Chapter VII: Windsor to Hampton Court (2)

This praise was exaggerated and indiscriminate. The present writer was sitting many years ago at the "Angel and Crown," in a mixed company of oarsmen, anglers, and residents, when he heard the performance of John Emery as Farmer Ashfield called in question. Somebody had extolled it for its rich Yorkshire dialect. Thereupon a grey-headed old man broke in with a quotation from "Speed the Plough." In the scene supposed to follow a ploughing-match, when Sir Abel Handy's patent invention has been kicked to pieces, and carried off at the heels of the frightened horses, Bob Handy answers his father's question, "Where's my plough?" by turning to the farmer and inquiring the name of the next county. "We ca's it Wilzhire, sur," is the reply. The scene, in fact, is laid in Hants. The grey-haired man was an old actor, and he finished his pertinent reference to Morton's play with the quiet remark that he too remembered Emery, and admired him in Yorkshire parts, but that Farmer Ashfield was _not_ a Yorkshire part. With a London audience in Emery's reign all countrymen were Yorkshiremen, just as all foreigners were Frenchmen. We must not leave Staines, where barge-life and riverside character generally may be studied better than at any other spot by the Thames, and the boundary stone without mentioning that this ancient monument bears the traces of its original inscription, dated /A.D./ 1280, "God preserve the City of London."

Penton Hook, on the Middlesex side, is a horseshoe-shaped piece of water, where the river shoals out a great deal, so that boats going down the rapid shallow run of half a mile will do well to keep in mid stream, so as to avoid grounding on that shore. If you pronounce Penton Hook as you see it written, you may chance to miss being understood. Penty Hook is the common pronunciation, and if without the aspirate, so much the nearer local correctness. Penty Hook Lock has an average fall of two feet and a half. There is a ferry here, by which you may avoid the Hook and its long pull. The bend at Penty Hook is the natural course of the river, and its horseshoe form, enclosing a large meadow, has the lock for a base. For general fishing, Penty Hook has been famed time out of mind; and, though disappointed men are sometimes heard to lament the growing signs that this fishery has begun to be worked out, every season yields many a well-filled creel. The lock is a good thing for those who voyage for pleasure; not that they go through it, but that it leaves them the undisturbed solitude of the ancient passage, by drawing away the hurriers, who think of nothing but of "getting there," wherever "there" may be. This retired and tranquil bend is the haunt of water-fowl, and is a very wilderness of butterflies. One of the countless tributary streams that feed the Thames, the Abbey River, babbles of days when the monks of Chertsey kept their preserves well filled from these productive fisheries. Fine trout are taken here still; the strong barbel gives excellent play; a number-twelve hook, mounted on a single hair, and baited with a gentle, will take roach and dace in any quantity, though a heavy float is necessitated by the force and depth of the stream; he who seeks the big chub should cast his line under any of the overhanging willows; and he who scrapes for gudgeon may choose from twenty pitches, any one of which will give him a day's quick work. Down stream now to Laleham is a short row, or walk, along the Middlesex shore, on which side is the towing-path from Staines as far as Shepperton.

Such charm as may be found in a flat landscape--and it is not small when there are trees and water, red roofs and quaint chimneys, sheep, cows, and an old church--we find at Laleham Ferry, one of the quietest and prettiest spots on the Thames. The nearest railway stations, neither of which is too near, are Staines and Shepperton. This little village was for nine years of work, study, and wedded happiness, the residence of Dr. Arnold, the mild but firm Erastian in most of his ecclesiastical views, the parental educator, the Liberal in politics but not in party, the Church reformer who clung to the Church not as a priesthood but as a body of believers, the man of thought and man of action. To Laleham, Thomas Arnold went at twenty-four years of age; took pupils, as, since he was twenty, and elected a Fellow of Oriel College, he had done at Oxford; married, and worked on, with the grand idea before him of bringing new life and spirit into our public-school system. It was at the end of his nine years' sojourn at Laleham that he took priest's orders, and turned a corner in his life whence his useful fame began. He was appointed to the headmastership of Rugby School. In those nine years at Laleham, peaceful and happy as they were, sorrows were not "too strictly kept" from Arnold's home. Four of his family are buried here; his infant child, his mother, his aunt, and his sister. It is no matter of mere opinion or dispute that Dr. Arnold and Rugby are associated as no person and place, no school and master, ever were before or since. Illustrious men have indeed raised the high standard of tuition higher than they found it, at other public schools. Their names add lustre to a shining roll. But Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, whose constant longing from his youth had been to "try whether our public school system has not in it some noble elements which may produce fruit even to life eternal," justified his belief and his mission so well, that he not only raised Rugby School to its highest fame, but introduced a great change and improvement into all school-life in England. He trusted much to his Sixth form, his elder boys, whom he inspired with love, veneration, and confidence, so that their recognised authority over the junior pupils was exercised as with a reflected light. He would have no "unpromising subjects," no pupils likely to taint others. "It is not necessary," he said, "that this should be a school of three hundred, or one hundred, or of fifty boys; but it is necessary that it should be a school of Christian gentlemen." All good hearts in time were bound to the firm, manly, sympathetic master, whose devotion to duty was contagious, and whose unceasing interest in his scholars was repaid by their reverence for him. Dr. Arnold's writings are earnest, clear, and independent. The six volumes of sermons, chiefly delivered to the Rugby boys, should be read by all boys, all parents, and all masters. Dean Stanley, his pupil and biographer, collected and republished his tracts on social and political subjects; and in the striking picturesqueness of his "Roman History," in which he adopts the "ballad-theory" of the Prussian historian, Niebuhr, he forestalled a mode of animated illustration, and contrast of ancient and modern events, which is so popular in the hands of Macaulay and Grote.

