the Kentish Weald. Reaches of the Thames are seen, peeping through
foliage; distant houses and whitewashed cottages shine clearly miles
away, and the spire of Bexley Church closes the view in front, where the
road ends dustily. Along this road comes daily and all day a varied
procession of tramps. The traveller looks down upon them from this eyrie
with wonderment and dismay; the cottagers, the householders and gardeners
hereabouts, see them pass with less surprise and additional misgivings,
for their gardens, their hen-roosts, clothes-lines and orchards pay
tribute to these Ishmaelites to whom the rights of property are but
imperfectly known. This is why the gates and doors along the Dover Road
are so uniformly and resolutely barred, bolted, chained, and padlocked;
for these reasons ferocious dogs roam amid the suburban pleasances, and
turn red eyes and foaming mouths toward one who leans across garden-gates
to admire the flowers with which the fertile soil of Kent has so liberally
spangled every cultivated spot; and to them is due the murderous-looking
garnishment of jagged and broken glass with which every wall-top is armed.
"Peace must lie down armed" on the Dover Road; the citizen must lock,
bolt, and bar his house o' nights, and does well to exhibit warning
placards, "Beware of the Dog!" He does better to tip the policeman
occasionally to keep an especially vigilant look-out, and it is not an
excess of precaution that so frequently covers the flower-beds with
wire-netting.
X
[Sidenote: TRAMPS]
There is, indeed, no road to equal the Dover Road for thieves, tramps,
cadgers, and miscellaneous vagrants, either for number or depravity.
Throughout the year they infest alike the highways and byways of Kent, but
the most constant procession of them is to be seen on the great main road
between London and the sea. A great deal of begging, some petty
pilfering, and a modicum of work in the fruit season and during the
hop-harvest suffice to keep them going for the greater part of the year,
while the winter months are fleeted in progresses from one casual ward to
another in the numerous unions along the road. Phenomenally ragged,
bronzed by the sun, unshaven, unshorn, they are met, men, women, and
children alike, at every turn, for many miles, especially between
Southwark and Canterbury. The sixteen miles' stretch of road between
Canterbury and Dover is comparatively unfrequented by them; but Gravesend,
Dartford, Crayford, and Bexley Heath are centres of the most disgraceful
mendicancy. "Lodgings for travellers" at fourpence a night, or two
shillings a week, are a feature of these places, and how prominent a
feature cannot be guessed by any one who has not been there. Whole
families on the tramp are to be met with between these places, and long
vistas of them are gained along any particularly straight piece of road.
They are everything that is dirty and horrible, but they are perfectly
happy and quite irreclaimable, many of them being hereditary tramps.
Philanthropic societies inquire into the tramp; classify him, endeavour to
cleanse him and restore him to some place in society, but all to no
purpose. He is quite satisfied with himself; he likes dirt, and dislikes
nothing so much as either moral or physical cleansing. That is one reason
why he seeks the shelter of the casual ward only as a last resource. He
has to undergo a bath there, and feels as chilly when his top-dressing of
grime is removed as you and I would be were we turned naked into the
streets. To reform your tramp it would be essential to snare him at a very
early age indeed, and, even then, I am not sure but that his natural
traits would break out suddenly, like those of any other wild beast kept
in captivity.
[Sidenote: TRAMPS' SIGNS]
The truth is, tramping is a very old profession, and hereditary in a
degree very few good people imagine. Unlettered, but highly organised,
trampdom has a _lingua franca_ of its own, and its signs are to be read,
chalked on the fences and gateposts of the Dover Road, as surely as one
could read a French novel.
The _argot_ and the sign-language of the road are not difficult to acquire
by those who have observant eyes and ears to hearken, but, like all
languages, they are ever changing, and the accepted signs of yesteryear
are constantly superseded by newer symbols. Little do the country-folk
understand the significance of the chalk-marks on their gates and walls.
