The Bath Road Part 8

[Sidenote: _PILGRIM'S PROGRESS_]

Then, when he again resumed his journey, the coachmen who drove by called out now and again to ask him if he would not ride on the outside of their coaches; and the farmers riding past on horseback said, with an air of pity, "'Tis warm walking, sir;" and, more than all, as he pa.s.sed through the villages, every old woman would come to her door and cry pitifully, "Good G.o.d!"

And so he came to Windsor, where, as he entered an inn and desired to have something to eat, the countenances of the waiters soon gave him to understand that they thought our pedestrian little, if anything, better than a beggar. In this contemptuous manner they served him, but, to do them justice, they allowed him to pay like a gentleman. "Perhaps," says Pastor Moritz, "this was the first time these pert, be-powdered puppies had ever been called on to wait on a poor devil who entered the place on foot." To add to this indignity, they showed him into a bedroom which more resembled a cell for malefactors than aught else, and when he desired a better room, told him, with scant ceremony, to go back to Slough. This, by the way, was at the "Christopher," at Eton. Crossing the bridge into Windsor again, he found himself opposite the Castle, and at the gates of a very capital inn, with several officers and persons of distinction going in and out. Here the landlord received him with civility, but the chambermaid who conducted him to his room did nothing but mutter and grumble. After an evening walk he returned, at peace with all men; but the waiters received him gruffly, and the chambermaid, dropping a half-curtsey, informed him, with a sneering laugh, that he might go and look for another bedroom, for the one she had by mistake shown him was already engaged. He protested so loudly at this that the landlord, who was a good soul, surely, came, and with great courtesy desired another room to be shown him, which, however, contained another bed.

Underneath was the tap-room, from which ascended the ribaldries and low conversation of some objectionable people who were drinking and singing songs down there, and scarcely had he dropped off to sleep before the fellow who was to sleep in the other bed came stumbling into the room.

After colliding with the Pastor's bed, he found his own, and got into it without the tiresome formality of removing boots and clothes.

The next morning the Pastor prepared to depart, needlessly annoyed by that eternal feminine--the grumbling chambermaid, who informed him that on no account should he sleep another night there. As he was going away, the surly waiter placed himself on the stairs, saying, "Pray remember the waiter," and when in receipt of the three-halfpence which our traveller bestowed, he cursed that inoffensive German with the heartiest imprecations. At the door stood the maid, saying, "Pray remember the chambermaid." "Yes, yes," says the Pastor (a worm will turn), "I shall long remember your most ill-mannered behaviour," and so gave her nothing.

Through Slough he went, by Salt Hill, to Maidenhead. At Salt Hill, which could hardly be called a village, he saw a barber's shop. For putting his hair in order, and for the luxury of a shave, that unconscionable barber charged one s.h.i.+lling.

Between Salt Hill and Maidenhead, this very much contemned pedestrian met with a very disagreeable adventure. Hitherto he had scarcely met a single foot-pa.s.senger, whilst coaches without number rolled every moment past him; for few roads were so crowded as was the Bath Road at this time.

[Sidenote: _THE PASTOR AND THE FOOTPAD_]

In one place the road led along a low, sunken piece of ground, between high trees, so that one could see but a little way ahead, and just here a fellow in a brown frock and round hat, with an immense stick in his hand, came up to him. His countenance was suspicious. He pa.s.sed, but immediately turned back and demanded a halfpenny to buy bread, for he had eaten nothing (so he said) that day.

The Pastor felt in his pocket, but could find nothing less than a s.h.i.+lling. Very imprudently, I should say, he informed the beggar of that fact, and begged to be excused.

"G.o.d bless my soul!" said the beggar, which pious invocation so frightened our timid friend that he, having due regard to the big stick and the brawny hand that held it, gave the beggar a s.h.i.+lling. Meanwhile a coach came past, and the fellow thanked him and went on his way. If the coach had come past sooner, he "would not," he says, "so easily have given him the s.h.i.+lling, which, G.o.d knows, I could not well spare. Whether a footpad or not, I will not pretend to say; but he had every appearance of it."

And so this unfortunate traveller marches off to the Oxford Road, and we are no longer concerned with him.

