The Bath Road Part 4

XI

There are changes impending not far from here. Who that knows Kew Bridge has not an affection for that hump-backed old structure, although it presents many difficulties to the rider? Kew Bridge is doomed, and the powers that be are going to pull it down and build another in its stead--and one, it is almost unnecessary to add, not at all picturesque.

Farewell, then, to the suburban delights of Kew. They are going to "improve" the river at Kew also--that river where, in summer time, the steamers get hung up on the sandbanks for lack of water. Alas, then, for the picturesque foresh.o.r.e of Strand-on-the-Green!

[Ill.u.s.tration: KEW BRIDGE, LOW WATER.]

[Sidenote: _HIGHWAYMEN_]

The pa.s.sengers by the Bath Flying Machine grew at this point a shade paler. They generally expected to be robbed on Hounslow Heath, and their expectations were almost invariably realized by the gentlemen in c.o.c.ked hats and c.r.a.pe masks, who were by no means backward in coming forward. The fine flower of the highwaymen practised on the Heath, and they did their spiriting gently and with so much courtesy that it was almost (not quite) a pleasure to hand over those rings and guineas of which so plenteous a store was collected every night.

Before, however, we come to Hounslow Heath, we have to cast a glance round Brentford, a town which holds the proud position of the county town of Middles.e.x. Foreigners might, in the innocence of their hearts, suppose that London would hold that honour; but to Brentford, known from time immemorial, and with the utmost justice, as "dirty Brentford," it has fallen. Has Brentford risen to the occasion? It must sorrowfully be admitted that it has not, and is a very marvel of dirt and dilapidation, and--But no matter! Until quite recently it also possessed, in the church of Old Brentford, the very ugliest church in England, which was so very ugly that it used to be credibly reported that people came long distances to see such a marvel of the unlovely. Alas! the church has been rebuilt, and so Brentford has lost a claim to distinction.

But Brentford has the honour of being mentioned in Shakespeare, in a pa.s.sage whose allusions not all the efforts of antiquaries have been able to explain, and distinguished itself in a peculiar way during the reign of King William the Fourth, whom people used to call, for no very good reason, Silly Billy. The King and Queen were expected to drive through the town, on their way from Windsor to London, and the streets were decorated.

But the inhabitants spiced their loyalty with sarcasm, for hanging on a line, stretched prominently across the road, was an old coat, turned inside out, in allusion to His Majesty's uncertain policy. Not satisfied, however, with this delicate way of calling him a turncoat, Brentford had another insult ready a little way down the street. The King was generally supposed to be very much under the influence of Queen Adelaide, and this was more or less gracefully alluded to by a pair of trousers fluttering in the wind like a banner suspended across the road. Their Majesties testified their recognition and appreciation of Brentford wit by never pa.s.sing through the town again.

[Sidenote: _SORDID HOUNSLOW_]

A little further afield takes us to Hounslow, where John Jerry is busy putting up those long streets of "villas," whose deadly sameness vexes the soul of the artist. He has torn down the old houses, in one of which, or rather, in several of which--for they had intercommunicating pa.s.sages--d.i.c.k Turpin was wont to hide when he was in refuge from the Bow Street runners.

"Bold Turpin vunce, on Hounslow Heath, His mare, Black Bess, bestrod--er; Ven there he see'd the bishop's coach Coming along the road--er."

Thus sang Sam Weller; but "Bold Turpin" would be hard put to it to identify his suburban haunts now, and we, before our hair is grey, will find those places strange which were so familiar the matter of a few years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COTTAGES, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN THE HAUNTS OF d.i.c.k TURPIN.]

