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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Bath Road, by Charles G. (Charles George)
+Harper
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Bath Road
+       History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
+
+
+Author: Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2011  [eBook #37921]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATH ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 37921-h.htm or 37921-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37921/37921-h/37921-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37921/37921-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/bathroadhistoryf00harp
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BATH ROAD
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
+
+
+THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.
+
+THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD, and its Tributaries, To-day, and in Days of Old.
+
+THE DOVER ROAD: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
+
+THE EXETER ROAD: The Story of the West of England Highway. [_In the
+Press._
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON, 1806.
+(_After R. B. Davis._)]
+
+
+THE BATH ROAD
+
+History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
+
+by
+
+CHARLES G. HARPER
+
+Author of "The Brighton Road," "The Portsmouth Road,"
+"The Dover Road," &c. &c.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Illustrated by the Author, and from Old Prints and Pictures
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: Chapman & Hall, Limited
+1899
+(_All Rights Reserved_)
+
+
+
+
+Printed by
+William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
+London and Beccles.
+
+
+
+
+TO E. T. COOK, ESQ.
+
+
+_Dear Mr. Cook,_
+
+_It was by your favour, as Editor of the_ DAILY NEWS, _that the very gist
+of this book first saw the light, in the form of two articles in the
+columns of that paper. It seems, then, peculiarly appropriate that these
+pages--representing, in the measurements common to journalists and
+authors, a growth from four thousand to some sixty thousand words--should
+be inscribed to yourself._
+
+  _Sincerely yours_,
+  CHARLES G. HARPER.
+
+
+
+
+_Preface_
+
+
+_This, the fourth volume in a series of books having for its object the
+preservation of so much of the Story of the Roads as may be interesting to
+the reading public, has been completed after considerable delay. The_
+DOVER ROAD, _which preceded the present work, was published so long ago as
+the close of 1895, and in that book the_ BATH ROAD _was (prematurely, it
+should seem, indeed) described as "In the Press." Attention is drawn to
+the fact, partly in order to point out how quickly and how surely the
+old-time aspects of the roads are disappearing; for, since the_ BATH ROAD
+_has been in progress, no fewer than four of the old inns pictured in
+these pages have disappeared, while great stretches of the road, once
+rural, have become suburban, and suburban streets have been so altered
+that they are in no wise distinguishable from those of town. It is because
+they will preserve the appearance and the memory of buildings that have
+had their day and are now being swept off the face of the earth, that it
+is hoped these volumes will find a welcome with those who care to cherish
+something of the records of a day that is done._
+
+CHARLES G. HARPER.
+
+  PETERSHAM, SURREY,
+  _February, 1899_.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+SEPARATE PLATES
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+   1. GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON,
+      1806. (_After R. B. Davis_)                          Frontispiece.
+
+   2. COACHING MISERIES. (_After Rowlandson_)                          7
+
+   3. PASSENGERS REFRESHED AFTER A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY.
+      (_After Rowlandson_)                                            13
+
+   4. THE "WHITE BEAR," PICCADILLY                                    23
+
+   5. ALLEN'S STALL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, ABOUT 1756                   35
+
+   6. HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797                                          41
+
+   7. KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET                           47
+
+   8. COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN                             101
+
+   9. AN ENGLISH ROAD                                                125
+
+  10. MAIDENHEAD THICKET                                             131
+
+  11. THE STAGE WAGGON. (_After Rowlandson_)                         139
+
+  12. THEALE                                                         143
+
+  13. WOOLHAMPTON                                                    147
+
+  14. RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY       151
+
+  15. AT THE 55TH MILESTONE                                          155
+
+  16. HUNGERFORD                                                     169
+
+  17. MARLBOROUGH                                                    189
+
+  18. FYFIELD                                                        195
+
+  19. MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON                           199
+
+  20. THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL                                      207
+
+  21. THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM                               211
+
+  22. BOX VILLAGE                                                    225
+
+  23. BATHAMPTON MILL                                                229
+
+  24. PRIOR PARK                                                     247
+
+  25. BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT                                     261
+
+  26. THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED                                       265
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
+
+
+  Old Village Lock-up, Cranford                           (_Title-page_)
+
+  Sign of the "White Bear," now at Fickles Hole                       25
+
+  The "White Horse" Inn, Fetter Lane. Demolished 1898                 30
+
+  Courtyard of the "Old Bell," Holborn. Demolished 1897               32
+
+  Hyde Park Corner, 1786                                              37
+
+  Hyde Park Corner, 1792                                              39
+
+  The "Halfway House," 1848                                           43
+
+  "Oldest Inhabitant"                                                 50
+
+  Thackeray's House, Young Street                                     54
+
+  The "White Horse." Traditional Retreat of Addison                   55
+
+  The "Red Cow," Hammersmith. Demolished 1897                         57
+
+  Robin Hood and Little John                                          64
+
+  The "Old Windmill"                                                  65
+
+  The "Old Pack Horse"                                                67
+
+  Kew Bridge, Low Water                                               69
+
+  Cottages, supposed to have been the Haunts of Dick Turpin           72
+
+  A Bath Road Pump                                                    85
+
+  The "Berkeley Arms"                                                 86
+
+  Cranford House                                                      88
+
+  The "Old Magpies"                                                   90
+
+  The "Gothic Barn," Harmondsworth                                    95
+
+  Old Flail, Harmondsworth                                            96
+
+  The County Boundary                                                 98
+
+  Almshouses, Langley                                                104
+
+  The Stolen Fountain                                                105
+
+  Windsor Castle, from the Road near Slough                          106
+
+  The "Bell and Bottle" Sign                                         133
+
+  Palmer's Statue                                                    135
+
+  Thatcham                                                           149
+
+  Inscription, Newbury Church                                        157
+
+  Old Cloth Hall, Newbury                                            160
+
+  The last of the Smock-frocks and Beavers                           164
+
+  Curious old Toll-house                                             165
+
+  Hungerford Tutti-men                                               171
+
+  Littlecote                                                         176
+
+  The Haunted Chamber                                                178
+
+  Roadside Inn, Manton                                               194
+
+  Avebury                                                            201
+
+  Silbury Hill                                                       202
+
+  Cross Keys                                                         218
+
+  The Hungerford Almshouse, Corsham Regis                            221
+
+  Entrance to Box Quarries                                           224
+
+  The Sun God                                                        233
+
+  Roman inscribed tablet                                             235
+
+  The Batheaston Vase                                                242
+
+  "Sham Castle"                                                      249
+
+  Old Pulteney Bridge                                                253
+
+  Illustrations to Old Advertisements                           258, 259
+
+
+
+
+THE ROAD TO BATH
+
+
+  London (Hyde Park Corner) to--                                   MILES
+
+  Kensington--
+    St. Mary Abbots                                                1-3/4
+    Addison Road                                                   2-1/2
+
+  Hammersmith                                                      3-1/4
+
+  Turnham Green                                                    5
+
+  Brentford--
+    Star Gates                                                     6
+    Town Hall (cross River Brent and Grand Junction Canal)         7
+
+  Isleworth (Railway Station)                                      8-1/2
+
+  Hounslow (Trinity Church)                                        9-3/4
+
+  Cranford Bridge (cross River Crane)                             12-1/4
+
+  Harlington Corner                                               13
+
+  Longford (cross River Colne)                                    15-1/4
+
+  Colnbrook (cross River Colne)                                   17
+
+  Langley Broom ("King William IV." Inn)                          18-1/2
+
+  Slough ("Crown" Hotel)                                          20-1/2
+
+  Salt Hill                                                       21-1/4
+
+  Maidenhead (cross River Thames)                                 26
+
+  Littlewick                                                      29-1/4
+
+  Knowl Hill                                                      31
+
+  Hare Hatch                                                      32-1/4
+
+  Twyford (cross River Loddon)                                    34
+
+  Reading (cross River Kennet)                                    39
+
+  Calcot Green                                                    41-1/2
+
+  Theale                                                          44
+
+  Woolhampton                                                     49-1/4
+
+  Thatcham (cross River Lambourne)                                52-3/4
+
+  Speenhamland}
+              }                                                   55-3/4
+  Newbury     }
+
+  Church Speen                                                    56-3/4
+
+  Hungerford (cross River Kennet)                                 64-1/2
+
+  Froxfield (cross River Kennet)                                  67
+
+  Marlborough                                                     74-1/2
+
+  Fyfield                                                         77
+
+  Overton                                                         78
+
+  West Kennet (cross River Kennet)                                79-1/4
+
+  Beckhampton Inn                                                 81
+
+  Cherhill                                                        84
+
+  Quemerford (cross tributary of River Marden)                    86-1/4
+
+  Calne (cross River Calne)                                       87-1/4
+
+  Black Dog Hill                                                  88-3/4
+
+  Derry Hill (Swan Inn)                                           90-3/4
+
+  Chippenham (cross River Avon)                                   93-1/4
+
+  Cross Keys                                                      96-1/2
+
+  Pickwick ("Hare and Hounds" Inn)                                97-1/4
+
+  Box                                                            100-1/4
+
+  Batheaston                                                     103-1/2
+
+  Walcot                                                         104-1/2
+
+  Bath (G. P. O.)                                                105-3/4
+
+
+
+
+The BATH ROAD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The great main roads of England have each their especial and unmistakeable
+character, not only in the nature of the scenery through which they run,
+but also in their story and in the memories which cling about them. The
+history of the Brighton Road is an epitome of all that was dashing and
+dare-devil in the times of the Regency and the reign of George the Fourth;
+the Portsmouth Road is sea-salty and blood-boltered with horrid tales of
+smuggling days, almost to the exclusion of every other imaginable
+characteristic of road history; and the story of the Dover Road is a very
+microcosm of the nation's history. Nothing strongly characteristic of
+England, Englishmen, and English customs but what you shall find a hint of
+it on the Dover Road. As for the Holyhead Road, it traverses the Midland
+territory of the fox-hunting and port-drinking squires, and reeks of
+toasts and conjurations of "no heel-taps;" the great North Road is an
+agricultural route pre-eminently; the Exeter Road the running-ground of
+some of the fleetest and best-appointed coaches of the Coaching Age; while
+the Bath Road was at one time the most literary and fashionable of them
+all.
+
+The best period of the Bath Road was peculiarly the era of powder and
+patches; of tie-wigs, long-skirted coats, and gorgeous waistcoats; of silk
+stockings and buckled shoes; when the test of a well-bred gentleman was
+the making a leg and the nice carriage of a clouded cane; when a grand
+lady would "protest" that a thing which challenged her admiration was
+"monstrous fine," and a gallant beau would "stap his vitals" by way of
+emphasis. It was a period of rigid etiquette and hollow artificiality; but
+a period also of a grand literary upheaval, and an era in which people
+were not, as now, merely clothed, but dressed.
+
+Bath at this time was the most fashionable place in all England. Did my
+lady suffer from that mysterious eighteenth-century complaint "the
+vapours," she journeyed to "the Bath." Did my lord experience in the gout
+a foretaste of the torments of that place popularly supposed to be paved
+with good intentions, he also went to Bath, in his private carriage,
+cursing as he went; while the halt, the lame, the afflicted of many
+diseases, came this way; some posting, others by stage-coach, and yet more
+riding horseback. Every invalid, hypochondriac, and _malade imaginaire_
+who could afford it went to Bath, for continental spas had not then become
+possible for English people, and the nauseating waters of Aix, Baden, and
+other places simply trickled unheeded away.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BEGGARS OF BATH_]
+
+Every invalid, in fact, who could afford it, went to Bath, and the
+mentally afflicted, who could not go, were sent thither; so that the
+saying which is now become proverbial (and whose origin and subtle
+innuendo seem in danger of being lost) arose, "Go to Bath," with the
+rider, "and get your head shaved;" the lunatics who were sent to those
+healing waters usually being thus tonsured. This derisive phrase was used
+toward any one who propounded a more than ordinarily crack-brained
+project. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that it has no sort of
+connection with the modern music-hall vulgarism, "Get your hair cut!"
+
+Another theory--but one more ingenious than acceptable--has it that the
+phrase derives from Bath having always been a resort of beggars. What,
+then, more natural, we are asked, than for one accosted by a mendicant to
+recall this topographical notoriety, and bid the rogue "go to Bath"? For,
+according to Fuller, that worthy author of the "Worthies," there were
+"many in that place; some natives there, others repairing thither from all
+parts of the land; the poor for alms, the pained for ease. Whither should
+fowl flock in a hard frost but to the barn-door? Here, all the two
+seasons, being the general confluence of gentry. Indeed, laws are daily
+made to restrain beggars, and daily broken by the connivance of those who
+make them; it being impossible, when the hungry belly barks and bowels
+sound, to keep the tongue silent. And although oil of whip be the proper
+plaister for the cramp of laziness, yet some pity is due to impotent
+persons. In a word, seeing there is the Lazar's-bath in this city, I
+doubt not but many a good Lazarus, the true object of charity, may beg
+therein." The road, then, to this City of Springs must have witnessed a
+motley throng.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The history of travelling, from the Creation to the present time, may be
+divided into four periods--those of no coaches, slow coaches, fast
+coaches, and railways. The "no-coach" period is a lengthy one, stretching,
+in fact, from the beginning of things, through the ages, down to the days
+of the Romans, and so on to the era when pack-horses conveyed travellers
+and goods along the uncertain tracks, which in the Middle Ages were all
+that remained of the highways built by that masterful race. The
+"slow-coach" era was preceded by an age when those few people who
+travelled at all went either on horseback, with their women-folk clinging
+on behind them, or else were wealthy enough to be able to afford the keep
+or hire of a "chariot," as the carriages of that time were named. That
+sinful old reprobate, Samuel Pepys, lived in the last days of the
+"no-coach" period, and saw the arrival of the slow coaches. He was one of
+those who used a chariot, and his "Diary" is full of accounts of how, on
+his innumerable journeys, he lost his way because of the badness of the
+roads, which then ran through vast stretches of unenclosed, uncultivated,
+and sparsely inhabited country, and were so fearfully bad that in many
+places the drivers did not dare to attempt such veritable "sloughs of
+despond," but drove around them over the hedgeless fields, thus making
+new tracks for themselves. In this way the origin of the winding character
+which many of our roads still retain is sufficiently accounted for.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "FLYING MACHINE"_]
+
+The "slow-coach" era was, absurdly enough, that of the "flying machines,"
+and in that era, with the year 1667, the coaching history of the Bath Road
+may be said to begin, when some greatly daring person issued a bill
+announcing that a "flying machine" would make the journey. It is not to be
+supposed that this was some emulator of Icarus or predecessor of the
+ambitious folks who for the last hundred years, more or less, have been
+trying to navigate the air with balloons or mechanical flying machines.
+Not at all. This was simply the figurative language employed to convey to
+those whom it might concern the wonderful feat that was to be attempted
+("God permitting," as the advertiser was careful to add), of travelling by
+road from the "Bell Savage," on Ludgate Hill, to Bath in three days. But
+here is the announcement:--
+
+    "FLYING MACHINE.
+
+    "All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on
+    their Road, let them repair to the 'Bell Savage' on Ludgate Hill in
+    London, and the 'White Lion' at Bath, at both which places they may be
+    received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which
+    performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets
+    forth at five o'clock in the morning.
+
+    "Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are allowed to
+    carry fourteen Pounds Weight--for all above to pay three-halfpence per
+    Pound."
+
+The rush of fashionables to take the waters, and see and be seen, had
+obviously not then commenced, since one crawling "flying machine" sufficed
+to accommodate the traffic; and it was not until thirty-six years later
+that it did begin, when Queen Anne (who, alas! is dead) resorted to "the
+Bath" for the benefit of the gout. What says Pope?
+
+  "Great Anna, whom Three Realms obey,
+  Does sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tay."
+
+If she had taken tea more consistently and drank less port, she would have
+been just as great and not so gouty--and Bath would have remained in that
+semi-obscurity in which it had long languished. No crowds of fashionables,
+no truckling statesmen, no wits, would have hastened down the road and
+peopled it so brilliantly had not Anne's big toe twinged with the torments
+of the damned; and it seems likely enough that this book would never have
+been written. Under the circumstances, therefore, the most appropriate
+toast for the author and the Mayor and Corporation of Bath to honour is
+that favourite old one, "High Church, High Farming, and Old Port for
+Ever," especially the last, "coupling with it," as they used to say before
+the custom of giving toasts died out, the honoured memory of Queen Anne.
+
+Another three-days-a-week coach then began to ply between London and Bath.
+In 1711 it had a rival, and five years later saw the establishment of the
+first daily coach from London. Thomas Baldwin, citizen and cooper of
+London, saw money in the venture, and, like the hero of one of Bret
+Harte's verses, who "saw his duty a dead sure thing," he "went for it,
+there and then." He would seem to have secured it, too, for he held the
+road for many years against all rivals, and was, moreover, landlord of one
+of the foremost hostelries on the road--the "Crown," at Salt Hill.
+
+[Illustration: COACHING MISERIES. (_After Rowlandson._)]
+
+His rivals were many, and, considering the popularity to which Bath soon
+attained, they must all have done well. Indeed, the establishment of a new
+coach to Bath would now appear to have been a favourite form of
+speculation, and Londoners found many such advertisements as the
+following:--
+
+    "_Daily Advertiser._ April 9, 1737.
+    "For Bath.
+
+    "A good Coach and able Horses will set out from the 'Black Swan' Inn,
+    in Holborn, on Wednesday or Thursday.
+
+    "Enquire of WILLIAM MAUD."
+
+[Sidenote: _COACHING MISERIES_]
+
+The invalid who trusted himself to the stage-coach of that period had,
+however, many risks to run. Doctors might recommend the waters, but before
+the patient reached them he had to endure a two days' journey, and even at
+that to bear a very martyrdom of bumps and jolts. For that was just before
+the time when coach-proprietors began to announce "comfortable" coaches
+"with springs," just as, a little earlier, they had laid great stress on
+their conveyances being glazed, and (to skip the centuries) as railway
+companies nowadays advertise dining and drawing room cars. Here are some
+coaching woes:--
+
+    "Just as you are going off, with only one other person on your side of
+    the coach, who, you flatter yourself, is the last--seeing the door
+    opened suddenly, and the landlady, coachman, guard, etc., cramming
+    and shoving and buttressing up an overgrown, puffing, greasy human
+    being of the butcher or grazier breed; the whole machine straining and
+    groaning under its cargo from the box to the basket. By dint of
+    incredible efforts and contrivances, the carcase is at length weighed
+    up to the door, where it has next to struggle with various obstacles
+    in the passage."
+
+The pictorial commentary upon this text is appended, together with a view
+representing passengers refreshed by being overturned into a wayside pond.
+
+The first mail-coach that ever ran in England ran between London and
+Bristol, and set out on Monday, August 2, 1784. Hitherto the letters had
+been conveyed by mounted post-boys, often provided with but sorry hacks,
+and always open to attack at the hands of any bad characters who might
+think it worth their while to intercept the post-bags. This risk led the
+more cautious persons, and those whose correspondence was of particular
+importance, to despatch their letters by the stage-coach, although the
+cost in that case was 2_s._ as against the ordinary postal charge of only
+4_d._ for places between 80 and 120 miles distant.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE FIRST MAIL COACH_]
+
+A clever and enterprising man resident at Bath had noted these things.
+This was John Palmer, the proprietor of the Bath Theatre. He not only
+noted them, but devised a plan by which the post was rendered swifter and
+more secure. The stage-coaches of that time took thirty-eight hours to
+accomplish the journey between London and Bath, and, although safer for
+the carriage of correspondence than by post-boy, were not so speedy.
+Palmer had frequently travelled the roads, and he rightly conceived
+thirty-eight hours to be too long a time to take for a journey of 106
+miles. He drew up a scheme for a mail-coach to carry four inside
+passengers, a coachman, and a guard, and to be drawn by four horses at the
+rate of between eight and nine miles an hour. In this manner, he argued,
+the journey between Bath and London should be accomplished, including
+stoppages, in sixteen hours. This plan, which he made as an instance, to
+be extended, if successful, to the other main roads throughout the
+kingdom, he communicated to the General Post Office. Two years passed
+before Palmer could get his proposals tried, but arrangements were
+eventually made, agreements entered into with five innkeepers along the
+London, Bath, and Bristol Road, for the horsing of the coach, and the
+first mail despatched from Bristol to London, August 2, 1784. The mounted
+post-boy's day was nearing its close, and by the summer of 1786, the trunk
+roads knew him and his post-horn no more.
+
+The mail-coaches enjoyed great privileges, of which the greatest was their
+exemption from all turnpike tolls, and the right exercised by the Post
+Office of indicting roads which might be out of repair or in any way
+dangerous. By the year 1810, mail-coaches had increased so greatly that
+the estimated annual loss of the various turnpike trusts on this exemption
+was £50,000. And all the while the postal business was increasing by leaps
+and bounds, although the price of postage was increased from time to time
+to help supply the Government, which speedily came to recognize the
+Department as a milch cow, and to demand increasing annual payments from
+it, to help pay the costs of waging Continental wars.
+
+Let us see what the postage between London, Bath, and Bristol was at
+different periods. The charges were regulated by distances, and one of the
+schedule measurements, "exceeding 80 miles and not exceeding 150 miles,"
+just includes these two towns. We find, then, that it was possible to get
+a letter conveyed that distance in 1635 for 4_d._, while a bulky package
+weighing one ounce cost 9_d._ in transmission; not extravagant charges for
+that far-off time, even allowing for the greater purchasing power of money
+in the first half of the seventeenth century. Twenty-five years later the
+scale was altered, and one could despatch a note for a penny less,
+although it cost 3_d._ more for an ounce weight. From 1711 to 1765, the
+scale was--
+
+  Letter.      One ounce.
+   4_d._       1_s._ 4_d._
+
+and from 1765 to 1784 the charges were again raised, to 5_d._ and 1_s._
+8_d._ respectively. Matters then went from bad to worse. In the beginning
+of 1797, the figures were 7_d._ and 2_s._ 4_d._; while the climax was
+finally reached at the beginning of this century, for on July 9, 1812, it
+cost 9_d._ to send a note between London, Bath, or Bristol, and 3_s._ for
+one ounce. A singular fact, in face of these repeated increases, was the
+growth of the Post Office revenues. In 1796, the net profit was £479,000;
+ten years later it had risen to considerably over one million sterling.
+The Bristol profit on Post Office business was £469 in 1794-5, and at that
+time the postmaster received a salary of £110 per annum. The Bath
+postmaster's billet was the best in the service, for he received £150,
+and, moreover, had the assistance of one clerk and three letter-carriers.
+
+[Illustration: PASSENGERS REFRESHED AFTER A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY. (_After
+Rowlandson._)]
+
+Meanwhile the stage-coaches had increased greatly. It was about 1800 that
+the "Sick, Lame, and Lazy"--a sober conveyance so called from the nature
+of its passengers, invalids, real and imaginary, on their way to Bath--was
+displaced by the new post coach that performed the journey in a single
+day; and thus the comfortable, _and_ expensive, beds of the "Pelican" at
+Speenhamland, where "the coach slept," began to be disestablished.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+[Sidenote: _"GOD-PERMITS"_]
+
+Our forefathers of the coaching age were properly pious. Desirous, when
+they travelled, of a "happy issue out of all their afflictions," as the
+Prayer-book has it--which in their case included such varied troubles as
+highwaymen's attacks, being upset, or finding themselves snowed up, with
+the extreme likelihood in winter-time of being severely frostbitten--they
+made their wills, and fervently committed themselves to the protection
+of Providence before starting and putting themselves in the care of
+the coachman. Coach proprietors, for their part, always advertised
+their conveyances to run "D.V.;" and the more slangy among our
+great-grandparents were accordingly accustomed to speak of these coaches
+as "God-permits." Express trains, which stop for nothing in heaven above
+or the earth beneath, short of a cataclysm of nature, have relegated that
+joke to the domains of archæology. Then, however, it had its poignant
+side.
+
+"The perils of the road in winter and foul weather," says one who braved
+them, "were formidable. On one occasion I rode sixteen hours under a
+deluging downpour of rain that never ceased for a single minute, and was
+so crushing in its effect as to disable every umbrella on the roof before
+the first hour had elapsed. On another occasion I started at six on a
+winter's morning outside the Bath "Regulator," which was due in London at
+eight o'clock at night. I was the only outside passenger. It came on to
+snow about an hour after we started--a snowstorm that never ceased for
+three days. The roads were a yard deep in snow before we reached Reading,
+which was exactly at the time we were due in London. Then with six horses
+we laboured on, and finally arrived at Fetter Lane at a quarter to three
+in the morning. Had it not been for the stiff doses of brandied coffee
+swallowed at every stage, this record would never have been written. As it
+was, I was so numbed, hands and feet, that I had to be lifted down, or
+rather, hauled out of an avalanche or hummock of snow, like a bale of
+goods. The landlady of the 'White Horse' took me in hand, and I was thawed
+gradually by the kitchen fire, placed between warm pillows, and dosed with
+a posset of her own compounding. Fortunately, no permanent injury
+resulted."
+
+[Sidenote: _SNOWSTORMS_]
+
+That was as late as 1816. Happily, although the term "an old-fashioned
+winter," is one frequently employed nowadays to denote one of exceptional
+severity, there is no reason to believe that such winters were less
+exceptional then than they are now. But the great frosts and snowstorms of
+those times belong to history, and although they only occurred (as they do
+now) at considerable intervals, they bulk largely in the records of the
+past.
+
+The great snowstorm of December 26, 1836, dislocated the coach service all
+over the country. The drifts on Marlborough Downs varied in depth from
+fourteen to sixteen feet. The Duke of Wellington, who was travelling down
+the road to the Duke of Beaufort's place at Badminton, arrived at
+Marlborough on the Monday night, in the thick of it, and put up at the
+"Castle." He was journeying in a carriage and four, with outriders, and
+started again the next morning, to be promptly stuck fast in a wheatfield.
+A number of labourers were procured, who dug him out.
+
+On that memorable occasion, the Bath and Bristol mails, which were due at
+those places on the Tuesday morning, were abandoned eighty miles from
+London, the mail-bags being brought up by the two guards in a post-chaise
+with four horses. For seventeen miles they had to come by way of the
+fields.
+
+Three outside passengers died of the cold when one of the stage coaches
+reached Chippenham, and frostbites were innumerable.
+
+But if all the untoward coaching incidents were recounted that befell upon
+the Bath Road, this would resolve itself into a dismal record, and it
+might then be supposed that coaching was invariably dangerous and
+uncomfortable, which was not the case. One of the most singular of these
+happenings was that in which a home-coming sailor was killed. A gunner
+named John Baker was wrecked on board the frigate _Diomede_, off the coast
+of Trincomalee, and narrowly escaped being drowned. Being picked up, he
+recovered sufficiently to be able to take a part in the storming of that
+place, and was sent home with the ship bearing the despatches. When he set
+foot again in England, he must naturally have thought all dangers past;
+but, coming up from Bath in January, 1796, the coach capsized at Reading,
+and the unhappy gunner, who had survived all perils of battle and the
+breeze, was killed.
+
+A not dissimilar accident happened in July, 1827, when the Bath mail was
+overturned between Reading and Newbury, through the horses bolting into a
+gravel-pit. A naval officer was killed, and most of the passengers
+injured.
+
+[Sidenote: _FOGS_]
+
+Although the latter accident happened in an age of very fast coaches, it
+is a fact that disasters were actually fewer than they had been in more
+leisurely times. The reasons for this increased safety in times when speed
+was vastly greater may be found in the facts that the roads were better
+kept, and the coaches better built. A whole series of Turnpike Acts had
+been passed in the course of the previous fifty years, resulting in roads
+as nearly perfect as roads can be, while the coachbuilder's trade had
+become almost an exact science. Had it not been for the occasional
+recklessness or drunkenness of drivers, and the winter fogs, there would
+be little to record in the way of accidents. As it was, coachmen sometimes
+(but very rarely) took a convivial glass too much; or, more often, raced
+opposition coaches to a final smash; and then there were the "pea-soupers"
+of fogs, which led the most experienced astray.
+
+The following story belongs to the first quarter of this century, and is
+told by one of the old drivers: "I recollect," he says, "a singular
+circumstance occasioned by a fog. There were eight mails that passed
+through Hounslow. The Bristol, Bath, Gloucester, and Stroud took the
+right-hand road; the Exeter, Yeovil, Poole, and 'Quicksilver' Devonport
+(which was the one I was driving) went the straight road towards Staines.
+We always saluted each other when passing with 'Good night, Bill,' 'Dick,'
+or 'Harry,' as the case might be. I was once passing a mail, mine being
+the fastest, and gave my wonted salute. A coachman named Downs was driving
+the Stroud mail. He instantly recognized my voice, so said, 'Charley, what
+are you doing on my road?' It was he, however, who had made the mistake;
+he had taken the Staines instead of the Slough road out of Hounslow. We
+both pulled up immediately; he had to turn round and go back--a feat
+attended with some difficulty in such a fog. Had it not been for our usual
+salute, he would not have discovered his mistake before arriving at
+Staines."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+One of the most striking differences between the coaching age and these
+railway times lies in the altered relations between passenger and driver.
+No railway passenger ever thinks of the man who drives the engine. He, in
+fact, rarely sees him. The coachman, on the other hand, was very much in
+evidence, and was not only seen, but expected to be "remembered" as well.
+And "remembered" the old coachmen were, too: for half a crown each to
+driver and guard was the least one could do in those times. How great a
+tax this was upon the traveller may be guessed when it is said that the
+coachman was generally changed about every fifty miles or so. The guard
+would probably accompany the coach all the way to Bath, but on the longer
+journeys there were at least two. There was a very simple formula used, as
+a hint to passengers that a tip should be forthcoming. "I go no further,
+gentlemen," the coachman would observe, putting his head in at the window.
+A simultaneous dipping of the hands into fobs on the part of the
+passengers resulted from this piece of information, and the coachman would
+depart, richer by considerably over half a sovereign. Imagination does not
+go to the length of picturing the driver or the guard of a train doing the
+like.
+
+[Sidenote: _TIPS_]
+
+It is not, however, to be supposed that coach passengers greatly delighted
+in the practice, even in those fine open-handed days. There were many who
+could not afford it, and others who regarded it as an imposition. But they
+tipped all the same, because, as Mr. Chaplin, the great coach proprietor
+in those palmy days, observed, if they did not the guard and coachman
+"would look very hard at them." Better to face a lioness robbed of her
+cubs than a coachman defrauded of his tip. Passengers, therefore, resigned
+themselves with a sigh to the expenditure, and travelled as little as they
+possibly could. There can, indeed, be no doubt that tipping, grown to a
+regular system, injured the coach proprietors' business; and it was
+eventually, if not abolished entirely, at least shorn of its more
+grandiose proportions. The first man to tackle the question was Thomas
+Cooper. He was proprietor of a line of coaches running between London and
+Bristol from 1827 to 1832. "Cooper's Old Company," he called his business.
+He had originally been landlord of the "Castle Hotel" at Marlborough, but
+gave it up and removed to Thatcham, where he took a cottage and built
+stables for his coaching stud. Here he was practically halfway between
+London and Bristol, and his day and night coaches stopped to dine and sup
+at "Cooper's Cottage," as, with a sense of the value of alliteration, he
+called it. All his advertisements bore the announcement, "No fees," and
+the same pleasing legend was writ large on the backs of his coaches.
+
+Cooper paid his coachmen and guards considerably higher wages, to
+compensate them for the loss of their tips. He became bankrupt in 1832,
+and sold his business to Chaplin, who afterwards, through his interest in
+the railway world, obtained him the post of stationmaster at Richmond,
+near London. From this position he eventually retired on a pension, and
+died about fifteen years ago.
+
+We all know the cantankerous passenger in the railway carriage who makes
+himself objectionable in a variety of ways, but a coach was a much more
+fruitful source of contention. Fortunately, however, it was not often that
+the incident of the strong man in the Bath coach bound for London was
+repeated. A corpulent person of prodigious strength tried to secure a
+place in the mail, but, all the seats being booked, he was told that it
+was impossible to convey him that night. Relying upon his strength and the
+unlikelihood of any one daring to disturb him, he got in while the coach
+was still standing in the stable yard, and waited. He had to wait so long,
+and had dined so well, that he fell asleep, and the coachman, finding him
+there, snoring, put his team into another coach, leaving the fat man in
+peaceable possession of his seat. He awoke in the middle of the night,
+still, of course, in the stable yard of the "White Lion" at Bath, while
+the road echoed with the laughter of the coachman and his friends all the
+way up to London.
+
+[Sidenote: _"FULL INSIDE"_]
+
+In that incident the passengers were fortunate. The "insides" were less to
+be congratulated who bore a part in the memorable journey down to Bath
+from Piccadilly with an extra passenger. It is of the Bath mail that the
+story is told. Mail coaches carried four inside. One night, when the mail
+was ready to start from Piccadilly, full up, inside and out, a gentleman
+who wanted to go to Marlborough came hurrying up. He was well known to
+coachman and guard as a regular customer; but, although they did not
+want to leave him behind, there seemed to be no alternative. He solved the
+difficulty himself by squeezing in as the coach started; and so, packed as
+tightly as herrings in a barrel, they rumbled away, amid the muttered
+curses of the original occupants. The misery of that journey may be better
+imagined than described, and when the coach halted at the "Bear" at
+Maidenhead, it might be supposed that the "insides" would have been only
+too pleased to get out for a momentary relief when the guard appeared at
+the door and made what was usually the pleasant announcement, "Time to get
+a cup of coffee here, gentlemen." Did they get out? Oh no! They were so
+tightly wedged that they dared not move, afraid lest they should not be
+able to get in again. So they endured to the bitter end, and there can be
+no doubt whatever that when Marlborough was reached, they "sped the
+parting guest" with exceptional heartiness.
+
+[Illustration: THE "WHITE BEAR," PICCADILLY.]
+
+[Illustration: SIGN OF THE "WHITE BEAR," NOW AT FICKLES HOLE.]
+
+The inn from which this coach started was the "White Bear," Piccadilly,
+which stood, until about the year 1860, on the site now occupied by the
+Criterion Restaurant. It was a curious old place, chiefly of wood, and had
+a great effigy of a polar bear on its frontage. This "White Bear" sign is
+still in existence, but rusticated to the lonely hamlet of Fickles Hole,
+near Croydon, where it stands in the little garden of the "White Bear"
+inn.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+A very swagger stage-coach, the "York House," was started between Bath and
+London in 1815, followed by a rival, the "Beaufort Hunt." The first-named
+started from the "York House Hotel" at Bath; the "Beaufort Hunt" from the
+"White Lion." Both were fast day coaches; and, perhaps because of racing,
+the "Beaufort Hunt" was upset twice in a fortnight, soon after it had been
+put on the road. It was a sporting age, but not so sporting that
+passengers were prepared to risk life and limb in taking part in this
+keen rivalry. Accordingly, the "Beaufort Hunt" fell upon evil times, and
+the proprietor had to dismiss his too zealous drivers. He was, however,
+fortunate in his new coachman, who was exceptionally civil and obliging,
+and eventually regained the position of the coach, which, although it kept
+up a furious pace of eleven miles an hour, remained for years a prime
+favourite with the more dashing travellers along the road.
+
+This and the other crack coaches, which continued running until the Great
+Western Railway finally took them away on trucks, quite cut out the mails,
+which, from being the fastest coaches on the road, soon came to occupy a
+very middling position.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE AUGUSTAN AGE_]
+
+In 1821, the mail-coaches had reached a speed of nearly eight and
+three-quarter miles an hour, including stoppages. They started from the
+General Post Office at 8 p.m., and reached Bristol at 10 a.m. the
+following morning. At the same period the two fast stage-coaches just
+described were doing their eleven miles an hour, and in 1830 were actually
+timed a mile an hour faster, while the mail was very little accelerated,
+if at all. Some years later, indeed (in 1837), the Bristol mail was
+wakened up, and performed the 121 miles in 11 hrs. 45 min., or at the rate
+of ten miles and a quarter an hour, including changes, of which there were
+fourteen. This was the fine flower of the Coaching Age on the Bath Road.
+There were then about fifteen or sixteen day and night coaches between
+London and Bath, and two mails, all running full. On June 4, 1838, the
+Great Western Railway was opened as far as Slough, and the coaches ran
+only between that place and Bath. In March, 1840, the railway was open as
+far as Reading; and June 30, 1841, saw trains running between London,
+Bath, and Bristol, and the road deserted.
+
+The difference between those times and these is sufficiently striking to
+demand some attention. Fares by mail were 4_d._ a mile; by stage-coach,
+from 4_d._ to 3-1/2_d._ a mile inside, and 2_d._ outside. Or, if one
+wanted to travel somewhat cheaper, and did not mind an all-night journey,
+the fares by night coach were about 2-1/2_d._ and 1-1/2_d._ respectively.
+The cost of travelling to Bath was therefore anything from 35_s._ down to
+14_s._ To these figures 5_s._ or 6_s._ should be added, for coachmen and
+guards always expected to be tipped, while something like half a sovereign
+for refreshments was essential.
+
+For those whose time was of no consequence, and whose pockets were not
+well lined, there were the slow lumbering stage-waggons, which progressed
+at about four miles an hour and stopped everywhere. The fare by these was
+something under a penny a mile, and refreshments were correspondingly
+cheap, for the landlords of the wayside inns, who despised this kind of
+travellers, provided a supper of cold beef at 6_d._ a head, and a
+shake-down of clean straw in the stable-loft at a nominal price.
+
+If, on the other hand, one desired to do the thing in style, it was always
+possible to post down. Only the great men of the earth did that, for the
+cost was more than considerable, tolls alone for a carriage and pair
+amounting to 9_s._ In fact, posting pair-horse to Bath would not have
+cost less than £11. Nor would there then have been any advantage in pace,
+for post-chaises generally attained a speed of ten miles an hour, when the
+best coaches were doing twelve. Still, there were those who posted, ready
+to pay, both in money and time, for their privacy; for the wealthy Briton
+of that day was apt to be an extremely haughty and insufferable person,
+and preferred to travel like a Grand Llama, even though he paid heavily
+for it in coin and discomfort.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE FIRST MOTOR-CAR_]
+
+Almost the last scene in this "strange eventful history" of
+road-travelling in the past was enacted in 1829, when Mr. Gurney's
+"steam-carriage" conveyed a number of people from London to Bath. The
+vehicle did not meet with the approval of the rustics, and at Melksham an
+angry mob, armed with stones, assailed the travellers, loudly denouncing
+the unholy thing. From Cranford Bridge to Reading, the speed was at the
+rate of sixteen miles an hour, and so delighted were those concerned with
+the result of the experiment that an announcement was made that "immediate
+measures" would be taken "to bring carriages of the sort into action on
+the roads." It has, however, been left to these last few years to
+re-introduce the motor-car, with results yet to be seen.
+
+Such was travel on the road in olden times. To-day one travels to Bath in
+a fraction of the time at less than half the cost; the 107 miles railway
+journey from Paddington occupies exactly two hours, and a third-class
+ticket costs 8_s._ 11_d._
+
+As these lines are being written, the last of the old coaching inns from
+which some of the Bath stages started, is being demolished. The "White
+Horse," in Fetter Lane, Holborn, fell upon evil days when railways
+revolutionized its custom. Where Lord Eldon stayed in 1766, and whence
+many another aristocratic traveller set forth, tramps and fourpenny
+"dossers" found refuge. The "White Horse" inn became the "White Horse
+Chambers"--not the kind of chambers understood in St. James's, but rather
+the cheap cubicles of St. Giles's.
+
+[Illustration: THE "WHITE HORSE" INN, FETTER LANE. DEMOLISHED 1898.]
+
+[Sidenote: _DEPARTED GLORIES_]
+
+Cary's "Itinerary" for 1821 (Cary was a guide, philosopher, and friend
+without whom our grandfathers never travelled) gives no fewer than
+thirty-seven stage-coaches which started from this old house. There was
+the "Accommodation" to Oxford, at seven o'clock in the morning; the Bath
+and Bristol Light Post coach, at two in the afternoon, arriving at
+Bristol at eight o'clock the following morning; and the Worcester,
+Cheltenham, and Woodstock coaches, which all travelled along the Bath road
+to Maidenhead. Then there were the York "Highflier," a crack Light Post
+coach, every morning, at nine o'clock; the "Princess Charlotte," to
+Brighton; the Lynn, Dover, Cambridge, Ipswich, and other coaches too
+numerous to mention in detail. It will, therefore, not be surprising to
+learn that the stables of this busy hostelry were large enough to hold
+seventy horses.
+
+At the foot of the staircase, near the entrance, was the office, and
+everywhere were long passages and interminable suites of rooms. But how
+different the circumstances in later years! The vast apartment that was
+the public dining-room became, in fact, a kind of socialistic kitchen.
+
+There, when his day's work was done, the kerbstone merchant came to grill
+the cheap chop he had purchased. There the professional cadger toasted a
+herring, while his companions cooked scraps of meat or toasted cheese.
+
+This part of Holborn was once famous for its old inns. Indeed, on the
+opposite side of that main artery of traffic were the "Black Bull" and the
+"Old Bell." There is nothing left of the first now except the great black
+effigy of a bull with a golden zone about the middle of him, and beyond
+the archway a courtyard which was once the galleried courtyard of the inn,
+but is now just the area of a block of peculiarly dirty "model" dwellings.
+
+[Illustration: COURTYARD OF THE "OLD BELL," HOLBORN. DEMOLISHED 1897.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "OLD BELL"_]
+
+What Londoner did not know the "Old Bell" Tavern, in Holborn, whose
+mellowed red brick frontage gave so great an air of distinction to that
+now commonplace thoroughfare. Among the last of the old galleried inns,
+some of its timbers dated back to 1521. The front of the house was
+comparatively juvenile, dating only from 1720. What its galleried
+courtyard was like let this sketch record. The site was sold for £11,600,
+and the house demolished, at the close of 1897, although its structural
+stability was unquestioned, and the place a favourite dining and luncheon
+house. Twenty-one coaches left that old house daily in the full flush of
+the coaching age; among them two Cheltenham coaches, the coaches to
+Faringdon, and Abingdon, Oxford, Woodstock, and Blenheim, all of which
+went by the Bath Road so far as Maidenhead, where they branched off _viâ_
+Henley. In addition, there was the stage which ran twice a day to
+Englefield Green, branching off at Hounslow. The "Old Bell" could, indeed,
+claim the credit of being the last actual coaching-house in London, for it
+is only a few years since the last three-horsed omnibus was discontinued
+that ran between it and Amersham, in Bucks. When the Metropolitan Railway
+extension reached that place, the conveyance, of course, became quite
+unnecessary, and the last remote echo of the genuine coaching age died
+away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The Bath Road is measured from Hyde Park Corner, and is a hundred and five
+miles and six furlongs in length. The reasons for this being reckoned as
+the starting-point of this great highway are found in the fact that when
+coaches were in their prime, Hyde Park Corner was at the very western
+verge of London. Early in the eighteenth century Londoners would have
+considered it in the country; and, indeed, the turnpike gate which until
+1721 crossed Piccadilly, opposite Berkeley Street, gave a quasi-official
+confirmation of that view. In that year, however, it was removed to Hyde
+Park Corner, just westward of the thoroughfare now known as Grosvenor
+Place, and so remained until October, 1825, when it was disestablished in
+favour of a turnpike gate opposite the spot where the Alexandra Hotel now
+stands. Beyond it--in the country--was the pretty rural village of
+Knightsbridge, with a gate by the barracks; and, beyond that, the remote
+village of Kensington, to which the Court retired for change of air, far
+away from London and its cares!
+
+From 1721 to 1825, therefore, we may well regard Hyde Park Corner as the
+beginning of town. This was so well recognized that local allusions to the
+fact were plentiful. For instance, where Piccadilly Terrace now stands was
+an inn called the "Hercules' Pillars," a favourite sign for houses on the
+outskirts of large towns, just as churches dedicated to St. Giles were
+anciently placed outside the city walls. "Hercules' Pillars" was the
+classic name for the Straits of Gibraltar, regarded then as the boundary
+of civilization; hence the peculiar fitness of the sign.
+
+On the western side of this inn, a place greatly resorted to by the
+'prentice lads who wanted to take their lasses for a country outing in
+Hyde Park, was a little cottage, long known as "Allen's Stall," which
+stood here from the time of George the Second until 1784, when Apsley
+House was erected on its site. The ground is said to have been a present
+from George the Second to a discharged soldier named Allen, who had
+fought under his command at Dettingen.
+
+[Illustration: ALLEN'S STALL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, ABOUT 1756.]
+
+[Sidenote: _ALLEN'S STALL_]
+
+The story is a pretty one, and tells how the King was riding into Hyde
+Park, when he noticed the soldier, still wearing a tattered uniform,
+taking charge of the stall in company with his wife.
+
+"What can I do for you?" asked the King, replying to the military salute
+which the ragged veteran offered.
+
+[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1786.]
+
+"I ask nothing better than to earn an honest living, your Majesty,"
+replied the soldier; "but I am like to be turned away by the Ranger. If
+your Majesty were to give me a grant of the ground my stall stands on, I
+would be happy."
+
+"Be happy, then," answered the King, and saw to it that Allen had his
+request satisfied.
+
+The stall became a cottage, where Allen and his wife lived until they were
+gathered to the great majority, having in the meanwhile, it may be
+supposed, done pretty well for themselves, since we find their son to
+have been an attorney. The cottage was deserted, and the royal gift of the
+land partly forgotten, so that the Lord Chancellor of that period was
+granted a lease of the ground and began to build a mansion on it. Allen's
+son had to the full that shrewdness which has made the name of "attorney"
+so generally detested that those "gentlemen by Act of Parliament" prefer
+nowadays to call themselves "solicitors." He waited until my Lord
+Chancellor had nearly completed his house, and then put forward his claim,
+finally obtaining £450 per annum as ground rent. He subsequently sold the
+land outright, and so Lord Chancellor Henry Bathurst, Baron Apsley, and
+Earl Bathurst, became the freeholder, and named his residence "Apsley
+House." The mansion was purchased by the nation for the great Duke of
+Wellington in 1820. It was, from its situation, long known as "No. 1,
+London."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _MUD BULWARKS_]
+
+Let us see what kind of entrance to London this was in olden times. In
+Queen Mary's day the idea of a road leading so far as Bath seems to have
+been considered too fantastic for common use, and this was accordingly
+known as the "waye to Reading." In that reign, which was so reactionary
+that many were discontented with it, and roused up armed rebellions, the
+rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt brought his men thus far, having crossed the Thames
+at Kingston and struggled through the awful sloughs between that place
+and Knightsbridge. It seems quite likely that, but for the mud of those
+miscalled "roads," the rebellion would have been successful, and the
+course of history changed. But Wyatt's soldiers were utterly exhausted
+with the march; and when the Londoners saw them, plastered with mud from
+head to foot, they forgot their own discontent, and laughed at their
+would-be deliverers, calling them "draggle-tails." So, dispirited and
+contemned, they were easily disposed of by the Queen's troops, who, secure
+behind their girdle of muck, had only to wait and slay them at leisure.
+
+[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1792.]
+
+The lesson seems not to have been lost upon the authorities, and
+accordingly we find this defence of dirt in existence up to the year 1842.
+For nearly three hundred years this "splendid isolation" set an almost
+impassable gulf between those who wished to get out of London and those
+who wanted to come in; for in the year just mentioned we learn that
+Knightsbridge was in so deplorable a state of neglect that it was
+perfectly impassable for persons possessing a common regard for
+cleanliness or comfort. Ankle-deep in mud and water, the pavement was
+rendered additionally dangerous by two steps, forming a sudden descent, so
+that those who were rash enough to attempt to pass that way in the dark
+generally bruised themselves severely at the best of it; or, at the worst,
+broke a leg or an arm.
+
+But this was nothing compared with a former age, when Lord Hervey, writing
+from Kensington, said the road was so infamously bad that he lived there
+in a solitude like that of a sailor cast away upon a lonely rock in
+mid-ocean. The only people who enjoyed this condition of affairs appear to
+have been the footpads and the highwaymen, who had the very best of times,
+until they were caught. Indeed, in the days when the stage-coaches
+performed the then marvellous feats of travelling at anything from three
+to five miles an hour, under favourable circumstances, the road could not
+be considered safe after Hyde Park Corner was left behind; and records
+tell of highway robberies, with the romantic accessories of blunderbusses
+and horse-pistols, at Knightsbridge so late as 1799.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "HALFWAY HOUSE"_]
+
+[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797.]
+
+There was at that time, and until 1848, an old inn standing by the way,
+near where are now Knightsbridge Barracks. This inn, the "Halfway House,"
+occupied the exact site where Prince of Wales's Gate now gives access to
+Hyde Park. Hereabouts lurked all manner of bad characters, who had
+infested the neighbourhood from time immemorial, safe from the clutches
+of the law both in their numbers and in the isolation created by the
+almost bottomless sloughs of mud which then decorated what was, by
+courtesy or force of habit, called the "road."
+
+[Illustration: THE "HALFWAY HOUSE." 1848.]
+
+At this spot, in April, 1740, the Bristol mail was robbed by a footpad,
+who overpowered the post-boy and got off with both the Bath and Bristol
+bags; while in 1774, three men were hanged for highway robbery here. But
+the most thrilling and circumstantial story of highwaymen at this spot is
+that which relates the capture of William Belchier, in 1750. There had
+been numerous highway robberies in the neighbourhood of the "Halfway
+House," and at last one William Norton, a "thief-catcher," was sent to
+apprehend the man, if possible. He took the Devizes chaise at half-past
+one in the morning of June 3, and when they had come to the place, sure
+enough the robber was there, waiting for them, and on foot. He bade the
+driver stop, and, holding a pistol in at the window, demanded the
+passengers' money. "Don't frighten us," replied Norton. "I have but a
+trifle; you shall have it." He also advised the three other passengers to
+give up their coin; and, holding a pistol concealed in one hand and some
+silver in the other, let the robber take the money. When he had taken it
+the thief-taker raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. It missed fire;
+but the robber was too frightened to notice that. He staggered back,
+holding up both hands, exclaiming, "O Lord, O Lord!" Norton then jumped
+out after him, pursued him six or seven hundred yards, and then caught
+him. He begged for mercy on his knees, but Norton took his neck-cloth off,
+tied his hands, and brought him into London, where he was tried, found
+guilty, and hanged. The prisoner asked his captor in court what trade he
+followed. "I keep a shop in Wych Street," replied Norton; adding, with
+grim significance, "and sometimes I take a thief."
+
+In Kensington Gore (which might have obtained its sanguinary name from
+these encounters--but didn't) a certain Mr. Jackson, of the Court of
+Requests at Westminster, was requested to "stand and deliver" on the night
+of December 27, in the same year, by four desperadoes. And so the tale
+goes on, with such curious side-lights on the state of society as are
+afforded by the stories of how pedestrians, desirous of journeying from
+London to Knightsbridge and Kensington, were used in those "good old
+times" to wait in Piccadilly until there were gathered a sufficient number
+of them to render the perilous journey safer. Even then they did not rely
+only on their numbers, but went well armed with swords, pistols, and
+cudgels.
+
+[Sidenote: _TURNPIKE GATES_]
+
+It is scarcely to be supposed that the turnpike-gates earned much money in
+those times, when ways were foul and dangerous, and when the cut-throats
+who lurked about that delectable "Halfway House" were in their prime.
+Printed here will be found several views of the first gate, showing its
+development from 1786 to 1797. It will be seen that a high brick wall then
+bounded the Park. This was continued all the way, except where the houses,
+low inns, and cottages on the north side of the road stood, and where
+their successors stand to-day, to the eastward and westward of the present
+"Albert Gate." That imposing entrance to the Park was made in 1846, and
+the immense houses on either side--the "two Gibraltars," as they were
+called--built. They were so called because it was thought they would never
+be taken; but the one on the east side, now the French Embassy, was soon
+let to Hudson, the Railway King. As mentioned just now, the "Halfway
+House" stood where the Prince of Wales's Gate opens into the Park. It
+stood there until 1848, when the ground was purchased for £3000, and the
+house pulled down. If the owners had kept the land, their descendants
+to-day could have sold it for a sum that would represent a handsome
+fortune, as evidenced by the fact that a plot of ground of the same size,
+on which Thorney House stood, in Kensington Gore was sold in 1898 for
+£100,000. Thus does the value of land increase in the neighbourhood of
+London.
+
+In 1827, London and its neighbourhood began to be relieved of the incubus
+of the turnpike-gates. In that year twenty-seven toll-gates were removed
+by Parliament; eighty-one were disestablished July 1, 1864; and sixty-one,
+October 31, 1865. Many others were swept away on the Essex and Middlesex
+roads on October 31, 1866, while the remainder ceased July 1, 1872. The
+first toll-gate which gave the traveller pause from 1856 to July 1, 1864,
+on the Bath and Exeter roads stood in Kensington Gore, and barred the
+roadway just where Victoria Road branches off. Many yet living can recall
+the "Halfpenny Hatch," as it was familiarly known. At the time of the
+Great Exhibition of 1851 the road was distinctly rural. It was that
+greatest of all exhibitions which gave an impetus to building in this
+neighbourhood. Up to that time London had not "discovered" Kensington, and
+the highway was not a mere street, but looked as though the country were
+round the corner, which, indeed, was very nearly the case. You could then,
+in fact, well imagine yourself to be on the highway to somewhere or
+another--a thing demanding more imagination to-day than most people are
+capable of calling up.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD KENSINGTON_]
+
+It may be as well to put on record in this place the Kensington of my own
+recollection. My reminiscences of Kensington by no means go so far back as
+the time when Leigh Hunt wrote his "Old Court Suburb," a book which
+described what was then a village "near London;" but when I first knew
+that now bustling place it was, if not exactly to be described as rural,
+certainly by no stretch of imagination to be called urban. In those days
+the great shops, which are no longer called shops, but "emporia," or
+"stores," or "magazines," did not flaunt with plate-glass windows opposite
+St. Mary Abbot's Church, nor, indeed, did the present building of St. Mary
+exist. In its place was a hideous structure, erected probably at some
+early period of the eighteenth century. It had windows that purported to
+be Gothic, and a bell-turret that belonged to no known order of
+architecture. It, and the now demolished old church of St. Paul,
+Hammersmith, bore a singular likeness to one another. The present
+generation can only discover what these unlovely buildings were like by
+referring to old prints, because there are none other now existing in
+London to which they can be likened; and a very good thing too. I can
+recollect old St. Mary's very well indeed, and the days when the old
+Vestry Hall was still a place for the transaction of vestry business are
+quite vivid to me. In fact, at that time the Vestry Hall was somewhat new,
+and where the imposing Town Hall now stands beside it there was a tall
+building of very grimy brick, with quaint little figures of a boy and a
+girl perched high up on brackets above, and on either side of, the door.
+These little figures were represented as clad in a peculiar Dutch-like
+uniform; the boy, I think, blue, and the girl a quite painful orange,
+whenever they repainted her, which was seldom. This was, in fact, some
+sort of charity school, and it was as dismal a place as all charitable
+institutions were apt to be in our grandfathers' time, when it was
+criminal to be poor, and eleemosynary establishments, in consequence, were
+designed as much like prisons as might well be.
+
+[Illustration: KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET.]
+
+At the time of which I speak it was quite necessary to go to London to do
+any save the most ordinary shopping, and if one had told the "oldest
+inhabitant" that a time was presently coming when it would be possible not
+only to order, but to purchase and take away on the instant, from
+Kensington shops the rarest and most costly things that the heart of man
+(or woman either, for that matter) could desire, that ancient individual
+would have thought he was being told fairy tales.
+
+[Illustration: "OLDEST INHABITANT."]
+
+I knew that oldest inhabitant, who has been long since gathered to his
+fathers. His was a quaint figure, and he was stored with many
+reminiscences. He could "mind the time" when Gore House was occupied by
+the Countess of Blessington, and when Louis Napoleon, then a young man
+about town, was a frequent visitor to that somewhat Bohemian
+establishment. Also he remembered the first 'bus to make its appearance in
+Kensington. For myself, I certainly remember the time here when omnibuses
+were few and far between. Now there are generally half a dozen waiting at
+any time you like to mention by St. Mary Abbot's, which has become, in
+omnibus slang, "Kensington Church," while the pavements are thronged by
+fashionable crowds all day long and every day. Not least remarkable is the
+long row of bicycles drawn up against the kerb opposite the aforesaid
+emporia, in charge of a diminutive boy in buttons, the patrons of these
+great shops being inveterate "bikists."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE NEW KENSINGTONS_]
+
+Now that towering hotels and flats have been built in Kensington High
+Street, the old-time distinction of the "Old Court Suburb" is fast
+becoming obliterated, and there are more Kensingtons than were ever
+dreamed of years ago. North Kensington, and South and West
+Kensington--which, shorn of these would-be aristocratic aliases, are just
+Notting Hill, Brompton, and Hammersmith--were just so many orchards and
+market-gardens not so many years ago; and I declare that it is not so long
+since there was an orchard in Allen Street, off the High Street, where
+red-brick flats now stand, while, in that chosen realm of flatland, Earl's
+Court, the cabbages and lettuces grew amazingly. Cromwell Road was not
+built at the time to which my memory harks back, and where the ornate
+Natural History Museum now stands there was a huge gravel-pit, in which
+were many ponds and swamps, where wild grasses grew and slimy newts
+increased and multiplied greatly. Gore House, which had been Lady
+Blessington's, was still standing in the early years of my recollection,
+and the Albert Hall, which now occupies the site of it, was, consequently,
+undreamt of. The last use to which it had been put was to be converted,
+by Alexis Soyer, into a huge restaurant for the millions who frequented
+the Great Exhibition of 1851, which I do _not_ recollect, thank goodness!
+
+[Sidenote: _KENSINGTON HOUSE_]
+
+There were other landmarks in the Kensington of my youth which have long
+since been swept away. For instance, where Victoria Road joins the Gore
+there was a tall archway leading to a hippodrome, or horse repository.
+Where it stood there is now an extremely "elegant"--as they used to say
+when I was younger--hotel. Even greater changes have taken place where the
+Gore joins the High Street. Where that collection of palatial houses
+called Kensington Court now stands, there stood years ago a huge old brick
+mansion which in its last days experienced some strange vicissitudes of
+fortune, among which its last two changes--into a school for young ladies,
+and finally into a lunatic asylum--were not the least remarkable. There
+was in those days a most dreadful slum at the back of this mansion, known
+locally as the "Rookery." Londoners should know the history of Kensington
+Court and its site, and how Baron Albert Grant, in the heyday of his
+financial success, pulled down the old mansion, and built himself on its
+ruins a lordly (and vulgar) pleasure-palace, which he called "Kensington
+House." The memory of it springs fresh to this day, and it requires little
+effort to recall the place as it stood, in all its pristine
+pretentiousness, until 1880, or thereabouts. It was built by the
+redoubtable Baron to shame Kensington Palace, which it exactly faced, and
+if gilt railings, fresh white stone, and big plate-glass windows may be
+said to have put the old Palace out of countenance, then Kensington Palace
+was shamed indeed, but only with that very questionable kind of shame
+which overtakes the poor patrician confronted by a swaggering, pursy
+millionaire. At any rate, Kensington Palace is avenged, for not one stone
+now remains of that pretentious house. It lay back some little distance
+from the road, from which it was screened by a tall iron railing, with
+gilded spikes and globular gas-lamps at intervals, of a type closely
+resembling those in use on the Metropolitan and District Railways. It is
+not a lovely type, but it is one still greatly favoured in the suburbs of
+Clapham and Blackheath.
+
+This ornate palisade of cast-iron, which pretended to be wrought, once
+passed, a gravel drive led up to the house. Ah, that house! It possessed
+all the flamboyant glories of Grosvenor Gardens and more, and was of a
+style called variously by the building journals of that day, French or
+Italian Renaissance. "Renaissance" is a term which, like charity, covers a
+multitude of sins, and if you want to cloak a collection of architectural
+enormities, why, you term it Renaissance, and, by implication, insult the
+great French and Italian masters of the New Birth. It needs not to trouble
+about the details of that house, save to say that polished granite pillars
+were well to the fore, and that portentous Mansard roofs in fish-scale
+lead coverings, with spikes, finished off its sky-line. For long years
+Kensington House remained unlet, because of the immense sums its up-keep
+would have entailed. Millionaires, South African and other varieties,
+were not so plentiful years ago as they are now. So, after some years of
+forlorn waiting for the occupier who never came, Kensington House, never
+once inhabited, was at last demolished, and its materials sold. It is said
+that the grand marble staircase went to grace the gilded salons of Madame
+Tussaud's waxen court, and certainly the spiky railings, with their
+gas-lamps, were sold to furnish an imposing entrance to Sandown Park
+Racecourse, where they may be seen to this day by the cyclist who wheels
+through Esher, down the Portsmouth Road.
+
+[Illustration: THACKERAY'S HOUSE, YOUNG STREET.]
+
+[Sidenote: _JOHN LEECH_]
+
+There still stands, off High Street, the grimy double-bayed house, now
+numbered 16, Young Street, but formerly No. 13, in which Thackeray wrote
+"Vanity Fair;" but most others of the old literary and artistic haunts of
+the "Old Court Suburb" have been demolished. "The Terrace"--that long row
+of old-fashioned houses extending from Wright's Lane westward--was pulled
+down but six years ago. Those houses were not beautiful, but they were at
+least pleasingly old-fashioned, and in No. 6 lived and died John Leech, an
+early victim of that peculiarly modern malady, "nerves." Some amazingly
+up-to-date shops now occupy the spot.
+
+[Illustration: THE "WHITE HORSE." TRADITIONAL RETREAT OF ADDISON.]
+
+Long ago, the other old-fashioned houses on this side of the road lost
+their forecourt gardens, over which other shops were built; and beyond the
+memory of any one now living there stood a little country inn at the
+corner of what is now the Earl's Court Road; a rural retreat called the
+"White Horse," to which Addison withdrew from the cold splendours of
+Holland House opposite. He had contracted an unhappy marriage with the
+Countess of Warwick, the mistress of that splendid mansion, which happily
+yet remains; but stole away to this more congenial haunt, and drank his
+intellect away.
+
+Beyond this, all was country road, in the coaching days, until Hammersmith
+was reached. The first outpost of that now unsavoury place was a rural inn
+called the "Red Cow," opposite Brook Green.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "RED COW"_]
+
+The "Red Cow," pulled down December, 1897, rejoiced once upon a time in
+the reputation of being a house of call for the peculiar gentry who
+infested the suburban reaches of the great western highways out of London.
+It was not by any means the resort of the aristocracy of the profession of
+highway robbery; but a place where the cly-fakers, the footpads, and the
+lower strata of thievery foregathered to learn the movements of travellers
+and retail them to the fine gentlemen who, mounted on the best of horses,
+and clad in gorgeous raiment, occupied the higher walks of the art at a
+safer distance down the road. The house was built in the sixteenth
+century, and was a quaint, though unpretending roadside tavern with a
+high-pitched, red-tiled roof. It possessed vast stables, for it was
+situated, in early coaching days, at the end of the first stage out of
+London. It may well be imagined, then, that the stable-yard was a scene of
+constant excitement in the good old days, for here were kept a goodly
+supply of strong roadsters for the coaches running to Bath, Bristol,
+Wells, Bridgewater, and Exeter, and here the elegant samples of horseflesh
+which had brought the coaches at a spanking pace from the "Belle Sauvage,"
+on Ludgate Hill, were changed for animals who could do the rough work of
+the country roads. They were not particularly fine to look at--especially
+those used on the night coaches--and it was often a matter of surprise
+that they were able to keep up the pace required, and that the greasy old
+harness stood the strain. It has been said that in one of the
+old-fashioned rooms of the "Red Cow" E. L. Blanchard wrote his "Memoirs
+of a Malacca Cane." In the last thirty years or so of its existence the
+"Red Cow" was a favourite pull-up for the waggoners from the market
+gardens, who in the small hours of the morning rumbled past with piled-up
+loads of fruit, vegetables, and flowers for Covent Garden, and halted on
+their return for a refresher of bread and cheese and beer. Then, too, the
+hay-carts used to halt here, and the sight of them, with the horses
+drinking from the old wooden water-trough beside the kerb-stone,
+underneath the swinging sign, was like a picture of Morland's come to
+life, and agreeably leavened that general air of fried-fish, drink, and
+dissipation which lingers in the memory as the most characteristic
+features of modern Hammersmith.
+
+[Illustration: THE "RED COW," HAMMERSMITH. DEMOLISHED 1897.]
+
+The travellers who were whirled through this place in the Augustan age of
+coaching were soon in the country again, on the way to Turnham Green,
+along the Chiswick High Road. That fine broad thoroughfare is now bordered
+by an almost continuous row of modern shops, erected, many of them, where
+barns and ricks stood less than ten years ago. Such was the appearance of
+"Young's Corner," indeed, until quite recently. That corner, let it be
+said for the information of those not well acquainted with the topography
+of the western suburbs, is the spot where the road from Shepherd's Bush
+joins the highway. Let it further be placed on record, before "historic
+doubts" have had time to gather about the origin of the name, that it
+derives from a little grocer's shop kept at the north-east angle of that
+junction of the roads within the recollection of the present writer, by
+one Young, who has probably been long since gathered to his fathers, for
+his Corner knows him no more, and a house-agent's shop, a brand-new
+building (like all its neighbours), stands where the now historic Young
+sold tea and sugar, and (let us hope) waxed prosperous in days gone by.
+
+[Sidenote: _TURNHAM GREEN_]
+
+Turnham Green lies ahead: a place historic by reason of a preliminary
+skirmish in the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads, and the
+residence in the early part of the century of a peculiarly heartless
+murderer. The passengers by the two-horsed "short-stages" which in the
+first half of this century travelled from London to the outlying villages
+and halted at the "Pack Horse and Talbot," doubtless were curious
+regarding Linden House, near by, notorious from association with Thomas
+Griffiths Wainewright, author and poisoner. He was born at Chiswick in
+1794, and was a grandson of Dr. Ralph Griffiths of Turnham Green. He began
+life by serving in the army, but presently took to literature as a
+profession, and wrote voluminously in the magazines of that day. As an
+author, although possessed of a sprightly wit, he would long since have
+been forgotten had it not been for the sensational career of crime upon
+which he entered in 1824. In that year he forged the signatures of his
+trustees, in order to obtain possession of a sum of £2259. He induced his
+uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, of Linden House, to receive him there as an
+inmate. Within a few months his relative died, poisoned with nux vomica,
+and Wainewright came into possession of his property. In 1830 he persuaded
+a Mrs. Abercromby, a widow lady, to take up her abode with him and his
+wife at Linden House. She came with her two daughters and was promptly
+poisoned with strychnine. After this he removed from the neighbourhood,
+and embarked upon a further series of murders in London. Eventually
+detected, he was convicted and transported for life to the Australian
+colonies, where he is credibly said to have poisoned others. Murder by
+poison was, in fact, an obsession with this man, although he was
+sufficiently sane and sordid to select victims whose deaths would bring
+him pecuniary advantage. Wainewright's _métier_ in literature was chiefly
+art criticism, and his style narrowly resembles that of a revolting
+person, now ostracised from Society, who also dabbled in Art and actually
+wrote and published an "appreciation" of the poisoner some few years
+since.
+
+Linden House was pulled down some fifteen years ago, and its site is
+marked by the modern villas of Linden Gardens. The recollection of it
+brings a train of reminiscences.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+[Sidenote: _SUBURBAN CHANGES_]
+
+Reminiscences are soon accumulated in these times. It needs not for the
+Londoner to be in the sere and yellow leaf for him to have known many and
+sweeping changes in the pleasant suburbs which used to bring the country
+to his doors, and the scent of the hawthorn through his open window with
+every recurring spring. For myself, I am not a lean and slippered
+pantaloon, on whose head the snows of many winters have fallen. The
+crow's-feet have not yet gathered around the corners of my eyes; and yet I
+have known many rural, or semi-rural, villages around the ever-spreading
+circle of the Great City which in my time have been for ever engulfed in
+the on-rolling waves of bricks and mortar. It is no effort of memory for
+me, or for many another, to recall the market gardens, the orchards, the
+open meadows, and the fine old seventeenth and eighteenth century
+red-brick mansions, each one enclosed within its high garden walls, with
+the jealous seclusion of a monastery, which occupied the sites where the
+streets of Brompton, Earl's Court, Fulham, Walham Green, and Putney now
+stretch their interminable ramifications, and are accounted, justly
+enough, as London. Tell me, if you can, what are the bounds of London,
+north, south, east, or west. Does from Forest Gate on the east, to
+Richmond on the west, span its limits in one direction? and from Wood
+Green on the northern heights, to Croydon on the south, encompass it on
+the other? They may in this year of grace, but where will the boundary of
+continuous brick and mortar be set ten years hence? and where will then be
+the pleasant resorts of the present-day wheelman? They will all be ruined,
+and not, mark you, ruined from the commercial point of view, for the
+coming of the builder spells riches for the suburban freeholder, whose
+land, in the slang of the surveying fraternity, has become "ripe." These
+rustic places are, nevertheless, ruined from the point of view of the
+lover of the picturesque, and when he sees the old mansions going, the
+meadows trenched for foundations, and the lanes widened and paved by the
+newly constituted vestry, he groans in spirit. I am, for instance,
+especially aggrieved at the workings of modernity with Turnham Green.
+
+I went to school there in the days when London was remote. We used to talk
+of "going up to London" then. Do any of the present-day inhabitants of
+Turnham Green, I wonder, speak thus? I imagine not. Turnham Green was then
+as rural as its name sounds now. The name, alas! is all that remains of
+its rurality, save, indeed, the two commons, the "Front" and "Back," as
+they are called. No one now remembers, I suppose, that the so-called "Back
+Common" is really Turnham Bec, even as the open space at Tooting remains
+Tooting Bec to this day. It is so, however, and it is only through this
+corruption that what is really and truly the original green of Turnham
+Green is dubbed the "Front Common." You see the humour of it?
+
+[Sidenote: _THE NEW SUBURB_]
+
+Turnham Green remained countrified until the railway came and took a slice
+off the so-called "Back Common," and built a station, and thus established
+the first outpost of Suburbia. Then another railway came, and took another
+slice, and a School Board filched another piece; and then great black
+boards, with white letters, began to be planted in the surrounding
+orchards, setting forth how "this eligible land" was to be let on building
+lease. Presently men who wore corduroys and waistcoats with sleeves to
+them, and leather straps round their trousers below the knees came along,
+and, with much elaborate profanity, built what were, with much humour,
+termed "villas" there. Streets of them, and all alike! After this, a
+tramway was made along the high-road, starting at Hammersmith, and ending
+at Kew Bridge. That tramway was amusing to us schoolboys, so long as the
+novelty of it lasted. Our school--it had the imposing name of Belmont
+House--faced the high-road, and it was our greatest delight of summer
+evenings to throw pieces of soap at the outside passengers of the trams
+from the bedroom windows. The expenditure of soap was tremendous, and
+sometimes those "outsiders" were hit, whereupon there was trouble! There
+was a gloomy old mansion opposite our school, called "Bleak House," and we
+used to think it was the veritable "Bleak House" of Dickens's story. We
+know better now. It still stands, but a furniture warehousing firm have
+built warehouses on to it, and it is no longer romantically gloomy.
+
+[Illustration: ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN.]
+
+The school has gone, too, where I learnt, and promptly forgot, Latin and
+Greek; and a row of shops, with big plate-glass windows and great gas
+lamps, have taken its place; and where we construed those dead (and
+deadly) languages, the linen-draper's assistant measures out muslins and
+calicoes. I have walked along these pavements during the last few days,
+and have noted more changes. There used to stand, beside the road, on the
+right hand as you go towards Gunnersbury, a little wayside "pub," with bow
+windows, and a bent and hunch-backed red-tiled roof. It was called the
+"Robin Hood," and an old-fashioned wooden post, supporting the swinging
+sign, stood on the kerb-stone, beside a horse-trough. I remember the sign
+well, for it had quite an elaborate picture painted upon it, representing
+Robin Hood and Little John. I can see quite clearly now that the artist of
+this affair obtained his ideas from the pictorial diplomas of the Ancient
+Order of Foresters; but, at the time, I thought it a very fine painting.
+The feathered hats impressed me very much indeed, although I always used
+to wonder why those two magnificent fellows hadn't pulled up their socks.
+It was some time before I discovered that they were not socks, but the big
+bucket boots of romance. They have pulled this old house down, and have
+built a glaring, flaring, gin-palace on the site of it, just as they did
+some five years ago to the old "Roebuck," not far off. The sign is gone,
+too, and wayfarers are no longer invited, if Robin Hood is not at home, to
+take a glass with Little John. What would happen, I often speculated, if
+both those heroes were away? Would, one take a glass, in that case, with
+Friar Tuck or Maid Marian?
+
+[Illustration: THE "OLD WINDMILL."]
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD SUBURBAN INNS_]
+
+There is an old inn still standing in this same high-road--most
+appropriately, by the way, situated next door to the Police Station,
+which, in its time, has extended hospitality to many a bold "road agent"
+who found his living on the Bath and Exeter Roads. The "Old Windmill" is a
+shy, retiring house which lies modestly some way back from the line of
+houses fronting the road. It has an open gravelled space in front, and a
+swinging sign on a post, which, together with an immense sundial on the
+front of the house, proclaims that the "Old Windmill" dates back to 1717.
+These are vestiges of the time when the Chiswick High Road was bordered by
+hedges instead of houses. The house, although it wears a certain
+old-world air, can scarce be called picturesque. The huge sundial just
+mentioned, with its mis-spelled legend, "So Fly's Life Away," gives it an
+interest, and so does the record of how one Henry Colam was arrested here
+one night toward the close of last century, on the charge, "For that he
+did molest and threaten certain of His Majesty's liege subjects upon the
+highway, in company with divers others, still at large." Henry had, as a
+matter of fact, "with divers others," attempted to rob the Bath Mail near
+this spot. He failed in his enterprise, but Bow Street had him all the
+same, and it does not require a very vivid imagination to conjure up a
+picture of his end.
+
+Another old inn, which still stands at Turnham Green, although greatly
+altered, has a history not to be forgotten.
+
+[Sidenote: _TREASON AND TREACHERY_]
+
+At the "Old Pack Horse" (not by any means to be confounded with the "Pack
+Horse and Talbot," a quarter of a mile nearer on the road to London)
+assembled parties of the conspirators who, headed by their two principals,
+named, oddly enough, Barclay and Perkins,[1] plotted the assassination of
+King William the Third, on February 15, 1696. They were authorized by the
+exiled James the Second to do the deed, and had planned for forty of their
+band to surround the King's carriage as he returned from one of his weekly
+hunting expeditions from Kensington Palace to Richmond Park. His coach,
+they knew, would pass along a narrow, morass-like lane from the waterside
+on to Turnham Green, near where the church now stands, and they were well
+aware that, as it could at this point proceed only at a walking pace,
+William would fall an easy victim. It chanced, however, that there were
+traitors among their number, who informed the King's friends, so that on
+two succeeding Saturdays, while they were expecting him, he remained at
+Kensington. Many of the band were arrested, and six suffered the penalty
+of high treason.
+
+The spot where the proposed assassination was to have been consummated is
+now known as Sutton Lane. At the corner of this suburban thoroughfare,
+where Fromow's Nursery stands, the fate of England was to have been
+decided.
+
+[Illustration: THE "OLD PACK HORSE."]
+
+The "Old Pack Horse" has been somewhat modernized of late years by
+additions built out on the ground floor, but it remains substantially the
+same building at which Jack Rann, the famous "Sixteen-string Jack" of
+highway romance, may have taken a last drink with which to screw up his
+courage just before setting out to rob Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the
+Princess Amelia, in Gunnersbury Lane, near by. "Sixteen-string Jack" was
+hanged for that job in 1774.
+
+He was peculiarly unfortunate, for Turnham Green and Gunnersbury were
+veritable Alsatias then, and those who travelled here should not have
+mentioned so ordinary a happening as having their purses taken. Indeed, it
+was so usual an occurrence that Horace Walpole tells us of a certain Lady
+Brown who, visiting here, always went provided with a purse full of brass
+tokens for the highwaymen. Imagination, conjuring up a picture of a Turpin
+or a Claude du Vall riding away with a pocketful of guineas which, on
+arriving home, he discovers to be counterfeits, provokes a smile.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+There are changes impending not far from here. Who that knows Kew Bridge
+has not an affection for that hump-backed old structure, although it
+presents many difficulties to the rider? Kew Bridge is doomed, and the
+powers that be are going to pull it down and build another in its
+stead--and one, it is almost unnecessary to add, not at all picturesque.
+Farewell, then, to the suburban delights of Kew. They are going to
+"improve" the river at Kew also--that river where, in summer time, the
+steamers get hung up on the sandbanks for lack of water. Alas, then, for
+the picturesque foreshore of Strand-on-the-Green!
+
+[Illustration: KEW BRIDGE, LOW WATER.]
+
+[Sidenote: _HIGHWAYMEN_]
+
+The passengers by the Bath Flying Machine grew at this point a shade
+paler. They generally expected to be robbed on Hounslow Heath, and their
+expectations were almost invariably realized by the gentlemen in cocked
+hats and crape masks, who were by no means backward in coming forward. The
+fine flower of the highwaymen practised on the Heath, and they did their
+spiriting gently and with so much courtesy that it was almost (not quite)
+a pleasure to hand over those rings and guineas of which so plenteous a
+store was collected every night.
+
+Before, however, we come to Hounslow Heath, we have to cast a glance round
+Brentford, a town which holds the proud position of the county town of
+Middlesex. Foreigners might, in the innocence of their hearts, suppose
+that London would hold that honour; but to Brentford, known from time
+immemorial, and with the utmost justice, as "dirty Brentford," it has
+fallen. Has Brentford risen to the occasion? It must sorrowfully be
+admitted that it has not, and is a very marvel of dirt and dilapidation,
+and--But no matter! Until quite recently it also possessed, in the church
+of Old Brentford, the very ugliest church in England, which was so very
+ugly that it used to be credibly reported that people came long distances
+to see such a marvel of the unlovely. Alas! the church has been rebuilt,
+and so Brentford has lost a claim to distinction.
+
+But Brentford has the honour of being mentioned in Shakespeare, in a
+passage whose allusions not all the efforts of antiquaries have been able
+to explain, and distinguished itself in a peculiar way during the reign of
+King William the Fourth, whom people used to call, for no very good
+reason, Silly Billy. The King and Queen were expected to drive through the
+town, on their way from Windsor to London, and the streets were decorated.
+But the inhabitants spiced their loyalty with sarcasm, for hanging on a
+line, stretched prominently across the road, was an old coat, turned
+inside out, in allusion to His Majesty's uncertain policy. Not satisfied,
+however, with this delicate way of calling him a turncoat, Brentford had
+another insult ready a little way down the street. The King was generally
+supposed to be very much under the influence of Queen Adelaide, and this
+was more or less gracefully alluded to by a pair of trousers fluttering in
+the wind like a banner suspended across the road. Their Majesties
+testified their recognition and appreciation of Brentford wit by never
+passing through the town again.
+
+[Sidenote: _SORDID HOUNSLOW_]
+
+A little further afield takes us to Hounslow, where John Jerry is busy
+putting up those long streets of "villas," whose deadly sameness vexes the
+soul of the artist. He has torn down the old houses, in one of which, or
+rather, in several of which--for they had intercommunicating
+passages--Dick Turpin was wont to hide when he was in refuge from the Bow
+Street runners.
+
+  "Bold Turpin vunce, on Hounslow Heath,
+    His mare, Black Bess, bestrod--er;
+  Ven there he see'd the bishop's coach
+    Coming along the road--er."
+
+Thus sang Sam Weller; but "Bold Turpin" would be hard put to it to
+identify his suburban haunts now, and we, before our hair is grey, will
+find those places strange which were so familiar the matter of a few years
+ago.
+
+[Illustration: COTTAGES, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN THE HAUNTS OF DICK TURPIN.]
+
+The town of Hounslow is as unprepossessing as its name, which is saying a
+great deal. Its mile-long street, unlivened by any interesting features,
+is dull without descending to the positively interesting unloveliness of
+Brentford. Just as collectors prize old china whose shape and colouring
+are frankly hideous to those who are not of the elect in those matters, so
+the grotesquely dirty and ugly streets of Brentford have an interest for
+the tourist who does not often come upon their like. Hounslow's is just a
+commonplace ugliness. The curtailed remains of its once numerous and
+extensive coaching inns are become, as a rule, low pot-houses, in which
+labourers in the market-gardens that practically surround the town, sit
+and drink themselves stupid in the evening; and the business premises and
+private houses which alternate along the highway are either shabby old
+places, not old enough to claim any interest on the score of antiquity; or
+of a pretentious bad taste rather more difficult to bear with than the
+dirty hovels and tumbledown cottages they have displaced. Here, indeed, is
+the debateable ground between town and country. Rurality is (appropriately
+enough) in its last ditch, while civilization has established a precarious
+outpost beside it. Flashy "villas" jostle the market-gardeners' cottages;
+and respectability sits self-satisfied in its prim Early Victorian
+drawing-rooms, amid its chairs upholstered in green rep, its horse-hair
+sofas and cut-glass lustres; while on either side the vulgar herd sits at
+open windows in its shirt-sleeves, and smokes black and exceedingly foul
+pipes, and gazes complacently upon the clothes hanging out to dry in the
+garden.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOUNSLOW'S COACHING DAYS_]
+
+Hounslow presented a different picture before the opening of the railways
+to the West. Two thousand post-horses were then kept in the town, and
+coaches and private carriages went dashing through at all hours of the day
+and night, so closely upon one another that they almost resembled a
+procession. As the poet says, the pedestrian then forced his way--
+
+  "Through coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl
+    Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion;
+  Here taverns wooing to a pint of 'purl,'
+    There mails fast flying off, like a delusion."
+
+And, indeed, they have, like delusions, vanished utterly. So early as
+April, 1842, a daily paper is found saying: "At the formerly flourishing
+village of Hounslow, so great is the general depreciation of property, on
+account of the transfer of traffic to the railway, that at one of the inns
+is an inscription, 'New milk and cream sold here;' while another announces
+the profession of the landlord as 'mending boots and shoes.'" The turnpike
+tolls at the same time, between London and Maidenhead, had decreased from
+£18 to £4 a week.
+
+Yet Hounslow very narrowly missed becoming a great railway junction. That,
+indeed, was its proper destiny when the coaching era was done and the
+place decaying. Hounslow became the busy place it was in the days of
+road-travel, because it commanded the great roads to the West. The Bath
+and Exeter Roads, which were one from Hyde Park Corner as far as this
+town, branched at its western end, and it was also on the route to
+Windsor. It should thus have become an important station on the Great
+Western Railway, and might have been, had not other interests prevailed.
+It was the original intention of the Great Western directors, when the
+line was planned by Brunel in 1833, to keep close to the old high-road to
+Bath; but landed interests, both private and corporate, brought about
+numerous deviations, and so Hounslow was left to its fate, and the Great
+Western main line passes through Southall, two and a half miles distant,
+instead.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+We will now press on to the Heath, for our friends the highwaymen are
+anxiously awaiting us. Right away from the seventeenth century this spot
+bore a bad repute, when one of the most daring exploits was performed on
+its gloomy expanse. This was no less a feat than the plundering of that
+warlike general, Fairfax, by Moll Cutpurse. The most capable soldier of
+the age robbed by a woman highwayman, if you will be pleased to excuse the
+Irishry of the expression! But, indeed, the Roaring Girl, as her
+contemporaries called her, was the best man among the whole of that daring
+crew, and to her courage, her cunning, and her ready wit she owed the
+successful career that was hers. She wore the breeches in no metaphorical
+sense, but through all her career habited herself in man's garments. Only
+when she had amassed a fortune and had retired from "the road" did she don
+the skirt.
+
+[Sidenote: _CLAUDE DU VALL_]
+
+It is sad to think that the greatest of all the brotherhood who made
+Hounslow Heath and highway robbery synonymous terms was cut off in the
+full tide of his success. At least, it seems so to us, although the
+travellers of the period doubtless felt a certain satisfaction when Du
+Vall was executed, on January 21, 1670. He was but twenty-seven years of
+age, and already had become a star of the first magnitude. He was, in
+fact, a master of the whole art and mystery of robbing upon the road, and
+to this he brought the most perfect courtesy. Violence had no part in the
+methods of this artist, and he would have scorned, we may be sure, the
+ruffianly and even murderous acts of a later generation of the craft,
+which not only despoiled travellers of their goods, but rendered the Heath
+dangerous to life and limb. His chief exploit is classic, and is set forth
+so eloquently, and with such an engaging profusion of capital letters, in
+a contemporary pamphlet, that one cannot do better than quote it:--
+
+"He, with his Squadron, overtakes a Coach which they had set over Night,
+having Intelligence of a Booty of four hundred Pounds in it. In the Coach
+was a Knight, his Lady, and only one Serving-maid, who, perceiving five
+Horsemen making up to them, presently imagined that they were beset; and
+they were confirmed in this Apprehension by seeing them whisper to one
+another, and ride backwards and forwards. The Lady, to shew that she was
+not afraid, takes a Flageolet out of her pocket and plays. Du Vall takes
+the Hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a Flageolet of his own,
+and in this Posture he rides up to the Coachside. 'Sir,' says he to the
+Person in the Coach, 'your Lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but
+that she dances as well. Will you please to walk out of the Coach and let
+me have the Honour to dance one Currant with her upon the Heath?' 'Sir,'
+said the Person in the Coach, 'I dare not deny anything to one of your
+Quality and good Mind. You seem a Gentleman, and your Request is very
+reasonable.' Which said, the Lacquey opens the Boot, out comes the knight,
+Du Vall leaps lightly off his horse and hands the Lady out of the Coach.
+They danced, and here it was that Du Vall performed Marvels; the best
+Masters in London, except those that are French, not being able to shew
+such footing as he did in his great French Riding Boots. The Dancing being
+over (there being no violins, Du Vall sung the Currant himself) he waits
+on the Lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vall to him,
+'Sir, you have forgot to pay the Musick.' 'No, I have not,' replies the
+knight, and, putting his Hand under the Seat of the Coach, pulls out a
+hundred Pounds in a Bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vall took with a
+very good grace, and courteously answered, 'Sir, you are liberal, and
+shall have no cause to repent your being so; this Liberality of yours
+shall excuse you the other Three Hundred Pounds,' and giving the Word,
+that if he met with any more of the Crew he might pass undisturbed, he
+civilly takes his leave of him. He manifested his agility of body by
+lightly dismounting off his horse, and with Ease and Freedom getting up
+again when he took his Leave; his excellent Deportment by his incomparable
+Dancing and his graceful manner of taking the hundred Pounds."
+
+When this hero had gone the inevitable way of his fellows, he was buried
+with great pomp and circumstance in the church of St. Paul, Covent Garden,
+with a set of eulogistic verses for his epitaph. Unfortunately, the old
+church was destroyed by fire and the epitaph with it.
+
+[Sidenote: _HIGHWAY MURDERS_]
+
+Mr. Nuthall, the Earl of Chatham's solicitor, too, who had been to Bath to
+confer with his gouty and irascible client, was stopped in his carriage as
+it was going towards London across this dreaded wilderness. The highwaymen
+fired at him, and he died of fright. Two other notable murders by
+highwaymen took place here--in 1798 and 1802--and bear witness to the
+degeneracy of the craft. The first was Mr. Mellish, who was fired upon and
+killed as he was returning from a run with the King's hounds. A Mr. Steele
+was the other victim, and his assailants, Haggarty and Holloway, who had
+planned the crime at the "Turk's Head," Dyot Street, Holborn, it is
+satisfactory to be able to add, were hanged. The execution took place at
+the Old Bailey, when twenty-eight persons among the crowds who had come to
+see the sight were crushed to death. Up to the year 1800, the Heath was a
+most famous place for gibbets. "The road," as a writer of the period says,
+"was literally lined with gibbets on which the carcases of malefactors
+hung in irons, blackening in the sun." Du Vall had a successor in Twysden,
+Bishop of Raphoe, collecting tithes in rather a promiscuous way, by
+turning highwayman in 1752. His career was a short one, for one of the
+first travellers he bade "Stand!" on the Heath shot him through the body,
+from which he died a few days later, at the house of a friend, from
+"inflammation of the bowels," as the contemporary report, jealous for the
+reputation of the dignified clergy, put it.
+
+Shall I weary you by recounting more of these highway crimes? There was
+Dr. Shelton, a surgeon, who flourished in the early thirties of last
+century, and, deserting lancet and scalpel, took to the road and that not
+more lethal weapon, the horse-pistol; though, to be sure, it was more for
+show than use, for not Du Vall himself could have been more courteous.
+
+That the poet who wrote of Bagshot Heath as a place "where ruined gamblers
+oft repay their loss" might with perfect propriety have substituted
+"Hounslow" will be readily seen when we mention Parsons, nearly
+contemporary with Shelton, who robbed at Hounslow that he might gamble in
+London. Parsons was the son of a "Bart. of the B.K.," as the Tichborne
+Claimant would have phrased it; an Eton boy, at one time an officer both
+in the Army and Navy, and the husband of a beautiful heiress. He made an
+edifying end at Tyburn.
+
+Then there was Barkwith, a mere novice, whose first sally led to a like
+exit. He was the son of a Cambridgeshire squire, and manager to a
+Lincoln's Inn solicitor. He had "borrowed" trust moneys wherewith to
+satisfy some debts of honour; and so the hour of four o'clock in the
+afternoon of a November day found him on the Heath, with a pistol in his
+hand and his heart in his mouth, "holding up" a coach. The booty was but a
+miserable handful of silver; but, being captured, he died for it, all the
+same. Let us trust he did "the young gentlemen who belong to Inns of
+Court" an injustice when, in his dying speech and confession, he warned
+his hearers against them as "the most wicked of any."
+
+[Sidenote: _"DARE-DEVIL SIMMS"_]
+
+Then there was Dare-devil Simms--"Gentleman Harry," as his friends called
+him--a midshipman who came up from deserting his ship in the West Country.
+First borrowing a saddle and bridle, and then stealing a horse, he
+commenced his career by robbing a post-chaise and the Bristol Mail, and
+coming to London, soon became a noted figure on this stage. One night he
+relieved a Mr. Sleep of his purse. The despoiled traveller bewailed his
+loss bitterly, but Harry comforted him with the assurance that he would
+have been robbed in any case; if not by himself, certainly by one or other
+of the two who were waiting for him down the road. "But if you meet them,"
+said he, "sing out 'Thomas!' and they will let you pass." The unfortunate
+man went on his way calling "Thomas!" to every one he met, and narrowly
+escaped being severely handled by some gentlemen who conceived themselves
+insulted.
+
+Presently Tyburn claimed Gentleman Harry also, and a career which had been
+begun by transportation, and continued through such stirring adventures
+as being sold for a slave, becoming a sailor and a privateersman, was
+finally extinguished by the halter. A short life and a merry.
+
+Strawkins, Simpson, and Wilson, too, helped to keep up the stirring story
+of the road. They intercepted the Bristol Mail and left the postboy, bound
+with ropes, at the bottom of a ditch on the outskirts of Colnbrook. They
+were tracked down by the Post Office, and, Wilson turning King's evidence,
+the first two were hanged. The Mail was then given an escort of Dragoons,
+but highway robbery had too strong a spice of adventure for one of these
+fine fellows to resist it. He accordingly pillaged the Bath Stage, and
+suffered the appointed end in due course.
+
+This catalogue of mine does not close until 1820, in which year four
+confederates plundered the Bristol Mail. They had booked the inside seats,
+and during their journey through the night forced open the strong boxes
+placed under the seats, decamped with their contents, and were never heard
+of again.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _A STORY OF THE ROAD_]
+
+One of the most diverting stories of Hounslow Heath, which serves to
+relieve its sombre repute, is that which the late Mr. James Payn tells, in
+one of his reminiscences. "The story goes," he says, "that early in the
+century the landlord of Skindle's, at Maidenhead, was a strong Radical,
+and could command a dozen votes; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in
+the person of his son, a good-for-naught. During a certain Berkshire
+election, a Tory solicitor was staying at this inn, and had occasion to go
+to London for the sinews of war. His gig was stopped on his way back, on
+Hounslow Heath, by a gentleman of the road.
+
+"I have no money," said the lawyer, with professional readiness, "but
+there is my watch and chain."
+
+"You have a thousand pounds in gold in a box under the seat," was the
+unexpected reply; "throw back the apron!"
+
+The lawyer obeyed, but as the horseman stooped to take the box, the lawyer
+knocked the pistol out of his hand and drove off at full gallop. He had a
+very quick-going mare, and before the highwayman could find his weapon,
+which had fallen into some furze, was beyond pursuit.
+
+The next morning the lawyer sent for the landlord. "Yesterday," he said,
+"I was stopped on Hounslow Heath. The man had a mask on, but I recognized
+him by his voice, which I can swear to. I knew him as well as he knew me.
+You had better speak to your son about it, and then we will resume our
+conversation."
+
+The landlord was quite innocent of his son's intended crime, but he had
+reason to believe him capable of it. He went out with a heavy heart, and
+when he came back his face showed it. "Well," he said, with a sort of calm
+despair, "what steps do you intend to take, sir, in the matter?"
+
+"None to hurt an old friend, you may be sure," answered the lawyer; "only
+those twelve votes you boasted about must be given to our side instead of
+yours;" which was accordingly arranged.
+
+In those days, as will already have been seen, Hounslow Heath was a very
+real place indeed. There was (as the journalistic slang of to-day has it)
+"actuality" about that then solitary and barren waste, which is not a
+little difficult to realize nowadays. The cyclist who speeds over the
+level roads and past the smiling orchards and market gardens, finds it
+difficult to believe that this was the sinister place of eighty years ago;
+and, since there is no Heath to-day, is apt to come to the conclusion that
+it must have been the very "Mrs. Harris" of heaths; a figment, that is to
+say, of romantic writers' imaginations. Such, however, was by no means the
+case. Where cultivated lands are now, and where suburban villas stand,
+there stretched, less than eighty years since, a veritable scene of
+desolation. Furze-bushes, swampy gravel-pits in which tall grasses and
+bulrushes grew, and grassy hillocks, the homes of snipe and frogs, and the
+haunts of the peewit, were the features of the scene by day; while, when
+night was come, the whole place swarmed with footpads and highwaymen.
+
+[Sidenote: _LORD BERKELEY'S ADVENTURES_]
+
+At that time Lord Berkeley used frequently to stay at his country house at
+Cranford, close by, from Saturdays to Mondays, and had twice been stopped
+and robbed on his way before a third and last encounter, in which he shot
+his assailant dead. On the second occasion, the door of his travelling
+carriage was opened, and a footpad, dressed as a sailor, pointed a
+fully-cocked pistol at him. The man's hand trembled violently, and while
+my lord was producing what money he had about him, the trigger was pulled,
+more, it would seem, from accident than intention. Happily, the pistol
+missed fire. The man then exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, my lord," and,
+recocking his pistol, retreated with his plunder.
+
+After this escape, Lord Berkeley swore he would never be robbed again, and
+always travelled at night with a short carriage-gun and a brace of
+pistols. Thus armed, it was on a November night in 1774 that he was
+attacked for the last time. He was going to dine with Mr. Justice
+Bulstrode, who lived in an old house surrounded by a brick wall, near
+where Hounslow's modern church now stands, and as the carriage was nearing
+the town, a voice called to the postboy to halt, and a man rode up to the
+carriage window on the left-hand side, thrusting in a pistol, as the glass
+was let down. With his left hand Lord Berkeley seized the weapon and
+turned it away, while with his right he pushed the short double-barrelled
+gun he had with him against the robber's body, and fired once. The man was
+severely wounded, and his clothes were set on fire, but he managed to ride
+away some fifty yards, and then fell dead. Two accomplices then appeared,
+but Lord Berkeley, and a servant on horseback who rode behind the
+carriage, made for them, and they fled. It was then discovered that the
+gang were all amateur highwaymen, and youths from eighteen to twenty years
+of age, in good positions in London.
+
+The Earl of Berkeley seems to have been somewhat unduly twitted about this
+encounter. Society was quite resigned to seeing highwaymen hanged,
+although it made heroes of them while they were waiting in the "stone jug"
+at Newgate for that fatal morning at Tyburn; but it appears to have
+considered the shooting of one of them an unsportsmanlike act.
+
+Lord Chesterfield, however, should have been quite the last man to sneer
+at the Earl on this score, for he himself was under a very well-deserved
+public censure for having prosecuted Dr. Dodd, his son's tutor, for
+forgery, with the result that the Doctor was hanged. Accordingly, when he
+sarcastically asked Lord Berkeley "how many highwaymen he had shot
+lately," it is pleasing to record that he was readily reduced to silence
+by the retort, "As many as you have hanged tutors; but with much better
+reason for doing so."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _CRANFORD_]
+
+It is just beyond Cranford Bridge that the pumps which are so odd a
+feature of the Bath Road begin. They line the highway on the left-hand
+side going from London, and are all situated in the same position as shown
+in the illustration. They are of uniform pattern, and are placed at
+regular intervals. These pumps are relics of the coaching age, but are
+peculiar to the Bath and some stretches of the Exeter roads. Placed here
+for keeping the highway well watered in the old days of road-travel, they
+have evidently long been out of use; in fact, their handles are all
+chained up. They recur so regularly that they might almost form part of a
+new table of measurement, as thus:--
+
+  63 paces             equal 1 telegraph-post.
+  19 telegraph-posts     "   1 mile.
+   2 miles               "   1 pump.
+   1-1/2 pumps           "   1 pub.
+
+[Illustration: A BATH ROAD PUMP.]
+
+[Illustration: THE "BERKELEY ARMS."]
+
+Cranford is a more picturesquely romantic place than any one has a right
+to expect in the Middlesex of these latter days. That outlying portion of
+the village which borders the high-road still wears the air of a tentative
+settlement of civilization amid the wilds of the rolling prairie, and
+might form a ready object-lesson for any untravelled Englishman who
+desires "local colour" for the writing of an American romance in the
+_genre_ of Bret Harte. And, indeed, the houses grouped around Cranford
+Bridge were, some seventy years ago, built on the very borders of Hounslow
+Heath, whose dreary and dangerous wastes only found a boundary here,
+beside the still waters of the placid Crane. At Cranford Bridge stands
+that fine old coaching inn, the "Berkeley Arms," and opposite the "White
+Hart," which must have been in those times very havens of refuge in that
+wild spot; and away up the lane to the right hand lies the village and
+park, as pretty a spot as you shall find in a long day's march. Cranford
+village is rich in beautiful old mansions set in midst of walled gardens
+whose formal precincts are entered through massive wrought-iron gates.
+Beside this lane is the village "lock-up," or "round-house," built in
+1810, and now the only one of its kind left anywhere near London. The
+rest have all been demolished, but "once upon a time" no village could
+have been considered complete without one, or without the whipping-post
+and stocks which were generally erected close at hand. Cranford, of
+course, being situated in the midst of the alarums and excursions caused
+by the highwaymen who infested the vicinity and kept the inhabitants in a
+state of terror every night, had a peculiarly urgent need for such a
+place, and it is, perhaps, because those gentry were such expert
+prison-breakers, that this example is more than usually strong, the door
+being plated with iron, and the small square window filled with sheet iron
+pierced with small holes.
+
+[Sidenote: _CRANFORD ROUND HOUSE_]
+
+Cranford Park, near by, was a seat of the Earls of Berkeley, and is now
+the residence of Lord Fitzhardinge, who is _de facto_ "Earl of Berkeley."
+But the romantic scandals which arose from the fifth Earl having
+eventually married a servant in his household, after she had borne him
+several children, caused so much litigation about the succession to the
+title that, although one of his sons, the Hon. Thomas Moreton
+Fitzhardinge-Berkeley, was declared by a decision of the House of Lords to
+be legitimate, he never assumed the title, for the reason that the barring
+of his elder brother reflected upon his mother's good name. The whole
+affair is exceedingly involved and mysterious, and it is therefore quite
+in order that Cranford House should have the reputation of being haunted.
+
+The house is a large rambling pile in the midst of the Park, overlooking
+the sullen ornamental waters formed from the river Crane. The ancient
+parish church stands close by. The chief or garden front of the house is
+curiously like one of the old-fashioned houses that give so distinctive a
+character to Park Lane, in London; having a double-bayed front with
+verandahs. The aspect of such a house standing in the open country is
+weird in the extreme.
+
+[Illustration: CRANFORD HOUSE.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CRANFORD GHOST_]
+
+It was the Hon. Grantley Berkeley who first drew attention to the
+"haunted" character of the house. He tells, in his "Recollections," how
+one night when he and his brother had returned home late, they went down
+into the kitchen in search of some supper, all the rest of the household
+having retired to rest long before, and distinctly saw the tall figure of
+an elderly woman walk across the kitchen. Thinking it was one of the
+maids, they spoke to her, but she vanished into thin air, and a search
+discovered nothing at all. The obvious comment here is that people
+returning home late at night in those times very frequently saw things
+that had no existence. The narrator's father, however, used to describe
+how he saw a man in the stable-yard, and thinking he was some unauthorized
+visitor in the Servants' Hall, asked him what he was doing there. The man
+"vanished" without a reply; to which the rejoinder may well be made that
+he might do so and yet be no ghost; the motive force being a sight of the
+horsewhip which the Earl was carrying.
+
+Cranford deserves notice from the literary pilgrim from the circumstance
+that Dr. Thomas Fuller, the Fuller of the much-quoted "Worthies of
+England," was chaplain to George, Lord Berkeley, who presented him to the
+rectory in 1658. He lies buried in the chancel of the church.
+
+Harlington Corner is the name of the spot, half a mile down the road,
+where one of the many old roadside hostelries stands by a branch road
+leading on the right to Harlington, and on the left to East Bedfont, on
+the Exeter Road. The Corner, besides leading to Harlington, was also the
+"junction" for Uxbridge, and here the slow stages set down or took up
+passengers for that town. The fast coaches did not stop here, or were
+supposed not to do so. Some of them, however, in defiance of time-bills,
+halted at the "Magpies"--by arrangement, of course, with the
+innkeeper--much to the profit of that house. One of these venal drivers
+was neatly caught by Mr. Chaplin, of the once well-known coaching firm of
+Chaplin and Horne. The coachman had with him on the box seat that day a
+particularly genial passenger, who proved also to have a very intimate
+knowledge of horseflesh. Pulling up at the "Magpies," where tables were
+spread, showing that the coach was expected as a matter of course, he
+winked at his passenger and invited him to refresh. Then, when all was, as
+the poet would say, "merry as a marriage-bell," the unknown, like another
+"Hawkshaw the Detective," revealed himself. He was Chaplin! The coachman
+drove that coach no more!
+
+[Illustration: THE "OLD MAGPIES."]
+
+[Sidenote: _"ARLINGTON OF HARLINGTON"_]
+
+Harlington, up the road to Uxbridge, was once the seat of the Bennets, one
+of whom, Henry Bennet, was created Viscount Thetford and Earl of Arlington
+in 1663, and lives in history as the "Arlington" of the Cabal. He selected
+this village for one of his titles, but the 'eralds' College (as it
+surely should have been called) made out his patent of nobility without
+the "H," and so "Arlington" he had to become. Arlington Street,
+Piccadilly, remains to this day, and the Dukes of Grafton, in whose
+numerous titles this is merged, are still Barons "Arlington of Harlington,
+in Middlesex."
+
+After which we will hasten on, passing Sipson (a corruption of
+"Shepiston") Green. Here we come upon the trail of messieurs the footpads
+again, for the road between this inn and the humbler "Old Magpies," a few
+hundred yards further on, is sad with the story of highway murder.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The times of the highwaymen are, fortunately for the wayfarer, if
+unhappily for romance, long since past, and many of the once-notorious
+haunts of Sixteen-string Jack, Claude du Vall, Dick Turpin, and their
+less-famed companions have disappeared before the ravages of time and the
+much more destructive onslaughts of the builder. A hundred years ago it
+would have been difficult to name a lonely suburban inn that was not more
+or less favoured and frequented by the "Knights of the Road." Nowadays the
+remaining examples are, for those interested in the old story of the
+roads, all too few.
+
+Perhaps this queer little roadside inn, the "Old Magpies," is the most
+romantic-looking among those that are left. For one thing, it possesses a
+thick and beetle-browed thatch which impends over the upper windows like
+bushy eyebrows, and gives those windows--the eyes of the house--just that
+lowering and suspicious look which heavy and bristling eyebrows confer
+upon a man.
+
+But it is not only its romantic appearance that gives the "Old Magpies" an
+interest, for it is a well-ascertained fact that outside this house, so
+near to the once terrible Hounslow Heath, the brother of Mr. Mellish, M.P.
+for Grimsby, was murdered by highwaymen in April, 1798, when returning
+from a day's hunting with the King's hounds.
+
+He had started with two others from the "Castle" Hotel, at Salt Hill, for
+London, after dinner, and the carriage in which the party was seated was
+passing near the "Old Magpies" at about half-past eight, when it was
+attacked by three footpads. One held the horses' heads while the other two
+guarded the windows, firing a shot through, to terrify the occupants. They
+then demanded money. No one offered any resistance, purses and bank-notes
+being handed over as a matter of course. Then the travellers were allowed
+to go, a parting shot in the dark being fired into the carriage. It struck
+Mr. Mellish in the forehead. Coming to another inn near by, called the
+"Magpies," the wounded man was taken upstairs and put to bed, while a
+surgeon was sent for.
+
+He came from Hounslow, and was robbed on the way by the same gang.
+Additional medical assistance was called in, but this late victim of
+highway robbery died within forty-eight hours.
+
+[Sidenote: _SIR JOSEPH BANKS_]
+
+The assassins were never apprehended, although Bow Street sent its
+cleverest officers to track them down. Bow Street caught the smaller fry
+readily enough, who snatched handkerchiefs and such petty booty, and
+hanged them out of hand, while the more desperate villains generally
+escaped. This is not to say that the Bow Street Runners were not vigilant
+and zealous. Indeed, their zeal sometimes outran their discretion, as
+instanced in their bold capture of Sir Joseph Banks, who was collecting
+natural history specimens in the wilds. Sir Joseph, distinguished man of
+science though he was, and a gentleman, was singularly ill-favoured, and
+in this fact lies the chief sting of Peter Pindar's witty verses on the
+subject--
+
+  "Sir Joseph, fav'rite of great Queens and Kings,
+  Whose wisdom weed- and insect-hunter sings;
+    And ladies fair applaud, with smile so dimpling;
+  Went forth one day amid the laughing fields
+  Where Nature such exhaustless treasure yields--A-simpling!
+  It happened on the self-same morn so bright
+  The nimble pupils of Sir Sampson Wright,
+  A-simpling too, for plants called Thieves, proceeded;
+  Of which the nation's field should oft be weeded."
+
+They seize Sir Joseph.
+
+  "'Sirs, what d'ye take me for?' the Knight exclaimed--
+    'A thief,' replied the Runners, with a curse;
+  'And now, sir, let us search you, and be damn'd'--
+    And then they searched his pockets, fobs, and purse,
+  But, 'stead of pistol dire, and death-like crape,
+    A pocket-handkerchief they cast their eye on,
+  Containing frogs and toads of various shape,
+    Dock, daisy, nettletop, and dandelion,
+      To entertain, with great propriety,
+      The members of his sage Society;
+  Yet would not alter they their strong belief
+  That this their pris'ner was a thief.
+
+  "'Sirs, I'm no highwayman,' exclaimed the Knight--
+  'No--there,' rejoined the Runners, 'you are right--
+    A footpad only. Yes, we know your trade--
+  Yes, you're a pretty babe of grace;
+  We want no proofs, old codger, but your face;
+    So come along with us, old blade.'
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Sir Joseph told them that a neighb'ring Squire
+    Should answer for it that he was no thief;
+  On which they plumply damn'd him for a liar,
+    And said such stories should not save his beef;
+      And, if they understood their trade,
+      His _mittimus_ should soon be made;
+  And forty pounds be theirs, a pretty sum,
+  For sending such a rogue to Kingdom Come."
+
+To the Squire, however, they took that distinguished member of Society,
+who, of course, identified him at once, and bade them beg his pardon. This
+they did--according to "Peter Pindar"--with a resolution in future not to
+judge of people by their looks!
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Just before reaching the roadside hamlet of Longford, fifteen miles from
+Hyde Park Corner, a lane leads on the right hand to Harmondsworth, a short
+mile distant across the wide flat cabbage and potato fields.
+"Harm'sworth," as the rustics call it, is mentioned in Domesday Book,
+under the name of "Hermondesworde;" that is to say, Hermonde's sworth or
+sward, the pasture-land of some forgotten Hermonde.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "GOTHIC BARN"_]
+
+Few ever turn aside from the dusty high-road to visit this old-fashioned
+village, rich in old timber-framed houses, and possessing an ancient
+tithe-barn which, standing next the church, was once part of an obscure
+Priory established here. The "Gothic Barn" is built precisely on
+ecclesiastical lines, with nave and aisles, and is the largest of the
+tithe-barns now remaining in England, being 191 feet in length and 38
+feet, in breadth. The walls are built of a rough kind of conglomerate
+found in the locality, and called "pudding-stone," the flints and pebbles
+distributed through the rock resembling to a lively imagination the
+currants and raisins in plum-puddings. The interior of the barn is a vast
+mass of oak columns and open roofing.
+
+[Illustration: THE "GOTHIC BARN," HARMONDSWORTH.]
+
+A relic of old country life may be seen hanging in this barn, in the
+shape of a flail, now occasionally used for threshing out beans.
+
+Very few people will understand the meaning of the old English word
+"flail," because it is almost fifty years since that old-world
+agricultural implement was in general use. Until steam was introduced as a
+labour-saving appliance in agricultural work, corn was invariably threshed
+out of the ear by wooden instruments like that pictured here, consisting
+of two unequal lengths of rounded wood of the size of an ordinary
+broomstick, connected by leathern loops.
+
+[Illustration: OLD FLAIL, HARMONDSWORTH]
+
+The farm hands who used this primitive contrivance grasped hold of the
+longer stick, and, brandishing it about over their heads, brought the
+hinged end down repeatedly on the wheat spread out on the threshing floor;
+thus, with the expenditure of considerable time and muscular strength,
+separating the grains from the ears. As the "business end" of the flail is
+constructed so as to swing in every direction, it is obvious that the
+mastery of it was only acquired with practice, and at the cost of sundry
+whacks on the head brought on himself by the clumsy novice. Indeed, it is
+an instrument requiring particular dexterity in manipulation.
