The walk from Oatlands Park Hotel to Cobham is beautiful with
memorials of Older England. Even on the grounds there is a quaint brick
gateway, which is the only relic of a palace which preceded the present
pile. The grandfather was indeed a stately edifice, built by Henry
VIII., improved and magnified, according to his lights, by Inigo Jones,
and then destroyed during the civil war. The river is here very
beautiful, and the view was once painted by Turner. It abounds in
“short windings and reaches.” Here it is, indeed, the Olerifera
Thamesis, as it was called by Guillaume le Breton in his “Phillipeis,”
in the days of Richard the Lion Heart. Here the eyots and banks still
recall Norman days, for they are “wild and were;” and there is even yet
a wary otter or two, known to the gypsies and fishermen, which may be
seen of moonlight nights plunging or swimming silently in the haunted
water.
Now we pass Walton Church, and look in, that my friend may see the
massy Norman pillars and arches, the fine painted glass, and the
brasses. One of these represents John Selwyn, who was keeper of the
royal park of Oatlands in 1587. Tradition, still current in the
village, says that Selwyn was a man of wondrous strength and of rare
skill in horsemanship. Once, when Queen Elizabeth was present at a stag
hunt, he leaped from his horse upon the back of the stag, while both
were running at full speed, kept his seat gracefully, guided the animal
towards the queen, and stabbed him so deftly that he fell dead at her
majesty's feet. It was daintily done, and doubtless Queen Bess, who
loved a proper man, was well pleased. The brass plate represents Selwyn
as riding on the stag, and there is in the village a shop where the
neat old dame who presides, or her daughter, will sell you for a penny
a picture of the plate, and tell you the story into the bargain. In it
the valiant ranger sits on the stag, which he is stabbing through the
neck with his couteau de chasse, looking meanwhile as solemn as
if he were sitting in a pew and listening to De profundis. He
who is great in one respect seldom fails in some other, and there is in
the church another and a larger brass, from which it appears that
Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who are depicted
in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monuments by Roubiliac
and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar lies
buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of Butler's
“Hudibras.” And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to his memory,
which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has left it in
print that this “fair black marble stone” cost him 6 pounds 4_s. 6_d.
When I was a youth, and used to pore in the old Franklin Library of
Philadelphia over Lilly, I never thought that his grave would be so
near my home. But a far greater literary favorite of mine lies buried
in the church-yard without. This is Dr. Maginn, the author of “Father
Tom and the Pope,” and many another racy, subtle jest. A fellow of
infinite humor,—the truest disciple of Rabelais,—and here he lies
without a monument!
Summon the sexton, and let us ask him to show us the scold's, or
gossip's, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the
vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred
years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted
with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that
all moral suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old
Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere
sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone).
For such diavolas they had made—what the sexton is just going to show
you—a muzzle of thin iron bars, which pass around the head and are
padlocked behind. In front a flat piece of iron enters the mouth and
keeps down the tongue. On it is the date 1633, and certain lines, no
longer legible:—
“Chester presents Walton with a bridle,
To curb women's tongues that talk too idle.”
A sad story, if we only knew it all! What tradition tells is that
long ago there was a Master Chester, who lost a fine estate through the
idle, malicious clack of a gossiping, lying woman. “What is good for a
bootless bene?” What he did was to endow the church with this admirable
piece of head-gear. And when any woman in the parish was unanimously
adjudged to be deserving of the honor, the bridle was put on her head
and tongue, and she was led about town by the beadle as an example to
all the scolding sisterhood. Truly, if it could only be applied to the
women and men who repeat gossip, rumors reports, on dits, small
slanders, proved or unproved, to all gobe-mouches, club-gabblers,
tea-talkers and tattlers, chatterers, church-twaddlers, wonderers
if-it-be-true-what-they-say; in fine, to the entire sister and brother
hood of tongue-waggers, I for one would subscribe my mite to have one
kept in every church in the world, to be zealously applied to their
vile jaws. For verily the mere Social Evil is an angel of light on this
earth as regards doing evil, compared to the Sociable Evil,—and thus
endeth the first lesson.