Does the portly yeoman suspect that the [symbol] on his gatepost means "no
good"? And how mixed would be the feelings of many a worthy lady were the
inner meaning of [symbol] revealed to her--"Religious, but good on the
whole." Were the eloquence of that mark discovered to her, she would know
at once how it was that the poor men, with their ragged beards and their
toes peeping through their boots, were so unfailingly pious and thankful
for the cold scran and the threepenny-piece with which she relieved their
needs, asking a blessing on her and hers until they were out of sight,
when they "stowed" the piety and threw the provisions into the nearest
ditch, calling in at the next roadside pub to take the edge off their
thirst with that threepenny-piece. It may safely be said that the tramp is
not grateful. He is, indeed, altruistic, but his altruism he saves for his
kind, and he exhibits it in the danger-signals he chalks up in places the
brotherhood wot of. There are degrees of danger, as of luck. Some
good-hearted people become soured by many calls on their generosity, and
one can readily understand even the mildest-mannered of elderly ladies
becoming restive when the sixth tramp appears at the close of the day.
Other people, too, lose their generosity with the bedding-out plants which
one of the fraternity has "sneaked" from the front garden under cover of
night. In the first instance, the sign [symbol] (which means "Spoilt by
too many callers") is likely to be found somewhere handy, and in the
second that innocent-looking triangle is apt to become [symbol], the
English of which is "Likely to have you taken up," even if it does not
become [symbol] == "Dangerous. Sure of being quodded."
XI
Passing many of these undesirable wayfarers, one comes, in a mile--fields
and hedgerows and market-gardens on either side--to Shoulder of Mutton
Green, a scrubby piece of common-ground shaped like South America--but
smaller. Hence the peculiar eloquence of its name. The Kent County Council
has set up a large and imposing notice-board at the corner of the green
which bears its name and a portentous number of bye-laws, and when the sun
is low and shadows slant (the board is so large and the green so small),
the shade of it falls across the green and into the next field.
And now comes Belle Grove, spelled, as one may see on the stuccoed
cottages by the wayside, with a pleasing diversity, Belle Grove, Bell
Grove, and Belgrove; and one would pin one's faith on the correct form
being the second variety, because the place is not beautiful, nor ever
could have been.
To Bell Grove, then, succeeds Welling, and Welling is a quite
uninteresting and shabby hamlet fringing the road, ten-and-a-quarter miles
from London Bridge. The new suburban railway from London to Bexley Heath
crosses the road, and has a station--a waste of sand, stones, and white
palings--here. The place, says Hasted, in his "History of Kent," was
called Well End, from the safe arrival of the traveller at it, after
having escaped the danger of robbers through the hazardous road from
Shooter's Hill, which derivation, though regarded as a happy effort of the
imagination, is considerably below the dignified level of a county
historian. Indeed, I seem to see in this the irresponsible frivolity of
the guards and coachmen of the Dover Mail. Why, the thing reeks of
coaching wit, and how Hasted, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries,
could have included in his monumental work (which took him forty years to
write) so obvious a witticism, is beyond my comprehension. Shall I be
considered pedantic if I point out that the place-name, with its
termination _ing_, carries with it evidence of being as old as Saxon
times, and denotes that here was the settlement of an ancient tribe, or
patriarchial family, the Wellings? I will dare the deed and record the
fact, remarking, meanwhile, that if other county historians were as little
learned as Hasted, and equally speculative, they would seem more human,
and their deadly tomes become much more entertaining.
But, after this, it would not beseem me to do else than record the fact
that the new suburban district springing up beside the road, half a mile
past Welling, is called "Crook Log." Why "Crook Log," and whence came that
singular name, are things "rop in mistry," and I will run no risks of
becoming fogged in rash endeavours to elucidate the origin of this
place-name.
[Sidenote: TO BEXLEY]
Half a mile onward, and then begins Bexley Heath. "Once upon a time," that
is to say, before an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1817 for enclosing
what was then a wide, wild tract of desolate heath-land, Bexley Heath was
entirely innocent of buildings.
The old village of Bexley lies a mile and a half to the right of the road,
and is as rural, peaceful, and pleasant as Bexley Heath is mean and
wretched. Between here and the village lies Hall Place, a Tudor mansion of
great size and stately architecture, largely distinguished for its
chequer-board patterning of flint and stone. The property was once that of
the family called "At-hall," from their residence here, in an earlier
mansion. The Tudor flint-and-stone building we now see was built by Sir
Justinian Champneis, a Lord Mayor of London, towards the middle of the
sixteenth century. In less than a hundred years the Champneis were
succeeded by the Austens, who made alterations, until 1772, when it passed
to Sir Francis Dashwood, in whose family it yet remains.
