A German Visitor to Sutton 1782.
In 1782, the young German author
Karl Philipp Moritz (1756-1793) toured England on foot, and later published a memoir of his travels:
Reisen eines Deutschen in England im Jahr 1782 (Berlin: Friedrich Maurer, 1783). He spent a night in Sutton Coldfield at the Swan (see post #1), and his enthusiastic account of the visit makes fascinating reading (especially as the school is mentioned):
The road from Birmingham onwards is not very agreeable, being in general uncommonly sandy. Yet the same evening I reached a little place called Sutton, where everything, however, appeared to be too grand for me to hope to obtain lodgings in it, till quite at the end of it I came to a small inn with the sign of the Swan, under which was written Aulton, brickmaker.
This seemed to have something in it that suited me, and therefore I boldly went into it; and when in I did not immediately, as heretofore, inquire if I could stay all night there, but asked for a pint of ale. I own I felt myself disheartened by their calling me nothing but master, and by their showing me into the kitchen, where the landlady was sitting at a table and complaining much of the toothache. The compassion I expressed for her on this account, as a stranger, seemed soon to recommend me to her favour, and she herself asked me if I would not stay the night there? To this I most readily assented; and thus I was again happy in a lodging for another night.
The company I here met with consisted of a female chimney-sweeper and her children, who, on my sitting down in the kitchen, soon drank to my health, and began a conversation with me and the landlady.
She related to us her history, which I am not ashamed to own I thought not uninteresting. She had married early, but had the hard luck to be soon deprived of her husband, by his being pressed as a soldier. She neither saw nor heard of him for many years, so concluded he was dead. Thus destitute, she lived seven years as a servant in Ireland, without any one's knowing that she was married. During this time her husband, who was a chimney-sweeper, came back to England and settled at Lichfield, resumed his old trade, and did well in it. As soon as he was in good circumstances, he everywhere made inquiry for his wife, and at last found out where she was, and immediately fetched her from Ireland. There surely is something pleasing in this constancy of affection in a chimney-sweeper. She told us, with tears in her eyes, in what a style of grandeur he had conducted her into Lichfield; and how, in honour to her, he made a splendid feast on the occasion. At this same Lichfield, which is only two miles from Sutton, and through which she said the road lay which I was to travel to-morrow, she still lived with this same excellent husband, where they were noted for their industry, where everybody respected them, and where, though in the lowest sphere, they are passing through life neither uselessly nor unhappily.
The landlady, during her absence, told me as in confidence, that this chimney-sweeper's husband, as meanly as I might fancy she now appeared, was worth a thousand pounds, and that without reckoning in their plate and furniture, that he always wore his silver watch, and that when he passed through Sutton, and lodged there, he paid like a nobleman.
She further remarked that the wife was indeed rather low-lived; but that the husband was one of the best-behaved, politest, and civilest men in the world. I had myself taken notice that this same dingy companion of mine had something singularly coarse and vulgar in her pronunciation. The word old, for example, she sounded like auld. In other respects, I had not yet remarked any striking variety or difference from the pronunciation of Oxford or London.
To-morrow the chimney-sweeper, said she, her husband, would not be at home, but if I came back by the way of Lichfield, she would take the liberty to request the honour of a visit, and to this end she told me her name and the place of her abode.
At night the rest of the family, a son and daughter of the landlady, came home, and paid all possible attention to their sick mother. I supped with the family, and they here behaved to me as if we had already lived many years together.
Happening to mention that I was, if not a scholar, yet a student, the son told me there was at Sutton a celebrated grammar-school, where the school-master received two hundred pounds a year settled salary, besides the income arising from the scholars.
And this was only in a village. I thought, and not without some shame and sorrow, of our grammar-schools in Germany, and the miserable pay of the masters.
When I paid my reckoning the next morning, I observed the uncommon difference here and at Windsor, Nettlebed, and Oxford. At Oxford I was obliged to pay for my supper, bed, and breakfast at least three shillings, and one to the waiter. I here paid for my supper, bed, and breakfast only one shilling, and to the daughter, whom I was to consider as chambermaid, fourpence; for which she very civilly thanked me, and gave me a written recommendation to an inn at Lichfield, where I should be well lodged, as the people in Lichfield were, in general, she said, very proud. This written recommendation was a masterpiece of orthography, and showed that in England, as well as elsewhere, there are people who write entirely from the ear, and as they pronounce. In English, however, it seems to look particularly odd, but perhaps that may be the case in all languages that are not native.
I took leave here, as one does of good friends, with a certain promise that on my return I would certainly call on them again.
[Sources: Osbourne's
History of BVGS (Volume 1) alerted me to the story. The text is from
Travels in England in 1782 (London: Cassell, 1886) pages 137-140. The portrait of Moritz is by C F Rehberg
circa 1790 (
Wikimedia Commons).]
