stream of poorer wayfarers added to the bustle. Poor folk took a
shake-down, with what grace they might summon up, in some clean straw on
the floor of outhouses and barns, and in this manner slept the sailor-men
who were continually tramping up the road or down. Not that sailors were
necessarily poor, but the bedrooms that held royalty were judged to be
above the tastes and circumstances of poor Jack, to whom, certainly, clean
straw in a barn would seem at any rate infinitely better than the gloomy
forecastle which he had just left.
[Sidenote: _DECADENCE_]
But if the sailors a hundred years ago, or thereby, were denied the
luxuries of sheets and coverlets, they were free to drink as much as they
pleased at the public bar, so long as they had the wherewithal to settle
the score. Rowlandson, who travelled this very road, has left a sketch of
"Sailors Carousing," by which you can see that Jack was, at any rate,
not one of Luther's fools, for the picture shows that he loved "women,
wine, and song" to a riotous extent. And Jack come home from a long
cruise, with prize-money in his pockets, was as ostentatious as any
_nouveau riche_. He would damn expense with any lord, and has been known
to call for sandwiches at the "Anchor" to place five-pound notes between,
and to eat the whole with an insane bravado.
[Illustration: SAILORS CAROUSING. _From a Sketch by Rowlandson._]
Those brave days were done when the railway came and left the roads silent
and deserted. Old inns sank into obscurity and neglect, and for many years
afterwards the sight of a solitary stranger wanting a bed for the night
would have aroused excitement in a place where, in the old days, one more
or less was a matter of little import. The "Anchor" for a time shared the
fate of its fellows, and its condition in 1865 is eloquently pictured by
the Hon. Grantley Berkeley. He says--
"I was travelling about the country, and it so happened that railway time,
as well as inevitable time, chose to make me
'The sport of circumstances, when
Circumstances seemed most the sport of men,'
and I found myself belated and tired in the vicinity of the little rural
village of Liphook, on the borders of Hampshire and Surrey, and forced by
time and circumstances to put up at a well-known inn.
"Now, time was when no traveller would have found fault with this, for the
inn I thus allude to was then the great posting and coaching house of 'the
road,' and the roar of wheels and the cries of 'first and second turn
out,' either 'up or down,' rang through the merry air, and kept the
locality in loud and continuous bustle, night and day. Now, however, the
glory of the roadside inn was gone; its site seemed changed to grief, and
the great elm tree[4] that had formerly during the heat of summer shed a
cooling shade over panting steeds and thirsty, dusty-booted men,
luxuriously grasping a fresh-drawn tankard of ale, stood sorrowing over
the grave of the posting and coaching trade, a tearful mourner on every
rainy day.
"There were the long ranges of stables, once filled by steeds of every
step and temper, curious specimens of every blemish under the sun. Some
that ran away the whole way, others that would be run away with by the
rest of the team; some that kept the whip in action to send them to the
collar, and others that kept the whip still, lest its touch should shut
them up to stopping, and give them no collar at all.
"These stables were a melancholy sight to me. They reminded me of my own.
Where, in my full stalls, twenty goodly steeds used to feed, little else
than a mouse stirs now; and that mouse may be a ghost for all I know,
haunting the grave of the last oat eaten a quarter of a century ago. In
this long line of disused stabling I paused. There was a thin cat there,
deceived to expectation by the long-deserted hole of a rat. A broken
broom, covered with very ancient cobwebs, lay under one manger, and the
remnants of a stable-bucket under another. Farmers came in and farmers
went out occasionally and tied up their horses anywhere; so that all the
tumbling-down stalls were dirty, and the whole thing given up to dreary
desolation.
[Sidenote: _RUSTIC CATERING_]
"A musing and a melancholy man, I left the stables, went into the house,
and called for dinner and a bed. No smart waiter, with a white napkin
twisted round his thumb, came forth to my summons; the few people in the
house looked like broken-down farming-men and women, and seemed to be
occupied in the selfish discussion of their own tap.
"'Yes,' they said, as if astonished by the unwonted desire for such
refreshment, 'I _could_ have a bed; and what would I like for dinner?'
