having visited Liphook, although we are not told by the meagre chronicles
of his remote age whether the King, who came here for sport in his Royal
Forest of Woolmer, stayed at an inn, nor, indeed, if there was any early
forerunner of the "Anchor" here in those times. Edward VI. passed down the
road to Cowdray, and Elizabeth, who was always "progressing" about the
country, and, like the Irishman, never seemed so much at home as when she
was abroad, halted here on her way to that princely seat, and put in a day
or so hunting in the Forest.
Beyond the fact that the "Merry Monarch" journeyed to Portsmouth and
stayed once at the "Castle" Inn, at Petersfield, we have no details of his
hostelries. He was in a hurry when he came thus far, and troubled the
Woolmer glades but little at any time. Queen Anne, who, after all, seems
rather less of a sportswoman than any other of our Queens, came to Liphook
and Woolmer for the express purpose of seeing the red deer whom her remote
ancestor, the Conqueror, "loved like a father"; and after her time royal
personages came thick and fast, like swallows in summer, and we find them
conferring a deathless fame upon the old inn by the feasts they ordered,
the pretty things they said, and the number of equipages they hired for
the conveyance of themselves and their trains towards the sea-coast. But
never was there in the history of the "Anchor" a more august company than
that assembled here in 1815, after Waterloo, when the Prince Regent,
journeying to Portsmouth to take part in the rejoicings and the reception
of the Allied Sovereigns, entertained at luncheon these crowned heads,
together with the Duchess of Oldenburg and Marshal Blucher. Afterwards
came William IV., who, when Duke of Clarence and Lord High Admiral, had
frequently stayed in the old house and taken his meals in the kitchen,
sitting sometimes, with commendable and endearing _bonhomie_, on the edge
of the kitchen table, gossiping with the landlord, and eating
bread-and-cheese with all the gusto and lack of ceremony of a hungry
plough-boy. The last royal personages to stay at the old inn were the
Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria, who walked in the garden or
showed themselves at the windows before the crowds who never failed to
obstruct the roads, eager for a glance at their future Queen.
I must confess, however, staunch Tory of the most crusted and mediaeval
type though I be, that all this array of sovereigns _in esse_ or _in
posse_ seems very dull, and bores me to yawning-point. With the exception
of those two royal brothers, George IV. and the Fourth William, they seem
not so much beings of flesh and blood as clothes-props and the deadly dull
and impersonal frameworks on which were hung so many tinselled dignities
and sounding titles. I turn with a sigh of relief to a much larger and a
great deal more interesting class of travellers who have found beneath the
hospitable roof of the "Royal Anchor" both a hearty welcome and the best
of good cheer; travellers who, however much we may like or dislike them,
were men of character who did not owe everything to the dignities to which
they were born; who, for good or ill, carved their own careers and have
left a throbbing and enduring personality behind them, while a king or a
queen is usually remembered merely by a Christian name and a Roman
numeral.
[Sidenote: _PEPYS_]
The guest-rooms of the "Royal Anchor" are called by regal names, and their
titles of "King," "Queen," "Crown," or "George" are blazoned upon the
doors with great pomp and circumstance; but as I have retired between the
sweet-smelling, lavender-scented sheets in one or other of the spacious
up-stair rooms and have dowsed the glim of my bedroom candle, I have
considered with satisfaction not so much that "Farmer George" and his
snuffy old _hausfrau_ may have slept here, as that the dearest of old
sinners and inconsequent gossips--I name Samuel Pepys--came to Liphook and
"lay here" o' nights, in receipt of many conjugal reproaches, I doubt not,
for certain gay vagaries, darkly hinted at with many "God forgive me's,"
in the pages of those confessions which men know by name as "Pepys'
Diary."
Mr. Samuel Pepys, Secretary to the Admiralty first, and amiable gossip
afterwards--although I fancy we generally reverse those titles to
recognition--was among those travellers who have left some sign of their
travels along these miles of heaths and open commons--this wildest
high-road in all England. Apart from his suburban trip to Putney, we find
the diarist chronicling journeys to and from Portsmouth.
On May 4, 1661, he left Petersfield. "Up in the morning," says he, "and
took coach, and so to Gilford, where we lay at the 'Red Lyon,' the best
inne, and lay in the room where the King lately lay in, where we had time
to see the Hospital, built by Archbishop Abbott, and the free schoole, and
were civilly treated by the Mayster.
