GUILDFORD TO LEATHERHEAD
Merrow.--The Horse and Groom.--Mr. Kipling on Surrey downs.--Clandon
Park.--The village mole-catcher.--A fearful battle.--February
sunshine.--Wide Ploughs.--Thomas Goffe and Thomas Thimble.--Locked
churches.--An atmosphere of war.--Effingham and its
admirals.--Little Bookham.--General d'Arblay in his
garden.--Mistletoe.
Of the two roads which run parallel to the downs east of Guildford,
doubtless the road south of the ridge runs through the prettiest
villages. Albury, Shere and Gomshall are a more charming trio than any
three that lie on the northern road, if only because of the woods about
them and the clear trout stream that runs under their walls and bridges.
The villages north of the ridge hardly have a good-sized pond between
them. But the walk from Guildford to Leatherhead, which can be shortened
at any railway station you please from Clandon to Bookham, is for all
that a walk through delightful country and villages of unchanging quiet.
Merrow is the first of the little hamlets that dot the Leatherhead road,
and though the Guildford villas are stretching out their gardens further
and further to the polite east, Merrow is still a mere group of downside
cottages. The church might have been better restored; but the chief
feature of the village is the old Horse and Groom Inn, with its gabled
front and its noble stack of chimneys, three sister shafts of peculiar
grace and mellow colour. The date, 1615, which records the age of the
inn above one of its bay windows, reads a reproach to the aggressively
modern porch and doors; and the white rough-cast with which the walls
are covered apparently conceals admirable timber and herringbone
brickwork. But the roof and the gables and windows still belong to an
inn and not a public-house, and the Horse and Groom too, swings a good
sign, vigorously drawn, of a prancing steed. Most of the signs of the
many White Horse and Black Horse inns are more like rocking-horses than
racers.
[Illustration: _Merrow._]
Above Merrow stretches some of the most perfect downland in England. If
the Sussex downs by Rottingdean inspired Mr. Kipling to his finest
poetry, the Surrey downs by Merrow taught him some of the most haunting
lines of all. I quote from eleven stanzas that ought not to be
separated:--
MERROW DOWN
There runs a road by Merrow Down--
A grassy track to-day it is
An hour out of Guildford town,
Above the river Wey it is.
Here, when they heard the horse-bells ring,
The ancient Britons dressed and rode
To watch the dark Phoenicians bring
Their goods along the Western Road.
But long and long before that time
(When bison used to roam on it)
Did Taffy and her Daddy climb
That down, and had their home on it.
The Wey, that Taffy called Wagai,
Was more than six times bigger then;
And all the Tribe of Tegumai
They cut a noble figure then!
Of all the Tribe of Tegumai
Who cut that figure, none remain--
On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry--
The silence and the sun remain.
But as the faithful years return
And hearts unwounded sing again,
Comes Taffy dancing through the fern
To lead the Surrey spring again.
In mocassins and deer-skin cloak
Unfearing, free and fair she flits,
And lights her little damp-wood smoke
To show her Daddy where she flits.
For far--oh, very far behind,
So far she cannot call to him,
Comes Tegumai alone to find
The daughter that was all to him.
Merrow to the east edges on Clandon Park, the seat of one of the great
Surrey families, the Onslows. It is a notable space, perhaps a mile
square of grass dotted with superb groups of elms. "Capability" Brown
laid out the park, and he certainly saw what the capabilities of that
sunny sward could be. The house, which stands on the south-east corner,
is an imposing cube of red brick, patched here and there with ivy, and
as square and formal as the ornamental water and the park below it is
formal and serpentine. Leoni built it, and Rysbrach designed two of its
chimney-pieces.
In the park you may chance to meet the mole-catcher of the place--an
upholder of right traditions of an old English village. I met him
searching disconsolately for a couple of his traps, which he had set too
near the pathway and which had been carried off by thieving passers-by,
on whom may malisons light. "I've got forty traps about here," he told
me with some pride, adding with resignation to a persistent fate that
"they" would not let him set a trap near the path. "They" always took it
if he did.
West Clandon church stands in the corner of the park, and is chiefly
remarkable for a very curious old sundial, belonging perhaps to the days
of Henry II, and built upside down by "restorers" into a buttress of the
south wall. Time has dealt hardly with the church, and time, perhaps,
may still restore its own dial. Under the dial, when I was last in the
carefully tended little churchyard, the level turf was studded with
snowdrops.
In a field close by the village once took place a remarkable battle. A
correspondent of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ of 1796 gives the following
account of it, which he had verbatim from an old inhabitant. "A serpent
once infested a back lane in the parish of West Clandon for a long time.
