Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

This is the third day since I arrived at the village of Heslington, two hundred miles from London. I missed the hackney coaches for the first three or four days in York, but after that, prepared myself for the change from the aurelia to the grub state, and dare say I shall become fat, torpid, and motionless with a very good grace. I have laid down two rules for the country: first, not to smite the partridge; for if I fed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau. The squire never reads, but is it possible he can believe that religion to be genuine whose ministers destroy his game? I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my acquaintance gradually falling off. I shall by that time have taken myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was before) your abomination. Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently, knowing all will come in due season!

Comment

Comment

Smith also claimed in November 1809 to have preached against horse-racing and coursing before the Archbishop and “the sporting clergy” at Malton, of all places.

See Wikipedia for his acquisition of the living at Foston and his attempts to avoid living there. When his fate had become more or less clear, he wrote from York of York, also to Lady Holland:

You can conceive nothing like the tumult of this city; it was as riotous as London in the middle of the night. I have seen two drunken people and one battle. The clergy and ladies are leaving the town. I am most happy to tell you that Lord Milton will, in all probability, get his election. I came here last night, and voted today.

I think I have tagged the correct Fitzwilliam – the 5th rather than the 4th earl – and assume that this was the 20 May 1807 election and that this undated letter has been mischronologized.

It is hard to stop quoting the man. Here he is several weeks after the June 1809 letter:

My life for the summer is thus disposed of:- I walk up and down my garden, and dine at home, till August; then come my large brother and my little sister; then I go to Manchester, to stay with Philosopher Philips, in September; Horner and Murray come to see me in October; then I shall go and see the Earl Grey; then walk up and down my garden till March.

September 1809:

hear you laugh at me for being happy in the country, and upon this I have a few words to say. In the first place, whether one lives or dies, I hold, and have always held, to be of infinitely less moment than is generally supposed; but if life is to be, then it is common sense to amuse yourself with the best you can find where you happen to be placed. I am not leading precisely the life I should choose, but that which (all things considered, as well as I could consider them) appeared to me to be the most eligible. I am resolved, therefore, to like it, and to reconcile myself to it; which is more manly than to feign myself above it, and to send up complaints by the post, of being thrown away, and being desolate, and such like trash. I am prepared, therefore, either way. If the chances of life ever enable me to emerge, I will show you that I have not been wholly occupied by small and sordid pursuits. If (as the greater probability is) I am come to the end of my career, I give myself quietly up to horticulture, etc. In short, if it be my lot to crawl, I will crawl contentedly; if to fly, I will fly with alacrity; but, as long as I can possibly avoid it, I will never be unhappy. If, with a pleasant wife, three children, a good house and farm, many books, and many friends, who wish me well, I cannot be happy, I am a very silly, foolish fellow, and what becomes of me is of very little consequence.

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Original

June 24th, 1809.
My dear Lady Holland,
This is the third day since I arrived at the village of Heslington, two hundred miles from London. I missed the hackney-coaches for the first three or four days in York, but after that, prepared myself for the change from the aurelia to the grub state, and dare say I shall become fat, torpid, and motionless with a very good grace.

I have laid down two rules for the country: first, not to smite the partridge; for if I fed the poor, and comforted the sick, and instructed the ignorant, yet I should be nothing worth, if I smote the partridge. If anything ever endangers the Church, it will be the strong propensity to shooting for which the clergy are remarkable. Ten thousand good shots dispersed over the country do more harm to the cause of religion than the arguments of Voltaire and Rousseau. The squire never reads, but is it possible he can believe that religion to be genuine whose ministers destroy his game?

I mean to come to town once a year, though of that, I suppose, I shall soon be weary, finding my mind growing weaker and weaker, and my acquaintance gradually falling off. I shall by that time have taken myself again to shy tricks, pull about my watch-chain, and become (as I was before) your abomination.

[…]

Mrs. Sydney is all rural bustle, impatient for the parturition of hens and pigs; I wait patiently, knowing all will come in due season!

SYDNEY SMITH.

267 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Anti-clericalism (7) ·
• Charles Wentworth-Fitzwilliam, 5th Earl Fitzwilliam (2) ·
• Church of England (93) ·
• Curates Residence Bill 1808 (1) ·
• Elizabeth Fox, Baroness Holland (1) ·
• 📌Foston, North Yorkshire (5) ·
• Grey partridge (1) ·
• Hackney carriage (2) ·
• Heslington (4) ·
• Hunting (10) ·
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1) ·
• London (74) ·
• 📌Malton, North Yorkshire (11) ·
• Partridge (3) ·
• Smith, Sydney (1771-1845) (7), wit, writer, Anglican cleric ·
• Voltaire (3) ·
• Whigs (1678-1859) (21), political faction and, later, party, supported parliamentarism, various forms of elite liberalism, manufacturing interests, opposed Catholic emancipation, succeeded by the Liberal Party ·
• 📌York (164) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 22 September 1465: A (perhaps exaggerated) menu for the enthronement at Cawood Castle of George Neville as Archbishop of York
• 4 May 1807: Lord Milton welcomes 10,000 to his 21st birthday barbecue at Wentworth Woodhouse, Rotherham, during his campaign to be elected MP for the Whigs
• 27 May 1746: Advertisement for a cockfight featuring 86 roosters at Pocklington (East Riding)
• 3 November 1826: “Nimrod” of London gets to know a coachman during a journey from Leeds to York
• 11 September 1666: Nine days after the start of the Great Fire, Margaret Hodgson of Richmond tells a York court that a beggar told her yesterday of a plot to burn London
• 20 July 1858: Haymaking with the Quakers of Bainbridge, Wensleydale
• 2 January 1863: William Allison (11) fails to shoot any rabbits at Coxwold
• 3 January 1820: Following Peterloo, the Rev Sydney Smith (Foston, Ryedale) tell the Whig Edward Davenport that literacy and the populist press make parliamentary reform inevitable
• 7 July 1819: The Rev. Sydney Smith complains from Foston to the historian John Allen of summer colds
• 10 February 1821: Sydney Smith describes for Edward Davenport the view from his rectory at Foston (Ryedale)