The Cruise of the Land-Yacht «Wanderer»: or, Thirteen Hundred Miles in my Caravan

Men and horses went on before, and the caravan followed by goods. In due time I myself arrived in town, and by the aid of a coachmaker and a gang of hands the great caravan was unloaded, and carefully bolted once more on her fore and aft carriages. Her beautiful polished mahogany sides and gilding were black with grime and smoke, but a wash all over put them to rights.

I then unlocked the back door to see how matters stood there. Something lay behind the door, but by dint of steady pushing it opened at last.

Then the scene presented to my view beggars description. A more complete wreck of the interior of a saloon it is impossible to conceive.

The doors of every cupboard and locker had been forced open with the awful shaking, and their contents lay on the deck mixed up in one chaotic heap – china, delft, and broken glass, my papers, manuscripts, and letters, my choicest photographs and best bound books, butter, bread, the cruets, eggs, and portions of my wardrobe, while the whole was freely besprinkled with paraffin, and derisively, as it were, bestrewn with blooming heather and hothouse flowers! Among the litter lay my little ammunition magazine and scattered matches – safety matches I need not say, else the probability is there would have been a bonfire on the line, and no more Wanderer to-day.

It seemed to me to be the work of fiends. It was enough to make an angel weep. The very rods on which ran the crimson silken hangings of the skylight windows were wrenched out and added to the pile.

It struck me at first, and the same thought occurred to the goods manager, that burglars had been at work and sacked the Wanderer.

But no, for nothing was missing.

Moral to all whom it concerns: Never put your caravan on a railway track.

It took me days of hard work to restore the status quo ante.

And all the while it was raining, and the streets covered with mud. The noise, and din, and dirt around me, were maddening. How I hated London then! Its streets, its shops, its rattling cabs, its umbrellaed crowds, the very language of its people. And how I wished myself back again on the wolds of Yorkshire, among the Northumbrian hills or the Grampian range – anywhere – anywhere out of the world of London, and feel the fresh, pure breezes of heaven blowing in my face, see birds, and trees, and flowers, and listen to the delightful sounds of rural life, instead of to cockney-murdered English.

Caravans like the Wanderer have no business to be in cities. They ought to give cities a wide, wide berth, and it will be my aim to do so in future.

The journey through London was accomplished in safety, though we found ourselves more than once in a block. When we had crossed over Chelsea Bridge, however, my spirits, which till now had been far below freezing point, began to rise, and once upon the common, with dwarf furze blooming here and there, and crimson morsels of ling (Erica communis), a balmy soft wind blowing, and the sun shining in a sky of blue, I forgot my troubles, and found myself singing once more, a free and independent gipsy.

But now to hark back a little. Who should meet me in London, all unexpectedly as it were, but “mamma”? I mean my children’s mother, and with her came my little daughter Inez! Long flaxen hair hath she, and big grey wondering eyes, but she is wise in her day and generation.

And Inez had determined in her own mind that she would accompany me on my tour through England – south, and be the little mistress of the land-yacht Wanderer.

So mamma left us at Park Lane, and went away home to her other wee “toddlers.” She took with her Polly, the cockatoo. It was a fair exchange: I had Inez and she had Polly; besides, one parrot is quite enough in a caravan, though for the matter of that Inie can do the talking of two.

A few silent tears were dropped after the parting – tears which she tried to hide from me.

But London sights and wonders are to a child pre-eminently calculated to banish grief and care, especially when supplemented by an unlimited allowance of ripe plums and chocolate creams.

Inez dried her eyes and smiled, and never cried again.

But if her cares were ended mine were only commencing, and would not terminate for weeks to come. Henceforward a child’s silvery treble was to ring through my “hallan,” (Scottice, cottage or place of abode) and little footsteps would patter on my stairs.

I was to bear the onus of a great responsibility. I was to be both “ma” and “pa” to her, nurse and lady’s maid all in one. Might not, I asked myself, any one or more of a thousand accidents befall her? Might she not, for instance, catch her death of cold, get lost in a crowd, get run over in some street, fall ill of pear and plum fever, or off the steps of the caravan?

I must keep my eye on her by night and by day. I made special arrangements for her comfort at night. The valet’s after-cabin was requisitioned for extra space, and he relegated to sleep on shore, so that we and Bob had all the Wanderer to ourselves.