We leave the church, so full of friendly memories. In this one
building alone there are twenty things known to me from a boy. For from
boyhood I have held in my memory those lines by Queen Elizabeth which
she uttered here, and have read Lilly and Ashmole and Maginn; and this
is only one corner in merrie England! Am I a stranger here? There is a
father-land of the soul, which has no limits to him who, far sweeping
on the wings of song and history, goes forth over many lands.
We have but a little farther to go on our way before we come to the
quaint old manor-house which was of old the home of President Bradshaw,
the grim old Puritan. There is an old sailor in the village, who owns a
tavern, and he says, and the policeman agrees with him, that it was in
this house that the death-warrant of King Charles the First was signed.
Also, that there is a subterranean passage which leads from it to the
Thames, which was in some way connected with battle, murder, plots,
Puritans, sudden death, and politics; though how this was is more than
legend can clearly explain. Whether his sacred majesty was led to
execution through this cavity, or whether Charles the Second had it for
one of his numerous hiding-places, or returned through it with Nell
Gwynn from his exile, are other obscure points debated among the
villagers. The truth is that the whole country about Walton is
subterrened with strange and winding ways, leading no one knows
whither, dug in the days of the monks or knights, from one
long-vanished monastery or castle to the other. There is the opening to
one of these hard by the hotel, but there was never any gold found in
it that ever I heard of. And all the land is full of legend, and ghosts
glide o' nights along the alleys, and there is an infallible fairy well
at hand, named the Nun, and within a short walk stands the tremendous
Crouch oak, which was known of Saxon days. Whoever gives but a little
of its bark to a lady will win her love. It takes its name from
croix (a cross), according to Mr. Kemble, {134} and it is
twenty-four feet in girth. Its first branch, which is forty-eight feet
long, shoots out horizontally, and is almost as large as the trunk.
Under this tree Wickliffe preached, and Queen Elizabeth dined.
It has been well said by Irving that the English, from the great
prevalence of rural habits throughout every class of society, have been
extremely fond of those festivals and holidays which agreeably
interrupt the stillness of country life. True, the days have gone when
burlesque pageant and splendid procession made even villages
magnificent. Harp and tabor and viol are no longer heard in every inn
when people would be merry, and men have forgotten how to give
themselves up to headlong roaring revelry. The last of this tremendous
frolicking in Europe died out with the last yearly kermess in
Amsterdam, and it was indeed wonderful to see with what utter
abandon the usually stolid Dutch flung themselves into a rushing
tide of frantic gayety. Here and there in England a spark of the old
fire, lit in mediaeval times, still flickers, or perhaps flames, as at
Dorking in the annual foot-ball play, which is carried on with such
vigor that two or three thousand people run wild in it, while all the
windows and street lamps are carefully screened for protection. But
notwithstanding the gradually advancing republicanism of the age, which
is dressing all men alike, bodily and mentally, the rollicking
democracy of these old-fashioned festivals, in which the peasant
bonneted the peer without ceremony, and rustic maids ran races en
chemise for a pound of tea, is entirely too leveling for culture.
There are still, however, numbers of village fairs, quietly conducted,
in which there is much that is pleasant and picturesque, and this at
Cobham was as pretty a bit of its kind as I ever saw. These are
old-fashioned and gay in their little retired nooks, and there the
plain people show themselves as they really are. The better class of
the neighborhood, having no sympathy with such sports or scenes, do not
visit village fairs. It is, indeed, a most exceptional thing to see any
man who is a “gentleman,” according to the society standard, in any
fair except Mayfair in London.
