The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries Part 4

VII

One of the earliest records we have of Portsmouth Road travellers is that which relates to three sixteenth-century inspectors of ordnance:

"July 20th, 1532--Paid to X pofer Morys, gonner, Cornelys Johnson, the Maister Smythe, and Henry Johnson for their costs in ryding to Portismouthe to viewe the King's ordenaunce there, by the s.p.a.ce of X dayes at Xs' the daye--V li."

[Sidenote: _MONMOUTH_]

So runs the record. But the business of most of them that fared this way whose faring has been preserved was of a very doleful character. I except, of course, royal personages, who, as previously noted in these pages, "progressed," and did nothing so plebeian as to "travel." Monmouth, who, though of royal birth, had failed to achieve a throne in his ill-fated rebellion of 1685, "travelled," "unfriended, melancholy, slow," on that fatal journey from Ringwood to London in a carriage guarded by a strong body of troops and militia-men. Poor fellow! the once gay and handsome Duke of Monmouth, the prettiest fellow and courtliest gallant of a courtly age, was conveyed, a prematurely grey and broken man, to his death, the due reward, it is true, of rebellion, but none the less pathetic. The mournful _cortege_ halted a night on the road at Guildford, where, in a room over the great entrance-gateway of Abbot's Hospital, the prisoners--the wretched Monmouth and the undaunted Lord Grey--were lodged, until daylight should come again and their road to execution be resumed.

A more lightsome tour must have been that undertaken by the four Indian kings who, in 1710, came to pay their devoirs to Queen Anne, and journeyed up to London, much to the wonderment of the country-folk, to whose lurid imaginations their copper-coloured countenances represented everything that was evil. Twenty years later seven chiefs of the Cherokees came this way, on a mission to the English Court; but the first pedestrian of whom we have any account who walked the whole distance between London and Portsmouth was a Mr. John Carter, who, having witnessed the proclamation of George I. in London on August 1, 1714, in succession to Queen Anne, set forth immediately for Portsmouth on foot. It is an emphatic comment upon contemporary social conditions to note that when Carter reached Portsmouth, on August 3, he was the first to bring the news. His zeal might conceivably have been attended with serious consequences had the Jacobites been more active; but as it was, Gibson, the Governor of Portsmouth, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts, threatened the newsmonger with imprisonment for what he was pleased to term "a false and seditious report."

A journey quite in keeping with the sombre history of this road was that by which the body of General Wolfe, the victor of Quebec, was brought to London. The remains of the General were landed at Portsmouth on Sunday, November 17, 1759, and were escorted by the garrison to the outskirts of the town. He was buried at Greenwich on the night of the 20th.

For the rest the history of travel upon the Portsmouth Road in olden times is chiefly made up of accounts of felons condemned to death for crimes ranging from petty larceny to high treason. The halo of a questionable kind of romance has perpetuated the enormities of the greater malefactors, but the sordid histories of the sheep-stealers and cattle-lifters, the miserable footpads, and contemptible minor sneaks and rogues who suffered death and were gibbeted with great profusion and publicity by the wayside, are clean forgotten.

[Sidenote: _NICHOLAS NICKLEBY_]

Modern times of road travel, that range from the reign of George IV. to the beginning of the Railway Era, are chiefly filled with stories of the Allied Sovereigns, who ate and drank a great deal too much on their way down to Portsmouth to celebrate the Peace of 1814; of the Duke of Wellington, who followed them in a carriage drawn by eight horses, and ate sparingly and drank little; and of all sorts of naval and military bigwigs and left-handed descendants of Royalty who held fat offices in army or navy, and lorded it grandly over meaner, but more legitimate, mortals. No literary or artistic annals belong to this time, saving only the well-known scenes in "Nicholas Nickleby."

It was on the Portsmouth Road that Nicholas Nickleby and Smike met that redoubtable _impresario_, Mr. Vincent Crummles. Nicholas, it may be remembered, had fallen upon evil times. His capital "did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings," and so he and Smike were compelled to foot it from London.

"'Now listen to me, Smike,' said Nicholas, as they trudged with stout hearts onwards. 'We are bound for Portsmouth.'

"Smike nodded his head and smiled, but expressed no other emotion; for whether they had been bound for Portsmouth or Port Royal would have been alike to him, so they had been bound together.