In the neighbourhood of Bexley Heath, and also at Crayford and places
beside the Thames near Dartford are some singular shafts of unknown age or
purpose, sunk into the soil, frequently to a depth of a hundred feet,
through the chalk of which this district chiefly consists. "Danes' Holes,"
the country-folk call them, and they are traditionally supposed to have
been constructed as hiding-places to which the old inhabitants of these
parts could retire when the Northmen's piratical fleets appeared in the
estuary of the Thames. Antiquaries have a theory that these singular pits
were sunk by our neolithic forbears in search of flints. The antiquaries,
however, are most probably wrong, because flints were to be found readily
enough by the men of the Stone Age, without going to the trouble of mining
for them; and no one has yet arisen to show that neolithic man was more
likely than we, his descendants, to give himself unnecessary labour.
We will, therefore, assume that the legendary name of "Danes' Holes"
shadows forth the purpose of these shafts a great deal more correctly than
the ingenious theories of antiquaries, made to fit personal predilections;
the more especially as legendary history is generally found to square with
facts much more frequently than scientific pundits would have us believe.
These remarkable pits commence with a trumpet-shaped orifice which
immediately contracts into a narrow shaft, broadening at the bottom into a
bulb-like chamber, not unremotely resembling in shape the tube and bulb of
a thermometer. "By a curious coincidence," says one who has long been
familiar with these strange survivals, "the shape of the Bexley shafts is
exactly that of a local beer-measure which is held in great estimation."
In several houses may be seen an advertisement that "beer is sold by the
yard."
XII
[Sidenote: CRAYFORD]
Leaving Bexley Heath, the road becomes suddenly beautiful, where it loses
the last of the mean shops--the cats'-meat vendors, the tinkers, the
marine stores--that give so distinct and unwholesome a _cachet_ to its
long-drawn-out street. The highway goes down a hill overhung with tall
trees, with chestnuts and hawthorns, whose blossoms fill the air in spring
with sweet and heavy scents; but, in the hollow, gasworks contend with
them, and generally, it is sad to say, come off easy victors. Follows then
a nondescript bend of the road which brings one presently into Crayford,
fifteen miles from London.
Antiquaries are divided in opinion over the ancient history of Crayford.
While some incline to the belief that it is the site of the Roman
Noviomagus, others are prone to select Keston Common as the locality of
that shadowy camp and city. The question will probably never be settled
beyond a doubt, but the weight of evidence is strong in favour of Keston
Common, eight miles away to the south-west. Here still exist the traces of
great earthworks, covering a space of a hundred acres, while numerous
finds of Roman coins and pottery have been made from time to time. At
Crayford, on the other hand, the only presumptive evidence is to be found
in this having been that old Roman military way, Watling Street, and, in
the very slender thread of allusion to the name of Noviomagus, supposed,
on the authority of Hasted, to be extant in the title of the
half-forgotten manor of Newbury.
But, however vague may be the connection between Noviomagus and Crayford,
certain it is that here, in 457, was fought that tremendous battle between
the Saxons under Hengist, and the Britons commanded by Vortigern, a
conflict in which four thousand of the Romanised Britons were slain. It
was in 449 that Hengist and Horsa, brother-chiefs[1] of the
Jutish-Saxons, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, at the invitation of
Vortigern, who sought their aid against the Picts and the Sea-rovers. They
came in three ships, and their original force could scarcely have numbered
more than five hundred men. But, having warred for the Britons, and fought
side by side with them against the Scots, they soon perceived how
defenceless was the land. "They sent," says the Anglo-Saxon chronicler,
"to the Angles, and bade them be told of the worthlessness of the Britons,
and the richness of the land." In response to this invitation, there came
from over sea the men of the Old Saxons, the Jutes, and the Angles; and,
six years after the landing of the two brothers, these treacherous allies,
strengthened in number, felt strong enough to attempt the seizure of Kent.
Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found, and, through the mists that
hang about the scanty records of that time, we hear first of the Battle of
Aylesford, fought in 455, in which the Britons experienced their first
great defeat. Here, though, Horsa was slain, and to Hengist, with his son
Esc, was left the foundation of the Saxon kingdom of Kent. The Battle of
Crayford for a time left all this fertile corner of England to the Saxons.
