Eric Parker

Nicknames.—Anastasius Hope.—Deepdene.—Mr. Howard's Garden.—Betchworth Chestnuts and Castle.—Brockham badgers.—The Straw-yards.—Bakers among the roses.—Leigh: Lie.—Leigh Place.—Ardernes and Copleys.—Sir Thomas's notion of a Gentleman.—Buckland's barn.

Of three dull nicknames, stuck like burrs on the mantles of Dorking's prophets, the dullest and prosiest has stuck to the richest. "Conversation" is a pretty severe burden for a man named plain Richard Sharp to carry; the hideousness of the baulked elision of "Sylva" Evelyn sets the teeth on edge (he developed into "Sylvie" as well as "Silver" Evelyn, poor man); "Capability" Brown, the gardener, must have been buttonholed by a thousand bores; but "Anastasius" Hope is beyond tolerance. How should such a name be endured? Thomas Hope endured it. He was the owner of Deepdene, the great house and garden and park a mile west of Dorking, property that once belonged to the Howards, and in particular to the ninth Duke of Norfolk. His father was a vastly wealthy Amsterdam merchant, he himself a patron and a critic of art. He gave Thorwaldsen his first commission in marble, and Thorwaldsen celebrated the day of the order every year of his life. But he owed his name to a romance, Anastasius or Memoirs of a Modern Greek, which he wrote at his leisure, and which places him, as Mr. John Timbs, promenading around Dorking in 1824, assures us, "in the highest list of eloquent writers and superior men." The Edinburgh Reviewer was not less effusive. Until Anastasius was published he had known Mr. Hope merely as the author of an essay on Household Furniture and Interior Decoration. In Anastasius was the change from the upholsterer to the epicurean.

Deepdene still holds statues and pictures, of which Mr. Bright, in his history of Dorking, gives a long list. Such a list belongs rightly to a history; but since the pictures can no longer be seen, other pages need but note that permission is occasionally granted to walk in the park. Aubrey's engaging description of the garden as he saw it late in the seventeenth century, a hundred years before Mr. Thomas Hope, belongs to his century and ours:—

But not the gardeners alone. The visitor had a quiet mind who could exclaim, as John Aubrey did, that "the pleasures of the garden were so ravishing that I can never expect any enjoyment beyond it but the Kingdom of Heaven." Aubrey has been called ill-natured, and a scandal-lover. Nobody ever called him that who has met him in a garden.

East of Dorking and the Deepdene are half-a-dozen Betchworths. Betchworth Clump rides a shoulder of the downs, with a superb view to the south; Betchworth village lies under the Clump a mile and more from the foot of the hill; Betchworth Park and Castle are between the village and Deepdene. Through the park runs a road, and an avenue of wonderful limes, but the Castle, which cannot be seen from the part of the park open to the public, is a castle no longer. It was never more than a castle in name; Sir Thomas Browne fortified it under Henry VI, but it saw no fighting. Thomas Hope's father, when he added Betchworth to his purchase of the Deepdene, pulled it down, and a mere fragment remains. Not much younger than the ruins, perhaps, are the gnarled and twisted boles of the Betchworth sweet chestnuts. Albury Park holds some giants, and there are a few trees quite as fine in Weybridge gardens that once stood on royal ground, but the Betchworth chestnuts must be older than either.

Badgers must have been common by Betchworth, for Brocks multiply in the local names. Brockham village, with a pretty green, stands beyond Betchworth Park on the Mole; probably the badger has left Brockham since the bricklayer came out of Dorking.

Other outdoor life has survived; Brockham still plays good cricket. Cricket was a favourite game on Brockham Green very early in its history. Cotmandene was not far away, and no doubt Cotmandene cricket encouraged smaller games. One of the customs of Brockham players was to wear straw hats of a pattern made in the village, and when the eleven went to play over at Mitcham there were derisive shouts—"Here come the Brockham straw yards." But the straw yards won, and in an innings.

It would be quite easy for a stranger to pass through the Betchworth that lies on the main road between Dorking and Reigate, and to believe he had seen it all. But the best of Betchworth is by the little church, south of the main road on a bend of the Mole. The church, cool and white, stands deep in a ring of beeches, elms, and ash-trees, and the baker and grocer of the village lives among roses in a little street of cottage gardens opposite. At least one of the bequests to the parish is curiously described on the church wall. Mrs. Margaret Fenwick left £200, which was to be used partly in binding out poor children as apprentices, and partly "in prefering in marriage such Maid Servants born in this Parish as shall respectfully live Seven Years in any Service and whose friends are not able to do it." The intention is clear, but friends unable to live respectfully seven years in one service would, one would think, be numerous.

The real centre from which to see the country east and south of Betchworth is Reigate, but a walk from Dorking to Reigate might very well take in Leigh, which is a little out of the beaten track. But if you ask the way, do not inquire for "Lee." "Lie" is the name. The village is very small, but it stands round a pretty little green, and one of the old timbered cottages with a Horsham slab roof sets the right grace to a group with the church and its trees. Leigh church has fine brasses of the Arderne family, who had Leigh Place, once an ancient and moated house half a mile north of the village, now a rather nondescript but quaint building; the moat remains, the house has been partly pulled down, partly rebuilt. Leigh Place belonged first to the great family of de Braose, but its earliest legends are of the Ardernes. There was a Sir Thomas de Arderne who wooed Margery, the wife of Nicholas de Poynings, in a very rough manner; he saw no way to making her his own wife except by making her widow of de Poynings, and so killed him. Tradition says that she died of a broken heart, and haunts Leigh Place, a sad lady in white; but it was probably not Sir Thomas, but a descendant of his, who first had Leigh Place. Still, to Leigh belongs the story. After the Ardernes, Leigh Place came to the Copleys, who were also of Gatton. One of them, Sir Thomas Copley, had original notions as to the proper bearing and attributes of an English gentleman. Mr. John Watney, writing in the Surrey ArchÆological Collections, gives a long letter which Sir Thomas wrote to Queen Elizabeth in 1575, defending himself, among other things, for having taken to himself titles to which he had no right. His defence is ingenious:—

I have taken Leigh on the way to Reigate. But the best way to see Leigh on a short walk is to reach it from Reigate travelling west. The introduction is by way of Reigate Heath, a wide and breezy common on which an old black windmill stands high above heather and bracken, a gaunt and wild neighbour to the orderly villas of the town.

Last of the little villages under the downs between Dorking and Reigate is Buckland—a handful of cottages, a pond, and a noble barn with upper-works like a tower. Buckland keeps tranquilly apart from Reigate, and Reigate, considerately enough, builds her new houses towards the railway and Redhill.