andover

the road between this point and andover, ascending the high ground between the ann and the test, is utterly without interest, and brings the traveller down into the town at the south side of the market square without any inducement to linger on the way. except on the saturday market-day, andover is given over to a dreamy quiet. the butchers’ dogs lie blinking sleepily on the thresholds, or on the kerbs, and regard with a pained surprise, rather than with any active resentment, the intrusive passage of a stray customer. tradesmen’s assistants leisurely open casual crates of goods on the pavements, with long intervals for gossip between the drawing of each nail,{133} and no one objects to the blocking of the footpath. a chance cyclist man?uvres in the empty void of the road in the midst of the square, and collides with no one, for the simple reason that there is nobody to collide with, and one acquaintance talks to another across the wide space and is distinctly heard. formal but not unpleasing houses front on to this square, together with the usual town hall, and a great modern, highly uninteresting gothic church, erected after the model of salisbury cathedral, on the site of the old building.

for fifty-one weeks of the fifty-two that comprise the year, this is the weekly six-days aspect of the place, varied occasionally by the advent of a travelling circus, or the arrival of a route-marching detachment of the royal artillery, who park their guns in the square, and may be seen in the stable-yards of the inns on which they are billeted, in various stages of dishevelment, in shirt-sleeves rolled up to elbows, and braces dangling at waists, littering down their horses, or smoking very short and very foul pipes.

all this idyllic quiet is blown to the winds during the week of weyhill fair, the october pandemonium held three and a half miles away. then hordes of cattle-and horse-jobbers, hop growers and buyers, cheese-factors, and the travellers of firms dealing in machinery, seeds, oil-cake, tarpaulins, and half a hundred other everyday agricultural requisites, descend upon the town. then are dragged out from mysterious receptacles the most antiquated of ‘flys,’ and waggonettes, and nondescript vehicles, to be pressed into the service of conveying visitors to the{134} fair, some three and a half miles from the town. whence they come, and where they are hidden away afterwards, is more than the stranger can tell, but it is quite certain that their retreat is in some corner where spiders dwell, and earwigs and other weird insects have a home. add to these facts the all-important one that it is generally possible to walk the distance in a shorter time, and you have a full portraiture of the average weyhill conveyance.

this sleepy old place, older by many more centuries than the oldest house remaining here can give any hint of, was not always so quiet. there were alarums and excursions (ending, however, with not so much as a cut finger) when james the second, falling back from salisbury before the advance of his son-in-law, william of orange, halted here. there might have been a battle in andover’s streets, or under the shadow of bury hill, had james put a bolder front on the business; but instead of cutting up william’s dutchmen, he just dined overnight, and hearing in the morning that his other son-in-law, prince george of denmark, had slunk off with lords ormond and drumlanrig, went off himself, strategically to the rear. he was an obstinate and ridiculous bigot, and a quite unlovable monarch, but he had a power of sarcasm. ‘what,’ said he, hearing of the prince’s desertion, and bitterly mimicking the absurd intonation of that recreant’s french catch-phrase, ‘is “est-il possible?” gone too? truly, a good trooper would have been a greater loss.’

old elections

after these events, that era of bribery and corruption set in, which is mistakenly supposed to have{135} been brought to an end through the agency of the several reform acts, passed by well-meaning legislatures to secure the purity of parliamentary elections. as if treating, and the crossing of horny hands with gold were the only ways of corrupting a constituency that the wit of man, or the address of a candidate, could discover! the palm no longer receives the coin; but who has not heard of the modern art of ‘nursing a constituency,’ by which the candidate, eager for parliamentary honours, sits down before a town, or a county division, subscribes liberally to hospitals and horticultural societies, cricket and football clubs, opens bazaars, and presides at young men’s christian associations, thereby winning the votes which would in other days have been acquired by palming the men and kissing all the babies? this tea-fight business gives us no picturesque situations like that in which charles james fox figured. fox was canvassing personally, and called upon one of the bluff and blunt order of voters, who listened to his eloquence, and remarked, ‘sir, i admire your abilities, but damn your principles!’ to which fox supplied the obvious retort, ‘sir, i admire your sincerity, but damn your manners!’

andover no longer sends a representative to parliament, but in the brave old days it elected two. with a knowledge of the wholesale purchasing of votes that then went on, it will readily be perceived that andover, with two members to elect, must have been a place flowing with milk and honey; or, less metaphorically, a happy hunting-ground for guineas and free drinks. it was somewhere about a hundred{136} and fifty years ago that sir francis blake delaval, a prominent rake and practical humorist of the period, was canvassing andover. one voter amid the venal herd was, to all appearance, proof against all temptations. money, wine, place, flattery had no seductions for this stoic. the baffled candidate was beside himself in his endeavours to discover the man’s weak point; for of course it was an age in which votes were so openly bought and sold that the saying ‘every man has his price’ was implicitly believed. only what was this particular voter’s figure? strange to say, he had no weakness for money, but was possessed with an inordinate desire to see a fire-eater, and doubted if there existed people endowed with that remarkable power. ‘off went delaval to london, and returned with angelo in a post-chaise. angelo exerted all his genius. fire poured from his mouth and nostrils—fire which melted that iron nature, and sent it off cheerfully to poll for delaval!’

