Mail met with the first of the two misadventures that befell it on
this occasion. The coach had passed through the toll-gate that then
stood here, and was going at about eight miles an hour, when it ran
over an old woman seated in the middle of the road, helplessly drunk.
The apparent truth of the old saying that Providence especially looks
after fools, drunkards, and children lost none of its point here, for
the coach and horses, in some marvellous way, passed over her without
doing her any injury except a slight bruise on the forehead, supposed
to have been caused by the drag-chain. By some almost miraculous
interposition, the horses seem to have dashed past on either side of
her. The coach was stopped, and the passengers and guard, naturally
thinking her days were ended by her being run over or kicked to death,
got nervously down to remove what they thought was at least a dying, if
not an already dead, creature, when they were assailed by a vigorous
torrent of abuse. Somewhat relieved by this evidence that she could
not be very seriously hurt, they picked her up, and, as she was much
too drunk to walk, placed her on the grass by the roadside, out of the
way of the traffic. Then the coach started again; but they had not
gone beyond two miles when, through the clear air of a very beautiful
night, the coachman saw a number of waggons ahead, approaching. He
called to the guard to blow his horn, which the guard accordingly did,
when the waggons drew off to one side. Unfortunately they were drawn
to their off-side, directly into the path of the on-coming mail, which
dashed into Barnett’s Tunbridge van, at the head of them. The van was
hurled violently into the hedge, and the coach, going off at an angle
from this terrific impact, then went full tilt into a hay-wain. The
splinter-bar ran under the shafts of the wain and so, happily for the
passengers, kept the coach from crashing over; but the shock of the
encounter flung the coachman from his seat and the wheels went over
his body. He rolled over and moaned piteously, but never spoke again.
Carried into the “Polhill Arms,” he shortly expired there.
Rough-and-ready roadside repairs were effected and the coach went on to
Riverhead, but the passengers, thoroughly unnerved by the chances and
disasters of this ominous night, preferred to walk on to that village,
three miles and a half away, where, at the “White Hart,” they rested.
The surviving toll-house at Pratt’s Bottom is neighboured by a signpost
which directs to Knockholt, to Sevenoaks, to Chelsfield, and—to the
Workhouse: _i.e._ the workhouse we have just passed at Lock’s Bottom.
That way also leads to London, but that is merely an incidental matter.
[Illustration: THE OLD TOLL-HOUSE, PRATT’S BOTTOM.]
The gently swelling hills at this point are composed of a stratum of
pebbles, mixed with a proportion of flints: the product of vastly
remote geological ages. These pebbles have given its Saxon name to
the neighbouring village of Chelsfield, which is Cealch-field or
Chesilfield = the field of pebbles; just as the not far distant
Chelsham and Chiselhurst, with similar pebbles, are, in the same way,
Pebble Home and Pebble Wood.
XIII
At Pratt’s Bottom there is an interesting parting of the ways. The
straight road on to Sevenoaks, by way of Polhill, is modern, having
been made in 1836. Before that time the route lay up along by the
dangerously acute turning to the right, where the old toll-house
stands, to the weary ascent of Rushmore, or Richmore Hill, and to
Knockholt Pound. Ogilby, in his “Britannia” of 1675 shows a map of this
road to “Nokeholt,” as he calls it, with “Ye Porcupine inne” on the
right-hand, near the summit; and a “Porcupine” inn is there to this day.
At the foot of the rise stands the “Bull’s Head” inn, itself of a
considerable age, picturesquely faced by a row of old elms, and just
beyond you may notice in the hollow on the right hand, where the
modern schools stand, an unreformed piece of the original old road,
going very steeply and stonily in a loop, and rejoining the present
route a quarter of a mile onwards. A white house, now a farmhouse,
just before reaching the “Porcupine,” is still sometimes called by the
older rustics “New Stables.” It was a posting-house in the old days. At
Knockholt, where, having reached the topmost eyrie of the downs, the
road turns left, the “Harrow” inn, that was once the house of call for
the carriers and waggoners of the Sevenoaks road, still stands.
When the chronicler of these things has explored the old way to
Sevenoaks and the new it remains more than ever a mystery why this
circuitous way was ever followed, and why so many generations of
travellers should have been content to continue along it when a
considerable distance might have been saved, a less arduous climb
encountered, and a much less dangerous descent made by following the
line of country now covered by the modern road.
