begins, but even now you become conscious of a gradual alteration in the
character of the street as you leave Rochester High Street and come
imperceptibly into Chatham; and even though the place has grown so large,
and holds so very varied a population that the military and naval sections
no longer bulk so largely as they used, they still make a brave show.
An inhabitant of Chatham need never wish to visit London, because the
triple towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester--to leave out all count of
Gillingham and New Brompton, which are to Chatham even as Hammersmith is
to our own great metropolis--contain samples of nearly all that is to be
seen in the Capital of the Empire, and much else besides. There is a
Dockyard at Chatham two miles in length, from which there issues every day
at the dinner-hour an army of artificers of every kind and degree--many
thousands of them; and in this Dockyard are ironclads, making, repairing,
and refitting together with vast military and naval stores, and all kinds
of relics, foremost among which there is a shed, full of old and historic
figure-heads; all that is left of the wooden walls that were such
efficient bulwarks of England's power. _Agamemnons_, _Arethusas_,
_Bellerophons_ are here, and many more. And all around are forts and
"lines," barracks and military hospitals; and drilling, manoeuvring,
marchings and counter-marchings, and all kinds of military exercises are
continually going forward. The names of streets, courts, and alleys, would
furnish a very Walhalla of naval heroes, and from all quarters come the
sounds of riveting, the blasts of bugles, and the shouting of the
captains; and when midday comes the noontide gun resounds from the heights
of Fort Pitt, and all the ragged urchins who live on the pavements fall
down as if they were shot, much to the terror of old ladies, strangers in
these parts, who pass by.
There is still a fine old-time nautical flavour hanging about Chatham. It
does not lie on the surface, but requires much patient searching amid mean
and disreputable streets, and it is only after passing through slums that
would affright a resident of Drury Lane that one finds curiously
respectable little terraces, giving upon the waterside, with masts and
yards, rigging, derricks, and other strange seafaring tackle peeping over
the roof-tops; amphibious corners where a smell of the sea, largely
intermixed with odours of pitch, tar, and rope, clings about everything;
where men with a nautical lurch come swinging along the pavements, and
where, if you glance in at the doorways which are nearly always open in
summer, you will see full-rigged models of ships standing on sideboards,
supported perhaps by a huge Family Bible, and flanked, most certainly,
with strange outlandish shells, branches of coral, and other spoils of
far-off lands.
But these things are not patent to he who goes only along the main road,
turning to neither right nor left; and it is only a little exploration of
byways that will convince you of Mr. Pickwick's summary remaining still
substantially correct. "The principal productions" of the three towns of
Rochester, Strood, and Chatham, according to Mr. Pickwick, "appear to be
soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard-men. The
commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are
marine-stores, hardbake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters." All of which
might well have been written to-day, so closely does the description still
apply; but when he goes on to remark that "the streets present a lively
and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the
military," he clearly speaks of by-past times. "It is truly delightful,"
he says, "to a philanthropic mind to see these gallant men staggering
along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent
spirits." Delightful indeed! But since those days Tommy Atkins has been
evolutionized into a very different creature.
XXV
[Sidenote: OUR LADY OF CHATHAM]
To plunge into mediaeval legends at Chatham will seem the strangest of
transitions, and Chatham Parish Church will appear to most people the last
place likely to have a story. Yet in demolishing the old building to
make way for a new, the workmen found some fragments of sculpture which
had a history. Amongst these was a headless group of the Virgin and Child.
[Illustration: THE INVASION OF ENGLAND: FRANCE. _After Hogarth._]
This was, in all probability, the effigy of Our Lady of Chatham, who, in
pre-Reformation times, was famous for her miracles; and of whom Lambarde
gives the following amusing story in his _Perambulations_: "It seems,"
says he, "that the corps of a man (lost through shipwracke belike) was
cast on land in the parishe of Chatham, and being there taken up, was by
some charitable persones committed to honest burial within their
church-yard; which thing was no sooner done, but Our Lady of Chatham,
finding herselfe offended therewith, arose by night and went in person to
the house of the parishe clearke, whiche then was in the streete, a good
distance from the church, and making a noyse at his window, awaked him.