I am writing these lines at Brighton, after having been a week on the road, and I must record that Inie and I get on well together. She is delighted with her gipsy tour, and with all the wonders she daily sees, and the ever-varying panorama that flits dreamlike before her, as we trot along on our journey. She nestles among rags on the broad coupé, or sits on my knee beside the driver, talking, laughing, or singing all day long. We never want apples and pears in the caravan – though they are given to us, not bought – and it is Inie’s pleasure sometimes to stop the Wanderer when she sees a crowd of schoolchildren, pitch these apples out, and laugh and crow to witness the grand scramble.

But some sights and scenes that present themselves to us on the road are so beautiful, or so funny, or so queer withal, that merely to laugh or crow would not sufficiently relieve the child’s feelings. On such occasions, and they are neither few nor far between, she must needs clap her tiny hands and kick with delight, and “hoo-oo-ray-ay!” till I fear people must take her for a little mad thing, or a Romany Rye run wild.

Such are the joys of gipsy life from a child’s point of view.

She eats well, too, on the road; and that makes me happy, for I must not let her get thin, you know. Probably she does get a good deal of her own way.

“You mustn’t spoil her,” ma said before she left. I’ll try not to forget that next time Inie wants another pineapple, or more than four ices at a sitting.

My great difficulty, however, is with her hair of a morning. She can do a good deal for herself in the way of dressing, but her hair – that the wind toys so with and drives distracted – sometimes is brushed out and left to float, but is more often plaited, and that is my work.

Well, when a boy, I was a wondrous artist in rushes. Always at home in woodland, on moor, or on marsh – I could have made you anything out of them, a hat or a rattle, a basket or creel, or even a fool’s cap, had you chosen to wear one. And my adroitness in rush-work now stands me in good stead in plaiting my wee witch’s hair.

Hurricane Bob is extremely fond of his little mistress. I’m sure he feels that he, too, has – when on guard – an extra responsibility, and if he hears a footstep near the caravan at night, he shakes the Wanderer fore and aft with his fierce barking, and would shake the owner of the footstep too if he only had the chance.

Our first bivouac after leaving London was in a kindly farmer’s stackyard, near Croydon. His name is M – , and the unostentatious hospitality of himself, his wife, and daughter I am never likely to forget.

I will give but one example of it.

“You can stay here as long as you please,” he said, in reply to a query of mine. “I’ll be glad to have you. For the bit of hay and straw your horses have you may pay if you please, and as little as you please, but for stable room – no.”

He would not insult my pride by preventing me from remunerating him for the fodder, nor must I touch his pride by offering to pay for stable room.

It was nearly seven o’clock, but a lovely evening, when I reached the gate of this farmer’s fine old house. Almost the first words he said to me as he came out to meet me on the lawn were these: “Ha! and so the Wanderer has come at last! I’m as pleased as anything to see you.”

He had been reading my adventures in the Leisure Hour.

We remained at anchor all next day, and Inez and I went to the Crystal Palace, and probably no two children ever enjoyed themselves more.

Next day was Saturday, and we started from the farm about eleven, but owing to a mishap it was two pm before we got clear of the town of Croydon itself.

The mishap occurred through my own absent-mindedness. I left the Wanderer in one of the numerous new streets in the outskirts, not far off the Brighton Road, and walked with Inez about a mile up into the town to do some shopping.

On returning, a heavy shower, a pelting shower in fact, came on, and so engrossed was I in protecting my little charge with the umbrella, that when I at last looked up, lo! we were lost! The best or the worst of it was that I did not know east from west, had never been in Croydon before, and had neglected to take the name of the street in which I had left the Wanderer.

It was a sad fix, and it took me two good hours to find my house upon wheels.

On through Red Hill, and right away for Horley; but though the horses were tired and it rained incessantly, it could not damp our spirits. At the Chequers Inn we found a pleasant landlord and landlady, and a delightfully quiet meadow in which we spent the Sabbath.

The Chequers Inn is very old-fashioned indeed, and seems to have been built and added to through many generations, the ancient parts never being taken down.

