Part 13
That prejudice has been so far broken down that several other Crematoriums are now open over the country, two close to London, welcomed by the Cremation Society as taking away much of its business, one by no means worked on commercial principles. In the course of twenty years, over twenty-five hundred bodies were consumed at Woking, many of them names of eminence: travellers like Sir Samuel Baker and Sir Henry Layard; physicians like Sir Benjamin Richardson and Sir Spencer Wells; authors like George Macdonald and W. E. Henley, Eliza Lynn Linton and "Edna Lyall"; artists like Watts and Burne-Jones; philanthropists like Sir Isaac Pitman and Dr. Barnardo; clergymen like H. R. Haweis and Brooke Lambert, all concerned in their last dispositions to set such a good example. Two dukes have been cremated here, with a due proportion of duchesses and other members of the peerage; a judge or two can be counted; and a crowning triumph of the Society would be to get a bishop among its clients. At the outset of the movement one bishop came forward to denounce it, but he was put to silence by a reminder how certain distinguished prelates had been cremated alive, so far back as Queen Mary's time, with no presumable damage to their souls' welfare.
[Illustration: THE GREAT POND, FRENSHAM.]
As an original supporter of an enterprise that never sought to make money, I need not shrink from giving it bold advertisement. The one valid objection to cremation, that death by poisoning might be undetected, is obviated by the precautions all along insisted upon by the Cremation Society, which, along with its own aims, has advocated such more stringent examination into the cause of death as itself requires in every case. The proceedings are facilitated when, in lifetime, one has expressed a disposition for this kind of funeral. The cost of cremation has now been reduced to a few pounds, becoming lowered as the apparatus was more often used. The Golder's Green Crematorium has almost extinguished the Society's, which stands below the Knap Hill Barracks, and above the canal bank, a mile or two out of Woking, just beyond the church of St. John's Hill. The building includes a chapel, where any religious service desired may be held, this and the final disposal of the remains being left to the friends of the deceased. The body, shrivelled up by a blast of hot air, is turned into a small handful of ashes, which can be preserved in an urn or buried in the ground, when its life is scattered through this world in the undying good or evil a man has helped to do. The Crematorium enclosure has a close-packed show of tiny tombstones and dwarf crosses, that give a strange effect, as of a dolls' cemetery, so inveterate is the desire for some visible memorial of our loved ones. For my part, I should wish what is not my real self to be thrown out on any of the breezy commons about Woking--
That from his ashes may be made The _heather_ of his native land.
All this fair country has been used for sepulchres since, above the heaths trodden by funeral processions and cheerful warriors of our day, were heaped tumuli where long-forgotten chiefs "quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests." The neighbourhood has some notable recent graves, besides those in the great gathering. Over the common to the west of Brookwood Cemetery is reached Pirbright, where, near the east end of the churchyard, Henry Stanley lies at rest beneath a huge block of rough stone, an appropriate monument for him whom the natives styled "stone-breaker," in admiration of his masterful dealing with difficulties. At Frimley, on the Surrey border, is buried Bret Harte. A little to the south of this, beside Farnborough station, on a wooded hill rises a far-seen dome, miniature of that which covers the great Napoleon at Paris, this one crowning a Benedictine Abbey built to enshrine the tombs of Louis Napoleon and his ill-fated son. On the other side of the line is the home of the Empress who, one might think, had little reason to love sights that should sorrowfully remind her how many a French mother's son may have been spared through her untimely loss. Yet here this bereaved exile was neighbour to our chief national manufactory of martial death.
To reach Aldershot Camp, one crosses the Blackwater, the parting of Surrey and Hants, where the last great English prize-fight was fought between Sayers and Heenan on a meadow chosen for convenience of dodging either county's police. The quarters extend for miles about the high-road running on from Farnborough station to Farnham, the North and South Camps being divided by the transverse line of the Canal. The bulk of the Camp is on Hampshire ground, but its ranges shoot into Surrey, where, on the Fox Hills or the Romping Downs, peaceably-minded strangers may be challenged by Roderick Dhus in khaki starting from copse and heath, or find themselves beset by the invisible rattle of skirmishers practising the game of war. Across a projecting tongue of Hants we come back into Surrey again; anyhow, it is not straying far from our theme to take a glance at this great military station.
