here, who lived so greatly in the eye of the world? Here is the epitaph
"to the memory of Mary, relict of the late Edmund Kean, who departed this
life March 30, 1849, in or about the 70th year of her age"; and from her
grave one can view the ridge along which runs the road to Portsmouth,
tramped by Edmund Kean in 1795, when he, as a boy of eight or nine years,
ran away from his home in Ewer street, Southwark, and shipped as cabin-boy
on a vessel bound for Madeira. He lies at Richmond: his widow was buried
here, close to the small estate upon which she had lived in retirement for
years.

[Illustration: CATHERINGTON CHURCH.]

In "Charles John Kean, F.R.G.S.," whose epitaph occupies one side of this
monument, it is difficult at first to recognize the famous actor, who,
after playing well his varied parts in Shakespearean plays, and in
melodrama, died in 1868, in his fifty-seventh year. His widow, Eleonora,
survived him until 1880, when, at the age of seventy-three, she died, and
"now lies with her loving husband."

[Sidenote: _ADMIRAL NAPIER_]

The Admiral, after his eventful career, rests near at hand beneath an
altar-tomb in an obscure corner of the graveyard, where ashes from the
heating apparatus of the church are heaped, and defile, together with the
miscellaneous dirt and foul rubbish of a neglected corner, his memorial,
that sets forth his rank and a _précis_ of his varied achievements. When
the present writer visited the spot, a bottomless pail and the remains of
an old boot placed on his tomb formed a hideous commentary upon the pride
and enthusiasm of a grateful country, and preached a sermon, both painful
and forcible, on the fleeting consideration of men for the distinguished
dead. It is thirty-five years ago since "Charley Napier," as his
contemporaries (brother-officers, or Tom, Dick, and Harry) called him,
died, after having performed many services for his country in many parts
of the world. It may seem, at the first blush, ungenerous to say so, but
the fact remains that, had he quitted this scene but seven years earlier,
his reputation had been brighter to-day, and this through no shortcoming
of his own. He had achieved many important, if somewhat too theatrical,
victories in his earlier days, when ordnance was comparatively light, and
when the old line-of-battle ship was at its highest development; and so,
when he was, in his old age, sent in command of the Baltic Fleet to reduce
the heavily-armed sea-forts of Cronstadt and Bomarsund, the uninstructed
but enthusiastic mob of his countrymen anticipated merely a naval
promenade, ending with the capitulation of those fortresses of the North.
When the Baltic Fleet cruised ingloriously for years in that icy sea, and
the Russian strongholds yet remained unreduced, the disappointment of the
million knew no bounds, and the Admiral's fame became tarnished. He was
ridiculed, and he had himself to thank in some measure for this, because,
in his characteristically reckless way, he had vowed to be either in
Cronstadt or Heaven within a month, and Heaven had not claimed him nor
Cronstadt submitted when the war was done.

[Sidenote: _AN UNCOUTH FIGURE_]

But if, like General Trochu, of some sixteen years later, he had "a plan"
and became the butt of witlings when that plan failed, he had the
Englishman's infallible refuge and court of public appeal--the "Times,"
and in the columns of that paper he stormed and thundered from time to
time, a great deal more effectively than ever he had done in the Baltic.
He had nearly always possessed a pet grievance, and had, ere this,
obtained election to Parliament to air the injustice of the hour; and in
the House he was wont to hold forth in a fine old quarter-deck manner that
amused many, and let off the steam of his wrath in an entirely harmless
way. Betweenwhiles he resided at Horndean, on a small estate he had
purchased years before, and in a house he had re-christened "Merchistoun,"
from the place of that name in Scotland where he was born. Here he, a
modern Cincinnatus, farmed his own land and pottered about, a singular
combination of sailor and agriculturist, and one of the most extraordinary
figures of his time. "He is," said one who wrote of his personal
appearance, "stout and broad built; stoops, from a wound in his neck;
walks lame, from another in his leg; turns out one of his feet, and has a
most slouching, slovenly gait; a large round face, with black, bushy
eyebrows, a double chin, scraggy, grey, uncurled whiskers and thin hair,
always bedaubed with snuff, which he takes in immense quantities; usually
his trousers far too short, and wears the ugliest pair of old shoes he can
find." He became quite an authority upon sheep and turnips, and so died,
after a busy life, on November 6, 1860.

Another great man lies at Catherington, within the church; Sir Nicholas
Hyde, Lord Chief Justice of England, and uncle of the still greater
Clarendon. His splendid monument, with recumbent marble effigies of
himself and his wife, occupies the east wall of the Hyde Chapel. Hinton
House--the seat of the Hydes near here, and the scene of the marriage
between James, Duke of York (afterwards James II.), and Anne Hyde,
daughter of the Chancellor, Clarendon, in 1660--has long since been
rebuilt.

From Catherington, one may either retrace one's steps to the Portsmouth
Road above Horndean, or else continue on the by-lanes that bring the
pedestrian to the highway below that wayside hamlet.

Horndean stands at the entrance to the Forest of Bere, and at the junction
of roads that lead to Rowlands Castle and Havant. It is just a neat and
comparatively recent place, like most of the wayside settlements that now
begin to dot the highway between this and Portsmouth. An old house or two
by way of nucleus, with some few decrepit cottages--the remainder of
Horndean is made up of a great red-brick brewery and some rural-looking
shops.

The Forest of Bere is at this day the most considerable remnant of that
vast tract of woodland (computed at some ninety thousand acres) which
formerly covered the face of southern Hants. It follows on either side of
the roadway from this point to within a short distance of Purbrook, and
extends for many miles across country, including Waltham Chase. Outlying
woodlands still occur plentifully; among them the leafy coverts of Alice
Holt (== _Axe-holt_, the Ash Wood), Liss Wood, Hawkley Hangers, and the
green glades of Avington, Old Park, and Cheriton.

XXXIV

[Sidenote: _WATERLOOVILLE_]

Presently the road becomes singularly suburban, and the beautiful glades
of the old Forest of Bere, that have fringed the highway from Horndean,
suddenly give place to rows of trim villas and recent shops. The highway,
but just now as lonely as most of the old coach-roads are usually become
in these days of steam and railways, is alive with wagons and tradesmen's
carts, and neatly-kept footpaths are bordered with lamp-posts, furnished
with oil-lamps.

This is the entirely modern neighbourhood of Waterlooville, a settlement
nearly a mile in length, bordering the Portsmouth Road, and wearing not so
much the appearance of an English village as that of some mushroom
township in the hurried clearings of an American forest. The inns, past
and present, of Waterlooville, have all been named allusively--the
"Waterloo" Hotel, the "Wellington" Inn, the "Belle Alliance."

Waterlooville, as its ugly name would imply, is modern, but with a
modernity much more recent than Wellington's great victory. The name,
indeed, was only bestowed upon the parish in 1858, and is a dreadful
example of that want of originality in recent place-names, seen both here
and in America. Why some descriptive title, such as our Anglo-Saxon
forebears gave to their settlements, could not have been conferred upon
this place, is difficult to understand. Certainly "Waterlooville" is at
once cumbrous and unmeaning, as here applied.

The history of Waterlooville is soon told. It was originally a portion of
the Forest of Bere, and its site was sold by the Commissioners of Woods
and Forests early in the present century. A tavern erected shortly
afterwards was named the "Heroes of Waterloo," and became subsequently the
halting-place for the coaches on this, the first stage out of Portsmouth
and the last from London. Around the tavern sprang up four houses, and
this settlement, some seven or eight miles from Portsmouth, was called
Waterloo until 1830, when, a rage for building having set in, resulting in
a church and some suburban villas, the "ville" was tacked on to the
already unmeaning and sufficiently absurd name.