"Now, that question was very well for them to ask, when they knew its
meaning to be very wide; but the real dilemma was, what could they get to
set before me? a point on which I at once desired information. 'A fowl.'
'What, ready for dressing?' 'Oh yes, quite.' Spirit of Ude--that King of
Cooks (when he chose it)--if you still delight in heat, then grill these
people; or when you 'cook their goose,' teach them to know the difference
between a fowl hung for a time and picked for the spit, and a poor dear
old chuckie, seated at roost in all her feathers, and 'ready' certainly;
for her owner has only to clutch her legs and pull her screaming from her
perch, to roast or boil, and send her, tough, to table.
"Well, up came my hen at last, flanked by some curious compound, dignified
by the name of sherry, which I exchanged for some very nearly as bad
spirits and water; when, having gone through the manual--not the
mastication--of a meal, I walked forth, and mused on the deserted garden
and paddock in the rear of all; and in the dusky hue of night fancied that
I saw the shadows of galled and broken-kneed posters limping over the
grass to graze, as no doubt they had done in former times. In short, dear
reader, from this last retrospection, hallucination, or what you will, I
regained mine inn, and, calling for a candle, went to bed."
There is a sad picture of decadence for you! But in two years' time all
this was changed, for in 1867 the present landlord, Mr. Peake, took the
fortunes of the old house in hand, and restored, as far as possible, the
old-time dignity of the place. He has brought back many of the glories of
the past, and still reigns. I have met many sorts of hosts, but none of
them approach so nearly the ideal as he, to whom the history and the care
of this fine old inn are as much a religion as the maintenance of their
religious houses was to the old monks of pre-Reformation days. And no post
more delightful than this, which gives one fresh air, leisure for
recreation, and nearly all the advantages of the country gentleman, to
whom, indeed, mine host of the "Anchor" most closely approximates in look
and speech. Long may the pleasant white face of the "Anchor" be turned
towards the village street, and, friend Peake, may your shadow, with the
grateful shade of the glorious chestnut tree that fronts your hostelry,
never grow less!
XXVI
[Sidenote: _MILLAND_]
Leaving Liphook, where, in the coaching revival of the '70's, Captain
Hargreaves' "Rocket" coach between London and Portsmouth stopped forty
minutes for lunch, we take to the road again, and come presently to
Milland Common. This is splendid galloping ground, and coaches always made
good time here, both in the old times and the new. Half-way across the
Common (being, not coach-passengers, but merely pedestrians whose time is
their own) we will step aside to investigate the two
ecclesiastical-looking buildings that are seen between and beyond the
trees on the left hand. Here, then, are the two chapels of Milland, with
the adjoining "habitable parsonage," to quote the somewhat vague
description of the "Clergy List." The new chapel, opened in 1880, although
a fair specimen of modern work and the design of the late architect of the
Royal Palace of Justice in London, is uninteresting; but the old,
barn-like building that served the scattered inhabitants of Milland so
many years and yet remains beside its modern successor, is worthy a
glance, if only for its extremely small and simple (not to say primitive)
design. It is so small that it could not conveniently contain a
congregation of more than fifty people; its plan, shaped like the letter
L, is surely unique, and altogether, the interior, with its plain high
pews and meagre pulpit, and its plastered, whitewashed walls, is of the
most unusual and secular appearance. Yet this diminutive building served
the needs of the place from the days of Edward VI. until recently, and to
it trudged on Sundays those of the Liphook folk who did not care to tramp
to their own distant church of Bramshott; and even some pious souls from
Rake (who, perhaps, valued public worship overmuch) performed a six-miles
journey hither and home again.
[Illustration: MILLAND CHAPEL.]
[Sidenote: _SELBORNE_]
But here let us leave the Portsmouth Road awhile for an expedition of some
five miles into the still wild and rarely-travelled tract of country in
whose midst lies the village of Selborne, memorable as the home, during
his long life, of that most amiable and placid student of Nature and her
works, the Rev. Gilbert White, D.D. When you have passed through the
village of Liss, you come at once into a broad expanse of country whose
characteristics resemble the typical scenes of Devonshire rather than
those of Hants. Swelling hills and fertile vales, still intersected by the
deeply-rutted lanes of which Gilbert White speaks, lead on to the
sequestered village of Selborne, as remote now from the rumours and
alarums of the outer world as when the naturalist penned his "Natural
History of Selborne," over a hundred years ago.
