Part 2

SEATON BRIDGE 106

“LOATHLY WORM” 107

EXETER CATHEDRAL: WEST FRONT 110

SAINT THOMAS 112

EXETER, FROM THE DUNSFORD ROAD 112

ALPHINGTON 113

AN EXMINSTER MONUMENT 115

EXMINSTER SAINT 116

TURF 119

STARCROSS 120

LANGSTONE POINT 122

MOUNT PLEASANT 123

LEE MOUNT, DAWLISH 124

SEA WALL, TEIGNMOUTH 126

RAILWAY AND SEA-WALL, NIGHT 128

RAILWAY AND SEA-WALL, FROM EAST CLIFF, TEIGNMOUTH 128

THE TEIGN 130

TEIGNMOUTH HARBOUR 131

MAIDENCOMBE 138

BERRY POMEROY CASTLE 147

FROM A MONUMENT, BERRY 149

EASTGATE, TOTNES 151

DARTMOUTH CASTLE 156

ANCIENT IRONWORK, SOUTH DOOR OF SAINT SAVIOUR’S CHURCH, DARTMOUTH 158

ARMS OF DARTMOUTH ON THE OLD GAOL 159

FORE STREET, KINGSBRIDGE 166

HEADMASTER’S DESK, KINGSBRIDGE 170

KINGSBRIDGE QUAY: EVENING 172

BOLT HEAD 178

DRAKE’S STATUE 181

SALTASH STATION 186

GUILDHALL, EAST LOOE, AND BOROUGH SEAL 197

“COMPARATIVELY PROSAIC FISHERMAN” 198

THE “JOLLY SAILOR” 200

SEAL OF WEST LOOE 201

TALLAND CHERUBS 203

AN OLD SHOP, POLPERRO 211

LANTEGLOS-JUXTA-FOWEY 214

A CORNISH MOOR 220

FONT, SAINT AUSTELL 224

A NOTE AT GORRAN 229

ROSELAND INN, PHILLEIGH 236

LANDER 237

CARN BREA 246

DRUIDICAL ALTAR, CARN BREA 248

SAINT MICHAEL’S MOUNT 253

PENZANCE, FROM ABOVE GULVAL 254

SAINT MICHAEL’S MOUNT: ENTRANCE TO THE CASTLE 256

PENZANCE HARBOUR: NIGHT 256

CHEVY CHASE HALL 259

PENZANCE 260

LUDGVAN LEAZE 261

SAINT BURYAN 262

SAINT GERMOE 263

THE LONGSHIPS LIGHTHOUSE 264

CARN KENIDJACK 266

SAINT LEVAN 267

SAINT GERMOE’S CHAIR 268

_From Paddington to Penzance_

I.

There were two of us: myself, the narrator, the artist-journalist of these truthful pages, and my sole companion, the Wreck. Why I call him by this unlovely title is our own private business, our exclusive bone of contention; not for untold gold would I disclose the identity of that man, the irresponsible, the nerveless, mute, inglorious fellow-wayfarer in this record of a summer’s tour. Let him, nameless save by epithet, go down with this book to a more or less extended posterity. But I give you some slight portraiture of him, so that you shall see he was not so very ill-favoured a Wreck, at any rate.

This man, willing to be convinced of the pleasure and the healthful profit of touring afoot, yet loth to try so grand a specific for varied ills, delayed long and faltered much between yea and nay ere he was finally pledged to the trip; but a time for decision comes at last, even to the most vacillating, and at length we set out together on this leisured tour.

It was time. When we left London the spirit of the silly season roamed abroad, and made men mad: the novelists were explaining diffusely in the columns of the public press why they wrote no plays; the playwrights were giving the retort discourteous (_coram publico_) to the effect that the novelists had all the will but didn’t know how, and the factions between them made any amount of copy for the enterprising editor who looked on and, so to speak, winked the other eye while the combatants contended. Unsuccessful Parliamentary candidates were counting the cost of their electoral struggles, and muttering melodramatic prophecies of “a time will come”; the eager journalist wandered about Fleet Street, seeking news and finding none, for the Building Societies had not yet begun to collapse; and the chiefest streets of town were “up.”

Those happy men, the layers of wood-paving, had created a delightful _Rus in Urbe_ of their own in Piccadilly, and enjoyed a prolonged sojourn amid such piney odours as Bournemouth itself never knew: here was health-giving balsam for them that had no cash to spend in holiday-making! But indeed almost every one had left town; only an unimportant residuum of some four millions remained, and wide-eyed emaciated cats howled dismally in deserted areas of the West End, while evening breezes blew stuffily across the Parks and set the Londoner sighing for purer air where blacks were not, nor the shouting of the streets annoyed the ear.

