The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries Part 19

x.x.xIII

Chalton Downs is the ideal tract of country for so heart-stirring an encounter. Never a considerable tree for miles in any direction: only bushes and spa.r.s.e clumps of saplings, and, for the rest, undulations of chalk as bare as the back of your hand, save for the short and scanty gra.s.s that affords not even a good mouthful for sheep. Here, where the Downs are most barren, a rough country lane dips into the hollow that runs parallel with the right-hand side of the highway, where a gaunt finger-post points the way to "Catherington and Hinton." On the corresponding ridge stands the small and scattered village, but large parish, of Catherington, whose church, dedicated to St. Catherine, is the parish church of modern Horndean and of other hamlets, a mile or more down the road.

The church of Catherington, so far as outward appearance goes, may be taken as amongst the most representative of Hampshire village churches, standing on the hill-brow, its graveyard separated from ploughed fields only by a hedge, its tombs overshadowed by two great solemn yew trees, its situation, no less than its shape and style, suggesting thoughts of Gray's "Elegy," and the peaceful rural lives of them that sleep beneath the skies in this retired G.o.d's acre. It is, therefore, with nothing less than a start of surprise that the wayfarer, weighted with obvious moralizings, discovers first the tomb of Admiral Sir Charles Napier, and then the resting-place of Charles Kean, his mother, and his wife. What do they here, who lived so greatly in the eye of the world? Here is the epitaph "to the memory of Mary, relict of the late Edmund Kean, who departed this life March 30, 1849, in or about the 70th year of her age"; and from her grave one can view the ridge along which runs the road to Portsmouth, tramped by Edmund Kean in 1795, when he, as a boy of eight or nine years, ran away from his home in Ewer street, Southwark, and shipped as cabin-boy on a vessel bound for Madeira. He lies at Richmond: his widow was buried here, close to the small estate upon which she had lived in retirement for years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATHERINGTON CHURCH.]

In "Charles John Kean, F.R.G.S.," whose epitaph occupies one side of this monument, it is difficult at first to recognize the famous actor, who, after playing well his varied parts in Shakespearean plays, and in melodrama, died in 1868, in his fifty-seventh year. His widow, Eleonora, survived him until 1880, when, at the age of seventy-three, she died, and "now lies with her loving husband."

[Sidenote: _ADMIRAL NAPIER_]

The Admiral, after his eventful career, rests near at hand beneath an altar-tomb in an obscure corner of the graveyard, where ashes from the heating apparatus of the church are heaped, and defile, together with the miscellaneous dirt and foul rubbish of a neglected corner, his memorial, that sets forth his rank and a _precis_ of his varied achievements. When the present writer visited the spot, a bottomless pail and the remains of an old boot placed on his tomb formed a hideous commentary upon the pride and enthusiasm of a grateful country, and preached a sermon, both painful and forcible, on the fleeting consideration of men for the distinguished dead. It is thirty-five years ago since "Charley Napier," as his contemporaries (brother-officers, or Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry) called him, died, after having performed many services for his country in many parts of the world. It may seem, at the first blush, ungenerous to say so, but the fact remains that, had he quitted this scene but seven years earlier, his reputation had been brighter to-day, and this through no shortcoming of his own. He had achieved many important, if somewhat too theatrical, victories in his earlier days, when ordnance was comparatively light, and when the old line-of-battle ship was at its highest development; and so, when he was, in his old age, sent in command of the Baltic Fleet to reduce the heavily-armed sea-forts of Cronstadt and Bomarsund, the uninstructed but enthusiastic mob of his countrymen antic.i.p.ated merely a naval promenade, ending with the capitulation of those fortresses of the North.

When the Baltic Fleet cruised ingloriously for years in that icy sea, and the Russian strongholds yet remained unreduced, the disappointment of the million knew no bounds, and the Admiral's fame became tarnished. He was ridiculed, and he had himself to thank in some measure for this, because, in his characteristically reckless way, he had vowed to be either in Cronstadt or Heaven within a month, and Heaven had not claimed him nor Cronstadt submitted when the war was done.

[Sidenote: _AN UNCOUTH FIGURE_]

But if, like General Trochu, of some sixteen years later, he had "a plan"

and became the b.u.t.t of witlings when that plan failed, he had the Englishman's infallible refuge and court of public appeal--the "Times,"

and in the columns of that paper he stormed and thundered from time to time, a great deal more effectively than ever he had done in the Baltic.

