Part 13

Five miles and a half down the road from Sittingbourne, the pilgrims who had prayed so devoutly at the shrine of Our Lady of the Buttress (and it is to be hoped had not forgotten the claims of Swanstree Hermitage) came to Ospringe, where they usually found a profuse hospitality waiting for them at the Maison Dieu. Not that there was any lack of religious houses on the way. Far from it, indeed. They had not proceeded much farther than a mile when they came in those times to the Hermitage of Bapchild, with the hermit standing on the doorstep, scratching himself with one hand, holding out a scollop shell for alms in the other, and conjuring them by the blessed Thomas and all the hierarchy of saints to spare something for his altar. The parish church of Bapchild, which was built in early Norman times, before any one dreamed of Canterbury becoming a place of pilgrimage, or the high-road crowded with a varied concourse of miserable sinners anxious to compound for their ill-deeds by visiting the scene of the martyrdom, is situated beside a lane at some distance from the road, and so was quite out of the track of that alms-giving crowd. It grieved the Vicar of Bapchild to see these free-handed folks going by, with never a mark or even a silver penny coming his way, and so he contrived to set up some sort of a cell and chapel with a few exceedingly dubious bones in it, supposed to be the reliques of saints; but probably grubbed up from his own churchyard. It did not matter much whose reliques they were called, for that was a credulous age, and so long as there were not two skulls of Saint Paulinus on view, or more than a gross of Saint Alphege's teeth to be seen at the numberless shrines between London and Canterbury, the pilgrims were not generally disposed to be critical. It was only when Saint Frideswyde appeared, from the osseous evidence of these shrines, to have as many arms as Vishnu, or when Saint Antholin appeared, from equally untrustworthy evidence, to have been in this life a Double-headed Nightingale or a kind of Siamese Twins, that men on pilgrimage became sceptical. But, after all, if saints could perform one kind of a miracle, why not another, and why should not Saint Alphege cause his teeth to be increased, until a peck of them could be gathered from the monasteries of Europe, or Saint Antholin not have his skulls miraculously multiplied if they had a mind to it; and if Saint Frideswyde could be proved to have been possessed of half a dozen arms, was it not for the good, if not of the church, at least of the clergy, that it should be so? And so, it is to be hoped that the Vicar and the Hermit, between them, did well; and also it is to be hoped that the Hermit took more advantage, for washing purposes, of the little stream which here also flowed across the roadway than his brethren were wont to do.

The road between Ospringe and Sittingbourne was in those days very lonely, and lonely it still remains, for the settlements of Bapchild, Radfield, and Greenstreet are but dull and dishevelled collections of tiny shops and cottages, with here and there a slumberous old inn or whitewashed farmhouse. The railway to Dover runs on the left hand, within sight of the highway, through the beautiful cherry-orchards and the hop-gardens, and the land slopes gently down to the levels of Teynham and the fertile though ague-stricken marshes of the Swale; that part of Kent where, according to the old local saying, there is "wealth without health"; significantly alluded to in the rhyme--

He that would not live long, Let him live at Murston, Teynham, or Tong.

[Sidenote: TONG]

Tong Castle, where Rowena "drank hael" to King Vortigern and captivated that very susceptible but unpatriotic monarch; the scene also of the treacherous murder by Hengist and his men of three hundred British nobles, is represented now only by a grassy mound. Here we are in the centre of the hop-growing districts, and the road begins to be bordered with hop-gardens, bare in autumn and winter, except for the great stacks of poles; but beautiful in spring and summer with the climbing bine, planted in long alleys in which women and children work in the long summer days, weeding and tying up the hops, and hanging up the wind-screens called "lews." For the hop-vine is a delicate plant that requires as much cossetting and constant attention as an invalid, and if it is not carefully tended and trained up in the way it should go, it presently droops and dies or becomes too weak to climb up the long twelve- and fifteen-feet poles which it is expected to surmount. And so it is jealously shielded from all draughts and boisterous breezes by long pieces of canvas or string netting, stretched from pole to pole at that side of the gardens whence come the prevailing winds; while every hop-pole is tied so scrupulously and elaborately to its fellow that a June hop-garden is a very maze of string.

