Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 8/A day at Selbourne
A DAY AT SELBOURNE.
I love a pilgrimage as I do a pic-nic. No matter whether it be to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, or to the birthplace of the Bard of Avon,—to the magnificent ruins of Kenilworth, or the rich quaint Elizabethan structure of Bramhill,—whether to visit sweet Melrose by the pale moonlight, or the frowning keep of Dover Castle,—whether the goal be associated with religion or war, with revelry or love,—I enjoy to travel out of the beaten track, athwart black commons and through rutty bye-lanes. Sometimes the object of veneration combines both person and place, and then the memory of one of the world’s Worthies adds charms to a spot which merits a meed of admiration in itself.
Such was my conviction before visiting Selbourne. That conviction has since been strongly confirmed. Whether we visit that sequestered village for the sake of recreation, or wishing to pay respect to the shade of Gilbert White, we are doubly gratified; for the locality which that eminent naturalist selected for his abiding-place is eminently beautiful, and well repays a pilgrimage. Like a fair picture encadred in a graceful frame, the home of the Naturalist is set amidst exquisite scenery which stretches far and wide from the centre of his gravestone.
The village of Selbourne lies in a somewhat secluded part of Hampshire, about equally distant from the towns of Alton, Petersfield, and Alresford; but is easily approached by the South-Western Railway, either from Alton, or else from the little station of Liss, whence a pleasant walk of some five miles through shady lanes will bring you under the shadow of the Hanger, with an excellent appetite for luncheon or dinner at the Queen’s Arms, a country inn which can boast of good cheer, the best of eggs, milk, and butter, and a civil and honest host.
Of course I had read all about the natural beauties of the village. White himself is special on this topic, and his editors have thought it necessary to expatiate still more largely upon the physical virtues of the vicinity. But fortunately it does not lie within the compass of the pen to depict trees, and rising grounds, and dells, and ravines, and gentle vales, so as to convey an adequate and just idea of a landscape. The brush of the painter is far better suited to this task, and by the aid of perspective and colouring, light and shade, he may present a picture which, if not altogether so true as a photograph, nevertheless enables a spectator to realise a large conception of the characteristics and the beauties of a particular view.
I was not, therefore, I confess, disappointed in my first impressions of Selbourne. Notwithstanding the descriptions—the “word-paintings” as Carlyle would term them—which I had read, something fresh and unique broke upon my sight when, passing over the brow of the hill which slopes down to the church on the road from Alton, I first came in sight of the quiet hamlet that sleeps so peacefully close at the foot of the beechen Hanger. Long before I had arrived so far, however, the Nore and Selbourne hills—the two most conspicuous features in this landscape—had been visible, standing out in bold relief against the clear blue sky, and terminating a range of elevated down which stretches across the country in a south-easterly direction. Almost in the centre of the place stands the house in which Gilbert White resided, and from which he issued forth to study the natural curiosities of Selbourne. It is now the abode of another well-known naturalist, Mr. Thomas Bell. There is nothing striking about this quiet mansion, of which we give an illustration on the next page. It was doubtless large enough for him, and is therefore only remarkable as associated with his name. It has, however, I might state, undergone considerable changes since his death. Still there it is, and the visitor passes it by with a feeling of veneration and regret, thinking of him at whose unseen bidding he has directed his footsteps to this pleasant spot. On the opposite side of the road, and close to the church, is the Playstow or Plestor, a spot on which used to be celebrated the sports of the village. According to White, here formerly stood a magnificent oak of immense age and girth, whose branches overshadowed its whole area. But this magnificent monarch of trees was blown down in a tremendous storm in the year 1702, and although many efforts were made to restore it to its original position, it never recovered the calamity. It is curious, however, to reflect on the life which this venerable spot has witnessed. How many generations of happy hearts have recreated on its green plateau! How young and old, rich and poor—in those days when rich and poor mingled more together than they do now, and the aged condescended to join without scruple or reserve in the innocent pleasures of the young—the village sires and the village matrons, the village lads and the village lasses, joined together in the mazy dance, or the thousand merry holiday sports of the spring and summer season! Appropriately, too, was this spot placed; it adjoined the churchyard where the rude forefathers of the hamlet slept. There the tale and the moral of life were close by. If it were necessary to have a skeleton at one’s feast, here it was at hand, and with equal force administered the lesson of the vanity and fleetingness of all human enjoyment.