At Knockholt one has come to a very bleak and inhospitable place, as
may be seen by that famous landmark, Knockholt Beeches, not far from
the ancient route. The Beeches, it is well known, are situated on the
loftiest view-point of the North Downs, and form as windy an outlook as
it is possible to conceive; but in those days travellers did not travel
for the sake of the views on the way.
[Illustration: KNOCKHOLT BEECHES.]
It is _de rigueur_ among the circles that frequent the site of the
Beeches to call it “Knock’olt.” To pronounce the name in any other way
would seem to them the sheerest affectation. The spot is, in fact,
dedicated by common consent to the beanfeaster on week-days and to the
sporting publican on Sundays, who drives his best barmaid out in a
flashy trap, and has lunch at the neighbouring inn, known to the vulgar
herd as the “Crahn.” Whether it be due to the strong liquors of the
“Crown” or to the bracing quality of the breezes I do not know, but the
sheer abandonment of the merry-making at the Beeches can excel even
that of the ’Eath on a Bank Holiday. “The ’Eath?” you ask. Why, yes;
there is only one possible ’Eath in this connection—that of ’Ampstead.
[Illustration: A PHYLLIS OF KNOCKHOLT.]
From Knockholt Beeches the eye ranges to the Crystal Palace, the
enormity of it a little excused by distance; and the Tower Bridge and
the dome of St. Paul’s are easily to be identified. But those familiar
objects soon pall, and the yearnful music of the concertina and the
mazy dance commonly occupy the all-too-swiftly fading afternoon. ’Arry
and ’Arriet exchange hats in the spirit of fellowship that has come
down to them from the remote ages when semi-savage ancestors swapped
headgear at their feasts to typify equality one with the other;
although I suspect that if you told ’Arry and his “donah” that they
do what they do because their ancient ancestors were accustomed to
do it, they would promptly tell you to “shut it, guv’nor.” And they
would properly be resentful, for every one prefers to think “I am I,”
self-actuated, automobilous, self-contained, and patterned on no model.
And at last, arms round waists, ’Arriet crowned with a bowler, and
’Arry’s cheeks swept by the “ostridge” feathers of her hat, they go
back in the solemn twilight to the waggonettes, singing the latest
songs of the Halls.
But to resume the old road, interrupted too long by this interlude.
A stark, forbidding plateau of swede and mangold-wurtzel fields follows
from the hamlet of Knockholt Pound, through which the road runs,
unfenced, like a footpath. Then it plunges, with little warning, down
the southern face of the hills and goes hazardously corkscrewing to the
levels, far below. Down there, on the right hand, through the hedges,
is Chevening, and you look down, like the rooks and crows, upon the
roofs of church and mansion, situated, as Mr. Thomas Hardy would say,
in his sesquipedalian fashion, “as in an isometric drawing.”
This, indeed, is the well-known “Madamscourt” Hill, so styled from
time immemorial, although the name derives from the estate of Morant’s
Court, at the foot. There is, at any rate, no lady in _this_ case, and
the direction, _cherchez la femme_, is entirely out of order.
The cyclist passes in a flash a large white house on the left hand,
half-way down, and is too engrossed upon the problem of whether he will
succeed in reaching the bottom safely to notice it. The house, now a
villa, was in the old days of the road a very fine inn, called the
“Star,” and from it the hill is still known to many of the country-folk
as “Star Hill.” The exceeding steepness of the hill gave the “Star”
the excellent custom it enjoyed until the way was diverted, and thus
abolished the jolly days of the old road.
The coaches wagged so slowly to the summit that the passengers commonly
walked quicker to the hill-top, and were already enjoying the very
choice fare provided when the weary team pulled up at the door. The
horses had, of course, to be rested, and as no one in those hospitable
days could think of not offering coachman and guard some liquid token
of their esteem, it was often a considerable time before the journey
was resumed.
Just below the old inn the “Pilgrim’s Way” from Winchester to
Canterbury crossed the road, making for Otford, along the sunny
southern slopes of the downs.
At last, gaining the level, the old coach-road joins the modern route
at the “Rose and Crown,” Dunton Green.
