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Abstract
This article addresses a gap in travel writing scholarship between studies of eighteenth century Grand Tourists and of Victorian day trippers. Its focus is on Yorkshire men and women from the middling ranks and professional classes who created tour journals, letters, and paintings recording tours of Scotland between 1796 and 1811. Five case studies carefully contextualise these historical sources within the reading, writing, record-keeping, and travel practices of their families. In doing so I demonstrate that studying these documents offers valuable insights and, when they are considered together, highlights how travel (and recording travel experiences) contributed to a sense of an emerging middle-class identity.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my thanks to my supervisors and all who read and commented on this article in draft form. Thanks to Nigel Leask and Ralph McLean for their thoughts on Walker’s paintings and to Paul White for his assistance with genealogical research. I am grateful also to Arthur Robinson for sharing transcripts of Mrs Thompson’s letters in his possession which are not included in Seeking the Scots. Transcriptions of other archival documents are reproduced by kind permission of Explore York Library and Archive, Hull History Centre, University of Leeds Special Collections, and the Wordsworth Trust.
Notes
1 Vickery, The Gentleman’s daughter, based largely on the archives of Lancashire families, contributed a great deal towards understanding this section of society.
2 Particularly influential has been Carruthers and Rawes, English Romanticism and the Celtic world.
3 Uglow, In these times. Moir, Discovery of Britain (originally published in 1964).
4 Important studies of manuscript culture outside literary circles or court settings include Whyman’s The pen and the people and Allan’s Commonplace books and reading in Georgian England.
5 Malcolm Andrews’ otherwise excellent and influential 1989 work The Search for the picturesque is uninterested in the social backgrounds of the writers or the audience for their works from which he quotes.
6 Batten, Pleasurable instruction, 3.
7 Ibid., 1.
8 Gard, Observant traveller.
9 ‘Early Tourists in Wales: 18th and nineteenth century tourists’ comments about Wales, https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/.
10 The post-colonial method of reading western travel writing, first put forward by Edward Said in his 1978 work Orientalism, is now widely used by travel writing scholars. For an overview of the development of travel writing and its study see Thompson, Travel Writing.
11 For group authorship in the context of Romantic authors see Levy, Family authorship and Romantic print culture.
12 York, Explore Libraries and Archives (YA): Journal of a tour of Scotland by William Gray, 1796, GRF/6/1 (2 volumes); Journal of a tour of Scotland by Jonathan Gray, 1796, GRF/6/2 (3 volumes).
13 Cobb, History of Grays of York, 168.
14 Archibald Fletcher (1746–1828), advocate and political reformer. In 1791 he had married Elizabeth Dawson from Oxton, near Tadcaster, so it is likely Fletcher was known in York legal circles.
15 Probably John Stuart of Luss (1743–1821), minister and Gaelic scholar, who accompanied Thomas Pennant on his 1772 tour of Scotland. David Dale (1739–1806) was the owner of the New Lanark mills complex before Robert Owen, his son-in-law, took over in 1799.
16 YA, GRF/6/1, vol 2.
17 The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine was published in parts between 1794 and 1807.
18 YA, GRF/6/1 vol 1, GRF/6/2 vol 2.
19 See Perrin, Snowdon, chapter 5: ‘The starting of the wild idea’, 120–152. The Sublime Wales website notes that Nicholas Owen’s guide, Caernarvonshire. A sketch of its history, antiquities, mountains … (1792) demonstrates that by the early 1790s it was apparently a popular activity to ascend Snowdon during the night to watch the sun rise: https://sublimewales.wordpress.com/attractions/snowdon/snowdon-y-wyddfa/snowdon-experiencing-the-landscape/snowdon-sunset-and-sunrise/ (accessed 4 April 2018).
20 YA, GRF/6/2 vol 1.
21 Ibid., vol 3.
22 Hey, Yorkshire from AD 1000, 182.
23 W[ordsworth] T[rust], Jane Marshall to Dorothy Wordsworth, WLMS A, Marshall John 1. L[eeds] U[niversity] L[ibrary], John Marshall’s tour books, MS 200/63-64.
24 After her mother’s death, Dorothy Wordsworth was sent to live with her ‘aunt’ Elizabeth Threlkeld in Halifax.
25 ‘New Grange’, now part of Leeds Beckett University campus.
26 WT, WLMS A, Marshall John 1.The letter is undated, but must date from some time after 3 September 1807 when according to John’s journal they reached Kelso.
27 De Selincourt, The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth: the middle years part 1: 1806–1811, 163–4. Wordsworth’s Recollections of a tour made in Scotland, use the two terms separately frequently and together on two occasions- “Solitary wildness of Loch ketterine,” 105, “as wild and solitary as any in the heart of the Highland mountains,” 197.
28 WT, Ibid.
29 LUL, MS 200/63.
30 Brant, Eighteenth-century letters, 237.
31 Denman, “Materialising cultural value”, 214. LUL, op cit.
32 LUL, MS 200/64.
33 For William Wordsworth and John Marshall’s common interests in planting and estate management see Denman, “Materialising cultural value in the English Lakes,” 206–33.
34 The bank, one of the earliest private banks in England, had been founded by his great-great uncle Joseph Pease in 1754. Hicks, Journal of Joseph Robinson Pease, iv.
35 For a discussion of the importance of letter-writing for earlier generations of the Pease family see Whyman, The pen and the people, 33–36.
36 Joseph’s father (1752–1807) was born Robinson and later adopted his mother’s surname ‘Pease’. He was brought up largely by his mother’s family in Manchester after his father’s death in 1756. The relatives which Pease visited in 1811 were most likely Thomas Robinson of Woodlands, Cheetham Hill and John Philips who was a relation by marriage as his wife was a Robinson.
