The Portsmouth Road and Its Tributaries Part 10

And now, having descanted upon the wisdom of the cobbler sticking to his last, or of the clergyman adhering rigorously to his spiritual functions, let us proceed to G.o.dalming on foot.

"Everybody that has been from G.o.dalming to Guildford knows," says Cobbett, "that there is hardly another such a pretty four miles in all England. The road is good; the soil is good; the houses are neat; the people are neat; the hills, the woods, the meadows, all are beautiful. Nothing wild and bold, to be sure, but exceedingly pretty; and it is almost impossible to ride along these four miles without feelings of pleasure, though you have rain for your companion, as it happened to be with me."

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST CATHERINE'S CHAPEL. _After J. M. W. Turner._]

There! is that not a pretty testimony in favour of this stretch of road?

And it is all the prettier, seeing from what source it comes; a source, to be sure, whence proceeded cursings and revilings, depreciations, and a thorough belittling of most things. Cobbett, you see, was a man with an infinite capacity for scorn and indignation, and that bias very frequently led him to take no account of things that a more evenly-balanced temper would have found delight in. But here is an altogether exceptional pa.s.sage, and therefore let us treasure it.

[Sidenote: _G.o.dALMING DERIVATIVES_]

When within sight of G.o.dalming, the road descends suddenly and proceeds along level lands through which runs the winding Wey. All around, a bold amphitheatre of hills closes the view, and the queer little town is set down by the meadows beside the river in the most moist and damp situation imaginable. It is among the smallest and least progressive of towns.h.i.+ps; with narrow streets, the most tortuous and deceptive, paved with granite setts and cobble-stones in varied patches. G.o.dalming is a town as old as the Kingdom of the South Saxons, and indeed derives its name from some seventh-century G.o.dhelm, to whom this fair meadowland (or "ing") then belonged. G.o.dhelm's Ing remains in, probably, almost the same condition now as when, a thousand years and more ago, the Saxon chieftain squatted down beside the Wey in this break of the hills and reared his flocks and herds, and was, in the fas.h.i.+on of those remote times, the father of his people. The little river runs its immemorial course, gnawed by winter flood and summer spate, through the alluvial soil of the valley; the gra.s.s grows green as ever, and the kine thrive as they have always done upon its succulent fare; the h.o.a.ry hills look down upon the lowlands in these days, when agitators would restore the Heptarchy, just as they did when the strife of the Eight Kingdoms watered the island with blood. Only G.o.dhelm and his contemporaries, with his descendants and many succeeding generations, are gone and have left no trace, save perhaps in the ancient divisions and hedges of the fields, like those of the greater part of England, old beyond the memory of man, or the evidence of engrossed parchments. Where the Saxon chieftain's primitive village arose, on a spot ever so little elevated above the grazing grounds beside the river, there run G.o.dalming streets to-day; their plan, if not so old as the days of this patriarch farmer, at least as ancient as the Norman Conquest, when the invaders dispossessed his descendants and kept them overawed by the strong castle of Guildford, perched in a strategic position, four miles up the road.

Not that those stolid agriculturists required much repression. Malcontents there might be elsewhere, but here, upon the borders of the great Andredwald--the dense forest that stretched almost continuously from the Thames to the South Coast--the peaceful herdsmen were content to acknowledge their new masters, so only they might be left undisturbed.

[Sidenote: _G.o.dALMING_]

And respectable obscurity has ever been the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristic of G.o.dalming. At intervals, indeed, we hear of it as the site of a hunting-lodge of the Merry Monarch; and once, in 1726, "G.o.dliman" (as the vulgar tongue had it then)[3] was the scene of a most remarkable imposture; but, generally speaking, the town lived on, the world forgetting and by the world forgot, saving only those whose business carried them here by coach on their way to or from Portsmouth; and G.o.dalming remained in their memories chiefly, no doubt, by reason of the excellent fare dispensed at the "King's Arms," where the coaches stopped.