Nine years of such a life as Arnold's would be enough to confer perpetual dignity on a more important place than Laleham, which contains a population of not more than six or seven hundred souls, and is not honoured and spoilt by a "surrounding neighbourhood" of new wealth, refinement, and education. Not that the village is more rustic--in the depreciative sense--than a village inhabited by people who "have known some nurture" ought to be. There are a few good old-fashioned houses about it, Arnold's being one of them; a solid red-brick house with a large garden. The occupant came to regard the country as "very beautiful." He had always a resource at hand, he tells us, in the bank of the river up to Staines; "which, though it be perfectly flat, has yet a great charm from its entire loneliness, there being not a house anywhere near it; and the river here has none of that stir of boats and barges upon it, which makes it in many places as public as the high road." Laleham House, the seat of the Earl of Lucan, is a plain square modern mansion with a Tuscan portico. The grounds of forty acres are noted for the noble elms, shrubs, lawns, and flower-gardens.

"One spot for flowers, the rest all turf and trees,"

as Leigh Hunt sang, though not of so large and fine a domain.

Some years ago a galvanised monkish movement, led by an Anglican clergyman, who went about town with sandalled feet, a girdle of knotted cord, and a cowl over his tonsured head, made a descent on Laleham, where the poor enthusiast tried to found a monastery, with what temporary noise of local wonderment is now a subject of much forgetfulness. The church at Laleham is small, old, and patched with modern brickwork; and the church across the river, at Chertsey, a mile lower down on the Surrey shore, is square-towered, part ancient and part new. Nothing very old, or noticeable as old, will be seen if we go inside; but we may do this reverence to modern art if not to antique religion, for there is a memorial bas-relief of simple beauty, carved in a Christian spirit by the Greek-souled sculptor, Flaxman, the subject being the raising of Jairus' daughter. Cattle are feeding on the grass of Chertsey Mead, or cooling themselves in the shallow stream. How different are they from the droves of builders and architects who try to improve the banks of the river! The cattle positively decline all effort at picturesqueness; but they are picturesque, which the new houses or villas, and stuck-up towers and turrets, with all their ornamental pretence, decidedly are not. A hundred years ago was built, by James Payne, the bridge of stone, with seven arches, the high middle arch being beneath a pointed summit of the parapet. This bridge, though steep, seems right under the lock, which is built of wood, and has a fall that averages three feet. Ancient and modern both are the intimate associations of Chertsey. Among the modern are reminiscences of Albert Smith, whom even James Hannay, a contemner of comic authorship, allowed to be a writer who was easy to read. He rattled on, with too little thought, it may be, but with a shrewd common-sense and an almost feminine justness of view, that won him friends among his enemies, even if a careless witticism now and then made an enemy of a friend. This was never for long; while it is certain that Albert Smith lived down a great deal of hard and even scornful criticism. He brought round all his old _Punch_ companions from whom he had cut adrift; and even the high-toned _Examiner_, seldom merciful to "light writers," pronounced one of his books of travel to be, "frank, genial, and manly." He practised in his early career as a dentist, but soon drifted into magazine work, and amused the laughter-loving public with his "Adventures of Mr. Ledbury, and his friend, Jack Johnson." The man-about-town style of writing was more amusingly and inoffensively exemplified in Albert Smith than in any of his rivals; for with him it was spontaneous--a hearty emanation from personal habit, which had grown into nature. Student-life--medical-student-life, that is to say--in Paris and London gave both incident and tone to his tales and sketches--the incident being of a practically jocular kind; and the tone, that of rollicking levity. He went a little out of his way to take up historical romancing in his novel on the subject of the venomous Marguerite d'Aubray, Marchioness of Brinvilliers; and Douglas Jerrold went a good deal out of _his_ way to assail his "former crony" Albert's dabbling in "arsenicated literature." More congenial, certainly, to his powers of lively common-place were the stories of "Christopher Tadpole" and "The Scattergood Family." He had some dramatic faculty, which took now and then the proper dramatic form of theatric art; and, beside the stage-burlesques collaborated by him with Shirley Brooks, Charles Kenny, Stoqueler, and others, he wrote a few pieces, whereof one was suggested by the famous Chertsey bell, and a romantic legend in connection with that relic of Saxon days. Albert Smith's brother Arthur, a man of singular gentleness, was devoted to him, and spared no pains to please and serve him in a multitude of ways, little and great. The affection which existed between the two was never shaded by difference of any kind. Here is a little story which now sees, for the first time, the light of print:--When Albert Smith was giving his long-lived entertainment of "Mont Blanc," Arthur, his right-hand man in the business of management, took a holiday, and, visiting some glass-works in the north, was so struck with the resemblance of certain waste products to icicles, that he brought a number of specimens away with him, had them mounted like pendants, and, on his return to Piccadilly, hung them in triumph round the eaves of the little _chalet_ which formed a prominent part of the set scene. Albert, who would not have damped his brother's delight for all the world, was "charmed" with the effect, and thanked the good Arthur again and again. "I _can't_ tell him," said he, secretly, to the present writer, "that the flowering plants, the Alpine heaths, and all, are in full summer-bloom. It would break his heart to be reminded of the little contradiction in the seasons."

