The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries Part 15

[Ill.u.s.tration: SAILORS CAROUSING. _From a Sketch by Rowlandson._]

Those brave days were done when the railway came and left the roads silent and deserted. Old inns sank into obscurity and neglect, and for many years afterwards the sight of a solitary stranger wanting a bed for the night would have aroused excitement in a place where, in the old days, one more or less was a matter of little import. The "Anchor" for a time shared the fate of its fellows, and its condition in 1865 is eloquently pictured by the Hon. Grantley Berkeley. He says--

"I was travelling about the country, and it so happened that railway time, as well as inevitable time, chose to make me

'The sport of circ.u.mstances, when Circ.u.mstances seemed most the sport of men,'

and I found myself belated and tired in the vicinity of the little rural village of Liphook, on the borders of Hampshire and Surrey, and forced by time and circ.u.mstances to put up at a well-known inn.

"Now, time was when no traveller would have found fault with this, for the inn I thus allude to was then the great posting and coaching house of 'the road,' and the roar of wheels and the cries of 'first and second turn out,' either 'up or down,' rang through the merry air, and kept the locality in loud and continuous bustle, night and day. Now, however, the glory of the roadside inn was gone; its site seemed changed to grief, and the great elm tree[4] that had formerly during the heat of summer shed a cooling shade over panting steeds and thirsty, dusty-booted men, luxuriously grasping a fresh-drawn tankard of ale, stood sorrowing over the grave of the posting and coaching trade, a tearful mourner on every rainy day.

"There were the long ranges of stables, once filled by steeds of every step and temper, curious specimens of every blemish under the sun. Some that ran away the whole way, others that would be run away with by the rest of the team; some that kept the whip in action to send them to the collar, and others that kept the whip still, lest its touch should shut them up to stopping, and give them no collar at all.

"These stables were a melancholy sight to me. They reminded me of my own.

Where, in my full stalls, twenty goodly steeds used to feed, little else than a mouse stirs now; and that mouse may be a ghost for all I know, haunting the grave of the last oat eaten a quarter of a century ago. In this long line of disused stabling I paused. There was a thin cat there, deceived to expectation by the long-deserted hole of a rat. A broken broom, covered with very ancient cobwebs, lay under one manger, and the remnants of a stable-bucket under another. Farmers came in and farmers went out occasionally and tied up their horses anywhere; so that all the tumbling-down stalls were dirty, and the whole thing given up to dreary desolation.

[Sidenote: _RUSTIC CATERING_]

"A musing and a melancholy man, I left the stables, went into the house, and called for dinner and a bed. No smart waiter, with a white napkin twisted round his thumb, came forth to my summons; the few people in the house looked like broken-down farming-men and women, and seemed to be occupied in the selfish discussion of their own tap.

"'Yes,' they said, as if astonished by the unwonted desire for such refreshment, 'I _could_ have a bed; and what would I like for dinner?'

"Now, that question was very well for them to ask, when they knew its meaning to be very wide; but the real dilemma was, what could they get to set before me? a point on which I at once desired information. 'A fowl.'

'What, ready for dressing?' 'Oh yes, quite.' Spirit of Ude--that King of Cooks (when he chose it)--if you still delight in heat, then grill these people; or when you 'cook their goose,' teach them to know the difference between a fowl hung for a time and picked for the spit, and a poor dear old chuckie, seated at roost in all her feathers, and 'ready' certainly; for her owner has only to clutch her legs and pull her screaming from her perch, to roast or boil, and send her, tough, to table.

"Well, up came my hen at last, flanked by some curious compound, dignified by the name of sherry, which I exchanged for some very nearly as bad spirits and water; when, having gone through the manual--not the mastication--of a meal, I walked forth, and mused on the deserted garden and paddock in the rear of all; and in the dusky hue of night fancied that I saw the shadows of galled and broken-kneed posters limping over the gra.s.s to graze, as no doubt they had done in former times. In short, dear reader, from this last retrospection, hallucination, or what you will, I regained mine inn, and, calling for a candle, went to bed."