"So to supper and to bed, being very merry about our discourse with the
Drawers" (as who should say the Barmen) "concerning the minister of the
towne, with a red face and a girdle.
"_5th, Lord's Day._ Mr. Creed and I went to the red-faced Parson's church,
and heard a good sermon of him, better than I looked for. Anon we walked
into the garden, and there played the fool a great while, trying who of
Mr. Creed or I could go best over the edge of an old fountaine well, and I
won a quart of sack of him. Then to supper in the banquet-house, and there
my wife and I did talk high, she against and I for Mrs. Pierce (that she
was a beauty), till we were both angry."
Seven years later, on August 6, 1688, to wit, Mr. Samuel Pepys was called
on business to Portsmouth, and Mrs. Pepys determined to go with him, at an
hour's notice. You may notice that Pepys says her readiness pleased him,
but that would seem to be a shameless want of frankness altogether unusual
in that Diary, wherein are set forth the secret thoughts and doings, not
altogether creditable to him who set them down so fully and freely.
[Illustration: SAMUEL PEPYS.]
[Sidenote: _WAYFARING_]
He did not travel as an ordinary commoner, being properly mindful of his
dignity as Secretary of a Government Department, a dignity, be it
observed, which it had been well if he had maintained more constantly
before him. Thus he was not a passenger in the Portsmouth "Machine," which
preceded the mail-coaches, but travelled in his own "coach" or "chariot,"
as he variously describes his private carriage. He would probably have
fared better, swifter, and more certainly if he had used the public
conveyance, but in that case we should have been the poorer by his
description of a journey in which his coachman lost his way for some hours
in the district between Cobham and Guildford, and the party came late
for dinner to the "Red Lion":--
"_August 6th, 1688._ Waked betimes, and my wife at an hour's warning is
resolved to go with me; which pleases me, her readiness.... To St. James's
to Mr. Wren, to bid him 'God be with you!' and so over the water to Fox
Hall; and then my wife and Deb. took me up, and we away to Gilford, losing
our way for three or four miles about Cobham. At Gilford we dined; and I
showed them the hospitall there of Bishop Abbot's, and his tomb in the
church; which, and all the rest of the tombs there, are kept mighty clean
and neat, with curtains before them. So to coach again, and got to
Lippook, 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. Here good, honest people; and after supper to bed.
"_7th._ To coach, and with a guide to Petersfield. And so," he says, "took
coach again back" after dinner, and "came at night to Gilford; where the
'Red Lyon' so full of people, and a wedding, that the master of the house
did get us a lodging over the way, at a private house, his landlord's,
mighty neat and fine: and there supped; and so" (the usual formula) "to
bed."
XXV
Another celebrated (or rather, notorious) person was used to lie here
frequently on his journeys between town and the Isle of Wight. "Liberty"
Wilkes had an estate at Sandown (_he_ calls it "Sandham"), and when he was
not busy agitating and be-devilling ministers in London, he was taking the
sea-breezes in the Wight and writing innumerable letters to his daughter,
Polly.
Statesmen must have breathed much more freely when the demagogue had left
London and they were rid for a while, however short, of "his inhuman
squint and diabolic grin." If we are to believe his contemporaries and the
portrait-painters, he was the ugliest man of his time, with the
countenance of a satyr, to match and typify the low cunning and the
obscenity of his crooked mind. "His personal appearance," wrote Lord
Brougham, "was so revolting as to be hardly human;" and, indeed,
apologists for Wilkes' character and appearance are singularly few among
historians in these days, when it is the fashion to review by-past
notorieties with the whitewash brush.
[Sidenote: _IMPIOUS REVELLERS_]
John Wilkes was born in 1727, and married, when in his twenty-second year,
a lady of considerable fortune, who afterwards separated from him, chiefly
owing to the disgust and abhorrence with which she looked upon his
dissolute habits and profligate acquaintances, amongst whom he counted
three of the most notorious rakes of the time, a time excelled in
profligacy only by the reign of Charles II. Shortly after this separation,
Wilkes joined a burlesque monastery, founded, amongst others, by those
three vicious creatures and notorious rakes, Lord Sandwich, Thomas Potter,
son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Sir Francis Dashwood. They
occupied the ruins of an old Cistercian monastery that still stands on
the banks of the Thames at Medmenham, and passed their time in a
blasphemous travesty of religion and the monastic life. The "Medmenham
Monks," they called themselves, but were known generally as the "Hell-Fire
Club."
