The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old
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Title: The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries: To-Day and in Days of Old
Author: Charles G. Harper
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THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
=ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY=: Examples of their work, with some
Criticisms and Appreciations. Super royal 4to, L3 3_s._ net.
=THE BRIGHTON ROAD=: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. With 95
Illustrations by the Author and from old prints. Demy 8vo, 16_s._
=FROM PADDINGTON TO PENZANCE=: The Record of a Summer Tramp. With 105
Illustrations by the Author. Demy 8vo, 16_s._
=A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK OF DRAWING FOR MODERN METHODS OF REPRODUCTION.=
Illustrated by the Author and others. Demy 8vo, 7_s._ 6_d._
=THE MARCHES OF WALES=: Notes and Impressions on the Welsh Borders, from
the Severn Sea to the Sands o' Dee. With 115 Illustrations by the Author
and from old-time portraits. Demy 8vo, 16_s._
=REVOLTED WOMAN=: Past, Present, and to Come. Illustrated by the Author
and from old-time portraits. Demy 8vo, 5_s._ net.
=THE DOVER ROAD=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. With 100 Illustrations by
the Author and from other sources. Demy 8vo. [_In the Press._
[Illustration:
"_Till, woe is me, so lubberly,
The vermin came and pressed me._"
_From a painting by George Morland._]
_THE PORTSMOUTH
ROAD AND ITS TRIBUTARIES:
TO-DAY AND IN DAYS OF OLD._
BY CHARLES G. HARPER,
AUTHOR OF The Brighton Road,
Marches of Wales, Drawing for
Reproduction, &c., &c., &c.
[Illustration]
_Illustrated by the Author, and from
Old-time Prints and Pictures._
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL LIMITED
1895
(_All Rights Reserved._)
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
LONDON & BUNGAY.
TO HENRY REICHARDT, ESQ.
_My dear Reichardt,_
_Here is the result of two years' hard work for your perusal; the outcome
of delving amid musty, dusty files of by-gone newspapers; of research
among forgotten books, and pamphlets curious and controversial; of country
jaunts along this old road both for pleasures sake and for taking the
notes and sketches that go towards making up the story of this old
highway._
_You will appreciate, more than most, the difficulties of contriving a
well-ordered narrative of times so clean forgotten as those of old-road
travel, and better still will you perceive the largeness of the task of
transmuting the notes and sketches of this undertaking into paper and
print. Hence this dedication._
_Yours, &c._,
CHARLES G. HARPER.
Preface
_There has been of late years a remarkable and widespread revival of
interest in the old coach-roads of England; a revival chiefly owing to the
modern amateur's enthusiasm for coaching; partly due to the healthy sport
and pastime of cycling, that brings so many afield from populous cities
who would otherwise grow stunted in body and dull of brain; and in degree
owing to the contemplative spirit that takes delight in scenes of by-gone
commerce and activity, prosaic enough, to the most of them that lived in
the Coaching Age, but now become hallowed by mere lapse of years and the
supersession of horse-flesh by steam-power._
_The Story of the Roads belongs now to History, and History is, to your
thoughtful man, quite as interesting as the best of novels. Sixty years
ago the Story of the Roads was brought to an end, and at that time (so
unheeded is the romance of every-day life) it seemed a story of the most
commonplace type, not worthy the telling. But we have gained what was of
necessity denied our fathers and grandfathers in this matter--the charm of
Historical Perspective, that lends a saving grace to experiences of the
most ordinary description, and to happenings the most untoward. Our
forebears travelled the roads from necessity, and saw nothing save
unromantic discomforts in their journeyings to and fro. We who read the
records of their times are apt to lament their passing, and to wish the
leisured life and not a few of the usages of our grandfathers back again.
The wish is vain, but natural, for it is a characteristic of every
succeeding generation to look back lovingly on times past, and in the
retrospect to see in roseate colours what was dull and, neutral-tinted to
folk who lived their lives in those by-gone days._
_If we only could pierce to the thought of aeons past, perhaps we should
find the men of the Stone Age regretting the times of the Arboreal
Ancestor, and should discover that distant relative, while swinging by his
prehensile tail from the branches of some forest tree, lamenting the
careless, irresponsible life of his remote forebear, the Primitive
Pre-atomic Globule._
_However that may be, certain it is that when our day is done, when Steam
shall have been dethroned and natural forces of which we know nothing have
revolutionized the lives of our descendants, those heirs of all the ages
will look back regretfully upon this Era of ours, and wistfully meditate
upon the romantic life we led towards the end of the nineteenth century!_
_The glamour of old-time travel has appealed to me equally with others of
my time, and has led me to explore the old coach-roads and their records.
Work of this kind is a pleasure, and the programme I have mapped out of
treating all the classic roads of England in this wise, is, though long
and difficult, not (to quote a horsey phrase suitable to this subject) all
"collar work."_
CHARLES G. HARPER.
35, CONNAUGHT STREET, HYDE PARK,
LONDON, _April 1895_.
LIST _of_ ILLVSTRATIONS
SEPARATE PLATES
PAGE
1. THE PRESS GANG. _By George Morland._ Frontispiece.
2. OLD "ELEPHANT AND CASTLE," 1824 22
3. "ELEPHANT AND CASTLE," 1826 30
4. ADMIRAL BYNG 48
5. A STRANGE SIGHT SOME TIME HENCE 52
6. THE SHOOTING OF ADMIRAL BYNG 56
7. WILLIAM PITT 74
8. THE RECRUITING SERGEANT 90
9. ROAD AND RAIL: DITTON MARSH, NIGHT 94
10. THE "NEW TIMES" GUILDFORD COACH 98
11. THE "TALLY-HO" HAMPTON COURT AND DORKING COACH 104
12. MICKLEHAM CHURCH 108
13. BROCKHAM BRIDGE 114
14. ESHER PLACE 120
15. LORD CLIVE 124
16. PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES 128
17. THE "ANCHOR," RIPLEY 142
18. GUILDHALL, GUILDFORD 148
19. CASTLE ARCH 152
20. AN INN YARD, 1747. _After Hogarth_ 162
21. THE "RED ROVER" GUILDFORD AND SOUTHAMPTON COACH 166
22. ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL. _After J. M. W. Turner_ 170
23. MARY TOFTS 178
24. NEW GODALMING STATION 184
25. THE DEVIL'S PUNCH BOWL 194
26. HINDHEAD. _After J. M. W. Turner_ 198
27. TYNDALL'S HOUSE 208
28. SAMUEL PEPYS 236
29. JOHN WILKES 240
30. SAILORS CAROUSING. _From a Sketch by Rowlandson_ 252
31. THE "FLYING BULL" INN 268
32. PETERSFIELD MARKET-PLACE 278
33. THE "COACH AND HORSES" INN 298
34. CATHERINGTON CHURCH 320
35. AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE ON THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD.
_By Rowlandson_ 330
36. THE SAILOR'S RETURN 334
37. TRUE BLUE; OR BRITAIN'S JOLLY TARS PAID OFF AT
PORTSMOUTH, 1797. _By Isaac Cruikshank_ 338
38. THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT, 1782. _By James
Gillray_ 346
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
PAGE
The Revellers 12
Edward Gibbon 19
"Dog and Duck" Tavern 28
Sign of the "Dog and Duck" 29
Jonas Hanway 43
"If the shades of those antagonists foregather" 44
The First Umbrella 46
The "Green Man," Putney Heath 70
The Windmill, Wimbledon Common 74
Mr. Walter Shoolbred 97
Boots at the "Bear" 102
The "Bear," Esher 103
Burford Bridge 111
The "White Horse," Dorking 112
The Road to Dorking 113
Castle Mill 117
Cobham Churchyard 137
Pain's Hill 139
Fame up-to-Date 142
Herbert Liddell Cortis 146
Market-House, Godalming 176
Charterhouse Relics 189
Gowser Jug 190
Wesley 191
Bust of Nelson 192
Tombstone, Thursley 204
Thursley Church 205
Sun-dial, Thursley 206
"Considering Cap" 223
Milland Chapel 260
"The Wakes," Selborne 261
Badge of the Selborne Society 267
The "Flying Bull" Sign 271
The "Jolly Drovers" 272
"Shaved with Trouble and Cold Water" 284
Edward Gibbon 288
Windy Weather 304
Benighted 319
Dancing Sailor 361
THE ROAD TO PORTSMOUTH
Miles
Stone's End, Borough, to--
Newington 1/4
Vauxhall 1-1/2
Battersea Rise 4
Wandsworth (cross River Wandle) 5-1/2
Tibbet's Corner, Putney Heath 7-3/4
"Robin Hood," Kingston Vale 9
Norbiton Church 11-1/4
Kingston Market-place 12
Thames Ditton 13-3/4
Esher 16
Cobham Street (cross River Mole) 19-1/2
Wisley Common 20-1/4
Ripley 23-1/2
Guildford (cross River Wey) 29-1/2
St. Catherine's Hill 30-1/2
Peasmarsh Common (cross River Wey) 31-1/4
Godalming 34
Milford 35-3/4
Moushill and Witley Commons 36-1/4
Hammer Ponds 38-1/2
Hindhead (Gibbet Hill) 41-1/4
Cold Ash Hill and "Seven Thorns" Inn 44-1/4
Liphook ("Royal Anchor") 46-3/4
Milland Common 47-1/2
Rake 50-1/4
Sheet Bridge (cross River Rother) 53-3/4
Petersfield 55
"Coach and Horses" 59
Horndean 62-1/2
Waterlooville and White Lane End 65-1/2
Purbrook (cross Purbrook stream) 66-1/2
Cosham 68-1/4
Hilsea 69-1/2
North End 70-3/4
Landport 71-1/2
Portsmouth Town 72
Portsmouth, Victoria Pier 73
_The Portsmouth Road_
I
The Portsmouth Road is measured (or was measured when road-travel was the
only way of travelling on _terra firma_, and coaches the chiefest machines
of progression) from the Stone's End, Borough. It went by Vauxhall to
Wandsworth, Putney Heath, Kingston-on-Thames, Guildford, and Petersfield;
and thence came presently into Portsmouth through the Forest of Bere and
past the frowning battlements of Porchester. The distance was, according
to Cary,--that invaluable guide, philosopher, and friend of our
grandfathers,--seventy-one miles, seven furlongs; and our forebears who
prayerfully entrusted their bodies to the dangers of the roads and
resigned their souls to Providence, were hurried along this route at the
break-neck speed of something under eight miles an hour, with their hearts
in their mouths and their money in their boots for fear of the highwaymen
who infested the roads, from London suburbs to the gates of Portsmouth
Citadel.
"Cary's Itinerary" for 1821 gives nine hours as the speediest journey
performed in that year by what was then considered the meteoric and
previously unheard-of swiftness of the "Rocket," which, in that new and
most fashionable era of mail and stage-coach travelling, had deserted the
grimy and decidedly unfashionable precincts of the Borough and the
"Elephant and Castle," for modish Piccadilly. So imagine the "Rocket" (do
you not perceive the subtle allusion to speed in that title?) starting
from the "White Bear," Piccadilly, which stood where the "Criterion" now
soars into the clouds--any morning at nine o'clock, to the flourishes of
the guard's "yard of tin," and to the admiration of a motley crowd of
'prentice-boys; Corinthians, still hazy in their ideas and unsteady on
their legs from debauches and card-playing in the night-houses of the
Haymarket round the corner; and of a frowzy, importunate knot of Jew
pedlars, and hawkers of all manner of useful and useless things which
might, to a vivid imagination, seem useful on a journey by coach. Away,
with crack of whip, tinful, rather than tuneful, fanfare, performed by
scarlet-coated, purple-faced guard, and with merry rattle of harness, to
Putney, where, upon the Heath, the coach joined the
"... old road, the high-road,
The road that's always new,"
thus to paraphrase the poet.
They were jolly coach-loads that fared along the roads in coaching days,
and, truly, all their jollity was needed, for unearthly hours,
insufficient protection from inclement weather, and the tolerable
certainty of falling in with thieves on their way, were experiences and
contingencies that, one might imagine, could scarce fail of depressing the
most buoyant spirits. But our forebears were composed of less delicate
nerves and tougher thews and sinews than ourselves. Possibly they had not
our veneer of refinement; they certainly possessed a most happy ignorance
of science and art; of microbes, and all the recondite ailments that
perplex us moderns, they knew nothing; they did all their work by that
glorious rule, the rule of thumb; and for their food, they lived on roast
beef and home-brewed ale, and damned kickshaws, new-fangled notions,
gentility, and a hundred other innovations whole-heartedly, like so many
Cobbetts. And Cobbett, in very truth, is the pattern and exemplar of the
old-time Englishman, who cursed tea, paper money, "gentlemen" farmers, and
innumerable things that, innovations then, have long since been cast aside
as old-fashioned and out of date.
[Sidenote: _THE ENGLISHMAN OF YORE_]
The Englishman of the days of road-travel was a much more robust person
than the Englishman of railway times. He had to be! The weaklings were all
killed off by the rigours of the undeniably harder winters than we
experience to-day, and by the rough-and-ready conditions of existence that
made for the survival of the strongest constitutions. Luxurious times and
easier conditions of life breed their own peculiar ills, and the
Englishman of a hundred years ago was a very fine animal indeed, who knew
little of nerves, and, altogether, compared greatly to his own advantage
with his neuralgia-stricken descendants of to-day.
Still, our ancestors saw nothing of the romance of their times. That has
been left for us to discover, and that glamour in which we see their age
is one afforded only by the lapse of time.
No: coaching days had their romance, more obvious perhaps to ourselves
than to those who lived in the times of road-travel; but most certainly
they had their own peculiar discomforts which we who are hurled at express
speed in luxurious Pullman cars, or in the more exclusive and less
sociable "first," to our destination would never endure were railways
abolished and the coaching era come again. I should imagine that
three-fourths of us would remain at home.
[Sidenote: _COACHING MISERIES_]
Here are some of the coaching miseries experienced by one who travelled
before steam had taken the place of good horseflesh, and, sooth to say,
there is not much in the nature of romantic glamour attaching to them:--
_Misery number one._ Although your place has been contingently secured
some days before, and although you have risen with the lark, yet you see
the ponderous vehicle arrive full. And this, not unlikely, more than once.
2. At the end of a stage, beholding the four panting, reeking, foaming
animals which have dragged you twelve miles, and the stiff, galled,
scraggy relay, crawling and limping out of the yard.
3. Being politely requested, at the foot of a tremendous hill, to ease the
horses. Mackintoshes, vulcanized india-rubber, gutta-percha, and gossamer
dust-coats unknown then.
4. An outside passenger, resolving to endure no longer "the pelting of the
pitiless storm," takes refuge, to your consternation, inside; together
with his dripping hat, saturated cloak, and soaked umbrella.
5. Set down with a promiscuous party to a meal bearing no resemblance to
that of a good hotel, excepting in the charge; and no time allowed in
which to enjoy it.
6. Closely packed in a box, "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in," with
_five_ companions morally or physically obnoxious, for two or three
comfortless days and nights.
7. During a halt overhearing the coarse language of the ostlers and the
tipplers of the roadside pot-house: and besieged with beggars exposing
their horrible mutilations.
8. Roused from your fitful nocturnal slumber by the horn or bugle; the
lashing and cracking of whips; the noisy arrivals at turnpike gates, or by
a search for parcels (which, after all, are not there) under your seat: to
say nothing of solicitous drivers who pester you with their entirely
uncalled-for attentions.
9. Discovering, at a diverging-point in your journey, that the "Tally-ho"
coach runs only every other day or so, or that it has been finally
stopped.
10. Clambering from the wheel by various iron projections to your
elevated seat, fearful, all the while, of breaking your precious neck.
11. After threading the narrowest streets of an ancient town, entering the
inn-yard by a low archway, at the imminent risk of decapitation.
12. Seeing the luggage piled "Olympus high," so as to occasion an alarming
oscillation.
13. Having the reins and whip placed in your unpractised hands while
coachee indulges in a glass and chat.
14. To be, when dangling at the edge of a seat, overcome with drowsiness.
15. Exposed to piercing draughts, owing to a refractory glass; or, _vice
versa_, being in a minority, you are compelled, for the sake of
ventilation, to thrust your umbrella accidentally through a pane.
16. At various seasons, suffocated with dust and broiled by a powerful
sun; or crouching under an umbrella in a drenching rain--or petrified with
cold--torn by fierce winds--struggling through snow--or wending your way
through perilous floods.
17. Perceiving that a young squire is receiving an initiatory lesson into
the art of driving; or that a jibbing horse, or a race with an opposition
coach, is endangering your existence.
18. Losing the enjoyment, or employment, of much precious time, not only
on the road, but also from subsequent fatigue.
19. Interrupted by your two rough-coated, big-buttoned, many-caped
friends, the coachman and guard, who hope you will remember them before
the termination of your hurried meal. Although the gratuity has been
frequently calculated in anticipation, you fail in making the mutual
reminiscences agreeable.
Clearly this was no _laudator temporis acti_.
II
But there are two sides to every medal, and it would be quite as easy to
draw up an equally long and convincing list of the joys of coaching. It
was not always raining or snowing when you wished to go a journey.
Highwaymen were always too many, but they did not lurk in every lane; and
the coach was not overturned on every journey, nor, even when a coach
_did_ upset, were the spilled passengers killed and injured with the
revolting circumstance and hideous complexity of a railway accident. On a
trip by coach, it was possible to see something of the country and to fill
one's lungs with fresh air, instead of coal-smoke and sulphur--and so
forth, _ad infinitum_!
[Sidenote: _THE COACHING AGE_]
The Augustan age of coaching,--by which I mean the period when George IV.
was king,--was celebrated for the number of gentlemen-drivers who ran
smart coaches upon the principal roads from London. Many of them mounted
the box-seat for the sake of sport alone: others, who had run through
their property and come to grief after the manner of the time, became
drivers of necessity. They could fulfil no other useful occupation, for at
that day professionalism was confined only to the Ring, and although
professors of the Noble Art of Self-Defence were admired and (in a sense)
envied, they were not gentlemen, judge them by what standard you please.
What was a poor Corinthian to do? To beg he would have been ashamed, to
dig would have humiliated him no less; the only way to earn a living and
yet retain the respect of his fellows, was to become a stage-coachman. He
had practically no alternative. Not yet had the manly sports of cricket
and football produced their professionals; lawn-tennis and cycling were
not dreamed of, and the professional riders, the "makers' amateurs,"
subsidized heavily from Coventry, were a degraded class yet to be evolved
by the young nineteenth century. So coachmen the young Randoms and
Rake-hells of the times became, and let us do them the justice to admit
that when they possessed handles to their names, they had the wit and
right feeling to see that those accidents of their birth gave them no
licence to assume "side" in the calling they had chosen for the love of
sport or from the spur of necessity. If they were proud by nature, they
pocketed their pride. They drove their best, took their fares, and
pocketed their tips with the most ordinary members of the coaching
fraternity, and they were a jolly band. Such were Sir St. Vincent Cotton;
Stevenson of the "Brighton Age," a graduate he of Trinity College,
Cambridge; and Captain Tyrwhitt Jones.
[Sidenote: _GENTLEMEN COACHMEN_]
St. Vincent Cotton, known familiarly to his contemporaries as "Vinny," was
one who drove a coach for a livelihood, and was not ashamed to own it. He
became reduced, as a consequence of his own folly, from an income of five
thousand a year to nothing; but he took Fortune's frowns with all the
nonchalance of a true sportsman, and was to all appearance as
light-hearted when he drove for a weekly wage as when he handled the reins
upon his own drag.
"One day," says one who knew him, "an old friend booked a place and got up
on the box-seat beside him, and a jolly five hours they had behind one of
the finest teams in England. When they came to their journey's end, the
friend was rather put to it as to what he ought to do; but he frankly put
out his hand to shake hands, and offered him a sovereign. 'No, no,' said
the coachman. 'Put that in your pocket, and give me the half-crown you
give to another coachman; and always come by me, and tell all your friends
and my old friends to do the same. A sovereign might be all very well for
once, but if you think that necessary for to-day you would not like to
feel it necessary the many times in the year you run down this way.
Half-a-crown is the trade price. Stick to that, and let us have many a
merry meeting and talk of old times.'"
"What was right," says our author, "he took as a matter of course in his
business, as I can testify by what happened between him and two of my
young brothers. They had to go to school at the town to which their old
friend the new coachman drove. Of course they would go by him whom they
had known all their little lives. They booked their places and paid their
money, and were proud to sit behind their friend with such a splendid
team.
"The Baronet chaffed and had fun with the boys, as he was always
hail-fellow-well-met with every one, old and young, all the way down; and
at the end, when he shook hands and did not see them prepare to give him
anything, he said, as they were turning away, 'Now, you young chaps,
hasn't your father given you anything for the coachman?'
"'Yes,' they said, looking sheepish, 'he gave us two shillings each, but
we didn't know what to do: we daren't give it to you.'
"'Oh,' said he, 'it's all right. You hand it over to me and come back with
me next holidays, and bring me a coach-full of your fellows. Good-bye.'"
