The Cruise of the Land-Yacht "Wanderer" Part 39

How different, though, the hedgerows look now from what they did when I started on my rambles in early summer, for now sombre browns, blues, and yellows have taken the place of spring's tender greens, and red berries hang in cl.u.s.ters where erst was the hawthorn's bloom.

The blossom has left the bramble-bushes, except here and there the pink of a solitary flower, but berries black and crimson cl.u.s.ter on them; only here and there among the ferns and brackens, now changing to brown, is the flush of nodding thistle, or some solitary orange flowers, and even as the wind sweeps through the trees a shower of leaves of every hue falls around us.

A steep hill leads us down to the valley in which Arundel is situated, and the peep from this braeland is very pretty and romantic.

The town sweeps up the opposite hill among delightful woodlands, the Duke of Norfolk's castle, with its flagstaff over the ruined keep, being quite a feature of the landscape.

We turn to the left in the town, glad we have not to climb that terrible hill; and, after getting clear of the town, bear away through a fine beech wood. The trees are already a.s.suming their autumnal garb of dusky brown and yellow, and sombre shades of every hue, only the general sadness is relieved by the appearance here and there of a still verdant wide-spreading ash.

On and on. Up hill and down dell. Hardly a field is to be seen, such a wildery of woodlands is there on every side. The brackens here are very tall, and, with the exception of a few dwarf oak, elm, or elder-bushes, const.i.tute the only undergrowth.

We are out in the open again, on a breezy upland; on each side the road is bounded by a great bank of gorse. When in bloom in May, how lovely it must look! We can see fields now, pale yellow or ploughed, suggestive of coming winter. And farm-steadings too, and far to the left a well-wooded fertile country, stretching for miles and miles.

Near to Bell's Hut Inn we stop to water, and put the nosebags on. There is a brush-cart at the door, and waggons laden with wood, and the tap-room is crowded with rough but honest-looking country folks, enjoying their midday repast of bread and beer.

The day is _so_ fine, the sun is _so_ bright, and the sward _so_ green, that we all squat, gipsy-fashion, on the gra.s.s, to discuss a modest lunch. Fowls crowd round us and we feed them. But one steals Foley's cheese from off his plate, and hen steals it from hen, till the big Dorking c.o.c.k gets it, and eats it too. Corn-flower scatters his oats about, and a feathered mult.i.tude surround him to pick them up.

Pea-blossom brings her nosebag down with a vicious thud every now and then, and causes much confusion among the fowls.

Bob is continually snapping at the wasps.

Bread-and-cheese and ginger-ale are not bad fare on a lovely day like this, when one has an appet.i.te.

Gipsies always have appet.i.tes.

A drunken drover starts off from the inn door without paying for his dinner. The landlady's daughter gives chase. I offer to lend her Bob.

She says she is good enough for two men like that. And so she proves.

We are very happy.

One's spirits while on the road to a great extent rise and fall with the barometer.

Chichester seems a delightful old place. But we drove rapidly through it, only stopping to admire the cross and the cathedral. The former put me in mind of that in Castle-gate of Aberdeen.

Between Littlehampton and the small town of Botley, which the reader may notice on the map of Hampshire, we made one night's halt, and started early next morning.

The view from the road which leads round the bay at Porchester is, even with the tide back, picturesque. Yonder is the romantic old castle of Porchester on the right middle distance, with its battlements and ivied towers; and far away on the horizon is Portsmouth, with its masts, and chimneys, and great gasworks, all asleep in the haze of this somewhat sombre and gloomy day.

Porchester--the town itself--could supply many a sketch for the artist fond of quaintness in buildings, in roofs, picturesque children, and old-fashioned public-houses. Who, I wonder, drinks all the "fine old beer," the "sparkling ales," and the "London stout," in this town of Porchester? Every third house seems an inn.

Through Fareham, where we stopped to admire a beautiful outdoor aviary, and where a major of marines and his wife possessed themselves of my little maiden, and gave her cake and flowers enough to set up and beautify the Wanderer for a week at least.

Botley is one of the quietest, quaintest, and most unsophisticated wee villages ever the Wanderer rolled into. It is rural in the extreme, but like those of all rural villages, its inhabitants, if unsophisticated, are as kind-hearted as any I have ever met.

Botley can boast of nearly half-a-score of public-houses, but it has only one hotel, the Dolphin, and one butcher's shop.

That milkman who let us into his field was right glad to see the caravan, which he had read a good deal about, and seemed proud to have us there, and just as pleased was the honest landlord of the Dolphin to have our horses. In the good old-fashioned way he invited my little daughter and me into the cosy parlour behind the bar, where we spent a few musical hours most enjoyably.

