THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD.*
The Portsmouth Road and its Tributaries ought to be a very entertaining book. Nothing is in the abstract more interesting than a great road,—a human river which has run for hundreds of years from one great town to another. Think of all the great men and women and great historical events that are connected with the Portsmouth Road. Down the Portsmorith Road, partly by the main stream and partly by one of the "lead-offs," went Nelson, when he left England to fight the Battle of Trafalgar. Up the road came the news of victory and of his death. To tell the history of the Ports- mouth Road in full would, indeed, be to recount half the naval glories of England. But the historic interest is only half the charm of a great road. The Portsmouth Road and its tributaries run through the most delightful rural scenery in England. In its passage through Surrey and Hampshire it takes the wayfarer into the very heart of some of the wildest country in the island, and one has only to explore its
tributaries a mile or two up from their point of. confluence to find oneself as far removed from the bustle of life as if one were in Devonshire or Wiltshire. Connected with the charm of scenery belonging to a road like the Portsmouth Road is the charm which belongs to old manor-houses, old churches, old inns, old cottages, and old towns and villages.
The Portsmouth Road is a very pageant of all these. You may journey down to find here a beautiful Elizabethan manor-house set among its trees ; there an old red-brick building of the time of Dutch William; or a piece of that pleasant Georgian style which combines dignity, comfort, and homeliness in equal degrees. The inns alone, with their benches and tables in front of them, are a delight to the traveller, so varied are they and so full of interest. One is the regular old posting-house of the beginning of the century, with its high door into the inn-yard. The next is a six- teenth-century ale-house, — in whose parlour might have sat Christopher Sly, and drunk his beer, not without a doubt as to whether the fat ale-wife would agree to chalk up another day's by-drinkings. It would be difficult, then, to make a book about the Portsmouth Road which should be dull or unentertaining. The writer of the work
before us has not done the impossible, and his book will doubtless be read with real interest by a large body of readers. It cannot be said, however, that he has made
anything like the use he might of his splendid opportunities. He too often leaves half said, or badly said, the things one would most have liked to find treated adequately and appropriately. It is, however, no good to look a gift-horse in the mouth, and we will therefore say no more, but content ourselves with what is given us,—namely, a large bundle of general gossip about the Portsmouth Road.
The crimes committed on the road come in for their fair share of notice in the work before us. Not only is the brutal murder committed on Hind Head, and commemorated by the well-known cross, fully described, but a very thrilling and melodramatic story is given of a murder committed by smugglers in the eighteenth century. These smugglers seem to have acted with the hideous cruelty which is attributed to pirates. They caught two men who were supposed to be engaged in bringing one of their comrades, named Diamond, to justice. This is how they treated them :—
" Another proposition that was made –to imprison the two in some safe place until they knew what would be Diamond's fate, and for each of the smugglers to subscribe threepence a week for their keep—was immediately scouted ; and instantly the brutal fury of these ruffians was aroused by Jackson, who, going into the room where the unfortunate men were lying, spurred them on their foreheads with the heavy spurs of his riding-boots, and having thus awakened them, whipped them into the kitchen of the inn until they were streaming with blood. Then, taking them outside, the gang lifted them on to a horse, one behind the other, and tying their hands and legs together, lashed them with heavy whips along the road, crying, 'Whip them, cut them, slash them, damn them ! ' From Rowlands Castle, past Wood Ashes, Goodthorpe Deane, and to Lady Holt Park, this scourging was continued through the night until the wretched men were three- parts dead. At two o'clock in the morning this gruesome pro- cession reached the Portsmouth Road at Rake, where the foremost members of the party halted before the' Red Lion,' kept in those days by one Scardefield, who was no stranger to their kind, nor unused to the purchase and storing of smuggled spirits. Here • (1.) The Port=mou'h Road and its Tributaries, To.Day and in the Days of Old. By Charles G. Harper. lEnstrated. London : Chapman and Hall.—(2.) Surrey Highways, Byways, and Waterways. Written and Illustrated by C. H. B. Barrett. London : Blue, Sands, anu Foster.