Читать книгу Highways and Byways in Surrey - Eric Parker - Страница 13

Table of Contents

Jonathan Swift, Secretary.—A new Tale of a Tub.—Sir William Temple, Essayist.—Swift's "Stella."—A heart under a sundial.—Dorothy Osborne.—Mother Ludlam's Cave—Waverley Abbey.—Two tons of wine.—Comfort from Cromwell.—A Surrey Landmark.

Hardly two miles from Farnham, and reached by a road overarched by fine oaks, Moor Park stands on the banks of the Wey. A turn in the lane throws open a view of rich hayfields and pasture, with the river winding in and out under a ridge of oakwoods; much the same view, perhaps, as Swift first had of the fields and the Wey when he came to Moor Park from Ireland to copy out Sir William Temple's essays and to meet the dark-eyed waiting-maid who was to inspire one of the great passions of literary history.

Moor Park was Sir William Temple's new name for an old manor. The name under which he bought the house and land was Compton Hall, and he renamed it after a property in Hertfordshire. "The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years ago," he wrote in his Essay on the Gardens of Epicures: and he laid out his own garden in the Dutch style which he admired. The garden has changed with the changing tastes of later owners; the house has fared a little better, though it was once metamorphosed into a Hydropathic Sanatorium—a new and dismal Tale of a Tub.

Moor Park.

Moor Park, when Sir William Temple had it, saw the writing of many books. Sir William Temple himself, deeply hurt with his sovereign, James II, for striking his name off the Privy Council, had vowed to give up diplomacy and turn to gardening and writing for the rest of his life. His gardening may have been as good as his writing, and his essay on Gardening is, of all his writings, perhaps the best. But it was in his seclusion at Moor Park that he wrote, also, one of the most ridiculous papers that ever brought the fame of an essayist to a retired politician. His Essay Upon the Ancient and Modern Learning remains one of the most astonishing examples of the admirable writing down of trash in the history of letters. Quite unnecessarily, he had taken up the task of comparing modern writers with ancient, to the disadvantage of the modern, and he cannot be said to have been well equipped for the business. He had never read a word of Greek, and he achieved the distinction of criticising modern writing without a single reference to the works of Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Ariosto, Molière, Racine, Corneille, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakespeare. The extraordinary thing is that the book was welcomed, and when a quarrel was struck over his claim that the Letters of Phalaris (which he could not read) were the best Letters in the world, he found ready champions. They were hopelessly defeated by Bentley, but Sir William Temple fortunately died before the defeat.

Better books were written at Moor Park by Sir William's secretary. Jonathan Swift, angry and rebellious, hating the authority and restraint of his Irish University, came to England an uncouth, ill-balanced, extravagant creature of twenty-one, and settled, or half-settled, to his work as amanuensis. He threw up his post in a rage, went over to Ireland and was ordained priest, made up his quarrel with his patron and came back to Moor Park to write The Tale of a Tub and The Battle of the Books. But the books were almost incidents. The mainspring of his life was his melancholy devotion to the pretty girl who waited on Lady Giffard, Sir William Temple's sister. She was Esther Johnson, daughter of Sir William's steward, but as Swift's Stella she lives in the story of sad and mysterious passions with Héloise and Laura.

Sir William Temple died in 1699, and was buried by his wife's side in Westminster Abbey; all but his heart, and that was laid in a silver box under the sundial in his garden. He left his papers to Swift, who wrote that there had died "with him all that was good and amiable among men," and to prove it quarrelled acrimoniously with the family.

Of another, gentler inmate of Moor Park we hear very little. Her fame was assured her when, as Dorothy Osborne, she had waited seven years to marry William Temple, and had sent to him, without an idea that they would reach an English public, some of the most graceful girlish letters ever written. After her marriage she leaves the scene, or we see her seldom. She corresponded with Queen Mary, but Swift has little to tell us about her. She, at least, could never have enraged him.

Stella's Cottage.

