Dower house

“ Mike nodded.
“It is a trick that criminals frequently employ. The new address, of course, was Dower House. Put out the lights and let us go up.”
Three lamps were extinguished, and the detective looked round fearfully at the shadows.
“I think we’ll leave this down here,” he said.
“I think we will,” said Michael, in complete agreement.
CHAPTER XLII
CAMERA! Three months had passed since the Dower House had yielded up its grisly secrets. ”

“ Instead, he would [Pg 235] find an ancient farmhouse, standing in a meadow skirting the road to Folkestone, a mile from the place where it branches from the Dover Road. An ancient farmhouse, its roof bent and bowed with age, and the greater part of it shrouded in ivy, from which Tudor chimneys peep picturesquely. In the meadow are traces of walls and an old well which before the greater part of Tappington Manor-house was destroyed stood in a quadrangle formed by the great range of buildings. Within the farmhouse there remains much that is quaint and interesting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the old houses here and at Rochester, and, indeed, along a great portion of the Dover Road, is the great use [Pg 101] of weather-boarding, chiefly on the upper storeys. An instance of this is seen at Strood at an inn, the “Crispin and Crispianus,” standing in the main street. A still more interesting point about this old house is its pictorial swinging sign, overhanging the pathway—a representation of the two shoemaker brothers, Crispin and Crispian, at work, cobbling boots. The brothers were Christian martyrs who suffered death at Soissons, A.D. 287. ”

“ On Dowgate Hill, almost the first house we meet is the old Hall of the Skinners’ Company, with its gate and archway, and small courtyard. Within we are confronted with one of those elaborately magnificent old doorways, porch rather, all embroidered with massive and yet florid carvings, which make us all wonder at the imagination and free hand of the worker. There is the usual spacious and good hall, and broad oaken stair, solid oak balusters and fine door-cases, with garlands and old mouldings ”

“ Leaving the heath by the Dover Road, which still follows the old Watling Street, the way is bordered by apparently endless rows of villas, and the outskirts of Kidbrook and Charlton village are passed before one comes to where the fields, bordered by hedgerows, first come in sight, and even these are disfigured by great boards, offering land to be let for building-plots. ”

“ A conveyance of land which is the inheritance of a minor child by his guardian or lord to another is void.
Dower shall not abate because the widow has received dower of another man unless part of the first dower received was of the same tenant and in the same town. But a woman who leaves her husband for another man is barred from dower. ”

“ Not but what I have my animosities towards Dover. I particularly detest Dover for the self-complacency with which it goes to bed. It always goes to bed (when I am going to Calais) with a more brilliant display of lamp and candle than any other town. Mr. and Mrs. Birmingham, host and hostess of the Lord Warden Hotel, are my much esteemed friends, but they are too conceited about the comforts of that establishment when the Night Mail is starting. I know it is a good house to stay at, and I don’t want the fact insisted upon in all its warm bright windows at such an hour. ”

“ So far from being unæsthetic, it possesses much that recommends it artistically, for it gives colour, and produces richness of surface where there would else be blankness. A wall whose face is so decorated forms an admirable ground to columns or pilasters, which it serves to relieve very effectively, as is exemplified in the screen façade of Dover House, that little architectural gem by Holland, which, though by no means faultless, has more of genuine artistic quality than any other building of its time in the whole Metropolis. ”

“ Beyond, the coast rises up from the low sandy level, and rounding the South Foreland, on which is a fine electric lighthouse of modern construction, we come to the chalk-cliffs, on top of which are the dark towers of Dover Castle, from whose battlements the road descends to the town along the water's edge and in the valley of the little stream that gives the place its name—the Dour, which the Celts called the Dwr or "water," and the Romans the Dubræ. The great keep of Dover dates from William Rufus's reign, and is one of the many badges left in England of the Norman Conquest. ”

“ In an ungracious fashion my Russian bear grunted his consent, and so I was led into the house, followed by the scowling father and by the big, black-bearded Dragoon. In the basement there was a large and roomy chamber, where the winter logs were stored. Thither it was that I was led, and I was given to understand that this was to be my lodging for the night. One side of this bleak apartment was heaped up to the ceiling with fagots of firewood. The rest of the room was stone-flagged and bare-walled, with a single, deep-set window upon one side, which was safely guarded with iron bars. ”

“ The fat reptiles that glided and slipped in the ghostly moonlight were fleeing, and leaving you alone to behold some spectacle, encounter some fate, too repulsive for the contemplation of reason.
Within this belt of rank vegetation and oaks the Manor House stood. The house had a plain stone front with small narrow windows, three on each side of the main door. At the rear was a large paved courtyard, with a pump and horse-trough in the middle.
The chief building consisted of a ground-floor, on which were the reception-rooms; a first floor of bedrooms ”

“ 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 ”

“ Hotel struck me as the best inn I had encountered in England. My principal errand at Dover was to look for Miss Betsey Trotwood's cottage, but I am sorry to say I failed to discover it. Was it not upon the downs, overlooking the town and the sea? I saw nothing on the downs but Dover Castle, which, in default of Miss Trotwood's stronghold, I zealously visited. It is an establishment of quite the same character, bristling with offensive and defensive machinery. More seriously speaking, it is a magnificent fortress—a bequest of the Middle Ages turned to excellent account by modern engineers. ”

