By walking outside Canterbury, a mile distant to Saint Thomas’s Hill, on the Whitstable Road, you shall see how thoroughly the Cathedral dominates the city; and arrive, by an exploration of the narrow lanes and the meads below, at an understanding of how this great Minster was Canterbury, and how subservient to it was all else. Affairs are now very different. A vigorous and pulsing life belongs to the streets and lanes, while it is the Church that has passed away from the intimate life of the people, and sunk back into retirement. Canterbury is far larger than ever before, and its modern pavements, that ring with soldiers’ tread, or with the speedy walk of busy citizens, are raised many feet above the street level of old Durovernum. Where the old Roman Watling Street left the city by what is now called the Riding Gate, the original paving of that military way was discovered some few years ago at a depth of fourteen feet below the level of the present road. Everywhere, when foundations for new houses have been dug, are discovered Roman pavements and the walls of forgotten buildings, and thus does Canterbury progress through the ages, rearing itself upon itself until its beginnings are hidden deep below the light of day. Strangely do modern ways here jostle with the old. A newly fronted house, proclaiming nothing of its antiquity, will yet often be found to contain much of interest. The ugly fronted Guildhall is an instance. Without, it is of the plainest and most uninteresting type; within, it has panelling and portraits and old arms to show the curious. At its door, too, stands all day and every day, or walks about the streets, a gorgeous creature clad in black knee-breeches and silk stockings; with buckled shoes and cocked-hat; with coat and waistcoat of a courtly type, trimmed and faced with gold lace. It is nothing less than startling to see such an uniform in daily use; and, still more amazing is it, when you ask the wearer of it who he is, to hear him reply, with a grave politeness, that he is the City Sergeant. Old institutions live long here, and old people, too. At Canterbury died, in 1891, aged ninety-one, William Clements, one of the last, if not the last, of the old stage-coach drivers, who had driven the “Tally-ho” coach between this and London long before the railway was thought of; and in July, 1901, aged 89, died Stephen Philpott, who was coachman of the Dover Mail, until the railway ran him off. He was transferred to a route between London and Herne Bay, and afterwards became proprietor of the “Royal Oak,” Dover, since demolished for street improvements.
“A GORGEOUS CREATURE.”
XXXIX
The Dover Road, after leaving Canterbury, loses very much of that religious character, picturesquely varied with robbery and murder, which is its chiefest feature between Southwark and the Shrine of Saint Thomas; for, although many foreign pilgrims landed at Dover to proceed to the place where the martyr lay, encased in gold and jewels, their number was nothing to be compared with that of the crowds who came into Canterbury from London, or along the Pilgrims’ Road from the West Country; and consequently the wayside shrines and oratories were fewer. The greater part of the sixteen miles between Canterbury and Dover is bare and exposed downs, with here and there a little village nestling, sheltered from the bleak winds, in deep valleys; but the first two miles, between the city and the coast, are now becoming gay with the geranium-beds, the lawns and gardens of Canterbury villadom.
WILLIAM CLEMENTS.
At the first milestone is Gutteridge Gate, where the old toll-house remains beside the “Gate” inn, and where bacchanalian countrymen gather on Sunday evenings in summer, drinking pots of ale as the sun goes down, and recalling to the artistic passer-by Teniers’ pictures of boors, as they shout and bang the wooden tables and benches with their pewter pots. Looking back at such a time down the long, straight road ascending from Canterbury, there come many jingling sons of Mars, each man with his adoring young woman, and sometimes one on either arm, for there is great competition for these gallant Hussars, Lancers, and Dragoons among the Canterbury fair ones; and “unappropriated blessings” of a rank in life that does not permit of “walking out” with mere troopers sit at windows commanding the road, sighing for that the conventions of the age do not permit them to “stoop to conquer” the conquerors of their fluttering hearts. “I could worship that man,” says the Fairy Queen in Iolanthe, gazing admiringly upon “Private Willis of the Grenadier Guards”; and how much more worshipful than a foot-soldier are the “cavalry chaps” of the Canterbury depôt!