composes so finely with the red-brick tower of the church, at the further
end of the village street, where the road abruptly forks. It is a street
of all kinds and sizes of houses, mostly old and pleasingly grouped.
But Welwyn has other claims upon the tourist. It was the home for many
years of Young, author of the once-popular _Night Thoughts_. Who reads
that sombre work now? He was rector here from 1730 until 1765, when he
died, but lives as a warning to those who inevitably identify an author
with his books. His work, _The Complaint_, _or_, _Night Thoughts on
Life_, _Death_, _and Immortality_, is dour reading, but he was so little
of a sombre man that we find him not infrequently in the company of, and
a fellow spirit among, the convivial men of his time. This was only a
product of his “sensibility,” that curious quality peculiar to the
eighteenth century, and did not necessarily prove him a weeping
philosopher. He had, indeed, a mental agility which could with ease fly
from the most depressing disquisitions on the silent tomb, to the proper
compounding of a stiff jorum of punch. Young, on his appointment to
Welwyn, married Lady Elizabeth (“Betty”) Lee, daughter of the Earl of
Lichfield. He found the rectory too small (or perhaps not good enough
for her ladyship), and so purchased a more imposing house called the
“Guessons”—anciently the “Guest House” of some abbey. With it he bought
land, and planted the lime-tree avenue which still remains a memorial of
him. There is a votive urn here, erected by Mr. Johnes-Knight, a
succeeding rector; but probably the most enduring memorial of Young is
the very first line of the _Night Thoughts_, the fine expression:—
“Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep.”
No one reads Young nowadays, and so every one who sees this, one of the
most hackneyed of quotations, ascribes it to Shakespeare. Alas, poor
Young!
Young erected a sundial in his garden here, with the motto, “_Eheu_,
_fugaces_!” “Alas, how fleeting!” It was not long before some midnight
robbers came, and, carrying it off, justified the inscription. Nowadays,
besides the avenue and the votive urn, all that remains to tell of him is
the tablet to his memory on the south wall of the aisle.
Knebworth Park, with mansion and an ancient parish church full of
monuments to Strodes, Robinsons and Lyttons, is just off to the left.
There is no Lytton blood in the Earls “of” Lytton, who are not of Litton,
near Tideswell, in Derbyshire, whence came the now extinct Lytton family.
The whole assumption is romantic rather than warranted by facts.
Knebworth is a place of much combined beauty and historic interest,
together with a great deal of vulgar and uninteresting sham. It has been
described as “a sham-old house, with a sham lake, sham heraldic monsters,
and sham-ancient portraits.” Bulwer, the first Lord Lytton—“Bulwig,” as
someone, to his intense annoyance, called him—was intensely fond of
Gothic architecture and ornamentation; fond of it in an undiscriminating,
Early Victorian, uninstructed way, and he stuck his house of Knebworth
all over with gimcrackery that he fondly thought to be mediæval.
Crockets, tourelles, pinnacles and grotesque gargoyles were added in
wholesale fashion, and in a very carpenterish way. One might almost say
they were _wafered_ on. They were not carved out of stone, but moulded
cheaply in plaster, and in his son’s time were always falling. As they
fell, they were relegated to the nearest dustheap, and their places
remained vacant. A visitor to the second Lord Lytton tells, apropos of
these things, how he was walking on the terrace with his host, when the
gardener came up and said, “If you please, my lord, another of them
bloody monkeys has fallen down in the night.” It was, of course, one
more of “Bulwig’s” quasi-Gothic abominations come to its doom.
The Earls Lytton are neither baronial Bulwers nor ancient lordly Lyttons.
Their real name is the very much more plebian one of Wiggett. So far
back as 1756, William Wiggett assumed the name of Bulwer on his marriage
with a Sarah of that ilk. His youngest son, the novelist, the child of
another wife, who had been an Elizabeth Warburton, added the name of
Lytton to his own on succeeding to his mother’s property of Knebworth.
But that does not at once bring us to the Lytton connection. For that,
we must quote the late Augustus J. C. Hare, who was an adept at
relationships to the remotest degree. He had hundreds of cousins of his
own, and knew who was everybody else’s twentieth or thirtieth cousin. He
tells us that this Elizabeth Warburton’s very remote connection with the
real Lyttons lay in the fact that “her grandfather, John Robinson, was
cousin (maternally) to Lytton Strode, who was great-nephew of a Sir
William Lytton, who died childless in 1704.” It will be allowed that the
connection _is_ remote; practically indeed, non-existent.