The town of Hounslow is as unprepossessing as its name, which is saying a great deal. Its mile-long street, unlivened by any interesting features, is dull without descending to the positively interesting unloveliness of Brentford. Just as collectors prize old china whose shape and colouring are frankly hideous to those who are not of the elect in those matters, so the grotesquely dirty and ugly streets of Brentford have an interest for the tourist who does not often come upon their like. Hounslow's is just a commonplace ugliness. The curtailed remains of its once numerous and extensive coaching inns are become, as a rule, low pot-houses, in which labourers in the market-gardens that practically surround the town, sit and drink themselves stupid in the evening; and the business premises and private houses which alternate along the highway are either shabby old places, not old enough to claim any interest on the score of antiquity; or of a pretentious bad taste rather more difficult to bear with than the dirty hovels and tumbledown cottages they have displaced. Here, indeed, is the debateable ground between town and country. Rurality is (appropriately enough) in its last ditch, while civilization has established a precarious outpost beside it. Flashy "villas" jostle the market-gardeners' cottages; and respectability sits self-satisfied in its prim Early Victorian drawing-rooms, amid its chairs upholstered in green rep, its horse-hair sofas and cut-gla.s.s l.u.s.tres; while on either side the vulgar herd sits at open windows in its shirt-sleeves, and smokes black and exceedingly foul pipes, and gazes complacently upon the clothes hanging out to dry in the garden.

[Sidenote: _HOUNSLOW'S COACHING DAYS_]

Hounslow presented a different picture before the opening of the railways to the West. Two thousand post-horses were then kept in the town, and coaches and private carriages went dashing through at all hours of the day and night, so closely upon one another that they almost resembled a procession. As the poet says, the pedestrian then forced his way--

"Through coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion; Here taverns wooing to a pint of 'purl,'

There mails fast flying off, like a delusion."

And, indeed, they have, like delusions, vanished utterly. So early as April, 1842, a daily paper is found saying: "At the formerly flourishing village of Hounslow, so great is the general depreciation of property, on account of the transfer of traffic to the railway, that at one of the inns is an inscription, 'New milk and cream sold here;' while another announces the profession of the landlord as 'mending boots and shoes.'" The turnpike tolls at the same time, between London and Maidenhead, had decreased from 18 to 4 a week.

Yet Hounslow very narrowly missed becoming a great railway junction. That, indeed, was its proper destiny when the coaching era was done and the place decaying. Hounslow became the busy place it was in the days of road-travel, because it commanded the great roads to the West. The Bath and Exeter Roads, which were one from Hyde Park Corner as far as this town, branched at its western end, and it was also on the route to Windsor. It should thus have become an important station on the Great Western Railway, and might have been, had not other interests prevailed.

It was the original intention of the Great Western directors, when the line was planned by Brunel in 1833, to keep close to the old high-road to Bath; but landed interests, both private and corporate, brought about numerous deviations, and so Hounslow was left to its fate, and the Great Western main line pa.s.ses through Southall, two and a half miles distant, instead.

XII

We will now press on to the Heath, for our friends the highwaymen are anxiously awaiting us. Right away from the seventeenth century this spot bore a bad repute, when one of the most daring exploits was performed on its gloomy expanse. This was no less a feat than the plundering of that warlike general, Fairfax, by Moll Cutpurse. The most capable soldier of the age robbed by a woman highwayman, if you will be pleased to excuse the Irishry of the expression! But, indeed, the Roaring Girl, as her contemporaries called her, was the best man among the whole of that daring crew, and to her courage, her cunning, and her ready wit she owed the successful career that was hers. She wore the breeches in no metaphorical sense, but through all her career habited herself in man's garments. Only when she had ama.s.sed a fortune and had retired from "the road" did she don the skirt.

[Sidenote: _CLAUDE DU VALL_]

It is sad to think that the greatest of all the brotherhood who made Hounslow Heath and highway robbery synonymous terms was cut off in the full tide of his success. At least, it seems so to us, although the travellers of the period doubtless felt a certain satisfaction when Du Vall was executed, on January 21, 1670. He was but twenty-seven years of age, and already had become a star of the first magnitude. He was, in fact, a master of the whole art and mystery of robbing upon the road, and to this he brought the most perfect courtesy. Violence had no part in the methods of this artist, and he would have scorned, we may be sure, the ruffianly and even murderous acts of a later generation of the craft, which not only despoiled travellers of their goods, but rendered the Heath dangerous to life and limb. His chief exploit is cla.s.sic, and is set forth so eloquently, and with such an engaging profusion of capital letters, in a contemporary pamphlet, that one cannot do better than quote it:--