XIV
The present road to Sevenoaks from Pratt’s Bottom is closely
neighboured by the South Eastern Railway, running in a deep chalk
cutting and then disappearing in the grim mouth of Polhill Tunnel,
one and-a-half mile long. The mephitic breath of the tunnel, bellying
sulphureously out and flying in noisome wisps over the road, would be
a good converting agent for those who, believing in eternal punishment
and the Pit, have not yet ordered their lives accordingly; and you
who look down there think it rather surprising that railways with
dreadful tunnels have not yet been pressed into missionary service
by those who will not renounce the traditional Hell of sulphur and
fire. Believers, convey your awful examples hither. Bring them to a
belief in an Eternity of _that_, only hotter, and you shall have them
instantaneously on their knees, earnestly making resolutions to turn
from their wickedness, and live.
A station, now called “Knockholt,” is planted here. It was formerly
styled “Halstead,” from the village of that name, half a mile away;
but, to avoid any possibility of confusion with another Halstead, in
Essex, it was given this name, although Knockholt is nearly three miles
distant.
The felled trees, wooden shanties, and sawmills here beside the road,
at May’s Farm, give the place rather the air of some scene of backwoods
activity in America.
From here the road gradually rises to the crest of Polhill, on the
commanding range of the North Downs. The “Polhill Arms,” standing on
the left hand, marks the beginning of the long descent into the Weald,
very thoroughly masked and the magnificent view down to Sevenoaks
hidden by a dense screen of beeches and firs. Something else is masked
by those trees: a great modern fort, with emplacements for heavy guns,
built up here for the defence of London, as part of a scheme comprising
some sixteen forts forming an irregular circle around the metropolis at
a radius of about twenty miles, and designed to check a sudden descent
of any possible enemy upon the capital.
London has been held by military experts to be peculiarly open to such
a danger; hence the forts of Polhill, Farningham, Dartford, Merstham,
Box Hill, Pewley Hill, Esher, and others. But Englishmen, official or
otherwise, are so used to considering the likelihood of invasion remote
that, although many of the sites for forts have been purchased, it has
been found impracticable to obtain sufficient money from Parliament
to complete the ring and to thoroughly fortify these approaches.
Parliament looks with suspicion upon Service proposals, and since
the scandals of the great Boer War those suspicions have been very
generally shared by the nation at large, which looks upon the methods
of the War Office as those of a war office in comic opera.
It is a tawny-coloured roadway that swoops down from the summit of
Polhill, between the sandy banks of a wooded cutting, to Dunton Green.
Half-way down, the trees and the cutting give place to open country,
and the hill itself goes by another name: that of Sepham Hill.
Down by Dunton Green, looking backwards, the hills, those noble North
Downs, are seen to go terracing away beautifully east and west, their
great, green, rounded shoulders dimpled with folds and gullies, shaggy
here and there with belts of trees, or scarred outrageously with great
gashes of chalk-pits, where the lime-burners every day demolish yet
another fragment of picturesque scenery and roast it in limekilns, to
the end that it may go towards the making of mortar and mean streets.
There goes Old England, in mortar, to feed the spreading tentacles of
the towns.
Just such a chalk-pit is that huge scar, beside the hill we have just
descended, where who shall say how many tons are excavated weekly?
What would Ruskin have said of it? Something superlative, without
doubt. I think I hear him: “accursed,” “damnable,” he says, and Dr.
Samuel Johnson, in the spirit-world, discussing the question with him,
decides magisterially, after his wont: “The point is, sir, whether you
are to use the materials Nature has given us for the improvement of
man’s condition in the world, or to neglect them in order to preserve
the savage wastes of a desolate country-side, to gratify the diseased
fancies of people who call themselves artists. Sir, let us take a walk
down the Elysian equivalent of Fleet Street!”
[Illustration: AN OLD WAYSIDE COTTAGE, BELOW POLHILL.]
Dunton Green, formerly Donington, is a rather Cockneyfied hamlet
that is at present halting between expansion and a few regretful
reminiscences of a past rural state. It is very populous, and the
children live and have their playground in the open road.
[Illustration: LONGFORD.]
At Longford, to which we come after Dunton Green, the river Darenth
is crossed, at an early stage of its career, by a bridge that long
ago superseded the ford. It is still a narrow bridge, with a roadway
only twenty feet wide, but it has been already once widened and once
renewed, as two tablets, built into the wall on either side, declare:
This Bridge was renewed by order of the Commissioners of Sevenoakes
Turnpike. William Covell, Mason.
And
This Bridge was Widen’d in March a.d. 1813 by order of the Seven Oaks
Turnpike Road. J. Smith, Archt.