Sunday was a delightful day, so still, so quiet, so beautiful. To live, to exist on such a day as this amid such scenery is to be happy.

September 7th. – We are on the road by nine. It is but five-and-twenty miles to Brighton. If we can do seven-and-twenty among Highland hills, we can surely do the same in tame domestic England.

But the roads are soft and sorely trying, and at Hand Cross we are completely storm-stayed by the terrible downpours of rain. I do not think the oldest inhabitant could have been far wrong when he averred it was the heaviest he ever could remember.

During a kind of break in the deluge we started, and in the evening reached the cross roads at Aldbourne, and here we got snugly at anchor after an eighteen-mile journey.

My little maiden went to sleep on the sofa hours before we got in, and there she was sound and fast. I could not even wake her for supper, though on my little table were viands that might make the teeth of a monk of the olden times water with joyful anticipation.

So I supped alone with Bob.

I spent a gloomy eerisome evening. It was so gloomy! And out of doors when I dared to look the darkness was profound. The incessant rattling of the raindrops on the roof was a sound not calculated to raise one’s spirits. I began to take a dreary view of life in general, indeed I began to feel superstitions. I —

“Papa, dear.”

Ha! Inez was awake, and smiling all over. Well, we would have a little pleasant prattle together, and then to bed. The rattling of the raindrops would help to woo us to sleep, and if the wind blew the Wanderer would rock. We would dream we were at sea, and sleep all the sounder for it.

“Good-night, dearie.”

“Good-night, darling papie.”

Chapter Twenty Seven.

Storm-Stayed at Brighton – Along the Coast and to Lyndhurst – The New Forest – Homewards through Hants

“Dim coasts and cloud-like hills and shoreless ocean,It seemed like omnipresence! God methoughtHad built Himself a temple; the whole worldSeem’d imaged in its vast circumference.”Coleridge.“Rides and rambles, sports and farming,Home the heart for ever warming;    Books and friends and ease;Life must after all be charming,    Full of joys like these.”Tupper.

I love Brighton, and if there were any probability of my ever “settling down,” as it is called, anywhere in this world before the final settling down, I would just as soon it should be in Brighton as in any place I know.

It is now the 13th of September, and the Wanderer has been storm-stayed here for days by equinoctial gales. She occupies a good situation, however, in a spacious walled enclosure, and although she has been rocking about like a gun-brig in Biscay Bay, she has not blown over.

As, owing to the high winds and stormy waves, digging on the sands, gathering shells, and other outdoor amusements have been denied us, we have tried to make up for it by visiting the theatre and spending long hours in the Aquarium.

The Aquarium is a dear delightful place. We have been much interested in the performances of the Infant Jumbo, the dwarf elephant, and no wonder. He kneels, and stands, and walks, plays a mouth organ, makes his way across a row of ninepins, and across a bar, balancing himself with a pole like a veritable Blondin. He plays a street-organ and beats a drum at the same time; and last, and most wonderful of all, he rides a huge tricycle, which he works with his legs, steering himself with his trunk. This infant is not much bigger than a donkey, but has the sense and judgment of ten thousand donkeys. I should dearly like to go on a cycling tour with him to John o’ Groat’s. I believe we would astonish the natives.

How the wind has been blowing to be sure, and how wild and spiteful the waves have been; how they have leapt and dashed and foamed, wrecking everything within reach, and tearing up even the asphalt on the promenade!

Sunday was a pleasant day, though wind and sea were still high, and on Monday we made an early start.

It is a muggy, rainy morning, with a strong head wind. The sea is grey and misty and all flecked with foam, and the country through which we drive is possessed of little interest. Before starting, however, we must needs pay a farewell visit to the shore, and enjoy five minutes’ digging in the sand. Then we said, —

“Good-bye, old sea; we will be sure to come back again when summer days are fine. Good-bye! Ta, ta!”

Shoreham is a quaint and curious, but very far from cleanly little town.

We heard here, by chance, that the storm waves had quite destroyed a portion of the lower road to Worthing, and so we had to choose the upper and longer route, which we reached in time for dinner with the kindly landlord of the Steyne Hotel. If children are a blessing, verily Mr C – is blessed indeed; he hath his quiver full, and no man deserves it more.

