I HAVE confessed to Leith Hill as the corner of Surrey that smiles for me above all others; but there are those who will call out on one for not preferring the severer beauties of Hindhead. This is, of course, a matter of taste, to some extent of upbringing. I was mainly reared in a country where stern and wild aspects of nature are cheaper than the lush charms of the South, that to my countrymen may appeal with a certain attraction of rarity. One has heard of a Swiss guide whose admiration was excited by a wide prospect of London chimney pots. A Corsican gentleman once undertook to show me what he called one of the finest scenes in his island, which I found too much like a market-garden. Cobbett, for his part, roundly abused Hindhead as “the most villainous spot God ever made,” by which he seems to mean that the roads were rough and the soil not suited for growing the “Cobbett corn” or the acacias which, with different degrees of success, he was trying to naturalise in his native country, when he carried on the trade of a nursery-gardener along with that of an uprooting journalist. For once, he has a laugh against himself in his Rural Rides, with the story of how he tried to get from Liphook—or was it Liss?—to Thursley without crossing the abhorred moor, yet after all blundered in the dark on to the top of it, though he had taken a local guide, as Pepys was fain to do for the passage of that Surrey St. Bernard.

Our age has a new heart for such open heights as border the Portsmouth road between Thursley and Liphook. At its highest point, about 900 feet, the road passes along the brow of a wide and deep depression known as the Devil’s Punch Bowl, round which stretches of bracken, gorse and heath, broken dells, ponds and pine-crested ridges, fall into the valleys by slopes and hollows rich in green lanes, in tangled coppices, in old cottages, and in other picturesque “bits,” the whole airy swell making a smaller and drier edition of Dartmoor. This once thinly populated moorland could not but attract artists and authors, who began to settle here

in what they hoped to find a congenial wilderness. Mr. Birkett Foster and Mr. Edmund Evans, the colour-printer, were, so far as I know, the first colonists who built adjoining houses for themselves beside Witley station. George Eliot came to live close by them at the “Heights,” after long searching for a home on the Surrey commons. The neighbourhood began to be so much affected by literary and scientific people, that the nickname Mindhead was suggested. More than one leading London consultant made his holiday retreat hereabouts, not keeping to himself the secret of the dry clear air in which delicate invalids can sit out of doors under winter sunshine. The merits of Hindhead as a health resort were advertised by Professor Tyndall building a house near the top, where he found himself able to spend the winter as well as on the Bel Alp. Mr. Grant Allen deserted the Riviera for Hindhead, from which he dated his “Hill-Top” novels, and here found many hints for “Moorland Idylls.” The local colour of one of Sir A. Conan Doyle’s romances betrays how he joined a colony where only successful novelists may now aspire to find house-room.

Twenty years ago, Hindhead had a loose scattering of villas and cottages round the Royal Huts Inn at the cross-roads, its post-office being at Grayshott over the Hants border, which was the only thing like a village. Now mansions and bungalows are more or less thickly strung upon those old roads, and on new ones, with shops appearing here and there in what before long may be spoken of as streets. The “Huts,” improved into an hotel, has half a dozen rivals, from the mansion-like “Beacon” to the “Fox and Pelican” model public-house; and Glen Lea, oldest of Hindhead pensions, sees fresh competitors springing up every year. Houses are dear and lodgings hard to find in the fine season. As in the case of Davos and other health resorts whose merit lay in their untainted air, the place has been overbuilt from the curative point of view; and it begins to attract a gayer society than the early Crusoes of this bracing heath, on which such notable persons have staved off their latter end; while the works of so many writers show how they have been at least sojourners hereabouts.

