Here, when they heard the horse-bells ring, The ancient Britons dressed and rode To watch the dark Phoenicians bring Their goods along the Western Road.
But long and long before that time (When bison used to roam on it) Did Taffy and her Daddy climb That down, and had their home on it.
The Wey, that Taffy called Wagai, Was more than six times bigger then; And all the Tribe of Tegumai They cut a n.o.ble figure then!
Of all the Tribe of Tegumai Who cut that figure, none remain-- On Merrow Down the cuckoos cry-- The silence and the sun remain.
But as the faithful years return And hearts unwounded sing again, Comes Taffy dancing through the fern To lead the Surrey spring again.
In moca.s.sins and deer-skin cloak Unfearing, free and fair she flits, And lights her little damp-wood smoke To show her Daddy where she flits.
For far--oh, very far behind, So far she cannot call to him, Comes Tegumai alone to find The daughter that was all to him.
Merrow to the east edges on Clandon Park, the seat of one of the great Surrey families, the Onslows. It is a notable s.p.a.ce, perhaps a mile square of gra.s.s dotted with superb groups of elms. "Capability" Brown laid out the park, and he certainly saw what the capabilities of that sunny sward could be. The house, which stands on the south-east corner, is an imposing cube of red brick, patched here and there with ivy, and as square and formal as the ornamental water and the park below it is formal and serpentine. Leoni built it, and Rysbrach designed two of its chimney-pieces.
In the park you may chance to meet the mole-catcher of the place--an upholder of right traditions of an old English village. I met him searching disconsolately for a couple of his traps, which he had set too near the pathway and which had been carried off by thieving pa.s.sers-by, on whom may malisons light. "I"ve got forty traps about here," he told me with some pride, adding with resignation to a persistent fate that "they" would not let him set a trap near the path. "They" always took it if he did.
West Clandon church stands in the corner of the park, and is chiefly remarkable for a very curious old sundial, belonging perhaps to the days of Henry II, and built upside down by "restorers" into a b.u.t.tress of the south wall. Time has dealt hardly with the church, and time, perhaps, may still restore its own dial. Under the dial, when I was last in the carefully tended little churchyard, the level turf was studded with snowdrops.
In a field close by the village once took place a remarkable battle. A correspondent of the _Gentleman"s Magazine_ of 1796 gives the following account of it, which he had verbatim from an old inhabitant. "A serpent once infested a back lane in the parish of West Clandon for a long time.
The inhabitants were much disturbed and afraid to pa.s.s that way. A soldier who had been condemned for desertion promised, if his life was spared, he would destroy this serpent. Accordingly he took his dog with him. A fierce battle ensued, the dog fastened him and the soldier killed it with his bayonet in a field belonging to the glebe called Deadacre."
According to the magazine"s correspondent, an "ancient piece of carving in wood" representing this frightful struggle, had been "preserved for many years in the parsonage house."
Between the two Clandons, West and East, the road runs by what is surely the finest ploughland in the county. A single field of over a hundred acres stretches up the side of the down to a belt of firs--a field for Cincinnatus himself to plough. I remember standing to stare at that great reach of shining stubble and furrow when first I saw it from the road on a day of marvellous February sunlight. Farm labourers were topping and tailing turnips two hundred yards away; partridges newly paired whirred up from the roadside; beyond the white stubbleland lay the pines of Netley Heath, a thin line of palest blue; a hundred larks filled the sky with singing, and I heard suddenly behind me the impetuous thrill of a chaffinch, that most summery of carols. The ploughland is Lord Onslow"s, and it must need a Minister of Agriculture to look after it.
East Clandon lies under that broad ploughland, a mile from Clandon Park.
Everything in East Clandon is what it ought to be, and everybody does what he ought to do. The timbered cottages are old and quiet; the barn roofs by the churchyard are long and lichened; the churchyard is bordered by a thick holly hedge, and about its graves, little clipped yew-trees stand like chessmen, perhaps meant to suggest a text; the cottage gardens are full of simple flowers and fruit-trees, and the cottagers work in them as if it were the best work to do, which doubtless it is. There could not be a happier looking village. One building only in the village knows, or shows, much suffering. At East Clandon is the country branch of the Queen Alexandra Nursing Home for children with hip disease. In fine weather the children lie in their cots on the verandah, like broken toys, and wave happily from their red blankets to pa.s.sers-by.
