Highways and Byways in Surrey Part 18

Edward III died at Sheen Palace, unloved and alone. Richard II's queen, Anne of Bohemia, died there seventeen years later, and Richard in his grief threw the palace down. It was rebuilt by Henry V, burnt down in 1497, rebuilt and renamed Richmond by Henry VII; then the Richmond who named it died in his new palace. But the overmastering sense of unhappiness which somehow has set itself about the story of Richmond Palace belongs to the closing days of Elizabeth. Elizabeth's death, and the month that went before it, patch English history like a week of night. She had been so strong, so untiring, so wise in her council chamber and so magnificent in her victorious fleet, and the fortune that followed her like a wind; the life of her body had been so unfailing, she had jested, wittily and coa.r.s.ely, with so many courtiers; she had commanded the chivalry of young and splendid n.o.bles, she had lived to see one of her favourites die and to send another to the block; and now she herself was dying. She knew it, and she would not hear of death. She was never so ready for the gaiety she could not enjoy. Her strength left her, she was a skeleton; still she sat with her dress unchanged, staring before her, flashing sudden rages at her ministers, rallying at the mention of an heir's name. Beauchamp, heir to the Suffolks, they put forward; she cried out he was the son of a rogue. The King of Scots?

they asked; she answered nothing. Dead, propped among her pillows, an old woman in ruff and stays, the memory of her last days shadows Richmond Palace like a drawn blind.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Richmond Hill._]

To the north beyond Richmond Hill and the huge hotel, twice burnt down, which looks over the woods and the river, one may come by tramways and railways to Kew and Kew Gardens. Kew, too, once had a palace, or an attempt at a palace. Frederick Prince of Wales, George III's father--the prince who did so much for Surrey cricket, and died, perhaps, from the blow of a cricket ball--lived at Kew House, and so did George III after him. George III pulled down Kew House in 1803, and built another; to be not less royal, George IV pulled that down. A smaller building, vaguely named Kew Palace still, stands in the Gardens; Queen Charlotte died there; you may see the room, and look, if you wish, on the tables and sofas she knew. But the pictures in Kew Palace were not all Queen Charlotte's; they are catalogued to-day, and so are many ma.n.u.scripts and autograph letters of royal persons which attract careful readers. From remarks which can be overheard in those sombre rooms, many visitors, I think, imagine the paintings of still life, of flowers in vases, odd representations of game and fruit, and so forth, to have been selected and hung in the house as specially suitable for public gardens. The portraits of royal gentlemen in blue and red puzzle them; why should they be shown these at Kew? These are for palaces and galleries; Kew is for a flower show.

What is the chief, the compelling fascination of Kew Gardens? What is it that sets Kew apart, not more beautiful than other gardens, but different from them, with a different attraction peculiarly its own? Is it the sense of change from roaring streets to quiet lawns, n.o.ble trees, s.p.a.ces and scents of gra.s.s and flowers? There may be a sense of change, but that is not all the secret, for Kew keeps the same charm for one who has come fresh from the broad aisles and avenues of some great country garden. Is it the rarity and the wealth of the Kew museums and houses--the orchid houses with their strange, lovely, uncanny inflorescences, flowers that have fancies and wilfulnesses, flowers that would people the dark with faces; or the lily-houses and the superb _Victoria regia_ that would cradle a water-baby; or the great palm houses, where you may walk in a gallery among enormous leaves and tropical creepers as if you were back again with your grandfathers in the tree tops? That is an attraction, but it is not all of it. Nor is it the achievement of the gardens in the separate spheres of gardening. The sheets of crocuses in the low March sunlight, and of daffodils shaking in an April wind, add a glory to the spring at Kew, but it is a glory that can belong to other lawns and other vistas of flowers. The Kew rose-garden has a wealth of roses, but it has, too, a wealth of old tree stems and broken branches which a garden meant for nothing but roses would hide. The herbaceous border grows luxuriant phloxes and delphiniums, but the background of gla.s.s houses sets a wrong light about it. The rock garden shows more rock and fewer ma.s.ses of Alpine flowers than other English gardens more lately made, with better knowledge of what wall and rock flowers need.