Mrs. Humphry Ward at one time lived near Haslemere; and any one familiar with its environs can take a good guess at the locality of Robert Elsmere’s Surrey parish, into which its squire’s stately mansion may have been transposed from Loseley or Sutton. Mrs. Oliphant must have been here, since The Cuckoo in the Nest, one of the best of her later novels, evidently deals with the neighbourhood, making a curious medley of real and fictitious names, and hardly doing justice to the scenery. An account of Hindhead a century ago is presented in an older novel called the King’s Mail. Then Mr. Baring-Gould’s Broom Squire opens with that grimly authentic romance Hindhead has of its own, the murder of a luckless sailor, commemorated by a stone at which Dickens makes Nicholas Nickleby sit down to rest on his weary tramp along the Portsmouth Road. A tomb in Thursley churchyard shows a rudely-carved representation of the crime, with this inscription—

The Huts Hotel exhibits a series of quaint pictures illustrating this tragedy. The murderers were hanged on what is still called Gibbet Hill, the highest point of the moorland, looking over to Haslemere from the edge of the Punch Bowl. The gibbet was soon blown down; then on its site a granite cross with a nobler inscription was erected by Chief Justice Sir William Erle. This spot, nearly 900 feet high, is the main point for picnic parties; and it seems time to tell the reader how to reach it.

About nine miles beyond Godalming, the Portsmouth road runs between the Gibbet Hill and the Punch Bowl, into which hollow leads a humbler footway from Thursley, lying about half a mile to the right where the road begins its long steady ascent. On the edge of the Punch Bowl, Nicholas Nickleby’s road has been brought down to a lower level, and the memorial stone with it; one must scramble up the sandy lane representing the old road to get the view from the cross. No description can do justice to this panorama, seen at its best on a still autumn day; and guide-book editors are here saved much trouble by an orientation-table, on the top of which, as on a compass face, will be found indicated the names, direction, and distance of all the chief points around.

From the Gibbet Hill it is nearly a mile on to the inhabited part of Hindhead, whose nearest station is Haslemere, three miles off, in the valley below, to and from which now plies an omnibus. From Haslemere to Farnham also runs a service of motor-cars that would give a good trip over this district, but without touching that highest and wildest point. Half-way up the ascent, near Shottermill Church and its fish-ponds, was a temporary home of George Eliot, who did some of her best work in this vicinity. Most of Hindhead’s visitors come by way of Haslemere; and in any case this is a place worth visiting for its own sake.

The picturesque character of the neighbourhood becomes very manifest at Witley, the station before Haslemere, where one might get out to make a gradual ascent of Hindhead by lanes on which it is easy to miss the way, unless by steering for clumps of wood high above the right of the railway some three miles on. Witley is also the station for Chiddingfold, a couple of miles south-eastward, whose picturesque old “Crown” Inn bespeaks former importance; and a factory of walking-sticks represents the iron and glass making that once flourished in this well-timbered district.

To the east of Witley station, Hambledon and Hascombe have some fine hill and wood scenery, rising to the height of 644 feet in the Beech Telegraph Hill, once a far-seen beacon point. To the north of this is Hascombe Church, whose lavish interior decoration makes it one of the sights of the vicinity. Severer features of interest are shown by Witley Church, standing a mile nearer London than the station. It contains a memorial of the murdered Duke of Clarence; and in the churchyard lies an ill-fated financier of our own time, under a costly tomb, with the inscription, “He loved the poor,” which seems suggested by the career of Robin Hood. On his home at Lea Park, above Witley, this notorious adventurer lavished so much of other people’s money, that there was some difficulty in disposing of a place which failed to be started as an hotel, even although baited with a golf course and other attractions of sport. In a better organised state of society, it should be purchased by the nation as free lodgings for authors and artists, who might help it to live down its past by illustrating or advertising a vicinity which George Eliot hit off as mingling the charms of Scotland with those of the green heart of England. Luckily, the wilder part of the grounds has been purchased by subscription, to be thrown into nature’s own demesne, freely available for public enjoyment, while at the same time the neighbourhood has lately had to complain of other bits of common being enclosed or stripped of their old trees.