[Illustration: JOHN WILKES.]
If the Earl of Sandwich was the champion _roue_, rake, and profligate of a
vicious age, certainly Wilkes almost bore away the distinction from him;
as we may judge from the result of the election amongst the Medmenham
revellers as to who should be chosen to take a place among the round dozen
who played a leading part in their midnight orgies.
The Earl of Sandwich, as the greater reprobate of the two, was chosen, and
Wilkes revenged himself upon the company by a practical joke, which
admirably illustrates the nature of their proceedings. "While the profane
revellers were feasting and uttering impious jests, Wilkes let loose, from
a chest wherein he was confined, a baboon dressed according to the common
representations of the Evil One. The moment chosen was during an
invocation addressed by Lord Sandwich to his master, the devil. The
consternation was indescribable. The terror communicated itself to the
baboon, which bounded about the room and finally lighted on Lord
Sandwich's shoulders, who in a paroxysm of terror recanted all he had been
saying, and, in an agony of cowardice, prayed to Heaven for mercy."
Some years later, in 1757, Wilkes entered Parliament as member for
Aylesbury, and became a supporter of the elder Pitt. When Pitt was in
opposition and the scandalously venal, corrupt, and utterly incompetent
ministry of Lord Bute misgoverned the country, Wilkes started the "North
Briton," a periodical satire, both in its contents and its title, upon
Scotchmen, who were then bitterly hated by the English, and upon the Scots
in Parliament and in politics, among whom Bute was the most prominent. The
persistent abuse which Wilkes showered upon the ministry had successfully
damaged the Government by the time that his forty-fourth number had been
published, and upon the appearance of the famous "Number 45," in 1763,
containing criticisms of the King's Speech, it was resolved to prosecute
him for seditious libel, to search his house, and to arrest himself, his
printers, and publishers.
[Sidenote: _'WILKES AND LIBERTY'_]
Wilkes desired nothing better than persecution. He was nothing of a
patriot, but only a vulgar schemer who worked for notoriety and gain, and
his craft, together with the inconceivable stupidity of the Government in
making a martyr of him, assured him of both. The warrants for his arrest
and for the seizure of his papers were declared illegal, and the numerous
actions-at-law which he brought against members of the Cabinet and
prominent officials in respect of those illegal proceedings, cost the
Government which defended them no less than L100,000. Wilkes now reprinted
"Number 45," and a majority in the House of Commons ordered the paper to
be burned by the common hangman, and on January 19, 1764, voted his
expulsion from the House, as the author of a scandalous and seditious
libel. He was convicted in the Court of King's Bench for having
re-published the obnoxious "Number 45," but did not present himself to
receive sentence. He fled, in fact, to France, and resided there for four
years, an outlaw. Twice he returned to England and unsuccessfully
petitioned an incredibly obstinate and stupid King for a pardon, which, it
is scarcely necessary to add, George III. refused to grant. On the second
occasion a general election was in progress, and this agitator then sought
re-election to Parliament, and stood for the City of London. Defeated in
the City, he issued his election address the following day as a candidate
for the county of Middlesex, and was returned triumphantly at the head of
the poll. "Wilkes and Liberty!" was now the popular cry, and the member
for Middlesex became more than ever the darling of the mob, the idol of
the populace. But the extraordinary stupidity of King, Court, and
Government, that had raised so utterly worthless and degraded a fellow as
Wilkes to this high pinnacle, kept him there by another expulsion from the
Commons, and by fines and imprisonment inflamed the anger of the crowd to
such a pitch that Benjamin Franklin said, with every appearance of
conviction, "that had Wilkes been as moral a man as the King, he would
have driven George III. out of his kingdom." So strong were prejudices in
favour of superficial morality in even that licentious age!
