The little life, that was destined to be such a cruel thorn in the sides of Authority, was very near being summarily extinguished about this time; on occasion of William getting out of his depth while bathing in the river Wey, and from which he was “pulled out by the foot, which happened to stick up above the water.”
By the time of his reaching ten or eleven years of age he is already getting useful, in his way, and he takes his turn with his brothers of going the annual visit to Weyhill Fair with their father. The fair at Weyhill, though still considerable, is not what it was then; the hop-growers now run off to Worcester, or Burton-on-Trent; but in those days, long before the railways, Weyhill in October was the grand centre for sheep, hops, &c. There the yearly hirings took place, and there the bucolic gathering from all the neighbouring counties had an annual dissipation. We shall presently see that it was at one of these trips Cobbett made his first acquaintance with American politics. But the following incident—which has often been told, but cannot on that account be omitted here—presents his first recorded look-out upon life.
“At eleven years of age, my employment was clipping of box-edgings and weeding beds of flowers in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester, at the Castle of Farnham, my native town. I had always been fond of beautiful gardens; and a gardener, who had just come from the King’s Gardens at Kew, gave such a description as made me instantly resolve to work in these gardens. The next morning, without saying a word to any one, off I set, with no clothes except those upon my back, and with thirteen halfpence in my pocket. I found that I must go to Richmond, and I accordingly went on, from place to place, inquiring my way thither. A long day (it was in June) brought me to Richmond in the afternoon. Two pennyworth of bread and cheese, and a pennyworth of small beer, which I had on the road, and one halfpenny that I had lost somehow or other, left threepence in my pocket. With this for my whole fortune, I was trudging through Richmond, in my blue smock-frock, and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring about me, my eye fell upon a little book in a bookseller’s window. ‘Tale of a Tub,’ price 3d. The title was so odd, that my curiosity was excited. I had the 3d., but then I could have no supper. In I went, and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read, that I got over into a field, at the upper corner of Kew Gardens, where there stood a haystack. On the shady side of this, I sat down to read. The book was so different from anything that I had ever read before; it was something so new to my mind, that, though I could not at all understand some of it, it delighted me beyond description; and it produced what I have always considered a birth of intellect. I read on till it was dark, without any thought about supper or bed. When I could see no longer, I put my little book in my pocket, and tumbled down by the side of the stack, where I slept till the birds in Kew Gardens awaked me in the morning; when off I started to Kew, reading my little book. The singularity of my dress, the simplicity of my manner, my confident and lively air, and, doubtless, his own compassion besides, induced the gardener, who was a Scotchman, I remember, to give me victuals, find me lodgings, and set me to work. And it was during the period that I was at Kew, that the present King (Geo. IV.), and two of his brothers laughed at the oddness of my dress, while I was sweeping the grass-plat round the foot of the pagoda. The gardener, seeing me fond of books, lent me some gardening books to read; but these I could not relish after my ‘Tale of a Tub,’ which I carried about with me wherever I went; and when I, at about twenty [24] years old, lost it in a box that fell overboard in the Bay of Fundy, in North America, the loss gave me greater pain then I have ever felt at losing thousands of pounds.”
How long the employment at Kew lasted, and how he got home again, does not appear. The life at Farnham was probably resumed before the approach of winter; for, either the year before this, or that immediately succeeding, he mentions being sent down from Farnham to Steeple Langford, in Wiltshire, with a horse; remaining at the latter place “from the month of June till the fall of the year.”
Cobbett must have been about fourteen years of age at the time alluded to in the following incident:—
“My father used to take one of us with him every year to the great hop-fair at Weyhill. The fair was held at Old Michaelmastide, and the journey was to us a sort of reward for the labours of the summer. It happened to be my turn to go thither the very year that Long Island was taken by the British. A great company of hop-merchants and farmers were just sitting down to supper as the post arrived, bringing in the ‘Extraordinary Gazette,’ which announced the victory. A hop-factor from London took the paper, placed his chair upon the table, and began to read with an audible voice. He was opposed, a dispute ensued, and my father retired, taking me by the hand, to another apartment, where we supped with about a dozen others of the same sentiments. Here Washington’s health, and success to the Americans, were repeatedly toasted, and this was the first time, as far as I can recollect, that I ever heard the General’s name mentioned. Little did I then dream that I should ever see the man, and still less that I should hear some of his own countrymen reviling and execrating him.”
Although we have learned, not only to look with complacency upon the results of the attempt to coerce the Colonies, but, also, to wonder that there could have ever been English statesmen so deluded as to expect anything but disaster from the contest; it has not been sufficiently observed, that the immediate effect was the partial ruin of the labouring poor in this country; that it is from that period that their prosperity has declined, and their comforts have become fewer and fewer. And what is more, before their impoverishment made it obvious to everybody, the common people and the tradesmen showed, by their abhorrence of the war, that they were, for once, gifted with a truer political sagacity than their precious rulers; and that there must have been some vague general anticipation of the consequences to them, and to their families. Prices rose, whilst wages remained stationary; and, from the very outset, the privations of the poor were aggravated to an intense degree. But from that date arose the thirst of the labouring classes for political information, which has since resulted in their possessing so general a share in representation.
So, down at quiet Farnham, the people had hitherto been, “like the rest of the country people in England,” neither knowing nor thinking much about politics. The “shouts of victory or the murmurs at a defeat,” would now and then break in upon their tranquillity for a moment; but after the American war had continued for a short time, the people began to be a little better acquainted with subjects of that kind. Cobbett says, that opinions were pretty equally divided concerning the war, at first; whilst there grew up a good deal of pretty warm discussion, sometimes:—
“My father was a partisan of the Americans: he used frequently to dispute on the subject with the gardener of a nobleman