THE DITTONS AND WALTON
Surbiton trains.--Thames Ditton.--Parks for trotting ponies.--A
forlorn garden.--The Dandies' Fete.--Graveyard poetry.--The
Pleasance of a Ferry.--Giggs Hill cricket.--Ditton Tulips.--Hampton
Bridge.--A dreary road.--Walton.--The Scold's Bridle.--John Selwyn
and the Stag.--Terror at an elephant.--William Lilly, astrologer.
Surbiton is a growth of seventy years, and was born when the railway
came. Once it was called a suburb of Kingston; now it has suburbs of its
own. Tramways join it to London; the railway empties Surbiton into
London every morning and pours London back again in the evening. Nearly
seventy trains a day stop at Surbiton on their way down from Waterloo;
nearly eighty stop on their way up. It must be quite inspiriting to lose
your train, and to know that you have only three minutes to wait; or to
catch the train before your train, or to choose which you will have of
two trains. Until you realise these figures, it is difficult to
understand why so many people are rushing about late for the train in
Surbiton station. They are catching the train before.
But Surbiton is not all villas; or perhaps it is, and it would be truer
to say that what is not villas within hail of the station is not
Surbiton. Thames Ditton lies rather more than a mile away, and Long
Ditton, between Thames Ditton and the railway, straggling, too, beyond
the railway. Thames Ditton is rapidly becoming rich and prosperous. A
few years ago it was a little, twisting main street, a ferry, an inn or
two, and a church, and was flanked by two fine properties, Ember Court
and Boyle Farm. Now the villa-builder has got to work, and the old
estates are being sliced up into acres and half acres. Ember Court was
once a manor belonging to Henry VIII, who hunted over it; later, it was
the property of Sir Arthur Onslow, the first Speaker of the House of
Commons who earned the title "Great." It is now a racecourse; trotting
ponies and American "machines" dash and flash where Mr. Speaker
sauntered staidly, and theatre bills flare at the entrance gates. Boyle
Farm has fared little better. Once it was the Duchess of Gloucester's,
wife of George the Third's brother; a century later, Lord St. Leonards,
Lord Chancellor in Lord Derby's first and shortest-lived Ministry, had
it. Now the park is criss-crossed with brand new yellow roads. I walked
through it while it was still ringing with the builder's hammer; and
straying off the gravel, suddenly found myself in the forlornest little
place possible--a formal garden, box-trimmed, tiny, deserted; the
narrow, carefully-planned beds nothing but weeds, the summerhouse at the
side a ruin. A park cut to pieces looks as if it were in anguish. But a
garden cries.
The river at Thames Ditton in 1827 saw a festival which was doubtless
considered one of the most prodigious affairs of the season. Five young
bloods, of whom two were the Lords Castlereagh and Chesterfield of the
day, subscribed L500 each to organise an enormous water party, to which,
presumably, everybody was invited who was worth inviting. It was a
superb occasion, with illuminations, quadrilles on the lawn, singers
from the opera, covers for five hundred people, and all adornments
proper to such gaiety. Afterwards it came to be known as the Dandies'
Fete, and Tom Moore wrote a set of verses about it, which, perhaps,
reflect fairly accurately the wit of the company. Here are nine lines
out of many:--
"Accordingly, with gay Sultanas,
Rebeccas, Sapphos, Roxalanas--
Circassian slaves, whom Love would pay
Half his maternal realms to ransom;--
Young nuns, whose chief religion lay
In looking most profanely handsome!
Muses in muslin--pastoral maids,
With hats from the _Arcade_-ian shades;
And fortune-tellers--rich, 'tis plain,
As fortune-_hunters_, form'd their train."
Moore sent the verses to Mrs. Norton; she, perhaps, was a Circassian or
a nun.
But Thames Ditton has had its own poet. He has been dignified by the
criticism of Charles Lamb, and his accomplishment was the composing of
epitaphs. "What is the reason," Lamb writes to Wordsworth in 1810, "we
have no good epitaphs after all?"
