FARNHAM
The joining of the ways.--Georgian poke bonnets.--The Castle.--Kings
at Farnham.--Poet Soldiers.--A glorious battle.--The Bishop's
artillery.--Paradise and the Bull's Eye.--Izaak Walton.--Cobbett's
education.--An old alehouse.--Hopgrowers in difficulties.--King
Charles's cap.--Elmer's pheasants.
Westernmost of all Surrey towns, Farnham stands at the joining of the
ways. Traders from Cornwall, pilgrims from Winchester, horse-dealers
driving their ponies from Weyhill Fair, have met on the roads that run
into Farnham from the west and south and north. Farnham Castle, for
seven centuries a Bishop's palace, links Surrey to the See of
Winchester. The Farnham oasthouses and hop-grounds bridge the crossing
from the fertile Hampshire border to the Bagshot sands and the wild and
sterile moors of Frensham and Hindhead. The town, set in its cultured
plot of vines and flower-beds, with its historic castle, its tranquil
church, and the Wey watering the pastures under its walls, stands like a
garden between the military rigidity of Aldershot and the wind that
blows over the Thursley heather.
No town in Surrey has two such old and orderly main streets as Farnham.
Here and there modern taste for a noisy pattern has broken the quiet
level; a bank has piled up a huge building of timber, handsome but out
of keeping; the new Corn Exchange is out of keeping and hideous; and in
1866 municipal enterprise pulled down the old market house, which stood
at the junction of the main streets and was a fascinating little
building perched on pillars. But much that is ancient and simple in
square red brick remains. The plain, low-roofed houses, with their flat
facades and crumpled, lichened tiles, succeed one another down Castle
Street and West Street with a delightful monotony. The elaborate carved
and painted doorways, knockers, lunettes, doors and steps are quite a
model exhibition. The two streets wear a Georgian air of poke-bonnets
and long purse-strings. Or they are Georgian, at all events, once or
twice during the day; on a sunny morning before breakfast, perhaps, or
when, perhaps in the rain, the endless traffic of wheels quiets for an
hour. For Farnham stands on the high road from London, and the motor
cars chase the eighteenth century into the side-streets.
[Illustration: _Looking towards Farnham from Thursley Common._]
Farnham is mostly of one period, and searchers for very old architecture
will be disappointed. One of the oldest buildings in the town is a tiny
set of almshouses, whose lowly gables line the road under the castle
hill. They were built by Andrew Windsor, of the parish of Bentley in
Hampshire, in 1619, and were intended, as an inscription on the wall
informs you, "For the Habitation and Relief of eight poor Honest
Impotent Old Persons." Even with four epithets, the almoners seem to
find life supportable.
The greatest and the oldest building is, of course, the castle. It
stands nobly on a hill, towards which the street rises like a carriage
drive, ending in a flight of steps. Once it must have dominated the town
as a fortress, but since Cromwell broke down the keep, Farnham has
looked up at a quieter and more episcopal pile--a fine gateway tower,
built by Bishop Fox early in the sixteenth century. Much of the castle
stands as he rebuilt it after various misfortunes in baronial and other
wars, but the front as it looks down on Farnham is less severe. Two
imposing cedar trees, out of a group of several, break the line of Fox's
massive red brick. Local legend has aged them considerably, for two
hundred years is suggested as a modest estimate of their antiquity. As a
fact, they cannot be much more than one hundred years old. They were
planted by Mrs. North, wife of Bishop North, who held the See from 1781
to 1820, and in an engraving of the castle published in 1792 there is
not a sign of them. The cedar is a very fast-growing tree--one of the
reasons why it is so brittle. The Farnham cedars are as brittle as any
others. I was told that when the present Bishop went abroad early in the
year 1908, he was hesitating over cutting off some of the larger
branches which shaded the castle wall and would not let it dry. The
April snow settled the question for him, and broke the branches he had
thought of lopping.