Then what is the abiding charm? To me, at all events, Kew has much the same appeal as the Londoner finds in Richmond Hill. It is a London garden, the garden of a town, perfectly made for its purpose. It can never, even with its glorious trees and its wide s.p.a.ces of gra.s.s, have the peace or know the spirit of a country garden. Too many feet tread its lawns; too many voices chatter in its walks. It may spread its wild flowers and grow its curious blossoms for those who know where and how to look for them; but its main effects must be of ordered gravel, of shaven gra.s.s, of patterned beds, of flowers that will suit artificial lakes and buildings and stone bal.u.s.trades. The keynote of Kew is by the wide pond, with the smooth green turf and the white stone, and the ma.s.ses of pansies and heliotrope and brilliant red geraniums. Those are the flowers which suit best the steps down to the water, and the fountains, and the swimming ducks and the birds on the banks. There is the right touch of artificiality about them; the right note of London.

The birds are Londoners themselves. The stately brown geese stalk over the lawns careless of poulterers or punt-guns. The cormorant, who most certainly knows he is being watched, dives to show off before admiring children. Even the blackbirds have forgotten their country habits, and will sing when country blackbirds are silent for the year. Once, late in July, I heard four singing in evening sunshine after rain. They would take any countryman back to the days of chestnut blossom and the scent of Surrey may; but that indolent melody, in July sunshine, belongs to London.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Kew Church._]

CHAPTER XXII

KINGSTON

Kingston Old and New.--The Stone.--The s.e.xton's Escape.--Throwing over the Church.--Ducking a Scold.--Aaron Evans's shot at a Cormorant.--The Dog Whipper.--A Feast of the Church.--Lord Francis Villiers's fight.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Kingston._]

Kingston has kept little of the past. An old alehouse, old almshouses, an old staircase, an old roof or two by the market place, and an old chapel, Lovekyn's, standing apart--the survivals are the loneliest things. Lovekyn's, once a chapel, and now a school, is one of the links.

Gibbon was a scholar there, and Gibbon belongs doubly to Surrey; he was born at Putney. But the changes at Kingston have made it almost all new, and the changes have come quickly. Only three or four years ago the quaint, small Harrow Inn had two companions, the Anglers and the Three Compa.s.ses, one with a fireside corner to warm ale and tell grandfathers'

tales in, the other with traditions of highwaymen and the road. They were pulled down. In Market Place there was once a fine Tudor house, the Castle Inn. The n.o.ble staircase remains, a good, thoroughgoing piece of carving of Bacchus and full casks; the house has gone. The church is old enough to have seen these and other losses; but the church is a mixed building; the tower, or most of it, is eighteenth century brick. Only one spot in the open streets of the town, I think, keeps an air of Kingston as the customers of the Castle Inn may have known it, and that is the little byway through which runs the water splash of the Hogsmill river. Cart horses standing in the ford, and bare-legged children fishing for minnows, are what Kingston saw in the old days.

The Stone remains; the Stone on which tradition says that the Anglo-Saxon kings were crowned. Once it stood in the chapel of St. Mary, a Saxon building adjoining the church; but St. Mary's Chapel fell in 1730. It was moved to the Market Place; afterwards in 1854, to the open s.p.a.ce where it now stands opposite the Court-house; on the very spot, they say, where there was once an Anglo-Saxon palace. The railing which surrounds it has been described as "of Saxon-like design," and perhaps that should suffice. On the pedestal which bears up the Stone are the names of the kings who were crowned on it: Edward the Elder, Ethelstan, Edmund, Edred, Edwig, Edward the Martyr, and Ethelred the Unready. What is the Kings' Stone? A morasteen, the archaeologists tell you; one of a circle of stones, on which the chief sat in council with his great men; the predecessors of the Anglo-Saxon chiefs would have been Arch-Druids, perhaps, or pontiff kings, acclaimed by ancient Britons centuries before the Romans set foot in Kent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Kingston Bridge._]

Kingston church, if its architecture is confused and much of it modern, has an imposing solemnity about it, and it contains some strange memorials. One is a stone fragment, on which the grateful survivor of an accident and a ruin has painted the words "Life Preserved." She was Hester Hammerton, daughter of Abram Hammerton, s.e.xton of the church, and in 1729 she was helping her father to dig a grave in the churchyard near the Saxon chapel of St. Mary. They dug too near the chapel foundations, and the chapel fell in upon them. The s.e.xton was killed, almost on the spot; his daughter was saved through the jamming of a piece of stone, and survived him as s.e.xton for fifteen years. Another memorial is a bra.s.s kept in the vestry; a long screed begins dismally enough--"Ten children in one grave--a dreadful sight"; but the verse is unequal to the opportunity. Another bra.s.s shows Robert Skern and his wife Joan; she, according to Manning and Bray, was a daughter of Alice Perrers, mistress of Edward III. A fourth monument, said to be in the chancel (but I did not find it), praises Mrs. Mary Morton, daughter of the wife of Robert Honeywood, of Charinge, Kent; she was "the Wonder of her s.e.x and this Age, for she liv'd to see near 400 issued from her Loynes." So Aubrey describes it, and so, with variations, the local historian. Mrs. Mary Morton died in 1620.

