The Dover Road Part 3

Juan did not understand a word Of English, save their shibboleth, "G.o.d d.a.m.n!"

And even that he had so rarely heard, He sometimes thought 'twas only their "Salaam,"

Or "G.o.d be with you!" and 'tis not absurd To think so; for, half English as I am (To my misfortune), never can I say I heard them wish "G.o.d with you," save that way.

But if he failed to understand their speech, he interpreted their actions accurately enough, and, drawing a pocket-pistol, shot the foremost in the stomach, who, writhing in agony on the ground, and unable to discriminate between Continental nationalities, called out that "the b.l.o.o.d.y Frenchman"

had killed him. His three companions did not wait to discover that it was not a Frenchman, but a Spaniard. No, they promptly ran away, and left their fellow to die, which he presently did, and Don Juan, after an interview with the coroner, proceeded on his road in wonderment.

"Perhaps," he thought, "it is the country's wont to welcome foreigners in this way."

Shooter's Hill is pictured excellently well in _A Tale of Two Cities_; the time, "a Friday night, late in November, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five," the occasion the pa.s.sing of the Dover Mail. The coachman was "laying on" to the horses like another Macduff, and the near leader of the tired team was shaking its head and everything upon it, as though denying that the coach could be got up the hill at all; while the pa.s.sengers, having been turned out to walk up the road and ease the horses, splashed miserably in the slush. The time was "ten minutes, good, past eleven," and the coachman had but just finished addressing the horses in such strange exclamations as "Tst! Yah! Get on with you! My blood!" and other picturesque, not to say lurid, phrases, when sounds were heard along the highway. Sounds of any sort on the road could not at this hour be aught than ominous, and so the pa.s.sengers, who were just upon the point of re-entering the coach, shivered and wondered if their purses and watches were quite safe which were lying snugly _perdu_ in their boots.

"Tst! Joe!" calls the coachman, from his box, warningly to the guard.

"What do you say, Tom?"

"I say a horse at a canter coming up," replies Tom.

"I say a horse at a gallop, Tom," rejoins the guard, entrenching himself behind his seat, and c.o.c.king his blunderbuss, calling out to the pa.s.sengers at the same time, "Gentlemen, in the King's name, all of you!"

The mail stopped. The hearts of the pa.s.sengers within thumped audibly, and if one could not see how they blenched, it was only owing to the obscurity of the mildewy inside of the old Mail. There they sat, in anxious expectancy, amid the disagreeable smell arising from the damp and dirty straw, and the relief they experienced when it was not a highwayman who rode up to them, but only a messenger for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, who sat shivering among the rest, may (in the words of a certain cla.s.s of novelists) "be better imagined than described."

There is but one criticism I have to make of this; but it is a serious point. There was no Dover Mail coach in 1775, for the earliest of all mail coaches, that between Bristol and London, was not established before 1784.

The mails until then were carried by post-boys on horse-back.

Of Severndroog Castle, built on the crest of Shooter's Hill during the last century, I shall say nothing, because, for one thing, it is of little interest, and, for another, whatever has to be said about it belongs to the province of the Guide Books, upon whose territory I do not propose to infringe. I want to give a modic.u.m of information with the maximum of amus.e.m.e.nt, with which declaration of policy I will proceed along the road to Dover.

Directly one comes to the crest of the hill there opens a wide view over the Kentish Weald. Reaches of the Thames are seen, peeping through foliage; distant houses and whitewashed cottages shine clearly miles away, and the spire of Bexley Church closes the view in front, where the road ends dustily. Along this road comes daily and all day a varied procession of tramps. The traveller looks down upon them from this eyrie with wonderment and dismay; the cottagers, the householders and gardeners hereabouts, see them pa.s.s with less surprise and additional misgivings, for their gardens, their hen-roosts, clothes-lines and orchards pay tribute to these Ishmaelites to whom the rights of property are but imperfectly known. This is why the gates and doors along the Dover Road are so uniformly and resolutely barred, bolted, chained, and padlocked; for these reasons ferocious dogs roam amid the suburban pleasances, and turn red eyes and foaming mouths toward one who leans across garden-gates to admire the flowers with which the fertile soil of Kent has so liberally spangled every cultivated spot; and to them is due the murderous-looking garnishment of jagged and broken gla.s.s with which every wall-top is armed.