"'I don't know much of these matters,' resumed Nicholas; 'but Portsmouth is a seaport town, and if no other employment is to be obtained, I should think we might get on board some ship. I am young and active, and could be useful in many ways. So could you.'...

"'Do we go all the way to-day?' asked Smike, after a short silence.

"'That would be too severe a trial, even for your willing legs,' said Nicholas, with a good-humoured smile. 'No. G.o.dalming is some thirty and odd miles from London--as I found from a map I borrowed--and I purpose to rest there. We must push on again to-morrow, for we are not rich enough to loiter.'...

"To G.o.dalming they came at last, and here they bargained for two humble beds, and slept soundly. In the morning they were astir: though not quite so early as the sun: and again afoot; if not with all the freshness of yesterday, still, with enough of hope and spirit to bear them cheerily on.

"It was a harder day's journey than that they had already performed, for there were long and weary hills to climb; and in journeys, as in life, it is a great deal easier to go down hill than up. However, they kept on, with unabated perseverance, and the hill has not yet lifted its face to heaven that perseverance will not gain the summit of at last.

"They walked upon the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl; and Smike listened with greedy interest as Nicholas read the inscription upon the stone which, reared upon that wild spot, tells of a foul and treacherous murder committed there by night. The gra.s.s on which they stood had once been dyed with gore; and the blood of the murdered man had run down, drop by drop, into the hollow which gives the place its name. 'The Devil's Bowl,'

thought Nicholas, as he looked into the void, 'never held fitter liquor than that!'"

VIII

[Sidenote: _WANDSWORTH_]

And now, having disposed of this batch of travellers, let us ourselves proceed, through Kennington and past Battersea Rise, to Wandsworth. There is, doubtless, much to be said of Kennington, seeing that its name is supposed to derive from _Koningtun_, or "the King's town," but that is no affair of ours; and while its history is much too remote for inclusion in these pages, its present-day appearance does not invite us to linger. But with Wandsworth the case is very different.

Wandsworth is set down at the mouth of a little river whose confluence with the greater Thames determined the precise locality of the first village established on what were, in the far-off days of Wandlesworth, the sedgy banks of the little Wandle. This stream, taking its source from Croydon, "flows ten miles and turns forty mills," and is in our own times perhaps the most despitefully-used river within the London area.

For, at the very beginning of its brief career, the Wandle now rises from a brick culvert beneath a railway embankment, where once its source bubbled up freely in the light of day; and, flowing through Beddington and Carshalton, comes through Mitcham and Earlsfield to its outlet at Wandsworth, a muddy river, defiled with sewage and the refuse of factories and mills whose produce ranges from linoleum and snuff, to paper, copper, and chemicals of every noxious variety.

There would have been no Wandsworth, either in fact or in name, had there been no Wandle, for the water-power that brought prosperity to the mills also provided a natural outlet for the manufacturers; and so there early grew up a series of wharves by the river's mouth that have done a great quant.i.ty of business at any period during these last two hundred years.

Aubrey, indeed, says that in his time there were many factories here, and that here were made "bra.s.s plates for kettles, skellets, and frying-pans, by Dutchmen, who kept it a mystery." Many of these old Dutchmen's places of business lasted until comparatively recent years, and were known as the "Frying Pan Houses." The greater part, however, of old Wandsworth is gone.

Gone, too, is the hamlet of Garratt, whose mock elections of a Mayor caused such convivial excitement a century ago. But a few old houses of a Dutch style of architecture still remain to show what manner of place this was before it had become suburban and its s.p.a.cious old architecture destroyed to make way for the interminable back streets where City clerkdom dwells in houselets composed of slack-baked bricks built on ash-heaps, "comprising" four cupboards, miscalled "rooms," with what the estate-agent magniloquently terms "the usual domestic offices."

Here and there in the High Street and on Wandsworth Plain stand these remains of Old Wandsworth, and they give a distinct _cachet_ to "the village." But the fury of the dabblers in bricks and mortar continues unabated, and they will not last long. One of the oldest houses here was destroyed some years back, and on its site stands a new police-station.

This was the well-known "Sword House," which took its name, not from the making of swords, but from a _chevaux de frise_ of claymores, of which, up to the beginning of the present reign, some few vestiges were left. The story goes that the occupant of the house was a retired officer of the army who had taken part in the defeat of the Scotch rebels at Culloden, and had collected a number of claymores for the protection of his house at Wandsworth, at that time a secluded place round whose outskirts hung a number of footpads. He defended the outer walls of his residence with these weapons, but they gradually disappeared, being stolen, one by one, by timid and peaceable wayfarers as some sort of protection against the gentry who rendered the suburbs dangerous o' nights.