So sensible was Wilkes of the advantages conferred upon him by
imprisonment, that when the savage mob rescued him from the coach that was
conveying him to gaol, he escaped from them and gave himself up, rather
than lose the advertisement of an incarceration. He had his reward
subsequently, when, offering himself for re-election for Middlesex, he
was returned with an enormous majority over Colonel Luttrell. The House of
Commons, however, by a vain and impotent resolution, declared the latter
to have been duly elected, and now, chiefly by the aid of folly and
fortuitous circumstances, Wilkes found his fortunes identified with the
cause of the Constitution and the liberty of the subject. He was elected
Sheriff of London, and became in 1774 Lord Mayor, being returned as a
member for Middlesex in the same year, unopposed, and for the fifth time.
At this period the citizens of London conferred upon him the post of
Chamberlain of the City, a position of great profit and consideration,
which must have made amends for many inconveniences in the past.
And now, having attained all he could desire, Wilkes sank the patriot in
the courtier. "Hush! you old fool!" said he at this period to an old woman
who raised the stale cry of "Wilkes and Liberty" in the street; "that was
all over long ago;" and, upon his being presented at Court during his
Mayoralty, he made himself so agreeable to the King that the old Monarch
declared he had never met so well-bred a Lord Mayor! Wilkes, not to be
out-shone when compliments were going free, assured his Majesty that he
had never been a Wilkite; and so, as in the fairy tales, "they lived
happily ever afterwards."
[Sidenote: _CORRESPONDENCE_]
Wilkes is seen to best advantage in his letters to his daughter. In them
he dropped the turgid vehemence which characterized his public utterances,
and became a quiet, mildly humorous gossip, concerned deeply about all
manner of insignificant domestic details, the incidents of his journeys,
and his sojournings in town or country. But from time to time the leer of
the elderly satyr is seen in this correspondence, and passages are not
infrequent in which the most frank and unlooked-for things, as between
father and daughter, may be read. But you shall judge for yourself.
He writes from Newport, Isle of Wight, on June 9, 1772:--
"MY DEAREST POLLY,
"I arrived at Cobham on Sunday before twelve, and dined, like a sober
citizen, by one; then sauntered through the elysium of Mr. Hamilton's
gardens till eight in the evening, like the first solitary man through
Paradise; and afterwards went to bed before ten. Yesterday I got to
Guildford by eleven, and paid my compliments to our good friend, Mrs.
Waugh and her family: reached Portsmouth at five."
At a later date he writes from "Sandham" (Sandown) Cottage, a country
retreat which he occupied frequently in these latter days, and several
references to the Portsmouth Road occur from time to time, as he journeyed
between Sandham Cottage and Prince's Court, London. He lay generally at
the "Anchor," Liphook, where the landlady, Mrs. Keen, "dull and sour"
though she might have been, according to one of Wilkes' letters, seems to
have made the triumphant demagogue and his daughter sufficiently
comfortable. Writing on September 14, 1788, he says:--
"MY DEAREST POLLY,
"I arrived at Sandham yesterday afternoon at three, after a lucky
passage of an hour and five minutes. There was very little wind, and
that quite adverse. I therefore hired for four-and-sixpence a wherry
with two oars not larger than a Thames boat, and committed myself to
our English deity, Neptune, who favourably heard my prayers. The
opposition of a little wind to the tide at high water made the
beginning of this long voyage rather rough; but the rest was
exceedingly pleasant.
"The preceding day I lay at Liphook, and directed Mrs. Keen to send
you this week a fine goose, and a brace of partridges....
"The road from Guildford quite to Portsmouth is really enchanting. But
I wanted you to enjoy with me these glorious scenes of Nature. I hope,
however, that the quiet of your present situation" (Miss Wilkes was
visiting the Duchess de la Valliere) "has chased away your feveret,
and restored you to sweet sleep, Nature's best nurse. Pray send me
such welcome news."
And then this agitator and sometime blasphemous member of the Medmenham
Hell-Fire Club goes on to write verses appreciative of the scenery on the
Portsmouth Road. In this wise:--
"Ever charming, ever new,
The landscape never tires the view:
The verdant meads, the river's flow,
The woody vallies warm and low;
The windy summit, wild and high,
Roughly rushing on the sky:
The pleasant seat, the ruin'd tower,
The naked rock, the shady bower;
The town and village,"----
But enough, enough. This "poetry" is but journalism cut into lengths and
rhymed.
