The Exeter Road: the story of the west of England highway — Edition Insights

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In Category - Geography

Authors: Harper, Charles G. (Charles George), 1863-1943 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2017 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: England -- Description and travel; England -- Social life and customs; Exeter Road Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 69,130

Reading time 301 min

Text sections 12

This digital edition of The Exeter Road: the story of the west of England highway — Edition Insights is described by source-level measurements including 69,130 words, 5 hr 1 min estimated reading time, and 12 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 28.1 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “England -- Description and travel,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #54140

An editorial note on Charles G. Harper's 'The Exeter Road', focusing on its structure, recurring images of solitude and movement, and the interplay between historical travel and literary retreat along the west of England highway.

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old-fashioned hostelry, which stood modestly back from the roadway on the north side of St. Paul’s Churchyard, was, unhappily, demolished in 1894, after a good deal more than two centuries’ record for good cheer. It was originally the ‘Swan and Harp,’ but some irreverent wag, probably as far back as the building of the house in Wren’s time, found the other name for it, and the effigies of the goose and the gridiron remained even to our own time.

This year of our imaginary journey affords a strange contrast with the appearance the streets will possess some sixty years later. Ludgate Hill, in 1837 an exceedingly narrow thoroughfare, paved with rough granite setts, will in the last decade of the century present a very different aspect. Instead of the dingy brick warehouses there will be handsome premises of some architectural pretensions, and the Hill will be considerably widened. The setts will have disappeared, to be replaced by wood pavement, and the traffic will have increased tenfold; until, in fact, it has become a continuous stream. There will be strange vehicles, too, unknown in 1837,--omnibuses, hansom-cabs, and motor cars, and where Ludgate Hill joins Fleet Street there will be a Circus and an obstructive railway-bridge.

We proceed in leisurely fashion down Ludgate Hill, and halt for passengers and parcels at the ‘Bolt-in-Tun,’ Fleet Street, which is now a railway receiving office. Thence by slow degrees, calling at the ‘Red Lion,’ ‘Spotted Dog,’ and the ‘White Hart,’ we eventually reach the ‘Gloucester Coffee House,’ Piccadilly, re-built many years ago, and now the ‘Berkeley Hotel.’ Beyond this point, progress is fortunately speedier, and we reach Hyde Park Corner in, comparatively speaking, the twinkling of an eye. Hyde Park Corner in 1837, this year of the Queen’s accession, has begun to feel the great changes that are presently to alter London so marvellously. We have among our fellow-travellers by the stage an old gentleman, a Cobbett-like person, who wears a rustic, semi-farmer kind of appearance, and recollects many improvements here; who can ‘mind the time, look you,’ when the turnpike-gate (which was removed in 1825) stood at the corner; when St. George’s Hospital was a private mansion, the residence of Lord Lanesborough; and when the road leading past it to Pimlico was quite wild country, as in the picture on page 43, where sportsmen shot snipe in those marshes that were in future years

to become the site of Belgrave Square and other aristocratic quarters.

At this spot Mr. Decimus Burton had already built the great Triumphal Arch forming the entrance to Constitution Hill, together with the Classic Screen at Hyde Park Corner. The Screen was built in 1828, and the Arch, which is a copy of the Arch of Titus at Rome, in 1832. Already, in 1820, Apsley House had become the residence of the Iron Duke, but it was not until 1846 that what Thackeray justly names ‘the hideous equestrian monster’ was placed on the summit of that Arch, opposite the Duke’s windows. Here is an illustration of it, before it was hoisted up to that height. Beside it you see the Duke himself, in his characteristic white trousers, in company with several weirdly dressed persons. Again, over page, may be seen the Arch, with the statue on it, and the neighbourhood vastly changed from the appearance it wears in the picture of the ‘North-East Prospect of St. George’s Hospital.’ Instead of the great hooded waggons starting for the West Country, the road is occupied with very crowded traffic, and among the vehicles may be noticed two omnibuses, one going to Chelsea, the other (for this is the year 1851) to the Exhibition,--the first exhibition that ever was. If, ladies and gentlemen, you will be pleased to look at those omnibuses, you will see that they have neither knifeboards nor seats on the roof, and that passengers are squatting up there in the most supremely uncomfortable, not to say dangerous, positions. Also, in those dark ages of London locomotion, the ascent to that uncomfortable roof was of itself perilous, for no

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Charles G. Harper's The Exeter Road (1899) is the fifth volume in his series on England's great roads, but it is far from a mere itinerary. The book's structure moves chapter by chapter along the highway from London to Exeter, yet Harper repeatedly pauses for digressions—anecdotes, local traditions, and literary associations—that give the route a layered, almost archaeological texture. The preface announces this method: Harper deliberately suppresses 'much archaeology and much purely guide-book description' in favor of 'floating traditions' and 'gossip of yesterday' that he believes will become 'the history of to-morrow.' This editorial note examines how the work's structure, recurring images of solitude and movement, and shifts between bustling coaching scenes and deserted downs create a distinctive portrait of a road in transition.