The man, at the first, as commonly it fareth with men disturbed in their
rest, demanded, somewhat roughly, 'who was there?' But when he
understoode, by her owne answer, that it was the Lady of Chatham, he
changed his note, and moste mildeley asked ye cause of her comming; she
tolde him, that there was lately buryed (neere to the place where she was
honoured) a sinful person, which so offended her eye with his gastly
grinning, that, unless he were removed, she could not but (to the great
griefe of good people) withdrawe herselfe from that place, and cease her
wonted miraculous working amongst them: and therefore, she willed him to
go with her, to the ende that, by his helpe, she might take him up, and
caste him again into the river. The clearke obeyed, arose, and waited on
her towarde the churche; but the goode ladie (not wonted to walk) waxed
wearie of the labour, and therefore was enforced, for very want of breath,
to sit downe in a bushe by the way, and there to rest her: and this place
(forsooth) as also the whole track of their journey, remaining ever after
a greene pathe, the towne dwellers were wont to shew. Now, after a while,
they go forward againe, and coming to the churcheyarde, digged up the
body, and conveyed it to the waterside, where it was first found. This
done, Our Lady shrancke againe into her shryne; and the clearke peaked
home, to patche up his broken sleepe; but the corps now eftsoones floted
up and down the river, as it did before; which thing being espyed by them
of Gillingham, it was once more taken up, and buryed in their
churcheyarde. But see what followed upon it: not only the roode of
Gillingham (say they), that a while before was busie in bestowing
myracles, was now deprived of all that his former virtue; but also ye very
earth and place where this carckase was laid, did continually, for ever
after, settle and sinke downewarde."
Barham has made good use of this story, you who have read the legend of
_Grey Dolphin_ in the _Ingoldsby Legends_ will remember. He narrates, with
a joyous irreverence, how, in consequence of the miraculous interposition
of the Lady of Chatham (Saint Bridget, forsooth! "who, after leading but a
so-so-life, had died in the odour of sanctity") masses were sung, tapers
kindled, bells tolled, and how everything thenceforward was wonderment and
devotion; the monks of Saint Romwold in solemn procession, the abbot at
their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of Saint
Thomas a Becket in the centre. "Father Fothergill brewed a XXX puncheon of
holy water," continues Tom Ingoldsby, clerk in holy orders and minor canon
of the Cathedral of Saint Paul, indulging at once his exuberant humour and
his contempt of the Church of Rome, with its relics, miracles,
bone-chests, and sanctified _aqua pura_. Meanwhile, the grinning sailor,
"grinning more than ever," had drifted down the river, off Gillingham, and
lay on the shore in all the majesty of mud, presently to be discovered by
the minions of Sir Robert de Shurland, who bade them "turn out his
pockets." But it was ill gleaning after the double scrutiny of Father
Fothergill and the parish clerk; and, as Ingoldsby observes, "there was
not a single maravedi."
[Illustration: PAID OFF AT CHATHAM. _After a Painting by R. Deighton,
R.A._]
[Sidenote: "JEZREEL"]
From Saint Bridget to a weird, but yet not altogether unworldly, fanatic
of recent years the transition would not be easy, were it not for the fact
that the said fanatic's hideous temple still crowns Chatham Hill for all
men to see, as a monument of the unfathomed and unfathomable credulity of
mankind. The stranger who walks or cycles his way to Dover is told that
this barrack-like building is "Jezreel's Temple," and that is about the
extent of the information forthcoming. The unredeemed ugliness of the
unfinished temple is at once repellant and exciting to curiosity, and the
name of "Jezreel" wears such an Old Testament air that most people who
pass by want very much to know who and what he was.
He was, as a matter of fact, a private soldier of the 16th Regiment, named
James White, who, having been bought out of the Army by the members of a
fanatical sect before whom he posed as a prophet, took the extraordinary
names of "James Jershom Jezreel," and, with seventeen followers, founded a
new sect, the New House of Israel, known by scoffers as the "Joannas."
They were, in fact, mad enthusiasts like those whom Joanna Southcott had
fooled, years before, and it is supposed that White took the name of
"Jezreel" from the Book of Hosea, adding the other names to make a trinity
of initial "J's," allusive to the Prophetess Joanna and her minor prophet,
John Wroe.