The "King's Arms" is there to this day, in one of the pa.s.sage-like streets by the Market House; this last quite a curiosity in its way. The "King's Arms," doubtless so called from the frequent visits of Charles II. and his Court on their hunting expeditions, has a quite wonderful range of stables and outhouses, reached through a great doorway from the street, through which the mails and stages pa.s.sed in days when road-travel was your only choice who journeyed to and fro in the land. It is a matter of sixty years since those capacious stalls and broad-paved yards witnessed the stir and bustle of the stablemen, coachmen, post-boys, and all the horsey creatures who found employment in the care of coach and horses, and they are so many lumber-rooms to-day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARKET-HOUSE, G.o.dALMING.]

But G.o.dalming was a place notorious in the eighteenth century as the scene of one of the most impudent frauds ever practised upon the credulity of mankind. There have been those who have said that such trickery as that to which Mary Tofts, the "rabbit-breeder" of G.o.dalming, lent herself, would meet with no success in so enlightened an age as this; but in so saying those folk have done a little less than justice to the eighteenth century, and have been particularly lenient to the nineteenth, which has proved itself, in the matter of Mahatmas, at least as credulous as by-gone ages were.

[Sidenote: _MARY TOFTS_]

The story of Mary Tofts, if not edifying, is at least interesting. She was the wife of Joshua Tofts, a poor journeyman cloth-worker of this little town, and was described as of "a healthy, strong const.i.tution, small size, fair complexion, a very stupid and sullen temper, and unable to write or read." Stupid or not, she possessed sufficient cunning to maintain her fraud for some time, and even to delude some eminent surgeons of the day into a firm belief in her pretended births of rabbits. For this was the preposterous nature of the imposition, and she claimed to have given birth to no less than eighteen of them. She attempted to account for this remarkable progeny by recounting how, "when she was weeding a field, she saw a rabbit spring up near her, after which she ran, with another woman that was at work just by her: this set her a-longing for rabbits.... Soon after, another rabbit sprang up near the same place, which she likewise endeavoured to catch. The same night she dreamt that she was in a field with those two rabbits in her lap, and awoke with a sick fit, which lasted till morning; from that time, for above three months, she had a constant and strong desire to eat rabbits, but being very poor and indigent, could not procure any." A Mr. Howard, a medical man of Guildford, who claimed to have a.s.sisted Mary Tofts in giving birth to eighteen rabbits, seems, from the voluminous literature on this subject, to have been something of a party to the cheat; and even if we did not find him a guilty accomplice, there would remain the scarce more flattering designation of egregious dupe. But Mr. Howard, dupe or rogue, was extremely busy in publis.h.i.+ng to the world the particulars of this extraordinary case. The woman was brought over from G.o.dalming to Guildford, so that she might be under his more immediate care, and he wrote a letter to Dr. St. Andre, George I.'s surgeon and anatomist, asking him to come and satisfy himself of the truth of this marvel. St. Andre went to Guildford post-haste, and returned to London afterwards with portions of these miraculous rabbits, and with so firm a belief in the story that he wrote and published a pamphlet setting forth full details of these wonders--the first of a long series of tracts, serious and humorous, for and against the good faith of this story.

Public attention was now roused in the most extraordinary degree, and the subject of Mary Tofts and her rabbits was in every one's mouth. The caricaturists took the matter up, and Hogarth has left two engravings referring to it: a small plate ent.i.tled "Cunicularii, or the Wise Men of G.o.dliman," and another, a very large and most elaborate print, full of symbolism and cryptic allusions, ent.i.tled "Credulity, Superst.i.tion, and Fanaticism."

Even the clergymen of the time rushed into the fray, and one went so far as to a.s.sert that Mary Tofts was the fulfilment of a prophecy in Esdras.

