ALTON TO COMPTON
A few miles to the right of the road is a place which no pilgrim of
modern times can leave unvisited--Selborne, White's Selborne, the home
of the gentle naturalist whose memory haunts these rural scenes. Here he
lived in the picturesque house overgrown with creepers, with the sunny
garden and dial at the back, and the great spreading oak where he loved
to study the ways of the owls, and the juniper tree, which, to his joy,
survived the Siberian winter of 1776. And here he died, and lies buried
in the quiet churchyard in the shade of the old yew tree where he so
often stood to watch his favourite birds. Not a stone but what speaks of
him, not a turn in the village street but has its tale to tell. The
play-stow, or village green, which Adam de Gurdon granted to the
Augustinian Canons of Selborne in the thirteenth century, where the
prior held his market of old, and where young and old met on summer
evenings under the big oak, and "sat in quiet debate" or "frolicked and
danced" before him; the farmhouse which now marks the site of the
ancient Priory itself, founded by Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of
Winchester, in 1232--he has described them all. How the good Canons grew
lazy and secular in their ways after a time, how William of Wykeham
found certain of them professed hunters and sportsmen, and tried in vain
to reform them, and how the estates were finally handed over to the new
college of St. Mary Magdalene at Oxford, by its founder, William of
Waynflete--Gilbert White has already told us. The Hanger, with its
wooded slopes, rising from the back of his garden, and that "noble
chalk promontory" of Nore Hill, planted with the beeches which he
called the most lovely of all forest trees, how familiar they seem to
us! Still the swifts wheel to and fro round the low church-tower, and
the crickets chirp in the long grass, and the white owl is heard at
night, just as when he used to linger under the old walls and watch
their manners with infinite care and love.
[Illustration: JANE AUSTEN'S HOUSE, CHAWTON.]
One of the "rocky hollow lanes" which lead towards Alton will take us
back into the road, and bring us to Chawton, a village about a mile from
that town. The fine Elizabethan manor-house at the foot of the green
knoll, and the grey church peeping out of the trees close by, have been
for centuries the home and burial-place of the Knights. On the south
side of the chancel a black and white marble monument records the memory
of that gallant cavalier, Sir Richard Knight, who risked life and
fortune in the Royal cause, and was invested with the Order of the Royal
Oak by Charles II. after the Restoration. But it is as the place where
Jane Austen, in George Eliot's opinion, "the greatest artist that has
ever written," composed her novels, that Chawton is memorable. The
cottage where she lived is still standing a few hundred yards from the
"great house," which was the home of the brother and nieces to whom she
was so fondly attached. She and her sister, Cassandra, settled there in
1809, and remained there until May, 1817, when they moved to the corner
house of College Street, Winchester, where three months afterwards she
died. During the eight years spent in this quiet home, Jane Austen
attained the height of her powers and wrote her most famous novels,
those works which she herself said cost her so little, and which in
Tennyson's words have given her a place in English literature "next to
Shakespeare." "Sense and Sensibility," her first novel, was published
two years after the move to Chawton. "Persuasion," the last and most
finished of the immortal series, was only written in 1816, a year before
her death. Seldom, indeed, has so great a novelist led so retired an
existence. The life at Chawton, so smooth in its even flow, with the
daily round of small excitements and quiet pleasures, the visits to the
"great house," and walks with her nieces in the woods, the shopping
expeditions to Alton, the talk about new bonnets and gowns, and the
latest news as to the births, deaths, and marriages of the numerous
relatives in Kent and Hampshire, are faithfully reflected in those
pleasant letters of Jane Austen, which her great-nephew, Lord Brabourne,
gave to the world. There is a good deal about her flowers, her chickens,
her niece's love affairs, the fancy work on which she is engaged, the
improvements in the house and garden--"You cannot imagine," she writes
on one occasion, "it is not in human nature to imagine, what a nice walk
we have round the orchard!"--but very little indeed about her books.
Almost the only allusion we find to one of her characters is in 1816,
when she writes to Fanny Knight of Anne Elliot in "Persuasion." "_You_
may perhaps like the heroine, as she is almost too good for me!"
Anything like fame or publicity was positively distasteful to her. She
owns to feeling absolutely terrified when a lady in town asked to be
introduced to her, and then adds laughingly, "If I am a wild beast I
cannot help it, it is not my fault!"
Curiously enough, the Pilgrims' Way, in the later course of its path,
brings us to Godmersham, that other and finer home of the Knights on the
Kentish Downs, a place also associated with Jane Austen's life and
letters, where she spent many pleasant hours in the midst of her family,
enjoying the beauty of the spot and its cheerful surroundings. But
Chawton retains the supremacy as her own home, and as the scene of those
literary labours that were cut short, alas! too soon. "What a pity," Sir
Walter Scott exclaimed, after reading a book of hers, "what a pity such
a gifted creature died so early!"