The Darenth rises at Westerham, only five miles away; but there is
already a sufficient head of water in the infant stream to serve the
purpose of a large flour-mill standing here.
Beyond it, a dusty stretch leads into Riverhead, past a strange little
outlying group of houses lying back from the road and fronted with
the rows of lime-trees that give it the name of Linden Square. Local
gossip declares the place to have once been a coaching inn, but exact
information is utterly unprocurable.
XV
That the village of Riverhead belongs very largely to Lord Amherst is
obvious enough, in the highly ornate terra-cotta tablets on the houses,
bearing a gigantic A crowned with an earl’s coronet and ensigned with
a shield charged with three spears. Also the “Amherst Arms,” with its
sign exhibiting two Red Indians and the motto, “Constantia et Virtute,”
proclaims the lordship.
Riverhead is a pretty little village, with a puzzling number of
branching roads, situated at the foot of the long steep rises to
Sevenoaks. Its name comes from the source of the Darenth being near at
hand. The church that looks so picturesque in the illustration is, in
fact, a piece of very bad early nineteenth-century Gothic, designed
and built in 1831 by Decimus Burton, whose sympathies were entirely
with the classic styles, as will be acknowledged when it is said that
he it was who designed the Arch and screen at Hyde Park Corner and the
lodges at the various gates of Hyde Park.
The corner of Riverhead selected for illustration here includes old and
new. The gabled houses on the left are recent; the weathered wall on
the right, with the curious little two-spouted fountain, is old; and
very old and weather-worn is the almost entirely illegible notice-board
declaring that something will be done to somebody doing something or
other, followed by “£5.” It is very vague and terrifying.
“Montreal,” a beautiful park on the right hand of the ascent to
Sevenoaks, is an historic place, the seat of Lord Amherst (Earl
Amherst and Baron Holmesdale), descendant of that great soldier
of the eighteenth century, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, Field-Marshal and
Commander-in-Chief.
The estate of Montreal came to this family in the seventeenth century,
when a Jeffrey Amherst of that period, a barrister, acquired it. The
place, then called “Brooks,” had been a seat of the ancient Colepepper
family. The famous soldier was born here, and it is not a little
curious to observe that his equally great contemporary, Wolfe, whose
most renowned exploits were performed in the same series of campaigns
in Canada, was born close at hand, at Westerham.
Amherst was born in 1717, and commenced his career as page to the first
Duke of Dorset at Knole, afterwards learning the profession of arms in
Germany, then, as now, the military school _par excellence_. How he
fought in the victory of Dettingen or in the defeat of Fontenoy does
not concern us here. His chance came when Pitt, alarmed at the policy
of the French in Canada, gave him high command in those territories;
and he justified the selection.
[Illustration: RIVERHEAD.]
He was no kid-glove warrior. Sentiment was no portion of his equipment
in the field, and if there were any in his composition he reserved it
until his campaigns were fought to a finish.
To some of his doings or proposals the term “methods of barbarism,”
shamefully applied by Little Englanders to the rosewater conduct of
our modern campaigns in South Africa, might well have been attached.
In warfare with the Indians he was so enraged with the atrocities
committed by them upon captured officers that he contemplated employing
bloodhounds and spreading smallpox among the redskins. That last horror
was, fortunately, sternly vetoed, not only for the sake of humanity,
but from the very reasonable fear that the scourge, once let loose,
might destroy not merely the “noble red man,” but the white man as well.
Probably no one fully informed ever applied to Amherst the term of
“dashing.” His methods as a general were calculating and deliberate;
he was, indeed, the very antithesis of the meteoric, impulsive Wolfe.
Those qualities served his country quite as well, and himself better;
for although he was not idolised as a hero, he succeeded, on his return
home, in obtaining the post of Commander-in-Chief.
To be regarded as a hero, it is generally considered necessary to be
killed in the performance of the heroic deed, which does not seem
altogether satisfactory, and is indeed rather discouraging.
However that may be, a grateful country, in the person of George the
Third, eventually offered Amherst an earldom. He refused it, and
accepted a barony instead. He held the post of Commander-in-Chief for
many years, and only resigned, under pressure, in 1795 in favour of the
Duke of York, the king’s son, whose military exploits are summed up in
the once-popular lines:
The brave old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men:
He marched them up to the top of a hill,
And marched them down again;
a specimen of minstrelsy which concludes with the obvious statements
that—
When they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were half-way up
They were neither up nor down.