[Sidenote: _DUPE OR ROGUE?_]

The King, too, was numbered among the believers, and things came to such a pa.s.s that ladies began to be alarmed with apprehensions of bringing into the world some unnatural progeny. "No one presumed to eat a rabbit,"

and the rent of rabbit-warrens sank to nothing. But a German Court physician--a Dr. Ahlers--who had proceeded to Guildford in order to report upon the matter to his Majesty, was rendered sceptical as much by the behaviour of Mr. Howard as by that of his interesting patient. He returned to town, convinced of trickery, and finally Mary Tofts and her medical adviser were brought to London and lodged in the Bagnio, Leicester Fields, where, in fear of combined threats of punishment and an artfully-pictured operation darkly hinted at by Sir Richard Manningham, she confessed that the fraud had been suggested to her by a woman, a neighbour at G.o.dalming, who, with the showman's instinct of Barnum, told her that here was a way to a good livelihood without the necessity of working for it. The part taken by Mr. Howard has never been satisfactorily explained, but as he was particularly insistent that Mary Tofts deserved a pension from the King on account of her rabbits, his part in the affair has, naturally, been looked upon with considerable suspicion. Doctor and patient were, however, committed to Tothill Fields, Bridewell.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARY TOFTS.]

Mary Tofts died many years later, in 1763, but a considerable time elapsed before she was forgotten, and portraits and pamphlets relating to her imposition found a ready sale. A rare tract, in which she is supposed to state her own case, still affords amus.e.m.e.nt to those who care to dig it up from the dusty acc.u.mulations of the British Museum. In it the interviewer of that age says, "It was thought fit to print her opinions _in puris naturalibus_, (_i. e._) in her own Stile and Spelling"; and a taste of her "stile" may be had from the following elegant extract:--

"Thof I be ripurzentid as an ignirunt littirat Wuman, as can nethur rite nor rede, yet I thank G.o.d I can do both; and thof mahaps I cant spel as well as sum peple as set up for authurs, yet I can rite trooth, and plane _Inglish_, wich is mor nor ani of um all has dun. As for settin my Mark to a papur, it was wen I wont well, and wos for goin the shortist wa to work: if tha had axt me to rite my name, I wood hav dun it; but tha onli bid me set my mark, as kunclooding I cood not rite my nam, but tha was mistakn."

And here is emphasis indeed!--

"All as has bin sad, except what I have here written, is a damd kunfounded ly.

"MERRY TUFT."

Mary Tofts made one more public appearance before she joined the great majority, and that was an occasion as little to her credit as the other.

Thus we read that, in 1740, she was committed to Guildford Gaol for receiving stolen goods!

XIX

[Sidenote: _VICARS VIGOROUS AND VARIOUS_]

In a more than usually quiet street, upon the edge of the town, stands the old church of G.o.dalming, dedicated to SS. Peter and Paul, whose tall leaden spire rises with happy effect above the roofs, and gives distant views of G.o.dalming a quiet and impressive dignity all its own among country towns. Vicars of G.o.dalming have not infrequently distinguished themselves; some for piety, one for piety combined with pugnacity, two for literature and learning, and at least one for "pride, idleness, affectation of Popery," and for refusing to preach. This last-named divine, Dr. Nicholas Andrews, had the misfortune to have been born out of due time, for had he but held the living in the sceptical eighteenth century instead of exactly a hundred years earlier, when piety was particularly aggressive, his pa.s.sion for fis.h.i.+ng on Sunday would have done him no harm. As it happened, however, his era fell in the midst of Puritan times, and the G.o.dalming people of that day were at once G.o.dly and vindictive: a combination not at all uncommon even now. At any rate, they pet.i.tioned Parliament for the removal of this too ardent fisherman, and he was sequestered accordingly.

The times were altered when the Rev. Samuel Speed, grandson of Speed the historian, held the living. He was, according to Aubrey, a "famous and valiant sea-chaplain and sailor," whose deeds are handed down to us in the stirring lines of a song "made by Sir John Birkenhead on the sea-fight with the Dutch"; in which we hear of this doughty cleric praying and fighting at one and the same time:--

"His chaplain, he plied his wonted work, He prayed like a Christian and fought like a Turk; Crying, 'Now for the King and the Duke of York,'

With a thump, a thump, thump," &c.

This worthy was at one time a buccaneer in the West Indies, and later, while he held the living of G.o.dalming, was imprisoned several times for debt. He died, indeed, in gaol, and was buried in London, in the old City church, since demolished, of St. Michael, Queenhithe, in 1682.