[Illustration: CHAWTON HOUSE]
From Chawton it is a short mile to Alton, famous for its breweries and
hop gardens, and its church door, riddled with the bullets of the
Roundheads. Our way now leads us through the woods of Alice
Holt--Aisholt--the Ash wood; like Woolmer, a royal forest from Saxon
times. Alice Holt was renowned for the abundance of its fallow deer,
which made it a favourite hunting ground with the Plantagenet kings, and
on one occasion Edward II., it is said, gave one of his scullions,
Morris Ken, the sum of twenty shillings because he fell from his horse
so often out hunting, "which made the king laugh exceedingly."
Here, too, after the battle of Evesham, Edward, Prince of Wales,
defeated Adam de Gurdon, one of Simon de Montfort's chief followers. He
is said to have challenged the rebel baron to a single combat, in which
Gurdon was wounded and made prisoner, but the victor spared his life and
afterwards obtained a royal pardon for his vanquished foe. A wild rugged
tract of country, Alice Holt was a chosen haunt of robbers and outlaws,
the terror of the wealthy London merchants who journeyed to St. Giles'
Fair at Winchester, and in the fourteenth century the wardens of the
fair kept five mounted serjeants-at-arms in the forest near Alton, for
their protection at that season.
Soon after leaving Alton the pilgrims would catch their first sight of
the river Wey, which rises close to the town. Along the banks of this
stream, flowing as it does through some of the loveliest Surrey scenery,
their road was now to lie, and not until they crossed St. Katherine's
ferry, at Guildford, were they finally to lose sight of its waters. The
river itself, more than one writer has suggested, may owe its name to
this circumstance, and have been originally called the Way river from
the ancient road which followed the early part of its course.
[Illustration: FARNHAM CASTLE.]
Leaving Froyle Park, Sir Hubert Miller's fine Jacobean house, on our
left, we pass Bentley Station, and, still following the river, join the
Portsmouth road just before entering Farnham. This town, which takes its
name from the commons overgrown with fern and heather still to be seen
in the neighbourhood on the Surrey side, is now surrounded with hop
gardens. It was among the earliest possessions of the Bishops of
Winchester, and formed part of the land granted to St. Swithun, in 860,
by Alfred's elder brother, Ethelbald, King of Wessex. The Castle-palace,
which still looks proudly down on the streets of the little town, was
first built by that magnificent prelate, Henry of Blois, but little of
the original building now remains except the offices, where some round
Norman pillars may still be seen. Farnham Castle was partly destroyed by
Henry III. during his wars with the barons, and suffered greatly at the
hands of the rebels in the time of Charles I., but was afterwards
rebuilt by Bishop Morley. Queen Elizabeth paid frequent visits here, and
on one occasion, while dining in the great hall with the Duke of
Norfolk, who was suspected of planning a marriage with Mary Queen of
Scots, pleasantly advised the Duke to be careful on what pillow he laid
his head. The lawn, with its stately cedars and grass-grown moat,
deserves a visit, but the most interesting part of the building is the
fine old keep with its massive buttresses and thirteenth-century arches,
commanding a wide view over the elm avenues of the park, and the commons
which stretch eastward on the Surrey side. Prominent in the foreground
are the picturesque heights of Crooksbury, crowned with those tall pines
which Cobbett climbed when he was a boy, to take the nests of crows and
magpies.
Farnham, it must be remembered, was the birthplace of this remarkable
man, and it was at Ash, a small town at the foot of the Hog's Back, that
he died in 1835. All his life long he retained the fondest affection for
these scenes of his youth. In 1825 he brought his son Richard, then a
boy of eleven, to see the little old house in the street where he had
lived with his grandmother, and showed him the garden at Waverley where
he worked as a lad, the tree near the Abbey from which he fell into the
river in a perilous attempt to take a crow's nest, and the strawberry
beds where he gathered strawberries for Sir Robert Rich's table, taking
care to eat the finest! Among these hills and commons, where he followed
the hounds on foot at ten years old, and rode across country at
seventy, we forget the political aspect of his life, his bitter
invectives against the Poor-laws and Paper-money, the National Debt and
the System, and think rather of his keen love of nature and delight in
the heaths, the sandy coppices, and forests of Surrey and Hampshire. And
now he sleeps in the church of Farnham, where he desired to be buried,
in the heart of the wild scenery which he loved so well.
[Illustration: CROOKSBURY FROM NEWLANDS CORNER.]
Just under Crooksbury, that "grand scene" of Cobbett's "exploits," lies
Moor Park, the retreat of Sir William Temple in his old age, which
seemed to him, to quote his own words, "the sweetest place, I think,
that I have ever seen in my life, either before or since, at home or
abroad." There we may still see the gardens which the statesman of the
Triple Alliance laid out after the fashion of those which he remembered
in Holland, where he enjoyed the companionship of his beloved sister,
Lady Giffard, and where his heart lies buried under the sundial. Here
Swift lived as his secretary, and learnt from King William III. how to
cut asparagus; here he wrote the "Tale of a Tub," and made love to Mrs.
Hester Johnson, Lady Giffard's pretty black-eyed waiting-maid. The
memory of that immortal love-story has not yet perished, and the house
where she lived is still known as Stella's Cottage. Here, too, just
beyond Moor Park, on the banks of the Wey, are the ruins of Waverley
Abbey, the first Cistercian house ever founded in England, often
described as "le petit Cîteaux," and the mother of many other abbeys.