The Road as a Sequence of Digressions

Harper organizes The Exeter Road as a linear journey, but the narrative rarely stays on the straight path. Each chapter corresponds to a stage of the highway, yet the text repeatedly veers into historical anecdotes, local legends, and literary pilgrimages. The preface explicitly defends this method: Harper values 'those anecdotes and floating traditions of the country, which, the gossip of yesterday, will be the history of to-morrow.' This structural choice means that the road itself becomes a thread connecting disparate stories—a coaching accident, a poet's retreat, a vanished inn. The reader is never allowed to forget that the highway is not just a physical route but a repository of memory. Harper's digressions are not distractions; they are the point. The book's architecture mirrors the experience of travel itself, where the journey is punctuated by unexpected encounters and detours.

Solitude and the Empty Highway

A recurring image in the excerpts is the contrast between the road's former bustle and its present stillness. At Winterslow Hut, Harper describes how 'the emptiness is appalling'—a place where 'two or three weeks will sometimes elapse without even a beggar or tramp or cart passing the door.' This sense of desolation is not merely scenic; it becomes a lens for understanding the road's history. Harper notes that the inn's appearance is 'identical with its aspect of sixty years ago,' yet the life has drained away. The same 'horse-pond by the roadside, the same trees, only older and more decrepit' remain, but the coaches no longer stop. This image of a frozen landscape, haunted by its own past, recurs throughout the book. Harper uses such moments to evoke a melancholy that is neither nostalgic nor sentimental, but observational: the road endures, but its purpose has shifted.

Literary Retreats and the Road's Quiet Corners

Harper's account of Winterslow Hut is notable for its extended focus on William Hazlitt, who lived there in seclusion. The description of Hazlitt's habits—'he would walk, for the pleasure of having the neighbourhood all to himself, from forty to fifty miles a day'—mirrors the book's own fascination with solitude. Harper quotes a later visitor who imagines Hazlitt 'reading Tom Jones for the tenth time, or enjoying one of Congreve's comedies' in the lonely parlour. This literary pilgrimage is not an aside; it is central to Harper's method. The road becomes a setting for intellectual retreat, a place where the noise of coaching traffic gives way to the quiet of the essayist's pen. By juxtaposing the inn's former role as a coaching stop with its later identity as a writer's refuge, Harper shows how the highway's meaning changes over time. The road is not just a route for commerce but a space for contemplation.

Movement Between Scenes: Coach, Foot, and Page

The book's structure is built on rapid shifts between modes of travel and observation. Harper moves from the coachman's bugle fanfares to the solitary walker on the downs, from the crowded inn yard to the empty parlour. These transitions are not jarring; they are the book's organizing principle. The excerpt describing Winterslow Hut begins with the coach-guards blowing 'fanfares on their bugles as a reminder for the ostler to have his fresh teams ready,' then shifts to Hazlitt's 'forty to fifty miles a day' on foot. The same location hosts both the bustle of the mail coach and the stillness of the literary recluse. Harper's prose itself enacts this movement: it is at once descriptive and anecdotal, blending topographical detail with quoted voices. The reader is constantly in motion, not just along the road but between its historical layers. This technique gives the book a kinetic energy that matches its subject.

Readers approaching The Exeter Road should expect not a straightforward guide but a meandering, associative history. Harper's method rewards those who enjoy digressions and local colour over systematic description. The book's strength lies in its ability to make a single highway feel like a world, where every inn, hill, and crossroads holds a story. Pay attention to the moments of stillness—the empty road, the abandoned hut—for they reveal as much about the road's character as the bustling coaching scenes. Harper's road is a palimpsest, and this edition invites you to read its layers.

That grey afternoon, the rain against the windows made Harper’s solitary coach journeys feel closer, each mile a quiet retreat into the self. The same lingering sense of vast, open solitude stayed with me, and I found myself drifting, almost without noticing, to the wilder silence of Alaska in The New Eldorado: A Summer Journey to Alaska — Themes and Context, another kind of pilgrimage, but toward an even lonelier horizon.