Selbourne, which I have been inclined to call a hamlet rather than a village, contains not many houses, and of these nine-tenths, at least, are humble cottages. It is very pretty to fancy that the eyes of the great naturalist and antiquarian had been fixed upon those low white-washed walls and those thatched roofs; but only to a few enthusiasts would it appear desirable that the state of things which existed in Gilbert White’s times should remain in ours. In fact, the case was very naïvely put by a fellow-pilgrim who accosted me in the court-yard of the only inn of which Selbourne can boast.
“Sir,” said he, “’tis twenty years and more since I first read Gilbert White’s ‘Natural History of Selbourne,’ and ever since that time I have longed to pay a visit to this place. For thirty years I drove the coach between Portsmouth and Guildford, and could never find an opportunity of gratifying my wish; however, the railways have thrust that opportunity upon me, and three years ago I drove over from Alton with a friend for the first time. But, sir, it’s distressing to see in what slovenly hovels the people of the place are hived; I had expected better things.”
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Selbourne Church.
Curiously enough, on going into the inn and turning over an album placed upon the table of the dining-room, for visitors to sign their names or write their opinions of the place in, I alighted upon the following gratuitous illustration of the moral aspects of the place. “If Nature taught men to look to Nature’s God, those who dwell amid lovely scenery should be the most pious. To-day a rustic wedding is held at this house. The bridegroom, a native of charming Selbourne, is already so tipsy he can scarcely stand (one o’clock p.m.); the brother is but a shade better, whilst the whole party are singing below uproariously, and certainly seem to have but little thought of Nature’s God.” Then follows a pithy sermon: “It is Grace, not Nature or external circumstances, which leads the sinner to the Saviour- C. L., October, 1859.”
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Gilbert White’s House at Selbourne.
My first impulse in visiting a place is to discover the highest rising ground or tower, and from such eminence to take a survey and acquire some faint knowledge of the topography. There could be no hesitation what to do, therefore, at Selbourne. No sooner had I stabled my horse and seen him fed, than I made my way to the top of the Hanger, up the zigzag path. The view amply repaid the trouble of the ascent.
I may observe here that the word Hanger is descriptive of a steep hill covered with trees. It is common throughout Hampshire, and even gives a name to the mansions of the private gentlemen—as, for example, Oakhanger, near Selbourne, and Mosshanger, near Basingstoke. The effect of these Hangers, especially when planted with beech, is exceedingly lovely, for the tree, whether individually, in groups, or forming a large wood, is graceful in the extreme. Whether clothed with leaves or bare, whether in summer or winter, in spring or autumn, the soft mass presents by its form and hues, a pleasing object in any landscape.
No wonder, then, that Selbourne attracts so many visitors, when it can boast of so magnificent a hill overlooking its quiet retreat. From the brow of this Hanger an extensive view is obtained. There are the hills to the south-west of Alton, on the road to Basingstoke; north-east are the magnificent Surrey Hills, stretching from Farnham to Guild ford, of which the Hogsback is the most celebrated; and to-east the south-west are seen the Sussex Downs—that giant barrier of chalk which lines the Channel coast. Immediately beneath, to the right, is that Black Heath, commonly called Woolmer Forest, formerly a wild, uncultivated tract, the pasture of innumerable herds of deer, and there, tradition asserts. Queen Anne on her way to Portsmouth enjoyed a stately battue. It still presents a vast unbroken expanse, and is made available by our military authorities for the purpose of an encampment. In fact, the white tents of the soldiers, seen in the far distance and glittering in the sunlight, add an exceedingly picturesque feature in summer to this view. .png)
Cottage below the Hanger at Selbourne.
The church of Selbourne is not a very modern structure, neither is it very old, though some parts of it, and especially the rude, thick, squat pillars which support the present edifice, bespeak an antiquity higher than the foundation of the priory, by Peter de la Roche, in the thirteenth century. It is a plain and simple rustic structure, with pointed windows, a quaint old porch, and square tower, coarsely stuccoed. On the south side it is overshadowed by a magnificent yew, upwards of thirty feet in girth, and whose massive bulk betokens its great age. One peculiarity about the church is, that this irregular fabric does not point to the east and west, but bears so much to the north-east that the four corners of the tower, and not the four sides, stand to the four cardinal points. Gilbert White attempts to account for this deviation by saying that the workmen, who probably were employed during the longest days, endeavoured to set the chancels to the rising of the sun.