As the first religious house founded in Surrey, the abbey, of which there are now few vestiges, gave Chertsey a name of imperishable renown in English annals. We are carried back by the sound to Saxon days, to King Egbert and the sainted Erkenwald, who founded the great monastery at Barking as well as that of Chertsey. Abbot Erkenwald received his first Charter from Frithwald, sub-regulus of Surrey, nine years after the foundation of this abbey of Cerotæsai, Cerotesege, or Certesyg, as the name last given appears in "Domesday Book." The etymology, then, of our familiar Chertsey is "Cerota's ey," or island. Erkenwald's monastery and church were erected on a grassy ait, formed by the Thames and the little stream now called the Abbey River, or Bourne. When was there ever monastery or abbey built in England, France, or other part of Christendom, but it was near a river, teeming with fish? In nine out of ten cases, the ground has been an island, whatever it may be now. Take Westminster, for instance. It is not, you will say, insulated; but it was, and its name was the Isle of Thorns; and the very first angelical promise in relation to the Saxon abbey was made to the fisherman, Edric, who was told by a supernatural visitant, sent by St. Peter, that a plentiful supply of fish would never fail him so long as he duly carried his tithe to the monks. From that time, quite early in the seventh century, till near the end of the fourteenth, the Thames fishermen religiously paid their tithe of salmon to the abbey; and it is a singular fact that the first violation of the custom was by a priest, the vicar of Rotherhithe, who denied his tithe until the monks of Westminster enforced it by law, protesting that the right had been granted to them by St. Peter, when their abbey was founded. As an instance of the primitive state of society, in the England of the Middle Ages, every bearer of fish to the Abbey of Westminster sat by prescriptive right at the prior's table that day, and could demand ale and bread at the buttery-hatch to be brought him by the cellarman.

Fish, not on fast days alone, but as a constant staple of diet, was one of the needs of monastic life. Nor did the monks and their lay brothers generally wait for tithings from secular piscatory sources, as the fraternity at Westminster seems to have done. Mr. Dendy Sadler has no doubt hit with main truth of history, if with some exuberance of playful humour, the monkish habit of angling. At Chertsey the Benedictine friars of the tenth century left such evidence of perfection in fish-culture as is pleasingly apparent to every Thames angler of the present day; and the salmon-trout nurseries of Mr. Forbes, on the Surrey shore, revive a goodly tradition of the olden time. Pike, perch, chub, bream, and barbel abound near Chertsey and Shepperton, as of yore; but the good monks, let us remember, had the lordly salmon always at hand, as well as the trout, which was too plentiful to suggest any thought of artificial hatching. The once stately abbey, of which all the remains now are the fragments of an arched gateway, part of a wall, and a bit of encaustic tile pavement, occupied an area of four acres, and looked like a town. The Danes pillaged and burnt the place two hundred years after its foundation, murdering the abbot, Beocca, with all his monks, to the number of ninety. It is scarcely possible, even now, to dig deep on the ground without unearthing bones and fragments of masonry, relics either of the ancient Saxon foundation, or of the second and still Saxon convent re-established by King Edgar, in the tenth century.

During successive periods many great men were interred here; but the abbey is chiefly remarkable, as a place of sepulture, for having been the brief resting-place of Henry VI., whose remains were brought thither from Blackfriars by water. It was on her way "toward Chertsey with her holy load" that the Lady Anne encountered crook-backed Richard of Gloucester, as the scene in Shakespeare's play of _Richard III._ vividly represents. Having been interred there with much solemnity, the corse of the murdered king was only suffered to remain undisturbed till the second year of his successor's reign, when Richard caused the coffin to be removed to Windsor. The weak but well-meaning king, whose piety and love of learning may be said to have been too strong for his mental sinew, held Chertsey in high regard and favour, following, indeed, other sovereigns by whom in long succession from Saxon times the abbey was often strengthened and endowed. To benefit a religious institution and the town pertaining thereto was formerly one and the same act, a state of things now hardly comprehended in its full significance. It was to the abbot, in kingly piety, that Henry VI. granted the right of holding a fair on St. Ann's Hill, on St. Ann's Day. The "Black Cherry Fair," as it is called, is now held in the town, and the date is changed from the 26th July to the 6th August. Another great fair, for cattle, horses, and poultry, is also held there on the 26th September, in view of Michaelmas Day, which ancient feast is generally honoured with the goose as a standing dish; for by that time of the year this bird, hatched in the spring, has attained a goodly form and condition, while preserving some of its tender youth. So notably do these considerations affect the fair in September, at Chertsey, that it is popularly designated the Goose and Onion Fair, the sale of geese and onions eclipsing all other traffic, not only as regards poultry, but horses and cattle to boot. As before observed, mills and fisheries survive the changes of epochs with extraordinary vitality. We have seen that Chertsey is still a head-quarters of angling, as it was a thousand years ago; and the abbey mills flourish in modern fashion to this day. More remarkable far is the survival of the curfew bell; for there are fisheries and mills of ancient origin all over England, but the curfew is heard at few other places than Chertsey. Here exists a curious old custom of tolling the day of the month, after a brief pause, at the close of the "knell of parting day." In the tower of the rebuilt parish church, with a peal of six bells, is one that is believed to have belonged to the ancient abbey. There is warrant for the tradition which assigns so venerable an age to this bell; for the Latin inscription