Not that "Jezreel" was mad. Not at all. To him as Prophet and Patriarch of
these New Israelites was given up the whole property of those who entered
the House, to be held in common; and he made a very good thing of the
infatuation of the hundreds of wealthy middle-class converts who had a
fancy for this singular kind of communistic religion. It was an article of
his followers' creed that they were the first portion of the 144,000,
twice told, who will receive Christ when he comes again to reign a
thousand years on earth. To support his character as leader of this
House, "Jezreel" pretended to have received a communication from a
messenger of God, who inspired him to write an extraordinary farrago of
Biblical balderdash, without argument, beginning, or end, called the
"Flying Roll." The curious may obtain three volumes of this nonsense, but
the only preternatural thing in these books of _Extracts from the Flying
Roll_ is their gross and unapproachable stupidity which completely addles
the brain of him who reads them, hoping thereby to discover the tenets of
the sect or any single thread of argument that may be followed for more
than a consecutive paragraph or two. The effect upon one reading those
pages is the same as that which Mark Twain tells us was produced on him
when Artemus Ward, having plied him with strong drink, began purposely to
enter upon a preposterous conversation, having a specious air of a grave
and lucid argument, but which was merely an idiotic string of meaningless
sentences. Mark Twain thought himself had gone daft, and felt his few
remaining senses going; and that is just what happens to any one who sits
down and seriously tries to understand what "Jezreel's" _Extracts_ are all
about.
In 1879, "Jezreel" married Clarissa Rogers, the daughter of a New Brompton
sawyer; and, assuming the name of "Queen Esther," she paid a visit, with
the prophet, to America. This precious pair made an extraordinary number
of converts in their preaching tours, and, returning to England, made
Gillingham the headquarters of their New House of Israel. Schools and
twenty acres of various buildings were built there at a cost of L100,000,
and the "Temple," intended to hold 20,000 people, was commenced on Chatham
Hill. But "Jezreel" died in 1885, chiefly of drink and the effects of
sunstroke, before this work could be completed and the zealots, who were
wont to go about with long hair tucked under purple-velvet caps, began to
wake up to a sense not only of their sumptuary folly, but also of the
phenomenal simplicity which they had exhibited in giving up their property
to the House. "Queen Esther" was incapable of fooling these simple folk as
completely as "Jezreel" had done, and minor prophets sprang up to dispute
her sovereignty over the elect. Perhaps they were jealous of the state in
which this quondam sawyer's daughter drove about in a carriage and pair,
attended by liveried servants. Perhaps also _they_ had visions and Divine
inspirations. At any rate, "Queen Esther" presently drooped, and died in
1888, in her twenty-eighth year; whereupon the sect swiftly collapsed
under the rival seers who followed. Lawsuits succeeded to the fine
religious frenzy in which the "Temple" was raised, and it still stands
unfinished, visible on its hilltop over a great part of Chatham. It would
be a pity to pull it down, or to complete it; or, indeed, to do anything
at all to it, for, as it is now, it furnishes perhaps as eloquent a sermon
on human wickedness and folly as could well be delivered.
The great tower, framed in steel and built of yellow brick with ornamental
lines of blue Staffordshire brick, has stone panels carved with a trumpet
with a scroll, "The Flying Roll," suspended from it; with the Prince of
Wales feathers and the motto "I serve," and other devices. The unfinished
tower itself cost L44,000. The foundation-stone was laid, as an
inscription says, 19th September, 1885, "by Mrs. Emma Cave, on behalf of
the 144,000. Revelations (_sic_) 7th, 4."
It was understood that Mrs. Cave, who at that time owned a large part of
Tufnell Park, found the money for the tower, selling her property for the
cause. The unfinished tower was seized by the building contractors for
debt, and offered for sale by auctioneers, who stated it "would do for a
lunatic asylum, prison, infirmary, etc." This suggestion failed, and the
contractors, unable to sell the incomplete carcase, let it to the sect
under a lease, which terminated in 1905. There were at that time
Jezreelite workrooms and printing-offices in the basement. An American
Jezreelite then appeared, one Michael Keyfor Mills, calling himself
"Prince Michael," and proposing to complete. The founder's father-in-law,
Edward Rogers, who had rented the place as a wholesale grocery warehouse,
opposed him and secured an injunction against members of the sect who had
supported the idea. Mills died at Gillingham in January, 1922, aged
sixty-five.
In 1908 a company was formed to demolish the building and sell the
materials; but when the upper floors had been taken down the concern
became insolvent. In 1913 it was proposed to convert the building into a
"Picture Palace," but the idea came to nothing; and later, the property
was offered at auction and withdrawn at L3,900.
