This primitive condition of affairs gave place shortly afterwards to roads skilfully and especially engineered, directly towards Brighton itself. The riotous world of youthful fashion raced along those newer roads, and the staid, immemorial highway to Lewes was left to its own old respectable routine. And so it remains to-day. You may reach Brighton by the shortest route from London in 51½ miles, but by way of Lewes it is some fifty-nine. Need it be said that the shortest route, here as elsewhere, is the favourite?
But for picturesqueness, and for quaint old inns, the road by Lewes should, without doubt, be selected.
THE “WHITE HART” GODSTONE.
The first of these is the famous “White Hart” at Godstone. I say “famous”; but, after all, is it nowadays famous among many classes? Among cyclists, yes, for it is well within twenty miles from London, and the pretty little hamlet of Godstone Green, with its half-dozen old inns, among them the “Hare and Hounds,” the “Bell,” and the “Rose and Crown,” nearly all sketchable, has ever been a kind of southern Ripley among clubmen. In coaching days, however, and in days long before coaching, when you got upon your horse and bumped in the saddle to your journey’s end, the “White Hart” was truly famous among all men. The old house, according to a painted wall-sign inscribed in the choicest Wardour Street English, was established in “ye reigne of Kynge Richard ye 2nd” and enlarged in that of Queen Elizabeth; and if there be indeed little of King Richard’s time to point to, there are many Elizabethan and Queen Annean and Early Georgian features which make up in pictorial quality what they lack in antiquity. The “White Hart” sign itself is in some sort evidence of the age claimed for the original house, for it was of course the well-known badge of King Richard. At the present day the couchant White Hart himself is displayed on one side of the swinging sign, and on the other the many-quartered shield of the local landowners, the Clayton family, and the house has become known in these latter days indifferently by the old title, or as the “Clayton Arms.”
The old-world gabled front of the inn would be strikingly beautiful in any situation, but the peculiarly appropriate old English rural setting renders it a subject for a painting or a theatrical scene. It is especially beautiful in spring, when the young foliage still keeps its freshness and the great horse-chestnut trees opposite are in bloom.
The old “White Hart” is a world too large for these days of easy and speedy travel. True, Godstone station is incredibly far away, but conceive anyone save the sentimentalist staying the night, when within twenty miles of London and home! Hence those echoing corridors, those empty bedrooms, the tarnished mirrors and utter stillness of the outlying parts of mine host’s extensive domain. Snug comfort, however, resides in and near what some terrible lover of the sham-antique has styled, in modern paint upon the ancient woodwork, “Ye Barre.”
Ye Goddes! the old house does not want that, nor any others of the many such inscriptions, the work, doubtless, of the defunct Smith, who was at once cook, gardener, artist of sorts, entertainment-organiser and musician (also of sorts), and ran riot, the matter of a decade or so since, over the house with pots of Aspinall’s facile enamels and a paintbrush, with what results we see to this day.