To these gardens come in August and September hundreds of men, women, and children from London slums; some by train, many more by road. Whole families of them, with their clothing, their pots and pans and sooty kettles, slung over their shoulders, come tramping down the weary miles, and fill the air with ribaldry, strange oaths, and horrible blasphemy. The villagers keep them at arm's length, if not, indeed, at a greater distance than that, and keep their children at home; going round their gardens and orchards at night, to see that gates are locked; and, bolting doors and latching windows securely, go to bed and dream dreams in which evil-looking hoppers are stealing their fruit and making away with the occupants of their hen-roosts. Sometimes they wake up and find the crashing of branches, the screaming and clucking of cocks and hens, which have formed the subjects of their dreams, to have foundation in fact, and hurriedly dashing out of bed, arrive, barefooted and armed only with a poker, in their gardens just in time to see mysterious figures vanish over the wall and to hear the protests of their stolen fowls grow small by degrees and beautifully less in the distance. Next day the bereaved villager is heard to execute fruitless variations of "Tell me, shepherds, have you seen my Flora pass this way?" and some enterprising emigrants from Whitechapel feast royally on poultry.

[Sidenote: OSPRINGE]

Just where the hilltop rises and looks down in the direction of Ospringe, the wisdom of the Faversham authorities has planted a Hospital for infectious diseases. It fronts the road, and has a very large door with "Isolation Hospital" painted on it in very small letters. Tramps and beggars passing by see a large house where possibly something may be begged or stolen. They go up to the door, and, after reading the legend painted there, may be seen to proceed hurriedly on their way. Without standing on the order of their going, they go at once. _Omne ignotum pro magnifico_: they don't know what "isolation" means, but they hurry off, lest they should catch isolation and die of it. And so they come, stricken with a mortal fear, into Ospringe, down a dusty hill. A Maison Dieu that stood here in olden times would perhaps have received them then, but to-day the few fragments of it that remain are part of the "Red Lion" inn, and tramps find no encouragement there.

The Knights Templar and the Brethren of the Holy Ghost held this Hospital for travellers for many years, from the time of Henry the Second, and they exercised a lavish hospitality, extended to all, from the King downwards. King John had a room here--a _camera regis_--and other monarchs frequently made this a halting-place on their way to or from Dover. Very few records are left of the feastings and jollifications that took place in this semi-religious, semi-secular retreat, and Ospringe has no longer any Royal visitors. The village consists of a long street beside the highway at the foot of Judd's Hill, and of a shorter street, called Water Lane, that runs off at right angles where the remains of the Maison Dieu stand beside the stream to which Ospringe owes its rather pretty name. At one time this stream flowed openly across the roadway, but it is bridged now, and Water Lane, which had a raised footpath on either side, while the lane itself was occupied by the stream, through which horses and carts splashed, has now been drained dry.

The "Anchor Hotel" was once a posting-house and a stopping-place on the route of local coaches between Chatham and Herne Bay, but this traffic has of course been long discontinued. The modern pilgrim should not fail, before leaving Ospringe, to explore Water Lane and the country road for half a mile beyond. The place abounds in old cottages, picturesque windmills, and old timbered houses of some pretensions. Of these, Queen Hall is probably the most interesting. Beyond it is the parish church, a very large building with a tower of grand design and unusual type. The edifice has been thoroughly and unusually well restored, with an exquisite taste unfortunately too rare in country districts, and may be instanced as an example of what "restoration" should be. The approach to the church by the road is past hop-gardens which group beautifully, and form an excellent motive for a sketch.