"I drive for a livelihood," said the Baronet to a friend. "Jones,
Worcester, and Stevenson have their liveried servants behind, who pack the
baggage and take all short fares and pocket all the fees. That's all very
well for them. I do all myself, and the more civil I am (particularly to
the old ladies) the larger fees I get." And with that he stowed away a
trunk in the boot, and turning down the steps, handed into the coach, with
the greatest care and civility, a fat old woman, saying as he remounted
the box, "There, that will bring me something like a fee."
The Baronet made three hundred a year out of this coach, and got his sport
out of it for nothing.
III
The "Rocket," and the other fashionable West-end coaches of the Regency
and George IV.'s reign, scorning the plebeian starting-point of the
"Elephant and Castle," whence the second and third-rate coaches, the
"rumble-tumbles" and the stage-wagons set out, took their departure from
the old City inns, and, calling at the Piccadilly hostelries on their way,
crossed the Thames at Putney, even as Captain Hargreaves' modern
Portsmouth "Rocket" did in the notable coaching revival some years since,
and as Mr. Shoolbred's Guildford coach, the "New Times," does now.
[Sidenote: _OLD PUTNEY BRIDGE_]
Here they paid their tolls at the old bridge--eighteenpence a time--and
laboriously toiled up the long hill that leads to Putney Heath, not
without some narrow escapes of the "outsiders" from having their heads
brought into sudden and violent contact with the archway of the old
toll-house that--though by no means picturesque in itself--was so strange
and curious an object in its position, straddling across the roadway.
What Londoner worthy the name does not regret the old crazy, timbered
bridge that connected Fulham with Putney? Granted that it was
inconveniently narrow, and humped in unexpected places, like a dromedary;
conceded that its many and mazy piers obstructed navigation and hindered
the tides; allowing every objection against it, old Putney Bridge was
infinitely more interesting than the present one of stone that sits so low
in the water and offends the eye with its matter-of-fact regularity,
proclaiming fat contracts and the unsympathetic baldness of outline
characteristic of the engineer's most admired efforts.
Perhaps an artist sees beauty where less privileged people discover only
ugliness; how else shall I account for the singular preference of the
guide-book, in which I read that "the ugly wooden bridge was replaced in
1886 by an elegant granite structure"?
[Illustration: THE REVELLERS.]
Old Putney Bridge could never have been anything else than picturesque,
from the date of its opening, in 1729, to its final demolition twelve
years ago: the new bridge will never be less than ugly and formal, and an
eyesore in the broad reach that was spanned so finely by the old timber
structure for over a hundred and fifty years. The toll for one person
walking across the bridge was but a halfpenny, but it frequently happened
in the old days that people had not even that small coin to pay their
passage, and in such cases it was the recognized custom for the tollman to
take their hats for security. The old gatekeepers of Putney Bridge were
provided with impressive-looking gowns and wore something the appearance
of beadles. Also they were provided with stout staves, which frequently
came in useful during the rows which were continually occurring upon the
occasions when wayfarers had their hats snatched off. "Your halfpenny or
your hat" was an offensive cry, and, together with the scuffles with
strayed revellers, left little peace to the guardians of the bridge.
[Sidenote: _SUBURBS_]
Everything is altered here since the old coaching-days; everything, that
is to say, but the course of the river and the trim churches of Fulham and
Putney, whose towers rise in rivalry from either shore. And Putney
church-tower is altogether dwarfed by the huge public-house that stands
opposite: a flaunting insult scarcely less flagrant than the shame put
upon the House of God by Cromwell and his fellows who sate in council of
war in the chancel, and discussed battles and schemed strife and bloodshed
over the table sacred to the Lord's Communion. Putney has suffered from
its nearness to London. Where, until ten years ago, old mansions and
equally old shops lined its steep High Street, there are now only rows of
pretentious frontages occupied by up-to-date butchers and bakers and
candlestick-makers; by drapers, milliners, and "stores" of the suburban,
or five miles radius, variety. Gone is "Fairfax House," most impressive
and dignified of suburban mansions, dating from the time of James I., and
sometime the headquarters of the "Army of God and the Parliament"; gone,
too, is Gibbon's birthplace, and the very church is partly
rebuilt--although _that_ is a crime of which our forebears of 1836 are
guilty. It is guilt, you will allow, who stand on the bridge and look down
upon the mean exterior brick walls of the nave, worse still by comparison
with the rough, weathered stones of the old tower. Every part of the
church was rebuilt then, except that tower, and though the Perpendicular
nave-arcade was set up again, it has been scraped and painted to a newness
that seems quite of a piece with other "improvements." All the monuments,
too, were moved into fresh places when the general post of that
sixty-years-old "restoration" was in progress. The dainty chantry of that
notable native of Putney, Bishop West, who died in 1533, was removed from
the south aisle to the chancel, and the ornate monument to Richard Lussher
placed in the tower, as one enters the church from the street.
Richard Lussher was not a remarkable man, or if he was the memory of his
extraordinary qualities has not been handed down to us. But if he was not
remarkable, his epitaph is, as you shall judge:--
"Memoriae Sacrum.
"Here lyeth y{e} body of Ric: Lussher of Puttney in y{e} Conty of
Surey, Esq: who married Mary, y{e} second daughter of George Scott of
Staplefoord, tanner, in y{e} Conty of Essex, Esq: he departed y{s}
lyfe y{e} 27{th} of September, An{o}o 1618. Aetatis sue 30.
"What tounge can speake y{e} Vertues of y{s} Creature?
Whose body fayre, whose soule of rarer feature;
He livd a Saynt, he dyed an holy wight,
In Heaven on earth a Joyfull heavy sight.
Body, Soule united, agreed in one.
Lyke strings well tuned in an unison,
No discord harsh y{s} navell could untye.
'Twas Heauen y{e} earth y{s} musick did envye;
Wherefore may well be sayd he lived well,
& being dead, y{e} World his vertues tell."
Some scornful commentator has called this doggerel; but I would that all
doggerel were as interesting.
[Sidenote: _HISTORIC FIGURES_]
We have already heard of one Cromwell at Putney, but another of the same
name, Thomas Cromwell,--almost as great a figure in the history of England
as "His Highness" the Protector,--was born here, a good deal over a
hundred years before warty-faced Oliver came and set his men in array
against the King's forces from Oxford. Thomas was the son of a blacksmith
whose forge stood somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Wandsworth Road,
on a site now lost; but though of such humble origin he rose to be a
successor of Wolsey, that romantic figure whom we shall meet lower down
the road, at Esher, who himself was of equally lowly birth, being but the
son of a butcher. But while Wolsey,--that "butcher's dogge," as some
jealous contemporary called him,--rendered much service to the Church,
Cromwell, like his namesake, had a genius for destruction, and became a
veritable _malleus ecclesia_. He it was who, unscrupulous and servile in
attendance upon the King's freaks, unctuous in flatteries of that Royal
paragon of vanity, sought and obtained the Chancellorship of England, by
suggesting that Henry should solve all his difficulties with Rome by
establishing a national Church of which he should be head. No surer way of
rising to the kingly favour could have been devised. Henry listened to his
adviser and took his advice, and Thomas Cromwell rose immediately to the
highest pinnacle of power, a lofty altitude which in those times often
turned men giddy and lost them their heads, in no figurative sense. None
so bitter and implacable towards an old faith than those who, having once
held it, have from one reason or another embraced new views; and Cromwell
was no exception from this rule. He was most zealous and industrious in
the work of disestablishing the religious houses, and the most rapacious
in securing a goodly share of the spoils. He was a terror to the homeless
monks and religious brethren whom his untiring industry had sent to beg
their bread upon the roads, and "fierce laws, fiercely executed--an
unflinching resolution which neither danger could daunt nor saintly virtue
move to mercy--a long list of solemn tragedies weigh upon his memory."
But these topmost platforms were craggy places in Henry VIII.'s time, and
the occupants of such dizzy heights fell frequently with a crash that was
all the greater from the depth of their fall. Wolsey had been more than
usually fortunate in his disgrace, for he was ill, and died from natural
causes. When his immediate successor, Sir Thomas More, fell, his life was
taken upon Tower Green. "_Decollat_," says a contemporary document, with a
grim succinctness, "_in castrum Londin: vulgo turris appellatur_."
Indeed, this was the common end of all them that walked arm-in-arm with
the King, and could have at one time boasted his friendship in the
historic phrase, "_Ego et Rex meus_." Why, the boast was a sure augury of
disaster. Wolsey found it so, and so also did More; and now Cromwell was
to follow More to the block. That his head fell amid protestations of his
belief in the Catholic faith is a singular comment upon the conduct of his
life, which was chiefly passed in violent persecutions of its ministers.
[Sidenote: _GIBBON_]
Another famous man was born at Putney: Edward Gibbon, the historian. Him
also we shall meet at another part of the road, but we may halt awhile to
hear some personal gossip at Putney, although it would be vain to seek his
birthplace to-day.
He says, in his posthumously-published "Memoirs of My Life and Writings":
"I was born at Putney, the 27th of April, O.S., in the year one thousand
seven hundred and twenty-seven; the first child of the marriage of Edward
Gibbon, Esq., and of Judith Porten. My lot might have been that of a
slave, a savage, or a peasant; nor can I reflect without pleasure on the
bounty of Nature, which cast my birth in a free and civilized country, in
an age of science and philosophy, in a family of honourable rank, and
decently endowed with the gifts of fortune. From my birth I have enjoyed
the rights of primogeniture; but I was succeeded by five brothers and one
sister, all of whom were snatched away in their infancy. My five brothers,
whose names may be found in the parish register of Putney, I shall not
pretend to lament.... In my ninth year," he continues, "in a lucid
interval of comparative health, my father adopted the convenient and
customary mode of English education; and I was sent to
Kingston-upon-Thames, to a school of about seventy boys, which was kept by
a Doctor Wooddeson and his assistants. Every time I have since passed over
Putney Common, I have always noticed the spot where my mother, as we drove
along in the coach, admonished me that I was now going into the world, and
must learn to think and act for myself."
At that time of writing he had "not forgotten how often in the year '46 I
was reviled and buffetted for the sins of my Tory ancestors." At length,
"by the common methods of discipline, at the expence of many tears and
some blood, I purchased the knowledge of the Latin syntax; and, not long
since, I was possessed of the dirty volumes of Phaedrus and Cornelius
Nepos, which I painfully construed and darkly understood."
Gibbon's "Miscellaneous Works," published after his death, are prefaced by
a silhouette portrait, cut in 1794 by a Mrs. Brown, and reproduced here.
Lord Sheffield, who edited the volume, remarks that "the extraordinary
talents of this lady have furnished as complete a likeness of Mr. Gibbon,
as to person, face, and manner, as can be conceived; yet it was done in
his absence." By this counterfeit presentment we see that the author of
the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" was possessed of a singular
personality, curiously out of keeping with his stately and majestic
periods.
[Illustration: EDWARD GIBBON.]
This is how Gibbon's personal appearance struck one of his
contemporaries--that brilliant Irishman, Malone:--
"Independent of his literary merit, as a companion Gibbon was uncommonly
agreeable. He had an immense fund of anecdote and of erudition of various
kinds, both ancient and modern, and had acquired such a facility and
elegance of talk that I had always great pleasure in listening to him. The
manner and voice, though they were peculiar, and I believe artificial at
first, did not at all offend, for they had become so appropriated as to
appear natural. His indolence and inattention and ignorance about his own
state are scarce credible. He had for five-and-twenty years a hydrocele,
and the swelling at length was so large that he quite straddled in his
walk; yet he never sought for any advice or mentioned it to his most
intimate friend, Lord Sheffield, and two or three days before he died very
gravely asked Lord Spencer and him whether they had perceived his malady.
The answer could only be, 'Had we eyes?' He thought, he said, when he was
at Althorp last Christmas, the ladies looked a little oddly. The fact is
that poor Gibbon, strange as it may seem, imagined himself well-looking,
and his first motion in a mixed company of ladies and gentlemen was to the
fireplace, against which he planted his back, and then, taking out his
snuff-box, began to hold forth. In his late unhappy situation it was not
easy for the ladies to find out where they could direct their eyes with
safety, for in addition to the hydrocele it appeared after his death that
he had a rupture, and it was perfectly a miracle how he had lived for some
time past, his stomach being entirely out of its natural position."
For other memories of Gibbon we must wait until we reach his ancestral
acres of Buriton, near Petersfield, and meanwhile, we have come to the
hill-brow, where the new route and the old meet, and the Portsmouth Road
definitely begins.
There are many other memories at Putney; too many, in fact, to linger
over, if we wish to come betimes to the dockyard town that is our
destination.
[Sidenote: _THEODORE HOOK_]
So no more than a mention of Theodore Hook, who lived in a little house on
the Fulham side of Putney Bridge, which was visited by Barham (dear,
genial Tom Ingoldsby!) while rowing up the Thames one fine day. Hook was
absent, and Barham wrote some impromptu verses in the hall, beginning--
"Why, gadzooks! here's Theodore Hook's,
Who's the author of so many humorous books!"
But the author of those books was the author also of many practical jokes,
of which the Berners Street Hoax is still the undisputed classic. But that
monumental piece of foolery is not more laughable than the jape he put
upon the Putney inn-keeper (I think he was the landlord of the old "White
Lion").
He called one day at that house and ordered an excellent dinner, with wine
and all manner of delicacies for one, and having finished his meal and
made himself particularly agreeable to the host (who by some singular
chance did not know his guest), he suddenly asked him if he would like to
know how to be able to draw both old and mild ale from the same barrel. Of
course he would! "Then," said Hook, "I'll show you, if you will take me
down to your cellar, and will promise never to divulge the secret." The
landlord promised. "Then," said the guest, "bring a gimlet with you, and
we'll proceed to work." When they had reached the cellar the landlord
pointed out a barrel of mild ale, and the stranger bored a hole in one
side with the gimlet. "Now, landlord," said he, "put your finger over the
hole while I bore the other side." The second hole having been bored, it
was stopped, in the same way, by the landlord's finger. "And now," said
the stranger, "where's a glass? Didn't you bring one?" "No," said mine
host. "But you'll find one up-stairs," replied the guest. "Yes; but I
can't leave the barrel, or all the ale will run away," rejoined the
landlord. "No matter," exclaimed the stranger, "I'll go for you," and ran
up the cellar steps for one. Meanwhile, the landlord waited patiently,
embracing the barrel, for five minutes--ten minutes--a quarter of an hour,
and then began to shout for the other to make haste, as he was getting the
cramp. His shouts at length brought--not the stranger--but his own wife.
"Well, where's the glass? where's the gentleman?" said he. "What, the
gentleman who came down here with you?" "Yes." "Oh, he went off a quarter
of an hour ago. What a pleasant-spoken gent----" "What!" cried the
landlord, aghast, "what did he say?" "Why," said his spouse, after
considering a moment, "he said you had been letting him into the mysteries
of the cellar." "Letting _him_ in," yelled the landlord, in a rage,
"letting _him_ in! Why, confound it, woman, he let _me_ in--he's never
paid for the dinner, wine, or anything."
When Hook subsequently called upon the landlord and settled his bill, it
is said that he and his victim had a good laugh over the affair, but if
that tale is true, that landlord must have been a very forgiving man.
IV
Let us now turn our attention to the original route to Portsmouth; the
road between the Stone's End, Borough, and Wandsworth. I warrant we shall
find it much more interesting than going from the West-end coach-offices
with the fashionables; for they were more varied crowds that assembled
round the old "Elephant and Castle" than were any of the coach-loads from
the "Cross Keys," Cheapside, or from that other old inn of coaching
memories, the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross.
[Illustration: OLD "ELEPHANT AND CASTLE," 1824.]
[Sidenote: _AN UNCONSIDERED TRIFLE_]
Every one journeyed from the "Elephant and Castle" in the old stage-coach
days, before the mails were introduced, and this well-known house early
became famous. It was about 1670 that the first inn bearing this sign
was erected here, on a piece of waste ground that, although situated so
near the borders of busy Southwark, had been, up to the time of Cromwell
and the era of the Commonwealth, quite an unconsidered and worthless plot
of ground, at one period the practising-ground for archers,--hence the
neighbouring title of Newington Butts,--but then barren of everything but
the potsherds and general refuse of neighbouring London. In 1658, some
one, willing to be generous at inconsiderable cost, gave this Place of
Desolation towards the maintenance of the poor of Newington; and it is to
be hoped that the poor derived much benefit from the gift. I am, however,
not very sure that they found their condition much improved by such
generosity. Fifteen years later, things wore a different complexion, for
when we hear of the gift being confirmed in 1673, and that the premises of
the "Elephant and Castle" inn were but recently built, the prospects of
the poor seem to be improving in some slight degree. Documents of this
period put the rent of this piece of waste at L5 _per annum_! and this
amount had only risen to L8 10_s._ in the space of a hundred years. But so
rapidly did the value of land now rise, that in 1776 a lease was granted
at the yearly rent of L100; and fourteen years later a renewal was
effected for twenty-one years at L190.
The poor of Newington should have been in excellent case by this time,
unless, indeed, their numbers increased with the times. And certainly the
neighbourhood had now grown by prodigious leaps and bounds, and Newington
Butts had now become a busy coaching centre. How rapidly the value of land
had increased about this time may be judged from the results of the
auction held upon the expiration of the lease in 1811. The whole of the
estate was put up for auction in four lots, and a certain Jane Fisher
became tenant of "the house called the 'Elephant and Castle,' used as a
public-house," for a term of thirty-one years, at the enormously increased
rent of L405, and an immediate outlay of L1200. The whole estate realized
L623 a year. As shown by a return of charities, printed for the House of
Commons in 1868, the "Elephant and Castle" Charity, including fourteen
houses and an investment in Government stock, yielded at that time an
annual income of L1453 10_s._ 0_d._
[Sidenote: _THE 'ELEPHANT AND CASTLE'_]
The two old views of the "Elephant and Castle" reproduced here, show the
relative importance of the place at different periods. The first was in
existence until 1824, and the larger house was built two years later. A
dreadful relic of the barbarous practice by which suicides were buried in
the highways, at the crossing of the roads, was discovered, some few years
since, under the roadway opposite the "Elephant and Castle," during the
progress of some alterations in the paving. The mutilated skeleton of a
girl was found, which had apparently been in that place for considerably
over a hundred years. Local gossips at once rushed to the conclusion that
this had been some undiscovered murder, but the registers of St. George's
Church, Southwark, probably afford a clue to the mystery. The significant
entry occurs--"1666: Abigall Smith, poisoned herself: buried in the
highway neere the Fishmongers' Almshouses."
No one has come forward to explain the reason of this particular sign
being selected. "Y{t} is call'd y{e} Elephaunt and Castell," says an old
writer, "and this is y{e} cognizaunce of y{e} Cotelers, as appeareth
likewise off y{e} Bell Savage by Lud Gate;" but this was never the
property of the Cutlers' Company, while the site of "Belle Sauvage" is
still theirs, and is marked by an old carved stone, bearing the initials
"J. A.," with a jocular-looking elephant pawing the ground and carrying a
castle.
When the first "Elephant and Castle" was built on this site, the land to
the westward as far as Lambeth and Kennington was quite rustic, and
remained almost entirely open until the end of last century. Lambeth and
Kennington were both villages, difficult of access except by water, and
this tract of ground, now covered with the crowded houses of an old
suburb, was known as St. George's Fields. It was low and flat, and was
traversed by broad ditches, generally full of stagnant water. Roman and
British remains have been found here, and it seems likely that some
prehistoric fighting was performed on this site, but as all this took
place a very long while before the Portsmouth Road was thought of, I shall
not propose to go back to the days of Ostorius Scapula or of Boadicea to
determine the facts. Instead, I will pass over the centuries until the
times of King James I., when there stood in the midst of St. George's
Fields, and on the site of Bethlehem Hospital, a disreputable tavern
known as the "Dog and Duck," at which no good young man of that period who
held his reputation dear would have been seen for worlds.
[Illustration: "DOG AND DUCK" TAVERN.]
There still remains, let into the boundary-wall of "Bedlam," the old stone
sign of the "Dog and Duck," divided into two compartments; one showing a
dog holding what is intended for a duck in his mouth, while the other
bears the badge of the Bridge House Estate, pointing to the fact that the
property belonged to that corporation. Duck-hunting was the chiefest
amusement here, and was carried on before a company the very reverse of
select in the grounds attached to the tavern, where a lake and rustic
arbours preceded the establishment of Rosherville.
At later periods St. George's Fields were the scene of "Wilkes and
Liberty" riots, and of the lively proceedings of Lord George Gordon's "No
Popery" enthusiasts. It is by a singular irony that upon the very spot
where forty thousand rabid Protestants assembled in 1780 to wreak their
vengeance upon the Catholics of London, there stands to-day the Roman
Catholic cathedral of St. George.
[Illustration: SIGN OF THE "DOG AND DUCK."]