In the days of Charles I East Clandon boasted a poet. He was Thomas Goffe, a writer of tragedies, and most unhappily married. Aubrey tells the story:--
"His wife pretended to fall in love with him, by hearing of him preach: upon which, said one Thomas Thimble (one of the Squire Bedell"s in Oxford, and his Confident) to him: "_Do not marry her: if thou dost, she will break thy heart_." He was not obsequious to his friend"s sober advice, but for her sake altered his condition, and cast anchor here. One time some of his Oxford friends made a visit to him she looked upon them with an ill eye, as if they had come _to eat her out of house and home_ (as they say), she provided a dish of milk, and some eggs for supper, and no more: They perceived her n.i.g.g.ardliness, and that her husband was inwardly troubled at it (she wearing the breeches) so they were resolved to be merry at supper, and talk all in Latin, and laughed exceedingly.
She was so vexed at their speaking Latin that she could not hold, but fell out a weeping, and rose from the table. The next day, Mr.
Goffe ordered a better dinner for them, and sent for some wine: they were merry, and his friends took their final leave of him. "Twas no long time before this Xanthippe made Mr. Thimble"s prediction good; and when he died, the last words he spake were: "_Oracle, Oracle, Tom Thimble_," and so he gave up the ghost."
Halfway from East Clandon to West Horsley is Hatchlands, a fine country house and park with n.o.ble beeches; and next to Hatchlands one of the prettiest and completest farmsteads in the county. The building in the neighbourhood is, indeed, some of the best to be seen. West Horsley itself is a fascinating collection of old cottages, vine-bowered and fronted with clipped yews. One such yew, standing by the door of what the picture postcards vaguely designate "old cottage, West Horsley," is an extraordinarily elaborate piece of rustic topiary. Another feature of the village is the now disused workhouse, a solid old brick building overlooking a horsepond: another, the bole of a superb elm, quite rightly stationed in the carpenter"s sawyard. Of West Horsley church it is more difficult to speak. It is possible to see from outside that there is a beautiful three lancet east window, but the rest of the church, with its chapel and fine monuments, is a sealed book. The door is locked, and the keys are kept at the rectory a mile away: the s.e.xton, next door to the church, is not allowed a key. It is not easy to write soberly of an authority which compels for one who should be allowed to see the church, four journeys of a mile to ask for and to return the keys. From West Horsley to Leatherhead is a pilgrimage by locked churches: East Horsley is locked, though you can get the key; Effingham and Little Bookham are locked, but I had no time to search for more keys when I was there; possibly they are easily found. Great Bookham is open, but Fetcham is locked; Leatherhead is more hospitable.
The great families of West Horsley are those of Berners and Nicholas.
The effigy of Sir James Berners, of West Horsley Place, is in the church: he was one of the followers of Richard II, and was beheaded on Tower Hill, in 1388. His daughter, according to tradition, was the famous Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of Sopwell, and author--or part author--of the _Boke of St. Albans_, a "Treatyse perteynynge to Hawkynge, Huntynge, Fysshynge, and Coote Armiris." Probably she wrote no more than the hunting, but it is pleasant to think that she may have watched her greyhounds "headed like a snake, and necked like a drake" on the downs above Horsley. Another Berners, the second Baron of the name, translated Froissart. Of the Nicholas family, Sir Edward was a Royalist and Secretary of State under both the Charleses. Of other owners of West Horsley Place, its mistress, Geraldine Browne, wife of Sir Anthony Browne, is claimed to be the "Fair Geraldine" of Surrey"s poem; but any other Geraldine would suit as well, if, indeed, Geraldine ever existed.
Another doubtful tradition of West Horsley is that the head of Sir Walter Raleigh is buried in the church with his son Carew. Certainly no one knows that it was buried anywhere else.
Leaving West Horsley, you are immediately in an atmosphere of war. At East Horsley, the Duke of Wellington guards the cross-roads and dispenses excellent bread and cheese and beer; at Effingham Prince Blucher used to stand on the main road, quite correctly placed to the east of the Duke; he has now marched down into the village and billeted himself as comfortably as before. The atmosphere of swords and sharpness has even entered ecclesiastical precincts. In East Horsley church there is a curious fresco, painted, I am told, by the late Lady Lovelace. It shows St. Martin dressed as a soldier in high boots, cloak and hat, cutting off the skirt of his cloak with his sword, to clothe a naked beggar kneeling before him. It is curious that a second legend of a cloak should belong to a neighbourhood connected with Sir Walter Raleigh.
Horsley Towers, on the left of the road to Effingham, is a large, grey, castellated building; its entrances might be fortifications. The park holds some superb beeches. But the grey coldness of Horsley Towers is a little exotic among these stretches of southern English parkland. Good Jacobean or Georgian red-brick much better suits oaks and beeches than the chateau-like towers of a Scottish castle.
