Before the days of railways, there were in England many small provincial “seasons”, which for the smaller fry were as important as the London one. That had always been pre-eminent, because it coincided with the Parliamentary Session, when members of both houses were obliged to be in London. They brought their wives and families with them and presented them at Court. The lesser country gentlemen were content with a Season nearer home, where the balls, assemblies and theatres were often quite as good as those in London, and where they kept in touch with their magisterial duties and continued their country sports. Town and country were thus more interlocked than is possible in these days when cities have grown so enormously, and the earlier system must have been humanising for both parties.
The Guide des Etrangers becomes lyrical over Newmarket. “One knows not which to admire most”, says the writer, “the swiftness of the horses or the earnestness of the several spectators who lay great wagers on their favourite beasts … the racers fly over the plain as if they either touched not or felt not the ground they run upon. No sight except that of a victorious army in pursuit of its enemy can exceed this. Such is the swiftness and fire of an English racehorse that no horse of any country in the universe can keep pace and breath with him, running four measured miles in eight or nine minutes, sometimes less. Thus a run by such horses continuing from thence to Constantinople (which is about 2,000 miles) would be made in about 66 hours.’’
Eighteenth-century Bath is well known from countless memoirs and letters, but the guides often give forgotten details—details which complete the picture of the life there. Take for instance this account of a morning’s bathing:
“In the morning, you are attended in a close chair, in your bathing clothes, to the Gross Bath. There the music plays while you enter the bath, and the persons that attend you present you with a little floating dish, in which is put a handkerchief, a nosegay, and of late the snuff box is added. Here the ladies and gentlemen keep to some distance, each to their proper side; but the place is but narrow, and they converse freely. Having thus amused themselves for an hour or two, they call their chairs and return to their lodgings.’’
When sea bathing became fashionable, the rise of seaside watering places turned what had been remote villages into new social centres. The Thanet Itinerary says that “the wealthy thousands from the vast metropolis hastened to the sea coast of Thanet, in order that they might refresh their weary bodies, and reinvigorate their constitutions by laving in the crystal waters of the Northern Ocean”. This sparkling vision of the North Sea is very different from Mme de Noailles’ impression of it a hundred years later:
“La Mer du Nord, cette mer glaciale qui a la couleur et la rage de l’hyène; qui envoie lentement, sur la côte, sa vague grise, couchée, creusée comme la Mort.’’
On most days in the year Mme de Noailles’ hyæna-colour is more like the North Sea we know; and perhaps the Thanet Itinerary detected couleur dt rose where more ordinary people would only see couleur d’hyène. So this account of the Assembly Rooms may also be taken with a grain of salt:
“Margate Assembly Rooms are perhaps superior to any in England. The ballroom is 87 by 45 feet, and decorated with stucco festoons, mirrors and girandoles, and five richly-cut chandeliers. Battison’s Library is a most superb structure, an excellent shop and library with a spacious dome, giving light and ornament to the whole structure, from the centre of which is suspended a beautiful glass chandelier. A range of Corinthian columns separates the shop from the library. Busts of the poets stand on the cornices of the book-cases, and the chimney-pieces are decorated with the Muses in bas relief.’’
Lady bathers in Margate preferred the “enclosed bath” as they considered this to be safer; but the gentlemen were brave enough to go right into the sea. They were conveyed in “ a bathing machine, concealed by a canvas umbrella, invented by one Beale, a quaker of the town”. The charge for a gentleman bathing alone was a shilling, but “with a guide, 1/3d.’’
Margate was one of the first places to make a fashion of donkey riding, a seaside amusement which now is only enjoyed by children. But in the days of George the Third it was looked upon as an excellent opportunity for flirtation. The guide tells us that “ Bennet’s was then the principal Assinary. Ladies chiefly encourage it for the exercise, and for the sake of the frolic; but they are generally accompanied on these excursions by their male friends”.
In none of these fashionable country towns was society better organised than it was at Tunbridge Wells, where Beau Nash was Master of the Ceremonies for some years before he went to Bath, and where his rules remained in force for nearly 100 years. If you followed the best guides you knew exactly what to do from the moment you set foot in the place, and you quickly became as completely at ease as if you were in your own club. When he arrived, the visitor was instructed to go to the Wells to “test the waters” and if he liked them he paid his “Welcome Penny” which made him free of the Wells until he left. He also must subscribe to the Assembly Rooms (5/-) and to the band. Ink, pens and paper were supplied at the Coffee House, and everybody met at the booksellers’ to buy, borrow and talk about books. Life in Tunbridge Wells was very regular. People got up very early, and between seven and eight they met at the Wells to drink the waters, after which came two hours’ walk. It was equally fashionable to breakfast at home or in the public rooms and gardens, where the band played under the trees. It was the correct thing to attend chapel at ten, and then the visitors scattered to amuse themselves. The band continued to play in the gardens, and people rode, walked and shopped; while on the common could be seen “ pedestrians, equestrians and assinarians of all ranks, sexes and ages”. In the jewellers’ and toyshops there were little raffles which were considered very amusing, and in the booksellers shops “the company met to collect the harmless satire or the panagyrics of the day”. After the early dinner morning dress was discarded and everyone “appeared in full and splendid attire to see and to be seen”. The Great Room was now given up to cards, and tea drinking went on in the gardens outside. Balls and theatres began at seven, a box at the play only costing 5/-, and the Beau insisted on rigid punctuality at all these functions.