Farnham Castle has entertained many Kings, from Edward I to Queen
Victoria. One of its earliest bishops was a king's brother, the great
Henry of Blois. Elizabeth was often at the castle, and once, bidding the
Duke of Norfolk dine with her there, spoke to him of his intrigue to
marry Mary Queen of Scots. According to one story she warned him "to be
careful on what pillow he laid his head"; according to another, the Duke
assured the Queen that the intrigue was none of his making, and that "he
meant never to marry with such a person where he could not be sure of
his pillow." He was thinking of Darnley, and that dark February morning
with the King stretched dead on the garden grass.
James I hunted at Farnham regularly, and actually took a lease from
Bishop Bilson of the castle, which he found a convenient centre for
hunting in the Surrey bailiwick of Windsor Forest. But James was the
last of the kings to hunt from Farnham. George III and Queen Charlotte
visited the castle because Bishop Thomas had been the King's tutor, but
Farnham's entertaining of royalty was nearly at an end. Once, in the
last century, Queen Victoria rode there from Aldershot with the Prince
Consort, inspected the Bible on which she had taken her oath at the
Coronation, admired the castle, and rode back again.
[Illustration: _Farnham Castle from the High Street._]
A castle with a keep and a moat, or rather a deep dry ditch, ought to
have memories of fighting, and Farnham Castle has seen some sharp
skirmishing. It has the distinction of having been twice held by a poet,
once for the Parliament and once for the King. George Wither was its
first commander, and his command did not increase his reputation either
as a man of letters or a man of war. Probably the castle was never worth
defending. It was isolated, and its possession, as it turned out, would
have helped neither side to control the movements of the other. But
Wither thought otherwise. He had made his name as a pastoral poet,
author of _Fidelia_ and _The Shepherd's Hunting_ and he now proposed to
make another name as a brilliant soldier. He saw all sorts of
possibilities in Farnham Castle and when the war broke out and he was
made Governor, he began at once building a drawbridge and a sallyport,
digging a well, and storing provisions. Unfortunately he had no
artillery, without which no self-respecting soldier could be expected to
hold a fort, even where, as at Farnham, there was no enemy within shot.
Riding up to London, he poured a perfect shower of requests into the
unwilling ears of Sir Richard Onslow, who was the chief pillar of the
Parliamentary party in Surrey, and at last he got an order for some
demi-culverins from the Tower. But his hopes were still to be dashed.
The next day came news that Prince Rupert was already in North Surrey,
and the demi-culverins were counter-ordered for fear of capture. Then
might he have light guns, drakes or falconets, which he could take along
by-roads? Sir Richard's answer was that the fortress, since it could not
be held, must be abandoned. For this decision Wither afterwards attacked
Sir Richard Onslow as a traitor, in two tremendous effusions entitled
_Se Defendendo_ and _Justitiarius Justificatus_, of which the latter
landed him in prison and was burnt by the common hangman. Meanwhile,
still protesting at being refused his guns, he rode down to his own
house at Alton, collected what carts and cattle he could find, took them
into Farnham, brought out all the stores and men he could command
through Farnham Park, and got them all safely to Kingston. He might have
been captured by Rupert; it was really quite an exploit.
So the castle came to the Royalists. They put in command of it Sir John
Denham, who in that very same year had published, anonymously, his
famous _Cooper's Hill_. Wither had left behind him three hundred sheep
and a hundred oxen, so that the garrison was well victualled, and the
poet-Governor ought to have been able to put up a fight against an enemy
who had no artillery. Wither would have shown him how to do it. But Sir
John had no idea of what a battle should be. One December morning, a few
days after he had taken over the command, Sir William Waller, a
Parliament General, rode up at the head of his dragoons and demanded
surrender. Of course Sir John refused, and Sir William proceeded to fix
a petard to the gate, to blow it in. A military genius like Wither would
have ordered his men to fire their muskets at the enemy; but all the
soldiers on both sides escaped that day. The explosive was securely
fastened in position, the gate was shattered, the assailants rushed at
the breach, and began at once to pull down the barricade of timber
erected inside by the garrison. This done, the garrison surrendered, and
the glorious day was over.
But Sir John Denham got the best of Wither in the end. Not long
afterwards Wither was taken prisoner by the Royalists, and Denham, who
had wisely been set at liberty to rejoin the Royalist forces, begged for
his rival's life. Mr. Wither, he pleaded, should not be hanged, for
while Wither lived he was not himself the worst poet in England.