ORA : MENTE : PIA : PRO : NOBIS : VIRGO : MARIA

is in Anglo-Saxon characters.

For a little more than two years, Abraham Cowley, the poet, intending to husband his small fortune, lived at Chertsey, or, rather, continued to exist for a short time. His desire for solitude provoked from Johnson, the lover of city life, a biographical sneer. It is true that the first night Cowley came to his half-timber house at Chertsey--he had desiderated a brick house, by-the-by--he caught a severe cold, and kept his room for ten days; but it is also true that he was an invalid when he came from Barn Elms, whence he was driven by illness. A series of mishaps befell him, which he recounted in a half ludicrous light, in a letter to his friend Sprat; and this letter it is that Johnson recommends "to the consideration of all that may hereafter pant for solitude." Cowley's house, which he only left in funereal pomp and state to be conveyed by water to Westminster Abbey, and there buried, is still sometimes called by its old name, Porch House, from a porch that once projected into the highway, but was pulled down a hundred years ago. In the garden is a fine group of trees, one of which, a horse-chestnut of great size and beauty, sheltered the poet in the short term of his life at Chertsey.

A memorable episode of Dickens's early work of fiction, "Oliver Twist," is graphically connected with this agricultural town, the most commercial establishment in which is a brewery. There were no railways to speak of when Fagin, the Jew that Dickens drew, was redrawn by Cruikshank, and when Bill Sikes, and Nancy, and Toby Crackit, and the Artful Dodger, and Charley Bates, and the bad people generally, seemed as real as, on the other and supernaturally amiable side, Rose Maylie and the rest were creatures of angelic imagination. There is nothing more real in this story, nor in all the stories that Dickens ever wrote, than the expedition by Sikes and Oliver, from Bethnal Green, through Finsbury and Barbican, to the West-end--past Hyde Park Corner, Kensington, Hammersmith, Chiswick, Kew, and Brentford--past Hampton and Halliford, Shepperton and Sunbury--till Chertsey was reached; and, joined now by Toby Crackit, they made their way through the silent town to the scene of the projected burglary. Boating-men know well the landing-stage at the "Bridge House," one of those inns where the comfort is not diminished either by negligence or false pretence. This is the recognised "hotel" of Chertsey; but the "Cricketers," in the Bridge Road, half a mile from the town, is the favourite resort of anglers. Many pleasant walks are still to be found near Chertsey, St. Ann's Hill being within a mile. As the residence of Charles James Fox, the house, with its gardens, lawns, shady walks, and quaint summer-houses, should be seen by all who have the opportunity of visiting it. The old gate of wrought iron, though not by any means extraordinary, nor indeed nearly so elaborate as some examples of smiths' work still to be seen about old parts of Chelsea, Chiswick, and Roehampton, is characteristic and significant of its period. From this gate to the summit of the hill is a short walk which affords a delightful view on a fine day, extending to Windsor on the one side, and to London, a distance of twenty miles, on the other. St. Ann's Well, on the descent, is a sylvan spot, which might better have been left alone than "improved," as it has been. It once looked like what it probably is, a veritable relic of the chapel which has been swept away like its contemporary foundation, the abbey on the marshy island below. St. Ann's Hill is a favourite place for picnics, as also for volunteer exercises and reviews. Returning towards Chertsey Bridge, on our downward Thames journey, we see the wood-crowned heights of Woburn, and presently make or renew acquaintance with the Wey, another tributary of the metropolitan river. The Wey rises in Hampshire, near Alton, where good ale used to be brewed, and indeed continues to be brewed still, in spite of the fact that this national beverage, the wine of the country, is getting more and more into the hands of a few noted brewers, and consequently is more and more "all alike," which is a sad sameness to think of! Time was when small breweries were oftener attached to inns of good repute, and when to taste the ale was a complimentary obligation. It is no question of curious tasting in these times; for you know pretty well what you are going to get when you ask for "a glass of bitter," which is generally good, but somewhat monotonous. What has become of all the country home-brewed, of the ales of different colleges, for example?

"I have a friend who loveth me,
And sendeth me ale of Trinity,"

sang Barry Cornwall. Where is now the good ale, and where are the good fellows who sent it?

"The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
Is left this vault to brag of."