XXI

A fine broad gravel stretch of highway is that which, on leaving Salt Hill, takes us gently down in the direction of the Thames, which the Bath Road crosses, over Maidenhead Bridge. The distance is four miles, with no villages, and but few scattered houses, on the way. Two miles and one mile respectively before the Bridge is reached are the wayside inns, called "Two Mile Brook" and "One Mile House." Near this last is the beautiful grouping of roadside elms, sketched in the accompanying ill.u.s.tration, "An English Road." Half a mile onward, the Great Western Railway crosses the road by a skew-bridge, and runs into Taplow station. Taplow village lies quite away from the road, but has an outpost, as it were, in the old, with the curious sign of the "Dumb Bell." Beyond this, the intervening stretch of road as far as Maidenhead Bridge is lined with villas standing in extensive grounds. Here the traveller renews his acquaintance with the Thames, and pa.s.ses over a fine stone bridge, built in 1772, from Bucks to Berks. This bridge succeeded a crazy timber structure, which itself had several predecessors. It is one of these early bridges that is mentioned in the declaration of a hermit who obtained a licence to settle here and collect alms. Such roadside hermits were common in the Middle Ages. They were licensed by the Bishop of their diocese, and were often useful in keeping bridges and highways in good order; the alms they received being, indeed, very much in the nature of voluntary tolls for these services. On the following declaration, Richard Ludlow obtained his licence:--

[Sidenote: _AN EARLY TOLL-KEEPER_]

"In the name of G.o.d, Amen. I, Richard Ludlow, before G.o.d and you my Lord Bishop of Salisbury, and in presence of all these wors.h.i.+pful men here being, offer up my profession of hermit under this form: that I, Richard, will be obedient to Holy Church; that I will lead my life, to my life's end, in sobriety and chast.i.ty; will avoid all open spectacles, taverns, and other such places; that I will every day hear ma.s.s, and say every day certain Paternosters and Aves: that I will fast every Friday, the vigils of Pentecost and All Hallows, on bread and water. And the goods that I may get by free gift of Christian people, or by bequest, or testament, or by any reasonable and true way, receiving only necessaries to my sustenance, as in meat, drink, clothing, and fuel, I shall truly, without deceit, lay out upon reparation and amending of the bridge and of the common way belonging to ye same town of Maidenhead."

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN ENGLISH ROAD.]

There is, perhaps, no more delightful picture along the whole course of the Bath Road than the view from Maidenhead Bridge up river, where the house-boats, gay with flowers and j.a.panese lanterns, are gathered beside the trim lawns of the riverside villas, with the gaily dressed crowds by Boulter's Lock beyond, and the wooded heights of Clieveden closing in the distance. Maidenhead shows the river at its most fas.h.i.+onable part.

It was at the "Greyhound" Inn, Maidenhead, that the unhappy Charles the First bade farewell to his children, July 16, 1647. He was in charge of his Roundhead captors at Caversham, and had been allowed to come over for two days. The Prince of Wales was abroad, but the Duke of York, then fifteen years of age; the Princess Elizabeth, two years younger; and the seven-year-old Duke of Gloucester, were brought to him. The affecting scene is said to have drawn tears even from Cromwell.

Maidenhead Bridge--the wooden one which preceeded the present structure--might have been the scene of a desperate encounter, but happened instead to have witnessed an equally desperate and farcical devil-take-the-hindmost flight on the part of the Irish soldiers of James the Second, who were posted here to dispute the pa.s.sage of the Thames with the advancing forces of William of Orange.

The November night had shrouded the river and the country side, when the sound of drums beating a Dutch march was heard. The soldiers, who had no heart in their work, did not remain to defend that strategic point, and bolted. They would have discovered, if they had kept their posts, that the martial music which lent them such agility was produced by the townsfolk of Maidenhead, who, in spite of that national crisis, appear to have been merry blades.

XXII

The "Bear" was the princ.i.p.al inn at Maidenhead in the coaching era, and owed much of its prosperity to the unwillingness of travellers who carried considerable sums of money with them to cross Maidenhead Thicket at night.

They slept peacefully at the "Bear," and resumed the roads in the morning, when the highwaymen were in hiding.