+
+Longford obtains its name from the marshy ford over one of the sluggish
+branches of the Colne, which anciently spread over the road at this spot.
+The ford was eventually replaced by the bridge, called "Queen's Bridge,"
+which now carries the highway over the stream close by the old inn now
+called the "Peggy Bedford," from a well-remembered landlady who kept the
+house in coaching days, and died in 1859. The real name of it, however,
+now almost forgotten, is the "King's Head." The spot is picturesque in the
+grouping of gnarled old wayside trees with the quaint house and its
+luxuriant garden; and more so, perhaps, because it comes as a surprise
+from the hitherto unrelieved monotony of the flat road all the way from
+Cranford Bridge.
+
+[Sidenote: _COLNBROOK_]
+
+In another mile and three-quarters the road reaches Colnbrook, in midst of
+whose long street one of the numerous channels of the Colne divides the
+counties of Middlesex and Bucks. The boundaries of English counties are
+rarely marked for the information of wayfarers along the highways and
+byeways of the country, but here the brick bridge over the Colne, built in
+1777, has inscriptions which mark where the frontiers march together; and
+when the Bath Road is crowded with cyclists on Saturday afternoons in
+summer-time one or more can generally be found standing on the bridge with
+one leg in each county.
+
+There are no fewer than four channels of the Colne here, and the land all
+round about is flat and waterlogged. The entrance to Colnbrook from London
+is in fact quite a little Holland in appearance, where streams flow
+sluggishly beside the road and are spanned by many footbridges that give
+access to the gardens of the pleasant country cottages on either side. A
+fine avenue of elms shades the road, and ahead is the cramped street of
+Colnbrook with its mellowed red-brick houses and bright red-tiled roofs.
+Colnbrook street is narrow to a degree, and it is surprising how the many
+coaches that used to come tearing through at all hours of day and night
+managed to escape accidents. There is reason for this narrowness, for
+Colnbrook was originally built upon a stone causeway across the marshes of
+the Colne, and nowhere else were there to be found solid foundations. The
+original causeway may possibly have been Roman, for this is said to have
+been the station of _Ad Pontes_, described by Antoninus in his
+_Itineraries_. Staines, however, is more likely the site of it.
+
+[Illustration: THE COUNTY BOUNDARY.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "OSTRICH"_]
+
+Colnbrook is probably the best example of a decayed coaching-town now to
+be found in the Home Counties. Too remote from London for suburban
+expansion to have affected it, the quaint street remains much as it was a
+hundred, nay two hundred years ago. The last coach might have left
+yester-year, so undisturbed appears to be the place. There are
+coaching-inns here of vast size, ranging from the solid-looking "George"
+with "eighteenth century" proclaimed plainly enough on its stolid face,
+back to the "Ostrich," rambling, gabled, timber-framed, Elizabethan. They
+would have you believe that this house stands on the site of one of the
+old guesthouses established in the eleventh, twelfth, and succeeding
+centuries along the roads by the good Churchmen of those times. The
+original guesthouse here, however, appears to have been a secular
+foundation, for it is recorded that in 1106, a certain Milo Crispin gave
+it--"_quoddam hospitium in viâ Londoniæ apud Colebroc_"--to the Abbot of
+Abingdon. The sign of the "Ostrich" is therefore a lineal descendant of
+"_Hospitium_," _viâ_ "Hospice" and "Ospridge;" for, as we have already
+seen, the letter H has ever been a negligeable quantity.
+
+The original house is said by persistent traditions to have been the scene
+of a dreadful series of abominable murders something of the "Sweeny Todd"
+order. The West of England, even so far back as five hundred years ago,
+was famous for its cloth, and along this road, with their bales and
+pack-horses, journeyed the rich clothiers to and from the London market,
+halting in their tedious travels at the inns on the way. The "Ostrich" was
+one of these, and prospered exceedingly by the patronage of those jolly
+merchants. The gold they carried, however, aroused the cupidity of the
+innkeeper and his wife, who devised a murder-trap in one of the upstairs
+bedrooms, by which the bed, which was placed above a trap-door, was tilted
+up in the middle of the night, so that its slumbering occupant was shot
+into a huge copper of boiling water, and so scalded to death. According to
+this tradition, which itself is some hundreds of years old, thirteen
+victims were thus disposed of, and the innkeeper waxed rich. There must
+have been other accomplices, for, according to the story, the bodies were
+kept until they formed a cartload, when they were heaped up, driven away
+to the Thames at Wraysbury and thrown in. One, however, had fallen out by
+the way, and whilst the criminals were disputing by the river-bank as to
+what had become of it, they were observed by a fisherman who had been
+hidden in the rushes while engaged in setting eel-bucks. He suggested that
+the best thing for them to do was to throw in one of themselves, to make
+up the number; to which sprightly wit they replied with a shower of
+arrows. The fisherman then rowed away, with one of the arrows sticking in
+his boat, and went with it into Colnbrook the following day. Outside the
+"Ostrich" he was espied by the innkeeper's little son, who exclaimed, "You
+have got one of my father's arrows!" The man and his wife were missing,
+but were afterwards captured and hanged.
+
+[Illustration: COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN.]
+
+This gory legend does not render Colnbrook the more attractive to the
+stranger, but the Colnbrook folks are proud of it. Like the Fat Boy in
+"Pickwick," they "wants to make yer flesh creep," and would have one
+believe that the present "Ostrich" is the identical building--which it
+isn't.
+
+Another cherished tradition of Colnbrook is that King John stayed here on
+his journey to Runneymede to sign the famous Magna Charta, the "Palladium
+of English Liberties," as phrase-makers are pleased to call it. They still
+show the stranger "King John's Palace," a quaint house which looks on to
+the road, and is not so old as John's time by some three hundred years.
+That, however, by no means discredits the story to the good folks of
+Colnbrook.
+
+A better ascertained historical event is the rising in favour of the
+deposed Richard the Second in 1400, when forty thousand men from the West
+Country lay encamped by the Colne, prepared to descend upon Windsor and
+London, to seize the usurper, Henry the Fourth. But Henry, fleeing from
+Windsor, raised an army in London; and between the rumours of his coming
+and treachery in their own ranks, the partisans of Richard faded away.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _TO SLOUGH_]
+
+The long stretches of the Bath Road between this and Slough are nowadays
+enlivened by few incidents or interesting places, although during the last
+century, and well on into this, the highway was lively enough with
+Royalties and their escorts, journeying between Windsor and St. James's.
+The route taken on these occasions was generally through Datchet, and so
+on to the Bath Road just here. An old print of this period shows us how
+George the Third used to travel on this road to London, or to the unkingly
+domestic life at Kew Palace, where the farmer-like reputation of that not
+very brilliant monarch was sustained on boiled mutton and turnips, and
+improving books.
+
+[Illustration: ALMSHOUSES, LANGLEY.]
+
+The hamlet of Langley Broom, one and a half miles on the way, is the
+uninteresting offshoot, of the pretty village of Langley Marish (or
+"Marshy Langley"), that lies just within sight of the road, and has some
+delightful old red-brick almshouses, which, together with the ancient
+library and painted room of Renaissance period in the church, render the
+place worthy a visit. This is all there is to interest the stranger, with
+the exception of a pretty peep towards Windsor Castle on the left hand,
+within two miles of Slough, and near where Cary of the _Itinerary_ places
+a spot he calls "Tetsworth Water," which does not appear to exist
+nowadays.
+
+[Illustration: THE STOLEN FOUNTAIN.]
+
+[Sidenote: _A STOLEN FOUNTAIN_]
+
+Slough is quite modern and unremarkable, but it is rapidly building up
+legends of its own. There have, for instance, been many strange thefts on
+the roads, from time to time, but none perhaps stranger than the
+purloining, two years ago, of the drinking-fountain which used to stand at
+the entrance to Slough, where the road branches off to Uxbridge. Until
+some unusually acquisitive folk came along and carried it away with them,
+there was at that corner a fountain of bronze and marble, fourteen feet in
+height, the bronze upper part weighing nearly half a ton. It acted also as
+a finger-post, directing strayed cyclists in the way they should go. The
+good folks of Slough went to bed one night and saw their fountain standing
+where it had been used to stand for years past; but in the morning, when
+they arose and went forth about their business, the fountain was gone!
+Nothing but the plinth was left. Some mad wag suggested that one of the
+many cyclists who frequent the Bath Road had taken it home with him as a
+memento of Slough; but it seems that a gang of original-minded thieves
+made away with it for the sake of the bronze, which, when broken up, must
+have brought them a good sum. At any rate, it seems quite beyond the
+bounds of possibility that Slough will ever see its fountain again.
+
+[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE ROAD NEAR SLOUGH.]
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+It requires the specialized knowledge of a district surveyor to determine
+where Slough ends and Salt Hill begins, although probably it would be a
+shrewd guess to say that the roads which cross the Bath Road in the midst
+of Slough, and go respectively left and right to Windsor and Stoke Poges,
+form the dividing line. For all practical purposes, however, the places
+are one. Salt Hill has decayed, rather than grown, while the town of
+Slough (unlovely name!) is almost wholly a creation of the railway. Not
+only strangers have noted the unpleasing name of the place, but some of
+the inhabitants even endeavoured to change it a few years ago. The
+proposition was to rechristen it "Upton Royal," Upton being a hamlet near
+by, the "Royal" a bright idea of the local boot-lickers, who wanted to
+emphasize the fact of their proximity to Windsor. The project fell
+through.
+
+[Sidenote: _A TRAGICAL DINNER_]
+
+Many of the crack coaches halted at Salt Hill, where, at the "Castle" or
+the "Windmill," they found accommodation of the very best. Salt Hill, in
+fact, was a place which thrived solely on coaching, and the glories of it
+are now departed. A tragical event clouded over the fair fame of the
+"Castle" in 1773. It seems that on the 29th of March in that year, a
+number of gentlemen forming the Colnbrook Turnpike Commission met there,
+when the Hon. Mr. O'Brien, Capt. Needham, Edward Mason, Major Mayne, Major
+Cheshire, Walpole Eyre, Capt. Salter, Mr. Isherwood, Mr. Benwell, Mr.
+Pote, senr., and Mr. Burcombe attended and dined together. The dinner
+consisted of soup, jack, perch, and "eel pitch cockt" (whatever that may
+have been), fowls, bacon, and greens, veal cutlets, ragout of pigs' ears,
+chine of mutton and salad, course of lamb and cucumbers, crawfish, pastry,
+and jellies. The wines were Madeira and Port of the very best quality;
+but, notwithstanding this elaborate spread, the company, we are told, ate
+and drank moderately, nor was there excess in any respect. Before dinner,
+several paupers were examined, and among them one most remarkably
+miserable object. In about ten or eleven days afterwards, every one of the
+company, except Mr. Pote, who had walked in the garden during the
+examination of the paupers, was taken ill, and five of them soon died. It
+was, at the time, supposed that some infection from the paupers had
+occasioned this fatality, more especially as Mr. Pote, who was absent from
+the examination, was the only person who escaped unaffected, although he
+had dined in exactly the same manner as the others.
+
+Some persons have compared this affair with the mortality arising from the
+Black Assizes, but it should seem, by another account, that these
+unfortunate gentlemen had partaken of soup that had been allowed to stand
+in a copper vessel, and that, therefore, they died of mineral poisoning.
+They lie buried in the little churchyard of Wexham, two miles distant,
+where an inscription records the facts. That sad business quite ruined the
+"Castle" Hotel.
+
+But all the Salt Hill hotels were ruined when the Great Western Railway
+was constructed. The first section was opened, from Paddington to Taplow,
+on June 4, 1838, and those old hostelries at one blow found most of their
+patrons taken from them. It is true that this disaster had been impending
+since 1833, when the route for the new railway was first surveyed; but
+after the victory of the opponents of the first Bill, when a public
+meeting was held at Salt Hill to rejoice in the defeat of the railway
+project, the innkeepers seemed to think that they could not come to much
+harm. They were, however, bitterly disillusioned.
+
+[Sidenote: _OPENING OF THE G.W.R._]
+
+It is curious, nowadays, to look back upon the time when the Great Western
+Railway was first built. The authorities of Eton College, together with
+the Court, had effectually driven the railway from Windsor and Eton, and
+the College people had also secured the insertion of a clause in the
+Company's Act forbidding the erection of a station at Slough.
+Notwithstanding this, however, trains stopped at Slough from the very
+first. The Company did this by an ingenious evasion of the spirit, if not
+the letter, of their Parliamentary obligations. By their Act they were
+forbidden to _build a station_ at Slough, but nothing had been said about
+trains stopping there! Accordingly, two rooms were hired at a public house
+beside the line where Slough station now stands, and tickets were issued
+there, comfortably enough. The Eton College authorities were maddened by
+this smart dodge, and applied for an injunction against the Company, which
+was duly refused.
+
+This is not the only railway romance belonging to Slough, for the Slough
+signal-box has had a romance of its own. The cabin was erected in 1844,
+and one of the earliest messages the signalman wired to London by the then
+wonderful new invention of the electric telegraph, was intelligence of the
+birth of the Duke of Edinburgh. The following year a man named Tawell
+committed a murder at Salt Hill, and escaped by the next train to London;
+but information was telegraphed to town, and being arrested as he stepped
+from the carriage at Paddington, he was subsequently tried and hanged. The
+telegraphist warned the officials at Paddington to look out for a man
+dressed like a Quaker. It is a singular circumstance that the original
+telegraphic code did not comprise any signal for the letter "Q;" but the
+telegraphist was not to be beaten. He spelled the word "Kwaker." Sir
+Francis Head has recorded how he was travelling along the line, months
+after, in a crowded carriage. "Not a word had been spoken since the train
+left London, but as we neared Slough Station, a short-bodied,
+short-necked, short-nosed, exceedingly respectable-looking man in the
+corner, fixing his eyes on the apparently fleeting wires, nodded to us as
+he muttered aloud, "Them's the cords that hung John Tawell!"[2]
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the history of Bath,
+and the crowds of rich travellers who travelled thither, to learn that
+Hounslow Heath had not long been left behind before another highwayman's
+territory was entered upon. This stretched roughly from Salt Hill, on the
+east, to Maidenhead Thicket, on the west. It would, of course, have been
+ill gleaning after the harvest had been reaped by the pick of the
+profession on the Heath, and, as a matter of fact, the gangs who infested
+Maidenhead Thicket and Salt Hill confined their attention to travellers
+_returning_ from Bath. Hawkes was the chief of them, and his was a name of
+dread.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "FLYING HIGHWAYMAN"_]
+
+Hawkes, the "Flying Highwayman," who obtained that eminently descriptive
+name from the rapidity with which he moved from place to place, levying
+tribute from the frequenters of the Bath Road, was a darkly prominent
+figure in the days of George the Third. His name perhaps is not so well
+known as that of the more than half-mythical Dick Turpin, but it deserves
+especial mention from the circumstance of his keeping the whole country
+side between Hounslow and Windsor in terror for some years, and from the
+cleverness of the disguises he assumed. Disguised now as an officer, or a
+farmer; or again, as a Quaker, he despoiled the King's liege subjects very
+effectively. His most notable exploit was enacted at Salt Hill.
+
+A vapouring fellow, apparently from the sister island, who, according to
+his own account of his antecedents, had been too frequently in action
+with hosts of enemies to care for footpads and such scum, alighting from a
+post-chaise, entered the wayside sign of the Plough, and laying down a
+pair of large horse-pistols, called loudly for brandy-and-water.
+
+Only one guest was in the room--a broad-hatted and drab-suited
+Quaker--who, in the most sedate manner, was satisfying his appetite with a
+modest meal. The traveller, swaggering in and laying down his weapons on
+the table in such close proximity to the edibles, startled the man of
+peace, who shrank from them in very terror.
+
+"Oh, my friend," says the traveller, "'tis folks who fear to carry arms
+give opportunities to the highwaymen. If they went protected as I do, what
+occasion would there be to fear any man, even Hawkes himself?" And then,
+with an abundance of oaths, he protested that not half a dozen highwaymen
+should avail to deprive him of a single sixpence. The Quaker, meanwhile,
+continued his humble refection, now and again glancing from his bread and
+cheese at his most noisy and demonstrative companion, who drank his
+brandy-and-water stalking up and down the apartment.
+
+Presently, his drink exhausted, and his eloquence thrown away upon friend
+Broadbrim--who he at once conceived to be so quiet because he had nothing
+to lose--he unceremoniously turned his back and sat down upon a chair to
+examine the valuables he carried about his person. Having satisfied
+himself of their safety, he snatched up his pistols, and, with an
+impatient exclamation, strode off to the bar, and was paying for his
+liquor and gossiping, when the silent Quaker, who had by this time
+finished his repast, passed out hurriedly and disappeared down the road.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIGHWAYMAN AND HIS PREY_]
+
+The boisterous traveller continued his conversation for a while with the
+landlord, and then, re-entering his post-chaise, bade the postboy drive
+fast, and holloa when a suspicious person approached. He threw himself
+upon the seat after he had closed the door, stretched his legs as wide as
+possible, and, planting his feet firmly, cocked his pistols, holding them
+at arm's length with their barrels resting on the open windows.
+
+The horses went on for about a mile, when the chaise entered upon a
+heath--a very desolate-looking place, with never a house visible in any
+direction: with nothing, indeed, to enliven the perspective save a
+gallows, if such an object, with a rattling skeleton swinging in chains
+from the cross-beam, can be so considered. The traveller gazed with a grim
+satisfaction at this spectacle, for it seemed to him, as to the
+shipwrecked sailor in the old story--an earnest of civilization.
+
+But while he was musing on the long arm of the law, the rapid sounds of
+horse's hoofs, sounding over the ragged turf of the heath, were heard, and
+a voice was presently raised, commanding the postboy to stop. The chaise
+was stopped suddenly, with a jolt and a crash, and a face, black-masked,
+mysterious, horrible, appeared at the window, together with the still more
+alarming apparition of the grinning muzzle of a horse-pistol. Then
+followed the inevitable, "Your money or your life!"
+
+The traveller had his weapons ready. Raising the muzzle of one to the
+highwayman's head, he pulled the trigger, while his unexpected assailant
+stood and laughed. Beyond a snap and some sparks from the bruised flint,
+nothing happened. With a curse, he levelled the other pistol, and with the
+same result. The man in the mask laughed louder. "No good, friend Bounce,
+trying that game," said he, coolly; "the powder was carefully blown out of
+each of thy pans, almost under thy nose. If thou dost not want a bullet
+through thy head, just hand me over the repeater in thy boot, the purse in
+thy hat, the bank-notes in thy fob, the gold snuffbox in thy breast, and
+the diamond ring up thy sleeve. Out with them," he added, "in less time
+than thee took when I saw thee put 'em there, or I'll send thee to Davy
+Jones, and take 'em myself."
+
+The muzzle of the highwayman's pistol was at his head--the trigger at full
+cock. The flashing eyes that sparkled behind the mask showed the
+unfortunate traveller that here was no man to be trifled with. He dropped
+his useless weapon, and with considerable trepidation drew, one by one,
+from their places of security the valuables mentioned by the highwayman,
+who, when he had received them all, drew half a crown from the purse, and,
+flinging it into the chaise, said, casting off his Quaker speech, "There
+is enough to pay your turnpikes. And, harkee!" he added, in a more
+peremptory tone, "for the future, don't brag quite so much." Turning his
+horse's head, he disappeared, leaving the chaise and its occupant to
+continue their journey. The latter speedily recognized that the Quaker was
+none other than Hawkes himself.
+
+[Sidenote: _AN ALE-HOUSE FIGHT_]
+
+But this was the last exploit of Captain Hawkes. On the evening of the
+same day a man in a heavy topcoat and riding-boots, splashed, and with
+every appearance of having come off a long journey, entered the "Rising
+Sun," at a village about twenty miles away. In one compartment of the
+tap-room, on either side of a painted table, sat two ploughmen, in
+smock-frocks, their shock heads resting on their arms, which were spread
+out on the table near an empty quart pot. They were both snoring loudly.
+The new-comer, having been served with a glass of gin and water, and a
+long clay pipe, took no notice of the sleepers. In a few minutes one of
+the rustics awoke, and, glancing vacantly about him, scratching his
+carroty head, seized the empty pot.
+
+He put it down, and, giving his companion a push that nearly sent him off
+his seat, exclaimed, "Ye greedy chap! blest if ye ain't been and drunk up
+all the beer while I were a-sleeping."
+
+"Then ye shouldn't have been a-sleeping, ye fool," retorted the other,
+grinning from ear to ear.
+
+"I'll gi' ye a dowse o' the chaps if ye grin at me," shouted the man,
+angrily.
+
+"Haw, haw!" jeered the grinner, across the table. "'Twould take a better
+man nor you to do it. And," he added, "if ye don't want a hiding, ye'd
+better not try."
+
+Up jumped the two chawbacons simultaneously, and rushed at one another
+furiously. They rolled on the sanded floor, kicking and cuffing, while the
+stranger sipped his gin and water and smoked placidly enough.
+
+Presently, however, one of the combatants opened a clasp-knife, and made
+as though he would stab the other. Seeing this, the quiet spectator rose
+and seized the man's wrist in a powerful grip. But, quick as thought, his
+own wrists were seized, and he was thrown to the floor, both men clinging
+tightly to him. When he at length managed to rise, both his wrists were
+handcuffed.
+
+"Neatly managed, that!" exclaimed one of the pretended rustics, throwing
+off his smock-frock and disclosing the red waistcoat of a Bow Street
+Runner.
+
+"You must acknowledge, Captain Hawkes, as how we've done you brown."
+
+They searched their captive, and found two loaded pistols and a great
+variety of valuables about him. Then they escorted him to a post-chaise,
+which was in waiting; and the same night saw him in Newgate.
+
+He made a quiet and composed end, like most of his kind. They knew their
+risks, these dauntless enemies of society, and accepted death by
+strangulation when it came with something of philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+And now for the plain, unvarnished narrative of one who travelled these
+roads a century ago.
+
+[Sidenote: _A STRANGER IN OUR GATES_]
+
+When that simple-minded German, Pastor Moritz, who visited England towards
+the close of last century, grew tired of London, he determined, he says,
+to visit Derbyshire; and, making the necessary preparations for his
+excursion, set out on June 21, 1782, for Richmond, though why he should
+have gone to Richmond _en route_ for Derbyshire is difficult to
+understand. He took with him four guineas, some linen, and a book of the
+roads, together with a map and a pocket-book, and (for he had his
+appreciations) a copy of "Paradise Lost."
+
+Thus equipped, he enjoyed for the first time what he calls the "luxury of
+being driven in an English stage," from which expression and our own
+people's doleful tales of eighteenth-century travelling in England, we may
+infer that the public conveyances of the Pastor's native land were
+particularly bad. The English coaches were, according to him, viewing them
+with the eye of a foreigner, "quite elegant." This particular one was
+lined in the inside, and had two seats large enough to accommodate six
+persons; "but it must be owned," he goes on to say, "that when the
+carriage was full the company was rather crowded." By which we may gather
+that the seats rather discommoded than accommodated.
+
+The only passenger at first was an elderly lady, but presently the coach
+was filled with other dames, who appeared to be a little acquainted with
+one another, and conversed, as our traveller thought, in a very insipid
+and tiresome manner. Fortunately, he had his road-book handy, and so took
+refuge in its pages by marking his route.
+
+The coach stopped at Kensington, where a Jew would have taken a seat, but
+that luxurious conveyance was full inside, and the Israelite was too proud
+to take a place amongst the half-price outsiders on the roof. This
+naturally annoyed the travellers, for they thought it preposterous that a
+Jew should be ashamed to ride on the outside. They thought he should have
+been grateful for being allowed to ride on any side in any way, since he
+was but a Jew. In this connection Mr. Moritz takes occasion to observe
+that the riding upon the roof of a coach is a curious practice. Persons to
+whom it was not convenient to pay full price sat outside, without any
+seats, or even a rail. By what means passengers thus fastened themselves
+securely on the roofs of those vehicles he knew not, but he constantly saw
+numbers seated there, at their ease, and apparently with perfect safety.
+
+On this occasion the outsiders, of whom there were six, made such a noise
+and bustle when the insiders alighted, as to almost frighten them, and I
+suspect the ladies were rendered horribly nervous by the only other man
+who rode inside the coach recounting to them all kinds of stories about
+robbers and footpads who had committed many crimes hereabouts. However, as
+this entertaining companion insisted, the English robbers were possessed
+of a superior honour as compared with the French: the former robbed only;
+the latter both robbed and murdered, doubtless on the principle of that
+classic proverb which assures us that dead men tell no tales.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIERARCHY OF THIEVES_]
+
+"Notwithstanding this," says our traveller, "there are in England another
+species of villains, who also murder, and that oftentimes for the merest
+trifles, of which they rob the person murdered. These are called footpads,
+and are the lowest class of English rogues, amongst whom, in general,
+there reigns something like some regard to character.
+
+"The highest order of thieves (!) are the pickpockets or cutpurses, whom
+you find everywhere, and sometimes even in the best companies. They are
+generally well and handsomely dressed, so that you take them to be persons
+of condition; as indeed may sometimes be the case--persons who by
+extravagance and excesses have reduced themselves to want, and find
+themselves obliged at last to have recourse to pilfering and thieving.
+
+"Next to them come the highwaymen, who rob on horseback, and often, they
+say, even with unloaded pistols, they terrify travellers in order to put
+themselves in possession of their purses. Among these persons, however,
+there are instances of true greatness of soul; there are numberless
+instances of their returning a large part of their booty where the party
+robbed has appeared to be particularly distressed, and they are seldom
+guilty of murder.
+
+"Then comes the third and lowest and worst of all thieves and rogues, the
+footpads before mentioned, who are on foot, and often murder in the most
+inhuman manner, for the sake of only a few shillings, any unfortunate
+people who happen to fall in their way."
+
+The coach arrived, one is glad to say, unharmed at Richmond, despite
+forebodings of disaster; but the pirates on board (so to speak) demanded
+another shilling of the Pastor, although he had already paid one at
+starting.
+
+At Richmond he stayed the night, and in the evening he took a walk out of
+the town, to Richmond Hill and the Terrace, where his feelings during the
+few enraptured minutes that he stood there seemed impossible for his pen
+to describe. One of his first sensations was chagrin and sorrow for the
+days wasted in London, and he vented a thousand bitter reproaches on his
+irresolution in not quitting that huge dungeon long before, to come here
+and spend his time in paradise.
+
+The landlady of the inn was so noted for the copiousness and the loudness
+of her talking to the servants that our traveller could not get to sleep
+until it was very late; but, notwithstanding this, he was up by three
+o'clock the next morning to see the sun rise over Richmond Hill. Alas!
+alas! the lazy servants, who cared nothing for such sights, did not arise
+till six o'clock, when he rushed out, only to be disappointed at finding
+the sky overcast.
+
+And now, having finished his breakfast, he seized his staff, his only
+companion, and proceeded to set forth on foot. Unfortunately, however, a
+traveller in this wise seemed to be considered as a sort of wild man or
+eccentric creature, who was stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by
+all. There were carriages without number on the road, and they occasioned
+a troublesome and disagreeable dust, and when he sat down in a hedge to
+read Milton, the people who rode or drove past stared at him with
+astonishment, and made significant gestures, as who should say, "This is a
+poor devil with a deranged head," so singular did it appear to them that a
+man should sit beside the public highway and read books.
+
+[Sidenote: _PILGRIM'S PROGRESS_]
+
+Then, when he again resumed his journey, the coachmen who drove by called
+out now and again to ask him if he would not ride on the outside of their
+coaches; and the farmers riding past on horseback said, with an air of
+pity, "'Tis warm walking, sir;" and, more than all, as he passed through
+the villages, every old woman would come to her door and cry pitifully,
+"Good God!"
+
+And so he came to Windsor, where, as he entered an inn and desired to have
+something to eat, the countenances of the waiters soon gave him to
+understand that they thought our pedestrian little, if anything, better
+than a beggar. In this contemptuous manner they served him, but, to do
+them justice, they allowed him to pay like a gentleman. "Perhaps," says
+Pastor Moritz, "this was the first time these pert, be-powdered puppies
+had ever been called on to wait on a poor devil who entered the place on
+foot." To add to this indignity, they showed him into a bedroom which more
+resembled a cell for malefactors than aught else, and when he desired a
+better room, told him, with scant ceremony, to go back to Slough. This, by
+the way, was at the "Christopher," at Eton. Crossing the bridge into
+Windsor again, he found himself opposite the Castle, and at the gates of a
+very capital inn, with several officers and persons of distinction going
+in and out. Here the landlord received him with civility, but the
+chambermaid who conducted him to his room did nothing but mutter and
+grumble. After an evening walk he returned, at peace with all men; but the
+waiters received him gruffly, and the chambermaid, dropping a
+half-curtsey, informed him, with a sneering laugh, that he might go and
+look for another bedroom, for the one she had by mistake shown him was
+already engaged. He protested so loudly at this that the landlord, who was
+a good soul, surely, came, and with great courtesy desired another room to
+be shown him, which, however, contained another bed.
+
+Underneath was the tap-room, from which ascended the ribaldries and low
+conversation of some objectionable people who were drinking and singing
+songs down there, and scarcely had he dropped off to sleep before the
+fellow who was to sleep in the other bed came stumbling into the room.
+After colliding with the Pastor's bed, he found his own, and got into it
+without the tiresome formality of removing boots and clothes.
+
+The next morning the Pastor prepared to depart, needlessly annoyed by that
+eternal feminine--the grumbling chambermaid, who informed him that on no
+account should he sleep another night there. As he was going away, the
+surly waiter placed himself on the stairs, saying, "Pray remember the
+waiter," and when in receipt of the three-halfpence which our traveller
+bestowed, he cursed that inoffensive German with the heartiest
+imprecations. At the door stood the maid, saying, "Pray remember the
+chambermaid." "Yes, yes," says the Pastor (a worm will turn), "I shall
+long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour," and so gave her nothing.
+
+Through Slough he went, by Salt Hill, to Maidenhead. At Salt Hill, which
+could hardly be called a village, he saw a barber's shop. For putting his
+hair in order, and for the luxury of a shave, that unconscionable barber
+charged one shilling.
+
+Between Salt Hill and Maidenhead, this very much contemned pedestrian met
+with a very disagreeable adventure. Hitherto he had scarcely met a single
+foot-passenger, whilst coaches without number rolled every moment past
+him; for few roads were so crowded as was the Bath Road at this time.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE PASTOR AND THE FOOTPAD_]
+
+In one place the road led along a low, sunken piece of ground, between
+high trees, so that one could see but a little way ahead, and just here a
+fellow in a brown frock and round hat, with an immense stick in his hand,
+came up to him. His countenance was suspicious. He passed, but immediately
+turned back and demanded a halfpenny to buy bread, for he had eaten
+nothing (so he said) that day.
+
+The Pastor felt in his pocket, but could find nothing less than a
+shilling. Very imprudently, I should say, he informed the beggar of that
+fact, and begged to be excused.
+
+"God bless my soul!" said the beggar, which pious invocation so frightened
+our timid friend that he, having due regard to the big stick and the
+brawny hand that held it, gave the beggar a shilling. Meanwhile a coach
+came past, and the fellow thanked him and went on his way. If the coach
+had come past sooner, he "would not," he says, "so easily have given him
+the shilling, which, God knows, I could not well spare. Whether a footpad
+or not, I will not pretend to say; but he had every appearance of it."
+
+And so this unfortunate traveller marches off to the Oxford Road, and we
+are no longer concerned with him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+A fine broad gravel stretch of highway is that which, on leaving Salt
+Hill, takes us gently down in the direction of the Thames, which the Bath
+Road crosses, over Maidenhead Bridge. The distance is four miles, with no
+villages, and but few scattered houses, on the way. Two miles and one mile
+respectively before the Bridge is reached are the wayside inns, called
+"Two Mile Brook" and "One Mile House." Near this last is the beautiful
+grouping of roadside elms, sketched in the accompanying illustration, "An
+English Road." Half a mile onward, the Great Western Railway crosses the
+road by a skew-bridge, and runs into Taplow station. Taplow village lies
+quite away from the road, but has an outpost, as it were, in the old, with
+the curious sign of the "Dumb Bell." Beyond this, the intervening stretch
+of road as far as Maidenhead Bridge is lined with villas standing in
+extensive grounds. Here the traveller renews his acquaintance with the
+Thames, and passes over a fine stone bridge, built in 1772, from Bucks to
+Berks. This bridge succeeded a crazy timber structure, which itself had
+several predecessors. It is one of these early bridges that is mentioned
+in the declaration of a hermit who obtained a licence to settle here and
+collect alms. Such roadside hermits were common in the Middle Ages. They
+were licensed by the Bishop of their diocese, and were often useful in
+keeping bridges and highways in good order; the alms they received
+being, indeed, very much in the nature of voluntary tolls for these
+services. On the following declaration, Richard Ludlow obtained his
+licence:--
+
+[Sidenote: _AN EARLY TOLL-KEEPER_]
+
+"In the name of God, Amen. I, Richard Ludlow, before God and you my Lord
+Bishop of Salisbury, and in presence of all these worshipful men here
+being, offer up my profession of hermit under this form: that I, Richard,
+will be obedient to Holy Church; that I will lead my life, to my life's
+end, in sobriety and chastity; will avoid all open spectacles, taverns,
+and other such places; that I will every day hear mass, and say every day
+certain Paternosters and Aves: that I will fast every Friday, the vigils
+of Pentecost and All Hallows, on bread and water. And the goods that I may
+get by free gift of Christian people, or by bequest, or testament, or by
+any reasonable and true way, receiving only necessaries to my sustenance,
+as in meat, drink, clothing, and fuel, I shall truly, without deceit, lay
+out upon reparation and amending of the bridge and of the common way
+belonging to ye same town of Maidenhead."
+
+[Illustration: AN ENGLISH ROAD.]
+
+There is, perhaps, no more delightful picture along the whole course of
+the Bath Road than the view from Maidenhead Bridge up river, where the
+house-boats, gay with flowers and Japanese lanterns, are gathered beside
+the trim lawns of the riverside villas, with the gaily dressed crowds by
+Boulter's Lock beyond, and the wooded heights of Clieveden closing in the
+distance. Maidenhead shows the river at its most fashionable part.
+
+It was at the "Greyhound" Inn, Maidenhead, that the unhappy Charles the
+First bade farewell to his children, July 16, 1647. He was in charge of
+his Roundhead captors at Caversham, and had been allowed to come over for
+two days. The Prince of Wales was abroad, but the Duke of York, then
+fifteen years of age; the Princess Elizabeth, two years younger; and the
+seven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, were brought to him. The affecting
+scene is said to have drawn tears even from Cromwell.
+
+Maidenhead Bridge--the wooden one which preceeded the present
+structure--might have been the scene of a desperate encounter, but
+happened instead to have witnessed an equally desperate and farcical
+devil-take-the-hindmost flight on the part of the Irish soldiers of James
+the Second, who were posted here to dispute the passage of the Thames with
+the advancing forces of William of Orange.
+
+The November night had shrouded the river and the country side, when the
+sound of drums beating a Dutch march was heard. The soldiers, who had no
+heart in their work, did not remain to defend that strategic point, and
+bolted. They would have discovered, if they had kept their posts, that the
+martial music which lent them such agility was produced by the townsfolk
+of Maidenhead, who, in spite of that national crisis, appear to have been
+merry blades.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The "Bear" was the principal inn at Maidenhead in the coaching era, and
+owed much of its prosperity to the unwillingness of travellers who carried
+considerable sums of money with them to cross Maidenhead Thicket at night.
+They slept peacefully at the "Bear," and resumed the roads in the morning,
+when the highwaymen were in hiding.
+
+[Sidenote: _MAIDENHEAD THICKET_]
+
+Maidenhead Thicket is really a long avenue lining the highway two miles
+from that town. It is a beautiful and romantic place, but its beauties
+were not apparent to travellers in days of old. The sinister reputation of
+the spot goes back for hundreds of years, and may be said to have arisen
+from the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Reading Abbey
+was despoiled. To that Abbey had resorted many hundreds of poor, certain
+of finding relief at its gates, and when its hospitality had become a
+thing of the past, these dependents simply infested the neighbourhood, and
+either begged or stole. As a chronicler of that time quaintly said: "There
+is great stoare of stout vagabonds and maysterless men (able enough for
+labour) which do great hurt in the country by their idle and naughtie
+life." In those times the Hundreds were liable for any robberies committed
+within their boundaries; and in 1590 the Hundred of Benhurst, in which
+Maidenhead Thicket is situated, had actually to pay £255 compensation for
+highway robberies committed here. In fact, Maidenhead Thicket had for a
+long time an unenviable reputation for highway robberies, with or without
+violence, and the desperadoes had so little care whom they robbed that not
+even the Vicars of Hurley, who came over to officiate at Maidenhead once a
+week, were safe. This was so fully recognized that the Vicars of Hurley
+used to draw an annual £50 extra on account of their risks.
+
+In later years a farmer, whose name was Cannon, was stopped one night on
+driving from Reading market. Two footpads compelled him to give up the
+well-filled money-bag he carried with him, and then let him go, consumed
+with impotent rage at his helplessness and the loss of his money.
+
+Suddenly, however, he remembered that he had with him, under the seat of
+the gig, a reaping-hook which he had brought back from being mended at
+Reading. That recollection brought him a bright idea. Turning his gig
+round, he drove back to the spot where he had been robbed, by a back way.
+As he had supposed, the ruffians were still there, waiting for more
+plunder. In the dark they took the farmer for a new-comer, until he had
+got to close quarters with his reaping-hook, which they mistook for a
+cutlass. The end of the encounter was that one footpad was left for dead,
+and the other took to his heels. The farmer searched the fallen foe and
+found his money-bag, together, it was said, with other spoils, which he
+promptly annexed, and drove off rejoicing.
+
+[Illustration: MAIDENHEAD THICKET.]
+
+After these tales of derring-do and robustious encounters, the story of
+the road becomes comparatively tame as it goes on and passes through
+Twyford and Reading.
+
+[Illustration: THE "BELL AND BOTTLE" SIGN.]
+
+[Sidenote: _"BELL AND BOTTLE"_]
+
+At the western end of Maidenhead Thicket, where, lying modestly back from
+the road, stands one of the innumerable "Coach and Horses" of the highway,
+the gossips of the adjacent Littlewick Green foregather and play bowls on
+the grass. Then comes Knowl Hill, where an old sign, swinging romantically
+from a wayside fir tree, proclaims the proximity of a curiously named inn,
+the "Bell and Bottle." What affinity have bells for bottles, or bottles
+for bells? "What," as the poet asks (in quite a different connection), "is
+Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" But perhaps the original innkeeper was
+something of a cynic, and thus paraphrased the well-worn conjunction,
+"Beer and Bible." Unfortunately for the inquiring stranger, the origin is
+"wrop in mistry."
+
+Down below Knowl Hill, past a chalk quarry on the right, is yet another
+inn--the neat and pretty "Seven Stars," to be succeeded at the hamlet of
+Kiln Green by the "Horse and Groom," gabled and embowered with vines, and
+facing up, not fronting, the road, in quite the ideal fashion. What the
+country here lacks in bold scenery it evidently gains in fertility, for
+the gardens of Kiln Green are a delightful mass of luxuriant flowers.
+
+The road through Hare Hatch to Twyford is flat and uninteresting. Twyford
+itself, an ancient place on the little river Loddon, is losing its antique
+character, from being the scene of much building activity. An old
+almshouse remains on the right hand, with the inscription, "Domino et
+pauperibus, 1640."
+
+The five miles between Twyford and Reading exhibit the gradual degeneracy
+of a country road approaching a large town; as regards the scenery, that
+is to say. The quality of the road surface remains excellent, and the
+width is generous--a circumstance probably owing to the especial widening
+carried out so far back as 1255, in consequence of the dangerous state of
+the highway, which was then narrow and bordered by dense woods wherein
+lurked all manner of evildoers.
+
+Three miles from the town, and continuing for the length of a mile, is a
+pleasant avenue of trees. The deep Sonning Cutting on the Great Western
+Railway is then crossed, and the suburbs of Biscuit Town presently
+encountered.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+"The run to Reading," I learn from a cycling paper, "constitutes a
+pleasant morning's spin from London." I should like to call up one of our
+great-grandfathers who travelled these thirty-nine miles painfully by
+coach, and read that paragraph to him.
+
+[Sidenote: _BISCUITS, SEEDS, AND SAUCE_]
+
+Reading numbers over 60,000 inhabitants, and is rapidly adding to them.
+This prosperity proceeds from several causes, Reading being--
+
+  "'Mongst other things, so widely known,
+  For biscuits, seeds, and sauce."
+
+The town, of course, stands for biscuits in the minds of most people, and
+the names of Huntley and Palmer have become household words, somewhat
+eclipsing Cock's Reading Sauce, and the seeds of Sutton's; while few
+people outside Reading are cognizant of its great engineering industries.
+So much for modern Reading, whose principal hero is George Palmer.
+
+[Illustration: PALMER'S STATUE.]
+
+Mr. George Palmer, whose death occurred in 1897, enjoyed the distinction
+of having a statue erected to him during his lifetime, an unusual honour
+which he shared with few others--Queen Victoria, the great Duke of
+Wellington, Lord Roberts, Reginald, Earl of Devon, and, of course, Mr.
+Gladstone. Mr. Palmer's fellow-townsmen elected to honour him in this way,
+and decided to have a statue which should be in every way true to life,
+and show the man "in his habit as he lived"--one in which the clothes
+should be as characteristic as the features. Our grandfathers would have
+represented him wrapped in a Roman toga, but those notions do not commend
+themselves to the present age, and so the effigy stands in all the
+supremely _un_-decorative guise of everyday dress: homely coat, and
+trousers excruciatingly baggy at the knees; bareheaded, and in one hand a
+silk hat and an unfolded umbrella. This is possibly the only instance in
+which these last necessary, but unlovely articles have been reproduced in
+bronze.
+
+Ancient Reading knew nothing of biscuits or sauces. It was the home of one
+of the very greatest Abbeys in England. The Abbot of Reading ranked next
+after those of Westminster and Glastonbury, and usually held important
+offices of State. In the Abbey, Parliaments have been held, Royal
+marriages celebrated, and Kings and Queens laid to rest. Yet of all this
+grandeur no shred is left. There are ruins; but, formless and featureless
+as they are, they cannot recall to the eye anything of the architectural
+glories of the past, and the bones of the Kings have for centuries been
+scattered no man knows whither.
+
+There are pleasant stories of Reading, and gruesome ones. Horrible was the
+fate of Hugh Faringdon, the last Abbot, who was, in 1539, with one of his
+monks, hanged, drawn and quartered for denying the religious supremacy of
+that royal wild beast, Henry the Eighth. The King had been friendly with
+him not so long before, and had presented him with a silver cup, as a
+token of this friendship.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE KING AND THE ABBOT_]
+
+One wonders if this unfortunate prelate was the same person as that Abbot
+of Reading mentioned by Fuller. The Abbot of that story was a man
+particularly fond of what have been gracefully termed the "pleasures of
+the table." His eyes, as the Psalmist puts it, "swelled out with
+fatness,"--and his stomach, too, for that matter. To him came one day a
+hungry stranger, fresh from the appetizing sport of hunting. He had lost
+his way, and craved the hospitality of the Abbey. That hospitality was
+extended to him, promptly enough, and he was seated at the Abbot's own
+table.
+
+It will readily be guessed that this hungry stranger was the King. He had
+wandered thus far, away from Windsor Forest and his attendants, and was
+genuinely famished. The Abbot, however, had no notion who he was; but he
+could see that this strayed huntsman was a very prince among good
+trencher-men, and envied him accordingly. "Well fare thy heart," said he,
+as he saw the roast beef disappearing; "I would give an hundred pounds
+could I feed so lustily on beef as you do. Alas! my weak and squeezie
+stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken."
+
+The King took the compliment and more beef, and, pledging his host,
+departed. Some weeks after, when the Abbot had quite forgotten all about
+the matter, he was sent for, clapped into the Tower, and kept, a miserable
+prisoner--not knowing what his offence might be, or what would befall him
+next--on bread and water. At length one day a sirloin of beef was placed
+before him, and he made such short work of it as to prove to the King, who
+was secretly watching him, that his treatment for "squeezie stomach" had
+succeeded admirably; so, springing out of the cupboard in which he had
+secreted himself, "My lord," says he, "deposit presently your hundred
+pounds in gold, or else you go not hence all the days of your life. I
+have been your physician to cure you, and here, as I deserve, I demand my
+fee for the same."
+
+The Abbot was enlightened. He, as Fuller says, "down with his dust, and,
+glad he escaped so, returned to Reading, as somewhat lighter in purse, so
+much more merry in heart, than when he came thence."
+
+Little remains at Reading to tell of the coaching age. Where are the
+"Bear," the "George," the "Crown"? Gone, with their jovial guests, into
+the limbo of forgotten things, almost as thoroughly as the civilization of
+Roman Calleva--the Silchester of modern times--situated at some distance
+down the road from Reading to Basingstoke, and whose relics may be seen
+gathered together in the Reading Museum. To that collection should be
+added a set of articles used in the everyday business of coaching. They
+would be just as curious to-day as those Roman potsherds of a thousand
+years ago.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+The Bath Road climbs, with some show of steepness, out of Reading,
+presently to enter upon that stretch of nearly seventeen miles of
+comparatively flat sandy gravel road which, for speed cycling, is the best
+part of the whole journey. The surface is nearly always splendid, save in
+very dry seasons, when the sand renders the going somewhat heavy, and the
+cyclist may well be surprised to learn that it was here, between Reading
+and Newbury, that Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach,
+lost their way, entirely through the badness of the roads.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAGE WAGGON. (_After Rowlandson._)]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "BERKSHIRE LADY"_]
+
+In spite of these modern advantages, the road is quite suburban and
+uninteresting until Calcot Green is passed, in two miles and a half. But
+it is here, amid the pleasant, though tame, scenery that Calcot Park, the
+home of the famous "Berkshire Lady," may be sought.
+
+The "Berkshire Lady" was the daughter of Sir William Kendrick, of Calcot,
+who flourished in the reign of Queen Anne. Upon the death of her father,
+she became sole heiress to the estate and an income of some five thousand
+pounds per annum. Rich, beautiful, and endowed with a vivacious manner, it
+is not surprising that she was courted by all the vinous, red-faced young
+squires in the neighbourhood; but she refused these offers until,
+according to an old ballad--
+
+  "Being at a noble wedding
+  In the famous town of Reading,
+  A young gentleman she saw
+  Who belonged to the law."
+
+We may shrewdly suspect that she not only "saw" him, but that they
+indulged in a desperate flirtation in the conservatory, or what may have
+answered to a conservatory in those times.
+
+The "Berkshire Lady" was evidently a New Woman, born very much in advance
+of her proper era. For what did she do? Why, she fell in love with that
+"young gentleman" straight away, and so furiously that nothing would
+suffice her but to send him an anonymous challenge to fight a duel or to
+marry her.
+
+Benjamin Child--for that was the name of the young and briefless (and also
+impecunious) barrister--was astonished at receiving a challenge from no
+one in particular; but, accompanied by a friend, proceeded to the
+rendezvous appointed by the unknown in Calcot Park. Arrived there, they
+perceived a masked lady, with a rapier, who informed the pair that she was
+the challenger:--
+
+  "'It was I that did invite you:
+  You shall wed me, or I'll fight you,
+  So now take your choice,' said she;
+  'Either fight, or marry me.'
+  Says he, 'Madam, pray what mean ye?
+  In my life I ne'er have seen ye;
+  Pray unmask, your visage show,
+  Then I'll tell you, aye or no.'"
+
+The lady, however, would not unmask:--
+
+  "'I will not my face uncover,
+  Till the marriage rites are over;
+  Therefore take you which you will,
+  Wed me, sir, or try your skill.'"
+
+The friend advised Benjamin Child, Esq., to take his chance of her being
+poor and pretty, or rich and--plain (those being the usually accepted
+conjunctions), and to marry her, which he accordingly promised to do. He
+had a reward for his moral courage, for the lady unmasked and disclosed
+herself as the beautiful unknown with whom he had flirted at the wedding.
+That they "lived happily ever afterwards" we need find no difficulty in
+believing.
+
+[Illustration: THEALE.]
+
+Many stories were current locally of this Mr. Child. One, in particular
+(certainly not a romantic one), related his great fondness for oysters, of
+which he was in the habit of consuming large quantities; in fact, he is
+said to have kept a museum of the tubs emptied by him, for one room in
+Calcot House was fitted round with shelves, upon which these empty
+mementos were arranged in regular order. It was his humour to show his
+friends this unique arrangement as a convincing proof of his capabilities
+in that particular branch of good living.
+
+Upon the death of his wife, Calcot became unbearable to him, and he sold
+it. But, curiously enough, nothing could induce him to quit the house, and
+the new proprietor was reduced to rendering it uninhabitable to him by
+unroofing it. Mr. Child then retired to a small cottage in an adjoining
+wood, where he spent the rest of his days in retirement.
+
+The Kendrick vault in the church of St. Mary, Reading, was exposed to view
+in 1820, when, among the numerous coffins found, was one bearing the
+inscription, "Frances Child, wife of Benjamin Child, of Calcot, first
+daughter of Sir W. Kendrick, died 1722, aged 35." The coffin was of lead,
+and was moulded to the form of the body, even to the lineaments of the
+face. Mr. Child was the last person buried in this vault. His coffin, of
+unusually large dimensions, is dated 1767.
+
+[Sidenote: _THEALE_]
+
+Two and a half miles from Calcot Green, and we are at Theale, a village
+prettily embowered among trees, but possessing a large and extraordinarily
+bad "Carpenter's Gothic" church, built about 1840, which looks quite
+charming at the distance of a quarter of a mile, but has been known to
+afflict architects who have made its close acquaintance with hopeless
+melancholia. In fine, Theale church is a horrid example of Early Victorian
+imitation of the Early English style.
+
+And now the road wanders sweetly between the green and pleasant levels
+beside the sedgy Kennet. Road, rail, river, and canal run side by side, or
+but slightly parted, for miles, past Woolhampton and the decayed town of
+Thatcham, to Newbury, and so on to Hungerford.
+
+A short mile before reaching Woolhampton, there stands, on the left-hand
+side of the road, quite lonely, a wayside inn, the "Rising Sun," a relic
+of coaching times. They still show one, in the parlour, the old
+booking-office in which parcels were received for the old road-waggons
+that plied with luggage between London and Bath, and talk of the days when
+the house used to own stabling for forty horses. A larger inn is the
+"Angel," at Woolhampton, with a most elaborate iron sign, from which
+depends a little carved figure of a vine-crowned Bacchus, astride his
+barrel, carved forty years ago by a wood-carver engaged on the restoration
+of Woolhampton Church. Tramps and other travellers unacquainted with the
+classics generally take this vinous heathen god to be a representation of
+the Angel after whom the inn was named.
+
+[Illustration: WOOLHAMPTON.]
+
+Woolhampton, once blessed with two "Angels," has now but one, for what was
+once known as the "Upper Angel" has been re-named the "Falmouth Arms."
+Although Woolhampton village possesses a railway station on the Hants
+and Berks branch of the Great Western Railway, travellers will look in
+vain for the name of it in their railway guides. If they will refer to
+"Midgham," however, they will have found it under another title.
+Originally called by the name of the village, it was found that passengers
+and luggage frequently lost their way here in mistake for Wolverhampton,
+also on the Great Western, and so the name had to be changed.
+
+[Illustration: THATCHAM.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THATCHAM_]
+
+Three and a half miles from Woolhampton comes Thatcham, famed in the
+coaching age for its "King's Head" inn, but now a decayed market town
+which has sunk to the status of a very dull village. A battered stone, all
+that remains of a market cross, stands in the middle of the wide, deserted
+street, enclosed by a circular seat, bearing an inscription recounting the
+history of the market, and the kingly protection which Henry the Third
+afforded the place against the "Newbury men." But, kingly help
+notwithstanding, the "Newbury men" have long since snatched its trade away
+from Thatcham, which has become a village, while Newbury has grown to be a
+town of 20,000 inhabitants. The only interesting object in the long street
+is Thatcham Chapel, an isolated Perpendicular building, purchased for
+10_s._ by Lady Frances Winchcombe in 1707. She presented it to a Blue Coat
+school which she founded in the village.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Newbury, the "hated rival," is three miles down the road. Within a mile of
+it in coaching times, but now not to be distinguished from the town
+itself, is Speenhamland, the site of that famous coaching inn, the
+"Pelican," whose charges were of so monumental a character that Quin has
+immortalized them in the lines:--
+
+  "The famous inn at Speenhamland,
+    That stands beneath the hill,
+  May well be called the Pelican,
+    From its enormous bill."
+
+Alas! how are the mighty fallen! The Pelican is no longer an inn, but has
+been divided up, and part of it is a veterinary establishment.
+
+[Illustration: RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THOMAS STACKHOUSE_]
+
+The most famous inhabitant of Newbury was that fifteenth-century clothier,
+that "Jack of Newbury," whose wealth and public benefactions were alike
+considered wonderful in his day. The most notorious inhabitant was that
+scandalous Vicar of Beenham Vallance, near by, who flourished flamboyantly
+here between 1733 and 1752. Candour compels the admission that the Rev.
+Thomas Stackhouse, besides being the learned author of the "History of the
+Bible," was also a great drunkard. That history, indeed, he chiefly wrote
+at an inn still standing on the Bath Road near Thatcham, called "Jack's
+Booth." He would stay there for days at a time, and write (and drink), in
+an arbour in the garden, going frequently from this retreat to his church
+on Sundays, where, in the pulpit, he would break into incoherent prayers
+and maudlin tears, asking forgiveness for his besetting sin, and promising
+reformation of his evil courses. But after service he was generally to be
+seen going back to his inn. Here one day a friend found him and reminded
+him that it was the day of the Bishop's Visitation, a circumstance which
+he had quite forgotten. He went off, clothed disgracefully, and by no
+means sober. "Who," asked the Bishop, indignantly, on seeing this strange
+creature--"who is that shabby, dirty old man?" The vicar answered the
+query himself. "I am," he shouted, "Thomas Stackhouse, Vicar of Beenham,
+who wrote the 'History of the Bible,' and that is more than your lordship
+can do!" The historian of these things says this reply quite upset the
+gravity of the solemn meeting; and the statement may well be believed.
+
+Camden says, "Newburie must acknowledge Speen as its mother," and Newbury,
+in fact, was originally an offshoot from Speen, which was anciently a
+fortified Roman settlement in the tangled underwoods of the wild country
+between the Roman cities of Aquæ Solis and Calleva (Bath and Silchester).
+The Romans called it "Spinæ," _i.e._ "the Thorns," a sufficiently
+descriptive title in that era. The Domesday Book calls it "Spone." The
+fact of Speen having been the original settlement may be partly traced in
+the circumstance of its lying directly on the old road, while Newbury, its
+infinitely bigger daughter, sprawls out on the Whitchurch and Andover
+roads, which run from the Bath Road almost at right angles.
+
+There are quaint houses at Newbury, and old inns; some of them, like the
+"Globe" or the "King's Arms," converted into shops or private houses,
+while others perhaps do a brisker trade in drink than in good cheer of the
+more hospitable sort. There are the "White Hart," and the "Jack of
+Newbury," with a modern front, and others. The Kennet divides the town in
+half, and runs under a bridge which carries the street across its narrow
+width, bordered with quaint-looking houses. Here is the old Cloth Hall, a
+singular building, neglected now that the weaving trade has decayed; and
+on the west side of the bridge stands the parish church with a small brass
+in it to the memory of the great "Jack," and a very economical monument to
+a certain "J.W.C.," 1692, just roughly carved into the stonework of a
+buttress at the east end.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE 55TH MILESTONE.]
+
+[Illustration: INSCRIPTION. NEWBURY CHURCH.]
+
+It is strange to think that only twenty-seven years ago (in 1872, as a
+matter of fact), at Newbury, a rag and bone dealer who for several years
+had been well known in the town as a man of intemperate habits, and
+upon whom imprisonment in Reading Gaol had failed to produce any
+beneficial effect, was fixed in the stocks for drunkenness and disorderly
+conduct at Divine service in the parish church. Twenty-six years had
+elapsed since the stocks had last been used, and their reappearance
+created no little sensation and amusement, several hundreds of persons
+being attracted to the spot where they were fixed. The sinful rag man was
+seated upon a stool, and his legs were secured in the stocks at a few
+minutes past one. He seemed anything but pleased with the laughter and
+derision of the crowd. Four hours having passed, he was released.
+
+[Sidenote: _"JACK OF NEWBURY"_]
+
+It is impossible to escape Jack of Newbury in this the scene of his
+greatness. "John Smalwoode the elder, alias John Wynchcombe," as he
+describes himself in his last will and testament, in 1519, was the most
+prominent of the clothworkers in the reigns of the Seventh and Eighth
+Henrys. He is perhaps best described in the words of a pamphlet published
+towards the close of the sixteenth century:--"He was a man of merrie
+disposition and honest conversation, was wondrous well beloved of rich and
+poore, especially because in every place where he came he would spend his
+money with the best, and was not any time found a churl of his purse.
+Wherefore, being so good a companion, he was called of olde and younge
+'Jacke of Newberie,' a man so generally well knowne in all this countrye
+for his good fellowship, that he could goe into no place but he found
+acquaintance; by means whereof Jacke could no sooner get a crowne, but
+straight hee found meanes to spend it; yet had he ever this care, that hee
+would always keepe himselfe in comely and decent apparel, neither at any
+time would hee be overcome in drinke, but so discreetly behave himselfe
+with honest mirthe and pleasant conceits, that he was every gentleman's
+companion."
+
+This is so excellent a voucher for him that it is not surprising so
+universal a favourite stepped into the shoes of his master's widow. She
+was rich, and he with a plentiful lack of coin; yet though she had a
+choice of suitors, including a "tanner, a taylor, and a parson," she set
+her heart on Jack with something of the determination which characterized
+the "Berkshire Lady" already referred to in these pages; and though he was
+something loth, married him out of hand. We are not told that she
+regretted it, but probably she did, for the stories have it that she was a
+gossip and given to staying out late, while Jack stopped at home and went
+betimes to bed. Once, when she returned at midnight, and knocked at the
+door, he looked from his window and told her that, as she had stayed out
+all day for her own delight, she might "lie forth" until the morning for
+his. "Moved with pity," as the narrative says, but more likely because her
+continual knocking kept him awake, he at last went down in his shirt and
+opened the door, when "Alack, husband," says she, "what hap have I? My
+wedding ring was even now in my hand, and I have let it fall about the
+door; good, sweet John, come forth with the candle and help me seek it."
+
+He "went forth" accordingly, into the street, and she locked him out! We
+are not told what happened when he got in again.
+
+He seems to have taken her loss, a little later, calmly enough, for he
+speedily married again, and although "wondrous wealthie," he chose a poor
+girl who lived at Aylesbury. A grand wedding it was when Joan (for that
+was her name) and Jack were married. Her head, we are assured, was adorned
+with a "billement of gold, and her hair, as yellow as gold, hanging downe
+behind her." In fact, "Her golden hair was hanging down her back," as the
+music-hall songster has it; which goes far to prove that the modern
+_penchant_ for yellow locks has a respectable antiquity, and warrants
+brunettes in using all the arts of the toilet to redress the errors of
+Nature.
+
+[Sidenote: _JACK AS ENTERTAINER_]
+
+Jack of Newbury entertained Henry the Eighth here, and, wonderful to
+relate, the floors of the house were covered with broad cloth, instead of
+the then usual rushes. Also, he equipped a hundred of his workmen, fifty
+as horsemen, and fifty armed with bows and pikes, "as well armed and
+better clothed than any," and went with them to the Scotch war. The
+"Ballad of the Newberrie Archers" tells us how they distinguished
+themselves at Flodden Field; but it must be added that it is doubtful
+whether they ever reached so far; which proves the ballad-maker--the
+"special correspondent" of that time--to have been more eloquent than
+truthful. That Jack was the principal man of his trade must be evident
+from these facts and from the statement that he employed a hundred looms;
+and a great deal more evident from his having been selected to head the
+petition of the clothiers for the encouragement of trade with France. He
+had a pretty taste in sarcasm, too, if his retort upon Wolsey, to whom it
+had been referred, and who had delayed to answer it, is considered. "If my
+Lord Chancellor's father," said he, "had been no hastier in killing
+calves than he in despatching of poor men's suits, I think he would never
+have worn a mitre." It is only necessary to remember that Wolsey was the
+son of a butcher for the sting of this quip to be appreciated.
+
+[Illustration: OLD CLOTH HALL, NEWBURY.]
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+In 1531, and again in 1556, Newbury was the scene of martyrdoms; and in
+1643 and 1644 the site of two battles between Charles and his Parliament,
+both almost equally indecisive, and both remarkable for desperate courage
+on either side.
+
+[Sidenote: _FIRST BATTLE OF NEWBURY_]
+
+The first battle was fought to the south of the town on September 18, and
+was the culmination of a Royalist attack upon the Parliamentary army under
+the Earl of Essex, on the march from Gloucester to London. Essex had
+designed to lie at Newbury, the town being strongly for the Parliament;
+but as he was marching across Enborne Chase on the 16th, his line was cut
+by the appearance of Prince Rupert, who charged down upon him with his
+dragoons. In this skirmish the Marquis de Vieuville was slain, and many
+others of the Royalists. The battle thus forced on by the rashness of
+Prince Rupert was one of the fiercest in the war.
+
+The King was encamped near Donnington. Essex advanced and seized some
+elevated ground, where his men were charged by the Royalist cavalry, at
+whose head was the Earl of Carnarvon. Carnarvon had that morning measured
+a gateway with his sword, to see if it were wide enough for the prisoners
+who, with Essex at their head, they were to lead through it in the
+evening. Although they cut up Essex's cavalry, Carnarvon himself fell in
+that gallant charge, and was carried through the same gateway, a corpse,
+that night.
+
+It was the Parliamentary foot, the London train-bands, that saved the day,
+which would otherwise have been a disastrous rout for their leader. They
+withstood the cannonading and the impetuous charges of Rupert's horse,
+and, with Essex himself among them, in a conspicuous white hat, drove back
+the Royalist infantry. It was not until night had fallen that the contest
+ceased. Six thousand were slain that day, and neither side had won. Essex
+was so weakened that he retreated upon Reading the next morning.
+
+He had nearly reached Theale when Rupert descended upon his rear like a
+hurricane, and cut down many of his troops in a spot still called, from
+this circumstance, "Dead Man's Lane."
+
+The Royalists perhaps had slightly the better of the First Battle of
+Newbury; but at what a cost! Carnarvon, the young Earl of Sunderland; and
+Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, slain! Falkland was Secretary of State,
+and a patriot whose feelings were above partizanship. He seems to have had
+a presentiment of death, for he received the Sacrament on the morning of
+the battle, saying, "I am weary of the times, and foresee much misery to
+my country; but I believe I shall be out of it ere night." There is a
+monument on Wash Common to him--
+
+  "The blameless and the brave,"
+
+who fell thus with his brothers-in-arms; and mounds still mark the places
+where the dead were buried. The memory of this great battle has recently
+been revived, for in 1897 its anniversary was celebrated, and wreaths and
+crosses of evergreens were laid upon the monument and the tumuli.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SECOND BATTLE_]
+
+The Second Battle of Newbury was fought on Sunday, October 27, 1644. The
+thickest part of it raged round Speen, on the Bath Road, and in the
+gardens of Shaw House. This house, one of the finest mansions in
+Berkshire, was built by Thomas Dolman, clothier, in 1581. He was evidently
+something of a scholar, and worldly wise as well, for he knew that his
+riches and his grand mansion would rouse envious talk. Accordingly he
+caused Latin and Greek inscriptions to be carved over the entrance, which,
+Englished, run--
+
+  "Let no envious man enter here."
+
+And--
+
+    "The toothless man envies the teeth of those who eat, and the mole
+    despises the eyes of the roe."
+
+It is quite obvious that Thomas Dolman had been a great deal criticized
+locally, and that the iron of that criticism had entered his soul.
+
+His son became Sir Thomas Dolman, and it was his descendant, Sir John
+Dolman, who garrisoned the house and entertained King Charles here on the
+night before the second battle. A hole is still shown in the panelling of
+the drawing-room, said to have been made by a shot fired at the King that
+night when standing at the window; and a brass plate records the
+circumstance in a Latin inscription.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE SMOCK-FROCKS AND BEAVERS.]
+
+The parapets of Shaw House were lined with Royalist musketeers on this
+occasion, and entrenchments thrown up in the gardens; but after a
+stubbornly contested fight the Royalists were too weakened to retain the
+position. Their ordnance and the wounded were left at Donnington Castle, a
+mile away, and they fell back upon Oxford. Neither side had been sorry
+when night fell and put an end to a hard-fought, but inconclusive, day;
+and for their part the Parliamentary leaders were glad to see the King's
+forces withdrawing by the light of the moon, and did not dare risk an
+attack upon them.
+
+It is not a little singular that during all this clash of arms the
+Royalist governor of Donnington Castle held that stronghold, although
+repeatedly attacked, from August, 1644, to April, 1646, and then only
+surrendered when desired by the King to do so.
+
+[Illustration: CURIOUS OLD TOLL-HOUSE BETWEEN NEWBURY AND HUNGERFORD.]
+
+[Sidenote: _SPEEN_]
+
+The road ascends to Speen, or, as it is often called, "Church Speen." The
+present writer was climbing it when he overtook a countryman in a
+smock-frock, to whom the steep gradient was evidently anything but
+welcome.
+
+"You're a regular Mountjoy, a' b'lieve," said the countryman, puffing and
+blowing.
+
+"A regular what?"
+
+"A Mountjoy--a walker. But there; you bain't Newbury?"
+
+I told him I certainly was not a native of that town.
+
+"Well," said he, "you won't, never have heerd of 'un, p'raps."
+
+It seems, then, that about fifty years ago Newbury boasted a pedestrian of
+that name, who obtained such a great local reputation that he has become
+proverbial with the country people, so that a "regular Mountjoy" is any
+one who possesses good walking powers.
+
+Church Speen passed, an undulating road leads past a curiously castellated
+old toll-house to Hungerford.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+It is at Hungerford, sixty-four miles from Hyde Park Corner, that one
+leaves Berkshire and enters Wilts, coming into wilder and less pastoral
+country. Hungerford town, however, is just within the Berkshire borders.
+The constant Kennet flows across the road here, and is crossed by a
+substantial bridge, from whose parapets anglers may be seen patiently
+waiting to lure the wily trout from their swims. Fuller quaintly says:
+"Good and great trouts are found in the river of Kennet nigh Hungerford;
+they are in their perfection in the month of May, and yearly decline with
+the buck. Being come to his full growth, he decays in goodness, not
+greatness, and thrives in his head till his death. Note, by the way, that
+an hog-back and little head is a sign that any fish is in season."
+
+The chief street of Hungerford lies along the road to Salisbury, and the
+cyclist who is intent upon "doing" the Bath Road without turning to
+thoroughly explore the places along its course, consequently sees little
+of the town beyond the few old mansions and cottages, and the old coaching
+inn, "The Bear," which front the highway. Not much, however, is in this
+case lost, for Hungerford contains little of interest, and were it not for
+its singular Hocktide customs, and for the fact that it was the first town
+to obtain the free delivery of letters between its post-office and the
+houses to which letters were addressed, would scarce demand an extended
+notice.
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD POST-OFFICE CUSTOMS_]
+
+The original plan of the General Post-Office, all over the country, was to
+allow postmasters of country towns to demand a fee for delivery. Those who
+expected letters were supposed to call for them. If they desired them to
+be delivered, the additional fee was a penny or twopence, according to the
+conscience or the cupidity of the postmaster, whose perquisites these fees
+were. This applied to houses quite near post-offices, and even next door
+to them. This extraordinary state of affairs was borne with for some time,
+until at last several towns brought actions against the Post-Office to
+decide if prepaid postage ought not to ensure delivery in the boundaries
+of post-towns. Hungerford was selected by the Courts as a typical case,
+and secured a judgment in its favour, Michaelmas, 1774.
+
+Hocktide is a stirring time in this little town of less than three
+thousand inhabitants. It is determined by Eastertide, and generally falls
+in April. The odd observances derive their origin from the conditions
+imposed by John of Gaunt, father of Henry the Fourth, who, in the
+fourteenth century, conferred the rights and privileges of common-land and
+fishing in the Kennet upon the town. To hand down the proof of his gift to
+posterity, he presented with the charter a brass horn which bears the
+inscription:--
+
+  "John a Gaun did giue and
+  grant the Riall of Fishing to
+  Hungerford Toune from Eldren
+  Stub to Irish stil excepting som
+  Seueral mil Pound
+        Jehosphat Lucas was Cunstabl."
+
+Not this horn, but its seventeenth-century successor, is jealously
+preserved in the Town Hall. It has a capacity of one quart.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOCK TIDE_]
+
+As an unreformed borough, Hungerford still enjoys the old-time custom of
+appointing, in the place of Mayor and Corporation, a Constable, Portreeve,
+Bailiff, Tithing-men, Keeper of the Keys of the Coffers, Hayward, Water
+Bailiffs, Ale-tasters, and Bellman. The ceremonies begin on the Friday
+before Hock Tuesday with a "macaroni supper and punchbowl," and are held
+at the "John of Gaunt" inn. Tuesday, however, is the great day, when at an
+early hour the bellman goes round the borough commanding all those who
+hold land or dwellings within the confines of the town to appear at the
+Hockney, under pain of a poll-tax of one penny, called the "head-penny."
+Lest this warning should be insufficient, he mounts to the balcony of
+the Town Hall, where he blows a blast upon the horn. Those who do not obey
+the summons and refuse the payment of the head-penny are liable to lose
+their rights to the privileges of the borough.
+
+[Illustration: HUNGERFORD.]
+
+By nine o'clock the jury are assembled in the Town Hall for the
+transaction of their annual business, and immediately after they are sworn
+in, the two tithing-men start on their round of the town. It is in this
+part of the proceedings that most interest is taken, for the business of
+the tithing-men is to take a poll-tax of twopence from every male
+inhabitant and a kiss from the wives and daughters of the burgesses. This
+is in recognition of the ancient powers of the Lord of the Manor, who had
+peculiar rights over the property and persons of his "chattels," as the
+people were once regarded.
+
+[Illustration: HUNGERFORD TUTTI-MEN.]
+
+The tithing-men are known as tutti-men; tutti being the local word for
+pretty. They carry short poles as insignia of office, gaily bedecked with
+blue ribbons and choice flowers known as tutti-poles; while behind them
+walks a man groaning under the weight of the tutti oranges, it being the
+custom to bestow an orange upon every person who is kissed, as well as
+upon the school and workhouse children. The rights of office having been
+duly vested in them by means of strange customs and exhortation, the two
+favoured ones start off down the High Street on their kissing mission,
+followed by the orange-bearer and greeted with the cheers of the assembled
+people. One by one the houses are entered, and the custom observed both in
+spirit and letter; nor is it confined to the young and comely, for the old
+dames of Hungerford would deem themselves, if not insulted, at least sadly
+neglected, were the tutti-men to pass their houses unentered. Usually
+these officers find little difficulty in carrying out their pleasant
+duties, but sometimes the excitement is increased by some coy maiden,
+whose rustic simplicity prompts her to run away or hide. But as a general
+rule the ladies of Hungerford show very little objection to the observance
+of the ancient customs, so that the labours of the tutti-men are
+considerably lightened.
+
+Thus, amid laughter, merriment, and mock-seriousness, the fun is continued
+until about half the borough is visited, by which time the tutti-men have
+taken care that all the duty kisses that should gratify the ancient
+inhabitants have been administered, as well as certain others that are
+more a pleasure than a duty. Certainly they deserve well of the town, for
+the tutti-men go through a good day's work by the time dinner is served.
+Then, in accordance with the time-honoured precedent, the Chief Constable
+is elected into the chair; the great bowl of punch is placed on the table
+after dinner, and the various offices toasted and replied for. One is
+drunk in solemn silence--that of John of Gaunt, the town's benefactor.
+All the townspeople seem satisfied with their day's carnival, save,
+perhaps, a crooning old burgher, who may occasionally be heard to extol
+the good old days when the punch was strong and the newly-elected officers
+went home in wheelbarrows.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _LITTLECOTE_]
+
+From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pass to
+the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that
+gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous,
+if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will
+Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The
+most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of
+Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile
+further down the road. Either will bring the traveller to that secluded
+spot in the course of three and a half miles.
+
+It stands, that hoary pile, in a wide and well-wooded park, sheltered
+beneath the swelling Wiltshire downs and close beside the gentle Kennet,
+whose stream has been fruitful of trout ever since "trouts" (as our
+ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) were angled for.
+Littlecote, as we now see it, was built by the Darells in the closing
+years of the fifteenth century, in whose early years it had passed from
+the Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of the Colstons to
+William Darell, son of Sir William Darell, of Sesay, in Yorkshire. A
+descendant of this emigrant from the North Riding, the "Wild Will Darell"
+of this blood-boltered history was born into an estate comprising an
+ancestral home and many thousands of acres in the counties of Wilts,
+Berks, and Hants, and might have been accounted fortunate had it not been
+for the rather more than trifling circumstances of an unhappy up-bringing
+which included a shameful treatment of himself and his mother by an
+unnatural father; the paternal extravagances which had alienated much of
+the property; the heavy charge made on the estate for the benefit of the
+mistress of his brother, who preceded him in the estate; and, finally, the
+crop of lawsuits into which he was plunged immediately upon succeeding to
+this singularly-encumbered patrimony. At this interval of time it has
+become quite impossible for serious historians to discriminate between the
+facts and the--fancies, shall we call them?--of the Wild Darell story.
+This difficulty does not arise from lack of patient research on the part
+of Darell commentators, who have ransacked the Record Office to prove that
+he was _not_ a villain of the most lurid kind, or the industry of others
+who have searched among musty muniment chests to determine that he _was_.
+It would, considering the fact of the records in the Littlecote muniment
+room not having yet been explored for the benefit of these historic
+doubts, be rash indeed for any one to pronounce definitely for either of
+the very diverse views held of Darell as Villain, or Darell as Good Young
+Man.
+
+The story, which first became widely known through a footnote appended to
+Sir Walter Scott's "Rokeby," is of a midwife summoned from the village of
+Shefford, seven miles away, on a false pretence of attending Lady Knyvett,
+of Charlton, near by, and of her being blindfolded and led on horseback in
+the darkness of the night to quite another house, in one of whose stately
+rooms lay a mysterious masked lady for whom her services were required.
+The horrid legend then goes on to say that a tall, slender gentleman, a
+lowering and ferocious-looking man, "havinge uppon hym a goune of blacke
+velvett," entered the room with some others, and, without a word, took the
+child from her arms and threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room,
+crushing it into the flaming logs with his boot-heel, so that it was
+presently consumed.
+
+A prime horror, this, and rich in ferocity, mystery, and all the
+incertitude that comes of age and conflicting testimony. Masked lady,
+blindfolded nurse, burnt baby, taciturn and horrible stranger, what lurid
+figures are these! and how royally abused for the possession of an
+over-imaginative mind would be that novelist who should dare conceive
+incidents so romantic!
+
+[Sidenote: _WILD DARELL_]
+
+Scott gleaned his traditions from the weird legends current in the
+country-side. They had, when he first printed them, been the fireside
+gossip of that district for over two hundred years, and of course in that
+length of time had lost nothing in the repetition. For that reason we are
+asked nowadays to discredit them altogether. We cannot, however, do that,
+because there came to light some years ago the actual deposition to the
+facts made by the midwife, Mrs. Barnes of Shefford, taken down on her
+deathbed by a Mr. Bridges of Great Shefford, a magistrate, who was also a
+cousin of Darell, and would not, it may well be supposed, be inclined to
+spread any baseless gossip to the hurt of a family with which he was
+connected. This deposition tells the story as already narrated. It does
+not identify Darell or Littlecote, nor does it even hint the identity of
+_any_ person or place. But the sinister discovery, some twenty years ago,
+at Longleat, of an original letter from Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, to
+Sir John Thynne, of Longleat, dated January 2, 1578/9 (about the time of
+the midwife's confession), brings us to the original rumours pointing to
+Darell's being the man and Littlecote the place.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLECOTE.]
+
+[Sidenote: _DEATH OF DARELL_]
+
+There was then residing at Longleat a Mr. Bonham, whose sister was well
+known to be living with Darell as his mistress, and this letter requests
+that "Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister touching her usage at Will.
+Darell's, the birth of her children, how many there were, and what became
+of them: for that the report of the murder of one of them was increasing
+foully, and would touch Will. Darell to the quick." To that letter there
+is no reply, and it remains uncertain whether Darell was ever arraigned
+for murder and acquitted (as the story goes), or whether the rumours
+simply were never crystallized into a definite charge against him. The
+probability seems to be that he never was called upon to stand his trial.
+It is quite certain, however, that the legend of his being haunted along
+the roads by the apparition of a burning infant which startled his horse
+so that Wild Darell was thrown and killed is a more or less pleasing
+invention. Darell died quite peacefully in his bed, at Littlecote, eleven
+years after the midwife's death, and was buried in the Darell Chapel at
+Ramsbury, where he was laid to rest, October 1st, 1589. Notwithstanding
+these well-ascertained facts, Darell is now, if we are to credit the
+stories of the country-side, an apparition himself, and superstitious
+rustics still fear to face the roads o' nights because of a Burning Babe
+and a Spectral Horseman, who comes dashing down them at a terror-stricken
+gallop, mounted on a horse of coal-black hue, with a breath like steam and
+eyes like burning coals!
+
+As for the elaborate embroideries added to the Wild Darell story from time
+to time, there are many. According to these ingenious fictions, the
+midwife counted the stairs of the strange house, and cut a piece out of
+the bed curtains, which she carried away. By these means; by finding the
+number of the stairs at Littlecote to tally with her counting, and by
+fitting her piece of tapestry to a hole in the curtains of a bed at
+Littlecote, we are told to believe the truth of the story. The singular
+thing, however, is that Mrs. Barnes made absolutely no mention of these
+things in her deposition. There remains, it is true, the fact already
+alluded to, that the magistrate who took down the woman's statement was a
+connection of Darell's, and might possibly have suppressed facts which
+could point to his relative being concerned in the affair. Another story
+is that upon Darell being arraigned (which in itself is uncertain), he
+made interest with Sir John Popham, the Chief Justice, to procure an
+acquittal.
+
+[Illustration: THE HAUNTED CHAMBER.]
+
+Now it is quite certain that Popham did not become Chief Justice until
+1592, when Darell had been in his grave nearly three years, and could not
+therefore have done so. He was, it is true, Attorney-General at the time
+of Darell's supposed crime, and, _had_ there been a trial, and _had_ he
+been bribed, could possibly have procured a _nolle prosequi_.
+
+But Darell certainly made over the reversion of Littlecote to Popham in
+1586, and Popham took possession upon Darell's decease. The story of this
+transaction being the bribe in question we owe to Aubrey, the county
+historian (or rather, the county gossip), who actually gives an account of
+the trial and says, "Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but
+being a great person and a favourite, he pronounced a _noli prosequi_."
+
+More to the point is the fact that Darell, in 1583, offered Lord
+Chancellor Bromley the then large sum of £5000 to be "his good friend."
+
+Those who are interested in the Darell story are equally divided as to his
+general character. One would have us believe that he was a Model Squire,
+who fished for trout, took an enthralling interest in his flower-garden,
+and if he did not always come home to tea (because tea not having at that
+period been introduced, it was impossible to do so), was content with a
+modest pint of claret at dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in
+reading what improving literature was to be had in the Elizabethan age;
+which, I fear, judging from the general character of the time, was of a
+somewhat meagre nature.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE REAL DARELL_]
+
+The real Darell was not quite like that picture. We already know that he
+had one mistress at Littlecote, and then there was Lady Anne Hungerford,
+an elderly charmer, whom by some means Wild Will had seduced from her
+husband, and whose letters, still preserved, to her "deare Dorrell" are
+not so improving as the recipient's other reading. One learns from these
+choice communications that Lady Anne had been accused of murder, adultery,
+and trying to poison her husband; and, under the circumstances, it seems
+quite likely that all these charges were well-founded, even though she
+says that "luker and gaine makes many dissembling and hollow hearts"
+(which sounds like one of the admirable copy-book maxims of our youth),
+and that she anticipates being cleared from suspicion of these "vill and
+abomynabell practiscis." Add to these hot-blooded intrigues the
+extravagances which, together with his litigious disposition, served to
+ruin his estate and to bring him into disfavour with his neighbours, and
+we obtain the genesis of all the ill-favoured legends of this picturesque
+figure of the Elizabethan era.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE GREAT REBELLION_]
+
+Littlecote had not done with stirring scenes when Darell was dead and the
+Pophams took possession. The Great Hall, hung round with pikes, leather
+jerkins, helmets, and cuirasses of Cromwellian times, serves to tell, in
+its warlike array, of how the place became a rendezvous of the Roundheads
+of this vicinity. These relics are the arms and accoutrements of the
+Popham Horse, raised by Colonel Alexander Popham, whose own suit of armour
+is still suspended here, over one of the doorways. A fitting place this,
+then, for that gathering of the King's Commissioners who came to
+Littlecote in December, 1688. The occasion was an historic one. James the
+Second was tottering upon his throne, and the Prince of Orange, invited to
+these shores to protect the civil and religious liberties of the nation,
+had marched up with his Dutchmen from his landing in the West Country. No
+man knew what would be the course of events, because not one of those
+concerned in that memorable crisis knew his own mind, from the King and
+his adherents on the one side, to the Prince and his partisans on the
+other.
+
+The two parties met at Hungerford on December 8. On the following day,
+Sunday, the Commissioners dined at Littlecote, and then and there the fate
+of the kingdom was settled, quite amicably. The old Hall was crowded with
+Peers and Generals--Halifax, the judicious "trimmer," whose cautious
+diplomacy guided the crisis through to its solution without bloodshed;
+Burnet, Nottingham, Shrewsbury, and Oxford, all waiting upon events.
+Halifax, the partisan of the King, seized the opportunity of extracting
+from Burnet all he knew and thought. "Do you wish to get the King into
+your power?" he asked the Bishop. "Not at all," replied Burnet: "we would
+not do the least harm to his person." "And if he were to go away?" slyly
+insinuated Halifax. "There is nothing so much to be wished," whispered the
+Bishop, apprehending his meaning; and so James slunk away, and William of
+Orange reigned in his stead.
+
+For the rest, Littlecote is a veritable storehouse of art and antiquities.
+The collection of ancient armour in the Great Hall is one of the finest in
+England. Here, too, is Chief Justice Popham's chair, and the thumbstocks
+which he used as a means of extracting confessions from petty offenders
+with whom persuasion of the merely moral kind had failed. Then there is
+the painting of Mr. Popham's horse, "Wild Dayrell," which won the Derby in
+1855, and many interesting objects besides. First in point of interest,
+however, is the Haunted Chamber, which is even now said to resound with
+groans and imprecations; and is still very much in the same condition as
+in Darell's day, although, to be sure, the fateful ante-room is now
+divided from it. Darell's Tree, an ancient elm, patched and chained
+together, is still to be seen on the south side of the house, carefully
+tended; the legend running that Littlecote will flourish so long as its
+hoary trunk holds together.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+But to return to the road, which presently comes to the charming village
+of Froxfield, with its wide village green and great red-brick barracks of
+almshouses, founded in 1686 by Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, for fifty
+clergymen's widows, and perched up on a bank above the right-hand side of
+the highway.
+
+[Sidenote: _SAVERNAKE FOREST_]
+
+Thence, nearly all the way into Marlborough, seven miles ahead, the road
+lies through Savernake Forest and its outskirts, passing the loveliest
+forest scenery in England. Nothing can compare for magnificence with the
+massed beeches and oaks of Savernake, whose glorious alleys of foliage
+extend for miles in every direction. These fine full-grown trees are
+planted for the most part in a well-considered design, and radiate from a
+central point in eight directions. These "Eight Walks," as they are
+called, vary in length from four miles downwards, and lie to the south of
+the road. The highway runs through the northern verge of the Forest, quite
+open and hedgeless all the way, with two gates across it, about two miles
+apart. The scenery is like nothing so much as a painting by De Wint or
+Constable.
+
+The Marquis of Ailesbury, to whom this noble demesne (the only Forest in
+the possession of a subject) belongs, has his residence near the southern
+boundary of the Forest, at Tottenham House, which is a singularly plain
+building externally, and so reminiscent in name of the Tottenham Court
+Road that it would have been exquisitely appropriate had the late Marquis
+sold the estate to Sir John Blundell Maple instead of to Lord Iveagh.
+
+I suppose the eccentricities of the late Marquis of Ailesbury will become
+the subject of curious legends in the coming by-and-by. He was born out of
+his time, and was a kind of "throw-back" to earlier types that flourished
+when the Prince Regent and the Toms and Jerrys disported themselves in the
+famous Corinthian manner.
+
+The glades of Savernake still remain in the family, but were alienated to
+Lord Iveagh, the man of Dublin stout, of whom the quaint Biblical conceit
+was invented by some temperance wag: "He who is not for us is agin us.[3]
+He brews XX." Lord Iveagh bought the estates and paid for them, but the
+House of Lords refused to sanction the sale, and so Savernake still
+belongs to the Brudenell-Bruces.
+
+The late Marquis had a perfect genius for dissipating wealth. A "horsey"
+man among the "horsey," his favourite companions were sporting men of the
+more unrefined type, and he was hail-fellow with the cab-men and 'bus-men
+of London. Radicals found in his career a text for their discourses and a
+reason for abolishing the House of Lords as an hereditary chamber; and the
+ballet-girls of the London theatres regarded him as all a Peer should be.
+One who knew "Lord Stomach-ache," as he was playfully nicknamed before he
+had succeeded to the Marquisate and was yet Lord Savernake, said--
+
+"The wealth and colour of his lordship's language surprised me. I never
+knew or heard a costermonger in the Dials with such a repertory. I saw him
+once with a couple of choice friends on a costermonger's barrow, such as
+is used for hawking fish or vegetables. One 'pal' had a 'yard of tin' (or
+coaching horn), on which he tootled melodiously. His lordship wore a very
+high collar, a blue birds-eye belcher fastened with a nursery-pin for a
+necktie, a huge drab box-cloth coat with large mother-o'-pearl buttons, a
+low-crowned, broad-brimmed coachman's hat, and a very tight pair of
+trousers. It was raining, a pitiless, pelting drizzle, and as they pulled
+up for drinks, he took off his heavy coat, and, placing it carefully over
+the patient 'moke,' said to it, as he patted it, 'There y'are, Neddy;
+that'll keep the bloomin' wet off you, old bloke, won't it?'"
+
+For my own part, I think the latter part of that incident is the most
+creditable thing on record in the "short and merry" life of poor
+"Stomach-ache."
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD TIMES ON THE ROAD_]
+
+Savernake Forest left behind, the road descends steeply down Forest Hill
+in the direction of Marlborough. This hill was one of the worst obstacles
+met with between London and Bath in the old times, and its steepness was
+then rendered more difficult by reason of the execrable surface of the
+road. This is the experience of one travelling to London about 1816:
+"Twenty times at least the eight horses came to a standstill, and had to
+be allowed their own time before they would move. For more than half the
+way up there lay an extensive encampment of gipsies along each side of the
+road, forming a most picturesque scene with their wild figures, their
+bright-coloured costumes, and dark bronzed skin; their white tents, and
+the numerous columns of blue, thin smoke that curled upwards and lost
+itself in the dense foliage. These stout vagabonds rendered us an
+essential service; they cheered and lashed the horses, they pushed bodily
+in the rear, and they climbed the spokes of the revolving wheels, to send
+them round, with a recklessness and dexterity only acquired by long
+practice. To compensate them for their labour, the coachman halted at the
+top of the hill to give them a chance of trading; and then the women came
+forward and did a little fortune-telling with the ladies, not without
+joking and bantering on the part of the onlookers; while the younger
+gipsies brought abundance of sweet wood-strawberries, dished up in
+dock-leaves, than which nothing at the time could have been more welcome.
+
+"During the first half of the journey to London our pace would not average
+more than four miles an hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of
+the road would keep up with us for the hour together, especially the
+pedlars and packmen, who would display their Brummagem wares, and now and
+then effect a sale as we rumbled along."
+
+A wide view extends from here, over the valley of the Kennet, with
+Marlborough lying in its hollow, and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away
+in bare rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marlborough develops
+itself slowly as one descends, and becomes lost for a time as the
+panoramic view sinks out of sight.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH_]
+
+There are fine old inns at Marlborough; coaching inns, fallen from the
+high estate that was theirs in the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord
+Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of servants, and Horace
+Walpole with his gimcrackery and his caustic comments upon the kind of
+society in which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayed here. No one
+comes here nowadays with vast retinues of lackeys, and the man does not
+exist, be he Peer or Commoner, who could dare be so offensive as that
+haughty and insufferable personage, the aforesaid Earl of Chatham, who,
+nursing his gout at the "Castle" Hotel in 1762, practically converted the
+place to his own exclusive use, regardless of the comfort or convenience
+of any one else. He would not stay at the "Castle," he said, storming at
+the terrified landlord, unless all the servants of the establishment were
+forthwith clothed in the Chatham livery. And so clothed they were, and the
+"Castle" became for some weeks what it had been before the strange
+workings of fate had converted it into the finest of all the inns along
+the road to Bath--the private residence of a nobleman.
+
+There are breakneck streets in Marlborough, for the town, although built
+in the valley, has the entrance to its principal street carried round the
+spur of a foothill so that one side of the thoroughfare is considerably
+lower than the other, and the humorous among Marlborough's neighbours
+declare that bicycles are the only vehicles that can be driven round by
+the Town Hall without upsetting. But, in spite of what Cobbett says in his
+"Rural Rides," that "Marlborough is an ill-looking place enough," this
+street is the finest, broadest, neatest, and most picturesque of any along
+these hundred odd miles of highway. Think of all the adjectives that make
+for admiration, and you have scarce employed one that overrates the
+dignified and stately air of the High Street of Marlborough. The width of
+the road is accounted for by its having been used as a market-place; the
+architectural character of the houses lining it is due to the fires that
+devastated the town in 1653, 1679, and 1690, burning down the older
+houses, and causing the town to be almost wholly rebuilt. Those were the
+days of the Renaissance, and before the dwelling-house became frankly
+unornamental and merely a brick or stone box for people to live in, with
+window and door holes from which they could look or issue forth.
+
+Thanks, then, to these fires, Marlborough is to-day a town of
+architectural delights, while the older portion of the College is fully as
+interesting, having been built on the site of the old Castle from designs
+by Inigo Jones or his son-in-law, Webb. It is thus a noble view along the
+High Street: the shops, which are interspersed among the private houses,
+being here and there fronted with covered ways, forming dry walks in wet
+weather; an arcaded Market House and Town Hall at the eastern end, and a
+church closing the view in each direction.
+
+[Sidenote: _ARCADIAN HUMBUG_]
+
+Marlborough College is at the western end of this street, occupying the
+fine mansion built by Francis, Lord Seymour, in time to entertain Charles
+the Second, who with his Queen, his brother, and a crowded suite halted
+here on his way to the West, in one of his Royal progresses. It became the
+residence of that Earl of Hertford whose Countess had a gushing affection
+for those tame poets of the eighteenth century whose blank verse was so
+soothing to the senses and so absolutely restful to the mind--requiring
+little mental exercise to write, and none at all to read. My Lady held
+quite a poetic court, of which Pope, Dr. Watts, and Thomson were the
+shining lights, and squirted amiable piffle about Chloes and Strephons
+while her fine London guests strutted about the emerald lawns pretending
+to be Wiltshire peasantry; the ladies wielding shepherds' crooks, and
+leading lambs made presentable with much expenditure of soap and water, in
+leashes of sky-blue silk; while the gallant gentlemen, more used, we may
+be sure, to dining and drinking, learned to play upon oaten reeds, and
+were quite idyllic and Arcadian. What an astounding time! and how
+disgusted these fine folks would have been, had they been forced to fare
+on the fat bacon and small beer of the real shepherds, instead of the
+kickshaws and the port which helped them to sustain their affectations!
+The spectacle of that vicious era, pretending to rural simplicity is,
+perhaps, the most notable example of vice paying homage to virtue that may
+be given. The folly of the age is almost inconceivable, but it is all
+preserved for us and duly certified in its literature and in the pictures
+of the school of Watteau; while this particular instance of it may be
+voluminously read of in the records of the time, or be conjured up by a
+sight of the winding walks and grottoes in the Castle gardens, where,
+perhaps, Dr. Watts may have seen the original busy bee that gave him the
+first notion of--
+
+  "How doth the little busy bee
+    Employ each shining hour,
+  By gath'ring honey all the day
+    From ev'ry opening flower."
+
+[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH.]
+
+Meanwhile, Thomson was sipping nectar (which is Greek for brandy-punch)
+with my Lord Hertford, and babbling of other things than green fields. In
+fact, the literary Lady Hertford found the poet of the "Seasons" to be a
+drunkard, and he was not invited to any more of her parties.
+
+The house passed at length to the Dukes of Northumberland, who neglected
+it, and at last leased it to a Mr. Cotterell, an innkeeper, who with
+prophetic vision saw custom coming down the road in an increasing tide.
+Appropriately known as the "Castle," it remained an hotel until January 5,
+1843, when its doors were finally closed, to be re-opened as the home of
+the newly established "Marlborough College."
+
+For nearly a century the "Castle" entertained the best society in the
+land. Forty-two coaches passed through the town every day when it was at
+the height of its prosperity, and a goodly proportion of their occupants
+stayed here. Take, in fact, the lists of distinguished arrivals at Bath
+during that time, and you have practically a visitors' list of the
+"Castle."
+
+Marlborough College was established in this house of entertainment, and
+new buildings have been added from time to time; but the old "Castle
+Hotel" may yet be traced from its characteristic architecture. Amid its
+pleasant lawns and gardens rises that prehistoric hill on which
+Marlborough Castle was built. Indeed, here, in this "Castle Mound," is the
+very fount and origin of the town, whose very name is supposed to derive
+from this earthwork, being the grave of the magician Merlin, who with his
+enchantments is said to lie here still, until Britain shall be in need of
+him again. "Merleberg," or "Merlin's town," is said to have been
+Marlborough's first name, and the crest over the town arms still
+represents the Mound, with a motto in Latin to "the bones of the wise
+Merlin."[4]
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE KENNET_]
+
+When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet
+to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and
+the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of
+the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be
+glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road
+itself is bare. The "green pastures and still waters" of the Psalmist,
+indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you see the
+pleasant water-meadows afar off as you toil up the shoulder of the downs,
+passing a picturesque roadside inn, the "Marquis of Ailesbury's Arms,"
+and the village of Fyfield on the way, with a glimpse of Manton village
+down below, amid its elms and farmyards by the windings of the stream.
+
+[Illustration: ROADSIDE INN, MANTON.]
+
+Fyfield (how many dozens of Fyfields are there in England?) is tiny,
+clean, and quaint, with a pinnacled church tower on to whose roof you look
+down from the road, and may glimpse in a backward glance the whole of the
+district traversed since Savernake Forest was left behind. There, in long
+dark clumps upon the distant hilly horizon are the grand avenues of
+that forest; the Bath Road descending from them like a white ribbon
+into Marlborough town, whose houses are hid, only the church towers
+shining white in the sun, against a green background. Ahead rises
+unenclosed downland, with chalky, flint-strewn road, the unenclosed wastes
+of green-grey grass, broken here and there with mounds, grass-grown too.
+
+[Illustration: FYFIELD.]
+
+[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH DOWNS_]
+
+On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, perhaps, rises the
+church of West Overton, an offence here in its newness, for this road is
+Roman, these mounds are ancient British graves, and everywhere, look in
+what direction you will on these bleak and treeless wastes, are the
+mysterious vestiges of a people who had no arts, no science, no
+literature, who lived, in fact, a savage nomadic life, but who, for all
+those disabilities, have left records of their passing that may well
+remain when the civilization of to-day has perished. On these downs are
+countless tumuli; in the hollows are unnumbered thousands of stones,
+brought no one knows whence, or for what purpose, and the remains of
+cromlechs may be seen that add to the complex puzzle of the wherefore of
+it all. West Kennet village stands in the succeeding hollow, like some
+shamed modern trespasser, amid these prehistoric remains which appear,
+Sphinx-like, on the sky-line or stand lonely in the folds of the barren
+hills.
+
+The district seems to have been a metropolis of the prehistoric dead (if,
+indeed, all these ruined stone avenues and circles are sepulchral), or
+some vast open-air cathedral of a forgotten faith; if they have a
+religious rather than a mortuary significance. For, but little over a mile
+distant, are the remains of the so-called "Druid Temple" at Avebury, a
+monument second only to Stonehenge in mystery, and a good deal more
+impressive in appearance; while, frowning down upon the highway, and
+standing immediately beside it, is that "greatest earthwork in Europe,"
+Silbury Hill.
+
+Avebury village stands on the road to Swindon, on the borders of
+Marlborough Downs, and has been built within a great circle which appears
+to have been approached by an avenue of standing stones. A few of these
+may still be observed, standing beside the hedgeless road. Some idea of
+the vast size and impressive aspect of this circular monument of those dim
+ages before history began may be obtained when it is said that it consists
+of an excavation 40 feet deep and 4442 feet in circumference, encircled on
+the outer side with an earthwork 40 feet high, the whole enclosing nearly
+29 acres. On the inner brink of this deep fosse there are now left
+thirty-five huge stones out of the original number of about one thousand.
+Nine of these are upright, ten thrown down, and sixteen buried. Traces of
+pits show where the farmers of many years ago dug up the others and took
+them away for building-stones or gateposts. Over six hundred and fifty
+others are known to have been destroyed, the cottages of Avebury and the
+roads having been built of their fragments. How the unknown builders of
+this weird place could have brought these huge rocks, some of them
+measuring fourteen feet in length, and all weighing many tons a-piece,
+from unguessed distances, remains a mystery.
+
+[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON.]
+
+[Sidenote: _AVEBURY_]
+
+The first mention of Avebury Temple is by Aubrey the antiquary. It was in
+1648 that he first saw the place, which seems, curiously enough, to have
+been until then quite unknown. He came upon it quite by chance, when
+hunting, and must have been astonished at the discovery of so
+extraordinary a place. His account of it led that kingly amateur of
+science, Charles the Second, to visit Avebury on his way to Bath in 1668.
+Pepys, too, going to Bath, unexpectedly happened both upon Avebury and
+Silbury Hill, and viewed them and the sepulchral barrows that, crowned
+with pine trees, look down from the hill sides, with an admiration not
+unmixed with a superstitious dread.
+
+[Illustration: AVEBURY.]
+
+The road to Swindon goes straight through this great earthwork, and is
+crossed midway by another; together, with part of the village built within
+the circle, cutting it up lamentably.
+
+[Illustration: SILBURY HILL.]
+
+[Sidenote: _SILBURY HILL_]
+
+Silbury Hill, which stands within sight, is a fitting pendant to these
+mysteries. Antiquaries have contended together in referring both to
+ancient Britons, Phoenicians, Danes, Saxons, and even Romans, and are
+divided in opinion as to their object: whether they were intended for
+Druids' or Snake-worshippers' temples, or whether they marked the last
+resting-places of those slain in some great battle fought before the dawn
+of history. That Silbury Hill stood here when the Romans came seems,
+however, to be certain from the fact that the old Roman road from
+_Cunetio_ to _Aquæ Solis_ (the existing Bath Road between Marlborough and
+Bath), engineered along the whole of its course in a perfectly straight
+line, swerves slightly from the south base of the hill, evidently to avoid
+injuring it. A learned antiquary (but the most learned must be reduced to
+the level of the most ignorant before these mute earthworks) considers
+that Silbury was raised to commemorate a battle, probably Arthur's second
+and last battle of Badon Hill. The same authority thinks Avebury to be a
+burying-place of the dead slain in a great battle, and planned to show the
+dispositions of the forces engaged on either side.
+
+But Silbury remains inscrutable. It is wholly an artificial hill, somewhat
+pyramidical in shape, and 170 feet in height. Its base covers five acres
+of ground, and was once surrounded by a stone circle, of which scanty
+traces are now left. The contents of it are estimated at 468,170 cubic
+yards of earth. Repeated attempts have been made to pluck out the heart of
+this mystery, but without success. So far back as 1777 it was mined from
+above by a party of Cornish miners, who worked under the direction of the
+then Duke of Northumberland and others, but nothing was discovered. Then
+in 1849 it was tunnelled from the base to the centre, where a space of
+twelve feet in diameter was examined, with the same disappointing result.
+Antiquaries consequently regard Silbury with hungry and expectant eyes.
+
+Just beyond this baffling relic stands the Beckhampton inn, where the
+"coaches dined" and changed teams, and where the Bath Road divides into
+the two routes; the right-hand road going through Calne, Chippenham, and
+Box; the other reaching Bath by way of Devizes and Melksham. Some coaches
+went one way and some the other. The crack coaches, including the
+"Beaufort Hunt," went by the former, which is two and a half miles
+shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one selected nowadays by
+record-breaking cyclists.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the "lower
+ground." So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great
+deal higher, and much more hilly than the "upper ground" between London
+and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would
+sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach
+driven by a gay young blade, one "Jack Everett;" an accident in which he
+and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferers were
+put into a cart filled with straw, and taken to the nearest surgeon. On
+the road into Marlborough the coachman beguiled the tedium of the way and
+the pain of his injured limb by saying to the old lady, "I have often
+kissed a young woman, and I don't see why I shouldn't kiss an old
+one"--and he suited the action to the words.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CHERHILL WHITE HORSE_]
+
+Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is the "Waggon and Horses," is the place
+mentioned by Dickens in the "Bagman's Story" in the _Pickwick Papers_. It
+remains as old-fashioned to-day as ever,[5] but does not very closely
+resemble the word-picture Dickens draws of it. He probably made
+acquaintance with the downs and the inn only in passing on his way between
+Bath and London in 1835. It stands at a spot where the road promises to
+become more cheerful and less gaunt and inhospitable; but the promise is
+not kept, the way going inexorably again along downs as bare as before,
+for another two miles. All the way between here and Cherhill village the
+"Lansdowne Column" is seen crowning the rolling hills to the left front.
+Built within the ramparts of an ancient hill-fort of the Danes, who
+encamped naturally enough in the most inaccessible position they could
+find, this "column," which is an obelisk, is an exceedingly prominent
+object in every direction. As one proceeds and turns the flank of the
+hill, the strange sight of a trotting White Horse is seen carved in the
+chalk of its swelling shoulder. This is not one of the ancient White
+Horses that decorate the hillsides of some parts of the West County and
+date from Anglo-Saxon times, but dates only from 1780, when it was cut by
+Dr. Allsop, an eccentric physician of Calne. The site it occupies is said
+to be the highest point between London and Bath, and the White Horse is
+supposed to be visible for thirty miles--which there is no occasion to
+believe. The figure measures 157 feet from head to tail, and the eye alone
+is 12 feet in diameter. The way the figure was designed is just a little
+curious.
+
+No one could possibly have correctly traced the outlines of so huge an
+affair, except by external aid, which probably accounts for the bad
+drawing of the ancient examples. Dr. Allsop adopted the plan of stationing
+himself on the downs in full view of the rough draft, so to speak, which
+he had already staked out with flags, and of shouting directions to his
+workmen by the aid of a speaking-trumpet.
+
+The hillside is so steep at this point that when the White Horse was
+restored in 1876, a workman was nearly killed by a truck load of chalk
+descending upon him down the slope.
+
+Passing this interesting spot and the village of Cherhill, which lies
+hidden to the right of the road, the highway reaches Calne through its
+suburb of Quemerford, along a flat road.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL.]
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _CALNE_]
+
+Calne (whose name be pleased to pronounce "Carne") is not a pleasing
+place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade
+utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the
+very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on
+account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place.
+"Calne," according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father's three
+years' residence there, "is not a very pretty place. The soil is clayey
+and chalky; the streams far from crystal; the hills bare and shapeless;
+the trees not venerable; the town itself irregular, which is its only
+beauty. But there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people in it."
+With all of which one may agree; save that the "irregularity" of the town
+is now rather sluttish than beautiful. As for the people, we are but
+travelling the road, and Calne is only an incident on our way--the people
+of it something less to ourselves, resembling, in fact, x, an unknown
+quantity.
+
+The outskirts of Calne are not prepossessing, nor does the long, stony
+street of mean characterless stone houses that leads to the centre of the
+little town alter the stranger's view. Calne, in fact, lying so near
+Bowood, long the seat of the Marquises of Lansdowne, and being their
+property, wears an abject, servile look. All that makes life worth living
+is at lordly Bowood; only that which is mean and commonplace is left to
+Calne. It seems (although one's prejudices are Conservative) as though
+some vampire were seated near, sucking away the life-blood of the place.
+
+There are two hills just out of Calne; Black Dog Hill, and Derry Hill, and
+they lead the traveller through picturesque scenery, past one of the
+lodges of Bowood, and so down into the flat alluvial lands where the Avon
+flows, and now and again floods out all the dwellers in those levels. The
+road down there is dreadfully dull to the pedestrian. To the cyclist, on
+the other hand, who has for these miles past been struggling up hills he
+cannot climb, and walking down others he dare not coast, the change is one
+from a penitential pilgrimage to Paradise.
+
+The entrance to the "ancient and royal" borough of Chippenham is hatefully
+like that into Calne, whose paltry houses are reproduced there. The centre
+of the town is, however, of a better character, although the streets are
+cramped and narrow. A singularly foreign air is given to the place by its
+balustraded stone bridge across the Avon, and if one cares to pursue the
+Continental tone further it may be found in the huge factory near by,
+where "Swiss" Condensed Milk, of the "Milkmaid" brand, is manufactured on
+an immense scale. For the rest, its cheese and corn markets and
+bacon-curing keep it very much alive, and a modern (and brutally ugly)
+Town Hall, built in 1856, shows sufficiently well how trade has grown
+since the time when the picturesque old Town Hall, still standing, was
+built in the sixteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM.]
+
+[Sidenote: _MAUD HEATH'S CAUSEWAY_]
+
+The most interesting thing in Chippenham is (to borrow a "bull" for the
+occasion) outside the town. "Maud Heath's Causeway," a stone-pitched path
+along the road that runs through the heavy clay lands beside the Wiltshire
+Avon, extends for four and a half miles, from Chippenham to the summit of
+Bremhillwick Hill. It was made under the will of Maud Heath, who died
+about 1474, for the benefit of the market folk resorting to Chippenham,
+who found the low-lying roads almost impassable in winter. Little is known
+of this old-time benefactress, but legend supplies the lack of knowledge,
+and the popular belief is that she was a market-woman who, finding the
+road from Langley Burrell into the town in so dreadful a state, determined
+to leave the savings of a lifetime for the provision of a stone causeway,
+so that future generations might go dry-shod to market.
+
+This causeway goes from the north-east side of the town, and continues
+through Langley Burrell to Tytherton Kellaways, up the shoulder of
+Bremhillwick Hill. The portion between Chippenham and Langley Burrell was,
+for some unexplained reason, not constructed until 1852-3.
+
+According to the inscriptions on the stone posts beside it, the Causeway
+is held to commence at the Hill, and to end at Chippenham--
+
+  "From this WICK HILL begins the praise
+  Of MAUD HEATH'S gift to these highways."
+
+At the other end, next Chippenham, where the road joins those from
+Malmesbury and Draycott, is another stone, with the inscription--
+
+  "Hither extendeth MAUD HEATH'S gift,
+  For where I stand is Chippenham Clift."
+
+Midway, on the bridge over the Avon, is another stone--a pillar twelve
+feet high, erected by the Trustees in 1698, with the following facts
+recorded on it:--
+
+    "To the memory of the worthy MAUD HEATH, of Langley Burrell, Spinster:
+    who in the year of grace, 1474, for the good of travellers, did in
+    charity bestow in land and houses, about eight pounds a year, for
+    ever, to be laid out on the highway and causeway, leading from Wick
+    Hill to Chippenham Clift."
+
+    CHIPPENHAM CLIFT. Injure me not. WICK HILL.
+
+A statue of Maud Heath, a purely imaginary likeness of course, since no
+portrait of her is known to exist, was set up on a pillar on the summit of
+Bremhillwick Hill in 1838 by the Marquis of Lansdowne and a local
+clergyman.
+
+The pillar is forty feet high, and the seated statue on the top of it
+represents Maud Heath in the costume of the period of Edward the Fourth,
+with a staff in her hand, and a basket by her side. An inscription bids--
+
+  "Thou who dost pause on this ærial height,
+  Where MAUD HEATH'S Pathway winds in shade or light,
+  Christian wayfarer in a world of strife,
+  Be still--and ponder on the path of life."
+
+The sentiments are admirable, if a little depressing: the verse atrocious.
+
+[Sidenote: _IMPROVING SENTIMENTS_]
+
+But worse remains. There are three dials on the pillar, with an
+inscription on the side facing the rising sun--
+
+  "VOLAT TEMPUS.
+
+  "Oh, early passenger, look up, be wise:
+  And think how, night and day, TIME onward FLIES."
+
+Opposite Noon is the advice, "Whilst we have time, do good."
+
+  "QVUM TEMPUS HABEMUS, OPEREMUR BONUM.
+
+  "Life steals away--this hour, O man, is lent thee
+  Patient to work the work of Him that sent thee."
+
+For Evening the admonition is not a little alarming--if taken literally.
+
+  "REDIBO. TU NUNQUAM.
+
+  "Haste, traveller! the sun is sinking low;
+  He shall return again--but NEVER THOU."
+
+The passing wayfarer might well ask why he should never return along this
+road!
+
+The late vicar of Bremhill did these metrical paraphrases of the Latin
+which led so tragically, but whose qualities, as verse, resemble the
+average of the ordinary Pantomime librettist.