Aldershot Camp, dating from after the Crimean War, has grown so much in half a century that it now sends out suckers to spring up on more remote commons, like those of Longmoor and Borden towards Selborne, where the soldier is understood to pine, exiled from the joys of Aldershot. His officers are not always much in love with the main camp, if one may judge from military novels like Lockhart's _Doubles and Quits_; I have heard subalterns wofully grumbling that they had nothing to do here but work, while their seniors profess to be reminded of Aden rather than of Eden. Of Aldershot as it was in earlier days, we get lively sketches in Mrs. Ewing's _Story of a Short Life_, this author having been familiar with the place before lines of barracks had replaced the huts, "like toy boxes of wooden soldiers," in which it seemed not easy to "put your pretty soldiers away at night when you had done playing with them, and get the lid to shut down." In that touching story she tells us at what a cost _Asholt_ Camp was constructed.
Take a Highwayman's Heath. Destroy every vestige of life with fire and axe, from the pine that has longest been a landmark, to the smallest beetle smothered in smoking moss. Burn acres of purple and pink heather, and pare away the young bracken that springs verdant from its ashes. Let flame consume the perfumed gorse in all its glory, and not spare the broom, whose more exquisite yellow atones for its lack of fragrance. In this common ruin be every lesser flower involved: blue beds of speedwell by the wayfarer's path--the daintier milkwort and rougher red rattle--down to the very dodder that clasps the heather, let them perish and the face of Dame Nature be utterly blackened! Then: shave the heath as bare as the back of your hand, and if you have felled every tree, and left not so much as a tussock of grass or a scarlet toadstool to break the force of the winds; then shall the winds come, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south, and shall raise on your shaven heath clouds of sand that would not discredit a desert in the heart of Africa. By some such recipe the ground was prepared for that Camp of Instruction.... Bare and dusty are the Parade Grounds, but they are thick with memories. Here were blessed the colours that became a young man's shroud that they might not be a nation's shame. Here march and music welcome the coming and speed the parting regiments. On this Parade the rising sun is greeted with gun-fire and trumpet clarions shriller than the cock, and there he sets to a like salute with tuck of drum. Here the young recruit drills, the warrior puts on his medal, the old pensioner steals back to watch them, and the soldiers' children play--sometimes at fighting or flag-wagging, but oftener at funerals!
Before the Crimean War, this obscure parish had only a few hundred people. The little church above Aldershot station betrays what a small place it originally was that has grown into a large town, its streets alive and alert with the varied uniforms of Mr. T. Atkins, some dozen or score thousand of him in ordinary times. The High Street, like certain more famous thoroughfares, has only one side, facing to the blocks of building and parade grounds of the South Camp on a ridge above the canal. The busier side streets bear such appropriate names as _Union_, _Wellington_, _Victoria_, while the blocks of soldiers' quarters are inspiringly dubbed _Corunna_, _Talavera_, and so forth; and other names of military fame mark the Lines stretching over the canal to the North Camp, which has a station and "bazaar" quarter of its own. On very hot days, indeed, one might mistake parts of the camp for an Indian cantonment, till the eye catches ragged firs bordering this dusty _maidan_. The Cavalry lie to the west, beside the Winchester high-road, which is a boundary of the permanent barracks, while beyond it summer brings out mushroom-beds of tents for the volunteers and militia temporarily under training. On this side, to the south, opens the Long Valley, haunted by shadows of dust, where the Royal Pavilion makes a station for the Sovereign reviewing the troops in that "awful Campus Martius." On a knoll in a hollow hereabouts has been hidden the statue of the Great Duke that was laughed off its old perch on the arch at Hyde Park Corner. Farther south, on the right of the high-road, stands out Hungry Hill, and beyond it the bluff called Cæsar's Camp, from which at a height of 600 feet there is a wide view northwards. Cæsar has other doubtful camps in Surrey, whose border is recrossed on these heights. Hence, by a hedge of public-houses with which Hale tempts the British Grenadier, or through the quiet shades of the Episcopal park, we come down to the hop grounds of Farnham, and across the Wey's gault beds may gain that other series of commons about Hindhead.