"Peace must lie down armed" on the Dover Road; the citizen must lock, bolt, and bar his house o' nights, and does well to exhibit warning placards, "Beware of the Dog!" He does better to tip the policeman occasionally to keep an especially vigilant look-out, and it is not an excess of precaution that so frequently covers the flower-beds with wire-netting.

X

[Sidenote: TRAMPS]

There is, indeed, no road to equal the Dover Road for thieves, tramps, cadgers, and miscellaneous vagrants, either for number or depravity.

Throughout the year they infest alike the highways and byways of Kent, but the most constant procession of them is to be seen on the great main road between London and the sea. A great deal of begging, some petty pilfering, and a modic.u.m of work in the fruit season and during the hop-harvest suffice to keep them going for the greater part of the year, while the winter months are fleeted in progresses from one casual ward to another in the numerous unions along the road. Phenomenally ragged, bronzed by the sun, unshaven, unshorn, they are met, men, women, and children alike, at every turn, for many miles, especially between Southwark and Canterbury. The sixteen miles' stretch of road between Canterbury and Dover is comparatively unfrequented by them; but Gravesend, Dartford, Crayford, and Bexley Heath are centres of the most disgraceful mendicancy. "Lodgings for travellers" at fourpence a night, or two shillings a week, are a feature of these places, and how prominent a feature cannot be guessed by any one who has not been there. Whole families on the tramp are to be met with between these places, and long vistas of them are gained along any particularly straight piece of road.

They are everything that is dirty and horrible, but they are perfectly happy and quite irreclaimable, many of them being hereditary tramps.

Philanthropic societies inquire into the tramp; cla.s.sify him, endeavour to cleanse him and restore him to some place in society, but all to no purpose. He is quite satisfied with himself; he likes dirt, and dislikes nothing so much as either moral or physical cleansing. That is one reason why he seeks the shelter of the casual ward only as a last resource. He has to undergo a bath there, and feels as chilly when his top-dressing of grime is removed as you and I would be were we turned naked into the streets. To reform your tramp it would be essential to snare him at a very early age indeed, and, even then, I am not sure but that his natural traits would break out suddenly, like those of any other wild beast kept in captivity.

[Sidenote: TRAMPS' SIGNS]

The truth is, tramping is a very old profession, and hereditary in a degree very few good people imagine. Unlettered, but highly organised, trampdom has a _lingua franca_ of its own, and its signs are to be read, chalked on the fences and gateposts of the Dover Road, as surely as one could read a French novel.

The _argot_ and the sign-language of the road are not difficult to acquire by those who have observant eyes and ears to hearken, but, like all languages, they are ever changing, and the accepted signs of yesteryear are constantly superseded by newer symbols. Little do the country-folk understand the significance of the chalk-marks on their gates and walls.

Does the portly yeoman suspect that the [symbol] on his gatepost means "no good"? And how mixed would be the feelings of many a worthy lady were the inner meaning of [symbol] revealed to her--"Religious, but good on the whole." Were the eloquence of that mark discovered to her, she would know at once how it was that the poor men, with their ragged beards and their toes peeping through their boots, were so unfailingly pious and thankful for the cold scran and the threepenny-piece with which she relieved their needs, asking a blessing on her and hers until they were out of sight, when they "stowed" the piety and threw the provisions into the nearest ditch, calling in at the next roadside pub to take the edge off their thirst with that threepenny-piece. It may safely be said that the tramp is not grateful. He is, indeed, altruistic, but his altruism he saves for his kind, and he exhibits it in the danger-signals he chalks up in places the brotherhood wot of. There are degrees of danger, as of luck. Some good-hearted people become soured by many calls on their generosity, and one can readily understand even the mildest-mannered of elderly ladies becoming restive when the sixth tramp appears at the close of the day.

Other people, too, lose their generosity with the bedding-out plants which one of the fraternity has "sneaked" from the front garden under cover of night. In the first instance, the sign [symbol] (which means "Spoilt by too many callers") is likely to be found somewhere handy, and in the second that innocent-looking triangle is apt to become [symbol], the English of which is "Likely to have you taken up," even if it does not become [symbol] == "Dangerous. Sure of being quodded."