Cobham is well built for dramatic display. Its White Lion Inn is of
the old coaching days, and the lion on its front is a very impressive
monster, one of the few relics of the days when signs were signs in
spirit and in truth. In this respect the tavern keeper of to-day is a
poor snob, that he thinks a sign painted or carven is degenerate and
low, and therefore announces, in a line of letters, that his
establishment is the Pig and Whistle, just as his remote predecessor
thought it was low, or slow, or old-fashioned to dedicate his ale-shop
to Pigen Wassail or Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more
genteel and secular form. In the public place were rows of booths
arranged in streets forming imperium in imperio, a town within a
town. There was of course the traditional gilt gingerbread, and the
cheering but not inebriating ginger-beer, dear to the youthful palate,
and not less loved by the tired pedestrian, when, mixed half and half
with ale, it foams before him as shandy gaff. There, too, were
the stands, presided over by jaunty, saucy girls, who would load a
rifle for you and give you a prize or a certain number of shots for a
shilling. You may be a good shot, but the better you shoot the less
likely will you be to hit the bull's-eye with the rifle which that
black-eyed Egyptian minx gives you; for it is artfully curved and
false-sighted, and the rifle was made only to rifle your pocket, and
the damsel to sell you with her smiles, and the doll is stuffed with
sawdust, and life is not worth living for, and Miching Mallocko says
it,—albeit I believe he lives at times as if there might be moments
when it was forgot.
And we had not been long on the ground before we were addressed
furtively and gravely by a man whom it required a second glance to
recognize as Samuel Petulengro, so artfully was he disguised as a
simple-seeming agriculturalist of the better lower-class. But that
there remained in Sam's black eyes that glint of the Romany which
nothing could disguise, one would have longed to buy a horse of him.
And in the same quiet way there came, one by one, out of the crowd, six
others, all speaking in subdued voices, like conspirators, and in
Romany, as if it were a sin. And all were dressed rustically, and the
same with intent to deceive, and all had the solemn air of very small
farmers, who must sell that horse at any sacrifice. But when I saw
Sam's horses I marked that his disguise of himself was nothing to the
wondrous skill with which he had converted his five-pound screws into
something comparatively elegant. They had been curried, clipped,
singed, and beautified to the last resource, and the manner in which
the finest straw had been braided into mane and tail was a miracle of
art. This was jour de fete for Sam and his diddikai, or
half-blood pals; his foot was on his native heath in the horse-fair,
where all inside the ring knew the gypsy, and it was with pride that he
invited us to drink ale, and once in the bar-room, where all assembled
were jockeys and sharps, conversed loudly in Romany, in order to
exhibit himself and us to admiring friends. A Romany rye, on such
occasions, is to a Sam Petulengro what a scion of royalty is to minor
aristocracy when it can lure him into its nets. To watch one of these
small horse-dealers at a fair, and to observe the manner in which he
conducts his bargains, is very curious. He lounges about all day,
apparently doing nothing; he is the only idler around. Once in a while
somebody approaches him and mutters something, to which he gives a
brief reply. Then he goes to a tap-room or stable-yard, and is merged
in a mob of his mates. But all the while he is doing sharp clicks of
business. There is somebody talking to another party about that
horse; somebody telling a farmer that he knows a young man as has
got a likely 'oss at 'arf price, the larst of a lot which he wants to
clear out, and it may be 'ad, but if the young man sees 'im [the
farmer] he may put it on 'eavy.
Then the agent calls in one of the disguised Romanys to testify to
the good qualities of the horse. They look at it, but the third
deguise, who has it in charge, avers that it has just been sold to
a gentleman. But they have another. By this time the farmer wishes he
had bought the horse. When any coin slips from between our fingers, and
rolls down through a grating into the sewer, we are always sure that it
was a sovereign, and not a half-penny. Yes, and the fish which drops
back from the line into the river is always the biggest take—or
mistake—of the day. And this horse was a bargain, and the three in
disguise say so, and wish they had a hundred like it. But there comes a
Voice from the depths, a casual remark, offering to bet that 'ere gent
won't close on that hoss. “Bet yer ten bob he will.” “Done.” “How do
yer know he don't take the hoss?” “He carn't; he's too heavy loaded
with Bill's mare. Says he'll sell it for a pound better.” The farmer
begins to see his way. He is shrewd; it may be that he sees through all
this myth of “the gentleman.” But his attention has been attracted to
the horse. Perhaps he pays a little more, or “the pound better;” in
greater probability he gets Sam's horse for the original price. There
are many ways among gypsies of making such bargains, but the motive
power of them all is taderin, or drawing the eye of the
purchaser, a game not unknown to Gorgios. I have heard of a German
yahud in Philadelphia, whose little boy Moses would shoot from the
door with a pop-gun or squirt at passers-by, or abuse them vilely, and
then run into the shop for shelter. They of course pursued him and
complained to the parent, who immediately whipped his son, to the great
solace of the afflicted ones. And then the afflicted seldom failed to
buy something in that shop, and the corrected son received ten per
cent. of the profit. The attention of the public had been drawn.
