The Dover Road Part 6

Our traveller journeyed to London by wagon, rather than take a post-chaise or even the stage-coach; an extremely undignified thing for an Historiographer Royal to do, one would think. But then, 'twas the way to note the strange customs of these English! The wagon was drawn by six horses, one before another, and beside them walked the wagoner clothed in black and appointed in all things like another Saint George. He had a brave mounteero on his head, and was a merry fellow who fancied he made a figure, and seemed mightily pleased with himself. Arrived at Gravesend, our traveller, for greater expedition, took boat to London, and so an end of him, so far, at least, as these pages are concerned.

[Sidenote: M. GROSLEY]

But this little crowd of scribbling foreigners who visited England and wrote accounts of their travels in these islands before the locomotive was dreamed of, had much better opportunities of catching impressions than the railway train affords. They came up this way to London, as slowly as the poet's spring; and, as a rule, they used their opportunities very well. For instance, here is the admirable M. Grosley, a kindly Frenchman who came over from Boulogne in 1765. He gives a most interesting account of his journey along the Dover Road on the 11th April. He embarked upon Captain Meriton's packet, which arrived, in company with a prodigious number of other ships, three hours before time, off Dover. Here they had to anchor for the tide to serve their landing, and the boisterous winds drove several vessels ash.o.r.e, while Captain Meriton's pa.s.sengers resigned themselves to death. When at length they landed, half dead, an Englishwoman with her very amiable daughter and a tall old Irishman, who pretended to be an officer (and who doubtless "had a way with him"), landed with our traveller, and contrived that he should pay part of their fare, the only trick played upon M. Grosley (I am pleased to say) during his stay in England. The customs officers looked like beggars, but treated this foreigner like a gentleman, as indeed we may suppose he was, for he belonged to the Academy.

However, a crown was levied on pa.s.sing his luggage by an innkeeper who held the _droit de viscomte_. All the inns were crowded with the miserable travellers just landed, and he with whom we are particularly concerned found it necessary to go into the kitchen of his inn and take off, with his own hands, one of the _tranches de boeuf_ grilling on the coals.

After this exploit, he cautiously went to bed at six o'clock in the afternoon, for there were not enough beds to go round, and possession was ever nine points of the law! At three in the morning he was called upon to turn out in favour of a new arrival; but, notwithstanding all the rout they made, he held to his four-poster until five, when he was turned out and the game of Box and c.o.x commenced.

The sole inhabitants of Dover (says our traveller) were sailors, ships'

captains, and innkeepers. The height of the triumphal arches, on which the vast signboards of the inns spanned the narrow streets, and the ridiculous magnificence of the ornaments that headed them, were wonderful as compared with the little post-boys, children of twelve and thirteen years of age, who were starting every minute in sole charge of post-chaises. The great mult.i.tude of travellers with which Dover was crowded afforded a reason for dispensing with a police regulation which forbade public conveyances to travel on Sundays, and on that day he set out with seven other pa.s.sengers in two carriages called ("called," you notice, like that street in Jerusalem that was "called" straight) "flying machines." There were six horses to a machine, and they covered the distance to London in one day for one guinea each person; pa.s.sengers' servants carried outside at half-price. The coachmen, who were most kindly disposed towards their horses, carried whips, certainly, but they were no more in their hands than the fan is in winter in the hand of a lady; they only served to make a show with, for their horses scarcely ever felt them, so great was the tenderness of the English coachman with his cattle.

But see the peculiar advantages of travelling on Sunday. There were no excis.e.m.e.n anywhere on duty, and even the highwaymen had ceased their labours during the night. The only knights of the road our travellers encountered were dangling from gibbets by the wayside in all the glories of periwigs and full-skirted coats. Unfortunately, the pace was marred by the frequent stoppages made to unload the brandy-kegs at the roadside inns from the boots of the coaches, where they had been stowed away in the absence of the gaugers.

[Sidenote: FOREIGNERS ON ENGLAND]

Upon their way to Canterbury, the travellers, and our foreigner in particular, had for some time perceived that they were no longer in France, and when at length they reached that bourne of pilgrims they were still further impressed with that fact by observing a fat man, who was just arisen from bed, standing at a bay window during the whole time the flying machines changed their Pegasuses; and, as they were unexpected the delay was considerable. But all this while the fat man stood there in his night-shirt, with a velvet cap on his head, contemplating them with folded arms and knitted brow, and with an expression which (in France) was to be seen only on the faces of them that had just buried their dearest friends.

Also, the "young persons" of both s.e.xes stood and stared--not to mince matters--like stuck pigs.

The country which they travelled through from Dover to London was (so our traveller thought) in general a bad mixture of sand and chalk. They skirted some lovely woods as well furnished as the best-stocked forests of France--alas! where are those woods now?--and presently pa.s.sed over commons covered with heath and stray broom, very high and flourishing all the year round. Those wild shrubs were left to the use of the poor of the several different parishes, but their vigour and thickness gave reason to conjecture that there were but few poor people in those parishes. The best lands were then, as now, laid out in hop-gardens.