The inhabitants were much disturbed and afraid to pass that way. A
soldier who had been condemned for desertion promised, if his life was
spared, he would destroy this serpent. Accordingly he took his dog with
him. A fierce battle ensued, the dog fastened him and the soldier killed
it with his bayonet in a field belonging to the glebe called Deadacre."
According to the magazine's correspondent, an "ancient piece of carving
in wood" representing this frightful struggle, had been "preserved for
many years in the parsonage house."
Between the two Clandons, West and East, the road runs by what is surely
the finest ploughland in the county. A single field of over a hundred
acres stretches up the side of the down to a belt of firs--a field for
Cincinnatus himself to plough. I remember standing to stare at that
great reach of shining stubble and furrow when first I saw it from the
road on a day of marvellous February sunlight. Farm labourers were
topping and tailing turnips two hundred yards away; partridges newly
paired whirred up from the roadside; beyond the white stubbleland lay
the pines of Netley Heath, a thin line of palest blue; a hundred larks
filled the sky with singing, and I heard suddenly behind me the
impetuous thrill of a chaffinch, that most summery of carols. The
ploughland is Lord Onslow's, and it must need a Minister of Agriculture
to look after it.
East Clandon lies under that broad ploughland, a mile from Clandon Park.
Everything in East Clandon is what it ought to be, and everybody does
what he ought to do. The timbered cottages are old and quiet; the barn
roofs by the churchyard are long and lichened; the churchyard is
bordered by a thick holly hedge, and about its graves, little clipped
yew-trees stand like chessmen, perhaps meant to suggest a text; the
cottage gardens are full of simple flowers and fruit-trees, and the
cottagers work in them as if it were the best work to do, which
doubtless it is. There could not be a happier looking village. One
building only in the village knows, or shows, much suffering. At East
Clandon is the country branch of the Queen Alexandra Nursing Home for
children with hip disease. In fine weather the children lie in their
cots on the verandah, like broken toys, and wave happily from their red
blankets to passers-by.
In the days of Charles I East Clandon boasted a poet. He was Thomas
Goffe, a writer of tragedies, and most unhappily married. Aubrey tells
the story:--
"His wife pretended to fall in love with him, by hearing of him
preach: upon which, said one Thomas Thimble (one of the Squire
Bedell's in Oxford, and his Confident) to him: '_Do not marry her:
if thou dost, she will break thy heart_.' He was not obsequious to
his friend's sober advice, but for her sake altered his condition,
and cast anchor here. One time some of his Oxford friends made a
visit to him she looked upon them with an ill eye, as if they had
come _to eat her out of house and home_ (as they say), she provided
a dish of milk, and some eggs for supper, and no more: They
perceived her niggardliness, and that her husband was inwardly
troubled at it (she wearing the breeches) so they were resolved to
be merry at supper, and talk all in Latin, and laughed exceedingly.
She was so vexed at their speaking Latin that she could not hold,
but fell out a weeping, and rose from the table. The next day, Mr.
Goffe ordered a better dinner for them, and sent for some wine: they
were merry, and his friends took their final leave of him. 'Twas no
long time before this Xanthippe made Mr. Thimble's prediction good;
and when he died, the last words he spake were: '_Oracle, Oracle,
Tom Thimble_,' and so he gave up the ghost."
Halfway from East Clandon to West Horsley is Hatchlands, a fine country
house and park with noble beeches; and next to Hatchlands one of the
prettiest and completest farmsteads in the county. The building in the
neighbourhood is, indeed, some of the best to be seen. West Horsley
itself is a fascinating collection of old cottages, vine-bowered and
fronted with clipped yews. One such yew, standing by the door of what
the picture postcards vaguely designate "old cottage, West Horsley," is
an extraordinarily elaborate piece of rustic topiary. Another feature of
the village is the now disused workhouse, a solid old brick building
overlooking a horsepond: another, the bole of a superb elm, quite
rightly stationed in the carpenter's sawyard. Of West Horsley church it
is more difficult to speak. It is possible to see from outside that
there is a beautiful three lancet east window, but the rest of the
church, with its chapel and fine monuments, is a sealed book. The door
is locked, and the keys are kept at the rectory a mile away: the sexton,
next door to the church, is not allowed a key. It is not easy to write
soberly of an authority which compels for one who should be allowed to
see the church, four journeys of a mile to ask for and to return the
keys. From West Horsley to Leatherhead is a pilgrimage by locked
churches: East Horsley is locked, though you can get the key; Effingham
and Little Bookham are locked, but I had no time to search for more keys
when I was there; possibly they are easily found. Great Bookham is open,
but Fetcham is locked; Leatherhead is more hospitable.