All along this western side of the county sand has been mainly in evidence. Where we cross the chalk, between Aldershot and Farnham, its ridge is so much narrowed and lowered as not to force itself on the notice of unspectacled eyes. This is exceptional, for elsewhere in Surrey nature lays her record open, plain to read, leaf after leaf, only here and there a little crumpled and dog's-eared at corners by the careless hands of time. So we can see clearly on our next transverse section, made nearer the eastern border.
X
THE BRIGHTON ROADS
All the main roads running southwards from London would lead with more or less of a circumbendibus to Brighton; and the ideal way for a leisurely traveller might be to pass from one to another on short cross-roads, so as to pick out the best stretches of each. In Paterson's road-book (1792) the _Brighthelmston_ Road is indicated as going by Croydon, Godstone Green, East Grinstead and Lewes, fifty-nine miles, with a short-cut beyond Godstone by Lindfield, saving seven miles; but it also gives the "New Road" by Sutton, Reigate, and Crawley, fifty-four miles. A newer road by Croydon and Redhill, joining the Reigate route at Povey Cross, so as to save a mile or so, came in our time to bear the name of the Brighton Road _par excellence_, and was preferred by coaches and cycles, till the crush of Croydon traffic and tramways
[Illustration: THE BOURNE, CHOBHAM.]
drove them back to the Sutton route, even at the cost of facing the steep windings of Reigate Hill.
This road through Sutton and Reigate seems to have been the standard one when the Prince Regent's patronage made Brighton's fortune. The lumbering stages of older days took a whole long day to go all the way round by Lewes; but early in the century lighter vehicles began to ply on a shorter route, their wheels soon greased by competition. Among the many faults Cobbett has to find with George IV.'s reign, one is that "great parcels of stock jobbers" live at Brighton with their families, who "skip backwards and forwards on the coaches" to business in the City. He speaks of at least twenty coaches running daily on three or four routes, by which the Brighton resident, "leaving not very early in the morning, reaches London by noon, and starting back two and a half hours after, reaches Brighton not very late at night." If 7 A.M. would answer to this matutinal worthy's idea of a not very early start, that allows five hours for a journey recorded to be done once, under William IV., in the exceptionally short time of three hours forty minutes. A more precise writer of Cobbett's date gives six hours as a good rate for sixteen regular coaches plying all the year--besides eight "butterflies" in summer--the "Times," the "Regulator," the "Rocket," the "Patriot," the "True Blue," and so forth. In our own day of coaching revival a record run has been a little under eight hours to Brighton and back, with the disadvantage of more thronged thoroughfares to be traversed at either end. The cyclists' record seems to be about seven hours for the double journey, which is only a little more than that of an amateur Dick Turpin on horseback. The famous Stock Exchange walk to Brighton was won in nine and a half hours. One can hardly say in what time the motor-car could devour this way, if it got a fair chance and a clear road, as the rail has for its rush of an hour or so. One of the latest appearances on the Brighton road has been a motor omnibus, that modestly professed to take four hours to Brighton. For some time the Post Office has been carrying its heavy traffic this way by a motor vehicle, which once encountered the old-fashioned peril of highway robbery. There has been talk of a special road from London to Brighton, reserved as a track on which such careering vehicles may consume their own dust at their own pace.