[Sidenote: _THE ROADS_]
This event brings us to the threshold of the coaching era, for in 1784,
four years after the Gordon Riots, mail-coaches were introduced, and the
roads were set in order. Years before, when only the slow stages were
running, a journey from London to Portsmouth occupied fourteen hours, _if
the roads were good_! Nothing is said of the time consumed on the way in
the other contingency; but we may pluck a phrase from a public
announcement towards the end of the seventeenth century that seems to hint
at dangers and problematical arrivals. "Ye 'Portsmouth Machine' sets out
from ye Elephant and Castell, and arrives presently _by the Grace of
God...._" In those days men did well to trust to grace, considering the
condition of the roads; but in more recent times coach-proprietors put
their trust in their cattle and McAdam, and dropped the piety.
A fine crowd of coaches left town daily in the '20's. The "Portsmouth
Regulator" left at eight a.m., and reached Portsmouth at five o'clock in
the afternoon; the "Royal Mail" started from the "Angel," by St.
Clement's, Strand, at a quarter-past seven every evening, calling at the
"George and Gate," Gracechurch Street, at eight, and arriving at the
"George," Portsmouth, at ten minutes past six the following morning; the
"Rocket" left the "Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, every morning at
half-past eight, calling at the "White Bear," Piccadilly, at nine, and
arriving (quite the speediest coach of this road) at the "Fountain,"
Portsmouth, at half-past five, just in time for tea; while the "Light
Post" coach took quite two hours longer on the journey, leaving London at
eight in the morning, and only reaching its destination in time for a late
dinner at seven p.m.
The "Night Post" coach, travelling all night, from seven o'clock to
half-past seven the next morning, took an intolerable time; the "Hero,"
which started from the "Spread Eagle," Gracechurch Street, at eight a.m.,
did better, bringing weary passengers to their destination in ten hours;
and the "Portsmouth Telegraph" flew between the "Golden Cross," Charing
Cross, and the "Blue Posts," Portsmouth, in nine hours and a half.
[Illustration: "ELEPHANT AND CASTLE," 1826.]
V
[Sidenote: _OLD-TIME TRAVELLERS_]
Many were the travellers in olden times upon the Portsmouth Road, from
Kings and Queens--who, indeed, did not "travel," but "progressed"--to
Ambassadors, nobles, Admirals of the Red, the White, the Blue, and
sailor-men of every degree. The admirals went, of course, in their own
coaches, the captains more frequently in public conveyances, and the
common ruck of sailors went, I fear, either on foot, or in the
rumble-tumble attached to the hinder part of the slower stages; or even in
the stage-wagons, which took the best part of three days to do the
distance between the "Elephant and Castle" and Portsmouth Hard. If they
had been paid off at Portsmouth and came eventually to London, they would
doubtless have walked, and with no very steady step at that, for the
furies of Gosport and the red-visaged trolls of Portsea took excellent
good care that Jack should be fooled to the top of his bent, and that
having been done, there would be little left either for coach journeys or
indeed anything else, save a few shillings for that indispensable sailor's
drink, rum. So, however Jack might go _down_ to Portsmouth, it is
tolerably certain that he in many cases either tramped to London on his
return from a cruise, or else was carried in one of those lumbering
stage-wagons that, drawn by eight horses, crawled over these seventy-three
miles with all the airy grace and tripping step of the tortoise. He lay,
with one or two companions, upon the noisome straw of the interior,
alternately swigging at the rum-bottle which when all else had failed him
was his remaining stay, and singing, with husky and uncertain voice,
seafaring chanties or patriotic songs, salty of the sea, of the type of
the "Saucy Arethusa" or "Hearts of Oak." He was a nauseous creature, full
of animal and ardent spirits, redolent of rum, and radiant of strange and
most objectionable oaths. He had, perhaps, been impressed into the Navy
against his will; had seen, and felt, hard knocks, and expected--nay,
hoped--to see and feel more yet, and, whatever might come to him, he did
his very best to enjoy the fleeting hour, careless of the morrow. He was
frankly Pagan, and fatalist to a degree, but he and his like won our
battles by sea and made England mistress of the waves, and so we should
contrive all our might to blink his many faults, and apply a telescope of
the most powerful kind to a consideration of his sterling virtues of
bull-dog courage and cheerfulness under the misfortunes which he brought
upon himself.
[Sidenote: _PETER SIMPLE_]
Marryat gives us in "Peter Simple" a vivid and convincing picture of the
sailor going to Portsmouth to rejoin his ship. He must have witnessed many
such scenes on his journeys to and from the great naval station, and it is
very likely that this incident of the novel was drawn from actual
observation.
Peter is setting out for Portsmouth for the first time, and everything is
new to him. He starts of course from the time-honoured starting-point of
the Portsmouth coaches, the historic "Elephant and Castle"; now, alas!
nothing but a huge ordinary "public," where a grimy railway-station and
tinkling tram-cars have taken the place of the old stage-coaches.
"Before eight," says Peter, "I had arrived at the 'Elephant and Castle,'
where we stopped for a quarter of an hour. I was looking at the painting
representing this animal with a castle on its back; and assuming that of
Alnwick, which I had seen, as a fair estimate of the size and weight of
that which he carried, was attempting to enlarge my ideas so as to
comprehend the stupendous bulk of the elephant, when I observed a crowd
assembled at the corner; and asking a gentleman who sat by me in a plaid
cloak whether there was not something very uncommon to attract so many
people, he replied, 'Not very, for it is only a drunken sailor.'
"I rose from my seat, which was on the hinder part of the coach, that I
might see him, for it was a new sight to me, and excited my curiosity;
when, to my astonishment, he staggered from the crowd, and swore that he'd
go to Portsmouth. He climbed up by the wheel of the coach and sat down by
me. I believe that I stared at him very much, for he said to me--
"'What are you gaping at, you young sculping? Do you want to catch flies?
or did you never see a chap half-seas-over before?'
"I replied, 'that I had never been to sea in my life, but that I was
going.'
"'Well then, you're like a young bear, all your sorrows to come--that's
all, my hearty,' replied he. 'When you get on board, you'll find monkey's
allowance--more kicks than halfpence. I say, you pewter-carrier, bring us
another pint of ale.'
"The waiter of the inn, who was attending the coach, brought out the ale,
half of which the sailor drank, and the other half threw into the waiter's
face, telling him 'that was his allowance. And now,' said he, 'what's to
pay?' The waiter, who looked very angry, but appeared too much afraid of
the sailor to say anything, answered fourpence: and the sailor pulled out
a handful of bank-notes, mixed up with gold, silver, and coppers, and was
picking out the money to pay for his beer, when the coachman, who was
impatient, drove off.
"'There's cut and run,' cried the sailor, thrusting all the money into his
breeches pocket. 'That's what you'll learn to do, my joker, before you
have been two cruises to sea.'
"In the meantime the gentleman in the plaid cloak, who was seated by me,
smoked his cigar without saying a word. I commenced a conversation with
him relative to my profession, and asked him whether it was not very
difficult to learn.
"'Larn,' cried the sailor, interrupting us, 'no; it may be difficult for
such chaps as me before the mast to larn, but you, I presume, is a reefer,
and they a'n't got much to larn, 'cause why, they pipeclays their weekly
accounts, and walks up and down with their hands in their pockets. You
must larn to chaw baccy, drink grog, and call the cat a beggar, and then
you knows all a midshipman's expected to know now-a-days. Ar'n't I right,
sir?' said the sailor, appealing to the gentleman in a plaid cloak. 'I
axes you, because I see you're a sailor by the cut of your jib. Beg
pardon, sir,' continued he, touching his hat, 'hope no offence.'
"'I am afraid that you have nearly hit the mark, my good fellow,' replied
the gentleman.
[Sidenote: _THE DRUNKEN SAILOR_]
"The drunken fellow then entered into conversation with him, stating that
he had been paid off from the 'Audacious' at Portsmouth, and had come up
to London to spend his money with his messmates; but that yesterday he had
discovered that a Jew at Portsmouth had sold him a seal as gold for
fifteen shillings, which proved to be copper, and that he was going back
to Portsmouth to give the Jew a couple of black eyes for his rascality,
and that when he had done that he was to return to his messmates, who had
promised to drink success to the expedition at the 'Cock and Bottle,' St.
Martin's Lane, until he should return.
"The gentleman in the plaid cloak commended him very much for his
resolution: for he said, 'that although the journey to and from Portsmouth
would cost twice the value of a gold seal, yet that in the end it might be
worth a _Jew's eye_.' What he meant I did not comprehend.
"Whenever the coach stopped, the sailor called for more ale, and always
threw the remainder which he could not drink into the face of the man who
brought it out for him, just as the coach was starting off, and then
tossed the pewter pot on the ground for him to pick up. He became more
tipsy every stage, and the last from Portsmouth, when he pulled out his
money he could find no silver, so he handed down a note, and desired the
waiter to change it. The waiter crumpled it up and put it into his pocket,
and then returned the sailor the change for a one-pound note: but the
gentleman in the plaid had observed that it was a five-pound note which
the sailor had given, and insisted upon the waiter producing it, and
giving the proper change. The sailor took his money, which the waiter
handed to him, begging pardon for the mistake, although he coloured up
very much at being detected. 'I really beg your pardon,' said he again,
'it was quite a mistake,' whereupon the sailor threw the pewter pot at the
waiter, saying, 'I really beg your pardon too,'--and with such force, that
it flattened upon the man's head, who fell senseless on the road. The
coachman drove off, and I never heard whether the man was killed or not."
"Liberty" Wilkes was a frequent traveller on this road, as also was Samuel
Pepys before him; but as I have a full and particular account of them both
later on in these pages, at the "Anchor" at Liphook--a house which they
frequently patronized,--we may pass on to others who were called this way
on business or on pleasure bent. And the business of one very notorious
character of the seventeenth century was a most serious affair: nothing,
in short, less than murder, red-handed, sudden, and terrible.
[Sidenote: _JOHN FELTON_]
John Felton's is one of the most lurid and outstanding figures among the
travellers upon the Portsmouth Road. For private and public reasons he
conceived he had a right to rid the world of the gay and debonair
"Steenie," George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Felton at this time was a
man of thirty-two, poor and neglected. He was an officer in the army who
had chanced, by his surly nature, to offend his superior, one Sir Henry
Hungate, a friend of the Duke's, and who effectually prevented his
obtaining a command. Felton retired from the service with the rank of
lieutenant, disgusted and vindictive at having juniors promoted over his
head. Arrears of pay, amounting, according to his own statement, to L80
were withheld from him, and no amount of entreaty could induce the
authorities to make payment. Ideas of revenge took possession of him while
in London, staying with his mother in an alley-way off Fleet Street. The
famous Remonstrance of the Commons presented to the King convinced Felton
that to deprive Buckingham of existence was to serve the best interests of
the nation, and to this end he determined to set out for Portsmouth, where
the Duke lay, directing the expedition for the relief of La Rochelle. He
first desired the prayers of the clergy and congregation of St. Bride's
for himself, as one wretched and disturbed in mind, and, buying a tenpenny
knife at a cutler's upon Tower Hill, he set out, Tuesday, August 19, 1628,
upon the road, first sewing the sheath of the knife in the lining of his
right-hand pocket, so that with his right hand (the other was maimed) he
could draw it without trouble. He also transcribed the opinion of a
contemporary polemical writer, that "that man is cowardly and base, and
deserveth not the name of a gentleman or soldier, who is not willing to
sacrifice his life for his God, his King, and his country," and pinned the
paper, together with a statement of his own grievances, upon his hat. He
did not arrive at Portsmouth until the next Saturday, having ridden upon
horseback so far as his slender funds would carry him, and walking the
rest of the way.
Buckingham was staying at a Portsmouth inn--the "Spotted Dog," in High
Street--long since demolished. Access to him was easy, among the number
who waited upon his favours, and so Felton experienced no difficulty in
approaching within easy striking distance. The Duke had left his
dressing-room to proceed to his carriage on a visit to the King at
Porchester, when, in the hall of the inn, Colonel Friar, one of his
intimates, whispered a word in his ear. He turned to listen, and was
instantly stabbed by Felton, receiving a deep wound in the left breast;
the knife sticking in his heart. Exclaiming "Villain!" he plucked it out,
staggered backwards, and falling against a table, was caught in the arms
of his attendants, dying almost immediately. No one saw the blow struck,
and the cry was raised that it was the work of a Frenchman; but Felton,
who had coolly walked from the room, returned, and with equal composure
declared himself to be the man. Thus died the gay and profligate
Buckingham, in the thirty-seventh year of his age. Surrounded by his
friends, his Duchess in an upper room, he was struck down as surely as
though his assailant had met him solitary and alone.
Within the space of a few minutes from his falling dead and the removal of
his body into an adjoining room, the place was deserted. The very horror
of the sudden deed left no room for curiosity. The house, awhile before
filled with servants and sycophants, was left in silence.
Many were found to admire and extol Felton and his deed. "God bless thee,
little David," said the country folk, crowding to shake his hand as he
was conveyed back to London for his trial. "Excellent Felton!" said many
decent people in London; and tried to prevent the only possible ending to
his career. That end came at Tyburn, where, we are told, "he testified
much repentance, and so took his death very stoutly and patiently. He was
very long a-dying. His body is gone to Portsmouth, there to be hanged in
chains."
VI
[Sidenote: _JOHN WESLEY_]
Among the memorable passengers along the Portsmouth Road in other days who
have left any record of their journeys is "that strenuous and painful
preacher," the Rev. John Wesley, D.D. On the fifth day of October, 1753,
he left the "humane, loving people" of Cowes, "and crossed over to
Portsmouth." Here he "found another kind of people" from the complaisant
inhabitants of the Isle of Wight. They had, unlike the Cowes people, none
of the milk of human kindness in their breasts, or if they possessed any,
it had all curdled, for they had "disputed themselves out of the power,
and well-nigh the form of religion," as Wesley remarks in his "Journals."
So, after the third day among these backsliders and curdled Christians, he
shook the dust of Portsmouth (if there was any to shake in October) off
his shoes, and departed, riding on horseback to "Godalmin."
We do not meet with him on this road for another eighteen years, when he
seems to have found the Portsmouth folk more receptive, for now "the
people in general here are more noble than most in the south of England."
Curiously enough, on another fifth of October (1771), he "set out at two"
from Portsmouth. This was, apparently, two o'clock in the morning, for
"about ten, some of our London friends met me at Cobham, with whom I took
a walk in the neighbouring gardens"--he refers, doubtless, to the gardens
of Pain's Hill, and is speaking of ten o'clock in the morning of the same
day; for no one, after a ride of fifty miles, would take walks in gardens
at ten o'clock of an October night--"inexpressibly pleasant, through the
variety of hills and dales and the admirable contrivance of the whole; and
now, after spending all his life in bringing it to perfection, the
grey-headed owner advertises it to be sold! Is there anything," he asks,
"under the sun that can satisfy a spirit made for God?" This query is no
doubt a very correct and moral one, but it seems somewhat cryptic.
[Sidenote: _JONAS HANWAY_]
Another traveller of a very singular character was Jonas Hanway, who,
coming up to town from Portsmouth in 1756, wrote a book purporting to be
"A Journal of an Eight Days' Journey from Portsmouth to
Kingston-on-Thames." This is a title which, on the first blush, rouses
interest in the breast of the historian, for such a book must needs (he
doubts not) contain much valuable information relating to this road and
old-time travelling upon it. Judge then of his surprise and disgust when,
upon a perusal of those ineffable pages, the inquirer into old times and
other manners than our own discovers that the author of that book has
simply enshrined his not particularly luminous remarks upon things in
general in two volumes of leaded type, and that in all the weary length
of that work, cast in the form of letters addressed to "a Lady," no word
appears relating to roads or travel. Vague discourses upon uninteresting
abstractions make up the tale of his pages, together with an incredibly
stupid "Essay on Tea, considered as pernicious to Health, obstructing
Industry, and Impoverishing the Nation."
[Illustration: JONAS HANWAY.]
The disappointed reader, baulked of his side-lights on manners and customs
upon the road, reflects with pardonable satisfaction that this book was
the occasion of an attack by Doctor Johnson upon Hanway and his "Essay on
Tea." It was not to be supposed that the Doctor, that sturdy tea-drinker,
could silently pass over such an onslaught upon his favourite beverage.
No; he reviewed the work in the "Literary Magazine," and certainly the
author is made to cut a sorry figure. Johnson at the outset let it be
understood that one who described tea as "that noxious herb" could expect
but little consideration from a "hardened and shameless tea-drinker" like
himself, who had "for twenty years diluted his meals with only the
infusion of this fascinating plant; whose kettle has scarcely time to
cool; who with tea amuses the evening, with tea solaces the midnight, and
with tea welcomes the morning."
[Illustration: "IF THE SHADES OF THOSE ANTAGONISTS FOREGATHER."]
No; Hanway was not successful in his crusade against tea. As a merchant
whose business had called him from England into Persia and Russia, he had
attracted much attention; for in those days Persia was almost an unknown
country to Englishmen, and Russia itself unfamiliar. His first printed
work--an historical account of British trade in those regions--was
therefore the means of gaining him a certain literary success, which
attended none of the seventy other works of which he was the author.
Boswell, indeed, goes so far as to say that "he acquired some reputation
by travelling abroad, and lost it all by travelling at home;" and Johnson,
to whom Hanway addressed an indignant letter, complaining of that unkind
review, regarded with contempt one who spoke so ill of the drink upon
which he produced so much solid work.
Johnson's defence of tea is vindicated by results; and if the shades of
those antagonists foregather somewhere up beyond the clouds, then Ursa
Major, over a ghostly dish of his most admired beverage, may point to the
astonishing and lasting vogue of the tea-leaf as the best argument in
favour of his preference.
[Sidenote: _CHAMPION OF THE UMBRELLA_]
Hanway was more successful as Champion of the Umbrella. He was, with a
singular courage, the first person to carry an umbrella in the streets of
London at a time when the unfurling of what is now become an indispensable
article of every-day use was regarded as effeminate, and was greeted with
ironical cheers or the savage shouts of hackmen, "Frenchman, Frenchman,
why don't you take a coach!" Those drivers of public conveyances saw their
livelihood slipping away when folk walked about in the rain, sheltered by
the immense structure the umbrella was upon its first introduction: a
heavy affair of cane ribs and oiled cloth, with a handle like a
broomstick. In fact, the ordinary umbrella of that time no more resembled
the dainty silk affair of modern use than an omnibus resembles a
stage-coach of last century. Hanway defended his use of the umbrella by
saying he was in delicate health after his return from Persia. Imagine
the parallel case of an invalid carrying a heavy modern carriage umbrella,
and then you have some sort of an idea of the tax Hanway's _parapluie_
must have been upon his strength.
[Illustration: THE FIRST UMBRELLA.]
[Sidenote: _PROFESSIONAL PHILANTHROPY_]
For the rest, Jonas Hanway was a philanthropist who did good in the sight
of all men, and was rejoiced beyond measure to find his benevolence
famous. He was, in short, one of the earliest among professional
philanthropists, and to such good works as the founding of the Marine
Society, and a share in the establishment of the Foundling Hospital, he
added agitations against the custom of giving vails to servants, schemes
for the protection of youthful chimney-sweeps, and campaigns against
midnight routs and evening assemblies. Carlyle calls him a dull, worthy
man; and he seems to have been, more than aught else, a County Councillor
of the Puritan variety, spawned out of all due time. He died, in fact, in
1786, rather more than a hundred years before County Councils were
established, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He was a meddlesome man,
without humour, who dealt with a provoking seriousness with trivial
things, and was the forerunner and _beau ideal_ of all earnest
"Progressives."
The year after Jonas Hanway travelled on this road, noting down an
infinite deal of nothing with great unction and a portentous gravity,
there went down from London to Portsmouth a melancholy cavalcade, bearing
a brave man to a cruel, shameful, and unjust death on the quarter-deck of
the man-o'-war "Monarque," in Portsmouth Harbour.
Admiral Byng was sent to Portsmouth to be tried by court-martial; and at
every stage of his progress there came and clamoured round his guards
noisy crowds of people of every rank, who reviled him for a traitor and a
coward, and thirsted for his blood in a practical way that only furious
and prejudiced crowds could show. Their feeling was intense, and had been
wrought to this pitch by the emissaries of a weak but vindictive
Government, which sought to cloak its disastrous parsimony and the ill
fortunes of war by erecting Byng into a sort of lightning-conductor which
should effectually divert the bolts of a popular storm from incapable
ministers. And these efforts of Government were, for a time, completely
successful. The nation was brought to believe Byng a poltroon of a
particularly despicable kind; and the crowds that assembled in the streets
of the country towns through which the discredited Admiral was led to his
fate were with difficulty prevented from anticipating the duty of the
firing-party that on March 14, 1757, woke the echoes of Gosport and
Portsmouth with their murderous volley.
