represented--like so many other obsolete things--at the South Kensington
Museum; and the typical innkeeper of that day should be also, for his like
is no more seen on earth. He was a burly man with a red, good-humoured,
clean-shaven face. He wore, frequently, knee-breeches and sleeved yellow
waistcoats with black stripes that made him look, to the youthful
imagination, like a great wasp or bumble-bee. He wore short white aprons,
too, and high collars encircling his thick red neck, so that one gazed
upon him in constant dread of his falling down in an apoplectic fit; he
wore--but enough! Let it be said, though, that he resembled a Blue-coat
boy in one respect, for he was never known to wear a hat.
All this is changed. Sittingbourne had grown into importance because its
situation was convenient for travellers to stay here to change horses at,
and when the roads became deserted the place would have fallen back into
its original obscurity had it not been for bricks, hops, and cherries.
Bricks, and the surrounding fruit country have prospered it anew, and have
made it what it is; a dusty, thickly populated, dirty town whose old
aspect has been altered from a broad and roomy street to crowded lanes and
a High Street filled with frowzy alleys, and many Dissenting conventicles
of different degrees of ugliness.
[Sidenote: PAPER]
Of late years, paper has been added to the interests of Sittingbourne.
Outside the town, on Milton Creek, leading muddily to the Swale, there you
will find paper in its crude wood-pulp stage, as imported from the mills
in Norway and Sweden. Closely viewed, it is not attractive. Slabs of
wood-pulp, stacked forty or fifty feet high, with a narrow-gauge railway
running between cliff-like accumulations of this merchandise, present a
scene made squalid by the torn and bedraggled fragments of paper packing
that the winds sport with. But, seen from the Swale, or indeed from a
distance on land, these towering stocks of the raw material for newspapers
have a peculiarly romantic appearance; looking indeed like a reminiscence
of the temples of the East.
The village of Milton itself, properly "Milton Regis," is full of queer
old corners. The church stands aloof, dignified, on a remote country road.
In its churchyard is a stone mentioning a woman who had six husbands:--
"Here lyeth interred the Body of Abraham Washiton (_sic_), late husband of
Alise Washinton now liveing in Milton, whome had in all six Husbands: John
Ailes, John Ricard, Thomas Gill, John Jeefrre, Alexander Flet. Anno 1601."
It will be observed that this lady who collected husbands is described as
"now liveing." Possibly the sixth was not the last; but by that time the
men of Milton must have grown rather timid.
In any case, the history of Mrs. Washinton was evidently considered
remarkable, to be detailed on this stone, either by herself or by the
admiring or astonished neighbourhood.
[Illustration: YARD OF THE "LION" INN. SITTINGBOURNE.]
Sittingbourne parish church, and some remaining walls of the more ancient
inns, are all that need detain the stranger. The massive square tower of
the church, which is a prominent feature of the High Street, is the oldest
part; the body of the building dates only from the Perpendicular period.
To this time belongs a singular monumental effigy of a lady, placed in a
niche of the north chancel wall; a mysterious figure, represented with an
infant wrapped in swaddling clothes lying across its wasted breast. No
inscription remains to tell its story. The church fronts on to the
highway, and in days of pilgrimage (and even so lately as 1830) the bourne
to which Sittingbourne owes its name, which comes from the Anglo-Saxon
"Saethingbourne," the seething, or bubbling, brook, trickled and welled up
in the likeness of a spring across the road. Through it splashed the
mounted pilgrims, while the weary-footed palmers crossed by
stepping-stones, or cooled their feet in the water. Many halted to cross
themselves, to kneel and pray before the figure of Our Lady which filled
the niche still remaining in the buttress of the Chilton Chapel, and was
called thence "Saint Mary of the Butterasse." This little shrine was
defaced in 1540, and now the running stream is enclosed in pipes that
discharge the water into Milton Creek.
[Sidenote: MURSTON]
The village of Murston, which at one time skirted the road at some
distance from Sittingbourne, and was in receipt of the town's leavings, is
now quite undistinguishable by a stranger from the town itself, so greatly
has the population grown of late years. It is quite uninteresting, save
for the memory of the affray by which the rector, the Reverend Richard
Tray, was ejected from his living in 1641. A stone let into the Rectory
wall preserves the record of the affair:--
_Si Natvra negat facit Indignatio Versvm._
The Barne which stood where this now
Stands was bvrnt down by the Rebel's hands in December 1659
This Barne which stands where tother stood
By Richard Tray is now made good, in July 1662
All things yov bvrn,
Or overtvrn,
Bvt bvild vp novght: pray tell
Is this the Fire of Zeale or Hell?