Aubrey has another record of the giants of those days. He had heard of one Wiltshire of the Feathers Inn at Kingston, who was a great thrower.

He would stand in the churchyard and throw a stone over the weatherc.o.c.k; "he would also throw a stone over the Thames (by the bridge) and struck the pales on the town side, which (I think) was not so difficult as the other throw. He was then of middle stature, and about thirty years of age." But if he had grown to greater stature? The weatherc.o.c.k of those days is no more, or we might measure the throw.

Kingston has other history besides its coronation stone and its monuments. The Parish Registers have added pictures of its past. Here is one of two poor women allowed to beg at the church:--

February 1571.

24. Sonday was here ij wemen the mother and dowghter owte of Ireland she called Elynor Salve to gather upon the deathe of her howsbande a genllman slayne amongst the wylde Iryshe being Captain of Gully gla.s.ses and gathered xviijd.

Here is a record of a Thames flood, October 9, 1570:--

Thursday at nyght rose a great winde and rayne that the Temps rosse so hye that they myght row w^t bott^s owte of the Temps a gret waye in to the market place and upon a sodayne.

In the year 1572 Kingston got a new cucking stool; the Kingston scolds had become past bearing. It cost 1 3_s._ 4_d._, and as soon as it was finished there was a very shrewish woman ducked in it.

1572 August. On Tewsday being the xix daye of this monthe of August ---- Downing wyfe to ---- Downinge gravemaker of this paryshe she was sett on a new cukking stolle made of a grett hythe and so browght a bowte the markett place to Temes brydge and ther had iij Duckinges over hed and eres becowse she was a common scolde and fyghter.

Here are extracts from the burial registers:--

June 4. 1593. John Akerleye wentte too bathe hymsellfe and was drownde & buryede.

August 25. 1598. William Hall was bered being shott by thefes when he was Constabl at Coblers Hol.

September 28. 1623. Richard Ratlive a Londenner which was slayne.

17 January 1623/4 W^m Foster son of W^m a goer about.

This is hardly a burial:--

July 11. 1629. A Bird called a Cormorant light on the top of the steeple and Aaron Evans shot, but mist it.

Here are items from the churchwarden's accounts. The parish dog whipper had become an inst.i.tution:--

1561. To fawcon for di yere (half a year) whyppyng of doggs oute of the churche. viijd

1578. To wrighte for beating the dogges out of the churche, for half a yeare. vjd.

But the morris dance--it was the dances that Kingston would spend money upon. There were two kinds of games which brought gifts to the church, May-games and the Kyngham. What sort of a game the Kyngham was n.o.body knows, but it brought the churchwardens most of their money: four or five pounds was a good collection. But the expenses could be heavy; there were shoes for the morris dancers, six pairs at 8_d._ a pair; there was silver paper for the dance, 8_d._; and there were for the feast, besides other drinking, a quarter of malt, 4_s._; 5 goce (geese), 15_d._; eggs, 6_d._; lamb, 18_d._; sugar, cloves, and mace, 11_d._; small raisins, 3_d._; saffern, 2_d._; vinegar and salt, 3_d._; 2 c.o.c.ks, 18_d._; 2 calves, 5_s._ 8_d._; sheep, 12_d._; lamb, 16_d._; quarter of veal, 8_d._; quarter of mutton, 6_d._; leg of veal and a neck, 4_d._ The morris dancers did well, with silver paper and new shoes; but the church kept a feast.