"He, with his Squadron, overtakes a Coach which they had set over Night, having Intelligence of a Booty of four hundred Pounds in it. In the Coach was a Knight, his Lady, and only one Serving-maid, who, perceiving five Hors.e.m.e.n making up to them, presently imagined that they were beset; and they were confirmed in this Apprehension by seeing them whisper to one another, and ride backwards and forwards. The Lady, to shew that she was not afraid, takes a Flageolet out of her pocket and plays. Du Vall takes the Hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a Flageolet of his own, and in this Posture he rides up to the Coachside. 'Sir,' says he to the Person in the Coach, 'your Lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but that she dances as well. Will you please to walk out of the Coach and let me have the Honour to dance one Currant with her upon the Heath?' 'Sir,'

said the Person in the Coach, 'I dare not deny anything to one of your Quality and good Mind. You seem a Gentleman, and your Request is very reasonable.' Which said, the Lacquey opens the Boot, out comes the knight, Du Vall leaps lightly off his horse and hands the Lady out of the Coach.

They danced, and here it was that Du Vall performed Marvels; the best Masters in London, except those that are French, not being able to shew such footing as he did in his great French Riding Boots. The Dancing being over (there being no violins, Du Vall sung the Currant himself) he waits on the Lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vall to him, 'Sir, you have forgot to pay the Musick.' 'No, I have not,' replies the knight, and, putting his Hand under the Seat of the Coach, pulls out a hundred Pounds in a Bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vall took with a very good grace, and courteously answered, 'Sir, you are liberal, and shall have no cause to repent your being so; this Liberality of yours shall excuse you the other Three Hundred Pounds,' and giving the Word, that if he met with any more of the Crew he might pa.s.s undisturbed, he civilly takes his leave of him. He manifested his agility of body by lightly dismounting off his horse, and with Ease and Freedom getting up again when he took his Leave; his excellent Deportment by his incomparable Dancing and his graceful manner of taking the hundred Pounds."

When this hero had gone the inevitable way of his fellows, he was buried with great pomp and circ.u.mstance in the church of St. Paul, Covent Garden, with a set of eulogistic verses for his epitaph. Unfortunately, the old church was destroyed by fire and the epitaph with it.

[Sidenote: _HIGHWAY MURDERS_]

Mr. Nuthall, the Earl of Chatham's solicitor, too, who had been to Bath to confer with his gouty and irascible client, was stopped in his carriage as it was going towards London across this dreaded wilderness. The highwaymen fired at him, and he died of fright. Two other notable murders by highwaymen took place here--in 1798 and 1802--and bear witness to the degeneracy of the craft. The first was Mr. Mellish, who was fired upon and killed as he was returning from a run with the King's hounds. A Mr. Steele was the other victim, and his a.s.sailants, Haggarty and Holloway, who had planned the crime at the "Turk's Head," Dyot Street, Holborn, it is satisfactory to be able to add, were hanged. The execution took place at the Old Bailey, when twenty-eight persons among the crowds who had come to see the sight were crushed to death. Up to the year 1800, the Heath was a most famous place for gibbets. "The road," as a writer of the period says, "was literally lined with gibbets on which the carcases of malefactors hung in irons, blackening in the sun." Du Vall had a successor in Twysden, Bishop of Raphoe, collecting t.i.thes in rather a promiscuous way, by turning highwayman in 1752. His career was a short one, for one of the first travellers he bade "Stand!" on the Heath shot him through the body, from which he died a few days later, at the house of a friend, from "inflammation of the bowels," as the contemporary report, jealous for the reputation of the dignified clergy, put it.

Shall I weary you by recounting more of these highway crimes? There was Dr. Shelton, a surgeon, who flourished in the early thirties of last century, and, deserting lancet and scalpel, took to the road and that not more lethal weapon, the horse-pistol; though, to be sure, it was more for show than use, for not Du Vall himself could have been more courteous.

