It was only recently, as I write, that I was at a very elegant art reception, which was fully reported in the newspapers. And I was very much astonished when a lady called my attention to another young and very pretty lady, and expressed intense disgust at the way the latter wore her hair. It was simply parted in the middle, and fell down on either side, smooth as a water-fall, and then broke into curls at the ends, just as water, after falling, breaks into waves and rapids. But as she spoke, I felt it all, and saw that Mrs. Petulengro was in the right. The girl with the end-curled hair was uncanny. Her hair curled at the ends,—so did her eyes; she was a witch.
“But there’s a many witches as knows clever things,” said Mrs. Petulengro. “And I learned from one of them how to cure the rheumatiz. Suppose you’ve got the rheumatiz. Well, just you carry a potato in your pocket. As the potato dries up, your rheumatiz will go away.”
Sam Smith was always known on the roads as Fighting Sam. Years have passed, and when I have asked after him I have always heard that he was either in prison or had just been let out. Once it happened that, during a fight with a Gorgio, the Gorgio’s watch disappeared, and Sam was arrested under suspicion of having got up the fight in order that the watch might disappear. All of his friends declared his innocence. The next trouble was for chorin a gry, or stealing a horse, and so was the next, and so on. As horse-stealing is not a crime, but only “rough gambling,” on the roads, nobody defended him on these counts. He was, so far as this went, only a sporting character. When his wife died he married Athalía, the widow of Joshua Cooper, a gypsy, of whom I shall speak anon. I always liked Sam. Among the travelers, he was always spoken of as genteel, owing to the fact, that whatever the state of his wardrobe might be, he always wore about his neck an immaculate white woolen scarf, and on jours de fête, such as horse-races, sported a boro stardī, or chimney-pot hat. O my friend, Colonel Dash, of the club! Change but the name, this fable is of thee!
“There’s to be a walgoro, kaliko i sala—a fair to-morrow morning, at Cobham,” said Sam, as he departed.
“All right. We’ll be there.”
As I went forth by the river into the night, and the stars looked down like loving eyes, there shot a meteor across the sky, one long trail of light, out of darkness into darkness, one instant bright, then dead forever. And I remembered how I once was told that stars, like mortals, often fall in love. O love, forever in thy glory go! And that they send their starry angels forth, and that the meteors are their messengers. O love, forever in thy glory go! For love and light in heaven, as on earth, were ever one, and planets speak with light. Light is their language; as they love they speak. O love, forever in thy glory go!
III. COBHAM FAIR.
The walk from Oatlands Park Hotel to Cobham is beautiful with memorials of Older England. Even on the grounds there is a quaint brick gateway, which is the only relic of a palace which preceded the present pile. The grandfather was indeed a stately edifice, built by Henry VIII., improved and magnified, according to his lights, by Inigo Jones, and then destroyed during the civil war. The river is here very beautiful, and the view was once painted by Turner. It abounds in “short windings and reaches.” Here it is, indeed, the Olerifera Thamesis, as it was called by Guillaume le Breton in his “Phillipeis,” in the days of Richard the Lion Heart. Here the eyots and banks still recall Norman days, for they are “wild and were;” and there is even yet a wary otter or two, known to the gypsies and fishermen, which may be seen of moonlight nights plunging or swimming silently in the haunted water.
Now we pass Walton Church, and look in, that my friend may see the massy Norman pillars and arches, the fine painted glass, and the brasses. One of these represents John Selwyn, who was keeper of the royal park of Oatlands in 1587. Tradition, still current in the village, says that Selwyn was a man of wondrous strength and of rare skill in horsemanship.
Once, when Queen Elizabeth was present at a stag hunt, he leaped from his horse upon the back of the stag, while both were running at full speed, kept his seat gracefully, guided the animal towards the queen, and stabbed him so deftly that he fell dead at her majesty’s feet. It was daintily done, and doubtless Queen Bess, who loved a proper man, was well pleased. The brass plate represents Selwyn as riding on the stag, and there is in the village a shop where the neat old dame who presides, or her daughter, will sell you for a penny a picture of the plate, and tell you the story into the bargain. In it the valiant ranger sits on the stag, which he is stabbing through the neck with his couteau de chasse, looking meanwhile as solemn as if he were sitting in a pew and listening to De profundis. He who is great in one respect seldom fails in some other, and there is in the church another and a larger brass, from which it appears that Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who are depicted in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monuments by Roubiliac and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar lies buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of Butler’s “Hudibras.” And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to his memory, which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has left it in print that this “fair black marble stone” cost him £6 4s. 6d. When I was a youth, and used to pore in the old Franklin Library of Philadelphia over Lilly, I never thought that his grave would be so near my home. But a far greater literary favorite of mine lies buried in the church-yard without. This is Dr. Maginn, the author of “Father Tom and the Pope,” and many