Inn, that stands so boldly and with such a fine last-century air on the
hill brow, they opened a tumulus which was found to contain, at a depth of
only eighteen inches, the well-preserved skeletons of sixteen men, the
victims of some prehistoric fray. Their feet were all placed towards the
east, and in the skull of one was found the iron head of a spear. Who were
these vanquished soldiers in a forgotten fight? Were they Belgae? Surely
not. Were they Christianized Saxons, slain in battle with Pagan vikings,
marauders from over sea? This seems more likely than any other theory.
That they were Christians appears certain from the position of their
skeletons, east and west; that they fell in battle is evident from the
silent testimony of the spear-head.
Down goes the road in a long steady slope, flanked by the great forts of
Purbrook and Widley, whose dingy red-brick walls and embrasures command
the entrance to the harbour. Away, to right and left, for a distance of
seven miles, runs a succession of these forts, from Fareham to Purbrook,
cresting the ridge of the long hill, connected by telegraph, and furnished
with extensive barrack accommodation.
Cosham village comes next, crouching at the foot of the ridge, with the
great guns high overhead to the rearwards: Cosham, neither town nor
village; busy enough for a town, sufficiently quaint for a village; with a
railway-crossing barring the road; a station adjoining it; the tramp of
soldiers re-echoing, and the blare of bugles familiar in the ears of the
people all day and every day.
[Sidenote: _SUBURBS_]
These are suburbs indeed, with the beginnings of pavements and the
terminus of a tramway that runs from here, a distance of three miles, to
Portsmouth itself. We cross over the bridges that span salty channels,
oozy and redolent of ocean and sea-weed during the hours of ebb. Here we
are immediately confronted with the ceinture of forts that embraces the
towns and garrisons of Portsea Island in a ring of masonry, earthworks,
and steel. The fortifications straddle across the road on brick arches
containing Royal Engineers' stores, and ornamented with the device "18 VR
61," done in red brick upon yellow; and obsolete cannon, buried up to
their trunnions, guard the brickwork piers against the wear and tear of
traffic.
Now come Hilsea Barracks, with Hilsea Post Office opposite, and further
on, opposite the "Green Posts" Inn, an obelisk, marking the
eighteenth-century bounds of the borough of Portsmouth, with the
inscription, "Burgi de Portesmuth Limes MDCCXCIX. Rev. G. Cuthbert
praetore." And so by stages through North End into Landport, past
ever-growing settlements and suburban wildernesses where new-built rows of
hutches miscalled villas look out upon market-gardens and those forlornest
of fields already marked out for "building sites," but still innocent of
houses; where builders' refuse cumbers the ground, and where muddy pools,
islanded with piles of broken and slack-baked bricks, and wrinkled into
furious wavelets by the blusterous winds, resemble miniature seas in which
(to aid the resemblance) lie the discarded iron pots and kettles of
Portsmouth households, their spouts and handles rising above the waters
like the vestiges of so many wrecked ironclads.
Successive eras of suburb-rearing are most readily to be noted. First come
the red-bricked suburbs still in the making; then those of the '60's and
the '70's, brown-bricked and grey-stuccoed; and then the settlements of a
period ranging from 1840 to 1860, contrived in a fashion fondly supposed
to represent Italian villas, characteristically constructed of lath and
plaster now very much the worse for wear, but at one time wearing a
spick-and-span appearance that would have delighted Macaulay, to whom the
sight of a row of "semi-detached suburban residences" gave visions of
progress and prosperity that seem to us inexpressibly vulgar. The sight of
wealthy tradesfolk and of plutocratic contractors seems to have warmed
Macaulay into an enthusiasm which became eloquent in enlarging upon the
rows of villas that encircle every great town. To him the ostentatious
surroundings of the despicable rogues--the typical contractors of the
early and mid-Victorian epoch--who contracted to supply hay and fodder for
our armies in the Crimea, and forwarded in their consignments a large
proportion of bricks and rotten straw--the vulgar display of men of this
stamp recalled the most prosperous times of the ancient Romans, and was
therefore to be approved. But these men have long since left their
lath-and-plaster fripperies for a place where (let us hope) their bricks
and their rotten straw will be remembered against them, and their
descendants have mounted on the heaps of their inherited money to a very
high social scale indeed. The eligible residences themselves, with their
"grounds," are mostly to be let, and the firesides across which unctuous
purveyors and middlemen and their wives grinned at one another and ate
buttered toast at tea-time, and drank "sherry wine" at night, are cold.