"The Britons," says the chronicler, "forsook the land of Kent, and in
great consternation fled to London." But, though enervated by long years
of luxury, and so greatly demoralised by defeats, the Britons had yet some
force left. Vortigern, "the betrayer of Britain," as he has come down to
us in the pages of history, was overthrown by another enemy, a rival
British prince, that doughty Romanised chieftain, Aurelius Ambrosianus,
who, after defeating that weak king, gathered up the scattered patriots,
and fell upon the Saxons with such fury that they were driven back to that
Isle of Thanet which had originally been given them for their services
against the Scots of Strathclyde. "Falchions drank blood that day; the
buzzard buried his horny beak in the carcases of the slain; the eagles
feasted royally on the flesh of them that fell; and the whitening bones of
the Northmen long afterwards strewed the fair land of Kent."
Eight years later, the work of Aurelius began to be undone, and in another
eight years the veteran Hengist and his son had completed the foundation
of their kingdom.
Crayford, it will thus be seen, is a town of considerable historic
interest; but, apart from this claim upon one's attention, it has, I fear,
no attraction whatever.
[Sidenote: A QUAINT EPITAPH]
But here is Crayford church, in whose yard is one of the quaintest
epitaphs imaginable:--
"Here lies the body of Peter Isnell, thirty years clerk of this parish. He
lived respected as a pious and mirthful man, and died on his way to
church, to assist at a wedding, on the 31st of March, 1811, aged 70. The
inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory, and
as a token of his long and faithful services.
The life of this Clerk was just three-score and ten,
Nearly half of which time he chaunted Amen.
In his youth he was married, like other young men;
But his wife died one day, so he chaunted Amen.
A second he married--she departed--what then?
He married and buried a third, with Amen.
Thus, his joys and his sorrows were treble; but then
His voice was deep bass as he sung out Amen.
On the horn he could blow, as well as most men
So his horn was exalted in sounding Amen.
But he lost all his wind after three-score and ten
And here, with three wives, he waits, till again
The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out Amen.
The distance between Crayford and Dartford is but two miles, past White
Hill; and all the way are fruit gardens, tramps, and odious little
terraces of brick cottages with tiny gardens in front, whose brilliant,
old-fashioned flowers--sweet-williams, marigolds, and polyanthuses--put to
shame these wretched efforts of the builder. There is, half a mile from
Crayford, beside the road, an iron post with the City of London arms and
the legend, "Act 24 & 25 Vict. cap. 42," in relief. This wayside pillar
marks at once the limits of the London Police District, and the boundary
of the area affected by the London Coal and Wine Duties Continuance Act of
1861. The City of London has been entitled from time immemorial to levy
dues on all coal entering the metropolis, and this privilege, regulated
from time to time, was abolished only in 1889. Two separate duties of
twelve pence and one penny per ton were confirmed by this act and
authorised to be levied upon coals, culm, and cinders; while the acts
dating from 1694, imposing a tax of four shillings per tun on all kinds of
wine were at the same time confirmed and renewed, and the radius made
identical with the London police jurisdiction, instead of the former limit
of twenty miles. These boundary marks were ordered to be set up on
turnpike and public roads, beside canals, inland navigations, and
railways, and are frequently encountered by the cyclist and pedestrian, to
whom their purpose is not a little mysterious.
The duty on coals entering London amounted in 1885 to no less than
L449,343, and on wines to L8,488. By far the greater part of these amounts
was, of course, collected on the railways and in the port of London.
Originally imposed for the maintenance of London orphans, the wine dues
became, like the coal duties, great sources of income, by which many
notable London improvements, among them the Victoria Embankment, have been
carried out.
XIII
[Sidenote: DARTFORD]
Dartford, to which we now come, is a queer little town, planted in a
profound hollow, through which runs its wealth-giving Darent. Mills and
factories meet the eye at every turn. Not smoking, grimy factories of the
kinds that blast the Midland counties, but cleanly-looking boarded
structures for the most part, own brothers to flour-mills in outward
aspect; places where paper is manufactured, and nowadays drugs and
chemicals. Dartford is industrial to-day, but there are old-fashioned
nooks, and some of the street-names are intriguing: "Bullace Lane" and
"Overy Street," for example. Few people nowadays know what is a "bullace."
It is, or was, a small wild plum, of the damson kind.