The highway from Godalming to Haslemere comes by Lea Park, avoiding Witley; but from its station, on the opposite side of the railway line, one has another road, five miles of up-and-down windings, with lovely views; and it would be only some couple of miles out of the way to go by Chiddingfold and along the edge of the Fold country. But, indeed, every approach to Haslemere, road or path, is charming, and would be more so, if not so often shut in by new red mansions and cottages “with a double coach-house.” This Surrey border town, which was made a rather rotten borough in Elizabeth’s reign, fell away from such dignity, but in our time revived as centre of so choice a district, and has a busy station on the L. & S.W. Portsmouth line. The station lies beyond the roomy village or townlet, to which Hindhead pilgrims might well turn back for a glimpse of its broad street, forming a right angle at the modest Market Hall, junction point of byroads with the highway between Godalming and Midhurst. Its good old houses have been much overlaid by chÂlets and bungalows, for even in the valley here we are some hundreds of feet above the sea, and Haslemere has its own clientÈle of health-seekers. The Church stands rather out of the way, across the railway line, but is worth a digression. In the nave, opposite the porch, a coloured window, the subject taken from Burne-Jones’s “Holy Grail,” makes a memorial to Tennyson. In the new part of the churchyard, near the gate, will be seen a curious mass of gorse and heather, which is Tyndall’s tomb, taking this form, it is understood, by his own desire, and rather painfully suggesting the remains of that “Screen” with which he disfigured the slopes of Hindhead in the unphilosophic design of fencing himself in against a neighbour.

On the farther side of the town, above the main street, will be found a remarkable Museum and Library presented to Haslemere by the late Mr. Jonathan Hutchinson, long its special patron: this institution should not be overlooked by those who have any interest in geology, as it excellently displays the natural history of the neighbourhood. The Recreation Ground on the same height offers a fine view across the valley to Hindhead, and northwards over the Fold country. Here we are on the steeper slope of Blackdown, which is rather higher than Hindhead, and still more wild, not as yet so much invaded by the builder. Past the Museum goes one of several ways up its sides, where an hour’s walk brings us finely over the border of Surrey; then beyond we gain the Blackdown plateau, one of the highest points of Sussex, from which Tennyson’s summer home looks to the South Downs, across the view “long loved by me.”

In this neighbourhood, as in the Isle of Wight, amusing tales are told of the poet’s love of seclusion and the manner in which he repelled unwelcome visitors. But the reader, no doubt above listening to local gossip, may be waiting to know his way up to Hindhead from Haslemere. The carriage road from the station is plain, passing under the railway, skirting the village of Shottermill on the left, then turning up a deep hollow to reach the top at the “Huts.” At the new church on Crichmere Green, a little way beyond the railway arch, the foot traveller should take a deep lane that looks as if it had strayed out of Devonshire, and this will bring him on the heath, over which a track bears left for the Huts, or he must keep up rather to the right for the Gibbet Hill. The finest footway to the Gibbet Hill, about three miles, is by the road mounting behind Haslemere Church, at the top of the ascent reaching a common, from which the bare ridge of Hindhead appears full in view, to be gained by a rough road over two intervening hollows, with pine-clad knolls high to the right, a scene that suggests Bonnie Scotland rather than Happy England.

