Adam Thorpe - Ulverton

Edmund Bunce. He had a tinderbox & I saw him put it to the straw

so many of these fellows he might do better to Say Nothing, than mitigate himself into lying. Starvation never loosened the rope, as one might say. Tho’ I am not wholly convinced of this hollow-belly wretchedness that The Times is so full of: most of these fellows look apple-cheeked enough to me, tho’ slow as oxen (whether from hunger I doubt) and with moist, red eyes — from a combination, I suspect, of wind and ale-house. Some, indeed, have an attenuated look — that have guttered, as it were, into a pool of pauperism, at the base of the Candle. I thought all Ploughmen to be strapping, yet half of these look hardly capable of the said task, with thin shoulders as tho’ they have sat at a desk since birth — and with whining, girlish voices that set my teeth on edge. But when I think what I have seen in London — that hardly bears the description of humanity — pestilential — hard by the Inns of

said they had nor warmth nor sufficient bread, and proceeded to abuse the said Edward Hobbs. I heard a gun let off, and saw a man fall. I don’t know who fired the gun. I struck the said Giles Griffin with my stick. Griffin kicked my person. Edward Hobbs knocked the said Griffin to the ground & he was trampled upon by diverse persons in the Mob, who were fleeing the horses. Griffin rose and thereupon struck this Examinant with a potato-lifter upon the jaw

digging began yesterday — and this being a most instructive business to witness, as I was able to do in my free hour: the turf is cut into squares — lifted like the peel of an apple — and thus revealing, as it were, the Flesh beneath

in Maddle Lane with my wife & five children. My mother lives with us also. I heard a horn blown & went to the Window. There were many persons outside: they said we are all one & I must go with them & I shd carry a stick. We have no fire so I took a spoon. They said we must collect money as at Whitsun feast.

The effect was dull, for the bared space was not sufficiently lily-white — as your arms are, my Emily — on account of a flintiness, and the sticky boots of the labourers. A quarry has been made for the chalk nearby, that replaces the removed soil, and as I write they are carrying the stone (from which all dark matter has been excised) to the equine place and tipping it & patting it in, this albescence being effected by manual means only — the Squire’s efforts are designed for the express purpose of keeping the Devil afar off from otherwise idle hands, and those inflammatory minds certain to see in our carriage of Justice a suitable Pyre for their needs. There has been a pamphlet circulating over the beer-pots that wd drain the bloom from your loveliness

said to him that we have no tatoes nor bread and our children cannot sleep, for they go bedward without sup, only watered milk & sugar, & hardly fire to cook by if we had these things: I said there is hardly ash to sweep into one hand at the end of the day. He answered this will turn to ashes in your mouth, & we must not be tearing the Notices down, for they are good advice. I said, D — n it, these people want money, & they shall have it. He answered that if we wd get money by any means in the open day, we would likewise pay in the open day

& the blacksmith, a great hairy fellow who blows out his cheeks before he speaks, and strikes his knees as tho’ they were his anvil (I colour the description somewhat — all tedious here — he is a smallish fellow that reeks of beer-shops and has grey hands) will Hang for certain, as he is down for robbery, Arson, machine-breaking, and extortion. He told me he had robbed only his own shop. He sobbed in the middle point of his Deposition. A fellow sobbing is a most ungainly sight, like seeing a horse limp.

that he has nothing to say.

it aid matters and move your father to be more disposed to this legal fellow who is swollen with love for his daughter more than a Judge with muffins, if this said legal fellow rapt with speechless admiration for a certain countenance was to place his spectacles firmly on his nose — and dip his pen — and commiserate whole-heartedly with said paternal being in his mercantile misfortune?

no answer to this Charge.

