Poor Cowley! The country was too much for him after all. Late on a July evening, after helping his haymakers to get in their last loads, he was soaked with a heavy summer dew. He caught cold and died, on July 28, 1667, and the Thames bore his coffin to burial in Westminster Abbey.
Less easy to find, if in some ways more familiar, than Porch House, is the very house into which the unwilling Oliver Twist was thrust by Bill Sikes mounted upon the stooping Toby Crackit. You can see the window through which Mr. Sikes pointed the pistol, and the door from which burst the valiant Mr. Giles and Mr. Brittles in pursuit. Or, at least, the more devout of Dickens students are thus privileged; I have been less fortunate. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, I believe, has identified the house to the satisfaction of many with Pyrcroft, a dwelling north-west of the station. But I have gone burgling after Bill Sikes and followed the road precisely as Dickens describes it, and Pyrcroft I never came near.
Chertsey still keeps up some fascinating customs. She has two quaintly named fairs, "Black Cherry Fair" on August 6, and "Goose and Onion Fair" on September 26, when she presides over the selling of horses and poultry. But the oldest and best custom is the ringing of the curfew bell, which still peals out to St. Anne's Hill and over Chertsey Mead from September 29 to March 25. The Chertsey bells are some of the finest in the country. The original curfew bell, which is supposed to have hung in the Abbey, tolled for the funeral of Henry VI, murdered a few hours before in the Tower of London, and hurried to Chertsey to be buried "without priest, clerk, torch or taper, singing or saying." According to the safer chronicles, the dead king's body was ferried to the Abbey by water. But Shakespeare in Richard III sends the corpse through London streets "borne in an open coffin; gentlemen bearing halberds to guard it; and Lady Anne as mourner." It is when Lady Anne, widow of the murdered king's son, tells the bearers to go "toward Chertsey with your holy load," that the coffin is stopped by the murderer Gloucester, and then follows that strange duel of hearts and words between the murderer and the prince's widow:
Gloster. Teach not thy lip such scorn; for it was made
For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.
If thy revengeful heart cannot forgive,
Lo, here I lend thee this sharp-pointed sword;
Which, if thou please to hide in this true breast,
And let the soul forth that adoreth thee,
I lay it open to the deadly stroke,
And humbly beg the death upon my knee.
[He lays his breast open. She offers at it with his sword.
Nay, do not pause; for I did kill King Henry,—
But 'twas thy beauty that provoked me.
Nay, now despatch; 'twas I that stabb'd young Edward,—
[She again offers at his breast.
But 'twas thy heavenly face that set me on.
[She lets fall the sword.
Take up the sword again or take up me.