[Sidenote: _A PIOUS BENEFACTOR_]

But if these purlieus were infested by a rascally crew who rendered all the outlying districts notorious for violence and robbery, Wandsworth can at least boast one conspicuously good man. This was that Alderman Henry Smith whose tomb and effigy are so conspicuous in the parish church. The Alderman was one of the greatest benefactors of the seventeenth century, and left his large estate in trust for the purchase of lands "for setting the poor people a-worke," and in bequests to parishes in Surrey. Henry Smith was a native of Wandsworth, an Alderman of the City of London, and a silversmith. He died in 1627; but in 1620, having neither wife nor children, made a disposition of his property, reserving for himself only sufficient for his personal needs. It is said that every parish in the county of Surrey benefits by his charity, with the sole exception of Mitcham, which owes this unenviable distinction to his having been whipped through its bounds as a common beggar. But how or why came so wealthy and well-considered a man as this respected Alderman of London City to be whipped as a rogue and vagabond? It is an old story which professes to explain this, and it is a story to which so respectable a gentleman as John Evelyn, the diarist, lends his authority, in Aubrey's "Surrey." It is, however, entirely apocryphal. According, then, to John Evelyn, the benefactor was known as "Dog Smith," and was a beggar who wandered through the country accompanied by his dog, and received alms in money and in kind. By this means was his vast fortune supposed to have been ama.s.sed.

But this tale is too grotesque for belief, put beside the well-known facts of his membership of the Silversmiths' Company, and of his friendship with the Earls of Ess.e.x and Dorset, who were also two of the executors of his will. The story of Mitcham may be dismissed when it is learned that the parishes of Surrey certainly owed their bequests to Henry Smith, but that the incidence of them was at the discretion of the trustees.

IX

The parish of Wandsworth extends up to Putney Heath, to which we come up-hill past the singularly-named "Tibbets' Corner." Research has failed to discover who or what was Tibbets, after whom or which the Corner was named; but a familiarity with the old-time character of the neighbourhood suggests that "Tibbets" is merely a corruption of "Gibbets," which were at one time the chiefest features of the landscape in these parts.

[Sidenote: _JERRY ABERSHAWE_]

Putney Heath was the scene of the notorious Jerry Abershawe's exploits in highway robbery. Where Veitch's nurseries now stand, at the corner of Stag Lane, in Putney Bottom, just before you come to the Beverley Brook, formerly stood the "Bald-faced Stag," or "Half-way House," at one time a notorious house of call for this youthful but daring desperado, who with numerous lesser lights infested the neighbourhood, in the latter half of last century, lurking in the remotenesses of Coombe Wood, and plundering unhappy wayfarers.

There is a story told of this lawless and picturesque figure to the effect that on a dark and inclement night of November, after having stopped every pa.s.senger along the road, he was suddenly taken ill and compelled to retire to the shelter of this public-house, standing lonely upon the roadside. His comrades--"pals," he would, doubtless, have called them--sent for a doctor, and a Dr. William Roots attended. He was bled, and the doctor was about to return home, when his patient, with a great appearance of earnestness, said, "You had better, sir, have some one to go back with you, as it is a very dark and lonesome journey." This, however, the doctor declined, remarking that "he had not the least fear, even should he meet with Abershawe himself," little thinking to whom he was speaking. This story was a favourite with Abershawe: it afforded him a reliable criterion of his unholy prowess.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "GREEN MAN," PUTNEY HEATH.]

Louis Jeremiah Avershawe--to give him his proper name--was born in 1773, and ended his career with a hempen cravat round his neck on August 3, 1795. He was tried at Croydon a.s.sizes, on July 30, for the murder of David Price, an officer sent to apprehend him in Southwark, whom he had shot; wounding at the same time another officer with a second pistol. A flaw in the indictment acquitted him on the first count, but he was convicted on the charge of feloniously shooting at one Barnaby Taylor.

With all his crimes, he was no coward, for, as a contemporary account of his trial says, "When Mr. Baron Penryn put on the black cap, the prisoner, regardless of his sad situation, at the same time put on his own hat, observing the judge with contemptuous looks while he was pa.s.sing the awful sentence of the law."