XXX

Faversham town, lying a mile distant, between Faversham Creek and the turnpike road, will doubtless in the course of a few years adjoin Ospringe, and convert the village into a mere suburb. Preston, the old suburb of Faversham, is distant something over a mile, but in between there have lately been built very many new streets of cottages and villas, evidences of Faversham's prosperity, doubtless, but not pleasing to the tourist. That prosperity is due to its situation upon a navigable creek, along which are pursued the trades of brick and tile making, and the manufacture of gunpowder; and the oyster fishery, which adds such a great proportion of wealth to this flourishing county of Kent, is largely centred here.

[Illustration: OSPRINGE: A JUNE HOP-GARDEN.]

The surrounding country, too, is probably the very richest and most suitable district for the growing of cherries, gooseberries, currants, and strawberries; and the frequency and perfection of the market-gardens, orchards, and hop-gardens strike the pedestrian with admiration and amazement. A visit in early spring, when the orchards are in blossom, and others in the cherry- and hop-picking seasons, convince the sceptical that Kent is, in sober truth, the "garden of England." The stranger needs but to spend a week between this and Canterbury; to tramp the high-road and the bye-lanes in the direction of Herne Hill and Whitstable, and he will see abundant evidences of how important is the fruit-growing industry, not only in the fields and gardens, where he may see the fruit growing, but also in the great barns and outhouses bursting with many thousands of bushel-baskets only awaiting the ripening of the cherries and currants to be filled and put upon the rails at Faversham Junction, whence numerous special trains are daily run during the season to London and the Borough Market. Somewhat earlier in the year--generally in mid-June--other evidences of the magnitude of the fruit interest are seen in the auctioneers' sale bills posted on every available board and fence, announcing that the growing crops are presently to be sold by auction.

[Sidenote: DISCONTENTED FARMERS]

But, in spite of the fertility of Kentish orchards, the countryman will not forego his privilege of grumbling. Singularly enough, he never thinks of eating any of the fruit he grows, and the more plentiful the crops, the less pleased he professes himself to be. Not that, should you come upon him at a season when plenty is less marked, he will be any the more gratified. Hold the peasant proprietor of an orchard in conversation during the fruit season, and you will think him one of the most miserable and unfortunate men in the country.

"Good day to you," you say.

(Hodge nods his head, and mumbles, "Mor'n'n.")

"Splendid crops you have down here. I should think things must be going pretty well in these parts?"

"Ay, goin' to the Devil fast enow, I'se warrand."

"Oh! how d'you make that out?"

"Make it out, is it? Why, look a-here at them there turmuts; d'you iver see sich poor things; ay, an' _all_ the root crops is bad's can be."

"Yes; but _you_'re all right with your fruit; cherries and apples."

"M'yes, there's a dale o' fruit this year: darned sight too much ter please me."

"But you can't very well have too much of a good thing, can you?"

"Can't you just, though; look at the price; down ter nothing, as you might say. Get it for the asking."

"But _I_ didn't get cherries for the asking; _I_ had to pay eightpence a pound for some I bought at Chatham."

"Oh! I dessay. Wish _I_ c'd git a penny a pound. But that's jist like them 'ere starv'em, rob'em, and cheat'em folks. Wouldn't give 'ee so much's the parings o' their finger-nails if they c'd help it."

"Then why don't you make preserves of some of your fruit?"

"Preserves? what's that, mister?"

"Why, jam, you know. Besides, surely you eat some of your own fruit, don't you?"

"Fruit's to sell, not to heat!"

"Well, then, if you can't sell it, don't preserve it, and won't eat any of it, _what_ do you do with it?"

"Give it ter the pigs, in coorse!"

"Yes, but why not eat some of it yourself?"

"Heat it! D'yer take me for a bloomin' Nebuchadnezzar? Besides, it's that there ondergestuble----!"

"But Nebuchadnezzar didn't eat fruit. He hadn't got the chance, poor fellow. He could only find grass to eat."

