hamlet of Milford, in those days a very small place indeed, but grown now
to the importance of a thriving village, standing amid level lands where
the road branches to Chichester. Once past Milford, however, they had need
of all their skill, for here the road begins to rise in the long five
miles ascent of Hindhead, and they found occasion for all their science in
saving their cattle in this long and arduous pull through a stretch of
country that for ruggedness has scarce its compeer in England.
Up to this point the villages and roadside settlements are numerous; but
now we leave the "White Lion" at Moushill behind, the more ordinary signs
of civilization are missing, and long stretches of heath and savage
hill-sides become familiar to the eye. On the right of the road lies
Thursley Common, a perfectly wild spot occupying high ground covered with
sand hummocks and tangled heather, and wearing all the characteristics of
mountain scenery. To the left stretches Witley Common, in the direction of
artist-haunted Witley and beautiful Haslemere, and in the distance are the
sandy hillocks known as the Devil's Jumps.
No road so wild and lonely as the Portsmouth Road, from the time when
mail-coaches first travelled along it, in 1784, until recent years, when
houses began to spring up in the wildest spots. From Putney Heath to
Portsdown Hill the road runs, for more than three-quarters of its length,
past ragged heaths, tumbled commons, and waste lands, chiefly
unenclosed; and the sombre fir tree, with its brothers, the larch and
pine, is the predominant feature of the copses and woodlands that line the
way. See what a long list the wayside commons make from London to
Portsmouth. To Putney Heath succeeds Wimbledon Common, Ditton Marsh,
Fairmile Common, and the commons of Wisley and Peasmarsh, all this side of
Godalming; while those of Witley, Hindhead, and Milland, with the bare and
open downs of Rake and Chalton, and the remains of Bere Forest, render the
remainder of the way one long expanse of free and open land.
[Illustration: THE DEVIL'S PUNCH BOWL.]
[Sidenote: _THE DEVIL'S PUNCH BOWL_]
Hindhead is the culminating-point of all this agriculturally barren, but
artistically delightful, country, and to see Hindhead aright requires the
grey and tender mists of late autumn. This road, in fact, is seen at its
best, from start to finish, in the last days of October or in the first
weeks of November, when the red sun sets in the early evening like a huge
fiery globe across the wastes and the darkling coppices, and gleams like
molten metal between the tall straight trunks of the melancholy fir trees
that stand like dumb and monstrous battalions deployed across the tangled
crofts. So much has been said and written in praise of Hindhead, that I
have known people to come away from it with a disappointed surprise. They
looked for a deeper profundity in the Devil's Punch Bowl, and saw but a
cup-like depression (marked on the maps as Haccombe Bottom), where they
expected to find the beetling cliffs and craggy precipices of the
Pyrenees, with, perhaps, the Foul Fiend himself waiting below amid the
scrub and the heather for any one more adventurous than his fellows who
should essay to climb down and investigate the scene. I will allow that
the tourists who come here at mid-day of some blazing summer, and gaze
with an air of disappointment at what some reckless writers have called
"these awful depths," have a right to their dissatisfaction, for the Punch
Bowl is least impressive at such a time, when never a shadow throws aerial
perspective into the view, nor mists hide with a delicate artistic
perception the prosaic fields which the merely utilitarian instincts and
industry of the farmer have created from the surrounding waste. The
imagination is curbed at this bald statement of facts under a cloudless
sky, and I may confess that a first sight of this famous spot under
similar conditions sent me away with no less a sense of disappointment.
But try the same scene on an autumn evening, when a grey-blue haze in the
atmosphere meets the white ground-mists, and your imagination has then a
free rein. There is no telling at such a time what may be the depths of
the Punch Bowl; and as for the houses that stand upon the topmost ridge of
Hindhead, why, they wear all the appearance of romantic castles, in which
not nineteenth-century villadom dwells, but where dare-devil barons of
Rhine-legend, or of the still more terrible Mrs. Radclyffe type, exercise
untrammelled their native ferocity, even unto the colophon of the third
volume.
