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

Unfortunately for the poor fellow, the band came past, and away rushed his confrères to listen.

It did not matter much to the condemned joskin that he was trundled about the town for two hours after they had returned, and finally deposited under the settle of an inn. For he was dead!

One other example of the congeniality of the Botley folks of long ago. My attention was attracted to a large iron-lettered slab that hangs on the wall of the coffee-room of the Dolphin. The following is the inscription thereon: —

This Stone is Erected To Perpetuate aMost Cruel Murder Committed on the Bodyof Thos. Webb a Poor Inhabitant of Swanmoreon the 11th of Feb. 1800 by John Digginsa Private Soldier in the Talbot FenciblesWhose Remains are Gibbeted on the Adjoining Common.

And there doubtless John Diggins’ body swung, and there his bones bleached and rattled till they fell asunder.

But the strange part of the story now has to be told; they had hanged the wrong man!

It is an ugly story altogether. Thus: two men (Fencibles) were drinking at a public-house, and going homewards late made a vow to murder the first man they met. Cruelly did they keep this vow, for an old man they encountered was at once put to the bayonet. Before going away from the body, however, the soldier who had done the deed managed to exchange bayonets with Diggins. The blood-stained instrument was therefore found in his scabbard, and he was tried and hanged. The real murderer confessed his crime twenty-one years afterwards, when on his deathbed.

So much for the Botley of long ago.

The iron slab, by the way, was found in the cellar of the Dolphin, and the flag of the Talbot Fencibles, strange to say, was found in the roof.

We took Southampton as our midday halt, driving all round the South Park before we entered – such a charming park – and stopped to dine among the guns away down beside the pier.

Then on for a few miles, bivouacking for the night in an inn yard, in order that we might return to Southampton and see the play.

Next day we reached Lyndhurst, and came safely to anchor in a meadow behind the old Crown Hotel, and this field we made our headquarters for several days.

It had always been my ambition to see something of the New Forest, and here I was in the centre of it. I had so often read about this wondrous Forest; I had thought about it, dreamt about it, and more than once it had found its way into the tales I wrote. And now I found the real to exceed the imaginary.

One great beauty about the New Forest is that it is open. There is nothing here of the sombre gloom of the Scottish pine wood. There are great green glades in it, and wide wild patches of heatherland. Even at the places where the trees are thickest the giant oaks thrust their arms out on every side as if to keep the other trees off.

“Stand back,” they seem to say. “We will not be crowded. We must not keep away the sunshine from the grass and the brackens beneath us, for all that has life loves the light. Stand back.”

What charmed me most in this Forest? I can hardly tell. Perhaps its gnarled and ancient oaks, that carried my thoughts back to the almost forgotten past; perhaps its treescapes in general, now with the tints of autumn burnishing their foliage; perhaps its glades, carpeted with soft green moss and grass, and surrounded with brackens branched and lofty, under which surely fairies still do dwell.

They say that the modern man is but a savage reformed by artificial means, and if left to himself would relapse to his pristine state. Well, if ever I should relapse thus, I’d live in the New Forest. Referring to the forest, Galpin says – “Within equal limits, perhaps, few parts of England afford a greater variety of beautiful landscapes than this New Forest. Its woody scenes, its extended lawns, and vast sweeps of wild country, unlimited by artificial boundaries, together with its river views and distant coasts, are all in a great degree magnificent. (There have been many portions of the Forest enclosed since these lines were written, but their gates are never closed against the stranger or sight-seer.) Still, it must be remembered that its chief characteristic, and what it rests on for distinction, is not sublimity but sylvan beauty.”

And this last line of Galpin’s naturally enough leads my thoughts away northward to the wild Highlands of Scotland, where sublimity is in advance of sylvan beauty, and brings the words of Wilson to my mind: —

“What lonely magnificence stretches around,Each sight how sublime, how awful each sound,All hushed and serene as a region of dreams,The mountains repose ’mid the roar of the streams.”

I have mentioned the wide-spreading oak-trees. Is it not possible that the mountain firs of our Scottish Highlands would spread also had they room? I mean if they were not planted so thickly, and had not to expend their growth in towering skywards in search of sunlight, their stems all brown and bare beneath, till looking into a pine wood is like looking into some vast cave, its dark roof supported by pillars.