There is a sad picture of decadence for you! But in two years' time all this was changed, for in 1867 the present landlord, Mr. Peake, took the fortunes of the old house in hand, and restored, as far as possible, the old-time dignity of the place. He has brought back many of the glories of the past, and still reigns. I have met many sorts of hosts, but none of them approach so nearly the ideal as he, to whom the history and the care of this fine old inn are as much a religion as the maintenance of their religious houses was to the old monks of pre-Reformation days. And no post more delightful than this, which gives one fresh air, leisure for recreation, and nearly all the advantages of the country gentleman, to whom, indeed, mine host of the "Anchor" most closely approximates in look and speech. Long may the pleasant white face of the "Anchor" be turned towards the village street, and, friend Peake, may your shadow, with the grateful shade of the glorious chestnut tree that fronts your hostelry, never grow less!

XXVI

[Sidenote: _MILLAND_]

Leaving Liphook, where, in the coaching revival of the '70's, Captain Hargreaves' "Rocket" coach between London and Portsmouth stopped forty minutes for lunch, we take to the road again, and come presently to Milland Common. This is splendid galloping ground, and coaches always made good time here, both in the old times and the new. Half-way across the Common (being, not coach-pa.s.sengers, but merely pedestrians whose time is their own) we will step aside to investigate the two ecclesiastical-looking buildings that are seen between and beyond the trees on the left hand. Here, then, are the two chapels of Milland, with the adjoining "habitable parsonage," to quote the somewhat vague description of the "Clergy List." The new chapel, opened in 1880, although a fair specimen of modern work and the design of the late architect of the Royal Palace of Justice in London, is uninteresting; but the old, barn-like building that served the scattered inhabitants of Milland so many years and yet remains beside its modern successor, is worthy a glance, if only for its extremely small and simple (not to say primitive) design. It is so small that it could not conveniently contain a congregation of more than fifty people; its plan, shaped like the letter L, is surely unique, and altogether, the interior, with its plain high pews and meagre pulpit, and its plastered, whitewashed walls, is of the most unusual and secular appearance. Yet this diminutive building served the needs of the place from the days of Edward VI. until recently, and to it trudged on Sundays those of the Liphook folk who did not care to tramp to their own distant church of Bramshott; and even some pious souls from Rake (who, perhaps, valued public worship overmuch) performed a six-miles journey hither and home again.

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

[Sidenote: _SELBORNE_]

But here let us leave the Portsmouth Road awhile for an expedition of some five miles into the still wild and rarely-travelled tract of country in whose midst lies the village of Selborne, memorable as the home, during his long life, of that most amiable and placid student of Nature and her works, the Rev. Gilbert White, D.D. When you have pa.s.sed through the village of Liss, you come at once into a broad expanse of country whose characteristics resemble the typical scenes of Devonshire rather than those of Hants. Swelling hills and fertile vales, still intersected by the deeply-rutted lanes of which Gilbert White speaks, lead on to the sequestered village of Selborne, as remote now from the rumours and alarums of the outer world as when the naturalist penned his "Natural History of Selborne," over a hundred years ago.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WAKES, _SELBORNE_]

The village occupies, with its few cottages, its church and vicarage, and Gilbert White's home, "The Wakes," a long and narrow valley. The Hanger, covered now as in White's time with his favourite tree, the beech, rises at the back of the village street, and trees indeed abound everywhere, coming even to aid the simple architecture of the place.

The butcher's shop at Selborne rests its front on three polled limes which form living pillars to the roof, and give, apart from their rustic appearance, a welcome shade and grateful coolness to that country shop in the heats of summer. But the most remarkable tree in Selborne, as indeed anywhere in Hampshire, is the n.o.ble churchyard yew, mentioned by the naturalist, and still standing to the south-west of the church. This remarkable tree has a circ.u.mference of twenty-five feet two inches at a height of four and a half feet from the ground; it rises to a total height of sixty-two feet, and its great branches spread a distance of twenty-two yards from north to south. It is still in the perfection of good health, and its foliage wears the dark and l.u.s.trous appearance characteristic of the yew when in a thriving state. It must have been a remarkable tree even in Gilbert White's time, and its age can only be counted by centuries.

[Sidenote: _GILBERT WHITE_]

The Wakes, where this simple soul lived so long, stands in the village street, by the open gra.s.s-plot, familiar to readers of the "Natural History" as the Plestor. Additions have been made to the house since White's time, but so judiciously that its appearance is little altered.