The wild grandeur of Hindhead and the gloomy depths of the Devil's Punch
Bowl are rendered additionally impressive by the memory of a particularly
brutal murder committed here, in 1786, upon an unknown sailor, who was
walking to Portsmouth to rejoin his ship.
[Illustration: HINDHEAD. _After J. M. W. Turner._]
[Sidenote: _A WAYSIDE CRIME_]
On the 24th of September in that year three men--Edward Lonegon, Michael
Casey, and James Marshall--were tramping to Portsmouth in search of
employment, when they met the sailor near Esher. He treated them to drink,
and offered to bear the expense of their journey, and they continued
together down the road. At the "Red Lion," in Road Lane, beyond Godalming,
where they stopped for refreshment, they were observed by two labouring
men who chanced to be in the house, and who, later in the day, followed in
their footsteps when returning home. On coming to the Devil's Punch Bowl
they noticed something lying below, amid the heather, that looked like a
dead sheep, but on climbing down to examine it, they found it to be the
dead body of the sailor they had seen drinking in the "Red Lion." His
villainous companions had knocked him down and killed him, "each agreeing
to have two cuts at his throat," and after stripping the body they had
rolled it into the hollow.
An alarm was raised, and the three murderers were overtaken at the hamlet
of Sheet, near Petersfield, where they were actually selling the clothes
of their victim in a public-house. Arrested here, they were tried at the
Spring Assizes of 1787, held at Kingston-on-Thames, were sentenced to
death, and hanged on April 7, their bodies being afterwards gibbeted on
Hindhead, the scene of their crime. For years afterwards the place was
known as Gibbet Hill, and, indeed, the country folk still speak of it by
that name. The tall post of the gibbet appears in Turner's view of
Hindhead in the "_Liber Studiorum_," and the road is shown winding amid
the downs, with a coach in the distance. Turner's view must be accepted
with all reserve, _as a view_, for he never sank the artist in the mere
topographical draughtsman; and the gibbet is quite an effort of his
imagination, for even so early as Gilbert White's time, it was shattered
in a terrific thunderstorm, as the old naturalist relates.
But although Turner has exaggerated the ruggedness of Hindhead in his
picture, the place is not at all gracious or suave. Cobbett roundly
declared that it was "certainly the most villainous spot that God ever
made"; and how wild it was in the seventeenth century, before even the old
high-road was in existence, we may gather from an entry in Pepys' Diary of
August 6, 1668: "So to coach again, and got to Liphook, late over
Hindhead, having an old man, a guide, in the coach with us; but got
thither with great fear of being out of our way, it being ten at night."
Hindhead was in the direct line of signalling semaphores between Greenwich
and Portsmouth before the days of the electric telegraph, and every day at
one o'clock the time was passed down from the Observatory. People used to
set their watches by the waving semaphore arms.
Until 1826 the old Portsmouth Road went along the very summit of Hindhead,
and its course, although deeply rutted and much overgrown with grass, can
still be readily traced near by the great cross of Cornish granite,
erected here, 345 feet above the deepest depths of the Devil's Punch Bowl,
by Sir William Erle, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in 1851, in memory
of the murdered sailor. The Latin inscriptions, _In luce spes, Post
tenebras lux_, and others, do not seem particularly appropriate to either
the place or the occasion.
The old highway followed the very brink of the Punch Bowl, and was in
winter-time extremely dangerous for coaches. To avoid the chance of
accident a new roadway was constructed some sixty feet lower, with a
substantial earthen embankment on the outer side, to prevent any
unlooked-for descent into this precipitous gulf.