The castle keep was never to be held by a successor to Wither and
Denham. Sir William Waller blew up one of the walls when he took it from
Sir John, and the year before Charles was executed Parliament ordered it
to be dismantled altogether. The garrison fell to with enthusiasm,
stripped the building of all the lead, wood, and glass they could lay
their hands on, and sold the wreck to make up their back pay. At the
Restoration, when Bishop Duppa came to the See, he found the castle
almost uninhabitable. It cost him more than two thousand pounds to make
it fit to live in, and his successor, Bishop Morley, spent even more. He
actually laid out ten thousand pounds in improvements, only to meet with
John Aubrey's criticism that he had repaired the building "without any
regard to the rules of architecture." Doctor Peter Mew, who succeeded
Morley, set about improving the castle from outside, and planted the top
of the keep, into which the old walls had been tumbled, with fruit
trees. Bishop Sumner, who held the See for forty-two years from 1827,
turned the orchard into a garden.
Bishop Mew had a double record. He was a soldier as well as a prelate,
and he took part in the last battle fought on English soil. When King
Monmouth's Mendip miners were making their last stand at Sedgmoor, the
end of the fight came with the arrival of King James's artillery. The
heavy cannon might never have been drawn to the ground where the battle
was raging, for the artillery were unprovided with horses, had not the
Bishop offered his coach horses and traces. When they came to Sedgmoor,
he himself directed the fire.
The result of the various fortunes and misfortunes of the castle in war,
and of the different additions and alterations made by successive
Bishops, is naturally rather puzzling. The castle is a medley of the
building of eight centuries. Oldest of all is the ruined keep and the
framework, or foundations, of the castle buildings; the masonry of the
keep is the work of Henry of Blois, and belongs to the twelfth century.
Next come three pillars of the old chapel, now used as a servants' hall.
I saw it when it was set for a meal, and the severe cleanliness of the
white stone above the white tablecloth and glass and cutlery has
remained one of the distinctest of my memories of the castle. Next in
age is the outer gateway--doubtless the scene of Sir William Waller's
explosion--an imposing block of masonry. From each side of the gateway
runs the outer wall of the castle, and between the keep and the outer
wall what was once a ditch has grown into the Bishop's garden, a sloping
stretch of shaven lawn and flower borders, with a fountain and birds
bathing in it. The keep itself, almost from the broken parapet to the
tumbled stones at the base, is a mixture of wall and rock garden, in
which grow all the rock plants worth growing. Perhaps there were
wallflowers when Bishop Mew planted his orchard in the keep; but the
pasque flower and other rarer blossoms which crowd round the base belong
to the gardening of a later day. The level lawn and flower beds of the
inner garden of the keep are as serene and shining as those below, and
the view to the south over Hindhead and the south downs is finer and
freer than from anywhere in the grounds, though there are many fine
views from the castle windows. Fanny Burney, who visited Farnham in
1791, only a month released from the trammels of Court life, would
certainly have been able, as she tells us she wished, to see the hills
above her beloved Norbury. But ladies of the Court were delicate
creatures, and she could not climb to the top. "I was ready to fall
already, from only ascending the slope to reach the castle," she adds
with some humility.
Of all the bishops, Bishop Fox left the most enduring mark on the
castle. He built the noble and lofty gateway tower named after him, and
certainly altered the look of the castle as Farnham sees it to-day, more
than any other Bishop, though what it may have looked like when the
boundary walls were all landing can only be guessed. Within, one of the
chief restorers was Bishop Morley. The hall, before he made his
alterations, was a good deal larger than the present room; you can see
the old doorway in the wall of the wide entrance passage. He added the
splendid staircases, with their carved oak newels, the work of Grinling
Gibbons; and he built the chapel, which also has some fine carving. A
later and most princely Bishop, Anthony Thorold, who held the See from
1891 to 1895, laid down a mile and a hundred yards of stair carpet, and
repaired an acre and a fifth of roof. He also fitted up rooms for
ordination candidates, each room with a name. St. Francis and other
saints preside over the slumbers of some; some sleep in Paradise; a
Bishop who is an occasional visitor looks out upon the Castle garden
from the Bull's Eye.
