THE portion of that highly favoured county which forms the
subject of Miss Jekyll's latest book lies in the angle between
• Old West Surrey : Bones Notes and M*11101i61. By Gertrude Jekyll. With MO Illustrations from Photographs by the Author. London: Longuums and CO. [134. net.] Hampshire and Sussex. Godalming is the chief town, and the boundary to the north is the Hog's Back. To the south it merges through the Weald into Sussex. Miss Jekyll has lived there almost continuously since she was a very young child. It was a wild and almost undiscovered country then. Now she deplores its destruction and disfigurement. Rail- ways, motors, buildings and iron fencing, and all kinds of competition have invaded this quiet corner. But there is still much unspoilt, though man does his best. It is not more than forty miles from London, and yet there are many thousand acres of wild country where one can walk for hours off the beaten track and hardly meet a soul. Coal has mercifully not been dis- covered in Surrey. The old cottages are as picturesque as. any in England. There are still old men to be seen with top- hats and smock-frocks. Shepherds carry crooks and women wear sun-bonnets. Miss Jekyll can even remember one old man whose Sunday dress was knee-breeches, and another who wore a pigtail. This was in the "fifties." Now, unfor- tunately, countryfolk mostly strive to be fashionable. Miss. Jekyll describes a wedding-party of the labouring class. The bride had a veil and orange-blossoms, a shower-bouquet and pages ! The bridegroom wore a cheap, shoddy suit, and had a billycock-hat pushed back from his poor, anxious, excited face that glistened with sweat. In his buttonhole was a large bouquet, and on his hands were white cotton gloves!
The feature of Miss Jekyll's book is the great collection of photographs that she has made : of farms and cottages, furniture and old tools, cottage ornaments and the old cottagers themselves. They are excellent photographs, and as charming as photographs reproduced on highly glazed paper can be. We do not suppose, were it not for these illustra- tions, that the book itself would ever have been written ; for some of the chapters contain very little beyond comments and explanations concerning the pictures. An unkind critic might, however, make fun of a few of the illustrations, which, as we have said, are a feature of the book : the copper warming-pan,. the Lay-rakes, the wicker bird-cage, the horn mugs, the iron skewers, the butter-prints, and the knife-tray, which can be seen anywhere at the present day, hardly deserve to be photographed. Even those of us who do not use red cotton handkerchiefs have probably seen them. But we must not be hard on Miss Jekyll ; only we cannot help thinking that if she had taken as much trouble over the text as she has over the best of the illustrations she might have produced a better book.
The earlier chapters deal with the old cottages and farms and some of the changes which have taken place in country life during the last fifty years. We pass to old furniture, cottage ornaments, crockery, table-ware, and various articles found in. cottages. These are illustrated with photographs of old objects which Miss Jekyll has secured at country sales. Many things which were in daily use have passed into the hands of dealers, and are now sold as curious antiquities.. The rural industries of West Surrey are not many beyond farming and wood-cutting. There is plenty of copse-wood, and the cutting of this, which is done by piecework, gives employment to many. In the woodlands there also go on the industries of hurdle-making and hoop-making,—the hoops. are used for barrels, and the longest ones go to the Tropics. forsugar hogsheads. Heath-cutting, too, for which a special tool is used, still goes on, and so does the making of heather and birch brooms. The broom-squarers, or "broom-squires," have always been noted in Surrey as rough folk. We find no mention of charcoal-burning, though the charcoal- burners of the Hurtwood cannot be unknown to Miss Jekyll. Bricklaying, cider-making (though Surrey is not a cider country), lime-burning, thatching (now only used for ricks in Surrey), and mole-catching are dealt with in turn. Perhaps Miss Jekyll remembers the old man at Westcott whose sign over his door described him as "Thatcher and Mole-catcher." Few things have altered rural life more than the introduction. of lucifer matches and cheap mineral oil ; and a whole chapter is devoted to rushlights and rushlight holders. Have our readers ever noticed shallow grooves burnt along the edges of old furniture P These come from laying the rushlights on the edge of the table or chest of drawers and letting them burn until they went out Those were the days when every cottage had its tinder-box. Lucifer matches seem to have Some of the best reading will be found in the three -chapters on the old conntryfolk, their ways, their speech, and their clothing. Those whose knowledge of Surrey is -confined to the Portsmouth road as seen from a bicycle -or a motor-car can have little idea how primitive is the rural life in the remoter valleys and the isolated cottages. 