CHAPTER VI.
MORE TYPICAL TRAMPS.
How far county divisions might affect the early fashions in gravestones was one of my first questions, and, having seen much of Kent, time was soon found for a scamper through the country bordering Epping Forest and along the backbone of Essex.
At Barking, just within the old Abbey gate, I came upon an enigmatical illustration.
FIG. 70.—AT BARKING.
Inscription illegible. Date appears to be 1759.
The signification of the four balls I am unable to suggest, unless they be connected in some way with the planetary system and point man's insignificance. They appear to emanate from a cloud resting upon the hour-glass, and may help the other emblems in symbolizing time and eternity. The nickering candle is also of doubtful interpretation. It may mean the brevity of life; it can hardly be needed, in the presence of the skull, to indicate death. The candle is sometimes employed alone, occasionally extinguished. At Woolwich there is an instance in which the candle is in the act of being put out.
FIG. 71.—AT WOOLWICH.
"To Siston Champion, died 27th Feb. 1749-50
(a few days after the birth of her child),
aged 28 years."
The candle is indeed commonly used as a simile of life's uncertainty in all countries, and it may be that where it is represented in a state of burning it may be meant as a lesson on the number of our days. It is seen with the skulls in the churchyard of St. Nicholas, Deptford, and other places.
FIG. 72.—AT DEPTFORD.
"To William Firth, died 1724, aged 21 years."
In West Ham Churchyard may be seen the figure of the kissing cherubs rather prettily rendered, but to be found in various forms in many places, and always expressive of affection.
FIG. 73.—AT WEST HAM.
"To Sarah Moore, died 1749."
Wanstead Churchyard is remarkable for the abundance and originality of its old gravestones. Here is one (Fig. 74) which carries more distinctly the fanciful idea suggested at West Ham (page 34, Fig. 63); flowers and foliage, and even fruit, combining with the lowered torch and summoning trumpet to tell of life beyond the grave.
FIG. 74.—AT WANSTEAD.
"To William Bosely, died 1712, aged 79."
There are several other variations of the same symbol in the elegant enclosure at Wanstead Church; but the most remarkable of the old stones is one which has at the top corners two projecting skulls, the one facing nearly to the front and the other in profile, both standing out in full relief, carefully and accurately sculptured, but too ghastly to be beautiful. This one, the Richmond example, and the two at Ripley constitute my entire experience of full relief work on a mere gravestone.
FIG. 75.—AT WANSTEAD.
"To William Swan, died 1715, aged 16 years."
Other churchyards in the locality we found less fruitful, and taking rail to Buckhurst Hill, we struck across Epping Forest to Chingford, also without profit, and walked on to Walthamstow, where another of the enfoliated death's-head pictures was found; the novelty being two skulls with ivy sprays, symbolical of evergreen recollections.
FIG. 76.—AT WALTHAMSTOW.
"To Jane Redfern, died 1734, aged 52 years,"
In the Broxbourne example on the same Plate (Fig. 77) branches of oak, bearing leaves and acorns, are used with good decorative effect on either side of a porch in which is seated a mourning figure, but I cannot undertake to explain the symbolical significance of the oak in sepulchral masonry.
FIG. 77.—AT BROXBOURNE.
"To Mrs Rowe, widow, died 6 May 1798."
My excursions into Essex have been too limited in scope to trace or test peculiarities in that county, but I have found by observation in a number of counties that, although there are occasional evidences of local invention, or at least of local modification, in certain districts, the same set of types which prevails in one county serves pretty well for all the rest.
It is well therefore to guard against disappointment. Pilgrimages like ours, having for their real purpose healthy exercise and physical enjoyment, are not to be counted failures when their ostensible errand seems to have borne no result. It is necessary for the pilgrim to be armed with some such reflection as this against the shafts of discomfiture. There have been occasions when, at the close of the day, conscious as I might be of the pleasant hours past, the freshened brain and the body reinvigorated, I have yet covetously mourned the scanty and valueless additions to my note-book. Other pilgrims may therefore take warning, be prepared for blank days in barren coverts, and sully not their satisfaction with regrets. But it will be a blank day indeed which does not carry its pleasures with it and store the mind with happy recollections. One walk on a winter's day over the hills from High Barnet to Edgware I reckoned sadly unproductive of the special novelties I sought, but it afforded me the contemplation of some landscapes which I can never forget, and it printed on my brain a little papier-maché-like church at Totteridge which was worth going miles to see. Better fortune next time should be the beacon of the gentle tramp. The long jaunt I had from Chigwell Lane Station through the pretty but unpopulous country west of Theydon Bois, uneventful as it was, made an ineffaceable mark on my memory. I picture now the long and solitary walk across fields and woodlands, with never a soul to tell the way for miles and miles, crossing and recrossing the winding Roden, startling the partridges from the turnips, and surprising, at some sudden bend in the footpath, the rabbits at their play. It is not without excitement to steer one's course over unknown and forsaken ground by chart and compass. These needful guides then prove their value, and in a hilly country an altitude-barometer is a friend not to be despised. It is not without some pride in one's self-reliance to find one's self five miles from a railway station, as I did at Stapleford Abbotts; and, though my special quest was all in vain at several halting-places that day, I met with a Norman doorway at Lambourn Church which archaeologists would call a dream, the axe-work of the old masons as clean cut and as perfect as though it had been done last week; and in taking a near cut at a guess across country for Stapleford Tawney I mind me that I lost my way, or thought I had, but the mariner's needle was true, and emerging in a green avenue I saw before me a finger-post marked "To Tawney Church." I took off my hat and respectfully saluted that finger-post, and was soon in the churchyard, where I haply lighted upon one of the gems of my collection, the headstone sculpture of "The Good Samaritan."
FIG. 78.—AT STAPLEFORD TAWNEY.
"To Richard Wright, died 3d March 1781,
aged 76 years."
I have, however, an earlier study of the same subject from the churchyard at Shorne Village, near Gravesend, which, is here given for comparison, and I have seen two others at Cranbrook. They all have some features alike, but there are differences in the treatment of details in each case.
FIG. 79.—AT SHORNE.
"To Mary Layton, died Jan. 12, 1760; Joseph
Layton, died May 21, 1757; and Will.
Holmes, died Aug. 26, 1752."
The stone at Shorne being close to the church door is well known to the villagers, by whom it is regarded as a curiosity. The schoolmaster was good enough to give me a photograph from which my sketch is made. But such rarities are seldom esteemed by, or even known to, the inhabitants of a place, and are passed by without heed by the constant congregation of the church. At Stapleford Tawney, just named, a native, the first I had seen for a mile or two, stopped at the unwonted sight of a stranger sketching in the churchyard, and I consulted him as to application of the parable of the Good Samaritan in the case under notice. His reply was that, though he had lived there "man and boy for fifty year," he had "never see'd the thing afore." He condescended, however, to take an interest in my explanations, and seemed to realize that it was worth while to seek for objects of interest even in a churchyard. This was decidedly better than the behaviour on another occasion of two rustics at Southfleet. They had passed my friend jotting down an epitaph, and the turn of a corner revealed me sketching a tombstone, when one to the other exclaimed, "Land sikes, Bill, if 'ere ain't another on em!"