The Battle of Dorking took place on the ridge north of the town in 1871, and resulted, after the invasion, in the conquest of Great Britain by Germany. It all came about perfectly simply. A rising in India had taken away part of our army; war with the United States over Canada had taken another 10,000 troops, and half of what were left were dealing with a Fenian revolution in Ireland. Germany put to sea and sank our fleet with torpedoes, a new and dreadful engine of war; then the German army landed and the end came at once. At least, it would have come, if Sir George Chesney, who described the battle of Dorking in Blackwood's Magazine, had prophesied truly. He lived till 1895, to see more than twenty years after his battle pass without an invasion; but the battle, for some of his readers, became a very real thing. The late Louis Jennings, in his Field Paths and Green Lanes, tells us that he had a friend who, believing most people to have very hazy notions of history, was in the habit of saying, "Of course you remember the battle of Dorking? Well, this was the very place where it was fought!" He was seldom contradicted.
The real history of Dorking has traditions of the table and the cellar. Dorking fowls perhaps first came to the neighbourhood with the Romans, and poultry and Dorking have been associated ever since. The true Dorking fowl is a large, well-feathered bird, and walks on five toes instead of lesser fowls' four. He has always been a great fowl for the table and historians have written about him since the days of Columella. Thus a contributor to the Gentleman's Magazine, in 1763:—
"An incredible quantity of poultry is sold in Dorking, and it is well known to the lovers of good eating for being remarkably large and fine. I have seen capons about Christmas which weighed between seven and eight pounds each out of their feathers, and were sold at five shillings apiece; nor are the geese brought to the market here about Michaelmas less excellent in their kind. The town is supplied with sea-fish from Brighthelmstone and Worthing, in Sussex."
Dorking.
The Dorking cooks knew well what to do with the sea-fish when they got them from Brighton. Dorking was famous for a particular way of making water-souchy, a delicious dish of various fishes, of which Mr. J.L. André in the Surrey Archæological Collections, has preserved the recipe rescued from an 1833 cookery book 'by a Lady':—
"Stew two or three flounders, some parsley roots and leaves, thirty peppercorns, and a quart of water, till the fish are boiled to pieces; pulp them through a sieve. Set over the fire the pulped fish, the liquor that boiled them, some perch, tench, or flounders, and some fresh roots or leaves of parsley; simmer all till done enough, then serve in a deep dish. Slices of bread and butter are to be sent to table to eat with the souchy."
It looks rather vague, but the "Gentlemen's Dorking Club" used to assemble every other Thursday from June to November to discuss the tench and flounders at the Red Lion, and the King's Head used even to attract diners-out from London, especially Dutch merchants, who were particularly fond of the admirable dish. Wine, too, was grown in the town. There was a particular kind of wild cherry, of which Aubrey was told by John Evelyn that it made a most excellent wine, little inferior to the French claret; it would even keep longer. With the cherry wine, perhaps, you would have eaten Dorking snails. They were large, white snails, which some said were brought to the Downs by the pilgrims, others thought were introduced from Italy by the Earl of Arundel, Lord Marshal of England; Lady Arundel used to cook and eat them. They roamed the Downs by Box Hill and other chalky places, and are still to be found there. Perhaps the Romans brought them, but they are not peculiar to Surrey and Sussex; I have found them on chalk in Hertfordshire, and I have heard of them on the Cotswolds.
Such good fare should have built up the constitutions of Dorking people. But it was not so in Aubrey's time, for he picks out the Dorking men and women as weaker and paler than others. He liked to see women with rosy faces:—
"Handsome women (viz. sanguine) as in Berks, Oxon, Somerset, &c. are rare at this market; they have a mealy complexion, and something hail like the French Picards; light grey eyed, and the kine hereabout are of sandy colour, like those in Picardy. None (especially those above the hill) have roses in their cheeks. The men and women are not so strong or of so warm a complexion as in Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, &c."