Through Farnham, Godalming, Guildford, Woking, Byfleet, and Weybridge, through all that country of heath and health, of pine-trees and rabbit-warrens, of scenery that you feel and breathe as well as see, the Hampshire stream flows and grows till it mingles with the waters of Thames below Chertsey, at a mill in the bend of the stream. It is said that the best hay in England comes from Chertsey mead, which also, during a large part of the year, affords right of commonage to neighbouring farmers for their cows; and the milk testifies to the richness of the pasture. It is at Weybridge that the Wey is joined by the Bourne, as also by the Basingstoke canal, and the meeting of the three streams is in a pleasant spot. Weybridge and Oatlands Park are places that hold renown in common. Round about the neighbourhood are country seats, beautifully situate, and two miles south of the town or village is Crockham Hill, from which a transcendent prospect of the whole weald of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex is gained, never to be forgotten. By Chart, or by Westerham Common, the way to Crockham Gap is the loveliest of Surrey walks, and indeed the beauty of the district cannot be overpraised.

At the Domesday survey, "Webrige" was a manor held by the Abbot of Chertsey, and its value was twenty shillings. With other lands, the property pertaining to the ancient abbey, it was annexed by Henry VIII. to the honour of Hampton Court. The estate of Oatlands was acquired by the king in manner following. He was negotiating its purchase when the owner, one William Rede, died, leaving his son John, a child, the heir. A short way was taken by the king to remove all difficulty. He constituted Sir Thomas Cromwell guardian of the boy, and the rest was plain. Very speedily the erection of a palace for Anne of Cleves, the king's intended wife, was commenced, the materials being found in the dismantled monasteries. Stone was brought from Chertsey and Bisham; marble for pavements from Abingdon; while the good red bricks which composed the walls were made at Woking, which name was spelt by the accountants "Okyng," much as it is pronounced at the present day by rustic natives. For his orchards, the king took apple, pear, and cherry trees from the orchards and gardens of Chertsey Abbey. The interior walls of Oatlands Palace were hung with the costliest tapestries of France and Flanders, the floors being covered with "carpets of Turque." But before the casket was ready the jewel had been discarded. Anne of Cleves, on whom Henry bestowed an uncomplimentary epithet, had come, and had proved unacceptable. The bride was divorced, and a new bride was taken in her stead. With the new bride Henry required a new palace. Oatlands was consigned to the keeping of Sir Anthony Brown; and, save that it was made the occasional residence of the Princess Mary, we hear very little more of Oatlands in King Henry's reign. We may fancy it a many-gabled, many-towered, Tudor edifice of red brick, with stone quoins and dressings, ornamental chimney-shafts, and handsome bays, like Hampton Court, in fact, with the same kind of turreted central gate-house in the principal front. There are drawings of it in the Bodleian at Oxford. The foundations are said to have been traced over fourteen acres. Terraces, flower-gardens, orchards, fountains, fishponds, and detached summer-houses adorned the pleasance round the magnificent edifice; and beyond, fenced about by a quickset hawthorn hedge, was the deer park.

An example of wasted labour and misapplied ingenuity, the grotto constructed in the eighteenth century by an Italian and his two sons for Henry Clinton, Duke of Newcastle, may be cited as one of the questionable glories of modern Oatlands. The artificers were twenty years at their work, which cost the Duke, it is said, £40,000; the sum stated in the early accounts being between £12,000 and £13,000. Outside, this egregious sham is built of tufa, which is a volcanic substance, or the calcareous deposit of certain springs. Within, the building has three or four chambers connected by low dark passages, on the ground floor, and one large chamber over all, with an elaborate cupola of satin-spar stalactites. All the inner walls are a mosaic of minerals, shells, and spars of various kinds, blending in many devices, and inlaid with endless patience and skill. Among the many fine specimens of minerals still left, are quartz, crystals, and ammonites of rare perfection. Horace Walpole delivered himself of this criticism on the Oatlands grotto: "Oatlands, that my memory had taken it into its head was the centre of Paradise, is not half so Elysian as I used to think. The grotto, a magnificent structure of shell-work, is a square, regular, and, which never happened to grotto before, lives up one pair of stairs, and yet only looks on a basin of dirty water."

It is evident that Horace Walpole spoke of the upper chamber as the grotto itself; and so it was mainly. This _bizarre_ kind of architecture was quite in the taste of George IV., and accordingly, when he was Prince of Wales, and just after Waterloo, he entertained at a supper in this wonderful room the Emperor of Russia, the King of Prussia, and the princes and generals in their train. As being tastefully in accord with a stalactite cavern, lit up by cut-glass chandeliers, the gilt chairs and sofas had satin cushions embroidered by the Duchess of York. Oatlands underwent many transformations; was destroyed by fire in different ages; and has sprung up again and again, like an exceedingly protean ph[oe]nix. The only vestiges of its ancient grandeur are the massive gateway and some magnificent cedars by the river. It is curious to think of its many transformations, during the dwindling and declining periods of its history. Once it was a rambling, mock-battlemented structure, in the taste of Strawberry Hill Gothic. A quasi-Italian style has been its later phase, and this remains, in the aspect now presented by the house, which has been converted to the purpose of a residential hotel. Oatlands has a longer story than can be told, even in outline, here. After Henry VIII. abandoned his intention to keep up its royal splendour, it became the temporary abode, at different periods, of Edward VI., Elizabeth, James I., Charles I., and Henrietta Maria--their youngest son, Henry, being born here--Queen Henrietta's second husband, the Earl of St. Albans, and then a succession of nobles, under various terms of tenure, till the Duke of York purchased the property in 1790, when the rococo edifice on the Strawberry Hill pattern of modern antiquity made its appearance, and became the bone of contention between two architects, the inglorious though not mute Pugin and Barry of the time, as we may call them--each claiming the honour of its invention. Greville's Memoirs give us as much as we want of the private life of His Royal Highness in his queer castle, or, if further information be desired, some interesting additions may be found in the "Life of George Brummell, Esq., commonly called Beau Brummell," who passed much of his time there, and whose most constant benefactor, after he had been cut by the Prince Regent, and other summer-friends, was _sa toute affectionnée amie et servante_, the kind Duchess. In justice to one or other of the rival claimants to the glory of architectural design, it may be said that the outside folly of Oatlands, as conceived either by Holland, the architect of Drury Lane Theatre--his best work--or John Carter, more favourably known by his etchings from the Gothic, was redeemed by its interior fitness and stately proportion. An example of the effect produced by transplanted architecture is conspicuous on Weybridge Green. Here, a Cockney wanderer out of his element of Babel life, stands the column celebrated by Gay in his "Trivia."