[Sidenote: _ADMIRAL BYNG_]
Admiral Byng was himself the son of an admiral, who was created Viscount
Torrington for his distinguished services. Some of the innumerable
caricaturists who earned a blackguardly living by attacking a man who had
few friends and powerful enemies, fixed upon his honourable birth as an
additional means of wounding him; and thus there exists a rare print
entitled "B-ng in Horrors; or T-rr-ngt-n's Ghost," which shows the shade
of the father as he
"Darts through the Caverns of the Ship
Where _Britain's Coward rides_,"
appearing to his son as he lies captive on board the "Monarque," and
reproaching him in a set of verses from which the above lines are an
elegant extract.
[Illustration: ADMIRAL BYNG.]
Other caricatures of the period more justly include ministers in their
satire. One is reproduced here, chiefly with the object of showing the
pleasing roadside humour of hanging criminals in chains. By this
illustration the native ferocity of the eighteenth-century caricaturists
is glaringly exemplified. The figure marked _A_ is intended for Admiral
Lord Anson, _B_ is meant for Byng, and _C_ represents the Duke of
Newcastle, the Prime Minister of the Administration that detached an
insufficient force for service in the Mediterranean. The fox who looks up
with satisfaction at the dangling bodies is of course intended for Charles
James Fox, whose resignation produced the fall of the ministry. The other
figures explain themselves by the aid of the labels issuing from their
mouths.
And what was Byng's crime, that his countrymen should have hated him with
this ferocious ardour? The worst that can be said of him is that he
probably felt disgusted with a Government which sent him on an important
mission with an utterly inadequate force. His previous career had not been
without distinction, and that he was an incapable commander had never
before been hinted. He doubtless on this occasion felt aggrieved at the
inadequacy of a squadron of ten ships, poorly manned, and altogether
ill-found, which he was given to oppose the formidable French armament
then fitting at Toulon for the reduction of Minorca, and possibly for a
descent upon our own coasts in the event of its first object being
attained.
When Byng reached Gibraltar with his wallowing ships and wretched crews,
he received intelligence of the French having already landed on the
island, and laying siege to Port St. Philip. His duty was to set sail and
oppose the enemy's fleet, and thus, if possible, cut off the retreat of
their forces already engaged on the island. He had been promised a force
from the garrison of Gibraltar, but upon his asking for the men the
Governor refused to obey his instructions, alleging that the position of
affairs would not allow of his sparing a single man from the Rock. So Byng
sailed without his expected reinforcement, and arrived off Minorca too
late for any communication to be made with the English Governor, who was
still holding the enemy at bay. For as he came in sight of land the French
squadron appeared, and the battle that became imminent was fought on the
following day.
Byng attacked the enemy's ships vigorously: the French remained upon the
defensive, and the superior weight of their guns told so heavily against
the English ships that they were thrown into confusion, and several
narrowly escaped capture. The Admiral sheered off and held a council of
war, whose deliberations resulted four days later in a retreat to
Gibraltar, leaving Minorca to its fate. Deprived of outside aid the
English garrison capitulated, and Byng's errand had thus failed. He was
sent home under arrest, and confined in a room of Greenwich Hospital
until the court-martial that was now demanded could be formed.
[Illustration: A STRANGE SIGHT SOME TIME HENCE.]
The action at sea had taken place on May 20, 1756, but the court-martial
only assembled at Portsmouth on December 28, and it took a whole month's
constant attendance to hear the matter out. The court found Byng guilty of
negligence in not having done his utmost in the endeavour to relieve
Minorca. It expressly acquitted him of cowardice and disaffection, but
condemned him to death under the provisions of the Articles of War, at the
same time recommending him to mercy.
[Sidenote: _BYNG'S DEATH_]
But no mercy was to be expected of King, Government, or country, inflamed
with rage at a French success, and all efforts, whether at Court or in
Parliament, were fruitless. The execution was fixed for March 14, and
Byng's demeanour thenceforward was equally unaffected and undaunted. He
met his death with a calmness of demeanour and a fortitude of spirit that
proved him to be no coward of that ignoble type which fears pain or
dissolution as the greatest and most awful of evils. His personal friends
were solicitous to avoid anything that might give him unnecessary pain,
and one of them, a few days before the end, inventing a pitiful ruse, said
to him, "Which of us is tallest?" "Why this ceremony?" asked the Admiral.
"I know well what it means; let the man come and measure me for my
coffin."
At the appointed hour of noon he walked forth of his cabin with a firm
step, and gazed calmly upon the waters of Portsmouth Harbour, alive with
boats full of people who had come to see a fellow-creature die. He
refused at first to allow his face to be covered, lest he might be
suspected of fear, but upon some officers around him representing that his
looks might confuse the soldiers of the firing-party and distract their
aim, he agreed to be blindfolded; and thus, kneeling upon the deck, and
holding a handkerchief in his hand, he awaited the final disposition of
the firing-party that was to send him out of the world by the aid of
powder and ball, discharged at the range of half-a-dozen paces. At the
pre-arranged signal of his dropping the handkerchief, the soldiers fired,
and the scapegoat fell dead, his breast riddled with a dozen bullets.
The execution of Byng was (to adopt Fouche's comment upon the murder of
the Duc d'Enghien) worse than a crime; it was a blunder. The ministry
fell, and the populace, who had before his death regarded Byng with a
consuming hatred, now looked upon him as a martyr. The cynical Voltaire,
who had unavailingly exerted himself to save the condemned man (and had
thereby demonstrated that your cynic is at most but superficially
currish), resumed his cynicism in that mordant passage of "Candide" which
will never die so long as the history of the British Fleet is read: "_Dans
ce pays-ci_," he wrote, "_il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un Amiral
pour encourager les autres!_"
[Illustration: THE SHOOTING OF ADMIRAL BYNG.]
VII
One of the earliest records we have of Portsmouth Road travellers is that
which relates to three sixteenth-century inspectors of ordnance:
"July 20th, 1532--Paid to X pofer Morys, gonner, Cornelys Johnson, the
Maister Smythe, and Henry Johnson for their costs in ryding to
Portismouthe to viewe the King's ordenaunce there, by the space of X
dayes at Xs' the daye--V li."
[Sidenote: _MONMOUTH_]
So runs the record. But the business of most of them that fared this way
whose faring has been preserved was of a very doleful character. I except,
of course, royal personages, who, as previously noted in these pages,
"progressed," and did nothing so plebeian as to "travel." Monmouth, who,
though of royal birth, had failed to achieve a throne in his ill-fated
rebellion of 1685, "travelled," "unfriended, melancholy, slow," on that
fatal journey from Ringwood to London in a carriage guarded by a strong
body of troops and militia-men. Poor fellow! the once gay and handsome
Duke of Monmouth, the prettiest fellow and courtliest gallant of a courtly
age, was conveyed, a prematurely grey and broken man, to his death, the
due reward, it is true, of rebellion, but none the less pathetic. The
mournful _cortege_ halted a night on the road at Guildford, where, in a
room over the great entrance-gateway of Abbot's Hospital, the
prisoners--the wretched Monmouth and the undaunted Lord Grey--were lodged,
until daylight should come again and their road to execution be resumed.
A more lightsome tour must have been that undertaken by the four Indian
kings who, in 1710, came to pay their devoirs to Queen Anne, and journeyed
up to London, much to the wonderment of the country-folk, to whose lurid
imaginations their copper-coloured countenances represented everything
that was evil. Twenty years later seven chiefs of the Cherokees came this
way, on a mission to the English Court; but the first pedestrian of whom
we have any account who walked the whole distance between London and
Portsmouth was a Mr. John Carter, who, having witnessed the proclamation
of George I. in London on August 1, 1714, in succession to Queen Anne, set
forth immediately for Portsmouth on foot. It is an emphatic comment upon
contemporary social conditions to note that when Carter reached
Portsmouth, on August 3, he was the first to bring the news. His zeal
might conceivably have been attended with serious consequences had the
Jacobites been more active; but as it was, Gibson, the Governor of
Portsmouth, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts, threatened the newsmonger
with imprisonment for what he was pleased to term "a false and seditious
report."
A journey quite in keeping with the sombre history of this road was that
by which the body of General Wolfe, the victor of Quebec, was brought to
London. The remains of the General were landed at Portsmouth on Sunday,
November 17, 1759, and were escorted by the garrison to the outskirts of
the town. He was buried at Greenwich on the night of the 20th.
For the rest the history of travel upon the Portsmouth Road in olden times
is chiefly made up of accounts of felons condemned to death for crimes
ranging from petty larceny to high treason. The halo of a questionable
kind of romance has perpetuated the enormities of the greater malefactors,
but the sordid histories of the sheep-stealers and cattle-lifters, the
miserable footpads, and contemptible minor sneaks and rogues who suffered
death and were gibbeted with great profusion and publicity by the
wayside, are clean forgotten.
[Sidenote: _NICHOLAS NICKLEBY_]
Modern times of road travel, that range from the reign of George IV. to
the beginning of the Railway Era, are chiefly filled with stories of the
Allied Sovereigns, who ate and drank a great deal too much on their way
down to Portsmouth to celebrate the Peace of 1814; of the Duke of
Wellington, who followed them in a carriage drawn by eight horses, and ate
sparingly and drank little; and of all sorts of naval and military bigwigs
and left-handed descendants of Royalty who held fat offices in army or
navy, and lorded it grandly over meaner, but more legitimate, mortals. No
literary or artistic annals belong to this time, saving only the
well-known scenes in "Nicholas Nickleby."
It was on the Portsmouth Road that Nicholas Nickleby and Smike met that
redoubtable _impresario_, Mr. Vincent Crummles. Nicholas, it may be
remembered, had fallen upon evil times. His capital "did not exceed, by
more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings," and so he and
Smike were compelled to foot it from London.
"'Now listen to me, Smike,' said Nicholas, as they trudged with stout
hearts onwards. 'We are bound for Portsmouth.'
"Smike nodded his head and smiled, but expressed no other emotion; for
whether they had been bound for Portsmouth or Port Royal would have been
alike to him, so they had been bound together.
"'I don't know much of these matters,' resumed Nicholas; 'but Portsmouth
is a seaport town, and if no other employment is to be obtained, I should
think we might get on board some ship. I am young and active, and could be
useful in many ways. So could you.'...
"'Do we go all the way to-day?' asked Smike, after a short silence.
"'That would be too severe a trial, even for your willing legs,' said
Nicholas, with a good-humoured smile. 'No. Godalming is some thirty and
odd miles from London--as I found from a map I borrowed--and I purpose to
rest there. We must push on again to-morrow, for we are not rich enough to
loiter.'...
"To Godalming they came at last, and here they bargained for two humble
beds, and slept soundly. In the morning they were astir: though not quite
so early as the sun: and again afoot; if not with all the freshness of
yesterday, still, with enough of hope and spirit to bear them cheerily on.
"It was a harder day's journey than that they had already performed, for
there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it
is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on,
with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to
heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.
"They walked upon the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl; and Smike listened
with greedy interest as Nicholas read the inscription upon the stone
which, reared upon that wild spot, tells of a foul and treacherous murder
committed there by night. The grass on which they stood had once been dyed
with gore; and the blood of the murdered man had run down, drop by drop,
into the hollow which gives the place its name. 'The Devil's Bowl,'
thought Nicholas, as he looked into the void, 'never held fitter liquor
than that!'"
VIII
[Sidenote: _WANDSWORTH_]
And now, having disposed of this batch of travellers, let us ourselves
proceed, through Kennington and past Battersea Rise, to Wandsworth. There
is, doubtless, much to be said of Kennington, seeing that its name is
supposed to derive from _Koeningtun_, or "the King's town," but that is no
affair of ours; and while its history is much too remote for inclusion in
these pages, its present-day appearance does not invite us to linger. But
with Wandsworth the case is very different.
Wandsworth is set down at the mouth of a little river whose confluence
with the greater Thames determined the precise locality of the first
village established on what were, in the far-off days of Wandlesworth, the
sedgy banks of the little Wandle. This stream, taking its source from
Croydon, "flows ten miles and turns forty mills," and is in our own times
perhaps the most despitefully-used river within the London area.
For, at the very beginning of its brief career, the Wandle now rises from
a brick culvert beneath a railway embankment, where once its source
bubbled up freely in the light of day; and, flowing through Beddington
and Carshalton, comes through Mitcham and Earlsfield to its outlet at
Wandsworth, a muddy river, defiled with sewage and the refuse of factories
and mills whose produce ranges from linoleum and snuff, to paper, copper,
and chemicals of every noxious variety.
There would have been no Wandsworth, either in fact or in name, had there
been no Wandle, for the water-power that brought prosperity to the mills
also provided a natural outlet for the manufacturers; and so there early
grew up a series of wharves by the river's mouth that have done a great
quantity of business at any period during these last two hundred years.
Aubrey, indeed, says that in his time there were many factories here, and
that here were made "brass plates for kettles, skellets, and frying-pans,
by Dutchmen, who kept it a mystery." Many of these old Dutchmen's places
of business lasted until comparatively recent years, and were known as the
"Frying Pan Houses." The greater part, however, of old Wandsworth is gone.
Gone, too, is the hamlet of Garratt, whose mock elections of a Mayor
caused such convivial excitement a century ago. But a few old houses of a
Dutch style of architecture still remain to show what manner of place this
was before it had become suburban and its spacious old architecture
destroyed to make way for the interminable back streets where City
clerkdom dwells in houselets composed of slack-baked bricks built on
ash-heaps, "comprising" four cupboards, miscalled "rooms," with what the
estate-agent magniloquently terms "the usual domestic offices."
Here and there in the High Street and on Wandsworth Plain stand these
remains of Old Wandsworth, and they give a distinct _cachet_ to "the
village." But the fury of the dabblers in bricks and mortar continues
unabated, and they will not last long. One of the oldest houses here was
destroyed some years back, and on its site stands a new police-station.
This was the well-known "Sword House," which took its name, not from the
making of swords, but from a _chevaux de frise_ of claymores, of which, up
to the beginning of the present reign, some few vestiges were left. The
story goes that the occupant of the house was a retired officer of the
army who had taken part in the defeat of the Scotch rebels at Culloden,
and had collected a number of claymores for the protection of his house at
Wandsworth, at that time a secluded place round whose outskirts hung a
number of footpads. He defended the outer walls of his residence with
these weapons, but they gradually disappeared, being stolen, one by one,
by timid and peaceable wayfarers as some sort of protection against the
gentry who rendered the suburbs dangerous o' nights.
[Sidenote: _A PIOUS BENEFACTOR_]
But if these purlieus were infested by a rascally crew who rendered all
the outlying districts notorious for violence and robbery, Wandsworth can
at least boast one conspicuously good man. This was that Alderman Henry
Smith whose tomb and effigy are so conspicuous in the parish church. The
Alderman was one of the greatest benefactors of the seventeenth century,
and left his large estate in trust for the purchase of lands "for setting
the poor people a-worke," and in bequests to parishes in Surrey. Henry
Smith was a native of Wandsworth, an Alderman of the City of London, and a
silversmith. He died in 1627; but in 1620, having neither wife nor
children, made a disposition of his property, reserving for himself only
sufficient for his personal needs. It is said that every parish in the
county of Surrey benefits by his charity, with the sole exception of
Mitcham, which owes this unenviable distinction to his having been whipped
through its bounds as a common beggar. But how or why came so wealthy and
well-considered a man as this respected Alderman of London City to be
whipped as a rogue and vagabond? It is an old story which professes to
explain this, and it is a story to which so respectable a gentleman as
John Evelyn, the diarist, lends his authority, in Aubrey's "Surrey." It
is, however, entirely apocryphal. According, then, to John Evelyn, the
benefactor was known as "Dog Smith," and was a beggar who wandered through
the country accompanied by his dog, and received alms in money and in
kind. By this means was his vast fortune supposed to have been amassed.
But this tale is too grotesque for belief, put beside the well-known facts
of his membership of the Silversmiths' Company, and of his friendship with
the Earls of Essex and Dorset, who were also two of the executors of his
will. The story of Mitcham may be dismissed when it is learned that the
parishes of Surrey certainly owed their bequests to Henry Smith, but that
the incidence of them was at the discretion of the trustees.
IX
The parish of Wandsworth extends up to Putney Heath, to which we come
up-hill past the singularly-named "Tibbets' Corner." Research has failed
to discover who or what was Tibbets, after whom or which the Corner was
named; but a familiarity with the old-time character of the neighbourhood
suggests that "Tibbets" is merely a corruption of "Gibbets," which were at
one time the chiefest features of the landscape in these parts.
[Sidenote: _JERRY ABERSHAWE_]
Putney Heath was the scene of the notorious Jerry Abershawe's exploits in
highway robbery. Where Veitch's nurseries now stand, at the corner of Stag
Lane, in Putney Bottom, just before you come to the Beverley Brook,
formerly stood the "Bald-faced Stag," or "Half-way House," at one time a
notorious house of call for this youthful but daring desperado, who with
numerous lesser lights infested the neighbourhood, in the latter half of
last century, lurking in the remotenesses of Coombe Wood, and plundering
unhappy wayfarers.
There is a story told of this lawless and picturesque figure to the effect
that on a dark and inclement night of November, after having stopped every
passenger along the road, he was suddenly taken ill and compelled to
retire to the shelter of this public-house, standing lonely upon the
roadside. His comrades--"pals," he would, doubtless, have called
them--sent for a doctor, and a Dr. William Roots attended. He was bled,
and the doctor was about to return home, when his patient, with a great
appearance of earnestness, said, "You had better, sir, have some one to go
back with you, as it is a very dark and lonesome journey." This, however,
the doctor declined, remarking that "he had not the least fear, even
should he meet with Abershawe himself," little thinking to whom he was
speaking. This story was a favourite with Abershawe: it afforded him a
reliable criterion of his unholy prowess.
[Illustration: THE "GREEN MAN," PUTNEY HEATH.]
Louis Jeremiah Avershawe--to give him his proper name--was born in 1773,
and ended his career with a hempen cravat round his neck on August 3,
1795. He was tried at Croydon Assizes, on July 30, for the murder of
David Price, an officer sent to apprehend him in Southwark, whom he had
shot; wounding at the same time another officer with a second pistol. A
flaw in the indictment acquitted him on the first count, but he was
convicted on the charge of feloniously shooting at one Barnaby Taylor.
With all his crimes, he was no coward, for, as a contemporary account of
his trial says, "When Mr. Baron Penryn put on the black cap, the prisoner,
regardless of his sad situation, at the same time put on his own hat,
observing the judge with contemptuous looks while he was passing the awful
sentence of the law."
He was executed on Kennington Common. Arriving at the gallows, he kicked
off his boots and died unshod, to disprove the letter, if not the spirit,
of an old warning of his mother's, that he was a bad lad and would die in
his shoes. His body was subsequently hanged in chains in Putney Bottom,
the scene of his exploits; and the satisfaction with which the passers-by
beheld his tattered skeleton, swinging in its iron cage from the gibbet,
may well be imagined; although it was not unlikely that, before they had
reached the streets of Kingston, or the High Street of Putney, some
surviving member of the malefactor's fraternity would exact his
unauthorized tolls.
[Sidenote: _GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD_]
Imagine how palpitating with incertitude the breasts of eighteenth-century
travellers must have been when once the oil-lit streets of the towns were
left behind. The stage-coach passengers sat glum and nervous,--each
suspecting his fellow,--with their money in their boots, their watches in
the lining of their hats, and other light valuables secreted in unlikely
parts of their persons, in the fond hope that the fine fellow, mounted on
a mettlesome horse, and bristling with weapons, who would presently bring
the coach to a stop in some gloomy bend of the road, might be either too
unpractised or in too great a hurry to think of those very obvious
hiding-places. Rarely, at one time, did the mails or the stages escape the
highwayman's unwelcome attentions, for, during a lengthy period, the wide,
unenclosed waste lands in the neighbourhood of London were the nocturnal
resorts of all who desired to better their fortunes at the expense of
whoever happened to be travelling upon these lonely roads after nightfall.
All the ruined gamesters and unconventional or reckless ne'er-do-wells who
could manage to buy, hire, or steal a horse, took to the exciting
occupation of highway robbery. This diversion promised at once to be
remunerative, and satisfying to the Englishman's sporting instincts, and
if the end of it was identical with a rope's end and a morning dance upon
nothing, why, the sportsman was unlucky,--and so an end. For although
death was the penalty for highway robbery, yet the pursuit of it does not
seem to have been looked upon as so very disgraceful; and the bold
gentlemen (!) who, well-armed and not ill-horsed, lurked upon Putney Heath
or Barnes Common, or any other of the many wildernesses that surrounded
London in the midst of last century, were accounted somewhat romantic,
even by the contemporaries whose pockets they occasionally lightened.