As we went about looking at people and pastimes, a Romany, I think
one of the Ayres, said to me,—
“See the two policemen? They're following you two gentlemen. They
saw you pallin' with Bowers. That Bowers is the biggest blackguard on
the roads between London and Windsor. I don't want to hurt his
charackter, but it's no bad talkin' nor dusherin of him to say
that no decent Romanys care to go with him. Good at a mill? Yes, he's
that. A reg'lar wastimengro, I call him. And that's why it is.”
Now there was in the fair a vast institution which proclaimed by a
monstrous sign and by an excessive eruption of advertisement that it
was THE SENSATION OF THE AGE. This was a giant hand-organ in connection
with a forty-bicycle merry-go-round, all propelled by steam. And as we
walked about the fair, the two rural policemen, who had nothing better
to do, shadowed or followed us, their bucolic features expressing the
intensest suspicion allied to the extremest stupidity; when suddenly
the Sensation of the Age struck up the Gendarme's chorus, “We'll run
'em in,” from Genevieve de Brabant, and the arrangement was complete.
Of all airs ever composed this was the most appropriate to the
occasion, and therefore it played itself. The whole formed quite a
little opera-bouffe, gypsies not being wanting. And as we came round,
in our promenade, the pretty girl, with her rifle in hand, implored us
to take a shot, and the walk wound up by her finally letting fly
herself and ringing the bell.
That pretty girl might or might not have a touch of Romany blood in
her veins, but it is worth noting that among all these show-men and
show-women, acrobats, exhibitors of giants, purse-droppers,
gingerbread-wheel gamblers, shilling knife-throwers,
pitch-in-his-mouths, Punches, Cheap-Jacks, thimble-rigs, and patterers
of every kind there is always a leaven and a suspicion of gypsiness. If
there be not descent, there is affinity by marriage, familiarity,
knowledge of words and ways, sweethearting and trafficking, so that
they know the children of the Rom as the house-world does not know
them, and they in some sort belong together. It is a muddle, perhaps,
and a puzzle; I doubt if anybody quite understands it. No novelist, no
writer whatever, has as yet clearly explained the curious fact
that our entire nomadic population, excepting tramps, is not, as we
thought in our childhood, composed of English people like ourselves. It
is leavened with direct Indian blood; it has, more or less modified, a
peculiar morale. It was old before the Saxon heptarchy.
I was very much impressed at this fair with the extensive and
unsuspected amount of Romany existent in our rural population. We had
to be satisfied, as we came late into the tavern for lunch, with cold
boiled beef and carrots, of which I did not complain, as cold carrots
are much nicer than warm, a fact too little understood in cookery.
There were many men in the common room, mostly well dressed, and decent
even if doubtful looking. I observed that several used Romany words in
casual conversation. I came to the conclusion at last that all who were
present knew something of it. The greatly reprobated Bowers was not
himself a gypsy, but he had a gypsy wife. He lived in a cottage not far
from Walton, and made baskets, while his wife roamed far and near,
selling them; and I have more than once stopped and sent for a pot of
ale, and shared it with Bill, listening meantime to his memories of the
road as he caned chairs or “basketed.” I think his reputation came
rather from a certain Bohemian disregard of convenances and of
appearances than from any deeply-seated sinfulness. For there are
Bohemians even among gypsies; everything in this life being relative
and socially-contractive. When I came to know the disreputable William
well, I found in him the principles of Panurge, deeply identified with
the morale of Falstaff; a wondrous fund of unbundled humor,
which expressed itself more by tones than words; a wisdom based on the
practices of the prize-ring; and a perfectly sympathetic admiration of
my researches into Romany. One day, at Kingston Fair, as I wished to
depart, I asked Bill the way to the station. “I will go with you and
show you,” he said. But knowing that he had business in the fair I
declined his escort. He looked at me as if hurt.
