The Dover Road Part 10

[Sidenote: CHATHAM]

Few people, as d.i.c.kens says, can tell where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, but even now you become conscious of a gradual alteration in the character of the street as you leave Rochester High Street and come imperceptibly into Chatham; and even though the place has grown so large, and holds so very varied a population that the military and naval sections no longer bulk so largely as they used, they still make a brave show.

An inhabitant of Chatham need never wish to visit London, because the triple towns of Chatham, Strood and Rochester--to leave out all count of Gillingham and New Brompton, which are to Chatham even as Hammersmith is to our own great metropolis--contain samples of nearly all that is to be seen in the Capital of the Empire, and much else besides. There is a Dockyard at Chatham two miles in length, from which there issues every day at the dinner-hour an army of artificers of every kind and degree--many thousands of them; and in this Dockyard are ironclads, making, repairing, and refitting together with vast military and naval stores, and all kinds of relics, foremost among which there is a shed, full of old and historic figure-heads; all that is left of the wooden walls that were such efficient bulwarks of England's power. _Agamemnons_, _Arethusas_, _Bellerophons_ are here, and many more. And all around are forts and "lines," barracks and military hospitals; and drilling, manoeuvring, marchings and counter-marchings, and all kinds of military exercises are continually going forward. The names of streets, courts, and alleys, would furnish a very Walhalla of naval heroes, and from all quarters come the sounds of riveting, the blasts of bugles, and the shouting of the captains; and when midday comes the noontide gun resounds from the heights of Fort Pitt, and all the ragged urchins who live on the pavements fall down as if they were shot, much to the terror of old ladies, strangers in these parts, who pa.s.s by.

There is still a fine old-time nautical flavour hanging about Chatham. It does not lie on the surface, but requires much patient searching amid mean and disreputable streets, and it is only after pa.s.sing through slums that would affright a resident of Drury Lane that one finds curiously respectable little terraces, giving upon the waterside, with masts and yards, rigging, derricks, and other strange seafaring tackle peeping over the roof-tops; amphibious corners where a smell of the sea, largely intermixed with odours of pitch, tar, and rope, clings about everything; where men with a nautical lurch come swinging along the pavements, and where, if you glance in at the doorways which are nearly always open in summer, you will see full-rigged models of ships standing on sideboards, supported perhaps by a huge Family Bible, and flanked, most certainly, with strange outlandish sh.e.l.ls, branches of coral, and other spoils of far-off lands.

But these things are not patent to he who goes only along the main road, turning to neither right nor left; and it is only a little exploration of byways that will convince you of Mr. Pickwick's summary remaining still substantially correct. "The princ.i.p.al productions" of the three towns of Rochester, Strood, and Chatham, according to Mr. Pickwick, "appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard-men. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine-stores, hardbake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters." All of which might well have been written to-day, so closely does the description still apply; but when he goes on to remark that "the streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military," he clearly speaks of by-past times. "It is truly delightful,"

he says, "to a philanthropic mind to see these gallant men staggering along under the influence of an overflow, both of animal and ardent spirits." Delightful indeed! But since those days Tommy Atkins has been evolutionized into a very different creature.

XXV

[Sidenote: OUR LADY OF CHATHAM]

To plunge into mediaeval legends at Chatham will seem the strangest of transitions, and Chatham Parish Church will appear to most people the last place likely to have a story. Yet in demolishing the old building to make way for a new, the workmen found some fragments of sculpture which had a history. Amongst these was a headless group of the Virgin and Child.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE INVASION OF ENGLAND: FRANCE. _After Hogarth._]

This was, in all probability, the effigy of Our Lady of Chatham, who, in pre-Reformation times, was famous for her miracles; and of whom Lambarde gives the following amusing story in his _Perambulations_: "It seems,"

says he, "that the corps of a man (lost through shipwracke belike) was cast on land in the parishe of Chatham, and being there taken up, was by some charitable persones committed to honest burial within their church-yard; which thing was no sooner done, but Our Lady of Chatham, finding herselfe offended therewith, arose by night and went in person to the house of the parishe clearke, whiche then was in the streete, a good distance from the church, and making a noyse at his window, awaked him.

