THE “DUMB BELL.”
An odd surviving relic of Knole as a College of Good Manners is the curious contrivance known as the “Dumb Bell,” in that one of these wardrobes styled the “Dumb Bell Gallery.” It very closely resembles the windlass seen over old country wells, with a roller on which is wound a rope that descends through a hole cut in the floor, into the billiard-room. The arms projecting from the roller are iron, tipped with lead. This machine, which appears to date back to about the beginning of the seventeenth century, is thought to have been in the nature of a “home exerciser,” and to have been suggested by the bell-ropes and the exercise of bell-ringing in church towers. Here, however, the athlete could bring up his muscles without being a nuisance to every one within earshot. From this originated the name of those very different objects, used however for the same purpose of exercising—the modern “dumb-bells.”
XXI
And so, farewell Knole, mausoleum of a departed condition of things, treasure-house of art and tradition, puppet-show for the summer throng. One looks for it, topping the sky-line, expectantly, and leaves it with regret; unlike those two tramps seen and heard on this very road by the present writer. One of them listlessly noticed its towers and gables. “Wot’s thet?” he asked his mate: not that he was interested, but for the sake of something to say. How can you be interested in anything when you are footsore but your feet?
“Corsel,” replied the other, shortly; “carm on.” But he need not have bidden his fellow “come on,” for he had not given the “castle” another glance, and had never halted a moment.
THE SEVEN OAKS.
The road descending steeply from Sevenoaks and having Knole Park on its left is the coaching highway, improved upon the ancient road. It is steep now, but how much steeper, how rugged and how narrow may be seen towards the bottom of the dip, where a little gate admits through the oaken palings of the park, and leads down a hollow lane whose banks are thickly set with ancient thorns and other trees. It is, or was before the embanked road was made, known locally by the names of “Shangden,” “Shand End,” or “Chene Dene,” in delightful incertitude.
This is the original road, preserved for the last seventy years or so in the bottom, where the modern highway was slightly deviated and constructed at a higher level. It is a surviving portion of that road Archbishop Islip, travelling horseback to Tonbridge in 1362, found so extremely bad. He struggled persistently, but at last fell from his horse and became “wet through all over.” In that pitiable condition he mounted again and rode on, without any change of clothes, and so was seized with paralysis.
An archway under the modern road, seen even more distinctly from a bye-road branching off to the right, was made for the especial purpose of maintaining unbroken the old line of an even more ancient cross-road—a pack-horse way—which crossed the old road from Sevenoaks to Tonbridge in the hollow, at right angles. The arch, however, has long been blocked up with timbering, and the pack-horse route is scarcely discernible in the park and the meadows.