Nor is the name of Bulwer as distinguished as the novelist wished it to
appear. He sought to range it with Bölver, one of the war-titles of the
Norse god, Odin; but it really derived from some plebian cattle-driver,
or Bullward.
The road rises steeply out of Welwyn, in the direction of Stevenage.
Here some of the coaches had a narrow escape from destruction at the
hands of unknown miscreants, ancestors of the criminal lunatics who place
obstacles upon the railways in our times. Our murderous larrikins had
their counterparts in the old days, in those who placed gates across the
roads, so that the coaches should run into them in the darkness. An
incident of this kind happened here on the night of June 5, 1805, when
two gates were found set up in the main road, and another at Welwyn
Green. Fortunately, no accident resulted, and the ruffians, who
doubtless were waiting the result of their work, must have gone home
disappointed.
From the beautiful expanse of gorsy and wooded hillside common above the
village may be glimpsed the great red-brick viaduct of Welwyn, carrying
the main line of the Great Northern Railway across the wide and deep
valley of the Mimram, an insignificant stream for such a channel.
Woolmer Green and Broadwater, between this point and Stevenage, are
modern and uninteresting hamlets, created out of nothingness by the
speculative builder and the handy situation of Knebworth station, beside
the road, which now begins to give another example of its flatness.
Leisurely wayfarers will notice the old half-timbered cottage at the
entrance to the churchyard. On its side wall are hung two stout long
poles with formidable hooks attached. These are old fire-appliances,
used in the days of thatched roofs, for pulling off the whole of the
blazing thatch. Travellers, leisured or otherwise, will scarce be able
to miss seeing the great and offensive boards hereabouts, advertising a
new suburban or “Garden Suburb” settlement in course of building away to
the right, since 1920; blessed and boomed by Lord Northcliffe, and
apparently to be given the name of “Daily Mail.” Horrible!
The entrance to Stevenage is signalised by a group of new and commonplace
cottages elbowing the famous Six Hills, a series of sepulchral barrows of
prehistoric date, beside the highway. These six grassy mounds might not
unreasonably be passed unthinkingly by the uninstructed, or taken for
grass-grown heaps of refuse. Centuries of wear and weather have had
their effect, and they do not look very monumental now; but they were
once remarkable enough to give the place its name, Stevenage deriving
from the Saxon “_stigenhaght_,” or “hills by the highway.”
To coachmen, who were adepts in the art of what the slangy call
“spoofing,” and were always ready—in earlier slang phrase—to “take a rise
out of” strangers, the Six Hills afforded an excellent opportunity of
practising a diluted form of wit, and often brought them a glass of
brandy or rum-and-milk at the next pull-up, in payment of the bets they
would make with the most innocent-looking passenger, that he could not
tell which two of the hills were furthest apart. They are, as nearly as
possible, equi-distant; but strangers would select one couple or another,
according to their fancy; whereupon the coachman would triumphantly point
out that the first and the last were, as a matter of fact, the most
widely divided. This perhaps does not exhibit coaching wit in a
strikingly robust light; but a very weak kind of jocularity served to
pass the weary hours of travel in our grandfathers’ days.
[Picture: The “Six Hills,” Stevenage]
XVI
STEVENAGE is the first of the many wide-streeted towns and villages whose
emptiness proclaims the something missing that was provided for by all
this vast roominess. Its one street, lining the old road, was originally
laid out so spaciously for the purpose of affording room for the traffic
for which, once upon a time, it was not too spacious. It is all too wide
now that the intercourse of two nations proceeds by rail, and many of the
old inns that once did so famous a trade are converted into private
residences. Prominent among them was the “Swan,” which may now be sought
in the large red-brick house on the right-hand side of the forking roads,
as the town is left for Baldock. It may readily be identified by its
archway, which formerly led to the spacious stables.
The “Swan” at Stevenage, kept in pre-railway days by a postmaster named
Cass, was one of those exclusive houses which, like the “Red Lion” and
the “Green Man” at Barnet, did not condescend to the ordinary
coach-traveller. Cass kept post-horses only, and his customers ranged
from princes and dukes down to baronets and wealthy knights.