ing the sole path, as the said legal fellow sees it, out of anguish and sobs and into illumination namely that glittering Paradise of unearthly delights namely betrothal to said counten

hedging in Little Hangy, by the crab-apple. I saw the Mob come over the crest towards me & I thought it was Whitsun, for they were merry & dressed in their best cloathes & wore ribands. They broke the hedge in many places. Some of them came up to me. I asked them why it was Whitsun now, & where was the feast

I merely blackly gloom my days away to an attenuated end — forever yearning — in the Exile, as it were, of love? No more of this. The Horse proceeds upon the hill in all its creamy glory with men about it like flies, tho’ this horse cannot flick its mane. There is a frosty glistening to it of a morning and when the mist settles of a late afternoon I almost think it looms like a spectre, like some ideal mount searching for its rider

I read the Riot Act to the assembled Mob. Upon perceiving the riotousness of the said persons to be unabated, I returned immediately to the House, to await the said force of Yeomanry Cavalry. The force came at about eight o’clock. It was fully light by then and the force proceeded to position itself in the woods behind the Doric Temple as it had been ascertained that the Mob were feloniously intent on causing destruction to my own Household,

most tedious supper, announced by a gong, and a gurgle in the throat from the housekeeper, who does not speak, and has a chin mottled in the pattern of a leaf — as if one has fallen thereupon, and sunk in long ago. The Squire, when intoxicated, glares across the dining-table as if intent on finding in one’s waistcoat the horizon that might settle him, and his voice has no need of a speaking-trumpet were it to be issuing instructions on a battlefield. He has eyes like a cotter’s windows under thatch — suspicious, yet promising warmth that on further exploration — turns to a chill — and grows damper by the long hour, until it altogether hisses into a kind of well, dark and dismal. Yet on the morrow he will be in a crumpled cheerfulness, and all bustle — if the weather allows it. His White Horse has turned him boyish, tho’ he powders his head in the fashion of his portraits. Several of the farmers here wear pigtails still. Yesterday I visited the House (a stiff and lofty pile) to Examine (if that term might be used of the discourse) his Lordship Chalmers. His ears are uncommonly large, and his nose looks at you in the place of eyes. He has a thumb-joint that clicks alarmingly in the spaces between words, like a fowling-piece. But I don’t think him a bad fellow.

saith: he does not answer the Charge for it will not stand

& we went riding. The rides here are thro’ beech. Beech and more beech, and then downland — nay more more & more downland. The whole world might be composed of turf & nibbling sheep, were one to be as these peasants, and not venture forth enough miles to break the downland spell — and see happy clay, and our sweet Thames. There is a dreadful Rollingness to these wretched minds, that need a right-angle sorely to shake them up. I am not a bad rider over gates and hedgerows, tho’ I have never taken horse out of London before. I stumbled only once — in an infernal patch of briar and mud that nearly had me threwn headlong. How does Matlock, sweetest Emily? The Special Commission arrives in a fortnight: I must have all the Briefs ready. We hear report that Field Marshal the Duke of W. himself will sit with the Judges, as if their scarlet will not terrify these wretches enough without that great Nose. They shall be dealt with in batches of twenty, or the assize will last till Doomsday — or certainly over Christmas. Alas — still a hundred remain. I must haste them on — they persevere in telling one every twist and turn, as if they are embarked on a yarn of the sea — of marvellous Adventure, such as I would hear from my father as a boy. One has to cut these yards of fustian cloth, as a tailor for a dwarf. A few, I am grateful to report (these the hardest & most guilty) say nothing, and set their jaws (tho’ their hands tremble). Sometimes I am in a fog of accent, that is made blinder by the majority of the labourers having severe catarrh, arising (or so I am informed by the Doctor, a bristly young fellow) from the draughts in their dwellings, or the wet straw they reportedly sleep on — but whatever the origin of the Complaint, it causes their accents to sound as tho’ slinking past — sunk into themselves, as it were — a quality that makes interpretation a deal more difficult. I have a man beside me, a local fellow of some education (he writes verse) — who lights my way by Translation. So the days pass without you, sweetest Emily.