[Sidenote: _THURSLEY_]
The headstone which was set up to mark the spot where the sailor was
murdered has been removed, and placed beside this newer road, where its
position renders its legend peculiarly vivid and terrible, although it is
couched only in the plainest and least affected of phrases. One side is
shown in the illustration, the other repeats the date of its erection, and
invokes a curse upon "the man who injureth or removeth this stone"; but
whether or no the man who thus invites the wrath of heaven would have
included the Ordnance Surveyors, I cannot say. Certainly _they_ have
"injured this stone" by carving upon it the Governmental "broad arrow."
The body of the murdered sailor was buried at the little village of
Thursley, some two miles distant, and there, in the churchyard, shadowed
by dark fir trees, stands a gruesome tombstone, an unconscionable product
of local art, with a carving in relief of the three murderers in the act
of dispatching their victim. Beneath this melodrama, the circumstances are
recounted at great length, and some halting verses conclude the mournful
narration.
[Illustration: TOMBSTONE, THURSLEY.]
[Sidenote: _'THE KING CAN DO NO WRONG!'_]
Thursley itself is situated on an old road that branches from the newer
highway upon entering Witley Common, and rejoins the ordinary route near
the "Royal Huts" Hotel. The village is rarely visited by strangers. The
old church stands in a commanding position, overlooking a wide tract of
country, including the Hog's Back, by Guildford, and the scattered ponds
of Frensham. An old sun-dial on the tower has the inscription _Hora pars
vitae_, and, like most of our clocks and watches, perpetuates in the
numeral "IIII" the long-exploded fiction of the infallibility of kings. I
wonder if any one remembers the origin of the substitution of "IIII" for
"IV" on nearly all the dials, whether sun-dials or clock-faces, of
civilization? Here is the story. The first clock that kept anything like
accurate time was constructed by a certain Henry Vick, in 1370. It was
made to the order of Charles V. of France, who was known as "the Wise."
Wise he certainly was, in some respects; but Roman numerals were not
within the sum of his knowledge. When Vick brought the King his clock, he
looked at its movements awhile. "Yes," said he, at length, "it works very
well; but you have got the figures on the dial wrong." "Surely never,
your Majesty," said Vick. "Yes," replied the King, "that IV should be
IIII." "But your Majesty is wrong," rejoined that not very tactful
clockmaker. "Wrong!" answered outraged majesty, "I am never wrong! Take it
away and correct the error." Vick did as he was commanded, and so to this
day we have IIII where we should really have IV.
[Illustration: THURSLEY CHURCH.]
[Illustration: SUN-DIAL, THURSLEY.]
There is a certain interest bound up with the name of Thursley, for it
affords an excellent example of the lengths to which antiquaries will go,
to scent derivatives. Kemble, the learned author of a deep and scholarly
book, "The Saxons in England," derives the name of Thursley from the
Scandinavian god Thor, whose equivalent in Saxon mythology was Thunor.
The name of Thunder Hill, a height near the village, has the same origin;
but the clinching argument of the neighbouring "Hammer Ponds," which Mr.
Kemble assumes to have been named after Thor's hammer, spoils the
reasoning of the theory altogether, for the "Hammer Ponds" are nothing but
the remains of the old forges that were thickly spread over the surface of
Kent, Surrey, and Sussex during a period from three centuries to one
hundred years ago.
[Sidenote: _TYNDALL_]
Just where the road from Thursley rejoins the highway stands the "Huts"
Inn, now enlarged and refurbished, and nothing less, if you please, in
these days than the "Royal Huts" Hotel. "Ma conscience!" I wonder what
friend Cobbett would have thought, _and_ said. But, believe me, nothing
less than this would serve the turn of Hindhead district now-a-days, for
it fast becoming as suburban as (say) Clapham. Do you want a
building-plot, carved out of a waste, where nothing has yet bloomed but
the tiny purple bells of the heather or the golden glory of the gorse?
