“I say a horse at a canter coming up,” replies Tom.
“I say a horse at a gallop, Tom,” rejoins the guard, entrenching himself behind his seat, and cocking his blunderbuss, calling out to the passengers at the same time, “Gentlemen, in the King’s name, all of you!”
The mail stopped. The hearts of the passengers within thumped audibly, and if one could not see how they blenched, it was only owing to the obscurity of the mildewy inside of the old Mail. There they sat, in anxious expectancy, amid the disagreeable smell arising from the damp and dirty straw, and the relief they experienced when it was not a highwayman who rode up to them, but only a messenger for Mr. Jarvis Lorry, who sat shivering among the rest, may (in the words of a certain class of novelists) “be better imagined than described.”
There is but one criticism I have to make of this; but it is a serious point. There was no Dover Mail coach in 1775, for the earliest of all mail coaches, that between Bristol and London, was not established before 1784. The mails until then were carried by post-boys on horse-back.
Of Severndroog Castle, built on the crest of Shooter’s Hill during the last century, I shall say nothing, because, for one thing, it is of little interest, and, for another, whatever has to be said about it belongs to the province of the Guide Books, upon whose territory I do not propose to infringe. I want to give a modicum of information with the maximum of amusement, with which declaration of policy I will proceed along the road to Dover.
Directly one comes to the crest of the hill there opens a wide view over the Kentish Weald. Reaches of the Thames are seen, peeping through foliage; distant houses and whitewashed cottages shine clearly miles away, and the spire of Bexley Church closes the view in front, where the road ends dustily. Along this road comes daily and all day a varied procession of tramps. The traveller looks down upon them from this eyrie with wonderment and dismay; the cottagers, the householders and gardeners hereabouts, see them pass with less surprise and additional misgivings, for their gardens, their hen-roosts, clothes-lines and orchards pay tribute to these Ishmaelites to whom the rights of property are but imperfectly known. This is why the gates and doors along the Dover Road are so uniformly and resolutely barred, bolted, chained, and padlocked; for these reasons ferocious dogs roam amid the suburban pleasances, and turn red eyes and foaming mouths toward one who leans across garden-gates to admire the flowers with which the fertile soil of Kent has so liberally spangled every cultivated spot; and to them is due the murderous-looking garnishment of jagged and broken glass with which every wall-top is armed. “Peace must lie down armed” on the Dover Road; the citizen must lock, bolt, and bar his house o’ nights, and does well to exhibit warning placards, “Beware of the Dog!” He does better to tip the policeman occasionally to keep an especially vigilant look-out, and it is not an excess of precaution that so frequently covers the flower-beds with wire-netting.
X
TRAMPS
There is, indeed, no road to equal the Dover Road for thieves, tramps, cadgers, and miscellaneous vagrants, either for number or depravity. Throughout the year they infest alike the highways and byways of Kent, but the most constant procession of them is to be seen on the great main road between London and the sea. A great deal of begging, some petty pilfering, and a modicum of work in the fruit season and during the hop-harvest suffice to keep them going for the greater part of the year, while the winter months are fleeted in progresses from one casual ward to another in the numerous unions along the road. Phenomenally ragged, bronzed by the sun, unshaven, unshorn, they are met, men, women, and children alike, at every turn, for many miles, especially between Southwark and Canterbury. The sixteen miles’ stretch of road between Canterbury and Dover is comparatively unfrequented by them; but Gravesend, Dartford, Crayford, and Bexley Heath are centres of the most disgraceful mendicancy. “Lodgings for travellers” at fourpence a night, or two shillings a week, are a feature of these places, and how prominent a feature cannot be guessed by any one who has not been there. Whole families on the tramp are to be met with between these places, and long vistas of them are gained along any particularly straight piece of road. They are everything that is dirty and horrible, but they are perfectly happy and quite irreclaimable, many of them being hereditary tramps.