+
+Maud Heath's charity is still in existence, and is now worth about £120
+per annum, a sum amply sufficient for keeping her Causeway in repair.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Rowden Hill, a mile out of Chippenham, on the road to Bath, is a welcome
+drop down into level land again, and would be enjoyable were it not for
+the bad surface. It is while wheeling such hills and such road-metal that
+one appreciates at the full the pluck and endurance of those early
+cyclists who raced across them in the early seventies, making the pace on
+the high bicycles of those times as gallantly as though the terrible
+jolting they experienced was really enjoyable. That well-known body of
+cyclists, the Bath Road Club, has numbered some good sportsmen and rare
+flyers in its time, and though their pace reads ridiculously slow beside
+that of these pneumatic-tyred days, the performances of those
+half-forgotten racers were quite as fine, and, conditions being equal,
+perhaps finer, than the record rides of recent seasons. There was a
+time--in August, 1870, to be precise--when two cyclists--Gardner and
+Fisher, did the double journey of 107 miles each way in five days, and men
+looked upon them as marvellous riders; so perhaps they were, considering
+the mechanical limitations of the machines they rode, whose like is not to
+be seen nowadays save in collections of curios. Equally wonderful were
+those stalwarts who cut away the hours, piece by piece, until their
+performances were topped by "Wat" Britten on the "ordinary" in 1880, when
+he did the double journey in 23 hours. There were those who then thought
+the last word had been said in the matter of Bath Road Records. They must
+have been astonished when R. C. Nesbitt's "ordinary" record was made on
+August 1, 1891, when he covered the out and home course in 15 hrs. 40
+mins. 34 secs. Improved methods of manufacture may have had something to
+do with the smashing character of this new performance; but, even so,
+consider the extraordinary efforts that must have gone toward getting
+those figures, which cut Britten's by 7 hrs. 20 mins., and at the same
+time secured one of the rare victories of the "ordinary" over the "safety"
+pneumatic-tyred bicycle. For this grand ride defeated Mr. Lowe's, made on
+a "safety," in 1891 by more than 30 minutes.
+
+[Sidenote: _CYCLING HISTORY_]
+
+But that was one of the last expiring efforts of the now obsolete and
+miscalled "ordinary." It was speedily beaten by J. W. Jarvis, September
+20, 1892, who put the figures at 15 hrs. 16 mins. 42 secs.--23 mins. 52
+secs. better than the previous best. Then came that hardy Brighton Road
+record-maker, C. G. Wridgway, whose ride of August 2, 1893, put the
+clocking at 14 hrs. 22 mins. 57 secs.--a wonderfully heavy lowering of
+figures. The following year Wridgway established records on both the
+Brighton and Bath Road within a month; beating his record here of the
+previous August by his ride on October 4, when he reduced his own time by
+the astonishing margin of 1 hr. 27 mins. 43 secs.
+
+Time was now cut so close that when W. J. Neasen, of the Anfield Club,
+essayed the difficult task of lowering it, he only succeeded, on May 11,
+1895, in getting inside Wridgway's time by 24 mins. 10 secs., the figures
+then standing at 12 hrs. 31 mins. 4 secs. H. C. Horswill, of the Essex
+Wheelers, then beat Neason's performance, in July, 1897, by 24 mins. 34
+secs., to be succeeded finally by F. W. Barnes, who on October 30, in the
+same year, performed the double journey in 11 hrs. 48 mins. 42 secs., and
+still holds the record.
+
+Among these records of the Bath Road must be mentioned the various essays
+made by C. A. Smith, of the Bath Road Club, on tricycles. He rode to Bath
+and back on a three-wheeler, July 16, 1891, in 16 hrs. 13 mins. 18 secs.,
+thus establishing a record, which was beaten four years later--August 23,
+1895--by F. Martin, by the narrow margin of 11 mins. 43 secs. These
+figures in turn were lowered, August 5, 1897, by T. J. Gibbs, Bath Road
+Club, who accomplished a record of 14 hrs. 18 min.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _PICKWICK_]
+
+And now we come, past the tree-shaded hamlet of Cross Keys, to Pickwick,
+ninety-seven miles from London, situated at a turning in the road which
+leads to Corsham Regis, half a mile distant, on the left hand. The
+traveller, exploring this road for the first time, looks forward with
+curiosity to seeing a place with so famous a name; but Pickwick, the
+decayed coaching hamlet, can scarcely be said to "live up to" its
+literary associations. Strictly speaking, it is not even decayed; but, now
+that the coaches are no more, flourishes on the "Pickwick Brewery," which
+makes a brave show down the road. It is an eminently prosperous-looking,
+stone-built hamlet, a comparatively modern offshoot of the hoary Saxon
+village of Corsham, which, once on the main road, was thrust into the
+background when the mail coach came in, and the great highway to Bath was
+cut on this route, half a mile away.
+
+[Illustration: CROSS KEYS.]
+
+It is a curious literary puzzle--How did the title of the "Pickwick
+Papers" originate? It is a well-ascertained fact that, in 1835, Dickens,
+then a reporter for the daily press, was sent to Bath to report a speech
+of Lord John Russell's, that now almost-forgotten statesman being a
+candidate for representing that city. The future novelist was then but
+twenty-three years of age, a time of life when impressions of travel are
+vivid and lasting. Journeying by coach, he had every opportunity for
+observing places and people; and so it happened that when, a few months
+later, the now historic publishing firm of Chapman and Hall offered him
+the literary commission which resulted in the "Posthumous Papers of the
+Pickwick Club," the story he produced derived many of its features from
+his own experiences. His recollections had no time to fade, for in March,
+1836, the first part of "Pickwick" was published, and others were well on
+the way. It must ever be a matter of doubt whether Dickens noticed the
+existence of Pickwick, the place. That he had noted the existence of
+Moses Pickwick, the coach proprietor of Bath, is obvious enough from the
+"Pickwick Papers," where Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller are taking their
+seats for that City of the Waters.
+
+"'I'm wery much afeerd, sir, that the properiator o' this here coach is a
+playin' some imperence vith us,' says Sam.
+
+"'How is that, Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick; 'aren't the names down on the
+way-bill?'
+
+"'The names is not only down on the vay-bill, sir,' replied Sam, 'but
+they've painted vun on 'em up, on the door o' the coach.'
+
+"'Dear me,' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, quite staggered by the coincidence,
+'what a very extraordinary thing!'
+
+"'Yes, but that ain't all,' said Sam, again directing his master's
+attention to the coach door; 'not content vith writin' up Pickwick, they
+puts "Moses" afore it, vich I call addin' insult to injury.'"
+
+There were then, it will be seen, real Pickwicks living in Bath, and the
+"Moses" Pickwick referred to was an actual person, the great-grandson of
+one Eleazer Pickwick, who, many years before, had risen by degrees from
+the humble position of post-boy at the "Old Bear," at Bath, to be landlord
+of the once famous "White Hart" inn, which stood where the "Grand Pump
+Room" hotel now towers aloft.
+
+Now comes the long-sought-for connection between place and persons of
+identical name. Eleazer Pickwick was a foundling. Discovered as an infant
+on the road at Pickwick, he was named by the guardians, in accordance with
+an old custom, after the place.
+
+[Sidenote: _CORSHAM REGIS_]
+
+Corsham, to which Pickwick belongs, is one of those places which it would
+be almost an indignity to call a "village," while to name it a "town"
+would be to give too great an importance to it. It is Corsham "Regis," by
+virtue of having been a residence of the Saxon Kings; but the Great
+Western has docked the kingly suffix, and if you were to ask at Paddington
+for a ticket to Corsham Regis, it is to be feared that the booking-clerk
+would not recognize the place under its full name.
+
+[Illustration: THE HUNGERFORD ALMSHOUSE, CORSHAM REGIS.]
+
+The townlet is a pleasing one, and, always excepting the new and ugly
+stone villas recently built, it abounds with delightful specimens of
+domestic architecture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and mid-eighteenth
+centuries; fine houses built of Corsham stone in a dignified Renaissance
+manner, or in the earlier Tudor convention of gables and mullioned
+windows. Corsham Court, the finest of all, standing in its nobly-wooded
+park, is Elizabethan, and exhibits the merging of the two periods of
+Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was Lady Hungerford, widow of a
+former owner of Corsham Court, who, in 1672, built the quaint Hungerford
+Almshouse, close by.
+
+For the rest, Corsham has little history. It was the scene of a mysterious
+murder in 1594, when a gentleman, one Henry Long, was shot dead, while
+sitting at dinner amid his friends, by Sir Charles and Sir Henry Danvers,
+two brothers, who hailed from Dauntsey. The motive was never known, and
+the assassins were never punished. Six years later, Charles was beheaded
+for taking part in Essex's rebellion; which seems to be a kind of oblique
+and fumbling retribution on the part of Providence for his crime. Henry,
+however, prospered amazingly, and was eventually created Earl Danby,
+flourishing all his life, as the wicked are, on good authority, supposed
+to do, "like the green bay tree," and dying in the odour of sanctity,
+"full of honours, woundes, and daies." He is commemorated in an eloquent
+epitaph, written by the saintly George Herbert of Bemerton, more than ten
+years before his (Danvers') death; a circumstance which would seem to
+prove Herbert a hypocrite and Danvers peculiarly solicitous for his own
+post-mortem reputation.
+
+Corsham was the birthplace of Sir Richard Blackmore, physician to William
+the Third, and poetaster, who, says Leigh Hunt, "composed heaps of dull
+poetry, versified the Psalms, and, by way of extending the lesson of
+patience, wrote a paraphrase of the Book of Job." What sarcasm!
+
+But Blackmore was read in his day, just as Leigh Hunt was in his, and Fate
+is sardonic enough (for who at this time reads Hunt's tedious stuff?) to
+consign critic and criticized to one common limbo of neglect.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BOX TUNNEL_]
+
+From Corsham the old road used to lead precipitously up to the summit of
+Box Hill and thence downwards by breakneck gullies, furrowed by rains, and
+rich in loose stones, into Box. The modern highway goes modestly round the
+shoulder of the hill. The village of Box has gained an adventitious fame
+from the celebrated tunnel on the Great Western Railway, which pierces Box
+Hill, and was, upon its completion, the longest tunnel in England.
+Compared with later works, it sinks into quite minor importance; but it is
+still an impressive engineering feat, whether you view it from the railway
+carriage windows or from the highway. Its length is 3199 yards, or nearly
+two miles, and the hill rises above it to a height of three hundred feet.
+Its cost of over £500,000 is no less impressive.
+
+A curious story is told at Box of a platelayer, employed in the tunnel
+some twenty years ago, who with his gang worked there at night, and slept
+at Box village in the day. After a while he became engaged to a girl in
+the village, and the wedding-day was fixed. The vicar of Box, however, was
+a stickler for red tape, and it appears that he found some technical
+objection in the fact of the man not sleeping the night in the village.
+At any rate, he would not perform the ceremony until the Bishop (of
+Gloucester) compelled him to do so.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BOX QUARRIES.]
+
+[Sidenote: _BOX QUARRIES_]
+
+At Box we are well within the stone district whose quarries have rendered
+building-stone from the times of the Roman occupation until the present
+day. The oolite which comes from here and from the Corsham quarries is a
+fine grained stone, easily worked, and of a rich cream colour when freshly
+wrought. As "Bath stone" it is famous, and has made Bath exclusively a
+city of stone-built houses. In addition, it is sent to all parts of the
+country, and even exported. The quarries of Corsham and Box are,
+therefore, the centres of a large and important industry. Box Hill is a
+mass of this stone, and the tunnel is consequently pierced through it.
+Three of the quarries are situated in the hill, some of them of great
+extent. The most extensive is driven into the flank of the hill like a
+tunnel, and has over three miles of galleries laid with tram-lines: dark,
+damp places, whose roofs are supported here and there by timber struts.
+The coldness of these quarry tunnels is remarkably piercing, even in the
+height of summer.
+
+[Illustration: BOX VILLAGE.]
+
+Box seems to have been a favourite country resort of the Romans, away from
+the crowded streets of _Aquæ Solis_; for on the land that slopes down
+toward the little Box Brook there have been found many Roman remains,
+while, only so recently as 1897, the site of a Roman villa was excavated
+near the south side of the church, with the result of unearthing a
+complete ground-plan and such interesting relics as mosaic pavements and
+votive altars.
+
+It is a crowded village to-day, and rather by way of being a town. Lying
+in a deep hollow, its stone-built houses climb steeply up both sides, with
+a picturesque glimpse back from where the old village lock-up stands
+beside the highway to the straggling cottages that line the old road down
+the side of Box Hill.
+
+Leaving Box we also, in the course of one mile, leave Wiltshire and come
+into Somerset, with Bath but four miles distant. The Box Brook runs on the
+right-hand side of the road, the Great Western Railway on the left. Soon,
+however, the road bends to the right at Bathford, and we come to
+Batheaston, once a village, but now merely a suburb of Bath, joined to
+the city by continuous streets.
+
+But there are pretty scenes just off these streets. Bathampton Mill, for
+instance, just below, on the Avon, with views of the grand circle of hills
+that enclose Bath.
+
+The picturesquely broken and wooded elevation of Combe Down rises away on
+the other side of the valley, with Prior Park nestled amid its hanging
+woods, and the village of Widcombe beneath. At an elevation of five
+hundred and fifty feet above the sea, it commands views not to be bettered
+in all the country round. Down below, in the warm steamy atmosphere of the
+Avon valley, one sees the railway entering Bath on its stone viaducts, and
+the trains winding in and out along the sharp curves amid the clustered
+houses. Bathampton lies below there, where the air is languorous and the
+hillsides hold the heat of the sun. From that sheltered spot the view
+backwards towards Bathampton Mill and the terraced houses of Batheaston is
+delightful; the houses that turn their ugly side to the road showing from
+here, amid their setting of green, like fairy palaces. Lower down the
+valley the houses cluster more thickly, where the valley widens out into
+the likeness of a great amphitheatre, and suburbs fade gradually into
+Bath.
+
+Then, coming to Walcot, the road finally loses all its character as a
+highway, and tramways, omnibuses, and traffic of every description
+proclaim the entrance to a populous city.
+
+[Illustration: BATHAMPTON MILL.]
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _BATH_]
+
+The story of Bath goes back some two thousand years, and has its origin in
+the myths of ages, in which Bladud figures variously as discoverer and
+creator of the healing springs. Serious historians are wont to exclude
+Bladud, and his descent from Brute the Trojan, and Lud Hudibras, the
+British King, from their pages, for the reason that Geoffrey of Monmouth,
+the monkish chronicler, who first narrates these stories in his history of
+Britain, was apt sometimes to confound chronicling with romancing. When,
+therefore, he tells how Prince Bladud was an adept in magic, and placed a
+cunning stone in the springs of this valley so that it made the water hot
+and healed the sick who resorted to them, he is looked upon with a
+suspicion that is deepened when he goes on to say that Bladud successfully
+attempted to fly with wings of his own invention from Bath to London, and
+only came to grief when London was reached, through the strings breaking,
+so that he fell and was dashed to pieces on the roof of the Temple of
+Apollo!
+
+Nor is the better known legend of Prince Bladud, the leper, exiled from
+his father's Court, universally accepted. According to that story, the
+Prince wandered to where Keynsham now stands, where he became a swineherd,
+and infected the pigs with his disease. Coming, however, into this valley,
+the porkers rolled themselves into the hot mud, which then occupied the
+site of Bath Abbey and the Baths, and were cured. Bladud perceiving this,
+applied the remedy to himself, with the like result, and returned to his
+home once more; building a city upon the spot in after years. This
+happened B.C. 863, and there is a statue of King Bladud, as he afterwards
+became, erected in the "Pump Room" in 1669; so that any one not
+subscribing to the truth of this legend had better do so at once, in view
+of this overwhelming evidence thus afforded.
+
+[Sidenote: _ROMAN RELICS_]
+
+We are on more certain ground when we come to the Romans. That great
+people left too many evidences of their occupation of this island for many
+doubts to be entertained as to where they settled, or when. Thus, when we
+assign the close of the first half-century of the Christian era to their
+discovery of the medicinal properties of these waters, we do so, not from
+legend, but from the evidence of the buildings they have left behind. It
+is singular that we do not, as a rule, lay much stress upon the Roman
+occupation of Britain. Yet it lasted long, and was for nearly four
+centuries what modern political slang terms "effectual." An advanced
+civilization reigned here then, and Britain became both a populous and a
+flourishing colony. The dealings of England with India in the present time
+form a tolerably close parallel with Rome's conquest of this island, and
+if we go further and liken the British who remained in the remote places
+of Cornwall, Devon, and Wales to the fierce Afghans and Chitralis who have
+troubled us on the borders of Hindostan, we shall by no means strain the
+similitude. Bath--or rather _Aquæ Solis_, the "Waters of the Sun"[6]--as
+well as being the one health-resort in Britain for the wealthy Roman
+colonists who needed such a retreat, was to the Roman officer of that era
+what Simla and the Hills are to our own military men in India--a place for
+rest and the restoration of health after the rigours of a hard campaign;
+with this difference, indeed, that to the Hills they go for coolness,
+while at Aquæ Solis is the expatriated legionary found both healing
+springs and a genial warmth after the bleak, inhospitable hills of the Far
+West or the Farther North.
+
+[Illustration: THE SUN GOD.]
+
+Discoveries at Bath and in its immediate neighbourhood have proved that
+there was a sanatorium for invalided officers on Combe Down, and we can
+well imagine such being conveyed hither, to recover or to die, along the
+road.
+
+The Baths of the Romans were discovered in 1755, fifteen feet below the
+surface of the ground; relics of a past magnificence; of a civilization
+that expired in bloodshed and conflagration. It was in the year 410 that
+the military forces of Rome left Britain. The weak Romano-British soon
+retrograded, and, worse than all, the country split up into petty, and
+mutually hostile, kingdoms. The Baths were neglected, the Arts decayed,
+and in Britain generally there was not spirit sufficient to withstand the
+marauding Saxons who finally overwhelmed the country and pillaged and
+burnt _Aquæ Solis_, just as they had pillaged every other city. It was
+after the sanguinary Battle of Deorham, A.D. 577, that the three cities of
+_Glevum_ (Gloucester), _Corinium_ (Cirencester), and _Aquæ Solis_ fell,
+spoils to the Saxon hosts under Ceawlin. You may search for the site of
+that great contest at the village now called Dyreham, some fifteen miles
+north-east of Bath, in Gloucestershire, and from its position it will be
+at once evident that those three cities must immediately have fallen after
+that fatal day. That was the cementing of the Saxon power in the West, and
+a fitting end to a hundred and fifty years of incessant warfare. The
+British never learned that union means strength; they never had the sense
+to combine before a common foe, and so the fierce invaders met and
+defeated them in detail, aided of course by their own fitness for the
+fight, and by the British incapacity. The Britons were lapped in luxury,
+and went drunk into battle, so that there was no possible hope for them in
+fighting the hardy warriors from the North. The wars waged then were wars
+of extermination, and neither persons nor places were spared. This proud
+city was levelled with the ground, and the civilization of four hundred
+years perished by fire in a day. Evidences of that dreadful time were
+plainly to be seen when the Roman Baths were excavated. They are to be
+seen even now, at the Museum, together with relics which prove the high
+degree of civilization that had been attained.
+
+[Illustration: MYSTERIOUS LEADEN TABLET DISCOVERED AT BATH.]
+
+Among other marks of progress is an inscribed tablet with an inscription
+which one authority declares to be the record of a "cure from either
+taking the waters or bathing, certified by three great men;" while another
+is equally positive that it is an "imprecation upon nine men, supposed to
+be guests, who had stolen a tablecloth at the conclusion of a
+dinner-party." The age of this tablet is fixed "between the second and
+fifth centuries of the Christian era," which in itself seems to be a wide
+enough margin. As if, however, this were not already sufficient, there are
+others, learned in these things, who declare that this relic records how
+a certain Quintus received 500,000 lbs. of copper coin for washing a lady
+named "Vilbia"! We are left to take our choice between speculations
+unfavourable to the personal cleanliness of that lady, or astonishment at
+the mode and extravagance of the payment. There is, indeed, "another way,"
+as the cookery books have it; but as that involves doubts about the
+scholarship of professed antiquaries, this third resort may only be hinted
+at in this place. Who shall decide where antiquaries disagree?
+
+The Saxons were shy of the places they had burnt. Heathens that they were,
+they generally believed the bloodstained ruins to be haunted by evil
+spirits, and so built their settlements at some distance away. The site of
+Bath seems to have been, to some degree, an exception. After lying waste
+for over a hundred years, it was occupied again, for the fame of its
+waters had not wholly died out: and "Akemanceaster," as the Saxons called
+it, entered upon a new lease of life. At that period, too, the Roman Road
+through Silchester, Speen, and Marlborough acquired its name of Akeman
+Street; the names meaning, as some would say, the "Sick Man's Town," and
+the "Sick Man's Road," from "aches" and the fame of the place, even then,
+as a spot at which to cure them. This has been characterized as absurd,
+and the derivation more plausibly held to be from a corruption of the
+Roman word _Aquæ_ affixed to the word "maen," or "man," meaning "stone" or
+"place," and joined to the word "cæster," a form of the Roman "castrum," a
+fortification; the compound word thus obtained meaning "the Fortified
+place at the Waters."
+
+[Sidenote: _ROYAL VISITS_]
+
+To follow the fortunes of Akemanceaster, or Bath, as it eventually became,
+through the Saxon period to the present time would be an exercise too
+prolonged for these pages. That Kings and Princes and ecclesiastics
+visited it then we know, and that the Normans built a great Abbey church
+where the present building of Bath Abbey stands is an easily ascertainable
+fact; but all the comings and goings of the great ones of the earth during
+the succeeding centuries would form but a bald catalogue. It is only when
+we come to the middle of the seventeenth century that we need pick up the
+thread of the narrative again, at the visits of the Queen of Charles the
+First in 1644; of Charles the Second, the Duke and Duchess of York, and
+Prince Rupert in 1663; the Queen of James the Second, 1687; and the
+Princess Anne, 1692; and as Queen Anne, 1702. Truly, a brilliant list for
+such a small place as Bath then was.
+
+But these Royal visits did not greatly benefit the place, as we may judge
+when we read that from 1592 to 1692, Bath had increased by only seventeen
+houses. Why was this? I conceive it to have been owing to the
+extraordinary apathy of the people of Bath, who had not provided the
+slightest accommodation for those who then drank the waters. Of what use
+was it for Sir Alexander Frayser, physician to Charles the Second, sending
+all his patients hither instead of to Continental health-resorts like Aix,
+if they had to drink the waters at a pump standing on the open pavement?
+and imagine the delights of bathing when the Baths were open to the
+public view, the said public delighting to throw dead cats, offal, and all
+manner of nastinesses among the bathers!
+
+A local doctor, named Oliver, took up these grievances in 1702, and the
+Corporation then set about building a Pump Room. This was opened in 1704,
+and the celebrated Beau Nash having been at about the same period
+appointed Master of the Ceremonies, the Bath visitors' list showed a
+decided improvement.
+
+Let us see what the amusements at "the Bath" had been hitherto. The place
+was devoid of elegant or attractive amusements, and the only promenade for
+the fashionables who followed Queen Anne to this then outlandish town was
+a grove of sycamores in which there was a bowling-green, and a band
+consisting of two performers, playing a fiddle and a hautboy! The
+courtiers who had deserted St. James's to follow her gouty Majesty to the
+waters must have cursed their folly when they saw those sycamores and
+heard that band!
+
+Nash altered all this. He was no King Log, and accordingly soon procured a
+band of music for the new Pump Room; an Assembly Room for the fashionables
+to take "tay" or chocolate, to dance, play cards, or to gossip in; and
+devised a code of manners, if not of morals, for the regulation of his
+little world, which he ruled with a rod of iron. He regulated everything,
+from the greatest festivities down to the smallest details of dress and
+deportment, and not the late M. Worth himself was more autocratic as to
+what should be worn. It is a familiar story how, the "Dutchess" of
+Queensbury appearing at a dress ball in an apron (an article of dress
+which, fashionable elsewhere, he had tabooed), he told her to remove it or
+leave. The apron was one of point lace, and said to have been worth five
+hundred guineas; but the Duchess removed it humbly enough, for had not
+this mighty arbiter of fashions declared aprons "fit only for Abigails"
+(by which name he meant maidservants to be understood), and who was she
+that she should dispute such an authority? Then, when the Princess Amelia,
+daughter of George the Third, begged him to allow another dance after
+eleven o'clock, what did this potentate reply? Did he humbly grant the
+request? Not at all; he refused, adding that the laws of Bath were, like
+those of Lycurgus, unalterable.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+[Sidenote: _BEAU NASH_]
+
+They say that Nash "made" Bath. That, however, is but partly true. Bath
+was beginning to make its way when he appeared, and he simply exploited
+the place. The Moment had come and brought the Man with it, and a tight
+grip he retained over all fashionable functions for over fifty years. He
+warred with the high-class rowdies who would have made the place a resort
+of Mohocks, and elevated "Bath manners" into a school of conduct perfectly
+well known and imitated, at a distance, in other parts of the Kingdom.
+They were manners of the most elaborate kind, and if attempted nowadays,
+it is difficult to conceive how the wheels of the world's business would
+go round at all. When a meeting took place between a lady and a gentleman,
+the gentleman inquiring, with a most elaborate bow, after her health, in
+such terms as "I am vastly honoured to have the pleasure of seeing you; I
+trust the salubrious airs of the Bath are keeping you in good health;" and
+the lady replying, "I am much obleeged[7] by your thoughtful inquiries: I
+protest I am mighty well," it took quite an appreciable time to descend
+from those rarefied heights of courtesy and come down to the gossip and
+scandals which were, we are told, among the principal pastimes of this
+health-resort in the days of powder and patches.
+
+[Sidenote: _SEVERE MEASURES_]
+
+But Nash not only saw to it that his fashionable clients behaved
+themselves. He had to contend with the camp-followers of fashion who
+swarmed into Bath. Mendicants infested the streets and made the gorge of
+those delicate eighteenth-century creatures rise with the sight of their
+rags and diseases. Nash knew that if he did not administer his kingdom
+severely, and if he allowed many of these stern realities of the world to
+obtrude upon the sight of the fastidious, the new-found fortunes of Bath
+would disappear, and his career with them. So, perhaps from an acute sense
+of the necessity for self-preservation, rather than from any desire to
+play the autocrat, he imposed his will so thoroughly that he became an
+unquestioned ruler. He induced the Corporation, which had entrusted him
+with these powers, to procure an Act in 1739 for the suppression of the
+beggars. It begins by reciting that "several loose, idle, and disorderly
+persons daily resort to the City of Bath, and remain wandering and begging
+about the streets and other places of the said City, and the suburbs
+thereof, under pretence of their being resident at The Bath for the
+benefit of the Mineral and Medical Waters, to the great disturbances of
+his Maj.'s subjects resorting to the said City. Be it enacted that the
+Constables, petty Constables, Tything-men, and other Peace Officers of the
+said City ... are hereby empowered and required to seize and apprehend all
+such persons who shall be so found wandering, begging, or misbehaving
+themselves, and them to carry before the Mayor, or some Justice, or
+Justices, of the Peace for the said City; who shall upon the oath of one
+sufficient witness, or upon his own view, commit the said person or
+persons so wandering or begging, to the House of Correction for any time
+not exceeding the space of 12 Kalendar months, and to be kept at hard
+labour, and receive correction as loose, idle, and disorderlie persons."
+
+So there was a reverse to the medal, and a very stringent government
+prevailed behind the careless, butterfly existence of the age, when
+literary squibs and lampoons and the gay personalities of Anstey's _New
+Bath Guide_ formed the excitements of the Bath.
+
+A curious relic of this artificial life is to be seen in the Victoria Park
+in the "Batheaston Vase." This is the name given to a handsome antique
+placed in a kind of classic temple. The vase was discovered at Tusculum,
+Cicero's villa, near Frascati, and brought to England during the last
+century by Sir John and Lady Miller, who then owned a beautiful villa at
+Batheaston, one of the favourite resorts of the society of that day.
+Decorated with garlands of bays, the vase was used at Lady Miller's
+receptions as a depository for verses written by her guests. It was
+presided over by one of the ladies of the party, posing as the Muse of
+Poetry, who drew the poetic offerings from its recesses, and, reciting
+them, crowned the authors of the best effort with bays. The opportunity
+proved too tempting for some of the wilder spirits, who wrote verses of a
+ribald and satirical character, better calculated to bring a blush to the
+cheek of the Poetic Muse than to add to either the morals or the harmony
+of those gatherings.
+
+[Illustration: THE BATHEASTON VASE.]
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+[Sidenote: _RALPH ALLEN_]
+
+Among this careless throng there were a few men of will and purpose. Ralph
+Allen; the two Woods, father and son, architects; and, somewhat later than
+them, John Palmer, were bold spirits who changed the aspect of Bath and
+helped to revolutionize the communications of the country.
+
+One of the greatest historical figures of Bath--perhaps even the greatest
+figure of all--before whom Bladud, Prince of Britain, at one end of the
+historic period, and Beau Nash at the other, sink into something like
+insignificance, is that of Ralph Allen. And yet--so arbitrary is
+fame--that for every ten who could recite you, off-hand, something of the
+history and achievements of Allen, a hundred could recount the story of
+Bladud or of Nash. This is not to say that Bath has forgotten her great
+man. On the contrary, the citizens show you his "Town House" in Lilliput
+Alley with no little pride, while his great mansion of Prior Park, to the
+south of the city, and looking down upon it, remains to this day the most
+princely edifice for miles around. But however mindful Bath may be of him,
+and although his classic house on the hillside inevitably recalls him to
+the memory of Bath people, the fact remains that Allen's is a name
+comparatively unknown to Bath's visitors.
+
+That he deserves a record in these pages must be conceded, for he it was
+who first established a regular postal service between one provincial town
+and another, and carried letters along the cross-roads, which, until his
+time, had been utterly neglected by the Post-office.
+
+It is a singular thing that to Bath should have belonged both Ralph Allen
+and John Palmer; the men who respectively developed the postal service and
+founded mail-coaches. It is true that Allen was not a native of Bath. His
+father was an innkeeper at St. Blazey, in Cornwall, and in that far
+western county he first learned the routine of a post-office, in the
+early years of last century. He was eleven years of age when he was
+placed with his grandmother, the post-mistress of St. Columb, and his
+industry in keeping the accounts secured him the good word of the district
+surveyor, who procured the lad an appointment as assistant to the
+post-master at Bath. Fortune favoured him, and when the post-master died,
+Allen was appointed in his stead. He had not long become post-master
+before he matured a scheme for developing the "bye" and cross-road posts,
+which should bring profit to himself and convenience the community. He
+proposed to "farm" these posts and pay the Government an annual sum for
+the privilege, leaving the direct posts between London and the provinces
+in the hands of the Post-office. A "bye" post was one between provincial
+towns; a cross-road post was one that lay off the half-dozen post routes
+then existing.
+
+It was in 1719 that Allen, then but twenty-six years of age, made his
+proposal to the Government. The postage on those descriptions of letters
+had hitherto amounted to £400 per annum. He was prepared to give £6000
+yearly, and to work the posts for a period of seven years, in
+consideration of receiving the whole of the revenue during that term. His
+offer was accepted, and the contract took effect from June 21, 1720. How
+Allen procured the funds for his enterprise is not known, but he must have
+had substantial financial support, since his first quarter's expenditure
+in establishing his system amounted to no less a sum than £1500, while the
+salaries of the staff he got together totalled a further £3000 per annum.
+
+Allen was a man of a modest and retiring habit, but with the greatest
+confidence in himself. He needed all his confidence, and all the untiring
+industry and vigilance that were his, for when three years of the seven
+had expired he found himself a loser by a small amount, and when the
+contract lapsed, his gain was quite inappreciable. Yet he renewed it for
+another seven years, convinced that the better facilities he had provided
+for the carriage of letters must needs lead to great developments. He was
+right: the correspondence of the country grew, and in 1741 we find him
+bidding £17,500 per annum for another term of seven years. He continued
+thus until his death in 1764, in receipt, for many years, of an income of
+not less than £12,000 a year on his post-office enterprise alone.
+
+[Sidenote: _POSTAL SERVICES_]
+
+Those were the times of the real post-boys. All letters were carried by
+mounted messengers, since the stage-coaches then running (where they
+existed at all!) were not fast enough, frequent enough, or sufficiently
+safe for the purpose. A side-light is thrown upon the average "speed" of
+these stage-coaches, not then considered speedy enough, by the onerous
+condition in Allen's contract that the mails were to be carried by his
+post-boys "at not less than five miles an hour."
+
+Allen was in the forefront of Bath enterprise, and was associated with
+John Wood, the elder of the two architects of that name, in rebuilding the
+city. Before their time it had been a place of mean streets and winding
+alleys, the out-at-elbows remains of Gothic times. As a result of their
+labours, and the labours of their immediate successors, Bath renewed her
+youth in a revived Classicism. Among the monuments of that time, Prior
+Park is conspicuous. It was built by John Wood in 1743 for Allen, whose
+great object in erecting this veritable palace was to demonstrate the
+qualities of the building-stone on his Combe Down property. Here he
+entertained some of the foremost literary men of his time: Pope, Fielding,
+Warburton; and is enshrined by Fielding as "Squire Allworthy" in "Tom
+Jones," and by Pope in the lines--
+
+  "Let low-born Allen, with ingenuous shame,
+  Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."
+
+The situation, and the front elevation of Prior Park, form together,
+perhaps, the noblest grouping of classic architecture and romantic scenery
+to be found in England. It was a time tinged with romanticism of an
+artificial kind which generally showed itself in affected and
+objectionable ways. But this artificiality was a matter of deportment
+merely. Literature was practised then, and Architecture flourished in the
+land.
+
+[Illustration: PRIOR PARK.]
+
+[Sidenote: _"SHAM CASTLE"_]
+
+There is another work of Allen's crowning the hill at Bathwick, which
+serves to show at once the romantic and the artificial signs of the times.
+Allen looked out from the windows of his Town House upon the bare hilltop,
+and thought how the view would have been improved had there been a ruined
+castle showing against the sky-line. Accordingly he built such an one, and
+there it is to-day; and if you don't know it to be a ruin built to order,
+it is very impressive indeed--at a distance. If, however, you know it
+to be a Sham Castle (which, by the way, is the name of it), romance
+immediately flies, abashed. There it stands, on its wind-swept heights,
+naked and unashamed; a frontage with nothing behind it; an empty mask,
+with crossbow slits from which arrows never were discharged, and
+battlements scarce more substantial than the pasteboard turrets that
+furnish the stage in romantic drama. If hypocrisy be indeed the homage
+that Vice pays to Virtue; then, by parallel reasoning, here is homage of
+the most flattering kind paid to Gothicism by an age that above all things
+prided itself on the way it fulfilled its classic ideals. It was a common
+failing of the time; and possibly, if attention had been called to it, a
+ready answer might have been found in the retort that "consistency is the
+bugbear of little minds."
+
+[Illustration: "SHAM CASTLE."]
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+But to return to the Beau, who seems to represent Bath more fully than any
+other person connected with its history. In his old age Nash fell upon
+evil times. Ruined by his own folly and extravagance, he had no
+opportunities of retrieving the position, for he had lived to see the
+friends of his more fortunate era pass away, and to witness the arrival of
+a younger generation which regarded his laws with indifference, if not
+with open contempt. His last years were eked out with the aid of a
+pittance of £10 a month given him by the Corporation of the city for which
+he had done so much, and a new Master of the Ceremonies presently reigned
+in his stead.
+
+In his declining days, Bath had altogether changed from the place it had
+been when in the zenith of his power. It had, for one thing, grown out of
+all knowledge, architecturally. The Grand Circus, parades, terraces,
+squares, all manner of finely designed houses, had sprung up. Smollett, in
+"Humphrey Clinker," makes Squire Bramble peevishly recount those changes,
+and say, "The same artist who planned the Circus has likewise projected a
+crescent: when that is finished, we shall probably have a star; and those
+who are living thirty years hence may perhaps see all the signs of the
+zodiac exhibited in architecture at Bath."
+
+[Sidenote: _BATH SOCIETY_]
+
+Then the select society of fifty years before had given place to a very
+mixed concourse, if we are to believe the same authority: "Every upstart
+of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at
+Bath, as in the very focus of observation. Clerks and factors from the
+East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters,
+negro-drivers, and hucksters, from our American plantations, enriched they
+know not how; agents, commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, in
+two successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers, and
+jobbers of every kind; men of low birth, and no breeding, have found
+themselves suddenly translated into a state of affluence, unknown to
+former ages; and no wonder that their brains should be intoxicated with
+pride, vanity, and presumption. Knowing no other criterion of greatness
+but the ostentation of wealth, they discharge their affluence, without
+taste or conduct, through every channel of the most absurd extravagance;
+and all of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any further
+qualification, they can mingle with the princes and nobles of the land.
+Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel-nosed
+sharks, prey on the blubber of those uncouth whales of fortune, are
+infected with the same rage of displaying their importance; and the
+slightest indisposition serves them for a pretext to insist on being
+conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble country-dances and cotillons among
+lordlings, squires, counsellors, and clergy. These delicate creatures
+from Bedfordbury, Butcher-row, Crutched-friars, and Botolph-lane, cannot
+breathe in the gross air of the lower town, or conform to the vulgar rules
+of a common lodging-house: the husband, therefore, must provide an entire
+house or elegant apartments in the new buildings. Such is the composition
+of what is called fashionable company at Bath."
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+What, however, of the literary celebrities, visitors or residents, or of
+the statesmen, the naval and military commanders, who were frequenting
+Bath at the time when that jaundiced criticism was penned. Dr. Johnson was
+then taking the waters, which are said by a later authority to taste of
+"warm smoothin'-irons;" Gainsborough alternately painted and bathed; while
+the Earl of Chatham and his still greater son; Nelson, Wolfe, Sheridan,
+and Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Southey, Jane Austin, and Landor, helped to
+sustain the repute of this, which Landor called the next most beautiful
+place in the world to Florence, well on into the next century.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BATH OF LONG AGO_]
+
+A diarist of over a century ago tells us how he went to Bath, and what he
+saw and did there. This was the Reverend Thomas Campbell, a lively
+Irishman (notwithstanding his Scottish name), who journeyed to England in
+1775, and visited Johnson and other literary bigwigs in London, coming to
+Bath on April 28, to take the waters. The coach set out from the New
+Church in the Strand (by which, no doubt, Saint Mary-le-Strand is
+indicated) at six o'clock in the morning, and came to Speenhamland
+("Spinomland," says the clergyman in his diary), where they lay. The
+country, he remarks, was very rich from London to this place, yet it was
+so level that there was scarce a good prospect the whole way, unless
+Clieveden, near Maidenhead Bridge could be so called.
+
+[Illustration: OLD PULTENEY BRIDGE.]
+
+When the coach resumed its journey the next day--the passengers,
+doubtless, lightened in pocket by that "long bill" of the "Pelican" at
+Speenhamland--the bleakness of Marlborough Downs communicated itself to
+the air, and from Newbury to Cottenham,[8] a distance of nearly thirty
+miles, the countryside was very bare of trees and herbage, in addition to
+being the worst land this Irishman had seen in England, and certainly
+swarming with beggars. For miles together the coach was pursued by them,
+from two to nine at a time, almost all of them children. They were more
+importunate than those of Ireland, or _even_ those in Wales. Poor Taffy!
+
+When our traveller reached Bath he rejoiced greatly, and, the next day
+being Sunday, went to the Abbey Church with other fashionables, and heard
+a sorry discourse, wretchedly delivered. Afterwards, in the Pump Room,
+where the yawning visitors were assembled, he met Lady Molyneux, who asked
+him to dinner, where he spent the pleasantest day since he came to
+England, for there were five or six lively Irish girls who sang and
+danced, and did everything but agree among themselves. "Women," remarks
+our diarist, "are certainly more envious than men, or at least they
+discover it upon more trifling occasions, and they cannot bear with
+patience that one of their party should obtain a preference of attention;
+this was thoroughly exemplified this day. One of these, who was a pretty
+little coquet, went home after dinner to dress for the Rooms, and her
+colour was certainly altered on returning for tea; they all fell into a
+titter, and one of them (who was herself painted, as I conceived) cried
+out, 'Heavens, look at her cheeks!'" This, truly, was unkind, and more
+certainly indiscreet. The young lady with the startling cheeks
+subsequently sang a song, which somewhat surprised the clergyman, from its
+breadth of idea, but the other ladies, and matrons too, "were kicking with
+laughter." Presently they all went home, the ladies most affectionate
+toward one another, and, says Mr. Campbell, "it is amazing what pleasure
+women find in kissing each other, for they do smack amazingly."
+
+[Sidenote: _A TORY PROPHECY_]
+
+The worthy clergyman seems to have been introduced to the less dignified
+circles of fashion. The general tone of the more exclusive sets was by no
+means so lively, for it was about this time that the Indian nabobs, the
+Civil servants, the retired officers of the Army and Navy and the East
+India Company began to discover Bath and to settle there, filling the
+place with Toryism and grumblings about "the services going to the dogs,
+sir." Here is a Tory prophecy, not yet verified: "There is one comfort I
+cannot have at Bath," said the Duke of Northumberland in 1779. "I like to
+read the newspapers at breakfast, and at Bath the post does not come in
+till one o'clock; that is a drawback to my pleasure." "So," said Lord
+Mansfield, "your grace likes the _comfort_ of reading the newspapers--the
+_comfort_ of reading the newspapers! Mark my words. A little sooner or
+later those newspapers will most assuredly write the Dukes of
+Northumberland out of their titles and possessions, and the country out of
+its king. Mark my words, for this will happen."
+
+As a prophecy, it may readily be conceded that this is an extremely bad
+shot, and that Lord Mansfield by no means, either figuratively or
+literally, inherited the mantle of Elijah. A hundred and twenty years have
+passed since then, and there are still dukes who have not been reduced to
+sweep crossings or keep chandlers' shops. True, if they have not come down
+so far in the world, it is in some cases owing to American dollars; but
+that is not the doing of the newspapers, one way or the other. As I have
+just remarked, that was a Tory prophecy, and though my Toryism is, I
+trust, of the most mediæval and crusted kind, and wholly beyond cavil, it
+may frankly be admitted here that the Party never has shone in prophecy.
+Nor, for that matter, has any party. The only seers are the
+leader-writers, and they never see beyond their noses.
+
+So Principalities and Powers and Titles are at least as powerful as ever
+they were, and--cynical fact--certain newspaper proprietors have been
+raised to the House of Peers; a thing, we may be sure, that Lord Mansfield
+never contemplated.
+
+Many other things, however, have happened in the meanwhile. Agitation does
+not pay so well as it did. The newspapers which were to do such dreadful
+things have greatly increased in number, if not in power, and the contents
+of them have changed radically; other times, other manners, as a glance at
+even the advertisements of that date will prove.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD ADVERTISEMENTS_]
+
+The advertisement columns of a paper just over a century old often afford
+amusement to those who come upon them. The manners and customs of those
+times and these are so different that the very quaintness of our
+forefathers' attitude of mind brings a smile upon our faces, although
+those eighteenth-century forbears of ours were really very serious people
+indeed, and took life, for the most part, like a dose of medicine, while
+we are apt to go to the other extreme and take it like champagne. No doubt
+our great-great-grandfathers would think the most sedate of us not a
+little wild could they witness how we live to-day, while, in our turn, we
+look back upon their times, and think times and people alike brutal. We
+wonder what sort of people they were who could, in this England of ours,
+offer a "Black boy for sale--docile and obedient. Answers to the name of
+Peter." Yet such advertisements were common on the front page of our
+newspapers once upon a time. Slavery was then a matter of course, and to
+have a black page for her very own was my lady's hall-mark of "quality."
+Sometimes such advertisements were embellished with little figures
+supposed to represent nigger-boys.
+
+The race of African negroes has either improved in good looks since then,
+or else the engravers of that day were not very careful in portraiture.
+But, indeed, black pages were almost as common as pet dogs, and were
+advertised in very much the same way, and these blocks were not portraits
+at all, but just printers' stock illustrations. The printer of a hundred
+years ago kept a curious little assortment of advertisement blocks. If a
+ship was about to sail for the colonies, it was advertised for weeks
+beforehand, and in a corner of the announcement was placed something that
+purported to be an illustration of the vessel. It generally looked like a
+Spanish galleon strayed from the Armada of two hundred years previously,
+and passengers would have been quite justified in not booking berths on so
+antiquated an affair.
+
+But perhaps the most amusing advertisements are the "Run away from his
+Home" and the "Stolen" varieties, also adorned with illustrations. It
+speaks very little for the morality of that age when we say that the
+ordinary newspaper printer also kept these blocks in stock.
+
+And, indeed, they seem to have frequently been required. Here is one
+example out of many in the newspapers of that age:--
+
+    "STOLEN
+    Out of the Stable of ROBERT COLGATE,
+    The 24th instant August, 1780
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    A black horse, rising five years old, thirteen Hands and a Half High,
+    Star in his forehead, small Ears, Mane stands up rough, being lately
+    rubbed off, long Tail, hangs his Tongue out often on the Road, good
+    Carriage; also a good Saddle, marked Barnard, with Spring Stumps.
+
+    "Whoever gives Information, so that the Said Horse may be had again,
+    shall receive TWO GUINEAS REWARD."
+
+It would scarcely be possible to identify the stolen horse from the
+accompanying cut. He has no long tail, as described in the advertisement,
+and his tongue _doesn't_ hang out. Moreover, he is burdened with a quite
+imaginary thief, who has a property devil whipping him on. The "awful
+example" hanging from the gibbet appears to be made of bolsters, and to
+have had, not a drop too much, but scarcely enough.
+
+The party with hands bigger than his head, who is here seen striking a
+dramatic attitude, is not a Howling Swell, although he wears his hair
+parted in the middle. Appearances here (as usually was the case in the old
+advertisements) are deceptive, and so far from being a Swell, Howling or
+otherwise, he is really a Heartless Villain, for he is one of two
+labourers who have--
+
+    "RUN AWAY.
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    And left their families chargeable to the Parish of CLAVERTON,
+
+    THOMAS GARNER, Labourer, about five feet seven or eight Inches high;
+    wears his own Hair, of a light Brown Complexion; hath lately, or is
+    now belonging to the Militia.
+
+    "And EDWARD BROWNING, Labourer, about five Feet four or five Inches
+    high, wears his own Hair, of a dark complexion; was one of Lord
+    North's Soldiers in the last War.
+
+    "Whoever will apprehend either, or both of them, and conduct them to
+    the Parish Officers of Claverton aforesaid, shall receive HALF A
+    GUINEA for each or either of them, and THREEPENCE per Mile for every
+    Mile they shall travel with them."
+
+History does not relate whether or no these gay deceivers were ever
+captured. If those who sought them relied upon the illustration, it would
+seem quite likely that they never were!
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE ABBEY_]
+
+The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cluster the Municipal
+Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements
+invalids are drawn in Bath chairs--one of the five articles with which
+the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps,
+Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come
+the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because
+they are not in every one's mouth, either literally or figuratively;
+although, to be sure, they are much more exclusively a local product than
+"Bath" buns; while "Bath" bricks are not made at Bath, but at Bridgewater.
+
+The surroundings of Bath Abbey are strikingly Continental in appearance,
+for that great church stands in a flagged _place_, instead of being set in
+a green and shady close, as usually is the case in England. Its
+surroundings have always been thronged, from the time when the Flying
+Machines crawled, to when the last of the mail coaches drew up in front of
+the "White Lion," in the Market Place hard by, or at the "White Hart,"
+which stood until 1866, where the "Grand Pump Room" Hotel now rises. The
+story of the Abbey is too long for these pages; but it is remarkable at
+once for being one of the very latest Gothic buildings in the country; for
+its possessing windows so large and so many that it has been called the
+"Lantern of England;" for its central tower, which is not square, being
+eleven feet narrower on its north and south sides than those to the east
+and west; and for the prodigious number of small marble and stone memorial
+tablets on its interior walls--tablets so many that they gave rise to the
+famous epigram by Quin:--
+
+  "These walls, so full of monument and bust,
+  Shew how Bath waters serve to lay the dust."
+
+Quite distinguished dust it is, too. Noblemen and dames of high degree;
+Admirals of the Blue, the White, the Red; legal, and military, and
+clerical dignitaries, and all manner of Civil servants, mostly of the
+mid-eighteenth century, and chiefly hailing from India and the Colonies,
+as described with much pomp and circumstance on their cenotaphs which so
+thickly cover the walls, and spoil the architectural effect. "The Bath,"
+was the solace of their kind, returning from the Tropics with nutmeg
+livers, gout, and autocratic ways. At "the Bath" they resided on half-pay,
+drank the waters, supported the local doctors, quarrelled with their
+neighbours, and consistently damned all "new-fangled notions," until death
+laid them by the heels.
+
+[Illustration: BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT.]
+
+There must have been--if we are capable of believing their epitaphs--some
+paragons of all the virtues in those times, and Bath seems to have claimed
+them all. Here, for instance, is Alicia, Countess of Erroll, "in whom was
+combined every virtue that could adorn human nature." She died young; the
+world is too wicked for such.
+
+[Sidenote: _"JACOB'S LADDER"_]
+
+Bath Abbey is remarkable in one respect far above all the minsters and
+cathedrals of England. As you stand facing the great West Front, which
+looks so grim and grey upon the stony courtyard that stretches before it,
+you see, flanking the immense west window, two heavy piers, terminating in
+turrets. On these piers are carved the singular representations of
+"Jacob's Ladder" that have given the Abbey a fame even beyond the merit
+of its architecture. From near the ground-level, almost to the turrets,
+this curious carving stretches, battered long years ago by the fury of an
+age which prided itself on its enmity to "superstitious images," and
+reduced by the further neglect of more than two hundred years to an almost
+shapeless mass. The origin of this curious decoration is found in the
+vision of Bishop Oliver King, who restored the then ruined Abbey in 1499.
+In this vision, by which he was induced to undertake the great work, he
+saw angels ascending and descending a ladder, and heard a voice say, "Let
+an Olive establish a Crown, and let a King restore the Church." He
+interpreted this as a Divine injunction to himself to repair the Abbey,
+and accordingly commenced the work; dying, however, before it was
+completed. The "ladders" have sculptured angels on them, while on the wall
+above the arch of the great window is represented a great concourse of
+adoring angels, with a figure of God in glory in their midst. Many of the
+figures have their heads knocked off; but the whole of this sculpture is
+shortly to be restored.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Bath entered upon a dead period about 1820. For a long while the newer and
+more easily reached glories of Brighton had taken the mere fashionables
+away, and even the waters were less favoured. Continental wars had ceased,
+and unpatriotic Britons flocked to foreign spas instead; Bath looking
+idly on and letting its customers go.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED.]
+
+It was some ten years later that Dickens visited Bath. From what he saw
+there he drew his portraits of place and persons in the "Pickwick Papers;"
+and the impression after reading them is undoubtedly one of faded
+gentility.
+
+So it remained until after the visit of the British Association in 1864,
+when the advice of the scientific men to the Corporation--to bring back
+business by providing more up-to-date accommodation--was laid to heart,
+and improvements begun. Since then the City has steadily climbed back
+again to the favour of invalids and the medical profession, and new Baths
+and all manner of modern appliances, a new railway station, and an air of
+an enlightened modernity, bid fair to keep Bath successful against all
+foreign competition for a long time to come.
+
+[Sidenote: _MODERN BATH_]
+
+Since this Renaissance of thirty-five years ago was begun, many things
+have happened at Bath. Roman remains, more extensive than ever the bygone
+generations suspected, have been discovered, and excavations have lain
+bare baths long covered up by shabby and altogether undistinguished
+buildings. Judicious restoration has preserved the great Roman Bath, long
+a scene of wreck and shattered stones, and has brought it into use again.
+This restored Bath affords perhaps the most picturesque view in the City,
+for from its margin one may gaze upwards and see to great advantage the
+beautiful tower of the Abbey soaring aloft; its late Gothic architecture
+contrasting piquantly with the classic elegance of that restored
+bathing-place, while the reflections of the columns deep down in the quiet
+pool give a singularly complete sense of restfulness.
+
+All this modern prosperity is, no doubt, very gratifying, but prosperity
+means much building, and Bath has now its suburbs; uncharted stretches of
+new villas, isolated, or in streets, that climb the hillsides of Combe
+Down, Beechen Cliff, and Lansdowne, and help to destroy Macaulay's
+well-known, if something too overdrawn, architectural picture of Bath, as
+"that beautiful City which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces
+of Bramante and Palladio, and which" (horrible literary solecism!) "the
+genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen,
+has made classic ground."
+
+Bath, indeed, was a jewel set in midst of her picturesque amphitheatre of
+rocky and wooded hills; but now that those hills and those woods are being
+covered with houses whose architecture is less calculated to "charm the
+eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio" than were
+the buildings of a century and a half ago, the setting of the jewel is by
+way of becoming tarnished. Now, also, it has been reserved to these times
+of cheap railway carriage of goods for brick houses to be seen at Bath;
+the one place in the world where brick never had an opportunity until
+these latter days of the "combine" of the allied "Bath Stone Firms," which
+has raised the price of Bath stone, so that in certain cases it has been
+found cheaper to bring bricks from the Midlands to build houses in Bath
+than to use the stone quarried on the spot. So, in the wilderness of new
+suburbs, the traveller who is whisked away by rail to Bristol may see, to
+his astonishment, amid the stone houses, rows of the most undeniable
+red-brick villas. And thus has come the spirit of what the late Professor
+Freeman was pleased to call "modernity" over Bath, once the peculiar
+preserve of stone and Classicism.
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Ailesbury, Marquis of, 183-185
+
+  Allen, Ralph, 242-250
+
+  "Allen's stall," 34-38
+
+  Anne, Queen, 6, 237, 238
+
+  Apsley House, 34-38
+
+  Arlington, Earl of, 90
+
+  Avebury, 198-203
+
+
+  Banks, Sir Joseph, 93
+
+  Bath, 2-15, 228-270
+
+  Batheaston, 227, 242
+
+  ---- Vase, 241
+
+  Bathford, 227
+
+  Bathampton, 228
+
+  Bath stone, 223-227, 268
+
+  Bathwick, 246
+
+  Beckhampton, 203-205
+
+  Berkeley, Earls of, 82-84, 87, 89
+
+  "Berkshire Lady," the, 141-145, 158
+
+  Bladud, Prince, 231, 243
+
+  Box, 203, 223-227
+
+  ---- Hill, 224, 227
+
+  ---- Tunnel, 223
+
+  Brentford, 70
+
+
+  Calcot, 141-145
+
+  Calne, 203, 206, 209
+
+  Cherhill, 205-207
+
+  Chippenham, 17, 203, 210-215, 253
+
+  Chiswick High Road, 58, 65
+
+  Church Speen, 153, 165, 166
+
+  Coaches:--
+    "Beaufort Hunt," 26, 204
+    "Flying Machines," 5, 69, 260
+    "Light Post" coach, 30
+    Mail coaches, 10, 11, 17-19, 27
+    "Regulator," 16
+    "York House," 26
+
+  Coaching era, 4-33, 204
+
+  ---- fares, 5, 28
+
+  ---- miseries, 9, 15-19
+
+  Coaching notabilities:--
+    Chaplin, Edward, 21, 90
+    ---- and Horne, 90
+    Cooper, Thomas, 21
+    Everett, Jack, 204
+
+  Colnbrook, 97-103
+
+  Colne, River, 96-98, 103
+
+  Corsham Regis, 218, 221-223, 224
+
+  Cranford, 82, 85, 86-89
+
+  ---- Bridge, 29, 84, 97
+
+  Cross Keys, 218
+
+  Cycling records, 215-218
+
+
+  Darell, William, 173-182
+
+
+  Froxfield, 182
+
+  Fyfield, 192
+
+
+  Great Western Railway, 27, 74, 108-110, 124, 134, 149, 221, 227
+
+  Gunnersbury, 63, 68
+
+
+  Hammersmith, 58, 63
+
+  Hare Hatch, 134
+
+  Harlington, 89-91
+
+  ---- Corner, 89
+
+  Harmondsworth, 94-96
+
+  Henry VIII., 13-138
+
+  Highwaymen, 40-45, 56, 67-69, 71, 74-84, 87, 91-94, 111-116, 118, 129
+
+  Hock-tide, 167-173
+
+  Hounslow, 19, 71-74, 92
+
+  ---- Heath, 69, 71, 74-84, 86, 92, 111
+
+  Hungerford, 146, 166-173
+
+  Hyde Park Corner, 33-40, 74, 94, 166
+
+
+  Inns (mentioned at length):--
+    "Bear," Maidenhead, 25, 129
+    "Bell and Bottle," Knowl Hill, 133
+    "Black Bull," Holborn, 31
+    "Castle," Marlborough, 17, 21, 187, 192
+    ----, Salt Hill, 92, 107
+    "Greyhound," Maidenhead, 127
+    "Halfway House," Kensington, 40, 43, 45
+    "Hercules' Pillars," Hyde Park Corner, 34
+    "King's Head," Longford, 97
+    "Magpies," 90
+    "Old Bell," Holborn, 31-33
+    "Old Magpies," 91
+    "Old Pack Horse," Turnham Green, 66-68
+    "Old Windmill," Turnham Green, 65
+    "Ostrich," Colnbrook, 99-103
+    "Pack Horse and Talbot," Turnham Green, 59, 66
+    "Peggy Bedford," Longford, 97
+    "Pelican," Speenhamland, 15, 150, 253
+    "Red Cow," Brook Green, 56-58
+    "Robin Hood," Turnham Green, 63-65
+    "Waggon and Horses," Beckhampton, 203-205
+    "White Bear," Piccadilly, 26
+    "White Bear," Fickles Hole, 26
+    "White Hart," Bath, 260
+    "White Horse," Fetter Lane, 16, 30
+    "White Lion," Bath, 22, 26, 260
+    "York House," Bath, 26
+
+
+  Jack of Newbury, 150-154, 157-161
+
+
+  Kennet, River, 146, 152, 166, 186, 193
+
+  Kensington, 34, 40, 44, 46-55
+
+  Kew Bridge, 68
+
+  Kiln Green, 133
+
+  Knightsbridge, 34, 40, 44
+
+  Knowl Hill, 133
+
+
+  Langley Broom, 104
+
+  ---- Marish, 104
+
+  Littlecote, 173-182
+
+  Longford, 94, 96
+
+
+  Maidenhead, 33, 122, 124-130
+
+  ---- Thicket, 111, 129-133
+
+  Mail coaches established, 10
+
+  Manton, 194
+
+  Marlborough, 22, 26, 182, 186-193, 204
+
+  ---- College, 188, 192
+
+  ---- Downs, 17, 197-201, 205, 253
+
+  Maud Heath's Causeway, 213-215
+
+
+  Nash, Beau, 238-240, 243, 250
+
+  Newbury, 18, 138, 146, 150-166, 253
+
+  ----, battles of, 161-165
+
+
+  Old-time travellers:--
+    Campbell, Rev. Thomas, 252-255
+    Moritz, Pastor, 116-123
+
+
+  Palmer, George, 135
+
+  ----, John, 10, 242, 243
+
+  Pickwick, 218-221
+
+  Postage of letters, 10-15, 167
+
+  Prior Park, 243, 246
+
+
+  Quemerford, 206
+
+
+  Reading, 18, 29, 130, 134-138
+
+
+  Salt Hill, 92, 106-111, 122
+
+  Savernake Forest, 182-185, 194
+
+  Sham Castle, 249
+
+  Silbury Hill, 198-203
+
+  Sipson Green, 91
+
+  Speen, 153, 165, 166
+
+  Speenhamland, 150, 253
+
+  Stackhouse, Rev. Thomas, 153
+
+
+  Taplow, 108, 124
+
+  Tetsworth water, 105
+
+  Thatcham, 21, 146, 149, 153
+
+  Theale, 145, 162
+
+  Turnham Green, 58-68
+
+  Turnpike gates, 11, 34, 45, 73, 166
+
+  Twyford, 130, 134
+
+
+  Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths, 59
+
+  Walcot, 228
+
+  West Kennet, 197
+
+  ---- Overton, 197
+
+  "Wild Darell," 173-182
+
+  Woolhampton, 146-149
+
+  Wyatt's Rebellion, 38
+
+
+  "Young's Corner," 58
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Stranger still, the chief informer was named Porter.
+
+[2] Tawell had poisoned his sweetheart, who, before dying, had time to
+denounce him to her friends. They pursued him to the station, but when
+they arrived there the train had gone. The telegram sent was in these
+words:--
+
+"A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill, and the suspected murderer
+was seen to take a first-class ticket for London by the train which left
+Slough at 7.42 p.m. He is in the garb of a Quaker, with a brown great-coat
+on, which reaches nearly to his feet. He is in the last compartment of the
+second-class carriage."
+
+At Paddington he took a City omnibus, but the conductor was a policeman in
+disguise, and dogged his footsteps from one coffee-house to another, which
+he is supposed to have entered for the purpose of setting up an _alibi_.
+At length, as he was stepping into a lodging-house in the City, the police
+tapped him on the shoulder, with the question, "Haven't you just come from
+Slough?" Tawell confusedly denied the fact, but he was arrested, with the
+result already recounted.
+
+[3] Lord Iveagh's name is Guinness. Unfortunately for the thoroughness of
+the jest, there are but thirteen chapters in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
+
+[4] It was about 1630 that the town of Marlborough obtained a new grant of
+arms in place of its old shield of a "Castle _argent_, on a field
+_sable_." The new shield, still in use, is heraldically described as--"Per
+Saltire, gules and azure. In chief, a Bull passant, argent, armed or. In
+fess, two Capons, argent. In base, three greyhounds courant in pale,
+argent. On a chief, or, a pale charged with a Tower triple-towered, or,
+between two Roses, gules. Crest--On a wreath, a Mount, vert, culminated by
+a Tower triple-towered, argent. Supporters: two Greyhounds, argent." These
+arms are intended to perpetuate the memory of the ancient custom in
+Marlborough of the aldermen and burgesses presenting the mayor for the
+time being with a leash of white greyhounds, a white bull, and two white
+capons.
+
+[5] "There are many pleasanter places, even in this dreary world, than
+Marlborough Downs when it blows hard; and if you throw in beside a gloomy
+winter's evening, a miry and sloppy road, and a pelting fall of heavy
+rain, and try the effect, by way of experiment, in your own proper person,
+you will experience the full force of this observation."
+
+The traveller's horse stopped before "a road-side inn on the right-hand
+side of the way, about half a quarter of a mile from the end of the
+Downs.... It was a strange old place, built of a kind of shingle, inlaid,
+as it were, with cross-beams, with gabled-topped windows projecting
+completely over the pathway, and a low door with a dark porch and a couple
+of steep steps leading down into the house, instead of the modern fashion
+of half a dozen shallow ones leading up to it."
+
+[6] That the Romans knew the city we call Bath as _Aquæ Solis_--the
+"Waters of the Sun"--we learn from the ancient history of Britain. A
+highly interesting light upon this is furnished by the sculptured stone
+discovered some years since, and now in the local museum, which shows a
+decorative representation of the head of the Sun God from whose face
+radiate sun-rays, alternately with serpents.
+
+[7] Once the recognized pronunciation of the word. The great Duke of
+Wellington was probably the last who spoke it thus.
+
+[8] He meant Chippenham.
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" />
+<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Bath Road, by Charles G. (Charles George) Harper</title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+    body {margin-left: 14%; margin-right: 12%;}
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+<body>
+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Bath Road, by Charles G. (Charles George)
+Harper</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Bath Road</p>
+<p>       History, Fashion, &amp; Frivolity on an Old Highway</p>
+<p>Author: Charles G. (Charles George) Harper</p>
+<p>Release Date: November 4, 2011  [eBook #37921]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATH ROAD***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/American Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/bathroadhistoryf00harp">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/bathroadhistoryf00harp</a>
+   </td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>THE BATH ROAD</h1>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="vertsbox">
+<p class="center"><span class="large">WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.</span></p>
+
+<p>THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.</p>
+<p>THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD, and its Tributaries, To-day, and in Days of Old.</p>
+<p>THE DOVER ROAD: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.</p>
+<p>THE EXETER ROAD: The Story of the West of England Highway. [<i>In the Press.</i></p></div>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><a name="front" id="front"></a></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/frontis.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON, 1806.<br />(<i>After R. B. Davis.</i>)</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="huge">The</span><br />
+<span class="giant">BATH ROAD</span></p>
+<p class="center"><span class="large"><i>HISTORY, FASHION, &amp; FRIVOLITY ON<br />AN OLD HIGHWAY</i></span></p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="large"><span class="smcap">By</span> CHARLES G. HARPER</span><br />
+<small><span class="smcap">Author of &#8220;The Brighton Road,&#8221; &#8220;The Portsmouth Road,&#8221;<br />
+&#8220;The Dover Road,&#8221; &amp;c. &amp;c.</span></small></p>
+
+<p><a name="title" id="title"></a>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/title.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><i>Illustrated by the Author, and from Old Prints<br />and Pictures</i></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">London: CHAPMAN &amp; HALL, Limited</span><br />
+1899<br />
+(<i>All Rights Reserved</i>)</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">PRINTED BY<br />
+WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED,<br />
+LONDON AND BECCLES.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+
+<div class="note">
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">To E. T. COOK, Esq.</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Dear Mr. Cook,</i></p>
+
+<p><i>It was by your favour, as Editor of the</i> <span class="smcap">Daily News</span>, <i>that the very gist
+of this book first saw the light, in the form of two articles in the
+columns of that paper. It seems, then, peculiarly appropriate that these
+pages&mdash;representing, in the measurements common to journalists and
+authors, a growth from four thousand to some sixty thousand words&mdash;should
+be inscribed to yourself.</i></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 8em;"><i>Sincerely yours</i>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 12em;">CHARLES G. HARPER.</span></p></div>
+
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/preface.jpg" alt="Preface" /></div>
+
+<p class="dropcap"><span class="caps"><i>T</i></span><i>his, the fourth volume in a series of books having for its object the
+preservation of so much of the Story of the Roads as may be interesting to
+the reading public, has been completed after considerable delay. The</i>
+<span class="smcap">Dover Road</span>, <i>which preceded the present work, was published so long ago as
+the close of 1895, and in that book the</i> <span class="smcap">Bath Road</span> <i>was (prematurely, it
+should seem, indeed) described as &#8220;In the Press.&#8221; Attention is drawn to
+the fact, partly in order to point out how quickly and how surely the
+old-time aspects of the roads are disappearing; for, since the</i> <span class="smcap">Bath Road</span>
+<i>has been in progress, no fewer than four of the old inns pictured in
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>these pages have disappeared, while great stretches of the road, once
+rural, have become suburban, and suburban streets have been so altered
+that they are in no wise distinguishable from those of town. It is because
+they will preserve the appearance and the memory of buildings that have
+had their day and are now being swept off the face of the earth, that it
+is hoped these volumes will find a welcome with those who care to cherish
+something of the records of a day that is done.</i></p>
+
+<p class="right">CHARLES G. HARPER.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Petersham, Surrey</span>,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>February, 1899</i>.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/illustrations.jpg" alt="List of Illustrations" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="center">SEPARATE PLATES</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1.</td><td><span class="smcap">George the Third travelling from Windsor to London, 1806.</span> (<i>After R. B. Davis</i>)</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#front">Frontispiece.</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">2.</td><td><span class="smcap">Coaching Miseries.</span> (<i>After Rowlandson</i>)</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_7">7</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">3.</td><td><span class="smcap">Passengers refreshed after a Long Day&#8217;s Journey.</span> (<i>After Rowlandson</i>)</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">4.</td><td><span class="smcap">The &#8220;White Bear,&#8221; Piccadilly</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">5.</td><td><span class="smcap">Allen&#8217;s Stall at Hyde Park Corner, about 1756</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">6.</td><td><span class="smcap">Hyde Park Corner, 1797</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_41">41</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">7.</td><td><span class="smcap">Kensington High Street, Summer Sunset</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">8.</td><td><span class="smcap">Colnbrook, a Decayed Coaching Town</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_101">101</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">9.</td><td><span class="smcap">An English Road</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_126">125</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">10.</td><td><span class="smcap">Maidenhead Thicket</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_131">131</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">11.</td><td><span class="smcap">The Stage Waggon.</span> (<i>After Rowlandson</i>)</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_139">139</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">12.</td><td><span class="smcap">Theale</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">13.</td><td><span class="smcap">Woolhampton</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_147">147</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">14.</td><td><span class="smcap">Rail and River: The Kennet and the Great Western Railway</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">15.</td><td><span class="smcap">At the 55th Milestone</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_155">155</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span>16.</td><td><span class="smcap">Hungerford</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">17.</td><td><span class="smcap">Marlborough</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_189">189</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">18.</td><td><span class="smcap">Fyfield</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_196">195</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">19.</td><td><span class="smcap">Marlborough Downs, near West Overton</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_199">199</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">20.</td><td><span class="smcap">The White Horse, Cherhill</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_207">207</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">21.</td><td><span class="smcap">The Old Market House, Chippenham</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_211">211</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">22.</td><td><span class="smcap">Box Village</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_225">225</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">23.</td><td><span class="smcap">Bathampton Mill</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_229">229</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">24.</td><td><span class="smcap">Prior Park</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_247">247</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">25.</td><td><span class="smcap">Bath Abbey: the West Front</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_261">261</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">26.</td><td><span class="smcap">The Roman Bath, restored</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="center">ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT</td></tr>
+<tr><td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td><td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Old Village Lock-up, Cranford</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#title">(<i>Title-page</i>)</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Sign of the &#8220;White Bear,&#8221; now at Fickles Hole</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_26">25</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;White Horse&#8221; Inn, Fetter Lane. Demolished 1898</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Courtyard of the &#8220;Old Bell,&#8221; Holborn. Demolished 1897</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Hyde Park Corner, 1786</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Hyde Park Corner, 1792</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_39">39</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Halfway House,&#8221; 1848</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_43">43</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&#8220;Oldest Inhabitant&#8221;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_50">50</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Thackeray&#8217;s House, Young Street</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">54</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;White Horse.&#8221; Traditional Retreat of Addison</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_55">55</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Red Cow,&#8221; Hammersmith. Demolished 1897</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_58">57</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Robin Hood and Little John</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_63">64</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Old Windmill&#8221;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Old Pack Horse&#8221;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Kew Bridge, Low Water</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Cottages, supposed to have been the Haunts of Dick Turpin</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_71">72</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>A Bath Road Pump</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Berkeley Arms&#8221;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_87">86</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Cranford House</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_88">88</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Old Magpies&#8221;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_90">90</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Gothic Barn,&#8221; Harmondsworth</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Old Flail, Harmondsworth</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The County Boundary</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_98">98</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></td><td>Almshouses, Langley</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_104">104</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The Stolen Fountain</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_105">105</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Windsor Castle, from the Road near Slough</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_106">106</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The &#8220;Bell and Bottle&#8221; Sign</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_133">133</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Palmer&#8217;s Statue</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Thatcham</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Inscription, Newbury Church</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">157</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Old Cloth Hall, Newbury</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_161">160</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The last of the Smock-frocks and Beavers</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_164">164</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Curious old Toll-house</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Hungerford Tutti-men</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Littlecote</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_176">176</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The Haunted Chamber</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Roadside Inn, Manton</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_194">194</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Avebury</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_201">201</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Silbury Hill</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_202">202</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Cross Keys</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_219">218</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The Hungerford Almshouse, Corsham Regis</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Entrance to Box Quarries</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The Sun God</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_232">233</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Roman inscribed tablet</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>The Batheaston Vase</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_241">242</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&#8220;Sham Castle&#8221;</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_250">249</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Old Pulteney Bridge</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_253">253</a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>Illustrations to Old Advertisements</td>
+    <td align="right"><a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span></p>
+<h2>THE ROAD TO BATH</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: -4em;">London (Hyde Park Corner) to&mdash;</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="center"><small>MILES</small></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Kensington&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">St. Mary Abbots</span></td>
+    <td align="right">1&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Addison Road</span></td>
+    <td align="right">2&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hammersmith</td>
+    <td align="right">3&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Turnham Green</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">5</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Brentford&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Star Gates</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">6</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Town Hall (cross River Brent and Grand Junction Canal)</span></td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">7</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Isleworth (Railway Station)</td>
+    <td align="right">8&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hounslow (Trinity Church)</td>
+    <td align="right">9&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cranford Bridge (cross River Crane)</td>
+    <td align="right">12&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Harlington Corner</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">13</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Longford (cross River Colne)</td>
+    <td align="right">15&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Colnbrook (cross River Colne)</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">17</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Langley Broom (&#8220;King William IV.&#8221; Inn)</td>
+    <td align="right">18&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Slough (&#8220;Crown&#8221; Hotel)</td>
+    <td align="right">20&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Salt Hill</td>
+    <td align="right">21&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Maidenhead (cross River Thames)</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">26</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Littlewick</td>
+    <td align="right">29&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Knowl Hill</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">31</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hare Hatch</td>
+    <td align="right">32&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Twyford (cross River Loddon)</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">34</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Reading (cross River Kennet)</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">39</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Calcot Green</td>
+    <td align="right">41&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span>Theale</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">44</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Woolhampton</td>
+    <td align="right">49&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Thatcham (cross River Lambourne)</td>
+    <td align="right">52&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Speenhamland<br />Newbury</td>
+    <td align="right" valign="middle">55&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Church Speen</td>
+    <td align="right">56&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Hungerford (cross River Kennet)</td>
+    <td align="right">64&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Froxfield (cross River Kennet)</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">67</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Marlborough</td>
+    <td align="right">74&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Fyfield</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">77</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Overton</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">78</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>West Kennet (cross River Kennet)</td>
+    <td align="right">79&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Beckhampton Inn</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">81</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cherhill</td>
+    <td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">84</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Quemerford (cross tributary of River Marden)</td>
+    <td align="right">86&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Calne (cross River Calne)</td>
+    <td align="right">87&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Black Dog Hill</td>
+    <td align="right">88&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Derry Hill (Swan Inn)</td>
+    <td align="right">90&#190;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Chippenham (cross River Avon)</td>
+    <td align="right">93&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Cross Keys</td>
+    <td align="right">96&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Pickwick (&#8220;Hare and Hounds&#8221; Inn)</td>
+    <td align="right">97&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Box</td>
+    <td align="right">100&#188;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Batheaston</td>
+    <td align="right">103&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Walcot</td>
+    <td align="right">104&#189;</td></tr>
+<tr><td>Bath (G. P. O.)</td>
+    <td align="right">105&#190;</td></tr></table>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img01.jpg" alt="The BATH ROAD" /></div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<p>The great main roads of England have each their especial and unmistakeable
+character, not only in the nature of the scenery through which they run,
+but also in their story and in the memories which cling about them. The
+history of the Brighton Road is an epitome of all that was dashing and
+dare-devil in the times of the Regency and the reign of George the Fourth;
+the Portsmouth Road is sea-salty and blood-boltered with horrid tales of
+smuggling days, almost to the exclusion of every other imaginable
+characteristic of road history; and the story of the Dover Road is a very
+microcosm of the nation&#8217;s history. Nothing strongly characteristic of
+England, Englishmen, and English customs but what you shall find a hint of
+it on the Dover Road. As for the Holyhead Road, it traverses the Midland
+territory of the fox-hunting and port-drinking squires, and reeks of
+toasts and conjurations of &#8220;no heel-taps;&#8221; the great North Road is an
+agricultural route pre-eminently; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> Exeter Road the running-ground of
+some of the fleetest and best-appointed coaches of the Coaching Age; while
+the Bath Road was at one time the most literary and fashionable of them
+all.</p>
+
+<p>The best period of the Bath Road was peculiarly the era of powder and
+patches; of tie-wigs, long-skirted coats, and gorgeous waistcoats; of silk
+stockings and buckled shoes; when the test of a well-bred gentleman was
+the making a leg and the nice carriage of a clouded cane; when a grand
+lady would &#8220;protest&#8221; that a thing which challenged her admiration was
+&#8220;monstrous fine,&#8221; and a gallant beau would &#8220;stap his vitals&#8221; by way of
+emphasis. It was a period of rigid etiquette and hollow artificiality; but
+a period also of a grand literary upheaval, and an era in which people
+were not, as now, merely clothed, but dressed.</p>
+
+<p>Bath at this time was the most fashionable place in all England. Did my
+lady suffer from that mysterious eighteenth-century complaint &#8220;the
+vapours,&#8221; she journeyed to &#8220;the Bath.&#8221; Did my lord experience in the gout
+a foretaste of the torments of that place popularly supposed to be paved
+with good intentions, he also went to Bath, in his private carriage,
+cursing as he went; while the halt, the lame, the afflicted of many
+diseases, came this way; some posting, others by stage-coach, and yet more
+riding horseback. Every invalid, hypochondriac, and <i>malade imaginaire</i>
+who could afford it went to Bath, for continental spas had not then become
+possible for English people, and the nauseating waters of Aix, Baden, and
+other places simply trickled unheeded away.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE BEGGARS OF BATH</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span>Every invalid, in fact, who could afford it, went to Bath, and the
+mentally afflicted, who could not go, were sent thither; so that the
+saying which is now become proverbial (and whose origin and subtle
+innuendo seem in danger of being lost) arose, &#8220;Go to Bath,&#8221; with the
+rider, &#8220;and get your head shaved;&#8221; the lunatics who were sent to those
+healing waters usually being thus tonsured. This derisive phrase was used
+toward any one who propounded a more than ordinarily crack-brained
+project. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that it has no sort of
+connection with the modern music-hall vulgarism, &#8220;Get your hair cut!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Another theory&mdash;but one more ingenious than acceptable&mdash;has it that the
+phrase derives from Bath having always been a resort of beggars. What,
+then, more natural, we are asked, than for one accosted by a mendicant to
+recall this topographical notoriety, and bid the rogue &#8220;go to Bath&#8221;? For,
+according to Fuller, that worthy author of the &#8220;Worthies,&#8221; there were
+&#8220;many in that place; some natives there, others repairing thither from all
+parts of the land; the poor for alms, the pained for ease. Whither should
+fowl flock in a hard frost but to the barn-door? Here, all the two
+seasons, being the general confluence of gentry. Indeed, laws are daily
+made to restrain beggars, and daily broken by the connivance of those who
+make them; it being impossible, when the hungry belly barks and bowels
+sound, to keep the tongue silent. And although oil of whip be the proper
+plaister for the cramp of laziness, yet some pity is due to impotent
+persons. In a word,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> seeing there is the Lazar&#8217;s-bath in this city, I
+doubt not but many a good Lazarus, the true object of charity, may beg
+therein.&#8221; The road, then, to this City of Springs must have witnessed a
+motley throng.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<p>The history of travelling, from the Creation to the present time, may be
+divided into four periods&mdash;those of no coaches, slow coaches, fast
+coaches, and railways. The &#8220;no-coach&#8221; period is a lengthy one, stretching,
+in fact, from the beginning of things, through the ages, down to the days
+of the Romans, and so on to the era when pack-horses conveyed travellers
+and goods along the uncertain tracks, which in the Middle Ages were all
+that remained of the highways built by that masterful race. The
+&#8220;slow-coach&#8221; era was preceded by an age when those few people who
+travelled at all went either on horseback, with their women-folk clinging
+on behind them, or else were wealthy enough to be able to afford the keep
+or hire of a &#8220;chariot,&#8221; as the carriages of that time were named. That
+sinful old reprobate, Samuel Pepys, lived in the last days of the
+&#8220;no-coach&#8221; period, and saw the arrival of the slow coaches. He was one of
+those who used a chariot, and his &#8220;Diary&#8221; is full of accounts of how, on
+his innumerable journeys, he lost his way because of the badness of the
+roads, which then ran through vast stretches of unenclosed, uncultivated,
+and sparsely inhabited country, and were so fearfully bad that in many
+places the drivers did not dare to attempt such veritable &#8220;sloughs of
+despond,&#8221; but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> drove around them over the hedgeless fields, thus making
+new tracks for themselves. In this way the origin of the winding character
+which many of our roads still retain is sufficiently accounted for.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;FLYING MACHINE&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>The &#8220;slow-coach&#8221; era was, absurdly enough, that of the &#8220;flying machines,&#8221;
+and in that era, with the year 1667, the coaching history of the Bath Road
+may be said to begin, when some greatly daring person issued a bill
+announcing that a &#8220;flying machine&#8221; would make the journey. It is not to be
+supposed that this was some emulator of Icarus or predecessor of the
+ambitious folks who for the last hundred years, more or less, have been
+trying to navigate the air with balloons or mechanical flying machines.
+Not at all. This was simply the figurative language employed to convey to
+those whom it might concern the wonderful feat that was to be attempted
+(&#8220;God permitting,&#8221; as the advertiser was careful to add), of travelling by
+road from the &#8220;Bell Savage,&#8221; on Ludgate Hill, to Bath in three days. But
+here is the announcement:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="center">&#8220;FLYING MACHINE.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on
+their Road, let them repair to the &#8216;Bell Savage&#8217; on Ludgate Hill in
+London, and the &#8216;White Lion&#8217; at Bath, at both which places they may be
+received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which
+performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets
+forth at five o&#8217;clock in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are allowed to
+carry fourteen Pounds Weight&mdash;for all above to pay three-halfpence per
+Pound.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>The rush of fashionables to take the waters, and see and be seen, had
+obviously not then commenced, since one crawling &#8220;flying machine&#8221; sufficed
+to accommodate the traffic; and it was not until thirty-six years later
+that it did begin, when Queen Anne (who, alas! is dead) resorted to &#8220;the
+Bath&#8221; for the benefit of the gout. What says Pope?</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Great Anna, whom Three Realms obey,<br />
+Does sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tay.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>If she had taken tea more consistently and drank less port, she would have
+been just as great and not so gouty&mdash;and Bath would have remained in that
+semi-obscurity in which it had long languished. No crowds of fashionables,
+no truckling statesmen, no wits, would have hastened down the road and
+peopled it so brilliantly had not Anne&#8217;s big toe twinged with the torments
+of the damned; and it seems likely enough that this book would never have
+been written. Under the circumstances, therefore, the most appropriate
+toast for the author and the Mayor and Corporation of Bath to honour is
+that favourite old one, &#8220;High Church, High Farming, and Old Port for
+Ever,&#8221; especially the last, &#8220;coupling with it,&#8221; as they used to say before
+the custom of giving toasts died out, the honoured memory of Queen Anne.</p>
+
+<p>Another three-days-a-week coach then began to ply between London and Bath.
+In 1711 it had a rival, and five years later saw the establishment of the
+first daily coach from London. Thomas Baldwin, citizen and cooper of
+London, saw money in the venture, and, like the hero of one of Bret
+Harte&#8217;s verses, who <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>&#8220;saw his duty a dead sure thing,&#8221; he &#8220;went for it,
+there and then.&#8221; He would seem to have secured it, too, for he held the
+road for many years against all rivals, and was, moreover, landlord of one
+of the foremost hostelries on the road&mdash;the &#8220;Crown,&#8221; at Salt Hill.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img02.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">COACHING MISERIES. (<i>After Rowlandson.</i>)</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>His rivals were many, and, considering the popularity to which Bath soon
+attained, they must all have done well. Indeed, the establishment of a new
+coach to Bath would now appear to have been a favourite form of
+speculation, and Londoners found many such advertisements as the
+following:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="center">&#8220;<i>Daily Advertiser.</i> April 9, 1737.<br />
+&#8220;For Bath.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A good Coach and able Horses will set out from the &#8216;Black Swan&#8217; Inn,
+in Holborn, on Wednesday or Thursday.</p>
+
+<p class="right">&#8220;Enquire of <span class="smcap">William Maud</span>.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>COACHING MISERIES</i></div>
+
+<p>The invalid who trusted himself to the stage-coach of that period had,
+however, many risks to run. Doctors might recommend the waters, but before
+the patient reached them he had to endure a two days&#8217; journey, and even at
+that to bear a very martyrdom of bumps and jolts. For that was just before
+the time when coach-proprietors began to announce &#8220;comfortable&#8221; coaches
+&#8220;with springs,&#8221; just as, a little earlier, they had laid great stress on
+their conveyances being glazed, and (to skip the centuries) as railway
+companies nowadays advertise dining and drawing room cars. Here are some
+coaching woes:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">&#8220;Just as you are going off, with only one other person on your side of
+the coach, who, you flatter yourself, is the last&mdash;seeing the door
+opened suddenly, and the landlady, coachman, guard, etc.,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> cramming
+and shoving and buttressing up an overgrown, puffing, greasy human
+being of the butcher or grazier breed; the whole machine straining and
+groaning under its cargo from the box to the basket. By dint of
+incredible efforts and contrivances, the carcase is at length weighed
+up to the door, where it has next to struggle with various obstacles
+in the passage.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The pictorial commentary upon this text is appended, together with a view
+representing passengers refreshed by being overturned into a wayside pond.</p>
+
+<p>The first mail-coach that ever ran in England ran between London and
+Bristol, and set out on Monday, August 2, 1784. Hitherto the letters had
+been conveyed by mounted post-boys, often provided with but sorry hacks,
+and always open to attack at the hands of any bad characters who might
+think it worth their while to intercept the post-bags. This risk led the
+more cautious persons, and those whose correspondence was of particular
+importance, to despatch their letters by the stage-coach, although the
+cost in that case was 2<i>s.</i> as against the ordinary postal charge of only
+4<i>d.</i> for places between 80 and 120 miles distant.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE FIRST MAIL COACH</i></div>
+
+<p>A clever and enterprising man resident at Bath had noted these things.
+This was John Palmer, the proprietor of the Bath Theatre. He not only
+noted them, but devised a plan by which the post was rendered swifter and
+more secure. The stage-coaches of that time took thirty-eight hours to
+accomplish the journey between London and Bath, and, although safer for
+the carriage of correspondence than by post-boy, were not so speedy.
+Palmer had frequently travelled the roads, and he rightly conceived
+thirty-eight hours to be too long a time to take for a journey of 106
+miles. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>He drew up a scheme for a mail-coach to carry four inside
+passengers, a coachman, and a guard, and to be drawn by four horses at the
+rate of between eight and nine miles an hour. In this manner, he argued,
+the journey between Bath and London should be accomplished, including
+stoppages, in sixteen hours. This plan, which he made as an instance, to
+be extended, if successful, to the other main roads throughout the
+kingdom, he communicated to the General Post Office. Two years passed
+before Palmer could get his proposals tried, but arrangements were
+eventually made, agreements entered into with five innkeepers along the
+London, Bath, and Bristol Road, for the horsing of the coach, and the
+first mail despatched from Bristol to London, August 2, 1784. The mounted
+post-boy&#8217;s day was nearing its close, and by the summer of 1786, the trunk
+roads knew him and his post-horn no more.</p>
+
+<p>The mail-coaches enjoyed great privileges, of which the greatest was their
+exemption from all turnpike tolls, and the right exercised by the Post
+Office of indicting roads which might be out of repair or in any way
+dangerous. By the year 1810, mail-coaches had increased so greatly that
+the estimated annual loss of the various turnpike trusts on this exemption
+was &pound;50,000. And all the while the postal business was increasing by leaps
+and bounds, although the price of postage was increased from time to time
+to help supply the Government, which speedily came to recognize the
+Department as a milch cow, and to demand increasing annual payments from
+it, to help pay the costs of waging Continental wars.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>Let us see what the postage between London, Bath, and Bristol was at
+different periods. The charges were regulated by distances, and one of the
+schedule measurements, &#8220;exceeding 80 miles and not exceeding 150 miles,&#8221;
+just includes these two towns. We find, then, that it was possible to get
+a letter conveyed that distance in 1635 for 4<i>d.</i>, while a bulky package
+weighing one ounce cost 9<i>d.</i> in transmission; not extravagant charges for
+that far-off time, even allowing for the greater purchasing power of money
+in the first half of the seventeenth century. Twenty-five years later the
+scale was altered, and one could despatch a note for a penny less,
+although it cost 3<i>d.</i> more for an ounce weight. From 1711 to 1765, the
+scale was&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="center">Letter.</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td><td align="center">One ounce.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="center">4<i>d.</i></td><td>&nbsp;</td><td align="center">1<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i></td></tr></table>
+
+<p>and from 1765 to 1784 the charges were again raised, to 5<i>d.</i> and 1<i>s.</i>
+8<i>d.</i> respectively. Matters then went from bad to worse. In the beginning
+of 1797, the figures were 7<i>d.</i> and 2<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i>; while the climax was
+finally reached at the beginning of this century, for on July 9, 1812, it
+cost 9<i>d.</i> to send a note between London, Bath, or Bristol, and 3<i>s.</i> for
+one ounce. A singular fact, in face of these repeated increases, was the
+growth of the Post Office revenues. In 1796, the net profit was &pound;479,000;
+ten years later it had risen to considerably over one million sterling.
+The Bristol profit on Post Office business was &pound;469 in 1794-5, and at that
+time the postmaster received a salary of &pound;110 per annum. The Bath
+postmaster&#8217;s billet was the best in the service, for he received &pound;150,
+and, moreover, had the assistance of one clerk and three letter-carriers.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img03.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PASSENGERS REFRESHED AFTER A LONG DAY&#8217;S JOURNEY. (<i>After Rowlandson.</i>)</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span>Meanwhile the stage-coaches had increased greatly. It was about 1800 that
+the &#8220;Sick, Lame, and Lazy&#8221;&mdash;a sober conveyance so called from the nature
+of its passengers, invalids, real and imaginary, on their way to Bath&mdash;was
+displaced by the new post coach that performed the journey in a single
+day; and thus the comfortable, <i>and</i> expensive, beds of the &#8220;Pelican&#8221; at
+Speenhamland, where &#8220;the coach slept,&#8221; began to be disestablished.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;GOD-PERMITS&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Our forefathers of the coaching age were properly pious. Desirous, when
+they travelled, of a &#8220;happy issue out of all their afflictions,&#8221; as the
+Prayer-book has it&mdash;which in their case included such varied troubles as
+highwaymen&#8217;s attacks, being upset, or finding themselves snowed up, with
+the extreme likelihood in winter-time of being severely frostbitten&mdash;they
+made their wills, and fervently committed themselves to the protection of
+Providence before starting and putting themselves in the care of the
+coachman. Coach proprietors, for their part, always advertised their
+conveyances to run &#8220;D.V.;&#8221; and the more slangy among our
+great-grandparents were accordingly accustomed to speak of these coaches
+as &#8220;God-permits.&#8221; Express trains, which stop for nothing in heaven above
+or the earth beneath, short of a cataclysm of nature, have relegated that
+joke to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> the domains of arch&aelig;ology. Then, however, it had its poignant
+side.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The perils of the road in winter and foul weather,&#8221; says one who braved
+them, &#8220;were formidable. On one occasion I rode sixteen hours under a
+deluging downpour of rain that never ceased for a single minute, and was
+so crushing in its effect as to disable every umbrella on the roof before
+the first hour had elapsed. On another occasion I started at six on a
+winter&#8217;s morning outside the Bath &#8220;Regulator,&#8221; which was due in London at
+eight o&#8217;clock at night. I was the only outside passenger. It came on to
+snow about an hour after we started&mdash;a snowstorm that never ceased for
+three days. The roads were a yard deep in snow before we reached Reading,
+which was exactly at the time we were due in London. Then with six horses
+we laboured on, and finally arrived at Fetter Lane at a quarter to three
+in the morning. Had it not been for the stiff doses of brandied coffee
+swallowed at every stage, this record would never have been written. As it
+was, I was so numbed, hands and feet, that I had to be lifted down, or
+rather, hauled out of an avalanche or hummock of snow, like a bale of
+goods. The landlady of the &#8216;White Horse&#8217; took me in hand, and I was thawed
+gradually by the kitchen fire, placed between warm pillows, and dosed with
+a posset of her own compounding. Fortunately, no permanent injury
+resulted.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SNOWSTORMS</i></div>
+
+<p>That was as late as 1816. Happily, although the term &#8220;an old-fashioned
+winter,&#8221; is one frequently employed nowadays to denote one of exceptional<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+severity, there is no reason to believe that such winters were less
+exceptional then than they are now. But the great frosts and snowstorms of
+those times belong to history, and although they only occurred (as they do
+now) at considerable intervals, they bulk largely in the records of the
+past.</p>
+
+<p>The great snowstorm of December 26, 1836, dislocated the coach service all
+over the country. The drifts on Marlborough Downs varied in depth from
+fourteen to sixteen feet. The Duke of Wellington, who was travelling down
+the road to the Duke of Beaufort&#8217;s place at Badminton, arrived at
+Marlborough on the Monday night, in the thick of it, and put up at the
+&#8220;Castle.&#8221; He was journeying in a carriage and four, with outriders, and
+started again the next morning, to be promptly stuck fast in a wheatfield.
+A number of labourers were procured, who dug him out.</p>
+
+<p>On that memorable occasion, the Bath and Bristol mails, which were due at
+those places on the Tuesday morning, were abandoned eighty miles from
+London, the mail-bags being brought up by the two guards in a post-chaise
+with four horses. For seventeen miles they had to come by way of the
+fields.</p>
+
+<p>Three outside passengers died of the cold when one of the stage coaches
+reached Chippenham, and frostbites were innumerable.</p>
+
+<p>But if all the untoward coaching incidents were recounted that befell upon
+
+the Bath Road, this would resolve itself into a dismal record, and it
+might then be supposed that coaching was invariably dangerous and
+uncomfortable, which was not the case. One of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> the most singular of these
+happenings was that in which a home-coming sailor was killed. A gunner
+named John Baker was wrecked on board the frigate <i>Diomede</i>, off the coast
+of Trincomalee, and narrowly escaped being drowned. Being picked up, he
+recovered sufficiently to be able to take a part in the storming of that
+place, and was sent home with the ship bearing the despatches. When he set
+foot again in England, he must naturally have thought all dangers past;
+but, coming up from Bath in January, 1796, the coach capsized at Reading,
+and the unhappy gunner, who had survived all perils of battle and the
+breeze, was killed.</p>
+
+<p>A not dissimilar accident happened in July, 1827, when the Bath mail was
+overturned between Reading and Newbury, through the horses bolting into a
+gravel-pit. A naval officer was killed, and most of the passengers
+injured.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>FOGS</i></div>
+
+<p>Although the latter accident happened in an age of very fast coaches, it
+is a fact that disasters were actually fewer than they had been in more
+leisurely times. The reasons for this increased safety in times when speed
+was vastly greater may be found in the facts that the roads were better
+kept, and the coaches better built. A whole series of Turnpike Acts had
+been passed in the course of the previous fifty years, resulting in roads
+as nearly perfect as roads can be, while the coachbuilder&#8217;s trade had
+become almost an exact science. Had it not been for the occasional
+recklessness or drunkenness of drivers, and the winter fogs, there would
+be little to record in the way of accidents. As it was, coachmen sometimes
+(but very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> rarely) took a convivial glass too much; or, more often, raced
+opposition coaches to a final smash; and then there were the &#8220;pea-soupers&#8221;
+of fogs, which led the most experienced astray.</p>
+
+<p>The following story belongs to the first quarter of this century, and is
+told by one of the old drivers: &#8220;I recollect,&#8221; he says, &#8220;a singular
+circumstance occasioned by a fog. There were eight mails that passed
+through Hounslow. The Bristol, Bath, Gloucester, and Stroud took the
+right-hand road; the Exeter, Yeovil, Poole, and &#8216;Quicksilver&#8217; Devonport
+(which was the one I was driving) went the straight road towards Staines.
+We always saluted each other when passing with &#8216;Good night, Bill,&#8217; &#8216;Dick,&#8217;
+or &#8216;Harry,&#8217; as the case might be. I was once passing a mail, mine being
+the fastest, and gave my wonted salute. A coachman named Downs was driving
+the Stroud mail. He instantly recognized my voice, so said, &#8216;Charley, what
+are you doing on my road?&#8217; It was he, however, who had made the mistake;
+he had taken the Staines instead of the Slough road out of Hounslow. We
+both pulled up immediately; he had to turn round and go back&mdash;a feat
+attended with some difficulty in such a fog. Had it not been for our usual
+salute, he would not have discovered his mistake before arriving at
+Staines.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<p>One of the most striking differences between the coaching age and these
+railway times lies in the altered relations between passenger and driver.
+No railway passenger ever thinks of the man who drives the engine. He, in
+fact, rarely sees him. The coachman, on the other hand, was very much in
+evidence, and was not only seen, but expected to be &#8220;remembered&#8221; as well.
+And &#8220;remembered&#8221; the old coachmen were, too: for half a crown each to
+driver and guard was the least one could do in those times. How great a
+tax this was upon the traveller may be guessed when it is said that the
+coachman was generally changed about every fifty miles or so. The guard
+would probably accompany the coach all the way to Bath, but on the longer
+journeys there were at least two. There was a very simple formula used, as
+a hint to passengers that a tip should be forthcoming. &#8220;I go no further,
+gentlemen,&#8221; the coachman would observe, putting his head in at the window.
+A simultaneous dipping of the hands into fobs on the part of the
+passengers resulted from this piece of information, and the coachman would
+depart, richer by considerably over half a sovereign. Imagination does not
+go to the length of picturing the driver or the guard of a train doing the
+like.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>TIPS</i></div>
+
+<p>It is not, however, to be supposed that coach passengers greatly delighted
+in the practice, even in those fine open-handed days. There were many who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+could not afford it, and others who regarded it as an imposition. But they
+tipped all the same, because, as Mr. Chaplin, the great coach proprietor
+in those palmy days, observed, if they did not the guard and coachman
+&#8220;would look very hard at them.&#8221; Better to face a lioness robbed of her
+cubs than a coachman defrauded of his tip. Passengers, therefore, resigned
+themselves with a sigh to the expenditure, and travelled as little as they
+possibly could. There can, indeed, be no doubt that tipping, grown to a
+regular system, injured the coach proprietors&#8217; business; and it was
+eventually, if not abolished entirely, at least shorn of its more
+grandiose proportions. The first man to tackle the question was Thomas
+Cooper. He was proprietor of a line of coaches running between London and
+Bristol from 1827 to 1832. &#8220;Cooper&#8217;s Old Company,&#8221; he called his business.
+He had originally been landlord of the &#8220;Castle Hotel&#8221; at Marlborough, but
+gave it up and removed to Thatcham, where he took a cottage and built
+stables for his coaching stud. Here he was practically halfway between
+London and Bristol, and his day and night coaches stopped to dine and sup
+at &#8220;Cooper&#8217;s Cottage,&#8221; as, with a sense of the value of alliteration, he
+called it. All his advertisements bore the announcement, &#8220;No fees,&#8221; and
+the same pleasing legend was writ large on the backs of his coaches.</p>
+
+<p>Cooper paid his coachmen and guards considerably higher wages, to
+compensate them for the loss of their tips. He became bankrupt in 1832,
+and sold his business to Chaplin, who afterwards, through his interest in
+the railway world, obtained him the post of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> stationmaster at Richmond,
+near London. From this position he eventually retired on a pension, and
+died about fifteen years ago.</p>
+
+<p>We all know the cantankerous passenger in the railway carriage who makes
+himself objectionable in a variety of ways, but a coach was a much more
+fruitful source of contention. Fortunately, however, it was not often that
+the incident of the strong man in the Bath coach bound for London was
+repeated. A corpulent person of prodigious strength tried to secure a
+place in the mail, but, all the seats being booked, he was told that it
+was impossible to convey him that night. Relying upon his strength and the
+unlikelihood of any one daring to disturb him, he got in while the coach
+was still standing in the stable yard, and waited. He had to wait so long,
+and had dined so well, that he fell asleep, and the coachman, finding him
+there, snoring, put his team into another coach, leaving the fat man in
+peaceable possession of his seat. He awoke in the middle of the night,
+still, of course, in the stable yard of the &#8220;White Lion&#8221; at Bath, while
+the road echoed with the laughter of the coachman and his friends all the
+way up to London.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img04.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;WHITE BEAR,&#8221; PICCADILLY.</p>
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;FULL INSIDE&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>In that incident the passengers were fortunate. The &#8220;insides&#8221; were less to
+be congratulated who bore a part in the memorable journey down to Bath
+from Piccadilly with an extra passenger. It is of the Bath mail that the
+story is told. Mail coaches carried four inside. One night, when the mail
+was ready to start from Piccadilly, full up, inside and out, a gentleman
+who wanted to go to Marlborough came hurrying up. He was well known to
+coachman and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>guard as a regular customer; but, although they did not
+want to leave him behind, there seemed to be no alternative. He solved the
+difficulty himself by squeezing in as the coach started; and so, packed as
+tightly as herrings in a barrel, they rumbled away, amid the muttered
+curses of the original occupants. The misery of that journey may be better
+imagined than described, and when the coach halted at the &#8220;Bear&#8221; at
+Maidenhead, it might be supposed that the &#8220;insides&#8221; would have been only
+too pleased to get out for a momentary relief when the guard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> appeared at
+the door and made what was usually the pleasant announcement, &#8220;Time to get
+a cup of coffee here, gentlemen.&#8221; Did they get out? Oh no! They were so
+tightly wedged that they dared not move, afraid lest they should not be
+able to get in again. So they endured to the bitter end, and there can be
+no doubt whatever that when Marlborough was reached, they &#8220;sped the
+parting guest&#8221; with exceptional heartiness.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img05.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">SIGN OF THE &#8220;WHITE BEAR,&#8221;<br />NOW AT FICKLES HOLE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The inn from which this coach started was the &#8220;White Bear,&#8221; Piccadilly,
+which stood, until about the year 1860, on the site now occupied by the
+Criterion Restaurant. It was a curious old place, chiefly of wood, and had
+a great effigy of a polar bear on its frontage. This &#8220;White Bear&#8221; sign is
+still in existence, but rusticated to the lonely hamlet of Fickles Hole,
+near Croydon, where it stands in the little garden of the &#8220;White Bear&#8221;
+inn.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<p>A very swagger stage-coach, the &#8220;York House,&#8221; was started between Bath and
+London in 1815, followed by a rival, the &#8220;Beaufort Hunt.&#8221; The first-named
+started from the &#8220;York House Hotel&#8221; at Bath; the &#8220;Beaufort Hunt&#8221; from the
+&#8220;White Lion.&#8221; Both were fast day coaches; and, perhaps because of racing,
+the &#8220;Beaufort Hunt&#8221; was upset twice in a fortnight, soon after it had been
+put on the road. It was a sporting age, but not so sporting that
+passengers were prepared to risk life and limb in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> taking part in this
+keen rivalry. Accordingly, the &#8220;Beaufort Hunt&#8221; fell upon evil times, and
+the proprietor had to dismiss his too zealous drivers. He was, however,
+fortunate in his new coachman, who was exceptionally civil and obliging,
+and eventually regained the position of the coach, which, although it kept
+up a furious pace of eleven miles an hour, remained for years a prime
+favourite with the more dashing travellers along the road.</p>
+
+<p>This and the other crack coaches, which continued running until the Great
+Western Railway finally took them away on trucks, quite cut out the mails,
+which, from being the fastest coaches on the road, soon came to occupy a
+very middling position.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE AUGUSTAN AGE</i></div>
+
+<p>In 1821, the mail-coaches had reached a speed of nearly eight and
+three-quarter miles an hour, including stoppages. They started from the
+General Post Office at 8 p.m., and reached Bristol at 10 a.m. the
+following morning. At the same period the two fast stage-coaches just
+described were doing their eleven miles an hour, and in 1830 were actually
+timed a mile an hour faster, while the mail was very little accelerated,
+if at all. Some years later, indeed (in 1837), the Bristol mail was
+wakened up, and performed the 121 miles in 11 hrs. 45 min., or at the rate
+of ten miles and a quarter an hour, including changes, of which there were
+fourteen. This was the fine flower of the Coaching Age on the Bath Road.
+There were then about fifteen or sixteen day and night coaches between
+London and Bath, and two mails, all running full. On June 4, 1838, the
+Great Western Railway was opened as far as Slough, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> the coaches ran
+only between that place and Bath. In March, 1840, the railway was open as
+far as Reading; and June 30, 1841, saw trains running between London,
+Bath, and Bristol, and the road deserted.</p>
+
+<p>The difference between those times and these is sufficiently striking to
+demand some attention. Fares by mail were 4<i>d.</i> a mile; by stage-coach,
+from 4<i>d.</i> to 3&#189;<i>d.</i> a mile inside, and 2<i>d.</i> outside. Or, if one
+wanted to travel somewhat cheaper, and did not mind an all-night journey,
+the fares by night coach were about 2&#189;<i>d.</i> and 1&#189;<i>d.</i> respectively.
+The cost of travelling to Bath was therefore anything from 35<i>s.</i> down to
+14<i>s.</i> To these figures 5<i>s.</i> or 6<i>s.</i> should be added, for coachmen and
+guards always expected to be tipped, while something like half a sovereign
+for refreshments was essential.</p>
+
+<p>For those whose time was of no consequence, and whose pockets were not
+well lined, there were the slow lumbering stage-waggons, which progressed
+at about four miles an hour and stopped everywhere. The fare by these was
+something under a penny a mile, and refreshments were correspondingly
+cheap, for the landlords of the wayside inns, who despised this kind of
+travellers, provided a supper of cold beef at 6<i>d.</i> a head, and a
+shake-down of clean straw in the stable-loft at a nominal price.</p>
+
+<p>If, on the other hand, one desired to do the thing in style, it was always
+possible to post down. Only the great men of the earth did that, for the
+cost was more than considerable, tolls alone for a carriage and pair
+amounting to 9<i>s.</i> In fact, posting pair-horse to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> Bath would not have
+cost less than &pound;11. Nor would there then have been any advantage in pace,
+for post-chaises generally attained a speed of ten miles an hour, when the
+best coaches were doing twelve. Still, there were those who posted, ready
+to pay, both in money and time, for their privacy; for the wealthy Briton
+of that day was apt to be an extremely haughty and insufferable person,
+and preferred to travel like a Grand Llama, even though he paid heavily
+for it in coin and discomfort.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE FIRST MOTOR-CAR</i></div>
+
+<p>Almost the last scene in this &#8220;strange eventful history&#8221; of
+road-travelling in the past was enacted in 1829, when Mr. Gurney&#8217;s
+&#8220;steam-carriage&#8221; conveyed a number of people from London to Bath. The
+vehicle did not meet with the approval of the rustics, and at Melksham an
+angry mob, armed with stones, assailed the travellers, loudly denouncing
+the unholy thing. From Cranford Bridge to Reading, the speed was at the
+rate of sixteen miles an hour, and so delighted were those concerned with
+the result of the experiment that an announcement was made that &#8220;immediate
+measures&#8221; would be taken &#8220;to bring carriages of the sort into action on
+the roads.&#8221; It has, however, been left to these last few years to
+re-introduce the motor-car, with results yet to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>Such was travel on the road in olden times. To-day one travels to Bath in
+a fraction of the time at less than half the cost; the 107 miles railway
+journey from Paddington occupies exactly two hours, and a third-class
+ticket costs 8<i>s.</i> 11<i>d.</i></p>
+
+<p>As these lines are being written, the last of the old coaching inns from
+which some of the Bath stages<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> started, is being demolished. The &#8220;White
+Horse,&#8221; in Fetter Lane, Holborn, fell upon evil days when railways
+revolutionized its custom. Where Lord Eldon stayed in 1766, and whence
+many another aristocratic traveller set forth, tramps and fourpenny
+&#8220;dossers&#8221; found refuge. The &#8220;White Horse&#8221; inn became the &#8220;White Horse
+Chambers&#8221;&mdash;not the kind of chambers understood in St. James&#8217;s, but rather
+the cheap cubicles of St. Giles&#8217;s.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img06.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;WHITE HORSE&#8221; INN, FETTER LANE. DEMOLISHED 1898.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>DEPARTED GLORIES</i></div>
+
+<p>Cary&#8217;s &#8220;Itinerary&#8221; for 1821 (Cary was a guide, philosopher, and friend
+without whom our grandfathers never travelled) gives no fewer than
+thirty-seven stage-coaches which started from this old house. There was
+the &#8220;Accommodation&#8221; to Oxford, at seven o&#8217;clock in the morning; the Bath
+and Bristol Light<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> Post coach, at two in the afternoon, arriving at
+Bristol at eight o&#8217;clock the following morning; and the Worcester,
+Cheltenham, and Woodstock coaches, which all travelled along the Bath road
+to Maidenhead. Then there were the York &#8220;Highflier,&#8221; a crack Light Post
+coach, every morning, at nine o&#8217;clock; the &#8220;Princess Charlotte,&#8221; to
+Brighton; the Lynn, Dover, Cambridge, Ipswich, and other coaches too
+numerous to mention in detail. It will, therefore, not be surprising to
+learn that the stables of this busy hostelry were large enough to hold
+seventy horses.</p>
+
+<p>At the foot of the staircase, near the entrance, was the office, and
+everywhere were long passages and interminable suites of rooms. But how
+different the circumstances in later years! The vast apartment that was
+the public dining-room became, in fact, a kind of socialistic kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>There, when his day&#8217;s work was done, the kerbstone merchant came to grill
+the cheap chop he had purchased. There the professional cadger toasted a
+herring, while his companions cooked scraps of meat or toasted cheese.</p>
+
+<p>This part of Holborn was once famous for its old inns. Indeed, on the
+opposite side of that main artery of traffic were the &#8220;Black Bull&#8221; and the
+&#8220;Old Bell.&#8221; There is nothing left of the first now except the great black
+effigy of a bull with a golden zone about the middle of him, and beyond
+the archway a courtyard which was once the galleried courtyard of the inn,
+but is now just the area of a block of peculiarly dirty &#8220;model&#8221; dwellings.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img07.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">COURTYARD OF THE &#8220;OLD BELL,&#8221; HOLBORN. DEMOLISHED 1897.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;OLD BELL&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>What Londoner did not know the &#8220;Old Bell&#8221; Tavern, in Holborn, whose
+mellowed red brick frontage gave so great an air of distinction to that
+now commonplace thoroughfare. Among the last of the old galleried inns,
+some of its timbers dated back to 1521. The front of the house was
+comparatively juvenile, dating only from 1720. What its galleried
+courtyard was like let this sketch record. The site <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>was sold for &pound;11,600,
+and the house demolished, at the close of 1897, although its structural
+stability was unquestioned, and the place a favourite dining and luncheon
+house. Twenty-one coaches left that old house daily in the full flush of
+the coaching age; among them two Cheltenham coaches, the coaches to
+Faringdon, and Abingdon, Oxford, Woodstock, and Blenheim, all of which
+went by the Bath Road so far as Maidenhead, where they branched off <i>vi&acirc;</i>
+Henley. In addition, there was the stage which ran twice a day to
+Englefield Green, branching off at Hounslow. The &#8220;Old Bell&#8221; could, indeed,
+claim the credit of being the last actual coaching-house in London, for it
+is only a few years since the last three-horsed omnibus was discontinued
+that ran between it and Amersham, in Bucks. When the Metropolitan Railway
+extension reached that place, the conveyance, of course, became quite
+unnecessary, and the last remote echo of the genuine coaching age died
+away.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<p>The Bath Road is measured from Hyde Park Corner, and is a hundred and five
+miles and six furlongs in length. The reasons for this being reckoned as
+the starting-point of this great highway are found in the fact that when
+coaches were in their prime, Hyde Park Corner was at the very western
+verge of London. Early in the eighteenth century Londoners would have
+considered it in the country;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> and, indeed, the turnpike gate which until
+1721 crossed Piccadilly, opposite Berkeley Street, gave a quasi-official
+confirmation of that view. In that year, however, it was removed to Hyde
+Park Corner, just westward of the thoroughfare now known as Grosvenor
+Place, and so remained until October, 1825, when it was disestablished in
+favour of a turnpike gate opposite the spot where the Alexandra Hotel now
+stands. Beyond it&mdash;in the country&mdash;was the pretty rural village of
+Knightsbridge, with a gate by the barracks; and, beyond that, the remote
+village of Kensington, to which the Court retired for change of air, far
+away from London and its cares!</p>
+
+<p>From 1721 to 1825, therefore, we may well regard Hyde Park Corner as the
+beginning of town. This was so well recognized that local allusions to the
+fact were plentiful. For instance, where Piccadilly Terrace now stands was
+an inn called the &#8220;Hercules&#8217; Pillars,&#8221; a favourite sign for houses on the
+outskirts of large towns, just as churches dedicated to St. Giles were
+anciently placed outside the city walls. &#8220;Hercules&#8217; Pillars&#8221; was the
+classic name for the Straits of Gibraltar, regarded then as the boundary
+of civilization; hence the peculiar fitness of the sign.</p>
+
+<p>On the western side of this inn, a place greatly resorted to by the
+&#8217;prentice lads who wanted to take their lasses for a country outing in
+Hyde Park, was a little cottage, long known as &#8220;Allen&#8217;s Stall,&#8221; which
+stood here from the time of George the Second until 1784, when Apsley
+House was erected on its site. The ground is said to have been a present
+from George the Second to a discharged soldier named Allen, who had
+fought under his command at Dettingen.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img08.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ALLEN&#8217;S STALL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, ABOUT 1756.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>ALLEN&#8217;S STALL</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>The story is a pretty one, and tells how the King was riding into Hyde
+Park, when he noticed the soldier, still wearing a tattered uniform,
+taking charge of the stall in company with his wife.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;What can I do for you?&#8221; asked the King, replying to the military salute
+which the ragged veteran offered.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img09.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">HYDE PARK CORNER, 1786.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I ask nothing better than to earn an honest living, your Majesty,&#8221;
+replied the soldier; &#8220;but I am like to be turned away by the Ranger. If
+your Majesty were to give me a grant of the ground my stall stands on, I
+would be happy.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Be happy, then,&#8221; answered the King, and saw to it that Allen had his
+request satisfied.</p>
+
+<p>The stall became a cottage, where Allen and his wife lived until they were
+gathered to the great majority, having in the meanwhile, it may be
+supposed, done pretty well for themselves, since we find<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> their son to
+have been an attorney. The cottage was deserted, and the royal gift of the
+land partly forgotten, so that the Lord Chancellor of that period was
+granted a lease of the ground and began to build a mansion on it. Allen&#8217;s
+son had to the full that shrewdness which has made the name of &#8220;attorney&#8221;
+so generally detested that those &#8220;gentlemen by Act of Parliament&#8221; prefer
+nowadays to call themselves &#8220;solicitors.&#8221; He waited until my Lord
+Chancellor had nearly completed his house, and then put forward his claim,
+finally obtaining &pound;450 per annum as ground rent. He subsequently sold the
+land outright, and so Lord Chancellor Henry Bathurst, Baron Apsley, and
+Earl Bathurst, became the freeholder, and named his residence &#8220;Apsley
+House.&#8221; The mansion was purchased by the nation for the great Duke of
+Wellington in 1820. It was, from its situation, long known as &#8220;No. 1,
+London.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>MUD BULWARKS</i></div>
+
+<p>Let us see what kind of entrance to London this was in olden times. In
+Queen Mary&#8217;s day the idea of a road leading so far as Bath seems to have
+been considered too fantastic for common use, and this was accordingly
+known as the &#8220;waye to Reading.&#8221; In that reign, which was so reactionary
+that many were discontented with it, and roused up armed rebellions, the
+rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt brought his men thus far, having crossed the Thames
+at Kingston and struggled through the awful sloughs between that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> place
+and Knightsbridge. It seems quite likely that, but for the mud of those
+miscalled &#8220;roads,&#8221; the rebellion would have been successful, and the
+course of history changed. But Wyatt&#8217;s soldiers were utterly exhausted
+with the march; and when the Londoners saw them, plastered with mud from
+head to foot, they forgot their own discontent, and laughed at their
+would-be deliverers, calling them &#8220;draggle-tails.&#8221; So, dispirited and
+contemned, they were easily disposed of by the Queen&#8217;s troops, who, secure
+behind their girdle of muck, had only to wait and slay them at leisure.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img10.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">HYDE PARK CORNER, 1792.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The lesson seems not to have been lost upon the authorities, and
+accordingly we find this defence of dirt in existence up to the year 1842.