[Sidenote: _THE ROMANCE OF ROBBERY_]
Believe me, these rascals who hung by the dark roadside, and, disguised
in black crepe or velvet masks, cried hoarsely in the ears of travellers,
"Stand and deliver!" were not the social pariahs they would be to-day,
could they revisit their suburban haunts. These fellows robbed the mails
"with the utmost regularity and dispatch," and despoiled every one who was
not sufficiently well armed to withstand them, without distinction of
class or sex. "Purses," says one, who recounts his memories of these
times, "rings, watches, snuff-boxes, passed from their owners to the
attentive highwayman, almost as soon as the muzzle of his pistol obtruded
through the window"; and when at last the poor fellow was lagged, and
languished in the stone jug of Newgate, the ladies whom he had relieved,
with much politeness, of their money and jewels came and condoled with
him, and flaunted their handkerchiefs out of window as he passed one fatal
morning to Tyburn in a tumbril, seated on his coffin, with the chaplain
beside him, preaching of kingdom-come.
Jerry Abershawe was a hero of this stamp, only he did not make his last
appearance on so fashionable a stage as Tyburn. Croydon was the scene of
his trial, and Wandsworth, as we have seen, was the place of his taking
off.
Two other highwaymen--William Brown and Joseph Witlock--who were both
hanged at Tyburn in 1773, for house-breaking, haunted the neighbourhood of
Putney Heath and Kingston, and robbed solitary pedestrians or children.
They were not of the fine flower of their profession, as one may judge
from the evidence given at their trial, by which it appeared that they
laid in wait for topers in wayside taverns, and robbed them upon their
coming out in a more or less helpless state. Two convivial fellows whom
they had seen carousing in the "Green Man" they waited for, and having
tied their hands behind their backs, relieved them of some twenty guineas,
together with such small odds and ends as knives and tobacco-boxes. A
little way further on, upon this occasion, they chanced upon a baker's
boy, and disdaining not even the merest trifles, they "persuaded" him to
hand over a few halfpence and a silver buckle he was carrying in a bag.
[Illustration: THE WINDMILL, WIMBLEDON COMMON.]
[Sidenote: _THE DUELLO_]
But Putney Heath and the adjoining Wimbledon Common were not notorious
only for highwaymen and footpads: they were the favourite meeting-grounds
of belligerent gentlemen with an exaggerated and altogether mistaken idea
of honour, who faced one another armed with swords or pistols, and fought
duels at an early hour of the morning, when courage was apt to be
insufficiently warmed. Their notions of honour and "satisfaction" were,
possibly, somewhat ridiculous, but it seems to me that a man who would get
up at an unearthly hour of the morning, perhaps in the coldest of weather,
to shoot at a fellow-creature, or to be shot at by him,--to be run through
the body with a rapier, or else to run his opponent through some vital
part,--must have been either singularly courageous or peculiarly
vindictive.
To either (or both) of these categories, then, must have belonged my Lord
Chandos and Colonel Compton, who were among the earliest to be "out" upon
this spot. The affair took place in 1652, and was fought with swords, the
Colonel being run through the body in a trice. In later times one of the
most extraordinary duels of the eighteenth century took place on Wimbledon
Common, between the Duke of York and Colonel Lennox, afterwards Duke of
Richmond and Viceroy of Ireland. It seems that the Duke of York, with his
brother the Prince of Wales (afterwards George IV.), was insulted one
night at Vauxhall by two gentlemen and a lady, all three masked, whose
identity, although shrewdly suspected, could not be certainly ascertained
at the time. They were, as a matter of fact, Lady Charlotte Lennox, who
had some grievance against the Prince, and her two brothers, the Duke of
Grafton and Lieutenant-Colonel Lennox. Now, the latter being
Lieutenant-Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, of which regiment the Duke of
York was full Colonel, was thus in a position of considerable delicacy
when his commanding officer took the first opportunity that offered of
putting an affront upon him on parade; for if he challenged and killed a
Royal Duke in a duel, the severest penalties would no doubt be inflicted
upon him,[1] but if, on the other hand, he pocketed the insult, his
"honour" was indelibly stained. Colonel Lennox took what he thought the
best course, and challenged the Duke of York to a hostile meeting, which
duly came off in a dell near where that well-known landmark, the Wimbledon
Common windmill, now stands. The seconds were Lord Rawdon and the Earl of
Winchilsea, and the weapons chosen were pistols. On the word "Fire!" being
given, only the Colonel's pistol was discharged: the Duke not having
pulled the trigger, and the Colonel not being desirous of another shot,
honour was declared to have been satisfied; the only damage done,
according to a contemporary account, being the loss of a curl from his
Royal Highness's head. An historian of the duello, however, throws unkind
doubts upon this story, and insinuates that the seconds, mindful no less
of their own safety than that of the Duke of York, took very good care
that the pistols were primed without bullets.
[Sidenote: _VICARIOUS DUELLING_]
In 1798 Mr. Pitt and Mr. George Tierney, M.P. for Southwark, had a
bloodless set-to, and two other political antagonists--Lord Castlereagh
and the jocular George Canning--fought, without a scratch, in 1809. In the
same year Lord Paget and Captain Cadogan had a "hostile meeting" here, and
exchanged shots without effect, the cause being, not politics this time,
but that much more fruitful origin of discord--a woman. Lord Paget,
himself a married man, had eloped with Lady Charlotte Wellesley, the wife
of his friend Henry Wellesley, and the lady's brother (one would have
thought the injured husband should have given battle) decided to avenge
the outraged honour of his family. So, as related, the combatants faced
one another and fired. The Captain's bullet went wide: my lord's pistol
merely flashed, and he, with a spark of right feeling, declined to shoot
again at a man whose family he had wronged. Mr. Henry Wellesley, though
apparently pusillanimous, was a more formidable, if less romantic,
antagonist. That gentleman brought an action for _crim. con._ against Lord
Paget, and salved his wounded feelings effectually with a verdict carrying
damages to the tune of L20,000.
[Illustration: WILLIAM PITT.]
One of the very few serious encounters that took place here happened to be
also the last. This was the duel between General Lorenzo Moore and Mr.
Miles Stapylton, fought with pistols on February 13, 1832. The General
wounded the civilian, who was seen to fall to the ground by the passengers
in the Godalming coach, which happened to be passing at the time. Some of
them came to his assistance, conveyed him off in a carriage, and desired
the General to consider himself under arrest. General Moore was
ignominiously marched off by a police-constable (so unromantic had the
times grown!), and was charged at Kingston. His antagonist, however,
becoming better, the man of war was released on bail, and no more was ever
heard of the affair.
[Sidenote: _PITT_]
Mr. Pitt, "the Great Commoner," who fought here without a scratch, was, if
not upon his "native heath" (for he was born at Hayes, in Kent), at least
within sight of his home. In fact, he practically went forth to do battle
at the very gates of Bowling Green House, where he lived--and died,
broken-hearted at Napoleon's successes, in later years. The house still
stands, altered, 'tis true, but not rebuilt; and the trees that shade its
lawn and make beautiful its rearward gardens have in their ranks some that
grew here when Pitt was resident under this roof. To call him "master"
here were to use the wrong expression, for the private conduct, and the
in-comings and out-goings of this great man, who made continental
alliances and whose political ascendancy set vast armies in motion all
over Europe, were very fully ordered by his eccentric and imperious niece,
Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept his bachelor household, acted as a
secretary, and filled by her own appointment the post of candid friend and
adviser. If Pitt endured uncomplainingly all this frank criticism under
his own roof-tree, the fact says much for the natural sweetness of his
temper; if he followed the advice of his volatile and irresponsible niece,
then he must have been weak-minded indeed. But the things that she did and
said, and he endured, are written by Lady Hester herself, and no less
reliable witness could be cited than she of her uncle's domestic life.
The "Telegraph" inn, that stands so short a distance from Bowling Green
House, marks the site of one of the old Admiralty telegraph-towers that
were placed in a line between London and Portsmouth, and whence signals
were transmitted by semaphores before the introduction of the electric
telegraph. Here it was that the anxious politicians gathered while Pitt
lay a-dying up the road in January 1806, in his forty-seventh year, struck
down by an attack of gout brought on by news of Austerlitz. He received
the "heavy news" while at Bath, sent in haste by courier; and shortly
afterwards he journeyed home to Putney, whence he was never fated to go,
only to his grave. It was on January 12 that he arrived at Bowling Green
House, and the first thing that met his gaze when he entered was the map
of Europe, hanging in the hall. The sight of it struck the dying man like
the thrust of a dagger, for of what use were political divisions and
boundaries, now that Napoleon was master? "Roll up that map," he
exclaimed; "it will not be wanted these ten years!" On January 23 he was
dead, and his last words, "My country, how I leave my country!" show the
mental agonies of his passing.
Thus died the greatest statesman of the eighteenth century, and the most
precocious in our annals. His opponents held it truth that he died of port
wine; his colleagues and his admirers of our own times say his wounded
patriotism dealt him the fatal blow; and this last, with some
modification, seems the correct view. Port he drank in prodigious
quantities: in his childhood it saved his life, and it probably enabled a
weakly constitution to hold out for forty-seven years. But save for the
coloration of his face, which in later days had a port-wine complexion,
his appearance showed nothing of the _viveur_. He was tall, angular, and
emaciated, and his features were cast in a most irregular mould. His nose
was long and tip-tilted, his face thin and spare, and his upper lip,
according to George III. (who certainly should have been an excellent
judge of obstinacy, seeing that he was perhaps the most self-willed and
unreasonable man of his time), was "d----d long and obstinate." But Pitt's
unprepossessing and even mean appearance was redeemed by the fire and
brilliancy of his eyes, and the dignity and lofty bearing he assumed in
public transfigured the awkward figure that was so severely commented upon
in private life.
X
From here, where Pitt died, it is a long and gentle descent to Kingston
Vale and the Robin Hood Gate. As you go down, the eye ranges over the
hills of Surrey, blue in the distance, and the picturesquely-broken waste
of Wimbledon Common appears in the foreground, now all innocent of the
bustle and turmoil, the business and the pleasure of the Wimbledon
Meeting. Alas! for the days, and still more alas! for the nights, of
Wimbledon Camp.
At the foot of the hill, going down from the Heath to Kingston, there
used to stand, beside the road, a mounting-block for assisting horsemen in
alighting from or mounting their horses. On it was carved the name of
Thomas Nuthall, Surveyor of Roehampton, 1654, with the curious jingle:--
"From London towne to Portse downe
They say 'tis miles three score."
This has disappeared, like many another quaint roadside relic, and there
comes now nothing but evidence of suburban activity until Kingston is
reached, save indeed the ruined Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene, now a
school-house, beside the footpath.
[Sidenote: _KINGSTON-UPON-THAMES_]
Kingston-on-Thames is still provincial in appearance, though now the
centre of a great growth of modern suburbs. Here we are eleven miles from
the Borough, and at the end of the first stage out of London in the old
days of the mail-coaches. Modern drags, like the "Rocket" Portsmouth coach
of some years back, changed at the "Robin Hood," in Kingston Vale, but the
coachmen of coaching times made longer stages.
The story of Kingston is a great deal too long for me to dwell upon in
these pages, which are not intended for a topographical dictionary. I am,
indeed, not at all sure but that a book might not be written upon this old
town, both to the advantage of the writer and the inhabitants of this
truly royal borough; and here is the suggestion, generously offered to any
one who wishes a subject!
Kingston-upon-Thames is so explicitly named in order to distinguish it
from the many other Kingstons which loyalty or snobbery (please to take
your choice) has created all over England. There is a Kingston near
Portsmouth, and the town of Hull was always known as Kingston-upon-Hull
until conveniency and democracy conspired together (much, I should
imagine, to the delight of Citizen Carnegie, the Almighty Millionaire and
Astounding Autocrat of Homestead) to dock it of two-thirds of its name.
But the list of Kingstons is too long for this place, and so you are
referred to the "Gazetteer" for the rest, while I proceed to delve amid
antiquarian matter in respect of the kings whose coronations took place
here.
It seems, then, that before their Saxon majesties had conferred this
undying distinction upon the town it was (or what little there was of it)
called Moreford, from the ford by which Julius Caesar and his hosts crossed
the Thames; if, indeed, they did not cross at quite a different place, as
some antiquaries contend, called Coway Stakes, by Shepperton. When
ninth-century Unification prevailed, and the Heptarchy was knocked into a
cocked hat, Egbert (only the late Mr. Freeman would have preferred to call
him "Ecgbehrt") held a great council here; but that first great Bretwalda
was crowned elsewhere, and the Kingston coronations begin in A.D. 900 with
Edward the Elder, who sat upon a big stone in the market-place and
received his crown amid the acclamations of the people and the
confoundedly rough horse-play of the chiefs, who bore him aloft upon a
buckler, and (I assure you it was so) tossed him vigorously in the air
until the new king became sick and silly, and was devoutly thankful that
a Coronation came only once in a lifetime!
[Sidenote: _SAXON KINGS AND MODERN CYCLISTS_]
I trouble you with these details merely because the stone upon which these
kings received their crowns is still in existence in the market-place,
enclosed by and mounted on a modern seven-sided pedestal, upon whose every
face is carved the name of one of those Seven Kings, fearfully and
wonderfully spelled, to the amazement of the thousands of cyclists who
pass by and darkly remember to have heard of Edward the Elder and his
successors. When they come and read of Eadweard and similar perversions,
they go away, more than ever determined to forget all about the pre-Norman
monarchs and to confine their attention to those nineteenth-century
bounders, the idols of their little purview--I name the "Makers'
Amateurs."
But this Anglo-Saxon line of kings, from Edward the Elder to Edmund the
Martyr and Ethelred, is a great deal more interesting than the
professional cyclist. True, you cannot well lay a wager about Athelstan or
Edred, who have been dead a considerable time, something, in fact, a
little under a thousand years,--and they never played things low down for
"records" or took sordid cheques or shared in "gate-money"; but they are
still interesting, and made things so lively in their days that some of
their doings have been handed down through ten centuries--and _that_ is a
kind of "record" in itself!
The Saxons managed to defeat the Danes here in some great battle, half
mythical, half historic, and the old Shrovetide game of football that used
to be indulged in, within the town, is supposed to have been derived from
the (certainly unchivalric) way in which the townsfolk of that dim era
indulged in the sport of kicking the decapitated head of the Danish leader
about their streets.
However that may have been, here was the chosen spot of Saxon coronation,
and here stands the stone within a modern iron railing which is fondly
believed to be of Saxon character. This stone is supposed to have been one
of thirteen, originally forming a Druidical circle, and invested with a
sacred character, if not a godlike power. Indeed, the connection between
sacred stones and coronation stones is very close, for at one time kings
were heirs of the gods, and not only pretended to Divine right, but were
actually regarded as themselves divine. People, however, shed this last
superstition, and began to disregard sacred stones at a comparatively
early date, and the other twelve deities or sacred objects of Kingston
soon disappeared, for when the townsfolk set about rebuilding their
original wooden houses with more enduring materials, they quickly broke up
the gods and built walls of their fragments.
[Sidenote: _KINGSTON LOYALTY_]
Kingston has ever been a place of importance, and its castle (than which
no other stronghold in England has so utterly passed away and vanished,
even its site being a mere matter of conjecture) was several times
captured and recaptured by opposing hosts in the Middle Ages. In later
times Kingston became celebrated much in the same way as Yankee Boston
leaped into fame; for it was here that the first armed force assembled in
the Civil War between Charles I. and his Parliament. Colonel Lunsford and
other Royalist officers attempted to seize for the King the store of arms
in the town, intending to proceed afterwards to Portsmouth, to hold that
fortress in the Royal cause. The King was at that time at Hampton Court.
But Lunsford's enterprise failed, for the Parliament got wind of it and
speedily arrested him. By a singular coincidence, Kingston was also the
scene of one of the last stands of the Royalists, for, in July 1648, a
body of some six hundred men was assembled here under the commands of Lord
Holland, the second Duke of Buckingham, and his brother, Lord Francis
Villiers.
They set out for Carisbrooke, with the object of releasing the King, who
was imprisoned there, but a superior force met them at Reigate, and in the
last skirmish that followed their retreat to Kingston, Lord Francis
Villiers was slain, in a road between the town and Surbiton Common, at a
spot long marked by the tree against whose trunk he stood and fought
single-handed a hopeless fight against six Roundheads.
"Here," says Aubrey, the historian of Surrey, "was slain the beautiful
Francis Villiers, at an elm in the hedge of the east side of the lane;
where, his horse being killed under him, he turned his back to the elm,
and fought most valiantly with half-a-dozen. The enemy, coming on the
other side of the hedge, pushed off his helmet and killed him, July 7,
1648, about six or seven o'clock in the afternoon. On the elm, cut down in
1680, was cut an ill-shaped =V= for Villiers, in memory of him."
Indeed, Kingston has always been a loyal town, and its people High Tories
of a kind that warms my heart towards them when I think of their bravery.
Not resting content with appearing in arms against the Parliament, they
petitioned in behalf of their King, thereby incurring considerable danger
of being "remembered" in no kindly wise by my lords and commons of Puritan
sympathies. Their High Toryism and hatred of modernity have been seen in
recent times by their objection to having their Corporation reformed, and
even in the persecution of cyclists has their bias been shown; but
centuries ago these traits took a much less pleasing shape: the whipping
and despiteful using of beggars, the ducking of scolds and the plentiful
hangings of petty criminals; although, to be sure, there were some kindly
souls in the town, as evidenced by the entries given in the parish
registers of alms bestowed instead of scourgings, and we have here no such
record of brutality as Godalming registers afford. Kingston, being on a
well-worn road and itself a considerable place, was in receipt of much
custom from wayfarers of every class, travelling to the sea. Here came
sea-salts, men-of-war, personages of the highest station, and Dick, Tom,
and ragged Harry. The fine old inns that Kingston boasted afford proof of
the amount of custom the town enjoyed. Of these, alas! only the "Castle"
is left, and that well-known house, going back to Elizabethan times, is
cut up into separate tenements.
The travellers who "put up" here must have made a goodly crowd, and were,
doubtless, the source of much prosperity to this ancient borough,
"A praty town, by Tamise ripe."
[Sidenote: _MENDICANTS_]
Another kind of mediaeval wayfarers (who took away what others brought)
were those who went from place to place, collecting alms for the relief of
their distresses. These beggars were "briefed" or authorized by the
Ecclesiastical Courts to collect alms and solicit aid at any church they
might think fit, even at great distances away from their homes.
Thus the country was, before the passing of the Poor Laws, infested with
certificated beggars and tramps who, coming with pitiful tales of robbery,
disease, and spoliation, worked upon the charitable feelings of country
churchwardens, who listened to the woeful tales of mendicants both native
and from over sea, and relieved them with a few pence and a "God be with
you," passing them over to the next parish, where the process would be
repeated. The roads leading to and from the sea-board would be
particularly favoured by these unfortunates, and the Portsmouth Road, in
especial, must have witnessed at times quite a procession of dolorous
alms-seekers telling of sad mishaps on land and sea in foreign climes.
Some of the items given in this way are recorded in old parish registers
and churchwardens' accounts. Here are some significant extracts from
Kingston-upon-Thames records:--
"June 25, 1570. Sonday was her Iho Jinkin by pattin w{ch} was robbid
on the sea by Spanyards.
"February 1571.
"10 Sonday was her a man for his Father who was robbed on the Sey by
Lycence from my Lord Admirall."
Here we are not to assume, from the absence of punctuation, that this
unfortunate man was robbed by licence from the Admiral, but that this was
a variety of licence from the ecclesiastical kind--a kind of secular
recommendation to all and sundry, subscribed by the man's commanding
officer.
"10 Item was here the proctor of Kingsland beside Knightbrig.
"24 Sonday was here ij weman the mother and dowghter owte of Ireland
she called Elynor Salve to gather upon the deathe of her howsbande a
gentlman slayne amongst the wylde Iryshe being Captain of Gallyglasses
and gathered xviij_d_.
"May 26 Item her was a man from Dorkinge whose howse was brent.
"August 20 Item the proctor of Kingsland was here the Sonday being the
20 of August. In the same day was here ij men being robbid on the
Seye."
This licensed mendicancy was finally suppressed by the Act of Parliament,
passed in the thirty-ninth year of Queen Elizabeth's reign, "For the
Suppressing of Rogues, Vagabonds, and Sturdy Beggars." It begins by
setting forth in detail all those who were considered to come under these
designations. These were:--"Persons calling themselves scholars, going
about begging; all idle persons going about in any country either begging
or using any subtil craft or unlawful games or plays, or feigning
knowledge in physionomy or palmestry; patent-gatherers; common players of
interludes, other than players belonging to any Baron of the Realm;
juglers, tinkers, pedlers, and petty chapmen; and generally all wandering
persons using, loytering, and refusing to work for reasonable wages, or
pretending to be Egyptians. These are to be taken, adjudged, and deemed
rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and on apprehension to be, by
appointment of any justice of the peace, &c., being assisted therein with
the advice of the minister and one other of the parish, stripped naked,
from the middle upward, and openly whipped until his or her body be
bloody; and then sent from parish to parish to his or her last residence,
and in default of going there within a time limited, to be eftsoons taken
and whipped again."
This statute was continued and altered in subsequent reigns, and not
repealed until the twelfth year of Queen Anne.