And here is the traditional home of paper-making in England, for it was in
Dartford, in the reign of Good Queen Bess, that John Spielman (majesty, in
the person of Gloriana's successor, James the First, knighted him for it
in 1605) introduced the art of paper-making to these shores. What induced
that man of gold and jewels and precious stones (he was jeweller to Her
Majesty) to take up paper-making, I do not know; but he made a very good
thing of it, commercially speaking, and no wonder, when he had sole
license during ten years for collecting rags for making his paper withal.
Besides introducing the manufacture of paper, Sir John Spielman added the
lime-tree to our parks and gardens, for he brought over with him from his
native place, Lindau, in Germany, two slips from some _unter den linden_
or another, and planted them in front of his Dartford home, where they
flourished and became the progenitors of all the limes in England.
[Illustration: ARMS OF SPIELMAN AND HIS FIRST WIFE.]
If you step into the quaint old church of Dartford, you will see, as soon
as your eyes become accustomed to the gloom, the tomb of Sir John Spielman
and his wife, with their effigies, properly carved, painted and gilt,
while in various parts of the church may be found what is said to be his
crest, the fool's cap, which he used as a water-mark on a particular size
of paper. "Foolscap" paper derives its name from that water-mark; and
thus, though the term now indicates a size, it was originally a
trade-mark. The mark may have been derived, not from any crest, but from
the long cap worn by the figure on his wife's shield of arms; although it
was greatly changed in the process. At the same time, it is to be noted
that the fool's cap water-mark occurred on paper made in Germany in 1472.
The presence of the badge in the church shows that the paper-maker had a
good deal to do with the reparation of the building.
In 1858 an association styling themselves the "Legal Society of Paper
Makers," of whom I know nothing, restored Spielman's tomb. The strange
heraldic coat-of-arms of Spielman will be noticed. It is, and looks,
German, and is of an extravagant nature that would utterly discompose an
English herald. Spielman's coat exhibits a blue serpent with a red crest,
standing on his tail on a gold background, between six golden lions on a
red field, the whole of this singular device based on a green mount. His
wife's arms, impaled with his own, are a man clothed in a long black gown,
with a long cap, holding in his hand an olive branch, and standing on a
red mount inverted. The crest is: a savage, wreathed about the temples and
loins with ivy. Motto: _Arte et fortuna_. The epitaph is in German.
Spielman's first wife died in 1607. In 1609 he married again, and deceased
in 1626, leaving by the second wife three sons and one daughter.
[Sidenote: THE SPIELMANS]
The fortunes of the Spielmans were short-lived. His second wife was living
in 1646, but seems to have had little interest in the business, which
about 1686 was in possession of a Mr. Blackwell. Meanwhile the Spielman
family had declined to poverty, and in 1690 "goody Spielman," widow of his
grandson George, was in receipt of 1s. 6d. weekly relief; and in 1696 the
wife of a John Spielman was receiving 2s. The Spielman paper mill stood
where the gas-mantle factory of Curtis and Harvey is now found.
There is a curious sundial actually in the church; oddly placed on a stone
foundation on the splayed sill of the south-east window. It is dated 1820,
and records the hours only from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.
A brass to John Donkin (1782-1846) shows him with head and shoulders. The
inscription states it was placed here because it was not considered proper
that one who had placed ancient men and times on record should himself be
forgotten.
[Illustration: DARTFORD CHURCH.]
We may be thankful that Spielman did no more to the church, for, had he
rebuilt it, we should have lost one of the finest and most picturesque
churches on the Dover Road, whose tall tower, severely unornamental, with
clock oddly placed on one side, is such a prominent feature of Dartford.
Gundulf, that famous architect-bishop of Rochester, to whom Rochester
Keep, Dover Castle, the White Tower of the Tower of London, portions of
Rochester Cathedral, and a number of other buildings, civil,
ecclesiastical and military, are ascribed with more or less show of
authority, is supposed to have built Dartford tower, not so much for
religious as for defensive uses. For hereby runs the Darent across the
road, and no bridge spanned the ford when Gundulf's tower was first built.
It therefore guarded the passage until the neighbouring hermit, who lived
in a fine damp cell by the riverside, succeeded in collecting enough money
wherewith to build a bridge whose successor forms an excellent
leaning-stock on Sundays to the British workman waiting anxiously for the
public-houses to open.