If you take the reduced ordnance map of England, and rule a straight line upon it from Paddington to Penzance and the Land’s End, you will find that the distance by this arbitrary measurement is some 265 miles, and that the line passes through or near Staines, Basingstoke, Salisbury, Exeter, Truro, and Redruth, to Penzance and Sennen Cove, by Penwithstart, touching the sea at three places _en route_--Fowey, Par, and Charlestown, neighbouring towns in Cornwall.

The most direct coach-road is given by Cary, of the _New Itinerary_, as 297 miles 5 furlongs. It was measured from Hyde Park Corner, and went through Brentford, Hounslow, Staines, Egham, Bagshot, Hartford Bridge, Basingstoke, Whitchurch, Andover, Salisbury, Blandford, Dorchester, Bridport, Axminster, Honiton, Exeter, Crockernwell, Okehampton, Launceston, Bodmin, Redruth, Pool, Camborne, Hayle River, and Crowlas. The route, it will be seen from this breathless excerpt, was commendably direct, thirty-two miles only being added by way of deviation from the measured map. On this road, so far as Exeter at least, much might be gleaned of moving interest in matters of coaching times, but beyond the Ever Faithful City no first-class nor very continuous service seems to have been maintained: the _Royal Mail_, _Defiance_, _Regulator_, _Traveller_, _Celerity_, and _Post_ coaches finding little custom farther west.

I keep all love for high-roads for those times (rare indeed) when I go a-wheel on cycles; it is better to fare by lanes and by-ways when you go afoot, and then to please yourself as to your route, caring little for a consistent line of march: consistency is the bugbear of little minds. So swayed by impulse and circumstances were we, that I should indeed fear to set about the computation of mileage in this our journey from East to West: for our somewhat involved course, your attention, dear reader, is invited to the map.

We packed our knapsacks overnight, and the next morning

By nine o’clock, as City-ward Belated clerks were pelting hard,

we had taken a hansom from Paddington, bound for Westminster Bridge, thence to voyage by steamer to Richmond.

Set down at Westminster Pier, we waited for the Richmond boat, while the growls and grumblings of the streets sounded loudly from the Bridge overhead, and mingled with the hoarse thunder of trains crossing the abominable squat cylinders and giant trellis-work that go to make the railway-bridge of Charing Cross.

I am not going to weary you with a description of how we slowly paddled up stream in the Richmond boat, past the Houses of Parliament on one hand, and Lambeth Palace and Doulton’s on the other; under Vauxhall and other London bridges, into suburban reaches, the shoals of Kew, and past the dirty town of Brentford (noted for possessing the ugliest parish church in all England), until at length we came off the boat at Richmond town. No: if I were to commence with this I know not where I should stop, and so, perhaps, the best way to treat the voyage would be by a masterly display of “reserved force.” Assume, then, that we are at length (for this steamboat journey is an affair of considerable time though few miles)--at length arrived at Richmond.

II.

What semi-suburb so pleasant as Richmond, quite unspoilable, though jerry-buildings and shoddy hotels conspire to oust its old-world air; though the Terrace elms are doomed; though on Saturdays and Sundays of summer, Halberts and Arrys, Halices and Hemmers, crowd George Street, and shout and sing and exchange hats, and row upon the river, where, from the bridge, you may see them waving their sculls windmill fashion, and colliding, one boat with another, so that, their little hour upon the water being finished, the boatowners levy extra charges for scraped paint and broken scull-blades.

How many towns or neighbourhoods can show such courtly concourse of old: kings and queens, statesmen, nobles, poets, and wits? Palaces so many and various have been builded here, that the historian’s brain reels with the reading of them: eulogistic verse, blank and rhymed, has been written by the yard, on place and people, chiefly by eighteenth century poets, who then thronged the banks of Thames and constituted themselves, virtually, a Mutual Admiration Society. Thomson wrote and died here; near by, Gay, protected by a Duke and Duchess of Queensberry, lapped milk, wrote metrical fables, grew sleek, and presently died; Cowley, Pope, and a host of others contributed to the flood of verse, commonly in such journalistic tricklings as these:--

“... rove through the pendant woods. That nodding hang o’er Harrington’s retreat; And stooping thence to Ham’s embowering walks, Beneath whose space, in spotless peace retired, With her the pleasing partner of his heart, The worthy Queensberry yet laments his Gay, And polished Cornbury woos the willing muse.”

Literary ladies, and blue-stockings too, have thronged Richmond, and to this day there stands on the Green a row of charming old houses, fronted with gardens and decaying wrought-iron gates, called Maid of Honour Row, where were lodged such maids of rank whom interest or favour could admit to that honoured, though hard-worked and thankless guild. Madame D’Arblay, who, as Fanny Burney, was a domestic martyr to the royal household, has shown us how empty was the title and painful the place of “Maid of Honour.”