There is an entry in Godalming parish registers, on this very road, which
shows that this was no disregarded law. On April 26, 1658, the Godalming
authorities seem to have inflicted a peculiarly brutal scourging:--
"Here was taken a vagrant"--says this yellow page, stained with time
and grotesque with crabbed writing and singular spelling--"one Mary
Parker, Widow, with a Child; and she was wipped according to law,
about the age of Thirty years, proper of personage; and she was to goo
to the place of her birth, that is, in Grauesend in Kent, and she is
limitted to iiij days, and to be caried from Tithing to Tything tell
she comes to the end of the s{d} jerney."
[Sidenote: _THE 'GOOD OLD TIMES'_]
Oh, those "good old times"!
Other singular entries occur at Kingston. In 1570, for instance, we read
that, on October 9--
"Thursday at nyght rose a great winde and rayne that the Temps rosse
so hye that they myght row w{t} bott{s} owte of the Temps a gret waye
in to the market place and upon a sodayne."
Two years later, a new cucking-stool was made at the expense of the
parish. It cost L1 3_s._ 4_d._, and seems to have been freely used. The
cucking-stool was a contrivance for the punishment of shrewish women who
made such ill use of their tongues as to disturb their neighbours as well
as their own families. Wherever there happened to be a pond or watercourse
in a parish a post was set up in it; across this post was placed a
transverse beam turning on a swivel, with a chair at one end of it, in
which when the offender was comfortably placed, that end was turned to the
water and let down into it as many times as the occasion was supposed to
require.
This new cucking-stool had not long been made when it was brought into
use, for, as the registers say--
"1572, August. On Tewsday being the xix day of this monthe of August
---- Downing wyfe to ---- Downinge gravemaker of this parysshe she was
sett on a new cukking stolle made of a grett hythe and so browght a
bowte the markett place to Temes brydge and ther had iij Duckinges
over hed and eres because she was a common scolde and fyghter."
During the next month the registers give the information that, September
8--
"This day in this towne was kept the Sessions of gayle Delyverye and
her was hangyd vj persons and seventeene taken for roges and vagabonds
and whippid abowte the market place and brent in the ears."
I think these extracts are sufficient to give a portraiture of the place
in olden times. For the Kingston of that remote date it were well not to
seek: it has gone with the snows of yester-year and the fallen leaves of
autumns past. There hangs to-day, in the Kingston Public Library, an old
drawing by a former Secretary of the Royal Academy, which, although as
a drawing it is as bad as may well be, has become, since the old
market-place was rebuilt, very valuable as a piece of documentary
evidence, showing what Kingston was like in olden times. This is negative
praise, but, even so, it is praise to which little of the handiwork of
by-past Secretaries of the Royal Academy can attain; for it has ever been
the practice of that distinguished body to confer the salaried posts at
their disposal upon those of their numerous members who could neither draw
nor paint. This old drawing shows dimly what manner of place Kingston was
until well on into the last century: the old timbered houses and the
projecting signs of the crazy inns making a brave show.
[Illustration: THE RECRUITING SERGEANT.]
[Sidenote: _THE RECRUITING SERGEANT_]
I should suppose it was at Kingston that John Collett conceived the idea
of his picture of "The Recruiting Sergeant," reproduced here; for the
wagon that stands in the road is labelled "Portsmouth Common Stage
Waggon," and the sign of the "Three Jolly Butchers" is clearly a
reminiscence of the "Jolly Butchers" at Clattern Bridge.
The recruiting sergeant was a scarcely less familiar figure on the road
than the stage-coach a hundred years ago, and a figure, too, that has ever
been seized upon by painters and writers alike for sentimental reasons.
Has he not been made notorious as "Sergeant Kite," the unscrupulous
ruffian who inveigled the country yokel into drink and the acceptance of
the King's shilling at the roadside inn? Evidently the painter of this
picture was a sentimentalist who regarded the recruiting sergeant in the
worst light. The composition and the figures are alike theatrical and
conventional. The weeping sweetheart is a figure borrowed from the stage,
and so are the two other prominent actors, the Sergeant and the Recruit.
The other figures are interesting. In the wagon a fellow is in the act of
kissing a girl, while an old woman belabours him about the head. Two
children are fearfully feeling the edge of a halberd in the foreground,
while a distressed dame--possibly the Recruit's mother--is being comforted
by some women friends.
At Kingston we had better take Mr. Shoolbred's "New Times" coach to
Guildford. That is to say, if we can find a seat; for this popular drive
is patronized so extensively that booking is brisk throughout the coaching
season. At eleven o'clock punctually, on every week-day forenoon in the
heyday of the year, the "New Times" starts from the "Berkeley" Hotel,
Piccadilly. The fame of this sole survivor of the Guildford coaches is of
no mere mushroom growth, for it is now over twenty years since Mr. Walter
Shoolbred first drove his own teams over this road, so that to-day he is
become an institution. Time was (and that but a few years since) when a
Portsmouth coach was the delight of the road; but Captain Hargreaves'
"Rocket" no longer enlivens the way, and, below Guildford, the Portsmouth
Road is unexploited. To-day we fare no farther behind our four-in-hand
than Mr. Shoolbred can take us, and he has the route entirely to himself.
[Sidenote: _DITTON MARSH_]
It is but rarely that this "well-appointed coach"--to speak after the
manner of advertisements--leaves London without a full load or an admiring
crowd of onlookers to witness its departure, and you feel yourself
(wrongly, it may well be) an essential part of the performance, as,
perched on the box-seat beside the driver, you are driven through the
thronging traffic of a May morning in Piccadilly. Not until the streets of
London are left behind us do the clean-limbed chestnuts of our team have
the opportunity of showing their paces; but Kingston Vale is done smartly,
and Kingston itself reached at 12.8. Presently we are out upon Ditton
Marsh, flat and broad and sombre, and we bowl along here at a fine round
pace until we reach the foot of the ascent where, outside a roadside
public-house--the "Orleans Arms"--stands a huge stone post, a century
old, carved with the names and distances of many towns and villages, and
known as the "White Lady" milestone.
[Illustration: ROAD AND RAIL: DITTON MARSH, NIGHT.]
[Illustration: MR. WALTER SHOOLBRED.]
Away to the right lies Thames Ditton, beloved of Theodore Hook and a
certain "lazy minstrel," well known to fame in these days, Mr. Ashby
Sterry. There also lived at Ditton, during the early part of this present
century, that eminent lawyer, Sir Edward Sugden, afterwards Lord St.
Leonards, and Lord Chancellor of England. His career was an example of the
rise of worth, for he was the son of a hairdresser in Duke Street,
Piccadilly, and won his way by the sole aid of his own bright intellect.
But, on the other hand, he remains the most dreadful example of the man
who draws his own will, and thus gives rise to wasteful litigation with
his testamentary incoherencies. He was also the victim of a particularly
odious witticism while living here. It shall be recounted, to the
perpetual infamy and dishonour of the man who uttered it. Theodore Hook
and Croker were on one occasion the guests of Sir Edward Sugden at Boyle
Farm. They were admiring a very beautiful vase that stood in the hall, and
Sir Edward told them it was a copy of the celebrated Warwick vase. "Yes,"
said Croker, "it is extremely handsome; but don't you think a facsimile of
the Barberini vase would have been more appropriate to the place?" I do
not remember to have heard if Sugden kicked his unmannerly guest: if he
did _not_, I regret the omission.
On the way to Esher, up the hillside, the coach passes the entrance-gates
of Sandown Park, that most fashionable of race-courses, opened in 1870,
and ever since then the "ladies' race-course" _par excellence_. Those
ornamental iron gates that face the road have a history: they came from
Baron Albert Grant's mansion, Kensington House, that stood where now
Kensington Court faces the Gardens and the old Palace.
[Illustration: THE "NEW TIMES" GUILDFORD COACH.]
[Sidenote: _'ESHER'S STEEP'_]
At Esher we make our second change, at that old-fashioned hostelry the
"Bear," and are shown those religiously preserved boots worn by the
post-boy who drove Philippe Egalite to Claremont in 1848, when escaping
"the red fool-fury of the Seine," then at flood-tide. These are boots
indeed, and more resemble the huge jack-boots in which Marlborough's
soldiers won Ramilies and Malplaquet, than nineteenth-century foot-gear.
The "Bear" is one of the finest of the old inns that ornament this old
road, and its stables, large enough, as the proprietor says, to hold a
hundred horses, are a sight to see.
Esher is a pleasant village, prettily rural, with a humble old church
behind that old coaching inn the "Bear," and a newer church, not at all
humble, across the way. Nearly all the monuments have been removed to the
new building; the most notable among them an elaborate memorial to Richard
Drake, Equerry to Queen Elizabeth, and father of the famous Sir Francis
Drake, who caused it to be placed in the old church. Some minor literary
lights, too, are buried here, among them Samuel Warren, Q.C., Recorder of
Hull and Master in Lunacy, who was born in 1807. This literary character
and legal luminary (of no great brilliancy, indeed) lived until 1877, when
his feeble flicker was finally dowsed in death. The injunction "de
mortuis" is kindly, but I cannot refrain from remarking here that I have
seen this shining light of law and letters characterized in print as a
"pompous ass." What else but pompous could he possibly have been after his
remarkable training, first for a degree in medicine, and, secondly, for
the bar? Such a career as this would be sufficient to turn any man of
average intelligence and more than average conceit into a third-rate
Johnson--such a man, in fact, as Warren became. Add to these advantages
(or disadvantages, you are free to choose your epithet) that of an author
successful more by hitting the bull's-eye of public taste than by
intrinsic merit, and you will wonder the less at his self-sufficient
mental attitude.
[Illustration: BOOTS AT THE "BEAR."]
[Illustration: THE "BEAR," ESHER.]
[Sidenote: _PRIGGERY_]
Warren was the author of such one-time extremely popular works as "Ten
Thousand a Year" and the "Diary of a Late Physician": applauded to the
echo in their day--a day that is done. He is additionally famous, however,
on another and very different count. His vanity was monumental, and he
possessed a prig's delight in recounting details of the social functions
to which he was used to be invited by the notabilities of his day.
A good anecdote survives of this unpleasing trait in Warren's character.
Let us howk it up again, and send it forth with a new lease of life.
Warren, it would seem, was narrating to Douglas Jerrold,[2] with much oily
circumstantiality, the splendid details of one of the dinners to which he
had been bidden in the mansions of the great. He constantly referred to
the unusual fact of no fish having been served at one of these feasts, and
asked Jerrold what explanation he thought could be offered of so strange
an omission. The reply was worthy of that wounding and blackguardly wit
for which Jerrold was so notorious; a form of ill-natured satire that
seems never to have brought him the sound thrashing he so richly deserved.
"Perhaps they ate it all up-stairs," said he.
XI
And now, before we proceed further along the Portsmouth Road, we must
"change here" for Dorking, a coach-route greatly favoured of late years,
both by Mr. Rumney's "Tally-ho" coach, and Mr. E. Brown's "Perseverance,"
by way of a relief from their accustomed haunts, to St. Albans and
elsewhere. The "Perseverance" (which, alas! no longer perseveres) left
Northumberland Avenue at eleven a.m., and came down the old route until
Surbiton was passed, when it turned off by way of Hook and Telegraph Hill,
by Prince's Coverts to Leatherhead, and so into Dorking.
[Illustration: THE "TALLY-HO" HAMPTON COURT AND DORKING COACH.]
[Sidenote: _THE 'TALLY-HO'_]
Mr. Rumney's "Wonder"--bah! what do I say?--I _should_ say that
gentleman's "Tally-ho" ran to Dorking in 1892, what time the
"Perseverance" also ran thither, and a fine seven-and-sixpenny ride it
was, there and back. By "there and back" I do not name the route between
London and the old Surrey town. Oh no; Mr. Rumney's was quite an original
idea. He gave Londoners the benefit of a country drive throughout, and ran
between the sweet rurality of Hampton Court and Dorking. At 11.10 every
morning he started from the "Mitre" Hotel, and so, across Hampton Bridge,
to Ditton and Claremont, and thence to Dorking, where, at the "White
Horse"----
But I anticipate, as the Early Victorian novelists were wont to say. I
will quote an account of the journey that appeared in one of the weekly
papers at the time, and have the less hesitation in quoting therefrom,
because I wrote the article myself, and if a man may not quote himself,
who, in Heaven's name, _may_ he quote?
"Every week-day of this spring-time the 'Tally-ho' leaves the 'Mitre,' at
Hampton Court, for Dorking. At eleven o'clock everything is in readiness
save the driver, who puts in a staid and majestic appearance on the box
only at the last moment. All around are ostlers and stablemen and men who,
although they have nothing whatever to do with the coach, and do not even
intend to go by it, are yet drawn here to admire the horses and to
surreptitiously pat them after the manner of all Englishmen, who, even if
they know nought of the noble animal's 'points,' at least love to see good
horse-flesh. Vigorous blasts from 'yards of tin' arouse alarums and
excursions, and bring faces to the hotel-windows, reminding one, together
with the gold-laced red coat of the guard, of the true coaching age, so
eloquently written of by that mighty historian of the road, C. J.
Apperley, whom men called 'Nimrod.'
"The appointments and the horse-flesh that go to make a first-rate modern
turn-out are luxurious beyond anything that 'Nimrod' could have seen,
splendid as were some of the crack coaches of his day. Were he here now,
he could but acknowledge our superiority in this respect; but we can
imagine his critical faculties centred upon what he would have called the
'tooling' of the drag, and his disappointment, not in the workmanship of
the driver, but in the excellence of the highways of to-day, which give a
coachman no opportunities of showing how resourceful he could be with his
wrist, nor how scientific with his 'springing' of his team. Let us
compassionate the critic whose well-trained faculties are thus wasted!
[Sidenote: _TO DORKING_]
"But it is full time we were off. A final flourish of the horn, and away
we go, our coach making for the heart of Surrey. 'Southward o'er Surrey's
pleasant hills,' as Tom Ingoldsby says, we go, to Leatherhead, beside
Drayton's 'mousling Mole'; and so, with a clatter and a cheery rattle of
the harness, past Mickleham, with its wayside church, and Juniper Hall,
red-faced, green-shuttered; perched above the roadside, redolent of
memories of the French refugees,--of whom M. D'Arblay, the husband of
Fanny Burney, was one,--and still wearing a fine and most unmistakable
eighteenth-century air, even though, as we pass, an equally undoubted
nineteenth-century telegraph-boy comes walking, with the leisurely air
peculiar to telegraph-boys, out of its carriage-drive into the road.
[Illustration: MICKLEHAM CHURCH.]
[Illustration: BURFORD BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: THE "WHITE HORSE," DORKING.]
"Now we are nearing our journey's end. The glorious woodlands of Norbury
Park--that old-time resort of literary ladies and gaping gentlemen, who
stapped their vitals and protested monstrously that the productions of
those blue-stockings were designed for immortality, long before the modern
woman was thought possible--the woods of Norbury come in view, and the
great swelling side of Box Hill rises in front, with the Burford Bridge
Hotel beneath, shaded by lofty trees which take their nourishment from the
Mole, bridged here by a substantial brick-and-stone structure that gives
that hostelry its name.
[Illustration: The Road to Dorking.]
[Sidenote: _BURFORD BRIDGE_]
"No more pleasant week-end resort than the Burford Bridge
Hotel--'providing always,' as the lawyers might say, that you do not make
your week-end coincide with one of Sir John Lubbock's popular carnivals.
Then----! But enough, enough. Hie we onwards, casting just one backward
glance towards that hotel which was just a decent road-side inn when Keats
wrote 'Endymion' there, coming in from moonlit walks across Box Hill,
inspired to heaven knows what unwritten poesy. Also, the Burford Bridge
Hotel has a claim upon the patriotic Englishman, who, thank goodness, is
not extinct, although Mr. Grant Allen thinks the generous feeling of
patriotism is unfashionable. For here Nelson slept during his last night
on English soil. The next day he embarked from Portsmouth, and--the rest
is history!
"Dorking at last! We pull up, with steaming cattle, at the old 'White
Horse,' where lunch is spread. We speculate upon the theory (one of many)
that the real original Weller inhabited here, but come, of course, to no
conclusion, where so many learned doctors in Dickens disagree. We
adventure down to Castle Mill; yea, even to the picturesque Brockham
Bridge below the town, beyond the foot of Box Hill. The town of Dorking
stretches out its more modern part in this direction, halting within sight
of Castle Mill, whence its _avant-garde_ is seen stalking horribly across
the meadows. For the rest, Dorking is pleasant enough, though containing
little of interest; and the parish church of St. Martin has been rebuilt.
Yet the long High Street still contains a few quaint frontages of the
seventeenth century, and our halting-place has a curious sign of wrought
ironwork. Those who do not pin their faith to the 'White Horse' as the
original of the 'Marquis of Granby' in the 'Pickwick Papers,' elect to
swear by the 'Red Lion,' once owned by a coach-proprietor who _might_
have sat for Samivel's father.
[Sidenote: _LITERARY LIGHTS_]
"The town and district have, indeed, many literary associations. Some of
these authors are now forgotten, or were never of more than local
celebrity; but what generation will that be which forgets old John Evelyn,
the diarist and author of 'Sylva,' and many other works, who must often
have ridden into the town from Wotton House, near by? He was a friend of
another congenial worthy, John Aubrey to wit. That amusingly quaint,
but not strictly reliable, old chronicler, says of this town:--'Dorking is
celebrated for fowls. The kine hereabout are of a sandy colour; the women,
especially those about the hill, have no roses in their cheeks.' I do not
notice that, however true may be his remarks about the fowls.
[Illustration: BROCKHAM BRIDGE.]
[Illustration: Castle Mill.]
"Defoe, among others, lived here; and Benjamin Disraeli at Deepdene
conceived the idea of 'Coningsby,' and wrote part of that work under its
roof, as may be seen set forth in his dedication. The fame of Madame
D'Arblay belongs more correctly to Mickleham. Then there were at Dorking
many disciples of the Aikins and Barbaulds, those Clarissas and Laetitias
of a pseudo-classic age whose dull wit was as forced as were the turgid
sentiments of the eminently proper characters in their writings. Theirs
was an age whose manners were as superficial as was the stucco upon the
brick walls of their neo-classic mansions and quasi-Greek conventicles;
and, for frankness' sake, I think I prefer our own times, when we have no
manners and make no pretensions that way.
"However, time is up. The guard winds his horn up the street, and we take
our seats again. The coachman gathers up his reins and shakes squarely
down into his seat; the ostlers step back. 'Good-bye, good-bye,' and we
are off at a quarter-past three on the return journey. We halt our team by
the way at a cheerful inn. The air bites shrewdly, and----'Well, yes; I
don't mind if I do!' 'Here's confusion to the Apostles of the Pump; a
health to our driver; prosperity to the "Tally-ho," and----' 'Hurry up,
please, gentlemen!' We take our seats once more with alacrity, and another
hour sees us again at Hampton Court."
To show the manner in which coach accounts were kept in the coaching age,
I append a copy of an old statement now in my possession. It is a "sharing
account," and details a month's takings and expenses in the expiring days
of road travel.
Meanwhile we resume our itinerary of the Portsmouth Road where we broke
off, at Esher.
[Sidenote: _COACH ACCOUNTS_]
_Dr._ _Cr._
LONDON AND _Dorking_ COACH.
_Account for 4 Weeks, ending the 5th Day of_
August _1837, both inclusive._
RECEIPTS. | | | | DISBURSEMENTS. || | | || | |
| | | | || | | || | |
MESSRS. HORNE | 82| 17| 6| || | | || | |
_Mr. Walker_ | 75| 12|--| MESSRS. HORNE. || | | || | |
| | | |Duty || 16| 17|-- || | |
| | | |Mileage || | | || | |
| | | |Tolls and Wages || | | || | |
| | | |Booking and Settling || | | || | |
| | | | Accounts || 3| 3|-- || | |
| | | |Washing and Greasing || 1| 1|-- || 21| 1|--
| | | | ||---|---|---||---|--|--
Dr. Mr. _Walker_| | | | || | | || | |
To Receipts _of_| | | |Mr. _Walker_. || | | || | |
_Messrs. Horne_| | | |Wages and Tolls || 13| 4|-- || | |
24| 11| 4 | | | |Booking ||-- |-- |-- || | |
Do. _of_ | | | |Washing and Greasing ||-- |-- |-- || | |
_Mr. Walker_ | | | |_Mileage_ || 7|-- |-- || | |
75| 12| -- | | | |_Touter_ ||-- | 16|-- || 21|--|--
-----| | | | | | || | | || | |
L|100| 3| 4 | | | | || | | || | |
================| | | | || | | || | |
| | | |---------------------|| | | || | |
Cr. | | | | SHARES. || | | || | |
By shares | | | |Miles. || | | || | |
79| 3| 4 | | | | 8 Messrs. Horne || 37| 5| 2|| | |
Disbursements | | | | 17 _Mr. Walker_ || 79| 3| 4||116| 8| 6
21| --| -- | | | |--- ||---|---|---||---|--|--
L 100| 3| 4 | | | |_25 Miles_ @L4 13 || | | || | |
================| | | | 1-1/2 18/25 _a || | | || | |
|---|---|--| mile_. || | | ||---|--|--
L|158| 9| 6| || | | L||158| 9| 6
=========================================================================
At Esher the fallen Cardinal Wolsey lived awhile when Providence frowned
upon him--and for Providence in this connection read Henry VIII., who
filled that position towards the great prelate, with great _eclat_ and an
altogether overwhelming success. When the king commanded Wolsey to retire
hither, the Cardinal lived in the old building of Esher Place, whose only
remains are seen at this day in the Gatehouse standing in the damp and
watery meadows beside the Mole. He found the place little to his liking,
and displayed his sorrows in a letter to Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester,
wherein he complains of the "moist and corrupt air." That he was quite in
a position to appreciate the dampness of his residence, we may well
believe when we read that he was "without beds, sheets, table-cloths, or
dishes"; and that he presently "fell sore sick that he was likely to die"
creates, under the circumstances, no surprise.