No one need feel lonely at Tunbridge Wells.
“On the Walks you have all the liberty of conversation in the world, and any person that looks like a gentleman and has an agreeable address and behaves with decency and good manners, may single out whom he pleases that does not appear engaged, and may talk, rally, be merry and say any decent thing to them. But all this makes no acquaintance, nor is it understood to mean so. If a gentleman desires to be more intimate, he must do it by Proper Application, and not by ordinary meeting on the Walks.’’
Tunbridge Wells “ is calculated to afford domestic accommodation to almost every class of visitor, from the Prince and Princess with appropriate retinue, to the solitary bachelor in sulky sinlessness”. The approaches to the town were the haunts of “ a parcel of mean fellows whom they called Touters, and their business touting. These men ride out miles to meet coaches and company coming hither and beg their custom while here”. Sarah Porter was called the Queen of the Touters, and for some years before 1739 Beau Nash made use of her to collect subscriptions in the Rooms. She knew everyone’s relations, and she boasted she never forgot a face. “She would stand in the ballroom and make thousands of curtesies and then she took her book, pen and ink, and followed people all over the room. No swearing or cursing disturbed her temper, and she said she was descended from those English women in the time of the Danes, who cut all their husbands’ throats the first night of their marriage.” Although Beau Nash thus made use of touting at Tunbridge Wells, the custom did not originate there. It is said to have begun on the Epsom Road on Derby Day, and got its name because the touters went “ as far as Tooting in pursuit of the victims of their trade”.
With the coming of railways, people travelled far more frequently and far more rapidly from place to place. The result was that manners and cu
stoms in most countries became more uniform. Etiquette books were less in demand and the amusing guide books of the past were superseded by the universal Mr. Bradshaw. There were still occasionally guide books on the old lines, published by railway companies, and in a Folkestone Guide of the fifties the following hopeful prophecy appears. It has alas! not been fulfilled.
“Steam will prove a universal peacemaker. The natives of all counties will cease to regard each other as enemies. Man will meet Man as his brother. War will cease. Similar reflections to these will naturally suggest themselves to the visitors while lounging on the Pier.’’
2 Buried in the Past
IN THESE DAYS, WHEN SIGNPOSTS ALL OVER THE COUNTRY have been temporarily mislaid, it is well to remember that the goals of some of our most enjoyable pre-war expeditions were not indicated in that conspicuous and now discredited manner. The archaeologist has never delighted in a building which merely stands upon the common earth to be seen with half an eye by the casual wayfarer. His treasure is hid in a field, “ which when he hath found it, he hideth, and for joy thereof, goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field”.
Archæological are among the most combative of men, and as I presume they exist in every country, I have often wished that all quarrelsome statesmen could be forcibly made into excavators. The fighting instinct would then have full scope. Swords would be beaten into spades, and spears into pickaxes. The Bren gun would give place to the sieve, and the tank to the wheelbarrow. The Molotoff bread basket would drop the two first words of its name, and would be occupied in carrying “ finds”. And best of all this “war” would never end. There would always be a new campaign to begin, and its battlefields would embrace the whole world.
For even when two schools of archæological reach the same conclusion, they differ so bitterly as to the routes by which they have arrived, that the war becomes more than ever acute. Take, for instance, the age of Stonehenge. In 1901 Sir Norman Lockyer decided that it was built between 1900 and 1500 B.C. He said that it was astronomically proved that only in that period did the sun rise so exactly behind the Hele Stone as to throw its shadow precisely upon the Altar Stone on the longest day. At present the actual sunrise on that day is a few degrees out. To the amateur this seemed a most satisfactory way of proving the point; and when excavations at the base of the stones revealed that the tools and objects buried under them pointed to 1800 B.C. as being the most likely date, it seemed that the watcher of the sky and the searcher in the earth had found a common meeting-place where, like righteousness and peace, they might kiss each other. Not at all. The date might be approximately correct, but the method of approach was appalling. Excavators pointed out that Stonehenge was built in days when there were no scientific means of astronomical observation. These calculations must have been done by the eye. And by shutting first one eye and then the other there was a possible variation in the date of about five hundred years.