“Posting in all its branches,” as the postmasters used to say in the
announcements outside their establishments, was at the beginning of the
nineteenth century essentially aristocratic; but it had many changes,
from its beginning, about the dawn of the seventeenth century, to its
end, before the middle of the nineteenth. Originally “posting” meant the
hire of horses only, and the traveller rode horseback himself,
accompanied perhaps by a mounted guide. Thus Fynes Morison, in his
_Itinerary_, published in 1617, speaks of the early days of posting:—“In
England, towards the south, and in the west parts, and from London to
Barwick upon the confines of Scotland, post-horses are established at
every ten miles or thereabouts, which they ride a false gallop after some
ten miles an hour sometimes, and that makes their hire the greater; for
with a commission from the chief postmaster or chiefe lords of the
councell (given either upon publike businesse, or at least pretence
thereof), a passenger shall pay twopence halfpenny each mile for his
horse, and as much for his guide’s horse; but one guide will serve the
whole company, though many ride together, who may easily bring back the
horses, driving them before him, who ‘know the waye as well as a beggar
knowes his dishe.’ This extraordinary charge of horses’ hire may well be
recompensed with the speede of the journey, whereby greater expences in
the innes are avoided; all the difficultie is, to have a body able to
endure the toyle. For these horses the passenger is at no charge to give
them meat onely at the ten miles, and the boy that carries them backe
will expect some few pence in gift.”
When carriages were introduced, the very great personages of the realm
“progressed” in them, and had their love of display gratified thereby.
But what they gained in pomp they lost in speed, for at the best of it
they rarely travelled at a greater pace than seven miles an hour.
An odd institution with the noble and the wealthy families of that bygone
age was the “running footman.” It has sometimes been supposed that these
deer-footed servitors were for town service, perhaps because “old Q,” the
profligate Marquis of Queensberry, who was the last to keep one, lived in
town during his last years and necessarily kept his lackey running London
streets. The unique sign of the “running footman,” with the portrait of
such an one in costume, is also in London, and may be seen any day on a
little public-house, still chiefly frequented by men-servants, in Charles
Street, Berkeley Square. He wears a uniform consisting of blue coat and
breeches, trimmed with gold lace. Round his waist is a red sash, on his
head a cap with a nodding plume, and in his hand the long staff carried
by all his tribe. This is an outfit somewhat different from that usually
worn, for we are told that they wore no breeches, but a short silk
petticoat kept down by a deep gold fringe.
The function of a running footman was to run ahead of his employer’s
carriage, to point out the proper turnings to take, or to arrange for his
reception at the inns; but as time went on and accommodation increased,
he was not of any practical use, and became simply a kind of unnecessary
fore-runner, who by his appearance advertised the coming of my lord and
upheld my lord’s dignity. It is said that these ministers to senseless
pomp and vanity usually ran at the rate of seven miles an hour, and
frequently did sixty miles a day. The long and highly ornamented staff
they carried had a hollow silver ball at the end containing white wine.
Unscrewing it, the footman could refresh himself. More white wine, mixed
with eggs, was given him at the end of his journey, and he must have
needed it! Over the bad and hilly roads of a hundred and fifty years
ago, the running footman could readily keep ahead of a carriage; on the
flat the horses, of course, had the advantage.
Post-chaises were unknown in England until after the middle of the
eighteenth century had come and gone. Thus we find Horace Walpole and
Gray, taking the “grand tour” together in 1739, astonished to laughter at
the post-chaises which conveyed them from Boulogne towards Paris. This
French vehicle, the father of all post-chaises, was two-wheeled, and not
very unlike our present hansom-cab, the door being in front and the body
hung in much the same way, only a little more forward from the wheels.
The French _chaise de-poste_ was invented in 1664, and the first used in
England were of this type; but they proved unsuitable for use in this
country, and English carriage-builders at length evolved the well-known
post-chaise, which went out only with the coaching age. But it was long
before it began to supplant the post-horses and the feminine pillion.
Every one is familiar with the appearance of the old post-chaise, which,
according to the painters and the print-sellers, appears to have been
used principally for the purpose of spiriting love-lorn couples with the
speed of the wind away from all restrictions of home and the Court of
Chancery. A post-chaise was (so it seems nowadays) a rather cumbrous
affair, four-wheeled, high, and insecurely hung, with a glass front and a
seat to hold three, facing the horses. The original designers evidently
had no prophetic visions as to this especial popularity of post-chaises
with errant lovers, nor did they ponder the proverb, “Two’s company,
three’s none,” else they would have restricted their accommodation to
two, or have enlarged it to four.