The more distinguished pilgrims who stopped at Farnham would taste the
hospitality of the monks of Waverley, and Henry III. was on one
occasion their guest. The Abbot of Waverley, too, was a great personage
in these parts, and his influence extended over several parishes through
which the pilgrims had to pass, although the privileges which he claimed
were often disputed by the Prior of Newark, the other ecclesiastical
magnate who reigned in this part of Surrey. Pilgrims of humbler rank
would find ample accommodation in the ancient hostelries of Farnham,
which was at that time a place of considerable importance, and returned
two members to Edward II.'s Parliament.
Their onward course now lay along the banks of the Wey until they
reached the foot of the narrow, curiously shaped chalk ridge known as
the Hog's Back. Here, at a place called Whiteway End, the end of the
white chalk road, two roads divide. Both lead to Guildford, the one
keeping on the crest of the ridge, the other along its southern slope.
The upper road has become an important thoroughfare in modern times, and
is now the main road from Farnham to Guildford; the lower is a grassy
lane, not always easy to follow, and little used in places, which leads
through the parishes of Seale, Puttenham, and Compton, the bright little
villages which stud the sides of the Hog's Back. This green woodland
path under the downs was the ancient British and Roman track along which
the Canterbury pilgrims journeyed, and which is still in some places
spoken of by the inhabitants as the Way. Other names in local use bear
the same witness. Beggar's Corner and Robber's or Roamer's Moor are
supposed to owe their appellations to the pilgrims: while the ivy-grown
manor-house of Shoelands, bearing the date of 1616 on its porch, is said
to take its name from the word "to shool," which in some dialects has
the same meaning as "to beg."
Another trace of the Pilgrimage is to be found in the local fairs which
are still held in the towns and villages along the road, and which were
fixed at those periods of the year when the pilgrims would be either
going to Canterbury or returning from there. Thus we find that at
Guildford the chief fair took place at Christmas, when the pilgrims
would be on their way to the winter festival of St. Thomas, and was
only altered to September in 1312, by which time the original day of the
Saint's martyrdom had ceased to be as popular as the summer feast. Again
the great fair at Shalford was fixed for the Feast of the Assumption,
the 15th of August, so as to catch the stream of pilgrims which flowed
back from Canterbury after the Feast of the Translation in July, and the
seven days' fair there, that went by the name of Becket's fair. Fairs
soon came to be held not only at towns such as Farnham, Guildford, and
Shalford, but at the small villages along the Pilgrims' Road. There was
one in the churchyard at Puttenham, and another at Wanborough, a church
on the northern side of the hill, which belonged to Waverley Abbey,
where the offerings made by the pilgrims formed part of the payments
yearly received by the Abbot, while a third was held on St. Katharine's
Hill during five days in September.
Even the churches along the road often owed their existence to the
Pilgrimage. The church of Seale was built early in the thirteenth
century by the Abbots of Waverley, and that of Wanborough was rebuilt
by the same Abbots, and was again allowed to fall into decay when the
days of pilgrimages were over. Both the sister chapels of St. Katharine
and St. Martha, we shall see, owed their restoration to the pilgrims'
passage, and many more along the Way were either raised in honour of St.
Thomas, or else adorned with frescoes and altar-pieces of the Martyrdom.
Along this pleasant Surrey hill-side the old Canterbury pilgrims
journeyed, going from church to church, from shrine to shrine, and more
especially if their pilgrimage took place in summer, enjoying the sweet
country air and leafy shades of this quiet woodland region. They
lingered, we may well believe, at the village fairs, and stopped at
every town to see the sights and hear the news; for the pilgrim of
mediæval days was, as Dean Stanley reminds us, a traveller with the same
adventures, stories, pleasures, pains, as the traveller of our own
times, and men of every type and class set out on pilgrimages much as
tourists to-day start on a foreign trip. Some, no doubt, undertook the
journey from devotion, and more in a vague hope of reaping some profit,
both material and spiritual, from a visit to the shrine of the
all-powerful Saint, while a thousand other motives--curiosity, love of
change and adventure, the pleasure of a journey--prompted the crowds who
thronged the road at certain seasons of the year. Chaucer's company of
pilgrims we know was a motley crew, and included men and women whose
characters were as varied as their rank and trade. With them came a
throng of jugglers and story-tellers and minstrels, who beguiled the way
with music and laughter as they rode or walked along, so that "every
town they came through, what with the noise of their singing, and with
the sound of their piping, and with the jangling of their Canterbury
bells, and with the barking of the dogs after them, they made more noise
than if the king came there with all his clarions." In their train, too,
a crowd of idle folk, of roving pedlars and begging friars and lazy
tramps, who were glad of any excuse to beg a crust or coin.
The presence of these last was by no means always welcome at the inns
and religious houses on the road, where doubtful characters often
craved admittance, knowing that if the hand of justice overtook them
they could always find refuge in one of those churches where the rights
of sanctuary were so resolutely claimed and so jealously defended by the
Abbot of Waverley or the Prior of Newark.
[Illustration: COMPTON VILLAGE.]