Not very far from Carrbridge, in the Grampians, is one of the strangest and weirdest bits of pine forest it is possible to imagine. Here the trees have plenty of room to spread; they evidently owe their existence to birds that have brought the seeds from afar. Be that as it may, they are not very tall, but gnarled and branched in the most fantastic fashion, while in the open spaces between them grow heather and brackens of such height and magnificence that among them an army could hide. If fairies still dwell anywhere in this land of ours, surely it is in this weirdlike ferny forest of Alpine pine-trees.

I very greatly enjoyed my long drive through Sherwood Forest, on the Duke of Portland’s estate. There, I think, many of the oaks are even more aged than those in the New Forest here, though, perhaps, I am mistaken. Spenser’s lines would better therefore describe the former —

“Great oaks, dry and dead,    Still clad with relics of their trophies old,Lifting to heaven their aged hoary heads,    Whose feet on earth have got but feeble hold,And half disbowelled stand above the ground,    With wreathed roots and naked arms,And trunks all rotten and unsound.”

In one of our rambles through the New Forest – driven we were in a dogcart over the green sward, through the ferns and through the furze, over glades and natural lawns, into tree caves, and round and about the gigantic monarchs of the woods – we were taken by our guide to see the king and queen oaks, a morsel of the bark of each of which now lies in the caravan. I would not like even to guess how old these oaks were – probably a thousand years and more. Yet had you and I, reader, a chance of living as long as these majestic trees may still exist, it would not be profitable for an assurance company to grant us an annuity.

But before seeing the king and queen I pointed out to our guide one particular oak.

“What a splendid old oak!” I remarked.

“Old,” was the reply – “why, sir, that’s only a hinfant hoak. He ain’t mebbe more’n three or four ’undred year old.”

And this was an infant!

I was silent for a spell after that. I was thinking.

’Twixt three and four hundred years of age! My mind was carried away back to the days of Henry the Eighth. He would be on the throne about that time, if I remember my school history aright, marrying and giving in marriage, cutting off heads right and left, and making himself generally jolly; and Cardinal Wolsey was up and about, and poor Buckingham was murdered under guise of an execution; and on the whole they were very busy and very bloody times, when this “hinfant hoak” first popped out of its acorn.

Lyndhurst may well be called the capital of this romantic forest.

It is quite a charming little town, chiefly built on the slope of a hill, with many beautiful villas and houses surrounding it.

It is well removed from the din and roar of the railway, and from shouts of station porters. It is a quiet place. No, I must qualify that statement; it would be quiet except for those everlasting bells. They clang-clang-clang every quarter of an hour all day long and all night, and all the year round. Poe speaks about: —

“The people, ah! the people,They that live up in the steeple,        They are ghouls!”

Are the good folks of Lyndhurst ghouls? Anyhow, the whole of the inhabitants of the sweet little town may be said to live up in the steeple. Their nerves and ears are encased in felt perhaps, but may heaven help any nervous invalid who happens to make the neighbourhood of that church steeple his or her habitat. The bells, however, did not bother me much, for a gipsy can always sleep.

If he can stand the bells the visitor will be happy at Lyndhurst. There are capital shops, several excellent inns, lots of well-furnished apartments, and a most comfortable family hotel, the Crown, and everywhere you will meet civility, – at all events I did; and what is more I mean to go back to Lyndhurst, and do a deal more of the Forest.

The visitor should go to Mr Short’s, and secure bits of Forest scenery and his guide-book – author Mr Phillips. This gentleman is most enthusiastic in his descriptions of the Forest and everything in and about it.

