Now! Then! Walter White arrives at Batley

27 July 1858: Walter White arrives at Batley

Walter White. 1861. A Month in Yorkshire, 4th Ed. London: Chapman and Hall. The best of White’s travel writing, in which, as usual, he encounters and investigates the Plain People. This is the golden age of walking, when there were good roads pretty much everywhere, and they hadn’t yet been made inaccessible to pedestrians by cars. His July is told in 31 chapters, which seem to refer to the days of the month. Get it:

Excerpt

The walk to the town gives you such a view as can only be seen in a manufacturing district: hills, fields, meadows, and rough slopes, all bestrewn with cottages, factories, warehouses, sheds, clouded here and there by smoke; roads and paths wandering apparently anywhere; here and there a quarry, and piles of squared stone; heaps of refuse; wheat-fields among the houses; potato-plots in little levels, and everything giving you the impression of waiting to be finished. Add to all this, troops of men and women, boys and girls – the girls with a kerchief pinned over the head, the corner hanging behind – going home to dinner, and a mighty noise of clogs,

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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Original

The walk to the town gives you such a view as can only be seen in a manufacturing district: hills, fields, meadows, and rough slopes, all bestrewn with cottages, factories, warehouses, sheds, clouded here and there by smoke; roads and paths wandering apparently anywhere; here and there a quarry, and piles of squared stone; heaps of refuse; wheat-fields among the houses; potato-plots in little levels, and everything giving you the impression of waiting to be finished. Add to all this, troops of men and women, boys and girls—the girls with a kerchief pinned over the head, the corner hanging behind—going home to dinner, and a mighty noise of clogs,

113 words.