XLI
In the London Road approach to Dover, one mile from the centre of the town, there used to stand an old inn called “The Milestone.” A hatter’s shop now occupies the site; but two old milestones are yet there. One says “70 miles to London: 14 miles to Canterbury,” and the other proclaims it to be “1 mile to Dovor.”
This old spelling of “Dover” was common until the opening of the railway era; and the coach-bills of the great Dover Road coach-proprietors, Horne, Chaplin, and Gray, spelt the place-name “Dovor,” with two “o’s,” instead of an “o” and an “e.”
“DEAR” DOVER
It will be expected of me that I should say something of Dover, and I do not intend to disappoint so very reasonable an expectation, although the Dover Road having been traversed, the object of this book is accomplished; and, therefore, any remarks I may have to offer must be informed, not with the prolixity of the local history, nor with the stodgy statistics of the Guide Book, but with conciseness and something of the sympathy which shows that to which but few Guide Books ever attain—the true inwardness of the place. It is quite easy to be contemptuous of Dover, from the visitor’s point of view; from other vantage-grounds it is a great deal more easy to acquire a certain enthusiasm for the old Cinque Port, its streets, its piers, its Castle, and the more modern fortifications which cross the Western Heights.
Thy cliffs, dear Dover! harbour and hotel;
Thy custom-house, with all its delicate duties;
Thy waiters running mucks at every bell;
Thy packets, all whose passengers are booties
To those who upon land or water dwell;
And last, not least, to strangers uninstructed,
Thy long, long bills, whence nothing is deducted.
sang Byron.
Turning, however, to a consideration of the two other objects of Byron’s outburst in Don Juan, the hotel and the cliffs, whether Shakespeare’s Cliff or those that form so grand a rampart away towards the North Foreland, Byron, we find, was justified in his choice of Dovorian features for due commemoration. For the cliffs, all that is to be said of the white walls of old Albion has been long ago committed to print, and I do not propose to attempt the saying of anything new about them. As for the hotel of which the poet speaks, it was probably the “Ship.” The “Ship,” alas! is gone, retired, as many of its landlords were enabled to do, into private life, and the “long, long bills” by which they earned rather more than a modest competency are now produced elsewhere. The “Lord Warden,” which was not, unfortunately, built in Byron’s time, could probably have afforded him material for another stanza or two, for that huge and supremely hideous building was celebrated at one time for the monumental properties of the bills presented to affrighted guests. Magnificent as were the charges made by rapacious hosts elsewhere, they all paled their ineffectual items before the sublime heights attained by the account rendered to Louis Napoleon when he stayed here.
There are limits even to Princely-Presidential purses and patiences, and few people cared to incur liabilities at the “Lord Warden,” which would have brought the shadow of the Bankruptcy Court looming upon the horizon. As for that most doughty of Lord Wardens of the Cinque Ports, from whose historic office the hotel takes its title—I name here, of course, the one and only “Duke of Wellington”—he usually resorted to an unpretending hostelry, the “Royal Oak Commercial Hotel,” in Cannon Street, nearly opposite the old Church of St. Mary’s, whenever he was called to the town.
It is not enough to know that Dover is a town of hoary antiquity; that Cæsar landed here B.C. 55 (or that he did not land here, but at Deal, as the more scholarly antiquaries inform us). 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; now, alas! pouring a contaminating flood through sewer-pipes far out to sea. I say, it is not enough to know that the Romans latinized the name to Dubris, that it was variously Doroberniæ, Dofris, Dovere, and in the eighteenth century occasionally “Dovor,” finally to have the seal set on these changes by its present name. It is not even sufficient to know (although it is highly interesting) that Domesday Book opens with Dover, commencing as it does, “Dovere tempore regis Edwardi.” But this last slice of historical provand is more than usually welcome because it gives us a foothold whereon to begin the exploration of the old town. When one comes to reduce the tough and gnarled latinity of Domesday Book to English as we speak it, we find this first entry to recite that King Edward the Confessor held a lien on a portion of the town rents, and that Earl Godwin also partook of what the Radical politics of our own time term “unearned increment.” Edward the Confessor was a mild-mannered man and weak. It is, for instance, primarily owing to his unfortunate preference for the foreigner that we owe the Norman invasion and conquest of England; but for all his mildness, it is extremely unlikely that this saintly invertebrate would not have resented the talk of “unearned increment” in his day. He was sufficiently considerate, however, so it would seem, to reduce the rents in his town of Dover, seeing that, although a thriving place, it had had the misfortune to be burned. The entry in Domesday Book goes on to say that here was a Guildhall, and a mill at the entry of the port, much in the way of shipping; and here, at this mention of the port we find our most eloquent text.
DOVER HARBOUR
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. Here, where the site broadens, and where steep streets give place to flatness, rolled the tides up the little estuary of the River Dour when Cæsar’s triremes anchored off the primitive port, and antiquaries point out the place, near the present Round Tower Street, where, so late as 1509, a tower was raised, to which vessels lying in the harbour were moored by iron rings. 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 the land and the open roadstead of the Downs; and, although the grey Castle crowns one cliff and the modern fortifications crest the other, yet, for all the ages during which man has been burrowing galleries here and piling up stonework and masonry there, if Cæsar could revisit the scene of his ineffectual descent upon Britain, he would find no difficulty in recognizing it. Only, the estuary where he beached his vessels is long since silted up and is buried beneath many feet of the rubble and refuse, the shards and potsherds that mark the passing of many busy generations. 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; honeycombed with stores, forts, and galleries, and grimed with the smoke from the clustered chimneys of the houses below. Other short and frowzy alleys run against the soiled chalk, and end there with a whimsical abruptness. Elbow room here is none, and to find it, one ventures upon the Harbour quays, toward the Docks and the Basins, where little gangways and iron swing-bridges lead to culs-de-sac, or end in sudden and precipitous descents into the water, causing the unwonted stranger frequently to retrace his steps and to swear freely. But, if one avoids these cryptic curse-compelling places, the Harbour is a very interesting place; much more so than the “front,” where people walk up and down aimlessly, the women dressed to kill, and glaring at one another as they pass, like strange cats on a roof-top. Here, instead, is the reality of life, and a variety that is lacking beyond. In the basins floats generally a strange and fortuitous concourse of vessels; schooners, yachts, cutters, hoys, smacks, brigantines, “billy-boys,” and steamers of every age, size, and trade, from the neat passenger-boats, with their decks holystoned to wonderment, to the dirty ocean-tramp, or the inky, wallowing collier; together with other craft whose names are unknown to the landsman. Likewise, there are many of the mercantile marine about. One may not, contrary to general belief, know these by their dress, for there is no peculiarity in the raiment of the mercantile Jack—except perhaps for its raggedness, poor fellow—by which he may be recognized. Rather would one know him by his anxious expression of countenance and by that inveterate habit of his, ashore, of leaning heavily against walls and posts, or anything capable of giving support. You may notice poor Jack’s favourite haunts hereabouts by the bare and burnished appearance of the brick and paint bordering on the Docks, and situated at a height of about four feet from the ground, where his shoulders have rubbed immemorially.