Following upon this suburban stratum come the egregious houses of the
Regency period: pseudo-classic houses these, bay-windowed and approached
by steep flights of stone steps surmounted by ridiculously skimpy little
porches, with attenuated neo-classic pillars and pediments, done in wood.
Some of these are gone--pulled down to make room for shops--and doubtless
many more will shortly go the same way. Let us hope one or two will be
preserved for all time, for, although by no means beautiful, they are
interesting as tending to show the manners of a period now removed from us
by nearly a century; the taste in domestic architecture of a time when the
First Gentleman in Europe ruled the land.
[Sidenote: _'ROADS' v. 'STREETS'_]
Here, where we come into Landport, we also come into the less affected
region of "streets." In the newer suburbs nothing less than "roads" will
serve the turn of the jerry-builder; his ambitious phraseology soars far
above what he thinks to be the more plebeian "street"; but perhaps, after
all, he is wise in his generation, and is amply justified by the
preferences of his clients; and if that is the situation, let us by all
means condole with him as a much-maligned man, who does not what he would,
but what he must.
Here, too, in these beginnings of the old town, shops jostle villas with
"grounds," and they in turn elbow artisans' dwellings, where children
swing with improvised swings of clothes-lines on the railings, and
manufacture mud-pies in the "gardens"; sticking them afterwards upon the
shutters of those ultimate shops of the suburbs which seem to be in a
chronic state of bankruptcy, and hold out no hopes of a living for the
pioneer butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers who, having served the
purpose and gone the way of all pioneers, leave them richer in experience
but light of pocket.
It was in these purlieus that Charles Dickens was born, at 387 Mile End
Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, on February 7, 1812; the son of Mr.
John Dickens, Navy pay-clerk, who is supposed to be portrayed in the
character of Micawber--no flattering portraiture of a father by his son.
Writers who have fallen under the spell of Dickens have tried to do some
sort of poetic representation of his birthplace; and, truth to tell, they
have failed, because there never was any poetry at all about the
place,--and probably never will be any, so long as its scrubby brick front
and paltry fore-court last: while as regards Dickens himself, he was a
very excellent business man among authors, and as little poetic as can
well be imagined.
XXXVII
[Sidenote: _PORTSMOUTH TOWN HALL_]
Landport left behind, one came, until within only a comparatively few
years ago, upon Portsmouth town through a series of ditches, scarps,
counterscarps, bastions, and defensible gates. They are all swept away
now, as being obsolete, and where they stood are parks and barracks,
military hospitals, and open spaces devoted to drilling. The surroundings
of Portsmouth are, in fact, very modern, and probably the most ancient
edifice here is the High Level railway station: a class of building which
age has no power to render venerable. The latest effort of modernity is to
be seen from this point in the Town Hall, of which every inhabitant of the
allied towns of Portsmouth, Southsea, Gosport, and Landport is
inordinately proud. And if size should count for anything, they have cause
for pride in this municipal effort; for Portsmouth Town Hall is
particularly immense. This is no place in which to enlarge upon its
elephantine dimensions, nor to specify how many hundreds of feet its tower
rises above the pavement; but it may be noted that it is a second-hand
design, having been closely copied from the Town Hall of Bolton, in
Lancashire. The architectural purist is at a loss how to describe its
architecture; for it is neither good Classic nor passable Renaissance,
although it partakes of the nature of both: it is, in view of the number
of municipal buildings put up in this fashion over the country during the
last forty years or so, perhaps best described as belonging to the
Victorian Town Hall order of architectural design; and that seems to me a
perspicuous definition of it. It has, however, an advantage that Bolton
altogether lacks. The sooty atmosphere of that dingy manufacturing town
has clothed the surface of its Town Hall with a mantle of grime, until the
building, from topmost pinnacle to pavement level, is, to use a
colloquialism, "as black as your hat." The fresh breezes that blow over
Portsmouth at least spare its Town Hall this indignity, and the design,
such as it is, seems as fresh to-day as when the building was first
inaugurated.
In Leland's time Portsmouth was "mured from the est toure a forelonge's
lengthe, with a mudde waulle armid with tymbre, whereon be great pieces
both of yron and brassen ordinauns"; and in later ages these primitive
defences had expanded into great bastions and massive walls, in which were
no less than six gates. When the military authorities dismantled these
town walls, with the gates and the fortifications, they did away at once
with a great deal of inconvenience and annoyance experienced by the civil
population of Portsmouth in being cooped up within bounds at night, and by
their reforming zeal destroyed the greater part of the interest with which
strangers viewed this old stronghold.