Here, then, is your chance, for building-plots fringe the road where,
indeed, the trim-built villa has not already risen. Professor Tyndall, who
built a house for himself just here, in 1882, selected the situation both
for its health-giving air and for its seclusion, but his example served
only to advertise the attractions of the place, and the astonishing favour
with which Hindhead is now regarded as a residence is directly
attributable to him. No one was less pleased than himself at this sudden
popularity of a district that had but a few years previously been a more
or less "howling" wilderness, for "he was always curiously sensitive to
the beauty of scenery," disliked suburbs, and was also singularly
sensitive to being overlooked from any neighbouring house. This preference
for reclusion led to the building of the hideous screens which hid from
his gaze an ugly house close at hand, and created so much angry
controversy a few years ago: screens that to-day remain an unfailing
reminiscence of the Professor. _Sic monumentum requiris, circumspice_, to
quote the old tag.
XXI
And now, save for the slight rise of Cold Ash Hill, it is all down-hill to
Liphook, and excellent going, too, on a fine gravelly road, closely
compacted and well kept. The country, though, is still wild and unfertile,
and for long stretches, after passing the "eligible plots" of Hindhead,
the road is seen narrowing away in long perspectives with never a house in
sight. In midst of all this waste stands a lonely roadside inn--the "Seven
Thorns" a wayside sign proclaims it to be--which draws its custom the Lord
only knows whence. It is frankly an inn for refreshing and for passing on
your way: no one, I imagine, ever wants to stay there; and by its cold and
cheerless exterior appearance one might readily come to the conclusion
that no one even lived there. The sign is singular, and seems either
descriptive or legendary. If legend it has, no whisper of it has ever
reached me; while as for descriptiveness, the "seven thorns" are simply
non-existent; and so the sign is neither more nor less a foreshadowing of
the place than the average Clapham "Rosebank" or the Brixton "Fernlea."
[Illustration: TYNDALL'S HOUSE: SCREENS IN THE FOREGROUND.]
Even on a summer's day one does not find the immediate neighbourhood of
the "Seven Thorns" Inn particularly exhilarating or cheerful, for,
although the country is open and unspoiled by buildings, yet the scenery
lacks the suavity of generous land, prolific of fine timber and graceful
foliage. The soil is ungrateful and unproductive; nourishing only the
gorse and the hardy grasses that grow upon commons and cover the nakedness
of the harsh sand and gravel of the surrounding country-side. Such trees
as grow about here are wind-tossed and scraggy, bespeaking the little
nutriment the land affords, and the greater number of them are firs and
pines, which, indeed, are the chiefest of Hampshire's sylvan growths.
[Sidenote: _A MEMORABLE SNOW-STORM_]
But in winter-time this unsheltered tract is swept with piercing winds
that know no bulwark, nor any stay against their furious onslaughts; and
here, in the great snow-storm of Yule-tide 1836, the Portsmouth coaches
were nearly snowed up. "The snow," says a writer of local gossip, "was
lying deep upon Hindhead, and had drifted into fantastic wreaths and huge
mounds raised by the fierce breath of a wild December gale. Coach after
coach crawled slowly and painfully up the steep hill, some coming from
London, others bound thither. But as the 'Seven Thorns' was neared, they
one and all came to a dead stop. The tired, wearied, exhausted cattle
refused to struggle through the snow-mountains any longer. Guards,
coachmen, passengers, and labourers attacked those masses of spotless
white with spade and shovel, but all to no purpose. It seemed as if a way
was not to be cleared. What stamping of feet and blowing of nails was
there! Women were shivering and waiting patiently; men were shouting,
grumbling, and swearing; and indeed the prospect of spending a winter's
night upon the outside of a coach on such a spot was, to say the least of
it, not cheerful. At last a brave man came to the rescue. The 'Star of
Brunswick,' a yellow-bodied coach that ran nightly between Portsmouth and
London, came up. The coachman's name was James Carter, well known to many
still living. He made very little to-do about the matter, but, whipping up
his horses, he charged the snow-drifts boldly and resolutely, and with
much swaying from side to side opened a path for himself and the rest."