The church of Waterlooville is a building of so paltry and vulgar a
design, and built of such poor materials, that a near sight of it would be
sufficient to make the mildest architect swear loud and long. This
plastered abomination is, of course, among the earliest buildings here;
for no sooner are two or three houses gathered together than an
unbeneficed clergyman--what we may on this sea-faring road most
appropriately term a "sky-pilot"--comes along and solicits subscriptions
towards the building of a church for the due satisfaction of the
"spiritual needs" of a meagre flock. It would be ungenerous to assert that
he always scents a living in this spiritual urgency, but the labourer is
worthy of his hire, and if by dint of much canvassing for funds amongst
pious old ladies and retired general officers (why is it that these men of
war so frequently become pillars of the Church after their army days are
done?) he succeeds in putting up some sort of a building called a church,
who else so eligible as incumbent?

[Sidenote: _PURBROOK_]

Where Waterlooville ends, the road runs for half-a-mile in mitigated
rusticity, to become again, at the sixth milestone from Portsmouth, lively
with the thriving, business-like village of Purbrook.

And at this point the traveller in coaching times came within sight of his
destination. Painfully the old stages climbed up the steep ascent of
Portsdown Hill before the road was lowered by cutting through the chalk at
the summit, about 1820, and grumblingly the passengers obeyed the coachman
and walked up the road to save the horses. But when they did reach the
crest of the hill such a panorama met their gaze as nowhere else could be
seen in England: Portsmouth, the Harbour, Gosport, the Isle of Wight, and
the coast-line for miles on either hand lay spread out before their eyes
as daintily as in a plan, and smiling like a Land of Promise.
Unfortunately, however, our forebears were not yet educated to a proper
appreciation and admiration of scenery. They, with that jovial bard of the
Regency, Captain Morris, preferred the pavements of great cities to the
pastorals of the country-side, and would with the greatest fervour have
echoed him when he wrote--

  "In town let me live, then, in town let me die;
  For, in truth, I can't relish the country, not I.
  If one must have a villa in summer to dwell,
  Oh! give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall."

Fortunately, however, the view remains unspoiled for a generation that
takes its pleasures afield, and can find delight in country scenes which
our great-grandfathers characterized as places of "horror and
desolation."

This is the point of view from which Rowlandson has sketched his
"Extraordinary Scene," and although we miss in the picture the "George
Inn," that stands so four-square and stalwart, perched up above the road,
yet the likeness to the place remains after these many years have flown.

The occasion that led to Rowlandson's producing the elaborate plate from
which the accompanying illustration was made, is referred to at length in
the title, which runs thus--

"An Extraordinary Scene on the Road from London to Portsmouth, Or an
Instance of Unexampled speed used by a Body of Guards, consisting of 1920
Rank and File, besides Officers, who, on the 10th of June, 1798, left
London in the Morning, and actually began to Embark for Ireland, at
Portsmouth, at four o'clock in the Afternoon; having travelled 74 Miles in
10 Hours."

[Illustration: AN EXTRAORDINARY SCENE ON THE PORTSMOUTH ROAD. _By
Rowlandson._]

Such a performance as this, at such a time, made a great impression, and
Rowlandson has made a very spirited drawing of the scene, full of life and
vigour. In the foreground is the "Portsmouth Fly," with officers inside,
taking their ease, and a number of soldiers occupying a precarious perch
on the roof, fifing and drumming, regardless of jolts and lurches. Flags
are waving from the windows of the "Fly," soldiers on the box are "laying
on" to the horses with a whip, while three others ride comfortably in the
"rumble-tumble" behind. Other parties follow, in curricles and carts,
hugging the shameless wenches who "doted on the military" in those
times as demonstratively as Mary Jane does now. On the right hand stands
an enthusiastic group at the door of the "Jolly Sailor": the landlord, in
apron and shirt-sleeves, about to drink the soldiers' healths in a bumper
of very respectable proportions, his womenkind looking on, while a young
hopeful, who has donned a saucepan by way of helmet, is "presenting arms"
with a besom. An ancient, with a wooden leg and a crutch, is fiddling away
with vigour, and a dog runs forward, barking. The long cavalcade is seen
disappearing down the hill, while away in the distance is Portsmouth
Harbour with its crowded shipping.

XXXV

[Sidenote: _SAILOR-MEN_]

But the greater number of the travellers along the Portsmouth Road,
whether they walked or rode, were sailors; and so salt of the sea are the
records of this old turnpike that the romance of old-time travel upon it
is chiefly concerned with them that went down to brave the elements on
board ship; or with those happy mariners who, having entered port, came
speeding up to home and beauty with all the ardour of men tossed and
buffeted by winds and waves on a two or three years' cruise. Pepys, who
happened to be on the road, on his way up from Portsmouth, June 12, 1667,
met several of the crew of the "Cambridge," and describes them in a manner
so unfavourable that I am inclined to suspect they showed too little
consideration for the Secretary to the Admiralty. At any rate, he
pictures them as being "the most debauched swearing rogues that ever were
in the Navy, just like their prophane commander." My certes, sirs! just
imagine Pepys playing the shocked Puritan, after having, perhaps, just
committed some of those peccadilloes which he sets down so frankly in his
ciphered "Diary."

[Sidenote: _THE SAILOR'S RETURN_]

That is one of the earliest glimpses we get of Jack ashore on this route,
and by it we can well see that his spirits were as boisterous then as ever
after. "Sailors earned their money like horses and spent it like asses,"
says an old writer, and certainly, once ashore, they were no niggards. It
was the natural reaction from a long life of stern discipline, tempered by
fighting, wounds, floggings, and marline-spikes, and for the most part
cheerfully endured on a miserable diet of weevilly biscuit, "salt horse,"
and pork full of maggots. The Mutiny at Spithead, April 15, 1797, was due
in part to the shameful quality of the provisions supplied, and partly to
the open huckstering of the pursers, the unfair distribution of
prize-money, to stoppages, and to insufficient pay. But these grievances
were of old standing, and the Government actually felt and expressed
indignation that sailors should object to be half starved and half
poisoned with insufficient and rotten food. However indignant the
Government may have been, redress was seen to be immediately advisable,
and the demands of the mutineers were granted. Sailors rated as A.B.'s had
their wages _raised_ to a shilling a day, and were paid at more frequent
intervals than once in ten years or so. It was stated (and names and dates
were given) in the House of Commons that some ships' companies had not
been paid for eight, ten, twelve, or fifteen years. Under such a system,
or want of system, as this, it frequently happened in those days of much
fighting and more disease that when the ships were paid off, the sailors
to whom money was due had long been dead. In those cases it was very
rarely that their heirs touched a penny, and certainly the Government
reaped no advantage. The money went into the pockets of the Admiralty
clerks and paymasters, who thrived on wholesale and shameless peculation.
If by some strange chance, or by a singular strength of constitution, some
hardy sailors remained to claim their due, they were paid it grudgingly,
without interest, and whittled away by deductions amounting to as much as
thirty or forty per cent.

[Illustration: THE SAILOR'S RETURN FROM PORTSMOUTH TO LONDON.

_Publish'd as the Act directs March 2 1772 by J. Bretherton, N{o}. 134,
New Bond Street._]

But when a man _did_ receive his pay, together with his prize-money, he
was like a school-boy out at play. Nothing was too ridiculous or puerile
for him to stoop to, and he was, as a class, so entirely innocent and
unsophisticated that the land-sharks waiting hungrily for homeward-bound
ships found him an easy prey. Stories innumerable have been told of his
childlike innocence of landsmen's ways, and pictures and caricatures
without end have been drawn and painted with the object of making men
smile at his strange doings. Here is a caricature dated so far back as
1772, showing "The Sailor's Return from Portsmouth to London." The point
of view chosen is, apparently, only a mile or two from Portsmouth, for in
the background rise some ruins obviously intended to represent Porchester
Castle. The sailor, after the manner so often dwelt upon, is keeping up a
pleasing travesty of sea-faring life. His jaded nag is a ship, and the
course is being steered by the nag's tail. The sailor himself has
evidently "come aboard" by the rope-ladder, seen hanging down almost to
the ground, and he keeps the fog-horn going to avoid collisions. A flag
flies from his top-gallant--in plain English, his hat--while a Union Jack
is fixed at the forepeak and an anchor is triced up at the bows, in
readiness for "heaving-to." His log might well be that of "Jack Junk" on a
similar journey:--"Hove out of Portsmouth on board the 'Britannia Fly'--a
swift sailer--got an inside berth--rather drowsy the first watch or
so--liked to have slipped off the stern--cast anchor at the 'George'--took
a fresh quid and a supply of grog--comforted the upper works--spoke
several homeward-bound frigates on the road--and after a tolerable smooth
voyage entered the port of London at ten past five, post meridian."