Bishop Morley, who spent so much money on the Castle, spent very little
on himself. A tiny room, almost a cell, is shown as the chamber in which
he spent hours in prayer, and in the extreme corner is a stone couch, on
which he slept when he allowed himself sleep. He had but one full meal a
day, he never warmed himself at a fire, he never married, he was never
ill, and was found dead on his bed one morning, at the ripe age of
eighty-seven. Starved to death, you are told; the hint is almost of
suicide.
Izaak Walton knew Morley, and stayed with him at the castle. He wrote
his Lives of Hooker and Herbert under the Bishop's roof, possibly added
something to his Life of Donne; the room is shown. I like to think of
him sitting through a sunny morning writing gently about the
shortcomings of Mrs. Hooker, how she made her poor husband tend the
sheep and rock the cradle; or setting down the superb last sentences of
the Life, and then taking down his fishing rod and wandering down by the
Wey after trout and chub. Perhaps, indeed, he could get a salmon. Among
the dues collected by the Bailiffs of the Borough early in the
seventeenth century I find the following----
"Of every fishmonger that selleth ffish at his window in the lent to
paye at good ffriday a good lb. of samon or of the beast ffish they
have then leaft."
The salmon, presumably, swam with the other "beast ffish" in the Wey.
[Illustration: _Cobbett's Birthplace at Farnham._]
Farnham's greatest man was not an ecclesiastic, but a politician.
William Cobbett, soldier, farmer, Radical, editor of _Peter Porcupine_
and the _Weekly Political Register_, and author of a diary unequalled of
its kind in English writing, was born at Farnham on March 9, 1762. The
house in which he was born, once a farmhouse and now the Jolly Farmer
inn, stands on the outskirts of the town near the Wey, conspicuous with
a white gable. As a boy, he must have been one of the busiest on any
farm in the neighbourhood. His father used to boast that he had four
boys, of whom the eldest was only fifteen years old--William Cobbett was
the third--and yet that they would do as much work as any three men in
Farnham. "When I first trudged a field," you read in the _The Life of
William Cobbett, by Himself_, "with my satchel swung over my shoulder, I
was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles, and at the close of day,
to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty." He was taught the
beginnings of farming at Farnham, and he first ran away from Farnham to
be a gardener. He was employed as a boy in the castle grounds, and there
he met a man who was a gardener at Kew. They talked, and the
eleven-year-old boy was fired to see for himself what gardening could
be. Next day he started off, with sixpence-halfpenny in his pocket, and
walked all day till he came to Richmond. There he should have had
supper; he had threepence left to get it with. But threepence was
exactly the price of a little book, _The Tale of a Tub_, which he spied
in a bookseller's window. He bought it, took it into a field near Kew
Gardens, and sat down to read; read on till it was dark, tumbled to
sleep under a haystack, and woke to ask the head gardener for work. He
was given work, but the gardener persuaded him to return home. Ten years
later he ran away from Farnham again, and for the last time. He was out
on the road to meet some friends on the way to Guildford Fair; the
London coach swung by, he swung up behind, and by nine that night was in
London with half-a-crown in his pocket. He left London for a soldier,
and his Farnham boyhood was over.
Riding by Farnham forty years after, Cobbett showed his son the spot
where he received his education. It was easily come by, but he was of
opinion that if he had not had it, "if I had been brought up a milksop,
with a nurserymaid everlastingly at my heels, I should have been this
day as great a fool, as inefficient a mortal, as any of those frivolous
idiots that are turned out from Winchester and Westminster School, or
from any of those dens of dunces called Colleges and Universities." The
spot is a sandy bank above the Bourne, a little stream, dry in summer,
which runs a mile south of Farnham, from Holt Forest to the Wey. This is
the education, described in _Rural Rides_:--
"There is a little hop-garden in which I used to work when from
eight to ten years old; from which I have scores of times run to
follow the hounds, leaving the hoe to do the best that it could to
destroy the weeds; but the most interesting thing was a _sand-hill_,
which goes from a part of the heath down to the rivulet. As a due
mixture of pleasure with toil, I, with two brothers, used
occasionally to _disport_ ourselves, as the lawyers call it, at this
sand-hill. Our diversion was this: we used to go to the top of the
hill, which was steeper than the roof of a house; one used to draw
his arms out of the sleeves of his smock-frock, and lay himself down
with his arms by his sides; and then the others, one at head, and
the other at feet, sent him rolling down the hill like a barrel or a
log of wood. By the time he got to the bottom, his hair, eyes, ears,
nose, and mouth were all full of this loose sand; then the others
took their turn, and at every roll there was a monstrous spell of
laughter."