Yet yov doe all
By the Spirits call
As yov pretend: bvt pray
What Spirit is't? _A bad one_ I dare say.
XXIX
Five miles and a half down the road from Sittingbourne, the pilgrims who
had prayed so devoutly at the shrine of Our Lady of the Buttress (and it
is to be hoped had not forgotten the claims of Swanstree Hermitage) came
to Ospringe, where they usually found a profuse hospitality waiting for
them at the Maison Dieu. Not that there was any lack of religious houses
on the way. Far from it, indeed. They had not proceeded much farther than
a mile when they came in those times to the Hermitage of Bapchild, with
the hermit standing on the doorstep, scratching himself with one hand,
holding out a scollop shell for alms in the other, and conjuring them by
the blessed Thomas and all the hierarchy of saints to spare something for
his altar. The parish church of Bapchild, which was built in early Norman
times, before any one dreamed of Canterbury becoming a place of
pilgrimage, or the high-road crowded with a varied concourse of miserable
sinners anxious to compound for their ill-deeds by visiting the scene of
the martyrdom, is situated beside a lane at some distance from the road,
and so was quite out of the track of that alms-giving crowd. It grieved
the Vicar of Bapchild to see these free-handed folks going by, with never
a mark or even a silver penny coming his way, and so he contrived to set
up some sort of a cell and chapel with a few exceedingly dubious bones in
it, supposed to be the reliques of saints; but probably grubbed up from
his own churchyard. It did not matter much whose reliques they were
called, for that was a credulous age, and so long as there were not two
skulls of Saint Paulinus on view, or more than a gross of Saint Alphege's
teeth to be seen at the numberless shrines between London and Canterbury,
the pilgrims were not generally disposed to be critical. It was only when
Saint Frideswyde appeared, from the osseous evidence of these shrines, to
have as many arms as Vishnu, or when Saint Antholin appeared, from equally
untrustworthy evidence, to have been in this life a Double-headed
Nightingale or a kind of Siamese Twins, that men on pilgrimage became
sceptical. But, after all, if saints could perform one kind of a miracle,
why not another, and why should not Saint Alphege cause his teeth to be
increased, until a peck of them could be gathered from the monasteries of
Europe, or Saint Antholin not have his skulls miraculously multiplied if
they had a mind to it; and if Saint Frideswyde could be proved to have
been possessed of half a dozen arms, was it not for the good, if not of
the church, at least of the clergy, that it should be so? And so, it is to
be hoped that the Vicar and the Hermit, between them, did well; and also
it is to be hoped that the Hermit took more advantage, for washing
purposes, of the little stream which here also flowed across the roadway
than his brethren were wont to do.
The road between Ospringe and Sittingbourne was in those days very lonely,
and lonely it still remains, for the settlements of Bapchild, Radfield,
and Greenstreet are but dull and dishevelled collections of tiny shops and
cottages, with here and there a slumberous old inn or whitewashed
farmhouse. The railway to Dover runs on the left hand, within sight of the
highway, through the beautiful cherry-orchards and the hop-gardens, and
the land slopes gently down to the levels of Teynham and the fertile
though ague-stricken marshes of the Swale; that part of Kent where,
according to the old local saying, there is "wealth without health";
significantly alluded to in the rhyme--
He that would not live long,
Let him live at Murston, Teynham, or Tong.
[Sidenote: TONG]
Tong Castle, where Rowena "drank hael" to King Vortigern and captivated
that very susceptible but unpatriotic monarch; the scene also of the
treacherous murder by Hengist and his men of three hundred British nobles,
is represented now only by a grassy mound. Here we are in the centre of
the hop-growing districts, and the road begins to be bordered with
hop-gardens, bare in autumn and winter, except for the great stacks of
poles; but beautiful in spring and summer with the climbing bine, planted
in long alleys in which women and children work in the long summer days,
weeding and tying up the hops, and hanging up the wind-screens called
"lews." For the hop-vine is a delicate plant that requires as much
cossetting and constant attention as an invalid, and if it is not
carefully tended and trained up in the way it should go, it presently
droops and dies or becomes too weak to climb up the long twelve- and
fifteen-feet poles which it is expected to surmount. And so it is
jealously shielded from all draughts and boisterous breezes by long pieces
of canvas or string netting, stretched from pole to pole at that side of
the gardens whence come the prevailing winds; while every hop-pole is tied
so scrupulously and elaborately to its fellow that a June hop-garden is a
very maze of string.