[Illustration: TRUE BLUE; OR BRITAIN'S JOLLY TARS PAID OFF AT PORTSMOUTH,
1797. _By Isaac Cruikshank._]

[Sidenote: _POOR JACK_]

Another, and a much more spirited, plate by Isaac Cruikshank, dated 1797,
and entitled, "True Blue; or Britain's Jolly Tars Paid Off at Portsmouth,"
shows a coach-load going off to London without more ado, accompanied by
Poll and Sue, Nancy, Kate, and Joan; all (nay, I will not say uproariously
drunk) in the merriest of moods. The horses gallop, hats are waved in
every direction, and those who have no hats flourish beer-bottles instead.
Some jolly Jack-a-Dandy stands upon the roof, at the imminent risk of his
neck, and scrapes a fiddle to what, considering the pace of the coach,
must have been a tune of the most agonizing description; while an amorous
fellow hugs his girl behind. The Union Jack is, of course, in a
prominent position, and a riotous, devil-me-care figure sits one of the
horses backwards. I do not observe any one of this merry company "heaving
the lead overboard," as became the pleasing fashion among sailor-men flush
of money who rode outside the day coaches to town. These merry men would
purchase long gold chains at Portsmouth, and on their journey would now
and then hang them over the side of the coach with their watches suspended
at the end by way of plummets, and would call out, in nautical style, so
many fathoms. Some home-coming sailors would walk up the road, either
because they had spent most of their money in drink and debauchery at
Portsmouth, or else because the idea commended itself to their freakish
natures; and the people of the inns and beerhouses on the way reaped a
fine harvest from this class of customer. I have told you, on another
page, how most of these sailor-men were accommodated, as to their sleeping
arrangements, by being given a shake-down in the clean straw of some
outhouse. They in many instances threw themselves down amid the straw,
hopelessly drunk; and then entered unto them the honest innkeeper, who
would not rob his guests, but saw no objection to taking them up by the
heels and shaking them vigorously until the money fell out of their
pockets among the straw. If they found the coin in the morning, why, it
was bad luck from the publican's point of view; and if they reeled away,
leaving their money behind them, it was a happy chance for mine host, who
came and gleaned a golden hoard from his straw. But if some indignant
sailor, full of horrid oaths and terrible threats, came and swore he had
been robbed during the night, the virtuous publican could suggest that
before he made such serious charges, it would be better if he made a
search. He _might_ have dropped his money!

Sometimes the Portsmouth Road was traversed by long processions of wagons
containing treasure captured at sea and landed at Portsmouth for greater
security in transmission to London. Such an occasion was that when Anson,
returning in 1744 from his four years' cruise in South American waters,
brought home a rich cargo of spoil in the "Centurion." This treasure was
valued at no less than £500,000, and was stowed away in twelve wagons,
which were sent up to London under an escort of sailors and marines.
Eighteen years later, another splendid haul was made by the capture of the
Spanish galleon "Hermione," from Lima, off Cadiz, and on this occasion the
value was scarcely less than before. The prize-money distributed amounted
to handsome fortunes for the officers, and conferred competencies upon
every man and boy in the two ships' companies that took part in the
capture. Such windfalls as these were not everyday occurrences, and many a
man gave and took hard knocks all his life, to die in his old age in
poverty and neglect. Very few, probably, of those fortunate prize-sharers
from the "Hermione" treasure-chest retained their wealth.

[Sidenote: _QUOTA-MEN_]

The people who dwelt along the highway all shared to some degree in this
marvellous good fortune, but they lived in fear of the murderous rascals
who began to infest the roads in 1795, tramping or being sent down from
London to join the navy at a time when every man was needed to help the
nation through the vast wars we were continually engaged in. At that
period of England's greatest struggle for existence the press-gang was in
full tide of activity, but the pressed men were few in proportion to the
number required to man the ships, and so Acts of Parliament were passed in
order to provide a certain number of men from each county and from every
seaport for the service of the navy. The men thus provided were induced to
join by the extraordinarily large bounties offered, some of which were as
much as £30; and many of these "quota-men," as they came to be called,
belonged to the most depraved of the criminal classes. The _personnel_ of
the navy was lowered by these men, and the sailors were disgusted with
them. The "quota-bounty," says an authority, "we conceive to have been the
most ill-advised and fatal measure ever adopted by the Government for
manning the fleet. The seamen who voluntarily entered in 1793 and fought
some of the most glorious of our battles received the comparatively small
bounty of £5. These brave fellows saw men totally ignorant of the
profession, the very refuse and outcasts of society, flying from justice
and the vengeance of the law, come on board with a bounty to the amount of
£70. One of these objects, on coming on board a ship of war with £70
bounty, was seized by a boatswain's mate, who, holding him up with one
hand by the waistband of his trousers, humorously exclaimed, 'Here's a
fellow that cost a guinea a pound!'"

Criminals were allowed as an alternative to long terms of imprisonment, to
volunteer for what was evidently regarded by the authorities as an
equivalent to the gaol--a man-o'-war. "All the bad characters of a
neighbourhood, loafers, poachers, footpads, possible murderers, men
suspected of any crime, but against whom there was not sufficient
evidence, were arrested and sent on board, with a note to the captain
begging him to take measures to prevent their return; which, as such men
were commonly stout-built fellows enough, he was no ways loath to do. The
gaol-birds from the towns were unquestionably worse; worse physically,
worse morally, and perhaps worse hygienically; they were not infrequently
infected with gaol-fever, and brought the infection to the fleet; they
were largely the cause of the severe, even brutal, discipline that ruled
in the navy towards the end of last century." According to the sailors
themselves--"Them was the chaps as played hell with the fleet: every
grass-combing beggar as chose to bear up for the bounty had nothing to do
but to dock the tails of his togs and take to the tender." They used to
ship in shoals; they were drafted by forties and fifties to each ship in
the fleet; they were hardly up the side, hardly mustered abaft, before
there was "Send for the barber, shave their pates, and send 'em for'rd to
the head, to be scrubbed and sluished from clue to ear-ring, afore you
could venture to berth 'em below. Then, stand clear of their shore-going
rigs--every finger was fairly a fishhook; neither chest, nor bed, nor
blanket, nor bag escaped their sleight-of-hand thievery; they pluck you,
aye, as clean as a poulterer, and bone your very eyebrows whilst staring
you full in the face."

[Sidenote: _ROADS INFESTED_]

These were the men who, instead of bringing prosperity to the innkeepers
and country folk, robbed and plundered stray travellers and lonely houses
by the way. Singly, they robbed hen-roosts and old market-women; in bands
their courage rose to highway robbery on a larger scale, and even to
murder. An official posting down to Portsmouth with money for a ship's
company came within an ace of being relieved of several thousands of
pounds; for on his coach being upset on Rake Hill a number of fellows
appeared with offers of help, and would have carried off the gold had not
the boxes in which it was contained been too heavy. As it was, while some
of them were engaging every one's attention in attempting to raise the
coach out of the slough in which it had become embedded, the remainder of
the band had got hold of the specie-boxes, and were battering them in with
great stones, when a party of marines opportunely arrived and caught them
in the very act.