Worthing, I may as well mention parenthetically, is one of the most delightful watering-places on the south coast, and I verily believe that the sun shines here when it does not shine anywhere else in England.

Two dear children (Winnie and Ernie C – ) came with us for three miles, bringing a basket to hold the blackberries they should gather on their way back.

Winnie was enchanted with this short experience of gipsy life, and wanted to know when I would return and take her to Brighton. Ernie did not say much; he was quietly happy.

It broke up a fine afternoon, and now and then the sun shone out, making the drive to Littlehampton, through the beautiful tree scenery, quite a delightful one.

Reached Littlehampton-on-Sea by five o’clock, and, seeing no other place handy, I undid the gate of the cricket-field and drove right in. I then obtained the address of the manager or secretary, and sent my valet to obtain leave. I have found this plan answer my purposes more than once. It is the quickest and the best. It was suggested to me long, long ago on reading that page of “Midshipman Easy” where that young gentleman proposes throwing the prisoners overboard and trying them by court-martial afterwards.

So when Mr Blank came “to see about it” he found the fait accompli, looked somewhat funny, but forgave me.

Littlehampton-on-Sea is a quiet and pleasant watering-place, bracing, too, and good for nervous people. I am surprised it is not more popular. It has the safest sea-bathing beach in the world, and is quite a heaven on earth for young children.

We had a run and a romp on the splendid sands here last night, and I do not know which of the two was the maddest or the merriest, Hurricane Bob or his wee mistress. We are down here again this morning for half-an-hour’s digging and a good run before starting.

Now last night the waves were rippling close up to the bathing-machines, and Bob had a delicious dip. When we left the Wanderer this morning he was daft with delight; he expected to bathe and splash again. But the tide is out, and the sea a mile away; only the soft, wet, rippled sands are here, and I have never in my life seen a dog look so puzzled or nonplussed as Bob does at this moment.

He is walking about on the sand looking for the sea.

“What can have happened?” he seems to be thinking. “The sea was here last night, right enough. Or can I have been dreaming? Where on earth has it gone to?”

In the same grounds where the Wanderer lay last night, but far away at the other end of the field, is another caravan – a very pretty and clean-looking one. I was told that it had been here a long time, that the man lived in it with his young wife, supporting her and himself by playing the dulcimer on the street. A quiet and highly respectable gipsy indeed.

Delayed by visitors till eleven, when we made a start westward once again.

’Tis a glorious morning. The sky is brightly blue, flecked with white wee clouds, a haze on the horizon, with rock-and-tower clouds rising like snowbanks above it.

The road to Arundel is a winding one, but there are plenty of finger-posts in various stages of dilapidation. A well-treed country, too, and highly cultivated. Every three or four minutes we pass a farm-steading or a cottage near the road, the gardens of the latter being all ablaze with bright geraniums, hydrangeas, dahlias, and sunflowers, and all kinds of berried, creeping, and climbing plants.

How different, though, the hedgerows look now from what they did when I started on my rambles in early summer, for now sombre browns, blues, and yellows have taken the place of spring’s tender greens, and red berries hang in clusters where erst was the hawthorn’s bloom.

The blossom has left the bramble-bushes, except here and there the pink of a solitary flower, but berries black and crimson cluster on them; only here and there among the ferns and brackens, now changing to brown, is the flush of nodding thistle, or some solitary orange flowers, and even as the wind sweeps through the trees a shower of leaves of every hue falls around us.

A steep hill leads us down to the valley in which Arundel is situated, and the peep from this braeland is very pretty and romantic.

The town sweeps up the opposite hill among delightful woodlands, the Duke of Norfolk’s castle, with its flagstaff over the ruined keep, being quite a feature of the landscape.

We turn to the left in the town, glad we have not to climb that terrible hill; and, after getting clear of the town, bear away through a fine beech wood. The trees are already assuming their autumnal garb of dusky brown and yellow, and sombre shades of every hue, only the general sadness is relieved by the appearance here and there of a still verdant wide-spreading ash.

On and on. Up hill and down dell. Hardly a field is to be seen, such a wildery of woodlands is there on every side. The brackens here are very tall, and, with the exception of a few dwarf oak, elm, or elder-bushes, constitute the only undergrowth.

