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.