But despite royal associations, perhaps, indeed, on account of them, the Richmond of to-day is Radical: it has been distinguished, or notorious, for its Radical tradesmen any time these last hundred and forty years, from the time when the institution of “Tea and shrimps, 9d.” may be said to date. Tea, by itself, is not distinctly Radical, but I confess I see the germs of Republicanism in shrimps, and I should not be surprised at hearing of red-capped revolts originating at any of those places--Herne Bay, Margate, Ramsgate, Greenwich, Gravesend, Kew, and Richmond, where the shrimp is (so to speak) rampant.

Time was, indeed, when a “dish of tea” was distinctly exclusive and aristocratic: it has been, with the constant reductions of duty, rendered less and less respectable. The first step in its downward career was taken when the “dish” was substituted for the “cup,” and its final degradation is reached in the company of the unholy shrimp. The “cup of coffee and two slices” of the early morning coffee-stall is vulgar, but seems not to sound the depths of the other institution.

Let Chancellors of the Exchequer be warned ere it is yet too late; with the disappearance of the last halfpenny of the duty upon tea will come the final crash. Tea and shrimps will be obtainable for sixpence, and monarchy will no longer rule the land; perchance Chancellors of the Exchequer themselves will be obsolete and dishonoured officers of State. Perhaps, too, in some far distant period, Richmond will succeed in obtaining a water supply. Now she stands on one of the charmingest reaches of Thames, and yet, within constant sight of his silver flood, drinkable water is hardly come by in Richmond households. This is the penalty (or one of them) of popularity; the wells that were all-sufficient for Richmond of the past do not suffice for the population of to-day, which has gained her a charter of incorporation, and lost her an aristocratic prestige. The rateable value of Richmond must be very large indeed, but what does it avail when hundreds of thousands of pounds are continually being spent in fruitless borings for water? Richmond folk, nowadays, have all of them a species of hydrophobia, induced by a tax of too many pence in the pound for the water rate. Uneasy sits the Mayor, and the way of the Council is hard.

“Reader! when last I was at Richmond town, A man in courtesy showed me an empty pit, And said, ‘The Reservoir,’ at which name I sniggered, Because an engineering print informed me once They never would fill reservoirs at Richmond.”

Thames, too, has been shockingly inclined to run dry at Richmond, so that there is building, even now, a lock that is to supersede that of Teddington in its present fame of largest and lowest on the river.

We looked into Richmond church and noted its many tablets to bygone actors and actresses, chief among them Edmund Kean, who died at the theatre here, so recently rebuilt. Then we hied to a restaurant and lunched, and partook (as in duty bound) of those cakes peculiar to the town. Then we set forth upon our walk.

III.

To continue on the highroad that leads out of populous Richmond toward the “Star and Garter,” is to find one’s self presently surrounded with rustic sights and sounds altogether unexpected of the stranger in these gates. To take the lower road is to come directly into Petersham, wearing, even in these days, an air of retirement and a smack of the eighteenth century, despite its close neighbourhood to the Richmond of District Railways and suburban aspects.

The little church of Petersham is interesting despite (perhaps on account of) its bastard architecture and singular plan, but the feature that gives distinction is its cupola-covered bell turret, quaintly designed and louvre-boarded. The interior is small and cramped, and crowded with monuments. Among these the most interesting, so it seemed to us, was that to the memory of Captain George Vancouver, whose name is perpetuated in the christening of Vancouver Island.

Others of some note, very great personages in their day, but now half-forgotten, are buried in the churchyard and have weighty monuments within the church. Among these are an Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, a vice-admiral, a serjeant-at-law, Lauderdales, Tollemaches, and several dames and knights of high degree. Perhaps more interesting still, Mortimer Collins, author of, among other novels, that charming story, “Sweet and Twenty,” lies buried here.

And from here it is well within three miles to the little village of Ham, encircling, with its scattered cottages and mansions of stolid red brick of legitimate “Queen Anne” design, that common whose name has within the last two years been so familiar in the mouths of men. You may journey into the county’s depths and not find so quiet a spot as this out-of-the-world corner, nor one so altogether behind these bustling times. It has all the makings of the familiar type of an old English village, even to its princely manor-house. Ham House is magnificent indeed, and thereby hangs a tale.

Its occupiers have been for many generations the Earls of Dysart, whose family rose to noble rank by sufficiently curious means in the time of Charles I., an era when the peerage was reinforced by methods essentially romantic and irregular. Beauty (none too strictly strait-laced) secured titles for its bar-sinistered descendants in those times: in our own it is commonly Beer that performs the same kindly office.