The wayside inns appealed strongly to our traveller. They were given, whether in town or country, to the making of large accounts, but then see how rich was the English lord who, as a cla.s.s, frequented them. Anyway, they were possessed of a cleanliness far beyond that to be found in the majority of the best private houses in France. There was only one inn on the road from Paris to Boulogne to be mentioned in the same breath with the English houses, and that was one at Montreuil, frequented by English travellers.

Between Canterbury and Rochester the coaches encountered an obstacle which savours rather of Don Quixote's adventures than of Sunday travelling in this unromantic country. This was nothing less than a windmill which the country-folk, taking advantage of that usually coachless day, were moving entire. Less fiery than the Don, the travellers outflanked the gigantic obstacle by dragging the coaches into the field beside the road. And of that road, M. Grosley has to say that it was excellent; covered with powdered flints, and well kept, in spite of the exemption from forced labour which the countrymen enjoyed; and here he quotes what Aurelius Victor has to say of the Emperor Vespasian's vast roadworks in Britain.

The roadways had not long been in this enviable condition; only, indeed, so recently as the days of George the Second had they been rescued from the bad state into which they had been suffered to fall during the civil wars, and, generally speaking, the English knew little or nothing of the art of road-making.

The repairing of the high-roads was at the expense of them that used them.

Neither rank nor dignity was exempted from the payment of tolls; the king himself was subject to them, and the turnpike would have been shut against his equipage if none of his officers paid the money before pa.s.sing by.

These high-roads had all along them a little raised bank, two or three feet broad, with a row of wooden posts whose tops were whitewashed so that the coachmen should see them at night. This was for the conveniency of foot-pa.s.sengers. In places where the road was too narrow to admit of this arrangement, the proprietors of lands adjoining were obliged to give pa.s.sage through their fields, which were all enclosed with tall hedges or with strong hurdles about four feet high, over which pa.s.sengers leapt or climbed. Custom had so habituated the village girls to this exercise that they acquitted themselves in it with a peculiar grace and agility. The great attention of the English to the conveniency of foot-pa.s.sengers had several causes. Firstly, they set the highest value upon the lives of their fellow-creatures, and in that peculiar circ.u.mstance they sacrificed to pleasure and conveniency. Secondly, their laws were not exclusively made and executed by persons who rode in their chariots. Thirdly, as the English carriages moved as swiftly in the country as slowly in the town, the meeting with persons who were so foolish or so ill-geared as to walk a-foot would have been disastrous to those wayfarers; and in so democratic a country as this the chariot-riders would have had a bad time in store for them for so small a matter as playing, as it were, the secular Juggernaut with pedestrians.

Eventually this moralising Frenchman reached London through Rochester, which place was one long street inhabited solely by ships' carpenters and dockyard men. At Greenwich, the sh.o.r.es of Thames loomed upon his enraptured gaze, agreeably confounded with long lines of trees and the masts of ships, and then came delightful London, and that haven where he would be--ah! you guess it, do you not? It was Leicester Fields, _le Squarr de Leicesterre_ of a later generation of Frenchmen.

XVII

[Sidenote: MILTON]

Having thus disposed of this company of scribbling foreigners, I will get on to Milton-next-Gravesend, which immediately adjoins the town; especially will I do so because, when the old waterside lanes have been explored, little remains to see besides Gordon's statue and the little cottage where he used to live. The high-road is not at all interesting, unless indeed a Jubilee clock-tower and a number of private houses of the Regent's Park order of architecture may be considered to lend a charm to it. Just beyond these houses comes Milton: a school, a church, and a public-house standing next one another. The church belongs to the Decorated period, and has a tower built of flints, stone, and chalk.

During the last century the churchwardens had the repairing of the nave roof under consideration, and, in order to save twenty pounds on an estimate, they decided to remove the battlements, and to have a slated roof, spanning nave and aisles, and ending in eaves. The thing was done, against the wish of the Vicar and with the approval of the then Bishop of Rochester, and all who pa.s.s this way can see how barbarous was the deed.

It had not even the merit of economy, for, by the time the work was completed, it had cost the churchwardens several hundreds of pounds more than had been antic.i.p.ated.

"Trifle not, your time's but short," says a very elaborate and complicated sundial over the south porch, looking down upon the road; and, taking the hint, we will proceed at once from Milton Church to the public-house next door. But not for carnal joys; oh no! Only in the interests of this book will we make such a sudden diversion; for, at the rear of the house, on the old bowling-green, is an interesting memorial of one of the jolly fellows who once upon a time gathered here on summer evenings and played a game of bowls when business in the neighbouring town of Gravesend was done for the day.

TO THE MEMORY OF MR. ALDERMAN NYNN, An honeft Man, and an Excellent Bowler.

_Cuique est sua Fama._

Full forty long Years was the ALDERMAN feen, The delight of each Bowler, and King of this Greene.

As long he remember'd his Art and his Name, Whofe hand was unerring, unrival'd whofe Fame.

His Bias was good, and he always was found To go the right way and to take enough ground.

The JACK to the uttermoft verge he would fend For the ALDERMAN lov'd a full length at each End.