Kingston has the credit of the first and the last battles in the Parliamentary wars, but the claim is a little shaky. There was an affair of outposts between Rupert's cavalry and some Parliamentarian troops between Oatlands and Kingston bridge in the year 1642--after Edgehill--but it was not a battle. The real battle of Kingston came six years later, and ended all the warfare that Surrey saw. That was the battle which crushed Lord Holland's scheme of raising London for the King. We shall meet Lord Holland at Reigate; but the fighting belongs to Kingston. Holland, who had planned a rising on Banstead Downs, and had hoped to capture and hold Reigate Castle, was in full retreat. At Reigate he had feared to hold the position he had taken up; he retreated on Dorking, and from Dorking, pursued by Major Audley of Livesey's Horse, he fled north. On Kingston Common, a little south-east of where Surbiton to-day takes train for London, his horse turned on their enemy; his infantry fell back. From each side a few spurred out, "playing valiantly," Audley writes. But the Royalists were beaten. Lord Francis Villiers, younger brother to the Duke of Buckingham, a boy of great personal beauty, fought alone in their rear. His horse was shot under him; he backed towards an elm, and fought with six of them. They came up behind him, pushed off his helmet and cut him to the ground. Report came to London that he was wounded, and orders were sent out to care for him.

But he was found dead, and his pockets were rifled. The evening was the end of the war in Surrey.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Swan, Thames Ditton._]

CHAPTER XXIII

THE DITTONS AND WALTON

Surbiton trains.--Thames Ditton.--Parks for trotting ponies.--A forlorn garden.--The Dandies' Fete.--Graveyard poetry.--The Pleasance of a Ferry.--Giggs Hill cricket.--Ditton Tulips.--Hampton Bridge.--A dreary road.--Walton.--The Scold's Bridle.--John Selwyn and the Stag.--Terror at an elephant.--William Lilly, astrologer.

Surbiton is a growth of seventy years, and was born when the railway came. Once it was called a suburb of Kingston; now it has suburbs of its own. Tramways join it to London; the railway empties Surbiton into London every morning and pours London back again in the evening. Nearly seventy trains a day stop at Surbiton on their way down from Waterloo; nearly eighty stop on their way up. It must be quite inspiriting to lose your train, and to know that you have only three minutes to wait; or to catch the train before your train, or to choose which you will have of two trains. Until you realise these figures, it is difficult to understand why so many people are rushing about late for the train in Surbiton station. They are catching the train before.

But Surbiton is not all villas; or perhaps it is, and it would be truer to say that what is not villas within hail of the station is not Surbiton. Thames Ditton lies rather more than a mile away, and Long Ditton, between Thames Ditton and the railway, straggling, too, beyond the railway. Thames Ditton is rapidly becoming rich and prosperous. A few years ago it was a little, twisting main street, a ferry, an inn or two, and a church, and was flanked by two fine properties, Ember Court and Boyle Farm. Now the villa-builder has got to work, and the old estates are being sliced up into acres and half acres. Ember Court was once a manor belonging to Henry VIII, who hunted over it; later, it was the property of Sir Arthur Onslow, the first Speaker of the House of Commons who earned the t.i.tle "Great." It is now a racecourse; trotting ponies and American "machines" dash and flash where Mr. Speaker sauntered staidly, and theatre bills flare at the entrance gates. Boyle Farm has fared little better. Once it was the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester's, wife of George the Third's brother; a century later, Lord St. Leonards, Lord Chancellor in Lord Derby's first and shortest-lived Ministry, had it. Now the park is criss-crossed with brand new yellow roads. I walked through it while it was still ringing with the builder's hammer; and straying off the gravel, suddenly found myself in the forlornest little place possible--a formal garden, box-trimmed, tiny, deserted; the narrow, carefully-planned beds nothing but weeds, the summerhouse at the side a ruin. A park cut to pieces looks as if it were in anguish. But a garden cries.

The river at Thames Ditton in 1827 saw a festival which was doubtless considered one of the most prodigious affairs of the season. Five young bloods, of whom two were the Lords Castlereagh and Chesterfield of the day, subscribed 500 each to organise an enormous water party, to which, presumably, everybody was invited who was worth inviting. It was a superb occasion, with illuminations, quadrilles on the lawn, singers from the opera, covers for five hundred people, and all adornments proper to such gaiety. Afterwards it came to be known as the Dandies'

Fete, and Tom Moore wrote a set of verses about it, which, perhaps, reflect fairly accurately the wit of the company. Here are nine lines out of many:--

"Accordingly, with gay Sultanas, Rebeccas, Sapphos, Roxalanas-- Circa.s.sian slaves, whom Love would pay Half his maternal realms to ransom;-- Young nuns, whose chief religion lay In looking most profanely handsome!

Muses in muslin--pastoral maids, With hats from the _Arcade_-ian shades; And fortune-tellers--rich, 'tis plain, As fortune-_hunters_, form'd their train."

Moore sent the verses to Mrs. Norton; she, perhaps, was a Circa.s.sian or a nun.