The Sutton route is certainly the best in that it soonest brings one out into something like open country. Once clear of tram lines at Tooting or Streatham, roads from the west end and the city converge by Figgs Marsh on the flats of Mitcham. This is a widely straggling sucker of the metropolis which clings to relics of its rustic character, showing clumps of cottages, old inns, and patches of open ground not yet squeezed out of existence, while it has a fame of its own for the manufacture of tobacco and for the culture of aromatic herbs, that are distilled at Carshalton not far off. About several villages around, indeed, the air is perfumed by crops of lavender and peppermint, the essence of which makes an export to France. This neighbourhood had also an old name for walnuts, as mentioned by Fuller; and it still has room for gardens as well as golf ground. Let us trust that only scandal-mongering jealousy prompted a reproach once current among its neighbours:--
Sutton for mutton, Carshalton for beef; Croydon for a pretty girl, And Mitcham for a thief!
It may be that Mitcham got this bad reputation through the gypsies that long hung about it, and other undesirable aliens who gathered to the revels of Mitcham Fair.
Outside of Mitcham, when the road has passed a very pleasant glimpse of the Wandle, it becomes truly rural, running for two or three miles by hedges, trees, and park palings, with as yet few hints of suburban expansion. Yet, truth to tell, this is but a commonplace prospect of Surrey; and the cyclist or pedestrian might do well to make a bend by the left for a more varied route, by Mitcham Common, Hackbridge, and Carshalton, with its old Church and the pond wept over by Ruskin, who would have mourned more loudly had he lived to see its well-timbered park invaded by the builder. Carshalton--spelt _Casehorton_ in Georgian books, _Cash-Haulton_ by Fuller--is one of those places that has a wilful pronunciation of its name, this and the spelling perhaps worn down from _Cross Old Town_; and it is old enough to figure in King Alfred's will. Eastwards, by Wallington and Beddington, this choice place of residence almost runs into Croydon, to which a pretty walk may be taken by the bank of the Wandle opposite Beddington Park, where the stately Hall of the Carews, that has entertained Queen Elizabeth, is now an Orphan Asylum, and may be visited on week-day afternoons. In the gardens here it is said that oranges were acclimatised for a century, till an unusually severe frost proved too much for them. The spirit of the nineteenth century turned part of Beddington Park into a sewage farm; but still this vicinity has some pretty peeps not yet blocked out by bricks and mortar.
Even in George I.'s time, Defoe tells us, the edge of the Downs hereabouts, as "the most agreeable spot on all this side of London," was thickly set with citizens' houses, some "built with such a Profusion of Expense that they look rather like Seats of the Nobility." In our day, the merits of a high and dry site have spread building farther on to the chalk heights. Coming by Carshalton, one strikes Sutton in its centre, where beside the railway station the road, till not long ago, was spanned by the sign of the "Cock," that held out longer than the turnpike gate below it. The high-road runs right through this long place, for two miles or so, first descending then ascending on the chalk slopes, where so many Londoners seek healthy homes that this must be the largest of our scores of _South towns_, one of the commonest place-names in England. _Newtown_ is still more frequent, and not far behind Sutton comes _Weston_, whereas _Nortons_ and _Eastons_ appear comparatively rare.
The Sutton of Surrey seems more prosperous than picturesque, its old features overlaid, and its parish monuments packed away into a handsome new Church. But a mile to the west, Cheam has more rural features scattered round a spire below which stands the chancel of the old Church, enshrining some stately monuments; then from this village one can walk on through Nonsuch Park to Ewell on the Epsom road. Cheam is perhaps best known by what seems the oldest private school in England, now a nursery for Eton, but it has passed through various phases, and was at one time kept by the Rev. William Gilpin, whose search for the picturesque came to be caricatured in the tours of _Dr. Syntax_.