'There will be found old folks who have never been to London, who are "no scholars" and full of incredible superstitions, who have stories to tell of smuggling days, and who are still firm believers in witchcraft. The world lass moved, and they have not moved with it. The present -writer well remembers an old man from Peaslake who was taken to the poll at the 1892 Election protesting that he -was not going to vote for Sir Robert Peel. Miss Jekyll has met with some who have never been ten miles away from their birthplace, and yet are unequalled for simple wisdom and shrewdness. They use the old dialect. The old verb "to abide" is still in their mouths. " Bide still, child !" or, "I'll bide at home till the rain gives over." The car- penter says of a post, "Rear it up," or "Saw it asunder." In summer flies " tenify " horses. To remember is still "to mind,—" I mind the time when it happened." 'To " scandalise " is to use abusive language to a person. An old husband or wife dies, and the survivor always says : "I've lost ray best friend." When they married they said : "I've got a good partner." The wryneck, according to Miss Jekyll, is "the rining-bird." We have heard the name used -of the willow-wren. It means the bird which comes when the -oak-bark or " rine" is stripped. "To store" means to value. ." I stores that, same as I does everything as was her'n," said a woman of a basin that belonged to her mother. " Any- when " is a convenient companion to " anywhere " ; and " somewhen " and " ofttimes " we have heard used in Surrey.
• " Do I dare ?" means "Have I leave ?" Thus : "Mother, do I -dare go to bed ? " This bit of conversation, among many amusing remarlis which Miss Jekyll has noted, is very like the Surrey rustic. Two labourers stood at the edge of a field above a hollow lane where two carts passed with difficulty. Said one : "Lane's ther' narrer." Said the other : " Yus " ; then, after a long pause, adding this profound remark : "It ain't wide enough." The custom of making "rough music" —beating pots and pans—outside a man's house as an ex- pression of public ill-feeling, which Miss Jekyll remembers in her young days, is by no means extinct. It is but a few years since the parson of a Surrey parish which shall be nameless was visited with "rough music." We would that space allowed us to transcribe much that Miss Jekyll has col- lected about old customs, such as the annual fight on Whit- Monday between the " Kaffirs " of Ewhurst (no doubt Cavaliers) and Roundheads of Rudgwick. We pass on to the chapter on smuggling. The county of Surrey lay on the smugglers' way when goods were landed, as many were, on the Sussex coast. The high-lying lands are still scored with the remains of old pack-horse tracks, well known to the smugglers, who travelled at night, keeping to the least frequented ways. The gangs would hide in the woods, and steal out to the villages and towns to sell brandy, silk, or lace to the innkeepers or private people. Many squires and yeomen were friendly with the smugglers, and kegs of brandy were often left on the doorstep at Barhatch Farm, near Cranleigh. In Cranleigh -Churchyard there was a regular hiding-place for barrels inside a tomb. The inn on Ewhttrst Hill has to this day a false roof for hiding smuggled goods. An old shepherd on the Downs used to remember the smugglers bringing their pack-loads up Combo Bottom at Shere. They came from Shoreham, riding into the sea and loading the horses straight from the boats. They would reach the Hurtwood the same night, getting up by Jelley's Hollow or Horseblock Hollow, having ridden right across Sussex, at least twenty-five -or thirty miles. As late as 1891 there was an old man living who had himself been transported for smuggling.
It will be seen that there is much pleasant, interesting matter in the book, and it seems ungracious to end by saying that the reader will lay it down with a profound sigh of relief. But an octavo volume of some three hundred pages, which weighs on the spring-balance over three pounds avoirdupois, is too heavy to read with comfort except sitting at a table.
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