+For nearly three hundred years this &#8220;splendid isolation&#8221; set an almost
+impassable gulf between those who wished to get out of London and those
+who wanted to come in;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> for in the year just mentioned we learn that
+Knightsbridge was in so deplorable a state of neglect that it was
+perfectly impassable for persons possessing a common regard for
+cleanliness or comfort. Ankle-deep in mud and water, the pavement was
+rendered additionally dangerous by two steps, forming a sudden descent, so
+that those who were rash enough to attempt to pass that way in the dark
+generally bruised themselves severely at the best of it; or, at the worst,
+broke a leg or an arm.</p>
+
+<p>But this was nothing compared with a former age, when Lord Hervey, writing
+from Kensington, said the road was so infamously bad that he lived there
+in a solitude like that of a sailor cast away upon a lonely rock in
+mid-ocean. The only people who enjoyed this condition of affairs appear to
+have been the footpads and the highwaymen, who had the very best of times,
+until they were caught. Indeed, in the days when the stage-coaches
+performed the then marvellous feats of travelling at anything from three
+to five miles an hour, under favourable circumstances, the road could not
+be considered safe after Hyde Park Corner was left behind; and records
+tell of highway robberies, with the romantic accessories of blunderbusses
+and horse-pistols, at Knightsbridge so late as 1799.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img11.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;HALFWAY HOUSE&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>There was at that time, and until 1848, an old inn standing by the way,
+near where are now Knightsbridge Barracks. This inn, the &#8220;Halfway House,&#8221;
+occupied the exact site where Prince of Wales&#8217;s Gate now gives access to
+Hyde Park. Hereabouts lurked all manner of bad characters, who had
+infested the neighbourhood from time immemorial, safe from <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>the clutches
+of the law both in their numbers and in the isolation created by the
+almost bottomless sloughs of mud which then decorated what was, by
+courtesy or force of habit, called the &#8220;road.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img12.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;HALFWAY HOUSE.&#8221; 1848.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>At this spot, in April, 1740, the Bristol mail was robbed by a footpad,
+who overpowered the post-boy and got off with both the Bath and Bristol
+bags; while in 1774, three men were hanged for highway robbery here. But
+the most thrilling and circumstantial story of highwaymen at this spot is
+that which relates the capture of William Belchier, in 1750. There had
+been numerous highway robberies in the neighbourhood of the &#8220;Halfway
+House,&#8221; and at last one William Norton, a &#8220;thief-catcher,&#8221; was sent to
+apprehend the man, if possible. He took the Devizes chaise at half-past
+one in the morning of June 3, and when they had come to the place, sure
+enough the robber was there, waiting for them, and on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> foot. He bade the
+driver stop, and, holding a pistol in at the window, demanded the
+passengers&#8217; money. &#8220;Don&#8217;t frighten us,&#8221; replied Norton. &#8220;I have but a
+trifle; you shall have it.&#8221; He also advised the three other passengers to
+give up their coin; and, holding a pistol concealed in one hand and some
+silver in the other, let the robber take the money. When he had taken it
+the thief-taker raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. It missed fire;
+but the robber was too frightened to notice that. He staggered back,
+holding up both hands, exclaiming, &#8220;O Lord, O Lord!&#8221; Norton then jumped
+out after him, pursued him six or seven hundred yards, and then caught
+him. He begged for mercy on his knees, but Norton took his neck-cloth off,
+tied his hands, and brought him into London, where he was tried, found
+guilty, and hanged. The prisoner asked his captor in court what trade he
+followed. &#8220;I keep a shop in Wych Street,&#8221; replied Norton; adding, with
+grim significance, &#8220;and sometimes I take a thief.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>In Kensington Gore (which might have obtained its sanguinary name from
+these encounters&mdash;but didn&#8217;t) a certain Mr. Jackson, of the Court of
+Requests at Westminster, was requested to &#8220;stand and deliver&#8221; on the night
+of December 27, in the same year, by four desperadoes. And so the tale
+goes on, with such curious side-lights on the state of society as are
+afforded by the stories of how pedestrians, desirous of journeying from
+London to Knightsbridge and Kensington, were used in those &#8220;good old
+times&#8221; to wait in Piccadilly until there were gathered a sufficient number
+of them to render the perilous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> journey safer. Even then they did not rely
+only on their numbers, but went well armed with swords, pistols, and
+cudgels.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>TURNPIKE GATES</i></div>
+
+<p>It is scarcely to be supposed that the turnpike-gates earned much money in
+those times, when ways were foul and dangerous, and when the cut-throats
+who lurked about that delectable &#8220;Halfway House&#8221; were in their prime.
+Printed here will be found several views of the first gate, showing its
+development from 1786 to 1797. It will be seen that a high brick wall then
+bounded the Park. This was continued all the way, except where the houses,
+low inns, and cottages on the north side of the road stood, and where
+their successors stand to-day, to the eastward and westward of the present
+&#8220;Albert Gate.&#8221; That imposing entrance to the Park was made in 1846, and
+the immense houses on either side&mdash;the &#8220;two Gibraltars,&#8221; as they were
+called&mdash;built. They were so called because it was thought they would never
+be taken; but the one on the east side, now the French Embassy, was soon
+let to Hudson, the Railway King. As mentioned just now, the &#8220;Halfway
+House&#8221; stood where the Prince of Wales&#8217;s Gate opens into the Park. It
+stood there until 1848, when the ground was purchased for &pound;3000, and the
+house pulled down. If the owners had kept the land, their descendants
+to-day could have sold it for a sum that would represent a handsome
+fortune, as evidenced by the fact that a plot of ground of the same size,
+on which Thorney House stood, in Kensington Gore was sold in 1898 for
+&pound;100,000. Thus does the value of land increase in the neighbourhood of
+London.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>In 1827, London and its neighbourhood began to be relieved of the incubus
+of the turnpike-gates. In that year twenty-seven toll-gates were removed
+by Parliament; eighty-one were disestablished July 1, 1864; and sixty-one,
+October 31, 1865. Many others were swept away on the Essex and Middlesex
+roads on October 31, 1866, while the remainder ceased July 1, 1872. The
+first toll-gate which gave the traveller pause from 1856 to July 1, 1864,
+on the Bath and Exeter roads stood in Kensington Gore, and barred the
+roadway just where Victoria Road branches off. Many yet living can recall
+the &#8220;Halfpenny Hatch,&#8221; as it was familiarly known. At the time of the
+Great Exhibition of 1851 the road was distinctly rural. It was that
+greatest of all exhibitions which gave an impetus to building in this
+neighbourhood. Up to that time London had not &#8220;discovered&#8221; Kensington, and
+the highway was not a mere street, but looked as though the country were
+round the corner, which, indeed, was very nearly the case. You could then,
+in fact, well imagine yourself to be on the highway to somewhere or
+another&mdash;a thing demanding more imagination to-day than most people are
+capable of calling up.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img13.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>OLD KENSINGTON</i></div>
+
+<p>It may be as well to put on record in this place the Kensington of my own
+recollection. My reminiscences of Kensington by no means go so far back as
+the time when Leigh Hunt wrote his &#8220;Old Court <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>Suburb,&#8221; a book which
+described what was then a village &#8220;near London;&#8221; but when I first knew
+that now bustling place it was, if not exactly to be described as rural,
+certainly by no stretch of imagination to be called urban. In those days
+the great shops, which are no longer called shops, but &#8220;emporia,&#8221; or
+&#8220;stores,&#8221; or &#8220;magazines,&#8221; did not flaunt with plate-glass windows opposite
+St. Mary Abbot&#8217;s Church, nor, indeed, did the present building of St. Mary
+exist. In its place was a hideous structure, erected probably at some
+early period of the eighteenth century. It had windows that purported to
+be Gothic, and a bell-turret that belonged to no known order of
+architecture. It, and the now demolished old church of St. Paul,
+Hammersmith, bore a singular likeness to one another. The present
+generation can only discover what these unlovely buildings were like by
+referring to old prints, because there are none other now existing in
+London to which they can be likened; and a very good thing too. I can
+recollect old St. Mary&#8217;s very well indeed, and the days when the old
+Vestry Hall was still a place for the transaction of vestry business are
+quite vivid to me. In fact, at that time the Vestry Hall was somewhat new,
+and where the imposing Town Hall now stands beside it there was a tall
+building of very grimy brick, with quaint little figures of a boy and a
+girl perched high up on brackets above, and on either side of, the door.
+These little figures were represented as clad in a peculiar Dutch-like
+uniform; the boy, I think, blue, and the girl a quite painful orange,
+whenever they repainted her, which was seldom. This was, in fact,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> some
+sort of charity school, and it was as dismal a place as all charitable
+institutions were apt to be in our grandfathers&#8217; time, when it was
+criminal to be poor, and eleemosynary establishments, in consequence, were
+designed as much like prisons as might well be.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img14.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>&#8220;OLDEST INHABITANT.&#8221;</small></div>
+
+<p>At the time of which I speak it was quite necessary to go to London to do
+any save the most ordinary shopping, and if one had told the &#8220;oldest
+inhabitant&#8221; that a time was presently coming when it would be possible not
+only to order, but to purchase and take away on the instant, from
+Kensington shops the rarest and most costly things that the heart of man
+(or woman either, for that matter) could desire, that ancient individual
+would have thought he was being told fairy tales.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that oldest inhabitant, who has been long since gathered to his
+fathers. His was a quaint figure, and he was stored with many
+reminiscences. He could &#8220;mind the time&#8221; when Gore House was occupied by
+the Countess of Blessington, and when Louis Napoleon, then a young man
+about town, was a frequent visitor to that somewhat Bohemian
+establishment. Also he remembered the first &#8217;bus to make its appearance in
+Kensington. For myself, I certainly remember the time here when omnibuses
+were few and far between. Now there are generally half a dozen waiting at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+any time you like to mention by St. Mary Abbot&#8217;s, which has become, in
+omnibus slang, &#8220;Kensington Church,&#8221; while the pavements are thronged by
+fashionable crowds all day long and every day. Not least remarkable is the
+long row of bicycles drawn up against the kerb opposite the aforesaid
+emporia, in charge of a diminutive boy in buttons, the patrons of these
+great shops being inveterate &#8220;bikists.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE NEW KENSINGTONS</i></div>
+
+<p>Now that towering hotels and flats have been built in Kensington High
+Street, the old-time distinction of the &#8220;Old Court Suburb&#8221; is fast
+becoming obliterated, and there are more Kensingtons than were ever
+dreamed of years ago. North Kensington, and South and West
+Kensington&mdash;which, shorn of these would-be aristocratic aliases, are just
+Notting Hill, Brompton, and Hammersmith&mdash;were just so many orchards and
+market-gardens not so many years ago; and I declare that it is not so long
+since there was an orchard in Allen Street, off the High Street, where
+red-brick flats now stand, while, in that chosen realm of flatland, Earl&#8217;s
+Court, the cabbages and lettuces grew amazingly. Cromwell Road was not
+built at the time to which my memory harks back, and where the ornate
+Natural History Museum now stands there was a huge gravel-pit, in which
+were many ponds and swamps, where wild grasses grew and slimy newts
+increased and multiplied greatly. Gore House, which had been Lady
+Blessington&#8217;s, was still standing in the early years of my recollection,
+and the Albert Hall, which now occupies the site of it, was, consequently,
+undreamt of. The last use to which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> it had been put was to be converted,
+by Alexis Soyer, into a huge restaurant for the millions who frequented
+the Great Exhibition of 1851, which I do <i>not</i> recollect, thank goodness!</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>KENSINGTON HOUSE</i></div>
+
+<p>There were other landmarks in the Kensington of my youth which have long
+since been swept away. For instance, where Victoria Road joins the Gore
+there was a tall archway leading to a hippodrome, or horse repository.
+Where it stood there is now an extremely &#8220;elegant&#8221;&mdash;as they used to say
+when I was younger&mdash;hotel. Even greater changes have taken place where the
+Gore joins the High Street. Where that collection of palatial houses
+called Kensington Court now stands, there stood years ago a huge old brick
+mansion which in its last days experienced some strange vicissitudes of
+fortune, among which its last two changes&mdash;into a school for young ladies,
+and finally into a lunatic asylum&mdash;were not the least remarkable. There
+was in those days a most dreadful slum at the back of this mansion, known
+locally as the &#8220;Rookery.&#8221; Londoners should know the history of Kensington
+Court and its site, and how Baron Albert Grant, in the heyday of his
+financial success, pulled down the old mansion, and built himself on its
+ruins a lordly (and vulgar) pleasure-palace, which he called &#8220;Kensington
+House.&#8221; The memory of it springs fresh to this day, and it requires little
+effort to recall the place as it stood, in all its pristine
+pretentiousness, until 1880, or thereabouts. It was built by the
+redoubtable Baron to shame Kensington Palace, which it exactly faced, and
+if gilt railings, fresh white stone, and big plate-glass<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> windows may be
+said to have put the old Palace out of countenance, then Kensington Palace
+was shamed indeed, but only with that very questionable kind of shame
+which overtakes the poor patrician confronted by a swaggering, pursy
+millionaire. At any rate, Kensington Palace is avenged, for not one stone
+now remains of that pretentious house. It lay back some little distance
+from the road, from which it was screened by a tall iron railing, with
+gilded spikes and globular gas-lamps at intervals, of a type closely
+resembling those in use on the Metropolitan and District Railways. It is
+not a lovely type, but it is one still greatly favoured in the suburbs of
+Clapham and Blackheath.</p>
+
+<p>This ornate palisade of cast-iron, which pretended to be wrought, once
+passed, a gravel drive led up to the house. Ah, that house! It possessed
+all the flamboyant glories of Grosvenor Gardens and more, and was of a
+style called variously by the building journals of that day, French or
+Italian Renaissance. &#8220;Renaissance&#8221; is a term which, like charity, covers a
+multitude of sins, and if you want to cloak a collection of architectural
+enormities, why, you term it Renaissance, and, by implication, insult the
+great French and Italian masters of the New Birth. It needs not to trouble
+about the details of that house, save to say that polished granite pillars
+were well to the fore, and that portentous Mansard roofs in fish-scale
+lead coverings, with spikes, finished off its sky-line. For long years
+Kensington House remained unlet, because of the immense sums its up-keep
+would have entailed. Millionaires, South African and other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> varieties,
+were not so plentiful years ago as they are now. So, after some years of
+forlorn waiting for the occupier who never came, Kensington House, never
+once inhabited, was at last demolished, and its materials sold. It is said
+that the grand marble staircase went to grace the gilded salons of Madame
+Tussaud&#8217;s waxen court, and certainly the spiky railings, with their
+gas-lamps, were sold to furnish an imposing entrance to Sandown Park
+Racecourse,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> where they may be seen to this day by the cyclist who wheels
+through Esher, down the Portsmouth Road.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img15.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THACKERAY&#8217;S HOUSE, YOUNG STREET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>JOHN LEECH</i></div>
+
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img16.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>THE &#8220;WHITE HORSE.&#8221;<br />TRADITIONAL RETREAT<br />OF ADDISON.</small></div>
+
+<p>There still stands, off High Street, the grimy double-bayed house, now
+numbered 16, Young Street, but formerly No. 13, in which Thackeray wrote
+&#8220;Vanity Fair;&#8221; but most others of the old literary and artistic haunts of
+the &#8220;Old Court Suburb&#8221; have been demolished. &#8220;The Terrace&#8221;&mdash;that long row
+of old-fashioned houses extending from Wright&#8217;s Lane westward&mdash;was pulled
+down but six years ago. Those houses were not beautiful, but they were at
+least pleasingly old-fashioned, and in No. 6 lived and died John Leech, an
+early victim of that peculiarly modern malady, &#8220;nerves.&#8221; Some amazingly
+up-to-date shops now occupy the spot.</p>
+
+<p>Long ago, the other old-fashioned houses on this side of the road lost
+their forecourt gardens, over which other shops were built; and beyond the
+memory of any one now living there stood a little country inn at the
+corner of what is now the Earl&#8217;s Court Road; a rural retreat called the
+&#8220;White Horse,&#8221; to which Addison withdrew from the cold splendours of
+Holland House opposite. He had contracted an unhappy marriage with the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+Countess of Warwick, the mistress of that splendid mansion, which happily
+yet remains; but stole away to this more congenial haunt, and drank his
+intellect away.</p>
+
+<p>Beyond this, all was country road, in the coaching days, until Hammersmith
+was reached. The first outpost of that now unsavoury place was a rural inn
+called the &#8220;Red Cow,&#8221; opposite Brook Green.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;RED COW&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Red Cow,&#8221; pulled down December, 1897, rejoiced once upon a time in
+the reputation of being a house of call for the peculiar gentry who
+infested the suburban reaches of the great western highways out of London.
+It was not by any means the resort of the aristocracy of the profession of
+highway robbery; but a place where the cly-fakers, the footpads, and the
+lower strata of thievery foregathered to learn the movements of travellers
+and retail them to the fine gentlemen who, mounted on the best of horses,
+and clad in gorgeous raiment, occupied the higher walks of the art at a
+safer distance down the road. The house was built in the sixteenth
+century, and was a quaint, though unpretending roadside tavern with a
+high-pitched, red-tiled roof. It possessed vast stables, for it was
+situated, in early coaching days, at the end of the first stage out of
+London. It may well be imagined, then, that the stable-yard was a scene of
+constant excitement in the good old days, for here were kept a goodly
+supply of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> strong roadsters for the coaches running to Bath, Bristol,
+Wells, Bridgewater, and Exeter, and here the elegant samples of horseflesh
+which had brought the coaches at a spanking pace from the &#8220;Belle Sauvage,&#8221;
+on Ludgate Hill, were changed for animals who could do the rough work of
+the country roads. They were not particularly fine to look at&mdash;especially
+those used on the night coaches&mdash;and it was often a matter of surprise
+that they were able to keep up the pace required, and that the greasy old
+harness stood the strain. It has been said that in one of the
+old-fashioned rooms of the &#8220;Red Cow&#8221; E. L. Blanchard<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> wrote his &#8220;Memoirs
+of a Malacca Cane.&#8221; In the last thirty years or so of its existence the
+&#8220;Red Cow&#8221; was a favourite pull-up for the waggoners from the market
+gardens, who in the small hours of the morning rumbled past with piled-up
+loads of fruit, vegetables, and flowers for Covent Garden, and halted on
+their return for a refresher of bread and cheese and beer. Then, too, the
+hay-carts used to halt here, and the sight of them, with the horses
+drinking from the old wooden water-trough beside the kerb-stone,
+underneath the swinging sign, was like a picture of Morland&#8217;s come to
+life, and agreeably leavened that general air of fried-fish, drink, and
+dissipation which lingers in the memory as the most characteristic
+features of modern Hammersmith.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img17.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;RED COW,&#8221; HAMMERSMITH. DEMOLISHED 1897.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The travellers who were whirled through this place in the Augustan age of
+coaching were soon in the country again, on the way to Turnham Green,
+along the Chiswick High Road. That fine broad thoroughfare is now bordered
+by an almost continuous row of modern shops, erected, many of them, where
+barns and ricks stood less than ten years ago. Such was the appearance of
+&#8220;Young&#8217;s Corner,&#8221; indeed, until quite recently. That corner, let it be
+said for the information of those not well acquainted with the topography
+of the western suburbs, is the spot where the road from Shepherd&#8217;s Bush
+joins the highway. Let it further be placed on record, before &#8220;historic
+doubts&#8221; have had time to gather about the origin of the name, that it
+derives from a little grocer&#8217;s shop kept at the north-east angle of that
+junction of the roads within the recollection of the present writer, by
+one Young, who<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> has probably been long since gathered to his fathers, for
+his Corner knows him no more, and a house-agent&#8217;s shop, a brand-new
+building (like all its neighbours), stands where the now historic Young
+sold tea and sugar, and (let us hope) waxed prosperous in days gone by.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>TURNHAM GREEN</i></div>
+
+<p>Turnham Green lies ahead: a place historic by reason of a preliminary
+skirmish in the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads, and the
+residence in the early part of the century of a peculiarly heartless
+murderer. The passengers by the two-horsed &#8220;short-stages&#8221; which in the
+first half of this century travelled from London to the outlying villages
+and halted at the &#8220;Pack Horse and Talbot,&#8221; doubtless were curious
+regarding Linden House, near by, notorious from association with Thomas
+Griffiths Wainewright, author and poisoner. He was born at Chiswick in
+1794, and was a grandson of Dr. Ralph Griffiths of Turnham Green. He began
+life by serving in the army, but presently took to literature as a
+profession, and wrote voluminously in the magazines of that day. As an
+author, although possessed of a sprightly wit, he would long since have
+been forgotten had it not been for the sensational career of crime upon
+which he entered in 1824. In that year he forged the signatures of his
+trustees, in order to obtain possession of a sum of &pound;2259. He induced his
+uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, of Linden House, to receive him there as an
+inmate. Within a few months his relative died, poisoned with nux vomica,
+and Wainewright came into possession of his property. In 1830 he persuaded
+a Mrs. Abercromby, a widow lady, to take up her<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> abode with him and his
+wife at Linden House. She came with her two daughters and was promptly
+poisoned with strychnine. After this he removed from the neighbourhood,
+and embarked upon a further series of murders in London. Eventually
+detected, he was convicted and transported for life to the Australian
+colonies, where he is credibly said to have poisoned others. Murder by
+poison was, in fact, an obsession with this man, although he was
+sufficiently sane and sordid to select victims whose deaths would bring
+him pecuniary advantage. Wainewright&#8217;s <i>m&eacute;tier</i> in literature was chiefly
+art criticism, and his style narrowly resembles that of a revolting
+person, now ostracised from Society, who also dabbled in Art and actually
+wrote and published an &#8220;appreciation&#8221; of the poisoner some few years
+since.</p>
+
+<p>Linden House was pulled down some fifteen years ago, and its site is
+marked by the modern villas of Linden Gardens. The recollection of it
+brings a train of reminiscences.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>X</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SUBURBAN CHANGES</i></div>
+
+<p>Reminiscences are soon accumulated in these times. It needs not for the
+Londoner to be in the sere and yellow leaf for him to have known many and
+sweeping changes in the pleasant suburbs which used to bring the country
+to his doors, and the scent of the hawthorn through his open window with
+every recurring spring. For myself, I am not a lean and slippered
+pantaloon, on whose head the snows of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> many winters have fallen. The
+crow&#8217;s-feet have not yet gathered around the corners of my eyes; and yet I
+have known many rural, or semi-rural, villages around the ever-spreading
+circle of the Great City which in my time have been for ever engulfed in
+the on-rolling waves of bricks and mortar. It is no effort of memory for
+me, or for many another, to recall the market gardens, the orchards, the
+open meadows, and the fine old seventeenth and eighteenth century
+red-brick mansions, each one enclosed within its high garden walls, with
+the jealous seclusion of a monastery, which occupied the sites where the
+streets of Brompton, Earl&#8217;s Court, Fulham, Walham Green, and Putney now
+stretch their interminable ramifications, and are accounted, justly
+enough, as London. Tell me, if you can, what are the bounds of London,
+north, south, east, or west. Does from Forest Gate on the east, to
+Richmond on the west, span its limits in one direction? and from Wood
+Green on the northern heights, to Croydon on the south, encompass it on
+the other? They may in this year of grace, but where will the boundary of
+continuous brick and mortar be set ten years hence? and where will then be
+the pleasant resorts of the present-day wheelman? They will all be ruined,
+and not, mark you, ruined from the commercial point of view, for the
+coming of the builder spells riches for the suburban freeholder, whose
+land, in the slang of the surveying fraternity, has become &#8220;ripe.&#8221; These
+rustic places are, nevertheless, ruined from the point of view of the
+lover of the picturesque, and when he sees the old mansions going, the
+meadows trenched for foundations, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> lanes widened and paved by the
+newly constituted vestry, he groans in spirit. I am, for instance,
+especially aggrieved at the workings of modernity with Turnham Green.</p>
+
+<p>I went to school there in the days when London was remote. We used to talk
+of &#8220;going up to London&#8221; then. Do any of the present-day inhabitants of
+Turnham Green, I wonder, speak thus? I imagine not. Turnham Green was then
+as rural as its name sounds now. The name, alas! is all that remains of
+its rurality, save, indeed, the two commons, the &#8220;Front&#8221; and &#8220;Back,&#8221; as
+they are called. No one now remembers, I suppose, that the so-called &#8220;Back
+Common&#8221; is really Turnham Bec, even as the open space at Tooting remains
+Tooting Bec to this day. It is so, however, and it is only through this
+corruption that what is really and truly the original green of Turnham
+Green is dubbed the &#8220;Front Common.&#8221; You see the humour of it?</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE NEW SUBURB</i></div>
+
+<p>Turnham Green remained countrified until the railway came and took a slice
+off the so-called &#8220;Back Common,&#8221; and built a station, and thus established
+the first outpost of Suburbia. Then another railway came, and took another
+slice, and a School Board filched another piece; and then great black
+boards, with white letters, began to be planted in the surrounding
+orchards, setting forth how &#8220;this eligible land&#8221; was to be let on building
+lease. Presently men who wore corduroys and waistcoats with sleeves to
+them, and leather straps round their trousers below the knees came along,
+and, with much elaborate profanity, built what were, with much humour,
+termed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> &#8220;villas&#8221; there. Streets of them, and all alike! After this, a
+tramway was made along the high-road, starting at Hammersmith, and ending
+at Kew Bridge. That tramway was amusing to us schoolboys, so long as the
+novelty of it lasted. Our school&mdash;it had the imposing name of Belmont
+House&mdash;faced the high-road, and it was our greatest delight of summer
+evenings to throw pieces of soap at the outside passengers of the trams
+from the bedroom windows. The expenditure of soap was tremendous, and
+sometimes those &#8220;outsiders&#8221; were hit, whereupon there was trouble! There
+was a gloomy old mansion opposite our school, called &#8220;Bleak House,&#8221; and we
+used to think it was the veritable &#8220;Bleak House&#8221; of Dickens&#8217;s story. We
+know better now. It still stands, but a furniture warehousing firm have
+built warehouses on to it, and it is no longer romantically gloomy.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img18.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The school has gone, too, where I learnt, and promptly forgot, Latin and
+Greek; and a row of shops, with big plate-glass windows and great gas
+lamps, have taken its place; and where we construed those dead (and
+deadly) languages, the linen-draper&#8217;s assistant measures out muslins and
+calicoes. I have walked along these pavements during the last few days,
+and have noted more changes. There used to stand, beside the road, on the
+right hand as you go towards Gunnersbury, a little wayside &#8220;pub,&#8221; with bow
+windows, and a bent and hunch-backed red-tiled roof. It was called the
+&#8220;Robin Hood,&#8221; and an old-fashioned wooden post, supporting the swinging
+sign, stood on the kerb-stone, beside a horse-trough. I remember the sign
+well, for it had quite an elaborate<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> picture painted upon it, representing
+Robin Hood and Little John. I can see quite clearly now that the artist of
+this affair obtained his ideas from the pictorial diplomas of the Ancient
+Order of Foresters; but, at the time, I thought it a very fine painting.
+The feathered hats impressed me very much indeed, although I always used
+to wonder why those two magnificent fellows hadn&#8217;t pulled up their socks.
+It was some time before I discovered that they were not socks, but the big
+bucket boots of romance. They have pulled this old house down, and have
+built a glaring, flaring, gin-palace on the site of it, just as they did
+some five years ago to the old &#8220;Roebuck,&#8221; not far off. The sign is gone,
+too, and wayfarers are no longer invited, if Robin Hood is not at home, to
+take a glass with Little John. What would happen, I often speculated, if
+both those heroes were away?<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> Would, one take a glass, in that case, with
+Friar Tuck or Maid Marian?</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img19.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;OLD WINDMILL.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>OLD SUBURBAN INNS</i></div>
+
+<p>There is an old inn still standing in this same high-road&mdash;most
+appropriately, by the way, situated next door to the Police Station,
+which, in its time, has extended hospitality to many a bold &#8220;road agent&#8221;
+who found his living on the Bath and Exeter Roads. The &#8220;Old Windmill&#8221; is a
+shy, retiring house which lies modestly some way back from the line of
+houses fronting the road. It has an open gravelled space in front, and a
+swinging sign on a post, which, together with an immense sundial on the
+front of the house, proclaims that the &#8220;Old Windmill&#8221; dates back to 1717.
+These are vestiges of the time when the Chiswick High Road was bordered by
+hedges instead of houses. The house, although it wears a certain<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+old-world air, can scarce be called picturesque. The huge sundial just
+mentioned, with its mis-spelled legend, &#8220;So Fly&#8217;s Life Away,&#8221; gives it an
+interest, and so does the record of how one Henry Colam was arrested here
+one night toward the close of last century, on the charge, &#8220;For that he
+did molest and threaten certain of His Majesty&#8217;s liege subjects upon the
+highway, in company with divers others, still at large.&#8221; Henry had, as a
+matter of fact, &#8220;with divers others,&#8221; attempted to rob the Bath Mail near
+this spot. He failed in his enterprise, but Bow Street had him all the
+same, and it does not require a very vivid imagination to conjure up a
+picture of his end.</p>
+
+<p>Another old inn, which still stands at Turnham Green, although greatly
+altered, has a history not to be forgotten.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>TREASON AND TREACHERY</i></div>
+
+<p>At the &#8220;Old Pack Horse&#8221; (not by any means to be confounded with the &#8220;Pack
+Horse and Talbot,&#8221; a quarter of a mile nearer on the road to London)
+assembled parties of the conspirators who, headed by their two principals,
+named, oddly enough, Barclay and Perkins,<a name='fna_1' id='fna_1' href='#f_1'><small>[1]</small></a> plotted the assassination of
+King William the Third, on February 15, 1696. They were authorized by the
+exiled James the Second to do the deed, and had planned for forty of their
+band to surround the King&#8217;s carriage as he returned from one of his weekly
+hunting expeditions from Kensington Palace to Richmond Park. His coach,
+they knew, would pass along a narrow, morass-like lane from the waterside
+on to Turnham Green, near where the church now stands, and they were well<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+aware that, as it could at this point proceed only at a walking pace,
+William would fall an easy victim. It chanced, however, that there were
+traitors among their number, who informed the King&#8217;s friends, so that on
+two succeeding Saturdays, while they were expecting him, he remained at
+Kensington. Many of the band were arrested, and six suffered the penalty
+of high treason.</p>
+
+<p>The spot where the proposed assassination was to have been consummated is
+now known as Sutton Lane. At the corner of this suburban thoroughfare,
+where Fromow&#8217;s Nursery stands, the fate of England was to have been
+decided.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img20.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;OLD PACK HORSE.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Old Pack Horse&#8221; has been somewhat modernized of late years by
+additions built out on the ground floor, but it remains substantially the
+same building at which Jack Rann, the famous<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> &#8220;Sixteen-string Jack&#8221; of
+highway romance, may have taken a last drink with which to screw up his
+courage just before setting out to rob Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the
+Princess Amelia, in Gunnersbury Lane, near by. &#8220;Sixteen-string Jack&#8221; was
+hanged for that job in 1774.</p>
+
+<p>He was peculiarly unfortunate, for Turnham Green and Gunnersbury were
+veritable Alsatias then, and those who travelled here should not have
+mentioned so ordinary a happening as having their purses taken. Indeed, it
+was so usual an occurrence that Horace Walpole tells us of a certain Lady
+Brown who, visiting here, always went provided with a purse full of brass
+tokens for the highwaymen. Imagination, conjuring up a picture of a Turpin
+or a Claude du Vall riding away with a pocketful of guineas which, on
+arriving home, he discovers to be counterfeits, provokes a smile.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XI</h2>
+
+<p>There are changes impending not far from here. Who that knows Kew Bridge
+has not an affection for that hump-backed old structure, although it
+presents many difficulties to the rider? Kew Bridge is doomed, and the
+powers that be are going to pull it down and build another in its
+stead&mdash;and one, it is almost unnecessary to add, not at all picturesque.
+Farewell, then, to the suburban delights of Kew. They are going to
+&#8220;improve&#8221; the river at Kew also&mdash;that river<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> where, in summer time, the
+steamers get hung up on the sandbanks for lack of water. Alas, then, for
+the picturesque foreshore of Strand-on-the-Green!</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img21.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">KEW BRIDGE, LOW WATER.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>HIGHWAYMEN</i></div>
+
+<p>The passengers by the Bath Flying Machine grew at this point a shade
+paler. They generally expected to be robbed on Hounslow Heath, and their
+expectations were almost invariably realized by the gentlemen in cocked
+hats and crape masks, who were by no means backward in coming forward. The
+fine flower of the highwaymen practised on the Heath, and they did their
+spiriting gently and with so much courtesy that it was almost (not quite)
+a pleasure to hand over those rings and guineas of which so plenteous a
+store was collected every night.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>Before, however, we come to Hounslow Heath, we have to cast a glance round
+Brentford, a town which holds the proud position of the county town of
+Middlesex. Foreigners might, in the innocence of their hearts, suppose
+that London would hold that honour; but to Brentford, known from time
+immemorial, and with the utmost justice, as &#8220;dirty Brentford,&#8221; it has
+fallen. Has Brentford risen to the occasion? It must sorrowfully be
+admitted that it has not, and is a very marvel of dirt and dilapidation,
+and&mdash;But no matter! Until quite recently it also possessed, in the church
+of Old Brentford, the very ugliest church in England, which was so very
+ugly that it used to be credibly reported that people came long distances
+to see such a marvel of the unlovely. Alas! the church has been rebuilt,
+and so Brentford has lost a claim to distinction.</p>
+
+<p>But Brentford has the honour of being mentioned in Shakespeare, in a
+passage whose allusions not all the efforts of antiquaries have been able
+to explain, and distinguished itself in a peculiar way during the reign of
+King William the Fourth, whom people used to call, for no very good
+reason, Silly Billy. The King and Queen were expected to drive through the
+town, on their way from Windsor to London, and the streets were decorated.
+But the inhabitants spiced their loyalty with sarcasm, for hanging on a
+line, stretched prominently across the road, was an old coat, turned
+inside out, in allusion to His Majesty&#8217;s uncertain policy. Not satisfied,
+however, with this delicate way of calling him a turncoat, Brentford had
+another insult ready a little way down the street.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> The King was generally
+supposed to be very much under the influence of Queen Adelaide, and this
+was more or less gracefully alluded to by a pair of trousers fluttering in
+the wind like a banner suspended across the road. Their Majesties
+testified their recognition and appreciation of Brentford wit by never
+passing through the town again.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SORDID HOUNSLOW</i></div>
+
+<p>A little further afield takes us to Hounslow, where John Jerry is busy
+putting up those long streets of &#8220;villas,&#8221; whose deadly sameness vexes the
+soul of the artist. He has torn down the old houses, in one of which, or
+rather, in several of which&mdash;for they had intercommunicating
+passages&mdash;Dick Turpin was wont to hide when he was in refuge from the Bow
+Street runners.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Bold Turpin vunce, on Hounslow Heath,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His mare, Black Bess, bestrod&mdash;er;</span><br />
+Ven there he see&#8217;d the bishop&#8217;s coach<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Coming along the road&mdash;er.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Thus sang Sam Weller; but &#8220;Bold Turpin&#8221; would be hard put to it to
+identify his suburban haunts now, and we, before our hair is grey, will
+find those places strange which were so familiar the matter of a few years
+ago.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img22.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">COTTAGES, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN THE HAUNTS OF DICK TURPIN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The town of Hounslow is as unprepossessing as its name, which is saying a
+great deal. Its mile-long street, unlivened by any interesting features,
+is dull without descending to the positively interesting unloveliness of
+Brentford. Just as collectors prize old china whose shape and colouring
+are frankly hideous to those who are not of the elect in those matters, so
+the grotesquely dirty and ugly streets of Brentford<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> have an interest for
+the tourist who does not often come upon their like. Hounslow&#8217;s is just a
+commonplace ugliness. The curtailed remains of its once numerous and
+extensive coaching inns are become, as a rule, low pot-houses, in which
+labourers in the market-gardens that practically surround the town, sit
+and drink themselves stupid in the evening; and the business premises and
+private houses which alternate along the highway are either shabby old
+places, not old enough to claim any interest on the score of antiquity; or
+of a pretentious bad taste rather more difficult to bear with than the
+dirty hovels and tumbledown cottages they have displaced. Here, indeed, is
+the debateable ground between town and country. Rurality is (appropriately
+enough) in its last ditch, while civilization has established a precarious
+outpost beside it. Flashy &#8220;villas&#8221; jostle the market-gardeners&#8217; cottages;
+and respectability sits self-satisfied in its prim Early Victorian
+drawing-rooms,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> amid its chairs upholstered in green rep, its horse-hair
+sofas and cut-glass lustres; while on either side the vulgar herd sits at
+open windows in its shirt-sleeves, and smokes black and exceedingly foul
+pipes, and gazes complacently upon the clothes hanging out to dry in the
+garden.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>HOUNSLOW&#8217;S COACHING DAYS</i></div>
+
+<p>Hounslow presented a different picture before the opening of the railways
+to the West. Two thousand post-horses were then kept in the town, and
+coaches and private carriages went dashing through at all hours of the day
+and night, so closely upon one another that they almost resembled a
+procession. As the poet says, the pedestrian then forced his way&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Through coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion;</span><br />
+Here taverns wooing to a pint of &#8216;purl,&#8217;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">There mails fast flying off, like a delusion.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, they have, like delusions, vanished utterly. So early as
+April, 1842, a daily paper is found saying: &#8220;At the formerly flourishing
+village of Hounslow, so great is the general depreciation of property, on
+account of the transfer of traffic to the railway, that at one of the inns
+is an inscription, &#8216;New milk and cream sold here;&#8217; while another announces
+the profession of the landlord as &#8216;mending boots and shoes.&#8217;&#8221; The turnpike
+tolls at the same time, between London and Maidenhead, had decreased from
+&pound;18 to &pound;4 a week.</p>
+
+<p>Yet Hounslow very narrowly missed becoming a great railway junction. That,
+indeed, was its proper destiny when the coaching era was done and the
+place decaying. Hounslow became the busy place<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> it was in the days of
+road-travel, because it commanded the great roads to the West. The Bath
+and Exeter Roads, which were one from Hyde Park Corner as far as this
+town, branched at its western end, and it was also on the route to
+Windsor. It should thus have become an important station on the Great
+Western Railway, and might have been, had not other interests prevailed.
+It was the original intention of the Great Western directors, when the
+line was planned by Brunel in 1833, to keep close to the old high-road to
+Bath; but landed interests, both private and corporate, brought about
+numerous deviations, and so Hounslow was left to its fate, and the Great
+Western main line passes through Southall, two and a half miles distant,
+instead.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XII</h2>
+
+<p>We will now press on to the Heath, for our friends the highwaymen are
+anxiously awaiting us. Right away from the seventeenth century this spot
+bore a bad repute, when one of the most daring exploits was performed on
+its gloomy expanse. This was no less a feat than the plundering of that
+warlike general, Fairfax, by Moll Cutpurse. The most capable soldier of
+the age robbed by a woman highwayman, if you will be pleased to excuse the
+Irishry of the expression! But, indeed, the Roaring Girl, as her
+contemporaries called her, was the best man among the whole of that daring
+crew, and to her courage, her cunning, and her ready wit she owed the
+successful career that was hers.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> She wore the breeches in no metaphorical
+sense, but through all her career habited herself in man&#8217;s garments. Only
+when she had amassed a fortune and had retired from &#8220;the road&#8221; did she don
+the skirt.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>CLAUDE DU VALL</i></div>
+
+<p>It is sad to think that the greatest of all the brotherhood who made
+Hounslow Heath and highway robbery synonymous terms was cut off in the
+full tide of his success. At least, it seems so to us, although the
+travellers of the period doubtless felt a certain satisfaction when Du
+Vall was executed, on January 21, 1670. He was but twenty-seven years of
+age, and already had become a star of the first magnitude. He was, in
+fact, a master of the whole art and mystery of robbing upon the road, and
+to this he brought the most perfect courtesy. Violence had no part in the
+methods of this artist, and he would have scorned, we may be sure, the
+ruffianly and even murderous acts of a later generation of the craft,
+which not only despoiled travellers of their goods, but rendered the Heath
+dangerous to life and limb. His chief exploit is classic, and is set forth
+so eloquently, and with such an engaging profusion of capital letters, in
+a contemporary pamphlet, that one cannot do better than quote it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;He, with his Squadron, overtakes a Coach which they had set over Night,
+having Intelligence of a Booty of four hundred Pounds in it. In the Coach
+was a Knight, his Lady, and only one Serving-maid, who, perceiving five
+Horsemen making up to them, presently imagined that they were beset; and
+they were confirmed in this Apprehension by seeing them<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> whisper to one
+another, and ride backwards and forwards. The Lady, to shew that she was
+not afraid, takes a Flageolet out of her pocket and plays. Du Vall takes
+the Hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a Flageolet of his own,
+and in this Posture he rides up to the Coachside. &#8216;Sir,&#8217; says he to the
+Person in the Coach, &#8216;your Lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but
+that she dances as well. Will you please to walk out of the Coach and let
+me have the Honour to dance one Currant with her upon the Heath?&#8217; &#8216;Sir,&#8217;
+said the Person in the Coach, &#8216;I dare not deny anything to one of your
+Quality and good Mind. You seem a Gentleman, and your Request is very
+reasonable.&#8217; Which said, the Lacquey opens the Boot, out comes the knight,
+Du Vall leaps lightly off his horse and hands the Lady out of the Coach.
+They danced, and here it was that Du Vall performed Marvels; the best
+Masters in London, except those that are French, not being able to shew
+such footing as he did in his great French Riding Boots. The Dancing being
+over (there being no violins, Du Vall sung the Currant himself) he waits
+on the Lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vall to him,
+&#8216;Sir, you have forgot to pay the Musick.&#8217; &#8216;No, I have not,&#8217; replies the
+knight, and, putting his Hand under the Seat of the Coach, pulls out a
+hundred Pounds in a Bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vall took with a
+very good grace, and courteously answered, &#8216;Sir, you are liberal, and
+shall have no cause to repent your being so; this Liberality of yours
+shall excuse you the other Three Hundred Pounds,&#8217; and giving the Word,
+that if he met with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> any more of the Crew he might pass undisturbed, he
+civilly takes his leave of him. He manifested his agility of body by
+lightly dismounting off his horse, and with Ease and Freedom getting up
+again when he took his Leave; his excellent Deportment by his incomparable
+Dancing and his graceful manner of taking the hundred Pounds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>When this hero had gone the inevitable way of his fellows, he was buried
+with great pomp and circumstance in the church of St. Paul, Covent Garden,
+with a set of eulogistic verses for his epitaph. Unfortunately, the old
+church was destroyed by fire and the epitaph with it.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>HIGHWAY MURDERS</i></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Nuthall, the Earl of Chatham&#8217;s solicitor, too, who had been to Bath to
+confer with his gouty and irascible client, was stopped in his carriage as
+it was going towards London across this dreaded wilderness. The highwaymen
+fired at him, and he died of fright. Two other notable murders by
+highwaymen took place here&mdash;in 1798 and 1802&mdash;and bear witness to the
+degeneracy of the craft. The first was Mr. Mellish, who was fired upon and
+killed as he was returning from a run with the King&#8217;s hounds. A Mr. Steele
+was the other victim, and his assailants, Haggarty and Holloway, who had
+planned the crime at the &#8220;Turk&#8217;s Head,&#8221; Dyot Street, Holborn, it is
+satisfactory to be able to add, were hanged. The execution took place at
+the Old Bailey, when twenty-eight persons among the crowds who had come to
+see the sight were crushed to death. Up to the year 1800, the Heath was a
+most famous place for gibbets. &#8220;The road,&#8221; as a writer of the period says,
+&#8220;was literally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> lined with gibbets on which the carcases of malefactors
+hung in irons, blackening in the sun.&#8221; Du Vall had a successor in Twysden,
+Bishop of Raphoe, collecting tithes in rather a promiscuous way, by
+turning highwayman in 1752. His career was a short one, for one of the
+first travellers he bade &#8220;Stand!&#8221; on the Heath shot him through the body,
+from which he died a few days later, at the house of a friend, from
+&#8220;inflammation of the bowels,&#8221; as the contemporary report, jealous for the
+reputation of the dignified clergy, put it.</p>
+
+<p>Shall I weary you by recounting more of these highway crimes? There was
+Dr. Shelton, a surgeon, who flourished in the early thirties of last
+century, and, deserting lancet and scalpel, took to the road and that not
+more lethal weapon, the horse-pistol; though, to be sure, it was more for
+show than use, for not Du Vall himself could have been more courteous.</p>
+
+<p>That the poet who wrote of Bagshot Heath as a place &#8220;where ruined gamblers
+oft repay their loss&#8221; might with perfect propriety have substituted
+&#8220;Hounslow&#8221; will be readily seen when we mention Parsons, nearly
+contemporary with Shelton, who robbed at Hounslow that he might gamble in
+London. Parsons was the son of a &#8220;Bart. of the B.K.,&#8221; as the Tichborne
+Claimant would have phrased it; an Eton boy, at one time an officer both
+in the Army and Navy, and the husband of a beautiful heiress. He made an
+edifying end at Tyburn.</p>
+
+<p>Then there was Barkwith, a mere novice, whose first sally led to a like
+exit. He was the son of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> a Cambridgeshire squire, and manager to a
+Lincoln&#8217;s Inn solicitor. He had &#8220;borrowed&#8221; trust moneys wherewith to
+satisfy some debts of honour; and so the hour of four o&#8217;clock in the
+afternoon of a November day found him on the Heath, with a pistol in his
+hand and his heart in his mouth, &#8220;holding up&#8221; a coach. The booty was but a
+miserable handful of silver; but, being captured, he died for it, all the
+same. Let us trust he did &#8220;the young gentlemen who belong to Inns of
+Court&#8221; an injustice when, in his dying speech and confession, he warned
+his hearers against them as &#8220;the most wicked of any.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;DARE-DEVIL SIMMS&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Then there was Dare-devil Simms&mdash;&#8220;Gentleman Harry,&#8221; as his friends called
+him&mdash;a midshipman who came up from deserting his ship in the West Country.
+First borrowing a saddle and bridle, and then stealing a horse, he
+commenced his career by robbing a post-chaise and the Bristol Mail, and
+coming to London, soon became a noted figure on this stage. One night he
+relieved a Mr. Sleep of his purse. The despoiled traveller bewailed his
+loss bitterly, but Harry comforted him with the assurance that he would
+have been robbed in any case; if not by himself, certainly by one or other
+of the two who were waiting for him down the road. &#8220;But if you meet them,&#8221;
+said he, &#8220;sing out &#8216;Thomas!&#8217; and they will let you pass.&#8221; The unfortunate
+man went on his way calling &#8220;Thomas!&#8221; to every one he met, and narrowly
+escaped being severely handled by some gentlemen who conceived themselves
+insulted.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Tyburn claimed Gentleman Harry also, and a career which had been
+begun by transportation,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> and continued through such stirring adventures
+as being sold for a slave, becoming a sailor and a privateersman, was
+finally extinguished by the halter. A short life and a merry.</p>
+
+<p>Strawkins, Simpson, and Wilson, too, helped to keep up the stirring story
+of the road. They intercepted the Bristol Mail and left the postboy, bound
+with ropes, at the bottom of a ditch on the outskirts of Colnbrook. They
+were tracked down by the Post Office, and, Wilson turning King&#8217;s evidence,
+the first two were hanged. The Mail was then given an escort of Dragoons,
+but highway robbery had too strong a spice of adventure for one of these
+fine fellows to resist it. He accordingly pillaged the Bath Stage, and
+suffered the appointed end in due course.</p>
+
+<p>This catalogue of mine does not close until 1820, in which year four
+confederates plundered the Bristol Mail. They had booked the inside seats,
+and during their journey through the night forced open the strong boxes
+placed under the seats, decamped with their contents, and were never heard
+of again.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XIII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>A STORY OF THE ROAD</i></div>
+
+<p>One of the most diverting stories of Hounslow Heath, which serves to
+relieve its sombre repute, is that which the late Mr. James Payn tells, in
+one of his reminiscences. &#8220;The story goes,&#8221; he says, &#8220;that early in the
+century the landlord of Skindle&#8217;s, at Maidenhead, was a strong Radical,
+and could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> command a dozen votes; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in
+the person of his son, a good-for-naught. During a certain Berkshire
+election, a Tory solicitor was staying at this inn, and had occasion to go
+to London for the sinews of war. His gig was stopped on his way back, on
+Hounslow Heath, by a gentleman of the road.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I have no money,&#8221; said the lawyer, with professional readiness, &#8220;but
+there is my watch and chain.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You have a thousand pounds in gold in a box under the seat,&#8221; was the
+unexpected reply; &#8220;throw back the apron!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The lawyer obeyed, but as the horseman stooped to take the box, the lawyer
+knocked the pistol out of his hand and drove off at full gallop. He had a
+very quick-going mare, and before the highwayman could find his weapon,
+which had fallen into some furze, was beyond pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the lawyer sent for the landlord. &#8220;Yesterday,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;I was stopped on Hounslow Heath. The man had a mask on, but I recognized
+him by his voice, which I can swear to. I knew him as well as he knew me.
+You had better speak to your son about it, and then we will resume our
+conversation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The landlord was quite innocent of his son&#8217;s intended crime, but he had
+reason to believe him capable of it. He went out with a heavy heart, and
+when he came back his face showed it. &#8220;Well,&#8221; he said, with a sort of calm
+despair, &#8220;what steps do you intend to take, sir, in the matter?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span>&#8220;None to hurt an old friend, you may be sure,&#8221; answered the lawyer; &#8220;only
+those twelve votes you boasted about must be given to our side instead of
+yours;&#8221; which was accordingly arranged.</p>
+
+<p>In those days, as will already have been seen, Hounslow Heath was a very
+real place indeed. There was (as the journalistic slang of to-day has it)
+&#8220;actuality&#8221; about that then solitary and barren waste, which is not a
+little difficult to realize nowadays. The cyclist who speeds over the
+level roads and past the smiling orchards and market gardens, finds it
+difficult to believe that this was the sinister place of eighty years ago;
+and, since there is no Heath to-day, is apt to come to the conclusion that
+it must have been the very &#8220;Mrs. Harris&#8221; of heaths; a figment, that is to
+say, of romantic writers&#8217; imaginations. Such, however, was by no means the
+case. Where cultivated lands are now, and where suburban villas stand,
+there stretched, less than eighty years since, a veritable scene of
+desolation. Furze-bushes, swampy gravel-pits in which tall grasses and
+bulrushes grew, and grassy hillocks, the homes of snipe and frogs, and the
+haunts of the peewit, were the features of the scene by day; while, when
+night was come, the whole place swarmed with footpads and highwaymen.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>LORD BERKELEY&#8217;S ADVENTURES</i></div>
+
+<p>At that time Lord Berkeley used frequently to stay at his country house at
+Cranford, close by, from Saturdays to Mondays, and had twice been stopped
+and robbed on his way before a third and last encounter, in which he shot
+his assailant dead. On the second occasion, the door of his travelling
+carriage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> was opened, and a footpad, dressed as a sailor, pointed a
+fully-cocked pistol at him. The man&#8217;s hand trembled violently, and while
+my lord was producing what money he had about him, the trigger was pulled,
+more, it would seem, from accident than intention. Happily, the pistol
+missed fire. The man then exclaimed, &#8220;I beg your pardon, my lord,&#8221; and,
+recocking his pistol, retreated with his plunder.</p>
+
+<p>After this escape, Lord Berkeley swore he would never be robbed again, and
+always travelled at night with a short carriage-gun and a brace of
+pistols. Thus armed, it was on a November night in 1774 that he was
+attacked for the last time. He was going to dine with Mr. Justice
+Bulstrode, who lived in an old house surrounded by a brick wall, near
+where Hounslow&#8217;s modern church now stands, and as the carriage was nearing
+the town, a voice called to the postboy to halt, and a man rode up to the
+carriage window on the left-hand side, thrusting in a pistol, as the glass
+was let down. With his left hand Lord Berkeley seized the weapon and
+turned it away, while with his right he pushed the short double-barrelled
+gun he had with him against the robber&#8217;s body, and fired once. The man was
+severely wounded, and his clothes were set on fire, but he managed to ride
+away some fifty yards, and then fell dead. Two accomplices then appeared,
+but Lord Berkeley, and a servant on horseback who rode behind the
+carriage, made for them, and they fled. It was then discovered that the
+gang were all amateur highwaymen, and youths from eighteen to twenty years
+of age, in good positions in London.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>The Earl of Berkeley seems to have been somewhat unduly twitted about this
+encounter. Society was quite resigned to seeing highwaymen hanged,
+although it made heroes of them while they were waiting in the &#8220;stone jug&#8221;
+at Newgate for that fatal morning at Tyburn; but it appears to have
+considered the shooting of one of them an unsportsmanlike act.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Chesterfield, however, should have been quite the last man to sneer
+at the Earl on this score, for he himself was under a very well-deserved
+public censure for having prosecuted Dr. Dodd, his son&#8217;s tutor, for
+forgery, with the result that the Doctor was hanged. Accordingly, when he
+sarcastically asked Lord Berkeley &#8220;how many highwaymen he had shot
+lately,&#8221; it is pleasing to record that he was readily reduced to silence
+by the retort, &#8220;As many as you have hanged tutors; but with much better
+reason for doing so.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XIV</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>CRANFORD</i></div>
+
+<p>It is just beyond Cranford Bridge that the pumps which are so odd a
+feature of the Bath Road begin. They line the highway on the left-hand
+side going from London, and are all situated in the same position as shown
+in the illustration. They are of uniform pattern, and are placed at
+regular intervals. These pumps are relics of the coaching age, but are
+peculiar to the Bath and some stretches of the Exeter roads. Placed here
+for keeping the highway well watered in the old days of road-travel, they
+have evidently long<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> been out of use; in fact, their handles are all
+chained up. They recur so regularly that they might almost form part of a
+new table of measurement, as thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="5" summary="table">
+<tr><td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">63</span></td><td>paces</td><td><span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span></td>
+    <td>equal</td><td>1 telegraph-post.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">19</span></td><td>telegraph-posts</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">"</td><td>1 mile.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right"><span style="padding-right: .8em;">2</span></td><td>miles</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">"</td><td>1 pump.</td></tr>
+<tr><td align="right">1&#189;</td><td>pumps</td><td>&nbsp;</td>
+    <td align="center">"</td><td>1 pub.</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img23.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">A BATH ROAD PUMP.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Cranford is a more picturesquely romantic place than any one has a right
+to expect in the Middlesex of these latter days. That outlying portion of
+the village which borders the high-road still wears the air of a tentative
+settlement of civilization amid the wilds of the rolling prairie, and
+might form a ready object-lesson for any untravelled Englishman who
+desires &#8220;local colour&#8221; for the writing of an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> American romance in the
+<i>genre</i> of Bret Harte. And, indeed, the houses grouped around Cranford
+Bridge were, some seventy years ago, built on the very borders of Hounslow
+Heath, whose dreary and dangerous wastes only found a boundary here,
+beside the still waters of the placid Crane. At Cranford Bridge stands
+that fine old coaching inn, the &#8220;Berkeley Arms,&#8221; and opposite the &#8220;White
+Hart,&#8221; which must have been in those times very havens of refuge in that
+wild spot; and away up the lane to the right hand lies the village and
+park, as pretty a spot as you shall find in a long day&#8217;s march. Cranford
+village is rich in beautiful old mansions set in midst of walled gardens
+whose formal precincts are entered through massive wrought-iron gates.
+Beside this lane is the village &#8220;lock-up,&#8221; or &#8220;round-house,&#8221; built in
+1810, and now the only one of its kind left<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> anywhere near London. The
+rest have all been demolished, but &#8220;once upon a time&#8221; no village could
+have been considered complete without one, or without the whipping-post
+and stocks which were generally erected close at hand. Cranford, of
+course, being situated in the midst of the alarums and excursions caused
+by the highwaymen who infested the vicinity and kept the inhabitants in a
+state of terror every night, had a peculiarly urgent need for such a
+place, and it is, perhaps, because those gentry were such expert
+prison-breakers, that this example is more than usually strong, the door
+being plated with iron, and the small square window filled with sheet iron
+pierced with small holes.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img24.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;BERKELEY ARMS.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>CRANFORD ROUND HOUSE</i></div>
+
+<p>Cranford Park, near by, was a seat of the Earls of Berkeley, and is now
+the residence of Lord Fitzhardinge, who is <i>de facto</i> &#8220;Earl of Berkeley.&#8221;
+But the romantic scandals which arose from the fifth Earl having
+eventually married a servant in his household, after she had borne him
+several children, caused so much litigation about the succession to the
+title that, although one of his sons, the Hon. Thomas Moreton
+Fitzhardinge-Berkeley, was declared by a decision of the House of Lords to
+be legitimate, he never assumed the title, for the reason that the barring
+of his elder brother reflected upon his mother&#8217;s good name. The whole
+affair is exceedingly involved and mysterious, and it is therefore quite
+in order that Cranford House should have the reputation of being haunted.</p>
+
+<p>The house is a large rambling pile in the midst of the Park, overlooking
+the sullen ornamental waters<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> formed from the river Crane. The ancient
+parish church stands close by. The chief or garden front of the house is
+curiously like one of the old-fashioned houses that give so distinctive a
+character to Park Lane, in London; having a double-bayed front with
+verandahs. The aspect of such a house standing in the open country is
+weird in the extreme.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img25.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">CRANFORD HOUSE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE CRANFORD GHOST</i></div>
+
+<p>It was the Hon. Grantley Berkeley who first drew attention to the
+&#8220;haunted&#8221; character of the house. He tells, in his &#8220;Recollections,&#8221; how
+one night when he and his brother had returned home late, they went down
+into the kitchen in search of some supper, all<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> the rest of the household
+having retired to rest long before, and distinctly saw the tall figure of
+an elderly woman walk across the kitchen. Thinking it was one of the
+maids, they spoke to her, but she vanished into thin air, and a search
+discovered nothing at all. The obvious comment here is that people
+returning home late at night in those times very frequently saw things
+that had no existence. The narrator&#8217;s father, however, used to describe
+how he saw a man in the stable-yard, and thinking he was some unauthorized
+visitor in the Servants&#8217; Hall, asked him what he was doing there. The man
+&#8220;vanished&#8221; without a reply; to which the rejoinder may well be made that
+he might do so and yet be no ghost; the motive force being a sight of the
+horsewhip which the Earl was carrying.</p>
+
+<p>Cranford deserves notice from the literary pilgrim from the circumstance
+that Dr. Thomas Fuller, the Fuller of the much-quoted &#8220;Worthies of
+England,&#8221; was chaplain to George, Lord Berkeley, who presented him to the
+rectory in 1658. He lies buried in the chancel of the church.</p>
+
+<p>Harlington Corner is the name of the spot, half a mile down the road,
+where one of the many old roadside hostelries stands by a branch road
+leading on the right to Harlington, and on the left to East Bedfont, on
+the Exeter Road. The Corner, besides leading to Harlington, was also the
+&#8220;junction&#8221; for Uxbridge, and here the slow stages set down or took up
+passengers for that town. The fast coaches did not stop here, or were
+supposed not to do so. Some of them, however, in defiance of time-bills,
+halted at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> the &#8220;Magpies&#8221;&mdash;by arrangement, of course, with the
+innkeeper&mdash;much to the profit of that house. One of these venal drivers
+was neatly caught by Mr. Chaplin, of the once well-known coaching firm of
+Chaplin and Horne. The coachman had with him on the box seat that day a
+particularly genial passenger, who proved also to have a very intimate
+knowledge of horseflesh. Pulling up at the &#8220;Magpies,&#8221; where tables were
+spread, showing that the coach was expected as a matter of course, he
+winked at his passenger and invited him to refresh. Then, when all was, as
+the poet would say, &#8220;merry as a marriage-bell,&#8221; the unknown, like another
+&#8220;Hawkshaw the Detective,&#8221; revealed himself. He was Chaplin! The coachman
+drove that coach no more!</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img26.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;OLD MAGPIES.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;ARLINGTON OF HARLINGTON&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Harlington, up the road to Uxbridge, was once the seat of the Bennets, one
+of whom, Henry Bennet, was created Viscount Thetford and Earl of Arlington
+in 1663, and lives in history as the &#8220;Arlington&#8221; of the Cabal. He selected
+this village for one of his titles,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> but the &#8217;eralds&#8217; College (as it
+surely should have been called) made out his patent of nobility without
+the &#8220;H,&#8221; and so &#8220;Arlington&#8221; he had to become. Arlington Street,
+Piccadilly, remains to this day, and the Dukes of Grafton, in whose
+numerous titles this is merged, are still Barons &#8220;Arlington of Harlington,
+in Middlesex.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>After which we will hasten on, passing Sipson (a corruption of
+&#8220;Shepiston&#8221;) Green. Here we come upon the trail of messieurs the footpads
+again, for the road between this inn and the humbler &#8220;Old Magpies,&#8221; a few
+hundred yards further on, is sad with the story of highway murder.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XV</h2>
+
+<p>The times of the highwaymen are, fortunately for the wayfarer, if
+unhappily for romance, long since past, and many of the once-notorious
+haunts of Sixteen-string Jack, Claude du Vall, Dick Turpin, and their
+less-famed companions have disappeared before the ravages of time and the
+much more destructive onslaughts of the builder. A hundred years ago it
+would have been difficult to name a lonely suburban inn that was not more
+or less favoured and frequented by the &#8220;Knights of the Road.&#8221; Nowadays the
+remaining examples are, for those interested in the old story of the
+roads, all too few.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps this queer little roadside inn, the &#8220;Old Magpies,&#8221; is the most
+romantic-looking among those that are left. For one thing, it possesses a
+thick and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> beetle-browed thatch which impends over the upper windows like
+bushy eyebrows, and gives those windows&mdash;the eyes of the house&mdash;just that
+lowering and suspicious look which heavy and bristling eyebrows confer
+upon a man.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not only its romantic appearance that gives the &#8220;Old Magpies&#8221; an
+interest, for it is a well-ascertained fact that outside this house, so
+near to the once terrible Hounslow Heath, the brother of Mr. Mellish, M.P.
+for Grimsby, was murdered by highwaymen in April, 1798, when returning
+from a day&#8217;s hunting with the King&#8217;s hounds.</p>
+
+<p>He had started with two others from the &#8220;Castle&#8221; Hotel, at Salt Hill, for
+London, after dinner, and the carriage in which the party was seated was
+passing near the &#8220;Old Magpies&#8221; at about half-past eight, when it was
+attacked by three footpads. One held the horses&#8217; heads while the other two
+guarded the windows, firing a shot through, to terrify the occupants. They
+then demanded money. No one offered any resistance, purses and bank-notes
+being handed over as a matter of course. Then the travellers were allowed
+to go, a parting shot in the dark being fired into the carriage. It struck
+Mr. Mellish in the forehead. Coming to another inn near by, called the
+&#8220;Magpies,&#8221; the wounded man was taken upstairs and put to bed, while a
+surgeon was sent for.</p>
+
+<p>He came from Hounslow, and was robbed on the way by the same gang.
+Additional medical assistance was called in, but this late victim of
+highway robbery died within forty-eight hours.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SIR JOSEPH BANKS</i></div>
+
+<p>The assassins were never apprehended, although<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Bow Street sent its
+cleverest officers to track them down. Bow Street caught the smaller fry
+readily enough, who snatched handkerchiefs and such petty booty, and
+hanged them out of hand, while the more desperate villains generally
+escaped. This is not to say that the Bow Street Runners were not vigilant
+and zealous. Indeed, their zeal sometimes outran their discretion, as
+instanced in their bold capture of Sir Joseph Banks, who was collecting
+natural history specimens in the wilds. Sir Joseph, distinguished man of
+science though he was, and a gentleman, was singularly ill-favoured, and
+in this fact lies the chief sting of Peter Pindar&#8217;s witty verses on the
+subject&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Sir Joseph, fav&#8217;rite of great Queens and Kings,<br />
+Whose wisdom weed- and insect-hunter sings;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And ladies fair applaud, with smile so dimpling;</span><br />
+Went forth one day amid the laughing fields<br />
+Where Nature such exhaustless treasure yields&mdash;A-simpling!<br />
+It happened on the self-same morn so bright<br />
+The nimble pupils of Sir Sampson Wright,<br />
+A-simpling too, for plants called Thieves, proceeded;<br />
+Of which the nation&#8217;s field should oft be weeded.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They seize Sir Joseph.</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;&#8216;Sirs, what d&#8217;ye take me for?&#8217; the Knight exclaimed&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8216;A thief,&#8217; replied the Runners, with a curse;</span><br />
+&#8216;And now, sir, let us search you, and be damn&#8217;d&#8217;&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And then they searched his pockets, fobs, and purse,</span><br />
+But, &#8217;stead of pistol dire, and death-like crape,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A pocket-handkerchief they cast their eye on,</span><br />
+Containing frogs and toads of various shape,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Dock, daisy, nettletop, and dandelion,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To entertain, with great propriety,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The members of his sage Society;</span><br />
+Yet would not alter they their strong belief<br />
+That this their pris&#8217;ner was a thief.<br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span><br />
+&#8220;&#8216;Sirs, I&#8217;m no highwayman,&#8217; exclaimed the Knight&mdash;<br />
+&#8216;No&mdash;there,&#8217; rejoined the Runners, &#8216;you are right&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A footpad only. Yes, we know your trade&mdash;</span><br />
+Yes, you&#8217;re a pretty babe of grace;<br />
+We want no proofs, old codger, but your face;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">So come along with us, old blade.&#8217;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span><span class="spacer">&#183;</span></span><br />
+&#8220;Sir Joseph told them that a neighb&#8217;ring Squire<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Should answer for it that he was no thief;</span><br />
+On which they plumply damn&#8217;d him for a liar,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And said such stories should not save his beef;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And, if they understood their trade,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">His <i>mittimus</i> should soon be made;</span><br />
+And forty pounds be theirs, a pretty sum,<br />
+For sending such a rogue to Kingdom Come.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>To the Squire, however, they took that distinguished member of Society,
+who, of course, identified him at once, and bade them beg his pardon. This
+they did&mdash;according to &#8220;Peter Pindar&#8221;&mdash;with a resolution in future not to
+judge of people by their looks!</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XVI</h2>
+
+<p>Just before reaching the roadside hamlet of Longford, fifteen miles from
+Hyde Park Corner, a lane leads on the right hand to Harmondsworth, a short
+mile distant across the wide flat cabbage and potato fields.
+&#8220;Harm&#8217;sworth,&#8221; as the rustics call it, is mentioned in Domesday Book,
+under the name of &#8220;Hermondesworde;&#8221; that is to say, Hermonde&#8217;s sworth or
+sward, the pasture-land of some forgotten Hermonde.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;GOTHIC BARN&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Few ever turn aside from the dusty high-road to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> visit this old-fashioned
+village, rich in old timber-framed houses, and possessing an ancient
+tithe-barn which, standing next the church, was once part of an obscure
+Priory established here. The &#8220;Gothic Barn&#8221; is built precisely on
+ecclesiastical lines, with nave and aisles, and is the largest of the
+tithe-barns now remaining in England, being 191 feet in length and 38
+feet, in breadth. The walls are built of a rough kind of conglomerate
+found in the locality, and called &#8220;pudding-stone,&#8221; the flints and pebbles
+distributed through the rock resembling to a lively imagination the
+currants and raisins in plum-puddings. The interior of the barn is a vast
+mass of oak columns and open roofing.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img27.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE &#8220;GOTHIC BARN,&#8221; HARMONDSWORTH.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>A relic of old country life may be seen hanging in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> this barn, in the
+shape of a flail, now occasionally used for threshing out beans.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img28.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>OLD FLAIL,<br />HARMONDSWORTH</small></div>
+
+<p>Very few people will understand the meaning of the old English word
+&#8220;flail,&#8221; because it is almost fifty years since that old-world
+agricultural implement was in general use. Until steam was introduced as a
+labour-saving appliance in agricultural work, corn was invariably threshed
+out of the ear by wooden instruments like that pictured here, consisting
+of two unequal lengths of rounded wood of the size of an ordinary
+broomstick, connected by leathern loops.</p>
+
+<p>The farm hands who used this primitive contrivance grasped hold of the
+longer stick, and, brandishing it about over their heads, brought the
+hinged end down repeatedly on the wheat spread out on the threshing floor;
+thus, with the expenditure of considerable time and muscular strength,
+separating the grains from the ears. As the &#8220;business end&#8221; of the flail is
+constructed so as to swing in every direction, it is obvious that the
+mastery of it was only acquired with practice, and at the cost of sundry
+whacks on the head brought on himself by the clumsy novice. Indeed, it is
+an instrument requiring particular dexterity in manipulation.</p>
+
+<p>Longford obtains its name from the marshy ford over one of the sluggish
+branches of the Colne, which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> anciently spread over the road at this spot.
+The ford was eventually replaced by the bridge, called &#8220;Queen&#8217;s Bridge,&#8221;
+which now carries the highway over the stream close by the old inn now
+called the &#8220;Peggy Bedford,&#8221; from a well-remembered landlady who kept the
+house in coaching days, and died in 1859. The real name of it, however,
+now almost forgotten, is the &#8220;King&#8217;s Head.&#8221; The spot is picturesque in the
+grouping of gnarled old wayside trees with the quaint house and its
+luxuriant garden; and more so, perhaps, because it comes as a surprise
+from the hitherto unrelieved monotony of the flat road all the way from
+Cranford Bridge.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>COLNBROOK</i></div>
+
+<p>In another mile and three-quarters the road reaches Colnbrook, in midst of
+whose long street one of the numerous channels of the Colne divides the
+counties of Middlesex and Bucks. The boundaries of English counties are
+rarely marked for the information of wayfarers along the highways and
+byeways of the country, but here the brick bridge over the Colne, built in
+1777, has inscriptions which mark where the frontiers march together; and
+when the Bath Road is crowded with cyclists on Saturday afternoons in
+summer-time one or more can generally be found standing on the bridge with
+one leg in each county.</p>
+
+<p>There are no fewer than four channels of the Colne here, and the land all
+round about is flat and waterlogged. The entrance to Colnbrook from London
+is in fact quite a little Holland in appearance, where streams flow
+sluggishly beside the road and are spanned by many footbridges that give
+access to the gardens of the pleasant country cottages on either<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> side. A
+fine avenue of elms shades the road, and ahead is the cramped street of
+Colnbrook with its mellowed red-brick houses and bright red-tiled roofs.
+Colnbrook street is narrow to a degree, and it is surprising how the many
+coaches that used to come tearing through at all hours of day and night
+managed to escape accidents. There is reason for this narrowness, for
+Colnbrook was originally built upon a stone causeway across the marshes of
+the Colne, and nowhere else were there to be found solid foundations. The
+original causeway may possibly have been Roman, for this is said to have
+been the station of <i>Ad Pontes</i>, described by Antoninus in his
+<i>Itineraries</i>. Staines, however, is more likely the site of it.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img29.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE COUNTY BOUNDARY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;OSTRICH&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Colnbrook is probably the best example of a decayed coaching-town now to
+be found in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> Home Counties. Too remote from London for suburban
+expansion to have affected it, the quaint street remains much as it was a
+hundred, nay two hundred years ago. The last coach might have left
+yester-year, so undisturbed appears to be the place. There are
+coaching-inns here of vast size, ranging from the solid-looking &#8220;George&#8221;
+with &#8220;eighteenth century&#8221; proclaimed plainly enough on its stolid face,
+back to the &#8220;Ostrich,&#8221; rambling, gabled, timber-framed, Elizabethan. They
+would have you believe that this house stands on the site of one of the
+old guesthouses established in the eleventh, twelfth, and succeeding
+centuries along the roads by the good Churchmen of those times. The
+original guesthouse here, however, appears to have been a secular
+foundation, for it is recorded that in 1106, a certain Milo Crispin gave
+it&mdash;&#8220;<i>quoddam hospitium in vi&acirc; Londoni&aelig; apud Colebroc</i>&#8221;&mdash;to the Abbot of
+Abingdon. The sign of the &#8220;Ostrich&#8221; is therefore a lineal descendant of
+&#8220;<i>Hospitium</i>,&#8221; <i>vi&acirc;</i> &#8220;Hospice&#8221; and &#8220;Ospridge;&#8221; for, as we have already
+seen, the letter H has ever been a negligeable quantity.</p>
+
+<p>The original house is said by persistent traditions to have been the scene
+of a dreadful series of abominable murders something of the &#8220;Sweeny Todd&#8221;
+order. The West of England, even so far back as five hundred years ago,
+was famous for its cloth, and along this road, with their bales and
+pack-horses, journeyed the rich clothiers to and from the London market,
+halting in their tedious travels at the inns on the way. The &#8220;Ostrich&#8221; was
+one of these, and prospered exceedingly by the patronage of those<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> jolly
+merchants. The gold they carried, however, aroused the cupidity of the
+innkeeper and his wife, who devised a murder-trap in one of the upstairs
+bedrooms, by which the bed, which was placed above a trap-door, was tilted
+up in the middle of the night, so that its slumbering occupant was shot
+into a huge copper of boiling water, and so scalded to death. According to
+this tradition, which itself is some hundreds of years old, thirteen
+victims were thus disposed of, and the innkeeper waxed rich. There must
+have been other accomplices, for, according to the story, the bodies were
+kept until they formed a cartload, when they were heaped up, driven away
+to the Thames at Wraysbury and thrown in. One, however, had fallen out by
+the way, and whilst the criminals were disputing by the river-bank as to
+what had become of it, they were observed by a fisherman who had been
+hidden in the rushes while engaged in setting eel-bucks. He suggested that
+the best thing for them to do was to throw in one of themselves, to make
+up the number; to which sprightly wit they replied with a shower of
+arrows. The fisherman then rowed away, with one of the arrows sticking in
+his boat, and went with it into Colnbrook the following day. Outside the
+&#8220;Ostrich&#8221; he was espied by the innkeeper&#8217;s little son, who exclaimed, &#8220;You
+have got one of my father&#8217;s arrows!&#8221; The man and his wife were missing,
+but were afterwards captured and hanged.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img30.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>This gory legend does not render Colnbrook the more attractive to the
+stranger, but the Colnbrook folks are proud of it. Like the Fat Boy in
+&#8220;Pickwick,&#8221; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>they &#8220;wants to make yer flesh creep,&#8221; and would have one
+believe that the present &#8220;Ostrich&#8221; is the identical building&mdash;which it
+isn&#8217;t.</p>
+
+<p>Another cherished tradition of Colnbrook is that King John stayed here on
+his journey to Runneymede to sign the famous Magna Charta, the &#8220;Palladium
+of English Liberties,&#8221; as phrase-makers are pleased to call it. They still
+show the stranger &#8220;King John&#8217;s Palace,&#8221; a quaint house which looks on to
+the road, and is not so old as John&#8217;s time by some three hundred years.
+That, however, by no means discredits the story to the good folks of
+Colnbrook.</p>
+
+<p>A better ascertained historical event is the rising in favour of the
+deposed Richard the Second in 1400, when forty thousand men from the West
+Country lay encamped by the Colne, prepared to descend upon Windsor and
+London, to seize the usurper, Henry the Fourth. But Henry, fleeing from
+Windsor, raised an army in London; and between the rumours of his coming
+and treachery in their own ranks, the partisans of Richard faded away.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XVII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>TO SLOUGH</i></div>
+
+<p>The long stretches of the Bath Road between this and Slough are nowadays
+enlivened by few incidents or interesting places, although during the last
+century, and well on into this, the highway was lively enough with
+Royalties and their escorts, journeying between Windsor and St. James&#8217;s.
+The route taken on these occasions was generally through Datchet, and so
+on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> to the Bath Road just here. An old print of this period shows us how
+George the Third used to travel on this road to London, or to the unkingly
+domestic life at Kew Palace, where the farmer-like reputation of that not
+very brilliant monarch was sustained on boiled mutton and turnips, and
+improving books.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img31.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ALMSHOUSES, LANGLEY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The hamlet of Langley Broom, one and a half miles on the way, is the
+uninteresting offshoot, of the pretty village of Langley Marish (or
+&#8220;Marshy Langley&#8221;), that lies just within sight of the road, and has some
+delightful old red-brick almshouses, which, together with the ancient
+library and painted room of Renaissance period in the church, render the
+place worthy a visit. This is all there is to interest the stranger,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> with
+the exception of a pretty peep towards Windsor Castle on the left hand,
+within two miles of Slough, and near where Cary of the <i>Itinerary</i> places
+a spot he calls &#8220;Tetsworth Water,&#8221; which does not appear to exist
+nowadays.</p>
+
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img32.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>THE STOLEN FOUNTAIN.</small></div>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>A STOLEN FOUNTAIN</i></div>
+
+<p>Slough is quite modern and unremarkable, but it is rapidly building up
+legends of its own. There have, for instance, been many strange thefts on
+the roads, from time to time, but none perhaps stranger than the
+purloining, two years ago, of the drinking-fountain which used to stand at
+the entrance to Slough, where the road branches off to Uxbridge. Until
+some unusually acquisitive folk came along and carried it away with them,
+there was at that corner a fountain of bronze and marble, fourteen feet in
+height, the bronze upper part weighing nearly half a ton. It acted also as
+a finger-post, directing strayed cyclists in the way they should go. The
+good folks of Slough went to bed one night and saw their fountain standing
+where it had been used to stand for years past; but in the morning, when
+they arose and went forth about their business, the fountain was gone!
+Nothing but the plinth was left. Some mad wag suggested that one of the
+many cyclists who frequent the Bath Road had taken it home with him<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> as a
+memento of Slough; but it seems that a gang of original-minded thieves
+made away with it for the sake of the bronze, which, when broken up, must
+have brought them a good sum. At any rate, it seems quite beyond the
+bounds of possibility that Slough will ever see its fountain again.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img33.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE ROAD NEAR SLOUGH.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XVIII</h2>
+
+<p>It requires the specialized knowledge of a district surveyor to determine
+where Slough ends and Salt Hill begins, although probably it would be a
+shrewd<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> guess to say that the roads which cross the Bath Road in the midst
+of Slough, and go respectively left and right to Windsor and Stoke Poges,
+form the dividing line. For all practical purposes, however, the places
+are one. Salt Hill has decayed, rather than grown, while the town of
+Slough (unlovely name!) is almost wholly a creation of the railway. Not
+only strangers have noted the unpleasing name of the place, but some of
+the inhabitants even endeavoured to change it a few years ago. The
+proposition was to rechristen it &#8220;Upton Royal,&#8221; Upton being a hamlet near
+by, the &#8220;Royal&#8221; a bright idea of the local boot-lickers, who wanted to
+emphasize the fact of their proximity to Windsor. The project fell
+through.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>A TRAGICAL DINNER</i></div>
+
+<p>Many of the crack coaches halted at Salt Hill, where, at the &#8220;Castle&#8221; or
+the &#8220;Windmill,&#8221; they found accommodation of the very best. Salt Hill, in
+fact, was a place which thrived solely on coaching, and the glories of it
+are now departed. A tragical event clouded over the fair fame of the
+&#8220;Castle&#8221; in 1773. It seems that on the 29th of March in that year, a
+number of gentlemen forming the Colnbrook Turnpike Commission met there,
+when the Hon. Mr. O&#8217;Brien, Capt. Needham, Edward Mason, Major Mayne, Major
+Cheshire, Walpole Eyre, Capt. Salter, Mr. Isherwood, Mr. Benwell, Mr.
+Pote, senr., and Mr. Burcombe attended and dined together. The dinner
+consisted of soup, jack, perch, and &#8220;eel pitch cockt&#8221; (whatever that may
+have been), fowls, bacon, and greens, veal cutlets, ragout of pigs&#8217; ears,
+chine of mutton and salad, course of lamb and cucumbers, crawfish, pastry,
+and jellies. The wines were Madeira and Port of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> very best quality;
+but, notwithstanding this elaborate spread, the company, we are told, ate
+and drank moderately, nor was there excess in any respect. Before dinner,
+several paupers were examined, and among them one most remarkably
+miserable object. In about ten or eleven days afterwards, every one of the
+company, except Mr. Pote, who had walked in the garden during the
+examination of the paupers, was taken ill, and five of them soon died. It
+was, at the time, supposed that some infection from the paupers had
+occasioned this fatality, more especially as Mr. Pote, who was absent from
+the examination, was the only person who escaped unaffected, although he
+had dined in exactly the same manner as the others.</p>
+
+<p>Some persons have compared this affair with the mortality arising from the
+Black Assizes, but it should seem, by another account, that these
+unfortunate gentlemen had partaken of soup that had been allowed to stand
+in a copper vessel, and that, therefore, they died of mineral poisoning.
+They lie buried in the little churchyard of Wexham, two miles distant,
+where an inscription records the facts. That sad business quite ruined the
+&#8220;Castle&#8221; Hotel.</p>
+
+<p>But all the Salt Hill hotels were ruined when the Great Western Railway
+was constructed. The first section was opened, from Paddington to Taplow,
+on June 4, 1838, and those old hostelries at one blow found most of their
+patrons taken from them. It is true that this disaster had been impending
+since 1833, when the route for the new railway was first surveyed; but
+after the victory of the opponents of the first<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> Bill, when a public
+meeting was held at Salt Hill to rejoice in the defeat of the railway
+project, the innkeepers seemed to think that they could not come to much
+harm. They were, however, bitterly disillusioned.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>OPENING OF THE G.W.R.</i></div>
+
+<p>It is curious, nowadays, to look back upon the time when the Great Western
+Railway was first built. The authorities of Eton College, together with
+the Court, had effectually driven the railway from Windsor and Eton, and
+the College people had also secured the insertion of a clause in the
+Company&#8217;s Act forbidding the erection of a station at Slough.
+Notwithstanding this, however, trains stopped at Slough from the very
+first. The Company did this by an ingenious evasion of the spirit, if not
+the letter, of their Parliamentary obligations. By their Act they were
+forbidden to <i>build a station</i> at Slough, but nothing had been said about
+trains stopping there! Accordingly, two rooms were hired at a public house
+beside the line where Slough station now stands, and tickets were issued
+there, comfortably enough. The Eton College authorities were maddened by
+this smart dodge, and applied for an injunction against the Company, which
+was duly refused.</p>
+
+<p>This is not the only railway romance belonging to Slough, for the Slough
+signal-box has had a romance of its own. The cabin was erected in 1844,
+and one of the earliest messages the signalman wired to London by the then
+wonderful new invention of the electric telegraph, was intelligence of the
+birth of the Duke of Edinburgh. The following year a man named Tawell
+committed a murder at Salt Hill, and escaped by the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> next train to London;
+but information was telegraphed to town, and being arrested as he stepped
+from the carriage at Paddington, he was subsequently tried and hanged. The
+telegraphist warned the officials at Paddington to look out for a man
+dressed like a Quaker. It is a singular circumstance that the original
+telegraphic code did not comprise any signal for the letter &#8220;Q;&#8221; but the
+telegraphist was not to be beaten. He spelled the word &#8220;Kwaker.&#8221; Sir
+Francis Head has recorded how he was travelling along the line, months
+after, in a crowded carriage. &#8220;Not a word had been spoken since the train
+left London, but as we neared Slough Station, a short-bodied,
+short-necked, short-nosed, exceedingly respectable-looking man in the
+corner, fixing his eyes on the apparently fleeting wires, nodded to us as
+he muttered aloud, &#8220;Them&#8217;s the cords that hung John Tawell!&#8221;<a name='fna_2' id='fna_2' href='#f_2'><small>[2]</small></a></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XIX</h2>
+
+<p>It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the history of Bath,
+and the crowds of rich travellers who travelled thither, to learn that
+Hounslow Heath had not long been left behind before another highwayman&#8217;s
+territory was entered upon. This stretched roughly from Salt Hill, on the
+east, to Maidenhead Thicket, on the west. It would, of course, have been
+ill gleaning after the harvest had been reaped by the pick of the
+profession on the Heath, and, as a matter of fact, the gangs who infested
+Maidenhead Thicket and Salt Hill confined their attention to travellers
+<i>returning</i> from Bath. Hawkes was the chief of them, and his was a name of
+dread.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;FLYING HIGHWAYMAN&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Hawkes, the &#8220;Flying Highwayman,&#8221; who obtained that eminently descriptive
+name from the rapidity with which he moved from place to place, levying
+tribute from the frequenters of the Bath Road, was a darkly prominent
+figure in the days of George the Third. His name perhaps is not so well
+known as that of the more than half-mythical Dick Turpin, but it deserves
+especial mention from the circumstance of his keeping the whole country
+side between Hounslow and Windsor in terror for some years, and from the
+cleverness of the disguises he assumed. Disguised now as an officer, or a
+farmer; or again, as a Quaker, he despoiled the King&#8217;s liege subjects very
+effectively. His most notable exploit was enacted at Salt Hill.</p>
+
+<p>A vapouring fellow, apparently from the sister island, who, according to
+his own account of his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> antecedents, had been too frequently in action
+with hosts of enemies to care for footpads and such scum, alighting from a
+post-chaise, entered the wayside sign of the Plough, and laying down a
+pair of large horse-pistols, called loudly for brandy-and-water.</p>
+
+<p>Only one guest was in the room&mdash;a broad-hatted and drab-suited
+Quaker&mdash;who, in the most sedate manner, was satisfying his appetite with a
+modest meal. The traveller, swaggering in and laying down his weapons on
+the table in such close proximity to the edibles, startled the man of
+peace, who shrank from them in very terror.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my friend,&#8221; says the traveller, &#8220;&#8217;tis folks who fear to carry arms
+give opportunities to the highwaymen. If they went protected as I do, what
+occasion would there be to fear any man, even Hawkes himself?&#8221; And then,
+with an abundance of oaths, he protested that not half a dozen highwaymen
+should avail to deprive him of a single sixpence. The Quaker, meanwhile,
+continued his humble refection, now and again glancing from his bread and
+cheese at his most noisy and demonstrative companion, who drank his
+brandy-and-water stalking up and down the apartment.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, his drink exhausted, and his eloquence thrown away upon friend
+Broadbrim&mdash;who he at once conceived to be so quiet because he had nothing
+to lose&mdash;he unceremoniously turned his back and sat down upon a chair to
+examine the valuables he carried about his person. Having satisfied
+himself of their safety, he snatched up his pistols, and, with an
+impatient exclamation, strode off to the bar, and was paying for his
+liquor and gossiping, when the silent<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> Quaker, who had by this time
+finished his repast, passed out hurriedly and disappeared down the road.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE HIGHWAYMAN AND HIS PREY</i></div>
+
+<p>The boisterous traveller continued his conversation for a while with the
+landlord, and then, re-entering his post-chaise, bade the postboy drive
+fast, and holloa when a suspicious person approached. He threw himself
+upon the seat after he had closed the door, stretched his legs as wide as
+possible, and, planting his feet firmly, cocked his pistols, holding them
+at arm&#8217;s length with their barrels resting on the open windows.</p>
+
+<p>The horses went on for about a mile, when the chaise entered upon a
+heath&mdash;a very desolate-looking place, with never a house visible in any
+direction: with nothing, indeed, to enliven the perspective save a
+gallows, if such an object, with a rattling skeleton swinging in chains
+from the cross-beam, can be so considered. The traveller gazed with a grim
+satisfaction at this spectacle, for it seemed to him, as to the
+shipwrecked sailor in the old story&mdash;an earnest of civilization.</p>
+
+<p>But while he was musing on the long arm of the law, the rapid sounds of
+horse&#8217;s hoofs, sounding over the ragged turf of the heath, were heard, and
+a voice was presently raised, commanding the postboy to stop. The chaise
+was stopped suddenly, with a jolt and a crash, and a face, black-masked,
+mysterious, horrible, appeared at the window, together with the still more
+alarming apparition of the grinning muzzle of a horse-pistol. Then
+followed the inevitable, &#8220;Your money or your life!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The traveller had his weapons ready. Raising the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> muzzle of one to the
+highwayman&#8217;s head, he pulled the trigger, while his unexpected assailant
+stood and laughed. Beyond a snap and some sparks from the bruised flint,
+nothing happened. With a curse, he levelled the other pistol, and with the
+same result. The man in the mask laughed louder. &#8220;No good, friend Bounce,
+trying that game,&#8221; said he, coolly; &#8220;the powder was carefully blown out of
+each of thy pans, almost under thy nose. If thou dost not want a bullet
+through thy head, just hand me over the repeater in thy boot, the purse in
+thy hat, the bank-notes in thy fob, the gold snuffbox in thy breast, and
+the diamond ring up thy sleeve. Out with them,&#8221; he added, &#8220;in less time
+than thee took when I saw thee put &#8217;em there, or I&#8217;ll send thee to Davy
+Jones, and take &#8217;em myself.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The muzzle of the highwayman&#8217;s pistol was at his head&mdash;the trigger at full
+cock. The flashing eyes that sparkled behind the mask showed the
+unfortunate traveller that here was no man to be trifled with. He dropped
+his useless weapon, and with considerable trepidation drew, one by one,
+from their places of security the valuables mentioned by the highwayman,
+who, when he had received them all, drew half a crown from the purse, and,
+flinging it into the chaise, said, casting off his Quaker speech, &#8220;There
+is enough to pay your turnpikes. And, harkee!&#8221; he added, in a more
+peremptory tone, &#8220;for the future, don&#8217;t brag quite so much.&#8221; Turning his
+horse&#8217;s head, he disappeared, leaving the chaise and its occupant to
+continue their journey. The latter speedily recognized that the Quaker was
+none other than Hawkes himself.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>AN ALE-HOUSE FIGHT</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>But this was the last exploit of Captain Hawkes. On the evening of the
+same day a man in a heavy topcoat and riding-boots, splashed, and with
+every appearance of having come off a long journey, entered the &#8220;Rising
+Sun,&#8221; at a village about twenty miles away. In one compartment of the
+tap-room, on either side of a painted table, sat two ploughmen, in
+smock-frocks, their shock heads resting on their arms, which were spread
+out on the table near an empty quart pot. They were both snoring loudly.
+The new-comer, having been served with a glass of gin and water, and a
+long clay pipe, took no notice of the sleepers. In a few minutes one of
+the rustics awoke, and, glancing vacantly about him, scratching his
+carroty head, seized the empty pot.</p>
+
+<p>He put it down, and, giving his companion a push that nearly sent him off
+his seat, exclaimed, &#8220;Ye greedy chap! blest if ye ain&#8217;t been and drunk up
+all the beer while I were a-sleeping.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then ye shouldn&#8217;t have been a-sleeping, ye fool,&#8221; retorted the other,
+grinning from ear to ear.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll gi&#8217; ye a dowse o&#8217; the chaps if ye grin at me,&#8221; shouted the man,
+angrily.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Haw, haw!&#8221; jeered the grinner, across the table. &#8220;&#8217;Twould take a better
+man nor you to do it. And,&#8221; he added, &#8220;if ye don&#8217;t want a hiding, ye&#8217;d
+better not try.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Up jumped the two chawbacons simultaneously, and rushed at one another
+furiously. They rolled on the sanded floor, kicking and cuffing, while the
+stranger sipped his gin and water and smoked placidly enough.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>Presently, however, one of the combatants opened a clasp-knife, and made
+as though he would stab the other. Seeing this, the quiet spectator rose
+and seized the man&#8217;s wrist in a powerful grip. But, quick as thought, his
+own wrists were seized, and he was thrown to the floor, both men clinging
+tightly to him. When he at length managed to rise, both his wrists were
+handcuffed.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Neatly managed, that!&#8221; exclaimed one of the pretended rustics, throwing
+off his smock-frock and disclosing the red waistcoat of a Bow Street
+Runner.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You must acknowledge, Captain Hawkes, as how we&#8217;ve done you brown.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>They searched their captive, and found two loaded pistols and a great
+variety of valuables about him. Then they escorted him to a post-chaise,
+which was in waiting; and the same night saw him in Newgate.</p>
+
+<p>He made a quiet and composed end, like most of his kind. They knew their
+risks, these dauntless enemies of society, and accepted death by
+strangulation when it came with something of philosophy.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XX</h2>
+
+<p>And now for the plain, unvarnished narrative of one who travelled these
+roads a century ago.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>A STRANGER IN OUR GATES</i></div>
+
+<p>When that simple-minded German, Pastor Moritz, who visited England towards
+the close of last century, grew tired of London, he determined, he says,
+to visit Derbyshire; and, making the necessary<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> preparations for his
+excursion, set out on June 21, 1782, for Richmond, though why he should
+have gone to Richmond <i>en route</i> for Derbyshire is difficult to
+understand. He took with him four guineas, some linen, and a book of the
+roads, together with a map and a pocket-book, and (for he had his
+appreciations) a copy of &#8220;Paradise Lost.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Thus equipped, he enjoyed for the first time what he calls the &#8220;luxury of
+being driven in an English stage,&#8221; from which expression and our own
+people&#8217;s doleful tales of eighteenth-century travelling in England, we may
+infer that the public conveyances of the Pastor&#8217;s native land were
+particularly bad. The English coaches were, according to him, viewing them
+with the eye of a foreigner, &#8220;quite elegant.&#8221; This particular one was
+lined in the inside, and had two seats large enough to accommodate six
+persons; &#8220;but it must be owned,&#8221; he goes on to say, &#8220;that when the
+carriage was full the company was rather crowded.&#8221; By which we may gather
+that the seats rather discommoded than accommodated.</p>
+
+<p>The only passenger at first was an elderly lady, but presently the coach
+was filled with other dames, who appeared to be a little acquainted with
+one another, and conversed, as our traveller thought, in a very insipid
+and tiresome manner. Fortunately, he had his road-book handy, and so took
+refuge in its pages by marking his route.</p>
+
+<p>The coach stopped at Kensington, where a Jew would have taken a seat, but
+that luxurious conveyance was full inside, and the Israelite was too proud
+to take a place amongst the half-price outsiders on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> the roof. This
+naturally annoyed the travellers, for they thought it preposterous that a
+Jew should be ashamed to ride on the outside. They thought he should have
+been grateful for being allowed to ride on any side in any way, since he
+was but a Jew. In this connection Mr. Moritz takes occasion to observe
+that the riding upon the roof of a coach is a curious practice. Persons to
+whom it was not convenient to pay full price sat outside, without any
+seats, or even a rail. By what means passengers thus fastened themselves
+securely on the roofs of those vehicles he knew not, but he constantly saw
+numbers seated there, at their ease, and apparently with perfect safety.</p>
+
+<p>On this occasion the outsiders, of whom there were six, made such a noise
+and bustle when the insiders alighted, as to almost frighten them, and I
+suspect the ladies were rendered horribly nervous by the only other man
+who rode inside the coach recounting to them all kinds of stories about
+robbers and footpads who had committed many crimes hereabouts. However, as
+this entertaining companion insisted, the English robbers were possessed
+of a superior honour as compared with the French: the former robbed only;
+the latter both robbed and murdered, doubtless on the principle of that
+classic proverb which assures us that dead men tell no tales.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE HIERARCHY OF THIEVES</i></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Notwithstanding this,&#8221; says our traveller, &#8220;there are in England another
+species of villains, who also murder, and that oftentimes for the merest
+trifles, of which they rob the person murdered. These are called footpads,
+and are the lowest class of English<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> rogues, amongst whom, in general,
+there reigns something like some regard to character.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The highest order of thieves (!) are the pickpockets or cutpurses, whom
+you find everywhere, and sometimes even in the best companies. They are
+generally well and handsomely dressed, so that you take them to be persons
+of condition; as indeed may sometimes be the case&mdash;persons who by
+extravagance and excesses have reduced themselves to want, and find
+themselves obliged at last to have recourse to pilfering and thieving.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Next to them come the highwaymen, who rob on horseback, and often, they
+say, even with unloaded pistols, they terrify travellers in order to put
+themselves in possession of their purses. Among these persons, however,
+there are instances of true greatness of soul; there are numberless
+instances of their returning a large part of their booty where the party
+robbed has appeared to be particularly distressed, and they are seldom
+guilty of murder.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Then comes the third and lowest and worst of all thieves and rogues, the
+footpads before mentioned, who are on foot, and often murder in the most
+inhuman manner, for the sake of only a few shillings, any unfortunate
+people who happen to fall in their way.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The coach arrived, one is glad to say, unharmed at Richmond, despite
+forebodings of disaster; but the pirates on board (so to speak) demanded
+another shilling of the Pastor, although he had already paid one at
+starting.</p>
+
+<p>At Richmond he stayed the night, and in the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> evening he took a walk out of
+the town, to Richmond Hill and the Terrace, where his feelings during the
+few enraptured minutes that he stood there seemed impossible for his pen
+to describe. One of his first sensations was chagrin and sorrow for the
+days wasted in London, and he vented a thousand bitter reproaches on his
+irresolution in not quitting that huge dungeon long before, to come here
+and spend his time in paradise.</p>
+
+<p>The landlady of the inn was so noted for the copiousness and the loudness
+of her talking to the servants that our traveller could not get to sleep
+until it was very late; but, notwithstanding this, he was up by three
+o&#8217;clock the next morning to see the sun rise over Richmond Hill. Alas!
+alas! the lazy servants, who cared nothing for such sights, did not arise
+till six o&#8217;clock, when he rushed out, only to be disappointed at finding
+the sky overcast.</p>
+
+<p>And now, having finished his breakfast, he seized his staff, his only
+companion, and proceeded to set forth on foot. Unfortunately, however, a
+traveller in this wise seemed to be considered as a sort of wild man or
+eccentric creature, who was stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by
+all. There were carriages without number on the road, and they occasioned
+a troublesome and disagreeable dust, and when he sat down in a hedge to
+read Milton, the people who rode or drove past stared at him with
+astonishment, and made significant gestures, as who should say, &#8220;This is a
+poor devil with a deranged head,&#8221; so singular did it appear to them that a
+man should sit beside the public highway and read books.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>PILGRIM&#8217;S PROGRESS</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>Then, when he again resumed his journey, the coachmen who drove by called
+out now and again to ask him if he would not ride on the outside of their
+coaches; and the farmers riding past on horseback said, with an air of
+pity, &#8220;&#8217;Tis warm walking, sir;&#8221; and, more than all, as he passed through
+the villages, every old woman would come to her door and cry pitifully,
+&#8220;Good God!&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so he came to Windsor, where, as he entered an inn and desired to have
+something to eat, the countenances of the waiters soon gave him to
+understand that they thought our pedestrian little, if anything, better
+than a beggar. In this contemptuous manner they served him, but, to do
+them justice, they allowed him to pay like a gentleman. &#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; says
+Pastor Moritz, &#8220;this was the first time these pert, be-powdered puppies
+had ever been called on to wait on a poor devil who entered the place on
+foot.&#8221; To add to this indignity, they showed him into a bedroom which more
+resembled a cell for malefactors than aught else, and when he desired a
+better room, told him, with scant ceremony, to go back to Slough. This, by
+the way, was at the &#8220;Christopher,&#8221; at Eton. Crossing the bridge into
+Windsor again, he found himself opposite the Castle, and at the gates of a
+very capital inn, with several officers and persons of distinction going
+in and out. Here the landlord received him with civility, but the
+chambermaid who conducted him to his room did nothing but mutter and
+grumble. After an evening walk he returned, at peace with all men; but the
+waiters received him gruffly, and the chambermaid,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> dropping a
+half-curtsey, informed him, with a sneering laugh, that he might go and
+look for another bedroom, for the one she had by mistake shown him was
+already engaged. He protested so loudly at this that the landlord, who was
+a good soul, surely, came, and with great courtesy desired another room to
+be shown him, which, however, contained another bed.</p>
+
+<p>Underneath was the tap-room, from which ascended the ribaldries and low
+conversation of some objectionable people who were drinking and singing
+songs down there, and scarcely had he dropped off to sleep before the
+fellow who was to sleep in the other bed came stumbling into the room.
+After colliding with the Pastor&#8217;s bed, he found his own, and got into it
+without the tiresome formality of removing boots and clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the Pastor prepared to depart, needlessly annoyed by that
+eternal feminine&mdash;the grumbling chambermaid, who informed him that on no
+account should he sleep another night there. As he was going away, the
+surly waiter placed himself on the stairs, saying, &#8220;Pray remember the
+waiter,&#8221; and when in receipt of the three-halfpence which our traveller
+bestowed, he cursed that inoffensive German with the heartiest
+imprecations. At the door stood the maid, saying, &#8220;Pray remember the
+chambermaid.&#8221; &#8220;Yes, yes,&#8221; says the Pastor (a worm will turn), &#8220;I shall
+long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour,&#8221; and so gave her nothing.</p>
+
+<p>Through Slough he went, by Salt Hill, to Maidenhead. At Salt Hill, which
+could hardly be called a village, he saw a barber&#8217;s shop. For putting his
+hair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> in order, and for the luxury of a shave, that unconscionable barber
+charged one shilling.</p>
+
+<p>Between Salt Hill and Maidenhead, this very much contemned pedestrian met
+with a very disagreeable adventure. Hitherto he had scarcely met a single
+foot-passenger, whilst coaches without number rolled every moment past
+him; for few roads were so crowded as was the Bath Road at this time.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE PASTOR AND THE FOOTPAD</i></div>
+
+<p>In one place the road led along a low, sunken piece of ground, between
+high trees, so that one could see but a little way ahead, and just here a
+fellow in a brown frock and round hat, with an immense stick in his hand,
+came up to him. His countenance was suspicious. He passed, but immediately
+turned back and demanded a halfpenny to buy bread, for he had eaten
+nothing (so he said) that day.</p>
+
+<p>The Pastor felt in his pocket, but could find nothing less than a
+shilling. Very imprudently, I should say, he informed the beggar of that
+fact, and begged to be excused.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;God bless my soul!&#8221; said the beggar, which pious invocation so frightened
+our timid friend that he, having due regard to the big stick and the
+brawny hand that held it, gave the beggar a shilling. Meanwhile a coach
+came past, and the fellow thanked him and went on his way. If the coach
+had come past sooner, he &#8220;would not,&#8221; he says, &#8220;so easily have given him
+the shilling, which, God knows, I could not well spare. Whether a footpad
+or not, I will not pretend to say; but he had every appearance of it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And so this unfortunate traveller marches off to the Oxford Road, and we
+are no longer concerned with him.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXI</h2>
+
+<p>A fine broad gravel stretch of highway is that which, on leaving Salt
+Hill, takes us gently down in the direction of the Thames, which the Bath
+Road crosses, over Maidenhead Bridge. The distance is four miles, with no
+villages, and but few scattered houses, on the way. Two miles and one mile
+respectively before the Bridge is reached are the wayside inns, called
+&#8220;Two Mile Brook&#8221; and &#8220;One Mile House.&#8221; Near this last is the beautiful
+grouping of roadside elms, sketched in the accompanying illustration, &#8220;An
+English Road.&#8221; Half a mile onward, the Great Western Railway crosses the
+road by a skew-bridge, and runs into Taplow station. Taplow village lies
+quite away from the road, but has an outpost, as it were, in the old, with
+the curious sign of the &#8220;Dumb Bell.&#8221; Beyond this, the intervening stretch
+of road as far as Maidenhead Bridge is lined with villas standing in
+extensive grounds. Here the traveller renews his acquaintance with the
+Thames, and passes over a fine stone bridge, built in 1772, from Bucks to
+Berks. This bridge succeeded a crazy timber structure, which itself had
+several predecessors. It is one of these early bridges that is mentioned
+in the declaration of a hermit who obtained a licence to settle here and
+collect alms. Such roadside hermits were common in the Middle Ages. They
+were licensed by the Bishop of their diocese, and were often useful in
+keeping bridges and highways in good order; the alms they <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>received
+being, indeed, very much in the nature of voluntary tolls for these
+services. On the following declaration, Richard Ludlow obtained his
+licence:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>AN EARLY TOLL-KEEPER</i></div>
+
+<p>&#8220;In the name of God, Amen. I, Richard Ludlow, before God and you my Lord
+Bishop of Salisbury, and in presence of all these worshipful men here
+being, offer up my profession of hermit under this form: that I, Richard,
+will be obedient to Holy Church; that I will lead my life, to my life&#8217;s
+end, in sobriety and chastity; will avoid all open spectacles, taverns,
+and other such places; that I will every day hear mass, and say every day
+certain Paternosters and Aves: that I will fast every Friday, the vigils
+of Pentecost and All Hallows, on bread and water. And the goods that I may
+get by free gift of Christian people, or by bequest, or testament, or by
+any reasonable and true way, receiving only necessaries to my sustenance,
+as in meat, drink, clothing, and fuel, I shall truly, without deceit, lay
+out upon reparation and amending of the bridge and of the common way
+belonging to ye same town of Maidenhead.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img34.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">AN ENGLISH ROAD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>There is, perhaps, no more delightful picture along the whole course of
+the Bath Road than the view from Maidenhead Bridge up river, where the
+house-boats, gay with flowers and Japanese lanterns, are gathered beside
+the trim lawns of the riverside villas, with the gaily dressed crowds by
+Boulter&#8217;s Lock beyond, and the wooded heights of Clieveden closing in the
+distance. Maidenhead shows the river at its most fashionable part.</p>
+
+<p>It was at the &#8220;Greyhound&#8221; Inn, Maidenhead,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> that the unhappy Charles the
+First bade farewell to his children, July 16, 1647. He was in charge of
+his Roundhead captors at Caversham, and had been allowed to come over for
+two days. The Prince of Wales was abroad, but the Duke of York, then
+fifteen years of age; the Princess Elizabeth, two years younger; and the
+seven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, were brought to him. The affecting
+scene is said to have drawn tears even from Cromwell.</p>
+
+<p>Maidenhead Bridge&mdash;the wooden one which preceeded the present
+structure&mdash;might have been the scene of a desperate encounter, but
+happened instead to have witnessed an equally desperate and farcical
+devil-take-the-hindmost flight on the part of the Irish soldiers of James
+the Second, who were posted here to dispute the passage of the Thames with
+the advancing forces of William of Orange.</p>
+
+<p>The November night had shrouded the river and the country side, when the
+sound of drums beating a Dutch march was heard. The soldiers, who had no
+heart in their work, did not remain to defend that strategic point, and
+bolted. They would have discovered, if they had kept their posts, that the
+martial music which lent them such agility was produced by the townsfolk
+of Maidenhead, who, in spite of that national crisis, appear to have been
+merry blades.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXII</h2>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Bear&#8221; was the principal inn at Maidenhead in the coaching era, and
+owed much of its prosperity to the unwillingness of travellers who carried
+considerable sums of money with them to cross Maidenhead Thicket at night.