“ There was in the castle of Dover an apartment called Arthur’s Hall, and another named Guenevra’s Chamber, which have been supposed to be 373 so called from the subjects of the paintings with which they were decorated; and a still more curious illustration of the foregoing drawing is furnished by an old house of this period still existing in New Street, Salisbury, a room in which preserves its painting in distemper, occupying the upper part of the wall, like the story of Lancelot in the pictures of the room of Morgan le Fay. ”

“ CHAPTER IX. WATIER'S. My uncle's house in Jermyn Street was quite a small one—five rooms and an attic. "A man-cook and a cottage," he said, "are all that a wise man requires." On the other hand, it was furnished with the neatness and taste which belonged to his character, so that his most luxurious friends found something in the tiny rooms which made them discontented with their own sumptuous mansions. Even the attic, which had been converted into my bedroom, was the most perfect little bijou attic that could possibly be imagined. ”

“ This is almost the only natural feature of Dover that has changed during nineteen centuries. Walk to the outmost verge of the Admiralty Pier and look back upon the town, and you will see it lying in the hollow, with the gaunt and horrid stucco houses of its “front” hiding the old streets that crouch behind in narrow ways. You will see the Castle Hill and the Western Heights, twin eminences guarding [Pg 246] the land and the open roadstead of the Downs ”

“ The home’s room arrangement on the first floor includes entrance hall, living room, dining room, sun porch, kitchen, breakfast room and room for removing soiled clothes, muddy shoes and rubbers with closet and lavatory. The second floor has four bedrooms, sun porch and two baths. Another room with bath for the Woodruff girls is on the third floor. The basement has a children’s recreation room.
Charles A. Brown came to Fort Dodge in the 1890s and began work for L. E. Armstrong at the Plymouth Clothing House. ”

“ The line of railings which separated this house from the street was rusty, and broken and the whole place had a flavour of mildew. The major walked briskly up the stone steps, hollowed out by the feet of generations of lodgers, and pushing open the great splotchy door, which bore upon it a brass plate indicating that the establishment was kept by a Mrs. Robins, he walked into the hall with the air of one who treads familiar ground. ”

“ 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 fact is that I live a very retired and secluded life here. I don't suppose there is a man in London who leads such a life as I do. It is quite unusual for me to have anyone to talk with."
I looked round at the little room, scantily furnished, with a sofa-bed at one side. Then I thought of the great, bare house, and the sinister door with the discoloured red seal upon it. ”

“ We saw the castle of Dover, and the sea beyond, four or five miles before we reached it. We looked at it through a long vale, the castle being upon an eminence, as it seemed, at the end of this vale, which opened to the sea. The country now became less fertile, but near Dover it seemed more rich again. Many buildings [Pg 146] stand on the flat fields, sheltered with tall trees. There is one old chapel that might have been there just in the same state in which it now is when this vale was as retired, and as little known to travellers as our own Cumberland mountain wilds thirty years ago. ”

“ Along this road comes daily and all day a varied procession of tramps. The traveller looks down upon them from this eyrie with wonderment and dismay; the cottagers, the householders and gardeners hereabouts, see them pass with less surprise and additional misgivings, for their gardens, their hen-roosts, clothes-lines and orchards pay tribute to these Ishmaelites to whom the rights of property are but imperfectly known. This is why the gates and doors along the Dover Road are so uniformly and resolutely barred, bolted, chained, and padlocked ”

“ Dover Castle is in most respects, with its pierced and honeycombed cliffs, an up-to-date fortress, but it was realised over a hundred years280 ago that the corresponding cliffs on the other side of the town required to be fortified; and thus the gun-galleries, the barracks, and the many military developments of the “Western Heights” came into being. One reaches these lofty altitudes most conveniently, but up infinite staircases, by that extremely dirty and dismal specimen of engineering skill, “the Shaft,” in Snargate Street. ”

“ It lies smutched with smoke, along the shore, and it is as commonplace as some worthy town of our own which has grown to like effect in as many decades as Dover has taken centuries. The difference in favor of Dover is that when at last you get outside of it, you are upon the same circle of downs that backs Folkestone, and on the top of one of them you are overawed by the very noble castle, which too few people, who know the place as the landing of the Calais boat, ever think of. ”

“ The “Bull” inn, standing at the top of the hill, was in coaching days the first post-house at which travellers stopped and changed horses on their way from London to Dover. The “Bull” has been rebuilt in recent years, but tradition says (and tradition is not always such a liar as some folks would have us believe) that Dick Turpin frequented the road, and that it was at this old house he held the landlady over the fire in order to make her confess where she had hoarded her money. ”

“ So good-bye to a truly great and sincere artist. What a successful life he had, rounded by so terribly painful a death!
One of the most interesting of the Dover episodes was our hiring of “Broome Hall” for the South-Eastern District manœuvres in the following September. The Castle was too far away for working them from there, so this fine old Elizabethan mansion, being in the very centre of the theatre of “war,” became our headquarters. There we entertained Lord Wolseley and his staff as the house-party. ”