Note 33 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY
Reading edition
For almost a century the exodus of the London citizens to the outlying country was considered fair game for satire. Bunbury’s caricature of 1772 only records the humours which Robert Lloyd had touched in “The Cit’s Country Box,” printed in No. 135 of the Connoisseur.
“The trav’ler with amazement sees A temple, Gothic or Chinese, With many a bell and tawdry rag on, And crested with a sprawling dragon. A wooden arch is bent astride A ditch of water four feet wide; With angles, curves, and zigzag lines, From Halfpenny’s exact designs. In front a level lawn is seen, Without a shrub upon the green; Where taste would want its first great law, But for the skulking sly Ha-Ha; By whose miraculous assistance You gain a prospect two fields distance. And now from Hyde Park Corner come The gods of Athens and of Rome: Here squabby Cupids take their places, With Venus and the clumsy graces; Apollo there, with aim so clever, Stretches his leaden bow for ever.”
Even Cowper saw little but absurdity in the demand for villas and “summer-houses.”
“Suburban villas, highway-side retreats, That dread th’ encroachment of our growing streets, Tight boxes neatly sash’d, and in a blaze With all a July sun’s collected rays, Delight the citizen, who, gasping there, Breathes clouds of dust, and calls it country air.”
Horace Smith, Lord Byron, and Thomas Hood all touched more or less satirically on this subject.