I cannot refrain from making one or two extracts. Phillips gives a nice description of the beautiful church of Lyndhurst – the church with the bells, and is loud in his praises of Sir F. Leighton’s splendid wall painting, which all who visit the Forest must go and gaze on and study for themselves. Phillips is quoting Eustace Jones in his “picture parables” when he says: —

“All the shade is so graduated from either end to the glory in the centre, that the picture will not let you rest till you have gazed on Him, the Bridegroom – the King in His beauty. There is no light in the centre of the palace where the Bridegroom is; yet it is dazzling bright and shining, because He is the light thereof for ever and ever. All the light comes from Him, glowing out from His garments in some strange way, that makes it seem to come and go, as when you look full in the sun’s face at midday, and see him burn – till he leaves his image in your eyes, glowing now large, and now small, yet dazzling alway. The face I cannot describe. There is joy in it for those who have kept their lamps still burning; there is sadness in it for those from whom it turns away – ineffable pity. But is hope quite past, even for these? His glance is averted from them, but does the hand that holds out the lily sceptre only mean to taunt their stainfulness by the sight of purity which may never more be theirs? Is He mocking at their calamity? Surely, if so, the Iron Sceptre would be less cruel than the White Lily. It cannot be, for there is nothing like it in His face.

“It may be a reflection awakened of His pity: it may be for relief from the brightness, that makes one turn from Him to look at those sorrowful faces on His left hand. It is all His palace. It is as light here as on His right hand. But there is this difference – the same sun shines winter on the Foolish virgins and summer on the Wise. It is so cold. It would not be, but that the wings of the angel who sorrowfully warns them back, shut out His light, leaving them only a strange garish brightness, wherein the waning moonlight, straggling through a troubled sky, chills and deadens the glory that yet would fall if it might. Not one of these looks at Him. They cannot. Their eyes, used to the darkness, cannot bear His light. One, who has ventured nearest and looked, has covered her face with her mantle and bowed herself that she may not see His radiance even through the angel’s wing. The farthest off, who has strained her eyeballs to see the Bridegroom, must needs cover her dazzled eyes and turn away, for she cannot bear the sight. One lies, like Lazarus, at the gate, if perchance some crumbs from the banquet may be thrown to her; – but she has looked at Him for a moment, and cowers down, awestricken with the glory, lest she see Him and her heart be scorched like her eyes. Two have not yet dared to raise their eyes to look. They have come very near, but the angel, with eyes so full and compassionate (tears must be in them), prays them not. A broken vine trails across their way, to remind them of the True Vine, whose broken branches they are. But the branch still holds by a tiny splinter to the Vine, and even to these, now turned away with empty lamps, lightless, into the cold night where the moon is fast being obscured by stormy clouds, the angel at the outer porch still displays a scroll: ‘Ora!’ – ‘Pray.’ This cannot be to mock their agony! Pray yet, if perchance the door may still open to their knocking, though their lamps were lighted late. The Bridegroom has risen up; but the door is not yet shut. The eleventh hour is nearly gone, but He is long-suffering still. Will they return with but a glimmer of light before it is for ever too late? Who can tell? It is dark without, and late, and there is no hope in their faces, and the angels have hushed their golden music, that it may not jar upon the sadness of those who leave His gate in tears.

“But on His right they all look at Him – every eye. They must, lest they see the sorrow of their sisters; and His very brightness interposes a blinding screen of glory to hide the sadness and the awful chill that is outside and beyond. And looking on Him, their faces are lightened, and beam radiant. They have brought their little lamps to Him, burning. Oh! how tiny the flames look, and how brown is their light against His glory, for they are all shone down and dazzled out before Him, like earthly lights before the sun – candles fading blear-eyed before the noon. One of the figures, eager, with the smallest lamp of them all, has pressed by all the rest, and caught the Bridegroom’s hand, that she who was last might be first; whilst another, in the very background, is content to bear aloft her largest lamp, with three wicks bravely burning, calmly confident and trustful; for they who are first shall be last. One, half-averted, nurses and tends the flame of her lamp still – it has had but a little oil in it, and that scarce eked out till now. Close to the Bridegroom, an angel holds out a child’s hand, with a little feeble light, so that even if it does not last on, it shall only go out in His very presence. But the little one is safe, for of such is His kingdom, and in heaven her Angel has always beheld the Father’s face. These are all in the sunshine of His favour, and glow with the light that streams from Him. Yet the angel at the porch still says even to these, ‘Vigila!’ – ‘Watch ye!’ and still pours oil into the fading lamp at the gate.”

Barley, Holmsley, and Sway are within easy reach of Lyndhurst, even to the pedestrian lady.