XI

Pa.s.sing many of these undesirable wayfarers, one comes, in a mile--fields and hedgerows and market-gardens on either side--to Shoulder of Mutton Green, a scrubby piece of common-ground shaped like South America--but smaller. Hence the peculiar eloquence of its name. The Kent County Council has set up a large and imposing notice-board at the corner of the green which bears its name and a portentous number of bye-laws, and when the sun is low and shadows slant (the board is so large and the green so small), the shade of it falls across the green and into the next field.

And now comes Belle Grove, spelled, as one may see on the stuccoed cottages by the wayside, with a pleasing diversity, Belle Grove, Bell Grove, and Belgrove; and one would pin one's faith on the correct form being the second variety, because the place is not beautiful, nor ever could have been.

To Bell Grove, then, succeeds Welling, and Welling is a quite uninteresting and shabby hamlet fringing the road, ten-and-a-quarter miles from London Bridge. The new suburban railway from London to Bexley Heath crosses the road, and has a station--a waste of sand, stones, and white palings--here. The place, says Hasted, in his "History of Kent," was called Well End, from the safe arrival of the traveller at it, after having escaped the danger of robbers through the hazardous road from Shooter's Hill, which derivation, though regarded as a happy effort of the imagination, is considerably below the dignified level of a county historian. Indeed, I seem to see in this the irresponsible frivolity of the guards and coachmen of the Dover Mail. Why, the thing reeks of coaching wit, and how Hasted, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, could have included in his monumental work (which took him forty years to write) so obvious a witticism, is beyond my comprehension. Shall I be considered pedantic if I point out that the place-name, with its termination _ing_, carries with it evidence of being as old as Saxon times, and denotes that here was the settlement of an ancient tribe, or patriarchial family, the Wellings? I will dare the deed and record the fact, remarking, meanwhile, that if other county historians were as little learned as Hasted, and equally speculative, they would seem more human, and their deadly tomes become much more entertaining.

But, after this, it would not beseem me to do else than record the fact that the new suburban district springing up beside the road, half a mile past Welling, is called "Crook Log." Why "Crook Log," and whence came that singular name, are things "rop in mistry," and I will run no risks of becoming fogged in rash endeavours to elucidate the origin of this place-name.

[Sidenote: TO BEXLEY]

Half a mile onward, and then begins Bexley Heath. "Once upon a time," that is to say, before an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1817 for enclosing what was then a wide, wild tract of desolate heath-land, Bexley Heath was entirely innocent of buildings.

The old village of Bexley lies a mile and a half to the right of the road, and is as rural, peaceful, and pleasant as Bexley Heath is mean and wretched. Between here and the village lies Hall Place, a Tudor mansion of great size and stately architecture, largely distinguished for its chequer-board patterning of flint and stone. The property was once that of the family called "At-hall," from their residence here, in an earlier mansion. The Tudor flint-and-stone building we now see was built by Sir Justinian Champneis, a Lord Mayor of London, towards the middle of the sixteenth century. In less than a hundred years the Champneis were succeeded by the Austens, who made alterations, until 1772, when it pa.s.sed to Sir Francis Dashwood, in whose family it yet remains.

In the neighbourhood of Bexley Heath, and also at Crayford and places beside the Thames near Dartford are some singular shafts of unknown age or purpose, sunk into the soil, frequently to a depth of a hundred feet, through the chalk of which this district chiefly consists. "Danes' Holes,"

the country-folk call them, and they are traditionally supposed to have been constructed as hiding-places to which the old inhabitants of these parts could retire when the Northmen's piratical fleets appeared in the estuary of the Thames. Antiquaries have a theory that these singular pits were sunk by our neolithic forbears in search of flints. The antiquaries, however, are most probably wrong, because flints were to be found readily enough by the men of the Stone Age, without going to the trouble of mining for them; and no one has yet arisen to show that neolithic man was more likely than we, his descendants, to give himself unnecessary labour.

We will, therefore, a.s.sume that the legendary name of "Danes' Holes"

shadows forth the purpose of these shafts a great deal more correctly than the ingenious theories of antiquaries, made to fit personal predilections; the more especially as legendary history is generally found to square with facts much more frequently than scientific pundits would have us believe.