A very striking instance might be found in the churchyard of
Ditton-upon-Thames, if you know such a place. Ditton-upon-Thames has
been blessed by the residence of a poet, who for love or money, I do
not well know which, has dignified every gravestone, for the last
few years, with brand-new verses, all different, and all ingenious,
with the author's name at the bottom of each. This sweet Swan of
Thames has so artfully diversified his strains and his rhymes, that
the same thought never occurs twice; more justly, perhaps, as no
thought ever occurs at all, there was a physical impossibility that
the same thought should recur. It is long since I saw and read these
inscriptions, but I remember the impression was of a smug usher at
his desk in the intervals of instruction, levelling his pen. Of
death, as it consists of dust and worms, and mourners and
uncertainty, he had never thought; but the word 'death' he had often
seen separate and conjunct with other words, till he had learned to
speak of all its attributes as glibly as Unitarian Belsham will
discuss you the attributes of the word 'God' in a pulpit; and will
talk of infinity with a tongue that dangles from a skull that never
reached in thought and thorough imagination two inches, or further
than from his hand to his mouth, or from the vestry to the
sounding-board of the pulpit.
But the epitaphs were trim, and sprag, and potent, and pleased the
survivors of Thames-Ditton above the old Mumpsimus of 'Afflictions
Sore'....
The church itself, or at all events the squat and tiny tower, has not
altered much since Lamb saw it. But the epitaphs have gone. Search among
the ivies and yews of the shady little churchyard will discover a number
of flat, weatherworn slabs of stone, but the verses and the signatures
have vanished. Fire and the wastepaper man are the common lot of poets,
but this "Swan of Thames" has come to his end by rain and hobnails. The
only Swan that remains is the inn, whose sign sits comfortably above the
front door, white and bright. Few Thames-side inns have a prettier
outlook, or look prettier from the river. Sunlight on shining brown
boats and quivering willows is a frequent memory of Thames waters, but
the Swan lies also opposite a ferry, and a ferry has a hundred
fascinations. Old fashioned rowing, running water, hailings and
signallings, quiet motion, thriving business, new arrivals; it is all
the cheerfullest of riverside traffic. None of the pleasanter services
of travel can be more directly rendered and directly paid for than being
ferried across a river.
Of Surrey village greens, the Thames Ditton Ground at Giggs Hill has had
much to do with Surrey cricket. Giggs Hill cricket has not always been
of the most scientific kind, but who shall say it was less enjoyed for
that? An old Giggs Hill cricketer tells us how the pitch used to be
prepared for a match. "I remember," he says, "seeing the late Harry
Stowell with an old beer barrel fixed on a trolley and filled with
water, wheeling it across the wicket. He would well douse the pitch, and
after running a small garden roller he had borrowed up and down a few
times the wicket was ready." This proceeding took place the day before
the match, so that batting must occasionally have been a venturesome
business. In those days a match meant what it still means in some
villages, an adjournment in the evening to the neighbouring inn, a
supper, beer, and songs. How many old inns still keep the name "The
Jolly Cricketers," and how many for little reason! In later days, Thames
Ditton cricket has become scientific enough. The Giggs Hill ground has
sent to the Oval cricketers like H.H. Stephenson, who was making
centuries for the county in the sixties; in modern times the great
Maurice Read, whom Mr. John Shuter has described as having "started a
new order among cricket professionals," learned his cricket at Thames
Ditton. But the greatest of all Thames Ditton cricketers is, of course,
Tom Richardson. He was actually born at Byfleet, but played as a boy at
Giggs Hill.
Thames Ditton's sister, Long Ditton, is probably known by sight by
thousands of people who do not know its name. You are looking at the
best of Long Ditton when you see Barr's nursery gardens from the train
window. There is hardly a month in the year, except in the deep of
midwinter, when the Ditton Hill gardens are not full of blossom. They
are never more glorious than in May and early June, when the long
parterres glow with the tall, late-flowering tulips. Of all flowers
which have been added to English gardens in the last twenty years, the
great thirty inch tulips seem to me the finest. A giant daffodil can be
superb, but it always looks like a giant. But these tulips have the
grace of slightness and the majesty of height; their open chalices burn
with the heat of jewels and the depth of the heart of wine; and here are
ten thousand of them. Perhaps the daffodils, earlier in the year, light
the gardens with a fresher lustre; but the tulips have the colour and
the glow. Railways have the good luck to run by many nursery gardens;
the tulips at Ditton Hill would help the South Western to challenge any
line.