His summer-house is gone to wreck, but the sunny garden, with its narrow red-brick path, remains, and so does the American juniper tree, together with the sculptured sun-dial, both set up by this quiet curate-in-charge.

His life in this quiet and isolated parish, wherein his observation of and delight in the living things of garden and lane, hanger and pond, were mingled with the duties of a country clergyman and the contemplative recreations of the book-lover, was suave and untroubled. Of the events--so to call them--of this calm and kindly life there is but a slender outline to record. He was born here, at the Wakes, the residence of his father and his grandfather before him, on July 18, 1720. Educated first at Basingstoke, under the care of the Rev. Thomas Warton, father of Warton the Poet Laureate, he was entered at Oriel College, Oxford, in 1739; took his B.A. in 1743; obtained a Fellowship in the succeeding year, and the degree of M.A. in 1746. He was ordained as a priest in 1747, and subsequently served, it is said, as curate to his uncle, the Vicar of Swarraton. He soon removed to Selborne, where he lived the remainder of his days, dying here on June 26, 1793. It has been said that he accepted the College living of Moreton Pinkney in Northamptonshire, but he certainly never went into residence there, and refused other offers of preferment. A Fellow of his College, he never forfeited his fellowship by marriage, and he was never Vicar of Selborne, but only curate-in-charge.

His only regret seems to have been that he had no neighbours whose pursuits resembled his own in any way. Thus, one of his letters records the regret that it had been his misfortune "never to have had any neighbours whose studies have led them towards the pursuit of natural knowledge": to which he attributes his "slender progress in a kind of information to which I have been tenderly attached from my childhood."

But it was owing to this seclusion and want of companionship that we are become the richer, by his letters to Thomas Pennant and the Hon. Daines Barrington, which have delighted successive generations. Little has come down to us concerning the personal attributes of Gilbert White. No portrait of him is known. We are told that he was a little man--some say but five feet three inches in height--who wore a wig and rode on a pony to Farringdon Church, where he officiated for a quarter of a century, or ambled benignantly about the lanes and by-ways of the neighbourhood. In one of his letters to a friend in Norfolk, he speaks of himself as riding or walking about the parish "attended daily (for although not a sportsman I still love a dog) by a beautiful spaniel with long ears, and a spotted nose and legs," and watching the village folk "as they sit in grave debate while the children frolic and dance before them." All that remains of his memory in village traditions and recollections indicates the modest, kindly nature of a courteous gentleman, such as peeps out from the pages of the "Natural History of Selborne."

Selborne Church is a roomy and handsome building in the Transitional Norman and Early English styles. It consists of a nave of four bays, a south aisle, chancel, and ma.s.sive western embattled tower. It has, however, a somewhat unfortunate effect of newness, owing to the restoration of 1883, when the south aisle was almost completely rebuilt, under the direction of a grand-nephew of the naturalist--Mr. William White, architect.

A memorial slab to the memory of Gilbert White is placed within the altar-rails, on the south wall of the chancel, and records that he was the son of John White, of Selborne, and Anne, daughter of Thomas Holt, Rector of Streatham. Another tablet, on the north wall, records the death, in 1759, of John White, barrister-at-law; and an earlier Gilbert White, Vicar of Selborne and grandfather of the more famous naturalist, lies in the chancel, beneath a ledger-stone bearing the date 1727.

Gilbert White is buried in the churchyard, among the tall gra.s.ses and waving wild-flowers, in a manner peculiarly fitting for that simple soul; and his grave--one of a row of five belonging to the White family--has a plain headstone, grey and lichened now, with the simple inscription, "G.

W., 26th June, 1793."

[Sidenote: _THE 'NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE'_]

It seems strange that so simple and uneventful a chronicle of the lives and habits of familiar birds and "wee sma' beasties," together with the plain records of sunshine and storm, rains and frosts, the blossoming of flowers and the fall of the leaf, which the "Natural History of Selborne"

presents, should have attained so great and lasting a popularity. This book is become as sure a cla.s.sic as the "Pilgrim's Progress" or the "Compleat Angler," and no one would have been more surprised at this result of his patient labours, undertaken simply for the joy they gave him, than old Gilbert himself. You see, in every page, nay, in every line, that he wrote for himself and his friends alone, and not with an observant eye upon the booksellers and their clients. Nay, more! Had he written thus, we should have missed the better part of his book; the observation of years, which thought nothing of profit for labour and time expended; the just language, written without any cudgelling of the brain for effect, and the homely incidents that make him live more surely than aught else.