The man, at the first, as commonly it fareth with men disturbed in their rest, demanded, somewhat roughly, 'who was there?' But when he understoode, by her owne answer, that it was the Lady of Chatham, he changed his note, and moste mildeley asked ye cause of her comming; she tolde him, that there was lately buryed (neere to the place where she was honoured) a sinful person, which so offended her eye with his gastly grinning, that, unless he were removed, she could not but (to the great griefe of good people) withdrawe herselfe from that place, and cease her wonted miraculous working amongst them: and therefore, she willed him to go with her, to the ende that, by his helpe, she might take him up, and caste him again into the river. The clearke obeyed, arose, and waited on her towarde the churche; but the goode ladie (not wonted to walk) waxed wearie of the labour, and therefore was enforced, for very want of breath, to sit downe in a bushe by the way, and there to rest her: and this place (forsooth) as also the whole track of their journey, remaining ever after a greene pathe, the towne dwellers were wont to shew. Now, after a while, they go forward againe, and coming to the churcheyarde, digged up the body, and conveyed it to the waterside, where it was first found. This done, Our Lady shrancke againe into her shryne; and the clearke peaked home, to patche up his broken sleepe; but the corps now eftsoones floted up and down the river, as it did before; which thing being espyed by them of Gillingham, it was once more taken up, and buryed in their churcheyarde. But see what followed upon it: not only the roode of Gillingham (say they), that a while before was busie in bestowing myracles, was now deprived of all that his former virtue; but also ye very earth and place where this carckase was laid, did continually, for ever after, settle and sinke downewarde."

Barham has made good use of this story, you who have read the legend of _Grey Dolphin_ in the _Ingoldsby Legends_ will remember. He narrates, with a joyous irreverence, how, in consequence of the miraculous interposition of the Lady of Chatham (Saint Bridget, forsooth! "who, after leading but a so-so-life, had died in the odour of sanct.i.ty") ma.s.ses were sung, tapers kindled, bells tolled, and how everything thenceforward was wonderment and devotion; the monks of Saint Romwold in solemn procession, the abbot at their head, the sacristan at their tail, and the holy breeches of Saint Thomas a Becket in the centre. "Father Fothergill brewed a x.x.x puncheon of holy water," continues Tom Ingoldsby, clerk in holy orders and minor canon of the Cathedral of Saint Paul, indulging at once his exuberant humour and his contempt of the Church of Rome, with its relics, miracles, bone-chests, and sanctified _aqua pura_. Meanwhile, the grinning sailor, "grinning more than ever," had drifted down the river, off Gillingham, and lay on the sh.o.r.e in all the majesty of mud, presently to be discovered by the minions of Sir Robert de Shurland, who bade them "turn out his pockets." But it was ill gleaning after the double scrutiny of Father Fothergill and the parish clerk; and, as Ingoldsby observes, "there was not a single maravedi."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAID OFF AT CHATHAM. _After a Painting by R. Deighton, R.A._]

[Sidenote: "JEZREEL"]

From Saint Bridget to a weird, but yet not altogether unworldly, fanatic of recent years the transition would not be easy, were it not for the fact that the said fanatic's hideous temple still crowns Chatham Hill for all men to see, as a monument of the unfathomed and unfathomable credulity of mankind. The stranger who walks or cycles his way to Dover is told that this barrack-like building is "Jezreel's Temple," and that is about the extent of the information forthcoming. The unredeemed ugliness of the unfinished temple is at once repellant and exciting to curiosity, and the name of "Jezreel" wears such an Old Testament air that most people who pa.s.s by want very much to know who and what he was.

He was, as a matter of fact, a private soldier of the 16th Regiment, named James White, who, having been bought out of the Army by the members of a fanatical sect before whom he posed as a prophet, took the extraordinary names of "James Jershom Jezreel," and, with seventeen followers, founded a new sect, the New House of Israel, known by scoffers as the "Joannas."

They were, in fact, mad enthusiasts like those whom Joanna Southcott had fooled, years before, and it is supposed that White took the name of "Jezreel" from the Book of Hosea, adding the other names to make a trinity of initial "J's," allusive to the Prophetess Joanna and her minor prophet, John Wroe.