"Where famed St. Giles's ancient limits spread,
An inrailed column rears its lofty head;
Here to seven streets seven dials count the day,
And from each other catch the circling ray."

A rover, indeed, was this monument from Seven Dials. First it was taken to Sayes Court, but never erected. Wanting a memorial to the Duchess of York, the villagers of Weybridge picked up the neglected masonry, altered it to suit their purpose, by discarding the dial-faced top and substituting a clumsy crown, and stuck it where it now stands. In the crypt of a small Roman Catholic chapel, facing a fine group of fir-trees on Weybridge Common, the body of Louis Philippe was laid, till the royal remains were taken to France and re-interred in the Orleans mausoleum at Dreux.

Largely frequented by anglers, Weybridge must take care if it desires to retain the favour of boating-men. While the towing-path crosses the boat-yard, and dredging is neglected by those, whoever they may be, on whom the duty rests, it is very difficult to avoid grounding; so that many owners have been taking their boats away, as the constant dragging not only scratches but strains them. Shepperton, on the Middlesex shore, is a pretty village, small and quiet, with its chief places of residence hidden away behind trees, or peeping out upon the river. It has a railway terminus, on the South Western system, and is about an hour, that is, nineteen miles, from Waterloo. The deeps afford tolerable fly-fishing in the trout season, and are more frequently fished for jack, perch, roach, and barbel. There are several good swims in pretty equal favour with anglers, to wit the upper deep, the lower deep, and the old deep, east of the creek rails. Besides these, the creek itself is often resorted to. The anglers' inns at Shepperton are the "Anchor" and the "Crown." It is an unspoilt Thames-side village, this Shepperton, in spite of its many pleasure-seeking visitors; a class, to say the sad truth, apt to disclose a selfish indifference to the pleasure of others. If the holiday-maker is to be traced by scientific investigation, the marks to be looked for will be broken bottles, greasy sandwich-papers, and lobster-shell, just as flint tools and weapons denote other and earlier savages who have lived on the earth, and have made it as disagreeable as possible for their fellow-brutes. Shepperton Lock and Ferry are both picturesque in themselves, as well as being foregrounds of scenery that is charming to the eye nurtured by art. Truly, landscape-painting has done noble service in fostering the love of nature. Though real beauty must be above the skill of man to imitate, it is a curious truth that no age in which that skill has not been exercised has ever left any written records of a feeling for the grandeur of mountains, or the simple loveliness of woods, fields, and brooks. Chaucer, you say? Why, Chaucer pictured everything because he had seen it in pictures; had the very soul of a limner; lived in the sincerest age of art; saw Flanders and Italy; was familiar with all that was exquisite in the refinement of courts; and, unless his appointment as clerk of the works at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, was a gross sinecure, knew how a daisy should look in stone as well as in nature's finer fashioning. He who imagines Chaucer to have displayed natural observation without cognisance of art has totally misread Chaucer's time, rich in actual colour, as in the very dress that distinguished "gentle and simple;" for, as Mr. Ruskin has said, speaking of "the lovely and fantastic dressing of the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries" (in the very heart and flower of which period Chaucer lived), "no good historical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful."