+They slept peacefully at the &#8220;Bear,&#8221; and resumed the roads in the morning,
+when the highwaymen were in hiding.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>MAIDENHEAD THICKET</i></div>
+
+<p>Maidenhead Thicket is really a long avenue lining the highway two miles
+from that town. It is a beautiful and romantic place, but its beauties
+were not apparent to travellers in days of old. The sinister reputation of
+the spot goes back for hundreds of years, and may be said to have arisen
+from the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Reading Abbey
+was despoiled. To that Abbey had resorted many hundreds of poor, certain
+of finding relief at its gates, and when its hospitality had become a
+thing of the past, these dependents simply infested the neighbourhood, and
+either begged or stole. As a chronicler of that time quaintly said: &#8220;There
+is great stoare of stout vagabonds and maysterless men (able enough for
+labour) which do great hurt in the country by their idle and naughtie
+life.&#8221; In those times the Hundreds were liable for any robberies committed
+within their boundaries; and in 1590 the Hundred of Benhurst, in which
+Maidenhead Thicket is situated, had actually to pay &pound;255 compensation for
+highway robberies committed here. In fact, Maidenhead Thicket had for a
+long time an unenviable<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> reputation for highway robberies, with or without
+violence, and the desperadoes had so little care whom they robbed that not
+even the Vicars of Hurley, who came over to officiate at Maidenhead once a
+week, were safe. This was so fully recognized that the Vicars of Hurley
+used to draw an annual &pound;50 extra on account of their risks.</p>
+
+<p>In later years a farmer, whose name was Cannon, was stopped one night on
+driving from Reading market. Two footpads compelled him to give up the
+well-filled money-bag he carried with him, and then let him go, consumed
+with impotent rage at his helplessness and the loss of his money.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, however, he remembered that he had with him, under the seat of
+the gig, a reaping-hook which he had brought back from being mended at
+Reading. That recollection brought him a bright idea. Turning his gig
+round, he drove back to the spot where he had been robbed, by a back way.
+As he had supposed, the ruffians were still there, waiting for more
+plunder. In the dark they took the farmer for a new-comer, until he had
+got to close quarters with his reaping-hook, which they mistook for a
+cutlass. The end of the encounter was that one footpad was left for dead,
+and the other took to his heels. The farmer searched the fallen foe and
+found his money-bag, together, it was said, with other spoils, which he
+promptly annexed, and drove off rejoicing.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img35.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">MAIDENHEAD THICKET.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After these tales of derring-do and robustious encounters, the story of
+the road becomes comparatively tame as it goes on and passes through
+Twyford and Reading.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img36.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>THE &#8220;BELL AND BOTTLE&#8221; SIGN.</small></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;BELL AND BOTTLE&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>At the western end of Maidenhead Thicket, where, lying modestly back from
+the road, stands one of the innumerable &#8220;Coach and Horses&#8221; of the highway,
+the gossips of the adjacent Littlewick Green foregather and play bowls on
+the grass. Then comes Knowl Hill, where an old sign, swinging romantically
+from a wayside fir tree, proclaims the proximity of a curiously named inn,
+the &#8220;Bell and Bottle.&#8221; What affinity have bells for bottles, or bottles
+for bells? &#8220;What,&#8221; as the poet asks (in quite a different connection), &#8220;is
+Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?&#8221; But perhaps the original innkeeper was
+something of a cynic, and thus paraphrased the well-worn conjunction,
+&#8220;Beer and Bible.&#8221; Unfortunately for the inquiring stranger, the origin is
+&#8220;wrop in mistry.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Down below Knowl Hill, past a chalk quarry on the right, is yet another
+inn&mdash;the neat and pretty &#8220;Seven Stars,&#8221; to be succeeded at the hamlet of
+Kiln Green by the &#8220;Horse and Groom,&#8221; gabled and embowered with vines, and
+facing up, not fronting, the road, in quite the ideal fashion. What the
+country here lacks in bold scenery it evidently gains in fertility, for
+the gardens of Kiln Green are a delightful mass of luxuriant flowers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>The road through Hare Hatch to Twyford is flat and uninteresting. Twyford
+itself, an ancient place on the little river Loddon, is losing its antique
+character, from being the scene of much building activity. An old
+almshouse remains on the right hand, with the inscription, &#8220;Domino et
+pauperibus, 1640.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The five miles between Twyford and Reading exhibit the gradual degeneracy
+of a country road approaching a large town; as regards the scenery, that
+is to say. The quality of the road surface remains excellent, and the
+width is generous&mdash;a circumstance probably owing to the especial widening
+carried out so far back as 1255, in consequence of the dangerous state of
+the highway, which was then narrow and bordered by dense woods wherein
+lurked all manner of evildoers.</p>
+
+<p>Three miles from the town, and continuing for the length of a mile, is a
+pleasant avenue of trees. The deep Sonning Cutting on the Great Western
+Railway is then crossed, and the suburbs of Biscuit Town presently
+encountered.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXIII</h2>
+
+<p>&#8220;The run to Reading,&#8221; I learn from a cycling paper, &#8220;constitutes a
+pleasant morning&#8217;s spin from London.&#8221; I should like to call up one of our
+great-grandfathers who travelled these thirty-nine miles painfully by
+coach, and read that paragraph to him.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>BISCUITS, SEEDS, AND SAUCE</i></div>
+
+<p>Reading numbers over 60,000 inhabitants, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> is rapidly adding to them.
+This prosperity proceeds from several causes, Reading being&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;&#8217;Mongst other things, so widely known,<br />
+For biscuits, seeds, and sauce.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The town, of course, stands for biscuits in the minds of most people, and
+the names of Huntley and Palmer have become household words, somewhat
+eclipsing Cock&#8217;s Reading Sauce, and the seeds of Sutton&#8217;s; while few
+people outside Reading are cognizant of its great engineering industries.
+So much for modern Reading, whose principal hero is George Palmer.</p>
+
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img37.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>PALMER&#8217;S STATUE.</small></div>
+
+<p>Mr. George Palmer, whose death occurred in 1897, enjoyed the distinction
+of having a statue erected to him during his lifetime, an unusual honour
+which he shared with few others&mdash;Queen Victoria, the great Duke of
+Wellington, Lord Roberts, Reginald, Earl of Devon, and, of course, Mr.
+Gladstone. Mr. Palmer&#8217;s fellow-townsmen elected to honour him in this way,
+and decided to have a statue which should be in every way true to life,
+and show the man &#8220;in his habit as he lived&#8221;&mdash;one in which the clothes
+should be as characteristic as the features. Our grandfathers would have
+represented him wrapped in a Roman toga, but those notions do not commend
+themselves to the present age, and so the effigy stands in all the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+supremely <i>un</i>-decorative guise of everyday dress: homely coat, and
+trousers excruciatingly baggy at the knees; bareheaded, and in one hand a
+silk hat and an unfolded umbrella. This is possibly the only instance in
+which these last necessary, but unlovely articles have been reproduced in
+bronze.</p>
+
+<p>Ancient Reading knew nothing of biscuits or sauces. It was the home of one
+of the very greatest Abbeys in England. The Abbot of Reading ranked next
+after those of Westminster and Glastonbury, and usually held important
+offices of State. In the Abbey, Parliaments have been held, Royal
+marriages celebrated, and Kings and Queens laid to rest. Yet of all this
+grandeur no shred is left. There are ruins; but, formless and featureless
+as they are, they cannot recall to the eye anything of the architectural
+glories of the past, and the bones of the Kings have for centuries been
+scattered no man knows whither.</p>
+
+<p>There are pleasant stories of Reading, and gruesome ones. Horrible was the
+fate of Hugh Faringdon, the last Abbot, who was, in 1539, with one of his
+monks, hanged, drawn and quartered for denying the religious supremacy of
+that royal wild beast, Henry the Eighth. The King had been friendly with
+him not so long before, and had presented him with a silver cup, as a
+token of this friendship.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE KING AND THE ABBOT</i></div>
+
+<p>One wonders if this unfortunate prelate was the same person as that Abbot
+of Reading mentioned by Fuller. The Abbot of that story was a man
+particularly fond of what have been gracefully termed the &#8220;pleasures of
+the table.&#8221; His eyes, as the Psalmist puts it, &#8220;swelled out with
+fatness,&#8221;&mdash;and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> his stomach, too, for that matter. To him came one day a
+hungry stranger, fresh from the appetizing sport of hunting. He had lost
+his way, and craved the hospitality of the Abbey. That hospitality was
+extended to him, promptly enough, and he was seated at the Abbot&#8217;s own
+table.</p>
+
+<p>It will readily be guessed that this hungry stranger was the King. He had
+wandered thus far, away from Windsor Forest and his attendants, and was
+genuinely famished. The Abbot, however, had no notion who he was; but he
+could see that this strayed huntsman was a very prince among good
+trencher-men, and envied him accordingly. &#8220;Well fare thy heart,&#8221; said he,
+as he saw the roast beef disappearing; &#8220;I would give an hundred pounds
+could I feed so lustily on beef as you do. Alas! my weak and squeezie
+stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The King took the compliment and more beef, and, pledging his host,
+departed. Some weeks after, when the Abbot had quite forgotten all about
+the matter, he was sent for, clapped into the Tower, and kept, a miserable
+prisoner&mdash;not knowing what his offence might be, or what would befall him
+next&mdash;on bread and water. At length one day a sirloin of beef was placed
+before him, and he made such short work of it as to prove to the King, who
+was secretly watching him, that his treatment for &#8220;squeezie stomach&#8221; had
+succeeded admirably; so, springing out of the cupboard in which he had
+secreted himself, &#8220;My lord,&#8221; says he, &#8220;deposit presently your hundred
+pounds in gold, or else you go not hence all the days of your life. I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>
+have been your physician to cure you, and here, as I deserve, I demand my
+fee for the same.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Abbot was enlightened. He, as Fuller says, &#8220;down with his dust, and,
+glad he escaped so, returned to Reading, as somewhat lighter in purse, so
+much more merry in heart, than when he came thence.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Little remains at Reading to tell of the coaching age. Where are the
+&#8220;Bear,&#8221; the &#8220;George,&#8221; the &#8220;Crown&#8221;? Gone, with their jovial guests, into
+the limbo of forgotten things, almost as thoroughly as the civilization of
+Roman Calleva&mdash;the Silchester of modern times&mdash;situated at some distance
+down the road from Reading to Basingstoke, and whose relics may be seen
+gathered together in the Reading Museum. To that collection should be
+added a set of articles used in the everyday business of coaching. They
+would be just as curious to-day as those Roman potsherds of a thousand
+years ago.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXIV</h2>
+
+<p>The Bath Road climbs, with some show of steepness, out of Reading,
+presently to enter upon that stretch of nearly seventeen miles of
+comparatively flat sandy gravel road which, for speed cycling, is the best
+part of the whole journey. The surface is nearly always splendid, save in
+very dry seasons, when the sand renders the going somewhat heavy, and the
+cyclist may well be surprised to learn that it was here, between Reading
+and Newbury, that Pepys and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>his wife, travelling in their own coach,
+lost their way, entirely through the badness of the roads.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img38.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE STAGE WAGGON. (<i>After Rowlandson.</i>)</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE &#8220;BERKSHIRE LADY&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>In spite of these modern advantages, the road is quite suburban and
+uninteresting until Calcot Green is passed, in two miles and a half. But
+it is here, amid the pleasant, though tame, scenery that Calcot Park, the
+home of the famous &#8220;Berkshire Lady,&#8221; may be sought.</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Berkshire Lady&#8221; was the daughter of Sir William Kendrick, of Calcot,
+who flourished in the reign of Queen Anne. Upon the death of her father,
+she became sole heiress to the estate and an income of some five thousand
+pounds per annum. Rich, beautiful, and endowed with a vivacious manner, it
+is not surprising that she was courted by all the vinous, red-faced young
+squires in the neighbourhood; but she refused these offers until,
+according to an old ballad&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Being at a noble wedding<br />
+In the famous town of Reading,<br />
+A young gentleman she saw<br />
+Who belonged to the law.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>We may shrewdly suspect that she not only &#8220;saw&#8221; him, but that they
+indulged in a desperate flirtation in the conservatory, or what may have
+answered to a conservatory in those times.</p>
+
+<p>The &#8220;Berkshire Lady&#8221; was evidently a New Woman, born very much in advance
+of her proper era. For what did she do? Why, she fell in love with that
+&#8220;young gentleman&#8221; straight away, and so furiously that nothing would
+suffice her but to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> send him an anonymous challenge to fight a duel or to
+marry her.</p>
+
+<p>Benjamin Child&mdash;for that was the name of the young and briefless (and also
+impecunious) barrister&mdash;was astonished at receiving a challenge from no
+one in particular; but, accompanied by a friend, proceeded to the
+rendezvous appointed by the unknown in Calcot Park. Arrived there, they
+perceived a masked lady, with a rapier, who informed the pair that she was
+the challenger:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;&#8216;It was I that did invite you:<br />
+You shall wed me, or I&#8217;ll fight you,<br />
+So now take your choice,&#8217; said she;<br />
+&#8216;Either fight, or marry me.&#8217;<br />
+Says he, &#8216;Madam, pray what mean ye?<br />
+In my life I ne&#8217;er have seen ye;<br />
+Pray unmask, your visage show,<br />
+Then I&#8217;ll tell you, aye or no.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The lady, however, would not unmask:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;&#8216;I will not my face uncover,<br />
+Till the marriage rites are over;<br />
+Therefore take you which you will,<br />
+Wed me, sir, or try your skill.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The friend advised Benjamin Child, Esq., to take his chance of her being
+poor and pretty, or rich and&mdash;plain (those being the usually accepted
+conjunctions), and to marry her, which he accordingly promised to do. He
+had a reward for his moral courage, for the lady unmasked and disclosed
+herself as the beautiful unknown with whom he had flirted at the wedding.
+That they &#8220;lived happily ever afterwards&#8221; we need find no difficulty in
+believing.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img39.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THEALE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Many stories were current locally of this Mr. Child. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>One, in particular
+(certainly not a romantic one), related his great fondness for oysters, of
+which he was in the habit of consuming large quantities; in fact, he is
+said to have kept a museum of the tubs emptied by him, for one room in
+Calcot House was fitted round with shelves, upon which these empty
+mementos were arranged in regular order. It was his humour to show his
+friends this unique arrangement as a convincing proof of his capabilities
+in that particular branch of good living.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the death of his wife, Calcot became unbearable to him, and he sold
+it. But, curiously enough, nothing could induce him to quit the house, and
+the new proprietor was reduced to rendering it uninhabitable to him by
+unroofing it. Mr. Child then retired to a small cottage in an adjoining
+wood, where he spent the rest of his days in retirement.</p>
+
+<p>The Kendrick vault in the church of St. Mary, Reading, was exposed to view
+in 1820, when, among the numerous coffins found, was one bearing the
+inscription, &#8220;Frances Child, wife of Benjamin Child, of Calcot, first
+daughter of Sir W. Kendrick, died 1722, aged 35.&#8221; The coffin was of lead,
+and was moulded to the form of the body, even to the lineaments of the
+face. Mr. Child was the last person buried in this vault. His coffin, of
+unusually large dimensions, is dated 1767.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THEALE</i></div>
+
+<p>Two and a half miles from Calcot Green, and we are at Theale, a village
+prettily embowered among trees, but possessing a large and extraordinarily
+bad &#8220;Carpenter&#8217;s Gothic&#8221; church, built about 1840, which looks quite
+charming at the distance of a quarter of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> a mile, but has been known to
+afflict architects who have made its close acquaintance with hopeless
+melancholia. In fine, Theale church is a horrid example of Early Victorian
+imitation of the Early English style.</p>
+
+<p>And now the road wanders sweetly between the green and pleasant levels
+beside the sedgy Kennet. Road, rail, river, and canal run side by side, or
+but slightly parted, for miles, past Woolhampton and the decayed town of
+Thatcham, to Newbury, and so on to Hungerford.</p>
+
+<p>A short mile before reaching Woolhampton, there stands, on the left-hand
+side of the road, quite lonely, a wayside inn, the &#8220;Rising Sun,&#8221; a relic
+of coaching times. They still show one, in the parlour, the old
+booking-office in which parcels were received for the old road-waggons
+that plied with luggage between London and Bath, and talk of the days when
+the house used to own stabling for forty horses. A larger inn is the
+&#8220;Angel,&#8221; at Woolhampton, with a most elaborate iron sign, from which
+depends a little carved figure of a vine-crowned Bacchus, astride his
+barrel, carved forty years ago by a wood-carver engaged on the restoration
+of Woolhampton Church. Tramps and other travellers unacquainted with the
+classics generally take this vinous heathen god to be a representation of
+the Angel after whom the inn was named.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img40.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">WOOLHAMPTON.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Woolhampton, once blessed with two &#8220;Angels,&#8221; has now but one, for what was
+once known as the &#8220;Upper Angel&#8221; has been re-named the &#8220;Falmouth Arms.&#8221;
+Although Woolhampton village possesses a railway <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>station on the Hants
+and Berks branch of the Great Western Railway, travellers will look in
+vain for the name of it in their railway guides. If they will refer to
+&#8220;Midgham,&#8221; however, they will have found it under another title.
+Originally called by the name of the village, it was found that passengers
+and luggage frequently lost their way here in mistake for Wolverhampton,
+also on the Great Western, and so the name had to be changed.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img41.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THATCHAM.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THATCHAM</i></div>
+
+<p>Three and a half miles from Woolhampton comes Thatcham, famed in the
+coaching age for its &#8220;King&#8217;s Head&#8221; inn, but now a decayed market town
+which has sunk to the status of a very dull village. A battered stone, all
+that remains of a market cross, stands in the middle of the wide, deserted
+street, enclosed by a circular seat, bearing an inscription recounting the
+history of the market, and the kingly<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> protection which Henry the Third
+afforded the place against the &#8220;Newbury men.&#8221; But, kingly help
+notwithstanding, the &#8220;Newbury men&#8221; have long since snatched its trade away
+from Thatcham, which has become a village, while Newbury has grown to be a
+town of 20,000 inhabitants. The only interesting object in the long street
+is Thatcham Chapel, an isolated Perpendicular building, purchased for
+10<i>s.</i> by Lady Frances Winchcombe in 1707. She presented it to a Blue Coat
+school which she founded in the village.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXV</h2>
+
+<p>Newbury, the &#8220;hated rival,&#8221; is three miles down the road. Within a mile of
+it in coaching times, but now not to be distinguished from the town
+itself, is Speenhamland, the site of that famous coaching inn, the
+&#8220;Pelican,&#8221; whose charges were of so monumental a character that Quin has
+immortalized them in the lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The famous inn at Speenhamland,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That stands beneath the hill,</span><br />
+May well be called the Pelican,<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From its enormous bill.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Alas! how are the mighty fallen! The Pelican is no longer an inn, but has
+been divided up, and part of it is a veterinary establishment.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img42.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THOMAS STACKHOUSE</i></div>
+
+<p>The most famous inhabitant of Newbury was that fifteenth-century clothier,
+that &#8220;Jack of Newbury,&#8221; <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>whose wealth and public benefactions were alike
+considered wonderful in his day. The most notorious inhabitant was that
+scandalous Vicar of Beenham Vallance, near by, who flourished flamboyantly
+here between 1733 and 1752. Candour compels the admission that the Rev.
+Thomas Stackhouse, besides being the learned author of the &#8220;History of the
+Bible,&#8221; was also a great drunkard. That history, indeed, he chiefly wrote
+at an inn still standing on the Bath Road near Thatcham, called &#8220;Jack&#8217;s
+Booth.&#8221; He would stay there for days at a time, and write (and drink), in
+an arbour in the garden, going frequently from this retreat to his church
+on Sundays, where, in the pulpit, he would break into incoherent prayers
+and maudlin tears, asking forgiveness for his besetting sin, and promising
+reformation of his evil courses. But after service he was generally to be
+seen going back to his inn. Here one day a friend found him and reminded
+him that it was the day of the Bishop&#8217;s Visitation, a circumstance which
+he had quite forgotten. He went off, clothed disgracefully, and by no
+means sober. &#8220;Who,&#8221; asked the Bishop, indignantly, on seeing this strange
+creature&mdash;&#8220;who is that shabby, dirty old man?&#8221; The vicar answered the
+query himself. &#8220;I am,&#8221; he shouted, &#8220;Thomas Stackhouse, Vicar of Beenham,
+who wrote the &#8216;History of the Bible,&#8217; and that is more than your lordship
+can do!&#8221; The historian of these things says this reply quite upset the
+gravity of the solemn meeting; and the statement may well be believed.</p>
+
+<p>Camden says, &#8220;Newburie must acknowledge Speen as its mother,&#8221; and Newbury,
+in fact, was originally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> an offshoot from Speen, which was anciently a
+fortified Roman settlement in the tangled underwoods of the wild country
+between the Roman cities of Aqu&aelig; Solis and Calleva (Bath and Silchester).
+The Romans called it &#8220;Spin&aelig;,&#8221; <i>i.e.</i> &#8220;the Thorns,&#8221; a sufficiently
+descriptive title in that era. The Domesday Book calls it &#8220;Spone.&#8221; The
+fact of Speen having been the original settlement may be partly traced in
+the circumstance of its lying directly on the old road, while Newbury, its
+infinitely bigger daughter, sprawls out on the Whitchurch and Andover
+roads, which run from the Bath Road almost at right angles.</p>
+
+<p>There are quaint houses at Newbury, and old inns; some of them, like the
+&#8220;Globe&#8221; or the &#8220;King&#8217;s Arms,&#8221; converted into shops or private houses,
+while others perhaps do a brisker trade in drink than in good cheer of the
+more hospitable sort. There are the &#8220;White Hart,&#8221; and the &#8220;Jack of
+Newbury,&#8221; with a modern front, and others. The Kennet divides the town in
+half, and runs under a bridge which carries the street across its narrow
+width, bordered with quaint-looking houses. Here is the old Cloth Hall, a
+singular building, neglected now that the weaving trade has decayed; and
+on the west side of the bridge stands the parish church with a small brass
+in it to the memory of the great &#8220;Jack,&#8221; and a very economical monument to
+a certain &#8220;J.W.C.,&#8221; 1692, just roughly carved into the stonework of a
+buttress at the east end.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img43.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">AT THE 55TH MILESTONE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img44.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>INSCRIPTION.<br />NEWBURY CHURCH.</small></div>
+
+<p>It is strange to think that only twenty-seven years ago (in 1872, as a
+matter of fact), at Newbury, a rag and bone dealer who for several years
+had been well <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>known in the town as a man of intemperate habits, and
+upon whom imprisonment in Reading Gaol had failed to produce any
+beneficial effect, was fixed in the stocks for drunkenness and disorderly
+conduct at Divine service in the parish church. Twenty-six years had
+elapsed since the stocks had last been used, and their reappearance
+created no little sensation and amusement, several hundreds of persons
+being attracted to the spot where they were fixed. The sinful rag man was
+seated upon a stool, and his legs were secured in the stocks at a few
+minutes past one. He seemed anything but pleased with the laughter and
+derision of the crowd. Four hours having passed, he was released.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;JACK OF NEWBURY&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>It is impossible to escape Jack of Newbury in this the scene of his
+greatness. &#8220;John Smalwoode the elder, alias John Wynchcombe,&#8221; as he
+describes himself in his last will and testament, in 1519, was the most
+prominent of the clothworkers in the reigns of the Seventh and Eighth
+Henrys. He is perhaps best described in the words of a pamphlet published
+towards the close of the sixteenth century:&mdash;&#8220;He was a man of merrie
+disposition and honest conversation, was wondrous well beloved of rich and
+poore, especially because in every place where he came he would spend his
+money with the best, and was not any time found a churl of his purse.
+Wherefore, being so good a companion, he was called of olde and younge
+&#8216;Jacke of Newberie,&#8217; a man so generally<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> well knowne in all this countrye
+for his good fellowship, that he could goe into no place but he found
+acquaintance; by means whereof Jacke could no sooner get a crowne, but
+straight hee found meanes to spend it; yet had he ever this care, that hee
+would always keepe himselfe in comely and decent apparel, neither at any
+time would hee be overcome in drinke, but so discreetly behave himselfe
+with honest mirthe and pleasant conceits, that he was every gentleman&#8217;s
+companion.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>This is so excellent a voucher for him that it is not surprising so
+universal a favourite stepped into the shoes of his master&#8217;s widow. She
+was rich, and he with a plentiful lack of coin; yet though she had a
+choice of suitors, including a &#8220;tanner, a taylor, and a parson,&#8221; she set
+her heart on Jack with something of the determination which characterized
+the &#8220;Berkshire Lady&#8221; already referred to in these pages; and though he was
+something loth, married him out of hand. We are not told that she
+regretted it, but probably she did, for the stories have it that she was a
+gossip and given to staying out late, while Jack stopped at home and went
+betimes to bed. Once, when she returned at midnight, and knocked at the
+door, he looked from his window and told her that, as she had stayed out
+all day for her own delight, she might &#8220;lie forth&#8221; until the morning for
+his. &#8220;Moved with pity,&#8221; as the narrative says, but more likely because her
+continual knocking kept him awake, he at last went down in his shirt and
+opened the door, when &#8220;Alack, husband,&#8221; says she, &#8220;what hap have I? My
+wedding ring was even now in my hand, and I have let it fall<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> about the
+door; good, sweet John, come forth with the candle and help me seek it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>He &#8220;went forth&#8221; accordingly, into the street, and she locked him out! We
+are not told what happened when he got in again.</p>
+
+<p>He seems to have taken her loss, a little later, calmly enough, for he
+speedily married again, and although &#8220;wondrous wealthie,&#8221; he chose a poor
+girl who lived at Aylesbury. A grand wedding it was when Joan (for that
+was her name) and Jack were married. Her head, we are assured, was adorned
+with a &#8220;billement of gold, and her hair, as yellow as gold, hanging downe
+behind her.&#8221; In fact, &#8220;Her golden hair was hanging down her back,&#8221; as the
+music-hall songster has it; which goes far to prove that the modern
+<i>penchant</i> for yellow locks has a respectable antiquity, and warrants
+brunettes in using all the arts of the toilet to redress the errors of
+Nature.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>JACK AS ENTERTAINER</i></div>
+
+<p>Jack of Newbury entertained Henry the Eighth here, and, wonderful to
+relate, the floors of the house were covered with broad cloth, instead of
+the then usual rushes. Also, he equipped a hundred of his workmen, fifty
+as horsemen, and fifty armed with bows and pikes, &#8220;as well armed and
+better clothed than any,&#8221; and went with them to the Scotch war. The
+&#8220;Ballad of the Newberrie Archers&#8221; tells us how they distinguished
+themselves at Flodden Field; but it must be added that it is doubtful
+whether they ever reached so far; which proves the ballad-maker&mdash;the
+&#8220;special correspondent&#8221; of that time&mdash;to have been more eloquent than
+truthful. That Jack was the principal man of his trade must be evident
+from these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> facts and from the statement that he employed a hundred looms;
+and a great deal more evident from his having been selected to head the
+petition of the clothiers for the encouragement of trade with France. He
+had a pretty taste in sarcasm, too, if his retort upon Wolsey, to whom it
+had been referred, and who had delayed to answer it, is considered. &#8220;If my
+Lord Chancellor&#8217;s father,&#8221; said he, &#8220;had been no hastier in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> killing
+calves than he in despatching of poor men&#8217;s suits, I think he would never
+have worn a mitre.&#8221; It is only necessary to remember that Wolsey was the
+son of a butcher for the sting of this quip to be appreciated.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img45.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">OLD CLOTH HALL, NEWBURY.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXVI</h2>
+
+<p>In 1531, and again in 1556, Newbury was the scene of martyrdoms; and in
+1643 and 1644 the site of two battles between Charles and his Parliament,
+both almost equally indecisive, and both remarkable for desperate courage
+on either side.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>FIRST BATTLE OF NEWBURY</i></div>
+
+<p>The first battle was fought to the south of the town on September 18, and
+was the culmination of a Royalist attack upon the Parliamentary army under
+the Earl of Essex, on the march from Gloucester to London. Essex had
+designed to lie at Newbury, the town being strongly for the Parliament;
+but as he was marching across Enborne Chase on the 16th, his line was cut
+by the appearance of Prince Rupert, who charged down upon him with his
+dragoons. In this skirmish the Marquis de Vieuville was slain, and many
+others of the Royalists. The battle thus forced on by the rashness of
+Prince Rupert was one of the fiercest in the war.</p>
+
+<p>The King was encamped near Donnington. Essex advanced and seized some
+elevated ground, where his men were charged by the Royalist cavalry, at
+whose head was the Earl of Carnarvon. Carnarvon had that morning measured
+a gateway with his sword, to see if it were wide enough for the prisoners
+who,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> with Essex at their head, they were to lead through it in the
+evening. Although they cut up Essex&#8217;s cavalry, Carnarvon himself fell in
+that gallant charge, and was carried through the same gateway, a corpse,
+that night.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Parliamentary foot, the London train-bands, that saved the day,
+which would otherwise have been a disastrous rout for their leader. They
+withstood the cannonading and the impetuous charges of Rupert&#8217;s horse,
+and, with Essex himself among them, in a conspicuous white hat, drove back
+the Royalist infantry. It was not until night had fallen that the contest
+ceased. Six thousand were slain that day, and neither side had won. Essex
+was so weakened that he retreated upon Reading the next morning.</p>
+
+<p>He had nearly reached Theale when Rupert descended upon his rear like a
+hurricane, and cut down many of his troops in a spot still called, from
+this circumstance, &#8220;Dead Man&#8217;s Lane.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The Royalists perhaps had slightly the better of the First Battle of
+Newbury; but at what a cost! Carnarvon, the young Earl of Sunderland; and
+Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, slain! Falkland was Secretary of State,
+and a patriot whose feelings were above partizanship. He seems to have had
+a presentiment of death, for he received the Sacrament on the morning of
+the battle, saying, &#8220;I am weary of the times, and foresee much misery to
+my country; but I believe I shall be out of it ere night.&#8221; There is a
+monument on Wash Common to him&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;The blameless and the brave,&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>who fell thus with his brothers-in-arms; and mounds still mark the places
+where the dead were buried. The memory of this great battle has recently
+been revived, for in 1897 its anniversary was celebrated, and wreaths and
+crosses of evergreens were laid upon the monument and the tumuli.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXVII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE SECOND BATTLE</i></div>
+
+<p>The Second Battle of Newbury was fought on Sunday, October 27, 1644. The
+thickest part of it raged round Speen, on the Bath Road, and in the
+gardens of Shaw House. This house, one of the finest mansions in
+Berkshire, was built by Thomas Dolman, clothier, in 1581. He was evidently
+something of a scholar, and worldly wise as well, for he knew that his
+riches and his grand mansion would rouse envious talk. Accordingly he
+caused Latin and Greek inscriptions to be carved over the entrance, which,
+Englished, run&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Let no envious man enter here.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>And&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="blockquot">&#8220;The toothless man envies the teeth of those who eat, and the mole
+despises the eyes of the roe.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It is quite obvious that Thomas Dolman had been a great deal criticized
+locally, and that the iron of that criticism had entered his soul.</p>
+
+<p>His son became Sir Thomas Dolman, and it was his descendant, Sir John
+Dolman, who garrisoned the house and entertained King Charles here on the
+night before the second battle. A hole is still shown<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> in the panelling of
+the drawing-room, said to have been made by a shot fired at the King that
+night when standing at the window; and a brass plate records the
+circumstance in a Latin inscription.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img46.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE LAST OF THE SMOCK-FROCKS AND BEAVERS.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The parapets of Shaw House were lined with Royalist musketeers on this
+occasion, and entrenchments thrown up in the gardens; but after a
+stubbornly contested fight the Royalists were too weakened to retain the
+position. Their ordnance and the wounded were left at Donnington Castle, a
+mile away, and they fell back upon Oxford. Neither side had been sorry
+when night fell and put an end to a hard-fought, but inconclusive, day;
+and for their part the Parliamentary leaders were glad to see the King&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+forces withdrawing by the light of the moon, and did not dare risk an
+attack upon them.</p>
+
+<p>It is not a little singular that during all this clash of arms the
+Royalist governor of Donnington Castle held that stronghold, although
+repeatedly attacked, from August, 1644, to April, 1646, and then only
+surrendered when desired by the King to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img47.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">CURIOUS OLD TOLL-HOUSE BETWEEN NEWBURY AND HUNGERFORD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SPEEN</i></div>
+
+<p>The road ascends to Speen, or, as it is often called, &#8220;Church Speen.&#8221; The
+present writer was climbing it when he overtook a countryman in a
+smock-frock, to whom the steep gradient was evidently anything but
+welcome.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a regular Mountjoy, a&#8217; b&#8217;lieve,&#8221; said the countryman, puffing and
+blowing.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A regular what?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A Mountjoy&mdash;a walker. But there; you bain&#8217;t Newbury?&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>I told him I certainly was not a native of that town.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said he, &#8220;you won&#8217;t, never have heerd of &#8217;un, p&#8217;raps.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>It seems, then, that about fifty years ago Newbury boasted a pedestrian of
+that name, who obtained such a great local reputation that he has become
+proverbial with the country people, so that a &#8220;regular Mountjoy&#8221; is any
+one who possesses good walking powers.</p>
+
+<p>Church Speen passed, an undulating road leads past a curiously castellated
+old toll-house to Hungerford.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXVIII</h2>
+
+<p>It is at Hungerford, sixty-four miles from Hyde Park Corner, that one
+leaves Berkshire and enters Wilts, coming into wilder and less pastoral
+country. Hungerford town, however, is just within the Berkshire borders.
+The constant Kennet flows across the road here, and is crossed by a
+substantial bridge, from whose parapets anglers may be seen patiently
+waiting to lure the wily trout from their swims. Fuller quaintly says:
+&#8220;Good and great trouts are found in the river of Kennet nigh Hungerford;
+they are in their perfection in the month of May, and yearly decline with
+the buck. Being come to his full growth, he decays in goodness, not
+greatness, and thrives in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> his head till his death. Note, by the way, that
+an hog-back and little head is a sign that any fish is in season.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The chief street of Hungerford lies along the road to Salisbury, and the
+cyclist who is intent upon &#8220;doing&#8221; the Bath Road without turning to
+thoroughly explore the places along its course, consequently sees little
+of the town beyond the few old mansions and cottages, and the old coaching
+inn, &#8220;The Bear,&#8221; which front the highway. Not much, however, is in this
+case lost, for Hungerford contains little of interest, and were it not for
+its singular Hocktide customs, and for the fact that it was the first town
+to obtain the free delivery of letters between its post-office and the
+houses to which letters were addressed, would scarce demand an extended
+notice.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>OLD POST-OFFICE CUSTOMS</i></div>
+
+<p>The original plan of the General Post-Office, all over the country, was to
+allow postmasters of country towns to demand a fee for delivery. Those who
+expected letters were supposed to call for them. If they desired them to
+be delivered, the additional fee was a penny or twopence, according to the
+conscience or the cupidity of the postmaster, whose perquisites these fees
+were. This applied to houses quite near post-offices, and even next door
+to them. This extraordinary state of affairs was borne with for some time,
+until at last several towns brought actions against the Post-Office to
+decide if prepaid postage ought not to ensure delivery in the boundaries
+of post-towns. Hungerford was selected by the Courts as a typical case,
+and secured a judgment in its favour, Michaelmas, 1774.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>Hocktide is a stirring time in this little town of less than three
+thousand inhabitants. It is determined by Eastertide, and generally falls
+in April. The odd observances derive their origin from the conditions
+imposed by John of Gaunt, father of Henry the Fourth, who, in the
+fourteenth century, conferred the rights and privileges of common-land and
+fishing in the Kennet upon the town. To hand down the proof of his gift to
+posterity, he presented with the charter a brass horn which bears the
+inscription:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;John a Gaun did giue and<br />
+grant the Riall of Fishing to<br />
+Hungerford Toune from Eldren<br />
+Stub to Irish stil excepting som<br />
+Seueral mil Pound<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">Jehosphat Lucas was Cunstabl.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Not this horn, but its seventeenth-century successor, is jealously
+preserved in the Town Hall. It has a capacity of one quart.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>HOCK TIDE</i></div>
+
+<p>As an unreformed borough, Hungerford still enjoys the old-time custom of
+appointing, in the place of Mayor and Corporation, a Constable, Portreeve,
+Bailiff, Tithing-men, Keeper of the Keys of the Coffers, Hayward, Water
+Bailiffs, Ale-tasters, and Bellman. The ceremonies begin on the Friday
+before Hock Tuesday with a &#8220;macaroni supper and punchbowl,&#8221; and are held
+at the &#8220;John of Gaunt&#8221; inn. Tuesday, however, is the great day, when at an
+early hour the bellman goes round the borough commanding all those who
+hold land or dwellings within the confines of the town to appear at the
+Hockney, under pain of a poll-tax of one penny, called the &#8220;head-penny.&#8221;
+Lest <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>this warning should be insufficient, he mounts to the balcony of
+the Town Hall, where he blows a blast upon the horn. Those who do not obey
+the summons and refuse the payment of the head-penny are liable to lose
+their rights to the privileges of the borough.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img48.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">HUNGERFORD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>By nine o&#8217;clock the jury are assembled in the Town Hall for the
+transaction of their annual business, and immediately after they are sworn
+in, the two tithing-men start on their round of the town. It is in this
+part of the proceedings that most interest is taken, for the business of
+the tithing-men is to take a poll-tax of twopence from every male
+inhabitant and a kiss from the wives and daughters of the burgesses. This
+is in recognition of the ancient powers of the Lord of the Manor, who had
+peculiar rights over the property and persons of his &#8220;chattels,&#8221; as the
+people were once regarded.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img49.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">HUNGERFORD TUTTI-MEN.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The tithing-men are known as tutti-men; tutti being the local word for
+pretty. They carry short poles as insignia of office, gaily bedecked with
+blue ribbons and choice flowers known as tutti-poles; while behind them
+walks a man groaning under the weight of the tutti oranges, it being the
+custom to bestow an orange upon every person who is kissed, as well as
+upon the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> school and workhouse children. The rights of office having been
+duly vested in them by means of strange customs and exhortation, the two
+favoured ones start off down the High Street on their kissing mission,
+followed by the orange-bearer and greeted with the cheers of the assembled
+people. One by one the houses are entered, and the custom observed both in
+spirit and letter; nor is it confined to the young and comely, for the old
+dames of Hungerford would deem themselves, if not insulted, at least sadly
+neglected, were the tutti-men to pass their houses unentered. Usually
+these officers find little difficulty in carrying out their pleasant
+duties, but sometimes the excitement is increased by some coy maiden,
+whose rustic simplicity prompts her to run away or hide. But as a general
+rule the ladies of Hungerford show very little objection to the observance
+of the ancient customs, so that the labours of the tutti-men are
+considerably lightened.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, amid laughter, merriment, and mock-seriousness, the fun is continued
+until about half the borough is visited, by which time the tutti-men have
+taken care that all the duty kisses that should gratify the ancient
+inhabitants have been administered, as well as certain others that are
+more a pleasure than a duty. Certainly they deserve well of the town, for
+the tutti-men go through a good day&#8217;s work by the time dinner is served.
+Then, in accordance with the time-honoured precedent, the Chief Constable
+is elected into the chair; the great bowl of punch is placed on the table
+after dinner, and the various offices toasted and replied for. One is
+drunk in solemn silence&mdash;that of John of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> Gaunt, the town&#8217;s benefactor.
+All the townspeople seem satisfied with their day&#8217;s carnival, save,
+perhaps, a crooning old burgher, who may occasionally be heard to extol
+the good old days when the punch was strong and the newly-elected officers
+went home in wheelbarrows.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXIX</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>LITTLECOTE</i></div>
+
+<p>From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pass to
+the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that
+gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous,
+if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will
+Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The
+most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of
+Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile
+further down the road. Either will bring the traveller to that secluded
+spot in the course of three and a half miles.</p>
+
+<p>It stands, that hoary pile, in a wide and well-wooded park, sheltered
+beneath the swelling Wiltshire downs and close beside the gentle Kennet,
+whose stream has been fruitful of trout ever since &#8220;trouts&#8221; (as our
+ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) were angled for.
+Littlecote, as we now see it, was built by the Darells in the closing
+years of the fifteenth century, in whose early years it had passed from
+the Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> Colstons to
+William Darell, son of Sir William Darell, of Sesay, in Yorkshire. A
+descendant of this emigrant from the North Riding, the &#8220;Wild Will Darell&#8221;
+of this blood-boltered history was born into an estate comprising an
+ancestral home and many thousands of acres in the counties of Wilts,
+Berks, and Hants, and might have been accounted fortunate had it not been
+for the rather more than trifling circumstances of an unhappy up-bringing
+which included a shameful treatment of himself and his mother by an
+unnatural father; the paternal extravagances which had alienated much of
+the property; the heavy charge made on the estate for the benefit of the
+mistress of his brother, who preceded him in the estate; and, finally, the
+crop of lawsuits into which he was plunged immediately upon succeeding to
+this singularly-encumbered patrimony. At this interval of time it has
+become quite impossible for serious historians to discriminate between the
+facts and the&mdash;fancies, shall we call them?&mdash;of the Wild Darell story.
+This difficulty does not arise from lack of patient research on the part
+of Darell commentators, who have ransacked the Record Office to prove that
+he was <i>not</i> a villain of the most lurid kind, or the industry of others
+who have searched among musty muniment chests to determine that he <i>was</i>.
+It would, considering the fact of the records in the Littlecote muniment
+room not having yet been explored for the benefit of these historic
+doubts, be rash indeed for any one to pronounce definitely for either of
+the very diverse views held of Darell as Villain, or Darell as Good Young
+Man.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>The story, which first became widely known through a footnote appended to
+Sir Walter Scott&#8217;s &#8220;Rokeby,&#8221; is of a midwife summoned from the village of
+Shefford, seven miles away, on a false pretence of attending Lady Knyvett,
+of Charlton, near by, and of her being blindfolded and led on horseback in
+the darkness of the night to quite another house, in one of whose stately
+rooms lay a mysterious masked lady for whom her services were required.
+The horrid legend then goes on to say that a tall, slender gentleman, a
+lowering and ferocious-looking man, &#8220;havinge uppon hym a goune of blacke
+velvett,&#8221; entered the room with some others, and, without a word, took the
+child from her arms and threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room,
+crushing it into the flaming logs with his boot-heel, so that it was
+presently consumed.</p>
+
+<p>A prime horror, this, and rich in ferocity, mystery, and all the
+incertitude that comes of age and conflicting testimony. Masked lady,
+blindfolded nurse, burnt baby, taciturn and horrible stranger, what lurid
+figures are these! and how royally abused for the possession of an
+over-imaginative mind would be that novelist who should dare conceive
+incidents so romantic!</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>WILD DARELL</i></div>
+
+<p>Scott gleaned his traditions from the weird legends current in the
+country-side. They had, when he first printed them, been the fireside
+gossip of that district for over two hundred years, and of course in that
+length of time had lost nothing in the repetition. For that reason we are
+asked nowadays to discredit them altogether. We cannot, however, do that,
+because there came to light some years ago the actual<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> deposition to the
+facts made by the midwife, Mrs. Barnes of Shefford, taken down on her
+deathbed by a Mr. Bridges of Great Shefford, a magistrate, who was also a
+cousin of Darell, and would not, it may well be supposed, be inclined to
+spread any baseless gossip to the hurt of a family with which he was
+connected. This deposition tells the story as already narrated. It does
+not identify Darell or Littlecote, nor does it even hint the identity of
+<i>any</i> person or place. But the sinister discovery, some twenty years ago,
+at Longleat, of an original letter from Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, to
+Sir John Thynne, of Longleat, dated January 2, 1578/9 (about the time of
+the midwife&#8217;s confession), brings us to the original rumours pointing to
+Darell&#8217;s being the man and Littlecote the place.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img50.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">LITTLECOTE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>DEATH OF DARELL</i></div>
+
+<p>There was then residing at Longleat a Mr. Bonham, whose sister was well
+known to be living with Darell as his mistress, and this letter requests
+that &#8220;Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister touching her usage<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> at Will.
+Darell&#8217;s, the birth of her children, how many there were, and what became
+of them: for that the report of the murder of one of them was increasing
+foully, and would touch Will. Darell to the quick.&#8221; To that letter there
+is no reply, and it remains uncertain whether Darell was ever arraigned
+for murder and acquitted (as the story goes), or whether the rumours
+simply were never crystallized into a definite charge against him. The
+probability seems to be that he never was called upon to stand his trial.
+It is quite certain, however, that the legend of his being haunted along
+the roads by the apparition of a burning infant which startled his horse
+so that Wild Darell was thrown and killed is a more or less pleasing
+invention. Darell died quite peacefully in his bed, at Littlecote, eleven
+years after the midwife&#8217;s death, and was buried in the Darell Chapel at
+Ramsbury, where he was laid to rest, October 1st, 1589. Notwithstanding
+these well-ascertained facts, Darell is now, if we are to credit the
+stories of the country-side, an apparition himself, and superstitious
+rustics still fear to face the roads o&#8217; nights because of a Burning Babe
+and a Spectral Horseman, who comes dashing down them at a terror-stricken
+gallop, mounted on a horse of coal-black hue, with a breath like steam and
+eyes like burning coals!</p>
+
+<p>As for the elaborate embroideries added to the Wild Darell story from time
+to time, there are many. According to these ingenious fictions, the
+midwife counted the stairs of the strange house, and cut a piece out of
+the bed curtains, which she carried away. By these means; by finding the
+number of the stairs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> at Littlecote to tally with her counting, and by
+fitting her piece of tapestry to a hole in the curtains of a bed at
+Littlecote, we are told to believe the truth of the story. The singular
+thing, however, is that Mrs. Barnes made absolutely no mention of these
+things in her deposition. There remains, it is true, the fact already
+alluded to, that the magistrate who took down the woman&#8217;s statement was a
+connection of Darell&#8217;s, and might possibly have suppressed facts which
+could point to his relative being concerned in the affair. Another story
+is that upon Darell being arraigned (which in itself is uncertain), he
+made interest with Sir John Popham, the Chief Justice, to procure an
+acquittal.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img51.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE HAUNTED CHAMBER.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Now it is quite certain that Popham did not become Chief Justice until
+1592, when Darell had been in his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> grave nearly three years, and could not
+therefore have done so. He was, it is true, Attorney-General at the time
+of Darell&#8217;s supposed crime, and, <i>had</i> there been a trial, and <i>had</i> he
+been bribed, could possibly have procured a <i>nolle prosequi</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But Darell certainly made over the reversion of Littlecote to Popham in
+1586, and Popham took possession upon Darell&#8217;s decease. The story of this
+transaction being the bribe in question we owe to Aubrey, the county
+historian (or rather, the county gossip), who actually gives an account of
+the trial and says, &#8220;Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but
+being a great person and a favourite, he pronounced a <i>noli prosequi</i>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>More to the point is the fact that Darell, in 1583, offered Lord
+Chancellor Bromley the then large sum of &pound;5000 to be &#8220;his good friend.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Those who are interested in the Darell story are equally divided as to his
+general character. One would have us believe that he was a Model Squire,
+who fished for trout, took an enthralling interest in his flower-garden,
+and if he did not always come home to tea (because tea not having at that
+period been introduced, it was impossible to do so), was content with a
+modest pint of claret at dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in
+reading what improving literature was to be had in the Elizabethan age;
+which, I fear, judging from the general character of the time, was of a
+somewhat meagre nature.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE REAL DARELL</i></div>
+
+<p>The real Darell was not quite like that picture. We already know that he
+had one mistress at Littlecote, and then there was Lady Anne Hungerford,
+an<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> elderly charmer, whom by some means Wild Will had seduced from her
+husband, and whose letters, still preserved, to her &#8220;deare Dorrell&#8221; are
+not so improving as the recipient&#8217;s other reading. One learns from these
+choice communications that Lady Anne had been accused of murder, adultery,
+and trying to poison her husband; and, under the circumstances, it seems
+quite likely that all these charges were well-founded, even though she
+says that &#8220;luker and gaine makes many dissembling and hollow hearts&#8221;
+(which sounds like one of the admirable copy-book maxims of our youth),
+and that she anticipates being cleared from suspicion of these &#8220;vill and
+abomynabell practiscis.&#8221; Add to these hot-blooded intrigues the
+extravagances which, together with his litigious disposition, served to
+ruin his estate and to bring him into disfavour with his neighbours, and
+we obtain the genesis of all the ill-favoured legends of this picturesque
+figure of the Elizabethan era.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXX</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE GREAT REBELLION</i></div>
+
+<p>Littlecote had not done with stirring scenes when Darell was dead and the
+Pophams took possession. The Great Hall, hung round with pikes, leather
+jerkins, helmets, and cuirasses of Cromwellian times, serves to tell, in
+its warlike array, of how the place became a rendezvous of the Roundheads
+of this vicinity. These relics are the arms and accoutrements of the
+Popham Horse, raised by Colonel Alexander Popham, whose own suit of armour
+is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> still suspended here, over one of the doorways. A fitting place this,
+then, for that gathering of the King&#8217;s Commissioners who came to
+Littlecote in December, 1688. The occasion was an historic one. James the
+Second was tottering upon his throne, and the Prince of Orange, invited to
+these shores to protect the civil and religious liberties of the nation,
+had marched up with his Dutchmen from his landing in the West Country. No
+man knew what would be the course of events, because not one of those
+concerned in that memorable crisis knew his own mind, from the King and
+his adherents on the one side, to the Prince and his partisans on the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>The two parties met at Hungerford on December 8. On the following day,
+Sunday, the Commissioners dined at Littlecote, and then and there the fate
+of the kingdom was settled, quite amicably. The old Hall was crowded with
+Peers and Generals&mdash;Halifax, the judicious &#8220;trimmer,&#8221; whose cautious
+diplomacy guided the crisis through to its solution without bloodshed;
+Burnet, Nottingham, Shrewsbury, and Oxford, all waiting upon events.
+Halifax, the partisan of the King, seized the opportunity of extracting
+from Burnet all he knew and thought. &#8220;Do you wish to get the King into
+your power?&#8221; he asked the Bishop. &#8220;Not at all,&#8221; replied Burnet: &#8220;we would
+not do the least harm to his person.&#8221; &#8220;And if he were to go away?&#8221; slyly
+insinuated Halifax. &#8220;There is nothing so much to be wished,&#8221; whispered the
+Bishop, apprehending his meaning; and so James slunk away, and William of
+Orange reigned in his stead.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>For the rest, Littlecote is a veritable storehouse of art and antiquities.
+The collection of ancient armour in the Great Hall is one of the finest in
+England. Here, too, is Chief Justice Popham&#8217;s chair, and the thumbstocks
+which he used as a means of extracting confessions from petty offenders
+with whom persuasion of the merely moral kind had failed. Then there is
+the painting of Mr. Popham&#8217;s horse, &#8220;Wild Dayrell,&#8221; which won the Derby in
+1855, and many interesting objects besides. First in point of interest,
+however, is the Haunted Chamber, which is even now said to resound with
+groans and imprecations; and is still very much in the same condition as
+in Darell&#8217;s day, although, to be sure, the fateful ante-room is now
+divided from it. Darell&#8217;s Tree, an ancient elm, patched and chained
+together, is still to be seen on the south side of the house, carefully
+tended; the legend running that Littlecote will flourish so long as its
+hoary trunk holds together.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXI</h2>
+
+<p>But to return to the road, which presently comes to the charming village
+of Froxfield, with its wide village green and great red-brick barracks of
+almshouses, founded in 1686 by Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, for fifty
+clergymen&#8217;s widows, and perched up on a bank above the right-hand side of
+the highway.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SAVERNAKE FOREST</i></div>
+
+<p>Thence, nearly all the way into Marlborough, seven miles ahead, the road
+lies through Savernake Forest<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> and its outskirts, passing the loveliest
+forest scenery in England. Nothing can compare for magnificence with the
+massed beeches and oaks of Savernake, whose glorious alleys of foliage
+extend for miles in every direction. These fine full-grown trees are
+planted for the most part in a well-considered design, and radiate from a
+central point in eight directions. These &#8220;Eight Walks,&#8221; as they are
+called, vary in length from four miles downwards, and lie to the south of
+the road. The highway runs through the northern verge of the Forest, quite
+open and hedgeless all the way, with two gates across it, about two miles
+apart. The scenery is like nothing so much as a painting by De Wint or
+Constable.</p>
+
+<p>The Marquis of Ailesbury, to whom this noble demesne (the only Forest in
+the possession of a subject) belongs, has his residence near the southern
+boundary of the Forest, at Tottenham House, which is a singularly plain
+building externally, and so reminiscent in name of the Tottenham Court
+Road that it would have been exquisitely appropriate had the late Marquis
+sold the estate to Sir John Blundell Maple instead of to Lord Iveagh.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose the eccentricities of the late Marquis of Ailesbury will become
+the subject of curious legends in the coming by-and-by. He was born out of
+his time, and was a kind of &#8220;throw-back&#8221; to earlier types that flourished
+when the Prince Regent and the Toms and Jerrys disported themselves in the
+famous Corinthian manner.</p>
+
+<p>The glades of Savernake still remain in the family, but were alienated to
+Lord Iveagh, the man of Dublin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> stout, of whom the quaint Biblical conceit
+was invented by some temperance wag: &#8220;He who is not for us is agin us.<a name='fna_3' id='fna_3' href='#f_3'><small>[3]</small></a>
+He brews XX.&#8221; Lord Iveagh bought the estates and paid for them, but the
+House of Lords refused to sanction the sale, and so Savernake still
+belongs to the Brudenell-Bruces.</p>
+
+<p>The late Marquis had a perfect genius for dissipating wealth. A &#8220;horsey&#8221;
+man among the &#8220;horsey,&#8221; his favourite companions were sporting men of the
+more unrefined type, and he was hail-fellow with the cab-men and &#8217;bus-men
+of London. Radicals found in his career a text for their discourses and a
+reason for abolishing the House of Lords as an hereditary chamber; and the
+ballet-girls of the London theatres regarded him as all a Peer should be.
+One who knew &#8220;Lord Stomach-ache,&#8221; as he was playfully nicknamed before he
+had succeeded to the Marquisate and was yet Lord Savernake, said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;The wealth and colour of his lordship&#8217;s language surprised me. I never
+knew or heard a costermonger in the Dials with such a repertory. I saw him
+once with a couple of choice friends on a costermonger&#8217;s barrow, such as
+is used for hawking fish or vegetables. One &#8216;pal&#8217; had a &#8216;yard of tin&#8217; (or
+coaching horn), on which he tootled melodiously. His lordship wore a very
+high collar, a blue birds-eye belcher fastened with a nursery-pin for a
+necktie, a huge drab box-cloth coat with large mother-o&#8217;-pearl buttons, a
+low-crowned, broad-brimmed coachman&#8217;s hat, and a very tight pair<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> of
+trousers. It was raining, a pitiless, pelting drizzle, and as they pulled
+up for drinks, he took off his heavy coat, and, placing it carefully over
+the patient &#8216;moke,&#8217; said to it, as he patted it, &#8216;There y&#8217;are, Neddy;
+that&#8217;ll keep the bloomin&#8217; wet off you, old bloke, won&#8217;t it?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For my own part, I think the latter part of that incident is the most
+creditable thing on record in the &#8220;short and merry&#8221; life of poor
+&#8220;Stomach-ache.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>OLD TIMES ON THE ROAD</i></div>
+
+<p>Savernake Forest left behind, the road descends steeply down Forest Hill
+in the direction of Marlborough. This hill was one of the worst obstacles
+met with between London and Bath in the old times, and its steepness was
+then rendered more difficult by reason of the execrable surface of the
+road. This is the experience of one travelling to London about 1816:
+&#8220;Twenty times at least the eight horses came to a standstill, and had to
+be allowed their own time before they would move. For more than half the
+way up there lay an extensive encampment of gipsies along each side of the
+road, forming a most picturesque scene with their wild figures, their
+bright-coloured costumes, and dark bronzed skin; their white tents, and
+the numerous columns of blue, thin smoke that curled upwards and lost
+itself in the dense foliage. These stout vagabonds rendered us an
+essential service; they cheered and lashed the horses, they pushed bodily
+in the rear, and they climbed the spokes of the revolving wheels, to send
+them round, with a recklessness and dexterity only acquired by long
+practice. To compensate them for their labour, the coachman halted at the
+top of the hill to give<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> them a chance of trading; and then the women came
+forward and did a little fortune-telling with the ladies, not without
+joking and bantering on the part of the onlookers; while the younger
+gipsies brought abundance of sweet wood-strawberries, dished up in
+dock-leaves, than which nothing at the time could have been more welcome.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;During the first half of the journey to London our pace would not average
+more than four miles an hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of
+the road would keep up with us for the hour together, especially the
+pedlars and packmen, who would display their Brummagem wares, and now and
+then effect a sale as we rumbled along.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>A wide view extends from here, over the valley of the Kennet, with
+Marlborough lying in its hollow, and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away
+in bare rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marlborough develops
+itself slowly as one descends, and becomes lost for a time as the
+panoramic view sinks out of sight.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>MARLBOROUGH</i></div>
+
+<p>There are fine old inns at Marlborough; coaching inns, fallen from the
+high estate that was theirs in the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord
+Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of servants, and Horace
+Walpole with his gimcrackery and his caustic comments upon the kind of
+society in which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> here. No one
+comes here nowadays with vast retinues of lackeys, and the man does not
+exist, be he Peer or Commoner, who could dare be so offensive as that
+haughty and insufferable personage, the aforesaid Earl of Chatham, who,
+nursing his gout at the &#8220;Castle&#8221; Hotel in 1762, practically converted the
+place to his own exclusive use, regardless of the comfort or convenience
+of any one else. He would not stay at the &#8220;Castle,&#8221; he said, storming at
+the terrified landlord, unless all the servants of the establishment were
+forthwith clothed in the Chatham livery. And so clothed they were, and the
+&#8220;Castle&#8221; became for some weeks what it had been before the strange
+workings of fate had converted it into the finest of all the inns along
+the road to Bath&mdash;the private residence of a nobleman.</p>
+
+<p>There are breakneck streets in Marlborough, for the town, although built
+in the valley, has the entrance to its principal street carried round the
+spur of a foothill so that one side of the thoroughfare is considerably
+lower than the other, and the humorous among Marlborough&#8217;s neighbours
+declare that bicycles are the only vehicles that can be driven round by
+the Town Hall without upsetting. But, in spite of what Cobbett says in his
+&#8220;Rural Rides,&#8221; that &#8220;Marlborough is an ill-looking place enough,&#8221; this
+street is the finest, broadest, neatest, and most picturesque of any along
+these hundred odd miles of highway. Think of all the adjectives that make
+for admiration, and you have scarce employed one that overrates the
+dignified and stately air of the High Street of Marlborough. The width of
+the road is accounted for by its having<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> been used as a market-place; the
+architectural character of the houses lining it is due to the fires that
+devastated the town in 1653, 1679, and 1690, burning down the older
+houses, and causing the town to be almost wholly rebuilt. Those were the
+days of the Renaissance, and before the dwelling-house became frankly
+unornamental and merely a brick or stone box for people to live in, with
+window and door holes from which they could look or issue forth.</p>
+
+<p>Thanks, then, to these fires, Marlborough is to-day a town of
+architectural delights, while the older portion of the College is fully as
+interesting, having been built on the site of the old Castle from designs
+by Inigo Jones or his son-in-law, Webb. It is thus a noble view along the
+High Street: the shops, which are interspersed among the private houses,
+being here and there fronted with covered ways, forming dry walks in wet
+weather; an arcaded Market House and Town Hall at the eastern end, and a
+church closing the view in each direction.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img52.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">MARLBOROUGH.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>ARCADIAN HUMBUG</i></div>
+
+<p>Marlborough College is at the western end of this street, occupying the
+fine mansion built by Francis, Lord Seymour, in time to entertain Charles
+the Second, who with his Queen, his brother, and a crowded suite halted
+here on his way to the West, in one of his Royal progresses. It became the
+residence of that Earl of Hertford whose Countess had a gushing affection
+for those tame poets of the eighteenth century whose blank verse was so
+soothing to the senses and so absolutely restful to the mind&mdash;requiring
+little mental exercise to write, and none at all to read. My Lady held
+quite a poetic court, of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>which Pope, Dr. Watts, and Thomson were the
+shining lights, and squirted amiable piffle about Chloes and Strephons
+while her fine London guests strutted about the emerald lawns pretending
+to be Wiltshire peasantry; the ladies wielding shepherds&#8217; crooks, and
+leading lambs made presentable with much expenditure of soap and water, in
+leashes of sky-blue silk; while the gallant gentlemen, more used, we may
+be sure, to dining and drinking, learned to play upon oaten reeds, and
+were quite idyllic and Arcadian. What an astounding time! and how
+disgusted these fine folks would have been, had they been forced to fare
+on the fat bacon and small beer of the real shepherds, instead of the
+kickshaws and the port which helped them to sustain their affectations!
+The spectacle of that vicious era, pretending to rural simplicity is,
+perhaps, the most notable example of vice paying homage to virtue that may
+be given. The folly of the age is almost inconceivable, but it is all
+preserved for us and duly certified in its literature and in the pictures
+of the school of Watteau; while this particular instance of it may be
+voluminously read of in the records of the time, or be conjured up by a
+sight of the winding walks and grottoes in the Castle gardens, where,
+perhaps, Dr. Watts may have seen the original busy bee that gave him the
+first notion of&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;How doth the little busy bee<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Employ each shining hour,</span><br />
+By gath&#8217;ring honey all the day<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From ev&#8217;ry opening flower.&#8221;</span></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Thomson was sipping nectar (which is Greek for brandy-punch)
+with my Lord Hertford,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> and babbling of other things than green fields. In
+fact, the literary Lady Hertford found the poet of the &#8220;Seasons&#8221; to be a
+drunkard, and he was not invited to any more of her parties.</p>
+
+<p>The house passed at length to the Dukes of Northumberland, who neglected
+it, and at last leased it to a Mr. Cotterell, an innkeeper, who with
+prophetic vision saw custom coming down the road in an increasing tide.
+Appropriately known as the &#8220;Castle,&#8221; it remained an hotel until January 5,
+1843, when its doors were finally closed, to be re-opened as the home of
+the newly established &#8220;Marlborough College.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For nearly a century the &#8220;Castle&#8221; entertained the best society in the
+land. Forty-two coaches passed through the town every day when it was at
+the height of its prosperity, and a goodly proportion of their occupants
+stayed here. Take, in fact, the lists of distinguished arrivals at Bath
+during that time, and you have practically a visitors&#8217; list of the
+&#8220;Castle.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Marlborough College was established in this house of entertainment, and
+new buildings have been added from time to time; but the old &#8220;Castle
+Hotel&#8221; may yet be traced from its characteristic architecture. Amid its
+pleasant lawns and gardens rises that prehistoric hill on which
+Marlborough Castle was built. Indeed, here, in this &#8220;Castle Mound,&#8221; is the
+very fount and origin of the town, whose very name is supposed to derive
+from this earthwork, being the grave of the magician Merlin, who with his
+enchantments is said to lie here still, until Britain shall be in need of
+him again. &#8220;Merleberg,&#8221; or &#8220;Merlin&#8217;s town,&#8221;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> is said to have been
+Marlborough&#8217;s first name, and the crest over the town arms still
+represents the Mound, with a motto in Latin to &#8220;the bones of the wise
+Merlin.&#8221;<a name='fna_4' id='fna_4' href='#f_4'><small>[4]</small></a></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXIII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE KENNET</i></div>
+
+<p>When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet
+to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and
+the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of
+the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be
+glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road
+itself is bare. The &#8220;green pastures and still waters&#8221; of the Psalmist,
+indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you see the
+pleasant water-meadows afar off as you toil up the shoulder of the downs,
+passing a picturesque roadside inn, the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> &#8220;Marquis of Ailesbury&#8217;s Arms,&#8221;
+and the village of Fyfield on the way, with a glimpse of Manton village
+down below, amid its elms and farmyards by the windings of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img53.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ROADSIDE INN, MANTON.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Fyfield (how many dozens of Fyfields are there in England?) is tiny,
+clean, and quaint, with a pinnacled church tower on to whose roof you look
+down from the road, and may glimpse in a backward glance the whole of the
+district traversed since Savernake Forest was left behind. There, in long
+dark clumps upon the distant hilly horizon are the grand avenues of
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>that forest; the Bath Road descending from them like a white ribbon
+into Marlborough town, whose houses are hid, only the church towers
+shining white in the sun, against a green background. Ahead rises
+unenclosed downland, with chalky, flint-strewn road, the unenclosed wastes
+of green-grey grass, broken here and there with mounds, grass-grown too.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img54.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">FYFIELD.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>MARLBOROUGH DOWNS</i></div>
+
+<p>On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, perhaps, rises the
+church of West Overton, an offence here in its newness, for this road is
+Roman, these mounds are ancient British graves, and everywhere, look in
+what direction you will on these bleak and treeless wastes, are the
+mysterious vestiges of a people who had no arts, no science, no
+literature, who lived, in fact, a savage nomadic life, but who, for all
+those disabilities, have left records of their passing that may well
+remain when the civilization of to-day has perished. On these downs are
+countless tumuli; in the hollows are unnumbered thousands of stones,
+brought no one knows whence, or for what purpose, and the remains of
+cromlechs may be seen that add to the complex puzzle of the wherefore of
+it all. West Kennet village stands in the succeeding hollow, like some
+shamed modern trespasser, amid these prehistoric remains which appear,
+Sphinx-like, on the sky-line or stand lonely in the folds of the barren
+hills.</p>
+
+<p>The district seems to have been a metropolis of the prehistoric dead (if,
+indeed, all these ruined stone avenues and circles are sepulchral), or
+some vast open-air cathedral of a forgotten faith; if they have a
+religious rather than a mortuary significance. For, but little over a mile
+distant, are the remains of the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> so-called &#8220;Druid Temple&#8221; at Avebury, a
+monument second only to Stonehenge in mystery, and a good deal more
+impressive in appearance; while, frowning down upon the highway, and
+standing immediately beside it, is that &#8220;greatest earthwork in Europe,&#8221;
+Silbury Hill.</p>
+
+<p>Avebury village stands on the road to Swindon, on the borders of
+Marlborough Downs, and has been built within a great circle which appears
+to have been approached by an avenue of standing stones. A few of these
+may still be observed, standing beside the hedgeless road. Some idea of
+the vast size and impressive aspect of this circular monument of those dim
+ages before history began may be obtained when it is said that it consists
+of an excavation 40 feet deep and 4442 feet in circumference, encircled on
+the outer side with an earthwork 40 feet high, the whole enclosing nearly
+29 acres. On the inner brink of this deep fosse there are now left
+thirty-five huge stones out of the original number of about one thousand.
+Nine of these are upright, ten thrown down, and sixteen buried. Traces of
+pits show where the farmers of many years ago dug up the others and took
+them away for building-stones or gateposts. Over six hundred and fifty
+others are known to have been destroyed, the cottages of Avebury and the
+roads having been built of their fragments. How the unknown builders of
+this weird place could have brought these huge rocks, some of them
+measuring fourteen feet in length, and all weighing many tons a-piece,
+from unguessed distances, remains a mystery.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img55.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>AVEBURY</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>The first mention of Avebury Temple is by Aubrey the antiquary. It was in
+1648 that he first saw the place, which seems, curiously enough, to have
+been until then quite unknown. He came upon it quite by chance, when
+hunting, and must have been astonished at the discovery of so
+extraordinary a place. His account of it led that kingly amateur of
+science, Charles the Second, to visit Avebury on his way to Bath in 1668.
+Pepys, too, going to Bath, unexpectedly happened both upon Avebury and
+Silbury Hill, and viewed them and the sepulchral barrows that, crowned
+with pine trees, look down from the hill sides, with an admiration not
+unmixed with a superstitious dread.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img56.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">AVEBURY.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The road to Swindon goes straight through this<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> great earthwork, and is
+crossed midway by another; together, with part of the village built within
+the circle, cutting it up lamentably.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img57.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">SILBURY HILL.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SILBURY HILL</i></div>
+
+<p>Silbury Hill, which stands within sight, is a fitting pendant to these
+mysteries. Antiquaries have contended together in referring both to
+ancient Britons, Ph&oelig;nicians, Danes, Saxons, and even Romans, and are
+divided in opinion as to their object: whether they were intended for
+Druids&#8217; or Snake-worshippers&#8217; temples, or whether they marked the last
+resting-places of those slain in some great battle fought before the dawn
+of history. That Silbury Hill stood here when the Romans came seems,
+however, to be certain from the fact that the old Roman road from
+<i>Cunetio</i> to <i>Aqu&aelig; Solis</i> (the existing Bath Road between Marlborough and
+Bath), engineered along<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> the whole of its course in a perfectly straight
+line, swerves slightly from the south base of the hill, evidently to avoid
+injuring it. A learned antiquary (but the most learned must be reduced to
+the level of the most ignorant before these mute earthworks) considers
+that Silbury was raised to commemorate a battle, probably Arthur&#8217;s second
+and last battle of Badon Hill. The same authority thinks Avebury to be a
+burying-place of the dead slain in a great battle, and planned to show the
+dispositions of the forces engaged on either side.</p>
+
+<p>But Silbury remains inscrutable. It is wholly an artificial hill, somewhat
+pyramidical in shape, and 170 feet in height. Its base covers five acres
+of ground, and was once surrounded by a stone circle, of which scanty
+traces are now left. The contents of it are estimated at 468,170 cubic
+yards of earth. Repeated attempts have been made to pluck out the heart of
+this mystery, but without success. So far back as 1777 it was mined from
+above by a party of Cornish miners, who worked under the direction of the
+then Duke of Northumberland and others, but nothing was discovered. Then
+in 1849 it was tunnelled from the base to the centre, where a space of
+twelve feet in diameter was examined, with the same disappointing result.
+Antiquaries consequently regard Silbury with hungry and expectant eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Just beyond this baffling relic stands the Beckhampton inn, where the
+&#8220;coaches dined&#8221; and changed teams, and where the Bath Road divides into
+the two routes; the right-hand road going through Calne, Chippenham, and
+Box; the other<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> reaching Bath by way of Devizes and Melksham. Some coaches
+went one way and some the other. The crack coaches, including the
+&#8220;Beaufort Hunt,&#8221; went by the former, which is two and a half miles
+shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one selected nowadays by
+record-breaking cyclists.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXIV</h2>
+
+<p>The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the &#8220;lower
+ground.&#8221; So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great
+deal higher, and much more hilly than the &#8220;upper ground&#8221; between London
+and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would
+sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach
+driven by a gay young blade, one &#8220;Jack Everett;&#8221; an accident in which he
+and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferers were
+put into a cart filled with straw, and taken to the nearest surgeon. On
+the road into Marlborough the coachman beguiled the tedium of the way and
+the pain of his injured limb by saying to the old lady, &#8220;I have often
+kissed a young woman, and I don&#8217;t see why I shouldn&#8217;t kiss an old
+one&#8221;&mdash;and he suited the action to the words.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE CHERHILL WHITE HORSE</i></div>
+
+<p>Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is the &#8220;Waggon and Horses,&#8221; is the place
+mentioned by Dickens in the &#8220;Bagman&#8217;s Story&#8221; in the <i>Pickwick Papers</i>. It<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+remains as old-fashioned to-day as ever,<a name='fna_5' id='fna_5' href='#f_5'><small>[5]</small></a> but does not very closely
+resemble the word-picture Dickens draws of it. He probably made
+acquaintance with the downs and the inn only in passing on his way between
+Bath and London in 1835. It stands at a spot where the road promises to
+become more cheerful and less gaunt and inhospitable; but the promise is
+not kept, the way going inexorably again along downs as bare as before,
+for another two miles. All the way between here and Cherhill village the
+&#8220;Lansdowne Column&#8221; is seen crowning the rolling hills to the left front.
+Built within the ramparts of an ancient hill-fort of the Danes, who
+encamped naturally enough in the most inaccessible position they could
+find, this &#8220;column,&#8221; which is an obelisk, is an exceedingly prominent
+object in every direction. As one proceeds and turns the flank of the
+hill, the strange sight of a trotting White Horse is seen carved in the
+chalk of its swelling shoulder. This is not one of the ancient White
+Horses that decorate the hillsides of some parts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> of the West County and
+date from Anglo-Saxon times, but dates only from 1780, when it was cut by
+Dr. Allsop, an eccentric physician of Calne. The site it occupies is said
+to be the highest point between London and Bath, and the White Horse is
+supposed to be visible for thirty miles&mdash;which there is no occasion to
+believe. The figure measures 157 feet from head to tail, and the eye alone
+is 12 feet in diameter. The way the figure was designed is just a little
+curious.</p>
+
+<p>No one could possibly have correctly traced the outlines of so huge an
+affair, except by external aid, which probably accounts for the bad
+drawing of the ancient examples. Dr. Allsop adopted the plan of stationing
+himself on the downs in full view of the rough draft, so to speak, which
+he had already staked out with flags, and of shouting directions to his
+workmen by the aid of a speaking-trumpet.</p>
+
+<p>The hillside is so steep at this point that when the White Horse was
+restored in 1876, a workman was nearly killed by a truck load of chalk
+descending upon him down the slope.</p>
+
+<p>Passing this interesting spot and the village of Cherhill, which lies
+hidden to the right of the road, the highway reaches Calne through its
+suburb of Quemerford, along a flat road.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img58.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXXV</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>CALNE</i></div>
+
+<p>Calne (whose name be pleased to pronounce &#8220;Carne&#8221;) is not a pleasing
+place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade
+utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the
+very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on
+account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place.
+&#8220;Calne,&#8221; according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father&#8217;s three
+years&#8217; residence there, &#8220;is not a very pretty place. The soil is clayey
+and chalky; the streams far from crystal; the hills bare and shapeless;
+the trees not venerable; the town itself irregular, which is its only
+beauty. But there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people in it.&#8221;
+With all of which one may agree; save that the &#8220;irregularity&#8221; of the town
+is now rather sluttish than beautiful. As for the people, we are but
+travelling the road, and Calne is only an incident on our way&mdash;the people
+of it something less to ourselves, resembling, in fact, x, an unknown
+quantity.</p>
+
+<p>The outskirts of Calne are not prepossessing, nor does the long, stony
+street of mean characterless stone houses that leads to the centre of the
+little town alter the stranger&#8217;s view. Calne, in fact, lying so near
+Bowood, long the seat of the Marquises of Lansdowne, and being their
+property, wears an abject, servile look. All that makes life worth living
+is at lordly Bowood; only that which is mean and commonplace is left to
+Calne. It seems (although one&#8217;s prejudices<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> are Conservative) as though
+some vampire were seated near, sucking away the life-blood of the place.</p>
+
+<p>There are two hills just out of Calne; Black Dog Hill, and Derry Hill, and
+they lead the traveller through picturesque scenery, past one of the
+lodges of Bowood, and so down into the flat alluvial lands where the Avon
+flows, and now and again floods out all the dwellers in those levels. The
+road down there is dreadfully dull to the pedestrian. To the cyclist, on
+the other hand, who has for these miles past been struggling up hills he
+cannot climb, and walking down others he dare not coast, the change is one
+from a penitential pilgrimage to Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>The entrance to the &#8220;ancient and royal&#8221; borough of Chippenham is hatefully
+like that into Calne, whose paltry houses are reproduced there. The centre
+of the town is, however, of a better character, although the streets are
+cramped and narrow. A singularly foreign air is given to the place by its
+balustraded stone bridge across the Avon, and if one cares to pursue the
+Continental tone further it may be found in the huge factory near by,
+where &#8220;Swiss&#8221; Condensed Milk, of the &#8220;Milkmaid&#8221; brand, is manufactured on
+an immense scale. For the rest, its cheese and corn markets and
+bacon-curing keep it very much alive, and a modern (and brutally ugly)
+Town Hall, built in 1856, shows sufficiently well how trade has grown
+since the time when the picturesque old Town Hall, still standing, was
+built in the sixteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img59.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>MAUD HEATH&#8217;S CAUSEWAY</i></div>
+
+<p>The most interesting thing in Chippenham is (to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>borrow a &#8220;bull&#8221; for the
+occasion) outside the town. &#8220;Maud Heath&#8217;s Causeway,&#8221; a stone-pitched path
+along the road that runs through the heavy clay lands beside the Wiltshire
+Avon, extends for four and a half miles, from Chippenham to the summit of
+Bremhillwick Hill. It was made under the will of Maud Heath, who died
+about 1474, for the benefit of the market folk resorting to Chippenham,
+who found the low-lying roads almost impassable in winter. Little is known
+of this old-time benefactress, but legend supplies the lack of knowledge,
+and the popular belief is that she was a market-woman who, finding the
+road from Langley Burrell into the town in so dreadful a state, determined
+to leave the savings of a lifetime for the provision of a stone causeway,
+so that future generations might go dry-shod to market.</p>
+
+<p>This causeway goes from the north-east side of the town, and continues
+through Langley Burrell to Tytherton Kellaways, up the shoulder of
+Bremhillwick Hill. The portion between Chippenham and Langley Burrell was,
+for some unexplained reason, not constructed until 1852-3.</p>
+
+<p>According to the inscriptions on the stone posts beside it, the Causeway
+is held to commence at the Hill, and to end at Chippenham&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;From this <span class="smcap">Wick Hill</span> begins the praise<br />
+Of <span class="smcap">Maud Heath&#8217;s</span> gift to these highways.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At the other end, next Chippenham, where the road joins those from
+Malmesbury and Draycott, is another stone, with the inscription&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Hither extendeth <span class="smcap">Maud Heath&#8217;s</span> gift,<br />
+For where I stand is Chippenham Clift.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>Midway, on the bridge over the Avon, is another stone&mdash;a pillar twelve
+feet high, erected by the Trustees in 1698, with the following facts
+recorded on it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>&#8220;To the memory of the worthy <span class="smcap">Maud Heath</span>, of Langley Burrell, Spinster:
+who in the year of grace, 1474, for the good of travellers, did in
+charity bestow in land and houses, about eight pounds a year, for
+ever, to be laid out on the highway and causeway, leading from Wick
+Hill to Chippenham Clift.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Chippenham Clift.</span> Injure me not. <span class="smcap">Wick Hill.</span></p></div>
+
+<p>A statue of Maud Heath, a purely imaginary likeness of course, since no
+portrait of her is known to exist, was set up on a pillar on the summit of
+Bremhillwick Hill in 1838 by the Marquis of Lansdowne and a local
+clergyman.</p>
+
+<p>The pillar is forty feet high, and the seated statue on the top of it
+represents Maud Heath in the costume of the period of Edward the Fourth,
+with a staff in her hand, and a basket by her side. An inscription bids&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Thou who dost pause on this &aelig;rial height,<br />
+Where <span class="smcap">Maud Heath&#8217;s</span> Pathway winds in shade or light,<br />
+Christian wayfarer in a world of strife,<br />
+Be still&mdash;and ponder on the path of life.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The sentiments are admirable, if a little depressing: the verse atrocious.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>IMPROVING SENTIMENTS</i></div>
+
+<p>But worse remains. There are three dials on the pillar, with an
+inscription on the side facing the rising sun&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 4em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Volat Tempus.</span></span><br />
+&#8220;Oh, early passenger, look up, be wise:<br />
+And think how, night and day, <span class="smcap">Time</span> onward <span class="smcap">Flies</span>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>Opposite Noon is the advice, &#8220;Whilst we have time, do good.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: .5em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Qvum Tempus Habemus, operemur bonum.</span></span><br />
+&#8220;Life steals away&mdash;this hour, O man, is lent thee<br />
+Patient to work the work of Him that sent thee.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>For Evening the admonition is not a little alarming&mdash;if taken literally.</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span style="margin-left: 3em;">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Redibo. Tu Nunquam.</span></span><br />
+&#8220;Haste, traveller! the sun is sinking low;<br />
+He shall return again&mdash;but <span class="smcap">never Thou</span>.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The passing wayfarer might well ask why he should never return along this
+road!</p>
+
+<p>The late vicar of Bremhill did these metrical paraphrases of the Latin
+which led so tragically, but whose qualities, as verse, resemble the
+average of the ordinary Pantomime librettist.</p>
+
+<p>Maud Heath&#8217;s charity is still in existence, and is now worth about &pound;120
+per annum, a sum amply sufficient for keeping her Causeway in repair.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXVI</h2>
+
+<p>Rowden Hill, a mile out of Chippenham, on the road to Bath, is a welcome
+drop down into level land again, and would be enjoyable were it not for
+the bad surface. It is while wheeling such hills and such road-metal that
+one appreciates at the full the pluck and endurance of those early
+cyclists who raced across them in the early seventies, making the pace on
+the high bicycles of those times as gallantly as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> though the terrible
+jolting they experienced was really enjoyable. That well-known body of
+cyclists, the Bath Road Club, has numbered some good sportsmen and rare
+flyers in its time, and though their pace reads ridiculously slow beside
+that of these pneumatic-tyred days, the performances of those
+half-forgotten racers were quite as fine, and, conditions being equal,
+perhaps finer, than the record rides of recent seasons. There was a
+time&mdash;in August, 1870, to be precise&mdash;when two cyclists&mdash;Gardner and
+Fisher, did the double journey of 107 miles each way in five days, and men
+looked upon them as marvellous riders; so perhaps they were, considering
+the mechanical limitations of the machines they rode, whose like is not to
+be seen nowadays save in collections of curios. Equally wonderful were
+those stalwarts who cut away the hours, piece by piece, until their
+performances were topped by &#8220;Wat&#8221; Britten on the &#8220;ordinary&#8221; in 1880, when
+he did the double journey in 23 hours. There were those who then thought
+the last word had been said in the matter of Bath Road Records. They must
+have been astonished when R. C. Nesbitt&#8217;s &#8220;ordinary&#8221; record was made on
+August 1, 1891, when he covered the out and home course in 15 hrs. 40
+mins. 34 secs. Improved methods of manufacture may have had something to
+do with the smashing character of this new performance; but, even so,
+consider the extraordinary efforts that must have gone toward getting
+those figures, which cut Britten&#8217;s by 7 hrs. 20 mins., and at the same
+time secured one of the rare victories of the &#8220;ordinary&#8221; over the &#8220;safety&#8221;
+pneumatic-tyred bicycle. For this grand<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> ride defeated Mr. Lowe&#8217;s, made on
+a &#8220;safety,&#8221; in 1891 by more than 30 minutes.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>CYCLING HISTORY</i></div>
+
+<p>But that was one of the last expiring efforts of the now obsolete and
+miscalled &#8220;ordinary.&#8221; It was speedily beaten by J. W. Jarvis, September
+20, 1892, who put the figures at 15 hrs. 16 mins. 42 secs.&mdash;23 mins. 52
+secs. better than the previous best. Then came that hardy Brighton Road
+record-maker, C. G. Wridgway, whose ride of August 2, 1893, put the
+clocking at 14 hrs. 22 mins. 57 secs.&mdash;a wonderfully heavy lowering of
+figures. The following year Wridgway established records on both the
+Brighton and Bath Road within a month; beating his record here of the
+previous August by his ride on October 4, when he reduced his own time by
+the astonishing margin of 1 hr. 27 mins. 43 secs.</p>
+
+<p>Time was now cut so close that when W. J. Neasen, of the Anfield Club,
+essayed the difficult task of lowering it, he only succeeded, on May 11,
+1895, in getting inside Wridgway&#8217;s time by 24 mins. 10 secs., the figures
+then standing at 12 hrs. 31 mins. 4 secs. H. C. Horswill, of the Essex
+Wheelers, then beat Neason&#8217;s performance, in July, 1897, by 24 mins. 34
+secs., to be succeeded finally by F. W. Barnes, who on October 30, in the
+same year, performed the double journey in 11 hrs. 48 mins. 42 secs., and
+still holds the record.</p>
+
+<p>Among these records of the Bath Road must be mentioned the various essays
+made by C. A. Smith, of the Bath Road Club, on tricycles. He rode to Bath
+and back on a three-wheeler, July 16, 1891, in 16 hrs. 13 mins. 18 secs.,
+thus establishing a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> record, which was beaten four years later&mdash;August 23,
+1895&mdash;by F. Martin, by the narrow margin of 11 mins. 43 secs. These
+figures in turn were lowered, August 5, 1897, by T. J. Gibbs, Bath Road
+Club, who accomplished a record of 14 hrs. 18 min.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXVII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>PICKWICK</i></div>
+
+<p>And now we come, past the tree-shaded hamlet of Cross Keys, to Pickwick,
+ninety-seven miles from London, situated at a turning in the road which
+leads to Corsham Regis, half a mile distant, on the left hand. The
+traveller, exploring this road for the first time, looks forward with
+curiosity to seeing a place with so famous a name; but Pickwick, the
+decayed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> coaching hamlet, can scarcely be said to &#8220;live up to&#8221; its
+literary associations. Strictly speaking, it is not even decayed; but, now
+that the coaches are no more, flourishes on the &#8220;Pickwick Brewery,&#8221; which
+makes a brave show down the road. It is an eminently prosperous-looking,
+stone-built hamlet, a comparatively modern offshoot of the hoary Saxon
+village of Corsham, which, once on the main road, was thrust into the
+background when the mail coach came in, and the great highway to Bath was
+cut on this route, half a mile away.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img60.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">CROSS KEYS.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>It is a curious literary puzzle&mdash;How did the title of the &#8220;Pickwick
+Papers&#8221; originate? It is a well-ascertained fact that, in 1835, Dickens,
+then a reporter for the daily press, was sent to Bath to report a speech
+of Lord John Russell&#8217;s, that now almost-forgotten statesman being a
+candidate for representing that city. The future novelist was then but
+twenty-three years of age, a time of life when impressions of travel are
+vivid and lasting. Journeying by coach, he had every opportunity for
+observing places and people; and so it happened that when, a few months
+later, the now historic publishing firm of Chapman and Hall offered him
+the literary commission which resulted in the &#8220;Posthumous Papers of the
+Pickwick Club,&#8221; the story he produced derived many of its features from
+his own experiences. His recollections had no time to fade, for in March,
+1836, the first part of &#8220;Pickwick&#8221; was published, and others were well on
+the way. It must ever be a matter of doubt whether Dickens noticed the
+existence of Pickwick, the place. That he had noted the existence of
+Moses<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> Pickwick, the coach proprietor of Bath, is obvious enough from the
+&#8220;Pickwick Papers,&#8221; where Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller are taking their
+seats for that City of the Waters.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;m wery much afeerd, sir, that the properiator o&#8217; this here coach is a
+playin&#8217; some imperence vith us,&#8217; says Sam.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;How is that, Sam?&#8217; said Mr. Pickwick; &#8216;aren&#8217;t the names down on the
+way-bill?&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;The names is not only down on the vay-bill, sir,&#8217; replied Sam, &#8216;but
+they&#8217;ve painted vun on &#8217;em up, on the door o&#8217; the coach.&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Dear me,&#8217; exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, quite staggered by the coincidence,
+&#8216;what a very extraordinary thing!&#8217;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Yes, but that ain&#8217;t all,&#8217; said Sam, again directing his master&#8217;s
+attention to the coach door; &#8216;not content vith writin&#8217; up Pickwick, they
+puts &#8220;Moses&#8221; afore it, vich I call addin&#8217; insult to injury.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>There were then, it will be seen, real Pickwicks living in Bath, and the
+&#8220;Moses&#8221; Pickwick referred to was an actual person, the great-grandson of
+one Eleazer Pickwick, who, many years before, had risen by degrees from
+the humble position of post-boy at the &#8220;Old Bear,&#8221; at Bath, to be landlord
+of the once famous &#8220;White Hart&#8221; inn, which stood where the &#8220;Grand Pump
+Room&#8221; hotel now towers aloft.</p>
+
+<p>Now comes the long-sought-for connection between place and persons of
+identical name. Eleazer Pickwick was a foundling. Discovered as an infant
+on the road at Pickwick, he was named by the guardians, in accordance with
+an old custom, after the place.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>CORSHAM REGIS</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span>Corsham, to which Pickwick belongs, is one of those places which it would
+be almost an indignity to call a &#8220;village,&#8221; while to name it a &#8220;town&#8221;
+would be to give too great an importance to it. It is Corsham &#8220;Regis,&#8221; by
+virtue of having been a residence of the Saxon Kings; but the Great
+Western has docked the kingly suffix, and if you were to ask at Paddington
+for a ticket to Corsham Regis, it is to be feared that the booking-clerk
+would not recognize the place under its full name.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img61.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE HUNGERFORD ALMSHOUSE, CORSHAM REGIS.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>The townlet is a pleasing one, and, always excepting the new and ugly
+stone villas recently built, it abounds with delightful specimens of
+domestic architecture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and mid-eighteenth
+centuries; fine houses built of Corsham stone in a dignified Renaissance
+manner, or in the earlier Tudor convention of gables and mullioned
+windows. Corsham Court, the finest of all, standing in its<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span> nobly-wooded
+park, is Elizabethan, and exhibits the merging of the two periods of
+Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was Lady Hungerford, widow of a
+former owner of Corsham Court, who, in 1672, built the quaint Hungerford
+Almshouse, close by.</p>
+
+<p>For the rest, Corsham has little history. It was the scene of a mysterious
+murder in 1594, when a gentleman, one Henry Long, was shot dead, while
+sitting at dinner amid his friends, by Sir Charles and Sir Henry Danvers,
+two brothers, who hailed from Dauntsey. The motive was never known, and
+the assassins were never punished. Six years later, Charles was beheaded
+for taking part in Essex&#8217;s rebellion; which seems to be a kind of oblique
+and fumbling retribution on the part of Providence for his crime. Henry,
+however, prospered amazingly, and was eventually created Earl Danby,
+flourishing all his life, as the wicked are, on good authority, supposed
+to do, &#8220;like the green bay tree,&#8221; and dying in the odour of sanctity,
+&#8220;full of honours, woundes, and daies.&#8221; He is commemorated in an eloquent
+epitaph, written by the saintly George Herbert of Bemerton, more than ten
+years before his (Danvers&#8217;) death; a circumstance which would seem to
+prove Herbert a hypocrite and Danvers peculiarly solicitous for his own
+post-mortem reputation.</p>
+
+<p>Corsham was the birthplace of Sir Richard Blackmore, physician to William
+the Third, and poetaster, who, says Leigh Hunt, &#8220;composed heaps of dull
+poetry, versified the Psalms, and, by way of extending the lesson of
+patience, wrote a paraphrase of the Book of Job.&#8221; What sarcasm!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>But Blackmore was read in his day, just as Leigh Hunt was in his, and Fate
+is sardonic enough (for who at this time reads Hunt&#8217;s tedious stuff?) to
+consign critic and criticized to one common limbo of neglect.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XXXVIII</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE BOX TUNNEL</i></div>
+
+<p>From Corsham the old road used to lead precipitously up to the summit of
+Box Hill and thence downwards by breakneck gullies, furrowed by rains, and
+rich in loose stones, into Box. The modern highway goes modestly round the
+shoulder of the hill. The village of Box has gained an adventitious fame
+from the celebrated tunnel on the Great Western Railway, which pierces Box
+Hill, and was, upon its completion, the longest tunnel in England.
+Compared with later works, it sinks into quite minor importance; but it is
+still an impressive engineering feat, whether you view it from the railway
+carriage windows or from the highway. Its length is 3199 yards, or nearly
+two miles, and the hill rises above it to a height of three hundred feet.
+Its cost of over &pound;500,000 is no less impressive.</p>
+
+<p>A curious story is told at Box of a platelayer, employed in the tunnel
+some twenty years ago, who with his gang worked there at night, and slept
+at Box village in the day. After a while he became engaged to a girl in
+the village, and the wedding-day was fixed. The vicar of Box, however, was
+a stickler for red tape, and it appears that he found some technical
+objection<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> in the fact of the man not sleeping the night in the village.
+At any rate, he would not perform the ceremony until the Bishop (of
+Gloucester) compelled him to do so.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img62.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">ENTRANCE TO BOX QUARRIES.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>BOX QUARRIES</i></div>
+
+<p>At Box we are well within the stone district whose quarries have rendered
+building-stone from the times of the Roman occupation until the present
+day. The oolite which comes from here and from the Corsham quarries is a
+fine grained stone, easily worked, and of a rich cream colour when freshly
+wrought. As &#8220;Bath stone&#8221; it is famous, and has made Bath exclusively a
+city of stone-built houses. In addition, it is sent to all parts of the
+country, and even exported. The quarries of Corsham and Box are,
+therefore, the centres <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>of a large and important industry. Box Hill is a
+mass of this stone, and the tunnel is consequently pierced through it.
+Three of the quarries are situated in the hill, some of them of great
+extent. The most extensive is driven into the flank of the hill like a
+tunnel, and has over three miles of galleries laid with tram-lines: dark,
+damp places, whose roofs are supported here and there by timber struts.
+The coldness of these quarry tunnels is remarkably piercing, even in the
+height of summer.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img63.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">BOX VILLAGE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>Box seems to have been a favourite country resort of the Romans, away from
+the crowded streets of <i>Aqu&aelig; Solis</i>; for on the land that slopes down
+toward the little Box Brook there have been found many Roman remains,
+while, only so recently as 1897, the site of a Roman villa was excavated
+near the south side of the church, with the result of unearthing a
+complete ground-plan and such interesting relics as mosaic pavements and
+votive altars.</p>
+
+<p>It is a crowded village to-day, and rather by way of being a town. Lying
+in a deep hollow, its stone-built houses climb steeply up both sides, with
+a picturesque glimpse back from where the old village lock-up stands
+beside the highway to the straggling cottages that line the old road down
+the side of Box Hill.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Box we also, in the course of one mile, leave Wiltshire and come
+into Somerset, with Bath but four miles distant. The Box Brook runs on the
+right-hand side of the road, the Great Western Railway on the left. Soon,
+however, the road bends to the right at Bathford, and we come to
+Batheaston,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> once a village, but now merely a suburb of Bath, joined to
+the city by continuous streets.</p>
+
+<p>But there are pretty scenes just off these streets. Bathampton Mill, for
+instance, just below, on the Avon, with views of the grand circle of hills
+that enclose Bath.</p>
+
+<p>The picturesquely broken and wooded elevation of Combe Down rises away on
+the other side of the valley, with Prior Park nestled amid its hanging
+woods, and the village of Widcombe beneath. At an elevation of five
+hundred and fifty feet above the sea, it commands views not to be bettered
+in all the country round. Down below, in the warm steamy atmosphere of the
+Avon valley, one sees the railway entering Bath on its stone viaducts, and
+the trains winding in and out along the sharp curves amid the clustered
+houses. Bathampton lies below there, where the air is languorous and the
+hillsides hold the heat of the sun. From that sheltered spot the view
+backwards towards Bathampton Mill and the terraced houses of Batheaston is
+delightful; the houses that turn their ugly side to the road showing from
+here, amid their setting of green, like fairy palaces. Lower down the
+valley the houses cluster more thickly, where the valley widens out into
+the likeness of a great amphitheatre, and suburbs fade gradually into
+Bath.</p>
+
+<p>Then, coming to Walcot, the road finally loses all its character as a
+highway, and tramways, omnibuses, and traffic of every description
+proclaim the entrance to a populous city.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img64.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">BATHAMPTON MILL.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+<h2>XXXIX</h2>
+
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>BATH</i></div>
+
+<p>The story of Bath goes back some two thousand years, and has its origin in
+the myths of ages, in which Bladud figures variously as discoverer and
+creator of the healing springs. Serious historians are wont to exclude
+Bladud, and his descent from Brute the Trojan, and Lud Hudibras, the
+British King, from their pages, for the reason that Geoffrey of Monmouth,
+the monkish chronicler, who first narrates these stories in his history of
+Britain, was apt sometimes to confound chronicling with romancing. When,
+therefore, he tells how Prince Bladud was an adept in magic, and placed a
+cunning stone in the springs of this valley so that it made the water hot
+and healed the sick who resorted to them, he is looked upon with a
+suspicion that is deepened when he goes on to say that Bladud successfully
+attempted to fly with wings of his own invention from Bath to London, and
+only came to grief when London was reached, through the strings breaking,
+so that he fell and was dashed to pieces on the roof of the Temple of
+Apollo!</p>
+
+<p>Nor is the better known legend of Prince Bladud, the leper, exiled from
+his father&#8217;s Court, universally accepted. According to that story, the
+Prince wandered to where Keynsham now stands, where he became a swineherd,
+and infected the pigs with his disease. Coming, however, into this valley,
+the porkers rolled themselves into the hot mud, which then occupied the
+site of Bath Abbey and the Baths, and were cured. Bladud perceiving this,
+applied the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> remedy to himself, with the like result, and returned to his
+home once more; building a city upon the spot in after years. This
+happened <span class="smcaplc">B.C.</span> 863, and there is a statue of King Bladud, as he afterwards
+became, erected in the &#8220;Pump Room&#8221; in 1669; so that any one not
+subscribing to the truth of this legend had better do so at once, in view
+of this overwhelming evidence thus afforded.</p>
+
+<div class="figright"><img src="images/img65.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>THE SUN GOD.</small></div>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>ROMAN RELICS</i></div>
+
+<p>We are on more certain ground when we come to the Romans. That great
+people left too many evidences of their occupation of this island for many
+doubts to be entertained as to where they settled, or when. Thus, when we
+assign the close of the first half-century of the Christian era to their
+discovery of the medicinal properties of these waters, we do so, not from
+legend, but from the evidence of the buildings they have left behind. It
+is singular that we do not, as a rule, lay much stress upon the Roman
+occupation of Britain. Yet it lasted long, and was for nearly four
+centuries what modern political slang terms &#8220;effectual.&#8221; An advanced
+civilization reigned here then, and Britain became both a populous and a
+flourishing colony. The dealings of England with India in the present time
+form a tolerably close parallel with Rome&#8217;s conquest of this island, and
+if we go further and liken the British who remained in the remote places
+of Cornwall, Devon, and Wales to the fierce Afghans and Chitralis who have
+troubled us on the borders of Hindostan, we shall by no means strain the
+similitude. Bath&mdash;or rather <i>Aqu&aelig; Solis</i>, the &#8220;Waters of the Sun&#8221;<a name='fna_6' id='fna_6' href='#f_6'><small>[6]</small></a>&mdash;as
+well as being the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> one health-resort in Britain for the wealthy Roman
+colonists who needed such a retreat, was to the Roman officer of that era
+what Simla and the Hills are to our own military men in India&mdash;a place for
+rest and the restoration of health after the rigours of a hard campaign;
+with this difference, indeed, that to the Hills they go for coolness,
+while at Aqu&aelig; Solis is the expatriated legionary found both healing
+springs and a genial warmth after the bleak, inhospitable hills of the Far
+West or the Farther North.</p>
+
+<p>Discoveries at Bath and in its immediate neighbourhood have proved that
+there was a sanatorium for invalided officers on Combe Down, and we can
+well imagine such being conveyed hither, to recover or to die, along the
+road.</p>
+
+<p>The Baths of the Romans were discovered in 1755, fifteen feet below the
+surface of the ground; relics of a past magnificence; of a civilization
+that expired in bloodshed and conflagration. It was in the year 410 that
+the military forces of Rome left Britain. The<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> weak Romano-British soon
+retrograded, and, worse than all, the country split up into petty, and
+mutually hostile, kingdoms. The Baths were neglected, the Arts decayed,
+and in Britain generally there was not spirit sufficient to withstand the
+marauding Saxons who finally overwhelmed the country and pillaged and
+burnt <i>Aqu&aelig; Solis</i>, just as they had pillaged every other city. It was
+after the sanguinary Battle of Deorham, <span class="smcaplc">A.D.</span> 577, that the three cities of
+<i>Glevum</i> (Gloucester), <i>Corinium</i> (Cirencester), and <i>Aqu&aelig; Solis</i> fell,
+spoils to the Saxon hosts under Ceawlin. You may search for the site of
+that great contest at the village now called Dyreham, some fifteen miles
+north-east of Bath, in Gloucestershire, and from its position it will be
+at once evident that those three cities must immediately have fallen after
+that fatal day. That was the cementing of the Saxon power in the West, and
+a fitting end to a hundred and fifty years of incessant warfare. The
+British never learned that union means strength; they never had the sense
+to combine before a common foe, and so the fierce invaders met and
+defeated them in detail, aided of course by their own fitness for the
+fight, and by the British incapacity. The Britons were lapped in luxury,
+and went drunk into battle, so that there was no possible hope for them in
+fighting the hardy warriors from the North. The wars waged then were wars
+of extermination, and neither persons nor places were spared. This proud
+city was levelled with the ground, and the civilization of four hundred
+years perished by fire in a day. Evidences of that dreadful time were
+plainly to be seen when the Roman Baths<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> were excavated. They are to be
+seen even now, at the Museum, together with relics which prove the high
+degree of civilization that had been attained.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img66.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">MYSTERIOUS LEADEN TABLET DISCOVERED AT BATH.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>Among other marks of progress is an inscribed tablet with an inscription
+which one authority declares to be the record of a &#8220;cure from either
+taking the waters or bathing, certified by three great men;&#8221; while another
+is equally positive that it is an &#8220;imprecation upon nine men, supposed to
+be guests, who had stolen a tablecloth at the conclusion of a
+dinner-party.&#8221; The age of this tablet is fixed &#8220;between the second and
+fifth centuries of the Christian era,&#8221; which in itself seems to be a wide
+enough margin. As if, however, this were not already sufficient, there are
+others, learned in these things,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> who declare that this relic records how
+a certain Quintus received 500,000 lbs. of copper coin for washing a lady
+named &#8220;Vilbia&#8221;! We are left to take our choice between speculations
+unfavourable to the personal cleanliness of that lady, or astonishment at
+the mode and extravagance of the payment. There is, indeed, &#8220;another way,&#8221;
+as the cookery books have it; but as that involves doubts about the
+scholarship of professed antiquaries, this third resort may only be hinted
+at in this place. Who shall decide where antiquaries disagree?</p>
+
+<p>The Saxons were shy of the places they had burnt. Heathens that they were,
+they generally believed the bloodstained ruins to be haunted by evil
+spirits, and so built their settlements at some distance away. The site of
+Bath seems to have been, to some degree, an exception. After lying waste
+for over a hundred years, it was occupied again, for the fame of its
+waters had not wholly died out: and &#8220;Akemanceaster,&#8221; as the Saxons called
+it, entered upon a new lease of life. At that period, too, the Roman Road
+through Silchester, Speen, and Marlborough acquired its name of Akeman
+Street; the names meaning, as some would say, the &#8220;Sick Man&#8217;s Town,&#8221; and
+the &#8220;Sick Man&#8217;s Road,&#8221; from &#8220;aches&#8221; and the fame of the place, even then,
+as a spot at which to cure them. This has been characterized as absurd,
+and the derivation more plausibly held to be from a corruption of the
+Roman word <i>Aqu&aelig;</i> affixed to the word &#8220;maen,&#8221; or &#8220;man,&#8221; meaning &#8220;stone&#8221; or
+&#8220;place,&#8221; and joined to the word &#8220;c&aelig;ster,&#8221; a form of the Roman &#8220;castrum,&#8221; a
+fortification; the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> compound word thus obtained meaning &#8220;the Fortified
+place at the Waters.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>ROYAL VISITS</i></div>
+
+<p>To follow the fortunes of Akemanceaster, or Bath, as it eventually became,
+through the Saxon period to the present time would be an exercise too
+prolonged for these pages. That Kings and Princes and ecclesiastics
+visited it then we know, and that the Normans built a great Abbey church
+where the present building of Bath Abbey stands is an easily ascertainable
+fact; but all the comings and goings of the great ones of the earth during
+the succeeding centuries would form but a bald catalogue. It is only when
+we come to the middle of the seventeenth century that we need pick up the
+thread of the narrative again, at the visits of the Queen of Charles the
+First in 1644; of Charles the Second, the Duke and Duchess of York, and
+Prince Rupert in 1663; the Queen of James the Second, 1687; and the
+Princess Anne, 1692; and as Queen Anne, 1702. Truly, a brilliant list for
+such a small place as Bath then was.</p>
+
+<p>But these Royal visits did not greatly benefit the place, as we may judge
+when we read that from 1592 to 1692, Bath had increased by only seventeen
+houses. Why was this? I conceive it to have been owing to the
+extraordinary apathy of the people of Bath, who had not provided the
+slightest accommodation for those who then drank the waters. Of what use
+was it for Sir Alexander Frayser, physician to Charles the Second, sending
+all his patients hither instead of to Continental health-resorts like Aix,
+if they had to drink the waters at a pump standing on the open pavement?
+and imagine the delights of bathing when<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> the Baths were open to the
+public view, the said public delighting to throw dead cats, offal, and all
+manner of nastinesses among the bathers!</p>
+
+<p>A local doctor, named Oliver, took up these grievances in 1702, and the
+Corporation then set about building a Pump Room. This was opened in 1704,
+and the celebrated Beau Nash having been at about the same period
+appointed Master of the Ceremonies, the Bath visitors&#8217; list showed a
+decided improvement.</p>
+
+<p>Let us see what the amusements at &#8220;the Bath&#8221; had been hitherto. The place
+was devoid of elegant or attractive amusements, and the only promenade for
+the fashionables who followed Queen Anne to this then outlandish town was
+a grove of sycamores in which there was a bowling-green, and a band
+consisting of two performers, playing a fiddle and a hautboy! The
+courtiers who had deserted St. James&#8217;s to follow her gouty Majesty to the
+waters must have cursed their folly when they saw those sycamores and
+heard that band!</p>
+
+<p>Nash altered all this. He was no King Log, and accordingly soon procured a
+band of music for the new Pump Room; an Assembly Room for the fashionables
+to take &#8220;tay&#8221; or chocolate, to dance, play cards, or to gossip in; and
+devised a code of manners, if not of morals, for the regulation of his
+little world, which he ruled with a rod of iron. He regulated everything,
+from the greatest festivities down to the smallest details of dress and
+deportment, and not the late M. Worth himself was more autocratic as to
+what should be worn. It is a familiar story how, the &#8220;Dutchess&#8221; of
+Queensbury appearing at a dress ball in an apron<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> (an article of dress
+which, fashionable elsewhere, he had tabooed), he told her to remove it or
+leave. The apron was one of point lace, and said to have been worth five
+hundred guineas; but the Duchess removed it humbly enough, for had not
+this mighty arbiter of fashions declared aprons &#8220;fit only for Abigails&#8221;
+(by which name he meant maidservants to be understood), and who was she
+that she should dispute such an authority? Then, when the Princess Amelia,
+daughter of George the Third, begged him to allow another dance after
+eleven o&#8217;clock, what did this potentate reply? Did he humbly grant the
+request? Not at all; he refused, adding that the laws of Bath were, like
+those of Lycurgus, unalterable.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XL</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>BEAU NASH</i></div>
+
+<p>They say that Nash &#8220;made&#8221; Bath. That, however, is but partly true. Bath
+was beginning to make its way when he appeared, and he simply exploited
+the place. The Moment had come and brought the Man with it, and a tight
+grip he retained over all fashionable functions for over fifty years. He
+warred with the high-class rowdies who would have made the place a resort
+of Mohocks, and elevated &#8220;Bath manners&#8221; into a school of conduct perfectly
+well known and imitated, at a distance, in other parts of the Kingdom.