From the top, the view over Hindhead itself has been criticised as somewhat featureless, but for points like the isolated row of sand hills to the north-west, known as the Devil’s Jumps, from such a legend as has so often arisen about any uncommon shape of scenery. The Devil’s Punch Bowl, alias Haccombe Bottom, is indeed a most imposing basin, that shelters a larger population of squatters than might be guessed on a glance at its dark, wide hollow opening down to Thursley and the valley of the Wey. Beyond it, the villa settlement of Hindhead, with Grayshott as its nucleus, is marked by a new Water Tower, which has supplied a felt want, these houses having at first stood dependent on wells that sometimes failed them. Not that there is any want of water in clay bottoms below the sand. All around are found tarns and pools, still perhaps known as Hammer Ponds, beside huge furrows driven through the earth by old searchers for iron. The marshy ground below Thursley drains into several ponds like Pudmore, that figures in Mr. Baring-Gould’s story, as does the rock “Thor’s Stone,” haunted by a mythology older than legends of that devil who took such athletic jumps. High up on the heath, to the south of Grayshott, and about a mile to the right of the Portsmouth road, are the Waggoners’ Wells, a chain of lakelets among dark woods, pronounced by George Eliot an ideal scene for a murder, admired also by Tennyson, who is said to have written here his “Flower in the Crannied Wall.” On a lower level, to the north-west, beyond the Devil’s Jumps, close to the Wey and the Surrey border, lie the sparkling sheets of Frensham Great and Little Ponds, either of them able to style itself a lake. A large pond above Shottermill, beside the high-road from Haslemere, is used for fish culture. It was by a short tenancy at Shottermill that George Eliot made the acquaintance of this country, which she describes as unsurpassable in “its particular style of beauty—perpetual undulation of heath and copse, and clear views of hurrying water, with here and there a grand pine-wood, steep wood-clothed promontories and gleaming pools.” If one might take exception to any words of such a writer, running water in clear view is not characteristic about Hindhead, unless at the bottom of the Punch Bowl, or in the case of that branch of the Wey which she had beside her in the Shottermill valley.

Such are hints of the scenes opening out to explorers on what may at first sight seem a monotonous stretch of heath and pine-woods, with this good quality for feeble folks, that, once at the top, they can ramble some way without any trying ups and downs. “Eyes or no eyes,” its visitors cannot but be sensible of that “ampler ether,” those restoring breezes that blow over Hindhead, untainted by smoky towns or misty flats. Too soon passes its season of purple glory; but it has other charms that win on one by familiarity. Its very winter is apt to show a more cheerful face than on the sodden, muggy lowlands; then always it lies open to the painting of the sky, from crisp clear mornings, when “not yet are Christmas garlands sere,” till that evening of the year, when—

Keble, like other writers of our day, means by moor the heathy uplands that are the chief ornament of Hindhead. But Spenser’s “moorish Colne” hints to us how, in the south of England at least, this name has implied rather such marshy and rushy flats as, about Thursley, are still vernacularly called the “moor” par excellence. These lowerlying skirts have beauties of their own, and seldom fail to be at least patched with the richer material spread out to dry on the heights.

It will soon be found how Hindhead runs into a neighbourhood of swelling heaths, such as Frensham Common, Headley Common, Ludshott Common, and Bramshott Common, over which one can expatiate for hours to the west. A couple of miles south of the Huts, the Portsmouth road crosses a here very jagged boundary of Surrey, reaching the “Seven Thorns” in Hampshire, and thence falling to Liphook on the edge of Woolmer Forest, which straggles on by the new Longmoor Camp to White’s Selborne. In the valley to the left, that is the course of the railway, runs the Sussex border, across which may be sought out scenes still more beautiful as more varied. Then on the north side lie another series of broken moorlands, by which the high ground slopes into the Wey valley—Milford Heath, Royal Common, Thursley Common, Kettlebury Hill, and Hankley Common, not to add minor names. Even Cobbett had kind thoughts of Thursley; and the author of Robert Elsmere, with an eye on this vicinity, if I err not, speaks the mind of our generation about the waste skirts of her hero’s parish:—

These quiet heaths and copses “saw another sight” during the Great War, when about Witley Common sprang up a huge camp, in which 30,000 raw soldiers could be trained for service at the front. Latterly, it was much occupied by Canadians, restlessly impatient allies, not altogether as welcome in the vicinity as in Flanders. Too many of them had nothing to do with their high pay but to waste it on liquor prohibited them at home, so the police, if not the publicans of Godalming, were glad to see the backs of these roisterers, who, once let loose upon the enemy, turned their high spirit to better purpose.

But, to be sure, tents and warriors are no novelty on Surrey commons, as will be shown in the next chapter.