To these gardens come in August and September hundreds of men, women, and
children from London slums; some by train, many more by road. Whole
families of them, with their clothing, their pots and pans and sooty
kettles, slung over their shoulders, come tramping down the weary miles,
and fill the air with ribaldry, strange oaths, and horrible blasphemy. The
villagers keep them at arm's length, if not, indeed, at a greater distance
than that, and keep their children at home; going round their gardens and
orchards at night, to see that gates are locked; and, bolting doors and
latching windows securely, go to bed and dream dreams in which
evil-looking hoppers are stealing their fruit and making away with the
occupants of their hen-roosts. Sometimes they wake up and find the
crashing of branches, the screaming and clucking of cocks and hens, which
have formed the subjects of their dreams, to have foundation in fact, and
hurriedly dashing out of bed, arrive, barefooted and armed only with a
poker, in their gardens just in time to see mysterious figures vanish over
the wall and to hear the protests of their stolen fowls grow small by
degrees and beautifully less in the distance. Next day the bereaved
villager is heard to execute fruitless variations of "Tell me, shepherds,
have you seen my Flora pass this way?" and some enterprising emigrants
from Whitechapel feast royally on poultry.
[Sidenote: OSPRINGE]
Just where the hilltop rises and looks down in the direction of Ospringe,
the wisdom of the Faversham authorities has planted a Hospital for
infectious diseases. It fronts the road, and has a very large door with
"Isolation Hospital" painted on it in very small letters. Tramps and
beggars passing by see a large house where possibly something may be
begged or stolen. They go up to the door, and, after reading the legend
painted there, may be seen to proceed hurriedly on their way. Without
standing on the order of their going, they go at once. _Omne ignotum pro
magnifico_: they don't know what "isolation" means, but they hurry off,
lest they should catch isolation and die of it. And so they come, stricken
with a mortal fear, into Ospringe, down a dusty hill. A Maison Dieu that
stood here in olden times would perhaps have received them then, but
to-day the few fragments of it that remain are part of the "Red Lion" inn,
and tramps find no encouragement there.
The Knights Templar and the Brethren of the Holy Ghost held this Hospital
for travellers for many years, from the time of Henry the Second, and they
exercised a lavish hospitality, extended to all, from the King downwards.
King John had a room here--a _camera regis_--and other monarchs frequently
made this a halting-place on their way to or from Dover. Very few records
are left of the feastings and jollifications that took place in this
semi-religious, semi-secular retreat, and Ospringe has no longer any Royal
visitors. The village consists of a long street beside the highway at the
foot of Judd's Hill, and of a shorter street, called Water Lane, that runs
off at right angles where the remains of the Maison Dieu stand beside the
stream to which Ospringe owes its rather pretty name. At one time this
stream flowed openly across the roadway, but it is bridged now, and Water
Lane, which had a raised footpath on either side, while the lane itself
was occupied by the stream, through which horses and carts splashed, has
now been drained dry.
The "Anchor Hotel" was once a posting-house and a stopping-place on the
route of local coaches between Chatham and Herne Bay, but this traffic has
of course been long discontinued. The modern pilgrim should not fail,
before leaving Ospringe, to explore Water Lane and the country road for
half a mile beyond. The place abounds in old cottages, picturesque
windmills, and old timbered houses of some pretensions. Of these, Queen
Hall is probably the most interesting. Beyond it is the parish church, a
very large building with a tower of grand design and unusual type. The
edifice has been thoroughly and unusually well restored, with an exquisite
taste unfortunately too rare in country districts, and may be instanced as
an example of what "restoration" should be. The approach to the church by
the road is past hop-gardens which group beautifully, and form an
excellent motive for a sketch.