Amherst lived but two years after the close of his public career, dying
in 1797, at the age of eighty-one.
He it was who, demolishing the old house at Riverhead, built the
present exceedingly plain stone mansion, and re-named house and park
“Montreal.” There was, in fact, something in the scenery around
Sevenoaks that reminded him vividly of those great northern pine-clad
territories of America, where he had warred with such distinction
against the French and the redskins; and there is a spot on the road
from Sevenoaks to Ightham, where the red-stemmed pines grow thick and
a mysterious woodland hush enshrouds the place, so keenly reminiscent
of the scene of his action at Crown Point in 1759, that he rechristened
it by that name. The spot—in the woodlands of Seal Chart—may readily
be found to-day, for it is marked by the Crown Point inn, whose sign,
the “Sir Jeffrey Amherst,” exhibiting a picture of the warrior himself
brooding over the scene of his exploit, depends picturesquely from a
tree-trunk.
A tall obelisk, built rather precariously of rubble, stands on a
rabbit-infested mound in the park of “Montreal,” in a vista opening
from the house, and is itself surrounded by weird pine-trees. It bears
long inscriptions reviewing those military operations. One side is
dedicated to a “most able statesman” (by whom William Pitt, Earl of
Chatham, is indicated), and another commemorates the meeting here of
Amherst with his two younger brothers—John, Admiral of the Blue, and
William, Lieutenant-General.
It was an era when England was fighting all the world, and had need of
such commanders.
The long list of military successes is stupendous:
Dedicated
to that most able
Statesman
during whose Administration
Cape Breton and Canada were conquered,
and from whose Influence
the British Arms derived
a Degree of Lustre
unparallell’d in past Ages.
Fort Levi surrendered 25^{th} August 1760
Isle au Noix abandoned 28^{th} August 1760
Montreal surrendered
and with it all Canada and
Ten French Battalions lay’d
down their Arms 8^{th} Sept. 1760
S^t. John’s, Newfoundland
retaken 18^{th} Sept. 1762.
Louisbourg surrendered
and Six French Battalions
Prisoners of War, 26^{th} July 1758
Port du Quesne taken possession of 24^{th} Nov. 1758
Niagara surrendered 25^{th} July 1759
Tonderoga[2] taken possession of 26^{th} July 1759
Crown Point taken possession of 4^{th} August 1759
Quebec capitulated 18^{th} Sept. 1759.
To commemorate
the providential and happy meeting
of three Brothers
on this, their Paternal Ground
on the 25^{th} January 1764
after a six Years glorious War
in which the three were successfully engaged
in various Climes, Seasons and Services.
[2] _I.e._ Ticonderoga.
XVI
The long, long ascent to Sevenoaks, which crowns a ridge seven hundred
feet above the sea-level, does not lack beauty, lined as it is for a
considerable distance with hedgerow elms. But it puts on another kind
of beauty at night, for as you come past the railway-station, and look
down in the darkness upon the galaxy of red and green signal lights,
it seems like a lavish Arabian Nights display of rubies and emeralds
spread out there, in the black cutting.
The name of the railway-station, on the other hand, is vulgarity
itself. It is known as “Tub’s Hill,” to distinguish it from the other
Sevenoaks station known (from the public-house outside) as “Bat and
Ball.”
Sevenoaks is greatly indebted to the South Eastern Railway for a matter
quite outside railway accommodation. The town had long and vainly been
seeking a good water-supply, and was still upon that quest when this
branch of the South-Eastern was under construction in 1867. What the
town wished to find, and could not, the contractors for the Riverhead
Tunnel found, very much against their will. They struck a spring which
for a time drowned them out and cost enormous sums to divert; but it
gave to the town its present abundant supply.
There can be no place with more divergent roads than those at the
entrance to Sevenoaks. They branch off singly, in pairs and triply,
acutely and gradually, and all with a specious artfulness leading the
unwary anywhere but into the town, and by choice into suburban roads
that presently end in wastes of shingle, heaps of building materials,
and uncompleted houses.
The old Sevenoaks of coaching days is mostly gone, or disguised out of
recognition. There was then a “cage,” or lock-up, in the town, with a
pond in front of it and a ducking-stool for nagging wives or scolding
neighbours. There was also a toll-gate and a weigh-bridge, where heavy
waggons paid according to their showing in tare and tret. Sevenoaks
was, in short, fully equipped with the engines of civilisation as
understood at that period.