[Illustration: THE WAKES, _SELBORNE_]
The village occupies, with its few cottages, its church and vicarage, and
Gilbert White's home, "The Wakes," a long and narrow valley. The Hanger,
covered now as in White's time with his favourite tree, the beech, rises
at the back of the village street, and trees indeed abound everywhere,
coming even to aid the simple architecture of the place.
The butcher's shop at Selborne rests its front on three polled limes which
form living pillars to the roof, and give, apart from their rustic
appearance, a welcome shade and grateful coolness to that country shop in
the heats of summer. But the most remarkable tree in Selborne, as indeed
anywhere in Hampshire, is the noble churchyard yew, mentioned by the
naturalist, and still standing to the south-west of the church. This
remarkable tree has a circumference of twenty-five feet two inches at a
height of four and a half feet from the ground; it rises to a total height
of sixty-two feet, and its great branches spread a distance of twenty-two
yards from north to south. It is still in the perfection of good health,
and its foliage wears the dark and lustrous appearance characteristic of
the yew when in a thriving state. It must have been a remarkable tree even
in Gilbert White's time, and its age can only be counted by centuries.
[Sidenote: _GILBERT WHITE_]
The Wakes, where this simple soul lived so long, stands in the village
street, by the open grass-plot, familiar to readers of the "Natural
History" as the Plestor. Additions have been made to the house since
White's time, but so judiciously that its appearance is little altered.
His summer-house is gone to wreck, but the sunny garden, with its narrow
red-brick path, remains, and so does the American juniper tree, together
with the sculptured sun-dial, both set up by this quiet curate-in-charge.
His life in this quiet and isolated parish, wherein his observation of and
delight in the living things of garden and lane, hanger and pond, were
mingled with the duties of a country clergyman and the contemplative
recreations of the book-lover, was suave and untroubled. Of the events--so
to call them--of this calm and kindly life there is but a slender outline
to record. He was born here, at the Wakes, the residence of his father and
his grandfather before him, on July 18, 1720. Educated first at
Basingstoke, under the care of the Rev. Thomas Warton, father of Warton
the Poet Laureate, he was entered at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1739; took
his B.A. in 1743; obtained a Fellowship in the succeeding year, and the
degree of M.A. in 1746. He was ordained as a priest in 1747, and
subsequently served, it is said, as curate to his uncle, the Vicar of
Swarraton. He soon removed to Selborne, where he lived the remainder of
his days, dying here on June 26, 1793. It has been said that he accepted
the College living of Moreton Pinkney in Northamptonshire, but he
certainly never went into residence there, and refused other offers of
preferment. A Fellow of his College, he never forfeited his fellowship by
marriage, and he was never Vicar of Selborne, but only curate-in-charge.
His only regret seems to have been that he had no neighbours whose
pursuits resembled his own in any way. Thus, one of his letters records
the regret that it had been his misfortune "never to have had any
neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural
knowledge": to which he attributes his "slender progress in a kind of
information to which I have been tenderly attached from my childhood."
But it was owing to this seclusion and want of companionship that we are
become the richer, by his letters to Thomas Pennant and the Hon. Daines
Barrington, which have delighted successive generations. Little has come
down to us concerning the personal attributes of Gilbert White. No
portrait of him is known. We are told that he was a little man--some say
but five feet three inches in height--who wore a wig and rode on a pony to
Farringdon Church, where he officiated for a quarter of a century, or
ambled benignantly about the lanes and by-ways of the neighbourhood. In
one of his letters to a friend in Norfolk, he speaks of himself as riding
or walking about the parish "attended daily (for although not a sportsman
I still love a dog) by a beautiful spaniel with long ears, and a spotted
nose and legs," and watching the village folk "as they sit in grave debate
while the children frolic and dance before them." All that remains of his
memory in village traditions and recollections indicates the modest,
kindly nature of a courteous gentleman, such as peeps out from the pages
of the "Natural History of Selborne."