Passing through the churchyard, a rapid descent leads into what is called the Dell of the Liths, a charming glen lined with fir and beech; at the bottom meanders a rippling rivulet, which in winter time doubtless becomes a riotous stream. At the further extremity of the Dell, a group of charcoal-burners were engaged in burning charcoal for the Farnham hop kilns, the curling smoke from the fires forming a no disagreeable object in the still air of the summer afternoon, although the acid and acrid odour emitted from the wood was anything but pleasant. In such quiet spots it was that Gilbert White loved to roam in search of the botanical curiosities of Selbourne, or watch the habits of the feathered tribes indigenous to the neighbourhood; and a more charming locality could scarcely be imagined. Had it no other name, it might well have been called the “Nightingale’s Valley,” or the “Cuckoo’s Walk,” for each of these birds revels in such secluded solitude as the woods of this pretty glen afford.
I have, however, yet to allude to one of the most remarkable features in the scenery of Selbourne—the deep dell-like lanes which here and there intersect the soil. White himself refers to them in the following passage:—
Among the singularities of this place, two rocky, hollow lanes, the one to Alton and the other to the Forest, deserve our attention. These roads, running through the meadow lands, are, by the traffic of ages and the fretting of wet, worn through the first stratum of our freestone, and partly through the second, so that they look more like water-courses than roads, and are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. In many places they are reduced sixteen or eighteen feet beneath the level of the fields, and after floods and in frosts exhibit a very grotesque and wild appearance, by reason of the tangled roots that are twisted among the strata, and from the torrents rushing down their broken sides, especially when those cascades are frozen into icicles hanging in all the fanciful shape of frost-work. These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the path above, and make timid horsemen shudder while they ride along them, but delight the naturalist with their various botany, and particularly with the curious filices with which they abound.
These lanes are most delightful promenades on a hot summer’s afternoon or evening, being sunk deep in the bed of the earth, and resembling far more the dried-up pathway of a torrent than a habitual roadway. A wooden bridge, thrown across one of these lanes, formed a picturesque feature, until its recent removal. Here, indeed, a naturalist may revel to his heart’s content. If these miniature chasms are gloomy, they abound in vegetation which delights in shade and moisture. The fern, the moss, the foxglove, the daphne, the wild strawberry, grasses of all kinds, tangled furze and thistles, and plants innumerable, which elsewhere would be weeds, but here appropriately adorn the garden of nature, literally mantle the banks on either side, whilst the trees which line their top thrust their roots down and in and out in the most fantastic shapes.
It is, however, to be regretted, that Selbourne and its neighbourhood are not better supplied with streams. With the exception of the Well Head, which is a perennial fountain, there is no real river to refresh the eye as it wanders over this beautiful scenery. After a storm of rain a thousand little channels are indeed filled with a temporary flood, but these soon ebb away, enjoying only a short tumultuous existence. No landscape can be said to be perfect without water. It is the beautiful meandering of the silvery Thames from Twickenham towards Kew that gives to the view from Richmond Hill so exquisite a charm; it is the absence of such an accessory that makes the visitor to Byron’s tomb in Harrow church-yard feel, whilst overlooking the fertile plain between him and Windsor, that something is wanting to perfect the picture.
Happily, it is only to the eye of the artist that this defect is palpably visible. Selbourne, to White, presented a thousand attractions; and to the lover of natural history it will present a thousand-and-one attractions, for it will have the additional charm of being associated with the name of its venerable son. I have not thought it necessary to dwell upon the biography of this illustrious man, for few are there who are unacquainted with its outlines. That he was born in the early part of the eighteenth century, and died in the year 1793; that he was educated at the Basingstoke Grammar School, under the superintendence of Dr. Thomas Warton, the father of the celebrated author of the “History of Music;” that he graduated at Oxford, and that he had the gateway of preferment open to him, but chose the quiet retirement of Selbourne, in order that he might carry on his favourite studies there—these are facts so generally known, that I have not thought it necessary to dwell upon them. His letters to Mr. Pennant and the Honourable Daines Barrington afford an admirable insight into his mind, his love of nature, and his manner of life; and what could I say to enhance his reputation which he has not already bequeathed to posterity in the monument which he has unconsciously raised to his quiet fame?
Yet the celebrity which Gilbert White has attained affords a striking lesson. It is a remarkable instance of what may be achieved by quiet observation and perseverance. When penning his letters, White knew not that he was constructing for himself a niche in the Temple of Fame. He minutely investigated Nature in her outward attributes; he jotted down his notes to a friend, scarcely regarding the style in which he poured forth his information, though that style shows him to have been an elegant scholar; and, without any special effort on his part, he has won the ear of thousands and tens of thousands whom he had not the most remote idea his epistles would ever reach. How unlike those who strive by night and by day, with severe toil and ceaseless assiduity, to acquire a bubble reputation in order that they may shine before men!