Manning, scholar and historian of Surrey, was vicar here, and also the Rev. Antony Warton. Their virtues and their attainments are duly set forth upon cenotaphs within the church, as also is the discovery of a certain cure for consumption by

"Nathaniel G.o.dbold Esqr.

Inventor and Proprietor of that Excellent Medicine The Vegetable Balsam For the cure of Consumption and Asthmas."

He died in December 1799, aged sixty-nine, and his appreciative relatives caused to be engraved on his epitaph, _Hic cineres, ubique Fama_; which really is very amusing, because his fame is now-a-days as decayed as are his ashes.

And yet they say these latter days of ours are distinguished above all else by shameless puffery! At least we spare the churches and do not use their walls as advertis.e.m.e.nt h.o.a.rdings. And, despite G.o.dbold and his Balsam, consumption still takes heavy toll, and not all the innumerable remedies nor all the Kochs in creation seem able to prevail in any degree against the disease.

[Ill.u.s.tration: NEW G.o.dALMING STATION.]

[Sidenote: _OGLETHORPE_]

At a short distance from the church, on the edge of a thickly-wooded hill overlooking New G.o.dalming station, stands the house and small estate of Westbrook, once belonging to the Oglethorpes, who settled here from Yorks.h.i.+re in the seventeenth century. Of this family was that notable octogenarian, General Oglethorpe, the literary discoverer of Dr.

Johnson, friend of Whitefield and founder of Georgia. During a long and active life that extended from 1698 to 1785, Oglethorpe had many experiences. He warred with the Indians who threatened the North American Colonies; he was secretary and aide-de-camp to Prince Eugene, when, according to the alliterative poet, that "good prince" bade

"An Austrian army, awfully arrayed, Boldly by battery bombard Belgrade."

He was suspected of Jacobite leanings, and was court-martialled for want of diligence in following up the Pretender's forces in their retreat from Derby; but he is memorable from a Londoner's point of view chiefly because he claimed to have, when a young man, shot woodc.o.c.k on the spot where in his old age rose the fas.h.i.+onable lounge of Regent Street.

Westbrook, too, has some slight connection with the Stuart legend; for General Oglethorpe's father--Sir Theophilus Oglethorpe--was a devoted partisan of that unlucky House, and it was whispered that one of his sons was the famous child smuggled into Whitehall Palace in a warming-pan, and known afterwards as the Old Pretender.

One of the most pleasing views of G.o.dalming is that from the grounds of Westbrook, above the railway-station, and the station of New G.o.dalming itself and its situation are distinctly picturesque, composing finely with the Frith Hill and the uplands away in the direction of Charterhouse.

And G.o.dalming is celebrated in modern times on two distinct counts: firstly for having been a pioneer in lighting street-lamps by electricity, and secondly for being the new home of Charterhouse School, removed from London in 1870, under the care of the Rev. W. Haig Brown, who still remains head-master of Thomas Sutton's old foundation. The school-buildings stand on the plateau of a down, at a distance of about a mile from G.o.dalming, and occupy a site of about eighty acres.

Here the Carthusians carry on the traditions of their old home in London, and some of the stones of the old school, deeply carved with the names of by-gone scholars, have been removed from old Charterhouse to the new building, where they are to be seen built into an archway. Charterhouse School numbers five hundred scholars, and its lovely situation, amid the Surrey Hills, together with its finely-planned buildings and spreading grounds, render this amongst the foremost public schools of the time.

One of the most interesting features of the school is its museum, housed in a building of semi-ecclesiastical aspect, built recently in the grounds. Here are many relics of old times and old scholars, together with the more usual collections of a country museum: stuffed birds, chipped flints, and miscellaneous antiquities; or, to quote the sarcastic Peter Pindar:--

"More broken pans, more G.o.ds, more mugs; Old snivel-bottles, jordans, and old jugs; More saucepans, lamps, and candlesticks, and kettles; In short, all sorts of culinary metals!"