"Grass 'ood'n't be so ondergestuble as fruit, I reckon. Blame me if you town folks don't think a man can live on nothink. Now, a pound or two o' steak, a few rashers o' fat bacon, an' a few heggs for bre'kfuss--that's more my line. Hexpeck a Christian man to heat fruit----!"

"But you expect people to buy yours, don't you?"

"Naw, I don't hexpeck nothin'."

"Then why do you grow it?"

"Bekause I suppose I'm a fool; that's about the size of it. Good day t'ye, mister."

XXXI

The history of Faversham town is extremely long and interesting, but as it does not lie on the direct road to Dover, it will not be necessary to go into a very detailed account of it. It is a curious, half-maritime borough whose Mayor wears a chain of office decorated with badges of oars and rudders; a town whose records include such events as the burial of King Stephen, his Queen, and his son Eustace; and at a very much later date, the attempted escape of James the Second. Faversham fishermen recognized the fugitive King as he crouched, shivering in the hoy at Shellness on that bitter December morning of 1688, and, robbing him of his watch and chain and his money, they brought him a prisoner to the Mayor's house, where he was detained two days, guarded by a mob of countrymen, on whom his terror-stricken appeals to be allowed to escape had no effect.

[Sidenote: FAVERSHAM]

"He who is not with me is against me," exclaimed the frantic bigot. "My blood will be upon your heads if I fall a martyr." But the dignity of a martyr was not to be his. A troop of Life-guards was sent to effect his release from the ignorant mob, who only refrained from stealing his diamond shoe-buckles because they thought them to be pieces of glass. James's terror of the Faversham fishers is reflected in his manifesto issued years afterwards, in which he offers an amnesty to his "rebel subjects," but expressly excepts such arch-traitors as Churchill, Danby, and the poor oyster-dredgers of Faversham.

Saints Crispin and Crispianus, who have a public-house dedicated to them at Strood, had an altar here in the Abbey Church, and were supposed to have lived a while at Preston, earning their living as cobblers in a cottage that stood where the "Swan" inn is now. Long after the Reformation had done sway with the shrine of Saint Thomas, pious bootmakers made pilgrimages to the place; and St. Crispin's Day was for centuries the principal holiday in Faversham. I would rather make pilgrimage to the place where they earned their living than to the shrines of all the sanctified humbugs who contended for pride of place in this world, and becoming worsted in the struggle for supremacy, received their Canonization as a matter of course.

Faversham in the fifteenth century was not less well-furnished with religious cranks than the holy road to Canterbury. There was an anchorite in one corner of Faversham churchyard, and an anchoress in another, and in their cells they sat and sulked their lives away, and never did any work. William Thornbury was rector here for twenty-two years, when he resigned his living especially to become an _inclusus_; and for eight years he occupied a damp and most uncomfortable cell amid the tombs, until he died, most likely of rheumatic fever, in 1481. There is a most beautiful brass to him in the church, with a long Latin verse, recounting how he was one of the elect, and how for long years he sat lonely in his cell. Why he should have lived such a life is a question which we, who are so far removed from that age, both by lapse of time and in change of thought, cannot readily answer. That he was a man of good birth, good position, and considerable wealth, would appear from his will, and these circumstances make his reclusion only the more extraordinary. He probably suffered either from religious mania, or else from a guilty conscience which led him thus to compound with Heaven for some undiscovered crime that made his life a misery.

But the traveller who keeps strictly to his Dover Road only passes through Faversham suburbs. Preston is the oldest of them, and lies directly on the road. To the left rises Faversham's fantastic spire, conspicuous above the flats; immediately in front goes the railway in a cutting underneath the road; and straight ahead, in the far distance, rises up a long thin white line amid hillsides clothed heavily with forests. It is long before the stranger discovers what is that singular white streak upon the dark trees, but it reveals itself, as he goes, as the famous Boughton Hill, and the woodlands as the extensive remains of Blean Forest.