Men of this stamp were the curse of the navy. They were more often
town-bred weaklings than robust countrymen, and to their constitutional
disabilities they added the vices of the towns from which they came, and a
sullen habit of mind that could leave no room for discipline. Those were
the days of the press-gang, when likely fellows, whether seamen or
landsmen, were taken by force from their occupations, shipped under guard
upon men-o'-war in the harbours, and sent to fight, willy-nilly, for King
and country. Merchantmen, coming home from long and tedious voyages, were
seized and hurried off immediately upon their stepping ashore, and, in
fact, any well-built young fellow, an apprentice or clerk, who could not
prove himself to be a master-man became at one time the ordinary prey of
the press-gangs that roamed about the seaboard towns in search of prey.
Seamen only were their proper quarry, but when more, and still more, men
were required as time went on, it mattered little whether pressed men were
landlubbers or sailors; and as the members of the press-gang came to be
paid so much a head for all the sturdy fellows they could seize, it may be
seen that they were not apt to stand upon trifles or to weigh evidence
very narrowly. There were exemptions from the press, and it was open to a
man who considered himself to have been illegally seized to send a
statement to the authorities. These became known as "state-the-case-men,"
but as, in many instances, the ship upon which they had been sent sailed
almost immediately, this formality was simply a cruel farce. If their
statements were ever forwarded to their destination, they only arrived by
the time the ships were well out to sea; and if their complaints were ever
investigated, the inquiries would most likely take place while the
subjects of them were in the thick of an action with the enemy; perhaps
wounded, possibly even already dead.

[Sidenote: _THE PRESS-GANG_]

The forays of the press-gangs were battles in themselves, and many a man
on either side was killed in these man-hunting expeditions. "Private
mischief," said the Earl of Mansfield, "had better be submitted to than
that public detriment and inconvenience should ensue;" but the men who
fought with the press-gangs did not see matters in this light, and neither
did their womenkind. The beautiful decorative drawing by Morland that
forms the frontispiece to this book puts the sentiment of the time against
impressment in a poetical way, but Gillray's more nervous and satirical
pencil gives, in his "Liberty of the Subject," a realistic and satirical
picture that shows how strenuously the press was resisted. It is a most
graphic and humorous representation of a "hot press" in the streets of
some seaport town, at a period immediately following upon the American War
of Independence, when men were particularly scarce. A gang has seized a
tailor, a poor, miserable-looking wretch with no fighting in him, almost
literally as well as metaphorically the "ninth part of a man," and his
captors are dragging him off, knock-kneed and incapable of resistance. But
if he submits so easily, the women of the crowd have to be reckoned with,
and are doing nearly all the fighting. The furious virago in the
foreground is pulling at a midshipman's hair with all the strength of one
hand, while with the other she is lugging his ear off, kicking him, at the
same time, with her knee. A sailor in the rear, with an animated
expression of countenance, has hold of her arm, and appears to be aiming a
blow at her head with the butt-end of a pistol; while another woman with a
heavy mop is preparing to fell him to the ground.

[Illustration: THE LIBERTY OF THE SUBJECT, 1782. _By James Gillray._]

One of the "hottest presses," and at the same time the most successful,
ever known, was that of March 8, 1803, Portsmouth. Five hundred able
seamen were obtained on that occasion by the strategy and cunning of a
certain Captain Brown, who assembled a company of marines late at night
with all the fuss and circumstance he could display, in order, as he gave
out, to quell a mutiny at Fort Monckton. The news of this pretended mutiny
spread rapidly, and great crowds came rushing down to see the affair. When
they had all crossed Haslar Bridge they were cooped up like so many fowls,
and that master of strategy, having posted his marines at the bridge end,
seized every suitable man in the crowd.

But the pressed men, although they tried every dodge to escape this forced
service, and though their unwillingness to serve his Majesty afloat has
made a classic of the saying, "One volunteer is worth three pressed men,"
did good service when once they were trapped and trained. For one thing,
they had no choice. 'Twas either a cheerful obedience to orders and
readiness in action when once afloat, or else a flogging with the cat and
a remand, heavily ironed, to the hold. Seeing how useless would be any
malingering, the pressed men turned to with a will, and fought our battles
with such spirit that the victories of Trafalgar, of "the glorious First
of June," off Cape St. Vincent, and many of the other notable exploits of
the British Fleet, are due to their courage and resolution.

[Sidenote: _REVELRY_]

When the pressed men came home (if ever they were so fortunate) they were
as a rule so inured to sea-service and hard knocks, that, so soon as they
had had a spree and spent their money, they were ready for another
cruise. But meanwhile they enjoyed themselves with the reckless
prodigality possible only to such men. When the ships came home (and ships
were always coming home then), Portsmouth ran with liquor, riot, and
revelry; and on fine summer days the grassy slopes of Portsdown Hill were
all alive with the jolly Jacks engaged with great earnestness in the
business of pleasure. Here, in the taverns that overlook from this breezy
height the harbour, the town, and the distant mud-flats, generations of
soldiers and sailors, fresh from battle and the salt sea, have caroused.
Here, opposite the "George" and the Belle Vue Gardens, where "the
military" and the servant-girls, the sailors and their lasses, still
disport on high-days and holidays, with swings, Aunt Sallies, cocoa-nut
shies, and, in short, all the fun of the fair, have the look-out men of a
hundred years ago shivered in the wind while scanning the distant horizon
for signs of Bonaparte and his flotilla, the inglorious Armada that never
left port.

XXXVI

When workmen were engaged in lowering the road opposite the old "George"
Inn, that stands so boldly and with such a fine last-century air on the
hill brow, they opened a tumulus which was found to contain, at a depth of
only eighteen inches, the well-preserved skeletons of sixteen men, the
victims of some prehistoric fray. Their feet were all placed towards the
east, and in the skull of one was found the iron head of a spear. Who were
these vanquished soldiers in a forgotten fight? Were they Belgæ? Surely
not. Were they Christianized Saxons, slain in battle with Pagan vikings,
marauders from over sea? This seems more likely than any other theory.
That they were Christians appears certain from the position of their
skeletons, east and west; that they fell in battle is evident from the
silent testimony of the spear-head.

Down goes the road in a long steady slope, flanked by the great forts of
Purbrook and Widley, whose dingy red-brick walls and embrasures command
the entrance to the harbour. Away, to right and left, for a distance of
seven miles, runs a succession of these forts, from Fareham to Purbrook,
cresting the ridge of the long hill, connected by telegraph, and furnished
with extensive barrack accommodation.

Cosham village comes next, crouching at the foot of the ridge, with the
great guns high overhead to the rearwards: Cosham, neither town nor
village; busy enough for a town, sufficiently quaint for a village; with a
railway-crossing barring the road; a station adjoining it; the tramp of
soldiers re-echoing, and the blare of bugles familiar in the ears of the
people all day and every day.

[Sidenote: _SUBURBS_]

These are suburbs indeed, with the beginnings of pavements and the
terminus of a tramway that runs from here, a distance of three miles, to
Portsmouth itself. We cross over the bridges that span salty channels,
oozy and redolent of ocean and sea-weed during the hours of ebb. Here we
are immediately confronted with the ceinture of forts that embraces the
towns and garrisons of Portsea Island in a ring of masonry, earthworks,
and steel. The fortifications straddle across the road on brick arches
containing Royal Engineers' stores, and ornamented with the device "18 VR
61," done in red brick upon yellow; and obsolete cannon, buried up to
their trunnions, guard the brickwork piers against the wear and tear of
traffic.