Not that "Jezreel" was mad. Not at all. To him as Prophet and Patriarch of these New Israelites was given up the whole property of those who entered the House, to be held in common; and he made a very good thing of the infatuation of the hundreds of wealthy middle-cla.s.s converts who had a fancy for this singular kind of communistic religion. It was an article of his followers' creed that they were the first portion of the 144,000, twice told, who will receive Christ when he comes again to reign a thousand years on earth. To support his character as leader of this House, "Jezreel" pretended to have received a communication from a messenger of G.o.d, who inspired him to write an extraordinary farrago of Biblical balderdash, without argument, beginning, or end, called the "Flying Roll." The curious may obtain three volumes of this nonsense, but the only preternatural thing in these books of _Extracts from the Flying Roll_ is their gross and unapproachable stupidity which completely addles the brain of him who reads them, hoping thereby to discover the tenets of the sect or any single thread of argument that may be followed for more than a consecutive paragraph or two. The effect upon one reading those pages is the same as that which Mark Twain tells us was produced on him when Artemus Ward, having plied him with strong drink, began purposely to enter upon a preposterous conversation, having a specious air of a grave and lucid argument, but which was merely an idiotic string of meaningless sentences. Mark Twain thought himself had gone daft, and felt his few remaining senses going; and that is just what happens to any one who sits down and seriously tries to understand what "Jezreel's" _Extracts_ are all about.

In 1879, "Jezreel" married Clarissa Rogers, the daughter of a New Brompton sawyer; and, a.s.suming the name of "Queen Esther," she paid a visit, with the prophet, to America. This precious pair made an extraordinary number of converts in their preaching tours, and, returning to England, made Gillingham the headquarters of their New House of Israel. Schools and twenty acres of various buildings were built there at a cost of 100,000, and the "Temple," intended to hold 20,000 people, was commenced on Chatham Hill. But "Jezreel" died in 1885, chiefly of drink and the effects of sunstroke, before this work could be completed and the zealots, who were wont to go about with long hair tucked under purple-velvet caps, began to wake up to a sense not only of their sumptuary folly, but also of the phenomenal simplicity which they had exhibited in giving up their property to the House. "Queen Esther" was incapable of fooling these simple folk as completely as "Jezreel" had done, and minor prophets sprang up to dispute her sovereignty over the elect. Perhaps they were jealous of the state in which this quondam sawyer's daughter drove about in a carriage and pair, attended by liveried servants. Perhaps also _they_ had visions and Divine inspirations. At any rate, "Queen Esther" presently drooped, and died in 1888, in her twenty-eighth year; whereupon the sect swiftly collapsed under the rival seers who followed. Lawsuits succeeded to the fine religious frenzy in which the "Temple" was raised, and it still stands unfinished, visible on its hilltop over a great part of Chatham. It would be a pity to pull it down, or to complete it; or, indeed, to do anything at all to it, for, as it is now, it furnishes perhaps as eloquent a sermon on human wickedness and folly as could well be delivered.

The great tower, framed in steel and built of yellow brick with ornamental lines of blue Staffordshire brick, has stone panels carved with a trumpet with a scroll, "The Flying Roll," suspended from it; with the Prince of Wales feathers and the motto "I serve," and other devices. The unfinished tower itself cost 44,000. The foundation-stone was laid, as an inscription says, 19th September, 1885, "by Mrs. Emma Cave, on behalf of the 144,000. Revelations (_sic_) 7th, 4."

It was understood that Mrs. Cave, who at that time owned a large part of Tufnell Park, found the money for the tower, selling her property for the cause. The unfinished tower was seized by the building contractors for debt, and offered for sale by auctioneers, who stated it "would do for a lunatic asylum, prison, infirmary, etc." This suggestion failed, and the contractors, unable to sell the incomplete carcase, let it to the sect under a lease, which terminated in 1905. There were at that time Jezreelite workrooms and printing-offices in the bas.e.m.e.nt. An American Jezreelite then appeared, one Michael Keyfor Mills, calling himself "Prince Michael," and proposing to complete. The founder's father-in-law, Edward Rogers, who had rented the place as a wholesale grocery warehouse, opposed him and secured an injunction against members of the sect who had supported the idea. Mills died at Gillingham in January, 1922, aged sixty-five.

In 1908 a company was formed to demolish the building and sell the materials; but when the upper floors had been taken down the concern became insolvent. In 1913 it was proposed to convert the building into a "Picture Palace," but the idea came to nothing; and later, the property was offered at auction and withdrawn at 3,900.

If there be any surviving Jezreelites of the "New and Latter House of Israel," who believe that the souls of only those who have lived since Moses can be saved, they will be able to look with satisfaction on the remains of their tower, which was built largely with the idea that five thousand of the elect would gather here at the destruction of the world.

