DORKING TO REIGATE
Nicknames.--Anastasius Hope.--Deepdene.--Mr. Howard's
Garden.--Betchworth Chestnuts and Castle.--Brockham badgers.--The
Straw-yards.--Bakers among the roses.--Leigh: Lie.--Leigh
Place.--Ardernes and Copleys.--Sir Thomas's notion of a
Gentleman.--Buckland's barn.
Of three dull nicknames, stuck like burrs on the mantles of Dorking's
prophets, the dullest and prosiest has stuck to the richest.
"Conversation" is a pretty severe burden for a man named plain Richard
Sharp to carry; the hideousness of the baulked elision of "Sylva" Evelyn
sets the teeth on edge (he developed into "Sylvie" as well as "Silver"
Evelyn, poor man); "Capability" Brown, the gardener, must have been
buttonholed by a thousand bores; but "Anastasius" Hope is beyond
tolerance. How should such a name be endured? Thomas Hope endured it. He
was the owner of Deepdene, the great house and garden and park a mile
west of Dorking, property that once belonged to the Howards, and in
particular to the ninth Duke of Norfolk. His father was a vastly wealthy
Amsterdam merchant, he himself a patron and a critic of art. He gave
Thorwaldsen his first commission in marble, and Thorwaldsen celebrated
the day of the order every year of his life. But he owed his name to a
romance, _Anastasius or Memoirs of a Modern Greek_, which he wrote at
his leisure, and which places him, as Mr. John Timbs, promenading around
Dorking in 1824, assures us, "in the highest list of eloquent writers
and superior men." The _Edinburgh Reviewer_ was not less effusive. Until
_Anastasius_ was published he had known Mr. Hope merely as the author of
an essay on _Household Furniture and Interior Decoration_. In
_Anastasius_ was the change from the upholsterer to the epicurean.
Deepdene still holds statues and pictures, of which Mr. Bright, in his
history of Dorking, gives a long list. Such a list belongs rightly to a
history; but since the pictures can no longer be seen, other pages need
but note that permission is occasionally granted to walk in the park.
Aubrey's engaging description of the garden as he saw it late in the
seventeenth century, a hundred years before Mr. Thomas Hope, belongs to
his century and ours:--
"Near this place the Honourable Charles Howard of Norfolk hath very
ingeniously contrived a long Hope (_i.e._, according to Virgil,
_Deductus Vallis_) in the most pleasant and delightful solitude for
house, gardens, orchards, boscages etc., that I have seen in
England: It deserves a Poem and was a subject worthy of Mr. Cowley's
Muse. The true name of this Hope is Dibden (quasi Deep Dene).
Mr. Howard hath cast this Hope in the form of a theatre on the sides
whereof he hath made seven narrow walks like the seats of a theatre,
one above another, about six in number, done with a plough, which
are bordered with thyme, and some cherry-trees, myrtles, etc. Here
was a great many orange trees and syringas which were then in
flower. In this garden are twenty-one sorts of thyme. The pit, as I
may call it, is stored full of rare flowers and choice plants. He
hath there two pretty lads his gardeners, who wonderfully delight in
their occupation, and this lovely solitude, and do enjoy themselves
so innocently in that pleasant corner, as if they were out of this
troublesome world, and seem to live in the state of innocency."
But not the gardeners alone. The visitor had a quiet mind who could
exclaim, as John Aubrey did, that "the pleasures of the garden were so
ravishing that I can never expect any enjoyment beyond it but the
Kingdom of Heaven." Aubrey has been called ill-natured, and a
scandal-lover. Nobody ever called him that who has met him in a garden.
East of Dorking and the Deepdene are half-a-dozen Betchworths.
Betchworth Clump rides a shoulder of the downs, with a superb view to
the south; Betchworth village lies under the Clump a mile and more from
the foot of the hill; Betchworth Park and Castle are between the village
and Deepdene. Through the park runs a road, and an avenue of wonderful
limes, but the Castle, which cannot be seen from the part of the park
open to the public, is a castle no longer. It was never more than a
castle in name; Sir Thomas Browne fortified it under Henry VI, but it
saw no fighting. Thomas Hope's father, when he added Betchworth to his
purchase of the Deepdene, pulled it down, and a mere fragment remains.
Not much younger than the ruins, perhaps, are the gnarled and twisted
boles of the Betchworth sweet chestnuts. Albury Park holds some giants,
and there are a few trees quite as fine in Weybridge gardens that once
stood on royal ground, but the Betchworth chestnuts must be older than
either.
Badgers must have been common by Betchworth, for Brocks multiply in the
local names. Brockham village, with a pretty green, stands beyond
Betchworth Park on the Mole; probably the badger has left Brockham since
the bricklayer came out of Dorking.
