James Beresford’s The Miseries of Human Life, originally published in 1806, was reprinted many times. And I’ve offered excerpts many times: here, here, and here. This one is from the section, The Miseries of Traveling.
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16.
A coach-window-glass, that will not be put up when it is down, nor down when it is up.
17.
On arriving, with a foundered horse, at a lone inn, with the intention of taking a bed,—every room occupied; so that you are under the necessity of passing a frosty night in a chair by the side of a sullen fire, while you solace yourself, hour after hour, with a succession of abortive attempts to feed it into a blaze;—
. . .
18.
In travelling on horse-back through an uninhabited country, enquiring your way, as you proceed, of different rustics, each of whom, besides giving you unintelligible directions as to your road, represents the place in question as many miles farther off than it had been reported by the last; thus making you seem to recede in your progress;—not to mention your expence of time and temper, from their anxious and useful enquiries as to the point from which you started, together with their rigmarole wonderings and lamentations at the number of miles which you have travelled out of your way.
19.
A coach-window-glass, that will not be put up when it is down, nor down when it is up.
17.
On arriving, with a foundered horse, at a lone inn, with the intention of taking a bed,—every room occupied; so that you are under the necessity of passing a frosty night in a chair by the side of a sullen fire, while you solace yourself, hour after hour, with a succession of abortive attempts to feed it into a blaze;—
. . .
18.
In travelling on horse-back through an uninhabited country, enquiring your way, as you proceed, of different rustics, each of whom, besides giving you unintelligible directions as to your road, represents the place in question as many miles farther off than it had been reported by the last; thus making you seem to recede in your progress;—not to mention your expence of time and temper, from their anxious and useful enquiries as to the point from which you started, together with their rigmarole wonderings and lamentations at the number of miles which you have travelled out of your way.
19.
After having, with the utmost difficulty, closed, and locked, and corded, your crammed trunk— being obliged to undo all, in order to get at something which lurks at the very bottom :— this, two or three times over.
20.
Attempting to pencil memoranda in a curricle, on a single piece of paper placed in the palm of your left hand :—cross road.
21.
The moment of discovering that you have dropped a highly-valued hereditary whip or stick out of an open carriage, without knowing when or where.20.
Attempting to pencil memoranda in a curricle, on a single piece of paper placed in the palm of your left hand :—cross road.
21.
Both illustrations courtesy Ancestry Images:
Thomas Rowlandson, "Doctor Syntax loosing his way" from the second edition of The Tour of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque, by William Coombe, 1812.
Isaac & George Cruikshank, "Bull & Mouth Inn. Bob bidding adieu to his friends & Life in London," from Life in London, 1822.