But in its present condition a good many of that number would be left outside; and there might be expected an unseemly crush to get within, only that by this time the elect of this particular brand must be a very small coterie.

XXVI

Little else is to be seen or noted in leaving Chatham for Rainham. The shop in which that singular old gentleman lived, with whom little David Copperfield made acquaintance, is not pointed out to the curious, and the ident.i.ty of that apostrophizer of his lungs and liver, who exclaimed "Goroo, goroo," and tearfully asked David if he would go for fourpence, has been much disputed. "The House on the Brook," to which the d.i.c.kens family removed when Mr. John d.i.c.kens' fortunes were low, is still to be seen, but "the Brook" has changed for the worse, and the visitor to Chatham who takes up the local papers will discover that it is pre-eminently the place where the Order of the Black Eye is conferred, on Sat.u.r.day nights in especial, but more or less impartially throughout the week.

[Sidenote: UPCHRUCH WARE]

It is not before Rainham is reached that the road becomes once more the open highway. Moor Street is pa.s.sed, and here the Rainham orchards and the cherry orchards of Gillingham begin to stretch away to the levels of the Upchurch marshes. "Wealth without health" begins to be the characteristic of the country, for the marsh mists hang over the levels from early evening, through the night, to almost midday; and agues, asthma, and bronchial complaints are the common lot. Many miles' length of submerged Roman pottery-works lie down in those Swale and Cooling marshes, and many have been, and are still, the "finds" of broken black "Upchurch ware" in the mud and ooze. Perfect specimens are discovered at rarer intervals. The proper method of searching for these vestiges of the Roman occupation is to equip one's self with a stout pair of sea-boots, and a "sou'wester,"

and to wade at low tide in the creeks, probing the slimy mud with iron rods. If the explorer is fortunate in his "pitch" he will discover pottery, broken or whole, by feeling his iron rod strike something harder than the surrounding half-liquid clay. The joy of such exquisite moments is unfortunately sometimes marred by the "find" being but a lump of half-baked clay; Roman, indeed, but not worthy of preservation. Still, when fragments of patterned ware are found, the discovery repays in interest for the time spent in mudlarking.

Rainham Church heralds the village, raising up its white and four-square battlemented walls from beside the road. A large building, with a few late bra.s.ses; a vault full of Tuftons, Earls of Thanet, of whom the last died in 1863, unmarried; and two life-sized marble statues of Tuftons, father and son, in that curious cla.s.sic convention of the late seventeenth century which found such a delight in representing distinguished folk as Roman warriors. Nicholas Tufton, the earl, and his son, who died from wounds received in battle, are those thus represented here; and the statue of the son, scupltured in a sitting position, is a really fine work of art. Beyond this, Rainham has not much to detain the explorer, and being a summer rendezvous for Chatham pleasure-parties and bean-feasters, it is apt to become dusty and riotous when the season of annual outings is at hand.

The church seen some distance to the left of the road is that of Newington. In the vestry is displayed a copy of the last will and testament of Simon Tomlin, dated November 13, 1689. In this disposition of his worldly effects are gifts to relatives and to the poor; and to his brother-in-law, William Plawe of Stockbury, he leaves "my best beaver hatt and the sum of 15, lawful money of England." It is to be hoped that the legatee got his hat, but, as many provisions of the will do not appear to have been complied with, it seems doubtful.

There was a priory of nuns established at Newington in early Norman times, but all that is now left of it is a striking legend which proves that when these pious ladies retired from the world they brought some of the world's worst characteristics with them. What they quarrelled about one night will never now be known, but when the morning dawned the Prioress was found strangled in her bed; which goes to prove that the veil no more goes to make the nun than orders black, white, or grey furnish a monk fully forth in true monastic attributes. A chalk pit, about a mile south of the church, called significantly "Nun-pit," is shown as the place where those less holy than homicidal sisters were afterwards buried alive. Other accounts say that these nuns were removed to Minster, in Sheppey. However that may be, Henry the Second would have no more nuns here. He placed seven priests in the Priory as secular canons, and gave them the manor, hoping that this religious house would in future have a less lurid career.

But things, instead of improving, grew worse. One of the canons was found murdered in his bed, and four of the brethren were convicted of the crime.