37 Hey, op cit, 182, 189.
38 For a discussion of middle-class identity and travel writing see Turner British Travel Writers in Europe. See also Fabricant on attitudes to country house visiting and class.
39 H[ull] H[istory] C[entre], Scottish tour journal of Joseph Robinson Pease II, 1811, C DFP 1808.
40 Ibid.
41 Ibid.
42 See Allan, Commonplace books.
43 LUL, Jane Tottie’s album, 1822, YAS/MD489/2/4.
44 LUL, Maria Tottie’s album, 1821, YAS/MD489/2/3.
45 LUL, Diary of a trip to Scotland, 1822, YAS/MD489/2/2. Several apparent mistranscriptions suggest that the surviving manuscript is a copy made by a member of the family unfamiliar with names of certain people and places, or perhaps by Jane Tottie in old age.
46 ‘Here [Callander] we first saw highland scenery, highland habits & highland costume. The landlord met us at the door with his son as waiter in tartan suits … The country from this place to Aviemore again improves in interest & becomes towards the close most beautiful, pass first Kingusie near where W.W. was shooting with Mr J. Walker, next the box, in which Col. Thornton penned his shooting tour’, LUL, YAS/MD489/2/2, 25, 42. A report of the Northern Society exhibition can be found in Leeds Mercury, June 15, 1833.
47 The clue to this attribution is mention of an ancestor called Horsley at Morpeth [incorrectly written Worsley but given correctly later in the tour] indicating the author must be a Walker. Jane’s Walker uncles were: George Walker, Thomas Walker, William Walker (who married Margaret, daughter of Samuel Walker of Masbrough Hall in 1806). Mary Horsley widow of John Horsley, antiquarian and author of Britannia Romana (1732), married Samuel Hallowell in 1732. Their daughter married William Walker of Killingbeck House, Leeds.
48 Sheeran, “No ordinary costume book,” 216–18. In 1821 Thomas Walker was renting out Grove Street Mill to Thomas Bischoff & Co. Ward, “Industrial development and location in Leeds north of the River Aire,” 370. In 1796, Thomas had married Martha Bischoff, but she is not mentioned as having been on the Scottish tour. A later reference in the text to ‘the ladies’ however indicates there was another female in the party, perhaps a servant.
49 A sketchbook containing drawings by George Walker, including Scottish subjects, survives in Sheffield Archives (MD 7048) but these cannot be linked positively to this tour using the anonymous manuscript. For example although Letterfinlay and Dunkeld are both represented in the tour and the Sheffield album the representations of Staffa do not reconcile. The drawing of a boat containing 10 figures on their way to or returning from Staffa, does not tally with George having ‘attended the disembarkation from the steam packet of about 100 Staffa passengers’, 48. Neither is it clear how Walker’s sketch of the Duke of Athol and hunting party would relate to the 1822 tour.
50 Richard Tottie of Kingston upon Hull (1770–1859) and Sarah Walker of Leeds (1770–1823) were married in 1800 in St Peter’s, Leeds. In 1822 their surviving children were: Jane (b. 1801), Maria (b. 1802), Richard (b. 1805), George William (christened 1809), Frances (known as ‘Sarah’, b. 1811) and Emma (b. 1810).
51 Richard Tottie (1770–1859) did not remarry and he continued to live with his unmarried daughters Jane, Sarah Frances and Emma until his death. Both his sons had died in 1828 and 1829. When Jane, the last of the sisters, died in 1888 her estate passed to the Coniston Hall branch of the family.
52 LUL, YAS/MD489/2/2, 15, 21, 33.
53 Ibid., 35–36, 38.
54 Ibid., 22.
55 The text gives no detail about the composition of the tour party; it is only possible to deduce that Philothea was definitely accompanied by a female relative – possibly her sister-in-law Jane Thompson. Philothea and Thomas Thompson had three surviving sons, Thomas Perronet (b.1783), John Vincent (b.1785), Charles William (b.1788) and one daughter, Philothea (b.1791). In 1807 none of their sons was at home. Although Thomas Thompson was involved in the 1807 parliamentary election he was elected to Midhurst where there was no need to actually campaign.
56 Arthur Robinson suggests that the family copy which came down through John was Philothea’s copy and that the LUL copy of the tour was given to Thomas Peronnet Thompson by his mother (letter, March 2016). It has not been possible to ascertain the latter, and I suggest that this was a first draft, whereas the bound copy was almost certainly the presentation copy for Philothea.
57 Robinson, Seeking the Scots, 11 and LUL, A journey in Scotland in summer 1807, MS 277/4/22. Dr. Johnson in fact wrote at the conclusion of his Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland ‘novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal, and I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national matters, are the thoughts of one who has seen but little’. Black, To the Hebrides, 248.
58 See Kinsley, Women writing the home tour, 45–73, for a discussion on how women travel writers presented their work to the public.
59 Philothea’s parents were William Briggs of London, excise official, and Elizabeth Perronet, daughter of a clergyman. She married Thomas Thompson in 1781.
60 Robinson, op cit, 68.
61 Whyman, The Pen and the People, 13.
62 LUL, MS 277/4/22.
63 Ezell, Social authorship, 12.
64 Letter of 30 January 1809 quoted in Robinson, Seeking the Scots, 80–81.
65 Robinson, Seeking the Scots, 62.
66 Ibid., 81.
67 Letter of 8 December 1807 (transcript provided by A.R.B. Robinson).
68 John Vincent left Queens College, Cambridge in 1805 and trained to be a barrister. His time in Edinburgh appears to have been spent attending lectures at the University. HHC, ‘Account of John Vincent Thompson’, DX373/7.
69 Brant, op. cit, 229.
70 Letter of 4 December 1808 (transcript).
71 Letter of 21 January 1809 (transcript).