Queen’s Bower Wood —

“Beautiful, beautiful Queen of the Forest,

How art thou hidden so wondrously deep!”

– Is one of the most charming of forest woods, its handsome aged oak picturesquely overhanging the clear and bubbling stream, so soon to mix its waters with the all-absorbing sea. The stream here, as in so many other parts of the Forest, is covered in summer time with white water-lilies.

We visited Lymington in the Wanderer, and although the rained poured down in torrents all day, from under the broad canopy of the coupé we viewed the scenery safely and were delighted therewith.

Of course the Wanderer visited Minstead and Stony Cross.

What a magnificent view is to be got of the Forest from the breezy furze-clad common near the inn at Bramble Hill!

Hurricane Bob led the way with a rush down the grassy slope to Rufus’s Stone, and Inie and myself came scampering on after, all three of us as full of life as mavises in May time.

The scenery about this sacred spot is pretty enough, but we did not greatly admire the stone itself. Nor did Hurricane Bob, though he paid his respects to it after his own canine fashion.

It somewhat detracts from the romance of the place that close adjoining you can have three shies at a cocoa-nut for a penny. I spent a shilling unsuccessfully; Inie knocked one down at the first shot, and Bob, not to be behindhand, watched his chance and stole one, for which may goodness forgive him.

I wish I could spare space to say something about the birds and beasts and creeping things of the Forest, and about its wild flowers, but this chapter the reader will doubtless think too long already.

I must mention Forest flies and snakes, however. Of the latter we saw none in the wilds, but the well-known snake-catcher of the New Forest, who supplies the Zoological Gardens, paid us a visit at the caravan, and brought with him some splendid specimens. Many of these were very tame, and drank milk from a saucer held to them by my wee girl.

The adders he catches with a very long pair of surgical forceps presented to him by Dr Blaker, of Lyndhurst, whose kindness and hospitality, by-the-bye, to us, will ever dwell in my memory.

We heard great accounts of the Forest flies. They say – though I cannot verify it by my own experience – that long before the transatlantic steamers reach New York, the mosquitoes, satiated with Yankee gore, smell the blood of an Englishman, and come miles to sea to meet him.

And so we were told that the Forest flies would hardly care to bite a Forest horse, but at once attacked a strange one and sent him wild.

Hearing us talk so much about this wondrous Forest fly, it was not unnatural that it should haunt wee Inie’s dreams and assume therein gigantic proportions. One day, when ranging through a thicket – this was before ever we had become acquainted with the fly – we came upon a capital specimen of the tawny owl, winking and blinking on a bough. Inez saw it first.

“Oh, papa,” she cried aghast, “there’s a Forest Fly!”

This put me in mind of the anecdote of the woman who was going out to India with her husband, a soldier in the gallant 42nd.

“You must take care of the mosquitoes,” said another soldier’s wife, who had been out.

“What’s a mosquito, ’oman?”

“Oh!” was the reply, “a creature with a long snout hangin’ doon in front, that it sucks your blood wi’.”

On landing in India almost the first animal she saw was an elephant.

“May the Lord preserve us!” cried the soldier’s wife, “is that a mosquito?”

But we had to leave the dear old Forest at last, and turn our horses’ heads to the north once more. “It is,” says Phillips, “in such sequestered spots as these, removed from the everlasting whirl and turmoil of this high-pressure age, that we may obtain some glimpses of a life strangely contrasting in its peaceful retirement with our own; and one cannot envy the feelings of him who may spend but a few hours here without many happy and pleasant reflections.”

“The past is but a gorgeous dream,And time glides by us like a stream    While musing on thy story;And sorrow prompts a deep alas!That like a pageant thus should pass    To wreck all human glory.”

We met many pleasant people at Lyndhurst and round it, and made many pleasant tours, Lymington being our limit.

Then we bade farewell to the friends we had made, and turned our horses’ heads homewards through Hants.

When I left my little village it was the sweet spring time, and as the Wanderer stood in the orchard, apple-blossoms fell all about and over her like showers of driven snow. When she stood there again it was the brown withered leaves that rustled around her, and the wind had a wintry sough in it. But I had health and strength in every limb, and in my heart sunny memories – that will never leave it – of the pleasantest voyage ever I have made in my life.