That the poet who wrote of Bagshot Heath as a place "where ruined gamblers oft repay their loss" might with perfect propriety have subst.i.tuted "Hounslow" will be readily seen when we mention Parsons, nearly contemporary with Shelton, who robbed at Hounslow that he might gamble in London. Parsons was the son of a "Bart. of the B.K.," as the Tichborne Claimant would have phrased it; an Eton boy, at one time an officer both in the Army and Navy, and the husband of a beautiful heiress. He made an edifying end at Tyburn.

Then there was Barkwith, a mere novice, whose first sally led to a like exit. He was the son of a Cambridgeshire squire, and manager to a Lincoln's Inn solicitor. He had "borrowed" trust moneys wherewith to satisfy some debts of honour; and so the hour of four o'clock in the afternoon of a November day found him on the Heath, with a pistol in his hand and his heart in his mouth, "holding up" a coach. The booty was but a miserable handful of silver; but, being captured, he died for it, all the same. Let us trust he did "the young gentlemen who belong to Inns of Court" an injustice when, in his dying speech and confession, he warned his hearers against them as "the most wicked of any."

[Sidenote: _"DARE-DEVIL SIMMS"_]

Then there was Dare-devil Simms--"Gentleman Harry," as his friends called him--a midshipman who came up from deserting his ship in the West Country.

First borrowing a saddle and bridle, and then stealing a horse, he commenced his career by robbing a post-chaise and the Bristol Mail, and coming to London, soon became a noted figure on this stage. One night he relieved a Mr. Sleep of his purse. The despoiled traveller bewailed his loss bitterly, but Harry comforted him with the a.s.surance that he would have been robbed in any case; if not by himself, certainly by one or other of the two who were waiting for him down the road. "But if you meet them,"

said he, "sing out 'Thomas!' and they will let you pa.s.s." The unfortunate man went on his way calling "Thomas!" to every one he met, and narrowly escaped being severely handled by some gentlemen who conceived themselves insulted.

Presently Tyburn claimed Gentleman Harry also, and a career which had been begun by transportation, and continued through such stirring adventures as being sold for a slave, becoming a sailor and a privateersman, was finally extinguished by the halter. A short life and a merry.

Strawkins, Simpson, and Wilson, too, helped to keep up the stirring story of the road. They intercepted the Bristol Mail and left the postboy, bound with ropes, at the bottom of a ditch on the outskirts of Colnbrook. They were tracked down by the Post Office, and, Wilson turning King's evidence, the first two were hanged. The Mail was then given an escort of Dragoons, but highway robbery had too strong a spice of adventure for one of these fine fellows to resist it. He accordingly pillaged the Bath Stage, and suffered the appointed end in due course.

This catalogue of mine does not close until 1820, in which year four confederates plundered the Bristol Mail. They had booked the inside seats, and during their journey through the night forced open the strong boxes placed under the seats, decamped with their contents, and were never heard of again.

XIII

[Sidenote: _A STORY OF THE ROAD_]

One of the most diverting stories of Hounslow Heath, which serves to relieve its sombre repute, is that which the late Mr. James Payn tells, in one of his reminiscences. "The story goes," he says, "that early in the century the landlord of Skindle's, at Maidenhead, was a strong Radical, and could command a dozen votes; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in the person of his son, a good-for-naught. During a certain Berkshire election, a Tory solicitor was staying at this inn, and had occasion to go to London for the sinews of war. His gig was stopped on his way back, on Hounslow Heath, by a gentleman of the road.

"I have no money," said the lawyer, with professional readiness, "but there is my watch and chain."

"You have a thousand pounds in gold in a box under the seat," was the unexpected reply; "throw back the ap.r.o.n!"

The lawyer obeyed, but as the horseman stooped to take the box, the lawyer knocked the pistol out of his hand and drove off at full gallop. He had a very quick-going mare, and before the highwayman could find his weapon, which had fallen into some furze, was beyond pursuit.

The next morning the lawyer sent for the landlord. "Yesterday," he said, "I was stopped on Hounslow Heath. The man had a mask on, but I recognized him by his voice, which I can swear to. I knew him as well as he knew me.