Shepperton, hale, green, and old, in its plentiful trees, mostly elms and horse-chestnuts, has likewise an age in history. It is a noted spot for Roman remains; it has a church that was venerable and still retains claims to veneration; and it has a rectory-house older, for the most part, than the parish church to which it belongs. The dwelling in question is of fifteenth century erection, and is principally of timber, the soundest, the strongest, the most enduring--English oak. Builders will come back in time to the wisdom of such building, as they are even now aware of the folly which assumes iron to be fireproof. Halliford is our next halt, a mile down from Shepperton Railway Station, the nearest to the place. It is quite accessible enough for anglers, whose interest, if not whose taste, leads them to a preference of seclusion to racket and noise. Proverbially "jolly," the angler understands jollity in the Waltonian sense, as, indeed, the most sensible of us all, anglers or not, understand it. The vulgar adverb, "awfully," does, indeed, too literally qualify at times the modern adjective. Halliford Bridge was washed away some years ago by the floods; and now the Surrey and Middlesex shores are connected by a brick and iron structure which is named Walton Bridge, and which, having been the occasion of war between Bumbledom on both sides the river, was painted of two colours, a chromatic difference that greatly increased the normal ugliness of the design. The most plentiful fish at Halliford are roach and bream, but there is an abundant variety of others. To distinguish this little place from another Halliford, which is a hamlet of Sunbury, it is sometimes called Lower Halliford. The views along and across the river, every way, are charming; and as we look over to Oatlands, the Surrey hills form a beautiful background; while on one side we have Walton and Ashley Park, and on the other Weybridge. The "Red Lion" is a favourite haunt of anglers, and all who visit the spot by road or river; and other houses of entertainment are the "Crown," the "Ship," and Mrs. Searle's. The narrow creek adjacent to the "Red Lion" is in frequent request as a harbour for punts and small craft in general. A little further and we come to Walton, having crossed the river once again into Surrey.

Walton-on-Thames was, in old Saxon days, as its name plainly indicates, a walled town. Etymology apart, the traces of its having been fortified speak for themselves in the neighbouring remains of important earthworks. It is now a village; and, as a village, large; but it is not quite large enough to be considered a town; and of its walls there are no traces above ground. Walton Bridge crosses the river just where there was once a ford that, as relics show, was strongly defended. A little above Walton is the spot at which Cæsar crossed, in the time of his second invasion. It is called Cowey Stakes, and has afforded matter for many an antiquarian discussion. The "Stakes" were driven in front of the bank to repel attempts at landing. Some accounts of them state that they were placed upright in two rows, across the shallow bend of the river, so as to support a bridge. Walton has an interesting church, very old in some parts, but modern in others, with Norman piers, on one of which may be read, deeply cut, the verse ascribed to Queen Elizabeth, when princess, and when it was sought by Mary to entrap her in a heresy regarding the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

"Christ was the Worde and spake it;
He took the bread and brake it;
And what the Worde doth make it,
That I believe, and take it."

Among the monuments are works of note by Roubiliac and Chantrey, the older sculptor excelling in the bold inventiveness and forcible execution of his work, a superb monument to Lord Shannon. On the left side of the communion table is buried William Lilly, the astrologer, that "cunning man, hight Sidrophel," as he figures, or is supposed to figure, in "Hudibras." Another tomb, but it is in the churchyard, not the church, holds the remains of "bright, broken Maginn," who sleeps without a memorial. President Bradshaw's house, at the back of Church Street, is divided into a group of wretched tenements, all in a squalid condition; yet in a room on the ground-floor of one of them, covered with dirt and whitewash, is a carved oak chimney-piece, with coupled columns and a cornice, the room itself being panelled, and an elaborately carved beam crossing the ceiling. There is a tradition that Charles I.'s death-warrant was signed in this room. One of the curiosities of Walton-on-Thames, shown at a house next that of Rosewell, the boat-builder, is a scold's gag, or bridle, few examples of which instrument yet remain in England. This particular specimen bears an inscription which, though now illegible, has no doubt been accurately quoted as follows:--

"Chester presents Walton with a Bridle,
To curb Women's tongues when they bee idle."

Chester, according to tradition, was a person who lost an estate through the evil speaking of a loose-tongued gossip, and took this mode of revenging himself on the sex. The bridle is a combination of head-piece and collar, a flat iron projection inside the latter being forced over the tongue, while a slit in the former, which passes over the face and skull, allows the nose to protrude. Not far from the church, on the road to the railway station, is Ashley Park, with its late Tudor or early Stuart mansion of red brick, containing a great hall, which takes the whole height of the house, and a gallery extending throughout its entire length of a hundred feet. The park, a richly wooded demesne, adjoins Oatlands. From St. George's Hill, in the vicinity, the magnificent prospect includes seven counties. The stream at Walton Bridge runs over many shallows, fast on the Surrey shore, and it is not easy to sail round the bend.

Along a pleasant reach of the river, on the Middlesex bank, lies the village of Sunbury, with three or four boating and angling inns, which are much frequented by pleasure parties, though it is always a marvel to foreigners that the accommodation at these and other Thames-side inns should not be of a higher order. At Sunbury are the rearing-ponds of the Thames Angling Preservation Society; and the fishing of all kinds is excellent, no part of the river affording better sport with the fly than Sunbury Weir, which abounds with trout. The "Flower Pot," the "Magpie," and the "Castle" are in Thames Street; and the "Weir Hotel" is on the Surrey side. The stone lock and lock-house are prettily placed amid pretty scenery, and there is a good camping-ground. As it is not often that a church is altered to its improvement, justice demands a recognition of the fact that the church of the Virgin Mary, by the river-side at Sunbury, from having been as ugly a brick building as was ever consecrated to public worship, has been rendered sightly by the insertion of new windows and the introduction of a semicircular chancel, and an elaborate Byzantine porch with stone arcades on either side. Till changed to the form we now see, the church appeared as it had been rebuilt in the eighteenth century. The ancient church was of Saxon foundation, dating from the time of Edward the Confessor. When the Orleans family made their retreat in the neighbourhood of the Thames, the Duke of Nemours assisted at the consecration, by Dr. (now Cardinal Archbishop) Manning, of a small Roman Catholic church a short distance off, prettily constructed of stone, from the drawing of Mr. Charles Buckler. The sailing clubs have made Sunbury a rendezvous, and boat-building is a prosperous occupation.