He had nearly always possessed a pet grievance, and had, ere this, obtained election to Parliament to air the injustice of the hour; and in the House he was wont to hold forth in a fine old quarter-deck manner that amused many, and let off the steam of his wrath in an entirely harmless way. Betweenwhiles he resided at Horndean, on a small estate he had purchased years before, and in a house he had re-christened "Merchistoun,"

from the place of that name in Scotland where he was born. Here he, a modern Cincinnatus, farmed his own land and pottered about, a singular combination of sailor and agriculturist, and one of the most extraordinary figures of his time. "He is," said one who wrote of his personal appearance, "stout and broad built; stoops, from a wound in his neck; walks lame, from another in his leg; turns out one of his feet, and has a most slouching, slovenly gait; a large round face, with black, bushy eyebrows, a double chin, scraggy, grey, uncurled whiskers and thin hair, always bedaubed with snuff, which he takes in immense quant.i.ties; usually his trousers far too short, and wears the ugliest pair of old shoes he can find." He became quite an authority upon sheep and turnips, and so died, after a busy life, on November 6, 1860.

Another great man lies at Catherington, within the church; Sir Nicholas Hyde, Lord Chief Justice of England, and uncle of the still greater Clarendon. His splendid monument, with rec.u.mbent marble effigies of himself and his wife, occupies the east wall of the Hyde Chapel. Hinton House--the seat of the Hydes near here, and the scene of the marriage between James, Duke of York (afterwards James II.), and Anne Hyde, daughter of the Chancellor, Clarendon, in 1660--has long since been rebuilt.

From Catherington, one may either retrace one's steps to the Portsmouth Road above Horndean, or else continue on the by-lanes that bring the pedestrian to the highway below that wayside hamlet.

Horndean stands at the entrance to the Forest of Bere, and at the junction of roads that lead to Rowlands Castle and Havant. It is just a neat and comparatively recent place, like most of the wayside settlements that now begin to dot the highway between this and Portsmouth. An old house or two by way of nucleus, with some few decrepit cottages--the remainder of Horndean is made up of a great red-brick brewery and some rural-looking shops.

The Forest of Bere is at this day the most considerable remnant of that vast tract of woodland (computed at some ninety thousand acres) which formerly covered the face of southern Hants. It follows on either side of the roadway from this point to within a short distance of Purbrook, and extends for many miles across country, including Waltham Chase. Outlying woodlands still occur plentifully; among them the leafy coverts of Alice Holt (== _Axe-holt_, the Ash Wood), Liss Wood, Hawkley Hangers, and the green glades of Avington, Old Park, and Cheriton.

x.x.xIV

[Sidenote: _WATERLOOVILLE_]

Presently the road becomes singularly suburban, and the beautiful glades of the old Forest of Bere, that have fringed the highway from Horndean, suddenly give place to rows of trim villas and recent shops. The highway, but just now as lonely as most of the old coach-roads are usually become in these days of steam and railways, is alive with wagons and tradesmen's carts, and neatly-kept footpaths are bordered with lamp-posts, furnished with oil-lamps.

This is the entirely modern neighbourhood of Waterlooville, a settlement nearly a mile in length, bordering the Portsmouth Road, and wearing not so much the appearance of an English village as that of some mushroom township in the hurried clearings of an American forest. The inns, past and present, of Waterlooville, have all been named allusively--the "Waterloo" Hotel, the "Wellington" Inn, the "Belle Alliance."

Waterlooville, as its ugly name would imply, is modern, but with a modernity much more recent than Wellington's great victory. The name, indeed, was only bestowed upon the parish in 1858, and is a dreadful example of that want of originality in recent place-names, seen both here and in America. Why some descriptive t.i.tle, such as our Anglo-Saxon forebears gave to their settlements, could not have been conferred upon this place, is difficult to understand. Certainly "Waterlooville" is at once c.u.mbrous and unmeaning, as here applied.

The history of Waterlooville is soon told. It was originally a portion of the Forest of Bere, and its site was sold by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests early in the present century. A tavern erected shortly afterwards was named the "Heroes of Waterloo," and became subsequently the halting-place for the coaches on this, the first stage out of Portsmouth and the last from London. Around the tavern sprang up four houses, and this settlement, some seven or eight miles from Portsmouth, was called Waterloo until 1830, when, a rage for building having set in, resulting in a church and some suburban villas, the "ville" was tacked on to the already unmeaning and sufficiently absurd name.