+They were manners of the most elaborate kind, and if attempted nowadays,
+it is difficult to conceive how the wheels of the world&#8217;s<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> business would
+go round at all. When a meeting took place between a lady and a gentleman,
+the gentleman inquiring, with a most elaborate bow, after her health, in
+such terms as &#8220;I am vastly honoured to have the pleasure of seeing you; I
+trust the salubrious airs of the Bath are keeping you in good health;&#8221; and
+the lady replying, &#8220;I am much obleeged<a name='fna_7' id='fna_7' href='#f_7'><small>[7]</small></a> by your thoughtful inquiries: I
+protest I am mighty well,&#8221; it took quite an appreciable time to descend
+from those rarefied heights of courtesy and come down to the gossip and
+scandals which were, we are told, among the principal pastimes of this
+health-resort in the days of powder and patches.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>SEVERE MEASURES</i></div>
+
+<p>But Nash not only saw to it that his fashionable clients behaved
+themselves. He had to contend with the camp-followers of fashion who
+swarmed into Bath. Mendicants infested the streets and made the gorge of
+those delicate eighteenth-century creatures rise with the sight of their
+rags and diseases. Nash knew that if he did not administer his kingdom
+severely, and if he allowed many of these stern realities of the world to
+obtrude upon the sight of the fastidious, the new-found fortunes of Bath
+would disappear, and his career with them. So, perhaps from an acute sense
+of the necessity for self-preservation, rather than from any desire to
+play the autocrat, he imposed his will so thoroughly that he became an
+unquestioned ruler. He induced the Corporation, which had entrusted him
+with these powers, to procure an Act in 1739 for the suppression of the
+beggars. It begins by reciting that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span> &#8220;several loose, idle, and disorderly
+persons daily resort to the City of Bath, and remain wandering and begging
+about the streets and other places of the said City, and the suburbs
+thereof, under pretence of their being resident at The Bath for the
+benefit of the Mineral and Medical Waters, to the great disturbances of
+his Maj.&#8217;s subjects resorting to the said City. Be it enacted that the
+Constables, petty Constables, Tything-men, and other Peace Officers of the
+said City ... are hereby empowered and required to seize and apprehend all
+such persons who shall be so found wandering, begging, or misbehaving
+themselves, and them to carry before the Mayor, or some Justice, or
+Justices, of the Peace for the said City; who shall upon the oath of one
+sufficient witness, or upon his own view, commit the said person or
+persons so wandering or begging, to the House of Correction for any time
+not exceeding the space of 12 Kalendar months, and to be kept at hard
+labour, and receive correction as loose, idle, and disorderlie persons.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img67.jpg" alt="" /><br />
+<small>THE BATHEASTON VASE.</small></div>
+
+<p>So there was a reverse to the medal, and a very stringent government
+prevailed behind the careless, butterfly existence of the age, when
+literary squibs and lampoons and the gay personalities of Anstey&#8217;s <i>New
+Bath Guide</i> formed the excitements of the Bath.</p>
+
+<p>A curious relic of this artificial life is to be seen in the Victoria Park
+in the &#8220;Batheaston Vase.&#8221; This is the name given to a handsome antique
+placed in a kind of classic temple. The vase was discovered at Tusculum,
+Cicero&#8217;s villa, near Frascati, and brought to England during the last
+century by Sir John and Lady Miller, who then owned a beautiful villa at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span>
+Batheaston, one of the favourite resorts of the society of that day.
+Decorated with garlands of bays, the vase was used at Lady Miller&#8217;s
+receptions as a depository for verses written by her guests. It was
+presided over by one of the ladies of the party, posing as the Muse of
+Poetry, who drew the poetic offerings from its recesses, and, reciting
+them, crowned the authors of the best effort with bays. The opportunity
+proved too tempting for some of the wilder spirits, who wrote verses of a
+ribald and satirical character, better calculated to bring a blush to the
+cheek of the Poetic Muse than to add to either the morals or the harmony
+of those gatherings.</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XLI</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>RALPH ALLEN</i></div>
+
+<p>Among this careless throng there were a few men of will and purpose. Ralph
+Allen; the two Woods, father and son, architects; and, somewhat later than
+them, John Palmer, were bold spirits who changed the aspect of Bath and
+helped to revolutionize the communications of the country.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>One of the greatest historical figures of Bath&mdash;perhaps even the greatest
+figure of all&mdash;before whom Bladud, Prince of Britain, at one end of the
+historic period, and Beau Nash at the other, sink into something like
+insignificance, is that of Ralph Allen. And yet&mdash;so arbitrary is
+fame&mdash;that for every ten who could recite you, off-hand, something of the
+history and achievements of Allen, a hundred could recount the story of
+Bladud or of Nash. This is not to say that Bath has forgotten her great
+man. On the contrary, the citizens show you his &#8220;Town House&#8221; in Lilliput
+Alley with no little pride, while his great mansion of Prior Park, to the
+south of the city, and looking down upon it, remains to this day the most
+princely edifice for miles around. But however mindful Bath may be of him,
+and although his classic house on the hillside inevitably recalls him to
+the memory of Bath people, the fact remains that Allen&#8217;s is a name
+comparatively unknown to Bath&#8217;s visitors.</p>
+
+<p>That he deserves a record in these pages must be conceded, for he it was
+who first established a regular postal service between one provincial town
+and another, and carried letters along the cross-roads, which, until his
+time, had been utterly neglected by the Post-office.</p>
+
+<p>It is a singular thing that to Bath should have belonged both Ralph Allen
+and John Palmer; the men who respectively developed the postal service and
+founded mail-coaches. It is true that Allen was not a native of Bath. His
+father was an innkeeper at St. Blazey, in Cornwall, and in that far
+western county he first learned the routine of a post-office, in the
+early<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> years of last century. He was eleven years of age when he was
+placed with his grandmother, the post-mistress of St. Columb, and his
+industry in keeping the accounts secured him the good word of the district
+surveyor, who procured the lad an appointment as assistant to the
+post-master at Bath. Fortune favoured him, and when the post-master died,
+Allen was appointed in his stead. He had not long become post-master
+before he matured a scheme for developing the &#8220;bye&#8221; and cross-road posts,
+which should bring profit to himself and convenience the community. He
+proposed to &#8220;farm&#8221; these posts and pay the Government an annual sum for
+the privilege, leaving the direct posts between London and the provinces
+in the hands of the Post-office. A &#8220;bye&#8221; post was one between provincial
+towns; a cross-road post was one that lay off the half-dozen post routes
+then existing.</p>
+
+<p>It was in 1719 that Allen, then but twenty-six years of age, made his
+proposal to the Government. The postage on those descriptions of letters
+had hitherto amounted to &pound;400 per annum. He was prepared to give &pound;6000
+yearly, and to work the posts for a period of seven years, in
+consideration of receiving the whole of the revenue during that term. His
+offer was accepted, and the contract took effect from June 21, 1720. How
+Allen procured the funds for his enterprise is not known, but he must have
+had substantial financial support, since his first quarter&#8217;s expenditure
+in establishing his system amounted to no less a sum than &pound;1500, while the
+salaries of the staff he got together totalled a further &pound;3000 per annum.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span>Allen was a man of a modest and retiring habit, but with the greatest
+confidence in himself. He needed all his confidence, and all the untiring
+industry and vigilance that were his, for when three years of the seven
+had expired he found himself a loser by a small amount, and when the
+contract lapsed, his gain was quite inappreciable. Yet he renewed it for
+another seven years, convinced that the better facilities he had provided
+for the carriage of letters must needs lead to great developments. He was
+right: the correspondence of the country grew, and in 1741 we find him
+bidding &pound;17,500 per annum for another term of seven years. He continued
+thus until his death in 1764, in receipt, for many years, of an income of
+not less than &pound;12,000 a year on his post-office enterprise alone.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>POSTAL SERVICES</i></div>
+
+<p>Those were the times of the real post-boys. All letters were carried by
+mounted messengers, since the stage-coaches then running (where they
+existed at all!) were not fast enough, frequent enough, or sufficiently
+safe for the purpose. A side-light is thrown upon the average &#8220;speed&#8221; of
+these stage-coaches, not then considered speedy enough, by the onerous
+condition in Allen&#8217;s contract that the mails were to be carried by his
+post-boys &#8220;at not less than five miles an hour.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Allen was in the forefront of Bath enterprise, and was associated with
+John Wood, the elder of the two architects of that name, in rebuilding the
+city. Before their time it had been a place of mean streets and winding
+alleys, the out-at-elbows remains of Gothic times. As a result of their
+labours, and the labours<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span> of their immediate successors, Bath renewed her
+youth in a revived Classicism. Among the monuments of that time, Prior
+Park is conspicuous. It was built by John Wood in 1743 for Allen, whose
+great object in erecting this veritable palace was to demonstrate the
+qualities of the building-stone on his Combe Down property. Here he
+entertained some of the foremost literary men of his time: Pope, Fielding,
+Warburton; and is enshrined by Fielding as &#8220;Squire Allworthy&#8221; in &#8220;Tom
+Jones,&#8221; and by Pope in the lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem">&#8220;Let low-born Allen, with ingenuous shame,<br />
+Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The situation, and the front elevation of Prior Park, form together,
+perhaps, the noblest grouping of classic architecture and romantic scenery
+to be found in England. It was a time tinged with romanticism of an
+artificial kind which generally showed itself in affected and
+objectionable ways. But this artificiality was a matter of deportment
+merely. Literature was practised then, and Architecture flourished in the
+land.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img68.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">PRIOR PARK.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;SHAM CASTLE&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>There is another work of Allen&#8217;s crowning the hill at Bathwick, which
+serves to show at once the romantic and the artificial signs of the times.
+Allen looked out from the windows of his Town House upon the bare hilltop,
+and thought how the view would have been improved had there been a ruined
+castle showing against the sky-line. Accordingly he built such an one, and
+there it is to-day; and if you don&#8217;t know it to be a ruin built to order,
+it is <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>very impressive indeed&mdash;at a distance. If, however, you know it
+to be a Sham Castle (which, by the way, is the name of it), romance
+immediately flies, abashed. There it stands, on its wind-swept heights,
+naked and unashamed; a frontage with nothing behind it; an empty mask,
+with crossbow slits from which arrows never were discharged, and
+battlements scarce more substantial than the pasteboard turrets that
+furnish the stage in romantic drama. If hypocrisy be indeed the homage
+that Vice pays to Virtue; then, by parallel reasoning, here is homage of
+the most flattering kind paid to Gothicism by an age that above all things
+prided itself on the way it fulfilled its classic ideals. It was a common
+failing of the time; and possibly, if attention had been<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> called to it, a
+ready answer might have been found in the retort that &#8220;consistency is the
+bugbear of little minds.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img69.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">&#8220;SHAM CASTLE.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XLII</h2>
+
+<p>But to return to the Beau, who seems to represent Bath more fully than any
+other person connected with its history. In his old age Nash fell upon
+evil times. Ruined by his own folly and extravagance, he had no
+opportunities of retrieving the position, for he had lived to see the
+friends of his more fortunate era pass away, and to witness the arrival of
+a younger generation which regarded his laws with indifference, if not
+with open contempt. His last years were eked out with the aid of a
+pittance of &pound;10 a month given him by the Corporation of the city for which
+he had done so much, and a new Master of the Ceremonies presently reigned
+in his stead.</p>
+
+<p>In his declining days, Bath had altogether changed from the place it had
+been when in the zenith of his power. It had, for one thing, grown out of
+all knowledge, architecturally. The Grand Circus, parades, terraces,
+squares, all manner of finely designed houses, had sprung up. Smollett, in
+&#8220;Humphrey Clinker,&#8221; makes Squire Bramble peevishly recount those changes,
+and say, &#8220;The same artist who planned the Circus has likewise projected a
+crescent: when that is finished, we shall probably have a star; and those
+who are living thirty years hence may<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span> perhaps see all the signs of the
+zodiac exhibited in architecture at Bath.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>BATH SOCIETY</i></div>
+
+<p>Then the select society of fifty years before had given place to a very
+mixed concourse, if we are to believe the same authority: &#8220;Every upstart
+of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at
+Bath, as in the very focus of observation. Clerks and factors from the
+East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters,
+negro-drivers, and hucksters, from our American plantations, enriched they
+know not how; agents, commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, in
+two successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers, and
+jobbers of every kind; men of low birth, and no breeding, have found
+themselves suddenly translated into a state of affluence, unknown to
+former ages; and no wonder that their brains should be intoxicated with
+pride, vanity, and presumption. Knowing no other criterion of greatness
+but the ostentation of wealth, they discharge their affluence, without
+taste or conduct, through every channel of the most absurd extravagance;
+and all of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any further
+qualification, they can mingle with the princes and nobles of the land.
+Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel-nosed
+sharks, prey on the blubber of those uncouth whales of fortune, are
+infected with the same rage of displaying their importance; and the
+slightest indisposition serves them for a pretext to insist on being
+conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble country-dances and cotillons among
+lordlings, squires,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> counsellors, and clergy. These delicate creatures
+from Bedfordbury, Butcher-row, Crutched-friars, and Botolph-lane, cannot
+breathe in the gross air of the lower town, or conform to the vulgar rules
+of a common lodging-house: the husband, therefore, must provide an entire
+house or elegant apartments in the new buildings. Such is the composition
+of what is called fashionable company at Bath.&#8221;</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XLIII</h2>
+
+<p>What, however, of the literary celebrities, visitors or residents, or of
+the statesmen, the naval and military commanders, who were frequenting
+Bath at the time when that jaundiced criticism was penned. Dr. Johnson was
+then taking the waters, which are said by a later authority to taste of
+&#8220;warm smoothin&#8217;-irons;&#8221; Gainsborough alternately painted and bathed; while
+the Earl of Chatham and his still greater son; Nelson, Wolfe, Sheridan,
+and Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Southey, Jane Austin, and Landor, helped to
+sustain the repute of this, which Landor called the next most beautiful
+place in the world to Florence, well on into the next century.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE BATH OF LONG AGO</i></div>
+
+<p>A diarist of over a century ago tells us how he went to Bath, and what he
+saw and did there. This was the Reverend Thomas Campbell, a lively
+Irishman (notwithstanding his Scottish name), who journeyed to England in
+1775, and visited Johnson and other literary bigwigs in London, coming to
+Bath on April 28, to take the waters. The coach set out from the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> New
+Church in the Strand (by which, no doubt, Saint Mary-le-Strand is
+indicated) at six o&#8217;clock in the morning, and came to Speenhamland
+(&#8220;Spinomland,&#8221; says the clergyman in his diary), where they lay. The
+country, he remarks, was very rich from London to this place, yet it was
+so level that there was scarce a good prospect the whole way, unless
+Clieveden, near Maidenhead Bridge could be so called.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img70.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">OLD PULTENEY BRIDGE.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p>When the coach resumed its journey the next day&mdash;the passengers,
+doubtless, lightened in pocket by that &#8220;long bill&#8221; of the &#8220;Pelican&#8221; at
+Speenhamland&mdash;the bleakness of Marlborough Downs communicated itself to
+the air, and from Newbury to Cottenham,<a name='fna_8' id='fna_8' href='#f_8'><small>[8]</small></a> a distance of nearly thirty
+miles, the countryside was very bare of trees and herbage, in addition to
+being the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> worst land this Irishman had seen in England, and certainly
+swarming with beggars. For miles together the coach was pursued by them,
+from two to nine at a time, almost all of them children. They were more
+importunate than those of Ireland, or <i>even</i> those in Wales. Poor Taffy!</p>
+
+<p>When our traveller reached Bath he rejoiced greatly, and, the next day
+being Sunday, went to the Abbey Church with other fashionables, and heard
+a sorry discourse, wretchedly delivered. Afterwards, in the Pump Room,
+where the yawning visitors were assembled, he met Lady Molyneux, who asked
+him to dinner, where he spent the pleasantest day since he came to
+England, for there were five or six lively Irish girls who sang and
+danced, and did everything but agree among themselves. &#8220;Women,&#8221; remarks
+our diarist, &#8220;are certainly more envious than men, or at least they
+discover it upon more trifling occasions, and they cannot bear with
+patience that one of their party should obtain a preference of attention;
+this was thoroughly exemplified this day. One of these, who was a pretty
+little coquet, went home after dinner to dress for the Rooms, and her
+colour was certainly altered on returning for tea; they all fell into a
+titter, and one of them (who was herself painted, as I conceived) cried
+out, &#8216;Heavens, look at her cheeks!&#8217;&#8221; This, truly, was unkind, and more
+certainly indiscreet. The young lady with the startling cheeks
+subsequently sang a song, which somewhat surprised the clergyman, from its
+breadth of idea, but the other ladies, and matrons too, &#8220;were kicking with
+laughter.&#8221; Presently they all went home, the ladies most<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> affectionate
+toward one another, and, says Mr. Campbell, &#8220;it is amazing what pleasure
+women find in kissing each other, for they do smack amazingly.&#8221;</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>A TORY PROPHECY</i></div>
+
+<p>The worthy clergyman seems to have been introduced to the less dignified
+circles of fashion. The general tone of the more exclusive sets was by no
+means so lively, for it was about this time that the Indian nabobs, the
+Civil servants, the retired officers of the Army and Navy and the East
+India Company began to discover Bath and to settle there, filling the
+place with Toryism and grumblings about &#8220;the services going to the dogs,
+sir.&#8221; Here is a Tory prophecy, not yet verified: &#8220;There is one comfort I
+cannot have at Bath,&#8221; said the Duke of Northumberland in 1779. &#8220;I like to
+read the newspapers at breakfast, and at Bath the post does not come in
+till one o&#8217;clock; that is a drawback to my pleasure.&#8221; &#8220;So,&#8221; said Lord
+Mansfield, &#8220;your grace likes the <i>comfort</i> of reading the newspapers&mdash;the
+<i>comfort</i> of reading the newspapers! Mark my words. A little sooner or
+later those newspapers will most assuredly write the Dukes of
+Northumberland out of their titles and possessions, and the country out of
+its king. Mark my words, for this will happen.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>As a prophecy, it may readily be conceded that this is an extremely bad
+shot, and that Lord Mansfield by no means, either figuratively or
+literally, inherited the mantle of Elijah. A hundred and twenty years have
+passed since then, and there are still dukes who have not been reduced to
+sweep crossings or keep chandlers&#8217; shops. True, if they have not come down
+so far in the world, it is in some<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> cases owing to American dollars; but
+that is not the doing of the newspapers, one way or the other. As I have
+just remarked, that was a Tory prophecy, and though my Toryism is, I
+trust, of the most medi&aelig;val and crusted kind, and wholly beyond cavil, it
+may frankly be admitted here that the Party never has shone in prophecy.
+Nor, for that matter, has any party. The only seers are the
+leader-writers, and they never see beyond their noses.</p>
+
+<p>So Principalities and Powers and Titles are at least as powerful as ever
+they were, and&mdash;cynical fact&mdash;certain newspaper proprietors have been
+raised to the House of Peers; a thing, we may be sure, that Lord Mansfield
+never contemplated.</p>
+
+<p>Many other things, however, have happened in the meanwhile. Agitation does
+not pay so well as it did. The newspapers which were to do such dreadful
+things have greatly increased in number, if not in power, and the contents
+of them have changed radically; other times, other manners, as a glance at
+even the advertisements of that date will prove.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XLIV</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>OLD ADVERTISEMENTS</i></div>
+
+<p>The advertisement columns of a paper just over a century old often afford
+amusement to those who come upon them. The manners and customs of those
+times and these are so different that the very quaintness of our
+forefathers&#8217; attitude of mind brings a smile upon our faces, although
+those eighteenth-century forbears of ours were really very serious people
+indeed,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> and took life, for the most part, like a dose of medicine, while
+we are apt to go to the other extreme and take it like champagne. No doubt
+our great-great-grandfathers would think the most sedate of us not a
+little wild could they witness how we live to-day, while, in our turn, we
+look back upon their times, and think times and people alike brutal. We
+wonder what sort of people they were who could, in this England of ours,
+offer a &#8220;Black boy for sale&mdash;docile and obedient. Answers to the name of
+Peter.&#8221; Yet such advertisements were common on the front page of our
+newspapers once upon a time. Slavery was then a matter of course, and to
+have a black page for her very own was my lady&#8217;s hall-mark of &#8220;quality.&#8221;
+Sometimes such advertisements were embellished with little figures
+supposed to represent nigger-boys.</p>
+
+<p>The race of African negroes has either improved in good looks since then,
+or else the engravers of that day were not very careful in portraiture.
+But, indeed, black pages were almost as common as pet dogs, and were
+advertised in very much the same way, and these blocks were not portraits
+at all, but just printers&#8217; stock illustrations. The printer of a hundred
+years ago kept a curious little assortment of advertisement blocks. If a
+ship was about to sail for the colonies, it was advertised for weeks
+beforehand, and in a corner of the announcement was placed something that
+purported to be an illustration of the vessel. It generally looked like a
+Spanish galleon strayed from the Armada of two hundred years previously,
+and passengers would have been quite justified in not booking berths on so
+antiquated an affair.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>But perhaps the most amusing advertisements are the &#8220;Run away from his
+Home&#8221; and the &#8220;Stolen&#8221; varieties, also adorned with illustrations. It
+speaks very little for the morality of that age when we say that the
+ordinary newspaper printer also kept these blocks in stock.</p>
+
+<p>And, indeed, they seem to have frequently been required. Here is one
+example out of many in the newspapers of that age:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="center">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Stolen</span><br />
+Out of the Stable of <span class="smcap">Robert Colgate</span>,<br />
+The 24th instant August, 1780</p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img71.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>A black horse, rising five years old, thirteen Hands and a Half High,
+Star in his forehead, small Ears, Mane stands up rough, being lately
+rubbed off, long Tail, hangs his Tongue out often on the Road, good
+Carriage; also a good Saddle, marked Barnard, with Spring Stumps.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whoever gives Information, so that the Said Horse may be had again,
+shall receive <span class="smcap">Two Guineas Reward</span>.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>It would scarcely be possible to identify the stolen horse from the
+accompanying cut. He has no long tail, as described in the advertisement,
+and his tongue <i>doesn&#8217;t</i> hang out. Moreover, he is burdened with a quite
+imaginary thief, who has a property devil whipping him on. The &#8220;awful
+example&#8221; hanging from the gibbet appears to be made of bolsters, and to
+have had, not a drop too much, but scarcely enough.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>The party with hands bigger than his head, who is here seen striking a
+dramatic attitude, is not a Howling Swell, although he wears his hair
+parted in the middle. Appearances here (as usually was the case in the old
+advertisements) are deceptive, and so far from being a Swell, Howling or
+otherwise, he is really a Heartless Villain, for he is one of two
+labourers who have&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+<p class="center">&#8220;<span class="smcap">Run Away.</span></p>
+
+<div class="figleft"><img src="images/img72.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+
+<p>And left their families chargeable to the Parish of <span class="smcap">Claverton</span>,</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Thomas Garner</span>, Labourer, about five feet seven or eight Inches high;
+wears his own Hair, of a light Brown Complexion; hath lately, or is
+now belonging to the Militia.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;And <span class="smcap">Edward Browning</span>, Labourer, about five Feet four or five Inches
+high, wears his own Hair, of a dark complexion; was one of Lord
+North&#8217;s Soldiers in the last War.</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;Whoever will apprehend either, or both of them, and conduct them to
+the Parish Officers of Claverton aforesaid, shall receive <span class="smcap">Half a
+Guinea</span> for each or either of them, and <span class="smcap">Threepence</span> per Mile for every
+Mile they shall travel with them.&#8221;</p></div>
+
+<p>History does not relate whether or no these gay deceivers were ever
+captured. If those who sought them relied upon the illustration, it would
+seem quite likely that they never were!</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XLV</h2>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>THE ABBEY</i></div>
+
+<p>The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cluster the Municipal
+Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements
+invalids<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> are drawn in Bath chairs&mdash;one of the five articles with which
+the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps,
+Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come
+the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because
+they are not in every one&#8217;s mouth, either literally or figuratively;
+although, to be sure, they are much more exclusively a local product than
+&#8220;Bath&#8221; buns; while &#8220;Bath&#8221; bricks are not made at Bath, but at Bridgewater.</p>
+
+<p>The surroundings of Bath Abbey are strikingly Continental in appearance,
+for that great church stands in a flagged <i>place</i>, instead of being set in
+a green and shady close, as usually is the case in England. Its
+
+surroundings have always been thronged, from the time when the Flying
+Machines crawled, to when the last of the mail coaches drew up in front of
+the &#8220;White Lion,&#8221; in the Market Place hard by, or at the &#8220;White Hart,&#8221;
+which stood until 1866, where the &#8220;Grand Pump Room&#8221; Hotel now rises. The
+story of the Abbey is too long for these pages; but it is remarkable at
+once for being one of the very latest Gothic buildings in the country; for
+its possessing windows so large and so many that it has been called the
+&#8220;Lantern of England;&#8221; for its central tower, which is not square, being
+eleven feet narrower on its north and south sides than those to the east
+and west; and for the prodigious number of small marble and stone memorial
+tablets on its interior walls&mdash;tablets so many that they gave rise to the
+famous epigram by Quin:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="poem"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>&#8220;These walls, so full of monument and bust,<br />
+Shew how Bath waters serve to lay the dust.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img73.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>Quite distinguished dust it is, too. Noblemen and dames of high degree;
+Admirals of the Blue, the White, the Red; legal, and military, and
+clerical dignitaries, and all manner of Civil servants, mostly of the
+mid-eighteenth century, and chiefly hailing from India and the Colonies,
+as described with much pomp and circumstance on their cenotaphs which so
+thickly cover the walls, and spoil the architectural effect. &#8220;The Bath,&#8221;
+was the solace of their kind, returning from the Tropics with nutmeg
+livers, gout, and autocratic ways. At &#8220;the Bath&#8221; they resided on half-pay,
+drank the waters, supported the local doctors, quarrelled with their
+neighbours, and consistently damned all &#8220;new-fangled notions,&#8221; until death
+laid them by the heels.</p>
+
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>There must have been&mdash;if we are capable of believing their epitaphs&mdash;some
+paragons of all the virtues in those times, and Bath seems to have claimed
+them all. Here, for instance, is Alicia, Countess of Erroll, &#8220;in whom was
+combined every virtue that could adorn human nature.&#8221; She died young; the
+world is too wicked for such.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>&#8220;JACOB&#8217;S LADDER&#8221;</i></div>
+
+<p>Bath Abbey is remarkable in one respect far above all the minsters and
+cathedrals of England. As you stand facing the great West Front, which
+looks so grim and grey upon the stony courtyard that stretches before it,
+you see, flanking the immense west window, two heavy piers, terminating in
+turrets. On these piers are carved the singular representations of
+&#8220;Jacob&#8217;s Ladder&#8221; that have given the Abbey a fame<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> even beyond the merit
+of its architecture. From near the ground-level, almost to the turrets,
+this curious carving stretches, battered long years ago by the fury of an
+age which prided itself on its enmity to &#8220;superstitious images,&#8221; and
+reduced by the further neglect of more than two hundred years to an almost
+shapeless mass. The origin of this curious decoration is found in the
+vision of Bishop Oliver King, who restored the then ruined Abbey in 1499.
+In this vision, by which he was induced to undertake the great work, he
+saw angels ascending and descending a ladder, and heard a voice say, &#8220;Let
+an Olive establish a Crown, and let a King restore the Church.&#8221; He
+interpreted this as a Divine injunction to himself to repair the Abbey,
+and accordingly commenced the work; dying, however, before it was
+completed. The &#8220;ladders&#8221; have sculptured angels on them, while on the wall
+above the arch of the great window is represented a great concourse of
+adoring angels, with a figure of God in glory in their midst. Many of the
+figures have their heads knocked off; but the whole of this sculpture is
+shortly to be restored.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<h2>XLVI</h2>
+
+<p>Bath entered upon a dead period about 1820. For a long while the newer and
+more easily reached glories of Brighton had taken the mere fashionables
+away, and even the waters were less favoured. Continental wars had ceased,
+and unpatriotic Britons flocked to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>foreign spas instead; Bath looking
+idly on and letting its customers go.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/img74.jpg" alt="" /></div>
+<p class="caption">THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED.</p>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>It was some ten years later that Dickens visited Bath. From what he saw
+there he drew his portraits of place and persons in the &#8220;Pickwick Papers;&#8221;
+and the impression after reading them is undoubtedly one of faded
+gentility.</p>
+
+<p>So it remained until after the visit of the British Association in 1864,
+when the advice of the scientific men to the Corporation&mdash;to bring back
+business by providing more up-to-date accommodation&mdash;was laid to heart,
+and improvements begun. Since then the City has steadily climbed back
+again to the favour of invalids and the medical profession, and new Baths
+and all manner of modern appliances, a new railway station, and an air of
+an enlightened modernity, bid fair to keep Bath successful against all
+foreign competition for a long time to come.</p>
+
+<div class="sidenote"><i>MODERN BATH</i></div>
+
+<p>Since this Renaissance of thirty-five years ago was begun, many things
+have happened at Bath. Roman remains, more extensive than ever the bygone
+generations suspected, have been discovered, and excavations have lain
+bare baths long covered up by shabby and altogether undistinguished
+buildings. Judicious restoration has preserved the great Roman Bath, long
+a scene of wreck and shattered stones, and has brought it into use again.
+This restored Bath affords perhaps the most picturesque view in the City,
+for from its margin one may gaze upwards and see to great advantage the
+beautiful tower of the Abbey soaring aloft; its late Gothic architecture
+contrasting piquantly with the classic elegance of that restored<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+bathing-place, while the reflections of the columns deep down in the quiet
+pool give a singularly complete sense of restfulness.</p>
+
+<p>All this modern prosperity is, no doubt, very gratifying, but prosperity
+means much building, and Bath has now its suburbs; uncharted stretches of
+new villas, isolated, or in streets, that climb the hillsides of Combe
+Down, Beechen Cliff, and Lansdowne, and help to destroy Macaulay&#8217;s
+well-known, if something too overdrawn, architectural picture of Bath, as
+&#8220;that beautiful City which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces
+of Bramante and Palladio, and which&#8221; (horrible literary solecism!) &#8220;the
+genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen,
+has made classic ground.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>Bath, indeed, was a jewel set in midst of her picturesque amphitheatre of
+rocky and wooded hills; but now that those hills and those woods are being
+covered with houses whose architecture is less calculated to &#8220;charm the
+eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio&#8221; than were
+the buildings of a century and a half ago, the setting of the jewel is by
+way of becoming tarnished. Now, also, it has been reserved to these times
+of cheap railway carriage of goods for brick houses to be seen at Bath;
+the one place in the world where brick never had an opportunity until
+these latter days of the &#8220;combine&#8221; of the allied &#8220;Bath Stone Firms,&#8221; which
+has raised the price of Bath stone, so that in certain cases it has been
+found cheaper to bring bricks from the Midlands to build houses in Bath<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+than to use the stone quarried on the spot. So, in the wilderness of new
+suburbs, the traveller who is whisked away by rail to Bristol may see, to
+his astonishment, amid the stone houses, rows of the most undeniable
+red-brick villas. And thus has come the spirit of what the late Professor
+Freeman was pleased to call &#8220;modernity&#8221; over Bath, once the peculiar
+preserve of stone and Classicism.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/the_end.jpg" alt="The End" /></div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+<p class="index">
+Ailesbury, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_183">183-185</a><br />
+<br />
+Allen, Ralph, <a href="#Page_242">242-250</a><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Allen&#8217;s stall,&#8221; <a href="#Page_34">34-38</a><br />
+<br />
+Anne, Queen, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_237">237</a>, <a href="#Page_238">238</a><br />
+<br />
+Apsley House, <a href="#Page_34">34-38</a><br />
+<br />
+Arlington, Earl of, <a href="#Page_90">90</a><br />
+<br />
+Avebury, <a href="#Page_198">198-203</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Banks, Sir Joseph, <a href="#Page_93">93</a><br />
+<br />
+Bath, <a href="#Page_2">2-15</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228-270</a><br />
+<br />
+Batheaston, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Vase, <a href="#Page_241">241</a><br />
+<br />
+Bathford, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Bathampton, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+Bath stone, <a href="#Page_223">223-227</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a><br />
+<br />
+Bathwick, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+Beckhampton, <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a><br />
+<br />
+Berkeley, Earls of, <a href="#Page_82">82-84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Berkshire Lady,&#8221; the, <a href="#Page_141">141-145</a>, <a href="#Page_158">158</a><br />
+<br />
+Bladud, Prince, <a href="#Page_231">231</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br />
+<br />
+Box, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223-227</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Hill, <a href="#Page_224">224</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Tunnel, <a href="#Page_223">223</a><br />
+<br />
+Brentford, <a href="#Page_70">70</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Calcot, <a href="#Page_141">141-145</a><br />
+<br />
+Calne, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a><br />
+<br />
+Cherhill, <a href="#Page_205">205-207</a><br />
+<br />
+Chippenham, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210-215</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Chiswick High Road, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a><br />
+<br />
+Church Speen, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Coaches:&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Beaufort Hunt,&#8221; <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Flying Machines,&#8221; <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Light Post&#8221; coach, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Mail coaches, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17-19</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Regulator,&#8221; <a href="#Page_16">16</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;York House,&#8221; <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Coaching era, <a href="#Page_4">4-33</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; fares, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; miseries, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_15">15-19</a><br />
+<br />
+Coaching notabilities:&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Chaplin, Edward, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&mdash;&mdash; and Horne, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Cooper, Thomas, <a href="#Page_21">21</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Everett, Jack, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Colnbrook, <a href="#Page_97">97-103</a><br />
+<br />
+Colne, River, <a href="#Page_96">96-98</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a><br />
+<br />
+Corsham Regis, <a href="#Page_218">218</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221-223</a>, <a href="#Page_224">224</a><br />
+<br />
+Cranford, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86-89</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Bridge, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a><br />
+<br />
+Cross Keys, <a href="#Page_218">218</a><br />
+<br />
+Cycling records, <a href="#Page_215">215-218</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Darell, William, <a href="#Page_173">173-182</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Froxfield, <a href="#Page_182">182</a><br />
+<br />
+Fyfield, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Great Western Railway, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108-110</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a><br />
+<br />
+Gunnersbury, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Hammersmith, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a><br />
+<br />
+Hare Hatch, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+Harlington, <a href="#Page_89">89-91</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Corner, <a href="#Page_89">89</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span><br />
+Harmondsworth, <a href="#Page_94">94-96</a><br />
+<br />
+Henry VIII., <a href="#Page_13">13-138</a><br />
+<br />
+Highwaymen, <a href="#Page_40">40-45</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67-69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74-84</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91-94</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111-116</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a><br />
+<br />
+Hock-tide, <a href="#Page_167">167-173</a><br />
+<br />
+Hounslow, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71-74</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Heath, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74-84</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a><br />
+<br />
+Hungerford, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166-173</a><br />
+<br />
+Hyde Park Corner, <a href="#Page_33">33-40</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Inns (mentioned at length):&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Bear,&#8221; Maidenhead, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Bell and Bottle,&#8221; Knowl Hill, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Black Bull,&#8221; Holborn, <a href="#Page_31">31</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Castle,&#8221; Marlborough, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&mdash;&mdash;, Salt Hill, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Greyhound,&#8221; Maidenhead, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Halfway House,&#8221; Kensington, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Hercules&#8217; Pillars,&#8221; Hyde Park Corner, <a href="#Page_34">34</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;King&#8217;s Head,&#8221; Longford, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Magpies,&#8221; <a href="#Page_90">90</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Old Bell,&#8221; Holborn, <a href="#Page_31">31-33</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Old Magpies,&#8221; <a href="#Page_91">91</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Old Pack Horse,&#8221; Turnham Green, <a href="#Page_66">66-68</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Old Windmill,&#8221; Turnham Green, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Ostrich,&#8221; Colnbrook, <a href="#Page_99">99-103</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Pack Horse and Talbot,&#8221; Turnham Green, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Peggy Bedford,&#8221; Longford, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Pelican,&#8221; Speenhamland, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Red Cow,&#8221; Brook Green, <a href="#Page_56">56-58</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Robin Hood,&#8221; Turnham Green, <a href="#Page_63">63-65</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;Waggon and Horses,&#8221; Beckhampton, <a href="#Page_203">203-205</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;White Bear,&#8221; Piccadilly, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;White Bear,&#8221; Fickles Hole, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;White Hart,&#8221; Bath, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;White Horse,&#8221; Fetter Lane, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;White Lion,&#8221; Bath, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">&#8220;York House,&#8221; Bath, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Jack of Newbury, <a href="#Page_150">150-154</a>, <a href="#Page_157">157-161</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Kennet, River, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a><br />
+<br />
+Kensington, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46-55</a><br />
+<br />
+Kew Bridge, <a href="#Page_68">68</a><br />
+<br />
+Kiln Green, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
+<br />
+Knightsbridge, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a><br />
+<br />
+Knowl Hill, <a href="#Page_133">133</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Langley Broom, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Marish, <a href="#Page_104">104</a><br />
+<br />
+Littlecote, <a href="#Page_173">173-182</a><br />
+<br />
+Longford, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Maidenhead, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124-130</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Thicket, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129-133</a><br />
+<br />
+Mail coaches established, <a href="#Page_10">10</a><br />
+<br />
+Manton, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Marlborough, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186-193</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; College, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Downs, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197-201</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Maud Heath&#8217;s Causeway, <a href="#Page_213">213-215</a><br />
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span><br />
+<br />
+Nash, Beau, <a href="#Page_238">238-240</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a><br />
+<br />
+Newbury, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150-166</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;, battles of, <a href="#Page_161">161-165</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Old-time travellers:&mdash;<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Campbell, Rev. Thomas, <a href="#Page_252">252-255</a></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Moritz, Pastor, <a href="#Page_116">116-123</a></span><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Palmer, George, <a href="#Page_135">135</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash;, John, <a href="#Page_10">10</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a><br />
+<br />
+Pickwick, <a href="#Page_218">218-221</a><br />
+<br />
+Postage of letters, <a href="#Page_10">10-15</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a><br />
+<br />
+Prior Park, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Quemerford, <a href="#Page_206">206</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Reading, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134-138</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Salt Hill, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_106">106-111</a>, <a href="#Page_122">122</a><br />
+<br />
+Savernake Forest, <a href="#Page_182">182-185</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a><br />
+<br />
+Sham Castle, <a href="#Page_249">249</a><br />
+<br />
+Silbury Hill, <a href="#Page_198">198-203</a><br />
+<br />
+Sipson Green, <a href="#Page_91">91</a><br />
+<br />
+Speen, <a href="#Page_153">153</a>, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Speenhamland, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a><br />
+<br />
+Stackhouse, Rev. Thomas, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Taplow, <a href="#Page_108">108</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a><br />
+<br />
+Tetsworth water, <a href="#Page_105">105</a><br />
+<br />
+Thatcham, <a href="#Page_21">21</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153</a><br />
+<br />
+Theale, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a><br />
+<br />
+Turnham Green, <a href="#Page_58">58-68</a><br />
+<br />
+Turnpike gates, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_34">34</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a>, <a href="#Page_166">166</a><br />
+<br />
+Twyford, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths, <a href="#Page_59">59</a><br />
+<br />
+Walcot, <a href="#Page_228">228</a><br />
+<br />
+West Kennet, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+&mdash;&mdash; Overton, <a href="#Page_197">197</a><br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Wild Darell,&#8221; <a href="#Page_173">173-182</a><br />
+<br />
+Woolhampton, <a href="#Page_146">146-149</a><br />
+<br />
+Wyatt&#8217;s Rebellion, <a href="#Page_38">38</a><br />
+<br />
+<br />
+&#8220;Young&#8217;s Corner,&#8221; <a href="#Page_58">58</a><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p class="center">PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.</p>
+
+
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p><p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr style="width: 50%;" />
+<p><strong>Footnotes:</strong></p>
+
+<p><a name='f_1' id='f_1' href='#fna_1'>[1]</a> Stranger still, the chief informer was named Porter.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_2' id='f_2' href='#fna_2'>[2]</a> Tawell had poisoned his sweetheart, who, before dying, had time to
+denounce him to her friends. They pursued him to the station, but when
+they arrived there the train had gone. The telegram sent was in these
+words:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&#8220;A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill, and the suspected murderer
+was seen to take a first-class ticket for London by the train which left
+Slough at 7.42 p.m. He is in the garb of a Quaker, with a brown great-coat
+on, which reaches nearly to his feet. He is in the last compartment of the
+second-class carriage.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>At Paddington he took a City omnibus, but the conductor was a policeman in
+disguise, and dogged his footsteps from one coffee-house to another, which
+he is supposed to have entered for the purpose of setting up an <i>alibi</i>.
+At length, as he was stepping into a lodging-house in the City, the police
+tapped him on the shoulder, with the question, &#8220;Haven&#8217;t you just come from
+Slough?&#8221; Tawell confusedly denied the fact, but he was arrested, with the
+result already recounted.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_3' id='f_3' href='#fna_3'>[3]</a> Lord Iveagh&#8217;s name is Guinness. Unfortunately for the thoroughness of
+the jest, there are but thirteen chapters in the Epistle to the Hebrews.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_4' id='f_4' href='#fna_4'>[4]</a> It was about 1630 that the town of Marlborough obtained a new grant of
+arms in place of its old shield of a &#8220;Castle <i>argent</i>, on a field
+<i>sable</i>.&#8221; The new shield, still in use, is heraldically described as&mdash;&#8220;Per
+Saltire, gules and azure. In chief, a Bull passant, argent, armed or. In
+fess, two Capons, argent. In base, three greyhounds courant in pale,
+argent. On a chief, or, a pale charged with a Tower triple-towered, or,
+between two Roses, gules. Crest&mdash;On a wreath, a Mount, vert, culminated by
+a Tower triple-towered, argent. Supporters: two Greyhounds, argent.&#8221; These
+arms are intended to perpetuate the memory of the ancient custom in
+Marlborough of the aldermen and burgesses presenting the mayor for the
+time being with a leash of white greyhounds, a white bull, and two white
+capons.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_5' id='f_5' href='#fna_5'>[5]</a> &#8220;There are many pleasanter places, even in this dreary world, than
+Marlborough Downs when it blows hard; and if you throw in beside a gloomy
+winter&#8217;s evening, a miry and sloppy road, and a pelting fall of heavy
+rain, and try the effect, by way of experiment, in your own proper person,
+you will experience the full force of this observation.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p>The traveller&#8217;s horse stopped before &#8220;a road-side inn on the right-hand
+side of the way, about half a quarter of a mile from the end of the
+Downs.... It was a strange old place, built of a kind of shingle, inlaid,
+as it were, with cross-beams, with gabled-topped windows projecting
+completely over the pathway, and a low door with a dark porch and a couple
+of steep steps leading down into the house, instead of the modern fashion
+of half a dozen shallow ones leading up to it.&#8221;</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_6' id='f_6' href='#fna_6'>[6]</a> That the Romans knew the city we call Bath as <i>Aqu&aelig; Solis</i>&mdash;the
+&#8220;Waters of the Sun&#8221;&mdash;we learn from the ancient history of Britain. A
+highly interesting light upon this is furnished by the sculptured stone
+discovered some years since, and now in the local museum, which shows a
+decorative representation of the head of the Sun God from whose face
+radiate sun-rays, alternately with serpents.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_7' id='f_7' href='#fna_7'>[7]</a> Once the recognized pronunciation of the word. The great Duke of
+Wellington was probably the last who spoke it thus.</p>
+
+<p><a name='f_8' id='f_8' href='#fna_8'>[8]</a> He meant Chippenham.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATH ROAD***</p>
+<p>******* This file should be named 37921-h.txt or 37921-h.zip *******</p>
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+<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/7/9/2/37921">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/7/9/2/37921</a></p>
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+*** END: FULL LICENSE ***
+</pre>
+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,6662 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Bath Road, by Charles G. (Charles George)
+Harper
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Bath Road
+       History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
+
+
+Author: Charles G. (Charles George) Harper
+
+
+
+Release Date: November 4, 2011  [eBook #37921]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BATH ROAD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by
+Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 37921-h.htm or 37921-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37921/37921-h/37921-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/37921/37921-h.zip)
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/bathroadhistoryf00harp
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BATH ROAD
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
+
+
+THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway.
+
+THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD, and its Tributaries, To-day, and in Days of Old.
+
+THE DOVER ROAD: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.
+
+THE EXETER ROAD: The Story of the West of England Highway. [_In the
+Press._
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON, 1806.
+(_After R. B. Davis._)]
+
+
+THE BATH ROAD
+
+History, Fashion, & Frivolity on an Old Highway
+
+by
+
+CHARLES G. HARPER
+
+Author of "The Brighton Road," "The Portsmouth Road,"
+"The Dover Road," &c. &c.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+Illustrated by the Author, and from Old Prints and Pictures
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London: Chapman & Hall, Limited
+1899
+(_All Rights Reserved_)
+
+
+
+
+Printed by
+William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
+London and Beccles.
+
+
+
+
+TO E. T. COOK, ESQ.
+
+
+_Dear Mr. Cook,_
+
+_It was by your favour, as Editor of the_ DAILY NEWS, _that the very gist
+of this book first saw the light, in the form of two articles in the
+columns of that paper. It seems, then, peculiarly appropriate that these
+pages--representing, in the measurements common to journalists and
+authors, a growth from four thousand to some sixty thousand words--should
+be inscribed to yourself._
+
+  _Sincerely yours_,
+  CHARLES G. HARPER.
+
+
+
+
+_Preface_
+
+
+_This, the fourth volume in a series of books having for its object the
+preservation of so much of the Story of the Roads as may be interesting to
+the reading public, has been completed after considerable delay. The_
+DOVER ROAD, _which preceded the present work, was published so long ago as
+the close of 1895, and in that book the_ BATH ROAD _was (prematurely, it
+should seem, indeed) described as "In the Press." Attention is drawn to
+the fact, partly in order to point out how quickly and how surely the
+old-time aspects of the roads are disappearing; for, since the_ BATH ROAD
+_has been in progress, no fewer than four of the old inns pictured in
+these pages have disappeared, while great stretches of the road, once
+rural, have become suburban, and suburban streets have been so altered
+that they are in no wise distinguishable from those of town. It is because
+they will preserve the appearance and the memory of buildings that have
+had their day and are now being swept off the face of the earth, that it
+is hoped these volumes will find a welcome with those who care to cherish
+something of the records of a day that is done._
+
+CHARLES G. HARPER.
+
+  PETERSHAM, SURREY,
+  _February, 1899_.
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+SEPARATE PLATES
+
+                                                                    PAGE
+
+   1. GEORGE THE THIRD TRAVELLING FROM WINDSOR TO LONDON,
+      1806. (_After R. B. Davis_)                          Frontispiece.
+
+   2. COACHING MISERIES. (_After Rowlandson_)                          7
+
+   3. PASSENGERS REFRESHED AFTER A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY.
+      (_After Rowlandson_)                                            13
+
+   4. THE "WHITE BEAR," PICCADILLY                                    23
+
+   5. ALLEN'S STALL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, ABOUT 1756                   35
+
+   6. HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797                                          41
+
+   7. KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET                           47
+
+   8. COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN                             101
+
+   9. AN ENGLISH ROAD                                                125
+
+  10. MAIDENHEAD THICKET                                             131
+
+  11. THE STAGE WAGGON. (_After Rowlandson_)                         139
+
+  12. THEALE                                                         143
+
+  13. WOOLHAMPTON                                                    147
+
+  14. RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY       151
+
+  15. AT THE 55TH MILESTONE                                          155
+
+  16. HUNGERFORD                                                     169
+
+  17. MARLBOROUGH                                                    189
+
+  18. FYFIELD                                                        195
+
+  19. MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON                           199
+
+  20. THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL                                      207
+
+  21. THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM                               211
+
+  22. BOX VILLAGE                                                    225
+
+  23. BATHAMPTON MILL                                                229
+
+  24. PRIOR PARK                                                     247
+
+  25. BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT                                     261
+
+  26. THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED                                       265
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
+
+
+  Old Village Lock-up, Cranford                           (_Title-page_)
+
+  Sign of the "White Bear," now at Fickles Hole                       25
+
+  The "White Horse" Inn, Fetter Lane. Demolished 1898                 30
+
+  Courtyard of the "Old Bell," Holborn. Demolished 1897               32
+
+  Hyde Park Corner, 1786                                              37
+
+  Hyde Park Corner, 1792                                              39
+
+  The "Halfway House," 1848                                           43
+
+  "Oldest Inhabitant"                                                 50
+
+  Thackeray's House, Young Street                                     54
+
+  The "White Horse." Traditional Retreat of Addison                   55
+
+  The "Red Cow," Hammersmith. Demolished 1897                         57
+
+  Robin Hood and Little John                                          64
+
+  The "Old Windmill"                                                  65
+
+  The "Old Pack Horse"                                                67
+
+  Kew Bridge, Low Water                                               69
+
+  Cottages, supposed to have been the Haunts of Dick Turpin           72
+
+  A Bath Road Pump                                                    85
+
+  The "Berkeley Arms"                                                 86
+
+  Cranford House                                                      88
+
+  The "Old Magpies"                                                   90
+
+  The "Gothic Barn," Harmondsworth                                    95
+
+  Old Flail, Harmondsworth                                            96
+
+  The County Boundary                                                 98
+
+  Almshouses, Langley                                                104
+
+  The Stolen Fountain                                                105
+
+  Windsor Castle, from the Road near Slough                          106
+
+  The "Bell and Bottle" Sign                                         133
+
+  Palmer's Statue                                                    135
+
+  Thatcham                                                           149
+
+  Inscription, Newbury Church                                        157
+
+  Old Cloth Hall, Newbury                                            160
+
+  The last of the Smock-frocks and Beavers                           164
+
+  Curious old Toll-house                                             165
+
+  Hungerford Tutti-men                                               171
+
+  Littlecote                                                         176
+
+  The Haunted Chamber                                                178
+
+  Roadside Inn, Manton                                               194
+
+  Avebury                                                            201
+
+  Silbury Hill                                                       202
+
+  Cross Keys                                                         218
+
+  The Hungerford Almshouse, Corsham Regis                            221
+
+  Entrance to Box Quarries                                           224
+
+  The Sun God                                                        233
+
+  Roman inscribed tablet                                             235
+
+  The Batheaston Vase                                                242
+
+  "Sham Castle"                                                      249
+
+  Old Pulteney Bridge                                                253
+
+  Illustrations to Old Advertisements                           258, 259
+
+
+
+
+THE ROAD TO BATH
+
+
+  London (Hyde Park Corner) to--                                   MILES
+
+  Kensington--
+    St. Mary Abbots                                                1-3/4
+    Addison Road                                                   2-1/2
+
+  Hammersmith                                                      3-1/4
+
+  Turnham Green                                                    5
+
+  Brentford--
+    Star Gates                                                     6
+    Town Hall (cross River Brent and Grand Junction Canal)         7
+
+  Isleworth (Railway Station)                                      8-1/2
+
+  Hounslow (Trinity Church)                                        9-3/4
+
+  Cranford Bridge (cross River Crane)                             12-1/4
+
+  Harlington Corner                                               13
+
+  Longford (cross River Colne)                                    15-1/4
+
+  Colnbrook (cross River Colne)                                   17
+
+  Langley Broom ("King William IV." Inn)                          18-1/2
+
+  Slough ("Crown" Hotel)                                          20-1/2
+
+  Salt Hill                                                       21-1/4
+
+  Maidenhead (cross River Thames)                                 26
+
+  Littlewick                                                      29-1/4
+
+  Knowl Hill                                                      31
+
+  Hare Hatch                                                      32-1/4
+
+  Twyford (cross River Loddon)                                    34
+
+  Reading (cross River Kennet)                                    39
+
+  Calcot Green                                                    41-1/2
+
+  Theale                                                          44
+
+  Woolhampton                                                     49-1/4
+
+  Thatcham (cross River Lambourne)                                52-3/4
+
+  Speenhamland}
+              }                                                   55-3/4
+  Newbury     }
+
+  Church Speen                                                    56-3/4
+
+  Hungerford (cross River Kennet)                                 64-1/2
+
+  Froxfield (cross River Kennet)                                  67
+
+  Marlborough                                                     74-1/2
+
+  Fyfield                                                         77
+
+  Overton                                                         78
+
+  West Kennet (cross River Kennet)                                79-1/4
+
+  Beckhampton Inn                                                 81
+
+  Cherhill                                                        84
+
+  Quemerford (cross tributary of River Marden)                    86-1/4
+
+  Calne (cross River Calne)                                       87-1/4
+
+  Black Dog Hill                                                  88-3/4
+
+  Derry Hill (Swan Inn)                                           90-3/4
+
+  Chippenham (cross River Avon)                                   93-1/4
+
+  Cross Keys                                                      96-1/2
+
+  Pickwick ("Hare and Hounds" Inn)                                97-1/4
+
+  Box                                                            100-1/4
+
+  Batheaston                                                     103-1/2
+
+  Walcot                                                         104-1/2
+
+  Bath (G. P. O.)                                                105-3/4
+
+
+
+
+The BATH ROAD
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+The great main roads of England have each their especial and unmistakeable
+character, not only in the nature of the scenery through which they run,
+but also in their story and in the memories which cling about them. The
+history of the Brighton Road is an epitome of all that was dashing and
+dare-devil in the times of the Regency and the reign of George the Fourth;
+the Portsmouth Road is sea-salty and blood-boltered with horrid tales of
+smuggling days, almost to the exclusion of every other imaginable
+characteristic of road history; and the story of the Dover Road is a very
+microcosm of the nation's history. Nothing strongly characteristic of
+England, Englishmen, and English customs but what you shall find a hint of
+it on the Dover Road. As for the Holyhead Road, it traverses the Midland
+territory of the fox-hunting and port-drinking squires, and reeks of
+toasts and conjurations of "no heel-taps;" the great North Road is an
+agricultural route pre-eminently; the Exeter Road the running-ground of
+some of the fleetest and best-appointed coaches of the Coaching Age; while
+the Bath Road was at one time the most literary and fashionable of them
+all.
+
+The best period of the Bath Road was peculiarly the era of powder and
+patches; of tie-wigs, long-skirted coats, and gorgeous waistcoats; of silk
+stockings and buckled shoes; when the test of a well-bred gentleman was
+the making a leg and the nice carriage of a clouded cane; when a grand
+lady would "protest" that a thing which challenged her admiration was
+"monstrous fine," and a gallant beau would "stap his vitals" by way of
+emphasis. It was a period of rigid etiquette and hollow artificiality; but
+a period also of a grand literary upheaval, and an era in which people
+were not, as now, merely clothed, but dressed.
+
+Bath at this time was the most fashionable place in all England. Did my
+lady suffer from that mysterious eighteenth-century complaint "the
+vapours," she journeyed to "the Bath." Did my lord experience in the gout
+a foretaste of the torments of that place popularly supposed to be paved
+with good intentions, he also went to Bath, in his private carriage,
+cursing as he went; while the halt, the lame, the afflicted of many
+diseases, came this way; some posting, others by stage-coach, and yet more
+riding horseback. Every invalid, hypochondriac, and _malade imaginaire_
+who could afford it went to Bath, for continental spas had not then become
+possible for English people, and the nauseating waters of Aix, Baden, and
+other places simply trickled unheeded away.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BEGGARS OF BATH_]
+
+Every invalid, in fact, who could afford it, went to Bath, and the
+mentally afflicted, who could not go, were sent thither; so that the
+saying which is now become proverbial (and whose origin and subtle
+innuendo seem in danger of being lost) arose, "Go to Bath," with the
+rider, "and get your head shaved;" the lunatics who were sent to those
+healing waters usually being thus tonsured. This derisive phrase was used
+toward any one who propounded a more than ordinarily crack-brained
+project. It is, perhaps, scarcely necessary to say that it has no sort of
+connection with the modern music-hall vulgarism, "Get your hair cut!"
+
+Another theory--but one more ingenious than acceptable--has it that the
+phrase derives from Bath having always been a resort of beggars. What,
+then, more natural, we are asked, than for one accosted by a mendicant to
+recall this topographical notoriety, and bid the rogue "go to Bath"? For,
+according to Fuller, that worthy author of the "Worthies," there were
+"many in that place; some natives there, others repairing thither from all
+parts of the land; the poor for alms, the pained for ease. Whither should
+fowl flock in a hard frost but to the barn-door? Here, all the two
+seasons, being the general confluence of gentry. Indeed, laws are daily
+made to restrain beggars, and daily broken by the connivance of those who
+make them; it being impossible, when the hungry belly barks and bowels
+sound, to keep the tongue silent. And although oil of whip be the proper
+plaister for the cramp of laziness, yet some pity is due to impotent
+persons. In a word, seeing there is the Lazar's-bath in this city, I
+doubt not but many a good Lazarus, the true object of charity, may beg
+therein." The road, then, to this City of Springs must have witnessed a
+motley throng.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+The history of travelling, from the Creation to the present time, may be
+divided into four periods--those of no coaches, slow coaches, fast
+coaches, and railways. The "no-coach" period is a lengthy one, stretching,
+in fact, from the beginning of things, through the ages, down to the days
+of the Romans, and so on to the era when pack-horses conveyed travellers
+and goods along the uncertain tracks, which in the Middle Ages were all
+that remained of the highways built by that masterful race. The
+"slow-coach" era was preceded by an age when those few people who
+travelled at all went either on horseback, with their women-folk clinging
+on behind them, or else were wealthy enough to be able to afford the keep
+or hire of a "chariot," as the carriages of that time were named. That
+sinful old reprobate, Samuel Pepys, lived in the last days of the
+"no-coach" period, and saw the arrival of the slow coaches. He was one of
+those who used a chariot, and his "Diary" is full of accounts of how, on
+his innumerable journeys, he lost his way because of the badness of the
+roads, which then ran through vast stretches of unenclosed, uncultivated,
+and sparsely inhabited country, and were so fearfully bad that in many
+places the drivers did not dare to attempt such veritable "sloughs of
+despond," but drove around them over the hedgeless fields, thus making
+new tracks for themselves. In this way the origin of the winding character
+which many of our roads still retain is sufficiently accounted for.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "FLYING MACHINE"_]
+
+The "slow-coach" era was, absurdly enough, that of the "flying machines,"
+and in that era, with the year 1667, the coaching history of the Bath Road
+may be said to begin, when some greatly daring person issued a bill
+announcing that a "flying machine" would make the journey. It is not to be
+supposed that this was some emulator of Icarus or predecessor of the
+ambitious folks who for the last hundred years, more or less, have been
+trying to navigate the air with balloons or mechanical flying machines.
+Not at all. This was simply the figurative language employed to convey to
+those whom it might concern the wonderful feat that was to be attempted
+("God permitting," as the advertiser was careful to add), of travelling by
+road from the "Bell Savage," on Ludgate Hill, to Bath in three days. But
+here is the announcement:--
+
+    "FLYING MACHINE.
+
+    "All those desirous to pass from London to Bath, or any other Place on
+    their Road, let them repair to the 'Bell Savage' on Ludgate Hill in
+    London, and the 'White Lion' at Bath, at both which places they may be
+    received in a Stage Coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which
+    performs the Whole Journey in Three Days (if God permit), and sets
+    forth at five o'clock in the morning.
+
+    "Passengers to pay One Pound five Shillings each, who are allowed to
+    carry fourteen Pounds Weight--for all above to pay three-halfpence per
+    Pound."
+
+The rush of fashionables to take the waters, and see and be seen, had
+obviously not then commenced, since one crawling "flying machine" sufficed
+to accommodate the traffic; and it was not until thirty-six years later
+that it did begin, when Queen Anne (who, alas! is dead) resorted to "the
+Bath" for the benefit of the gout. What says Pope?
+
+  "Great Anna, whom Three Realms obey,
+  Does sometimes counsel take, and sometimes tay."
+
+If she had taken tea more consistently and drank less port, she would have
+been just as great and not so gouty--and Bath would have remained in that
+semi-obscurity in which it had long languished. No crowds of fashionables,
+no truckling statesmen, no wits, would have hastened down the road and
+peopled it so brilliantly had not Anne's big toe twinged with the torments
+of the damned; and it seems likely enough that this book would never have
+been written. Under the circumstances, therefore, the most appropriate
+toast for the author and the Mayor and Corporation of Bath to honour is
+that favourite old one, "High Church, High Farming, and Old Port for
+Ever," especially the last, "coupling with it," as they used to say before
+the custom of giving toasts died out, the honoured memory of Queen Anne.
+
+Another three-days-a-week coach then began to ply between London and Bath.
+In 1711 it had a rival, and five years later saw the establishment of the
+first daily coach from London. Thomas Baldwin, citizen and cooper of
+London, saw money in the venture, and, like the hero of one of Bret
+Harte's verses, who "saw his duty a dead sure thing," he "went for it,
+there and then." He would seem to have secured it, too, for he held the
+road for many years against all rivals, and was, moreover, landlord of one
+of the foremost hostelries on the road--the "Crown," at Salt Hill.
+
+[Illustration: COACHING MISERIES. (_After Rowlandson._)]
+
+His rivals were many, and, considering the popularity to which Bath soon
+attained, they must all have done well. Indeed, the establishment of a new
+coach to Bath would now appear to have been a favourite form of
+speculation, and Londoners found many such advertisements as the
+following:--
+
+    "_Daily Advertiser._ April 9, 1737.
+    "For Bath.
+
+    "A good Coach and able Horses will set out from the 'Black Swan' Inn,
+    in Holborn, on Wednesday or Thursday.
+
+    "Enquire of WILLIAM MAUD."
+
+[Sidenote: _COACHING MISERIES_]
+
+The invalid who trusted himself to the stage-coach of that period had,
+however, many risks to run. Doctors might recommend the waters, but before
+the patient reached them he had to endure a two days' journey, and even at
+that to bear a very martyrdom of bumps and jolts. For that was just before
+the time when coach-proprietors began to announce "comfortable" coaches
+"with springs," just as, a little earlier, they had laid great stress on
+their conveyances being glazed, and (to skip the centuries) as railway
+companies nowadays advertise dining and drawing room cars. Here are some
+coaching woes:--
+
+    "Just as you are going off, with only one other person on your side of
+    the coach, who, you flatter yourself, is the last--seeing the door
+    opened suddenly, and the landlady, coachman, guard, etc., cramming
+    and shoving and buttressing up an overgrown, puffing, greasy human
+    being of the butcher or grazier breed; the whole machine straining and
+    groaning under its cargo from the box to the basket. By dint of
+    incredible efforts and contrivances, the carcase is at length weighed
+    up to the door, where it has next to struggle with various obstacles
+    in the passage."
+
+The pictorial commentary upon this text is appended, together with a view
+representing passengers refreshed by being overturned into a wayside pond.
+
+The first mail-coach that ever ran in England ran between London and
+Bristol, and set out on Monday, August 2, 1784. Hitherto the letters had
+been conveyed by mounted post-boys, often provided with but sorry hacks,
+and always open to attack at the hands of any bad characters who might
+think it worth their while to intercept the post-bags. This risk led the
+more cautious persons, and those whose correspondence was of particular
+importance, to despatch their letters by the stage-coach, although the
+cost in that case was 2_s._ as against the ordinary postal charge of only
+4_d._ for places between 80 and 120 miles distant.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE FIRST MAIL COACH_]
+
+A clever and enterprising man resident at Bath had noted these things.
+This was John Palmer, the proprietor of the Bath Theatre. He not only
+noted them, but devised a plan by which the post was rendered swifter and
+more secure. The stage-coaches of that time took thirty-eight hours to
+accomplish the journey between London and Bath, and, although safer for
+the carriage of correspondence than by post-boy, were not so speedy.
+Palmer had frequently travelled the roads, and he rightly conceived
+thirty-eight hours to be too long a time to take for a journey of 106
+miles. He drew up a scheme for a mail-coach to carry four inside
+passengers, a coachman, and a guard, and to be drawn by four horses at the
+rate of between eight and nine miles an hour. In this manner, he argued,
+the journey between Bath and London should be accomplished, including
+stoppages, in sixteen hours. This plan, which he made as an instance, to
+be extended, if successful, to the other main roads throughout the
+kingdom, he communicated to the General Post Office. Two years passed
+before Palmer could get his proposals tried, but arrangements were
+eventually made, agreements entered into with five innkeepers along the
+London, Bath, and Bristol Road, for the horsing of the coach, and the
+first mail despatched from Bristol to London, August 2, 1784. The mounted
+post-boy's day was nearing its close, and by the summer of 1786, the trunk
+roads knew him and his post-horn no more.
+
+The mail-coaches enjoyed great privileges, of which the greatest was their
+exemption from all turnpike tolls, and the right exercised by the Post
+Office of indicting roads which might be out of repair or in any way
+dangerous. By the year 1810, mail-coaches had increased so greatly that
+the estimated annual loss of the various turnpike trusts on this exemption
+was L50,000. And all the while the postal business was increasing by leaps
+and bounds, although the price of postage was increased from time to time
+to help supply the Government, which speedily came to recognize the
+Department as a milch cow, and to demand increasing annual payments from
+it, to help pay the costs of waging Continental wars.
+
+Let us see what the postage between London, Bath, and Bristol was at
+different periods. The charges were regulated by distances, and one of the
+schedule measurements, "exceeding 80 miles and not exceeding 150 miles,"
+just includes these two towns. We find, then, that it was possible to get
+a letter conveyed that distance in 1635 for 4_d._, while a bulky package
+weighing one ounce cost 9_d._ in transmission; not extravagant charges for
+that far-off time, even allowing for the greater purchasing power of money
+in the first half of the seventeenth century. Twenty-five years later the
+scale was altered, and one could despatch a note for a penny less,
+although it cost 3_d._ more for an ounce weight. From 1711 to 1765, the
+scale was--
+
+  Letter.      One ounce.
+   4_d._       1_s._ 4_d._
+
+and from 1765 to 1784 the charges were again raised, to 5_d._ and 1_s._
+8_d._ respectively. Matters then went from bad to worse. In the beginning
+of 1797, the figures were 7_d._ and 2_s._ 4_d._; while the climax was
+finally reached at the beginning of this century, for on July 9, 1812, it
+cost 9_d._ to send a note between London, Bath, or Bristol, and 3_s._ for
+one ounce. A singular fact, in face of these repeated increases, was the
+growth of the Post Office revenues. In 1796, the net profit was L479,000;
+ten years later it had risen to considerably over one million sterling.
+The Bristol profit on Post Office business was L469 in 1794-5, and at that
+time the postmaster received a salary of L110 per annum. The Bath
+postmaster's billet was the best in the service, for he received L150,
+and, moreover, had the assistance of one clerk and three letter-carriers.
+
+[Illustration: PASSENGERS REFRESHED AFTER A LONG DAY'S JOURNEY. (_After
+Rowlandson._)]
+
+Meanwhile the stage-coaches had increased greatly. It was about 1800 that
+the "Sick, Lame, and Lazy"--a sober conveyance so called from the nature
+of its passengers, invalids, real and imaginary, on their way to Bath--was
+displaced by the new post coach that performed the journey in a single
+day; and thus the comfortable, _and_ expensive, beds of the "Pelican" at
+Speenhamland, where "the coach slept," began to be disestablished.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+[Sidenote: _"GOD-PERMITS"_]
+
+Our forefathers of the coaching age were properly pious. Desirous, when
+they travelled, of a "happy issue out of all their afflictions," as the
+Prayer-book has it--which in their case included such varied troubles as
+highwaymen's attacks, being upset, or finding themselves snowed up, with
+the extreme likelihood in winter-time of being severely frostbitten--they
+made their wills, and fervently committed themselves to the protection
+of Providence before starting and putting themselves in the care of
+the coachman. Coach proprietors, for their part, always advertised
+their conveyances to run "D.V.;" and the more slangy among our
+great-grandparents were accordingly accustomed to speak of these coaches
+as "God-permits." Express trains, which stop for nothing in heaven above
+or the earth beneath, short of a cataclysm of nature, have relegated that
+joke to the domains of archaeology. Then, however, it had its poignant
+side.
+
+"The perils of the road in winter and foul weather," says one who braved
+them, "were formidable. On one occasion I rode sixteen hours under a
+deluging downpour of rain that never ceased for a single minute, and was
+so crushing in its effect as to disable every umbrella on the roof before
+the first hour had elapsed. On another occasion I started at six on a
+winter's morning outside the Bath "Regulator," which was due in London at
+eight o'clock at night. I was the only outside passenger. It came on to
+snow about an hour after we started--a snowstorm that never ceased for
+three days. The roads were a yard deep in snow before we reached Reading,
+which was exactly at the time we were due in London. Then with six horses
+we laboured on, and finally arrived at Fetter Lane at a quarter to three
+in the morning. Had it not been for the stiff doses of brandied coffee
+swallowed at every stage, this record would never have been written. As it
+was, I was so numbed, hands and feet, that I had to be lifted down, or
+rather, hauled out of an avalanche or hummock of snow, like a bale of
+goods. The landlady of the 'White Horse' took me in hand, and I was thawed
+gradually by the kitchen fire, placed between warm pillows, and dosed with
+a posset of her own compounding. Fortunately, no permanent injury
+resulted."
+
+[Sidenote: _SNOWSTORMS_]
+
+That was as late as 1816. Happily, although the term "an old-fashioned
+winter," is one frequently employed nowadays to denote one of exceptional
+severity, there is no reason to believe that such winters were less
+exceptional then than they are now. But the great frosts and snowstorms of
+those times belong to history, and although they only occurred (as they do
+now) at considerable intervals, they bulk largely in the records of the
+past.
+
+The great snowstorm of December 26, 1836, dislocated the coach service all
+over the country. The drifts on Marlborough Downs varied in depth from
+fourteen to sixteen feet. The Duke of Wellington, who was travelling down
+the road to the Duke of Beaufort's place at Badminton, arrived at
+Marlborough on the Monday night, in the thick of it, and put up at the
+"Castle." He was journeying in a carriage and four, with outriders, and
+started again the next morning, to be promptly stuck fast in a wheatfield.
+A number of labourers were procured, who dug him out.
+
+On that memorable occasion, the Bath and Bristol mails, which were due at
+those places on the Tuesday morning, were abandoned eighty miles from
+London, the mail-bags being brought up by the two guards in a post-chaise
+with four horses. For seventeen miles they had to come by way of the
+fields.
+
+Three outside passengers died of the cold when one of the stage coaches
+reached Chippenham, and frostbites were innumerable.
+
+But if all the untoward coaching incidents were recounted that befell upon
+the Bath Road, this would resolve itself into a dismal record, and it
+might then be supposed that coaching was invariably dangerous and
+uncomfortable, which was not the case. One of the most singular of these
+happenings was that in which a home-coming sailor was killed. A gunner
+named John Baker was wrecked on board the frigate _Diomede_, off the coast
+of Trincomalee, and narrowly escaped being drowned. Being picked up, he
+recovered sufficiently to be able to take a part in the storming of that
+place, and was sent home with the ship bearing the despatches. When he set
+foot again in England, he must naturally have thought all dangers past;
+but, coming up from Bath in January, 1796, the coach capsized at Reading,
+and the unhappy gunner, who had survived all perils of battle and the
+breeze, was killed.
+
+A not dissimilar accident happened in July, 1827, when the Bath mail was
+overturned between Reading and Newbury, through the horses bolting into a
+gravel-pit. A naval officer was killed, and most of the passengers
+injured.
+
+[Sidenote: _FOGS_]
+
+Although the latter accident happened in an age of very fast coaches, it
+is a fact that disasters were actually fewer than they had been in more
+leisurely times. The reasons for this increased safety in times when speed
+was vastly greater may be found in the facts that the roads were better
+kept, and the coaches better built. A whole series of Turnpike Acts had
+been passed in the course of the previous fifty years, resulting in roads
+as nearly perfect as roads can be, while the coachbuilder's trade had
+become almost an exact science. Had it not been for the occasional
+recklessness or drunkenness of drivers, and the winter fogs, there would
+be little to record in the way of accidents. As it was, coachmen sometimes
+(but very rarely) took a convivial glass too much; or, more often, raced
+opposition coaches to a final smash; and then there were the "pea-soupers"
+of fogs, which led the most experienced astray.
+
+The following story belongs to the first quarter of this century, and is
+told by one of the old drivers: "I recollect," he says, "a singular
+circumstance occasioned by a fog. There were eight mails that passed
+through Hounslow. The Bristol, Bath, Gloucester, and Stroud took the
+right-hand road; the Exeter, Yeovil, Poole, and 'Quicksilver' Devonport
+(which was the one I was driving) went the straight road towards Staines.
+We always saluted each other when passing with 'Good night, Bill,' 'Dick,'
+or 'Harry,' as the case might be. I was once passing a mail, mine being
+the fastest, and gave my wonted salute. A coachman named Downs was driving
+the Stroud mail. He instantly recognized my voice, so said, 'Charley, what
+are you doing on my road?' It was he, however, who had made the mistake;
+he had taken the Staines instead of the Slough road out of Hounslow. We
+both pulled up immediately; he had to turn round and go back--a feat
+attended with some difficulty in such a fog. Had it not been for our usual
+salute, he would not have discovered his mistake before arriving at
+Staines."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+One of the most striking differences between the coaching age and these
+railway times lies in the altered relations between passenger and driver.
+No railway passenger ever thinks of the man who drives the engine. He, in
+fact, rarely sees him. The coachman, on the other hand, was very much in
+evidence, and was not only seen, but expected to be "remembered" as well.
+And "remembered" the old coachmen were, too: for half a crown each to
+driver and guard was the least one could do in those times. How great a
+tax this was upon the traveller may be guessed when it is said that the
+coachman was generally changed about every fifty miles or so. The guard
+would probably accompany the coach all the way to Bath, but on the longer
+journeys there were at least two. There was a very simple formula used, as
+a hint to passengers that a tip should be forthcoming. "I go no further,
+gentlemen," the coachman would observe, putting his head in at the window.
+A simultaneous dipping of the hands into fobs on the part of the
+passengers resulted from this piece of information, and the coachman would
+depart, richer by considerably over half a sovereign. Imagination does not
+go to the length of picturing the driver or the guard of a train doing the
+like.
+
+[Sidenote: _TIPS_]
+
+It is not, however, to be supposed that coach passengers greatly delighted
+in the practice, even in those fine open-handed days. There were many who
+could not afford it, and others who regarded it as an imposition. But they
+tipped all the same, because, as Mr. Chaplin, the great coach proprietor
+in those palmy days, observed, if they did not the guard and coachman
+"would look very hard at them." Better to face a lioness robbed of her
+cubs than a coachman defrauded of his tip. Passengers, therefore, resigned
+themselves with a sigh to the expenditure, and travelled as little as they
+possibly could. There can, indeed, be no doubt that tipping, grown to a
+regular system, injured the coach proprietors' business; and it was
+eventually, if not abolished entirely, at least shorn of its more
+grandiose proportions. The first man to tackle the question was Thomas
+Cooper. He was proprietor of a line of coaches running between London and
+Bristol from 1827 to 1832. "Cooper's Old Company," he called his business.
+He had originally been landlord of the "Castle Hotel" at Marlborough, but
+gave it up and removed to Thatcham, where he took a cottage and built
+stables for his coaching stud. Here he was practically halfway between
+London and Bristol, and his day and night coaches stopped to dine and sup
+at "Cooper's Cottage," as, with a sense of the value of alliteration, he
+called it. All his advertisements bore the announcement, "No fees," and
+the same pleasing legend was writ large on the backs of his coaches.
+
+Cooper paid his coachmen and guards considerably higher wages, to
+compensate them for the loss of their tips. He became bankrupt in 1832,
+and sold his business to Chaplin, who afterwards, through his interest in
+the railway world, obtained him the post of stationmaster at Richmond,
+near London. From this position he eventually retired on a pension, and
+died about fifteen years ago.
+
+We all know the cantankerous passenger in the railway carriage who makes
+himself objectionable in a variety of ways, but a coach was a much more
+fruitful source of contention. Fortunately, however, it was not often that
+the incident of the strong man in the Bath coach bound for London was
+repeated. A corpulent person of prodigious strength tried to secure a
+place in the mail, but, all the seats being booked, he was told that it
+was impossible to convey him that night. Relying upon his strength and the
+unlikelihood of any one daring to disturb him, he got in while the coach
+was still standing in the stable yard, and waited. He had to wait so long,
+and had dined so well, that he fell asleep, and the coachman, finding him
+there, snoring, put his team into another coach, leaving the fat man in
+peaceable possession of his seat. He awoke in the middle of the night,
+still, of course, in the stable yard of the "White Lion" at Bath, while
+the road echoed with the laughter of the coachman and his friends all the
+way up to London.
+
+[Sidenote: _"FULL INSIDE"_]
+
+In that incident the passengers were fortunate. The "insides" were less to
+be congratulated who bore a part in the memorable journey down to Bath
+from Piccadilly with an extra passenger. It is of the Bath mail that the
+story is told. Mail coaches carried four inside. One night, when the mail
+was ready to start from Piccadilly, full up, inside and out, a gentleman
+who wanted to go to Marlborough came hurrying up. He was well known to
+coachman and guard as a regular customer; but, although they did not
+want to leave him behind, there seemed to be no alternative. He solved the
+difficulty himself by squeezing in as the coach started; and so, packed as
+tightly as herrings in a barrel, they rumbled away, amid the muttered
+curses of the original occupants. The misery of that journey may be better
+imagined than described, and when the coach halted at the "Bear" at
+Maidenhead, it might be supposed that the "insides" would have been only
+too pleased to get out for a momentary relief when the guard appeared at
+the door and made what was usually the pleasant announcement, "Time to get
+a cup of coffee here, gentlemen." Did they get out? Oh no! They were so
+tightly wedged that they dared not move, afraid lest they should not be
+able to get in again. So they endured to the bitter end, and there can be
+no doubt whatever that when Marlborough was reached, they "sped the
+parting guest" with exceptional heartiness.
+
+[Illustration: THE "WHITE BEAR," PICCADILLY.]
+
+[Illustration: SIGN OF THE "WHITE BEAR," NOW AT FICKLES HOLE.]
+
+The inn from which this coach started was the "White Bear," Piccadilly,
+which stood, until about the year 1860, on the site now occupied by the
+Criterion Restaurant. It was a curious old place, chiefly of wood, and had
+a great effigy of a polar bear on its frontage. This "White Bear" sign is
+still in existence, but rusticated to the lonely hamlet of Fickles Hole,
+near Croydon, where it stands in the little garden of the "White Bear"
+inn.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+A very swagger stage-coach, the "York House," was started between Bath and
+London in 1815, followed by a rival, the "Beaufort Hunt." The first-named
+started from the "York House Hotel" at Bath; the "Beaufort Hunt" from the
+"White Lion." Both were fast day coaches; and, perhaps because of racing,
+the "Beaufort Hunt" was upset twice in a fortnight, soon after it had been
+put on the road. It was a sporting age, but not so sporting that
+passengers were prepared to risk life and limb in taking part in this
+keen rivalry. Accordingly, the "Beaufort Hunt" fell upon evil times, and
+the proprietor had to dismiss his too zealous drivers. He was, however,
+fortunate in his new coachman, who was exceptionally civil and obliging,
+and eventually regained the position of the coach, which, although it kept
+up a furious pace of eleven miles an hour, remained for years a prime
+favourite with the more dashing travellers along the road.
+
+This and the other crack coaches, which continued running until the Great
+Western Railway finally took them away on trucks, quite cut out the mails,
+which, from being the fastest coaches on the road, soon came to occupy a
+very middling position.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE AUGUSTAN AGE_]
+
+In 1821, the mail-coaches had reached a speed of nearly eight and
+three-quarter miles an hour, including stoppages. They started from the
+General Post Office at 8 p.m., and reached Bristol at 10 a.m. the
+following morning. At the same period the two fast stage-coaches just
+described were doing their eleven miles an hour, and in 1830 were actually
+timed a mile an hour faster, while the mail was very little accelerated,
+if at all. Some years later, indeed (in 1837), the Bristol mail was
+wakened up, and performed the 121 miles in 11 hrs. 45 min., or at the rate
+of ten miles and a quarter an hour, including changes, of which there were
+fourteen. This was the fine flower of the Coaching Age on the Bath Road.
+There were then about fifteen or sixteen day and night coaches between
+London and Bath, and two mails, all running full. On June 4, 1838, the
+Great Western Railway was opened as far as Slough, and the coaches ran
+only between that place and Bath. In March, 1840, the railway was open as
+far as Reading; and June 30, 1841, saw trains running between London,
+Bath, and Bristol, and the road deserted.
+
+The difference between those times and these is sufficiently striking to
+demand some attention. Fares by mail were 4_d._ a mile; by stage-coach,
+from 4_d._ to 3-1/2_d._ a mile inside, and 2_d._ outside. Or, if one
+wanted to travel somewhat cheaper, and did not mind an all-night journey,
+the fares by night coach were about 2-1/2_d._ and 1-1/2_d._ respectively.
+The cost of travelling to Bath was therefore anything from 35_s._ down to
+14_s._ To these figures 5_s._ or 6_s._ should be added, for coachmen and
+guards always expected to be tipped, while something like half a sovereign
+for refreshments was essential.
+
+For those whose time was of no consequence, and whose pockets were not
+well lined, there were the slow lumbering stage-waggons, which progressed
+at about four miles an hour and stopped everywhere. The fare by these was
+something under a penny a mile, and refreshments were correspondingly
+cheap, for the landlords of the wayside inns, who despised this kind of
+travellers, provided a supper of cold beef at 6_d._ a head, and a
+shake-down of clean straw in the stable-loft at a nominal price.
+
+If, on the other hand, one desired to do the thing in style, it was always
+possible to post down. Only the great men of the earth did that, for the
+cost was more than considerable, tolls alone for a carriage and pair
+amounting to 9_s._ In fact, posting pair-horse to Bath would not have
+cost less than L11. Nor would there then have been any advantage in pace,
+for post-chaises generally attained a speed of ten miles an hour, when the
+best coaches were doing twelve. Still, there were those who posted, ready
+to pay, both in money and time, for their privacy; for the wealthy Briton
+of that day was apt to be an extremely haughty and insufferable person,
+and preferred to travel like a Grand Llama, even though he paid heavily
+for it in coin and discomfort.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE FIRST MOTOR-CAR_]
+
+Almost the last scene in this "strange eventful history" of
+road-travelling in the past was enacted in 1829, when Mr. Gurney's
+"steam-carriage" conveyed a number of people from London to Bath. The
+vehicle did not meet with the approval of the rustics, and at Melksham an
+angry mob, armed with stones, assailed the travellers, loudly denouncing
+the unholy thing. From Cranford Bridge to Reading, the speed was at the
+rate of sixteen miles an hour, and so delighted were those concerned with
+the result of the experiment that an announcement was made that "immediate
+measures" would be taken "to bring carriages of the sort into action on
+the roads." It has, however, been left to these last few years to
+re-introduce the motor-car, with results yet to be seen.
+
+Such was travel on the road in olden times. To-day one travels to Bath in
+a fraction of the time at less than half the cost; the 107 miles railway
+journey from Paddington occupies exactly two hours, and a third-class
+ticket costs 8_s._ 11_d._
+
+As these lines are being written, the last of the old coaching inns from
+which some of the Bath stages started, is being demolished. The "White
+Horse," in Fetter Lane, Holborn, fell upon evil days when railways
+revolutionized its custom. Where Lord Eldon stayed in 1766, and whence
+many another aristocratic traveller set forth, tramps and fourpenny
+"dossers" found refuge. The "White Horse" inn became the "White Horse
+Chambers"--not the kind of chambers understood in St. James's, but rather
+the cheap cubicles of St. Giles's.
+
+[Illustration: THE "WHITE HORSE" INN, FETTER LANE. DEMOLISHED 1898.]
+
+[Sidenote: _DEPARTED GLORIES_]
+
+Cary's "Itinerary" for 1821 (Cary was a guide, philosopher, and friend
+without whom our grandfathers never travelled) gives no fewer than
+thirty-seven stage-coaches which started from this old house. There was
+the "Accommodation" to Oxford, at seven o'clock in the morning; the Bath
+and Bristol Light Post coach, at two in the afternoon, arriving at
+Bristol at eight o'clock the following morning; and the Worcester,
+Cheltenham, and Woodstock coaches, which all travelled along the Bath road
+to Maidenhead. Then there were the York "Highflier," a crack Light Post
+coach, every morning, at nine o'clock; the "Princess Charlotte," to
+Brighton; the Lynn, Dover, Cambridge, Ipswich, and other coaches too
+numerous to mention in detail. It will, therefore, not be surprising to
+learn that the stables of this busy hostelry were large enough to hold
+seventy horses.
+
+At the foot of the staircase, near the entrance, was the office, and
+everywhere were long passages and interminable suites of rooms. But how
+different the circumstances in later years! The vast apartment that was
+the public dining-room became, in fact, a kind of socialistic kitchen.
+
+There, when his day's work was done, the kerbstone merchant came to grill
+the cheap chop he had purchased. There the professional cadger toasted a
+herring, while his companions cooked scraps of meat or toasted cheese.
+
+This part of Holborn was once famous for its old inns. Indeed, on the
+opposite side of that main artery of traffic were the "Black Bull" and the
+"Old Bell." There is nothing left of the first now except the great black
+effigy of a bull with a golden zone about the middle of him, and beyond
+the archway a courtyard which was once the galleried courtyard of the inn,
+but is now just the area of a block of peculiarly dirty "model" dwellings.
+
+[Illustration: COURTYARD OF THE "OLD BELL," HOLBORN. DEMOLISHED 1897.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "OLD BELL"_]
+
+What Londoner did not know the "Old Bell" Tavern, in Holborn, whose
+mellowed red brick frontage gave so great an air of distinction to that
+now commonplace thoroughfare. Among the last of the old galleried inns,
+some of its timbers dated back to 1521. The front of the house was
+comparatively juvenile, dating only from 1720. What its galleried
+courtyard was like let this sketch record. The site was sold for L11,600,
+and the house demolished, at the close of 1897, although its structural
+stability was unquestioned, and the place a favourite dining and luncheon
+house. Twenty-one coaches left that old house daily in the full flush of
+the coaching age; among them two Cheltenham coaches, the coaches to
+Faringdon, and Abingdon, Oxford, Woodstock, and Blenheim, all of which
+went by the Bath Road so far as Maidenhead, where they branched off _via_
+Henley. In addition, there was the stage which ran twice a day to
+Englefield Green, branching off at Hounslow. The "Old Bell" could, indeed,
+claim the credit of being the last actual coaching-house in London, for it
+is only a few years since the last three-horsed omnibus was discontinued
+that ran between it and Amersham, in Bucks. When the Metropolitan Railway
+extension reached that place, the conveyance, of course, became quite
+unnecessary, and the last remote echo of the genuine coaching age died
+away.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The Bath Road is measured from Hyde Park Corner, and is a hundred and five
+miles and six furlongs in length. The reasons for this being reckoned as
+the starting-point of this great highway are found in the fact that when
+coaches were in their prime, Hyde Park Corner was at the very western
+verge of London. Early in the eighteenth century Londoners would have
+considered it in the country; and, indeed, the turnpike gate which until
+1721 crossed Piccadilly, opposite Berkeley Street, gave a quasi-official
+confirmation of that view. In that year, however, it was removed to Hyde
+Park Corner, just westward of the thoroughfare now known as Grosvenor
+Place, and so remained until October, 1825, when it was disestablished in
+favour of a turnpike gate opposite the spot where the Alexandra Hotel now
+stands. Beyond it--in the country--was the pretty rural village of
+Knightsbridge, with a gate by the barracks; and, beyond that, the remote
+village of Kensington, to which the Court retired for change of air, far
+away from London and its cares!
+
+From 1721 to 1825, therefore, we may well regard Hyde Park Corner as the
+beginning of town. This was so well recognized that local allusions to the
+fact were plentiful. For instance, where Piccadilly Terrace now stands was
+an inn called the "Hercules' Pillars," a favourite sign for houses on the
+outskirts of large towns, just as churches dedicated to St. Giles were
+anciently placed outside the city walls. "Hercules' Pillars" was the
+classic name for the Straits of Gibraltar, regarded then as the boundary
+of civilization; hence the peculiar fitness of the sign.
+
+On the western side of this inn, a place greatly resorted to by the
+'prentice lads who wanted to take their lasses for a country outing in
+Hyde Park, was a little cottage, long known as "Allen's Stall," which
+stood here from the time of George the Second until 1784, when Apsley
+House was erected on its site. The ground is said to have been a present
+from George the Second to a discharged soldier named Allen, who had
+fought under his command at Dettingen.
+
+[Illustration: ALLEN'S STALL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, ABOUT 1756.]
+
+[Sidenote: _ALLEN'S STALL_]
+
+The story is a pretty one, and tells how the King was riding into Hyde
+Park, when he noticed the soldier, still wearing a tattered uniform,
+taking charge of the stall in company with his wife.
+
+"What can I do for you?" asked the King, replying to the military salute
+which the ragged veteran offered.
+
+[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1786.]
+
+"I ask nothing better than to earn an honest living, your Majesty,"
+replied the soldier; "but I am like to be turned away by the Ranger. If
+your Majesty were to give me a grant of the ground my stall stands on, I
+would be happy."
+
+"Be happy, then," answered the King, and saw to it that Allen had his
+request satisfied.
+
+The stall became a cottage, where Allen and his wife lived until they were
+gathered to the great majority, having in the meanwhile, it may be
+supposed, done pretty well for themselves, since we find their son to
+have been an attorney. The cottage was deserted, and the royal gift of the
+land partly forgotten, so that the Lord Chancellor of that period was
+granted a lease of the ground and began to build a mansion on it. Allen's
+son had to the full that shrewdness which has made the name of "attorney"
+so generally detested that those "gentlemen by Act of Parliament" prefer
+nowadays to call themselves "solicitors." He waited until my Lord
+Chancellor had nearly completed his house, and then put forward his claim,
+finally obtaining L450 per annum as ground rent. He subsequently sold the
+land outright, and so Lord Chancellor Henry Bathurst, Baron Apsley, and
+Earl Bathurst, became the freeholder, and named his residence "Apsley
+House." The mansion was purchased by the nation for the great Duke of
+Wellington in 1820. It was, from its situation, long known as "No. 1,
+London."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _MUD BULWARKS_]
+
+Let us see what kind of entrance to London this was in olden times. In
+Queen Mary's day the idea of a road leading so far as Bath seems to have
+been considered too fantastic for common use, and this was accordingly
+known as the "waye to Reading." In that reign, which was so reactionary
+that many were discontented with it, and roused up armed rebellions, the
+rebel Sir Thomas Wyatt brought his men thus far, having crossed the Thames
+at Kingston and struggled through the awful sloughs between that place
+and Knightsbridge. It seems quite likely that, but for the mud of those
+miscalled "roads," the rebellion would have been successful, and the
+course of history changed. But Wyatt's soldiers were utterly exhausted
+with the march; and when the Londoners saw them, plastered with mud from
+head to foot, they forgot their own discontent, and laughed at their
+would-be deliverers, calling them "draggle-tails." So, dispirited and
+contemned, they were easily disposed of by the Queen's troops, who, secure
+behind their girdle of muck, had only to wait and slay them at leisure.
+
+[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1792.]
+
+The lesson seems not to have been lost upon the authorities, and
+accordingly we find this defence of dirt in existence up to the year 1842.
+For nearly three hundred years this "splendid isolation" set an almost
+impassable gulf between those who wished to get out of London and those
+who wanted to come in; for in the year just mentioned we learn that
+Knightsbridge was in so deplorable a state of neglect that it was
+perfectly impassable for persons possessing a common regard for
+cleanliness or comfort. Ankle-deep in mud and water, the pavement was
+rendered additionally dangerous by two steps, forming a sudden descent, so
+that those who were rash enough to attempt to pass that way in the dark
+generally bruised themselves severely at the best of it; or, at the worst,
+broke a leg or an arm.
+
+But this was nothing compared with a former age, when Lord Hervey, writing
+from Kensington, said the road was so infamously bad that he lived there
+in a solitude like that of a sailor cast away upon a lonely rock in
+mid-ocean. The only people who enjoyed this condition of affairs appear to
+have been the footpads and the highwaymen, who had the very best of times,
+until they were caught. Indeed, in the days when the stage-coaches
+performed the then marvellous feats of travelling at anything from three
+to five miles an hour, under favourable circumstances, the road could not
+be considered safe after Hyde Park Corner was left behind; and records
+tell of highway robberies, with the romantic accessories of blunderbusses
+and horse-pistols, at Knightsbridge so late as 1799.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "HALFWAY HOUSE"_]
+
+[Illustration: HYDE PARK CORNER, 1797.]
+
+There was at that time, and until 1848, an old inn standing by the way,
+near where are now Knightsbridge Barracks. This inn, the "Halfway House,"
+occupied the exact site where Prince of Wales's Gate now gives access to
+Hyde Park. Hereabouts lurked all manner of bad characters, who had
+infested the neighbourhood from time immemorial, safe from the clutches
+of the law both in their numbers and in the isolation created by the
+almost bottomless sloughs of mud which then decorated what was, by
+courtesy or force of habit, called the "road."
+
+[Illustration: THE "HALFWAY HOUSE." 1848.]
+
+At this spot, in April, 1740, the Bristol mail was robbed by a footpad,
+who overpowered the post-boy and got off with both the Bath and Bristol
+bags; while in 1774, three men were hanged for highway robbery here. But
+the most thrilling and circumstantial story of highwaymen at this spot is
+that which relates the capture of William Belchier, in 1750. There had
+been numerous highway robberies in the neighbourhood of the "Halfway
+House," and at last one William Norton, a "thief-catcher," was sent to
+apprehend the man, if possible. He took the Devizes chaise at half-past
+one in the morning of June 3, and when they had come to the place, sure
+enough the robber was there, waiting for them, and on foot. He bade the
+driver stop, and, holding a pistol in at the window, demanded the
+passengers' money. "Don't frighten us," replied Norton. "I have but a
+trifle; you shall have it." He also advised the three other passengers to
+give up their coin; and, holding a pistol concealed in one hand and some
+silver in the other, let the robber take the money. When he had taken it
+the thief-taker raised his pistol and pulled the trigger. It missed fire;
+but the robber was too frightened to notice that. He staggered back,
+holding up both hands, exclaiming, "O Lord, O Lord!" Norton then jumped
+out after him, pursued him six or seven hundred yards, and then caught
+him. He begged for mercy on his knees, but Norton took his neck-cloth off,
+tied his hands, and brought him into London, where he was tried, found
+guilty, and hanged. The prisoner asked his captor in court what trade he
+followed. "I keep a shop in Wych Street," replied Norton; adding, with
+grim significance, "and sometimes I take a thief."
+
+In Kensington Gore (which might have obtained its sanguinary name from
+these encounters--but didn't) a certain Mr. Jackson, of the Court of
+Requests at Westminster, was requested to "stand and deliver" on the night
+of December 27, in the same year, by four desperadoes. And so the tale
+goes on, with such curious side-lights on the state of society as are
+afforded by the stories of how pedestrians, desirous of journeying from
+London to Knightsbridge and Kensington, were used in those "good old
+times" to wait in Piccadilly until there were gathered a sufficient number
+of them to render the perilous journey safer. Even then they did not rely
+only on their numbers, but went well armed with swords, pistols, and
+cudgels.
+
+[Sidenote: _TURNPIKE GATES_]
+
+It is scarcely to be supposed that the turnpike-gates earned much money in
+those times, when ways were foul and dangerous, and when the cut-throats
+who lurked about that delectable "Halfway House" were in their prime.
+Printed here will be found several views of the first gate, showing its
+development from 1786 to 1797. It will be seen that a high brick wall then
+bounded the Park. This was continued all the way, except where the houses,
+low inns, and cottages on the north side of the road stood, and where
+their successors stand to-day, to the eastward and westward of the present
+"Albert Gate." That imposing entrance to the Park was made in 1846, and
+the immense houses on either side--the "two Gibraltars," as they were
+called--built. They were so called because it was thought they would never
+be taken; but the one on the east side, now the French Embassy, was soon
+let to Hudson, the Railway King. As mentioned just now, the "Halfway
+House" stood where the Prince of Wales's Gate opens into the Park. It
+stood there until 1848, when the ground was purchased for L3000, and the
+house pulled down. If the owners had kept the land, their descendants
+to-day could have sold it for a sum that would represent a handsome
+fortune, as evidenced by the fact that a plot of ground of the same size,
+on which Thorney House stood, in Kensington Gore was sold in 1898 for
+L100,000. Thus does the value of land increase in the neighbourhood of
+London.
+
+In 1827, London and its neighbourhood began to be relieved of the incubus
+of the turnpike-gates. In that year twenty-seven toll-gates were removed
+by Parliament; eighty-one were disestablished July 1, 1864; and sixty-one,
+October 31, 1865. Many others were swept away on the Essex and Middlesex
+roads on October 31, 1866, while the remainder ceased July 1, 1872. The
+first toll-gate which gave the traveller pause from 1856 to July 1, 1864,
+on the Bath and Exeter roads stood in Kensington Gore, and barred the
+roadway just where Victoria Road branches off. Many yet living can recall
+the "Halfpenny Hatch," as it was familiarly known. At the time of the
+Great Exhibition of 1851 the road was distinctly rural. It was that
+greatest of all exhibitions which gave an impetus to building in this
+neighbourhood. Up to that time London had not "discovered" Kensington, and
+the highway was not a mere street, but looked as though the country were
+round the corner, which, indeed, was very nearly the case. You could then,
+in fact, well imagine yourself to be on the highway to somewhere or
+another--a thing demanding more imagination to-day than most people are
+capable of calling up.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD KENSINGTON_]
+
+It may be as well to put on record in this place the Kensington of my own
+recollection. My reminiscences of Kensington by no means go so far back as
+the time when Leigh Hunt wrote his "Old Court Suburb," a book which
+described what was then a village "near London;" but when I first knew
+that now bustling place it was, if not exactly to be described as rural,
+certainly by no stretch of imagination to be called urban. In those days
+the great shops, which are no longer called shops, but "emporia," or
+"stores," or "magazines," did not flaunt with plate-glass windows opposite
+St. Mary Abbot's Church, nor, indeed, did the present building of St. Mary
+exist. In its place was a hideous structure, erected probably at some
+early period of the eighteenth century. It had windows that purported to
+be Gothic, and a bell-turret that belonged to no known order of
+architecture. It, and the now demolished old church of St. Paul,
+Hammersmith, bore a singular likeness to one another. The present
+generation can only discover what these unlovely buildings were like by
+referring to old prints, because there are none other now existing in
+London to which they can be likened; and a very good thing too. I can
+recollect old St. Mary's very well indeed, and the days when the old
+Vestry Hall was still a place for the transaction of vestry business are
+quite vivid to me. In fact, at that time the Vestry Hall was somewhat new,
+and where the imposing Town Hall now stands beside it there was a tall
+building of very grimy brick, with quaint little figures of a boy and a
+girl perched high up on brackets above, and on either side of, the door.
+These little figures were represented as clad in a peculiar Dutch-like
+uniform; the boy, I think, blue, and the girl a quite painful orange,
+whenever they repainted her, which was seldom. This was, in fact, some
+sort of charity school, and it was as dismal a place as all charitable
+institutions were apt to be in our grandfathers' time, when it was
+criminal to be poor, and eleemosynary establishments, in consequence, were
+designed as much like prisons as might well be.
+
+[Illustration: KENSINGTON HIGH STREET, SUMMER SUNSET.]
+
+At the time of which I speak it was quite necessary to go to London to do
+any save the most ordinary shopping, and if one had told the "oldest
+inhabitant" that a time was presently coming when it would be possible not
+only to order, but to purchase and take away on the instant, from
+Kensington shops the rarest and most costly things that the heart of man
+(or woman either, for that matter) could desire, that ancient individual
+would have thought he was being told fairy tales.
+
+[Illustration: "OLDEST INHABITANT."]
+
+I knew that oldest inhabitant, who has been long since gathered to his
+fathers. His was a quaint figure, and he was stored with many
+reminiscences. He could "mind the time" when Gore House was occupied by
+the Countess of Blessington, and when Louis Napoleon, then a young man
+about town, was a frequent visitor to that somewhat Bohemian
+establishment. Also he remembered the first 'bus to make its appearance in
+Kensington. For myself, I certainly remember the time here when omnibuses
+were few and far between. Now there are generally half a dozen waiting at
+any time you like to mention by St. Mary Abbot's, which has become, in
+omnibus slang, "Kensington Church," while the pavements are thronged by
+fashionable crowds all day long and every day. Not least remarkable is the
+long row of bicycles drawn up against the kerb opposite the aforesaid
+emporia, in charge of a diminutive boy in buttons, the patrons of these
+great shops being inveterate "bikists."
+
+[Sidenote: _THE NEW KENSINGTONS_]
+
+Now that towering hotels and flats have been built in Kensington High
+Street, the old-time distinction of the "Old Court Suburb" is fast
+becoming obliterated, and there are more Kensingtons than were ever
+dreamed of years ago. North Kensington, and South and West
+Kensington--which, shorn of these would-be aristocratic aliases, are just
+Notting Hill, Brompton, and Hammersmith--were just so many orchards and
+market-gardens not so many years ago; and I declare that it is not so long
+since there was an orchard in Allen Street, off the High Street, where
+red-brick flats now stand, while, in that chosen realm of flatland, Earl's
+Court, the cabbages and lettuces grew amazingly. Cromwell Road was not
+built at the time to which my memory harks back, and where the ornate
+Natural History Museum now stands there was a huge gravel-pit, in which
+were many ponds and swamps, where wild grasses grew and slimy newts
+increased and multiplied greatly. Gore House, which had been Lady
+Blessington's, was still standing in the early years of my recollection,
+and the Albert Hall, which now occupies the site of it, was, consequently,
+undreamt of. The last use to which it had been put was to be converted,
+by Alexis Soyer, into a huge restaurant for the millions who frequented
+the Great Exhibition of 1851, which I do _not_ recollect, thank goodness!
+
+[Sidenote: _KENSINGTON HOUSE_]
+
+There were other landmarks in the Kensington of my youth which have long
+since been swept away. For instance, where Victoria Road joins the Gore
+there was a tall archway leading to a hippodrome, or horse repository.
+Where it stood there is now an extremely "elegant"--as they used to say
+when I was younger--hotel. Even greater changes have taken place where the
+Gore joins the High Street. Where that collection of palatial houses
+called Kensington Court now stands, there stood years ago a huge old brick
+mansion which in its last days experienced some strange vicissitudes of
+fortune, among which its last two changes--into a school for young ladies,
+and finally into a lunatic asylum--were not the least remarkable. There
+was in those days a most dreadful slum at the back of this mansion, known
+locally as the "Rookery." Londoners should know the history of Kensington
+Court and its site, and how Baron Albert Grant, in the heyday of his
+financial success, pulled down the old mansion, and built himself on its
+ruins a lordly (and vulgar) pleasure-palace, which he called "Kensington
+House." The memory of it springs fresh to this day, and it requires little
+effort to recall the place as it stood, in all its pristine
+pretentiousness, until 1880, or thereabouts. It was built by the
+redoubtable Baron to shame Kensington Palace, which it exactly faced, and
+if gilt railings, fresh white stone, and big plate-glass windows may be
+said to have put the old Palace out of countenance, then Kensington Palace
+was shamed indeed, but only with that very questionable kind of shame
+which overtakes the poor patrician confronted by a swaggering, pursy
+millionaire. At any rate, Kensington Palace is avenged, for not one stone
+now remains of that pretentious house. It lay back some little distance
+from the road, from which it was screened by a tall iron railing, with
+gilded spikes and globular gas-lamps at intervals, of a type closely
+resembling those in use on the Metropolitan and District Railways. It is
+not a lovely type, but it is one still greatly favoured in the suburbs of
+Clapham and Blackheath.
+
+This ornate palisade of cast-iron, which pretended to be wrought, once
+passed, a gravel drive led up to the house. Ah, that house! It possessed
+all the flamboyant glories of Grosvenor Gardens and more, and was of a
+style called variously by the building journals of that day, French or
+Italian Renaissance. "Renaissance" is a term which, like charity, covers a
+multitude of sins, and if you want to cloak a collection of architectural
+enormities, why, you term it Renaissance, and, by implication, insult the
+great French and Italian masters of the New Birth. It needs not to trouble
+about the details of that house, save to say that polished granite pillars
+were well to the fore, and that portentous Mansard roofs in fish-scale
+lead coverings, with spikes, finished off its sky-line. For long years
+Kensington House remained unlet, because of the immense sums its up-keep
+would have entailed. Millionaires, South African and other varieties,
+were not so plentiful years ago as they are now. So, after some years of
+forlorn waiting for the occupier who never came, Kensington House, never
+once inhabited, was at last demolished, and its materials sold. It is said
+that the grand marble staircase went to grace the gilded salons of Madame
+Tussaud's waxen court, and certainly the spiky railings, with their
+gas-lamps, were sold to furnish an imposing entrance to Sandown Park
+Racecourse, where they may be seen to this day by the cyclist who wheels
+through Esher, down the Portsmouth Road.
+
+[Illustration: THACKERAY'S HOUSE, YOUNG STREET.]
+
+[Sidenote: _JOHN LEECH_]
+
+There still stands, off High Street, the grimy double-bayed house, now
+numbered 16, Young Street, but formerly No. 13, in which Thackeray wrote
+"Vanity Fair;" but most others of the old literary and artistic haunts of
+the "Old Court Suburb" have been demolished. "The Terrace"--that long row
+of old-fashioned houses extending from Wright's Lane westward--was pulled
+down but six years ago. Those houses were not beautiful, but they were at
+least pleasingly old-fashioned, and in No. 6 lived and died John Leech, an
+early victim of that peculiarly modern malady, "nerves." Some amazingly
+up-to-date shops now occupy the spot.
+
+[Illustration: THE "WHITE HORSE." TRADITIONAL RETREAT OF ADDISON.]
+
+Long ago, the other old-fashioned houses on this side of the road lost
+their forecourt gardens, over which other shops were built; and beyond the
+memory of any one now living there stood a little country inn at the
+corner of what is now the Earl's Court Road; a rural retreat called the
+"White Horse," to which Addison withdrew from the cold splendours of
+Holland House opposite. He had contracted an unhappy marriage with the
+Countess of Warwick, the mistress of that splendid mansion, which happily
+yet remains; but stole away to this more congenial haunt, and drank his
+intellect away.
+
+Beyond this, all was country road, in the coaching days, until Hammersmith
+was reached. The first outpost of that now unsavoury place was a rural inn
+called the "Red Cow," opposite Brook Green.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "RED COW"_]
+
+The "Red Cow," pulled down December, 1897, rejoiced once upon a time in
+the reputation of being a house of call for the peculiar gentry who
+infested the suburban reaches of the great western highways out of London.
+It was not by any means the resort of the aristocracy of the profession of
+highway robbery; but a place where the cly-fakers, the footpads, and the
+lower strata of thievery foregathered to learn the movements of travellers
+and retail them to the fine gentlemen who, mounted on the best of horses,
+and clad in gorgeous raiment, occupied the higher walks of the art at a
+safer distance down the road. The house was built in the sixteenth
+century, and was a quaint, though unpretending roadside tavern with a
+high-pitched, red-tiled roof. It possessed vast stables, for it was
+situated, in early coaching days, at the end of the first stage out of
+London. It may well be imagined, then, that the stable-yard was a scene of
+constant excitement in the good old days, for here were kept a goodly
+supply of strong roadsters for the coaches running to Bath, Bristol,
+Wells, Bridgewater, and Exeter, and here the elegant samples of horseflesh
+which had brought the coaches at a spanking pace from the "Belle Sauvage,"
+on Ludgate Hill, were changed for animals who could do the rough work of
+the country roads. They were not particularly fine to look at--especially
+those used on the night coaches--and it was often a matter of surprise
+that they were able to keep up the pace required, and that the greasy old
+harness stood the strain. It has been said that in one of the
+old-fashioned rooms of the "Red Cow" E. L. Blanchard wrote his "Memoirs
+of a Malacca Cane." In the last thirty years or so of its existence the
+"Red Cow" was a favourite pull-up for the waggoners from the market
+gardens, who in the small hours of the morning rumbled past with piled-up
+loads of fruit, vegetables, and flowers for Covent Garden, and halted on
+their return for a refresher of bread and cheese and beer. Then, too, the
+hay-carts used to halt here, and the sight of them, with the horses
+drinking from the old wooden water-trough beside the kerb-stone,
+underneath the swinging sign, was like a picture of Morland's come to
+life, and agreeably leavened that general air of fried-fish, drink, and
+dissipation which lingers in the memory as the most characteristic
+features of modern Hammersmith.
+
+[Illustration: THE "RED COW," HAMMERSMITH. DEMOLISHED 1897.]
+
+The travellers who were whirled through this place in the Augustan age of
+coaching were soon in the country again, on the way to Turnham Green,
+along the Chiswick High Road. That fine broad thoroughfare is now bordered
+by an almost continuous row of modern shops, erected, many of them, where
+barns and ricks stood less than ten years ago. Such was the appearance of
+"Young's Corner," indeed, until quite recently. That corner, let it be
+said for the information of those not well acquainted with the topography
+of the western suburbs, is the spot where the road from Shepherd's Bush
+joins the highway. Let it further be placed on record, before "historic
+doubts" have had time to gather about the origin of the name, that it
+derives from a little grocer's shop kept at the north-east angle of that
+junction of the roads within the recollection of the present writer, by
+one Young, who has probably been long since gathered to his fathers, for
+his Corner knows him no more, and a house-agent's shop, a brand-new
+building (like all its neighbours), stands where the now historic Young
+sold tea and sugar, and (let us hope) waxed prosperous in days gone by.
+
+[Sidenote: _TURNHAM GREEN_]
+
+Turnham Green lies ahead: a place historic by reason of a preliminary
+skirmish in the Civil War between Cavaliers and Roundheads, and the
+residence in the early part of the century of a peculiarly heartless
+murderer. The passengers by the two-horsed "short-stages" which in the
+first half of this century travelled from London to the outlying villages
+and halted at the "Pack Horse and Talbot," doubtless were curious
+regarding Linden House, near by, notorious from association with Thomas
+Griffiths Wainewright, author and poisoner. He was born at Chiswick in
+1794, and was a grandson of Dr. Ralph Griffiths of Turnham Green. He began
+life by serving in the army, but presently took to literature as a
+profession, and wrote voluminously in the magazines of that day. As an
+author, although possessed of a sprightly wit, he would long since have
+been forgotten had it not been for the sensational career of crime upon
+which he entered in 1824. In that year he forged the signatures of his
+trustees, in order to obtain possession of a sum of L2259. He induced his
+uncle, Mr. G. E. Griffiths, of Linden House, to receive him there as an
+inmate. Within a few months his relative died, poisoned with nux vomica,
+and Wainewright came into possession of his property. In 1830 he persuaded
+a Mrs. Abercromby, a widow lady, to take up her abode with him and his
+wife at Linden House. She came with her two daughters and was promptly
+poisoned with strychnine. After this he removed from the neighbourhood,
+and embarked upon a further series of murders in London. Eventually
+detected, he was convicted and transported for life to the Australian
+colonies, where he is credibly said to have poisoned others. Murder by
+poison was, in fact, an obsession with this man, although he was
+sufficiently sane and sordid to select victims whose deaths would bring
+him pecuniary advantage. Wainewright's _metier_ in literature was chiefly
+art criticism, and his style narrowly resembles that of a revolting
+person, now ostracised from Society, who also dabbled in Art and actually
+wrote and published an "appreciation" of the poisoner some few years
+since.
