MORE TYPICAL TRAMPS.
How far county divisions might affect the early fashions in
gravestones was one of my first questions, and, having seen much of
Kent, time was soon found for a scamper through the country bordering
Epping Forest and along the backbone of Essex.
At Barking, just within the old Abbey gate, I came upon an enigmatical
illustration.
FIG. 70.--AT BARKING.
Inscription illegible. Date appears to be 1759.
The signification of the four balls I am unable to suggest, unless
they be connected in some way with the planetary system and point
man's insignificance. They appear to emanate from a cloud resting upon
the hour-glass, and may help the other emblems in symbolizing time and
eternity. The nickering candle is also of doubtful interpretation. It
may mean the brevity of life; it can hardly be needed, in the presence
of the skull, to indicate death. The candle is sometimes employed
alone, occasionally extinguished. At Woolwich there is an instance in
which the candle is in the act of being put out.
FIG. 71.--AT WOOLWICH.
"To Siston Champion, died 27th Feb. 1749-50
(a few days after the birth of her child),
aged 28 years."
The candle is indeed commonly used as a simile of life's uncertainty
in all countries, and it may be that where it is represented in a
state of burning it may be meant as a lesson on the number of our
days. It is seen with the skulls in the churchyard of St. Nicholas,
Deptford, and other places.
FIG. 72.--AT DEPTFORD.
"To William Firth, died 1724, aged 21 years."
In West Ham Churchyard may be seen the figure of the kissing cherubs
rather prettily rendered, but to be found in various forms in many
places, and always expressive of affection.
FIG. 73.--AT WEST HAM.
"To Sarah Moore, died 1749."
Wanstead Churchyard is remarkable for the abundance and originality
of its old gravestones. Here is one (Fig. 74) which carries more
distinctly the fanciful idea suggested at West Ham (page 34, Fig. 63);
flowers and foliage, and even fruit, combining with the lowered torch
and summoning trumpet to tell of life beyond the grave.
FIG. 74.--AT WANSTEAD.
"To William Bosely, died 1712, aged 79."
[Illustration: FIG. 70. BARKING.]
[Illustration: FIG. 71. WOOLWICH.]
[Illustration: FIG. 72. DEPTFORD.]
[Illustration: FIG. 73. WEST HAM.]
[Illustration: FIG. 74. WANSTEAD.]
[Illustration: FIG. 75. WANSTEAD.]
There are several other variations of the same symbol in the elegant
enclosure at Wanstead Church; but the most remarkable of the old
stones is one which has at the top corners two projecting skulls, the
one facing nearly to the front and the other in profile, both standing
out in full relief, carefully and accurately sculptured, but too
ghastly to be beautiful. This one, the Richmond example, and the two
at Ripley constitute my entire experience of full relief work on a
mere gravestone.
FIG. 75.--AT WANSTEAD.
"To William Swan, died 1715, aged 16 years."
Other churchyards in the locality we found less fruitful, and taking
rail to Buckhurst Hill, we struck across Epping Forest to Chingford,
also without profit, and walked on to Walthamstow, where another of
the enfoliated death's-head pictures was found; the novelty being two
skulls with ivy sprays, symbolical of evergreen recollections.
FIG. 76.--AT WALTHAMSTOW.
"To Jane Redfern, died 1734, aged 52 years,"
In the Broxbourne example on the same Plate (Fig. 77) branches of oak,
bearing leaves and acorns, are used with good decorative effect on
either side of a porch in which is seated a mourning figure, but I
cannot undertake to explain the symbolical significance of the oak in
sepulchral masonry.
FIG. 77.--AT BROXBOURNE.
"To Mrs Rowe, widow, died 6 May 1798."
My excursions into Essex have been too limited in scope to trace or
test peculiarities in that county, but I have found by observation in
a number of counties that, although there are occasional evidences
of local invention, or at least of local modification, in certain
districts, the same set of types which prevails in one county serves
pretty well for all the rest.
It is well therefore to guard against disappointment. Pilgrimages
like ours, having for their real purpose healthy exercise and physical
enjoyment, are not to be counted failures when their ostensible errand
seems to have borne no result. It is necessary for the pilgrim to
be armed with some such reflection as this against the shafts of
discomfiture. There have been occasions when, at the close of the
day, conscious as I might be of the pleasant hours past, the freshened
brain and the body reinvigorated, I have yet covetously mourned the
scanty and valueless additions to my note-book. Other pilgrims may
therefore take warning, be prepared for blank days in barren coverts,
and sully not their satisfaction with regrets. But it will be a blank
day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the
mind with happy recollections. One walk on a winter's day over the
hills from High Barnet to Edgware I reckoned sadly unproductive of the
special novelties I sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of
some landscapes which I can never forget, and it printed on my brain a
little _papier-maché_-like church at Totteridge which was worth going
miles to see. Better fortune next time should be the beacon of the
gentle tramp. The long jaunt I had from Chigwell Lane Station through
the pretty but unpopulous country west of Theydon Bois, uneventful as
it was, made an ineffaceable mark on my memory. I picture now the long
and solitary walk across fields and woodlands, with never a soul to
tell the way for miles and miles, crossing and recrossing the winding
Roden, startling the partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at
some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. It is
not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken
ground by chart and compass. These needful guides then prove their
value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not
to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance
to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at
Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain
at several halting-places that day, I met with a Norman doorway at
Lambourn Church which archaeologists would call a dream, the axe-work
of the old masons as clean cut and as perfect as though it had been
done last week; and in taking a near cut at a guess across country for
Stapleford Tawney I mind me that I lost my way, or thought I had, but
the mariner's needle was true, and emerging in a green avenue I saw
before me a finger-post marked "To Tawney Church." I took off my
hat and respectfully saluted that finger-post, and was soon in
the churchyard, where I haply lighted upon one of the gems of my
collection, the headstone sculpture of "The Good Samaritan."
[Illustration: FIG. 76. WALTHAMSTOW.]
[Illustration: FIG. 77. BROXBOURNE.]
FIG. 78.--AT STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.
"To Richard Wright, died 3d March 1781,
aged 76 years."
I have, however, an earlier study of the same subject from the
churchyard at Shorne Village, near Gravesend, which, is here given
for comparison, and I have seen two others at Cranbrook. They all have
some features alike, but there are differences in the treatment of
details in each case.
FIG. 79.--AT SHORNE.
"To Mary Layton, died Jan. 12, 1760; Joseph
Layton, died May 21, 1757; and Will.
Holmes, died Aug. 26, 1752."
The stone at Shorne being close to the church door is well known to
the villagers, by whom it is regarded as a curiosity. The schoolmaster
was good enough to give me a photograph from which my sketch is
made. But such rarities are seldom esteemed by, or even known to, the
inhabitants of a place, and are passed by without heed by the constant
congregation of the church. At Stapleford Tawney, just named, a
native, the first I had seen for a mile or two, stopped at the
unwonted sight of a stranger sketching in the churchyard, and I
consulted him as to application of the parable of the Good Samaritan
in the case under notice. His reply was that, though he had lived
there "man and boy for fifty year," he had "never see'd the
thing afore." He condescended, however, to take an interest in my
explanations, and seemed to realize that it was worth while to seek
for objects of interest even in a churchyard. This was decidedly
better than the behaviour on another occasion of two rustics at
Southfleet. They had passed my friend jotting down an epitaph, and the
turn of a corner revealed me sketching a tombstone, when one to the
other exclaimed, "Land sikes, Bill, if 'ere ain't another on em!"
[Illustration: FIG. 78. STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.]
[Illustration: FIG. 79. SHORNE.]