[Illustration: _The Red Lion, Betchworth._]
Other outdoor life has survived; Brockham still plays good cricket.
Cricket was a favourite game on Brockham Green very early in its
history. Cotmandene was not far away, and no doubt Cotmandene cricket
encouraged smaller games. One of the customs of Brockham players was to
wear straw hats of a pattern made in the village, and when the eleven
went to play over at Mitcham there were derisive shouts--"Here come the
Brockham straw yards." But the straw yards won, and in an innings.
It would be quite easy for a stranger to pass through the Betchworth
that lies on the main road between Dorking and Reigate, and to believe
he had seen it all. But the best of Betchworth is by the little church,
south of the main road on a bend of the Mole. The church, cool and
white, stands deep in a ring of beeches, elms, and ash-trees, and the
baker and grocer of the village lives among roses in a little street of
cottage gardens opposite. At least one of the bequests to the parish is
curiously described on the church wall. Mrs. Margaret Fenwick left L200,
which was to be used partly in binding out poor children as apprentices,
and partly "in prefering in marriage such Maid Servants born in this
Parish as shall respectfully live Seven Years in any Service and whose
friends are not able to do it." The intention is clear, but friends
unable to live respectfully seven years in one service would, one would
think, be numerous.
The real centre from which to see the country east and south of
Betchworth is Reigate, but a walk from Dorking to Reigate might very
well take in Leigh, which is a little out of the beaten track. But if
you ask the way, do not inquire for "Lee." "Lie" is the name. The
village is very small, but it stands round a pretty little green, and
one of the old timbered cottages with a Horsham slab roof sets the right
grace to a group with the church and its trees. Leigh church has fine
brasses of the Arderne family, who had Leigh Place, once an ancient and
moated house half a mile north of the village, now a rather nondescript
but quaint building; the moat remains, the house has been partly pulled
down, partly rebuilt. Leigh Place belonged first to the great family of
de Braose, but its earliest legends are of the Ardernes. There was a Sir
Thomas de Arderne who wooed Margery, the wife of Nicholas de Poynings,
in a very rough manner; he saw no way to making her his own wife except
by making her widow of de Poynings, and so killed him. Tradition says
that she died of a broken heart, and haunts Leigh Place, a sad lady in
white; but it was probably not Sir Thomas, but a descendant of his, who
first had Leigh Place. Still, to Leigh belongs the story. After the
Ardernes, Leigh Place came to the Copleys, who were also of Gatton. One
of them, Sir Thomas Copley, had original notions as to the proper
bearing and attributes of an English gentleman. Mr. John Watney, writing
in the _Surrey Archaeological Collections_, gives a long letter which Sir
Thomas wrote to Queen Elizabeth in 1575, defending himself, among other
things, for having taken to himself titles to which he had no right. His
defence is ingenious:--
"As to the other point, where your Majesty showed to be informed,
that I had attributed to myself in those letters of marque greater
titles than became me or than I could well avow, that must needs be
either in that I termed myself _nobilis Anglus_, or in that, for
more credit both to myself and your service, I was bold to set down
_Dominus de Gatton_, _Roughey_ etc., naming certain my Lordships.
To the first I beseech your Majesty to consider, that there is no
other Latin word proper to signify a gentleman born, but _nobilis_.
As for _generosus_, as I have read in good writers _Vinum
generosum_, for a good cup of wine and _equus generosus_ for a
courageous horse, so I never heard _generosus_ alone so used, to
signify a gentleman born, but only on the gross Latin current in
Westminster Hall, and, if I had set down _generosus Anglus_, it
would have then construed rather a gentle Englishman than an English
gentleman. And as for _armiger_, it had yet been more barbarous, for
surely the world here abroad would rather have understood by that
strange term a page or a sword-bearer than a gentleman of the better
sort, as custom has made it to be construed in England; that this is
simply true, I doubt not, but that your Majesty, excelling in your
knowledge of good letters, will easily judge a gracious sentence on
my suit.... So that in setting down the term _nobilis_ used through
the world for a gentleman, I had no intention to make myself more
noble than I am, but to take only that which was due unto me."
[Illustration: _Buckland._]
I have taken Leigh on the way to Reigate. But the best way to see Leigh
on a short walk is to reach it from Reigate travelling west. The
introduction is by way of Reigate Heath, a wide and breezy common on
which an old black windmill stands high above heather and bracken, a
gaunt and wild neighbour to the orderly villas of the town.
Last of the little villages under the downs between Dorking and Reigate
is Buckland--a handful of cottages, a pond, and a noble barn with
upper-works like a tower. Buckland keeps tranquilly apart from Reigate,
and Reigate, considerately enough, builds her new houses towards the
railway and Redhill.
[Illustration: _The Roman Road at Ockley._]