Now come Hilsea Barracks, with Hilsea Post Office opposite, and further
on, opposite the "Green Posts" Inn, an obelisk, marking the
eighteenth-century bounds of the borough of Portsmouth, with the
inscription, "Burgi de Portesmuth Limes MDCCXCIX. Rev. G. Cuthbert
praetore." And so by stages through North End into Landport, past
ever-growing settlements and suburban wildernesses where new-built rows of
hutches miscalled villas look out upon market-gardens and those forlornest
of fields already marked out for "building sites," but still innocent of
houses; where builders' refuse cumbers the ground, and where muddy pools,
islanded with piles of broken and slack-baked bricks, and wrinkled into
furious wavelets by the blusterous winds, resemble miniature seas in which
(to aid the resemblance) lie the discarded iron pots and kettles of
Portsmouth households, their spouts and handles rising above the waters
like the vestiges of so many wrecked ironclads.

Successive eras of suburb-rearing are most readily to be noted. First come
the red-bricked suburbs still in the making; then those of the '60's and
the '70's, brown-bricked and grey-stuccoed; and then the settlements of a
period ranging from 1840 to 1860, contrived in a fashion fondly supposed
to represent Italian villas, characteristically constructed of lath and
plaster now very much the worse for wear, but at one time wearing a
spick-and-span appearance that would have delighted Macaulay, to whom the
sight of a row of "semi-detached suburban residences" gave visions of
progress and prosperity that seem to us inexpressibly vulgar. The sight of
wealthy tradesfolk and of plutocratic contractors seems to have warmed
Macaulay into an enthusiasm which became eloquent in enlarging upon the
rows of villas that encircle every great town. To him the ostentatious
surroundings of the despicable rogues--the typical contractors of the
early and mid-Victorian epoch--who contracted to supply hay and fodder for
our armies in the Crimea, and forwarded in their consignments a large
proportion of bricks and rotten straw--the vulgar display of men of this
stamp recalled the most prosperous times of the ancient Romans, and was
therefore to be approved. But these men have long since left their
lath-and-plaster fripperies for a place where (let us hope) their bricks
and their rotten straw will be remembered against them, and their
descendants have mounted on the heaps of their inherited money to a very
high social scale indeed. The eligible residences themselves, with their
"grounds," are mostly to be let, and the firesides across which unctuous
purveyors and middlemen and their wives grinned at one another and ate
buttered toast at tea-time, and drank "sherry wine" at night, are cold.

Following upon this suburban stratum come the egregious houses of the
Regency period: pseudo-classic houses these, bay-windowed and approached
by steep flights of stone steps surmounted by ridiculously skimpy little
porches, with attenuated neo-classic pillars and pediments, done in wood.
Some of these are gone--pulled down to make room for shops--and doubtless
many more will shortly go the same way. Let us hope one or two will be
preserved for all time, for, although by no means beautiful, they are
interesting as tending to show the manners of a period now removed from us
by nearly a century; the taste in domestic architecture of a time when the
First Gentleman in Europe ruled the land.

[Sidenote: _'ROADS' v. 'STREETS'_]

Here, where we come into Landport, we also come into the less affected
region of "streets." In the newer suburbs nothing less than "roads" will
serve the turn of the jerry-builder; his ambitious phraseology soars far
above what he thinks to be the more plebeian "street"; but perhaps, after
all, he is wise in his generation, and is amply justified by the
preferences of his clients; and if that is the situation, let us by all
means condole with him as a much-maligned man, who does not what he would,
but what he must.

Here, too, in these beginnings of the old town, shops jostle villas with
"grounds," and they in turn elbow artisans' dwellings, where children
swing with improvised swings of clothes-lines on the railings, and
manufacture mud-pies in the "gardens"; sticking them afterwards upon the
shutters of those ultimate shops of the suburbs which seem to be in a
chronic state of bankruptcy, and hold out no hopes of a living for the
pioneer butchers, bakers, and candlestick-makers who, having served the
purpose and gone the way of all pioneers, leave them richer in experience
but light of pocket.

It was in these purlieus that Charles Dickens was born, at 387 Mile End
Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, on February 7, 1812; the son of Mr.
John Dickens, Navy pay-clerk, who is supposed to be portrayed in the
character of Micawber--no flattering portraiture of a father by his son.
Writers who have fallen under the spell of Dickens have tried to do some
sort of poetic representation of his birthplace; and, truth to tell, they
have failed, because there never was any poetry at all about the
place,--and probably never will be any, so long as its scrubby brick front
and paltry fore-court last: while as regards Dickens himself, he was a
very excellent business man among authors, and as little poetic as can
well be imagined.

XXXVII

[Sidenote: _PORTSMOUTH TOWN HALL_]

Landport left behind, one came, until within only a comparatively few
years ago, upon Portsmouth town through a series of ditches, scarps,
counterscarps, bastions, and defensible gates. They are all swept away
now, as being obsolete, and where they stood are parks and barracks,
military hospitals, and open spaces devoted to drilling. The surroundings
of Portsmouth are, in fact, very modern, and probably the most ancient
edifice here is the High Level railway station: a class of building which
age has no power to render venerable. The latest effort of modernity is to
be seen from this point in the Town Hall, of which every inhabitant of the
allied towns of Portsmouth, Southsea, Gosport, and Landport is
inordinately proud. And if size should count for anything, they have cause
for pride in this municipal effort; for Portsmouth Town Hall is
particularly immense. This is no place in which to enlarge upon its
elephantine dimensions, nor to specify how many hundreds of feet its tower
rises above the pavement; but it may be noted that it is a second-hand
design, having been closely copied from the Town Hall of Bolton, in
Lancashire. The architectural purist is at a loss how to describe its
architecture; for it is neither good Classic nor passable Renaissance,
although it partakes of the nature of both: it is, in view of the number
of municipal buildings put up in this fashion over the country during the
last forty years or so, perhaps best described as belonging to the
Victorian Town Hall order of architectural design; and that seems to me a
perspicuous definition of it. It has, however, an advantage that Bolton
altogether lacks. The sooty atmosphere of that dingy manufacturing town
has clothed the surface of its Town Hall with a mantle of grime, until the
building, from topmost pinnacle to pavement level, is, to use a
colloquialism, "as black as your hat." The fresh breezes that blow over
Portsmouth at least spare its Town Hall this indignity, and the design,
such as it is, seems as fresh to-day as when the building was first
inaugurated.

In Leland's time Portsmouth was "mured from the est toure a forelonge's
lengthe, with a mudde waulle armid with tymbre, whereon be great pieces
both of yron and brassen ordinauns"; and in later ages these primitive
defences had expanded into great bastions and massive walls, in which were
no less than six gates. When the military authorities dismantled these
town walls, with the gates and the fortifications, they did away at once
with a great deal of inconvenience and annoyance experienced by the civil
population of Portsmouth in being cooped up within bounds at night, and by
their reforming zeal destroyed the greater part of the interest with which
strangers viewed this old stronghold.

To-day one obtains too little historic colour in the streets of the old
town. The "Blue Posts," where the midshipmen stayed and joked and
quarrelled, was burned down in 1870, and the "Fountain" is now a Home for
Sailors, conducted upon strictly non-alcoholic lines, and Broad Street,
which was at one time so very, very lively a place, has declined from the
riotous days of yore into a more or less sedate old age. The inns with
which it abounded are still there, but how altered their custom, their use
and wont, from the hard-drinking, hard-swearing, hard-fighting days of
old!

One may look back upon those old days with regret for a vanished
picturesqueness and yet not wish them back; may know that the sailor who
drinks cocoa and banks his wages in the Post-office Savings Bank is better
off and immeasurably happier than his ancestor who, if he survived to
receive any pay at all, squandered it instantly upon all conceivable
kinds of drink and debauchery, and yet can see that his was by far the
most interesting figure. It is the same with the ships of the navy. No one
will contend that life was healthier upon the old wooden line-of-battle
ships than it is on the modern ironclads of the fleet; not a single voice
could be raised in favour of the dim and dirty orlop-decks of the old
men-o'-war, in comparison with the light, airy, and roomy quarters on
board our battle-ships of to-day; and yet there is scarce an Englishman
who does not heartily regret the old three-deckers that rode the waves so
gallantly, whose tier over tier of guns rose high above the waves and made
a braver show than ever the "iron pots" of modern times can do.