We are out in the open again, on a breezy upland; on each side the road is bounded by a great bank of gorse. When in bloom in May, how lovely it must look! We can see fields now, pale yellow or ploughed, suggestive of coming winter. And farm-steadings too, and far to the left a well-wooded fertile country, stretching for miles and miles.

Near to Bell’s Hut Inn we stop to water, and put the nosebags on. There is a brush-cart at the door, and waggons laden with wood, and the tap-room is crowded with rough but honest-looking country folks, enjoying their midday repast of bread and beer.

The day is so fine, the sun is so bright, and the sward so green, that we all squat, gipsy-fashion, on the grass, to discuss a modest lunch. Fowls crowd round us and we feed them. But one steals Foley’s cheese from off his plate, and hen steals it from hen, till the big Dorking cock gets it, and eats it too. Corn-flower scatters his oats about, and a feathered multitude surround him to pick them up. Pea-blossom brings her nosebag down with a vicious thud every now and then, and causes much confusion among the fowls.

Bob is continually snapping at the wasps.

Bread-and-cheese and ginger-ale are not bad fare on a lovely day like this, when one has an appetite.

Gipsies always have appetites.

A drunken drover starts off from the inn door without paying for his dinner. The landlady’s daughter gives chase. I offer to lend her Bob. She says she is good enough for two men like that. And so she proves.

We are very happy.

One’s spirits while on the road to a great extent rise and fall with the barometer.

Chichester seems a delightful old place. But we drove rapidly through it, only stopping to admire the cross and the cathedral. The former put me in mind of that in Castle-gate of Aberdeen.

Between Littlehampton and the small town of Botley, which the reader may notice on the map of Hampshire, we made one night’s halt, and started early next morning.

The view from the road which leads round the bay at Porchester is, even with the tide back, picturesque. Yonder is the romantic old castle of Porchester on the right middle distance, with its battlements and ivied towers; and far away on the horizon is Portsmouth, with its masts, and chimneys, and great gasworks, all asleep in the haze of this somewhat sombre and gloomy day.

Porchester – the town itself – could supply many a sketch for the artist fond of quaintness in buildings, in roofs, picturesque children, and old-fashioned public-houses. Who, I wonder, drinks all the “fine old beer,” the “sparkling ales,” and the “London stout,” in this town of Porchester? Every third house seems an inn.

Through Fareham, where we stopped to admire a beautiful outdoor aviary, and where a major of marines and his wife possessed themselves of my little maiden, and gave her cake and flowers enough to set up and beautify the Wanderer for a week at least.

Botley is one of the quietest, quaintest, and most unsophisticated wee villages ever the Wanderer rolled into. It is rural in the extreme, but like those of all rural villages, its inhabitants, if unsophisticated, are as kind-hearted as any I have ever met.

Botley can boast of nearly half-a-score of public-houses, but it has only one hotel, the Dolphin, and one butcher’s shop.

That milkman who let us into his field was right glad to see the caravan, which he had read a good deal about, and seemed proud to have us there, and just as pleased was the honest landlord of the Dolphin to have our horses. In the good old-fashioned way he invited my little daughter and me into the cosy parlour behind the bar, where we spent a few musical hours most enjoyably.

It seems though that Botley has not always borne the reputation of being a quiet place. For example, long ago, though the recollection of the affair is still green in the memory of the oldest inhabitants, there used to be held at Botley what were called “beef-fairs.” For months beforehand “twopences” were saved, to raise a fund for fair-day. When this latter came round, the agreement among these innocents was that having once taken the cup of beer in his hand every man must drain it to the bottom, to prove he was a man.

In his bacchanalian song “Willie brew’d a peck o’ maut,” Burns says: —

“The first that rises to gang awa’A cuckold cowardly loon is he.The first that in the neuk does fa’We’ll mak’ him king amang the three.”

But at the beef-fair of Botley matters were reversed, and the first that “in the neuk did fa’” was fined two shillings, and failing payment he was condemned to be hanged.

On a certain fair-day a certain “innocent” fell in the nook but refused to pay. Honour was honour among these fair folks, so first they stood the culprit on his head, and endeavoured to shake the money out of him. Disappointed and unsuccessful, they really did hang him, not by the neck but by the waist, to a beam.