To-day one obtains too little historic colour in the streets of the old
town. The "Blue Posts," where the midshipmen stayed and joked and
quarrelled, was burned down in 1870, and the "Fountain" is now a Home for
Sailors, conducted upon strictly non-alcoholic lines, and Broad Street,
which was at one time so very, very lively a place, has declined from the
riotous days of yore into a more or less sedate old age. The inns with
which it abounded are still there, but how altered their custom, their use
and wont, from the hard-drinking, hard-swearing, hard-fighting days of
old!
One may look back upon those old days with regret for a vanished
picturesqueness and yet not wish them back; may know that the sailor who
drinks cocoa and banks his wages in the Post-office Savings Bank is better
off and immeasurably happier than his ancestor who, if he survived to
receive any pay at all, squandered it instantly upon all conceivable
kinds of drink and debauchery, and yet can see that his was by far the
most interesting figure. It is the same with the ships of the navy. No one
will contend that life was healthier upon the old wooden line-of-battle
ships than it is on the modern ironclads of the fleet; not a single voice
could be raised in favour of the dim and dirty orlop-decks of the old
men-o'-war, in comparison with the light, airy, and roomy quarters on
board our battle-ships of to-day; and yet there is scarce an Englishman
who does not heartily regret the old three-deckers that rode the waves so
gallantly, whose tier over tier of guns rose high above the waves and made
a braver show than ever the "iron pots" of modern times can do.
[Sidenote: _OLD AND NEW_]
The old-time aspect of Portsmouth is gone for ever. An almost complete
transformation has taken place in appearance, in thought, and manner in
little over a century, and where the body of Jack the Painter hung, high
as Haman, from a lofty gallows on Blockhouse Beach, no criminals swing
to-day. Even the "cat," that instrument of discipline, too barbarous to be
honoured even by immemorial usage, no longer flays the backs of A.B.'s,
and is relegated to the cold shades of a museum, to rest beside such
long-out-of-date instruments of torture as the branks and the
thumb-screws.
But, tide what will betide, a fine martial-naval air clings about the old
town, and will last while a bugle remains to be blown or a pennant is left
to be hoisted. The salt sea-breezes still bluster through the narrow
streets; the dockyard clangs louder, longer, busier than ever; the tramp
of soldiers echoes; the boom of cannon peals across the waters, and God's
Englishmen are ready as ever they have been, and ever will be; though out
yonder at Spithead and in foreign waters their forebears have strewed the
floor of the sea with their bones, and though, with treacherous iron and
steel beneath their feet while afloat, they may at any moment, be it peace
or war, be sent to the bottom to join the ill-fated ships' companies of
the "Mary Rose," the "Royal George," the more recent "Captain,"
"Eurydice," "Atalanta," or "Victoria."
Here, where the stone stairs lead down into the water, is Portsmouth
Point. Mark it well, for from this spot have embarked countless fine
fellows to serve King and country afloat. What would we not give for a
moment's glimpse of "Point" (as Portsmouth folk call it, with a brevity
born of every-day use) just a hundred years ago? Fortunately the genius of
Rowlandson has preserved for us something of the appearance of Portsmouth
Point at that time, when war raged over nearly all the civilized world,
when wooden ships rode the waves buoyantly, when battles were the rule and
peace the exception.
[Sidenote: _A PATHETIC FIGURE_]
The Point was in those days simply a collection of taverns giving upon the
harbour and the stairs, whence departed a continuous stream of officers
and men of the navy. It was a place throbbing with life and
excitement--the sailors going out and returning home; the leave-takings,
the greetings; the boozing and the fighting, are all shown in
Rowlandson's drawing as on a stage, while the tall ships form an
appropriate background, like the back-cloth of a theatrical scene. It is a
scene full of humour. Sailors are leaning on their arms out of window; a
gold-laced officer bids good-bye to his girl while his trunks are being
carried down to the stairs; a drunken sailor and his equally drunken woman
are belabouring one another with all the good-will in the world, and a
wooden-legged sailor-man is scraping away for very life on a fiddle and
dancing grotesquely to get a living. He is a funny figure, you say; but,
by your leave, it seems to me that he is only a figure of a very great
pathos. Belisarius, over whom historians have wept as they recounted his
fall and his piteous appeals for the scanty charity of an obolus, was but
a rascally Roman general who betrayed his trust and became a peculator of
the first magnitude; and he deserved his fate. But here is a poor devil
who has been maimed in battle and left to earn his bread by playing the
fool before a crowd of careless folk, happy if he can excite their
compassion to the extent of a stray sixpence or an occasional drink. No:
his is not a funny figure.