You can claim Timothy the tortoise as a personal friend, and are thrilled with the curious annals of the idiot boy whose strange appet.i.te for honey-bees excited the naturalist's sympathies, both for the bees and the boy. Colonies might revolt and become the "United States"; French Revolutions and other dreadful portents shake thrones and set the world in arms, but Gilbert was a great deal more interested in the butcher birds, and in predatory rats, than in soldiers or blood-boltered human tyrants.

The mid-day snoring of sleepy owls in the dusky rafters of some capacious barn, the hum of the bees, the scream of the peewits, and the clattering cabals of noisy starlings were more to him than instrumental music or the disputes of parliaments. And so he lived an uninterrupted round for forty years and died peacefully at last, happy and contented always, while dwellers in towns, then as now, beat their hearts out in unavailing ambitions and fruitless hatreds.

Ornithology owes much to Gilbert White's patient observations, and his "Natural History" bids fair to become a possession for all time.

Numberless editions of it have been issued, annotated by men of science, who have found little of import to add to his work; and other editions are constantly in the making. But best monument of all is that a.s.sociation of friends to birds and beasts, the Selborne Society, that, taking its name from Gilbert White's old home, owns him as master in many branches and local centres throughout England. When the centenary of the simple naturalist's death was celebrated in 1893, the large attendance at Selborne of members of the Society showed that here lies one whose memory the lovers of nature and wild life will not willingly let die.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BADGE OF THE SELBORNE SOCIETY.]

XXVII

[Sidenote: _TOLL-HOUSES_]

Returning from this sentimental excursion to Selborne to the road at Rake, the pedestrian will notice a singular old cottage with many angles, fronting the highway. This is one of the old toll-houses left after the abolition of turnpike trusts, and of the vexatious taxes upon road-travel that only finally disappeared within comparatively recent years. Sixty, nay fifty, years ago, there were six toll-houses and turnpike bars between London and Portsmouth. They commenced with one at Newington, followed closely by another at Vauxhall, and one more at the "Robin Hood," in Kingston Vale. The next was situated at Cobham Street, and neither Cary nor Paterson, the two great rival road-guides of coaching days, mention another until just before Liphook. The next was at Rake, but, singularly enough, neither of those usually unimpeachable authorities mention this particular gate, which would appear to have been the last along this route.

Just beyond the old toll-house, visible down the road in the ill.u.s.tration of the "Flying Bull," comes the rustic public-house bearing that most unusual, if not unique, sign. Here stands a grand wayside oak beside a steep lane leading down into Harting Coombe, and the bare branches of this giant tree make a most effective natural composition with the tiled front of the inn and its curious swinging sign. The present writer inquired the origin of the "Flying Bull" of a countryman, lounging along the road, and obtained for answer the story that is current in these parts; which, having no competing legend, may be given here for what it is worth.

"The 'Flying Bull,'" said the countryman. "Oh, aye, it _is_ a curious sign, sure-ly. How did it 'riginate? Well, they _do_ say as how, years ago, before _my_ time, they useter turn cattle out to graze in them meadows down there;" and he pointed down the lane. "There wur a lot o'

flies in those meadows in summer at that time, and so there is now, for the matter o' that. Howsomedever, when they turned them there cattle into these here meadows, the flies made 'em smart and set 'em racing about half mad. They _wur_ flying bulls; but 'tis _my_ belief it useter be the 'Fly _and_ Bull' public-house.... Thankee, sir; yer health, I'm sure!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "FLYING BULL" INN.]

The road now rises gradually to a considerable height, being carried along the ridge of Rake Down, an elevated site now covered with large and pretentious country residences, but less than fifty years ago a wide tract of uncultivated land that grew nothing but gorse and ling, gra.s.s and heather, and bore no houses. The view hence is peculiarly beautiful over the wooded Suss.e.x Weald, towards Midhurst, whose name, even now, describes its situation amid woods. The hollow below is Harting Coombe, and the neighbouring villages of Harting and Rogate recall the time when wild deer roamed the oak woods and the jealously-guarded Chases of Waltham and Woolmer.