MONMOUTH
So runs the record. But the business of most of them that fared this way whose faring has been preserved was of a very doleful character. I except, of course, royal personages, who, as previously noted in these pages, “progressed,” and did nothing so plebeian as to “travel.” Monmouth, who, though of royal birth, had failed to achieve a throne in his ill-fated rebellion of 1685, “travelled,” “unfriended, melancholy, slow,” on that fatal journey from Ringwood to London in a carriage guarded by a strong body of troops and militia-men. Poor fellow! the once gay and handsome Duke of Monmouth, the prettiest fellow and courtliest gallant of a courtly age, was conveyed, a prematurely grey and broken man, to his death, the due reward, it is true, of rebellion, but none the less pathetic. The mournful cortège halted a night on the road at Guildford, where, in a room over the great entrance-gateway of Abbot’s Hospital, the prisoners—the wretched Monmouth and the undaunted Lord Grey—were lodged, until daylight should come again and their road to execution be resumed.
A more lightsome tour must have been that undertaken by the four Indian kings who, in 1710, came to pay their devoirs to Queen Anne, and journeyed up to London, much to the wonderment of the country-folk, to whose lurid imaginations their copper-coloured countenances represented everything that was evil. Twenty years later seven chiefs of the Cherokees came this way, on a mission to the English Court; but the first pedestrian of whom we have any account who walked the whole distance between London and Portsmouth was a Mr. John Carter, who, having witnessed the proclamation of George I. in London on August 1, 1714, in succession to Queen Anne, set forth immediately for Portsmouth on foot. It is an emphatic comment upon contemporary social conditions to note that when Carter reached Portsmouth, on August 3, he was the first to bring the news. His zeal might conceivably have been attended with serious consequences had the Jacobites been more active; but as it was, Gibson, the Governor of Portsmouth, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts, threatened the newsmonger with imprisonment for what he was pleased to term “a false and seditious report.”
A journey quite in keeping with the sombre history of this road was that by which the body of General Wolfe, the victor of Quebec, was brought to London. The remains of the General were landed at Portsmouth on Sunday, November 17, 1759, and were escorted by the garrison to the outskirts of the town. He was buried at Greenwich on the night of the 20th.
For the rest the history of travel upon the Portsmouth Road in olden times is chiefly made up of accounts of felons condemned to death for crimes ranging from petty larceny to high treason. The halo of a questionable kind of romance has perpetuated the enormities of the greater malefactors, but the sordid histories of the sheep-stealers and cattle-lifters, the miserable footpads, and contemptible minor sneaks and rogues who suffered death and were gibbeted with great profusion and publicity by the wayside, are clean forgotten.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
Modern times of road travel, that range from the reign of George IV. to the beginning of the Railway Era, are chiefly filled with stories of the Allied Sovereigns, who ate and drank a great deal too much on their way down to Portsmouth to celebrate the Peace of 1814; of the Duke of Wellington, who followed them in a carriage drawn by eight horses, and ate sparingly and drank little; and of all sorts of naval and military bigwigs and left-handed descendants of Royalty who held fat offices in army or navy, and lorded it grandly over meaner, but more legitimate, mortals. No literary or artistic annals belong to this time, saving only the well-known scenes in “Nicholas Nickleby.”
It was on the Portsmouth Road that Nicholas Nickleby and Smike met that redoubtable impresario, Mr. Vincent Crummles. Nicholas, it may be remembered, had fallen upon evil times. His capital “did not exceed, by more than a few halfpence, the sum of twenty shillings,” and so he and Smike were compelled to foot it from London.
“‘Now listen to me, Smike,’ said Nicholas, as they trudged with stout hearts onwards. ‘We are bound for Portsmouth.’
“Smike nodded his head and smiled, but expressed no other emotion; for whether they had been bound for Portsmouth or Port Royal would have been alike to him, so they had been bound together.