Effingham, although so small a village, has a name that will last with the history of the English Navy. It gave his t.i.tle to the first Lord Howard of Effingham, the ill.u.s.trious father of a still more ill.u.s.trious son. The first Lord of Effingham was William Howard, son of the second Duke of Norfolk, and one of the great men of the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. He was with Henry VIII at the Field of the Cloth of Gold; he was Lord High Admiral; at Sir Thomas Wyatt"s rebellion he shut Ludgate in Wyatt"s face, and more than any Englishman he helped Elizabeth to her throne. But his son is an even greater figure. Like his father, he was Lord High Admiral, but the father never had the son"s opportunity. For the second Lord Howard of Effingham commanded the English Navy against the Spanish Armada, and as the victor of that tremendous fleet and the captor of Cadiz he was made Earl of Nottingham, and held the office of Lord High Admiral until the green old age of eighty-three, when "he retired," we are told, "from public life, and the rest of his life was peace and prayer." He lies with his father at Reigate, which with the churches of Lingfield and Great Bookham holds the dust of many generations of the Surrey Howards. Fourteen Howards have been buried at Reigate, twelve at Lingfield, and thirty at Great Bookham; but so far as I can find, none, curiously enough, at Effingham itself.
Scarcely half a mile separates the churches of Effingham and Little Bookham, the latter a tiny building considerably altered by various restorations, but containing some interesting remains of Norman work.
Almost touching the church stands, and has stood since days before Domesday book was written, a great yew, dark and shining, with another thousand years" life in it, if its vigorous branches tell the truth. The village itself is not much more than a cottage or two, but Little Bookham must always be a place of interest, at all events for those who read and write newspapers, for the Manor House is the home of one of the doyens of English journalism, Mr. Meredith Townsend, for forty-four years joint-editor of the _Spectator_.
"Master and friend, whose ardent soul Burns brighter as it nears the goal, Whose indefatigable pen Stirs envy in us younger men----"
So has Mr. Charles Graves addressed him, and so might others feel a n.o.ble envy.
Great Bookham, less than a mile away, was once the home of another writer. f.a.n.n.y Burney lived there for four years after she had married General d"Arblay, and the two of them with their baby, and an income of 125, were superlatively happy. Here she wrote _Camilla_, which was to build and to christen the house she lived in later, and it was from Bookham that she set out to take the first bound copies to King George and the Queen at Windsor. "About how much time did you give to it?"
asked the good-natured King, and "Are you much frightened? As much frightened as you were before?" The Queen asked M. and Madame d"Arblay to dine the next day, and in the interval the General, having been introduced to the Queen"s gardener at Frogmore, "a skilful and famous botanist," consulted him seriously about the Bookham cabbages. M.
d"Arblay was a gardener of greater courage than science. His wife sends her father a picture of the work done among the Bookham fruits and flowers.
"Our garden," she writes, "is not yet quite the most profitable thing in the world; but M. d"A. a.s.sures me it is to be the staff of our table and existence." But M. d"Arblay had very little luck. He planted strawberries hoping to gather fruit within three months, and was disappointed:--
"Another time, too, with great labour, he cleared a considerable compartment of weeds, and, when it looked clean and well, and he showed his work to the gardener, the man said he had demolished an asparagus bed! M. d"Arblay protested, however, nothing could look more like _des mauvaises herbes_.
"His greatest pa.s.sion is for transplanting. Everything we possess he moves from one end of the garden to another, to produce better effects. Roses take place of jessamines, jessamines of honeysuckles, and honeysuckles of lilies, till they have all danced round as far as the s.p.a.ce allows; but whether the effect may not be a general mortality, summer only can determine."
The picture of the General turning his sword into a reaping hook is even more alluring:--
"I wish you had seen him yesterday, mowing down our hedge--with his sabre, and with an air and att.i.tudes so military, that, if he had been hewing down other legions than those he encountered--_i.e._ of spiders--he could scarcely have had a mien more tremendous, or have demanded an arm more mighty. Heaven knows, I am "the most _contente personne_ in the world" to see his sabre so employed!"
The garden in which these severely military operations took place still surrounds the same windows, gay with wistaria and roses. Possibly the gnarled apple trees which fringe the lawn are actual survivors of the general"s sabre.