On the other side of Thames Ditton ferry lies Hampton Court Park, a
noble stretch of ordered green. From the ferry to Hampton Court Bridge
is a mile by river, and nearly twice as much by road, which runs through
East Molesey. There is little of interest in either of the Moleseys,
East or West, but it is worth walking a dull mile or two to look down
stream from the Bridge over Henry VIII's palace, with its yews and elms,
dark and stately, in the garden beyond the imposing walls. There is a
far more comprehensive view of Hampton Court to be had from the railway
or the river, but it is still a fine pile of brick seen down stream from
the Bridge. Up stream, Hampton Church stands a mile away at the bend of
the river, grey in the sunshine; between the church and the bridge is
the lock, bright with boats in summer, and the weir, tumbling down a
roar of green water to make roach-swims and barbel-swims for patient
fishermen. In the road to the left you may catch sight or sound of one
of the London coaches, with its white-hatted driver and painted panels,
well named the Vivid. Molesey's roads carry away many of the motor cars
that run to Hampton Court; but the old Vivid still jangles hopefully
after them.
North and west of Molesey runs the ugliest road in Surrey. It begins
with the paling running round the Hurst Park racecourse, and it goes on
between the ramparts of enormous reservoirs. To stand on the edge of one
of these great basins of water (it is strictly forbidden to do so) is
to get a new meaning of desolation. They are horribly deep--you can see
how deep if you stand above one which is half empty; the sides slope so
steeply that if you fell in you could never climb out again, and they
are the loneliest stretches of water conceivable. No bird has any need
that brings him to water that has no shelter and no food. Once I watched
a sunset in November across one of these reservoirs. When the sun sank
low the water blackened; the wind drove little waves slapping with foam
against the stone bank; a single sea-gull swept up out of the dark and
fled away down wind like a scrap of torn paper; it was the most solitary
ending a day could have.
The reservoirs by Molesey stretch far back from the river. Nearer the
river the birds find them more hospitable. I remember a day in October
when I stood watching the martins making one of their last halts on the
way south over the reservoirs on the river bank at Surbiton. It was a
pouring wet afternoon, there was a high wind, and the rain drove bubbles
in the ruffled water and half blotted the greens and greys of blown
willows and the russet of thorn berries on the far side of the river. A
short trolley line ran down a stone pier from beside the road to the
edge of the water, where a barge with a bright brown sail waited; the
smoke from a clinker fire built in a pierced bucket swept fitfully about
the pier; grimy men loaded a car on the trolley line. Over the grey-blue
water hundreds of house-martins dipped and darted and chattered; my
umbrella blew inside out, a few scared birds near me tossed up into the
sky and fell down again, joining the hundreds circling and curtseying in
the wind and the rain.
The road from Molesey runs west to Walton-on-Thames, where you strike
the river high enough to find it running through something like real
country. Walton has an interesting old manor house and a Norman church a
good deal spoiled by restorers. In the vestry, preserved in a cabinet
made out of an old beam from the belfry, is a relic of days when women
talked too much--a scold's or gossip's bridle. It is a sort of cage
shaped to fit the head and made of steel, which time has rusted and
blackened. A kind of bit is arranged to go into the scold's mouth and
hold her tongue, and according to those who have been voluntarily
bridled--nobody can remember a scold in Walton--it answers its purpose
admirably. When the bit is in and the bridle properly padlocked the
most vixenish can only utter inarticulate murmurs.