[Illustration: DANCING SAILOR.]
XXXVIII
The old coach offices clustered about this spot. Several stood in Bath
Square, and here, among others, was the Old Van Office, kept by Uriah
Green. The vans were similar to the stage-coaches, but much larger and
clumsier, and jogged along at a very easy pace. They took, in fact, from
fifteen to sixteen hours to perform the journey under the most favourable
circumstances, and in bad weather no one ventured to prophesy at what time
they _would_ arrive.
The fares were, consequently, very much lower than those of the swifter
coaches, which stood at L1 1_s._ 0_d._ inside, and 12_s._ 6_d._ outside.
One might, on the other hand, take a trip from Portsmouth to London on the
outside of a van for 6_s._ 6_d._ The cheapness of these conveyances caused
them to be largely patronized by blue-jackets. One van left Portsmouth at
four p.m. every day for the "Eagle," City Road, London, arriving there at
about seven or eight o'clock the next morning, and another left the
"Eagle" for Portsmouth at the same time.
[Sidenote: _ROAD TRAVEL_]
This was at the beginning of the present century, and was a vast
improvement upon the still older, clumsier, and infinitely slower
road-wagons. Thirty-five years earlier (_circa_ 1770), even the quickest
stages were no speedier than the vans. For instance, at that time the
"Royal Mail" started daily from the "Blue Posts" at two p.m., and only
arrived in London at six o'clock the next morning. Then came Clarke's
"Flying Machine," which was so little like flying that it did the journey
only in a day, leaving the "King's Arms" Inn, Portsmouth, every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday night at ten o'clock, and returning on alternate
nights.
In 1805 the number and the speed of coaches were considerably augmented.
Among them were the "Royal Mail," from the "George"; the "Nelson," from
the "Blue Posts"; the "Hero," from the "Fountain"; the "Regulator," from
the "George"; and Vicat and Co.'s speedy "Rocket," that started from the
"Quebec" Tavern, and did the journey to town in nine hours. It was at this
period that a local bard was moved to verse by the astonishing swiftness
of the coaches, and this is how he sings their prowess:--
"In olden times, two days were spent
'Twixt Portsmouth and the Monument;
When Flying Diligences plied,
When men in Roundabouts would ride,
And at the surly driver's will,
Get out and climb each tedious hill.
But since the rapid Freeling's age,
How much improved the _English Stage_!
Now in ten hours the London Post
Reaches from Lombard Street our coast."
Prodigious! But when the railway was opened from Portsmouth to Nine Elms
in 1840, and did the journey in three hours, there were, alas! no votaries
of the Muse to celebrate the event.
That year witnessed the last of the old coaching days upon the Portsmouth
Road, so far, at least, as ordinary travellers were concerned. Some few,
particularly conservative, still elected to travel by road; and, as may
be seen from the appended copy of a Post-office Time-Bill, the
Postmaster-General put no trust in new-fangled methods of conveyance:--
GENERAL POST OFFICE.
THE EARL OF LICHFIELD, HER MAJESTY'S POSTMASTER-GENERAL.
London and Portsmouth Time-Bill.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
|Contractors'| | | | Time | |
| Names. | | | |Allowed.| |
|------------|--|---|-------|--------|--------------------------------|
| |In|Out| M.F. | H.M. |Dispatched from the General Post|
| | | | | |Office, the of , 184 , at|
| | | | | |by time-piece, at by clock.|
| | | | | |Coach No. { With time-piece|
| | | | | |sent out { safe, |
| | | | | | { No. to |
| | | | | |Arrived at the Gloucester |
| | | | | | Coffee-House at |
| | | |{ 13.0 | 1.35 |Arrived at Kingston at |
| | | |{ 4.0 }| |Esher |
| | | |{ 3.4 }| |Cobham |
|Chaplin and | | |{ 3.7 }| 1.25 |Arrived at Ripley at |
| Gray | | |{ 6.1 }| |Guildford |
| | | |{ 4.2 }| 1.18 |Arrived at Godalming at |
| | | |{ 2.1 }| |Mousehill |
| | | |{10.1 }| 1.32 |Arrived at Liphook at |
| | | |{ 8.3 | 1.3 |Arrived at Petersfield at |
| Wise | | | 7.4 | 57 |Arrived at Horndean at |
| | | | 5.6 }| |Cosham |
| Guy | | | 4.6 }| 1.20 |Arrived at the Post Office, |
| | | | | |Portsmouth, the of , 184 ,|
| | | | | |at by time-piece, at by |
| | | | | |clock. |
| | | | | | { Delivered time-piece|
| | | | | |Coach No. { safe, No. |
| | | | | |arrived { to |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------+
The time of working each stage, &c. Up-time allowed the same.