The place of Wolsey's compulsory retirement was almost completely
destroyed when the modern mansion of Esher Place was built, and the chief
historic house of Esher is now Claremont.
XII
Claremont is a house of sad memories, destined, so it might seem to the
superstitious, to witness a succession of tragedies and sorrows.
Neither the house nor the estate are of any considerable age; the estate
originating in a fancy of Sir John Vanbrugh,--that professional architect
and amateur dramatist of Queen Anne's time,--for a suburban retreat. He
purchased some land at Esher, between the village and the common, and,
foregoing his usual ponderous style of piling up huge masses of stone
and brickwork, put up quite a small and unpretentious brick house upon it.
Sir John Vanbrugh died in 1726, and posterity seems still in doubt as to
whether he excelled in writing comedies or in designing ponderous palaces
of the type of Blenheim and Castle Howard. Certainly his writings are as
light as his buildings heavy, and though a wit might justly compose an
epitaph for him as an architect,
"Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee,"
the application can extend no further.
[Illustration: Ruins of Wolsey's Palace Esher]
Before he died, Vanbrugh's estate was sold to the Earl of Clare, who added
a banqueting-hall to the architect's modest dwelling, purchased additional
land, and, after the custom greatly honoured in the observance during the
eighteenth century, stole much more from the neighbouring common, until he
brought the palings of the park coterminous (as the political geographers
might say) with the Portsmouth Road. In midst of the land he had thus
filched from the commoners of Esher, the Earl of Clare built a kind of
belvidere on a pleasant eminence overlooking the country-side, and called
it Clare Mount. Thus arose the name of the house and park. Soon
afterwards, however, the Earl was created Duke of Newcastle, and, to
honour his new pomp and circumstance the more, employed Kent, the
celebrated landscape gardener, to re-arrange the grounds and gardens,
until their magnificence called forth this eulogium from Sir Samuel Garth,
a dabbler both in medicine and metre:--
"Oh! who can paint in verse those rising hills,
Those gentle valleys, and their silver rills;
Close groves and opening glades with verdure spread,
Flow'rs sighing sweets, and shrubs that balsams bleed?"
Ah! who indeed? Not Sir Samuel Garth, though, if this be a representative
taste of his quality.
The Claremont that we see now was built by the "heaven-born general,"
Clive, who purchased the estate upon the death of the Duke of Newcastle in
1768. He built, with the aid of Lancelot Brown (Capability Brown his
contemporaries eke-named him), in a grand and massive style that excited
the gaping wonder of the country folk. "The peasantry of Surrey," says
Macaulay, in his "Essay on Clive," "looked with mysterious horror on the
stately house which was rising at Claremont, and whispered that the great
wicked lord had ordered the walls to be made so thick in order to keep out
the devil, who would one day carry him away bodily." This unenviable
reputation for wickedness was the work of Clive's enemies, of whom,
perhaps, from one cause and another, no man has possessed so many. The men
above whose heads his genius and daring had carried him, and the Little
Englanders of that day, both hated the hero of Plassey with a lurid and
vitriolic vehemence. They circulated strange tales of his cruelty and
cupidity in India, until even well-informed people regarded Clive as an
incarnate fiend, and "Capability" Brown even came to wonder that his
conscience allowed him to sleep in the same house with the notorious
Moorshedabad treasure-chest.
[Illustration: LORD CLIVE.]
Clive ended his brief but glorious career, slain by his own hand, in
November 1774, but none the less murdered by the ingratitude of his
country, a country so prolific in heroes that it can afford, for the sport
of factions, to hound them occasionally to ruin and to death, coming
afterwards in recriminating heart-agony to mourn their loss. Clive died,
not yet fifty years of age, killed by constitutional melancholia,
aggravated by disease and the yelpings of politicians, eager to drag down
in the mire the man who gave us India. The arms of Clive still decorate
the pediment of Claremont, the only house, so 'tis said, that "Capability"
Brown ever built, though he altered many.
[Sidenote: _PRINCESS CHARLOTTE_]
In the forty years that succeeded between the death of Clive and the
purchase of the estate by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests,
Claremont had a succession of owners; and upon the marriage of the Prince
Regent's only daughter, the Princess Charlotte, in 1816, it was allotted
to her for a residence. It was in May of that year that the Princess
Charlotte of Wales was married to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the petty
German Duchy that has furnished princelings innumerable for the recruiting
of kingdoms and principalities, and has given the Coburg Loaf its name.
But within a year of her marriage the Princess died in child-birth, and
was buried in a mausoleum within the park. Then Claremont was for long
deserted. There is a much-engraved portrait of the Princess, painted by
Chalon, R.A., which shows a pleasant-faced girl, with fine neck and full
eyes,--the characteristic eyes of the Guelphs,--and a strong facial
resemblance to her father and grandfather, the Third and Fourth Georges.
She is represented as habited in the indecent dress of the period, with
ermined robe, and wearing a velvet hat with an immense plume of ostrich
feathers. But a much more pleasing portrait is that by an unnamed artist,
"a Lady," reproduced here, which gives a representation of the Princess
without those elaborate feathers and showy trappings of Court ceremonial.
[Sidenote: _CHRONIQUES SCANDALEUSES_]
The circumstances that attended the death of this Princess, to whom the
nation looked as their future Queen, were not a little mysterious, and
gave rise to many sinister rumours and scandals. Sir Richard Croft, a
fashionable _accoucheur_ of that time, was in attendance upon her with
other physicians. He was one who signed the bulletins announcing her
steady progress towards recovery after the birth of a dead child; but on
the following day the news of the Princess's death came as a sudden shock
upon England, whose people had but recently shared in the joy and
happiness of her happy marriage, doubly welcome after the sinister
quarrels, estrangements, and espionages that marked the wedded life of the
Regent. Scarce had the tidings of the Princess Charlotte's death at
Claremont become public property than all manner of strange whispers
became current as to the causes of it. The public mind was, singularly
enough, not satisfied with the medical explanations which would ordinarily
have been accepted for very truth; but became exercised with vague
suspicions of foul play that were only fanned into further life by the
mutual recriminations of medicos and lay pamphleteers. Even those who
saw no shadow of a crime upon this bad business were ready to cast blame
and the bitterest reproaches upon Sir Richard Croft, in whose care the
case chiefly lay, for his mistaken treatment. And this was not the first
occasion upon which Croft's conduct had been looked upon with suspicion,
for, years previously, a scandalous rumour had been bruited about with
regard to two of his noble patients,--the Duchess of Devonshire and an
unnamed lady of title,--by which it would seem that he was privy to a
supposititious change of children at the Duchess of Devonshire's
accouchement, when it was believed that the Duchess exchanged a girl for
her friend's boy.
[Illustration: PRINCESS CHARLOTTE OF WALES.]
But on this occasion the affair was much more serious, whether blame
attached to him solely for mistaken treatment, or whether scandal
whispered at criminal complicity. The Princess Charlotte died on November
6, 1817; three months later--on February 13, 1818--Sir Richard Croft, in
despair, shot himself. He was but fifty-six years of age.
Years later--in 1832--when Lady Ann Hamilton's extraordinary scribblings
were published in two volumes under the title of "A Secret History of the
Court of England, from 1760 to the Death of George IV.," these old rumours
were crystallized into a definite charge of murder against some nobleman
whose name is prudently veiled under a blank. The Princess, says Lady
Hamilton, was in a fair way of recovery, and a cup of broth was given her;
but after partaking of it she died in convulsions. The nurse who handed
her the cup noticed a dark red sediment at the bottom, and on tasting it
found her tongue blistered! This peer, according to Lady Hamilton, acted
with the connivance of the King, George III., and his glorified German
_hausfrau_, and with the approval of the Princess's father, the Regent,
who, it is asserted in those pages, was heard to say some time previously
at Esher that "no child of the Princess Charlotte shall ever sit upon the
throne of England." Lady Ann Hamilton, however, was a malevolent gossip,
holding the most extreme Radical views, and as a personal friend and
uncompromising partisan of Caroline, Princess of Wales,--that silly and
phenomenally undignified woman--was eager to believe anything, no matter
how atrocious, of her husband and his people.
No member of the Royal Family was present at the Princess Charlotte's
death-bed. She died, with the sole exception of her husband, Prince
Leopold, amid physicians and domestics.
The King and Queen were (says Lady Hamilton) a hundred and eight miles
away, and the Regent was either at Carlton House or staying with the
Marquis of Hertford (or rather the _Marchioness_, she adds, in significant
italics).
It is said that Lady Ann Hamilton's writings, published as a "Secret
History," were given to the world, without her knowledge or consent, by a
gentleman who had obtained the manuscript. Certain it is that when these
two volumes appeared, in 1832, they were suppressed; and some four years
later, when some other manuscripts belonging to the author were
advertised for sale by auction, they were hastily bought up on behalf of a
royal personage, and, it is believed, destroyed.
It is difficult to understand the hardihood which asserted at that time
that the Princess Charlotte had been the victim of a murderous conspiracy
between her nearest relatives; the more especially because her death would
not seem to have been any one's immediate great gain. Had it been of great
advantage to any prominent member of the Royal Family, the suspicion might
have been better founded, for royalty has no monopoly of virtue, while the
temptations of its position are a hundredfold greater than those of lower
estate. The history of royal houses shows that murder has frequently
altered the line of succession, but surely the House of Brunswick (that
heavy and phlegmatic line) never soared to this tragic height, or plumbed
such depths of crime in modern times.
[Sidenote: _'MR. SMITH'_]
For many years after the death of the Princess Charlotte, Claremont was
closed, the rooms unoccupied, and left in much the condition they were
then. Prince Leopold became, by the death of his wife, life-owner of the
place, but its sad memories led him to leave it for ever. In after years
the Prince became King of the Belgians, and, in 1832, a year after this
advancement, married the eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, King of the
French. Sixteen years later, during the stress of the French Revolution of
1848, that _bourgeois_ King fled from Paris and crossed the Channel as
"Mr. Smith," and his son-in-law placed Claremont at the disposal of the
_emigre malgre lui_. Here he died in 1850. In 1865 the King of the
Belgians died, and Claremont reverted to the Crown. Six years later the
Marquis and Marchioness of Lorne stayed here on the occasion of their
marriage, and when the Queen's youngest son, Prince Leopold, Duke of
Albany, was married, Claremont became his home. But the Duke died in 1884,
and the house is now in the occupation of his widow.
Claremont, indeed, is a place weighted with memories and sad thoughts of
the "might have been." If only the intrepid Clive had lived to take the
field against our rebellious colonists, as it was proposed he should do,
it seems likely that the New England States had yet been ours, and
Washington surely hanged or shot. Then North America had not become the
safe refuge of political murderers commanding sympathetic ears at the
White House, nor had we ever heard of the _scagliola_ fripperies of a
Presidential Reception. But a dull and obstinate King, a stupid ministry,
and incompetent generals combined to lose us those colonies, and death
snatched away untimely the foremost military genius of the time, to leave
statesmen in despair at what they thought was surely the decay of a
glorious Empire.
How changed, too, would have been the succession had the Princess
Charlotte lived! The Sailor King--that most unaffected and heartiest of
monarchs, whom the irreverent witlings of his day called "Silly Billy,"
for no particular reason that I know of--would have still remained Duke of
Clarence, and the Princess Victoria would have been but a mere cousin of
another Queen. But no matter what Fate has in store for other Houses, the
Coburger reaps an advantage, whate'er befalls; and though one is relegated
to a less distinguished career by the death of his consort, another of
that prolific race becomes the husband of a Queen, and the father of our
future Kings.
XIII
But it is a long way yet to Guildford, and eight miles to our next change,
at the "Talbot" Hotel, Ripley; equally with the Esher "Bear" a coaching
inn of long and honourable lineage. Let us then proceed without more ado
down the road.
[Sidenote: _FAIRMILE_]
Fairmile Common is the next place of note, and it is especially notable
from the coaching point of view, by reason of the flatness of the road
that is supposed to be the only level mile between London and Guildford.
Along this Fair Mile, then, the coachmen of by-past generations generally
took the opportunity of "springing" their cattle, and as they were
"sprung" then, so they are to-day, over this best of galloping-grounds,
the said "springing" bringing us, in less than no time, to Cobham Street,
where there is a very fine and large roadside inn indeed, called the
"White Lion." If the coach stopped here, you would be able to verify this
statement by an exploration of the interior, which is as cosy and cheerful
within as it is bare and cold and inhospitable-looking without--at least,
those are my sentiments. But, then, the coach doesn't stop, but goes
dashing round the corner and over the river Mole and up Pain's Hill in the
"twinkling of a bed-post," that somewhat clumsy _facon de parler_.
Now, if you walked leisurely this way, there would be time for talking of
many interesting things. Firstly, as to Fairmile itself, which is worth
lingering over upon a fine summer's day.
Fairmile Common is associated, in local tradition, with the following
tragedy. Two young brothers of the Vincent family of Stoke D'Abernon, the
elder of whom had but just come into possession of his estate, were out on
a shooting expedition from that village. They had put up several birds,
but had not been able to get a single shot, when the eldest swore with a
great oath that he would fire at whatever they next met with. They had
gone but little further when the miller of the neighbouring mill passed
them and bade them good-day. When he had passed, the younger brother
jokingly reminded the elder of his oath, whereupon the latter immediately
fired at the miller, who fell dead upon the spot. The murderer escaped to
his home, and, by family influence, backed by large sums of money, no
effective steps were taken for his arrest. He was concealed upon his
estate for some years, when he died from remorse. To commemorate his rash
act and his untimely death, a monument was placed in Stoke D'Abernon
Church, bearing the "bloody hand" which no doubt gave rise to the whole
story.
[Sidenote: _COBHAM STREET_]
The red hand of Ulster, badge of honourable distinction, is not
understanded by the country folk, and so, to account for it, the Stoke
D'Abernon villagers have evolved this moving tale. That is my view of the
legend. If you are curious concerning it, why, Stoke D'Abernon is near at
hand, and there, in as charming a village church as you could wish to see,
filled, beside, with archaeological interest, is this memorial. Did space
suffice (which it doesn't) much might be said of Stoke D'Abernon, of
Slyfield Farm, and of Cobham village; which last must on no account be
confounded with Cobham Street. The latter place is, in fact, just an
offshoot (though an old one 'tis true) of the original village, and it
arose out of the large amount of custom that was always going along the
Portsmouth Road in olden times.
[Illustration: COBHAM CHURCHYARD.]
Cobham Street stood here in receipt of this custom and of much patronage
from that very fine high-handed gentleman, the Honourable Charles
Hamilton, who in the reign of George II. filched a large tract of common
land just beyond the other side of the Mole, enclosed it, and by the
expenditure of vast sums of money caused such gardens to blossom here,
such caves and grottoes to be formed, and such cunning dispositions of
statuary to be made (all in the classic taste of the time) that that
carping critic, Horace Walpole, was compelled to a reluctant admiration.
And this was the origin of the estate still known as Pain's Hill.
"'Tis very bad, in man or woman,
To steal a goose from off the common:
But who shall plead that man's excuse
Who steals the common from the goose?"
Thus the metrical moralist. But this was common sport (no joke intended
here!) during last century and in the beginning of this, and if a man
stole a few hundred acres in this way, he was thought none the worse of
for it. For all that, however, the Honourable Charles Hamilton was nothing
more, in fact, than a common thief, with this difference--that the poor
devil who "prigged" a handkerchief was hanged for petty larceny, while the
rich man who stole land on a large scale, and converted it to his own
uses, was hailed as a man of taste and culture, and his robbery commended.
[Illustration: PAIN'S HILL.]
[Sidenote: _WISLEY_]
Pain's Hill looms up finely as one turns the corner of Cobham Street and
crosses the Mole by the successor of the bridge built here by the "Good
Queen Maud," in place of the ford where one of her maids-of-honour was
drowned. There are more inns here, and their humped and bowed roofs make
an excellent composition in a sketch, with the remarkable mop-like trees
of Pain's Hill Park seen in silhouette beyond. To Pain's Hill succeeds
Tartar Hill and Wisley Common; sombre fir trees lining the road and
reflected in the great pond that spreads like some mystic mere over many
acres. The "Huts" Hotel, however, rebuilt and aggressively modern, is not
at all mystic, and neither are the crowds of thirsty, dusty cyclists who
frequent it on summer days.
XIV
[Sidenote: _CYCLING_]
The Portsmouth Road, from London to Ripley, has, any time these last
twenty years, been the most frequented by cyclists of any road in England.
The "Ripley Road," as it is generally known among wheelmen, is throughout
the year, but more especially in the spring and summer months, alive with
cycles and noisy with the ringing of cycle-bells. On Saturday afternoons,
and on fine Sundays, an almost inconceivable number take a journey down
these twenty-three miles from London, and back again in the evening;
calling at the "Angel," at Ditton, on the way, and taking tea at their
Mecca, the "Anchor," at Ripley. The road is excellent for cycling, but so
also are a number of others, equally accessible, around London, and it
must be acknowledged that the "Ripley Road" is as much favoured by a
singular freak of fashion in cycling, and as illogically, as a particular
walk in Hyde Park is affected by Society on Sundays. But in cycling
circles (apt phrase!) it is quite the correct thing to be seen at Ditton
or at Ripley on a Sunday, and every one who is any one in that sport and
pastime, be-devilled as it is now-a-days with shady professionalism and
the transparently subsidized performances of the makers' amateurs, must be
there. The "Ripley Road," now-a-days, is, in fact, the stalking-ground of
self-advertising long-distance riders, of cliquey and boisterous club-men,
and of the immodest women who wear breeches awheel. The tourist, and the
man who only has a fancy for the cycle as a means of healthful exercise,
and does not join the membership of a club, give the "Ripley Road" a wide
berth.
The frequenters of this road became in 1894 such an unmitigated nuisance
and source of danger to the public in passing through Kingston-on-Thames,
that the local bench of magistrates were obliged to institute proceedings
against a number of cyclists for furious driving, and for riding machines
without lights or bells. According to the evidence given by an inspector
of police, no fewer than twenty thousand cyclists passed through Kingston
on Whit Sunday, 1894.
[Illustration: FAME UP-TO-DATE.]
Coaching men hate the cyclist with a bitter hatred, and he will ever be to
them a _bete noir_ of the blackest hue. It may not be generally known that
the contumelious expression of "cads on castors," which has become so
widespread that it has almost obtained the popularity of a proverb,
originated with Edmund Yates; but he was really the author of that
scornful epithet, whose apt alliteration will probably never be forgotten,
though the "castors" be evolved into hitherto undreamed-of patterns, and
the race of cads who earned the appellation be dead and gone. The
expression "cads on castors" will, with that other humorous epithet,
"Brompton boilers," achieve immortality when cycling is obsolete, and the
corrugated iron roofs of the Bethnal Green Museum are rusted away. The
objectionable phrase of "bounders on box-seats," which some cycling
journalists have flung back at their coaching critics has not run to
anything like the popularity of the other, and more apt, effort of
alliterative conciseness; for the prejudices of the lieges have, up to
now, been chiefly in favour of the whips and horsey men to whom the cycle
is the "poor man's horse," and therefore to be condemned. Will the sport
and pastime of cycling ever become aristocratic? It is to be feared or
hoped (accordingly as you admire or detest the cycle) that it will never
win to this regard: at least, not while the road-racing clubs and
individual cyclists continue to render the Queen's highway dangerous for
all other travellers; not so long as that peculiar species of Fame, which
is more properly Notoriety, continues to be trumpeted abroad concerning
the doings of racing cyclists who strive, not for the English love of
sport, but for the cheques awarded them by the long-headed manufacturers
whose machines they ride--and advertise.
[Illustration: THE "ANCHOR," RIPLEY.]
[Sidenote: _RIPLEY_]
But cycling has brought much prosperity to Ripley village and its two
antiquated inns, the "Talbot" and the "Anchor." A few years ago, indeed
(before cycling had become so popular), the "Talbot" was closed and given
over to solitude and mice, but now-a-days one may be as well served there
as at any country hostel you please to mention. The company, however, of
the "Talbot" is not exclusively made up of wheelmen of the gregarious (or
club) species, and a decent tourist who is neither a scorcher nor a wearer
of badges, nor anything else of the "attached" variety, may rest himself
there with quiet and comfort, except on high days and Bank holidays: on
which occasions the quiet and peaceable man generally stays at home,
preferring solitude to the over-much company he would find on the road.
