DORKING
Mr. Stiggins at the Marquis of Granby--A Ruin.--The battle of
Dorking.--Real fighting.--The Table and Cellar.--Water-souchy, a
delicious dish.--Wild cherries.--Dorking snails.--Sandy kine.--Women
without roses.--Shrove Tuesday football.--Dorking's glory.--Jupp at
Cotmandene.--An earthquake.--Giant and Dwarf.
Dorking has twice had history made for it, and travellers come to visit
the scenes. It was in the bar of the Marquis of Granby at Dorking that
Sam Weller met his mother-in-law, and watched the reverend Mr. Stiggins
make toast and sip the pineapple rum and water, and advised Mr. Weller
senior as to the best method of treating Shepherds with cold water.
Pilgrims cross the Atlantic to visit the Marquis of Granby. No Dorking
inn bears the name, nor ever has; but Americans will tell you that the
Marquis is only a name Dickens invented to cover the identity of the
White Horse, which fronts the cobbles of Dorking High Street with its
gables and white and green paint much as it must have done in the time
of Dickens. Dickens himself, in _All the Year Round_--he did not sign
the article, but in that paper none but he might have written of that
inn--conceived "the Markis" to be the King's Head, in the old days a
great coaching house on the Brighton Road. It stood at the corner of
High Street and South Street, and in South Street to-day you may still
gaze at its unhappy walls and windows. The old lattices are boarded up,
smashed with stones; the rooms are empty. When the post office came to
stand at the corner, the King's Head became a tenement house; afterwards
a ruin.
The Battle of Dorking took place on the ridge north of the town in 1871,
and resulted, after the invasion, in the conquest of Great Britain by
Germany. It all came about perfectly simply. A rising in India had taken
away part of our army; war with the United States over Canada had taken
another 10,000 troops, and half of what were left were dealing with a
Fenian revolution in Ireland. Germany put to sea and sank our fleet with
torpedoes, a new and dreadful engine of war; then the German army landed
and the end came at once. At least, it would have come, if Sir George
Chesney, who described the battle of Dorking in _Blackwood's Magazine_,
had prophesied truly. He lived till 1895, to see more than twenty years
after his battle pass without an invasion; but the battle, for some of
his readers, became a very real thing. The late Louis Jennings, in his
_Field Paths and Green Lanes_, tells us that he had a friend who,
believing most people to have very hazy notions of history, was in the
habit of saying, "Of course you remember the battle of Dorking? Well,
this was the very place where it was fought!" He was seldom
contradicted.
The real history of Dorking has traditions of the table and the cellar.
Dorking fowls perhaps first came to the neighbourhood with the Romans,
and poultry and Dorking have been associated ever since. The true
Dorking fowl is a large, well-feathered bird, and walks on five toes
instead of lesser fowls' four. He has always been a great fowl for the
table and historians have written about him since the days of
Columella. Thus a contributor to the _Gentleman's Magazine_, in 1763:--
"An incredible quantity of poultry is sold in Dorking, and it is
well known to the lovers of good eating for being remarkably large
and fine. I have seen capons about Christmas which weighed between
seven and eight pounds each out of their feathers, and were sold at
five shillings apiece; nor are the geese brought to the market here
about Michaelmas less excellent in their kind. The town is supplied
with sea-fish from Brighthelmstone and Worthing, in Sussex."
[Illustration: _Dorking._]
The Dorking cooks knew well what to do with the sea-fish when they got
them from Brighton. Dorking was famous for a particular way of making
water-souchy, a delicious dish of various fishes, of which Mr. J.L.
Andre in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, has preserved the
recipe rescued from an 1833 cookery book 'by a Lady':--
"Stew two or three flounders, some parsley roots and leaves, thirty
peppercorns, and a quart of water, till the fish are boiled to
pieces; pulp them through a sieve. Set over the fire the pulped
fish, the liquor that boiled them, some perch, tench, or flounders,
and some fresh roots or leaves of parsley; simmer all till done
enough, then serve in a deep dish. Slices of bread and butter are to
be sent to table to eat with the souchy."
It looks rather vague, but the "Gentlemen's Dorking Club" used to
assemble every other Thursday from June to November to discuss the tench
and flounders at the Red Lion, and the King's Head used even to attract
diners-out from London, especially Dutch merchants, who were
particularly fond of the admirable dish. Wine, too, was grown in the
town. There was a particular kind of wild cherry, of which Aubrey was
told by John Evelyn that it made a most excellent wine, little inferior
to the French claret; it would even keep longer. With the cherry wine,
perhaps, you would have eaten Dorking snails. They were large, white
snails, which some said were brought to the Downs by the pilgrims,
others thought were introduced from Italy by the Earl of Arundel, Lord
Marshal of England; Lady Arundel used to cook and eat them. They roamed
the Downs by Box Hill and other chalky places, and are still to be found
there. Perhaps the Romans brought them, but they are not peculiar to
Surrey and Sussex; I have found them on chalk in Hertfordshire, and I
have heard of them on the Cotswolds.
Such good fare should have built up the constitutions of Dorking people.
But it was not so in Aubrey's time, for he picks out the Dorking men and
women as weaker and paler than others. He liked to see women with rosy
faces:--
"Handsome women (viz. sanguine) as in Berks, Oxon, Somerset, &c. are
rare at this market; they have a mealy complexion, and something
hail like the French Picards; light grey eyed, and the kine
hereabout are of sandy colour, like those in Picardy. None
(especially those above the hill) have roses in their cheeks. The
men and women are not so strong or of so warm a complexion as in
Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, &c."