[Sidenote: _WILKES AS CRITIC_]
We find Wilkes as a _poseur_ on literature in one of these entertaining
letters to "dearest Polly." He indites from his cottage of Sandham a June
letter wherein he says how impatient he is for "the descending showers to
call forth all Nature's sweets, and waken all her flowers, for the earth
is as thirsty as Boswell, and as cracked in many places as he certainly is
in one. His book, however, is that of an entertaining madman. Poor
Johnson! Does a friend come and add to the gross character of such a man
the unknown trait of disgusting gluttony? I shall bring his two quartos
back with me, and will point out numberless mistakes; but there are many
excellent things in them. I suspect, not unfrequently, a mistake in the
_Dramatis Personae_. He has put down to _Boswell_ what was undoubtedly said
by _Johnson_; what the latter did, and what the former could not say. The
motto to his book should have been the two lines of Pope,
'Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And if he lies not, must at least betray.'"
But he has a playful and somewhat engaging style of writing, on occasion.
Perpend:--
"_'Anchor,' at Liphook,
"Friday Afternoon, July 8, 1791._
"MY DEAREST POLLY,
"I have found the tench here so remarkably delicate, that nothing
could add to their flavour on a certain Alderman's palate but the
eating them in your company. They were, indeed, exquisite, and I see a
brace playing about, which seem to promise equally. I have therefore
spoiled their sport in the watery element, and as they set out this
evening, before ten, it is thought they will arrive in Grosvenor
Square to-morrow morning, in time for you to decide, at four, if their
personal merit is equal to that of their late companions. Two little
feathered folks, young and tender, of the same farm, accompany them in
their journey, and I hope are not unworthy of being _croques_.
"My best compliments to the nymph of the bosquets in Grosvenor Square.
"Adieu!"
The inclemency of the merry month of May is not of modern date, for
Wilkes, who had been travelling from Grosvenor Square to Sandown on the
sixth of that treacherous month, in the year of grace 1792, found a fire
at the hospitable "Anchor" as welcome as fires generally are in dreary
autumn.
"After I left Grosvenor Square," he says, "quite to Liphook, it rained
incessantly, and I enjoyed a good fire there as much as I should have done
on a raw day of the month of November. I found the spring very backward,
except in the immediate environs of London; and nothing but a little
purple heath and yellow broom to cheer the eye in the long dreary extent
from Guildford to Liphook."
[Sidenote: _TRAVELLING EXPERIENCES_]
Some few days later, he writes a gossipy letter to his daughter, full of
little domestic details, most strange and curious to find flowing from
the pen of Liberty Wilkes. We find, for instance, "that the gardener's
wife increases in size almost as much as his pumpkins," and that "there
are thirteen pea-fowls at the cottage, between whom some solemn
gallantries are continually passing; and the gallinis are as brisk and
amorous as any French _petits-maitres_. The consequences I foresee.
'Un et un font deux,
C'est le nombre heureux,
En galanterie, mais quelquefois,
Un et un font trois.'"
On another occasion we learn that "the farmers are swearing, the parsons
praying, for rain; neither hopeful of any result until the weather
changes." About this time--on July 7, 1793--Mr. Wilkes has been returning
along the Portsmouth Road from London to the Isle of Wight. He found the
dust and heat almost overpowering, and the highway crowded with recruits,
both for army and navy, who were no small inconvenience to his progress.
Portsmouth was full of warlike preparations, Lord Howe expecting to sail
the same day with a fleet of twenty sail, perfectly well-conditioned, and
the men in high spirits at the prospect of coming to blows with the
French.
Similarly, the next year, he found the July heat almost beyond endurance.
"I almost melted away," he tells Polly, "from the extreme of a suffocating
heat before I arrived at Cobham, and a large bowl of lemonade was scarcely
sufficient to wash away the dust, which I had been champing for above
three hours." A Mr. Hervey, "brother-in-law to Mr. Lambe, a silversmith,
and Common Councilman of my ward," was at that time landlord of the "White
Hart," at Cobham. "I was well used by him," says Wilkes, "and the house
has a very decent appearance, but the poor fellow had tears in his eyes
when he told me of thirty-five horse quartered on him." When he reached
Liphook, what with two hounds, chained together in the outhouses of the
"Anchor," yelping all night, and the intolerable heat, the patriot had no
sleep the livelong night, and so resorted to his post-chaise and departed
for Portsmouth at an early hour of the morning.