Selborne Church is a roomy and handsome building in the Transitional
Norman and Early English styles. It consists of a nave of four bays, a
south aisle, chancel, and massive western embattled tower. It has,
however, a somewhat unfortunate effect of newness, owing to the
restoration of 1883, when the south aisle was almost completely rebuilt,
under the direction of a grand-nephew of the naturalist--Mr. William
White, architect.
A memorial slab to the memory of Gilbert White is placed within the
altar-rails, on the south wall of the chancel, and records that he was the
son of John White, of Selborne, and Anne, daughter of Thomas Holt, Rector
of Streatham. Another tablet, on the north wall, records the death, in
1759, of John White, barrister-at-law; and an earlier Gilbert White, Vicar
of Selborne and grandfather of the more famous naturalist, lies in the
chancel, beneath a ledger-stone bearing the date 1727.
Gilbert White is buried in the churchyard, among the tall grasses and
waving wild-flowers, in a manner peculiarly fitting for that simple soul;
and his grave--one of a row of five belonging to the White family--has a
plain headstone, grey and lichened now, with the simple inscription, "G.
W., 26th June, 1793."
[Sidenote: _THE 'NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE'_]
It seems strange that so simple and uneventful a chronicle of the lives
and habits of familiar birds and "wee sma' beasties," together with the
plain records of sunshine and storm, rains and frosts, the blossoming of
flowers and the fall of the leaf, which the "Natural History of Selborne"
presents, should have attained so great and lasting a popularity. This
book is become as sure a classic as the "Pilgrim's Progress" or the
"Compleat Angler," and no one would have been more surprised at this
result of his patient labours, undertaken simply for the joy they gave
him, than old Gilbert himself. You see, in every page, nay, in every line,
that he wrote for himself and his friends alone, and not with an observant
eye upon the booksellers and their clients. Nay, more! Had he written
thus, we should have missed the better part of his book; the observation
of years, which thought nothing of profit for labour and time expended;
the just language, written without any cudgelling of the brain for effect,
and the homely incidents that make him live more surely than aught else.
You can claim Timothy the tortoise as a personal friend, and are thrilled
with the curious annals of the idiot boy whose strange appetite for
honey-bees excited the naturalist's sympathies, both for the bees and the
boy. Colonies might revolt and become the "United States"; French
Revolutions and other dreadful portents shake thrones and set the world in
arms, but Gilbert was a great deal more interested in the butcher birds,
and in predatory rats, than in soldiers or blood-boltered human tyrants.
The mid-day snoring of sleepy owls in the dusky rafters of some capacious
barn, the hum of the bees, the scream of the peewits, and the clattering
cabals of noisy starlings were more to him than instrumental music or the
disputes of parliaments. And so he lived an uninterrupted round for forty
years and died peacefully at last, happy and contented always, while
dwellers in towns, then as now, beat their hearts out in unavailing
ambitions and fruitless hatreds.
Ornithology owes much to Gilbert White's patient observations, and his
"Natural History" bids fair to become a possession for all time.
Numberless editions of it have been issued, annotated by men of science,
who have found little of import to add to his work; and other editions are
constantly in the making. But best monument of all is that association of
friends to birds and beasts, the Selborne Society, that, taking its name
from Gilbert White's old home, owns him as master in many branches and
local centres throughout England. When the centenary of the simple
naturalist's death was celebrated in 1893, the large attendance at
Selborne of members of the Society showed that here lies one whose memory
the lovers of nature and wild life will not willingly let die.
[Illustration: BADGE OF THE SELBORNE SOCIETY.]
XXVII
[Sidenote: _TOLL-HOUSES_]
Returning from this sentimental excursion to Selborne to the road at Rake,
the pedestrian will notice a singular old cottage with many angles,
fronting the highway. This is one of the old toll-houses left after the
abolition of turnpike trusts, and of the vexatious taxes upon road-travel
that only finally disappeared within comparatively recent years. Sixty,
nay fifty, years ago, there were six toll-houses and turnpike bars between
London and Portsmouth. They commenced with one at Newington, followed
closely by another at Vauxhall, and one more at the "Robin Hood," in
Kingston Vale. The next was situated at Cobham Street, and neither Cary
nor Paterson, the two great rival road-guides of coaching days, mention
another until just before Liphook. The next was at Rake, but, singularly
enough, neither of those usually unimpeachable authorities mention this
particular gate, which would appear to have been the last along this
route.
