The Devil's Jumps, from Frensham Common.
From Frensham Great Pond one may push on to Hindhead, three or four miles to the south-east, or may return to Farnham through Tilford by way of the Little Pond, another broad and shining stretch of water. The way to Farnham is the better, for it means leaving the high road for the natural paths that run over and round the windy ridges of the commonland to the east. From the rising ground between the two Frensham ponds there is a fine panorama of pine and heather. Crooksbury Hill juts up dark and commanding to the north; the level line of the ridge on the left, a few hundred yards away, is broken and humped with barrows; far away to the east lies Charterhouse, grey in the haze by Godalming; behind, to the south-east, the Devil's Jumps, three little squat, conical hills whose very oddity is one of their attractions. They edge the horizon like inverted pudding bowls covered with bracken, and with bell-heather kindling to crimson in the July sunlight.
Bridge at Tilford.
July is the month in which to visit Frensham Little Pond. It was an accident which first showed me the pond as it ought to be seen, and as few see it. I had been watching a number of herons through my glasses; one of them eyeing me discontentedly from the reeds on a southern arm of the water, and three more flapping majestically over the trees, apparently dropping suddenly down into the valley of the Wey. Trying to take a short cut to the stream I missed my way among the woodland rides, and suddenly found myself again on the edge of the pond. It was worth making the mistake. The northern corner of the pond by the little boathouse is one sheet of white waterlilies. The corner runs into a rough triangle, with two sides fifty yards in length and a base of perhaps thirty yards. There must be nearly a thousand square yards of lilies, and from five to ten lilies to the yard, green buds, opening blossoms, and great white cups and gold-centred chalices, wet and swaying in the wind. Through all the summer those lilies flower, and there cannot be as many people see them as there are lilies. Fortunately, it would be difficult to find them unless you were walking: you could not drive a motor-car or ride a bicycle down those sandy lanes, and nobody on foot would pick the lilies.
To walk from Frensham Little Pond over Tilford Common to Tilford is to traverse some of the wildest and freshest commonland in Surrey. For some distance from the northern corner of the pond the way runs through woodland, crossed and recrossed by so many sandy paths that it is a good deal easier to get lost than to find the high road running into Tilford from the south. It is worth while getting lost, for that matter, if only to realise the wildness of the place; though it would perhaps be better to choose daytime for the business, for there are some awkward-looking, though perhaps not dangerous, bogs on the lower ground near the Wey. This lower ground, by the way, is a wonderful place for rabbits. You come suddenly out from the wood on the border of a reedy field, and see dozens of scampering bodies cleaving paths through the shaking rushes. Now and then a rabbit, puzzled by the silence following the sound of the invader's coming, sits and cocks up a pair of ears above the grass; his head goes a little higher, his timorous eye catches yours, and the greenery closes behind him.
Tilford to-day cannot be very different from the Tilford of the days of Cobbett. It is a straggling little hamlet, lying about the triangle formed by its cricket-green. The Wey runs halfway round the green, and is crossed by two grey and ancient bridges. But the chief glory of Tilford is its mighty oak, one of the greatest of English trees. Its age is unknown, and perhaps would hardly be known if it were felled. It has been claimed as "the oak at Kynghoc," mentioned in the charter given to Waverley Abbey in 1128; but that oak is mentioned as standing on the Abbeyland boundary, and the Tilford oak has never stood on the boundary. These historic oaks make difficult problems. Wherever you find a great tree, local legend gathers round it. Queen Elizabeth dined under it or shot a stag under it; Charles II climbed in it; Wesley preached under it; it is the boundary of the parish; it was the boundary of the Abbeyland eight hundred years ago. But was it always, then, the greatest tree for miles round? Eight hundred years ago, may there not have stood another tree near where it stands to-day, as large or even larger? Surely the traditions of one great tree pass, when the tree falls, to its nearest great neighbour; but they pass so seldom, and so slowly, that the villagers hardly note the change. Three generations are born and die, and no villager living has seen the older greater oak; the younger, slighter tree succeeds to its glories. Tilford's oak to-day is called by all Tilford the King's Oak. On the old estate maps it is Novel's Oak; Novel, perhaps, was a yeoman farmer.
Between Tilford and Elstead.