[Illustration: _Weydon Mill, Farnham._]
When will _Rural Rides_ be added to the cheap editions? No other book
of the open air and open politics mixes the two with such a breezy grip
as Cobbett's. One rides with the sturdy old man over the road which he
thought the prettiest in England--the four miles between Guildford and
Godalming--or across "the most villainous spot God ever made," which was
Hindhead, and listens to him praising the bean fields and the turnips
here, and the oaks and acacias there, cursing the Wen-devils and
place-men and pensioners, the reptiles, toad-eaters and tax-eaters, and
yet the sheer honesty and affection of the man shine from every page.
There never was such a mixture of execration and the scent of
bean-blossom. But _Rural Rides_ remains a book of the library rather
than the bookshelf.
Farnham has two other authors, one a native and one a friend. Miss Ada
Bayly, known to her readers as Edna Lyall, made Farnham her holiday home
since she was four years old, and set the scenes of two of her novels in
the town. Even better known by his work, if not by his name, is Augustus
Toplady, the author of the hymn, "Rock of Ages." Toplady was born in a
little house in West Street, now pulled down, in 1740. He wrote much
that was bitter; all that is remembered is his hymn.
Every town on the Portsmouth road has its old coaching inn, and
Farnham's is the Bush. It stands modestly aloof; you must walk under an
arch to finds its oldest walls and its wistaria. It was not always the
best inn in Farnham. In 1604, in the account of the Borough, the
receipts of the Bailiffs are thus recorded:--
"Dewes which hath bene payed accostomly paied to the Baylleffs of
the Borrough and Towne of Farneham, beyond the memory of any man
that now liveth as Aniale rents always as followeth:--
For the 4 Inns 28s
That to saye of the Georg 7s
of the Whit Hart 7s
of the Anteolop 7s
of the Crown 7s
Of every alhouse within the Borough 2s
Of every alhouse out of the Borough 12d
Of every alhouse at the chosing of the
Bayleffs, called knowledge money 1d
Of every alhouse as will unlisensed or
licinsed at every ffayr day every
on of them 1d."
The Bush is not mentioned by name; it was a mere alehouse. Soon it
became a full-grown inn, and the Georg, the Whit Hart and the Anteolop
paled their ineffectual hearths.
[Illustration: _Oasthouses near Farnham._]
Farnham was once the greatest market in England for wheat. Now the chief
industry is hops. Farnham hops are some of the best grown, and have
always fetched long prices. In Cobbett's day, Kentish hops averaged five
pounds a hundredweight, and Hampshire hops were about the same price;
Farnham hops fetched seven pounds. English hops to-day average perhaps
less than five pounds a hundred, and the hopgrower is in distress.
Eighty years ago he was being ruined. Cobbett makes up his accounts,
writing at Chilworth on Sept. 25, 1822:--
"The crop of hops has been very fine here, as well as every where
else. The crop not only large, but good in quality. They expect to
get _six_ pounds a hundred for them at Weyhill Fair. That is _one_
more than I think they will get. The best Sussex hops were selling
in the Borough of Southwark at three pounds a hundred a few days
before I left London. The Farnham hops _may_ bring double that
price; but that, I think, is as much as they will: and this is ruin
to the hop-planter. The _tax_, with its attendant inconveniences,
amounts to a pound a hundred; the picking, drying, and bagging to
50s. The carrying to market not less than 5s. Here is the sum of L3
10s. of the money. Supposing the crop to be half a ton to the acre,
the bare tillage will be 10s. The poles for an acre cannot cost less
than L2 a year; that is another 4s. to each hundred of hops. This
brings the outgoings to 82s. Then comes the manure, then come the
poor-rates, and road-rates, and county-rates; and if these leave one
single farthing for _rent_ I think it is strange."
