Charles G. Harper

“ It seems, then, that when Cæsar came off here, the site upon which almost half the present town of Dover is built was under water. The peculiar site of Dover can perhaps most readily be noted by one who climbs the bare chalk hills that bear on their summits the defences known as the Western Heights. Keeping to rearward of the Citadel, and walking round the shoulders of these hills, one sees that a deep and narrow valley runs down to the sea-beach, contracting almost to the likeness of a narrow gorge where the old town commences, and widening again where it meets the sea. ”

“ Shooter’s Hill was not always a place whereon one could rest in safety. Indeed, it bore for long years a particularly bad name as being the lurking-place of ferocious footpads, cutpurses, highwaymen, cut-throats, and gentry of allied professions who rushed out from these leafy coverts and took liberal toll from wayfarers. Six men were hanged hereabouts, in times not so very remote, for robbery with murder upon the highway; the remains of four of them decorated the summit of the hill, while two others swung gracefully from gibbets beside the Eltham Road. ”

“ The road between Ospringe and Sittingbourne was in those days very lonely, and lonely it still remains, for the settlements of Bapchild, Radfield, and Greenstreet are but dull and dishevelled collections of tiny shops and cottages, with here and there a slumberous old inn or whitewashed farmhouse. The railway to Dover runs on the left hand, within sight of the highway, through the beautiful cherry-orchards and the hop-gardens, and the land slopes gently down to the levels of Teynham and the fertile though ague-stricken marshes of the Swale ”

“ Everywhere, when foundations for new houses have been dug, are discovered Roman pavements and the walls of forgotten buildings, and thus does Canterbury progress through the ages, rearing itself upon itself until its beginnings are hidden deep below the light of day. Strangely do modern ways here jostle with the old. A newly fronted house, proclaiming nothing of its antiquity, will yet often be found to contain much of interest. ”

“ And after the romantic times of that unfortunate family come the stolid annals of Dutch William, Anne, and the unimaginative Georges—a line of sovereigns for whom enthusiasm was impossible. Mean in their vices and contemptible in their virtues, they lived their lives and reigned over England, and posted along the Dover Road on their way to or from beloved Hanover; and no man’s heart beat the faster for their coming, and none sorrowed overmuch for their going. ”

“ It is not sufficient to be floored with such heavy slabs of historical information as those by which we learn that the name of Dover has been arrived at through a long series of British, Roman, and Saxon forms, originating from the little stream called anciently the Dour, that flowed, once upon a time, through the chalk valley of Temple Ewell and Buckland, tinkling cheerfully through the old town and falling into the waves over the pebbles of Dover beach ”

“ The road now grows suburban to Dover, and the valley commences to open out toward the sea. Where the Dour flows, all the vegetation is luxuriant, and there are lovely ponds decked with water-lilies beside the Crabble meadows, below the highway to the right and near the prettily named village of River; but as the hills rise on either hand they grow barren again and stretch for miles right and left. ”

“ Here, on these ancient dust-heaps and kitchen-middens stands the chief business street of Dover, Snargate Street, running parallel with the sea, but now separated from it by the breadth of the Harbour and many intermediate alleys, smelling vehemently of tar and stale reminiscences of ocean. Snargate Street is long and narrow, a model neither of cleanliness nor of convenience, and it crouches humbly beneath the towering cliffs which rise on its landward side, cut, carved, and tunnelled ”

“ But this preface is not to be like those; for it would require an essay in itself to give a comprehensive idea of the Dover Road, in all its implications. A road is not merely so many miles of highway, more or less well-maintained. It is not only something in the surveyor’s way; but history as well. It is life, touched at every point.
The Dover Road—the highway between London and that most significant of approaches to the Continent of Europe—would have been something much more in its mere name had it not been for the accident of London: one of the greatest accidents. ”

“ The chief point of interest in Canterbury is, of course, the Cathedral, the bourne to which countless pilgrims came from all parts of the civilized world to gain the goodwill and intercedence of that thrice sacred and potent Saint Thomas whose peculiar sanctity over-topped by far that of any other English martyr, and whose shrine possessed scarce less efficacy than that of the most renowned Continental resorts of the pious. ”

“ To the left rises Faversham’s fantastic spire, conspicuous above the flats; immediately in front goes the railway in a cutting underneath the road; and straight ahead, in the far distance, rises up a long thin white line amid hillsides clothed heavily with forests. It is long before the stranger discovers what is that singular white streak upon the dark trees, but it reveals itself, as he goes, as the famous Boughton Hill, and the woodlands as the extensive remains of Blean Forest.
It was at “Boughton-under-the-Blee” that Chaucer’s Canon and Yeoman overtook the pilgrims. ”

“ With the struggles of the Reformation went the relics, the gold and jewels, and—worse than all—the decorations and painted windows of the Cathedral. With many abuses and with the disgusting humbug of the old order of things went also, it is sad to think, much of the living reality of religion; and Canterbury Cathedral is to-day an historical museum to the crowd of tourists, and an architectural model for students of that first of all the arts. Curiosity, and little else, draws the crowd. ”

“ To these gardens come in August and September hundreds of men, women, and children from London slums; some by train, many more by road. Whole families of them, with their clothing, their pots and pans and sooty kettles, slung over their shoulders, come tramping down the weary miles, and fill the air with ribaldry, strange oaths, and horrible blasphemy. The villagers keep them at arm’s length, if not, indeed, at a greater distance than that, and keep their children at home; going round their gardens and orchards at night, to see that gates are locked ”