Having cleared the Sutton villadom, about the twelfth milestone from Westminster once more we emerge into the open; yet for a time the green Downs are cumbered by huge institutions, a lunatic asylum, and other blocks of building till lately used as Metropolitan Union schools, whose pupils made an advertisement for Sutton's salubrity; but one hears that they are now to be devoted to the care of more afflicted wards of our local government. Beyond, on the right, is seen the outlying place called Belmont, that hardly justifies its name. The unshackled wayfarer might bear over the Downs to the left, making for the spire of the pretty village of Banstead, hidden among fine trees. Those who keep the high-road must not forget to turn round, near the crossing of the Epsom Downs line, for a view from the highest point, over 500 feet, looking across the southern suburbs to the dome of St. Paul's, that may be seen on a clear day, and sometimes, it is said, the eye catches Windsor Castle to the west. Closer at hand are scenes that moved an eighteenth-century poet:--
... where low tufted broom Or box, or berried junipers arise; Or the tall growth of glossy rinded beech; And where the burrowing rabbit turns the dust, And where the dappled deer delights to bound, Such are the downs of Banstead, edged with woods And towery villas.
Here we are fairly on Banstead Downs, stretching to the Epsom racecourse, that seems to have originally come under Banstead's name. Epsom town lies two or three miles to our right, beyond Nork Park. To the left, on the north side of the Downs, is the park called the "Oaks," seat of that Lord Derby who founded the race so named. On either side there are alluring byways, like that leading by Banstead along the ridge to Woodmansterne, at whose little Church guide-posts set us on the way back to Carshalton, or into the Chipstead valley, where we might turn down to Purley, or up the valley to regain the high-road at Tadworth by a very pleasant path through Banstead woods and over Burgh Heath.
At Tadworth, where the Chipstead valley line to Tottenham Corner is crossed, the high-road forks, its right branch going to Dorking, its left to Reigate by the spire of Kingswood Church. The Dorking road runs over Banstead Heath and Walton Heath, where, at the height of nearly 600 feet, stands up Walton-on-the-Hill, so called in distinction from Walton low-lying on the Thames. Here there is a wide stretch of real stubbly heath, such as Cobbett would abuse as "villainous," but the Romans had not such bad taste, who left the remains of a considerable villa to be unearthed on it. Walton Place is said to have been the retreat of Anne of Cleves after her lucky separation from the royal Bluebeard. In our day Walton is perhaps best famed for its excellent golf links. The whole district is a charming jumble of fields and woods among pitted sandhills and wrinkled chalk ridges, where a pedestrian will often be tempted to stray from the open road. A mile or so to the west of Walton,
[Illustration: REIGATE HEATH, EVENING.]
over a wooded hollow, is reached the conspicuous Church of Headley-on-the-Hill, already mentioned as goal of so many footpaths. From this may soon be gained the Roman Road; and southwards, from Walton or Headley, there are pleasant tracks leading to the edge of the Downs to strike the Pilgrims' Way as it comes to pass above Reigate.
These heaths are skirted by our Brighton highway, which at Gatton Park, about three miles beyond the fork at Tadworth, approaches its grandest point. Through the cutting to lower its level, that gave such strange offence to Cobbett, it suddenly emerges on the steep brow above Reigate, passing under the Suspension Bridge of the Pilgrims' Way, whence on the left a most leafy lane leads down to Redhill, the modern annexe of Reigate. A footpath runs along the cutting to the end of the Suspension Bridge, where are seats for enjoying the celebrated view from this brow; but from the open turf by the roadside the prospect is hardly diminished, embracing the whole south of the county. The Holmesdale Valley lies at our feet, with Reigate spread out in the foreground, backed by the sand ridge; far away to the east stretches the Weald of Kent; and the towers of East Grinstead stand up to the south-east, across the Sussex border, with Crowborough Beacon beyond. Chanctonbury Ring and the Devil's Dyke on the Sussex Downs can sometimes be made out to the south. To the west, the Holmesdale Valley is continued between Leith Hill and the Chalk Downs on which we stand; then on that hand the featureless ridge of Hindhead will close the view in fine weather.