By Command of the Postmaster-General.
GEORGE STOW, Surveyor and Superintendent.
[Sidenote: _HER MAJESTY'S MAILS_]
This time-bill, quoted by Mr. Stanley Harris in his "Coaching Age," is
dated April 1841, and shows, by a side-light, the innate conservatism of
all Government institutions. At that time the London and South-Western
Railway--then called the London and Southampton--had been opened eleven
months, with a station at Portsmouth and a London terminus at Nine Elms,
yet her Majesty's mails still went by road, and at a pace scarcely
equalled for slowness among all the coaches of England. Nine hours and ten
minutes taken, at this late period, in journeying between London and
Portsmouth! Why, the Jehus of the Bath and Exeter Roads, the drivers of
the "Quicksilver" and the "Regulator," even, would have scorned this
jog-trot.
The present generation, which knows less of coaching times than of the
Wars of the Roses or any other equally far-removed period, will be puzzled
over the references to clocks and time-pieces in the bill printed above.
These time-pieces were served out at the General Post Office to all
mail-coaches. They were wound up and set going in correct time, and,
enclosed in a securely-fastened box to prevent its being tampered with,
one was handed to the guard of each mail leaving London. By means of his
time-piece the guard could check the progress of the mail, and could hurry
up the driver on an occasion. It was the guard's duty to deliver up his
time-piece on arrival at his destination, when the time shown by it was
entered by the postmaster, and any late arrivals notified to the
Postmaster-General.
[Sidenote: _REVIVALS_]
That august public functionary finally yielded to the pressure of
circumstances, and in 1842 her Majesty's mails went by rail instead of by
road. The Queen's highway was then lonely indeed, and it was not until
1875, when the coaching revival was already some twelve or thirteen years
old, that the revived "Rocket" coach was put on between London and
Portsmouth. It ran from the "White Horse" Cellars every Tuesday, Thursday,
and Saturday during the season, returning from the "George," Portsmouth,
on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In the earlier years of its running,
the "Rocket" made good time, taking eight and a half hours, up or down;
but its quickest time was made on the down journey during the season of
1881, when it left Piccadilly at 11.10 a.m., and reached Portsmouth at
seven p.m. == seven hours fifty minutes, inclusive of seven changes, as
against six changes in previous seasons. Captain Hargreaves was the bold
projector of this long-distance coach, and since his retirement from the
road none other has had the enterprise sufficient for so great an
undertaking. The Portsmouth Road has known no through coach since his
"Rocket" was discontinued. The Postmaster-General of this age of railways
is, however, about to try an interesting and important revival of the
old-time mail-coach along a portion of this route, as far as Guildford;
and it is understood that, should his venture prove successful, this
journey will be extended to Portsmouth. Meanwhile, night coaches will run,
carrying the Parcel mails, from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Guildford, going
by way of Epsom and Leatherhead. The reason for this reversion to old
methods is that the railway companies demand rates for the carriage of the
Parcel mails which, in the opinion of the Postal Department, are
excessive, amounting as they do to about fifty-five per cent. of the
gross receipts for the parcels carried. The coaches will leave London at
ten p.m., arriving at Guildford at two a.m.; while, from Guildford, branch
coaches will probably run, to serve the more remote country towns of
Surrey.
INDEX
Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 156-160, 235.
Abbot's Hospital, 59, 158, 235.
Abershawe, Jeremiah, 67-69.
Battersea Rise, 63.
Bere, Forest of, 1, 326, 327, 328.
Bowling Green House, 78.
Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 38.
Buriton, 20, 273, 285-294.
Butser Hill, 225, 295-297.
Byng, Admiral, 48-56.
Catherington, 320.
Chalton Downs, 225, 301, 320.