Moor Park lies along the banks of the Wey, and through it runs a drive open to foot passengers, but not to bicycles or dogs. Nearly at the end of the drive going towards Waverley Abbey is a curious cave, lined and roofed at the entrance with stone, and barred and gated and spiked with iron, evidently a fit habitation, once upon a time, for a very witch-like old woman. The gates, or rather railings which do not open, must have been placed there many years ago, for no initials have been carved, or at least none are visible, on the stone within. The cave runs back, some way from the road, into pleasantly dubious darkness. In this case, according to the tradition of the place, lived the witch, Mother Ludlam, whose caldron lies in the tower of Frensham Church. Another excavation in the ground a few yards away has also its own tradition, or rather two traditions. One is that it was the regular abode of a hermit named Foote, who starved to death in it; another, that Foote was a lunatic who was found dying in the hole, but actually died in the workhouse. The details are precise. "Foote was a gentleman. He came one day to the Unicorn Inn at Farnham. Next day he hired a man to wheel a heavy portmanteau to Moor Park gate, when he told the man to put it down. Foote was taken very ill, was found by old Hill the keeper and taken to Swift's cottage where Hill lived. The union officials took Foote and his heavy portmanteau to the Union. 'It's only buttons inside,' said they. 'It's gold! gold!' exclaimed Foote with his dying breath." So runs the local version.

In Moor Park.

At the gates of the entrance of Moor Park stands a charming cottage, brick and timber embowered in roses. It has been known at different times as "Dean Swift's Cottage" and "Stella's Cottage." Perhaps neither lived there. Outside the park the Wey broadens out into a wide pool, shaded by magnificent sycamores, and then drops through sluices to a lower level, to twist back to the north-west under the walls of Waverley Abbey.

Waverley Abbey is the greatest of the ruins in a county where ruins are few. Once the Abbey precinct covered sixty acres of ground; to-day nothing remains but tumbled walls and broken gates. It was not the oldest nor the richest of Abbeys in the county, but in some ways it was the noblest foundation of all. It was the earliest house of Cistercian monks in England; it inherited the spirit and the traditions of one of the finest of the monastic orders, the stricter sect of the monks of St. Benedict; its brethren were simple, kindly men with few wants and little money, who yet were generous hosts and the most skilful farmers of their day; it was the elder sister of Tintern Abbey, the mother of the Abbeys of Garendon, Ford, Combe and Thame, and the grandmother of seven others; and its abbots had precedence in the chapters of abbots throughout the order of Cistercians.

The White Monks, as the Cistercians were called, used to choose wild and lonely places for their churches, and Waverley Abbey, which stands in fields even now sometimes flooded, in its early days was more than once in difficulties through rain and bad seasons. It was founded in 1128 by William Giffard, the second Bishop of Winchester after the Conquest, and the buildings were still unfinished when, in 1201, a great storm inundated the Abbey, almost carried away its walls, and ruined all its crops, wheat, hay, and flax. Two years later, from the failure of the harvest after the flood, corn was so scarce that the monks had to scatter themselves among other Convents till they could thresh another summer's corn. In 1215 the spring from which they got all the water suddenly failed, and the monks were without water for their wine till one of them found a fresh spring and took it by pipes to the admiring Abbey. Eighteen years later came another storm and vast floods; the water rushed through the Abbey grounds, carrying away walls and bridges, and was eight feet deep in the buildings. There were other floods; in 1265 the monks had to sleep where they could out of the water, and it took days to clean away the silted mud. Those were some of the penalties of being so conveniently near to a river.

Waverley Abbey.

Waverley Abbey.

Round the buildings accumulated the traditional virtues. The Annals of Waverley record that in 1248 a youth fell by accident from the very parapet of the church tower to the ground without receiving the smallest injury. He was stupefied, and was thought to be dead, but after a little while began to speak and to be sensible, and soon completely recovered. On an earlier occasion, Aubrey tells us that "a boy of seven or eight years of age, standing near the Abbey gate, fell into the river, on the Feast of the Invention of the Cross, and by the rapidity of the stream was drove through four of the bridges, and was afterwards found on the surface of the water, dead to all outward appearance; but being taken out and carefully attended, he was brought to life, and came to his post at the gate from whence he had not been missed nor inquired after."

When the church was dedicated in 1278—it had taken seventy-five years to build—there was great rejoicing and a superb banquet. Nicholas de Ely, Bishop of Winchester, to make the occasion splendid, supplied feasting at his own expense for nine days to all who attended; abbots, lords, knights and noble ladies came to the dedication, and on the first day seven thousand and sixty-six guests sat down to meat. That is Waverley's greatest record of hospitality. Another record belongs to a guest. King John spent four days at the Abbey in Holy Week, 1208, and on that occasion one R. de Cornhull was ordered to be paid five marks for "two tons of wine" carried from Pagham.

In the Grounds, Waverley Abbey.