If there be any surviving Jezreelites of the "New and Latter House of
Israel," who believe that the souls of only those who have lived since
Moses can be saved, they will be able to look with satisfaction on the
remains of their tower, which was built largely with the idea that five
thousand of the elect would gather here at the destruction of the world.
But in its present condition a good many of that number would be left
outside; and there might be expected an unseemly crush to get within, only
that by this time the elect of this particular brand must be a very small
coterie.
XXVI
Little else is to be seen or noted in leaving Chatham for Rainham. The
shop in which that singular old gentleman lived, with whom little David
Copperfield made acquaintance, is not pointed out to the curious, and the
identity of that apostrophizer of his lungs and liver, who exclaimed
"Goroo, goroo," and tearfully asked David if he would go for fourpence,
has been much disputed. "The House on the Brook," to which the Dickens
family removed when Mr. John Dickens' fortunes were low, is still to be
seen, but "the Brook" has changed for the worse, and the visitor to
Chatham who takes up the local papers will discover that it is
pre-eminently the place where the Order of the Black Eye is conferred, on
Saturday nights in especial, but more or less impartially throughout the
week.
[Sidenote: UPCHRUCH WARE]
It is not before Rainham is reached that the road becomes once more the
open highway. Moor Street is passed, and here the Rainham orchards and the
cherry orchards of Gillingham begin to stretch away to the levels of the
Upchurch marshes. "Wealth without health" begins to be the characteristic
of the country, for the marsh mists hang over the levels from early
evening, through the night, to almost midday; and agues, asthma, and
bronchial complaints are the common lot. Many miles' length of submerged
Roman pottery-works lie down in those Swale and Cooling marshes, and many
have been, and are still, the "finds" of broken black "Upchurch ware" in
the mud and ooze. Perfect specimens are discovered at rarer intervals. The
proper method of searching for these vestiges of the Roman occupation is
to equip one's self with a stout pair of sea-boots, and a "sou'wester,"
and to wade at low tide in the creeks, probing the slimy mud with iron
rods. If the explorer is fortunate in his "pitch" he will discover
pottery, broken or whole, by feeling his iron rod strike something harder
than the surrounding half-liquid clay. The joy of such exquisite moments
is unfortunately sometimes marred by the "find" being but a lump of
half-baked clay; Roman, indeed, but not worthy of preservation. Still,
when fragments of patterned ware are found, the discovery repays in
interest for the time spent in mudlarking.
Rainham Church heralds the village, raising up its white and four-square
battlemented walls from beside the road. A large building, with a few late
brasses; a vault full of Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, of whom the last died
in 1863, unmarried; and two life-sized marble statues of Tuftons, father
and son, in that curious classic convention of the late seventeenth
century which found such a delight in representing distinguished folk as
Roman warriors. Nicholas Tufton, the earl, and his son, who died from
wounds received in battle, are those thus represented here; and the statue
of the son, scupltured in a sitting position, is a really fine work of
art. Beyond this, Rainham has not much to detain the explorer, and being a
summer rendezvous for Chatham pleasure-parties and bean-feasters, it is
apt to become dusty and riotous when the season of annual outings is at
hand.
The church seen some distance to the left of the road is that of
Newington. In the vestry is displayed a copy of the last will and
testament of Simon Tomlin, dated November 13, 1689. In this disposition of
his worldly effects are gifts to relatives and to the poor; and to his
brother-in-law, William Plawe of Stockbury, he leaves "my best beaver hatt
and the sum of L15, lawful money of England." It is to be hoped that the
legatee got his hat, but, as many provisions of the will do not appear to
have been complied with, it seems doubtful.
There was a priory of nuns established at Newington in early Norman times,
but all that is now left of it is a striking legend which proves that when
these pious ladies retired from the world they brought some of the world's
worst characteristics with them. What they quarrelled about one night will
never now be known, but when the morning dawned the Prioress was found
strangled in her bed; which goes to prove that the veil no more goes to
make the nun than orders black, white, or grey furnish a monk fully forth
in true monastic attributes. A chalk pit, about a mile south of the
church, called significantly "Nun-pit," is shown as the place where those
less holy than homicidal sisters were afterwards buried alive. Other
accounts say that these nuns were removed to Minster, in Sheppey. However
that may be, Henry the Second would have no more nuns here. He placed
seven priests in the Priory as secular canons, and gave them the manor,
hoping that this religious house would in future have a less lurid career.