+
+Linden House was pulled down some fifteen years ago, and its site is
+marked by the modern villas of Linden Gardens. The recollection of it
+brings a train of reminiscences.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+[Sidenote: _SUBURBAN CHANGES_]
+
+Reminiscences are soon accumulated in these times. It needs not for the
+Londoner to be in the sere and yellow leaf for him to have known many and
+sweeping changes in the pleasant suburbs which used to bring the country
+to his doors, and the scent of the hawthorn through his open window with
+every recurring spring. For myself, I am not a lean and slippered
+pantaloon, on whose head the snows of many winters have fallen. The
+crow's-feet have not yet gathered around the corners of my eyes; and yet I
+have known many rural, or semi-rural, villages around the ever-spreading
+circle of the Great City which in my time have been for ever engulfed in
+the on-rolling waves of bricks and mortar. It is no effort of memory for
+me, or for many another, to recall the market gardens, the orchards, the
+open meadows, and the fine old seventeenth and eighteenth century
+red-brick mansions, each one enclosed within its high garden walls, with
+the jealous seclusion of a monastery, which occupied the sites where the
+streets of Brompton, Earl's Court, Fulham, Walham Green, and Putney now
+stretch their interminable ramifications, and are accounted, justly
+enough, as London. Tell me, if you can, what are the bounds of London,
+north, south, east, or west. Does from Forest Gate on the east, to
+Richmond on the west, span its limits in one direction? and from Wood
+Green on the northern heights, to Croydon on the south, encompass it on
+the other? They may in this year of grace, but where will the boundary of
+continuous brick and mortar be set ten years hence? and where will then be
+the pleasant resorts of the present-day wheelman? They will all be ruined,
+and not, mark you, ruined from the commercial point of view, for the
+coming of the builder spells riches for the suburban freeholder, whose
+land, in the slang of the surveying fraternity, has become "ripe." These
+rustic places are, nevertheless, ruined from the point of view of the
+lover of the picturesque, and when he sees the old mansions going, the
+meadows trenched for foundations, and the lanes widened and paved by the
+newly constituted vestry, he groans in spirit. I am, for instance,
+especially aggrieved at the workings of modernity with Turnham Green.
+
+I went to school there in the days when London was remote. We used to talk
+of "going up to London" then. Do any of the present-day inhabitants of
+Turnham Green, I wonder, speak thus? I imagine not. Turnham Green was then
+as rural as its name sounds now. The name, alas! is all that remains of
+its rurality, save, indeed, the two commons, the "Front" and "Back," as
+they are called. No one now remembers, I suppose, that the so-called "Back
+Common" is really Turnham Bec, even as the open space at Tooting remains
+Tooting Bec to this day. It is so, however, and it is only through this
+corruption that what is really and truly the original green of Turnham
+Green is dubbed the "Front Common." You see the humour of it?
+
+[Sidenote: _THE NEW SUBURB_]
+
+Turnham Green remained countrified until the railway came and took a slice
+off the so-called "Back Common," and built a station, and thus established
+the first outpost of Suburbia. Then another railway came, and took another
+slice, and a School Board filched another piece; and then great black
+boards, with white letters, began to be planted in the surrounding
+orchards, setting forth how "this eligible land" was to be let on building
+lease. Presently men who wore corduroys and waistcoats with sleeves to
+them, and leather straps round their trousers below the knees came along,
+and, with much elaborate profanity, built what were, with much humour,
+termed "villas" there. Streets of them, and all alike! After this, a
+tramway was made along the high-road, starting at Hammersmith, and ending
+at Kew Bridge. That tramway was amusing to us schoolboys, so long as the
+novelty of it lasted. Our school--it had the imposing name of Belmont
+House--faced the high-road, and it was our greatest delight of summer
+evenings to throw pieces of soap at the outside passengers of the trams
+from the bedroom windows. The expenditure of soap was tremendous, and
+sometimes those "outsiders" were hit, whereupon there was trouble! There
+was a gloomy old mansion opposite our school, called "Bleak House," and we
+used to think it was the veritable "Bleak House" of Dickens's story. We
+know better now. It still stands, but a furniture warehousing firm have
+built warehouses on to it, and it is no longer romantically gloomy.
+
+[Illustration: ROBIN HOOD AND LITTLE JOHN.]
+
+The school has gone, too, where I learnt, and promptly forgot, Latin and
+Greek; and a row of shops, with big plate-glass windows and great gas
+lamps, have taken its place; and where we construed those dead (and
+deadly) languages, the linen-draper's assistant measures out muslins and
+calicoes. I have walked along these pavements during the last few days,
+and have noted more changes. There used to stand, beside the road, on the
+right hand as you go towards Gunnersbury, a little wayside "pub," with bow
+windows, and a bent and hunch-backed red-tiled roof. It was called the
+"Robin Hood," and an old-fashioned wooden post, supporting the swinging
+sign, stood on the kerb-stone, beside a horse-trough. I remember the sign
+well, for it had quite an elaborate picture painted upon it, representing
+Robin Hood and Little John. I can see quite clearly now that the artist of
+this affair obtained his ideas from the pictorial diplomas of the Ancient
+Order of Foresters; but, at the time, I thought it a very fine painting.
+The feathered hats impressed me very much indeed, although I always used
+to wonder why those two magnificent fellows hadn't pulled up their socks.
+It was some time before I discovered that they were not socks, but the big
+bucket boots of romance. They have pulled this old house down, and have
+built a glaring, flaring, gin-palace on the site of it, just as they did
+some five years ago to the old "Roebuck," not far off. The sign is gone,
+too, and wayfarers are no longer invited, if Robin Hood is not at home, to
+take a glass with Little John. What would happen, I often speculated, if
+both those heroes were away? Would, one take a glass, in that case, with
+Friar Tuck or Maid Marian?
+
+[Illustration: THE "OLD WINDMILL."]
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD SUBURBAN INNS_]
+
+There is an old inn still standing in this same high-road--most
+appropriately, by the way, situated next door to the Police Station,
+which, in its time, has extended hospitality to many a bold "road agent"
+who found his living on the Bath and Exeter Roads. The "Old Windmill" is a
+shy, retiring house which lies modestly some way back from the line of
+houses fronting the road. It has an open gravelled space in front, and a
+swinging sign on a post, which, together with an immense sundial on the
+front of the house, proclaims that the "Old Windmill" dates back to 1717.
+These are vestiges of the time when the Chiswick High Road was bordered by
+hedges instead of houses. The house, although it wears a certain
+old-world air, can scarce be called picturesque. The huge sundial just
+mentioned, with its mis-spelled legend, "So Fly's Life Away," gives it an
+interest, and so does the record of how one Henry Colam was arrested here
+one night toward the close of last century, on the charge, "For that he
+did molest and threaten certain of His Majesty's liege subjects upon the
+highway, in company with divers others, still at large." Henry had, as a
+matter of fact, "with divers others," attempted to rob the Bath Mail near
+this spot. He failed in his enterprise, but Bow Street had him all the
+same, and it does not require a very vivid imagination to conjure up a
+picture of his end.
+
+Another old inn, which still stands at Turnham Green, although greatly
+altered, has a history not to be forgotten.
+
+[Sidenote: _TREASON AND TREACHERY_]
+
+At the "Old Pack Horse" (not by any means to be confounded with the "Pack
+Horse and Talbot," a quarter of a mile nearer on the road to London)
+assembled parties of the conspirators who, headed by their two principals,
+named, oddly enough, Barclay and Perkins,[1] plotted the assassination of
+King William the Third, on February 15, 1696. They were authorized by the
+exiled James the Second to do the deed, and had planned for forty of their
+band to surround the King's carriage as he returned from one of his weekly
+hunting expeditions from Kensington Palace to Richmond Park. His coach,
+they knew, would pass along a narrow, morass-like lane from the waterside
+on to Turnham Green, near where the church now stands, and they were well
+aware that, as it could at this point proceed only at a walking pace,
+William would fall an easy victim. It chanced, however, that there were
+traitors among their number, who informed the King's friends, so that on
+two succeeding Saturdays, while they were expecting him, he remained at
+Kensington. Many of the band were arrested, and six suffered the penalty
+of high treason.
+
+The spot where the proposed assassination was to have been consummated is
+now known as Sutton Lane. At the corner of this suburban thoroughfare,
+where Fromow's Nursery stands, the fate of England was to have been
+decided.
+
+[Illustration: THE "OLD PACK HORSE."]
+
+The "Old Pack Horse" has been somewhat modernized of late years by
+additions built out on the ground floor, but it remains substantially the
+same building at which Jack Rann, the famous "Sixteen-string Jack" of
+highway romance, may have taken a last drink with which to screw up his
+courage just before setting out to rob Dr. Bell, the chaplain to the
+Princess Amelia, in Gunnersbury Lane, near by. "Sixteen-string Jack" was
+hanged for that job in 1774.
+
+He was peculiarly unfortunate, for Turnham Green and Gunnersbury were
+veritable Alsatias then, and those who travelled here should not have
+mentioned so ordinary a happening as having their purses taken. Indeed, it
+was so usual an occurrence that Horace Walpole tells us of a certain Lady
+Brown who, visiting here, always went provided with a purse full of brass
+tokens for the highwaymen. Imagination, conjuring up a picture of a Turpin
+or a Claude du Vall riding away with a pocketful of guineas which, on
+arriving home, he discovers to be counterfeits, provokes a smile.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+There are changes impending not far from here. Who that knows Kew Bridge
+has not an affection for that hump-backed old structure, although it
+presents many difficulties to the rider? Kew Bridge is doomed, and the
+powers that be are going to pull it down and build another in its
+stead--and one, it is almost unnecessary to add, not at all picturesque.
+Farewell, then, to the suburban delights of Kew. They are going to
+"improve" the river at Kew also--that river where, in summer time, the
+steamers get hung up on the sandbanks for lack of water. Alas, then, for
+the picturesque foreshore of Strand-on-the-Green!
+
+[Illustration: KEW BRIDGE, LOW WATER.]
+
+[Sidenote: _HIGHWAYMEN_]
+
+The passengers by the Bath Flying Machine grew at this point a shade
+paler. They generally expected to be robbed on Hounslow Heath, and their
+expectations were almost invariably realized by the gentlemen in cocked
+hats and crape masks, who were by no means backward in coming forward. The
+fine flower of the highwaymen practised on the Heath, and they did their
+spiriting gently and with so much courtesy that it was almost (not quite)
+a pleasure to hand over those rings and guineas of which so plenteous a
+store was collected every night.
+
+Before, however, we come to Hounslow Heath, we have to cast a glance round
+Brentford, a town which holds the proud position of the county town of
+Middlesex. Foreigners might, in the innocence of their hearts, suppose
+that London would hold that honour; but to Brentford, known from time
+immemorial, and with the utmost justice, as "dirty Brentford," it has
+fallen. Has Brentford risen to the occasion? It must sorrowfully be
+admitted that it has not, and is a very marvel of dirt and dilapidation,
+and--But no matter! Until quite recently it also possessed, in the church
+of Old Brentford, the very ugliest church in England, which was so very
+ugly that it used to be credibly reported that people came long distances
+to see such a marvel of the unlovely. Alas! the church has been rebuilt,
+and so Brentford has lost a claim to distinction.
+
+But Brentford has the honour of being mentioned in Shakespeare, in a
+passage whose allusions not all the efforts of antiquaries have been able
+to explain, and distinguished itself in a peculiar way during the reign of
+King William the Fourth, whom people used to call, for no very good
+reason, Silly Billy. The King and Queen were expected to drive through the
+town, on their way from Windsor to London, and the streets were decorated.
+But the inhabitants spiced their loyalty with sarcasm, for hanging on a
+line, stretched prominently across the road, was an old coat, turned
+inside out, in allusion to His Majesty's uncertain policy. Not satisfied,
+however, with this delicate way of calling him a turncoat, Brentford had
+another insult ready a little way down the street. The King was generally
+supposed to be very much under the influence of Queen Adelaide, and this
+was more or less gracefully alluded to by a pair of trousers fluttering in
+the wind like a banner suspended across the road. Their Majesties
+testified their recognition and appreciation of Brentford wit by never
+passing through the town again.
+
+[Sidenote: _SORDID HOUNSLOW_]
+
+A little further afield takes us to Hounslow, where John Jerry is busy
+putting up those long streets of "villas," whose deadly sameness vexes the
+soul of the artist. He has torn down the old houses, in one of which, or
+rather, in several of which--for they had intercommunicating
+passages--Dick Turpin was wont to hide when he was in refuge from the Bow
+Street runners.
+
+  "Bold Turpin vunce, on Hounslow Heath,
+    His mare, Black Bess, bestrod--er;
+  Ven there he see'd the bishop's coach
+    Coming along the road--er."
+
+Thus sang Sam Weller; but "Bold Turpin" would be hard put to it to
+identify his suburban haunts now, and we, before our hair is grey, will
+find those places strange which were so familiar the matter of a few years
+ago.
+
+[Illustration: COTTAGES, SUPPOSED TO HAVE BEEN THE HAUNTS OF DICK TURPIN.]
+
+The town of Hounslow is as unprepossessing as its name, which is saying a
+great deal. Its mile-long street, unlivened by any interesting features,
+is dull without descending to the positively interesting unloveliness of
+Brentford. Just as collectors prize old china whose shape and colouring
+are frankly hideous to those who are not of the elect in those matters, so
+the grotesquely dirty and ugly streets of Brentford have an interest for
+the tourist who does not often come upon their like. Hounslow's is just a
+commonplace ugliness. The curtailed remains of its once numerous and
+extensive coaching inns are become, as a rule, low pot-houses, in which
+labourers in the market-gardens that practically surround the town, sit
+and drink themselves stupid in the evening; and the business premises and
+private houses which alternate along the highway are either shabby old
+places, not old enough to claim any interest on the score of antiquity; or
+of a pretentious bad taste rather more difficult to bear with than the
+dirty hovels and tumbledown cottages they have displaced. Here, indeed, is
+the debateable ground between town and country. Rurality is (appropriately
+enough) in its last ditch, while civilization has established a precarious
+outpost beside it. Flashy "villas" jostle the market-gardeners' cottages;
+and respectability sits self-satisfied in its prim Early Victorian
+drawing-rooms, amid its chairs upholstered in green rep, its horse-hair
+sofas and cut-glass lustres; while on either side the vulgar herd sits at
+open windows in its shirt-sleeves, and smokes black and exceedingly foul
+pipes, and gazes complacently upon the clothes hanging out to dry in the
+garden.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOUNSLOW'S COACHING DAYS_]
+
+Hounslow presented a different picture before the opening of the railways
+to the West. Two thousand post-horses were then kept in the town, and
+coaches and private carriages went dashing through at all hours of the day
+and night, so closely upon one another that they almost resembled a
+procession. As the poet says, the pedestrian then forced his way--
+
+  "Through coaches, drays, choked turnpikes, and a whirl
+    Of wheels, and roar of voices, and confusion;
+  Here taverns wooing to a pint of 'purl,'
+    There mails fast flying off, like a delusion."
+
+And, indeed, they have, like delusions, vanished utterly. So early as
+April, 1842, a daily paper is found saying: "At the formerly flourishing
+village of Hounslow, so great is the general depreciation of property, on
+account of the transfer of traffic to the railway, that at one of the inns
+is an inscription, 'New milk and cream sold here;' while another announces
+the profession of the landlord as 'mending boots and shoes.'" The turnpike
+tolls at the same time, between London and Maidenhead, had decreased from
+L18 to L4 a week.
+
+Yet Hounslow very narrowly missed becoming a great railway junction. That,
+indeed, was its proper destiny when the coaching era was done and the
+place decaying. Hounslow became the busy place it was in the days of
+road-travel, because it commanded the great roads to the West. The Bath
+and Exeter Roads, which were one from Hyde Park Corner as far as this
+town, branched at its western end, and it was also on the route to
+Windsor. It should thus have become an important station on the Great
+Western Railway, and might have been, had not other interests prevailed.
+It was the original intention of the Great Western directors, when the
+line was planned by Brunel in 1833, to keep close to the old high-road to
+Bath; but landed interests, both private and corporate, brought about
+numerous deviations, and so Hounslow was left to its fate, and the Great
+Western main line passes through Southall, two and a half miles distant,
+instead.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+We will now press on to the Heath, for our friends the highwaymen are
+anxiously awaiting us. Right away from the seventeenth century this spot
+bore a bad repute, when one of the most daring exploits was performed on
+its gloomy expanse. This was no less a feat than the plundering of that
+warlike general, Fairfax, by Moll Cutpurse. The most capable soldier of
+the age robbed by a woman highwayman, if you will be pleased to excuse the
+Irishry of the expression! But, indeed, the Roaring Girl, as her
+contemporaries called her, was the best man among the whole of that daring
+crew, and to her courage, her cunning, and her ready wit she owed the
+successful career that was hers. She wore the breeches in no metaphorical
+sense, but through all her career habited herself in man's garments. Only
+when she had amassed a fortune and had retired from "the road" did she don
+the skirt.
+
+[Sidenote: _CLAUDE DU VALL_]
+
+It is sad to think that the greatest of all the brotherhood who made
+Hounslow Heath and highway robbery synonymous terms was cut off in the
+full tide of his success. At least, it seems so to us, although the
+travellers of the period doubtless felt a certain satisfaction when Du
+Vall was executed, on January 21, 1670. He was but twenty-seven years of
+age, and already had become a star of the first magnitude. He was, in
+fact, a master of the whole art and mystery of robbing upon the road, and
+to this he brought the most perfect courtesy. Violence had no part in the
+methods of this artist, and he would have scorned, we may be sure, the
+ruffianly and even murderous acts of a later generation of the craft,
+which not only despoiled travellers of their goods, but rendered the Heath
+dangerous to life and limb. His chief exploit is classic, and is set forth
+so eloquently, and with such an engaging profusion of capital letters, in
+a contemporary pamphlet, that one cannot do better than quote it:--
+
+"He, with his Squadron, overtakes a Coach which they had set over Night,
+having Intelligence of a Booty of four hundred Pounds in it. In the Coach
+was a Knight, his Lady, and only one Serving-maid, who, perceiving five
+Horsemen making up to them, presently imagined that they were beset; and
+they were confirmed in this Apprehension by seeing them whisper to one
+another, and ride backwards and forwards. The Lady, to shew that she was
+not afraid, takes a Flageolet out of her pocket and plays. Du Vall takes
+the Hint, plays also, and excellently well, upon a Flageolet of his own,
+and in this Posture he rides up to the Coachside. 'Sir,' says he to the
+Person in the Coach, 'your Lady plays excellently, and I doubt not but
+that she dances as well. Will you please to walk out of the Coach and let
+me have the Honour to dance one Currant with her upon the Heath?' 'Sir,'
+said the Person in the Coach, 'I dare not deny anything to one of your
+Quality and good Mind. You seem a Gentleman, and your Request is very
+reasonable.' Which said, the Lacquey opens the Boot, out comes the knight,
+Du Vall leaps lightly off his horse and hands the Lady out of the Coach.
+They danced, and here it was that Du Vall performed Marvels; the best
+Masters in London, except those that are French, not being able to shew
+such footing as he did in his great French Riding Boots. The Dancing being
+over (there being no violins, Du Vall sung the Currant himself) he waits
+on the Lady to her coach. As the knight was going in, says Du Vall to him,
+'Sir, you have forgot to pay the Musick.' 'No, I have not,' replies the
+knight, and, putting his Hand under the Seat of the Coach, pulls out a
+hundred Pounds in a Bag, and delivers it to him, which Du Vall took with a
+very good grace, and courteously answered, 'Sir, you are liberal, and
+shall have no cause to repent your being so; this Liberality of yours
+shall excuse you the other Three Hundred Pounds,' and giving the Word,
+that if he met with any more of the Crew he might pass undisturbed, he
+civilly takes his leave of him. He manifested his agility of body by
+lightly dismounting off his horse, and with Ease and Freedom getting up
+again when he took his Leave; his excellent Deportment by his incomparable
+Dancing and his graceful manner of taking the hundred Pounds."
+
+When this hero had gone the inevitable way of his fellows, he was buried
+with great pomp and circumstance in the church of St. Paul, Covent Garden,
+with a set of eulogistic verses for his epitaph. Unfortunately, the old
+church was destroyed by fire and the epitaph with it.
+
+[Sidenote: _HIGHWAY MURDERS_]
+
+Mr. Nuthall, the Earl of Chatham's solicitor, too, who had been to Bath to
+confer with his gouty and irascible client, was stopped in his carriage as
+it was going towards London across this dreaded wilderness. The highwaymen
+fired at him, and he died of fright. Two other notable murders by
+highwaymen took place here--in 1798 and 1802--and bear witness to the
+degeneracy of the craft. The first was Mr. Mellish, who was fired upon and
+killed as he was returning from a run with the King's hounds. A Mr. Steele
+was the other victim, and his assailants, Haggarty and Holloway, who had
+planned the crime at the "Turk's Head," Dyot Street, Holborn, it is
+satisfactory to be able to add, were hanged. The execution took place at
+the Old Bailey, when twenty-eight persons among the crowds who had come to
+see the sight were crushed to death. Up to the year 1800, the Heath was a
+most famous place for gibbets. "The road," as a writer of the period says,
+"was literally lined with gibbets on which the carcases of malefactors
+hung in irons, blackening in the sun." Du Vall had a successor in Twysden,
+Bishop of Raphoe, collecting tithes in rather a promiscuous way, by
+turning highwayman in 1752. His career was a short one, for one of the
+first travellers he bade "Stand!" on the Heath shot him through the body,
+from which he died a few days later, at the house of a friend, from
+"inflammation of the bowels," as the contemporary report, jealous for the
+reputation of the dignified clergy, put it.
+
+Shall I weary you by recounting more of these highway crimes? There was
+Dr. Shelton, a surgeon, who flourished in the early thirties of last
+century, and, deserting lancet and scalpel, took to the road and that not
+more lethal weapon, the horse-pistol; though, to be sure, it was more for
+show than use, for not Du Vall himself could have been more courteous.
+
+That the poet who wrote of Bagshot Heath as a place "where ruined gamblers
+oft repay their loss" might with perfect propriety have substituted
+"Hounslow" will be readily seen when we mention Parsons, nearly
+contemporary with Shelton, who robbed at Hounslow that he might gamble in
+London. Parsons was the son of a "Bart. of the B.K.," as the Tichborne
+Claimant would have phrased it; an Eton boy, at one time an officer both
+in the Army and Navy, and the husband of a beautiful heiress. He made an
+edifying end at Tyburn.
+
+Then there was Barkwith, a mere novice, whose first sally led to a like
+exit. He was the son of a Cambridgeshire squire, and manager to a
+Lincoln's Inn solicitor. He had "borrowed" trust moneys wherewith to
+satisfy some debts of honour; and so the hour of four o'clock in the
+afternoon of a November day found him on the Heath, with a pistol in his
+hand and his heart in his mouth, "holding up" a coach. The booty was but a
+miserable handful of silver; but, being captured, he died for it, all the
+same. Let us trust he did "the young gentlemen who belong to Inns of
+Court" an injustice when, in his dying speech and confession, he warned
+his hearers against them as "the most wicked of any."
+
+[Sidenote: _"DARE-DEVIL SIMMS"_]
+
+Then there was Dare-devil Simms--"Gentleman Harry," as his friends called
+him--a midshipman who came up from deserting his ship in the West Country.
+First borrowing a saddle and bridle, and then stealing a horse, he
+commenced his career by robbing a post-chaise and the Bristol Mail, and
+coming to London, soon became a noted figure on this stage. One night he
+relieved a Mr. Sleep of his purse. The despoiled traveller bewailed his
+loss bitterly, but Harry comforted him with the assurance that he would
+have been robbed in any case; if not by himself, certainly by one or other
+of the two who were waiting for him down the road. "But if you meet them,"
+said he, "sing out 'Thomas!' and they will let you pass." The unfortunate
+man went on his way calling "Thomas!" to every one he met, and narrowly
+escaped being severely handled by some gentlemen who conceived themselves
+insulted.
+
+Presently Tyburn claimed Gentleman Harry also, and a career which had been
+begun by transportation, and continued through such stirring adventures
+as being sold for a slave, becoming a sailor and a privateersman, was
+finally extinguished by the halter. A short life and a merry.
+
+Strawkins, Simpson, and Wilson, too, helped to keep up the stirring story
+of the road. They intercepted the Bristol Mail and left the postboy, bound
+with ropes, at the bottom of a ditch on the outskirts of Colnbrook. They
+were tracked down by the Post Office, and, Wilson turning King's evidence,
+the first two were hanged. The Mail was then given an escort of Dragoons,
+but highway robbery had too strong a spice of adventure for one of these
+fine fellows to resist it. He accordingly pillaged the Bath Stage, and
+suffered the appointed end in due course.
+
+This catalogue of mine does not close until 1820, in which year four
+confederates plundered the Bristol Mail. They had booked the inside seats,
+and during their journey through the night forced open the strong boxes
+placed under the seats, decamped with their contents, and were never heard
+of again.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _A STORY OF THE ROAD_]
+
+One of the most diverting stories of Hounslow Heath, which serves to
+relieve its sombre repute, is that which the late Mr. James Payn tells, in
+one of his reminiscences. "The story goes," he says, "that early in the
+century the landlord of Skindle's, at Maidenhead, was a strong Radical,
+and could command a dozen votes; but his prosperity had a sad drawback in
+the person of his son, a good-for-naught. During a certain Berkshire
+election, a Tory solicitor was staying at this inn, and had occasion to go
+to London for the sinews of war. His gig was stopped on his way back, on
+Hounslow Heath, by a gentleman of the road.
+
+"I have no money," said the lawyer, with professional readiness, "but
+there is my watch and chain."
+
+"You have a thousand pounds in gold in a box under the seat," was the
+unexpected reply; "throw back the apron!"
+
+The lawyer obeyed, but as the horseman stooped to take the box, the lawyer
+knocked the pistol out of his hand and drove off at full gallop. He had a
+very quick-going mare, and before the highwayman could find his weapon,
+which had fallen into some furze, was beyond pursuit.
+
+The next morning the lawyer sent for the landlord. "Yesterday," he said,
+"I was stopped on Hounslow Heath. The man had a mask on, but I recognized
+him by his voice, which I can swear to. I knew him as well as he knew me.
+You had better speak to your son about it, and then we will resume our
+conversation."
+
+The landlord was quite innocent of his son's intended crime, but he had
+reason to believe him capable of it. He went out with a heavy heart, and
+when he came back his face showed it. "Well," he said, with a sort of calm
+despair, "what steps do you intend to take, sir, in the matter?"
+
+"None to hurt an old friend, you may be sure," answered the lawyer; "only
+those twelve votes you boasted about must be given to our side instead of
+yours;" which was accordingly arranged.
+
+In those days, as will already have been seen, Hounslow Heath was a very
+real place indeed. There was (as the journalistic slang of to-day has it)
+"actuality" about that then solitary and barren waste, which is not a
+little difficult to realize nowadays. The cyclist who speeds over the
+level roads and past the smiling orchards and market gardens, finds it
+difficult to believe that this was the sinister place of eighty years ago;
+and, since there is no Heath to-day, is apt to come to the conclusion that
+it must have been the very "Mrs. Harris" of heaths; a figment, that is to
+say, of romantic writers' imaginations. Such, however, was by no means the
+case. Where cultivated lands are now, and where suburban villas stand,
+there stretched, less than eighty years since, a veritable scene of
+desolation. Furze-bushes, swampy gravel-pits in which tall grasses and
+bulrushes grew, and grassy hillocks, the homes of snipe and frogs, and the
+haunts of the peewit, were the features of the scene by day; while, when
+night was come, the whole place swarmed with footpads and highwaymen.
+
+[Sidenote: _LORD BERKELEY'S ADVENTURES_]
+
+At that time Lord Berkeley used frequently to stay at his country house at
+Cranford, close by, from Saturdays to Mondays, and had twice been stopped
+and robbed on his way before a third and last encounter, in which he shot
+his assailant dead. On the second occasion, the door of his travelling
+carriage was opened, and a footpad, dressed as a sailor, pointed a
+fully-cocked pistol at him. The man's hand trembled violently, and while
+my lord was producing what money he had about him, the trigger was pulled,
+more, it would seem, from accident than intention. Happily, the pistol
+missed fire. The man then exclaimed, "I beg your pardon, my lord," and,
+recocking his pistol, retreated with his plunder.
+
+After this escape, Lord Berkeley swore he would never be robbed again, and
+always travelled at night with a short carriage-gun and a brace of
+pistols. Thus armed, it was on a November night in 1774 that he was
+attacked for the last time. He was going to dine with Mr. Justice
+Bulstrode, who lived in an old house surrounded by a brick wall, near
+where Hounslow's modern church now stands, and as the carriage was nearing
+the town, a voice called to the postboy to halt, and a man rode up to the
+carriage window on the left-hand side, thrusting in a pistol, as the glass
+was let down. With his left hand Lord Berkeley seized the weapon and
+turned it away, while with his right he pushed the short double-barrelled
+gun he had with him against the robber's body, and fired once. The man was
+severely wounded, and his clothes were set on fire, but he managed to ride
+away some fifty yards, and then fell dead. Two accomplices then appeared,
+but Lord Berkeley, and a servant on horseback who rode behind the
+carriage, made for them, and they fled. It was then discovered that the
+gang were all amateur highwaymen, and youths from eighteen to twenty years
+of age, in good positions in London.
+
+The Earl of Berkeley seems to have been somewhat unduly twitted about this
+encounter. Society was quite resigned to seeing highwaymen hanged,
+although it made heroes of them while they were waiting in the "stone jug"
+at Newgate for that fatal morning at Tyburn; but it appears to have
+considered the shooting of one of them an unsportsmanlike act.
+
+Lord Chesterfield, however, should have been quite the last man to sneer
+at the Earl on this score, for he himself was under a very well-deserved
+public censure for having prosecuted Dr. Dodd, his son's tutor, for
+forgery, with the result that the Doctor was hanged. Accordingly, when he
+sarcastically asked Lord Berkeley "how many highwaymen he had shot
+lately," it is pleasing to record that he was readily reduced to silence
+by the retort, "As many as you have hanged tutors; but with much better
+reason for doing so."
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _CRANFORD_]
+
+It is just beyond Cranford Bridge that the pumps which are so odd a
+feature of the Bath Road begin. They line the highway on the left-hand
+side going from London, and are all situated in the same position as shown
+in the illustration. They are of uniform pattern, and are placed at
+regular intervals. These pumps are relics of the coaching age, but are
+peculiar to the Bath and some stretches of the Exeter roads. Placed here
+for keeping the highway well watered in the old days of road-travel, they
+have evidently long been out of use; in fact, their handles are all
+chained up. They recur so regularly that they might almost form part of a
+new table of measurement, as thus:--
+
+  63 paces             equal 1 telegraph-post.
+  19 telegraph-posts     "   1 mile.
+   2 miles               "   1 pump.
+   1-1/2 pumps           "   1 pub.
+
+[Illustration: A BATH ROAD PUMP.]
+
+[Illustration: THE "BERKELEY ARMS."]
+
+Cranford is a more picturesquely romantic place than any one has a right
+to expect in the Middlesex of these latter days. That outlying portion of
+the village which borders the high-road still wears the air of a tentative
+settlement of civilization amid the wilds of the rolling prairie, and
+might form a ready object-lesson for any untravelled Englishman who
+desires "local colour" for the writing of an American romance in the
+_genre_ of Bret Harte. And, indeed, the houses grouped around Cranford
+Bridge were, some seventy years ago, built on the very borders of Hounslow
+Heath, whose dreary and dangerous wastes only found a boundary here,
+beside the still waters of the placid Crane. At Cranford Bridge stands
+that fine old coaching inn, the "Berkeley Arms," and opposite the "White
+Hart," which must have been in those times very havens of refuge in that
+wild spot; and away up the lane to the right hand lies the village and
+park, as pretty a spot as you shall find in a long day's march. Cranford
+village is rich in beautiful old mansions set in midst of walled gardens
+whose formal precincts are entered through massive wrought-iron gates.
+Beside this lane is the village "lock-up," or "round-house," built in
+1810, and now the only one of its kind left anywhere near London. The
+rest have all been demolished, but "once upon a time" no village could
+have been considered complete without one, or without the whipping-post
+and stocks which were generally erected close at hand. Cranford, of
+course, being situated in the midst of the alarums and excursions caused
+by the highwaymen who infested the vicinity and kept the inhabitants in a
+state of terror every night, had a peculiarly urgent need for such a
+place, and it is, perhaps, because those gentry were such expert
+prison-breakers, that this example is more than usually strong, the door
+being plated with iron, and the small square window filled with sheet iron
+pierced with small holes.
+
+[Sidenote: _CRANFORD ROUND HOUSE_]
+
+Cranford Park, near by, was a seat of the Earls of Berkeley, and is now
+the residence of Lord Fitzhardinge, who is _de facto_ "Earl of Berkeley."
+But the romantic scandals which arose from the fifth Earl having
+eventually married a servant in his household, after she had borne him
+several children, caused so much litigation about the succession to the
+title that, although one of his sons, the Hon. Thomas Moreton
+Fitzhardinge-Berkeley, was declared by a decision of the House of Lords to
+be legitimate, he never assumed the title, for the reason that the barring
+of his elder brother reflected upon his mother's good name. The whole
+affair is exceedingly involved and mysterious, and it is therefore quite
+in order that Cranford House should have the reputation of being haunted.
+
+The house is a large rambling pile in the midst of the Park, overlooking
+the sullen ornamental waters formed from the river Crane. The ancient
+parish church stands close by. The chief or garden front of the house is
+curiously like one of the old-fashioned houses that give so distinctive a
+character to Park Lane, in London; having a double-bayed front with
+verandahs. The aspect of such a house standing in the open country is
+weird in the extreme.
+
+[Illustration: CRANFORD HOUSE.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CRANFORD GHOST_]
+
+It was the Hon. Grantley Berkeley who first drew attention to the
+"haunted" character of the house. He tells, in his "Recollections," how
+one night when he and his brother had returned home late, they went down
+into the kitchen in search of some supper, all the rest of the household
+having retired to rest long before, and distinctly saw the tall figure of
+an elderly woman walk across the kitchen. Thinking it was one of the
+maids, they spoke to her, but she vanished into thin air, and a search
+discovered nothing at all. The obvious comment here is that people
+returning home late at night in those times very frequently saw things
+that had no existence. The narrator's father, however, used to describe
+how he saw a man in the stable-yard, and thinking he was some unauthorized
+visitor in the Servants' Hall, asked him what he was doing there. The man
+"vanished" without a reply; to which the rejoinder may well be made that
+he might do so and yet be no ghost; the motive force being a sight of the
+horsewhip which the Earl was carrying.
+
+Cranford deserves notice from the literary pilgrim from the circumstance
+that Dr. Thomas Fuller, the Fuller of the much-quoted "Worthies of
+England," was chaplain to George, Lord Berkeley, who presented him to the
+rectory in 1658. He lies buried in the chancel of the church.
+
+Harlington Corner is the name of the spot, half a mile down the road,
+where one of the many old roadside hostelries stands by a branch road
+leading on the right to Harlington, and on the left to East Bedfont, on
+the Exeter Road. The Corner, besides leading to Harlington, was also the
+"junction" for Uxbridge, and here the slow stages set down or took up
+passengers for that town. The fast coaches did not stop here, or were
+supposed not to do so. Some of them, however, in defiance of time-bills,
+halted at the "Magpies"--by arrangement, of course, with the
+innkeeper--much to the profit of that house. One of these venal drivers
+was neatly caught by Mr. Chaplin, of the once well-known coaching firm of
+Chaplin and Horne. The coachman had with him on the box seat that day a
+particularly genial passenger, who proved also to have a very intimate
+knowledge of horseflesh. Pulling up at the "Magpies," where tables were
+spread, showing that the coach was expected as a matter of course, he
+winked at his passenger and invited him to refresh. Then, when all was, as
+the poet would say, "merry as a marriage-bell," the unknown, like another
+"Hawkshaw the Detective," revealed himself. He was Chaplin! The coachman
+drove that coach no more!
+
+[Illustration: THE "OLD MAGPIES."]
+
+[Sidenote: _"ARLINGTON OF HARLINGTON"_]
+
+Harlington, up the road to Uxbridge, was once the seat of the Bennets, one
+of whom, Henry Bennet, was created Viscount Thetford and Earl of Arlington
+in 1663, and lives in history as the "Arlington" of the Cabal. He selected
+this village for one of his titles, but the 'eralds' College (as it
+surely should have been called) made out his patent of nobility without
+the "H," and so "Arlington" he had to become. Arlington Street,
+Piccadilly, remains to this day, and the Dukes of Grafton, in whose
+numerous titles this is merged, are still Barons "Arlington of Harlington,
+in Middlesex."
+
+After which we will hasten on, passing Sipson (a corruption of
+"Shepiston") Green. Here we come upon the trail of messieurs the footpads
+again, for the road between this inn and the humbler "Old Magpies," a few
+hundred yards further on, is sad with the story of highway murder.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+The times of the highwaymen are, fortunately for the wayfarer, if
+unhappily for romance, long since past, and many of the once-notorious
+haunts of Sixteen-string Jack, Claude du Vall, Dick Turpin, and their
+less-famed companions have disappeared before the ravages of time and the
+much more destructive onslaughts of the builder. A hundred years ago it
+would have been difficult to name a lonely suburban inn that was not more
+or less favoured and frequented by the "Knights of the Road." Nowadays the
+remaining examples are, for those interested in the old story of the
+roads, all too few.
+
+Perhaps this queer little roadside inn, the "Old Magpies," is the most
+romantic-looking among those that are left. For one thing, it possesses a
+thick and beetle-browed thatch which impends over the upper windows like
+bushy eyebrows, and gives those windows--the eyes of the house--just that
+lowering and suspicious look which heavy and bristling eyebrows confer
+upon a man.
+
+But it is not only its romantic appearance that gives the "Old Magpies" an
+interest, for it is a well-ascertained fact that outside this house, so
+near to the once terrible Hounslow Heath, the brother of Mr. Mellish, M.P.
+for Grimsby, was murdered by highwaymen in April, 1798, when returning
+from a day's hunting with the King's hounds.
+
+He had started with two others from the "Castle" Hotel, at Salt Hill, for
+London, after dinner, and the carriage in which the party was seated was
+passing near the "Old Magpies" at about half-past eight, when it was
+attacked by three footpads. One held the horses' heads while the other two
+guarded the windows, firing a shot through, to terrify the occupants. They
+then demanded money. No one offered any resistance, purses and bank-notes
+being handed over as a matter of course. Then the travellers were allowed
+to go, a parting shot in the dark being fired into the carriage. It struck
+Mr. Mellish in the forehead. Coming to another inn near by, called the
+"Magpies," the wounded man was taken upstairs and put to bed, while a
+surgeon was sent for.
+
+He came from Hounslow, and was robbed on the way by the same gang.
+Additional medical assistance was called in, but this late victim of
+highway robbery died within forty-eight hours.
+
+[Sidenote: _SIR JOSEPH BANKS_]
+
+The assassins were never apprehended, although Bow Street sent its
+cleverest officers to track them down. Bow Street caught the smaller fry
+readily enough, who snatched handkerchiefs and such petty booty, and
+hanged them out of hand, while the more desperate villains generally
+escaped. This is not to say that the Bow Street Runners were not vigilant
+and zealous. Indeed, their zeal sometimes outran their discretion, as
+instanced in their bold capture of Sir Joseph Banks, who was collecting
+natural history specimens in the wilds. Sir Joseph, distinguished man of
+science though he was, and a gentleman, was singularly ill-favoured, and
+in this fact lies the chief sting of Peter Pindar's witty verses on the
+subject--
+
+  "Sir Joseph, fav'rite of great Queens and Kings,
+  Whose wisdom weed- and insect-hunter sings;
+    And ladies fair applaud, with smile so dimpling;
+  Went forth one day amid the laughing fields
+  Where Nature such exhaustless treasure yields--A-simpling!
+  It happened on the self-same morn so bright
+  The nimble pupils of Sir Sampson Wright,
+  A-simpling too, for plants called Thieves, proceeded;
+  Of which the nation's field should oft be weeded."
+
+They seize Sir Joseph.
+
+  "'Sirs, what d'ye take me for?' the Knight exclaimed--
+    'A thief,' replied the Runners, with a curse;
+  'And now, sir, let us search you, and be damn'd'--
+    And then they searched his pockets, fobs, and purse,
+  But, 'stead of pistol dire, and death-like crape,
+    A pocket-handkerchief they cast their eye on,
+  Containing frogs and toads of various shape,
+    Dock, daisy, nettletop, and dandelion,
+      To entertain, with great propriety,
+      The members of his sage Society;
+  Yet would not alter they their strong belief
+  That this their pris'ner was a thief.
+
+  "'Sirs, I'm no highwayman,' exclaimed the Knight--
+  'No--there,' rejoined the Runners, 'you are right--
+    A footpad only. Yes, we know your trade--
+  Yes, you're a pretty babe of grace;
+  We want no proofs, old codger, but your face;
+    So come along with us, old blade.'
+
+    *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "Sir Joseph told them that a neighb'ring Squire
+    Should answer for it that he was no thief;
+  On which they plumply damn'd him for a liar,
+    And said such stories should not save his beef;
+      And, if they understood their trade,
+      His _mittimus_ should soon be made;
+  And forty pounds be theirs, a pretty sum,
+  For sending such a rogue to Kingdom Come."
+
+To the Squire, however, they took that distinguished member of Society,
+who, of course, identified him at once, and bade them beg his pardon. This
+they did--according to "Peter Pindar"--with a resolution in future not to
+judge of people by their looks!
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+Just before reaching the roadside hamlet of Longford, fifteen miles from
+Hyde Park Corner, a lane leads on the right hand to Harmondsworth, a short
+mile distant across the wide flat cabbage and potato fields.
+"Harm'sworth," as the rustics call it, is mentioned in Domesday Book,
+under the name of "Hermondesworde;" that is to say, Hermonde's sworth or
+sward, the pasture-land of some forgotten Hermonde.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "GOTHIC BARN"_]
+
+Few ever turn aside from the dusty high-road to visit this old-fashioned
+village, rich in old timber-framed houses, and possessing an ancient
+tithe-barn which, standing next the church, was once part of an obscure
+Priory established here. The "Gothic Barn" is built precisely on
+ecclesiastical lines, with nave and aisles, and is the largest of the
+tithe-barns now remaining in England, being 191 feet in length and 38
+feet, in breadth. The walls are built of a rough kind of conglomerate
+found in the locality, and called "pudding-stone," the flints and pebbles
+distributed through the rock resembling to a lively imagination the
+currants and raisins in plum-puddings. The interior of the barn is a vast
+mass of oak columns and open roofing.
+
+[Illustration: THE "GOTHIC BARN," HARMONDSWORTH.]
+
+A relic of old country life may be seen hanging in this barn, in the
+shape of a flail, now occasionally used for threshing out beans.
+
+Very few people will understand the meaning of the old English word
+"flail," because it is almost fifty years since that old-world
+agricultural implement was in general use. Until steam was introduced as a
+labour-saving appliance in agricultural work, corn was invariably threshed
+out of the ear by wooden instruments like that pictured here, consisting
+of two unequal lengths of rounded wood of the size of an ordinary
+broomstick, connected by leathern loops.
+
+[Illustration: OLD FLAIL, HARMONDSWORTH]
+
+The farm hands who used this primitive contrivance grasped hold of the
+longer stick, and, brandishing it about over their heads, brought the
+hinged end down repeatedly on the wheat spread out on the threshing floor;
+thus, with the expenditure of considerable time and muscular strength,
+separating the grains from the ears. As the "business end" of the flail is
+constructed so as to swing in every direction, it is obvious that the
+mastery of it was only acquired with practice, and at the cost of sundry
+whacks on the head brought on himself by the clumsy novice. Indeed, it is
+an instrument requiring particular dexterity in manipulation.
+
+Longford obtains its name from the marshy ford over one of the sluggish
+branches of the Colne, which anciently spread over the road at this spot.
+The ford was eventually replaced by the bridge, called "Queen's Bridge,"
+which now carries the highway over the stream close by the old inn now
+called the "Peggy Bedford," from a well-remembered landlady who kept the
+house in coaching days, and died in 1859. The real name of it, however,
+now almost forgotten, is the "King's Head." The spot is picturesque in the
+grouping of gnarled old wayside trees with the quaint house and its
+luxuriant garden; and more so, perhaps, because it comes as a surprise
+from the hitherto unrelieved monotony of the flat road all the way from
+Cranford Bridge.
+
+[Sidenote: _COLNBROOK_]
+
+In another mile and three-quarters the road reaches Colnbrook, in midst of
+whose long street one of the numerous channels of the Colne divides the
+counties of Middlesex and Bucks. The boundaries of English counties are
+rarely marked for the information of wayfarers along the highways and
+byeways of the country, but here the brick bridge over the Colne, built in
+1777, has inscriptions which mark where the frontiers march together; and
+when the Bath Road is crowded with cyclists on Saturday afternoons in
+summer-time one or more can generally be found standing on the bridge with
+one leg in each county.
+
+There are no fewer than four channels of the Colne here, and the land all
+round about is flat and waterlogged. The entrance to Colnbrook from London
+is in fact quite a little Holland in appearance, where streams flow
+sluggishly beside the road and are spanned by many footbridges that give
+access to the gardens of the pleasant country cottages on either side. A
+fine avenue of elms shades the road, and ahead is the cramped street of
+Colnbrook with its mellowed red-brick houses and bright red-tiled roofs.
+Colnbrook street is narrow to a degree, and it is surprising how the many
+coaches that used to come tearing through at all hours of day and night
+managed to escape accidents. There is reason for this narrowness, for
+Colnbrook was originally built upon a stone causeway across the marshes of
+the Colne, and nowhere else were there to be found solid foundations. The
+original causeway may possibly have been Roman, for this is said to have
+been the station of _Ad Pontes_, described by Antoninus in his
+_Itineraries_. Staines, however, is more likely the site of it.
+
+[Illustration: THE COUNTY BOUNDARY.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "OSTRICH"_]
+
+Colnbrook is probably the best example of a decayed coaching-town now to
+be found in the Home Counties. Too remote from London for suburban
+expansion to have affected it, the quaint street remains much as it was a
+hundred, nay two hundred years ago. The last coach might have left
+yester-year, so undisturbed appears to be the place. There are
+coaching-inns here of vast size, ranging from the solid-looking "George"
+with "eighteenth century" proclaimed plainly enough on its stolid face,
+back to the "Ostrich," rambling, gabled, timber-framed, Elizabethan. They
+would have you believe that this house stands on the site of one of the
+old guesthouses established in the eleventh, twelfth, and succeeding
+centuries along the roads by the good Churchmen of those times. The
+original guesthouse here, however, appears to have been a secular
+foundation, for it is recorded that in 1106, a certain Milo Crispin gave
+it--"_quoddam hospitium in via Londoniae apud Colebroc_"--to the Abbot of
+Abingdon. The sign of the "Ostrich" is therefore a lineal descendant of
+"_Hospitium_," _via_ "Hospice" and "Ospridge;" for, as we have already
+seen, the letter H has ever been a negligeable quantity.
+
+The original house is said by persistent traditions to have been the scene
+of a dreadful series of abominable murders something of the "Sweeny Todd"
+order. The West of England, even so far back as five hundred years ago,
+was famous for its cloth, and along this road, with their bales and
+pack-horses, journeyed the rich clothiers to and from the London market,
+halting in their tedious travels at the inns on the way. The "Ostrich" was
+one of these, and prospered exceedingly by the patronage of those jolly
+merchants. The gold they carried, however, aroused the cupidity of the
+innkeeper and his wife, who devised a murder-trap in one of the upstairs
+bedrooms, by which the bed, which was placed above a trap-door, was tilted
+up in the middle of the night, so that its slumbering occupant was shot
+into a huge copper of boiling water, and so scalded to death. According to
+this tradition, which itself is some hundreds of years old, thirteen
+victims were thus disposed of, and the innkeeper waxed rich. There must
+have been other accomplices, for, according to the story, the bodies were
+kept until they formed a cartload, when they were heaped up, driven away
+to the Thames at Wraysbury and thrown in. One, however, had fallen out by
+the way, and whilst the criminals were disputing by the river-bank as to
+what had become of it, they were observed by a fisherman who had been
+hidden in the rushes while engaged in setting eel-bucks. He suggested that
+the best thing for them to do was to throw in one of themselves, to make
+up the number; to which sprightly wit they replied with a shower of
+arrows. The fisherman then rowed away, with one of the arrows sticking in
+his boat, and went with it into Colnbrook the following day. Outside the
+"Ostrich" he was espied by the innkeeper's little son, who exclaimed, "You
+have got one of my father's arrows!" The man and his wife were missing,
+but were afterwards captured and hanged.
+
+[Illustration: COLNBROOK, A DECAYED COACHING TOWN.]
+
+This gory legend does not render Colnbrook the more attractive to the
+stranger, but the Colnbrook folks are proud of it. Like the Fat Boy in
+"Pickwick," they "wants to make yer flesh creep," and would have one
+believe that the present "Ostrich" is the identical building--which it
+isn't.
+
+Another cherished tradition of Colnbrook is that King John stayed here on
+his journey to Runneymede to sign the famous Magna Charta, the "Palladium
+of English Liberties," as phrase-makers are pleased to call it. They still
+show the stranger "King John's Palace," a quaint house which looks on to
+the road, and is not so old as John's time by some three hundred years.
+That, however, by no means discredits the story to the good folks of
+Colnbrook.
+
+A better ascertained historical event is the rising in favour of the
+deposed Richard the Second in 1400, when forty thousand men from the West
+Country lay encamped by the Colne, prepared to descend upon Windsor and
+London, to seize the usurper, Henry the Fourth. But Henry, fleeing from
+Windsor, raised an army in London; and between the rumours of his coming
+and treachery in their own ranks, the partisans of Richard faded away.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _TO SLOUGH_]
+
+The long stretches of the Bath Road between this and Slough are nowadays
+enlivened by few incidents or interesting places, although during the last
+century, and well on into this, the highway was lively enough with
+Royalties and their escorts, journeying between Windsor and St. James's.
+The route taken on these occasions was generally through Datchet, and so
+on to the Bath Road just here. An old print of this period shows us how
+George the Third used to travel on this road to London, or to the unkingly
+domestic life at Kew Palace, where the farmer-like reputation of that not
+very brilliant monarch was sustained on boiled mutton and turnips, and
+improving books.
+
+[Illustration: ALMSHOUSES, LANGLEY.]
+
+The hamlet of Langley Broom, one and a half miles on the way, is the
+uninteresting offshoot, of the pretty village of Langley Marish (or
+"Marshy Langley"), that lies just within sight of the road, and has some
+delightful old red-brick almshouses, which, together with the ancient
+library and painted room of Renaissance period in the church, render the
+place worthy a visit. This is all there is to interest the stranger, with
+the exception of a pretty peep towards Windsor Castle on the left hand,
+within two miles of Slough, and near where Cary of the _Itinerary_ places
+a spot he calls "Tetsworth Water," which does not appear to exist
+nowadays.
+
+[Illustration: THE STOLEN FOUNTAIN.]
+
+[Sidenote: _A STOLEN FOUNTAIN_]
+
+Slough is quite modern and unremarkable, but it is rapidly building up
+legends of its own. There have, for instance, been many strange thefts on
+the roads, from time to time, but none perhaps stranger than the
+purloining, two years ago, of the drinking-fountain which used to stand at
+the entrance to Slough, where the road branches off to Uxbridge. Until
+some unusually acquisitive folk came along and carried it away with them,
+there was at that corner a fountain of bronze and marble, fourteen feet in
+height, the bronze upper part weighing nearly half a ton. It acted also as
+a finger-post, directing strayed cyclists in the way they should go. The
+good folks of Slough went to bed one night and saw their fountain standing
+where it had been used to stand for years past; but in the morning, when
+they arose and went forth about their business, the fountain was gone!
+Nothing but the plinth was left. Some mad wag suggested that one of the
+many cyclists who frequent the Bath Road had taken it home with him as a
+memento of Slough; but it seems that a gang of original-minded thieves
+made away with it for the sake of the bronze, which, when broken up, must
+have brought them a good sum. At any rate, it seems quite beyond the
+bounds of possibility that Slough will ever see its fountain again.
+
+[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE ROAD NEAR SLOUGH.]
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+It requires the specialized knowledge of a district surveyor to determine
+where Slough ends and Salt Hill begins, although probably it would be a
+shrewd guess to say that the roads which cross the Bath Road in the midst
+of Slough, and go respectively left and right to Windsor and Stoke Poges,
+form the dividing line. For all practical purposes, however, the places
+are one. Salt Hill has decayed, rather than grown, while the town of
+Slough (unlovely name!) is almost wholly a creation of the railway. Not
+only strangers have noted the unpleasing name of the place, but some of
+the inhabitants even endeavoured to change it a few years ago. The
+proposition was to rechristen it "Upton Royal," Upton being a hamlet near
+by, the "Royal" a bright idea of the local boot-lickers, who wanted to
+emphasize the fact of their proximity to Windsor. The project fell
+through.
+
+[Sidenote: _A TRAGICAL DINNER_]
+
+Many of the crack coaches halted at Salt Hill, where, at the "Castle" or
+the "Windmill," they found accommodation of the very best. Salt Hill, in
+fact, was a place which thrived solely on coaching, and the glories of it
+are now departed. A tragical event clouded over the fair fame of the
+"Castle" in 1773. It seems that on the 29th of March in that year, a
+number of gentlemen forming the Colnbrook Turnpike Commission met there,
+when the Hon. Mr. O'Brien, Capt. Needham, Edward Mason, Major Mayne, Major
+Cheshire, Walpole Eyre, Capt. Salter, Mr. Isherwood, Mr. Benwell, Mr.
+Pote, senr., and Mr. Burcombe attended and dined together. The dinner
+consisted of soup, jack, perch, and "eel pitch cockt" (whatever that may
+have been), fowls, bacon, and greens, veal cutlets, ragout of pigs' ears,
+chine of mutton and salad, course of lamb and cucumbers, crawfish, pastry,
+and jellies. The wines were Madeira and Port of the very best quality;
+but, notwithstanding this elaborate spread, the company, we are told, ate
+and drank moderately, nor was there excess in any respect. Before dinner,
+several paupers were examined, and among them one most remarkably
+miserable object. In about ten or eleven days afterwards, every one of the
+company, except Mr. Pote, who had walked in the garden during the
+examination of the paupers, was taken ill, and five of them soon died. It
+was, at the time, supposed that some infection from the paupers had
+occasioned this fatality, more especially as Mr. Pote, who was absent from
+the examination, was the only person who escaped unaffected, although he
+had dined in exactly the same manner as the others.
+
+Some persons have compared this affair with the mortality arising from the
+Black Assizes, but it should seem, by another account, that these
+unfortunate gentlemen had partaken of soup that had been allowed to stand
+in a copper vessel, and that, therefore, they died of mineral poisoning.
+They lie buried in the little churchyard of Wexham, two miles distant,
+where an inscription records the facts. That sad business quite ruined the
+"Castle" Hotel.
+
+But all the Salt Hill hotels were ruined when the Great Western Railway
+was constructed. The first section was opened, from Paddington to Taplow,
+on June 4, 1838, and those old hostelries at one blow found most of their
+patrons taken from them. It is true that this disaster had been impending
+since 1833, when the route for the new railway was first surveyed; but
+after the victory of the opponents of the first Bill, when a public
+meeting was held at Salt Hill to rejoice in the defeat of the railway
+project, the innkeepers seemed to think that they could not come to much
+harm. They were, however, bitterly disillusioned.
+
+[Sidenote: _OPENING OF THE G.W.R._]
+
+It is curious, nowadays, to look back upon the time when the Great Western
+Railway was first built. The authorities of Eton College, together with
+the Court, had effectually driven the railway from Windsor and Eton, and
+the College people had also secured the insertion of a clause in the
+Company's Act forbidding the erection of a station at Slough.
+Notwithstanding this, however, trains stopped at Slough from the very
+first. The Company did this by an ingenious evasion of the spirit, if not
+the letter, of their Parliamentary obligations. By their Act they were
+forbidden to _build a station_ at Slough, but nothing had been said about
+trains stopping there! Accordingly, two rooms were hired at a public house
+beside the line where Slough station now stands, and tickets were issued
+there, comfortably enough. The Eton College authorities were maddened by
+this smart dodge, and applied for an injunction against the Company, which
+was duly refused.
+
+This is not the only railway romance belonging to Slough, for the Slough
+signal-box has had a romance of its own. The cabin was erected in 1844,
+and one of the earliest messages the signalman wired to London by the then
+wonderful new invention of the electric telegraph, was intelligence of the
+birth of the Duke of Edinburgh. The following year a man named Tawell
+committed a murder at Salt Hill, and escaped by the next train to London;
+but information was telegraphed to town, and being arrested as he stepped
+from the carriage at Paddington, he was subsequently tried and hanged. The
+telegraphist warned the officials at Paddington to look out for a man
+dressed like a Quaker. It is a singular circumstance that the original
+telegraphic code did not comprise any signal for the letter "Q;" but the
+telegraphist was not to be beaten. He spelled the word "Kwaker." Sir
+Francis Head has recorded how he was travelling along the line, months
+after, in a crowded carriage. "Not a word had been spoken since the train
+left London, but as we neared Slough Station, a short-bodied,
+short-necked, short-nosed, exceedingly respectable-looking man in the
+corner, fixing his eyes on the apparently fleeting wires, nodded to us as
+he muttered aloud, "Them's the cords that hung John Tawell!"[2]
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+It will not surprise those who are acquainted with the history of Bath,
+and the crowds of rich travellers who travelled thither, to learn that
+Hounslow Heath had not long been left behind before another highwayman's
+territory was entered upon. This stretched roughly from Salt Hill, on the
+east, to Maidenhead Thicket, on the west. It would, of course, have been
+ill gleaning after the harvest had been reaped by the pick of the
+profession on the Heath, and, as a matter of fact, the gangs who infested
+Maidenhead Thicket and Salt Hill confined their attention to travellers
+_returning_ from Bath. Hawkes was the chief of them, and his was a name of
+dread.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "FLYING HIGHWAYMAN"_]
+
+Hawkes, the "Flying Highwayman," who obtained that eminently descriptive
+name from the rapidity with which he moved from place to place, levying
+tribute from the frequenters of the Bath Road, was a darkly prominent
+figure in the days of George the Third. His name perhaps is not so well
+known as that of the more than half-mythical Dick Turpin, but it deserves
+especial mention from the circumstance of his keeping the whole country
+side between Hounslow and Windsor in terror for some years, and from the
+cleverness of the disguises he assumed. Disguised now as an officer, or a
+farmer; or again, as a Quaker, he despoiled the King's liege subjects very
+effectively. His most notable exploit was enacted at Salt Hill.
+
+A vapouring fellow, apparently from the sister island, who, according to
+his own account of his antecedents, had been too frequently in action
+with hosts of enemies to care for footpads and such scum, alighting from a
+post-chaise, entered the wayside sign of the Plough, and laying down a
+pair of large horse-pistols, called loudly for brandy-and-water.
+
+Only one guest was in the room--a broad-hatted and drab-suited
+Quaker--who, in the most sedate manner, was satisfying his appetite with a
+modest meal. The traveller, swaggering in and laying down his weapons on
+the table in such close proximity to the edibles, startled the man of
+peace, who shrank from them in very terror.
+
+"Oh, my friend," says the traveller, "'tis folks who fear to carry arms
+give opportunities to the highwaymen. If they went protected as I do, what
+occasion would there be to fear any man, even Hawkes himself?" And then,
+with an abundance of oaths, he protested that not half a dozen highwaymen
+should avail to deprive him of a single sixpence. The Quaker, meanwhile,
+continued his humble refection, now and again glancing from his bread and
+cheese at his most noisy and demonstrative companion, who drank his
+brandy-and-water stalking up and down the apartment.
+
+Presently, his drink exhausted, and his eloquence thrown away upon friend
+Broadbrim--who he at once conceived to be so quiet because he had nothing
+to lose--he unceremoniously turned his back and sat down upon a chair to
+examine the valuables he carried about his person. Having satisfied
+himself of their safety, he snatched up his pistols, and, with an
+impatient exclamation, strode off to the bar, and was paying for his
+liquor and gossiping, when the silent Quaker, who had by this time
+finished his repast, passed out hurriedly and disappeared down the road.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIGHWAYMAN AND HIS PREY_]
+
+The boisterous traveller continued his conversation for a while with the
+landlord, and then, re-entering his post-chaise, bade the postboy drive
+fast, and holloa when a suspicious person approached. He threw himself
+upon the seat after he had closed the door, stretched his legs as wide as
+possible, and, planting his feet firmly, cocked his pistols, holding them
+at arm's length with their barrels resting on the open windows.
+
+The horses went on for about a mile, when the chaise entered upon a
+heath--a very desolate-looking place, with never a house visible in any
+direction: with nothing, indeed, to enliven the perspective save a
+gallows, if such an object, with a rattling skeleton swinging in chains
+from the cross-beam, can be so considered. The traveller gazed with a grim
+satisfaction at this spectacle, for it seemed to him, as to the
+shipwrecked sailor in the old story--an earnest of civilization.
+
+But while he was musing on the long arm of the law, the rapid sounds of
+horse's hoofs, sounding over the ragged turf of the heath, were heard, and
+a voice was presently raised, commanding the postboy to stop. The chaise
+was stopped suddenly, with a jolt and a crash, and a face, black-masked,
+mysterious, horrible, appeared at the window, together with the still more
+alarming apparition of the grinning muzzle of a horse-pistol. Then
+followed the inevitable, "Your money or your life!"
+
+The traveller had his weapons ready. Raising the muzzle of one to the
+highwayman's head, he pulled the trigger, while his unexpected assailant
+stood and laughed. Beyond a snap and some sparks from the bruised flint,
+nothing happened. With a curse, he levelled the other pistol, and with the
+same result. The man in the mask laughed louder. "No good, friend Bounce,
+trying that game," said he, coolly; "the powder was carefully blown out of
+each of thy pans, almost under thy nose. If thou dost not want a bullet
+through thy head, just hand me over the repeater in thy boot, the purse in
+thy hat, the bank-notes in thy fob, the gold snuffbox in thy breast, and
+the diamond ring up thy sleeve. Out with them," he added, "in less time
+than thee took when I saw thee put 'em there, or I'll send thee to Davy
+Jones, and take 'em myself."
+
+The muzzle of the highwayman's pistol was at his head--the trigger at full
+cock. The flashing eyes that sparkled behind the mask showed the
+unfortunate traveller that here was no man to be trifled with. He dropped
+his useless weapon, and with considerable trepidation drew, one by one,
+from their places of security the valuables mentioned by the highwayman,
+who, when he had received them all, drew half a crown from the purse, and,
+flinging it into the chaise, said, casting off his Quaker speech, "There
+is enough to pay your turnpikes. And, harkee!" he added, in a more
+peremptory tone, "for the future, don't brag quite so much." Turning his
+horse's head, he disappeared, leaving the chaise and its occupant to
+continue their journey. The latter speedily recognized that the Quaker was
+none other than Hawkes himself.
+
+[Sidenote: _AN ALE-HOUSE FIGHT_]
+
+But this was the last exploit of Captain Hawkes. On the evening of the
+same day a man in a heavy topcoat and riding-boots, splashed, and with
+every appearance of having come off a long journey, entered the "Rising
+Sun," at a village about twenty miles away. In one compartment of the
+tap-room, on either side of a painted table, sat two ploughmen, in
+smock-frocks, their shock heads resting on their arms, which were spread
+out on the table near an empty quart pot. They were both snoring loudly.
+The new-comer, having been served with a glass of gin and water, and a
+long clay pipe, took no notice of the sleepers. In a few minutes one of
+the rustics awoke, and, glancing vacantly about him, scratching his
+carroty head, seized the empty pot.
+
+He put it down, and, giving his companion a push that nearly sent him off
+his seat, exclaimed, "Ye greedy chap! blest if ye ain't been and drunk up
+all the beer while I were a-sleeping."
+
+"Then ye shouldn't have been a-sleeping, ye fool," retorted the other,
+grinning from ear to ear.
+
+"I'll gi' ye a dowse o' the chaps if ye grin at me," shouted the man,
+angrily.
+
+"Haw, haw!" jeered the grinner, across the table. "'Twould take a better
+man nor you to do it. And," he added, "if ye don't want a hiding, ye'd
+better not try."
+
+Up jumped the two chawbacons simultaneously, and rushed at one another
+furiously. They rolled on the sanded floor, kicking and cuffing, while the
+stranger sipped his gin and water and smoked placidly enough.
+
+Presently, however, one of the combatants opened a clasp-knife, and made
+as though he would stab the other. Seeing this, the quiet spectator rose
+and seized the man's wrist in a powerful grip. But, quick as thought, his
+own wrists were seized, and he was thrown to the floor, both men clinging
+tightly to him. When he at length managed to rise, both his wrists were
+handcuffed.
+
+"Neatly managed, that!" exclaimed one of the pretended rustics, throwing
+off his smock-frock and disclosing the red waistcoat of a Bow Street
+Runner.
+
+"You must acknowledge, Captain Hawkes, as how we've done you brown."
+
+They searched their captive, and found two loaded pistols and a great
+variety of valuables about him. Then they escorted him to a post-chaise,
+which was in waiting; and the same night saw him in Newgate.
+
+He made a quiet and composed end, like most of his kind. They knew their
+risks, these dauntless enemies of society, and accepted death by
+strangulation when it came with something of philosophy.
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+And now for the plain, unvarnished narrative of one who travelled these
+roads a century ago.
+
+[Sidenote: _A STRANGER IN OUR GATES_]
+
+When that simple-minded German, Pastor Moritz, who visited England towards
+the close of last century, grew tired of London, he determined, he says,
+to visit Derbyshire; and, making the necessary preparations for his
+excursion, set out on June 21, 1782, for Richmond, though why he should
+have gone to Richmond _en route_ for Derbyshire is difficult to
+understand. He took with him four guineas, some linen, and a book of the
+roads, together with a map and a pocket-book, and (for he had his
+appreciations) a copy of "Paradise Lost."
+
+Thus equipped, he enjoyed for the first time what he calls the "luxury of
+being driven in an English stage," from which expression and our own
+people's doleful tales of eighteenth-century travelling in England, we may
+infer that the public conveyances of the Pastor's native land were
+particularly bad. The English coaches were, according to him, viewing them
+with the eye of a foreigner, "quite elegant." This particular one was
+lined in the inside, and had two seats large enough to accommodate six
+persons; "but it must be owned," he goes on to say, "that when the
+carriage was full the company was rather crowded." By which we may gather
+that the seats rather discommoded than accommodated.
+
+The only passenger at first was an elderly lady, but presently the coach
+was filled with other dames, who appeared to be a little acquainted with
+one another, and conversed, as our traveller thought, in a very insipid
+and tiresome manner. Fortunately, he had his road-book handy, and so took
+refuge in its pages by marking his route.
+
+The coach stopped at Kensington, where a Jew would have taken a seat, but
+that luxurious conveyance was full inside, and the Israelite was too proud
+to take a place amongst the half-price outsiders on the roof. This
+naturally annoyed the travellers, for they thought it preposterous that a
+Jew should be ashamed to ride on the outside. They thought he should have
+been grateful for being allowed to ride on any side in any way, since he
+was but a Jew. In this connection Mr. Moritz takes occasion to observe
+that the riding upon the roof of a coach is a curious practice. Persons to
+whom it was not convenient to pay full price sat outside, without any
+seats, or even a rail. By what means passengers thus fastened themselves
+securely on the roofs of those vehicles he knew not, but he constantly saw
+numbers seated there, at their ease, and apparently with perfect safety.
+
+On this occasion the outsiders, of whom there were six, made such a noise
+and bustle when the insiders alighted, as to almost frighten them, and I
+suspect the ladies were rendered horribly nervous by the only other man
+who rode inside the coach recounting to them all kinds of stories about
+robbers and footpads who had committed many crimes hereabouts. However, as
+this entertaining companion insisted, the English robbers were possessed
+of a superior honour as compared with the French: the former robbed only;
+the latter both robbed and murdered, doubtless on the principle of that
+classic proverb which assures us that dead men tell no tales.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE HIERARCHY OF THIEVES_]
+
+"Notwithstanding this," says our traveller, "there are in England another
+species of villains, who also murder, and that oftentimes for the merest
+trifles, of which they rob the person murdered. These are called footpads,
+and are the lowest class of English rogues, amongst whom, in general,
+there reigns something like some regard to character.
+
+"The highest order of thieves (!) are the pickpockets or cutpurses, whom
+you find everywhere, and sometimes even in the best companies. They are
+generally well and handsomely dressed, so that you take them to be persons
+of condition; as indeed may sometimes be the case--persons who by
+extravagance and excesses have reduced themselves to want, and find
+themselves obliged at last to have recourse to pilfering and thieving.
+
+"Next to them come the highwaymen, who rob on horseback, and often, they
+say, even with unloaded pistols, they terrify travellers in order to put
+themselves in possession of their purses. Among these persons, however,
+there are instances of true greatness of soul; there are numberless
+instances of their returning a large part of their booty where the party
+robbed has appeared to be particularly distressed, and they are seldom
+guilty of murder.
+
+"Then comes the third and lowest and worst of all thieves and rogues, the
+footpads before mentioned, who are on foot, and often murder in the most
+inhuman manner, for the sake of only a few shillings, any unfortunate
+people who happen to fall in their way."
+
+The coach arrived, one is glad to say, unharmed at Richmond, despite
+forebodings of disaster; but the pirates on board (so to speak) demanded
+another shilling of the Pastor, although he had already paid one at
+starting.
+
+At Richmond he stayed the night, and in the evening he took a walk out of
+the town, to Richmond Hill and the Terrace, where his feelings during the
+few enraptured minutes that he stood there seemed impossible for his pen
+to describe. One of his first sensations was chagrin and sorrow for the
+days wasted in London, and he vented a thousand bitter reproaches on his
+irresolution in not quitting that huge dungeon long before, to come here
+and spend his time in paradise.
+
+The landlady of the inn was so noted for the copiousness and the loudness
+of her talking to the servants that our traveller could not get to sleep
+until it was very late; but, notwithstanding this, he was up by three
+o'clock the next morning to see the sun rise over Richmond Hill. Alas!
+alas! the lazy servants, who cared nothing for such sights, did not arise
+till six o'clock, when he rushed out, only to be disappointed at finding
+the sky overcast.
+
+And now, having finished his breakfast, he seized his staff, his only
+companion, and proceeded to set forth on foot. Unfortunately, however, a
+traveller in this wise seemed to be considered as a sort of wild man or
+eccentric creature, who was stared at, pitied, suspected, and shunned by
+all. There were carriages without number on the road, and they occasioned
+a troublesome and disagreeable dust, and when he sat down in a hedge to
+read Milton, the people who rode or drove past stared at him with
+astonishment, and made significant gestures, as who should say, "This is a
+poor devil with a deranged head," so singular did it appear to them that a
+man should sit beside the public highway and read books.
+
+[Sidenote: _PILGRIM'S PROGRESS_]
+
+Then, when he again resumed his journey, the coachmen who drove by called
+out now and again to ask him if he would not ride on the outside of their
+coaches; and the farmers riding past on horseback said, with an air of
+pity, "'Tis warm walking, sir;" and, more than all, as he passed through
+the villages, every old woman would come to her door and cry pitifully,
+"Good God!"
+
+And so he came to Windsor, where, as he entered an inn and desired to have
+something to eat, the countenances of the waiters soon gave him to
+understand that they thought our pedestrian little, if anything, better
+than a beggar. In this contemptuous manner they served him, but, to do
+them justice, they allowed him to pay like a gentleman. "Perhaps," says
+Pastor Moritz, "this was the first time these pert, be-powdered puppies
+had ever been called on to wait on a poor devil who entered the place on
+foot." To add to this indignity, they showed him into a bedroom which more
+resembled a cell for malefactors than aught else, and when he desired a
+better room, told him, with scant ceremony, to go back to Slough. This, by
+the way, was at the "Christopher," at Eton. Crossing the bridge into
+Windsor again, he found himself opposite the Castle, and at the gates of a
+very capital inn, with several officers and persons of distinction going
+in and out. Here the landlord received him with civility, but the
+chambermaid who conducted him to his room did nothing but mutter and
+grumble. After an evening walk he returned, at peace with all men; but the
+waiters received him gruffly, and the chambermaid, dropping a
+half-curtsey, informed him, with a sneering laugh, that he might go and
+look for another bedroom, for the one she had by mistake shown him was
+already engaged. He protested so loudly at this that the landlord, who was
+a good soul, surely, came, and with great courtesy desired another room to
+be shown him, which, however, contained another bed.
+
+Underneath was the tap-room, from which ascended the ribaldries and low
+conversation of some objectionable people who were drinking and singing
+songs down there, and scarcely had he dropped off to sleep before the
+fellow who was to sleep in the other bed came stumbling into the room.
+After colliding with the Pastor's bed, he found his own, and got into it
+without the tiresome formality of removing boots and clothes.
+
+The next morning the Pastor prepared to depart, needlessly annoyed by that
+eternal feminine--the grumbling chambermaid, who informed him that on no
+account should he sleep another night there. As he was going away, the
+surly waiter placed himself on the stairs, saying, "Pray remember the
+waiter," and when in receipt of the three-halfpence which our traveller
+bestowed, he cursed that inoffensive German with the heartiest
+imprecations. At the door stood the maid, saying, "Pray remember the
+chambermaid." "Yes, yes," says the Pastor (a worm will turn), "I shall
+long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour," and so gave her nothing.
+
+Through Slough he went, by Salt Hill, to Maidenhead. At Salt Hill, which
+could hardly be called a village, he saw a barber's shop. For putting his
+hair in order, and for the luxury of a shave, that unconscionable barber
+charged one shilling.
+
+Between Salt Hill and Maidenhead, this very much contemned pedestrian met
+with a very disagreeable adventure. Hitherto he had scarcely met a single
+foot-passenger, whilst coaches without number rolled every moment past
+him; for few roads were so crowded as was the Bath Road at this time.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE PASTOR AND THE FOOTPAD_]
+
+In one place the road led along a low, sunken piece of ground, between
+high trees, so that one could see but a little way ahead, and just here a
+fellow in a brown frock and round hat, with an immense stick in his hand,
+came up to him. His countenance was suspicious. He passed, but immediately
+turned back and demanded a halfpenny to buy bread, for he had eaten
+nothing (so he said) that day.
+
+The Pastor felt in his pocket, but could find nothing less than a
+shilling. Very imprudently, I should say, he informed the beggar of that
+fact, and begged to be excused.
+
+"God bless my soul!" said the beggar, which pious invocation so frightened
+our timid friend that he, having due regard to the big stick and the
+brawny hand that held it, gave the beggar a shilling. Meanwhile a coach
+came past, and the fellow thanked him and went on his way. If the coach
+had come past sooner, he "would not," he says, "so easily have given him
+the shilling, which, God knows, I could not well spare. Whether a footpad
+or not, I will not pretend to say; but he had every appearance of it."
+
+And so this unfortunate traveller marches off to the Oxford Road, and we
+are no longer concerned with him.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+A fine broad gravel stretch of highway is that which, on leaving Salt
+Hill, takes us gently down in the direction of the Thames, which the Bath
+Road crosses, over Maidenhead Bridge. The distance is four miles, with no
+villages, and but few scattered houses, on the way. Two miles and one mile
+respectively before the Bridge is reached are the wayside inns, called
+"Two Mile Brook" and "One Mile House." Near this last is the beautiful
+grouping of roadside elms, sketched in the accompanying illustration, "An
+English Road." Half a mile onward, the Great Western Railway crosses the
+road by a skew-bridge, and runs into Taplow station. Taplow village lies
+quite away from the road, but has an outpost, as it were, in the old, with
+the curious sign of the "Dumb Bell." Beyond this, the intervening stretch
+of road as far as Maidenhead Bridge is lined with villas standing in
+extensive grounds. Here the traveller renews his acquaintance with the
+Thames, and passes over a fine stone bridge, built in 1772, from Bucks to
+Berks. This bridge succeeded a crazy timber structure, which itself had
+several predecessors. It is one of these early bridges that is mentioned
+in the declaration of a hermit who obtained a licence to settle here and
+collect alms. Such roadside hermits were common in the Middle Ages. They
+were licensed by the Bishop of their diocese, and were often useful in
+keeping bridges and highways in good order; the alms they received
+being, indeed, very much in the nature of voluntary tolls for these
+services. On the following declaration, Richard Ludlow obtained his
+licence:--
+
+[Sidenote: _AN EARLY TOLL-KEEPER_]
+
+"In the name of God, Amen. I, Richard Ludlow, before God and you my Lord
+Bishop of Salisbury, and in presence of all these worshipful men here
+being, offer up my profession of hermit under this form: that I, Richard,
+will be obedient to Holy Church; that I will lead my life, to my life's
+end, in sobriety and chastity; will avoid all open spectacles, taverns,
+and other such places; that I will every day hear mass, and say every day
+certain Paternosters and Aves: that I will fast every Friday, the vigils
+of Pentecost and All Hallows, on bread and water. And the goods that I may
+get by free gift of Christian people, or by bequest, or testament, or by
+any reasonable and true way, receiving only necessaries to my sustenance,
+as in meat, drink, clothing, and fuel, I shall truly, without deceit, lay
+out upon reparation and amending of the bridge and of the common way
+belonging to ye same town of Maidenhead."
+
+[Illustration: AN ENGLISH ROAD.]
+
+There is, perhaps, no more delightful picture along the whole course of
+the Bath Road than the view from Maidenhead Bridge up river, where the
+house-boats, gay with flowers and Japanese lanterns, are gathered beside
+the trim lawns of the riverside villas, with the gaily dressed crowds by
+Boulter's Lock beyond, and the wooded heights of Clieveden closing in the
+distance. Maidenhead shows the river at its most fashionable part.
+
+It was at the "Greyhound" Inn, Maidenhead, that the unhappy Charles the
+First bade farewell to his children, July 16, 1647. He was in charge of
+his Roundhead captors at Caversham, and had been allowed to come over for
+two days. The Prince of Wales was abroad, but the Duke of York, then
+fifteen years of age; the Princess Elizabeth, two years younger; and the
+seven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, were brought to him. The affecting
+scene is said to have drawn tears even from Cromwell.
+
+Maidenhead Bridge--the wooden one which preceeded the present
+structure--might have been the scene of a desperate encounter, but
+happened instead to have witnessed an equally desperate and farcical
+devil-take-the-hindmost flight on the part of the Irish soldiers of James
+the Second, who were posted here to dispute the passage of the Thames with
+the advancing forces of William of Orange.
+
+The November night had shrouded the river and the country side, when the
+sound of drums beating a Dutch march was heard. The soldiers, who had no
+heart in their work, did not remain to defend that strategic point, and
+bolted. They would have discovered, if they had kept their posts, that the
+martial music which lent them such agility was produced by the townsfolk
+of Maidenhead, who, in spite of that national crisis, appear to have been
+merry blades.
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+
+The "Bear" was the principal inn at Maidenhead in the coaching era, and
+owed much of its prosperity to the unwillingness of travellers who carried
+considerable sums of money with them to cross Maidenhead Thicket at night.
+They slept peacefully at the "Bear," and resumed the roads in the morning,
+when the highwaymen were in hiding.
+
+[Sidenote: _MAIDENHEAD THICKET_]
+
+Maidenhead Thicket is really a long avenue lining the highway two miles
+from that town. It is a beautiful and romantic place, but its beauties
+were not apparent to travellers in days of old. The sinister reputation of
+the spot goes back for hundreds of years, and may be said to have arisen
+from the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Reading Abbey
+was despoiled. To that Abbey had resorted many hundreds of poor, certain
+of finding relief at its gates, and when its hospitality had become a
+thing of the past, these dependents simply infested the neighbourhood, and
+either begged or stole. As a chronicler of that time quaintly said: "There
+is great stoare of stout vagabonds and maysterless men (able enough for
+labour) which do great hurt in the country by their idle and naughtie
+life." In those times the Hundreds were liable for any robberies committed
+within their boundaries; and in 1590 the Hundred of Benhurst, in which
+Maidenhead Thicket is situated, had actually to pay L255 compensation for
+highway robberies committed here. In fact, Maidenhead Thicket had for a
+long time an unenviable reputation for highway robberies, with or without
+violence, and the desperadoes had so little care whom they robbed that not
+even the Vicars of Hurley, who came over to officiate at Maidenhead once a
+week, were safe. This was so fully recognized that the Vicars of Hurley
+used to draw an annual L50 extra on account of their risks.
+
+In later years a farmer, whose name was Cannon, was stopped one night on
+driving from Reading market. Two footpads compelled him to give up the
+well-filled money-bag he carried with him, and then let him go, consumed
+with impotent rage at his helplessness and the loss of his money.
+
+Suddenly, however, he remembered that he had with him, under the seat of
+the gig, a reaping-hook which he had brought back from being mended at
+Reading. That recollection brought him a bright idea. Turning his gig
+round, he drove back to the spot where he had been robbed, by a back way.
+As he had supposed, the ruffians were still there, waiting for more
+plunder. In the dark they took the farmer for a new-comer, until he had
+got to close quarters with his reaping-hook, which they mistook for a
+cutlass. The end of the encounter was that one footpad was left for dead,
+and the other took to his heels. The farmer searched the fallen foe and
+found his money-bag, together, it was said, with other spoils, which he
+promptly annexed, and drove off rejoicing.
+
+[Illustration: MAIDENHEAD THICKET.]
+
+After these tales of derring-do and robustious encounters, the story of
+the road becomes comparatively tame as it goes on and passes through
+Twyford and Reading.
+
+[Illustration: THE "BELL AND BOTTLE" SIGN.]
+
+[Sidenote: _"BELL AND BOTTLE"_]
+
+At the western end of Maidenhead Thicket, where, lying modestly back from
+the road, stands one of the innumerable "Coach and Horses" of the highway,
+the gossips of the adjacent Littlewick Green foregather and play bowls on
+the grass. Then comes Knowl Hill, where an old sign, swinging romantically
+from a wayside fir tree, proclaims the proximity of a curiously named inn,
+the "Bell and Bottle." What affinity have bells for bottles, or bottles
+for bells? "What," as the poet asks (in quite a different connection), "is
+Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" But perhaps the original innkeeper was
+something of a cynic, and thus paraphrased the well-worn conjunction,
+"Beer and Bible." Unfortunately for the inquiring stranger, the origin is
+"wrop in mistry."
+
+Down below Knowl Hill, past a chalk quarry on the right, is yet another
+inn--the neat and pretty "Seven Stars," to be succeeded at the hamlet of
+Kiln Green by the "Horse and Groom," gabled and embowered with vines, and
+facing up, not fronting, the road, in quite the ideal fashion. What the
+country here lacks in bold scenery it evidently gains in fertility, for
+the gardens of Kiln Green are a delightful mass of luxuriant flowers.
+
+The road through Hare Hatch to Twyford is flat and uninteresting. Twyford
+itself, an ancient place on the little river Loddon, is losing its antique
+character, from being the scene of much building activity. An old
+almshouse remains on the right hand, with the inscription, "Domino et
+pauperibus, 1640."
+
+The five miles between Twyford and Reading exhibit the gradual degeneracy
+of a country road approaching a large town; as regards the scenery, that
+is to say. The quality of the road surface remains excellent, and the
+width is generous--a circumstance probably owing to the especial widening
+carried out so far back as 1255, in consequence of the dangerous state of
+the highway, which was then narrow and bordered by dense woods wherein
+lurked all manner of evildoers.
+
+Three miles from the town, and continuing for the length of a mile, is a
+pleasant avenue of trees. The deep Sonning Cutting on the Great Western
+Railway is then crossed, and the suburbs of Biscuit Town presently
+encountered.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+
+"The run to Reading," I learn from a cycling paper, "constitutes a
+pleasant morning's spin from London." I should like to call up one of our
+great-grandfathers who travelled these thirty-nine miles painfully by
+coach, and read that paragraph to him.
+
+[Sidenote: _BISCUITS, SEEDS, AND SAUCE_]
+
+Reading numbers over 60,000 inhabitants, and is rapidly adding to them.
+This prosperity proceeds from several causes, Reading being--
+
+  "'Mongst other things, so widely known,
+  For biscuits, seeds, and sauce."
+
+The town, of course, stands for biscuits in the minds of most people, and
+the names of Huntley and Palmer have become household words, somewhat
+eclipsing Cock's Reading Sauce, and the seeds of Sutton's; while few
+people outside Reading are cognizant of its great engineering industries.
+So much for modern Reading, whose principal hero is George Palmer.
+
+[Illustration: PALMER'S STATUE.]
+
+Mr. George Palmer, whose death occurred in 1897, enjoyed the distinction
+of having a statue erected to him during his lifetime, an unusual honour
+which he shared with few others--Queen Victoria, the great Duke of
+Wellington, Lord Roberts, Reginald, Earl of Devon, and, of course, Mr.
+Gladstone. Mr. Palmer's fellow-townsmen elected to honour him in this way,
+and decided to have a statue which should be in every way true to life,
+and show the man "in his habit as he lived"--one in which the clothes
+should be as characteristic as the features. Our grandfathers would have
+represented him wrapped in a Roman toga, but those notions do not commend
+themselves to the present age, and so the effigy stands in all the
+supremely _un_-decorative guise of everyday dress: homely coat, and
+trousers excruciatingly baggy at the knees; bareheaded, and in one hand a
+silk hat and an unfolded umbrella. This is possibly the only instance in
+which these last necessary, but unlovely articles have been reproduced in
+bronze.
+
+Ancient Reading knew nothing of biscuits or sauces. It was the home of one
+of the very greatest Abbeys in England. The Abbot of Reading ranked next
+after those of Westminster and Glastonbury, and usually held important
+offices of State. In the Abbey, Parliaments have been held, Royal
+marriages celebrated, and Kings and Queens laid to rest. Yet of all this
+grandeur no shred is left. There are ruins; but, formless and featureless
+as they are, they cannot recall to the eye anything of the architectural
+glories of the past, and the bones of the Kings have for centuries been
+scattered no man knows whither.
+
+There are pleasant stories of Reading, and gruesome ones. Horrible was the
+fate of Hugh Faringdon, the last Abbot, who was, in 1539, with one of his
+monks, hanged, drawn and quartered for denying the religious supremacy of
+that royal wild beast, Henry the Eighth. The King had been friendly with
+him not so long before, and had presented him with a silver cup, as a
+token of this friendship.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE KING AND THE ABBOT_]
+
+One wonders if this unfortunate prelate was the same person as that Abbot
+of Reading mentioned by Fuller. The Abbot of that story was a man
+particularly fond of what have been gracefully termed the "pleasures of
+the table." His eyes, as the Psalmist puts it, "swelled out with
+fatness,"--and his stomach, too, for that matter. To him came one day a
+hungry stranger, fresh from the appetizing sport of hunting. He had lost
+his way, and craved the hospitality of the Abbey. That hospitality was
+extended to him, promptly enough, and he was seated at the Abbot's own
+table.
+
+It will readily be guessed that this hungry stranger was the King. He had
+wandered thus far, away from Windsor Forest and his attendants, and was
+genuinely famished. The Abbot, however, had no notion who he was; but he
+could see that this strayed huntsman was a very prince among good
+trencher-men, and envied him accordingly. "Well fare thy heart," said he,
+as he saw the roast beef disappearing; "I would give an hundred pounds
+could I feed so lustily on beef as you do. Alas! my weak and squeezie
+stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken."
+
+The King took the compliment and more beef, and, pledging his host,
+departed. Some weeks after, when the Abbot had quite forgotten all about
+the matter, he was sent for, clapped into the Tower, and kept, a miserable
+prisoner--not knowing what his offence might be, or what would befall him
+next--on bread and water. At length one day a sirloin of beef was placed
+before him, and he made such short work of it as to prove to the King, who
+was secretly watching him, that his treatment for "squeezie stomach" had
+succeeded admirably; so, springing out of the cupboard in which he had
+secreted himself, "My lord," says he, "deposit presently your hundred
+pounds in gold, or else you go not hence all the days of your life. I
+have been your physician to cure you, and here, as I deserve, I demand my
+fee for the same."
+
+The Abbot was enlightened. He, as Fuller says, "down with his dust, and,
+glad he escaped so, returned to Reading, as somewhat lighter in purse, so
+much more merry in heart, than when he came thence."
+
+Little remains at Reading to tell of the coaching age. Where are the
+"Bear," the "George," the "Crown"? Gone, with their jovial guests, into
+the limbo of forgotten things, almost as thoroughly as the civilization of
+Roman Calleva--the Silchester of modern times--situated at some distance
+down the road from Reading to Basingstoke, and whose relics may be seen
+gathered together in the Reading Museum. To that collection should be
+added a set of articles used in the everyday business of coaching. They
+would be just as curious to-day as those Roman potsherds of a thousand
+years ago.
+
+
+
+
+XXIV
+
+
+The Bath Road climbs, with some show of steepness, out of Reading,
+presently to enter upon that stretch of nearly seventeen miles of
+comparatively flat sandy gravel road which, for speed cycling, is the best
+part of the whole journey. The surface is nearly always splendid, save in
+very dry seasons, when the sand renders the going somewhat heavy, and the
+cyclist may well be surprised to learn that it was here, between Reading
+and Newbury, that Pepys and his wife, travelling in their own coach,
+lost their way, entirely through the badness of the roads.
+
+[Illustration: THE STAGE WAGGON. (_After Rowlandson._)]
+
+[Sidenote: _THE "BERKSHIRE LADY"_]
+
+In spite of these modern advantages, the road is quite suburban and
+uninteresting until Calcot Green is passed, in two miles and a half. But
+it is here, amid the pleasant, though tame, scenery that Calcot Park, the
+home of the famous "Berkshire Lady," may be sought.
+
+The "Berkshire Lady" was the daughter of Sir William Kendrick, of Calcot,
+who flourished in the reign of Queen Anne. Upon the death of her father,
+she became sole heiress to the estate and an income of some five thousand
+pounds per annum. Rich, beautiful, and endowed with a vivacious manner, it
+is not surprising that she was courted by all the vinous, red-faced young
+squires in the neighbourhood; but she refused these offers until,
+according to an old ballad--
+
+  "Being at a noble wedding
+  In the famous town of Reading,
+  A young gentleman she saw
+  Who belonged to the law."
+
+We may shrewdly suspect that she not only "saw" him, but that they
+indulged in a desperate flirtation in the conservatory, or what may have
+answered to a conservatory in those times.
+
+The "Berkshire Lady" was evidently a New Woman, born very much in advance
+of her proper era. For what did she do? Why, she fell in love with that
+"young gentleman" straight away, and so furiously that nothing would
+suffice her but to send him an anonymous challenge to fight a duel or to
+marry her.
+
+Benjamin Child--for that was the name of the young and briefless (and also
+impecunious) barrister--was astonished at receiving a challenge from no
+one in particular; but, accompanied by a friend, proceeded to the
+rendezvous appointed by the unknown in Calcot Park. Arrived there, they
+perceived a masked lady, with a rapier, who informed the pair that she was
+the challenger:--
+
+  "'It was I that did invite you:
+  You shall wed me, or I'll fight you,
+  So now take your choice,' said she;
+  'Either fight, or marry me.'
+  Says he, 'Madam, pray what mean ye?
+  In my life I ne'er have seen ye;
+  Pray unmask, your visage show,
+  Then I'll tell you, aye or no.'"
+
+The lady, however, would not unmask:--
+
+  "'I will not my face uncover,
+  Till the marriage rites are over;
+  Therefore take you which you will,
+  Wed me, sir, or try your skill.'"
+
+The friend advised Benjamin Child, Esq., to take his chance of her being
+poor and pretty, or rich and--plain (those being the usually accepted
+conjunctions), and to marry her, which he accordingly promised to do. He
+had a reward for his moral courage, for the lady unmasked and disclosed
+herself as the beautiful unknown with whom he had flirted at the wedding.
+That they "lived happily ever afterwards" we need find no difficulty in
+believing.
+
+[Illustration: THEALE.]
+
+Many stories were current locally of this Mr. Child. One, in particular
+(certainly not a romantic one), related his great fondness for oysters, of
+which he was in the habit of consuming large quantities; in fact, he is
+said to have kept a museum of the tubs emptied by him, for one room in
+Calcot House was fitted round with shelves, upon which these empty
+mementos were arranged in regular order. It was his humour to show his
+friends this unique arrangement as a convincing proof of his capabilities
+in that particular branch of good living.
+
+Upon the death of his wife, Calcot became unbearable to him, and he sold
+it. But, curiously enough, nothing could induce him to quit the house, and
+the new proprietor was reduced to rendering it uninhabitable to him by
+unroofing it. Mr. Child then retired to a small cottage in an adjoining
+wood, where he spent the rest of his days in retirement.
+
+The Kendrick vault in the church of St. Mary, Reading, was exposed to view
+in 1820, when, among the numerous coffins found, was one bearing the
+inscription, "Frances Child, wife of Benjamin Child, of Calcot, first
+daughter of Sir W. Kendrick, died 1722, aged 35." The coffin was of lead,
+and was moulded to the form of the body, even to the lineaments of the
+face. Mr. Child was the last person buried in this vault. His coffin, of
+unusually large dimensions, is dated 1767.
+
+[Sidenote: _THEALE_]
+
+Two and a half miles from Calcot Green, and we are at Theale, a village
+prettily embowered among trees, but possessing a large and extraordinarily
+bad "Carpenter's Gothic" church, built about 1840, which looks quite
+charming at the distance of a quarter of a mile, but has been known to
+afflict architects who have made its close acquaintance with hopeless
+melancholia. In fine, Theale church is a horrid example of Early Victorian
+imitation of the Early English style.
+
+And now the road wanders sweetly between the green and pleasant levels
+beside the sedgy Kennet. Road, rail, river, and canal run side by side, or
+but slightly parted, for miles, past Woolhampton and the decayed town of
+Thatcham, to Newbury, and so on to Hungerford.
+
+A short mile before reaching Woolhampton, there stands, on the left-hand
+side of the road, quite lonely, a wayside inn, the "Rising Sun," a relic
+of coaching times. They still show one, in the parlour, the old
+booking-office in which parcels were received for the old road-waggons
+that plied with luggage between London and Bath, and talk of the days when
+the house used to own stabling for forty horses. A larger inn is the
+"Angel," at Woolhampton, with a most elaborate iron sign, from which
+depends a little carved figure of a vine-crowned Bacchus, astride his
+barrel, carved forty years ago by a wood-carver engaged on the restoration
+of Woolhampton Church. Tramps and other travellers unacquainted with the
+classics generally take this vinous heathen god to be a representation of
+the Angel after whom the inn was named.
+
+[Illustration: WOOLHAMPTON.]
+
+Woolhampton, once blessed with two "Angels," has now but one, for what was
+once known as the "Upper Angel" has been re-named the "Falmouth Arms."
+Although Woolhampton village possesses a railway station on the Hants
+and Berks branch of the Great Western Railway, travellers will look in
+vain for the name of it in their railway guides. If they will refer to
+"Midgham," however, they will have found it under another title.
+Originally called by the name of the village, it was found that passengers
+and luggage frequently lost their way here in mistake for Wolverhampton,
+also on the Great Western, and so the name had to be changed.
+
+[Illustration: THATCHAM.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THATCHAM_]
+
+Three and a half miles from Woolhampton comes Thatcham, famed in the
+coaching age for its "King's Head" inn, but now a decayed market town
+which has sunk to the status of a very dull village. A battered stone, all
+that remains of a market cross, stands in the middle of the wide, deserted
+street, enclosed by a circular seat, bearing an inscription recounting the
+history of the market, and the kingly protection which Henry the Third
+afforded the place against the "Newbury men." But, kingly help
+notwithstanding, the "Newbury men" have long since snatched its trade away
+from Thatcham, which has become a village, while Newbury has grown to be a
+town of 20,000 inhabitants. The only interesting object in the long street
+is Thatcham Chapel, an isolated Perpendicular building, purchased for
+10_s._ by Lady Frances Winchcombe in 1707. She presented it to a Blue Coat
+school which she founded in the village.
+
+
+
+
+XXV
+
+
+Newbury, the "hated rival," is three miles down the road. Within a mile of
+it in coaching times, but now not to be distinguished from the town
+itself, is Speenhamland, the site of that famous coaching inn, the
+"Pelican," whose charges were of so monumental a character that Quin has
+immortalized them in the lines:--
+
+  "The famous inn at Speenhamland,
+    That stands beneath the hill,
+  May well be called the Pelican,
+    From its enormous bill."
+
+Alas! how are the mighty fallen! The Pelican is no longer an inn, but has
+been divided up, and part of it is a veterinary establishment.
+
+[Illustration: RAIL AND RIVER: THE KENNET AND THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY.]
+
+[Sidenote: _THOMAS STACKHOUSE_]
+
+The most famous inhabitant of Newbury was that fifteenth-century clothier,
+that "Jack of Newbury," whose wealth and public benefactions were alike
+considered wonderful in his day. The most notorious inhabitant was that
+scandalous Vicar of Beenham Vallance, near by, who flourished flamboyantly
+here between 1733 and 1752. Candour compels the admission that the Rev.
+Thomas Stackhouse, besides being the learned author of the "History of the
+Bible," was also a great drunkard. That history, indeed, he chiefly wrote
+at an inn still standing on the Bath Road near Thatcham, called "Jack's
+Booth." He would stay there for days at a time, and write (and drink), in
+an arbour in the garden, going frequently from this retreat to his church
+on Sundays, where, in the pulpit, he would break into incoherent prayers
+and maudlin tears, asking forgiveness for his besetting sin, and promising
+reformation of his evil courses. But after service he was generally to be
+seen going back to his inn. Here one day a friend found him and reminded
+him that it was the day of the Bishop's Visitation, a circumstance which
+he had quite forgotten. He went off, clothed disgracefully, and by no
+means sober. "Who," asked the Bishop, indignantly, on seeing this strange
+creature--"who is that shabby, dirty old man?" The vicar answered the
+query himself. "I am," he shouted, "Thomas Stackhouse, Vicar of Beenham,
+who wrote the 'History of the Bible,' and that is more than your lordship
+can do!" The historian of these things says this reply quite upset the
+gravity of the solemn meeting; and the statement may well be believed.
+
+Camden says, "Newburie must acknowledge Speen as its mother," and Newbury,
+in fact, was originally an offshoot from Speen, which was anciently a
+fortified Roman settlement in the tangled underwoods of the wild country
+between the Roman cities of Aquae Solis and Calleva (Bath and Silchester).
+The Romans called it "Spinae," _i.e._ "the Thorns," a sufficiently
+descriptive title in that era. The Domesday Book calls it "Spone." The
+fact of Speen having been the original settlement may be partly traced in
+the circumstance of its lying directly on the old road, while Newbury, its
+infinitely bigger daughter, sprawls out on the Whitchurch and Andover
+roads, which run from the Bath Road almost at right angles.
+
+There are quaint houses at Newbury, and old inns; some of them, like the
+"Globe" or the "King's Arms," converted into shops or private houses,
+while others perhaps do a brisker trade in drink than in good cheer of the
+more hospitable sort. There are the "White Hart," and the "Jack of
+Newbury," with a modern front, and others. The Kennet divides the town in
+half, and runs under a bridge which carries the street across its narrow
+width, bordered with quaint-looking houses. Here is the old Cloth Hall, a
+singular building, neglected now that the weaving trade has decayed; and
+on the west side of the bridge stands the parish church with a small brass
+in it to the memory of the great "Jack," and a very economical monument to
+a certain "J.W.C.," 1692, just roughly carved into the stonework of a
+buttress at the east end.
+
+[Illustration: AT THE 55TH MILESTONE.]
+
+[Illustration: INSCRIPTION. NEWBURY CHURCH.]
+
+It is strange to think that only twenty-seven years ago (in 1872, as a
+matter of fact), at Newbury, a rag and bone dealer who for several years
+had been well known in the town as a man of intemperate habits, and
+upon whom imprisonment in Reading Gaol had failed to produce any
+beneficial effect, was fixed in the stocks for drunkenness and disorderly
+conduct at Divine service in the parish church. Twenty-six years had
+elapsed since the stocks had last been used, and their reappearance
+created no little sensation and amusement, several hundreds of persons
+being attracted to the spot where they were fixed. The sinful rag man was
+seated upon a stool, and his legs were secured in the stocks at a few
+minutes past one. He seemed anything but pleased with the laughter and
+derision of the crowd. Four hours having passed, he was released.
+
+[Sidenote: _"JACK OF NEWBURY"_]
+
+It is impossible to escape Jack of Newbury in this the scene of his
+greatness. "John Smalwoode the elder, alias John Wynchcombe," as he
+describes himself in his last will and testament, in 1519, was the most
+prominent of the clothworkers in the reigns of the Seventh and Eighth
+Henrys. He is perhaps best described in the words of a pamphlet published
+towards the close of the sixteenth century:--"He was a man of merrie
+disposition and honest conversation, was wondrous well beloved of rich and
+poore, especially because in every place where he came he would spend his
+money with the best, and was not any time found a churl of his purse.
+Wherefore, being so good a companion, he was called of olde and younge
+'Jacke of Newberie,' a man so generally well knowne in all this countrye
+for his good fellowship, that he could goe into no place but he found
+acquaintance; by means whereof Jacke could no sooner get a crowne, but
+straight hee found meanes to spend it; yet had he ever this care, that hee
+would always keepe himselfe in comely and decent apparel, neither at any
+time would hee be overcome in drinke, but so discreetly behave himselfe
+with honest mirthe and pleasant conceits, that he was every gentleman's
+companion."
+
+This is so excellent a voucher for him that it is not surprising so
+universal a favourite stepped into the shoes of his master's widow. She
+was rich, and he with a plentiful lack of coin; yet though she had a
+choice of suitors, including a "tanner, a taylor, and a parson," she set
+her heart on Jack with something of the determination which characterized
+the "Berkshire Lady" already referred to in these pages; and though he was
+something loth, married him out of hand. We are not told that she
+regretted it, but probably she did, for the stories have it that she was a
+gossip and given to staying out late, while Jack stopped at home and went
+betimes to bed. Once, when she returned at midnight, and knocked at the
+door, he looked from his window and told her that, as she had stayed out
+all day for her own delight, she might "lie forth" until the morning for
+his. "Moved with pity," as the narrative says, but more likely because her
+continual knocking kept him awake, he at last went down in his shirt and
+opened the door, when "Alack, husband," says she, "what hap have I? My
+wedding ring was even now in my hand, and I have let it fall about the
+door; good, sweet John, come forth with the candle and help me seek it."
+
+He "went forth" accordingly, into the street, and she locked him out! We
+are not told what happened when he got in again.
+
+He seems to have taken her loss, a little later, calmly enough, for he
+speedily married again, and although "wondrous wealthie," he chose a poor
+girl who lived at Aylesbury. A grand wedding it was when Joan (for that
+was her name) and Jack were married. Her head, we are assured, was adorned
+with a "billement of gold, and her hair, as yellow as gold, hanging downe
+behind her." In fact, "Her golden hair was hanging down her back," as the
+music-hall songster has it; which goes far to prove that the modern
+_penchant_ for yellow locks has a respectable antiquity, and warrants
+brunettes in using all the arts of the toilet to redress the errors of
+Nature.
+
+[Sidenote: _JACK AS ENTERTAINER_]
+
+Jack of Newbury entertained Henry the Eighth here, and, wonderful to
+relate, the floors of the house were covered with broad cloth, instead of
+the then usual rushes. Also, he equipped a hundred of his workmen, fifty
+as horsemen, and fifty armed with bows and pikes, "as well armed and
+better clothed than any," and went with them to the Scotch war. The
+"Ballad of the Newberrie Archers" tells us how they distinguished
+themselves at Flodden Field; but it must be added that it is doubtful
+whether they ever reached so far; which proves the ballad-maker--the
+"special correspondent" of that time--to have been more eloquent than
+truthful. That Jack was the principal man of his trade must be evident
+from these facts and from the statement that he employed a hundred looms;
+and a great deal more evident from his having been selected to head the
+petition of the clothiers for the encouragement of trade with France. He
+had a pretty taste in sarcasm, too, if his retort upon Wolsey, to whom it
+had been referred, and who had delayed to answer it, is considered. "If my
+Lord Chancellor's father," said he, "had been no hastier in killing
+calves than he in despatching of poor men's suits, I think he would never
+have worn a mitre." It is only necessary to remember that Wolsey was the
+son of a butcher for the sting of this quip to be appreciated.
+
+[Illustration: OLD CLOTH HALL, NEWBURY.]
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+
+In 1531, and again in 1556, Newbury was the scene of martyrdoms; and in
+1643 and 1644 the site of two battles between Charles and his Parliament,
+both almost equally indecisive, and both remarkable for desperate courage
+on either side.
+
+[Sidenote: _FIRST BATTLE OF NEWBURY_]
+
+The first battle was fought to the south of the town on September 18, and
+was the culmination of a Royalist attack upon the Parliamentary army under
+the Earl of Essex, on the march from Gloucester to London. Essex had
+designed to lie at Newbury, the town being strongly for the Parliament;
+but as he was marching across Enborne Chase on the 16th, his line was cut
+by the appearance of Prince Rupert, who charged down upon him with his
+dragoons. In this skirmish the Marquis de Vieuville was slain, and many
+others of the Royalists. The battle thus forced on by the rashness of
+Prince Rupert was one of the fiercest in the war.
+
+The King was encamped near Donnington. Essex advanced and seized some
+elevated ground, where his men were charged by the Royalist cavalry, at
+whose head was the Earl of Carnarvon. Carnarvon had that morning measured
+a gateway with his sword, to see if it were wide enough for the prisoners
+who, with Essex at their head, they were to lead through it in the
+evening. Although they cut up Essex's cavalry, Carnarvon himself fell in
+that gallant charge, and was carried through the same gateway, a corpse,
+that night.
+
+It was the Parliamentary foot, the London train-bands, that saved the day,
+which would otherwise have been a disastrous rout for their leader. They
+withstood the cannonading and the impetuous charges of Rupert's horse,
+and, with Essex himself among them, in a conspicuous white hat, drove back
+the Royalist infantry. It was not until night had fallen that the contest
+ceased. Six thousand were slain that day, and neither side had won. Essex
+was so weakened that he retreated upon Reading the next morning.
+
+He had nearly reached Theale when Rupert descended upon his rear like a
+hurricane, and cut down many of his troops in a spot still called, from
+this circumstance, "Dead Man's Lane."
+
+The Royalists perhaps had slightly the better of the First Battle of
+Newbury; but at what a cost! Carnarvon, the young Earl of Sunderland; and
+Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, slain! Falkland was Secretary of State,
+and a patriot whose feelings were above partizanship. He seems to have had
+a presentiment of death, for he received the Sacrament on the morning of
+the battle, saying, "I am weary of the times, and foresee much misery to
+my country; but I believe I shall be out of it ere night." There is a
+monument on Wash Common to him--
+
+  "The blameless and the brave,"
+
+who fell thus with his brothers-in-arms; and mounds still mark the places
+where the dead were buried. The memory of this great battle has recently
+been revived, for in 1897 its anniversary was celebrated, and wreaths and
+crosses of evergreens were laid upon the monument and the tumuli.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE SECOND BATTLE_]
+
+The Second Battle of Newbury was fought on Sunday, October 27, 1644. The
+thickest part of it raged round Speen, on the Bath Road, and in the
+gardens of Shaw House. This house, one of the finest mansions in
+Berkshire, was built by Thomas Dolman, clothier, in 1581. He was evidently
+something of a scholar, and worldly wise as well, for he knew that his
+riches and his grand mansion would rouse envious talk. Accordingly he
+caused Latin and Greek inscriptions to be carved over the entrance, which,
+Englished, run--
+
+  "Let no envious man enter here."
+
+And--
+
+    "The toothless man envies the teeth of those who eat, and the mole
+    despises the eyes of the roe."
+
+It is quite obvious that Thomas Dolman had been a great deal criticized
+locally, and that the iron of that criticism had entered his soul.
+
+His son became Sir Thomas Dolman, and it was his descendant, Sir John
+Dolman, who garrisoned the house and entertained King Charles here on the
+night before the second battle. A hole is still shown in the panelling of
+the drawing-room, said to have been made by a shot fired at the King that
+night when standing at the window; and a brass plate records the
+circumstance in a Latin inscription.
+
+[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE SMOCK-FROCKS AND BEAVERS.]
+
+The parapets of Shaw House were lined with Royalist musketeers on this
+occasion, and entrenchments thrown up in the gardens; but after a
+stubbornly contested fight the Royalists were too weakened to retain the
+position. Their ordnance and the wounded were left at Donnington Castle, a
+mile away, and they fell back upon Oxford. Neither side had been sorry
+when night fell and put an end to a hard-fought, but inconclusive, day;
+and for their part the Parliamentary leaders were glad to see the King's
+forces withdrawing by the light of the moon, and did not dare risk an
+attack upon them.
+
+It is not a little singular that during all this clash of arms the
+Royalist governor of Donnington Castle held that stronghold, although
+repeatedly attacked, from August, 1644, to April, 1646, and then only
+surrendered when desired by the King to do so.
+
+[Illustration: CURIOUS OLD TOLL-HOUSE BETWEEN NEWBURY AND HUNGERFORD.]
+
+[Sidenote: _SPEEN_]
+
+The road ascends to Speen, or, as it is often called, "Church Speen." The
+present writer was climbing it when he overtook a countryman in a
+smock-frock, to whom the steep gradient was evidently anything but
+welcome.
+
+"You're a regular Mountjoy, a' b'lieve," said the countryman, puffing and
+blowing.
+
+"A regular what?"
+
+"A Mountjoy--a walker. But there; you bain't Newbury?"
+
+I told him I certainly was not a native of that town.
+
+"Well," said he, "you won't, never have heerd of 'un, p'raps."
+
+It seems, then, that about fifty years ago Newbury boasted a pedestrian of
+that name, who obtained such a great local reputation that he has become
+proverbial with the country people, so that a "regular Mountjoy" is any
+one who possesses good walking powers.
+
+Church Speen passed, an undulating road leads past a curiously castellated
+old toll-house to Hungerford.
+
+
+
+
+XXVIII
+
+
+It is at Hungerford, sixty-four miles from Hyde Park Corner, that one
+leaves Berkshire and enters Wilts, coming into wilder and less pastoral
+country. Hungerford town, however, is just within the Berkshire borders.