These remarkable pits commence with a trumpet-shaped orifice which immediately contracts into a narrow shaft, broadening at the bottom into a bulb-like chamber, not unremotely resembling in shape the tube and bulb of a thermometer. "By a curious coincidence," says one who has long been familiar with these strange survivals, "the shape of the Bexley shafts is exactly that of a local beer-measure which is held in great estimation."

In several houses may be seen an advertis.e.m.e.nt that "beer is sold by the yard."

XII

[Sidenote: CRAYFORD]

Leaving Bexley Heath, the road becomes suddenly beautiful, where it loses the last of the mean shops--the cats'-meat vendors, the tinkers, the marine stores--that give so distinct and unwholesome a _cachet_ to its long-drawn-out street. The highway goes down a hill overhung with tall trees, with chestnuts and hawthorns, whose blossoms fill the air in spring with sweet and heavy scents; but, in the hollow, gasworks contend with them, and generally, it is sad to say, come off easy victors. Follows then a nondescript bend of the road which brings one presently into Crayford, fifteen miles from London.

Antiquaries are divided in opinion over the ancient history of Crayford.

While some incline to the belief that it is the site of the Roman Noviomagus, others are p.r.o.ne to select Keston Common as the locality of that shadowy camp and city. The question will probably never be settled beyond a doubt, but the weight of evidence is strong in favour of Keston Common, eight miles away to the south-west. Here still exist the traces of great earthworks, covering a s.p.a.ce of a hundred acres, while numerous finds of Roman coins and pottery have been made from time to time. At Crayford, on the other hand, the only presumptive evidence is to be found in this having been that old Roman military way, Watling Street, and, in the very slender thread of allusion to the name of Noviomagus, supposed, on the authority of Hasted, to be extant in the t.i.tle of the half-forgotten manor of Newbury.

But, however vague may be the connection between Noviomagus and Crayford, certain it is that here, in 457, was fought that tremendous battle between the Saxons under Hengist, and the Britons commanded by Vortigern, a conflict in which four thousand of the Romanised Britons were slain. It was in 449 that Hengist and Horsa, brother-chiefs[1] of the Jutish-Saxons, landed at Ebbsfleet, in Thanet, at the invitation of Vortigern, who sought their aid against the Picts and the Sea-rovers. They came in three ships, and their original force could scarcely have numbered more than five hundred men. But, having warred for the Britons, and fought side by side with them against the Scots, they soon perceived how defenceless was the land. "They sent," says the Anglo-Saxon chronicler, "to the Angles, and bade them be told of the worthlessness of the Britons, and the richness of the land." In response to this invitation, there came from over sea the men of the Old Saxons, the Jutes, and the Angles; and, six years after the landing of the two brothers, these treacherous allies, strengthened in number, felt strong enough to attempt the seizure of Kent.

Pretexts for a quarrel were readily found, and, through the mists that hang about the scanty records of that time, we hear first of the Battle of Aylesford, fought in 455, in which the Britons experienced their first great defeat. Here, though, Horsa was slain, and to Hengist, with his son Esc, was left the foundation of the Saxon kingdom of Kent. The Battle of Crayford for a time left all this fertile corner of England to the Saxons.

"The Britons," says the chronicler, "forsook the land of Kent, and in great consternation fled to London." But, though enervated by long years of luxury, and so greatly demoralised by defeats, the Britons had yet some force left. Vortigern, "the betrayer of Britain," as he has come down to us in the pages of history, was overthrown by another enemy, a rival British prince, that doughty Romanised chieftain, Aurelius Ambrosia.n.u.s, who, after defeating that weak king, gathered up the scattered patriots, and fell upon the Saxons with such fury that they were driven back to that Isle of Thanet which had originally been given them for their services against the Scots of Strathclyde. "Falchions drank blood that day; the buzzard buried his h.o.r.n.y beak in the carcases of the slain; the eagles feasted royally on the flesh of them that fell; and the whitening bones of the Northmen long afterwards strewed the fair land of Kent."

Eight years later, the work of Aurelius began to be undone, and in another eight years the veteran Hengist and his son had completed the foundation of their kingdom.

Crayford, it will thus be seen, is a town of considerable historic interest; but, apart from this claim upon one's attention, it has, I fear, no attraction whatever.