XXX
Faversham town, lying a mile distant, between Faversham Creek and the
turnpike road, will doubtless in the course of a few years adjoin
Ospringe, and convert the village into a mere suburb. Preston, the old
suburb of Faversham, is distant something over a mile, but in between
there have lately been built very many new streets of cottages and villas,
evidences of Faversham's prosperity, doubtless, but not pleasing to the
tourist. That prosperity is due to its situation upon a navigable creek,
along which are pursued the trades of brick and tile making, and the
manufacture of gunpowder; and the oyster fishery, which adds such a great
proportion of wealth to this flourishing county of Kent, is largely
centred here.
[Illustration: OSPRINGE: A JUNE HOP-GARDEN.]
The surrounding country, too, is probably the very richest and most
suitable district for the growing of cherries, gooseberries, currants,
and strawberries; and the frequency and perfection of the market-gardens,
orchards, and hop-gardens strike the pedestrian with admiration and
amazement. A visit in early spring, when the orchards are in blossom, and
others in the cherry- and hop-picking seasons, convince the sceptical that
Kent is, in sober truth, the "garden of England." The stranger needs but
to spend a week between this and Canterbury; to tramp the high-road and
the bye-lanes in the direction of Herne Hill and Whitstable, and he will
see abundant evidences of how important is the fruit-growing industry, not
only in the fields and gardens, where he may see the fruit growing, but
also in the great barns and outhouses bursting with many thousands of
bushel-baskets only awaiting the ripening of the cherries and currants to
be filled and put upon the rails at Faversham Junction, whence numerous
special trains are daily run during the season to London and the Borough
Market. Somewhat earlier in the year--generally in mid-June--other
evidences of the magnitude of the fruit interest are seen in the
auctioneers' sale bills posted on every available board and fence,
announcing that the growing crops are presently to be sold by auction.
[Sidenote: DISCONTENTED FARMERS]
But, in spite of the fertility of Kentish orchards, the countryman will
not forego his privilege of grumbling. Singularly enough, he never thinks
of eating any of the fruit he grows, and the more plentiful the crops, the
less pleased he professes himself to be. Not that, should you come upon
him at a season when plenty is less marked, he will be any the more
gratified. Hold the peasant proprietor of an orchard in conversation
during the fruit season, and you will think him one of the most miserable
and unfortunate men in the country.
"Good day to you," you say.
(Hodge nods his head, and mumbles, "Mor'n'n.")
"Splendid crops you have down here. I should think things must be going
pretty well in these parts?"
"Ay, goin' to the Devil fast enow, I'se warrand."
"Oh! how d'you make that out?"
"Make it out, is it? Why, look a-here at them there turmuts; d'you iver
see sich poor things; ay, an' _all_ the root crops is bad's can be."
"Yes; but _you_'re all right with your fruit; cherries and apples."
"M'yes, there's a dale o' fruit this year: darned sight too much ter
please me."
"But you can't very well have too much of a good thing, can you?"
"Can't you just, though; look at the price; down ter nothing, as you might
say. Get it for the asking."
"But _I_ didn't get cherries for the asking; _I_ had to pay eightpence a
pound for some I bought at Chatham."
"Oh! I dessay. Wish _I_ c'd git a penny a pound. But that's jist like them
'ere starv'em, rob'em, and cheat'em folks. Wouldn't give 'ee so much's the
parings o' their finger-nails if they c'd help it."
"Then why don't you make preserves of some of your fruit?"
"Preserves? what's that, mister?"
"Why, jam, you know. Besides, surely you eat some of your own fruit, don't
you?"
"Fruit's to sell, not to heat!"
"Well, then, if you can't sell it, don't preserve it, and won't eat any of
it, _what_ do you do with it?"
"Give it ter the pigs, in coorse!"
"Yes, but why not eat some of it yourself?"
"Heat it! D'yer take me for a bloomin' Nebuchadnezzar? Besides, it's that
there ondergestuble----!"
"But Nebuchadnezzar didn't eat fruit. He hadn't got the chance, poor
fellow. He could only find grass to eat."
"Grass 'ood'n't be so ondergestuble as fruit, I reckon. Blame me if you
town folks don't think a man can live on nothink. Now, a pound or two o'
steak, a few rashers o' fat bacon, an' a few heggs for bre'kfuss--that's
more my line. Hexpeck a Christian man to heat fruit----!"
"But you expect people to buy yours, don't you?"
"Naw, I don't hexpeck nothin'."
"Then why do you grow it?"
"Bekause I suppose I'm a fool; that's about the size of it. Good day t'ye,
mister."