It was an expensive as well as a pleasant method of travelling, costing
as it did at least a shilling a mile, and, in times when forage was dear,
one shilling and threepence. The usual rates were chaise, nine-pence a
mile, pair of post-horses, sixpence; four horses and chaise, supposing
you desired to travel speedily—say at twelve miles an
hour—one-and-ninepence. But these costs and charges did not frank the
traveller through. The post-boy’s tip was as inevitable as night and
morning. Likewise there were the “gates” to pay every now and again.
One shudders to contemplate the total cost of posting from London to
Edinburgh, even with only the ordinary equipment of two horses. There
were thirty post-stages between the two capitals, according to the books
published for the use of travellers a hundred years ago. Those books
were very necessary to any one who did not desire to be charged for
perhaps a mile more on each stage than it really measured, which was one
of those artful postmasters’ little ways. Here is a list of these stages
with the measurements, to which travellers drew the attention of those
postmasters who commonly endeavoured to overcharge:—
Miles Furlongs Miles Furlongs
Barnet 11 0 York 9 3
Hatfield 8 4 Easingwold 13 3
Stevenage 11 7 Thirsk 10 3
Biggleswade 13 5 Northallerton 9 0
Buckden 15 7 Darlington 16 0
Stilton 13 7 Durham 18 2
Stamford 14 2 Newcastle 14 4
Witham Common 11 2 Morpeth 14 6
Grantham 9 5 Alnwick 18 6
Newark 14 3 Belford 14 5
Tuxford 13 2 Berwick 15 3
Barnby Moor 10 4 Press Inn 11 5
Doncaster 12 0 Dunbar 14 3
Ferrybridge 15 2 Haddington 11 0
Tadcaster 12 7 Edinburgh 16 0
Nearly four hundred miles by these measurements. This, at a shilling a
mile for the posting, gives £20; but, including the postboys’ tips,
“gates,” and expenses at the inns on the road, the journey could not have
been done in this way under £30, at the most modest calculation. This
list of post-stages was one drawn up for distances chiefly between the
towns, but nothing is more remarkable along the Great North Road than the
number of old posting-houses which still exist (although of course their
business is gone) in wild and lonely spots, far removed from either town
or village.
Another “branch” of posting was the horsing alone, by which a private
carriage could be taken to or from town by hiring posters at every stage.
This was a favourite practice with the gentry of the shires, who thus had
all the _éclat_ of travelling in private state, without the expense and
trouble of providing their own horses. It is probably of this method
that De Quincey speaks in the following passage:—
“In my childhood,” says he, “standing with one or two of my brothers
and sisters at the front window of my mother’s carriage, I remember
one unvarying set of images before us. The postillion (for so were
all carriages then driven) was employed, not by fits and starts, but
always and eternally, in quartering, _i.e._ in crossing from side to
side, according to the casualties of the ground. Before you
stretched a wintry length of lane, with ruts deep enough to fracture
the leg of a horse, filled to the brim with standing pools of
rain-water; and the collateral chambers of these ruts kept from
becoming confluent by thin ridges, such as the Romans called _lirae_,
to maintain the footing upon which _lirae_, so as not to swerve (or
as the Romans would say, _delirare_), was a trial of some skill, both
for the horses and their postillion. It was, indeed, next to
impossible for any horse, on such a narrow crust of separation, not
to grow _delirious_ in the Roman metaphor; and the nervous anxiety
which haunted me when a child was much fed by this image so often
before my eyes, and the sympathy with which I followed the motion of
the docile creatures’ legs. Go to sleep at the beginning of a stage,
and the last thing you saw—wake up, and the first thing you saw—was
the line of wintry pools, the poor off-horse planting his steps with
care, and the cautious postillion gently applying his spur whilst
manoeuvring across the system of grooves with some sort of science
that looked like a gipsy’s palmistry—so equally unintelligible to me
were his motions in what he sought and in what he avoided.”
XVII
BEFORE we leave Stevenage, we must pay a visit to the “Old Castle” inn,
in whose stable the body of the eccentric Henry Trigg is deposited, in a
coffin amid the rafters, plain for all to see; somewhat dilapidated and
battered in the lapse of two centuries, and with a patch of tin over the
hole cut in it by some riotous blades long ago, but doubtless still
containing his bones. His Will sufficiently explains the circumstances.
IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.
I, HENRY TRIGG, of Stevenage, in the County of Hertford, Grocer,
being very infirm and weak in body, but of perfect sound mind and
memory, God be praised for it, calling into mind the mortality of my
body, do now make and ordain this my last Will and Testament, in
writing, hereafter following: that is to say:—Principally I recommend
my soul into the merciful hands of Almighty God that first gave me
it, assuredly believing and only expecting free pardon and
forgiveness of all my sins, and eternal life in and through the only
merits, death, and passion of Jesus Christ my Saviour; and as to my
body I commit it to the West end of my Hovel, to be decently laid
there upon a floor erected by my Executor, upon the purlin, for the
same purpose; nothing doubting but at the general Resurrection I
shall receive the same again by the mighty power of God; and as for
and concerning such worldly substance as it hath pleased God to bless
me with in this world, I do devise and dispose of the same in manner
and form here following.
[Picture: Trigg’s Coffin]
_Imprimis_. I give and devise unto my loving brother Thomas Trigg,
of Letchworth, in the County of Hertford, Clerk, and to his Heirs and
Assigns for ever, all those my Freehold Lands lying dispersedly in
the several common fields in the parish of Stevenage aforesaid, and
also all my Copyhold Lands, upon condition that he shall lay my body
upon the place before mentioned; and also all that Messuage, Cottage,
or Tenement at Redcoats Green in the Parish of Much Wymondly,
together with those Nine Acres of Land (more or less) purchased of
William Hale and Thomas Hale, Jun.; and also my Cottage, Orchard, and
barn, with four acres of Land (more or less) belonging, lying, and
being in the Parish of Little Wymondly, and now in the possession of
Samuel Kitchener, labourer; and all my Cottages, Messuages, or
Tenements situate and being in Stevenage, aforesaid: or, upon
condition that he shall pay my brother, George Trigg, the sum of Ten
Pounds per annum for life: but if my brother shall neglect or refuse
to lay my body where I desire it should be laid, then, upon that
condition, I will and bequeath all that which I have already
bequeathed to my brother Thomas Trigg, unto my brother George Trigg,
and to his heirs for ever; and if my brother George Trigg should
refuse to lay my body under my Hovel, then what I have bequeathed
unto him, as all my Lands and Tenements, I lastly bequeath them unto
my nephew William Trigg and his heirs for ever, upon his seeing that
my body is decently laid up there as aforesaid.
_Item_. I give and bequeath unto my nephew William Trigg, the sum of
_Five Pounds_, at the age of Thirty years; to his sister Sarah the
sum of _Twenty Pounds_; to his sister Rose the sum of _Twenty
Pounds_; and lastly to his sister Ann the sum of _Twenty Pounds_; all
at the age of Thirty Years: to John Spencer, of London, Butcher, the
sum of _One Guinea_; and to Solomon Spencer, of Stevenage, the sum of
_One Guinea_, Three Years next after my decease; to my cousin Henry
Kimpton, _One Guinea_, One Year next after my decease, and another
_Guinea_ Two Years after my decease; to William Waby, _Five
Shillings_; and to Joseph Priest, _Two Shillings and Sixpence_, Two
Years after my decease; to my tenant Robert Wright the sum of _Five
Shillings_, Two years next after my decease; and to Ralph Lowd and
John Reeves, _One Shilling_ each, Two Years next after my decease.
_Item_. All the rest of my Goods and Chattels, and personal Estate,
and Ready Money, I do hereby give and devise unto my brother Thomas
Trigg, paying my debts and laying my body where I would have it laid;
whom I likewise make and ordain my full and sole Executor of this my
last Will and Testament, or else to them before mentioned; ratifying
and confirming this and no other to be my last Will and Testament, in
witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this
Twenty-eighth day of September, in the year of our Lord One Thousand
Seven Hundred and Twenty-four
HENRY TRIGG.
Read, signed, sealed, and declared by the said Henry Trigg, the
Testator, to be his last Will and Testament, in the presence of us
who have subscribed our names as witnesses hereto, in the presence of
the said Testator.
JOHN HAWKINS, Sen.
JOHN HAWKINS, Jun.
× The mark of WILLIAM SEXTON.
Proved in the Archdeaconry of Huntingdon, the 15th day of October,
1724, by the Executor Thomas Trigg.