ABSTRACT
In 1790, the intrepid traveller, John Byng, Viscount Torrington, embarked on a tour of some of the Midland counties in pursuit of quiet, picturesque scenery. This was a region of Britain increasingly renowned for its burgeoning industrial productivity rather than its picturesque beauty, and Byng was frequently frustrated in his desire to seek refuge from the noise and bustle of the city. This chapter examines the way in which, during the late eighteenth century in Britain, the land and its labouring inhabitants came to be valued for being quiet. It argues that a combination of agricultural improvement and picturesque tourism created in the literature of rural life a tendency to represent the poor as silent objects, figures to be seen but not heard. This development was conscientiously resisted in Oliver Goldsmith's nostalgic poem, The Deserted Village, which lamented the loss of social noise caused by the growth of commerce and the attendant depopulation of the countryside.