XXXI
The history of Faversham town is extremely long and interesting, but as it
does not lie on the direct road to Dover, it will not be necessary to go
into a very detailed account of it. It is a curious, half-maritime borough
whose Mayor wears a chain of office decorated with badges of oars and
rudders; a town whose records include such events as the burial of King
Stephen, his Queen, and his son Eustace; and at a very much later date,
the attempted escape of James the Second. Faversham fishermen recognized
the fugitive King as he crouched, shivering in the hoy at Shellness on
that bitter December morning of 1688, and, robbing him of his watch and
chain and his money, they brought him a prisoner to the Mayor's house,
where he was detained two days, guarded by a mob of countrymen, on whom
his terror-stricken appeals to be allowed to escape had no effect.
[Sidenote: FAVERSHAM]
"He who is not with me is against me," exclaimed the frantic bigot. "My
blood will be upon your heads if I fall a martyr." But the dignity of a
martyr was not to be his. A troop of Life-guards was sent to effect his
release from the ignorant mob, who only refrained from stealing his
diamond shoe-buckles because they thought them to be pieces of glass.
James's terror of the Faversham fishers is reflected in his manifesto
issued years afterwards, in which he offers an amnesty to his "rebel
subjects," but expressly excepts such arch-traitors as Churchill, Danby,
and the poor oyster-dredgers of Faversham.
Saints Crispin and Crispianus, who have a public-house dedicated to them
at Strood, had an altar here in the Abbey Church, and were supposed to
have lived a while at Preston, earning their living as cobblers in a
cottage that stood where the "Swan" inn is now. Long after the Reformation
had done sway with the shrine of Saint Thomas, pious bootmakers made
pilgrimages to the place; and St. Crispin's Day was for centuries the
principal holiday in Faversham. I would rather make pilgrimage to the
place where they earned their living than to the shrines of all the
sanctified humbugs who contended for pride of place in this world, and
becoming worsted in the struggle for supremacy, received their
Canonization as a matter of course.
Faversham in the fifteenth century was not less well-furnished with
religious cranks than the holy road to Canterbury. There was an anchorite
in one corner of Faversham churchyard, and an anchoress in another, and in
their cells they sat and sulked their lives away, and never did any work.
William Thornbury was rector here for twenty-two years, when he resigned
his living especially to become an _inclusus_; and for eight years he
occupied a damp and most uncomfortable cell amid the tombs, until he died,
most likely of rheumatic fever, in 1481. There is a most beautiful brass
to him in the church, with a long Latin verse, recounting how he was one
of the elect, and how for long years he sat lonely in his cell. Why he
should have lived such a life is a question which we, who are so far
removed from that age, both by lapse of time and in change of thought,
cannot readily answer. That he was a man of good birth, good position, and
considerable wealth, would appear from his will, and these circumstances
make his reclusion only the more extraordinary. He probably suffered
either from religious mania, or else from a guilty conscience which led
him thus to compound with Heaven for some undiscovered crime that made his
life a misery.
But the traveller who keeps strictly to his Dover Road only passes through
Faversham suburbs. Preston is the oldest of them, and lies directly on the
road. To the left rises Faversham's fantastic spire, conspicuous above the
flats; immediately in front goes the railway in a cutting underneath the
road; and straight ahead, in the far distance, rises up a long thin white
line amid hillsides clothed heavily with forests. It is long before the
stranger discovers what is that singular white streak upon the dark trees,
but it reveals itself, as he goes, as the famous Boughton Hill, and the
woodlands as the extensive remains of Blean Forest.
It was at "Boughton-under-the-Blee" that Chaucer's Canon and Yeoman
overtook the pilgrims. The Canon's hat hung down his back by a lace, for
he had ridden as though he were mad. Under his hood he had placed a
burdock-leaf to cool his head, but yet his forehead dropped like a still
that was full of plantain and wallflower. The Canon's Yeoman tells the
pilgrims how pleased his master would be of their company as far as
Canterbury; and the Host makes him welcome, asking if his master can
please the party with a merry story. "A story?" asks the Yeoman; "that is
nothing to what the Canon can do. He is an Alchemist, and so clever that--
"all this ground on which we be riding,
Till that we come to Canterbury town,
He could all cleane turnen up so down,
And pave it all of silver and of gold."