And so the Portsmouth Road was kept open in that wild winter, while most
of the main roads in England were hopelessly snowed up. But memories of
coaching days on this old road are rather meagre, for, although sea-faring
business sent a great many travellers journeying between London and the
dockyard town, the Portsmouth Road was never celebrated for crack coaches
or for record times, and when coaching was in full swing, men saw as
little romance in being dragged down the highways behind four horses as we
can discover in railway travelling. With coach-proprietors, the horsing
and equipping of a coach were matters of business, and beyond looking
shrewdly after that business, the most of them cared little enough for
coaching history. With the passengers, too, travelling was an evil to be
endured. It irked them intolerably: it was a necessity, a duty,--what you
will for unpleasantness,--and so, when the journey was done, the better
part of them immediately dismissed it from their minds, instead of
dwelling fondly upon the memories of perils overcome and rigours
endured--as we are apt to imagine.
[Sidenote: _REGRETS FOR COACHING DAYS_]
It was only when the Augustan age of coaching had dawned that travellers
began to feel any delight or exhilaration in road-travel; and that age was
cut short so untimely by the Railway Era that the young fellows and the
middle-aged men whose blood coursed briskly through their veins, and who
knew a thing or two about horse-flesh, felt a not unnatural regret in the
change, and conceived an altogether natural affection for the old
_regime_. Their regret can be the more readily understood when one
inquires into the beginnings of railway travel; when conveyance by steam
_might_ have been more expeditious than the coach service (although what
with delays and unpunctuality at the inauguration of railways even _that_
was an open question), but certainly was at the same time much more
uncomfortable. For, in place of the sheltered inside of a coach, or the
frankly open and unprotected outside, the primitive railway passenger was
conveyed to his destination in an open truck exposed to the furious rush
of air caused by the passage of the train; and, all the way, he employed
his time, not in admiring the landscape, or, as he was wont to do from a
coach-top, in kissing his hand to the girls, but fleeted a penitential
pilgrimage in scooping out from his eyes the blacks and coal-grit
liberally imparted from the wobbly engine, own brother to the "Rocket,"
and immediate descendant of "Puffing Billy."
No wonder they regretted the more healthful and cleanly journeys by coach,
and small blame to them if they voted the railway a nuisance; believed the
country to be "going to the dogs," and agreed with the Duke of Wellington,
when he exclaimed, upon seeing the first railway train in progress, "There
goes the English aristocracy!"
For these men, and for the amateur coachees who during the Regency had
occupied the box-seats of the foremost stages, this last period of
coaching represented everything that was healthful and manly, and when the
last wheel had turned, and the ultimate blast from the guard's bugle had
sounded; when the roadside inn and its well-filled stables became
deserted; and when the few remaining coachmen, post-boys, and ostlers had
either accepted situations with the railway companies or had gone into the
workhouse, a glamour clothed the by-gone dispensation that has lost
nothing with the lapse of time. The pity is that these thorough-going
admirers of days as dead as those of the Pharaohs were so largely "mute,
inglorious Miltons," and have left so small a record of their stirring
times awheel.
[Sidenote: _AN OLD COACHMAN TALKS_]
One of the last coachmen on this road was interviewed by a local paper
some years ago, and the inclusion here of his reminiscences is
inevitable. The "Last of the Old Whips" they called him:--
"He was sitting by a blazing fire, in a cheerful, pleasant room, evidently
enjoying a glass of 'something hot' in the style that 'Samivel's father'
would have thoroughly appreciated. But truth compels us to add that he had
evidently seen better days, and that the comforts with which he was now
temporarily surrounded had been strangers to him many a long day. Yet
there were many still living who remembered 'young Sam Carter' as a
dashing whip, who knew a good team when he sat behind them, and had
handled the ribbons in a most workmanlike fashion. But the old fire and
energy are still unquenched, either by the lapse of years or the pressure
of hard times, and the veteran gladly gives the rein to memory and spins a
yarn of the old coaching days.
[Sidenote: _REMINISCENCES_]