[Illustration: _The White Horse, Dorking._]
One, at least, of the old customs of the town survived until very recent
memory. Now it has died out with the rest. From Mr. J.S. Bright's
_History of Dorking_ I learn that the office of constable has lapsed;
the places of the 'Beggar-poker' and the 'Ale Taster' have been taken by
the local police. Parish funds are no longer dispensed at the close of
church service. The poor on St. Thomas's Day used to go out 'Gooding';
to-day they plead no more. The Ditchling Singers, which were the Dorking
Waits, no longer keep Christmas. On the 29th of May, sacred to King
Charles II of blessed memory, an oak bough used to hang from the church
tower; the tower is bare throughout the year. Guy Fawkes has been burned
for the last time; the Jack in the Green dances no longer in cowslips
and buttercups on the first of May. One ancient rite alone persisted
until the other day. Every Shrove Tuesday, in dim remembrance of the
great carnival which in ancient, pre-Reformation days, preceded the
rigours of Lent, mummers made the circuit of the town. In the afternoon
all the shops were shut and boarded up, and a game of football, started
at the church gates, rioted up and down the main street. In the
_Southern Weekly News_, an account describing the game of 1888 says that
just before midday a procession of men grotesquely attired was formed,
headed by a man bearing three footballs on a triangular frame, over
which was the motto:--
"Kick away both Whig and Tory,
Wind and water Dorking's glory."
The Town Crier started the game, kicked off the first ball at two
o'clock, and stopped it at six. But that was in 1888. Twenty years have
changed the Crier's duties. Fines and the police have stopped the old
custom altogether.
Fifty years ago the Dorking cricket ground at Cotmandene was hardly less
well known than the Oval. Two Dorking cricketers belong to the glorious
days of Cotmandene. Henry Jupp was born in the town, and Tom Humphrey at
Mitcham, but both kept public-houses in Dorking, and both played great
cricket for the county. Many stories are told of Jupp, who was a
favourite with the crowd, but one of the oldest belongs to Cotmandene.
The match was for his benefit, and he was batting. Playing back at a
ball, he trod on his wicket, and a bail fell. He picked up the bail,
replaced it, and was reminded that he was out. "Out! At Dorking! Not
me!" Nor did he go out, but made a hundred instead.
Another of Dorking's inhabitants made history in a different way.
Brayley's _History of Surrey_ was printed throughout in Dorking, and
Ede, the printer, is said to have spent over L10,000 in the printing.
What he made out of it is doubtful; he had made the L10,000 by his three
businesses as printer, chemist, and perfumer.
The real Dorking, apart from its battles over and to come, is
sufficiently happy to have had very little history. The Danes sacked it,
tradition says: they cannot have had much plunder. Julius Caesar marched
through it, perhaps, if there was a Dorking then; the Roman road, at all
events, the great Stone Street, which is still an English road by Ockley
to the south, drove through the corner of Dorking churchyard. Another
event of the dark days was an earthquake in 1551, in which, according to
Henry Machyn's _Diary_, "pottes, panes, and dysys dounst and mett fell
downe abowt howse and with many odur thyngs." But an earthquake which
could do nothing more than make pots, pans and dishes dance is hardly an
earthquake at all.
Perhaps its greatest event of historical times was a funeral. On the
23rd of December, 1815, Charles Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk, was
buried at Dorking with the pomp and pageantry of a king. The procession
left St. James's Square in London at nine in the morning; the coach and
six horses of the Duke of Sussex and twenty carriages followed it; they
reached Dorking at five. Deputy Garter King of Arms, Norroy King of
Arms, three heralds and three pursuivants attended in tabards of state;
Deputy Garter, after the service, proclaimed the Duke's styles and
titles:--
The Most High, Mighty, and Most Potent Prince,
Charles Howard, Duke of Norfolk,
Earl Marshal,
And Hereditary Earl Marshal of England,
Earl of Arundel Castle,
Earl of Surrey, Earl of Norfolk, Earl of Norwich,
Baron Mowbray,
Baron of Howard, Baron of Segrave,
Baron Brurese of Gower,
Baron Fitzalan, Baron Warren, Baron Clun,
Baron Oswaldestre, Baron Maltravers,
Baron Greystock, Baron Furnival, Baron Verdon,
Baron Lovetot, Baron Strange,
And Premier Baron Howard of Castle Rising,
Premier Duke, Premier Earl, Premier Baron of England,
And Chief of the Illustrious Family of the Howards.
The parish registers add little that can have stirred the world. Eleven
years after the earthquake, on February 28, 1562, "Owyn Tonny was
christened; who (a later hand adds), scoffing at thunder, standing under
a beech was stroke to death, his clothes stinking with a sulphurious
stench, being about the age of twenty years or thereabouts."
Another entry is more personal. De Foe, perhaps, who lived near Dorking,
and knew two Dorking giants, might have liked to see the parish register
side by side with a note in his "Tour." The "Tour" gives two
measurements of the giants:--
"At this place lived another ancient gentleman and his son, of a very
good family, Augustine Bellson, Esq.; the father measured seven feet and
a half, and allowing that he might have sunk for his age, being
seventy-one years old; and the son measured two inches taller than his
father."
From the Parish Register, 1738, May 16: "Richard Madderson, aged 29
years, and was not above three feet and three inches high; but in
thickness grown as much as any other person. He was all his life
troubled with an inward griping distemper, of which he at last died very
suddenly."
Thus the quiet life of Dorking in the quiet centuries. The days before
the repeal of the Corn Laws, with the introduction of machinery for hand
labour, saw the usual terror and the usual threats. "Captain Rock" and
"Captain Swing" signed the letters which were sent to Dorking farmers;
special constables were sworn, the windows of the Red Lion were broken,
and once, on November 22, 1830, a van drawn by four horses took Dorking
prisoners to the county gaol. Cavalry patrolled the town by night; but
that November saw the end of Dorking's nearest knowledge of modern war.