But things, instead of improving, grew worse. One of the canons was found
murdered in his bed, and four of the brethren were convicted of the crime.
[Sidenote: NEWINGTON]
From these queer stories we come, appropriately enough, to a tale in which
the Enemy bears a brave part. When Newington Church was being built, "ever
so long ago," as the tale of gramarye has it, and the time came for the
bells to be hung, the Devil, who, it is well known, hates the sound of
church bells, conceived the grand plan of pushing the tower over, so that
the builders would give up the idea. Accordingly, he ventured down the
lane one night, and, standing in the churchyard--as he could well do,
because the place was not yet consecrated--placed his back against the
tower, and, putting his feet against a wall on the other side of the road,
pushed. No one knows what was the result, but as there is a tower here to
this day--and a very fine one it is, too--it may be presumed that either
Satan had altogether overrated his strength, or that the builders had
built better than they knew. But if the Enemy failed in this, he at least
succeeded in leaving his mark. Accordingly, here is the wall, and in it is
a stone, and in that stone is a hole made by his toes; while on another
stone is the print of a very fine and large boot-sole--valuable evidence,
because it not only proves the truth of the story but also shows us that
the Devil wore a Blucher boot on one foot and let the other go unshod. If
you ask me how it came about that the Devil could come here in the
fourteenth century wearing a nineteenth-century boot, I must quote the
showman who exhibited a wax model of Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel was
seen to be reading the _Times_, and some one in the crowd pointed out the
incongruous circumstance, to which the showman replied that Daniel, being
a prophet, read the _Times_ by anticipation! And if a saint could
anticipate the nineteenth century in newspapers, why should not the Fiend
do the same in boots?
Peaceful cherry orchards stretch along the narrow valley, and the railway
runs through them, giving glimpses to passengers of long rows of cherry
trees with emerald grass flecked with sunlight and flocks of sheep feeding
under the boughs; and picturesque farmsteads standing in midst of fertile
meads.
XXVII
[Sidenote: ROMAN STATIONS]
The village of Newington stands on either side of the old Dover Road,
which is here identical with the famous Roman military _via_ of Watling
Street. It is situated in the centre of a district covered thickly with
Roman remains, and the village itself dates from Saxon times, when it
really _was_ a "new town" as distinguished from the adjacent ruins of the
ancient Roman station of Durolevum. All the ingenuity of archaeologists has
been insufficient to determine at what particular spot this military post
was established. Judde Hill, Sittingbourne, and Bapchild have been
selected as probable sites of Durolevum, and certainly Bapchild and
Sittingbourne are likely places for the original military post mentioned
in the _Itinerary_ of Antoninus. Both are situated within an easy distance
of the measurements given by the itinerist, and at either place there was
anciently a stream of water crossing the road, sufficient, perhaps, to
warrant the prefix of "Duro," which, almost without exception,
distinguishes the Roman military place-names on the Dover Road. That
prefix was the Latinized form of the Celtic "dour," signifying a stream,
and it is met with at:--
Dubris == Dover.
Durovernum == Canterbury.
Durolevum == ? Bapchild, Sittingbourne, or Ospringe.
Durobrivae == Rochester.
A military expedition would naturally be encamped beside a stream, where
the cavalry could water their horses, in preference to a waterless
district; and therefore, Newington and Judde Hill, which both stand beyond
an easy reach of flowing water, cannot have such good claims to have been
the site of Durolevum as either Sittingbourne, or Bapchild, whose name,
indeed, is a corruption of the Saxon Beccanceld, "the pool of the
springs." The flow of water throughout the country must in those remote
times have been much greater than now, for dense forests then covered a
great part of the island, and induced rains and moisture. In fact, the
Dover Road was until recent years remarkable for the number of
considerable streams and trickling rills that flowed across it, either
under bridges or across fords, and it is not so long since those that
crossed the highway at Sittingbourne and Bapchild were diverted or dried
up. They must have been broad streams when Caesar led his legionaries up
the rough British trackway in pursuit of the Cantii, and the still very
considerable brook that crosses the road at Ospringe would have then
attained the dimensions of a river. It might be well to look to Ospringe
for the original Durolevum, for the situation must have been admirable
from a military point of view; and, moreover, it was near, if not then
actually on, the head of a navigable creek leading directly to the sea,
where Faversham now stands.