+The constant Kennet flows across the road here, and is crossed by a
+substantial bridge, from whose parapets anglers may be seen patiently
+waiting to lure the wily trout from their swims. Fuller quaintly says:
+"Good and great trouts are found in the river of Kennet nigh Hungerford;
+they are in their perfection in the month of May, and yearly decline with
+the buck. Being come to his full growth, he decays in goodness, not
+greatness, and thrives in his head till his death. Note, by the way, that
+an hog-back and little head is a sign that any fish is in season."
+
+The chief street of Hungerford lies along the road to Salisbury, and the
+cyclist who is intent upon "doing" the Bath Road without turning to
+thoroughly explore the places along its course, consequently sees little
+of the town beyond the few old mansions and cottages, and the old coaching
+inn, "The Bear," which front the highway. Not much, however, is in this
+case lost, for Hungerford contains little of interest, and were it not for
+its singular Hocktide customs, and for the fact that it was the first town
+to obtain the free delivery of letters between its post-office and the
+houses to which letters were addressed, would scarce demand an extended
+notice.
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD POST-OFFICE CUSTOMS_]
+
+The original plan of the General Post-Office, all over the country, was to
+allow postmasters of country towns to demand a fee for delivery. Those who
+expected letters were supposed to call for them. If they desired them to
+be delivered, the additional fee was a penny or twopence, according to the
+conscience or the cupidity of the postmaster, whose perquisites these fees
+were. This applied to houses quite near post-offices, and even next door
+to them. This extraordinary state of affairs was borne with for some time,
+until at last several towns brought actions against the Post-Office to
+decide if prepaid postage ought not to ensure delivery in the boundaries
+of post-towns. Hungerford was selected by the Courts as a typical case,
+and secured a judgment in its favour, Michaelmas, 1774.
+
+Hocktide is a stirring time in this little town of less than three
+thousand inhabitants. It is determined by Eastertide, and generally falls
+in April. The odd observances derive their origin from the conditions
+imposed by John of Gaunt, father of Henry the Fourth, who, in the
+fourteenth century, conferred the rights and privileges of common-land and
+fishing in the Kennet upon the town. To hand down the proof of his gift to
+posterity, he presented with the charter a brass horn which bears the
+inscription:--
+
+  "John a Gaun did giue and
+  grant the Riall of Fishing to
+  Hungerford Toune from Eldren
+  Stub to Irish stil excepting som
+  Seueral mil Pound
+        Jehosphat Lucas was Cunstabl."
+
+Not this horn, but its seventeenth-century successor, is jealously
+preserved in the Town Hall. It has a capacity of one quart.
+
+[Sidenote: _HOCK TIDE_]
+
+As an unreformed borough, Hungerford still enjoys the old-time custom of
+appointing, in the place of Mayor and Corporation, a Constable, Portreeve,
+Bailiff, Tithing-men, Keeper of the Keys of the Coffers, Hayward, Water
+Bailiffs, Ale-tasters, and Bellman. The ceremonies begin on the Friday
+before Hock Tuesday with a "macaroni supper and punchbowl," and are held
+at the "John of Gaunt" inn. Tuesday, however, is the great day, when at an
+early hour the bellman goes round the borough commanding all those who
+hold land or dwellings within the confines of the town to appear at the
+Hockney, under pain of a poll-tax of one penny, called the "head-penny."
+Lest this warning should be insufficient, he mounts to the balcony of
+the Town Hall, where he blows a blast upon the horn. Those who do not obey
+the summons and refuse the payment of the head-penny are liable to lose
+their rights to the privileges of the borough.
+
+[Illustration: HUNGERFORD.]
+
+By nine o'clock the jury are assembled in the Town Hall for the
+transaction of their annual business, and immediately after they are sworn
+in, the two tithing-men start on their round of the town. It is in this
+part of the proceedings that most interest is taken, for the business of
+the tithing-men is to take a poll-tax of twopence from every male
+inhabitant and a kiss from the wives and daughters of the burgesses. This
+is in recognition of the ancient powers of the Lord of the Manor, who had
+peculiar rights over the property and persons of his "chattels," as the
+people were once regarded.
+
+[Illustration: HUNGERFORD TUTTI-MEN.]
+
+The tithing-men are known as tutti-men; tutti being the local word for
+pretty. They carry short poles as insignia of office, gaily bedecked with
+blue ribbons and choice flowers known as tutti-poles; while behind them
+walks a man groaning under the weight of the tutti oranges, it being the
+custom to bestow an orange upon every person who is kissed, as well as
+upon the school and workhouse children. The rights of office having been
+duly vested in them by means of strange customs and exhortation, the two
+favoured ones start off down the High Street on their kissing mission,
+followed by the orange-bearer and greeted with the cheers of the assembled
+people. One by one the houses are entered, and the custom observed both in
+spirit and letter; nor is it confined to the young and comely, for the old
+dames of Hungerford would deem themselves, if not insulted, at least sadly
+neglected, were the tutti-men to pass their houses unentered. Usually
+these officers find little difficulty in carrying out their pleasant
+duties, but sometimes the excitement is increased by some coy maiden,
+whose rustic simplicity prompts her to run away or hide. But as a general
+rule the ladies of Hungerford show very little objection to the observance
+of the ancient customs, so that the labours of the tutti-men are
+considerably lightened.
+
+Thus, amid laughter, merriment, and mock-seriousness, the fun is continued
+until about half the borough is visited, by which time the tutti-men have
+taken care that all the duty kisses that should gratify the ancient
+inhabitants have been administered, as well as certain others that are
+more a pleasure than a duty. Certainly they deserve well of the town, for
+the tutti-men go through a good day's work by the time dinner is served.
+Then, in accordance with the time-honoured precedent, the Chief Constable
+is elected into the chair; the great bowl of punch is placed on the table
+after dinner, and the various offices toasted and replied for. One is
+drunk in solemn silence--that of John of Gaunt, the town's benefactor.
+All the townspeople seem satisfied with their day's carnival, save,
+perhaps, a crooning old burgher, who may occasionally be heard to extol
+the good old days when the punch was strong and the newly-elected officers
+went home in wheelbarrows.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _LITTLECOTE_]
+
+From the everyday respectable dulness of Hungerford itself we will pass to
+the exciting scandals which make up much of the story of Littlecote, that
+gloomy and romantic Tudor mansion, which has become famous (or infamous,
+if you will have it so) through the crimes and debaucheries of Will
+Darell. There are two ways of reaching Littlecote from the Bath Road. The
+most obvious way is by turning to the right when in the midst of
+Hungerford town; the other, which is the more rural, is by a lane a mile
+further down the road. Either will bring the traveller to that secluded
+spot in the course of three and a half miles.
+
+It stands, that hoary pile, in a wide and well-wooded park, sheltered
+beneath the swelling Wiltshire downs and close beside the gentle Kennet,
+whose stream has been fruitful of trout ever since "trouts" (as our
+ancestors quaintly called them, in the plural) were angled for.
+Littlecote, as we now see it, was built by the Darells in the closing
+years of the fifteenth century, in whose early years it had passed from
+the Colston family by the marriage of the heiress of the Colstons to
+William Darell, son of Sir William Darell, of Sesay, in Yorkshire. A
+descendant of this emigrant from the North Riding, the "Wild Will Darell"
+of this blood-boltered history was born into an estate comprising an
+ancestral home and many thousands of acres in the counties of Wilts,
+Berks, and Hants, and might have been accounted fortunate had it not been
+for the rather more than trifling circumstances of an unhappy up-bringing
+which included a shameful treatment of himself and his mother by an
+unnatural father; the paternal extravagances which had alienated much of
+the property; the heavy charge made on the estate for the benefit of the
+mistress of his brother, who preceded him in the estate; and, finally, the
+crop of lawsuits into which he was plunged immediately upon succeeding to
+this singularly-encumbered patrimony. At this interval of time it has
+become quite impossible for serious historians to discriminate between the
+facts and the--fancies, shall we call them?--of the Wild Darell story.
+This difficulty does not arise from lack of patient research on the part
+of Darell commentators, who have ransacked the Record Office to prove that
+he was _not_ a villain of the most lurid kind, or the industry of others
+who have searched among musty muniment chests to determine that he _was_.
+It would, considering the fact of the records in the Littlecote muniment
+room not having yet been explored for the benefit of these historic
+doubts, be rash indeed for any one to pronounce definitely for either of
+the very diverse views held of Darell as Villain, or Darell as Good Young
+Man.
+
+The story, which first became widely known through a footnote appended to
+Sir Walter Scott's "Rokeby," is of a midwife summoned from the village of
+Shefford, seven miles away, on a false pretence of attending Lady Knyvett,
+of Charlton, near by, and of her being blindfolded and led on horseback in
+the darkness of the night to quite another house, in one of whose stately
+rooms lay a mysterious masked lady for whom her services were required.
+The horrid legend then goes on to say that a tall, slender gentleman, a
+lowering and ferocious-looking man, "havinge uppon hym a goune of blacke
+velvett," entered the room with some others, and, without a word, took the
+child from her arms and threw it upon a blazing fire in an ante-room,
+crushing it into the flaming logs with his boot-heel, so that it was
+presently consumed.
+
+A prime horror, this, and rich in ferocity, mystery, and all the
+incertitude that comes of age and conflicting testimony. Masked lady,
+blindfolded nurse, burnt baby, taciturn and horrible stranger, what lurid
+figures are these! and how royally abused for the possession of an
+over-imaginative mind would be that novelist who should dare conceive
+incidents so romantic!
+
+[Sidenote: _WILD DARELL_]
+
+Scott gleaned his traditions from the weird legends current in the
+country-side. They had, when he first printed them, been the fireside
+gossip of that district for over two hundred years, and of course in that
+length of time had lost nothing in the repetition. For that reason we are
+asked nowadays to discredit them altogether. We cannot, however, do that,
+because there came to light some years ago the actual deposition to the
+facts made by the midwife, Mrs. Barnes of Shefford, taken down on her
+deathbed by a Mr. Bridges of Great Shefford, a magistrate, who was also a
+cousin of Darell, and would not, it may well be supposed, be inclined to
+spread any baseless gossip to the hurt of a family with which he was
+connected. This deposition tells the story as already narrated. It does
+not identify Darell or Littlecote, nor does it even hint the identity of
+_any_ person or place. But the sinister discovery, some twenty years ago,
+at Longleat, of an original letter from Sir H. Knyvett, of Charlton, to
+Sir John Thynne, of Longleat, dated January 2, 1578/9 (about the time of
+the midwife's confession), brings us to the original rumours pointing to
+Darell's being the man and Littlecote the place.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLECOTE.]
+
+[Sidenote: _DEATH OF DARELL_]
+
+There was then residing at Longleat a Mr. Bonham, whose sister was well
+known to be living with Darell as his mistress, and this letter requests
+that "Mr. Bonham will inquire of his sister touching her usage at Will.
+Darell's, the birth of her children, how many there were, and what became
+of them: for that the report of the murder of one of them was increasing
+foully, and would touch Will. Darell to the quick." To that letter there
+is no reply, and it remains uncertain whether Darell was ever arraigned
+for murder and acquitted (as the story goes), or whether the rumours
+simply were never crystallized into a definite charge against him. The
+probability seems to be that he never was called upon to stand his trial.
+It is quite certain, however, that the legend of his being haunted along
+the roads by the apparition of a burning infant which startled his horse
+so that Wild Darell was thrown and killed is a more or less pleasing
+invention. Darell died quite peacefully in his bed, at Littlecote, eleven
+years after the midwife's death, and was buried in the Darell Chapel at
+Ramsbury, where he was laid to rest, October 1st, 1589. Notwithstanding
+these well-ascertained facts, Darell is now, if we are to credit the
+stories of the country-side, an apparition himself, and superstitious
+rustics still fear to face the roads o' nights because of a Burning Babe
+and a Spectral Horseman, who comes dashing down them at a terror-stricken
+gallop, mounted on a horse of coal-black hue, with a breath like steam and
+eyes like burning coals!
+
+As for the elaborate embroideries added to the Wild Darell story from time
+to time, there are many. According to these ingenious fictions, the
+midwife counted the stairs of the strange house, and cut a piece out of
+the bed curtains, which she carried away. By these means; by finding the
+number of the stairs at Littlecote to tally with her counting, and by
+fitting her piece of tapestry to a hole in the curtains of a bed at
+Littlecote, we are told to believe the truth of the story. The singular
+thing, however, is that Mrs. Barnes made absolutely no mention of these
+things in her deposition. There remains, it is true, the fact already
+alluded to, that the magistrate who took down the woman's statement was a
+connection of Darell's, and might possibly have suppressed facts which
+could point to his relative being concerned in the affair. Another story
+is that upon Darell being arraigned (which in itself is uncertain), he
+made interest with Sir John Popham, the Chief Justice, to procure an
+acquittal.
+
+[Illustration: THE HAUNTED CHAMBER.]
+
+Now it is quite certain that Popham did not become Chief Justice until
+1592, when Darell had been in his grave nearly three years, and could not
+therefore have done so. He was, it is true, Attorney-General at the time
+of Darell's supposed crime, and, _had_ there been a trial, and _had_ he
+been bribed, could possibly have procured a _nolle prosequi_.
+
+But Darell certainly made over the reversion of Littlecote to Popham in
+1586, and Popham took possession upon Darell's decease. The story of this
+transaction being the bribe in question we owe to Aubrey, the county
+historian (or rather, the county gossip), who actually gives an account of
+the trial and says, "Sir John Popham gave sentence according to law, but
+being a great person and a favourite, he pronounced a _noli prosequi_."
+
+More to the point is the fact that Darell, in 1583, offered Lord
+Chancellor Bromley the then large sum of L5000 to be "his good friend."
+
+Those who are interested in the Darell story are equally divided as to his
+general character. One would have us believe that he was a Model Squire,
+who fished for trout, took an enthralling interest in his flower-garden,
+and if he did not always come home to tea (because tea not having at that
+period been introduced, it was impossible to do so), was content with a
+modest pint of claret at dinner, and spent the rest of the evening in
+reading what improving literature was to be had in the Elizabethan age;
+which, I fear, judging from the general character of the time, was of a
+somewhat meagre nature.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE REAL DARELL_]
+
+The real Darell was not quite like that picture. We already know that he
+had one mistress at Littlecote, and then there was Lady Anne Hungerford,
+an elderly charmer, whom by some means Wild Will had seduced from her
+husband, and whose letters, still preserved, to her "deare Dorrell" are
+not so improving as the recipient's other reading. One learns from these
+choice communications that Lady Anne had been accused of murder, adultery,
+and trying to poison her husband; and, under the circumstances, it seems
+quite likely that all these charges were well-founded, even though she
+says that "luker and gaine makes many dissembling and hollow hearts"
+(which sounds like one of the admirable copy-book maxims of our youth),
+and that she anticipates being cleared from suspicion of these "vill and
+abomynabell practiscis." Add to these hot-blooded intrigues the
+extravagances which, together with his litigious disposition, served to
+ruin his estate and to bring him into disfavour with his neighbours, and
+we obtain the genesis of all the ill-favoured legends of this picturesque
+figure of the Elizabethan era.
+
+
+
+
+XXX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE GREAT REBELLION_]
+
+Littlecote had not done with stirring scenes when Darell was dead and the
+Pophams took possession. The Great Hall, hung round with pikes, leather
+jerkins, helmets, and cuirasses of Cromwellian times, serves to tell, in
+its warlike array, of how the place became a rendezvous of the Roundheads
+of this vicinity. These relics are the arms and accoutrements of the
+Popham Horse, raised by Colonel Alexander Popham, whose own suit of armour
+is still suspended here, over one of the doorways. A fitting place this,
+then, for that gathering of the King's Commissioners who came to
+Littlecote in December, 1688. The occasion was an historic one. James the
+Second was tottering upon his throne, and the Prince of Orange, invited to
+these shores to protect the civil and religious liberties of the nation,
+had marched up with his Dutchmen from his landing in the West Country. No
+man knew what would be the course of events, because not one of those
+concerned in that memorable crisis knew his own mind, from the King and
+his adherents on the one side, to the Prince and his partisans on the
+other.
+
+The two parties met at Hungerford on December 8. On the following day,
+Sunday, the Commissioners dined at Littlecote, and then and there the fate
+of the kingdom was settled, quite amicably. The old Hall was crowded with
+Peers and Generals--Halifax, the judicious "trimmer," whose cautious
+diplomacy guided the crisis through to its solution without bloodshed;
+Burnet, Nottingham, Shrewsbury, and Oxford, all waiting upon events.
+Halifax, the partisan of the King, seized the opportunity of extracting
+from Burnet all he knew and thought. "Do you wish to get the King into
+your power?" he asked the Bishop. "Not at all," replied Burnet: "we would
+not do the least harm to his person." "And if he were to go away?" slyly
+insinuated Halifax. "There is nothing so much to be wished," whispered the
+Bishop, apprehending his meaning; and so James slunk away, and William of
+Orange reigned in his stead.
+
+For the rest, Littlecote is a veritable storehouse of art and antiquities.
+The collection of ancient armour in the Great Hall is one of the finest in
+England. Here, too, is Chief Justice Popham's chair, and the thumbstocks
+which he used as a means of extracting confessions from petty offenders
+with whom persuasion of the merely moral kind had failed. Then there is
+the painting of Mr. Popham's horse, "Wild Dayrell," which won the Derby in
+1855, and many interesting objects besides. First in point of interest,
+however, is the Haunted Chamber, which is even now said to resound with
+groans and imprecations; and is still very much in the same condition as
+in Darell's day, although, to be sure, the fateful ante-room is now
+divided from it. Darell's Tree, an ancient elm, patched and chained
+together, is still to be seen on the south side of the house, carefully
+tended; the legend running that Littlecote will flourish so long as its
+hoary trunk holds together.
+
+
+
+
+XXXI
+
+
+But to return to the road, which presently comes to the charming village
+of Froxfield, with its wide village green and great red-brick barracks of
+almshouses, founded in 1686 by Sarah, Duchess of Somerset, for fifty
+clergymen's widows, and perched up on a bank above the right-hand side of
+the highway.
+
+[Sidenote: _SAVERNAKE FOREST_]
+
+Thence, nearly all the way into Marlborough, seven miles ahead, the road
+lies through Savernake Forest and its outskirts, passing the loveliest
+forest scenery in England. Nothing can compare for magnificence with the
+massed beeches and oaks of Savernake, whose glorious alleys of foliage
+extend for miles in every direction. These fine full-grown trees are
+planted for the most part in a well-considered design, and radiate from a
+central point in eight directions. These "Eight Walks," as they are
+called, vary in length from four miles downwards, and lie to the south of
+the road. The highway runs through the northern verge of the Forest, quite
+open and hedgeless all the way, with two gates across it, about two miles
+apart. The scenery is like nothing so much as a painting by De Wint or
+Constable.
+
+The Marquis of Ailesbury, to whom this noble demesne (the only Forest in
+the possession of a subject) belongs, has his residence near the southern
+boundary of the Forest, at Tottenham House, which is a singularly plain
+building externally, and so reminiscent in name of the Tottenham Court
+Road that it would have been exquisitely appropriate had the late Marquis
+sold the estate to Sir John Blundell Maple instead of to Lord Iveagh.
+
+I suppose the eccentricities of the late Marquis of Ailesbury will become
+the subject of curious legends in the coming by-and-by. He was born out of
+his time, and was a kind of "throw-back" to earlier types that flourished
+when the Prince Regent and the Toms and Jerrys disported themselves in the
+famous Corinthian manner.
+
+The glades of Savernake still remain in the family, but were alienated to
+Lord Iveagh, the man of Dublin stout, of whom the quaint Biblical conceit
+was invented by some temperance wag: "He who is not for us is agin us.[3]
+He brews XX." Lord Iveagh bought the estates and paid for them, but the
+House of Lords refused to sanction the sale, and so Savernake still
+belongs to the Brudenell-Bruces.
+
+The late Marquis had a perfect genius for dissipating wealth. A "horsey"
+man among the "horsey," his favourite companions were sporting men of the
+more unrefined type, and he was hail-fellow with the cab-men and 'bus-men
+of London. Radicals found in his career a text for their discourses and a
+reason for abolishing the House of Lords as an hereditary chamber; and the
+ballet-girls of the London theatres regarded him as all a Peer should be.
+One who knew "Lord Stomach-ache," as he was playfully nicknamed before he
+had succeeded to the Marquisate and was yet Lord Savernake, said--
+
+"The wealth and colour of his lordship's language surprised me. I never
+knew or heard a costermonger in the Dials with such a repertory. I saw him
+once with a couple of choice friends on a costermonger's barrow, such as
+is used for hawking fish or vegetables. One 'pal' had a 'yard of tin' (or
+coaching horn), on which he tootled melodiously. His lordship wore a very
+high collar, a blue birds-eye belcher fastened with a nursery-pin for a
+necktie, a huge drab box-cloth coat with large mother-o'-pearl buttons, a
+low-crowned, broad-brimmed coachman's hat, and a very tight pair of
+trousers. It was raining, a pitiless, pelting drizzle, and as they pulled
+up for drinks, he took off his heavy coat, and, placing it carefully over
+the patient 'moke,' said to it, as he patted it, 'There y'are, Neddy;
+that'll keep the bloomin' wet off you, old bloke, won't it?'"
+
+For my own part, I think the latter part of that incident is the most
+creditable thing on record in the "short and merry" life of poor
+"Stomach-ache."
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD TIMES ON THE ROAD_]
+
+Savernake Forest left behind, the road descends steeply down Forest Hill
+in the direction of Marlborough. This hill was one of the worst obstacles
+met with between London and Bath in the old times, and its steepness was
+then rendered more difficult by reason of the execrable surface of the
+road. This is the experience of one travelling to London about 1816:
+"Twenty times at least the eight horses came to a standstill, and had to
+be allowed their own time before they would move. For more than half the
+way up there lay an extensive encampment of gipsies along each side of the
+road, forming a most picturesque scene with their wild figures, their
+bright-coloured costumes, and dark bronzed skin; their white tents, and
+the numerous columns of blue, thin smoke that curled upwards and lost
+itself in the dense foliage. These stout vagabonds rendered us an
+essential service; they cheered and lashed the horses, they pushed bodily
+in the rear, and they climbed the spokes of the revolving wheels, to send
+them round, with a recklessness and dexterity only acquired by long
+practice. To compensate them for their labour, the coachman halted at the
+top of the hill to give them a chance of trading; and then the women came
+forward and did a little fortune-telling with the ladies, not without
+joking and bantering on the part of the onlookers; while the younger
+gipsies brought abundance of sweet wood-strawberries, dished up in
+dock-leaves, than which nothing at the time could have been more welcome.
+
+"During the first half of the journey to London our pace would not average
+more than four miles an hour, and sometimes the tramps and wanderers of
+the road would keep up with us for the hour together, especially the
+pedlars and packmen, who would display their Brummagem wares, and now and
+then effect a sale as we rumbled along."
+
+A wide view extends from here, over the valley of the Kennet, with
+Marlborough lying in its hollow, and the Wiltshire downs, stretching away
+in bare rolling masses, in the direction of Swindon. Marlborough develops
+itself slowly as one descends, and becomes lost for a time as the
+panoramic view sinks out of sight.
+
+
+
+
+XXXII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH_]
+
+There are fine old inns at Marlborough; coaching inns, fallen from the
+high estate that was theirs in the days when Pepys and Sheridan, my Lord
+Chatham with his gout and his innumerable train of servants, and Horace
+Walpole with his gimcrackery and his caustic comments upon the kind of
+society in which he found himself upon the Bath Road, stayed here. No one
+comes here nowadays with vast retinues of lackeys, and the man does not
+exist, be he Peer or Commoner, who could dare be so offensive as that
+haughty and insufferable personage, the aforesaid Earl of Chatham, who,
+nursing his gout at the "Castle" Hotel in 1762, practically converted the
+place to his own exclusive use, regardless of the comfort or convenience
+of any one else. He would not stay at the "Castle," he said, storming at
+the terrified landlord, unless all the servants of the establishment were
+forthwith clothed in the Chatham livery. And so clothed they were, and the
+"Castle" became for some weeks what it had been before the strange
+workings of fate had converted it into the finest of all the inns along
+the road to Bath--the private residence of a nobleman.
+
+There are breakneck streets in Marlborough, for the town, although built
+in the valley, has the entrance to its principal street carried round the
+spur of a foothill so that one side of the thoroughfare is considerably
+lower than the other, and the humorous among Marlborough's neighbours
+declare that bicycles are the only vehicles that can be driven round by
+the Town Hall without upsetting. But, in spite of what Cobbett says in his
+"Rural Rides," that "Marlborough is an ill-looking place enough," this
+street is the finest, broadest, neatest, and most picturesque of any along
+these hundred odd miles of highway. Think of all the adjectives that make
+for admiration, and you have scarce employed one that overrates the
+dignified and stately air of the High Street of Marlborough. The width of
+the road is accounted for by its having been used as a market-place; the
+architectural character of the houses lining it is due to the fires that
+devastated the town in 1653, 1679, and 1690, burning down the older
+houses, and causing the town to be almost wholly rebuilt. Those were the
+days of the Renaissance, and before the dwelling-house became frankly
+unornamental and merely a brick or stone box for people to live in, with
+window and door holes from which they could look or issue forth.
+
+Thanks, then, to these fires, Marlborough is to-day a town of
+architectural delights, while the older portion of the College is fully as
+interesting, having been built on the site of the old Castle from designs
+by Inigo Jones or his son-in-law, Webb. It is thus a noble view along the
+High Street: the shops, which are interspersed among the private houses,
+being here and there fronted with covered ways, forming dry walks in wet
+weather; an arcaded Market House and Town Hall at the eastern end, and a
+church closing the view in each direction.
+
+[Sidenote: _ARCADIAN HUMBUG_]
+
+Marlborough College is at the western end of this street, occupying the
+fine mansion built by Francis, Lord Seymour, in time to entertain Charles
+the Second, who with his Queen, his brother, and a crowded suite halted
+here on his way to the West, in one of his Royal progresses. It became the
+residence of that Earl of Hertford whose Countess had a gushing affection
+for those tame poets of the eighteenth century whose blank verse was so
+soothing to the senses and so absolutely restful to the mind--requiring
+little mental exercise to write, and none at all to read. My Lady held
+quite a poetic court, of which Pope, Dr. Watts, and Thomson were the
+shining lights, and squirted amiable piffle about Chloes and Strephons
+while her fine London guests strutted about the emerald lawns pretending
+to be Wiltshire peasantry; the ladies wielding shepherds' crooks, and
+leading lambs made presentable with much expenditure of soap and water, in
+leashes of sky-blue silk; while the gallant gentlemen, more used, we may
+be sure, to dining and drinking, learned to play upon oaten reeds, and
+were quite idyllic and Arcadian. What an astounding time! and how
+disgusted these fine folks would have been, had they been forced to fare
+on the fat bacon and small beer of the real shepherds, instead of the
+kickshaws and the port which helped them to sustain their affectations!
+The spectacle of that vicious era, pretending to rural simplicity is,
+perhaps, the most notable example of vice paying homage to virtue that may
+be given. The folly of the age is almost inconceivable, but it is all
+preserved for us and duly certified in its literature and in the pictures
+of the school of Watteau; while this particular instance of it may be
+voluminously read of in the records of the time, or be conjured up by a
+sight of the winding walks and grottoes in the Castle gardens, where,
+perhaps, Dr. Watts may have seen the original busy bee that gave him the
+first notion of--
+
+  "How doth the little busy bee
+    Employ each shining hour,
+  By gath'ring honey all the day
+    From ev'ry opening flower."
+
+[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH.]
+
+Meanwhile, Thomson was sipping nectar (which is Greek for brandy-punch)
+with my Lord Hertford, and babbling of other things than green fields. In
+fact, the literary Lady Hertford found the poet of the "Seasons" to be a
+drunkard, and he was not invited to any more of her parties.
+
+The house passed at length to the Dukes of Northumberland, who neglected
+it, and at last leased it to a Mr. Cotterell, an innkeeper, who with
+prophetic vision saw custom coming down the road in an increasing tide.
+Appropriately known as the "Castle," it remained an hotel until January 5,
+1843, when its doors were finally closed, to be re-opened as the home of
+the newly established "Marlborough College."
+
+For nearly a century the "Castle" entertained the best society in the
+land. Forty-two coaches passed through the town every day when it was at
+the height of its prosperity, and a goodly proportion of their occupants
+stayed here. Take, in fact, the lists of distinguished arrivals at Bath
+during that time, and you have practically a visitors' list of the
+"Castle."
+
+Marlborough College was established in this house of entertainment, and
+new buildings have been added from time to time; but the old "Castle
+Hotel" may yet be traced from its characteristic architecture. Amid its
+pleasant lawns and gardens rises that prehistoric hill on which
+Marlborough Castle was built. Indeed, here, in this "Castle Mound," is the
+very fount and origin of the town, whose very name is supposed to derive
+from this earthwork, being the grave of the magician Merlin, who with his
+enchantments is said to lie here still, until Britain shall be in need of
+him again. "Merleberg," or "Merlin's town," is said to have been
+Marlborough's first name, and the crest over the town arms still
+represents the Mound, with a motto in Latin to "the bones of the wise
+Merlin."[4]
+
+
+
+
+XXXIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE KENNET_]
+
+When the traveller leaves Marlborough he bids good-bye, for many miles yet
+to come, to the pleasant forest groves, the rich, low-lying pastures, and
+the fishful streams that have bordered the road hitherto. The valley of
+the Kennet is, it is true, near by, and for the next six miles it may be
+glimpsed, on the left, like some Promised Land of Plenty; but the road
+itself is bare. The "green pastures and still waters" of the Psalmist,
+indeed, you think when mounting gradually out of Marlborough you see the
+pleasant water-meadows afar off as you toil up the shoulder of the downs,
+passing a picturesque roadside inn, the "Marquis of Ailesbury's Arms,"
+and the village of Fyfield on the way, with a glimpse of Manton village
+down below, amid its elms and farmyards by the windings of the stream.
+
+[Illustration: ROADSIDE INN, MANTON.]
+
+Fyfield (how many dozens of Fyfields are there in England?) is tiny,
+clean, and quaint, with a pinnacled church tower on to whose roof you look
+down from the road, and may glimpse in a backward glance the whole of the
+district traversed since Savernake Forest was left behind. There, in long
+dark clumps upon the distant hilly horizon are the grand avenues of
+that forest; the Bath Road descending from them like a white ribbon
+into Marlborough town, whose houses are hid, only the church towers
+shining white in the sun, against a green background. Ahead rises
+unenclosed downland, with chalky, flint-strewn road, the unenclosed wastes
+of green-grey grass, broken here and there with mounds, grass-grown too.
+
+[Illustration: FYFIELD.]
+
+[Sidenote: _MARLBOROUGH DOWNS_]
+
+On the left hand, at the distance of half a mile, perhaps, rises the
+church of West Overton, an offence here in its newness, for this road is
+Roman, these mounds are ancient British graves, and everywhere, look in
+what direction you will on these bleak and treeless wastes, are the
+mysterious vestiges of a people who had no arts, no science, no
+literature, who lived, in fact, a savage nomadic life, but who, for all
+those disabilities, have left records of their passing that may well
+remain when the civilization of to-day has perished. On these downs are
+countless tumuli; in the hollows are unnumbered thousands of stones,
+brought no one knows whence, or for what purpose, and the remains of
+cromlechs may be seen that add to the complex puzzle of the wherefore of
+it all. West Kennet village stands in the succeeding hollow, like some
+shamed modern trespasser, amid these prehistoric remains which appear,
+Sphinx-like, on the sky-line or stand lonely in the folds of the barren
+hills.
+
+The district seems to have been a metropolis of the prehistoric dead (if,
+indeed, all these ruined stone avenues and circles are sepulchral), or
+some vast open-air cathedral of a forgotten faith; if they have a
+religious rather than a mortuary significance. For, but little over a mile
+distant, are the remains of the so-called "Druid Temple" at Avebury, a
+monument second only to Stonehenge in mystery, and a good deal more
+impressive in appearance; while, frowning down upon the highway, and
+standing immediately beside it, is that "greatest earthwork in Europe,"
+Silbury Hill.
+
+Avebury village stands on the road to Swindon, on the borders of
+Marlborough Downs, and has been built within a great circle which appears
+to have been approached by an avenue of standing stones. A few of these
+may still be observed, standing beside the hedgeless road. Some idea of
+the vast size and impressive aspect of this circular monument of those dim
+ages before history began may be obtained when it is said that it consists
+of an excavation 40 feet deep and 4442 feet in circumference, encircled on
+the outer side with an earthwork 40 feet high, the whole enclosing nearly
+29 acres. On the inner brink of this deep fosse there are now left
+thirty-five huge stones out of the original number of about one thousand.
+Nine of these are upright, ten thrown down, and sixteen buried. Traces of
+pits show where the farmers of many years ago dug up the others and took
+them away for building-stones or gateposts. Over six hundred and fifty
+others are known to have been destroyed, the cottages of Avebury and the
+roads having been built of their fragments. How the unknown builders of
+this weird place could have brought these huge rocks, some of them
+measuring fourteen feet in length, and all weighing many tons a-piece,
+from unguessed distances, remains a mystery.
+
+[Illustration: MARLBOROUGH DOWNS, NEAR WEST OVERTON.]
+
+[Sidenote: _AVEBURY_]
+
+The first mention of Avebury Temple is by Aubrey the antiquary. It was in
+1648 that he first saw the place, which seems, curiously enough, to have
+been until then quite unknown. He came upon it quite by chance, when
+hunting, and must have been astonished at the discovery of so
+extraordinary a place. His account of it led that kingly amateur of
+science, Charles the Second, to visit Avebury on his way to Bath in 1668.
+Pepys, too, going to Bath, unexpectedly happened both upon Avebury and
+Silbury Hill, and viewed them and the sepulchral barrows that, crowned
+with pine trees, look down from the hill sides, with an admiration not
+unmixed with a superstitious dread.
+
+[Illustration: AVEBURY.]
+
+The road to Swindon goes straight through this great earthwork, and is
+crossed midway by another; together, with part of the village built within
+the circle, cutting it up lamentably.
+
+[Illustration: SILBURY HILL.]
+
+[Sidenote: _SILBURY HILL_]
+
+Silbury Hill, which stands within sight, is a fitting pendant to these
+mysteries. Antiquaries have contended together in referring both to
+ancient Britons, Phoenicians, Danes, Saxons, and even Romans, and are
+divided in opinion as to their object: whether they were intended for
+Druids' or Snake-worshippers' temples, or whether they marked the last
+resting-places of those slain in some great battle fought before the dawn
+of history. That Silbury Hill stood here when the Romans came seems,
+however, to be certain from the fact that the old Roman road from
+_Cunetio_ to _Aquae Solis_ (the existing Bath Road between Marlborough and
+Bath), engineered along the whole of its course in a perfectly straight
+line, swerves slightly from the south base of the hill, evidently to avoid
+injuring it. A learned antiquary (but the most learned must be reduced to
+the level of the most ignorant before these mute earthworks) considers
+that Silbury was raised to commemorate a battle, probably Arthur's second
+and last battle of Badon Hill. The same authority thinks Avebury to be a
+burying-place of the dead slain in a great battle, and planned to show the
+dispositions of the forces engaged on either side.
+
+But Silbury remains inscrutable. It is wholly an artificial hill, somewhat
+pyramidical in shape, and 170 feet in height. Its base covers five acres
+of ground, and was once surrounded by a stone circle, of which scanty
+traces are now left. The contents of it are estimated at 468,170 cubic
+yards of earth. Repeated attempts have been made to pluck out the heart of
+this mystery, but without success. So far back as 1777 it was mined from
+above by a party of Cornish miners, who worked under the direction of the
+then Duke of Northumberland and others, but nothing was discovered. Then
+in 1849 it was tunnelled from the base to the centre, where a space of
+twelve feet in diameter was examined, with the same disappointing result.
+Antiquaries consequently regard Silbury with hungry and expectant eyes.
+
+Just beyond this baffling relic stands the Beckhampton inn, where the
+"coaches dined" and changed teams, and where the Bath Road divides into
+the two routes; the right-hand road going through Calne, Chippenham, and
+Box; the other reaching Bath by way of Devizes and Melksham. Some coaches
+went one way and some the other. The crack coaches, including the
+"Beaufort Hunt," went by the former, which is two and a half miles
+shorter, and is the classic route, and always the one selected nowadays by
+record-breaking cyclists.
+
+
+
+
+XXXIV
+
+
+The road between Newbury and Bath was in coaching days known as the "lower
+ground." So far as physical geography goes, however, the land is a great
+deal higher, and much more hilly than the "upper ground" between London
+and Newbury, and it is not to be wondered at that accidents would
+sometimes happen here. This, then, was the scene of an accident to a coach
+driven by a gay young blade, one "Jack Everett;" an accident in which he
+and an elderly lady passenger had a broken leg each. Both sufferers were
+put into a cart filled with straw, and taken to the nearest surgeon. On
+the road into Marlborough the coachman beguiled the tedium of the way and
+the pain of his injured limb by saying to the old lady, "I have often
+kissed a young woman, and I don't see why I shouldn't kiss an old
+one"--and he suited the action to the words.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE CHERHILL WHITE HORSE_]
+
+Beckhampton inn, whose real sign is the "Waggon and Horses," is the place
+mentioned by Dickens in the "Bagman's Story" in the _Pickwick Papers_. It
+remains as old-fashioned to-day as ever,[5] but does not very closely
+resemble the word-picture Dickens draws of it. He probably made
+acquaintance with the downs and the inn only in passing on his way between
+Bath and London in 1835. It stands at a spot where the road promises to
+become more cheerful and less gaunt and inhospitable; but the promise is
+not kept, the way going inexorably again along downs as bare as before,
+for another two miles. All the way between here and Cherhill village the
+"Lansdowne Column" is seen crowning the rolling hills to the left front.
+Built within the ramparts of an ancient hill-fort of the Danes, who
+encamped naturally enough in the most inaccessible position they could
+find, this "column," which is an obelisk, is an exceedingly prominent
+object in every direction. As one proceeds and turns the flank of the
+hill, the strange sight of a trotting White Horse is seen carved in the
+chalk of its swelling shoulder. This is not one of the ancient White
+Horses that decorate the hillsides of some parts of the West County and
+date from Anglo-Saxon times, but dates only from 1780, when it was cut by
+Dr. Allsop, an eccentric physician of Calne. The site it occupies is said
+to be the highest point between London and Bath, and the White Horse is
+supposed to be visible for thirty miles--which there is no occasion to
+believe. The figure measures 157 feet from head to tail, and the eye alone
+is 12 feet in diameter. The way the figure was designed is just a little
+curious.
+
+No one could possibly have correctly traced the outlines of so huge an
+affair, except by external aid, which probably accounts for the bad
+drawing of the ancient examples. Dr. Allsop adopted the plan of stationing
+himself on the downs in full view of the rough draft, so to speak, which
+he had already staked out with flags, and of shouting directions to his
+workmen by the aid of a speaking-trumpet.
+
+The hillside is so steep at this point that when the White Horse was
+restored in 1876, a workman was nearly killed by a truck load of chalk
+descending upon him down the slope.
+
+Passing this interesting spot and the village of Cherhill, which lies
+hidden to the right of the road, the highway reaches Calne through its
+suburb of Quemerford, along a flat road.
+
+[Illustration: THE WHITE HORSE, CHERHILL.]
+
+
+
+
+XXXV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _CALNE_]
+
+Calne (whose name be pleased to pronounce "Carne") is not a pleasing
+place. Once the seat of a cloth-making industry, it has seen its trade
+utterly decay, and is only now regaining something of its commerce in the
+very different staple of bacon-curing. One does not contemn Calne on
+account of its misfortunes, but it must always have been a slipshod place.
+"Calne," according to Hartley Coleridge, who described his father's three
+years' residence there, "is not a very pretty place. The soil is clayey
+and chalky; the streams far from crystal; the hills bare and shapeless;
+the trees not venerable; the town itself irregular, which is its only
+beauty. But there were good, comfortable, unintellectual people in it."
+With all of which one may agree; save that the "irregularity" of the town
+is now rather sluttish than beautiful. As for the people, we are but
+travelling the road, and Calne is only an incident on our way--the people
+of it something less to ourselves, resembling, in fact, x, an unknown
+quantity.
+
+The outskirts of Calne are not prepossessing, nor does the long, stony
+street of mean characterless stone houses that leads to the centre of the
+little town alter the stranger's view. Calne, in fact, lying so near
+Bowood, long the seat of the Marquises of Lansdowne, and being their
+property, wears an abject, servile look. All that makes life worth living
+is at lordly Bowood; only that which is mean and commonplace is left to
+Calne. It seems (although one's prejudices are Conservative) as though
+some vampire were seated near, sucking away the life-blood of the place.
+
+There are two hills just out of Calne; Black Dog Hill, and Derry Hill, and
+they lead the traveller through picturesque scenery, past one of the
+lodges of Bowood, and so down into the flat alluvial lands where the Avon
+flows, and now and again floods out all the dwellers in those levels. The
+road down there is dreadfully dull to the pedestrian. To the cyclist, on
+the other hand, who has for these miles past been struggling up hills he
+cannot climb, and walking down others he dare not coast, the change is one
+from a penitential pilgrimage to Paradise.
+
+The entrance to the "ancient and royal" borough of Chippenham is hatefully
+like that into Calne, whose paltry houses are reproduced there. The centre
+of the town is, however, of a better character, although the streets are
+cramped and narrow. A singularly foreign air is given to the place by its
+balustraded stone bridge across the Avon, and if one cares to pursue the
+Continental tone further it may be found in the huge factory near by,
+where "Swiss" Condensed Milk, of the "Milkmaid" brand, is manufactured on
+an immense scale. For the rest, its cheese and corn markets and
+bacon-curing keep it very much alive, and a modern (and brutally ugly)
+Town Hall, built in 1856, shows sufficiently well how trade has grown
+since the time when the picturesque old Town Hall, still standing, was
+built in the sixteenth century.
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MARKET HOUSE, CHIPPENHAM.]
+
+[Sidenote: _MAUD HEATH'S CAUSEWAY_]
+
+The most interesting thing in Chippenham is (to borrow a "bull" for the
+occasion) outside the town. "Maud Heath's Causeway," a stone-pitched path
+along the road that runs through the heavy clay lands beside the Wiltshire
+Avon, extends for four and a half miles, from Chippenham to the summit of
+Bremhillwick Hill. It was made under the will of Maud Heath, who died
+about 1474, for the benefit of the market folk resorting to Chippenham,
+who found the low-lying roads almost impassable in winter. Little is known
+of this old-time benefactress, but legend supplies the lack of knowledge,
+and the popular belief is that she was a market-woman who, finding the
+road from Langley Burrell into the town in so dreadful a state, determined
+to leave the savings of a lifetime for the provision of a stone causeway,
+so that future generations might go dry-shod to market.
+
+This causeway goes from the north-east side of the town, and continues
+through Langley Burrell to Tytherton Kellaways, up the shoulder of
+Bremhillwick Hill. The portion between Chippenham and Langley Burrell was,
+for some unexplained reason, not constructed until 1852-3.
+
+According to the inscriptions on the stone posts beside it, the Causeway
+is held to commence at the Hill, and to end at Chippenham--
+
+  "From this WICK HILL begins the praise
+  Of MAUD HEATH'S gift to these highways."
+
+At the other end, next Chippenham, where the road joins those from
+Malmesbury and Draycott, is another stone, with the inscription--
+
+  "Hither extendeth MAUD HEATH'S gift,
+  For where I stand is Chippenham Clift."
+
+Midway, on the bridge over the Avon, is another stone--a pillar twelve
+feet high, erected by the Trustees in 1698, with the following facts
+recorded on it:--
+
+    "To the memory of the worthy MAUD HEATH, of Langley Burrell, Spinster:
+    who in the year of grace, 1474, for the good of travellers, did in
+    charity bestow in land and houses, about eight pounds a year, for
+    ever, to be laid out on the highway and causeway, leading from Wick
+    Hill to Chippenham Clift."
+
+    CHIPPENHAM CLIFT. Injure me not. WICK HILL.
+
+A statue of Maud Heath, a purely imaginary likeness of course, since no
+portrait of her is known to exist, was set up on a pillar on the summit of
+Bremhillwick Hill in 1838 by the Marquis of Lansdowne and a local
+clergyman.
+
+The pillar is forty feet high, and the seated statue on the top of it
+represents Maud Heath in the costume of the period of Edward the Fourth,
+with a staff in her hand, and a basket by her side. An inscription bids--
+
+  "Thou who dost pause on this aerial height,
+  Where MAUD HEATH'S Pathway winds in shade or light,
+  Christian wayfarer in a world of strife,
+  Be still--and ponder on the path of life."
+
+The sentiments are admirable, if a little depressing: the verse atrocious.
+
+[Sidenote: _IMPROVING SENTIMENTS_]
+
+But worse remains. There are three dials on the pillar, with an
+inscription on the side facing the rising sun--
+
+  "VOLAT TEMPUS.
+
+  "Oh, early passenger, look up, be wise:
+  And think how, night and day, TIME onward FLIES."
+
+Opposite Noon is the advice, "Whilst we have time, do good."
+
+  "QVUM TEMPUS HABEMUS, OPEREMUR BONUM.
+
+  "Life steals away--this hour, O man, is lent thee
+  Patient to work the work of Him that sent thee."
+
+For Evening the admonition is not a little alarming--if taken literally.
+
+  "REDIBO. TU NUNQUAM.
+
+  "Haste, traveller! the sun is sinking low;
+  He shall return again--but NEVER THOU."
+
+The passing wayfarer might well ask why he should never return along this
+road!
+
+The late vicar of Bremhill did these metrical paraphrases of the Latin
+which led so tragically, but whose qualities, as verse, resemble the
+average of the ordinary Pantomime librettist.
+
+Maud Heath's charity is still in existence, and is now worth about L120
+per annum, a sum amply sufficient for keeping her Causeway in repair.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVI
+
+
+Rowden Hill, a mile out of Chippenham, on the road to Bath, is a welcome
+drop down into level land again, and would be enjoyable were it not for
+the bad surface. It is while wheeling such hills and such road-metal that
+one appreciates at the full the pluck and endurance of those early
+cyclists who raced across them in the early seventies, making the pace on
+the high bicycles of those times as gallantly as though the terrible
+jolting they experienced was really enjoyable. That well-known body of
+cyclists, the Bath Road Club, has numbered some good sportsmen and rare
+flyers in its time, and though their pace reads ridiculously slow beside
+that of these pneumatic-tyred days, the performances of those
+half-forgotten racers were quite as fine, and, conditions being equal,
+perhaps finer, than the record rides of recent seasons. There was a
+time--in August, 1870, to be precise--when two cyclists--Gardner and
+Fisher, did the double journey of 107 miles each way in five days, and men
+looked upon them as marvellous riders; so perhaps they were, considering
+the mechanical limitations of the machines they rode, whose like is not to
+be seen nowadays save in collections of curios. Equally wonderful were
+those stalwarts who cut away the hours, piece by piece, until their
+performances were topped by "Wat" Britten on the "ordinary" in 1880, when
+he did the double journey in 23 hours. There were those who then thought
+the last word had been said in the matter of Bath Road Records. They must
+have been astonished when R. C. Nesbitt's "ordinary" record was made on
+August 1, 1891, when he covered the out and home course in 15 hrs. 40
+mins. 34 secs. Improved methods of manufacture may have had something to
+do with the smashing character of this new performance; but, even so,
+consider the extraordinary efforts that must have gone toward getting
+those figures, which cut Britten's by 7 hrs. 20 mins., and at the same
+time secured one of the rare victories of the "ordinary" over the "safety"
+pneumatic-tyred bicycle. For this grand ride defeated Mr. Lowe's, made on
+a "safety," in 1891 by more than 30 minutes.
+
+[Sidenote: _CYCLING HISTORY_]
+
+But that was one of the last expiring efforts of the now obsolete and
+miscalled "ordinary." It was speedily beaten by J. W. Jarvis, September
+20, 1892, who put the figures at 15 hrs. 16 mins. 42 secs.--23 mins. 52
+secs. better than the previous best. Then came that hardy Brighton Road
+record-maker, C. G. Wridgway, whose ride of August 2, 1893, put the
+clocking at 14 hrs. 22 mins. 57 secs.--a wonderfully heavy lowering of
+figures. The following year Wridgway established records on both the
+Brighton and Bath Road within a month; beating his record here of the
+previous August by his ride on October 4, when he reduced his own time by
+the astonishing margin of 1 hr. 27 mins. 43 secs.
+
+Time was now cut so close that when W. J. Neasen, of the Anfield Club,
+essayed the difficult task of lowering it, he only succeeded, on May 11,
+1895, in getting inside Wridgway's time by 24 mins. 10 secs., the figures
+then standing at 12 hrs. 31 mins. 4 secs. H. C. Horswill, of the Essex
+Wheelers, then beat Neason's performance, in July, 1897, by 24 mins. 34
+secs., to be succeeded finally by F. W. Barnes, who on October 30, in the
+same year, performed the double journey in 11 hrs. 48 mins. 42 secs., and
+still holds the record.
+
+Among these records of the Bath Road must be mentioned the various essays
+made by C. A. Smith, of the Bath Road Club, on tricycles. He rode to Bath
+and back on a three-wheeler, July 16, 1891, in 16 hrs. 13 mins. 18 secs.,
+thus establishing a record, which was beaten four years later--August 23,
+1895--by F. Martin, by the narrow margin of 11 mins. 43 secs. These
+figures in turn were lowered, August 5, 1897, by T. J. Gibbs, Bath Road
+Club, who accomplished a record of 14 hrs. 18 min.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _PICKWICK_]
+
+And now we come, past the tree-shaded hamlet of Cross Keys, to Pickwick,
+ninety-seven miles from London, situated at a turning in the road which
+leads to Corsham Regis, half a mile distant, on the left hand. The
+traveller, exploring this road for the first time, looks forward with
+curiosity to seeing a place with so famous a name; but Pickwick, the
+decayed coaching hamlet, can scarcely be said to "live up to" its
+literary associations. Strictly speaking, it is not even decayed; but, now
+that the coaches are no more, flourishes on the "Pickwick Brewery," which
+makes a brave show down the road. It is an eminently prosperous-looking,
+stone-built hamlet, a comparatively modern offshoot of the hoary Saxon
+village of Corsham, which, once on the main road, was thrust into the
+background when the mail coach came in, and the great highway to Bath was
+cut on this route, half a mile away.
+
+[Illustration: CROSS KEYS.]
+
+It is a curious literary puzzle--How did the title of the "Pickwick
+Papers" originate? It is a well-ascertained fact that, in 1835, Dickens,
+then a reporter for the daily press, was sent to Bath to report a speech
+of Lord John Russell's, that now almost-forgotten statesman being a
+candidate for representing that city. The future novelist was then but
+twenty-three years of age, a time of life when impressions of travel are
+vivid and lasting. Journeying by coach, he had every opportunity for
+observing places and people; and so it happened that when, a few months
+later, the now historic publishing firm of Chapman and Hall offered him
+the literary commission which resulted in the "Posthumous Papers of the
+Pickwick Club," the story he produced derived many of its features from
+his own experiences. His recollections had no time to fade, for in March,
+1836, the first part of "Pickwick" was published, and others were well on
+the way. It must ever be a matter of doubt whether Dickens noticed the
+existence of Pickwick, the place. That he had noted the existence of
+Moses Pickwick, the coach proprietor of Bath, is obvious enough from the
+"Pickwick Papers," where Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller are taking their
+seats for that City of the Waters.
+
+"'I'm wery much afeerd, sir, that the properiator o' this here coach is a
+playin' some imperence vith us,' says Sam.
+
+"'How is that, Sam?' said Mr. Pickwick; 'aren't the names down on the
+way-bill?'
+
+"'The names is not only down on the vay-bill, sir,' replied Sam, 'but
+they've painted vun on 'em up, on the door o' the coach.'
+
+"'Dear me,' exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, quite staggered by the coincidence,
+'what a very extraordinary thing!'
+
+"'Yes, but that ain't all,' said Sam, again directing his master's
+attention to the coach door; 'not content vith writin' up Pickwick, they
+puts "Moses" afore it, vich I call addin' insult to injury.'"
+
+There were then, it will be seen, real Pickwicks living in Bath, and the
+"Moses" Pickwick referred to was an actual person, the great-grandson of
+one Eleazer Pickwick, who, many years before, had risen by degrees from
+the humble position of post-boy at the "Old Bear," at Bath, to be landlord
+of the once famous "White Hart" inn, which stood where the "Grand Pump
+Room" hotel now towers aloft.
+
+Now comes the long-sought-for connection between place and persons of
+identical name. Eleazer Pickwick was a foundling. Discovered as an infant
+on the road at Pickwick, he was named by the guardians, in accordance with
+an old custom, after the place.
+
+[Sidenote: _CORSHAM REGIS_]
+
+Corsham, to which Pickwick belongs, is one of those places which it would
+be almost an indignity to call a "village," while to name it a "town"
+would be to give too great an importance to it. It is Corsham "Regis," by
+virtue of having been a residence of the Saxon Kings; but the Great
+Western has docked the kingly suffix, and if you were to ask at Paddington
+for a ticket to Corsham Regis, it is to be feared that the booking-clerk
+would not recognize the place under its full name.
+
+[Illustration: THE HUNGERFORD ALMSHOUSE, CORSHAM REGIS.]
+
+The townlet is a pleasing one, and, always excepting the new and ugly
+stone villas recently built, it abounds with delightful specimens of
+domestic architecture of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and mid-eighteenth
+centuries; fine houses built of Corsham stone in a dignified Renaissance
+manner, or in the earlier Tudor convention of gables and mullioned
+windows. Corsham Court, the finest of all, standing in its nobly-wooded
+park, is Elizabethan, and exhibits the merging of the two periods of
+Gothic and Renaissance architecture. It was Lady Hungerford, widow of a
+former owner of Corsham Court, who, in 1672, built the quaint Hungerford
+Almshouse, close by.
+
+For the rest, Corsham has little history. It was the scene of a mysterious
+murder in 1594, when a gentleman, one Henry Long, was shot dead, while
+sitting at dinner amid his friends, by Sir Charles and Sir Henry Danvers,
+two brothers, who hailed from Dauntsey. The motive was never known, and
+the assassins were never punished. Six years later, Charles was beheaded
+for taking part in Essex's rebellion; which seems to be a kind of oblique
+and fumbling retribution on the part of Providence for his crime. Henry,
+however, prospered amazingly, and was eventually created Earl Danby,
+flourishing all his life, as the wicked are, on good authority, supposed
+to do, "like the green bay tree," and dying in the odour of sanctity,
+"full of honours, woundes, and daies." He is commemorated in an eloquent
+epitaph, written by the saintly George Herbert of Bemerton, more than ten
+years before his (Danvers') death; a circumstance which would seem to
+prove Herbert a hypocrite and Danvers peculiarly solicitous for his own
+post-mortem reputation.
+
+Corsham was the birthplace of Sir Richard Blackmore, physician to William
+the Third, and poetaster, who, says Leigh Hunt, "composed heaps of dull
+poetry, versified the Psalms, and, by way of extending the lesson of
+patience, wrote a paraphrase of the Book of Job." What sarcasm!
+
+But Blackmore was read in his day, just as Leigh Hunt was in his, and Fate
+is sardonic enough (for who at this time reads Hunt's tedious stuff?) to
+consign critic and criticized to one common limbo of neglect.
+
+
+
+
+XXXVIII
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BOX TUNNEL_]
+
+From Corsham the old road used to lead precipitously up to the summit of
+Box Hill and thence downwards by breakneck gullies, furrowed by rains, and
+rich in loose stones, into Box. The modern highway goes modestly round the
+shoulder of the hill. The village of Box has gained an adventitious fame
+from the celebrated tunnel on the Great Western Railway, which pierces Box
+Hill, and was, upon its completion, the longest tunnel in England.
+Compared with later works, it sinks into quite minor importance; but it is
+still an impressive engineering feat, whether you view it from the railway
+carriage windows or from the highway. Its length is 3199 yards, or nearly
+two miles, and the hill rises above it to a height of three hundred feet.
+Its cost of over L500,000 is no less impressive.
+
+A curious story is told at Box of a platelayer, employed in the tunnel
+some twenty years ago, who with his gang worked there at night, and slept
+at Box village in the day. After a while he became engaged to a girl in
+the village, and the wedding-day was fixed. The vicar of Box, however, was
+a stickler for red tape, and it appears that he found some technical
+objection in the fact of the man not sleeping the night in the village.
+At any rate, he would not perform the ceremony until the Bishop (of
+Gloucester) compelled him to do so.
+
+[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO BOX QUARRIES.]
+
+[Sidenote: _BOX QUARRIES_]
+
+At Box we are well within the stone district whose quarries have rendered
+building-stone from the times of the Roman occupation until the present
+day. The oolite which comes from here and from the Corsham quarries is a
+fine grained stone, easily worked, and of a rich cream colour when freshly
+wrought. As "Bath stone" it is famous, and has made Bath exclusively a
+city of stone-built houses. In addition, it is sent to all parts of the
+country, and even exported. The quarries of Corsham and Box are,
+therefore, the centres of a large and important industry. Box Hill is a
+mass of this stone, and the tunnel is consequently pierced through it.
+Three of the quarries are situated in the hill, some of them of great
+extent. The most extensive is driven into the flank of the hill like a
+tunnel, and has over three miles of galleries laid with tram-lines: dark,
+damp places, whose roofs are supported here and there by timber struts.
+The coldness of these quarry tunnels is remarkably piercing, even in the
+height of summer.
+
+[Illustration: BOX VILLAGE.]
+
+Box seems to have been a favourite country resort of the Romans, away from
+the crowded streets of _Aquae Solis_; for on the land that slopes down
+toward the little Box Brook there have been found many Roman remains,
+while, only so recently as 1897, the site of a Roman villa was excavated
+near the south side of the church, with the result of unearthing a
+complete ground-plan and such interesting relics as mosaic pavements and
+votive altars.
+
+It is a crowded village to-day, and rather by way of being a town. Lying
+in a deep hollow, its stone-built houses climb steeply up both sides, with
+a picturesque glimpse back from where the old village lock-up stands
+beside the highway to the straggling cottages that line the old road down
+the side of Box Hill.
+
+Leaving Box we also, in the course of one mile, leave Wiltshire and come
+into Somerset, with Bath but four miles distant. The Box Brook runs on the
+right-hand side of the road, the Great Western Railway on the left. Soon,
+however, the road bends to the right at Bathford, and we come to
+Batheaston, once a village, but now merely a suburb of Bath, joined to
+the city by continuous streets.
+
+But there are pretty scenes just off these streets. Bathampton Mill, for
+instance, just below, on the Avon, with views of the grand circle of hills
+that enclose Bath.
+
+The picturesquely broken and wooded elevation of Combe Down rises away on
+the other side of the valley, with Prior Park nestled amid its hanging
+woods, and the village of Widcombe beneath. At an elevation of five
+hundred and fifty feet above the sea, it commands views not to be bettered
+in all the country round. Down below, in the warm steamy atmosphere of the
+Avon valley, one sees the railway entering Bath on its stone viaducts, and
+the trains winding in and out along the sharp curves amid the clustered
+houses. Bathampton lies below there, where the air is languorous and the
+hillsides hold the heat of the sun. From that sheltered spot the view
+backwards towards Bathampton Mill and the terraced houses of Batheaston is
+delightful; the houses that turn their ugly side to the road showing from
+here, amid their setting of green, like fairy palaces. Lower down the
+valley the houses cluster more thickly, where the valley widens out into
+the likeness of a great amphitheatre, and suburbs fade gradually into
+Bath.
+
+Then, coming to Walcot, the road finally loses all its character as a
+highway, and tramways, omnibuses, and traffic of every description
+proclaim the entrance to a populous city.
+
+[Illustration: BATHAMPTON MILL.]
+
+
+
+
+XXXIX
+
+
+[Sidenote: _BATH_]
+
+The story of Bath goes back some two thousand years, and has its origin in
+the myths of ages, in which Bladud figures variously as discoverer and
+creator of the healing springs. Serious historians are wont to exclude
+Bladud, and his descent from Brute the Trojan, and Lud Hudibras, the
+British King, from their pages, for the reason that Geoffrey of Monmouth,
+the monkish chronicler, who first narrates these stories in his history of
+Britain, was apt sometimes to confound chronicling with romancing. When,
+therefore, he tells how Prince Bladud was an adept in magic, and placed a
+cunning stone in the springs of this valley so that it made the water hot
+and healed the sick who resorted to them, he is looked upon with a
+suspicion that is deepened when he goes on to say that Bladud successfully
+attempted to fly with wings of his own invention from Bath to London, and
+only came to grief when London was reached, through the strings breaking,
+so that he fell and was dashed to pieces on the roof of the Temple of
+Apollo!
+
+Nor is the better known legend of Prince Bladud, the leper, exiled from
+his father's Court, universally accepted. According to that story, the
+Prince wandered to where Keynsham now stands, where he became a swineherd,
+and infected the pigs with his disease. Coming, however, into this valley,
+the porkers rolled themselves into the hot mud, which then occupied the
+site of Bath Abbey and the Baths, and were cured. Bladud perceiving this,
+applied the remedy to himself, with the like result, and returned to his
+home once more; building a city upon the spot in after years. This
+happened B.C. 863, and there is a statue of King Bladud, as he afterwards
+became, erected in the "Pump Room" in 1669; so that any one not
+subscribing to the truth of this legend had better do so at once, in view
+of this overwhelming evidence thus afforded.
+
+[Sidenote: _ROMAN RELICS_]
+
+We are on more certain ground when we come to the Romans. That great
+people left too many evidences of their occupation of this island for many
+doubts to be entertained as to where they settled, or when. Thus, when we
+assign the close of the first half-century of the Christian era to their
+discovery of the medicinal properties of these waters, we do so, not from
+legend, but from the evidence of the buildings they have left behind. It
+is singular that we do not, as a rule, lay much stress upon the Roman
+occupation of Britain. Yet it lasted long, and was for nearly four
+centuries what modern political slang terms "effectual." An advanced
+civilization reigned here then, and Britain became both a populous and a
+flourishing colony. The dealings of England with India in the present time
+form a tolerably close parallel with Rome's conquest of this island, and
+if we go further and liken the British who remained in the remote places
+of Cornwall, Devon, and Wales to the fierce Afghans and Chitralis who have
+troubled us on the borders of Hindostan, we shall by no means strain the
+similitude. Bath--or rather _Aquae Solis_, the "Waters of the Sun"[6]--as
+well as being the one health-resort in Britain for the wealthy Roman
+colonists who needed such a retreat, was to the Roman officer of that era
+what Simla and the Hills are to our own military men in India--a place for
+rest and the restoration of health after the rigours of a hard campaign;
+with this difference, indeed, that to the Hills they go for coolness,
+while at Aquae Solis is the expatriated legionary found both healing
+springs and a genial warmth after the bleak, inhospitable hills of the Far
+West or the Farther North.
+
+[Illustration: THE SUN GOD.]
+
+Discoveries at Bath and in its immediate neighbourhood have proved that
+there was a sanatorium for invalided officers on Combe Down, and we can
+well imagine such being conveyed hither, to recover or to die, along the
+road.
+
+The Baths of the Romans were discovered in 1755, fifteen feet below the
+surface of the ground; relics of a past magnificence; of a civilization
+that expired in bloodshed and conflagration. It was in the year 410 that
+the military forces of Rome left Britain. The weak Romano-British soon
+retrograded, and, worse than all, the country split up into petty, and
+mutually hostile, kingdoms. The Baths were neglected, the Arts decayed,
+and in Britain generally there was not spirit sufficient to withstand the
+marauding Saxons who finally overwhelmed the country and pillaged and
+burnt _Aquae Solis_, just as they had pillaged every other city. It was
+after the sanguinary Battle of Deorham, A.D. 577, that the three cities of
+_Glevum_ (Gloucester), _Corinium_ (Cirencester), and _Aquae Solis_ fell,
+spoils to the Saxon hosts under Ceawlin. You may search for the site of
+that great contest at the village now called Dyreham, some fifteen miles
+north-east of Bath, in Gloucestershire, and from its position it will be
+at once evident that those three cities must immediately have fallen after
+that fatal day. That was the cementing of the Saxon power in the West, and
+a fitting end to a hundred and fifty years of incessant warfare. The
+British never learned that union means strength; they never had the sense
+to combine before a common foe, and so the fierce invaders met and
+defeated them in detail, aided of course by their own fitness for the
+fight, and by the British incapacity. The Britons were lapped in luxury,
+and went drunk into battle, so that there was no possible hope for them in
+fighting the hardy warriors from the North. The wars waged then were wars
+of extermination, and neither persons nor places were spared. This proud
+city was levelled with the ground, and the civilization of four hundred
+years perished by fire in a day. Evidences of that dreadful time were
+plainly to be seen when the Roman Baths were excavated. They are to be
+seen even now, at the Museum, together with relics which prove the high
+degree of civilization that had been attained.
+
+[Illustration: MYSTERIOUS LEADEN TABLET DISCOVERED AT BATH.]
+
+Among other marks of progress is an inscribed tablet with an inscription
+which one authority declares to be the record of a "cure from either
+taking the waters or bathing, certified by three great men;" while another
+is equally positive that it is an "imprecation upon nine men, supposed to
+be guests, who had stolen a tablecloth at the conclusion of a
+dinner-party." The age of this tablet is fixed "between the second and
+fifth centuries of the Christian era," which in itself seems to be a wide
+enough margin. As if, however, this were not already sufficient, there are
+others, learned in these things, who declare that this relic records how
+a certain Quintus received 500,000 lbs. of copper coin for washing a lady
+named "Vilbia"! We are left to take our choice between speculations
+unfavourable to the personal cleanliness of that lady, or astonishment at
+the mode and extravagance of the payment. There is, indeed, "another way,"
+as the cookery books have it; but as that involves doubts about the
+scholarship of professed antiquaries, this third resort may only be hinted
+at in this place. Who shall decide where antiquaries disagree?
+
+The Saxons were shy of the places they had burnt. Heathens that they were,
+they generally believed the bloodstained ruins to be haunted by evil
+spirits, and so built their settlements at some distance away. The site of
+Bath seems to have been, to some degree, an exception. After lying waste
+for over a hundred years, it was occupied again, for the fame of its
+waters had not wholly died out: and "Akemanceaster," as the Saxons called
+it, entered upon a new lease of life. At that period, too, the Roman Road
+through Silchester, Speen, and Marlborough acquired its name of Akeman
+Street; the names meaning, as some would say, the "Sick Man's Town," and
+the "Sick Man's Road," from "aches" and the fame of the place, even then,
+as a spot at which to cure them. This has been characterized as absurd,
+and the derivation more plausibly held to be from a corruption of the
+Roman word _Aquae_ affixed to the word "maen," or "man," meaning "stone" or
+"place," and joined to the word "caester," a form of the Roman "castrum," a
+fortification; the compound word thus obtained meaning "the Fortified
+place at the Waters."
+
+[Sidenote: _ROYAL VISITS_]
+
+To follow the fortunes of Akemanceaster, or Bath, as it eventually became,
+through the Saxon period to the present time would be an exercise too
+prolonged for these pages. That Kings and Princes and ecclesiastics
+visited it then we know, and that the Normans built a great Abbey church
+where the present building of Bath Abbey stands is an easily ascertainable
+fact; but all the comings and goings of the great ones of the earth during
+the succeeding centuries would form but a bald catalogue. It is only when
+we come to the middle of the seventeenth century that we need pick up the
+thread of the narrative again, at the visits of the Queen of Charles the
+First in 1644; of Charles the Second, the Duke and Duchess of York, and
+Prince Rupert in 1663; the Queen of James the Second, 1687; and the
+Princess Anne, 1692; and as Queen Anne, 1702. Truly, a brilliant list for
+such a small place as Bath then was.
+
+But these Royal visits did not greatly benefit the place, as we may judge
+when we read that from 1592 to 1692, Bath had increased by only seventeen
+houses. Why was this? I conceive it to have been owing to the
+extraordinary apathy of the people of Bath, who had not provided the
+slightest accommodation for those who then drank the waters. Of what use
+was it for Sir Alexander Frayser, physician to Charles the Second, sending
+all his patients hither instead of to Continental health-resorts like Aix,
+if they had to drink the waters at a pump standing on the open pavement?
+and imagine the delights of bathing when the Baths were open to the
+public view, the said public delighting to throw dead cats, offal, and all
+manner of nastinesses among the bathers!
+
+A local doctor, named Oliver, took up these grievances in 1702, and the
+Corporation then set about building a Pump Room. This was opened in 1704,
+and the celebrated Beau Nash having been at about the same period
+appointed Master of the Ceremonies, the Bath visitors' list showed a
+decided improvement.
+
+Let us see what the amusements at "the Bath" had been hitherto. The place
+was devoid of elegant or attractive amusements, and the only promenade for
+the fashionables who followed Queen Anne to this then outlandish town was
+a grove of sycamores in which there was a bowling-green, and a band
+consisting of two performers, playing a fiddle and a hautboy! The
+courtiers who had deserted St. James's to follow her gouty Majesty to the
+waters must have cursed their folly when they saw those sycamores and
+heard that band!
+
+Nash altered all this. He was no King Log, and accordingly soon procured a
+band of music for the new Pump Room; an Assembly Room for the fashionables
+to take "tay" or chocolate, to dance, play cards, or to gossip in; and
+devised a code of manners, if not of morals, for the regulation of his
+little world, which he ruled with a rod of iron. He regulated everything,
+from the greatest festivities down to the smallest details of dress and
+deportment, and not the late M. Worth himself was more autocratic as to
+what should be worn. It is a familiar story how, the "Dutchess" of
+Queensbury appearing at a dress ball in an apron (an article of dress
+which, fashionable elsewhere, he had tabooed), he told her to remove it or
+leave. The apron was one of point lace, and said to have been worth five
+hundred guineas; but the Duchess removed it humbly enough, for had not
+this mighty arbiter of fashions declared aprons "fit only for Abigails"
+(by which name he meant maidservants to be understood), and who was she
+that she should dispute such an authority? Then, when the Princess Amelia,
+daughter of George the Third, begged him to allow another dance after
+eleven o'clock, what did this potentate reply? Did he humbly grant the
+request? Not at all; he refused, adding that the laws of Bath were, like
+those of Lycurgus, unalterable.
+
+
+
+
+XL
+
+
+[Sidenote: _BEAU NASH_]
+
+They say that Nash "made" Bath. That, however, is but partly true. Bath
+was beginning to make its way when he appeared, and he simply exploited
+the place. The Moment had come and brought the Man with it, and a tight
+grip he retained over all fashionable functions for over fifty years. He
+warred with the high-class rowdies who would have made the place a resort
+of Mohocks, and elevated "Bath manners" into a school of conduct perfectly
+well known and imitated, at a distance, in other parts of the Kingdom.
+They were manners of the most elaborate kind, and if attempted nowadays,
+it is difficult to conceive how the wheels of the world's business would
+go round at all. When a meeting took place between a lady and a gentleman,
+the gentleman inquiring, with a most elaborate bow, after her health, in
+such terms as "I am vastly honoured to have the pleasure of seeing you; I
+trust the salubrious airs of the Bath are keeping you in good health;" and
+the lady replying, "I am much obleeged[7] by your thoughtful inquiries: I
+protest I am mighty well," it took quite an appreciable time to descend
+from those rarefied heights of courtesy and come down to the gossip and
+scandals which were, we are told, among the principal pastimes of this
+health-resort in the days of powder and patches.
+
+[Sidenote: _SEVERE MEASURES_]
+
+But Nash not only saw to it that his fashionable clients behaved
+themselves. He had to contend with the camp-followers of fashion who
+swarmed into Bath. Mendicants infested the streets and made the gorge of
+those delicate eighteenth-century creatures rise with the sight of their
+rags and diseases. Nash knew that if he did not administer his kingdom
+severely, and if he allowed many of these stern realities of the world to
+obtrude upon the sight of the fastidious, the new-found fortunes of Bath
+would disappear, and his career with them. So, perhaps from an acute sense
+of the necessity for self-preservation, rather than from any desire to
+play the autocrat, he imposed his will so thoroughly that he became an
+unquestioned ruler. He induced the Corporation, which had entrusted him
+with these powers, to procure an Act in 1739 for the suppression of the
+beggars. It begins by reciting that "several loose, idle, and disorderly
+persons daily resort to the City of Bath, and remain wandering and begging
+about the streets and other places of the said City, and the suburbs
+thereof, under pretence of their being resident at The Bath for the
+benefit of the Mineral and Medical Waters, to the great disturbances of
+his Maj.'s subjects resorting to the said City. Be it enacted that the
+Constables, petty Constables, Tything-men, and other Peace Officers of the
+said City ... are hereby empowered and required to seize and apprehend all
+such persons who shall be so found wandering, begging, or misbehaving
+themselves, and them to carry before the Mayor, or some Justice, or
+Justices, of the Peace for the said City; who shall upon the oath of one
+sufficient witness, or upon his own view, commit the said person or
+persons so wandering or begging, to the House of Correction for any time
+not exceeding the space of 12 Kalendar months, and to be kept at hard
+labour, and receive correction as loose, idle, and disorderlie persons."
+
+So there was a reverse to the medal, and a very stringent government
+prevailed behind the careless, butterfly existence of the age, when
+literary squibs and lampoons and the gay personalities of Anstey's _New
+Bath Guide_ formed the excitements of the Bath.
+
+A curious relic of this artificial life is to be seen in the Victoria Park
+in the "Batheaston Vase." This is the name given to a handsome antique
+placed in a kind of classic temple. The vase was discovered at Tusculum,
+Cicero's villa, near Frascati, and brought to England during the last
+century by Sir John and Lady Miller, who then owned a beautiful villa at
+Batheaston, one of the favourite resorts of the society of that day.
+Decorated with garlands of bays, the vase was used at Lady Miller's
+receptions as a depository for verses written by her guests. It was
+presided over by one of the ladies of the party, posing as the Muse of
+Poetry, who drew the poetic offerings from its recesses, and, reciting
+them, crowned the authors of the best effort with bays. The opportunity
+proved too tempting for some of the wilder spirits, who wrote verses of a
+ribald and satirical character, better calculated to bring a blush to the
+cheek of the Poetic Muse than to add to either the morals or the harmony
+of those gatherings.
+
+[Illustration: THE BATHEASTON VASE.]
+
+
+
+
+XLI
+
+
+[Sidenote: _RALPH ALLEN_]
+
+Among this careless throng there were a few men of will and purpose. Ralph
+Allen; the two Woods, father and son, architects; and, somewhat later than
+them, John Palmer, were bold spirits who changed the aspect of Bath and
+helped to revolutionize the communications of the country.
+
+One of the greatest historical figures of Bath--perhaps even the greatest
+figure of all--before whom Bladud, Prince of Britain, at one end of the
+historic period, and Beau Nash at the other, sink into something like
+insignificance, is that of Ralph Allen. And yet--so arbitrary is
+fame--that for every ten who could recite you, off-hand, something of the
+history and achievements of Allen, a hundred could recount the story of
+Bladud or of Nash. This is not to say that Bath has forgotten her great
+man. On the contrary, the citizens show you his "Town House" in Lilliput
+Alley with no little pride, while his great mansion of Prior Park, to the
+south of the city, and looking down upon it, remains to this day the most
+princely edifice for miles around. But however mindful Bath may be of him,
+and although his classic house on the hillside inevitably recalls him to
+the memory of Bath people, the fact remains that Allen's is a name
+comparatively unknown to Bath's visitors.
+
+That he deserves a record in these pages must be conceded, for he it was
+who first established a regular postal service between one provincial town
+and another, and carried letters along the cross-roads, which, until his
+time, had been utterly neglected by the Post-office.
+
+It is a singular thing that to Bath should have belonged both Ralph Allen
+and John Palmer; the men who respectively developed the postal service and
+founded mail-coaches. It is true that Allen was not a native of Bath. His
+father was an innkeeper at St. Blazey, in Cornwall, and in that far
+western county he first learned the routine of a post-office, in the
+early years of last century. He was eleven years of age when he was
+placed with his grandmother, the post-mistress of St. Columb, and his
+industry in keeping the accounts secured him the good word of the district
+surveyor, who procured the lad an appointment as assistant to the
+post-master at Bath. Fortune favoured him, and when the post-master died,
+Allen was appointed in his stead. He had not long become post-master
+before he matured a scheme for developing the "bye" and cross-road posts,
+which should bring profit to himself and convenience the community. He
+proposed to "farm" these posts and pay the Government an annual sum for
+the privilege, leaving the direct posts between London and the provinces
+in the hands of the Post-office. A "bye" post was one between provincial
+towns; a cross-road post was one that lay off the half-dozen post routes
+then existing.
+
+It was in 1719 that Allen, then but twenty-six years of age, made his
+proposal to the Government. The postage on those descriptions of letters
+had hitherto amounted to L400 per annum. He was prepared to give L6000
+yearly, and to work the posts for a period of seven years, in
+consideration of receiving the whole of the revenue during that term. His
+offer was accepted, and the contract took effect from June 21, 1720. How
+Allen procured the funds for his enterprise is not known, but he must have
+had substantial financial support, since his first quarter's expenditure
+in establishing his system amounted to no less a sum than L1500, while the
+salaries of the staff he got together totalled a further L3000 per annum.
+
+Allen was a man of a modest and retiring habit, but with the greatest
+confidence in himself. He needed all his confidence, and all the untiring
+industry and vigilance that were his, for when three years of the seven
+had expired he found himself a loser by a small amount, and when the
+contract lapsed, his gain was quite inappreciable. Yet he renewed it for
+another seven years, convinced that the better facilities he had provided
+for the carriage of letters must needs lead to great developments. He was
+right: the correspondence of the country grew, and in 1741 we find him
+bidding L17,500 per annum for another term of seven years. He continued
+thus until his death in 1764, in receipt, for many years, of an income of
+not less than L12,000 a year on his post-office enterprise alone.
+
+[Sidenote: _POSTAL SERVICES_]
+
+Those were the times of the real post-boys. All letters were carried by
+mounted messengers, since the stage-coaches then running (where they
+existed at all!) were not fast enough, frequent enough, or sufficiently
+safe for the purpose. A side-light is thrown upon the average "speed" of
+these stage-coaches, not then considered speedy enough, by the onerous
+condition in Allen's contract that the mails were to be carried by his
+post-boys "at not less than five miles an hour."
+
+Allen was in the forefront of Bath enterprise, and was associated with
+John Wood, the elder of the two architects of that name, in rebuilding the
+city. Before their time it had been a place of mean streets and winding
+alleys, the out-at-elbows remains of Gothic times. As a result of their
+labours, and the labours of their immediate successors, Bath renewed her
+youth in a revived Classicism. Among the monuments of that time, Prior
+Park is conspicuous. It was built by John Wood in 1743 for Allen, whose
+great object in erecting this veritable palace was to demonstrate the
+qualities of the building-stone on his Combe Down property. Here he
+entertained some of the foremost literary men of his time: Pope, Fielding,
+Warburton; and is enshrined by Fielding as "Squire Allworthy" in "Tom
+Jones," and by Pope in the lines--
+
+  "Let low-born Allen, with ingenuous shame,
+  Do good by stealth, and blush to find it fame."
+
+The situation, and the front elevation of Prior Park, form together,
+perhaps, the noblest grouping of classic architecture and romantic scenery
+to be found in England. It was a time tinged with romanticism of an
+artificial kind which generally showed itself in affected and
+objectionable ways. But this artificiality was a matter of deportment
+merely. Literature was practised then, and Architecture flourished in the
+land.
+
+[Illustration: PRIOR PARK.]
+
+[Sidenote: _"SHAM CASTLE"_]
+
+There is another work of Allen's crowning the hill at Bathwick, which
+serves to show at once the romantic and the artificial signs of the times.
+Allen looked out from the windows of his Town House upon the bare hilltop,
+and thought how the view would have been improved had there been a ruined
+castle showing against the sky-line. Accordingly he built such an one, and
+there it is to-day; and if you don't know it to be a ruin built to order,
+it is very impressive indeed--at a distance. If, however, you know it
+to be a Sham Castle (which, by the way, is the name of it), romance
+immediately flies, abashed. There it stands, on its wind-swept heights,
+naked and unashamed; a frontage with nothing behind it; an empty mask,
+with crossbow slits from which arrows never were discharged, and
+battlements scarce more substantial than the pasteboard turrets that
+furnish the stage in romantic drama. If hypocrisy be indeed the homage
+that Vice pays to Virtue; then, by parallel reasoning, here is homage of
+the most flattering kind paid to Gothicism by an age that above all things
+prided itself on the way it fulfilled its classic ideals. It was a common
+failing of the time; and possibly, if attention had been called to it, a
+ready answer might have been found in the retort that "consistency is the
+bugbear of little minds."
+
+[Illustration: "SHAM CASTLE."]
+
+
+
+
+XLII
+
+
+But to return to the Beau, who seems to represent Bath more fully than any
+other person connected with its history. In his old age Nash fell upon
+evil times. Ruined by his own folly and extravagance, he had no
+opportunities of retrieving the position, for he had lived to see the
+friends of his more fortunate era pass away, and to witness the arrival of
+a younger generation which regarded his laws with indifference, if not
+with open contempt. His last years were eked out with the aid of a
+pittance of L10 a month given him by the Corporation of the city for which
+he had done so much, and a new Master of the Ceremonies presently reigned
+in his stead.
+
+In his declining days, Bath had altogether changed from the place it had
+been when in the zenith of his power. It had, for one thing, grown out of
+all knowledge, architecturally. The Grand Circus, parades, terraces,
+squares, all manner of finely designed houses, had sprung up. Smollett, in
+"Humphrey Clinker," makes Squire Bramble peevishly recount those changes,
+and say, "The same artist who planned the Circus has likewise projected a
+crescent: when that is finished, we shall probably have a star; and those
+who are living thirty years hence may perhaps see all the signs of the
+zodiac exhibited in architecture at Bath."
+
+[Sidenote: _BATH SOCIETY_]
+
+Then the select society of fifty years before had given place to a very
+mixed concourse, if we are to believe the same authority: "Every upstart
+of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at
+Bath, as in the very focus of observation. Clerks and factors from the
+East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters,
+negro-drivers, and hucksters, from our American plantations, enriched they
+know not how; agents, commissaries, and contractors, who have fattened, in
+two successive wars, on the blood of the nation; usurers, brokers, and
+jobbers of every kind; men of low birth, and no breeding, have found
+themselves suddenly translated into a state of affluence, unknown to
+former ages; and no wonder that their brains should be intoxicated with
+pride, vanity, and presumption. Knowing no other criterion of greatness
+but the ostentation of wealth, they discharge their affluence, without
+taste or conduct, through every channel of the most absurd extravagance;
+and all of them hurry to Bath, because here, without any further
+qualification, they can mingle with the princes and nobles of the land.
+Even the wives and daughters of low tradesmen, who, like shovel-nosed
+sharks, prey on the blubber of those uncouth whales of fortune, are
+infected with the same rage of displaying their importance; and the
+slightest indisposition serves them for a pretext to insist on being
+conveyed to Bath, where they may hobble country-dances and cotillons among
+lordlings, squires, counsellors, and clergy. These delicate creatures
+from Bedfordbury, Butcher-row, Crutched-friars, and Botolph-lane, cannot
+breathe in the gross air of the lower town, or conform to the vulgar rules
+of a common lodging-house: the husband, therefore, must provide an entire
+house or elegant apartments in the new buildings. Such is the composition
+of what is called fashionable company at Bath."
+
+
+
+
+XLIII
+
+
+What, however, of the literary celebrities, visitors or residents, or of
+the statesmen, the naval and military commanders, who were frequenting
+Bath at the time when that jaundiced criticism was penned. Dr. Johnson was
+then taking the waters, which are said by a later authority to taste of
+"warm smoothin'-irons;" Gainsborough alternately painted and bathed; while
+the Earl of Chatham and his still greater son; Nelson, Wolfe, Sheridan,
+and Goldsmith, Wordsworth, Southey, Jane Austin, and Landor, helped to
+sustain the repute of this, which Landor called the next most beautiful
+place in the world to Florence, well on into the next century.
+
+[Sidenote: _THE BATH OF LONG AGO_]
+
+A diarist of over a century ago tells us how he went to Bath, and what he
+saw and did there. This was the Reverend Thomas Campbell, a lively
+Irishman (notwithstanding his Scottish name), who journeyed to England in
+1775, and visited Johnson and other literary bigwigs in London, coming to
+Bath on April 28, to take the waters. The coach set out from the New
+Church in the Strand (by which, no doubt, Saint Mary-le-Strand is
+indicated) at six o'clock in the morning, and came to Speenhamland
+("Spinomland," says the clergyman in his diary), where they lay. The
+country, he remarks, was very rich from London to this place, yet it was
+so level that there was scarce a good prospect the whole way, unless
+Clieveden, near Maidenhead Bridge could be so called.
+
+[Illustration: OLD PULTENEY BRIDGE.]
+
+When the coach resumed its journey the next day--the passengers,
+doubtless, lightened in pocket by that "long bill" of the "Pelican" at
+Speenhamland--the bleakness of Marlborough Downs communicated itself to
+the air, and from Newbury to Cottenham,[8] a distance of nearly thirty
+miles, the countryside was very bare of trees and herbage, in addition to
+being the worst land this Irishman had seen in England, and certainly
+swarming with beggars. For miles together the coach was pursued by them,
+from two to nine at a time, almost all of them children. They were more
+importunate than those of Ireland, or _even_ those in Wales. Poor Taffy!
+
+When our traveller reached Bath he rejoiced greatly, and, the next day
+being Sunday, went to the Abbey Church with other fashionables, and heard
+a sorry discourse, wretchedly delivered. Afterwards, in the Pump Room,
+where the yawning visitors were assembled, he met Lady Molyneux, who asked
+him to dinner, where he spent the pleasantest day since he came to
+England, for there were five or six lively Irish girls who sang and
+danced, and did everything but agree among themselves. "Women," remarks
+our diarist, "are certainly more envious than men, or at least they
+discover it upon more trifling occasions, and they cannot bear with
+patience that one of their party should obtain a preference of attention;
+this was thoroughly exemplified this day. One of these, who was a pretty
+little coquet, went home after dinner to dress for the Rooms, and her
+colour was certainly altered on returning for tea; they all fell into a
+titter, and one of them (who was herself painted, as I conceived) cried
+out, 'Heavens, look at her cheeks!'" This, truly, was unkind, and more
+certainly indiscreet. The young lady with the startling cheeks
+subsequently sang a song, which somewhat surprised the clergyman, from its
+breadth of idea, but the other ladies, and matrons too, "were kicking with
+laughter." Presently they all went home, the ladies most affectionate
+toward one another, and, says Mr. Campbell, "it is amazing what pleasure
+women find in kissing each other, for they do smack amazingly."
+
+[Sidenote: _A TORY PROPHECY_]
+
+The worthy clergyman seems to have been introduced to the less dignified
+circles of fashion. The general tone of the more exclusive sets was by no
+means so lively, for it was about this time that the Indian nabobs, the
+Civil servants, the retired officers of the Army and Navy and the East
+India Company began to discover Bath and to settle there, filling the
+place with Toryism and grumblings about "the services going to the dogs,
+sir." Here is a Tory prophecy, not yet verified: "There is one comfort I
+cannot have at Bath," said the Duke of Northumberland in 1779. "I like to
+read the newspapers at breakfast, and at Bath the post does not come in
+till one o'clock; that is a drawback to my pleasure." "So," said Lord
+Mansfield, "your grace likes the _comfort_ of reading the newspapers--the
+_comfort_ of reading the newspapers! Mark my words. A little sooner or
+later those newspapers will most assuredly write the Dukes of
+Northumberland out of their titles and possessions, and the country out of
+its king. Mark my words, for this will happen."
+
+As a prophecy, it may readily be conceded that this is an extremely bad
+shot, and that Lord Mansfield by no means, either figuratively or
+literally, inherited the mantle of Elijah. A hundred and twenty years have
+passed since then, and there are still dukes who have not been reduced to
+sweep crossings or keep chandlers' shops. True, if they have not come down
+so far in the world, it is in some cases owing to American dollars; but
+that is not the doing of the newspapers, one way or the other. As I have
+just remarked, that was a Tory prophecy, and though my Toryism is, I
+trust, of the most mediaeval and crusted kind, and wholly beyond cavil, it
+may frankly be admitted here that the Party never has shone in prophecy.
+Nor, for that matter, has any party. The only seers are the
+leader-writers, and they never see beyond their noses.
+
+So Principalities and Powers and Titles are at least as powerful as ever
+they were, and--cynical fact--certain newspaper proprietors have been
+raised to the House of Peers; a thing, we may be sure, that Lord Mansfield
+never contemplated.
+
+Many other things, however, have happened in the meanwhile. Agitation does
+not pay so well as it did. The newspapers which were to do such dreadful
+things have greatly increased in number, if not in power, and the contents
+of them have changed radically; other times, other manners, as a glance at
+even the advertisements of that date will prove.
+
+
+
+
+XLIV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _OLD ADVERTISEMENTS_]
+
+The advertisement columns of a paper just over a century old often afford
+amusement to those who come upon them. The manners and customs of those
+times and these are so different that the very quaintness of our
+forefathers' attitude of mind brings a smile upon our faces, although
+those eighteenth-century forbears of ours were really very serious people
+indeed, and took life, for the most part, like a dose of medicine, while
+we are apt to go to the other extreme and take it like champagne. No doubt
+our great-great-grandfathers would think the most sedate of us not a
+little wild could they witness how we live to-day, while, in our turn, we
+look back upon their times, and think times and people alike brutal. We
+wonder what sort of people they were who could, in this England of ours,
+offer a "Black boy for sale--docile and obedient. Answers to the name of
+Peter." Yet such advertisements were common on the front page of our
+newspapers once upon a time. Slavery was then a matter of course, and to
+have a black page for her very own was my lady's hall-mark of "quality."
+Sometimes such advertisements were embellished with little figures
+supposed to represent nigger-boys.
+
+The race of African negroes has either improved in good looks since then,
+or else the engravers of that day were not very careful in portraiture.
+But, indeed, black pages were almost as common as pet dogs, and were
+advertised in very much the same way, and these blocks were not portraits
+at all, but just printers' stock illustrations. The printer of a hundred
+years ago kept a curious little assortment of advertisement blocks. If a
+ship was about to sail for the colonies, it was advertised for weeks
+beforehand, and in a corner of the announcement was placed something that
+purported to be an illustration of the vessel. It generally looked like a
+Spanish galleon strayed from the Armada of two hundred years previously,
+and passengers would have been quite justified in not booking berths on so
+antiquated an affair.
+
+But perhaps the most amusing advertisements are the "Run away from his
+Home" and the "Stolen" varieties, also adorned with illustrations. It
+speaks very little for the morality of that age when we say that the
+ordinary newspaper printer also kept these blocks in stock.
+
+And, indeed, they seem to have frequently been required. Here is one
+example out of many in the newspapers of that age:--
+
+    "STOLEN
+    Out of the Stable of ROBERT COLGATE,
+    The 24th instant August, 1780
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    A black horse, rising five years old, thirteen Hands and a Half High,
+    Star in his forehead, small Ears, Mane stands up rough, being lately
+    rubbed off, long Tail, hangs his Tongue out often on the Road, good
+    Carriage; also a good Saddle, marked Barnard, with Spring Stumps.
+
+    "Whoever gives Information, so that the Said Horse may be had again,
+    shall receive TWO GUINEAS REWARD."
+
+It would scarcely be possible to identify the stolen horse from the
+accompanying cut. He has no long tail, as described in the advertisement,
+and his tongue _doesn't_ hang out. Moreover, he is burdened with a quite
+imaginary thief, who has a property devil whipping him on. The "awful
+example" hanging from the gibbet appears to be made of bolsters, and to
+have had, not a drop too much, but scarcely enough.
+
+The party with hands bigger than his head, who is here seen striking a
+dramatic attitude, is not a Howling Swell, although he wears his hair
+parted in the middle. Appearances here (as usually was the case in the old
+advertisements) are deceptive, and so far from being a Swell, Howling or
+otherwise, he is really a Heartless Villain, for he is one of two
+labourers who have--
+
+    "RUN AWAY.
+
+    [Illustration]
+
+    And left their families chargeable to the Parish of CLAVERTON,
+
+    THOMAS GARNER, Labourer, about five feet seven or eight Inches high;
+    wears his own Hair, of a light Brown Complexion; hath lately, or is
+    now belonging to the Militia.
+
+    "And EDWARD BROWNING, Labourer, about five Feet four or five Inches
+    high, wears his own Hair, of a dark complexion; was one of Lord
+    North's Soldiers in the last War.
+
+    "Whoever will apprehend either, or both of them, and conduct them to
+    the Parish Officers of Claverton aforesaid, shall receive HALF A
+    GUINEA for each or either of them, and THREEPENCE per Mile for every
+    Mile they shall travel with them."
+
+History does not relate whether or no these gay deceivers were ever
+captured. If those who sought them relied upon the illustration, it would
+seem quite likely that they never were!
+
+
+
+
+XLV
+
+
+[Sidenote: _THE ABBEY_]
+
+The Abbey is the very centre of Bath. Round it cluster the Municipal
+Offices, the Baths, and the Pump Room, and along the broad pavements
+invalids are drawn in Bath chairs--one of the five articles with which
+the name of the City is indissolubly linked. When Bath chairs, Bath chaps,
+Bath stone, and Bath buns are no longer so distinguished, then will come
+the final crash. One need not insist so greatly upon Bath Olivers, because
+they are not in every one's mouth, either literally or figuratively;
+although, to be sure, they are much more exclusively a local product than
+"Bath" buns; while "Bath" bricks are not made at Bath, but at Bridgewater.
+
+The surroundings of Bath Abbey are strikingly Continental in appearance,
+for that great church stands in a flagged _place_, instead of being set in
+a green and shady close, as usually is the case in England. Its
+surroundings have always been thronged, from the time when the Flying
+Machines crawled, to when the last of the mail coaches drew up in front of
+the "White Lion," in the Market Place hard by, or at the "White Hart,"
+which stood until 1866, where the "Grand Pump Room" Hotel now rises. The
+story of the Abbey is too long for these pages; but it is remarkable at
+once for being one of the very latest Gothic buildings in the country; for
+its possessing windows so large and so many that it has been called the
+"Lantern of England;" for its central tower, which is not square, being
+eleven feet narrower on its north and south sides than those to the east
+and west; and for the prodigious number of small marble and stone memorial
+tablets on its interior walls--tablets so many that they gave rise to the
+famous epigram by Quin:--
+
+  "These walls, so full of monument and bust,
+  Shew how Bath waters serve to lay the dust."
+
+Quite distinguished dust it is, too. Noblemen and dames of high degree;
+Admirals of the Blue, the White, the Red; legal, and military, and
+clerical dignitaries, and all manner of Civil servants, mostly of the
+mid-eighteenth century, and chiefly hailing from India and the Colonies,
+as described with much pomp and circumstance on their cenotaphs which so
+thickly cover the walls, and spoil the architectural effect. "The Bath,"
+was the solace of their kind, returning from the Tropics with nutmeg
+livers, gout, and autocratic ways. At "the Bath" they resided on half-pay,
+drank the waters, supported the local doctors, quarrelled with their
+neighbours, and consistently damned all "new-fangled notions," until death
+laid them by the heels.
+
+[Illustration: BATH ABBEY: THE WEST FRONT.]
+
+There must have been--if we are capable of believing their epitaphs--some
+paragons of all the virtues in those times, and Bath seems to have claimed
+them all. Here, for instance, is Alicia, Countess of Erroll, "in whom was
+combined every virtue that could adorn human nature." She died young; the
+world is too wicked for such.
+
+[Sidenote: _"JACOB'S LADDER"_]
+
+Bath Abbey is remarkable in one respect far above all the minsters and
+cathedrals of England. As you stand facing the great West Front, which
+looks so grim and grey upon the stony courtyard that stretches before it,
+you see, flanking the immense west window, two heavy piers, terminating in
+turrets. On these piers are carved the singular representations of
+"Jacob's Ladder" that have given the Abbey a fame even beyond the merit
+of its architecture. From near the ground-level, almost to the turrets,
+this curious carving stretches, battered long years ago by the fury of an
+age which prided itself on its enmity to "superstitious images," and
+reduced by the further neglect of more than two hundred years to an almost
+shapeless mass. The origin of this curious decoration is found in the
+vision of Bishop Oliver King, who restored the then ruined Abbey in 1499.
+In this vision, by which he was induced to undertake the great work, he
+saw angels ascending and descending a ladder, and heard a voice say, "Let
+an Olive establish a Crown, and let a King restore the Church." He
+interpreted this as a Divine injunction to himself to repair the Abbey,
+and accordingly commenced the work; dying, however, before it was
+completed. The "ladders" have sculptured angels on them, while on the wall
+above the arch of the great window is represented a great concourse of
+adoring angels, with a figure of God in glory in their midst. Many of the
+figures have their heads knocked off; but the whole of this sculpture is
+shortly to be restored.
+
+
+
+
+XLVI
+
+
+Bath entered upon a dead period about 1820. For a long while the newer and
+more easily reached glories of Brighton had taken the mere fashionables
+away, and even the waters were less favoured. Continental wars had ceased,
+and unpatriotic Britons flocked to foreign spas instead; Bath looking
+idly on and letting its customers go.
+
+[Illustration: THE ROMAN BATH, RESTORED.]
+
+It was some ten years later that Dickens visited Bath. From what he saw
+there he drew his portraits of place and persons in the "Pickwick Papers;"
+and the impression after reading them is undoubtedly one of faded
+gentility.
+
+So it remained until after the visit of the British Association in 1864,
+when the advice of the scientific men to the Corporation--to bring back
+business by providing more up-to-date accommodation--was laid to heart,
+and improvements begun. Since then the City has steadily climbed back
+again to the favour of invalids and the medical profession, and new Baths
+and all manner of modern appliances, a new railway station, and an air of
+an enlightened modernity, bid fair to keep Bath successful against all
+foreign competition for a long time to come.
+
+[Sidenote: _MODERN BATH_]
+
+Since this Renaissance of thirty-five years ago was begun, many things
+have happened at Bath. Roman remains, more extensive than ever the bygone
+generations suspected, have been discovered, and excavations have lain
+bare baths long covered up by shabby and altogether undistinguished
+buildings. Judicious restoration has preserved the great Roman Bath, long
+a scene of wreck and shattered stones, and has brought it into use again.
+This restored Bath affords perhaps the most picturesque view in the City,
+for from its margin one may gaze upwards and see to great advantage the
+beautiful tower of the Abbey soaring aloft; its late Gothic architecture
+contrasting piquantly with the classic elegance of that restored
+bathing-place, while the reflections of the columns deep down in the quiet
+pool give a singularly complete sense of restfulness.
+
+All this modern prosperity is, no doubt, very gratifying, but prosperity
+means much building, and Bath has now its suburbs; uncharted stretches of
+new villas, isolated, or in streets, that climb the hillsides of Combe
+Down, Beechen Cliff, and Lansdowne, and help to destroy Macaulay's
+well-known, if something too overdrawn, architectural picture of Bath, as
+"that beautiful City which charms even eyes familiar with the masterpieces
+of Bramante and Palladio, and which" (horrible literary solecism!) "the
+genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney and of Jane Austen,
+has made classic ground."
+
+Bath, indeed, was a jewel set in midst of her picturesque amphitheatre of
+rocky and wooded hills; but now that those hills and those woods are being
+covered with houses whose architecture is less calculated to "charm the
+eyes familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio" than were
+the buildings of a century and a half ago, the setting of the jewel is by
+way of becoming tarnished. Now, also, it has been reserved to these times
+of cheap railway carriage of goods for brick houses to be seen at Bath;
+the one place in the world where brick never had an opportunity until
+these latter days of the "combine" of the allied "Bath Stone Firms," which
+has raised the price of Bath stone, so that in certain cases it has been
+found cheaper to bring bricks from the Midlands to build houses in Bath
+than to use the stone quarried on the spot. So, in the wilderness of new
+suburbs, the traveller who is whisked away by rail to Bristol may see, to
+his astonishment, amid the stone houses, rows of the most undeniable
+red-brick villas. And thus has come the spirit of what the late Professor
+Freeman was pleased to call "modernity" over Bath, once the peculiar
+preserve of stone and Classicism.
+
+
+The End
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Ailesbury, Marquis of, 183-185
+
+  Allen, Ralph, 242-250
+
+  "Allen's stall," 34-38
+
+  Anne, Queen, 6, 237, 238
+
+  Apsley House, 34-38
+
+  Arlington, Earl of, 90
+
+  Avebury, 198-203
+
+
+  Banks, Sir Joseph, 93
+
+  Bath, 2-15, 228-270
+
+  Batheaston, 227, 242
+
+  ---- Vase, 241
+
+  Bathford, 227
+
+  Bathampton, 228
+
+  Bath stone, 223-227, 268
+
+  Bathwick, 246
+
+  Beckhampton, 203-205
+
+  Berkeley, Earls of, 82-84, 87, 89
+
+  "Berkshire Lady," the, 141-145, 158
+
+  Bladud, Prince, 231, 243
+
+  Box, 203, 223-227
+
+  ---- Hill, 224, 227
+
+  ---- Tunnel, 223
+
+  Brentford, 70
+
+
+  Calcot, 141-145
+
+  Calne, 203, 206, 209
+
+  Cherhill, 205-207
+
+  Chippenham, 17, 203, 210-215, 253
+
+  Chiswick High Road, 58, 65
+
+  Church Speen, 153, 165, 166
+
+  Coaches:--
+    "Beaufort Hunt," 26, 204
+    "Flying Machines," 5, 69, 260
+    "Light Post" coach, 30
+    Mail coaches, 10, 11, 17-19, 27
+    "Regulator," 16
+    "York House," 26
+
+  Coaching era, 4-33, 204
+
+  ---- fares, 5, 28
+
+  ---- miseries, 9, 15-19
+
+  Coaching notabilities:--
+    Chaplin, Edward, 21, 90
+    ---- and Horne, 90
+    Cooper, Thomas, 21
+    Everett, Jack, 204
+
+  Colnbrook, 97-103
+
+  Colne, River, 96-98, 103
+
+  Corsham Regis, 218, 221-223, 224
+
+  Cranford, 82, 85, 86-89
+
+  ---- Bridge, 29, 84, 97
+
+  Cross Keys, 218
+
+  Cycling records, 215-218
+
+
+  Darell, William, 173-182
+
+
+  Froxfield, 182
+
+  Fyfield, 192
+
+
+  Great Western Railway, 27, 74, 108-110, 124, 134, 149, 221, 227
+
+  Gunnersbury, 63, 68
+
+
+  Hammersmith, 58, 63
+
+  Hare Hatch, 134
+
+  Harlington, 89-91
+
+  ---- Corner, 89
+
+  Harmondsworth, 94-96
+
+  Henry VIII., 13-138
+
+  Highwaymen, 40-45, 56, 67-69, 71, 74-84, 87, 91-94, 111-116, 118, 129
+
+  Hock-tide, 167-173
+
+  Hounslow, 19, 71-74, 92
+
+  ---- Heath, 69, 71, 74-84, 86, 92, 111
+
+  Hungerford, 146, 166-173
+
+  Hyde Park Corner, 33-40, 74, 94, 166
+
+
+  Inns (mentioned at length):--
+    "Bear," Maidenhead, 25, 129
+    "Bell and Bottle," Knowl Hill, 133
+    "Black Bull," Holborn, 31
+    "Castle," Marlborough, 17, 21, 187, 192
+    ----, Salt Hill, 92, 107
+    "Greyhound," Maidenhead, 127
+    "Halfway House," Kensington, 40, 43, 45
+    "Hercules' Pillars," Hyde Park Corner, 34
+    "King's Head," Longford, 97
+    "Magpies," 90
+    "Old Bell," Holborn, 31-33
+    "Old Magpies," 91
+    "Old Pack Horse," Turnham Green, 66-68
+    "Old Windmill," Turnham Green, 65
+    "Ostrich," Colnbrook, 99-103
+    "Pack Horse and Talbot," Turnham Green, 59, 66
+    "Peggy Bedford," Longford, 97
+    "Pelican," Speenhamland, 15, 150, 253
+    "Red Cow," Brook Green, 56-58
+    "Robin Hood," Turnham Green, 63-65
+    "Waggon and Horses," Beckhampton, 203-205
+    "White Bear," Piccadilly, 26
+    "White Bear," Fickles Hole, 26
+    "White Hart," Bath, 260
+    "White Horse," Fetter Lane, 16, 30
+    "White Lion," Bath, 22, 26, 260
+    "York House," Bath, 26
+
+
+  Jack of Newbury, 150-154, 157-161
+
+
+  Kennet, River, 146, 152, 166, 186, 193
+
+  Kensington, 34, 40, 44, 46-55
+
+  Kew Bridge, 68
+
+  Kiln Green, 133
+
+  Knightsbridge, 34, 40, 44
+
+  Knowl Hill, 133
+
+
+  Langley Broom, 104
+
+  ---- Marish, 104
+
+  Littlecote, 173-182
+
+  Longford, 94, 96
+
+
+  Maidenhead, 33, 122, 124-130
+
+  ---- Thicket, 111, 129-133
+
+  Mail coaches established, 10
+
+  Manton, 194
+
+  Marlborough, 22, 26, 182, 186-193, 204
+
+  ---- College, 188, 192
+
+  ---- Downs, 17, 197-201, 205, 253
+
+  Maud Heath's Causeway, 213-215
+
+
+  Nash, Beau, 238-240, 243, 250
+
+  Newbury, 18, 138, 146, 150-166, 253
+
+  ----, battles of, 161-165
+
+
+  Old-time travellers:--
+    Campbell, Rev. Thomas, 252-255
+    Moritz, Pastor, 116-123
+
+
+  Palmer, George, 135
+
+  ----, John, 10, 242, 243
+
+  Pickwick, 218-221
+
+  Postage of letters, 10-15, 167
+
+  Prior Park, 243, 246
+
+
+  Quemerford, 206
+
+
+  Reading, 18, 29, 130, 134-138
+
+
+  Salt Hill, 92, 106-111, 122
+
+  Savernake Forest, 182-185, 194
+
+  Sham Castle, 249
+
+  Silbury Hill, 198-203
+
+  Sipson Green, 91
+
+  Speen, 153, 165, 166
+
+  Speenhamland, 150, 253
+
+  Stackhouse, Rev. Thomas, 153
+
+
+  Taplow, 108, 124
+
+  Tetsworth water, 105
+
+  Thatcham, 21, 146, 149, 153
+
+  Theale, 145, 162
+
+  Turnham Green, 58-68
+
+  Turnpike gates, 11, 34, 45, 73, 166
+
+  Twyford, 130, 134
+
+
+  Wainewright, Thomas Griffiths, 59
+
+  Walcot, 228
+
+  West Kennet, 197
+
+  ---- Overton, 197
+
+  "Wild Darell," 173-182
+
+  Woolhampton, 146-149
+
+  Wyatt's Rebellion, 38
+
+
+  "Young's Corner," 58
+
+
+PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Stranger still, the chief informer was named Porter.
+
+[2] Tawell had poisoned his sweetheart, who, before dying, had time to
+denounce him to her friends. They pursued him to the station, but when
+they arrived there the train had gone. The telegram sent was in these
+words:--
+
+"A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill, and the suspected murderer
+was seen to take a first-class ticket for London by the train which left
+Slough at 7.42 p.m. He is in the garb of a Quaker, with a brown great-coat
+on, which reaches nearly to his feet. He is in the last compartment of the
+second-class carriage."
+
+At Paddington he took a City omnibus, but the conductor was a policeman in
+disguise, and dogged his footsteps from one coffee-house to another, which
+he is supposed to have entered for the purpose of setting up an _alibi_.
+At length, as he was stepping into a lodging-house in the City, the police
+tapped him on the shoulder, with the question, "Haven't you just come from
+Slough?" Tawell confusedly denied the fact, but he was arrested, with the
+result already recounted.
+
+[3] Lord Iveagh's name is Guinness. Unfortunately for the thoroughness of
+the jest, there are but thirteen chapters in the Epistle to the Hebrews.
+
+[4] It was about 1630 that the town of Marlborough obtained a new grant of
+arms in place of its old shield of a "Castle _argent_, on a field
+_sable_." The new shield, still in use, is heraldically described as--"Per
+Saltire, gules and azure. In chief, a Bull passant, argent, armed or. In
+fess, two Capons, argent. In base, three greyhounds courant in pale,
+argent. On a chief, or, a pale charged with a Tower triple-towered, or,
+between two Roses, gules. Crest--On a wreath, a Mount, vert, culminated by
+a Tower triple-towered, argent. Supporters: two Greyhounds, argent." These
+arms are intended to perpetuate the memory of the ancient custom in
+Marlborough of the aldermen and burgesses presenting the mayor for the
+time being with a leash of white greyhounds, a white bull, and two white
+capons.
+
+[5] "There are many pleasanter places, even in this dreary world, than
+Marlborough Downs when it blows hard; and if you throw in beside a gloomy
+winter's evening, a miry and sloppy road, and a pelting fall of heavy
+rain, and try the effect, by way of experiment, in your own proper person,
+you will experience the full force of this observation."
+
+The traveller's horse stopped before "a road-side inn on the right-hand
+side of the way, about half a quarter of a mile from the end of the
+Downs.... It was a strange old place, built of a kind of shingle, inlaid,
+as it were, with cross-beams, with gabled-topped windows projecting
+completely over the pathway, and a low door with a dark porch and a couple
+of steep steps leading down into the house, instead of the modern fashion
+of half a dozen shallow ones leading up to it."
+
+[6] That the Romans knew the city we call Bath as _Aquae Solis_--the
+"Waters of the Sun"--we learn from the ancient history of Britain. A
+highly interesting light upon this is furnished by the sculptured stone
+discovered some years since, and now in the local museum, which shows a
+decorative representation of the head of the Sun God from whose face
+radiate sun-rays, alternately with serpents.
+
+[7] Once the recognized pronunciation of the word. The great Duke of
+Wellington was probably the last who spoke it thus.
+
+[8] He meant Chippenham.
+
+
+
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