|
Myers Literary Guide:
|
The North-East
|
|
DANIEL DEFOE (1660? - 1731) Defoe was more interested in how people got their living than in describing natural wonders. On his tour of Great Britain, published in 1724-27, he says, for example: 'Darlington... has nothing remarkable but dirt.' On his way north, Defoe noted the salt pans at South Shields, which consumed a prodigious amount of coal from Newcastle: 'The fire makes such a smoke, that we saw it ascend in clouds over the hills, four miles before we came to Durham, which is sixteen miles from the place.' Durham itself is described without rapture, though the clergy live 'in all the magnificence and splendour imaginable'. He is moved to compassion, however, by a mining accident at Lumley Park 'where three score poor people lost their lives in the pit.' Defoe was impressed by Newcastle and its quays: 'Well wharf'd up and faced with free-stone... the longest and largest key for landing and loading goods that is to be seen in England, for that at Yarmouth... and much longer than that at Bristol.' Defoe marvelled at the amount of coal shipped from the port. and concludes; 'They build ships here to perfection, I mean as to strength and to bear the sea.' Defoe had been active in Newcastle as a secret government agent since 29 September 1706, when he rode across the bridge and got the price of a new horse out of John Bell, the postmaster in Newcastle. The Post House stood at the south end of Bigg Market, adjoining Pudding Chare. Defoe was passing under the name of Alexander Goldsmith at the time and was sounding local opinion about the proposed union of England and Scotland. he spent a good deal of time in the area over the next two years and was back in 1710, this time as Claud Guilot. He took lodgings in Hillgate just across the river in Gateshead. He published through Joseph Button, a bookseller on the Tyne bridge (built-up like old London bridge), and may have collaborated with him on the Newcastle Gazette. He also relied on Button to get his spectacles repaired and procure supplies of his favourite pickles. Defoe fervently regrets his decision not to comment on the antiquities indicated by writers such as William Camden (q.v.), compelling him to leave out much of beauty across the whole of the North, and states that he will return to honour 'the dust of gallant men and glorious nations' in a proper manner. He did inspect parts of the Roman Wall, however, and makes much of his exertions in climbing The Cheviot. On his journey north through Northumberland, he writes: 'Every place shews you ruin'd castles, Roman altars, inscriptions, monuments of battle, of heroes killed and armies routed, and the like: the towns of Morpeth, Alnwick, Warkworth, Tickill and many others show their old castles, and some of them still in tolerable repair, as Alnwick in particular, and Warkworth; others as Bamburgh, Norham, Chillingham, Horton, Dunstar, Wark and innumerable more, are sunk in their own ruins by the meer length of time.'Defoe found the local inhabitants well-informed as to Chevy Chase and the Battle of Flodden. Berwick however was old, decayed and neither populous nor rich. Defoe's last remarks concern the Northumbrian dialect: 'The natives of this country... are distinguished by a shibboleth upon their tongues, namely, a difficulty in pronouncing the letter r, which they cannot deliver from their tongues without a hollow jarring in the throat, by which they are plainly known, as a foreigner is in pronouncing the th and the natives value themselves upon that imperfection, because, forsooth, it shews the antiquity of their blood.'
|
|