It was at "Boughton-under-the-Blee" that Chaucer's Canon and Yeoman overtook the pilgrims. The Canon's hat hung down his back by a lace, for he had ridden as though he were mad. Under his hood he had placed a burdock-leaf to cool his head, but yet his forehead dropped like a still that was full of plantain and wallflower. The Canon's Yeoman tells the pilgrims how pleased his master would be of their company as far as Canterbury; and the Host makes him welcome, asking if his master can please the party with a merry story. "A story?" asks the Yeoman; "that is nothing to what the Canon can do. He is an Alchemist, and so clever that--

"all this ground on which we be riding, Till that we come to Canterbury town, He could all cleane turnen up so down, And pave it all of silver and of gold."

"Ah!" says Harry Bailly, the Host, "that's all very well, you know, but how is it that this wonderful master of yours wears such a threadbare coat?" To this query, the Yeoman is bound to answer that his master is too clever by half, or not clever enough, and that he has, for all his alchemy, only wasted his substance and that of many more. The Canon hears something of this, and bidding his servant hold his tongue, makes off for very shame, while the Yeoman tells the story that brings the party to Harbledown.

XXXII

[Sidenote: BOUGHTON]

Boughton-under-Blean is perhaps the neatest, quietest, longest, and most cheerfully picturesque village on the Dover Road. It lies near the foot of the hill. Half-way up is the church.

In the churchyard of Boughton there is a great yew-tree whose girth at three feet from the ground was taken by the vicar in 1894. It was then 9 ft. 9 in. The age of this tree is exactly known, for a seventeenth century vicar, the Reverend John Johnson, recorded, "the little yew-tree by the south doer was sett in 1695." The yew, therefore, expands one foot in sixty-one years.

One or two country houses with large gardens and trimly cut hedges occupy the crest of the hill; and just beyond, on the level plateau of Dunkirk, is the church, built in 1840, as some means toward civilizing the untutored savages the villagers of this beautiful county had become under the neglect of that Christian Church whose Metropolitan Cathedral rises proudly beyond the hillside village of Harbledown, less than three miles away. God in His goodness has blessed with a boundless fertility the fair land of Kent, so that old Michael Drayton merely expressed facts when he wrote that rapturous eulogy--

O famous Kent! What county hath this isle that can compare with thee? That hath within thyself as much as thou canst wish; Thy rabbits, venison, fruits, thy sorts of fowl and fish; As what with strength compares, thy hay, thy corn, Nor anything doth want that anywhere is good.

But, long after the first quarter of the nineteenth century had passed, this part of Kent was peopled with a peasantry compared with whom the Hindoos and the Chinese, who were even then receiving the warm attention of missionary zealots, were highly civilized and enlightened. The very county in which Augustine had landed and reintroduced Christianity thirteen hundred years before was neglected and ignored by the port-drinking parsons and prebendal wine-butts who drew fat incomes from the Church and starved the souls of dwellers under its very shadow; and the kindly fruits of this fertile land, with its furred and feathered game, brought no prosperity to the people. "The earth is the Squire's and the fulness thereof" was an emendation of Holy Writ scored deeply in every yokel's brain; and here, whither a fervent piety had brought uncounted thousands of pilgrims in the by-past centuries, the country-folk lived from youth to age, Godless and unlettered. The Era of Reform had dawned on England, sweeping away much, both good and evil, but these dark districts of Kent remained the same, save for a slowly growing feeling of discontent. The New Poor Law naturally fostered this feeling in a country where every other peasant lived in old age upon Outdoor Relief--and thought it the most reasonable way of ending a life of toil. By this new dispensation it became necessary for a poor man to break up his home and go into the "Union" before relief could be afforded him; and thus the Poors' Rates were raised and the feelings of ratepayers and peasantry embittered simultaneously. A man who felt no shame in receiving his half-crown or five shillings a week from the parish, experienced bitter degradation in becoming an inmate of what is now generally known as "the House," then hateful under the current name of "the Bastille," or "Bastyle," as the English peasant pronounced the word.

[Sidenote: "COURTENAY"]