Hop-buyers and sellers in those days met in the old Market House, and
were doubtless familiar with the queer inscription, still remembered by
middle-aged Farnham farmers. John Clark built the Market House in 1566,
and wrote on it his riddle:--
"You who don't like me, give money to mend me,
You who do like me, give money to end me."
The Local Board of 1866, looking round for some worthy object on which
to spend their money, liked the old house so well that they ended its
existence on the spot.
No parish church is more difficult to drive up to than St. Andrew's at
Farnham. If you know the way you can come to a corner of the churchyard
by a side street, but Farnham goes to church chiefly by alleys and
footpaths. The churchyard is more striking than the church, much of
which is new. The thick turf, shaven and level, runs to the foot of
mossy brick walls; an avenue of pollarded elms leads from the south
door; all round stand little, old red houses. Six o'clock on a sunny
autumn evening is the time to wait in Farnham churchyard. Every three
hours the mellow, feeble bells ring a chime which suits September
twilight:--
"Life let us cherish
While yet the taper glows,
And the fresh floweret
Pluck ere it close.
Away with every toil and care,
And cease the rankling thorn to wear;
With manful hearts life's conflict meet,
Till Death sounds the retreat."
Vernon House, a Tudor building changed from its old name, Culver Hall,
and altered so as to front on West Street, has an unhappy memory of the
Parliament wars. Charles the First lodged there one December night, a
closely guarded prisoner on his way from Hurst Castle to Windsor. A
month later he was to leave Windsor for Whitehall. He had little to give
his host, and gave him all he had. It was a white morning cap of quilted
silk, which Mr. George Vernon, inheriting from his grandfather, left in
1732 to his grandson, "desiring it may always go to the next heir male
of my family, as a testimony of our steadfast loyalty and adherence to
the Crown, which is the only bounty my family ever received for all the
losses and expenses they sustained for the royal cause, which amounted
to several thousands of pounds."
[Illustration: _In Farnham Churchyard._]
I had nearly forgotten Farnham's painter. He was Stephen Elmer, and a
picture of his, "The Last Supper," hangs in the church tower. But his
forte was painting fish and game, dead and alive. In a curious old
pamphlet, "_The Earwig, or An Old Woman's Remarks on the present
Exhibition of Pictures of the Royal Academy--a critical pamphlet
published in Fleet Street_, 1781, I find the following entries. Of the
painters and subjects, Mr. Elmer and Mrs. Robinson belong to Surrey. The
rest supply the setting:--
"10. Thais--Sir Joshua Reynolds, R.A.--The face was painted from the
famous Emily Bertie ... It was a cruel _snouch_ in the Painter, a
fine Girl having paid him seventy-five guineas for an hour's work,
and being unable to pay for the other half of her portrait, to
exhibit her with such a sarcastic allusion to her private life--to
call her Thais--to put a torch in her hand, and direct her to set
flames to the temple of Chastity. Such rigorous punishment seldom is
inflicted by a rich man on a pretty woman, merely from her want of
money.
79. Damn'd bad.
106. Mrs. Mahon in the character of Elvira--J. Roberts.--Painting,
painted.
107. Portrait of Mrs. Robinson--J. Roberts.--At some distance the
effect nearly the same as the preceding number; but on closer
inspection, the colour not quite so thickly laid on. We must do
justice to the Exhibiting Artists by saying that there are no worse
_of their size_ in the room than these Dulcineas.
129. Brace of Pheasants--S. Elmer, A.--No artist can come nearer to
the object he attempts. His fish, his birds, and fruit are as
exquisitely fine as any of the Flemish masters."
The National Gallery lacks an Elmer: private collectors may be luckier.
Mr. J.E. Harting, to whom all Surrey naturalists owe a debt, reminds me
that many of Elmer's best pictures were engraved to illustrate Daniel's
_Rural Sports_, and that it was Elmer who painted the picture of the
hybrid between a blackcock and a pheasant which readers of _Selborne_
will remember was sent by Lord Stawell to Gilbert White. "It had been
found by the spaniels of one of his keepers in a coppice, and shot on
the wing."
[Illustration: _Frensham Pond._]