The first Earl of Dysart had in his time fulfilled the painful post of “whipping-boy”--a species of human scapegoat--to his sacred Majesty, and by his stripes was his preferment earned.

I am told that it is not to be supposed this house and manor are the property of the Dysarts: they pay and have paid, time almost out of mind, an annual rent into the Court of Chancery for the benefit of the lost owners.

“But yet,” said my informant at Ham--the strenuous upholder of public rights in that notorious Ham Common prosecution,--“but yet, although this is their only local status, the Dysart Trustees have endeavoured, from time to time, to assume greater rights over Ham Common and public rights-of-way, than even might be claimed by the veritable lord of the manor.”

In the early part of 1891, the Trustees placed notice-boards at different points of the Common, setting forth the pains and penalties and nameless punishments that would be incurred by any who should cut turf or cart gravel, exceeding in this act (it seems) their rights, even had they possessed the title, for there is extant a deed executed by Charles I., in favour of the people of Ham, giving the Common to their use for ever.

Fortunately there was sufficient public spirit in Ham for the resisting of illegal encroachments, and eventually the notice-boards were sawn down by village Hampdens. Thereupon followed a prosecution at the instance of the Dysart Trustees, with the result that the defendants were all triumphantly acquitted.

It were indeed a pity had this, one of the largest and most beautiful commons near London, been gradually drawn within the control of family trustees. It is now a breezy open space of some seventy-eight acres, stretching away from Richmond Park to near Teddington, and pleasingly wild with gorse and sandpits and ancient elms.

Here, almost to where the Kingston road bisects the Common, the avenue leading to Ham House stretches its aisle of greenery, its length nearly half-a-mile. To pursue this walk to the wrought-iron gates of the House is to be assured of interest. Erected in the early years of the seventeenth century, it remains a splendid specimen of building ere yet the day of contracts had set in. The red-brick front faces toward the river, and includes a spacious courtyard in whose centre is placed a semi-recumbent stone figure of Thames with flowing urn. Along the whole extensive frontage of the House, placed in niches, runs a series of busts, cast in lead and painted to resemble stone--a quaint conceit.

But it is not only the splendour of design and execution that renders Ham House so interesting. It was, in the time of Charles II., a meeting-place of the notorious Cabal--that quintette of unscrupulous Ministers of State whose doings were a shame to their country. Here they plotted together, and under this roof the liberties of the lieges were schemed away. Those were stirring times at Ham. Now the place wears almost a deserted look. The courtyard is grass-grown between the joints of its paving, and it is many years since the massive iron gates enclosing the grounds were used. It seems to have been lonely and decayed, even in Horace Walpole’s time. He says, “Every minute I expected to see ghosts sweeping by--ghosts that I would not give sixpence to see--Lauderdales, Tollemaches, and Maitlands.” For my part I think I would give a great many sixpences not to see them, either by night or by day, whether or not they carried their heads in the place where heads should be, or under their arms, an exceedingly uncomfortable position, even for ghosts, one would think. I have not that horrid itching (which I suppose characterises the membership of the Psychical Research Society) for the society of wraiths and bogeys, and hold ghosts, apparitions, spooks, and spunkies of every kind in a holy horror.

Therefore, we presently departed hence, and came, in course of time, to Kingston. Whether or not Kingston can be identified as the place where Cæsar crossed the ford across the Thames in pursuit of Cassivelaunus and his cerulean-dyed hordes of Britons, our ancestors, is, I take it, of not much concern nowadays, although antiquaries of our fathers’ time made a great pother about the conflicting claims of Kingston and Coway Stakes, at Shepperton, to the honour, if honour it be, of affording passage to the victorious general and his legions. I like something of more human interest than these dry bones, and, I doubt not, you who endeavour to read these pages are of the same mind; so, to make your pilgrimage through this book the lighter, I think “we had better” do like Boffin, in the presence of Mrs. Boffin--that is, “drop the subject.”

But the subject to which we must come (for no one who writes upon Kingston can avoid it) is only one remove nearer. I refer to that bone of contention (excuse the confusion of ideas) the King’s Stone, now set up and railed round in Kingston market-place, and carven with the names of the seven Saxon kings crowned here. It is this stone which has caused many pretty controversies as to whether or not it confers the name upon the town, or whether or not the place was the King’s Town.

You may, doubtless, if you are greedy of information on these heads, find all conceivable arguments set forth in the pages of the Surrey Archæological Society’s Transactions. I confess my curiosity does not carry me to such lengths. The stone is there, and, like good tourists, we accepted as so much gospel the facts set forth on it, and cared nothing as to the etymology of Kingston. Instead, we busied ourselves in hiring a boat which should take us to Reading, a journey which we estimated of a week’s duration.