“Does tute pen mandy'd chore tute?” (Do you think I would rob
you or pick your pockets?) For he believed I was afraid of it. I
knew Bill better. I knew that he was perfectly aware that I was about
the only man in England who had a good opinion of him in any way, or
knew what good there was in him. When a femme incomprise, a
woman not as yet found out, discovers at last the man who is so much a
master of the art of flattery as to satisfy somewhat her inordinate
vanity, she is generally grateful enough to him who has thus gratified
her desires to refrain from speaking ill of him, and abuse those who
do, especially the latter. In like manner, Bill Bowers, who was every
whit as interesting as any femme incomprise in Belgravia, or
even Russell Square, believing that I had a little better opinion of
him than anybody else, would not only have refrained from robbing me,
but have proceeded to lam with his fists anybody else who would have
done so,—the latter proceeding being, from his point of view, only a
light, cheerful, healthy, and invigorating exercise, so that, as he
said, and as I believe truthfully, “I'd rather be walloped than not
fight.” Even as my friend H. had rather lose than not play “farrer.”
This was a very pretty little country fair at Cobham; pleasant and
purely English. It was very picturesque, with its flags, banners, gayly
bedecked booths, and mammoth placards, there being, as usual, no lack
of color or objects. I wonder that Mr. Frith, who has given with such
idiomatic genius the humors of the Derby, has never painted an
old-fashioned rural fair like this. In a few years the last of them
will have been closed, and the last gypsy will be there to look on.
There was a pleasant sight in the afternoon, when all at once, as it
seemed to me, there came hundreds of pretty, rosy-cheeked children into
the fair. There were twice as many of them as of grown people. I think
that, the schools being over for the day, they had been sent a-fairing
for a treat. They swarmed in like small bee-angels, just escaped from
some upset celestial hive; they crowded around the booths, buying
little toys, chattering, bargaining, and laughing, when my eye caught
theirs, as though to be noticed was the very best joke in the whole
world. They soon found out the Sensation of the Age, and the mammoth
steam bicycle was forthwith crowded with the happy little creatures,
raptured in all the glory of a ride. The cars looked like baskets full
of roses. It was delightful to see them: at first like grave and stolid
little Anglo-Saxons, occupied seriously with the new Sensation; then
here and there beaming with thawing jollity; then smiling like sudden
sun-gleams; and then laughing, until all were in one grand chorus, as
the speed became greater, and the organ roared out its notes as rapidly
as a runaway musical locomotive, and the steam-engine puffed in time,
until a high-pressure scream told that the penn'orth of fun was up.
As we went home in the twilight, and looked back at the trees and
roofs of the village, in dark silhouette against the gold-bronze sky,
and heard from afar and fitfully the music of the Great Sensation
mingled with the beat of a drum and the shouts of the crowd, rising and
falling with the wind, I felt a little sad, that the age, in its
advancing refinement, is setting itself against these old-fashioned
merry-makings, and shrinking like a weakling from all out-of-doors
festivals, on the plea of their being disorderly, but in reality
because they are believed to be vulgar. They come down to us from rough
old days; but they are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at
least kind and hearty. We admire that life on the stage, we ape it in
novels, we affect admiration and appreciation of its rich
picturesqueness and vigorous originality, and we lie in so doing; for
there is not an aesthetic prig in London who could have lived an hour
in it. Truly, I should like to know what Francois Villon and Chaucer
would have thought of some of their modern adorers, or what the lioness
Fair-sinners of the olden time would have had to say to the nervous
weaklings who try to play the genial blackguard in their praise! It is
to me the best joke of the age that those who now set themselves up for
priests of the old faith are the men, of all others, whom the old gods
would have kicked, cum magna injuria, out of the temple. When I
sit by Bill Bowers, as he baskets, and hear the bees buzz about his
marigolds, or in Plato Buckland's van, or with a few hearty and true
men of London town of whom I wot, then I know that the old
spirit liveth in its ashes; but there is little of it, I trow, among
its penny prig-trumpeters.