At the Dissolution Waverley's end came quickly. The Abbey was one of the first of the smaller monasteries to fall. The obsequious adventurer whom Thomas Cromwell sent to Waverley to report on the Abbey establishment was Doctor Layton, and evidently he was neither feasted nor bribed by the simple Abbot and his monks. Thus he writes to Cromwell after his visit:—

To the right honorable Mr. Thomas Crumwell, chief secretary to the King's highness.

It may please your mastership to understand that I have licenced the bringer, the Abbot of Waverley, to repair unto you for liberty to survey his husbandry whereupon consisteth the wealth of his monastery. The man is honest, but none of the children of Solomon: every monk within his house is his fellow, and every servant his master. Mr. Treasurer and other gentlemen hath put servants unto him whom the poor [fool?] dare neither command nor displease. Yesterday, early in the morning, sitting in my chamber in examination, I could neither get bread nor drink, neither fire of those knaves till I was fretished; and the Abbot durst not speak to them. I called them all before me, and forgot their names, but took from every man the keys of his office, and made new officers for my time here, perchance as stark knaves as the others. It shall be expedient for you to give him a lesson and tell the poor fool what he should do. Among his monks I found corruption of the worst sort, because they dwell in the forest from all company. Thus I pray God preserve you. From Waverley this morning early before day, ready to depart towards Chichester, by the speedy hand of your most assured servant and poor priest,

Richard Layton.

It is satisfactory to learn that the weasely Doctor was "fretished," which must be pretty nearly the same thing as perished with cold and hunger. The Abbot's plea for his monastery—surely one of the honestest letters ever written—sets in contrast the characters of the monastery and its visitor. He writes to Cromwell on June 9, 1536:—

To the right honourable Master Secretary to the King.

Pleaseth your mastership I received your letters of the vij^th day of this present month, and hath endeavoured myself to accomplish the contents of them, and have sent your mastership the true extent, value, and account of our said monastery. Beseeching your good mastership, for the love of Christ's passion, to help to the preservation of this poor monastery, that we your beadsmen may remain in the service of God, with the meanest living that any poor men may live with, in this world. So to continue in the service of Almighty Jesus, and to pray for the estate of our prince and your mastership. In no vain hope I write this to your mastership, for as much you put me in such boldness full gently, when I was in suit to you the last year at Winchester, saying, 'Repair to me for such business as ye shall have from time to time.' Therefore, instantly praying you, and my poor brethren with weeping yes!—desire you to help them; in this world no creatures in more trouble. And so we remain depending upon the comfort that shall come to us from you—serving God daily at Waverley. From thence the ix^th day of June, 1536.

William, the poor Abbot there, your chaplain to command.

Crooksbury Hill and Frensham Little Pond, from Frensham Common.

The comfort that came to the White Monks was the dissolution of the Abbey in the month following. After the dissolution the buildings fell gradually to pieces, generously helped by builders of other houses. When Sir William More was giving Loseley near Guildford the shape we see to-day he carted waggon-load after waggon-load of stone from the ruined church, and Sir William More was perhaps not the first and certainly not the last of the spoilers. The neighbourhood quarried from the ruins until only a few years ago. When Aubrey saw the Abbey in 1672 he found the walls of a church, cloisters, a chapel used as a stable, and part of the house with its window-glass intact, and paintings of St. Dunstan and the devil, pincers, crucibles and all. To-day most of the ruins have fallen flat. There is some beautiful vaulting left, and massive heaps of stone show the corners and boundaries of the church and other buildings. Ivy-stems, coils of green gigantic pythons, climb about the walls and broken doorways; pigeons nest on the window-ledges and clatter like frightened genii out over the field.

Above Moor Park, a landmark for miles round, Crooksbury Hill lifts like a dark pyramid. Crooksbury Hill has a dozen different wardrobes. You may wake to find her grey in the morning, you may leave her behind you grey-green with the sun full on her flank, you may turn at noon to find the sun lighting her deep emerald; she is sunniest and hottest in a shining blue; and in the evening with the setting sun behind her she cloaks herself in purple and black as if her pines belonged to Scotland. She cannot see so far as Chanctonbury Ring, which is the watching comrade of all walkers in the country of the South Downs, and she has not the height of Leith Hill or Hindhead; but she is the grave and constant companion of all travellers for many miles round her, and measures for them the angle of the sun or the slope of the stars, as do all good landmarks for those who love a landmark like a friend.