The great families of West Horsley are those of Berners and Nicholas.
The effigy of Sir James Berners, of West Horsley Place, is in the
church: he was one of the followers of Richard II, and was beheaded on
Tower Hill, in 1388. His daughter, according to tradition, was the
famous Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of Sopwell, and author--or part
author--of the _Boke of St. Albans_, a "Treatyse perteynynge to
Hawkynge, Huntynge, Fysshynge, and Coote Armiris." Probably she wrote no
more than the hunting, but it is pleasant to think that she may have
watched her greyhounds "headed like a snake, and necked like a drake" on
the downs above Horsley. Another Berners, the second Baron of the name,
translated Froissart. Of the Nicholas family, Sir Edward was a Royalist
and Secretary of State under both the Charleses. Of other owners of West
Horsley Place, its mistress, Geraldine Browne, wife of Sir Anthony
Browne, is claimed to be the "Fair Geraldine" of Surrey's poem; but any
other Geraldine would suit as well, if, indeed, Geraldine ever existed.
Another doubtful tradition of West Horsley is that the head of Sir
Walter Raleigh is buried in the church with his son Carew. Certainly no
one knows that it was buried anywhere else.
Leaving West Horsley, you are immediately in an atmosphere of war. At
East Horsley, the Duke of Wellington guards the cross-roads and
dispenses excellent bread and cheese and beer; at Effingham Prince
Bluecher used to stand on the main road, quite correctly placed to the
east of the Duke; he has now marched down into the village and billeted
himself as comfortably as before. The atmosphere of swords and sharpness
has even entered ecclesiastical precincts. In East Horsley church there
is a curious fresco, painted, I am told, by the late Lady Lovelace. It
shows St. Martin dressed as a soldier in high boots, cloak and hat,
cutting off the skirt of his cloak with his sword, to clothe a naked
beggar kneeling before him. It is curious that a second legend of a
cloak should belong to a neighbourhood connected with Sir Walter
Raleigh.
Horsley Towers, on the left of the road to Effingham, is a large, grey,
castellated building; its entrances might be fortifications. The park
holds some superb beeches. But the grey coldness of Horsley Towers is a
little exotic among these stretches of southern English parkland. Good
Jacobean or Georgian red-brick much better suits oaks and beeches than
the chateau-like towers of a Scottish castle.
Effingham, although so small a village, has a name that will last with
the history of the English Navy. It gave his title to the first Lord
Howard of Effingham, the illustrious father of a still more illustrious
son. The first Lord of Effingham was William Howard, son of the second
Duke of Norfolk, and one of the great men of the reigns of Mary and
Elizabeth. He was with Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; he
was Lord High Admiral; at Sir Thomas Wyatt's rebellion he shut Ludgate
in Wyatt's face, and more than any Englishman he helped Elizabeth to her
throne. But his son is an even greater figure. Like his father, he was
Lord High Admiral, but the father never had the son's opportunity. For
the second Lord Howard of Effingham commanded the English Navy against
the Spanish Armada, and as the victor of that tremendous fleet and the
captor of Cadiz he was made Earl of Nottingham, and held the office of
Lord High Admiral until the green old age of eighty-three, when "he
retired," we are told, "from public life, and the rest of his life was
peace and prayer." He lies with his father at Reigate, which with the
churches of Lingfield and Great Bookham holds the dust of many
generations of the Surrey Howards. Fourteen Howards have been buried at
Reigate, twelve at Lingfield, and thirty at Great Bookham; but so far as
I can find, none, curiously enough, at Effingham itself.
Scarcely half a mile separates the churches of Effingham and Little
Bookham, the latter a tiny building considerably altered by various
restorations, but containing some interesting remains of Norman work.
Almost touching the church stands, and has stood since days before
Domesday book was written, a great yew, dark and shining, with another
thousand years' life in it, if its vigorous branches tell the truth. The
village itself is not much more than a cottage or two, but Little
Bookham must always be a place of interest, at all events for those who
read and write newspapers, for the Manor House is the home of one of the
doyens of English journalism, Mr. Meredith Townsend, for forty-four
years joint-editor of the _Spectator_.
"Master and friend, whose ardent soul
Burns brighter as it nears the goal,
Whose indefatigable pen
Stirs envy in us younger men----"
So has Mr. Charles Graves addressed him, and so might others feel a
noble envy.