—(S.) Some Ancient English Raines and their Associations, Personal, Archeological, and Historic. By Eliza- beth Hodges. Illustrated by S. J. Lorton. London : T. Fisher Unwin. they knocked and rattled at the door until Scardefield was obliged to get out of bed and open to them. Galley, still alive, was thrust into an outhouse while the band, having roused the landlord and procured drink, caroused in the parlour of the inn. Chater they carried in with them ; and when Scardefield stood horrified at seeing so ghastly a figure of a man, all bruised and injured and spattered with blood, they told him a specious tale of an engagement they had had with the King's officers : that here was one comrade, wounded, and another, dead or dying, in his brew-house. While it was yet dark they carried Galley to a place in Harting Coombe, at some distance from the Red Lion,* and, digging a grave in a fox-earth by the light of a lantern, they buried him, without enquiring too closely whether or not their victim was dead. That he was not dead at that time became evident when his body was found, with the hands raised to the face, as though to prevent the dirt from suffocating him. The whole of this day this evil company sat drinking in the Red Lion,' having disposed of their other prisoner for a time by chaining him by the leg in a turf-shed near by. This was Monday, and at night they all returned home, lest their absence might be remarked by their neighbours ; agreeing to meet again at Rake on the Wednesday evening, to consider how they might best put an end to Chafer. When Wednesday night had come, this council of fourteen smugglers decided to dispatch him forthwith, and, going down in a body to the turf-shed where he had lain all this while, suffering agonies from the cruel usage to which he had already been subjected, they unchained him, and with the most revolting barbarities, set him across &- horse and whipped him afresh all the way back to Lady Holt Park, where there was a deep, dry well. Into this they threw the wretched man, and by his cries and groans perceiving that he was not yet dead, they collected a great number of large stones, which, together with two great gate-posts, they flung down upon him, and then rode away."
In the author's journey down the Portsmouth Road, he mentions the fact that down it went the melancholy cavalcade which took "a brave man to a cruel, shameful, and unjust death on the quarter-deck of the man-of-war Monarqne ' in Portsmouth Harbour." That man was, of course, Admiral Byng. Mr. Harper goes on to give an interesting account of Byng and of the way he met his end, including the reproduction of a most interesting plate, show- ing the last scene on the •Monarque.' Byng is kneeling on the deck and some six marines are firing at him at close quarters. They are not, apparently, more than four or five feet away, for the points of their long bayonets almost touch him. Here is a story which shows Byng's fortitude :—
The execution was fixed for March 14th, and Byng's demeanour thenceforward was equally unaffected and undaunted. He met his death with a calmness of demeanour and a fortitude of spirit that proved him to be no coward of that ignoble type which fears pain or dissolution as the greatest and most awful of evils. His personal friends were solicitous to avoid anything that might give him unnecessary pain, and one of them, a few days before the end, inventing a pitiful ruse, said to him, Which of us is tallest?'—' Why this ceremony ? ' asked the Admiral. I know well what it means ; let the man come and measure me- for my coffin.' "
Before we leave Mr. Harper's book we may note that the illustrations are in many cases very curious. It is, however, much to be regretted that he has not added statements of the origin of the engravings he reproduces. For example, one would greatly like to know whether the picture of the execu- tion of Byng was from a contemporary plate.
A book which serves to supplement 'The Portsmouth Road ie Mr. Barrett's Surrey Highways, Byways, and Waterways. It is in effect an account of the old houses and buildings of Surrey. The style is rambling and cumbrous, and the matter not seldom confused and without arrangement ; but for all that the book contains a good deal of curious informa- tion concerning the antiquities of Surrey not to be obtained elsewhere. The drawings are, on the whole, excellent, and special praise may be given to the reproductions of archi- tectural details. For examples we may cite the sketches of iron window fastenings at Guildford, of the staircase gate at Slyfields Manor Honse,—that exquisite piece of brickwork set in a meadow near the Mole, not far from Cobham, and on a tributary of the Portsmouth Road which runs from Leather- head to join the main stream. A work of a similar kind, though it does not deal with Surrey, is Mrs. Hodges's Some Ancient English Homes. Here we get an account of nine old houses in Gloucestershire and the neighbouring counties, with appropriate drawings and sketches; and here again the illus- trations will probably find more admirers than the text. Both books show how much more interest is felt in the manor- houses of England than formerly. A generation ago the lore of old houses was cultivated by a very small class even among the educated. Now the delight in and love for the old houses has become almost universal.
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