Great Bookham has grown a good deal since the d"Arblays knew it. But the splendid sh.e.l.l of an ancient elm still shades the churchyard gate; the flint-walled church, with ivy bunched over its b.u.t.tressed tower, and lichens glowing on the Horsham slabs of its chapel roof, can have changed but little. Two or three of its monuments are interesting. One is a bra.s.s plate recounting the virtues and the pedigree of Edmund Slyfield and his wife Elizabeth. They were of Slyfield Place; he was "a stoute Esquire who alwaies set G.o.d"s feare before his Eyes"; she was a model of all the graces, and descended from the Paulets, Capells, Sydneys, Gainsfords, Finches, Arundels, Whites, and Lamberts--a good long list to bring into an epitaph, but there are twenty-eight lines of honest doggerel to do it in. Another monument is quite as striking, which represents Colonel Thomas Moore in the full uniform of the commanding officer of a regiment of foot in the reign of Queen Anne, which the sculptor"s convention has idealised into a mixture of a bathing costume, a kilt, and a plaid. The church, indeed, is a museum of records of different times and tastes to a degree uncommon in far more important buildings. In the east wall of the chancel is a slab commemorating in three Latin hexameters the founding of the building by John de Rutherwyk, the great Abbot whom we meet at Chertsey; and the east window of the Slyfield chapel is dedicated, in a long, biographical inscription in bra.s.s, to the memory of Lord Raglan, who as Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, military secretary to the Duke of Wellington, lost an arm at the Duke"s side at Waterloo, and forty years later commanded the British army in the East before Sebastopol, where he died. Lord Raglan"s connection with Great Bookham is slight: but his niece, Lady Mary Farquhar, who put up the window, lived at Polesden, a mile or two away.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Slyfield Place._]
Last of the villages on the road from Guildford to Leatherhead is Fetcham. A park, a road bordered by cottages and a pretty house or two, and a battlemented church-tower deep among yews, and hollies, and ivy-trees--Fetcham is as pleasantly small and quiet as her western neighbours. But what a string of churches it is, along these twelve miles of Surrey roadway; nine villages, each with its grey-walled building and the cool whiteness of the arches, aisles, and chancels. No pilgrim of the old centuries could tire on such a journey. To-day he might. Only four of the church doors give him a welcome.
Above Fetcham"s church, which, like Stoke D"Abernon and one or two others, fronts on the flowers and lawns of a private garden, great bunches of mistletoe darken the winter tree-tops. Fetcham is on the border of the mistletoe country, which stretches from Leatherhead to Dorking and Boxhill.
CHAPTER XI
G.o.dALMING
A country town.--Peter the Great"s breakfast.--Pykes in the Wey.--Dogs and fish-carts.--Off to Botany Bay.--Owen Manning.--A most malignant priest.--Eashing Bridges.--Peperharow deer.--Loseley from a distance.--Charterhouse in the future.
The best view of G.o.dalming is from the hill roads above Farncombe. Not many towns group themselves so well against hills and woods; few have so s.p.a.cious and quiet a foreground. The church stands on the Wey; the churchyard runs down to the very banks, and the n.o.ble leaded spire lifts its chanticleer higher, I think, from the tower than any other church in Surrey. Between the foot of the hill and the Wey spreads wide meadowland; the Wey flows tranquilly by willow-herb and alder; beyond the Wey are the red roofs of G.o.dalming cl.u.s.tered in the trees. It is the completest little country town; the green fields in front and the woods beyond set it compact together, cl.u.s.tered as a country town should be about its church and its High Street, with the river running clear at its side.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _On the Way to G.o.dalming from Haslemere._]
G.o.dalming High Street has not kept the grace of Guildford, nor had it ever the width and the air of Epsom or Farnham, but it has more than one building of distinction, and its links with the past are in old inns, timbered stories and forgotten courts. The White Hart still juts its wooden beams over the pavement; the King"s Arms, a later building, has a square-set front which has watched many coaches jangle off to Portsmouth. The King"s Arms has had more than one king as a guest. The Emperor Alexander I of Russia and King Frederick William of Prussia dined there in the year before Waterloo; a more famous and a more greedy monarch who knew the King"s Arms was Peter the Great in the days of Queen Anne. He had a suite of twenty with him, and the record of his bill of fare for the day is in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. I have not seen it, but the historians who have supply abounding details. Peter and his twenty had for breakfast besides side-dishes, half a sheep, half a lamb, ten pullets, a dozen chickens, seven dozen eggs and something over a quart apiece of mulled wine, with a gallon or so of brandy.
Dinner was a better meal; three stone of ribs of beef was the main dish, with a sheep, a lamb, and a couple of joints of veal to help it out; capons and rabbits tempted the jaded, and four dozen of sack and wine made up for what was lacking at breakfast.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Town Hall, G.o.dalming._]
Besides the inns, two old houses in particular set their mark on the High Street. One is dated 1663; both are of rich brickwork, almost extravagantly ornate with ledges, patterned courses, elaborate parapets and cas.e.m.e.nts. The unhappy addition is the paint. If they had never been painted, or if the paint could be done away with, the pattern would take on twice its charm. But that is the main regret for all G.o.dalming. If the High Street could have its false fronts pulled down, and all its old timber and brick shown to the road, it would fascinate as Guildford does. It would be worth the town"s while to spend money to show what it possesses of older centuries. But that is a frequent reflection in other towns.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Timbered House in the Market Place, G.o.dalming._]