[Sidenote: _OLD AND NEW_]

The old-time aspect of Portsmouth is gone for ever. An almost complete
transformation has taken place in appearance, in thought, and manner in
little over a century, and where the body of Jack the Painter hung, high
as Haman, from a lofty gallows on Blockhouse Beach, no criminals swing
to-day. Even the "cat," that instrument of discipline, too barbarous to be
honoured even by immemorial usage, no longer flays the backs of A.B.'s,
and is relegated to the cold shades of a museum, to rest beside such
long-out-of-date instruments of torture as the branks and the
thumb-screws.

But, tide what will betide, a fine martial-naval air clings about the old
town, and will last while a bugle remains to be blown or a pennant is left
to be hoisted. The salt sea-breezes still bluster through the narrow
streets; the dockyard clangs louder, longer, busier than ever; the tramp
of soldiers echoes; the boom of cannon peals across the waters, and God's
Englishmen are ready as ever they have been, and ever will be; though out
yonder at Spithead and in foreign waters their forebears have strewed the
floor of the sea with their bones, and though, with treacherous iron and
steel beneath their feet while afloat, they may at any moment, be it peace
or war, be sent to the bottom to join the ill-fated ships' companies of
the "Mary Rose," the "Royal George," the more recent "Captain,"
"Eurydice," "Atalanta," or "Victoria."

Here, where the stone stairs lead down into the water, is Portsmouth
Point. Mark it well, for from this spot have embarked countless fine
fellows to serve King and country afloat. What would we not give for a
moment's glimpse of "Point" (as Portsmouth folk call it, with a brevity
born of every-day use) just a hundred years ago? Fortunately the genius of
Rowlandson has preserved for us something of the appearance of Portsmouth
Point at that time, when war raged over nearly all the civilized world,
when wooden ships rode the waves buoyantly, when battles were the rule and
peace the exception.

[Sidenote: _A PATHETIC FIGURE_]

The Point was in those days simply a collection of taverns giving upon the
harbour and the stairs, whence departed a continuous stream of officers
and men of the navy. It was a place throbbing with life and
excitement--the sailors going out and returning home; the leave-takings,
the greetings; the boozing and the fighting, are all shown in
Rowlandson's drawing as on a stage, while the tall ships form an
appropriate background, like the back-cloth of a theatrical scene. It is a
scene full of humour. Sailors are leaning on their arms out of window; a
gold-laced officer bids good-bye to his girl while his trunks are being
carried down to the stairs; a drunken sailor and his equally drunken woman
are belabouring one another with all the good-will in the world, and a
wooden-legged sailor-man is scraping away for very life on a fiddle and
dancing grotesquely to get a living. He is a funny figure, you say; but,
by your leave, it seems to me that he is only a figure of a very great
pathos. Belisarius, over whom historians have wept as they recounted his
fall and his piteous appeals for the scanty charity of an obolus, was but
a rascally Roman general who betrayed his trust and became a peculator of
the first magnitude; and he deserved his fate. But here is a poor devil
who has been maimed in battle and left to earn his bread by playing the
fool before a crowd of careless folk, happy if he can excite their
compassion to the extent of a stray sixpence or an occasional drink. No:
his is not a funny figure.

[Illustration: DANCING SAILOR.]

XXXVIII

The old coach offices clustered about this spot. Several stood in Bath
Square, and here, among others, was the Old Van Office, kept by Uriah
Green. The vans were similar to the stage-coaches, but much larger and
clumsier, and jogged along at a very easy pace. They took, in fact, from
fifteen to sixteen hours to perform the journey under the most favourable
circumstances, and in bad weather no one ventured to prophesy at what time
they _would_ arrive.

The fares were, consequently, very much lower than those of the swifter
coaches, which stood at £1 1_s._ 0_d._ inside, and 12_s._ 6_d._ outside.
One might, on the other hand, take a trip from Portsmouth to London on the
outside of a van for 6_s._ 6_d._ The cheapness of these conveyances caused
them to be largely patronized by blue-jackets. One van left Portsmouth at
four p.m. every day for the "Eagle," City Road, London, arriving there at
about seven or eight o'clock the next morning, and another left the
"Eagle" for Portsmouth at the same time.

[Sidenote: _ROAD TRAVEL_]

This was at the beginning of the present century, and was a vast
improvement upon the still older, clumsier, and infinitely slower
road-wagons. Thirty-five years earlier (_circa_ 1770), even the quickest
stages were no speedier than the vans. For instance, at that time the
"Royal Mail" started daily from the "Blue Posts" at two p.m., and only
arrived in London at six o'clock the next morning. Then came Clarke's
"Flying Machine," which was so little like flying that it did the journey
only in a day, leaving the "King's Arms" Inn, Portsmouth, every Monday,
Wednesday, and Friday night at ten o'clock, and returning on alternate
nights.

In 1805 the number and the speed of coaches were considerably augmented.
Among them were the "Royal Mail," from the "George"; the "Nelson," from
the "Blue Posts"; the "Hero," from the "Fountain"; the "Regulator," from
the "George"; and Vicat and Co.'s speedy "Rocket," that started from the
"Quebec" Tavern, and did the journey to town in nine hours. It was at this
period that a local bard was moved to verse by the astonishing swiftness
of the coaches, and this is how he sings their prowess:--

  "In olden times, two days were spent
  'Twixt Portsmouth and the Monument;
  When Flying Diligences plied,
  When men in Roundabouts would ride,
  And at the surly driver's will,
  Get out and climb each tedious hill.
  But since the rapid Freeling's age,
  How much improved the _English Stage_!
  Now in ten hours the London Post
  Reaches from Lombard Street our coast."

Prodigious! But when the railway was opened from Portsmouth to Nine Elms
in 1840, and did the journey in three hours, there were, alas! no votaries
of the Muse to celebrate the event.

That year witnessed the last of the old coaching days upon the Portsmouth
Road, so far, at least, as ordinary travellers were concerned. Some few,
particularly conservative, still elected to travel by road; and, as may
be seen from the appended copy of a Post-office Time-Bill, the
Postmaster-General put no trust in new-fangled methods of conveyance:--

  GENERAL POST OFFICE.
  THE EARL OF LICHFIELD, HER MAJESTY'S POSTMASTER-GENERAL.
  London and Portsmouth Time-Bill.

  +---------------------------------------------------------------------+
  |Contractors'|  |   |       |  Time  |                                |
  |   Names.   |  |   |       |Allowed.|                                |
  |------------|--|---|-------|--------|--------------------------------|
  |            |In|Out|  M.F. |   H.M. |Dispatched from the General Post|
  |            |  |   |       |        |Office, the   of      , 184 , at|
  |            |  |   |       |        |by time-piece, at      by clock.|
  |            |  |   |       |        |Coach No.      { With time-piece|
  |            |  |   |       |        |sent out       { safe,          |
  |            |  |   |       |        |               { No.   to       |
  |            |  |   |       |        |Arrived at the Gloucester       |
  |            |  |   |       |        |  Coffee-House at               |
  |            |  |   |{ 13.0 |   1.35 |Arrived at Kingston at          |
  |            |  |   |{ 4.0 }|        |Esher                           |
  |            |  |   |{ 3.4 }|        |Cobham                          |
  |Chaplin and |  |   |{ 3.7 }|   1.25 |Arrived at Ripley at            |
  |    Gray    |  |   |{ 6.1 }|        |Guildford                       |
  |            |  |   |{ 4.2 }|   1.18 |Arrived at Godalming at         |
  |            |  |   |{ 2.1 }|        |Mousehill                       |
  |            |  |   |{10.1 }|   1.32 |Arrived at Liphook at           |
  |            |  |   |{ 8.3  |   1.3  |Arrived at Petersfield at       |
  | Wise       |  |   |  7.4  |     57 |Arrived at Horndean at          |
  |            |  |   |  5.6 }|        |Cosham                          |
  | Guy        |  |   |  4.6 }|   1.20 |Arrived at the Post Office,     |
  |            |  |   |       |        |Portsmouth, the   of     , 184 ,|
  |            |  |   |       |        |at    by time-piece, at     by  |
  |            |  |   |       |        |clock.                          |
  |            |  |   |       |        |          { Delivered time-piece|
  |            |  |   |       |        |Coach No. { safe, No.           |
  |            |  |   |       |        |arrived   { to                  |
  +---------------------------------------------------------------------+

  The time of working each stage, &c. Up-time allowed the same.
  By Command of the Postmaster-General.
  GEORGE STOW, Surveyor and Superintendent.