As we near Hampton, the historical and the "Happy," Garrick's villa comes into view. The watery way, down from Sunbury, is between banks which are flat and uninteresting, osiers hiding the land from those who voyage in boats. Robert Adam, who, in conjunction with his brother James, improved the street architecture of London--their fraternal labours being commemorated in the name of that since-spoilt river-terrace, the "Adelphi"--built the Corinthian front of Hampton House, as it was called when Garrick bought it, though the mansion has since been renamed after the great actor himself. Adam's portico, the salient feature of the house, reaches, with its pediment, above the attic storey. Much is said about the building, its contents and its visitors, by Horace Walpole; for Garrick's dinners, his illuminated grounds, and his night-fêtes, attracted company of the first order. On the lawn, near the water's edge, was and is a miniature Grecian temple, of octagonal shape, with an Ionic porch, the structure being designed for a summer-house, in which for a time was placed Roubiliac's statue of Shakespeare, to be removed, after Garrick's death, to the British Museum. Garrick planted his domain very tastefully, and the trees that have grown to goodly height and umbrageousness since his day, now invest the spot with a dignified grace. For twenty-five years Garrick enjoyed his liberal ease and the pleasures of well-chosen society in this home of comfort and elegance; and his wife, who survived him by forty-three years, living to a great age, continued to dwell here, maintaining everything in the same place as when he was her companion. The forget-me-not, commonest of wild flowers in this neighbourhood, finds surely a congenial soil where David Garrick's memory was cherished so fondly and so long. Islands in thick succession dot the stream, and when fishing-rods are patiently extended here and there, the picture is at once socially and tranquilly suggestive. Opposite the town and church of Hampton lies Moulsey Hurst, between the villages of East and West Moulsey. This wide and beautiful meadow, "hard and smooth as velvet," as one of Archibald Constable's literary correspondents describes it, has been degraded in all ways attributable to civilisation. As a race-course, it is probably the vulgarest in the world; and its history is bound up with the annals of duelling and prize-fighting. A letter, very characteristic of the time, contains the following candid record:--"Breakfasted at Mr. Maule's very early, and went along with him and the Bailie to see the great fight between Belcher and Cribb, at Moseley Hurst, near Hampton. The day was very fine, and we had a charming drive out in our coach-and-four, and beat all the coaches and chaises by the way. We had three hard runs with one post-chaise and four very fine horses, before we could pass it, and drove buggies, horsemen, and all off the road into lanes and doors of houses." Among the gentlemen present, as the same frank-spoken witness testifies, were "the Duke of Kent, Mr. Wyndham, Lord Archibald Hamilton (a famous hand, I am told), Lord Kinnaird, Mr. T. Sheridan, &c. &c., and all the fighting-men in town, of course." These last, we read further, were "the Game Chicken, Woods, Tring, Pitloon, &c. Captain Barclay of Urie received us, and put us across the river in a boat, and he followed with Cribb, whom he backed at all hands. The Hon. Barclay (Berkeley) Craven was the judge." This charming chronicler proceeds to tell us that the odds were on Belcher, but that the hero in question, after a long fight, "was at length obliged to give in." Poor fellow! Modern adherents to the theory that fisticuffs had any early origin in Great Britain may be consoled for the decadence of the "good old national art of self-defence" by the assurance that boxing was a practice which endured little more than a century and a half, if so long, and was learnt from North American savages. Its real antiquity is Greek, the grounds for believing that the Anglo-Saxons, and, after them, the Plantagenets, favoured this form of pugilism being extremely slender. The English prize-fighters of the eighteenth century encountered one another with broadswords. There are other "arts of self-defence" far better entitled to rank as English than boxing. The quarter-staff is one.

On the road to Moulsey from Walton-on-Thames stands Apps Court, or the modern representative of that capital mansion, once inhabited by Mrs. or Miss Catherine Barton, who might have been called a "professional beauty" had the phrase, together with photography, been invented in her day. The manor was bequeathed to her for life by Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax. She was a reigning "toast," and her name frequently occurs in Swift's journal to Stella. Catherine Barton, who was a sort of niece to Sir Isaac Newton, being, in fact, the daughter of his half-sister, has been spoken of as the mistress of Lord Halifax; though it is now pretty clearly established that she was privately married to him, before his elevation to the peerage. She afterwards married a master of the Mint, who succeeded in that office her illustrious uncle. Many other persons of note are historically associated with "delightful Ab's Court," so designated by Pope, in his Horatian epistle to one of its proprietors, Colonel Cotterell. The grounds, like most of the Thames pleasances, contain some grand timber; oaks and elms being conspicuous objects.

A little past Moulsey Lock is Hampton Court Bridge, a five-arched iron structure, by which we take our way to the palace and its famous grounds.

/Godfrey Turner/.