“In town let me live, then; in town let me die;
For no, I can’t relish the country, not I.
If one must have a cottage in summer to dwell,
O give me the sweet shady side of Pall Mall.”
His aspiration was denied him, for that eighteenth-century Anacreon died here at Brockham.
A solemn row of immemorial yews along the shoulders of the hills marks where the sandalled feet of pilgrims trod the Pilgrims’ Way. At Buckland a pond, a sign-post, a tall elm, and a church that looks like a barn, and a barn that looks like a church, make up a very pretty picture. Betchworth lies to the left hand, a mile onward, and possesses some stately old houses. To it succeeds Dorking.
Now Dorking, if you can conceive the conjunction, is at once aristocratic and popular. The proximity of that Cockney pleasance, Box Hill, is, of course, responsible for the one, and doubtless the overawing neighbourhood of Denbies and Deepdene accounts for the other. Dorking is celebrated for a mythical battle, for a breed of fowls, and for having been the home of Tony Weller, who kept the “Markis o’ Granby” here. The name of the place was invariably spelt “Darking” a hundred years ago, even by literary folks, and country people still pronounce it in that way. It is a supremely cheerful town, with a very wide High Street.
WESTCOTT.
Beyond the town the North Downs assume a wilder and more wooded aspect, where the modern but pretty hamlet of Westcott stands by the way, and the deep valley and heavy woodlands of Wotton open out delightfully upon the wayfarer. In the “little church of Wotton”—pronounced “Wootton”—lies John Evelyn, the Diarist and lover of trees, with many other Evelyns, and Wotton Park is just beyond, where many trees of his planting yet flourish. Wotton Hatch, a lonely hamlet, overlooks the scene.