The church of Waterlooville is a building of so paltry and vulgar a design, and built of such poor materials, that a near sight of it would be sufficient to make the mildest architect swear loud and long. This plastered abomination is, of course, among the earliest buildings here; for no sooner are two or three houses gathered together than an unbeneficed clergyman--what we may on this sea-faring road most appropriately term a "sky-pilot"--comes along and solicits subscriptions towards the building of a church for the due satisfaction of the "spiritual needs" of a meagre flock. It would be ungenerous to a.s.sert that he always scents a living in this spiritual urgency, but the labourer is worthy of his hire, and if by dint of much canva.s.sing for funds amongst pious old ladies and retired general officers (why is it that these men of war so frequently become pillars of the Church after their army days are done?) he succeeds in putting up some sort of a building called a church, who else so eligible as inc.u.mbent?

[Sidenote: _PURBROOK_]

Where Waterlooville ends, the road runs for half-a-mile in mitigated rusticity, to become again, at the sixth milestone from Portsmouth, lively with the thriving, business-like village of Purbrook.

And at this point the traveller in coaching times came within sight of his destination. Painfully the old stages climbed up the steep ascent of Portsdown Hill before the road was lowered by cutting through the chalk at the summit, about 1820, and grumblingly the pa.s.sengers obeyed the coachman and walked up the road to save the horses. But when they did reach the crest of the hill such a panorama met their gaze as nowhere else could be seen in England: Portsmouth, the Harbour, Gosport, the Isle of Wight, and the coast-line for miles on either hand lay spread out before their eyes as daintily as in a plan, and smiling like a Land of Promise.

Unfortunately, however, our forebears were not yet educated to a proper appreciation and admiration of scenery. They, with that jovial bard of the Regency, Captain Morris, preferred the pavements of great cities to the pastorals of the country-side, and would with the greatest fervour have echoed him when he wrote--

"In town let me live, then, in town let me die; For, in truth, I can't relish the country, not I.

If one must have a villa in summer to dwell, Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall."

Fortunately, however, the view remains unspoiled for a generation that takes its pleasures afield, and can find delight in country scenes which our great-grandfathers characterized as places of "horror and desolation."

This is the point of view from which Rowlandson has sketched his "Extraordinary Scene," and although we miss in the picture the "George Inn," that stands so four-square and stalwart, perched up above the road, yet the likeness to the place remains after these many years have flown.

The occasion that led to Rowlandson's producing the elaborate plate from which the accompanying ill.u.s.tration was made, is referred to at length in the t.i.tle, which runs thus--

"An Extraordinary Scene on the Road from London to Portsmouth, Or an Instance of Unexampled speed used by a Body of Guards, consisting of 1920 Rank and File, besides Officers, who, on the 10th of June, 1798, left London in the Morning, and actually began to Embark for Ireland, at Portsmouth, at four o'clock in the Afternoon; having travelled 74 Miles in 10 Hours."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE ON THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD. _By Rowlandson._]

Such a performance as this, at such a time, made a great impression, and Rowlandson has made a very spirited drawing of the scene, full of life and vigour. In the foreground is the "Portsmouth Fly," with officers inside, taking their ease, and a number of soldiers occupying a precarious perch on the roof, fifing and drumming, regardless of jolts and lurches. Flags are waving from the windows of the "Fly," soldiers on the box are "laying on" to the horses with a whip, while three others ride comfortably in the "rumble-tumble" behind. Other parties follow, in curricles and carts, hugging the shameless wenches who "doted on the military" in those times as demonstratively as Mary Jane does now. On the right hand stands an enthusiastic group at the door of the "Jolly Sailor": the landlord, in ap.r.o.n and shirt-sleeves, about to drink the soldiers' healths in a b.u.mper of very respectable proportions, his womenkind looking on, while a young hopeful, who has donned a saucepan by way of helmet, is "presenting arms"

with a besom. An ancient, with a wooden leg and a crutch, is fiddling away with vigour, and a dog runs forward, barking. The long cavalcade is seen disappearing down the hill, while away in the distance is Portsmouth Harbour with its crowded shipping.

x.x.xV

[Sidenote: _SAILOR-MEN_]