[Sidenote: _MAIDENHEAD THICKET_]

Maidenhead Thicket is really a long avenue lining the highway two miles from that town. It is a beautiful and romantic place, but its beauties were not apparent to travellers in days of old. The sinister reputation of the spot goes back for hundreds of years, and may be said to have arisen from the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries, when Reading Abbey was despoiled. To that Abbey had resorted many hundreds of poor, certain of finding relief at its gates, and when its hospitality had become a thing of the past, these dependents simply infested the neighbourhood, and either begged or stole. As a chronicler of that time quaintly said: "There is great stoare of stout vagabonds and maysterless men (able enough for labour) which do great hurt in the country by their idle and naughtie life." In those times the Hundreds were liable for any robberies committed within their boundaries; and in 1590 the Hundred of Benhurst, in which Maidenhead Thicket is situated, had actually to pay 255 compensation for highway robberies committed here. In fact, Maidenhead Thicket had for a long time an unenviable reputation for highway robberies, with or without violence, and the desperadoes had so little care whom they robbed that not even the Vicars of Hurley, who came over to officiate at Maidenhead once a week, were safe. This was so fully recognized that the Vicars of Hurley used to draw an annual 50 extra on account of their risks.

In later years a farmer, whose name was Cannon, was stopped one night on driving from Reading market. Two footpads compelled him to give up the well-filled money-bag he carried with him, and then let him go, consumed with impotent rage at his helplessness and the loss of his money.

Suddenly, however, he remembered that he had with him, under the seat of the gig, a reaping-hook which he had brought back from being mended at Reading. That recollection brought him a bright idea. Turning his gig round, he drove back to the spot where he had been robbed, by a back way.

As he had supposed, the ruffians were still there, waiting for more plunder. In the dark they took the farmer for a new-comer, until he had got to close quarters with his reaping-hook, which they mistook for a cutla.s.s. The end of the encounter was that one footpad was left for dead, and the other took to his heels. The farmer searched the fallen foe and found his money-bag, together, it was said, with other spoils, which he promptly annexed, and drove off rejoicing.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIDENHEAD THICKET.]

After these tales of derring-do and robustious encounters, the story of the road becomes comparatively tame as it goes on and pa.s.ses through Twyford and Reading.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE "BELL AND BOTTLE" SIGN.]

[Sidenote: _"BELL AND BOTTLE"_]

At the western end of Maidenhead Thicket, where, lying modestly back from the road, stands one of the innumerable "Coach and Horses" of the highway, the gossips of the adjacent Littlewick Green foregather and play bowls on the gra.s.s. Then comes Knowl Hill, where an old sign, swinging romantically from a wayside fir tree, proclaims the proximity of a curiously named inn, the "Bell and Bottle." What affinity have bells for bottles, or bottles for bells? "What," as the poet asks (in quite a different connection), "is Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?" But perhaps the original innkeeper was something of a cynic, and thus paraphrased the well-worn conjunction, "Beer and Bible." Unfortunately for the inquiring stranger, the origin is "wrop in mistry."

Down below Knowl Hill, past a chalk quarry on the right, is yet another inn--the neat and pretty "Seven Stars," to be succeeded at the hamlet of Kiln Green by the "Horse and Groom," gabled and embowered with vines, and facing up, not fronting, the road, in quite the ideal fas.h.i.+on. What the country here lacks in bold scenery it evidently gains in fertility, for the gardens of Kiln Green are a delightful ma.s.s of luxuriant flowers.

The road through Hare Hatch to Twyford is flat and uninteresting. Twyford itself, an ancient place on the little river Loddon, is losing its antique character, from being the scene of much building activity. An old almshouse remains on the right hand, with the inscription, "Domino et pauperibus, 1640."

The five miles between Twyford and Reading exhibit the gradual degeneracy of a country road approaching a large town; as regards the scenery, that is to say. The quality of the road surface remains excellent, and the width is generous--a circ.u.mstance probably owing to the especial widening carried out so far back as 1255, in consequence of the dangerous state of the highway, which was then narrow and bordered by dense woods wherein lurked all manner of evildoers.

Three miles from the town, and continuing for the length of a mile, is a pleasant avenue of trees. The deep Sonning Cutting on the Great Western Railway is then crossed, and the suburbs of Biscuit Town presently encountered.

XXIII

"The run to Reading," I learn from a cycling paper, "const.i.tutes a pleasant morning's spin from London." I should like to call up one of our great-grandfathers who travelled these thirty-nine miles painfully by coach, and read that paragraph to him.

[Sidenote: _BISCUITS, SEEDS, AND SAUCE_]

Reading numbers over 60,000 inhabitants, and is rapidly adding to them.

This prosperity proceeds from several causes, Reading being--

"'Mongst other things, so widely known, For biscuits, seeds, and sauce."

The town, of course, stands for biscuits in the minds of most people, and the names of Huntley and Palmer have become household words, somewhat eclipsing c.o.c.k's Reading Sauce, and the seeds of Sutton's; while few people outside Reading are cognizant of its great engineering industries.