Archæological field days mean extremely pleasant picnics. Motors arrive from all directions, and in the intervals of study the archæological sit about in groups eating sandwiches and mayonnaise of salmon. But they are also as militant as most field days, for, of course, they are as controversial as any other archæological function. I well remember a clerical member of our society leading us for some miles over Salisbury Plain to see an earthwork which he had recently discovered, and which he considered to be the only instance in this country of an exact reproduction of a Greek theatre. It was a wonderful walk. The clergyman led the way, and about eighty people followed him. Round us was the boundless Plain; and as we proceeded I scanned the horizon, hoping to see come into view the vast and hitherto unrecognised outlines of an enormous amphitheatre. Our guide thought that his theatre must have been a meeting place for the wise men of three British villages which were known to have existed nearby. On we went. Vainly I tried to identify the vast discovery, and decided that my eye was not sufficiently trained. At last we arrived, and I had abruptly to bring my vision down from the telescopic to the microscopic. The theatre was tiny. It was like an armchair in a comfortable London club—a fairly high back, broad arms, and a low seat. In the great spaces around, it was not surprising that it had hithero been overlooked.
The clergyman now expounded his views. He thought that when the three villages had business to discuss they had each sent a representative to this spot, and that the three sides of the tiny earthwork were the remains of their three seats. His lecture was accompanied by an undercurrent of interruption from a lady archaeologist who disagreed with him.
“It’s a dew pond”, she said.
The old man lectured on undisturbed.
“It’s a dew pond”, came again.
He went on.
“It’s a dew pond. It’s a dew pond. It’s a dew pond.’’
“No, madam. It has only three sides, so it never held water.’’
“It’s a dew pond … a dew pond … Did you find any raddle and clay in the bottom?’’
“No, madam, I did not. It is NOT A DEW POND.’’
The lecturer continued as though unaffected by this persistent heckler, but towards the end of his address he turned to her, saying ironically:
“You may be pleased to learn that a Henry II penny was found in the bank.’’
“I did not suggest that it was mediaeval”, she answered irately; and the whole party crowded on to the site to discuss their reaction to the controversy.
Another time, again on Salisbury Plain, we assembled to inspect a British village site, which had only lately been discovered. This was expected to be of supreme interest, as the site was on virgin down and had never been ploughed up.
I heard my neighbours saying: “We shall find it just as they left it. It will be most instructive”.
This really did excite me. In my ignorant way, I at once imagined the dear little cave dwellings suddenly deserted, with all their furniture and belongings: kettles still on hobs, ornaments still on mantelpieces, beds still made.
Sustained by passionate enthusiasm I strode over the Plain in the wake of a goodly number of business-like archæological. At one place they paused, and seemed to wait for stragglers to join for the last lap. I paused too, and looked across the uninterrupted spaces of green down.
“Wonderful! Wonderful!” I heard on all sides. I looked round the vast horizon and agreed. Then, to my dismay, I found that instead I must look under my feet. We were already at the village, and absolutely nothing of it could be recognised by the untrained eye. One by one we were shown the unique details of this remarkable prehistoric encampment. This hardly-visible depression in the turf was said to be a hearth. That one was a garden. Here had once been a boundary wall.
That this should disappoint, merely means that one is not an archaeologist; yet nevertheless these expeditions were supremely enjoyable. Archæology then is more than a pursuit for experts. It is a real bit of the country, and appeals equally to the novice in historical study, to the lover of the countryside and to the simple person who merely enjoys the society of his fellow men.
My earliest recollections of archæological are that they were all very old. They were retired admirals and archdeacons. But now anyone living in a part of the world where excavations are being carried on will take part, whatever his age. Aeroplanes first carried archæology away from the exclusive control of the elderly. Airmen are always young, and in the past twenty years or so, young men flying over wide stretches of country have taken photographs which have revolutionised the science of archæology. It was very exciting when aerial photographs first rediscovered the “Aubrey Holes” at Stonehenge, which for years had been derided as instances of the ridiculous credulity of that poetic seventeenth century scholar. Airmen found Woodhenge, a temple on the same lines as Stonehenge, situated a mile or two away, and originally built of wood. The impermanent material had perished; and the vast eternal stones nearby had obliterated all memory of the other building. Now its traces were seen from the air. Excavators d
iscovered the situation of every post that had once stood in the temple, and they are now indicated by concrete blocks.
So archæology is a pursuit independent of milestones and signposts: its indicators are even more romantic. They also call for more imagination, and for an elasticity of mind which despises no method of approach. My most erudite friend, G.M. Young, is credibly said to have been the original of the Wise Scribe who brought out of his treasure things new and old. But though he can decipher any ancient manuscript in the British Museum, he also has the patient art of extracting what facts may lie behind the countryman’s casual references to local conditions. Nowadays, when it is impossible to travel far afield, G.M. learns much from his comrades in the Home Guard, and where other people might see nothing but the uncritical credulity of the “uneducated”, G. M. joins the fragments of living tradition on to his own previous store of authenticated information. This brings archæology to life.
The discovery ten years ago of the “Sanctuary” near Avebury is an instance of progressive investigation. Nineteenth-century students doubted the existence of this monument, as they doubted the Aubrey Holes. Aubrey had mentioned it in about 1660; and Stukely made a sketch of it from memory soon after the winter of 1724, when the ground was ploughed “ to gain a little dirty profit”, and the Sanctuary was so completely destroyed that its very site seemed to be irrecoverable.
Country Moods and Tenses Page 5