Just beyond the old toll-house, visible down the road in the illustration
of the "Flying Bull," comes the rustic public-house bearing that most
unusual, if not unique, sign. Here stands a grand wayside oak beside a
steep lane leading down into Harting Coombe, and the bare branches of this
giant tree make a most effective natural composition with the tiled front
of the inn and its curious swinging sign. The present writer inquired the
origin of the "Flying Bull" of a countryman, lounging along the road, and
obtained for answer the story that is current in these parts; which,
having no competing legend, may be given here for what it is worth.
"The 'Flying Bull,'" said the countryman. "Oh, aye, it _is_ a curious
sign, sure-ly. How did it 'riginate? Well, they _do_ say as how, years
ago, before _my_ time, they useter turn cattle out to graze in them
meadows down there;" and he pointed down the lane. "There wur a lot o'
flies in those meadows in summer at that time, and so there is now, for
the matter o' that. Howsomedever, when they turned them there cattle into
these here meadows, the flies made 'em smart and set 'em racing about half
mad. They _wur_ flying bulls; but 'tis _my_ belief it useter be the 'Fly
_and_ Bull' public-house.... Thankee, sir; yer health, I'm sure!"
[Illustration: THE "FLYING BULL" INN.]
The road now rises gradually to a considerable height, being carried along
the ridge of Rake Down, an elevated site now covered with large and
pretentious country residences, but less than fifty years ago a wide tract
of uncultivated land that grew nothing but gorse and ling, grass and
heather, and bore no houses. The view hence is peculiarly beautiful over
the wooded Sussex Weald, towards Midhurst, whose name, even now, describes
its situation amid woods. The hollow below is Harting Coombe, and the
neighbouring villages of Harting and Rogate recall the time when wild deer
roamed the oak woods and the jealously-guarded Chases of Waltham and
Woolmer.
[Illustration: THE "FLYING BULL" SIGN.]
[Sidenote: _THE 'JOLLY DROVERS'_]
Just beyond the long line of modern houses stands another roadside inn,
the "Jolly Drovers," planted 'mid capacious barns and roomy outhouses, at
the angle of another country lane, leading to Rogate. The "Jolly Drovers"
looks an old house, but it was built so recently as the '20's, by a frugal
drover named Knowles, who saw a profitable investment for his savings in
building a "public" at what was then a lonely spot called Shrubb's Corner.
[Illustration: THE "JOLLY DROVERS."]
And now, all the remaining five miles into Petersfield, the road goes
along a fine, healthy, breezy country, bordered for a long distance by
park-like iron fences and carefully-planted sapling firs, pines, and
larches. At a point three and a half miles distant from Petersfield comes
the hamlet of Sheet, where the road goes down abruptly between low, sandy
cliffs, and brings us into the valley of the Rother, here a tiny stream
that trickles insignificantly under a bridge, and rises, some three miles
away, behind Petersfield, amid the hills and hangers of Steep, on the
grounds of Rothercombe Farm, and then flows on through Sussex. The Sussex
and Hampshire borders have, indeed, followed the road nearly all the way
from Milland, but now we plunge directly into Hants. The character of the
country changes, too, almost as soon as we are over the line; the chalk
begins to replace the sand and gravel hitherto met, and the trees are
fewer. Only by Buriton and at Up Park, to the south, is there much
woodland; but at the latter place the deep shady copses and the ferny
dells where the red deer still browse are delightful. Up Park should hold
a place in the memory of loyal sportsmen, for it was here, long before
Goodwood was used as a running-ground, that many celebrated races were
held; and here the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., won his first
race, in 1784, when his "Merry Traveller" beat Sir John Lade's "Medly
Cut." And so into Petersfield.
XXVIII
[Sidenote: _PETERSFIELD_]