But the greater number of the travellers along the Portsmouth Road, whether they walked or rode, were sailors; and so salt of the sea are the records of this old turnpike that the romance of old-time travel upon it is chiefly concerned with them that went down to brave the elements on board ship; or with those happy mariners who, having entered port, came speeding up to home and beauty with all the ardour of men tossed and buffeted by winds and waves on a two or three years' cruise. Pepys, who happened to be on the road, on his way up from Portsmouth, June 12, 1667, met several of the crew of the "Cambridge," and describes them in a manner so unfavourable that I am inclined to suspect they showed too little consideration for the Secretary to the Admiralty. At any rate, he pictures them as being "the most debauched swearing rogues that ever were in the Navy, just like their prophane commander." My certes, sirs! just imagine Pepys playing the shocked Puritan, after having, perhaps, just committed some of those peccadilloes which he sets down so frankly in his ciphered "Diary."

[Sidenote: _THE SAILOR'S RETURN_]

That is one of the earliest glimpses we get of Jack ash.o.r.e on this route, and by it we can well see that his spirits were as boisterous then as ever after. "Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like a.s.ses,"

says an old writer, and certainly, once ash.o.r.e, they were no n.i.g.g.ards. It was the natural reaction from a long life of stern discipline, tempered by fighting, wounds, floggings, and marline-spikes, and for the most part cheerfully endured on a miserable diet of weevilly biscuit, "salt horse,"

and pork full of maggots. The Mutiny at Spithead, April 15, 1797, was due in part to the shameful quality of the provisions supplied, and partly to the open huckstering of the pursers, the unfair distribution of prize-money, to stoppages, and to insufficient pay. But these grievances were of old standing, and the Government actually felt and expressed indignation that sailors should object to be half starved and half poisoned with insufficient and rotten food. However indignant the Government may have been, redress was seen to be immediately advisable, and the demands of the mutineers were granted. Sailors rated as A.B.'s had their wages _raised_ to a shilling a day, and were paid at more frequent intervals than once in ten years or so. It was stated (and names and dates were given) in the House of Commons that some ships' companies had not been paid for eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Under such a system, or want of system, as this, it frequently happened in those days of much fighting and more disease that when the ships were paid off, the sailors to whom money was due had long been dead. In those cases it was very rarely that their heirs touched a penny, and certainly the Government reaped no advantage. The money went into the pockets of the Admiralty clerks and paymasters, who thrived on wholesale and shameless peculation.

If by some strange chance, or by a singular strength of const.i.tution, some hardy sailors remained to claim their due, they were paid it grudgingly, without interest, and whittled away by deductions amounting to as much as thirty or forty per cent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SAILOR'S RETURN FROM PORTSMOUTH TO LONDON.

_Publish'd as the Act directs March 2 1772 by J. Bretherton, N{o}. 134, New Bond Street._]

But when a man _did_ receive his pay, together with his prize-money, he was like a school-boy out at play. Nothing was too ridiculous or puerile for him to stoop to, and he was, as a cla.s.s, so entirely innocent and unsophisticated that the land-sharks waiting hungrily for homeward-bound ships found him an easy prey. Stories innumerable have been told of his childlike innocence of landsmen's ways, and pictures and caricatures without end have been drawn and painted with the object of making men smile at his strange doings. Here is a caricature dated so far back as 1772, showing "The Sailor's Return from Portsmouth to London." The point of view chosen is, apparently, only a mile or two from Portsmouth, for in the background rise some ruins obviously intended to represent Porchester Castle. The sailor, after the manner so often dwelt upon, is keeping up a pleasing travesty of sea-faring life. His jaded nag is a ship, and the course is being steered by the nag's tail. The sailor himself has evidently "come aboard" by the rope-ladder, seen hanging down almost to the ground, and he keeps the fog-horn going to avoid collisions. A flag flies from his top-gallant--in plain English, his hat--while a Union Jack is fixed at the forepeak and an anchor is triced up at the bows, in readiness for "heaving-to." His log might well be that of "Jack Junk" on a similar journey:--"Hove out of Portsmouth on board the 'Britannia Fly'--a swift sailer--got an inside berth--rather drowsy the first watch or so--liked to have slipped off the stern--cast anchor at the 'George'--took a fresh quid and a supply of grog--comforted the upper works--spoke several homeward-bound frigates on the road--and after a tolerable smooth voyage entered the port of London at ten past five, post meridian."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRUE BLUE; OR BRITAIN'S JOLLY TARS PAID OFF AT PORTSMOUTH, 1797. _By Isaac Cruikshank._]