“ By walking outside Canterbury, a mile distant to Saint Thomas’s Hill, on the Whitstable Road, you shall see how thoroughly the Cathedral dominates the city; and arrive, by an exploration of the narrow lanes and the meads below, at an understanding of how this great Minster was Canterbury, and how subservient to it was all else. Affairs are now very different. A vigorous and pulsing life belongs to the streets and lanes, while it is the Church that has passed away from the intimate life of the people, and sunk back into retirement. ”

“ Phenomenally ragged, bronzed by the sun, unshaven, unshorn, they are met, men, women, and children alike, at every turn, for many miles, especially between Southwark and Canterbury. The sixteen miles’ stretch of road between Canterbury and Dover is comparatively unfrequented by them; but Gravesend, Dartford, Crayford, and Bexley Heath are centres of the most disgraceful mendicancy. “Lodgings for travellers” at fourpence a night, or two shillings a week, are a feature of these places, and how prominent a feature cannot be guessed by any one who has not been there. ”

“ When Erasmus and Dean Colet were returning in 1512 from their unconventional pilgrimage to Canterbury, they came, two miles from the city, to a steep and narrow part of the road, overhung by high banks on either side. The scenery is the same as then. The selfsame banks of an equal abruptness still rise above the road; the rough and crazy flight of steps still leads up to the gateway of Lanfranc’s old Hospital for Lepers, the Hospital of Harbledown. The immemorial yews are here even now; one still flourishing, the other decayed. ”

“ The proper method of searching for these vestiges of the Roman occupation is to equip one’s self with a stout pair of sea-boots, and a “sou’wester,” and to wade at low tide in the creeks, probing the slimy mud with iron rods. If the explorer is fortunate in his “pitch” he will discover pottery, broken or whole, by feeling his iron rod strike something harder than the surrounding half-liquid clay. The joy of such exquisite moments is unfortunately sometimes marred by the “find” being but a lump of half-baked clay; Roman, indeed, but not worthy of preservation. ”

“ The Old Kent Road of from seventy to eighty years ago presented a very different aspect from that with which those are familiar who travel nowadays up and down its great length in tramcars. It was distinctly rural. The few houses that were to be seen here in coaching days were chiefly inns, with swinging signs creaking, and horse-troughs lining the roadside, and the “Kentish Drovers,” that now wears much the same appearance as any other London public-house, was a veritable rustic house of call for countrymen driving their sheep and cattle to London markets. ”

“ The stranger comes unawares upon Gad’s Hill. The ascent is so gradual that he is quite unprepared for the shock that awaits him when he comes in sight of a house and two spreading cedars that can scarce be other than Charles Dickens’ home. He has seen them pictured so often that there can surely be no mistake; and yet—— He feels cheated. Is this, then, the famous hill where travellers were wont to be robbed? ”

“ Englishmen were ashamed of this disgraceful entrance into London, and one whose duty lay in bringing a representative foreigner from Dover to London craftily contrived that he should enter the Metropolis at night, when the dirty tenements of Kent Street, by which their carriage would pass, would be hidden in darkness. When Newington Causeway was made, and direct access gained to the Old Kent Road, the horrors of Kent Street were no longer to be braved by travellers. ”

“ Unlettered, but highly organised, trampdom has a lingua franca of its own, and its signs are to be read, chalked on the fences and gateposts of the Dover Road, as surely as one could read a French novel.
The argot and the sign-language of the road are not difficult to acquire by those who have observant eyes and ears to hearken, but, like all languages, they are ever changing, and the accepted signs of yesteryear are constantly superseded by newer symbols. Little do the country-folk understand the significance of the chalk-marks on their gates and walls. ”

“ But up among the young oak coppices, the lush grass, and the perennial springs of Shooter’s Hill, all is peaceful and pleasant. You can hear the Woolwich bugles sing softly through the summer air; birds twitter overhead, the robustious crowings of arrogant cocks, the sharp ring of jerry-builders’ trowels comes up from below, the winds whisper among the oaks and rustle like the frou-frou of silk through the foliage of the silver-beeches—while London toils and moils beyond. ”

“ Travellers’ tales in England during six or seven centuries are concerned with two great evils; highway robbery and the shocking state of the roads; and so deep and dangerous were some of the quagmires that, rather than attempt to cross them, coachmen would drive through wayside fields, and thus make a road for themselves. It was in this way that ancient highways became diverted, and the pedestrian who finds the route between two towns to be extraordinarily circuitous must often look to these circumstances for an explanation. ”

“ Plymouth Breakwater is a great deal more impressive, but then, it is not a pier, but is set down in midst of a tempestuous Sound, where no one can get at it without risk and trouble. And the Admiralty Pier owes its very great fame largely to the ease with which you can reach it and promenade up and down its almost interminable pavings. Crowds come to see the boats off or in, and people are always sweeping the seas with telescopes and field-glasses, finding a perennial joy in so doing, difficult to be understood. ”

“ The excavation of chalk and flints during so long a period has left its mark—a very deep and ineffaceable mark, too—upon this part of the road, and, to a stranger, the appearance presented by the scarred and deeply quarried countryside is wild and wonderful. Spaces of many acres have been quarried to a depth, in some places, of over a hundred and fifty feet, and many of these great pits have been abandoned for centuries, accumulating in that time a large and luxuriant growth of trees and bushes. ”

“ Men, women, and children were alike butchered in those streets, and when, crying for mercy, they were hewed in pieces before his eyes, their fate left him unmoved. It was only when he saw three French knights fighting valiantly in the market-place against overwhelming odds, that the chivalry of the Black Prince was touched. That hundreds or thousands of the citizens should be slain was nothing to him, for they were nothing, but to see gentlemen of rank and birth fighting a hopeless fight was too much. ”