[Sidenote: _HER MAJESTY'S MAILS_]

This time-bill, quoted by Mr. Stanley Harris in his "Coaching Age," is
dated April 1841, and shows, by a side-light, the innate conservatism of
all Government institutions. At that time the London and South-Western
Railway--then called the London and Southampton--had been opened eleven
months, with a station at Portsmouth and a London terminus at Nine Elms,
yet her Majesty's mails still went by road, and at a pace scarcely
equalled for slowness among all the coaches of England. Nine hours and ten
minutes taken, at this late period, in journeying between London and
Portsmouth! Why, the Jehus of the Bath and Exeter Roads, the drivers of
the "Quicksilver" and the "Regulator," even, would have scorned this
jog-trot.

The present generation, which knows less of coaching times than of the
Wars of the Roses or any other equally far-removed period, will be puzzled
over the references to clocks and time-pieces in the bill printed above.
These time-pieces were served out at the General Post Office to all
mail-coaches. They were wound up and set going in correct time, and,
enclosed in a securely-fastened box to prevent its being tampered with,
one was handed to the guard of each mail leaving London. By means of his
time-piece the guard could check the progress of the mail, and could hurry
up the driver on an occasion. It was the guard's duty to deliver up his
time-piece on arrival at his destination, when the time shown by it was
entered by the postmaster, and any late arrivals notified to the
Postmaster-General.

[Sidenote: _REVIVALS_]

That august public functionary finally yielded to the pressure of
circumstances, and in 1842 her Majesty's mails went by rail instead of by
road. The Queen's highway was then lonely indeed, and it was not until
1875, when the coaching revival was already some twelve or thirteen years
old, that the revived "Rocket" coach was put on between London and
Portsmouth. It ran from the "White Horse" Cellars every Tuesday, Thursday,
and Saturday during the season, returning from the "George," Portsmouth,
on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In the earlier years of its running,
the "Rocket" made good time, taking eight and a half hours, up or down;
but its quickest time was made on the down journey during the season of
1881, when it left Piccadilly at 11.10 a.m., and reached Portsmouth at
seven p.m. == seven hours fifty minutes, inclusive of seven changes, as
against six changes in previous seasons. Captain Hargreaves was the bold
projector of this long-distance coach, and since his retirement from the
road none other has had the enterprise sufficient for so great an
undertaking. The Portsmouth Road has known no through coach since his
"Rocket" was discontinued. The Postmaster-General of this age of railways
is, however, about to try an interesting and important revival of the
old-time mail-coach along a portion of this route, as far as Guildford;
and it is understood that, should his venture prove successful, this
journey will be extended to Portsmouth. Meanwhile, night coaches will run,
carrying the Parcel mails, from St. Martin's-le-Grand to Guildford, going
by way of Epsom and Leatherhead. The reason for this reversion to old
methods is that the railway companies demand rates for the carriage of the
Parcel mails which, in the opinion of the Postal Department, are
excessive, amounting as they do to about fifty-five per cent. of the
gross receipts for the parcels carried. The coaches will leave London at
ten p.m., arriving at Guildford at two a.m.; while, from Guildford, branch
coaches will probably run, to serve the more remote country towns of
Surrey.

INDEX

  Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 156-160, 235.

  Abbot's Hospital, 59, 158, 235.

  Abershawe, Jeremiah, 67-69.

  Battersea Rise, 63.

  Bere, Forest of, 1, 326, 327, 328.

  Bowling Green House, 78.

  Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, 38.

  Buriton, 20, 273, 285-294.

  Butser Hill, 225, 295-297.

  Byng, Admiral, 48-56.

  Catherington, 320.

  Chalton Downs, 225, 301, 320.

  Charlotte, Princess of Wales, 127-134.

  Charterhouse School, 188.

  Clare, Earl of, 123.

  Claremont, 120-134.

  Clive, Lord, 124-127, 134.

  Coaches--
    "Accommodation," the, 217.
    "Britannia Fly," the, 338.
    "Defiance," the, 217.
    "Flying Machine," the, 362.
    "Hero," the, 30, 363.
    "Independent," the, 217.
    "Light Post" Coach, the, 30.
    "Nelson," the, 215, 363.
    "New Times," the, 11, 94, 146, 147.
    "Night Post" Coach, the, 30.
    "Perseverance," the, 104.
    "Portsmouth Fly," the, 330.
    "Portsmouth Machine," the, 29.
    "Portsmouth Regulator," the, 30.
    "Red Rover," the, 165.
    "Regulator," the, 363.
    "Rocket," the, 2, 10, 30, 216, 363.
    "Rocket," the new, 11, 81, 94, 259, 366.
    "Royal Mail," the, 30, 362, 363.
    "Star of Brunswick," the, 212, 216, 218.
    "Tally-ho," the, 104-118.
    "Tantivy," the, 218.
    "Telegraph," the, 30, 165, 166.
    "True Blue," the, 338.
    "Wanderer," the, 217.

  Coaching Age, the, 2-11, 29, 118, 161-169, 175, 211-219, 362-367.

  Coaching Notabilities--
    Balchin, William, 216.
    Brown, E., 194.
    Carter, James, 212, 218.
    Carter, Samuel, 215.
    Cotton, Sir St. Vincent, 8-10.
    Falconer, Francis, 216.
    Hargreaves, Capt., 11, 94, 259, 366.
    Jones, Capt. Tyrwhitt, 8.
    Nicholls, Robert, 217.
    "Nimrod," 108.
    Peers, John, 166.
    Rumney, P. J., 104, 107.
    Shoolbred, Walter, 11, 94.
    Stevenson, William, 8.
    Weller, Sam, 217.
    Worcester, Marquis of, 10.

  Cobbett, Richard, 202, 225-227, 282.

  Cobham Street, 42, 135, 137, 239, 267.

  Cold Ash Hill, 208, 219

  Cortis, H. L., 146.

  Cosham, 352.

  Croft, Sir Richard, 128-131.

  Croker, 98.

  Cromwell, Oliver, 13.

  Cromwell, Thomas, 15.

  Cycling, 83, 140-146.

  Devil's Punch Bowl, 62, 197, 202, 218.

  Dickens, Charles, Birthplace of, 356.

  Ditton Marsh, 97.

  Dorking, 104, 107, 114.

  Duelling, 73, 78.
  Duels--
    Lord Castlereagh and George Canning, 77.
    Lord Chandos and Col. Compton, 73.
    General Lorenzo Moore and Miles Stapylton, 77.
    Lord Paget and Capt. Cadogan, 77.
    William Pitt and George Tierney, 74.
    Duke of York and Col. Lennox, 73.

  Esher, 98, 118.

  Fairmile Common, 135.

  Farnborough, 218.

  Felton, John, 38.

  Fitzclarence, Lord Adolphus, 219.

  Gibbon, Edward, 14, 17-20, 288-293.

  Godalming, 41, 89, 170, 173-193, 216.

  Godbold, Nathaniel, 184.

  Gordon Riots, 29.

  Guildford, 1, 59, 147-169, 217, 239, 366, 367.

  Guildford Castle, 152-155.

  Hamilton, Hon. Charles, 137.

  Hamilton, Lady Anne, 132.

  Hampshire, 219, 224.