It seems though that Botley has not always borne the reputation of being a quiet place. For example, long ago, though the recollection of the affair is still green in the memory of the oldest inhabitants, there used to be held at Botley what were called "beef-fairs." For months beforehand "twopences" were saved, to raise a fund for fair-day. When this latter came round, the agreement among these innocents was that having once taken the cup of beer in his hand every man must drain it to the bottom, to prove he was a man.

In his baccha.n.a.lian song "Willie brew'd a peck o' maut," Burns says:--

"The first that rises to gang awa'

A cuckold cowardly loon is he.

The first that in the neuk does fa'

We'll mak' him king amang the three."

But at the beef-fair of Botley matters were reversed, and the first that "in the neuk did fa'" was fined two shillings, and failing payment he was condemned to be hanged.

On a certain fair-day a certain "innocent" fell in the nook but refused to pay. Honour was honour among these fair folks, so first they stood the culprit on his head, and endeavoured to shake the money out of him.

Disappointed and unsuccessful, they really did hang him, not by the neck but by the waist, to a beam.

Unfortunately for the poor fellow, the band came past, and away rushed his _confreres_ to listen.

It did not matter much to the condemned joskin that he was trundled about the town for two hours after they had returned, and finally deposited under the settle of an inn. For he was _dead_!

One other example of the congeniality of the Botley folks of long ago.

My attention was attracted to a large iron-lettered slab that hangs on the wall of the coffee-room of the Dolphin. The following is the inscription thereon:--

This Stone is Erected To Perpetuate a Most Cruel Murder Committed on the Body of Thos. Webb a Poor Inhabitant of Swanmore on the 11th of Feb. 1800 by John Diggins a Private Soldier in the Talbot Fencibles Whose Remains are Gibbeted on the Adjoining Common.

And there doubtless John Diggins' body swung, and there his bones bleached and rattled till they fell asunder.

But the strange part of the story now has to be told; they had hanged the wrong man!

It is an ugly story altogether. Thus: two men (Fencibles) were drinking at a public-house, and going homewards late made a vow to murder the first man they met. Cruelly did they keep this vow, for an old man they encountered was at once put to the bayonet. Before going away from the body, however, the soldier who had done the deed managed to exchange bayonets with Diggins. The blood-stained instrument was therefore found in _his_ scabbard, and he was tried and hanged. The real murderer confessed his crime twenty-one years afterwards, when on his deathbed.

So much for the Botley of long ago.

The iron slab, by the way, was found in the cellar of the Dolphin, and the flag of the Talbot Fencibles, strange to say, was found in the roof.

We took Southampton as our midday halt, driving all round the South Park before we entered--such a charming park--and stopped to dine among the guns away down beside the pier.

Then on for a few miles, bivouacking for the night in an inn yard, in order that we might return to Southampton and see the play.

Next day we reached Lyndhurst, and came safely to anchor in a meadow behind the old Crown Hotel, and this field we made our headquarters for several days.

It had always been my ambition to see something of the New Forest, and here I was in the centre of it. I had so often read about this wondrous Forest; I had thought about it, dreamt about it, and more than once it had found its way into the tales I wrote. And now I found the real to exceed the imaginary.

One great beauty about the New Forest is that it is open. There is nothing here of the sombre gloom of the Scottish pine wood. There are great green glades in it, and wide wild patches of heatherland. Even at the places where the trees are thickest the giant oaks thrust their arms out on every side as if to keep the other trees off.

"Stand back," they seem to say. "We will not be crowded. We must not keep away the sunshine from the gra.s.s and the brackens beneath us, for all that has life loves the light. Stand back."

What charmed me most in this Forest? I can hardly tell. Perhaps its gnarled and ancient oaks, that carried my thoughts back to the almost forgotten past; perhaps its treescapes in general, now with the tints of autumn burnishing their foliage; perhaps its glades, carpeted with soft green moss and gra.s.s, and surrounded with brackens branched and lofty, under which surely fairies still do dwell.

They say that the modern man is but a savage reformed by artificial means, and if left to himself would relapse to his pristine state.

Well, if ever I should relapse thus, I'd live in the New Forest.

Referring to the forest, Galpin says--"Within equal limits, perhaps, few parts of England afford a greater variety of beautiful landscapes than this New Forest. Its woody scenes, its extended lawns, and vast sweeps of wild country, unlimited by artificial boundaries, together with its river views and distant coasts, are all in a great degree magnificent.

[There have been many portions of the Forest enclosed since these lines were written, but their gates are never closed against the stranger or sight-seer.] Still, it must be remembered that its chief characteristic, and what it rests on for distinction, is not sublimity but sylvan beauty."