[Sidenote: NEWINGTON]

From these queer stories we come, appropriately enough, to a tale in which the Enemy bears a brave part. When Newington Church was being built, "ever so long ago," as the tale of gramarye has it, and the time came for the bells to be hung, the Devil, who, it is well known, hates the sound of church bells, conceived the grand plan of pushing the tower over, so that the builders would give up the idea. Accordingly, he ventured down the lane one night, and, standing in the churchyard--as he could well do, because the place was not yet consecrated--placed his back against the tower, and, putting his feet against a wall on the other side of the road, pushed. No one knows what was the result, but as there is a tower here to this day--and a very fine one it is, too--it may be presumed that either Satan had altogether overrated his strength, or that the builders had built better than they knew. But if the Enemy failed in this, he at least succeeded in leaving his mark. Accordingly, here is the wall, and in it is a stone, and in that stone is a hole made by his toes; while on another stone is the print of a very fine and large boot-sole--valuable evidence, because it not only proves the truth of the story but also shows us that the Devil wore a Blucher boot on one foot and let the other go unshod. If you ask me how it came about that the Devil could come here in the fourteenth century wearing a nineteenth-century boot, I must quote the showman who exhibited a wax model of Daniel in the lions' den. Daniel was seen to be reading the _Times_, and some one in the crowd pointed out the incongruous circ.u.mstance, to which the showman replied that Daniel, being a prophet, read the _Times_ by antic.i.p.ation! And if a saint could antic.i.p.ate the nineteenth century in newspapers, why should not the Fiend do the same in boots?

Peaceful cherry orchards stretch along the narrow valley, and the railway runs through them, giving glimpses to pa.s.sengers of long rows of cherry trees with emerald gra.s.s flecked with sunlight and flocks of sheep feeding under the boughs; and picturesque farmsteads standing in midst of fertile meads.

XXVII

[Sidenote: ROMAN STATIONS]

The village of Newington stands on either side of the old Dover Road, which is here identical with the famous Roman military _via_ of Watling Street. It is situated in the centre of a district covered thickly with Roman remains, and the village itself dates from Saxon times, when it really _was_ a "new town" as distinguished from the adjacent ruins of the ancient Roman station of Durolevum. All the ingenuity of archaeologists has been insufficient to determine at what particular spot this military post was established. Judde Hill, Sittingbourne, and Bapchild have been selected as probable sites of Durolevum, and certainly Bapchild and Sittingbourne are likely places for the original military post mentioned in the _Itinerary_ of Antoninus. Both are situated within an easy distance of the measurements given by the itinerist, and at either place there was anciently a stream of water crossing the road, sufficient, perhaps, to warrant the prefix of "Duro," which, almost without exception, distinguishes the Roman military place-names on the Dover Road. That prefix was the Latinized form of the Celtic "dour," signifying a stream, and it is met with at:--

Dubris == Dover.

Durovernum == Canterbury.

Durolevum == ? Bapchild, Sittingbourne, or Ospringe.

Durobrivae == Rochester.

A military expedition would naturally be encamped beside a stream, where the cavalry could water their horses, in preference to a waterless district; and therefore, Newington and Judde Hill, which both stand beyond an easy reach of flowing water, cannot have such good claims to have been the site of Durolevum as either Sittingbourne, or Bapchild, whose name, indeed, is a corruption of the Saxon Beccanceld, "the pool of the springs." The flow of water throughout the country must in those remote times have been much greater than now, for dense forests then covered a great part of the island, and induced rains and moisture. In fact, the Dover Road was until recent years remarkable for the number of considerable streams and trickling rills that flowed across it, either under bridges or across fords, and it is not so long since those that crossed the highway at Sittingbourne and Bapchild were diverted or dried up. They must have been broad streams when Caesar led his legionaries up the rough British trackway in pursuit of the Cantii, and the still very considerable brook that crosses the road at Ospringe would have then attained the dimensions of a river. It might be well to look to Ospringe for the original Durolevum, for the situation must have been admirable from a military point of view; and, moreover, it was near, if not then actually on, the head of a navigable creek leading directly to the sea, where Faversham now stands.

But when archaeologists leave the consideration of Caesar's and his successors' military station and seek the site of Durolevum town or city, they unaccountably lose sight of the fact that this Roman province of Britannia Prima was obviously very populous, and that Durolevum, instead of being a small isolated town, must needs have been the centre of a thickly populated district of smaller towns, hamlets, and outlying villas, stretching for miles along the now solitary reaches of the Dover Road, and reaching down to the Upchurch marshes.