Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/50

 lived at Hounslow, that, on his ordering his gardener to cut an avenue to open a view, the perspective disclosed a gibbet with a thief on it, and that several members of the Campbell family having died with their shoes on, the prospect revived such ominous and unpleasant reminiscences that Lord Islay instantly ordered the prospect to be closed again with a clump of thick Scotch firs.

If any highwayman who galloped to the gallows a century ago, could see Hounslow Heath now, he would wonder where the four thousand acres that covered fourteen parishes had shrunk to. He would find only a few dozen acres of grass field enclosed for the cavalry reviews on one side of the road, and a few dozen acres of rough furze and bramble on the other for cavalry drill. Local historians say that the heath was once an oak forest that spread its green boughs from Staines to Brentford, and there is an old tradition that the last wolf killed, centuries ago now, was hunted down at Perry Oaks, near Feltham Hill.

In Charles the First's time Hounslow contained one hundred and twenty houses, chiefly inns and ale-houses relying on travellers. It was always indeed dependent on the coaches of the great west road. Every third house is still an inn or a beer shop. Ruined stables, faded signs of the Marquis of Granby and other bygone celebrities, still testify to the old prosperity of the place, when the Comet used to come flashing in, five minutes under the hour, from Piccadilly.

Let us sketch the Comet of the old days. Tom Brown, the coachman, allows only fifty seconds for changing horses—smart's the word with him. Tom in the neat white hat, the clean doeskin gloves, the well cut trousers and dapper frock—we quote a contemporaneous portrait—is the pink of Jarvies. The coach is a strong, well-built, canary-coloured drag: a bull's head on the doors: a Saracen's head on the hind boot. It carries fourteen passengers and goes ten miles an hour, guaranteed pace. There is a big bell-mouthed blunderbuss, ready for the Turpin boys; there are two pistols in the cases; there is a lamp on each side the coach, and another gleams out under the footboard. In fifty seconds three greys and a piebald have replaced the three chesnuts and a bay.

The ostler fastens the last buckle; the coachman's foot is already on the roller bolt.

"How is Paddy's leg?" he asks, as he settles down to his seat and shakes out the reins.

"Nearly right, sir," replies the horse-keeper, twitching off the last cloth.

"Let 'em go, then," says the great artist, "and take care of yourselves."

The spankers strike out and away they go, over what coachmen used to call "the hospital ground," from Hounslow to Staines. The coachman generally sprang his cattle over this bit of level, where there was no pebble bigger than a nutmeg. They kept for it all the "box-kickers" and stiff-mouthed old platers, whose backs would not hold an ounce down hill or draw an ounce up—queer tempered creatures, that were over the pole one day and over the bars the next. So they used to flash past the Scotch firs where Mr. Steele was murdered, and the pond where Mr. Mellish was killed, and by the turn where Courthorpe Knatchbull beat off the four scoundrels, an-d the place where Turpin, according to Mr. Samuel Weller, let fly at the bishop's too hasty coachman:

The crow takes note, upon the wing, of a pretty tradition of Hounslow which addresses itself to the human heart. During those cruel wars that brought the king's army and the parliamentarians alternately to encamp on Hounslow Heath, one Mr. George Trevelyan, a cavalier gentleman of Nettlecomb, in Somersetshire, and suspected of plotting against Cromwell, was seized by puritan soldiers, and sent close prisoner to the Tower. His captors, took care, moreover, to burn and destroy all of his property that they could, and, above all, drove off with them from the stables and fields of Nettlecomb and its neighbourhood, every horse that would mount a dragoon, or drag a cannon, or a baggage waggon. They left the old house beggared, ransacked, and defaced, and rode off singing their sullen psalms. Heaven and earth was moved for Trevelyan's release by his devoted wife; but Cromwell, bent on breaking such stubborn spirits, would not listen to any less ransom than two thousand pounds. But where to get it? The faithful steward racked his brains, and the poor wife wrought and prayed ceaselessly in her great need. Farms were sold, old oaks were felled, dear heirlooms were beaten down for the goldsmith and the Jews; above all, as the old record especially notes, "the great Barley Mow" was taken to market. The two thousand gold pieces were at last spread by the delighted steward before the eyes of the tearful wife. The difficulty now, was, how to get the bags of gold safe up to London, and escape the hungry highwaymen of Bagshot and Hounslow, the rapacious constables of hostile towns, and the stray snatchers in inn yards? At last Heaven sent a thought to her heart. She had heard of rough roads where ladies had harnessed strong draught oxen to the cumbrous family coaches, to drag them through the sloughs and deep-rutted lanes to some great dance or solemn assembly. The horses were all gone for miles round. The thought was at once turned to action. The great "gold" coach was provisioned for the long journey, the faithful steward, true as steel, accompanied the loving wife; and they took twenty-eight days doing the hundred and sixty miles. The dark prison doors flew open. The loving wife flew into the arms of her free husband. But she sickened of small-pox at Hounslow—the first halting place for the swift homeward horses as it had been the last for the slow oxen—and she died breathing the name which had been the watchword of her great devotion. She was buried at Hounslow, on the site of the home of the old Brotherhood