Chapter Twenty Eight.

Caravanning for Health

“Life is not to live, but to be well.”

This chapter, and indeed the whole of this appendix, may be considered nothing more or less than an apology for my favourite way of spending my summer outing.

Now there are no doubt thousands who would gladly follow my example, and become for a portion of the year lady or gentlemen gipsies, did not circumstances over which they have no control raise insuperable barriers between them and a realisation of their wishes. For these I can only express my sorrow. On the other hand, I know there are many people who have both leisure and means at command, people who are perhaps bored with all ordinary ways of travelling for pleasure; people, mayhap, who suffer from debility of nerves, from indigestion, and from that disease of modern times we call ennui, which so often precedes a thorough break-up and a speedy march to the grave. It is for the benefit of these I write my appendix; it is to them I most cordially dedicate it.

There may be some who, having read thus far, may say to themselves: —

“I feel tired and bored with the worry of the ordinary everyday method of travelling, rushing along in stuffy railway carriages, residing in crowded hotels, dwelling in hackneyed seaside towns, following in the wake of other travellers to Scotland or the Continent, over-eating and over-drinking; I feel tired of ball, concert, theatre, and at homes, tired of scandal, tired of the tinselled show and the businesslike insincerity of society, and I really think I am not half well. And if ennui, as doctors say, does lead the way to the grave, I do begin to think I’m going there fast enough. I wonder if I am truly getting ill, or old, or something; and if a complete change would do me good?” I would make answer thus: – You may be getting ill, or you may be getting old, or both at once, for remember age is not to be reckoned by years, and nothing ages one sooner than boredom and ennui. But if there be any doubts in your mind as regards the state of your health, and seeing that ennui does not weaken any one organ more than another, but that its evil effects are manifested in a deterioration of every organ and portion of the body and tissues at once, let us consider for a moment what health really is.

It was Emerson, I think, who said, “Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.”

There is a deal of truth underlying that sentence. To put it in my own homely way: if a young man, or a middle-aged one either, while spending a day in the country, with the fresh breezes of heaven blowing on his brow, with the larks a-quiver with song in the bright sunshine, and all nature rejoicing, – I tell you that if such an individual, not being a cripple, can pass a five-barred gate without an inclination to vault over it, he cannot be in good health.

Will that scale suit you to measure your health against?

Nay, but to be more serious, let me quote the words of that prince of medical writers, the late lamented Sir Thomas Watson, Bart: —

“Health is represented in the natural or standard condition of the living body. It is not easy to express that condition in a few words, nor is it necessary. My wish is to be intelligible rather than scholastic, and I should puzzle myself as well as you, were I to attempt to lay down a strict and scientific definition of what is meant by the term ‘health.’ It is sufficient for our purpose to say that it implies freedom from pain and sickness; freedom also from all those changes in the natural fabric of the body, that endanger life or impede the easy and effectual exercise of the vital functions. It is plain that health does not signify any fixed and immutable condition of the body. The standard of health varies in different persons, according to age, sex, and original constitution; and in the same person even, from week to week or from day to day, within certain limits it may shift and librate. Neither does health necessarily imply the integrity of all the bodily organs. It is not incompatible with great and permanent alterations, nor even with the loss of parts that are not vital – as of an arm, a leg, or an eye. If we can form and fix in our minds a clear conception of the state of health, we shall have little difficulty in comprehending what is meant by disease, which consists in some deviation from that state – some uneasy or unnatural sensation of which the patient is aware; some embarrassment of function, perceptible by himself or by others; or some unsafe though hidden condition of which he may be unconscious; some mode, in short, of being, or of action, or of feeling different from those which are proper to health.”

Can medicine restore the health of those who are threatened with a break-up, whose nerves are shaken, whose strength has been failing for some time past, when it seems to the sufferer – to quote the beautiful words of the Preacher – the days have already come when you find no pleasure in them; when you feel as if the light of the sun and the moon and the stars are darkened, that the silver cord is loosed, the golden bowl is broken, and the pitcher broken at the fountain?