But if you wish to see the club-wheelman in his most characteristic moods,
why then the "Anchor" is your inn, for in the low-ceiled rooms that lurk
dimly behind the queer, white-washed gables of that old house, cycling
clubmen foregather in any number, limited only by the capacity of the inn.
The place is given over to cyclists, and beside the road, behind the
house, or on the broad common upon which this roadside village fronts,
their machines are stacked as thickly as in the store-rooms of some
manufactory.
[Illustration: HERBERT LIDDELL CORTIS.]
At the further end of the village stands the ancient but much-restored
chapel of Ripley, interesting to cyclists by reason of the memorial window
inserted here to the memory of an early cycling hero of the
race-path--Herbert Liddell Cortis--who died, shortly after reaching
Australia, at Carcoar, New South Wales, on December 28, 1885. Interest of
another kind may be found in the architecture of the Earl of Lovelace's
beautiful seat, Ockham Park, that borders the road, just before entering
the village; and in the ruins of Newark Abbey, that lie on the banks of
the Wey, across Ripley Green. But time and tide wait for no man, and the
"New Times" coach is equally impatient of delay. Two minutes suffice for
changing teams at the "Talbot," and off that heir of the coaching age goes
again.
XV.
For six miles the road runs level, from Ripley to Guildford, forming
excellent galloping ground for the horses of the "New Times" coach. All
the way the scenery is pretty, but with no very striking features, and
villas dot the roadside for a considerable distance. On the left hand the
coach passes Clandon Park, and on the right comes Mr. Frederic Harrison's
historic house, Sutton Place, and Stoke Park, that takes its name from the
village of Stoke-next-Guildford.
Past some outlying waste lands and over railway bridges, the coach rattles
down the sharp descent into Guildford town; down the narrow High
Street--the steepest, they say, in England, and certainly the stoniest--to
draw up before the "Angel," punctually at two o'clock.
[Sidenote: _PROVINCIALITY_]
Guildford is no more than thirty miles from London, and yet it remains to
this day as provincial in appearance as ever it could have been in the
olden times of road-travel. Provinciality was the pet bugbear of Matthew
Arnold, but he applied it as a scornful term only to literary and critical
shortcomings. To him the vapourings of modern poetasters would have been
provincialisms, and the narrow-minded criticisms of Mr. George Howells,
who can see nothing in Shakespeare, but perceives a wealth of genius in
his fellow-novelists of the United States, would have been provincialisms
of the worst order.
But the provinciality of places, as distinguished from minds, can be no
reproach in these latter days, when all the great towns, with London at
their head, have grown so large and congested that a sight of God's pure
country and a breath of healthy air are only to be obtained by most
townsfolk with infinite pains and great expenditure of time. It was an
evil day when the great cities of England grew so large that one who
ascended a church steeple in their midst could discover nothing on the
horizon but chimney-pots and bricks-and-mortar; and the best of times were
those when weary citizens took their pleasure after the day's work in the
fields and groves that bordered upon the habitations of men. What are
Progress and Civilization but will-o'-wisps conjured up by the malignity
of the devil to hide the degeneration of the race and the starvation of
the soul, when the outcome of the centuries is the shutting out from the
face of nature of three-fourths of the population? What else than a sorry
jest is the boast of London's five millions of people, when by far the
greater proportion of those five millions never know what country life
means, nor even what is the mitigated rusticity of a provincial town in
whose centre you can open your casement of a morning and welcome the sun
rising in a clear sky, listen to the morning chorus of the birds, and see,
though you be in the very midst of the provincial microcosm, the fields
and hedge-rows, the streams and rural lanes of the country-side?
[Sidenote: _GUILDFORD_]
Guildford, then, is provincial in the best and healthiest sense; for
though your habitat be in the High Street, which here, as in all other
properly-constituted towns, is the very nucleus of the borough, you
need never be longer than ten minutes in leaving the town behind if you
are so minded. Guildford is a town of very individual character. Godalming
folks will tell you that Guildford is "cliquey," by which term I
understand exclusiveness to be meant. It may be so, in fact I believe this
to be one of Guildford's most marked social characteristics; but
exclusiveness implies local patriotism, which is a refreshing spirit for a
Londoner to encounter once in a way. At any rate, he will find no spirit
of this description in what Cobbett satirically termed "the Wen." The
patriotism of Peckham has yet to be discovered; the local enthusiasm of
Camberwell is as rare as the song of the lark in London streets; and the
man who would now praise what was once the country village of "merrie"
Islington is not to be found.
[Illustration: GUILDHALL, GUILDFORD.]
It is difficult to pluck even one greatly outstanding incident from
Guildford's history wherewith to enliven these pages, for although
Guildford possessed a strong and well-placed castle from Norman times, it
cannot be said that the annals of the town are at all distinguished by
records of battle, murder, and sudden death, or by military prowess. So
much the better for Guildford town, you will say, and the expression may
be allowed, for this old borough has ever been eminently peaceful and
prosperous in the absence of civil or military commotion. Its very name is
earnest of trade and merchandise; and the guilds of Guildford were very
powerful bodies of traders who dealt in cloths and wool, at one time the
chiefest of local products, or in the minor articles that ministered to
the wants of those great staple trades.
Meanwhile the guardians of the old Castle, whose keep still dominates
Guildford from most points of view, had little enough to do but to keep
the place in order for such occasions when the King came a-hunting in the
neighbourhood, or progressed past here to some distant part of the realm.
King John seems to have been by far the most frequent royal visitor to
Guildford Castle, and almost the last, for the cold comforts of Norman
keeps went very early out of fashion with kings and queens, and domestic
hearths began to replace dungeon-like apartments in chilly towers as soon
as social conditions began to settle down into something remotely
resembling tranquillity.
Guildford Keep stands at this day in gardens belonging to the Corporation,
and free to all. It is of the Norman type, familiarized to many by prints
of such well-known Norman towers as those of Rochester and of Hedingham
Castles, and is at this time a mere shell, open to the sky. Within the
thickness of the walls are staircases by which it is possible to climb to
the summit and gaze thence down upon the red roofs of the town that
cluster so picturesquely beneath. Here, too, is a Norman oratory, whose
narrow walls are covered with names and figures scratched deeply into the
stone, "probably," says a local guide, "the work of prisoners confined
here." But "J. Robinson, 1892," was surely no prisoner within these
bounds, although he should have been who thus carved his undistinguished
name here.
[Illustration: CASTLE ARCH.]
[Sidenote: _THE GUILDHALL_]
Beside the keep there remains but one archway of all the extensive
military works that at one time surrounded the Castle. This is in Quarry
Street, and is known as Castle Arch. The chalk caverns close at hand, and
the vaulted crypt beneath the "Angel," although they have long been looked
upon as dungeons, had, according to the best-informed of local
archaeologists, no connection whatever with the Castle. Perhaps even before
the Castle keep, the delightfully quaint old Guildhall is the most
characteristic feature of Guildford's architecture. Compared with that old
stronghold, the Guildhall is the merest _parvenu_, having been built in
1683; but, comparisons of age apart, there is no parallel to be drawn
between the two. The old tower is four-square and stern, with only the
picturesqueness that romance can find, while the belfried tower and the
boldly-projecting clock that impends massively over the pavements of the
High Street, and gives the time o' day to the good folks of the town, are
the pride of the eye and the delight of the artistic sense of all them
that know how to appreciate at their true aesthetic value those memorials
of the old corporate spirit of business and good-fellowship that have long
since vanished from municipal practice. The legend that may still be read
upon the Corporation mace, of Elizabethan date, is earnest of this
old-time amity. Thus it runs: "Fayre God. Doe Justice. Love thy Brether."
Set against this, the proceedings of the Kingston-upon-Thames Town Council
of some few weeks back make ugly reading, and at the same time illustrate
the new spirit very vividly indeed. You who list to learn may read in the
records for the present year of that old borough, that while one member
of the Council stigmatized another member's statements as falsehoods, the
first rejoined that his accuser was, in plain English, "a liar." Appealed
to by the Mayor to withdraw the offensive expression, he refused, and the
Mayor and Corporation filed out of the Council-chamber, leaving him to his
own reflections.
That the burghers of Guildford were always the best of friends one with
another is not my contention; that the dignity of their ancient
surroundings should conduce to loving-kindness may remain unquestioned.
XVI
[Sidenote: _GEORGE ABBOT_]
The greatest of Guildford's worthies was George Abbot, the son of Maurice
Abbot, a clothworker of this town, and his wife Alice. He was born in
1562, the eldest of that "happy ternion of brothers," as Fuller quaintly
describes him and his two younger brothers, who became respectively Bishop
of Salisbury and Lord Mayor of London. The parents of these distinguished
men came very near to martyrdom in the reign of Queen Mary, for they were
both ardent Protestants; but, escaping the fate that befell many others,
they had the happiness of seeing their children rise in the world far
beyond all local expectations. Alice Abbot, indeed, had a singular dream
which foretold that "if she could eat a jack or pike, the first son she
should bring into the world would be a great man." A few days afterwards
(so runs the story) she drew up a pike from the river Wey while filling
buckets for household use; and, in accord with the promptings of her
dream, ate it. "Many people of quality offered themselves to be sponsors
at the baptism of Mistress Alice's son--the future Archbishop," says
Aubrey; and if the dream itself was nothing but the result of a late
supper acting upon a vivid imagination, certainly local interest in
"Mistress Alice's" account of it procured for her firstborn quite an
exceptional degree of favour and consideration. He was educated first at
the Free Grammar School of Guildford, and was sent at the age of sixteen
to Balliol College. Thenceforward his rise was rapid. He studied theology,
and became tutor to the sons of influential personages. Excellent
preferments in the Church became his at an early age, and through many
stages of favour he became Archbishop of Canterbury in his forty-ninth
year. His rise was undoubtedly due to native worth, for Abbot was a
scholar of the foremost rank, and well equipped, both by study and by
force of character, to hold his own in the fierce religious controversies
of his time. He was, moreover, honest, and had little of the truckler or
the time-server in his nature, as his opposition both to James I. and
Charles I. showed, on occasion. It is to his righteous opposition that
Charterhouse School, now down the road at Godalming, owes its very
existence; for, when the cupidity of James I. was aroused over the
provisions of Thomas Sutton's will, and when he attempted to divert that
pious founder's money to his own uses, Abbot withstood the attempt, and
the King was fain to give way--with an ill grace, 'tis true, but
effectually enough.
Abbot was nothing of a courtier, and, indeed, no very pleasant-natured
man. He was sour of aspect and morose; gloomy and fanatic in religion, and
no less swift to send religious opponents to the stake than the Catholic
inquisitors of a generation before his time. He had a strong and militant
affection for the reformed religion, and held a singularly lonely position
between the levelling puritanical-democratic doctrines of the age and the
High Church party. A Calvinistic narrowness distinguished this great man's
public acts, and he was sufficiently Puritan in spirit to look with
disfavour upon, and to absolutely forbid, Sunday sports. His truculent
religious views appeared in a lurid light shortly after he became
Archbishop, when he condemned two Arians to death for what he held to be
"blasphemous heresy." These two unfortunate men, Bartholomew Legate and
Edward Wightman, were burnt in 1614, three years after their sentence, as
the "recompence of their pride and impiety."
Meanwhile, the mind of the Archbishop was liberal enough in other
directions. He could send religious dissenters to a horrible death, and
look back with satisfaction upon his handiwork, while, at the same time,
he was maturing the plans and provisions for the noble almshouse that
still stands in Guildford High Street and bears the honoured name of
Abbot's Hospital.
[Sidenote: _A SAD MISCHANCE_]
In 1619 he laid the first stone of his "Hospital," and three years later
had the satisfaction of seeing it incorporated by Royal Charter; a
satisfaction clouded by an accident that embittered the remainder of his
life. The story of this untoward event illustrates at once the morbid
habit of his mind and the bitter passions of those times. It was in 1621,
while with a hunting party in Bramshill Park, that this thing befell. A
large party had assembled by the invitation of Lord Zouch, and chased the
deer through the glades of that lovely park. The Archbishop drew his bow
at a buck, and at the same time that the arrow sped, a gamekeeper, one
Peter Hawkins, darted forward between the trees, and received the shaft in
his heart.
A coroner's jury returned a verdict by which the accident was attributed
to the man's negligence in exposing himself to danger after having been
warned; but Abbot was greatly distressed, and so heavily did the
occurrence weigh upon him that, to the time of his death, in 1632, he kept
a monthly fast on a Tuesday, the day of the gamekeeper's death. He also
settled an annuity of L20 upon the man's widow.
The King declared that "an angel might have miscarried in such sort," and
that "no one but a fool or a knave would think worse of a man for such an
accident"; but it suited Abbot's religious rivals and opponents to regard
with public aversion one "whose hands were imbrued with blood"; and his
clergy, who had felt the curb of the Archbishop's discipline too acutely
to let this chance slip, felt or expressed a horror of their spiritual
head ever afterwards. Others even went so far as to refuse ordination at
the hands of a homicide, and bishops-elect scrupled to receive
consecration from him, until the Royal Pardon had been obtained and the
conscience of the Church satisfied.
For all his opposition to James I., the Archbishop lost a good friend when
that pragmatical monarch died, and gained an enemy when Charles I. came to
the throne. The High Church party were then in the ascendant, and Abbot,
from various causes, declined from favour. In 1627 he was sequestered, and
the Archbishopric of Canterbury put into commission of five bishops, of
whom Laud, Abbot's particular enemy, was one.
These misfortunes at length broke Abbot's health, which finally failed in
1632. At the beginning of that year he seemed upon the point of death, but
revived somewhat, and a letter, still preserved, written by an especial
friend at this juncture, hinted at the indecency of those who expected his
end, and says--"If any other prelate gape at his benefice, his Grace
perhaps may eat the goose which shall graze upon his grave."
But death came upon Abbot that same year. He made an edifying end at
Croydon, and was buried, by his own request, in Trinity Church, opposite
the Hospital he had founded in his native town.
Eight years afterwards, the Archbishop's brother, Sir Maurice Abbot,
erected the sumptuous monument there which Pepys admired on one of his
visits to Guildford. It still remains, although the church itself (one of
Guildford's three churches) has been rebuilt.
XVII
[Sidenote: _THE INN-YARD_]
Guildford has many old inns, as befits an old town which lay directly upon
an old coach-road. Of these the chiefest lie in the High Street, and they
are the "Angel," the "Crown," the "White Hart," and the "Red Lion." The
"Red Lion" has a modernized frontage, but within it is the same hostelry
at which Mr. Samuel Pepys stayed, time and again; the others are more
suggestive of the flower of the coaching age and of Pickwickian revels;
but in these latter days the wide race of "commercial gentlemen" and the
somewhat stolid and beefy grazier class are their more usual guests.
Behind their prosperous-looking fronts are the vast stable-yards,
approached from the High Street by yawning archways that "once upon a
time" admitted the coaches, and whence issued the carriages and
post-chaises of a by-gone day; now echoing with the rumble of the omnibus
that plies between the town and the railway-station, laden chiefly with
the sample-boxes of enterprising bagmen. But in that "once upon a time,"
whose chronology finally determined and came to an end in the '40's, there
was a superabundance of coach traffic here.
Hogarth has left a picture of a typical country inn-yard of his time which
shows, better than any amount of unaided description, what manner of
places they were whence started the lumbering stages of last century. No
one has yet identified the picture, reproduced here, with any particular
inn, although some have sought to place it in Essex, because of the
election crowd seen in the background carrying an effigy and a banner
inscribed with the weird, and at first sight incomprehensible, legend "No
Old Baby." A candidate named Child stood for one of the Essex boroughs
about this date, and, according to Hogarth commentators, this group was
intended as an incidental satire upon him. On the other hand, the
likelihood of this being really an inn-yard upon the Portsmouth Road is
seen by the sailor who occupies a somewhat insecure position upon the roof
of the coach beside a French valet, and whose bundle is inscribed
"Centurion." The "Centurion," one of Anson's squadron, put in repeatedly
at Portsmouth, and the sailor is apparently on a journey home, fresh from
the sea and from Anson's command.
The scene is very amusing, and most of the interest centres in the
foreground, where a coach is seen, about to start. An old woman sits
smoking in the rumble-tumble behind, while a traveller looks on and pays
no heed to the post-boy who holds his hat in readiness for a tip. A guest
is about to depart, and the landlord is seen presenting his bill. He seems
to be assuring his customer that his charges are strictly moderate; but,
judging from the sour expression of the latter's face, mine host has been
overcharging him for a good round sum. Meanwhile, the devil's own din is
being sounded by the fat landlady, who is ringing her bell violently for
the chambermaid, and by a noisy fellow who is winding a horn out of window
with all his might. The chambermaid is otherwise engaged, for an amorous
spark is seen to be kissing her in the open doorway.
[Illustration: AN INN-YARD, 1747. _After Hogarth._]
[Sidenote: _COACHES_]
So greatly was Guildford High Street crowded in the old coaching times
that, just about a hundred years ago, it was widened at one point by the
slicing off of a portion from one of Guildford's three churches which
projected inconveniently into the roadway. To gaze upon what is still a
very narrow street, and to remember that this is its "widened" state, is
calculated to impress a stranger with the singular parsimony of our
ancestors, when land was comparatively cheap and considerations of space
presumably not so pressing.
The pressure of traffic here in the Augustan age of coaching will be
better understood when it is learned that not only did the Portsmouth
coaches pass through Guildford, and the numerous local stages that ran no
further than Guildford and Godalming, but that the Southampton coaches
came thus far, and only turned off from this road at a point just beyond
the town. The celebrated "Red Rover" Southampton coach came this way, and
so did the equally famous "Telegraph"; and, leaving Guildford behind, they
pursued their way to Southampton by way of Farnham and Winchester. To this
route belonged many celebrated whips of those times whose names are almost
unmeaning now-a-days; and some of the best of these once well-known
wielders of the whipcord were stopped by Fate and the Railway in the full
force of their careers. Happy the man whose spirit was not too stubborn to
submit gracefully and at once to the new dispensation, and to seek
employment on the rail. Good servants of the road found equally good
places on the railways--if they chose to take them. But (and can you
wonder at it?) they rarely chose to accept, having naturally the bitterest
prejudices against the railways and everything that belonged to them; and
many men wasted their energies and expended their savings in a fruitless
endeavour to compete with steam, when they could have transferred their
allegiance from the road to the rail with honour and profit to themselves
and no less to their employers. John Peers, a well-known coachman, and
driver of the London and Southampton "Telegraph," was reduced by the
coming of the railway to driving an omnibus. From this position, being
scornful and quarrelsome, unable to adapt himself to changed
circumstances, and altogether "above his station," he drifted finally into
the workhouse. A gentleman who had known him well upon the box-seat in
more prosperous days, discovered him in this refuge of the
poverty-stricken and superseded; started a subscription for him amongst
his former patrons, and rescued him from the small mercies and little ease
of the Guardians of the Poor. He was housed upon the road he had driven
over so often in the days before steam had come to ruin the coaching
interest, and there, in due course, he died.
And his was a fate happier than that of most others--coachmen, guards,
post-boys, and ostlers--thrown out of employment by railways, and unable
or unwilling to adapt themselves to new surroundings. Many of these soured
and disappointed men lived on and on in a vain hope of "new-fangled
notions" coming to a speedy and disastrous failure. When accidents
occurred and lives were lost by railway smashes, their faces were lit
up with a wintry joy, and they wagged their heads with an air of profound
wisdom, and said individually, "I told you so!" When the "Railway Mania"
of 1844 and succeeding years collapsed and brought the inevitable
financial crash, they chuckled, and felt by anticipation the ribbons in
their hands again. But though financial disasters came on top of
collisions, and though the system of railway travel seemed for a while
like a bubble on point of bursting, the promise was never fulfilled, and
the old coachmen who actually did drive the roads once more did so as
ministers to the amateur spirit that has since 1863 caused so many coaches
to be put upon the country roads of Old England.
[Illustration: THE "RED ROVER" GUILDFORD AND SOUTHAMPTON COACH.]
XVIII
[Sidenote: _INEPT CRITICISM_]
Directly the river Wey is crossed, either in leaving or entering
Guildford, the road begins to rise steeply. Going towards Godalming, it
brings the traveller in a mile's walk to the ruined chapel of St.
Catherine, standing on a sandstone hill beside the highway, whose red
sides are burrowed by rabbits and sand-martins. The chapel has been ruined
time out of mind, and is to-day but a motive for a sketch. One of Turner's
best plates in his "_Liber Studiorum_" has St. Catherine's Chapel for its
subject, and to the criticism of Turner's work comes the Rev. Mr. Stopford
Brooke, in this wise:--"It is no picturesque place. Turner painted English
life as it was; and the struggle of the poor is uppermost in his m
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