[Illustration: _Walton Church._]
Among some curious old brasses in the church is one which commemorates,
"John Selwyn 'gent,' Keeper of her Matis Parke of Oteland vnder ye right
honorable Charles Howward Lord Admyrall of England his good Lord and
Mr." He died on March 22, 1587, and his brass illustrates a remarkable
incident. John Selwyn, dressed in a most workmanlike costume like a
Scots gillie with a ruff, is shown riding on the back of a stag, into
whose throat he is plunging a great hunting-knife. Two stories explain
the picture. One, told in the _Antiquarian Repertory_, is that Selwyn,
"in the heat of the chase, suddenly leaped from his horse upon the back
of the stag (both running at that time with their utmost speed), and not
only kept his seat gracefully in spite of every effort of the affrighted
beast, but, drawing his sword, with it guided him toward the Queen, and
coming near her presence, plunged it in his throat, so that the animal
fell dead at her feet." Another version told locally is that the stag
was charging Queen Elizabeth when the keeper rode up, leapt on its back
and killed it, but was killed by the stag as it fell. It does not seem
impossible. Against the story of the keeper being killed in rescuing the
Queen, Mr. F.W. Smith, a local authority, has urged that Queen Elizabeth
would hardly have been hunting six weeks after the execution of Mary
Queen of Scots, and also when the Armada was almost on its way. But
nobody in England, certainly not Drake, ever stopped doing anything
because the Armada was coming, and as for hunting six weeks after the
death of Mary Queen of Scots, that would be nothing out of the way for
Queen Elizabeth. A huge oak, thirty feet in girth, is spoken of as the
tree under which the stag was killed at the Queen's feet, but nobody
could tell me where it was. There are many superb oaks in the gardens in
Walton and Weybridge. Once the whole district was included in Windsor
Park.
Hidden in a group of obscure cottages stands the old manor-house, partly
preserved as a curiosity, partly as an addition to a garden. The house
was not improved by an experience for some years as a tenement dwelling,
crowded with more families than it should have held. It was rescued from
that indignity by its present possessor, Mr. Lowther Bridger. Heavy
beams, oak panels, and a fine chimney-piece remain, relics of the Stuart
days when John Bradshaw, President of the Council, had the house.
Tradition, certainly wrongly, says that Bradshaw signed Charles's
death-warrant in the hall. Bradshaw, no doubt, signed it at Westminster.
But the association of his name would be enough for village gossip. "The
place where they cut off the king's head," is a variant of the story.
Above Walton Bridge are Coway Stakes, where Julius Caesar is supposed to
have crossed the Thames in pursuit of Cassivellaunus, king of the
Catuvellauni. The British chief drove sharpened stakes into the bed of
the river, to block the ford, and built a palisade along the bank, where
he waited for the enemy. They came on, cavalry and infantry, in spite of
the stakes. The Catuvellauni would have met them, but fled in horror at
the sight of an armoured elephant.
A great cricketer is buried in Walton churchyard, and a great astrologer
in the church. The cricketer was Lumpy Stevens, whom we met at Send. The
astrologer was William Lilly, author of a yearly publication, _Merlinus
Anglicus Junior_, a sort of Old Moore's Almanac. The prophecies of
storms, fires and disasters were as dull reading then as they are now,
but one or two entries in his _Life and Times_, written by himself, are
illuminating, especially his record of family amenities, thus:--
"The 16th of February 1653/4, my second Wife died; for whose Death
I shed no Tears. I had 500_l._ with her as a Portion, but she and
her poor Relations spent me 1000_l._ _Gloria Patri, & Filio, &
Spiritui Sancto: sicul erat in principio et nunc et semper, & in
saecula saeculorum_: For the 20th of _April_ 1653, these Enemies of
mine, _viz._ Parliament-men, were turned out of doors by _Oliver
Cromwell_."
"In _October_ 1654, I married the third Wife, who is signified in my
Nativity by _Jupiter_ in _Libra_: And she is so totally in her
Conditions, to my great Comfort."
Lilly got into trouble with the Parliament men later. He had predicted a
town in conflagration, and when the Fire of London occurred in 1666 he
was accused of having caused it. He had to appear before a Parliamentary
committee specially sitting on the matter, but he was able to satisfy
the chairman that he had nothing to do with the fire. He admitted that
he had drawn mysterious designs of persons in winding sheets and digging
graves, which were to foretell the plague, and of towers and houses on
fire, which might have meant the city of London blazing; but he had
never fixed the exact year for these things to happen. So the committee
let him off. If he had lived till the next century, when William the
Third's horse had thrown his rider, and the Jacobite toast was "the
little gentleman in black velvet," Lilly could have pointed with pride
to other cabalistic drawings in his _Merlin_ One shows a mole walking
about under a dragon; another, a mole attacking a crown.
[Illustration: _Epsom._]