  Hanway, Jonas, 42-47.

  Harting Coombe, 268, 271, 315.

  Highwaymen, 65, 67-72, 296, 301-305.

  Hilsea, 218, 353.

  Hindhead, 194, 197-203, 207, 211, 296, 305.

  Hinton House, 326.

  Hook, Theodore, 20-22, 98.

  Horndean, 218, 301, 320, 325, 326, 327.

  Hungate, Sir Henry, 38.

  Hyde, Sir Nicholas, 325.

  Inns--
    "Anchor," the, Ripley, 140.
    "Angel," the, Ditton, 140.
    "Angel," the, Guildford, 161.
    "Angel," the, Strand, 30.
    "Bald-faced Stag," the, 67.
    "Bear," the, Esher, 101.
    "Belle Alliance," the, 327.
    "Belle Sauvage," the, 30, 216.
    "Berkeley" Hotel, the, 94.
    "Blue Posts," the, Portsmouth, 30, 216, 301, 358, 362.
    "Burford Bridge" Hotel, the, 112.
    "Castle," the, Petersfield, 233, 278, 281.
    "Castle and Falcon," the, Aldersgate Street, 215.
    "Coach and Horses," the, Gravel Hill, 297.
    "Coach and Horses," the, Hilsea, 218.
    "Cock and Bottle," the, St. Martin's Lane, 37.
    "Cross Keys," the, Wood Street, 22, 217.
    "Crown," the, Guildford, 161.
    "Dog and Duck," the, 28.
    "Dolphin," the, Petersfield, 281-283.
    "Eagle," the, City Road, 362.
    "Elephant and Castle," the, 2, 11, 22-27, 29, 33, 34.
    "Flying Bull," the, Rake, 218, 268.
    "Fountain," the, Portsmouth, 30, 216, 217, 358, 363.
    "George," the, Portsdown Hill, 351.
    "George," the, Portsmouth, 30, 217, 363.
    "George and Gate," the, Gracechurch Street, 30.
    "Globe," the, Portsmouth, 215.
    "Golden Cross," the, Charing Cross, 22, 30.
    "Green Man," the, Putney Heath, 72.
    "Green Posts," the, Hilsea, 219.
    "Heroes of Waterloo," the, 328.
    "Huts" Hotel, the, 139.
    "Jolly Butchers," the, 93.
    "Jolly Drovers," the, 271.
    "King's Arms," the, Godalming, 175.
    "King's Arms," the, Portsmouth, 363.
    "Mitre," the, Hampton Court, 107.
    "New Inn," the, Old Change, 215.
    "Quebec," the, Portsmouth, 363.
    "Ram," the, Guildford, 217.
    "Red Lion," the, Dorking, 114.
    "Red Lion," the, Guildford, 161, 235, 239.
    "Red Lion," the, Petersfield, 281.
    "Robin Hood," the, Kingston Vale, 81, 267.
    "Royal Anchor," the, Liphook, 38, 218, 232-258, 296.
    "Royal Huts," the, Hindhead, 203, 207.
    "Royal Oak," the, Portsmouth, 217.
    "Seven Thorns," the, 208, 211, 218, 219, 220.
    "Spotted Dog," the, 40.
    "Spread Eagle," the, Gracechurch Street, 30, 216, 217.
    "Sussex Bell," the, 219.
    "Talbot," the, Ripley, 135.
    "Telegraph," the, Putney Heath, 79.
    "White Bear," the, Piccadilly, 2, 30.
    "White Hart," the, Guildford, 161.
    "White Hart," the, Petersfield, 281.
    "White Horse," the, Dorking, 107, 114.
    "White Horse Cellars," the, 366.
    "White Lion," the, Cobham Street, 135.

  Jerrold, Douglas, 104.

  Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 43.

  Kean, Charles, 320-323.

  Kean, Edmund, 323.

  Kennington, 27, 63.

  Kingston-on-Thames, 1, 81-94, 141, 201.

  Lady Holt Park, 314, 316.

  Landport, 353.

  Leech, John, 189.

  Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, Prince, 127-134.

  Leopold, Prince, Duke of Albany, 134.

  Louis Philippe, King of the French, 133.

  Lussher, Richard, Epitaph, 14.

  Liphook, 208, 216, 222, 225, 228, 230, 232-258, 260, 267, 296.

  Milford, 193.

  Milland, 231, 259, 272.

  Mole, River, 108, 112.

  Monmouth, James, Duke of, 59.

  More, Sir Thomas, 16.

  Murders by Smugglers, 310-318.

  Napier, Admiral Sir Charles, 320-325.

  Newington, 25, 267.

  "Nicholas Nickleby," 61, 297.

  Nine Elms, 218.

  Oglethorpe, General, 187.

  Oxenbourne Downs, 297-301.

  Pain's Hill, 42, 138.

  Pepys, Samuel, 38, 160, 161, 202, 235-239, 281, 333.

  Petersfield, 1, 216, 233, 235, 272-285.

  Peter the Great, 192.

  "Peter Simple," 34.

  Pitt, William, 74, 78-80.

  Porchester, 1.

  Portsdown Hill, 274, 295, 329.

  Portsea Island, 353.

  Portsmouth, 41, 217, 218, 235, 329, 352, 357-367.

  Portsmouth Point, 360.

  Press-Gang, 345-350.

  Purbrook, 301, 329, 352.

  Putney, 2, 11, 13.

  Putney Heath, 1, 11, 72.

  Rake, 218, 260, 267, 268, 315, 317, 318, 345.

  "Recruiting Sergeant," the, 93.

  Ripley, 135-146, 217.

  Rogues and Vagabonds, 86-90, 342-345.

  Sailor-men, 334-351, 358-362.

  St. Catherine's Chapel, 169.

  Sandown Park, 98.

  Selborne, 260, 267.

  Sheet, 201, 272.

  Shulbrede Priory, 220.

  Smith, Henry, Alderman, 65, 66.

  Smuggling, 305-319.

  Stoke D'Abernon, 136.

  Stone's End, 1, 22.

  Sugden, Sir Edward, 98.

  Sword House, 65.

  Tartar Hill, 139.

  Thames Ditton, 98.

  Thursley, 203-207.

  Tibbet's Corner, 67.

  Tofts, Mary, 176-182.

  Toll-houses, 267.

  Travellers, Old-time, 33, 56-63, 252-258, 330-345.

  Turner, J. M. W., 169, 201.

  Tyndall, Professor, 207, 230.

  Up Park, 273.

  Vanbrugh, Sir John, 120-123.

  Vauxhall, 1.

  Villiers, Lord Francis, 85.

  Villiers, George, Duke of Buckingham, 38.

  Wandle, River, 63.

  Wandsworth, 1, 22, 63-67.

  Wandsworth Road, 15.

  Warren, Samuel, Q.C., 101-104.

  Waterloo, 327.

  Waterlooville, 327-329.

  Wellington, 327.

  Wesley, Rev. John, 41, 188, 190.

  White, Gilbert, 201, 230, 261-267.

  "White Lady," the, 98.

  Wilkes, John, 28, 38, 240-252.

  Wimbledon Common, 72, 80.

  Wisley, 139.

  Witley Common, 203.

  Wolfe, General, 60.

  Wolsey, Cardinal, 15, 118, 120.

  Woolmer Forest, 228, 232.

_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London & Bungay._

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It is due, though, to the memory of the Duke of York to state that
_he_ was content to be regarded in this affair as an ordinary private
gentleman.

[2] Edmund Yates says it was Sergeant Murphy, the eminent lawyer, and not
Jerrold. See his "Recollections."

[3] This corrupt pronunciation is perpetuated in "Godliman" Street, by St.
Paul's Churchyard, in London.

[4] This "elm" is a chestnut.

[5] The "County of Southampton," to speak by the card.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _italics_.

Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.

Superscripted characters are indicated by {superscript}.

The original text contains letters with diacritical marks that are not
represented in this text version.