Great Bookham, less than a mile away, was once the home of another
writer. Fanny Burney lived there for four years after she had married
General d'Arblay, and the two of them with their baby, and an income of
L125, were superlatively happy. Here she wrote _Camilla_, which was to
build and to christen the house she lived in later, and it was from
Bookham that she set out to take the first bound copies to King George
and the Queen at Windsor. "About how much time did you give to it?"
asked the good-natured King, and "Are you much frightened? As much
frightened as you were before?" The Queen asked M. and Madame d'Arblay
to dine the next day, and in the interval the General, having been
introduced to the Queen's gardener at Frogmore, "a skilful and famous
botanist," consulted him seriously about the Bookham cabbages. M.
d'Arblay was a gardener of greater courage than science. His wife sends
her father a picture of the work done among the Bookham fruits and
flowers.
"Our garden," she writes, "is not yet quite the most profitable thing in
the world; but M. d'A. assures me it is to be the staff of our table and
existence." But M. d'Arblay had very little luck. He planted
strawberries hoping to gather fruit within three months, and was
disappointed:--
"Another time, too, with great labour, he cleared a considerable
compartment of weeds, and, when it looked clean and well, and he
showed his work to the gardener, the man said he had demolished an
asparagus bed! M. d'Arblay protested, however, nothing could look
more like _des mauvaises herbes_.
"His greatest passion is for transplanting. Everything we possess he
moves from one end of the garden to another, to produce better
effects. Roses take place of jessamines, jessamines of honeysuckles,
and honeysuckles of lilies, till they have all danced round as far
as the space allows; but whether the effect may not be a general
mortality, summer only can determine."
The picture of the General turning his sword into a reaping hook is even
more alluring:--
"I wish you had seen him yesterday, mowing down our hedge--with his
sabre, and with an air and attitudes so military, that, if he had
been hewing down other legions than those he encountered--_i.e._ of
spiders--he could scarcely have had a mien more tremendous, or have
demanded an arm more mighty. Heaven knows, I am 'the most _contente
personne_ in the world' to see his sabre so employed!"
The garden in which these severely military operations took place still
surrounds the same windows, gay with wistaria and roses. Possibly the
gnarled apple trees which fringe the lawn are actual survivors of the
general's sabre.
Great Bookham has grown a good deal since the d'Arblays knew it. But the
splendid shell of an ancient elm still shades the churchyard gate; the
flint-walled church, with ivy bunched over its buttressed tower, and
lichens glowing on the Horsham slabs of its chapel roof, can have
changed but little. Two or three of its monuments are interesting. One
is a brass plate recounting the virtues and the pedigree of Edmund
Slyfield and his wife Elizabeth. They were of Slyfield Place; he was "a
stoute Esquire who alwaies set God's feare before his Eyes"; she was a
model of all the graces, and descended from the Paulets, Capells,
Sydneys, Gainsfords, Finches, Arundels, Whites, and Lamberts--a good
long list to bring into an epitaph, but there are twenty-eight lines of
honest doggerel to do it in. Another monument is quite as striking,
which represents Colonel Thomas Moore in the full uniform of the
commanding officer of a regiment of foot in the reign of Queen Anne,
which the sculptor's convention has idealised into a mixture of a
bathing costume, a kilt, and a plaid. The church, indeed, is a museum of
records of different times and tastes to a degree uncommon in far more
important buildings. In the east wall of the chancel is a slab
commemorating in three Latin hexameters the founding of the building by
John de Rutherwyk, the great Abbot whom we meet at Chertsey; and the
east window of the Slyfield chapel is dedicated, in a long, biographical
inscription in brass, to the memory of Lord Raglan, who as Fitzroy James
Henry Somerset, military secretary to the Duke of Wellington, lost an
arm at the Duke's side at Waterloo, and forty years later commanded the
British army in the East before Sebastopol, where he died. Lord
Raglan's connection with Great Bookham is slight: but his niece, Lady
Mary Farquhar, who put up the window, lived at Polesden, a mile or two
away.
[Illustration: _Slyfield Place._]
Last of the villages on the road from Guildford to Leatherhead is
Fetcham. A park, a road bordered by cottages and a pretty house or two,
and a battlemented church-tower deep among yews, and hollies, and
ivy-trees--Fetcham is as pleasantly small and quiet as her western
neighbours. But what a string of churches it is, along these twelve
miles of Surrey roadway; nine villages, each with its grey-walled
building and the cool whiteness of the arches, aisles, and chancels. No
pilgrim of the old centuries could tire on such a journey. To-day he
might. Only four of the church doors give him a welcome.
Above Fetcham's church, which, like Stoke D'Abernon and one or two
others, fronts on the flowers and lawns of a private garden, great
bunches of mistletoe darken the winter tree-tops. Fetcham is on the
border of the mistletoe country, which stretches from Leatherhead to
Dorking and Boxhill.