Now mourn ev'ry Eye that hath feen him difplay The Arts of the Game, and the Wiles of his play; For the great Bowler, DEATH, at one critical Cast Has ended his length, and clofe rubb'd him at laft.

F. W. pofuit, MDCCLXXVI.

And having duly noted this elegy of a truly admirable man, we may leave Milton, pausing but to look down upon the estuary of the Thames, where the great liners pa.s.s to and fro the most distant parts of the world, and also to consider the humours of a hundred years ago, when, as now, Milton was in the corporate jurisdiction of Gravesend, and when it sufficed both to employ one watchman between them. This watchman was also Common Crier, and was supported, not by a salary, but (like a hospital) by voluntary contributions. And he did not do badly by the grateful Gravesenders, for he collected, one year with another, 60, which, added to the market-gardening business he also carried on, must have made quite a comfortable income.

[Sidenote: DENTON]

A little way beyond Milton, where the road curves round to the right, there will be seen on the left an eighteenth-century mansion, standing in extensive grounds. Immediately within the lodge-gates is what looks like a small church, surrounded by trees. It is older and far more interesting than it seems to be. Until 1901 it was, in fact, a roofless ruin; but it was then restored by Mr. George M. Arnold, who then owned Denton Court, the name of the house. The church, now used as a private chapel by the owner of Denton Court, was in fact Denton Chapel, the place of worship of the parish of Denton, which was ecclesiastically separate from Milton until 1879. Denton is a place so small that few maps condescend to notice it, but it is an ancient place, first named in A.D. 950, as "Denetune,"

when the manor was given by one Byrhtric to the Priory of St. Andrew at Rochester, which built this chapel of St. Mary. It was on the dissolution of the monasteries in the time of Henry the Eighth that it fell into ruin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DENTON CHAPEL.]

The chapel is of literary interest, for it is the original of Barham's "Ingoldsby Abbey." In travelling between Canterbury and London by coach, Barham noticed the ruined walls standing up, silhouetted against the sky, and looking far more important than intrinsically they were; for this was then a cleared s.p.a.ce, the new road near by having in 1787 been cut actually through the little churchyard.

Commentators in various editions of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ have stated sceptically "the remains of Ingoldsby Abbey will be found--if found at all--among the 'Chateaux en Espagne.'" That is not so; for here it is.

Barham himself, in a note to the legend "The Ingoldsby Penance," remarks the ruins are "still to be seen by the side of the high Dover road, about a mile and a half below the town of Gravesend."

... near The great gate Father Thames rolls sun-bright and clear, Cobham woods to the right--on the opposite sh.o.r.e Laindon Hills in the distance, ten miles off, or more; Then you've Milton and Gravesend behind--and before You can see almost all the way down to the Nore.

In Domesday Book Denton is written "Danitune," and it is generally held that the name comes from the raiding Danes, who certainly troubled this estuary; but it is probably "Dene-town," the place in the vale; perhaps in contradistinction to Higham, which is not far off.

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOE GARGERY'S FORGE.]

[Sidenote: CHALK]

Chalk is the next place on the road, and Chalk is quite the smallest and most scattered of villages, beginning at the summit of the hill leading out of Milton and ending at Chalk church, which stands on a hillock retired behind a clump of trees nearly a mile down the road, and far away from any house. All the way the road commands long reaches of the Thames and the Ess.e.x marshes, and on summer days the singing of the larks high in air above the open fields can be heard.

At Chalk, in 1836, Charles d.i.c.kens rented a honeymoon cottage, on his marriage with Catherine Hogarth. Great controversies arose some years ago, following upon what is said to be a wrong identification of the place with a residence called the "Manor House"; and it was stated that the real dwelling in question was the weather-boarded and much humbler cottage at the fork of the old and new roads between Gravesend and Northfleet, still standing, and with a commemorative tablet on it. Opposite is "Joe Gargery's Forge."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANCIENT CARVING--CHALK.]

Chalk church is a very much unrestored building of flint and rubble, dating from the thirteenth century. Its south aisle was pulled down at some remote period. There still remains, and in very good preservation, too, a singular Early English carving over the western door representing a grinning countryman holding an immense flagon in his two hands and gazing upward towards a whimsically-contorted figure that seems to be nearly all head and teeth. Between the two is an empty tabernacle which at one time before the destruction of "idolatrous statues" would have held a figure of the Virgin. The two remaining figures probably ill.u.s.trate the celebration of "Church ales," a yearly festival formerly common to all English villages, and held on the day sacred to the particular saint to whom the church was dedicated. On these occasions there was used to be general jollity; feasting and drinking; manly sports, such as boxing, wrestling, and games at quarter-staff, would be indulged in, and the day was held as a fair, to which came jugglers and players of interludes and itinerant vendors from far and near. The Church, of course, being the original occasion of the merry-making, looked benignly upon it, and provided the funds for the malt from which the so-called "Church ales" were brewed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAILORS' FOLLY. (_After Julius Caesar Ibbetson_).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: JACK COME HOME AGAIN.]