XXVIII
The fine upland Common of Tunbridge Wells is one of the town’s greatest assets. Extraordinary outcrops of rock occur on it, and away to where it merges into Rusthall Common is that bourne of many a pilgrimage—the famous Toad Rock: an immense mass of sandstone really very like a toad squatting on its haunches, and not by any means of so uncertain a shape as that of so many of those queer rocks in which you see just what you please, like Hamlet’s cloud, “almost in shape of a camel,” “like a weasel,” and finally “very like a whale.” The Toad Rock has not so many imaginary incarnations, and looks only like a toad. In these days it has been found necessary to protect it with a defensive iron railing, but this precaution has not served to exclude the usual fools who carve their folly deeply into everything capable of being marked with a penknife.
THE TOAD ROCK.
The natural gorge close by, known as Gibraltar Rocks, still is marked by one of the houses built on the Common by a sentimental English Government for the French priests exiled from France at the Revolution. In addition, the Government made them an allowance for their maintenance.
The population of Rusthall, to judge from the language and behaviour of its boys and young men, must be in a very primitive stage of civilisation. The stupid foulness and vileness of their conduct in the neighbourhood of that public resort, the Toad Rock, any day and every day deserve the attention of the police.
SCENE AT “HIGH ROCKS.”
Tunbridge Wells is a neighbourhood of rocks, but none others approach the weird scene at the spot appropriately called High Rocks, less than two miles distant, on the way to Groombridge. It is not the “Finest Scenery in England,” as claimed by Mr. Thomas Coster, proprietor of the “High Rocks Hotel,” who charges sixpence to enter; but it is highly curious. Many ingenious and enterprising sightseers, chiefly active cyclists, resenting the being clicked through a turnstile at sixpence a head, take Mr. Coster and his encircling fences in the rear, and, entering a little wood, insinuate themselves into his domain and see his rocks for nothing. His rocks! On the whole, their enterprise has my respectful admiration, for it seems absurd to treat Nature as if she had made this scene in the infancy of the world for the purpose of providing a showman with an income.
THE MARQUIS OF
ABERGAVENNY’S “A.”
The writer of a guide-book published in 1810 describes the “High Rocks” as “romantic scenery,” and says that, “combining with the wish to please and be pleased,” the spot “tended to create an agreeable relief to that tædium which will frequently encroach on a place of public resort.” There is a specious plausibility about this which leads the reader at first to idly agree; but the muzziness of thought and woolliness of expression very soon lead one to the opinion that the writer, although he may have had an inkling of what he meant when he set out, very soon lost himself on the way.
The High Rocks cover a space of about two acres, and consist of a great wooded bluff hanging, cliff-like, over the road, and intersected in innumerable directions with fissures, gullies, and ravines from fifty to seventy feet deep. These ravines are crossed by numerous wooden bridges, and ascended or descended by rustic stairs. There is the Bell Rock, which gives forth a metallic sound when struck; the Warning Rock, and all sorts of other rocks, fantastically named; and there are swings and brake-loads of excursionists, and mazes. Altogether, the place is pretty well exploited, and the penknife has been busy on every spot within reach.
THE NEVILLE GATE, FRANT.
A way to Hastings by Tunbridge Wells lay in coaching days through Frant, Wadhurst, and Ticehurst, emerging upon the direct road again at Stone Crouch. It is a wildly beautiful wooded district, passing through a line of country where an immense upholstered letter A is noticeable on almost every cottage, sometimes in company with the Neville portcullis, indicating the ownership of the Marquis of Abergavenny in the country-side. Near Frant an extraordinary gateway into the park of Eridge abuts upon the wayside, flanked by his Bull’s Head crest and adorned with the punning motto, Ne vile celis: “Wish nothing base.” A proud motto, woefully smirched by Lord William Neville in recent years, when he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment for forgery.