He was executed on Kennington Common. Arriving at the gallows, he kicked off his boots and died unshod, to disprove the letter, if not the spirit, of an old warning of his mother's, that he was a bad lad and would die in his shoes. His body was subsequently hanged in chains in Putney Bottom, the scene of his exploits; and the satisfaction with which the pa.s.sers-by beheld his tattered skeleton, swinging in its iron cage from the gibbet, may well be imagined; although it was not unlikely that, before they had reached the streets of Kingston, or the High Street of Putney, some surviving member of the malefactor's fraternity would exact his unauthorized tolls.

[Sidenote: _GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD_]

Imagine how palpitating with incert.i.tude the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of eighteenth-century travellers must have been when once the oil-lit streets of the towns were left behind. The stage-coach pa.s.sengers sat glum and nervous,--each suspecting his fellow,--with their money in their boots, their watches in the lining of their hats, and other light valuables secreted in unlikely parts of their persons, in the fond hope that the fine fellow, mounted on a mettlesome horse, and bristling with weapons, who would presently bring the coach to a stop in some gloomy bend of the road, might be either too unpractised or in too great a hurry to think of those very obvious hiding-places. Rarely, at one time, did the mails or the stages escape the highwayman's unwelcome attentions, for, during a lengthy period, the wide, unenclosed waste lands in the neighbourhood of London were the nocturnal resorts of all who desired to better their fortunes at the expense of whoever happened to be travelling upon these lonely roads after nightfall.

All the ruined gamesters and unconventional or reckless ne'er-do-wells who could manage to buy, hire, or steal a horse, took to the exciting occupation of highway robbery. This diversion promised at once to be remunerative, and satisfying to the Englishman's sporting instincts, and if the end of it was identical with a rope's end and a morning dance upon nothing, why, the sportsman was unlucky,--and so an end. For although death was the penalty for highway robbery, yet the pursuit of it does not seem to have been looked upon as so very disgraceful; and the bold gentlemen (!) who, well-armed and not ill-horsed, lurked upon Putney Heath or Barnes Common, or any other of the many wildernesses that surrounded London in the midst of last century, were accounted somewhat romantic, even by the contemporaries whose pockets they occasionally lightened.

[Sidenote: _THE ROMANCE OF ROBBERY_]

Believe me, these rascals who hung by the dark roadside, and, disguised in black crepe or velvet masks, cried hoa.r.s.ely in the ears of travellers, "Stand and deliver!" were not the social pariahs they would be to-day, could they revisit their suburban haunts. These fellows robbed the mails "with the utmost regularity and dispatch," and despoiled every one who was not sufficiently well armed to withstand them, without distinction of cla.s.s or s.e.x. "Purses," says one, who recounts his memories of these times, "rings, watches, snuff-boxes, pa.s.sed from their owners to the attentive highwayman, almost as soon as the muzzle of his pistol obtruded through the window"; and when at last the poor fellow was lagged, and languished in the stone jug of Newgate, the ladies whom he had relieved, with much politeness, of their money and jewels came and condoled with him, and flaunted their handkerchiefs out of window as he pa.s.sed one fatal morning to Tyburn in a tumbril, seated on his coffin, with the chaplain beside him, preaching of kingdom-come.

Jerry Abershawe was a hero of this stamp, only he did not make his last appearance on so fashionable a stage as Tyburn. Croydon was the scene of his trial, and Wandsworth, as we have seen, was the place of his taking off.

Two other highwaymen--William Brown and Joseph Witlock--who were both hanged at Tyburn in 1773, for house-breaking, haunted the neighbourhood of Putney Heath and Kingston, and robbed solitary pedestrians or children.

They were not of the fine flower of their profession, as one may judge from the evidence given at their trial, by which it appeared that they laid in wait for topers in wayside taverns, and robbed them upon their coming out in a more or less helpless state. Two convivial fellows whom they had seen carousing in the "Green Man" they waited for, and having tied their hands behind their backs, relieved them of some twenty guineas, together with such small odds and ends as knives and tobacco-boxes. A little way further on, upon this occasion, they chanced upon a baker's boy, and disdaining not even the merest trifles, they "persuaded" him to hand over a few halfpence and a silver buckle he was carrying in a bag.