this was that same delaval whose attorney sent him the following bill of costs after one of his contests:—

to being thrown out of the window of the george inn, andover; to my leg being thereby broken; to surgeon’s bill, and loss of time and business; all in the service of sir francis delaval, ￡500.

and cheap too.

practical joking

they kept this sort of thing up for many years; not always, however, throwing solicitors out of hotel windows; although rival political factions often expressed their determination to throw one another’s candidate in the anton, after the fashion of the bills{137} posted in the town during a contest in the ’40’s, which announced in displayed type—

lord huntingtower for ever!

sir john pollen in the river!!

catching fish for his lordship’s dinner!!!

history does not satisfy us on the point whether or not those furious partisans carried out their threat; or whether, if they did, their victim afforded good bait.

this lord huntingtower was the eldest son of the late earl of dysart, and a well-matched companion of the late marquis of waterford. roaming the country-side on dark nights, mounted on stilts, with sheets over their clothes and hollowed turnips on their heads with scooped-out holes for eyes and mouth, and lit with candles, they frightened many a timid rustic out of his dull wits. in daytime they played practical jokes on the tradesfolk of andover. for example, entering a little general shop in the town, lord huntingtower asked for a pound of treacle. ‘where shall i put it?’ asked the old woman who kept the shop, seeing that the usual basin was not forthcoming.

‘p-pup-pup-put it in my hat,’ said my lord, who stuttered in yard-lengths, holding out his ‘topper.’ the pound of treacle was accordingly poured into the lincoln and bennett, and the next instant it was on the shopkeeper’s head.

this was the manner in which lord huntingtower endeared himself to the people—those, that is to say, who were not the victims of his pleasantries.{138}

that kind of person is quite extinct now. they should have (but unfortunately they have not) a stuffed specimen in the natural history museum at south kensington; because he is numbered with the dodo, the plesiosaurus, and the mastodon. the marquis of winchester who flourished at the same period as my lords huntingtower and waterford was of the same stamp. he had the fiery port countenance which was the sign of the three-bottle man, and his life and the deeds that he did are still fondly remembered at andover, for his country-house was at amport, in the immediate neighbourhood. he was the premier marquis of england, and although up to his neck in mortgages and writs, an extremely great personage. let us, therefore, take our hats off as humbly as we know how to do.

when he was at his country-place he worshipped at the little village church of amport. sometimes he did not worship, but slept, lulled off to the land of nod by the roaring fire he kept in his room-like pew. on one occasion it chanced that he was wide awake, and, like the illustrious sir roger de coverley, leant upon the door of that pew, and gazed around to satisfy himself that all his tenantry were present. then an awful thing happened, the hinges of the door broke, and it fell with a great clatter to the ground, and the marquis with it. he said ‘damn!’ with great fervour and unction, and everybody laughed. no one thought it—as they should have done—shocking, which shows the depravity of the age.

the marquis and the squire

there is no doubt whatever about that depravity, which, like the worm in the bud, has wrought ruin{139} among our manners since then. how sad it is that we are not now content to call upon providence to

bless the squire and his relations

and keep us in our proper stations;

but are all too intent upon ‘getting on,’ to defer to rank, or take a spell at the delightful occupations of tuft-hunting and boot-licking! even in those days this horrid decadence had begun to manifest itself, as you will see by the story of this same marquis and mr. assheton smith of tedworth park. mr. smith could (as the saying goes) have ‘bought up’ the impoverished marquis of winchester several times over, and not have felt any strain upon his resources. moreover, he was a squire of great consideration in these parts, and as master of the tedworth hunt, something of a rival in importance. for which things, and more, the marquis hated him, and on one occasion took an opportunity of reproving him publicly before the whole field, in the fine florid language of which he had so ready a command. possibly mr. smith had committed the unpardonable indignity of showing my lord the way over a particularly stiff fence he was hesitating at. at any rate the language of the premier marquis was violent, and contained some reference to the disparity between their respective ranks. but the squire was ready with his retort. he said, ‘anyhow, i’d sooner be a rich squire than a poor marquis!’ the field smiled, because the reduced circumstances of the marquis of winchester had been notorious ever since his father had been secretly buried at midnight in the family{140} vault at amport, for fear the bailiffs should seize the body for debt.

there are, for good or ill, no such sportsmen nowadays as there were in the times before railways came and brought more competition into existence, making life a business and a struggle, instead of the light-hearted and irresponsible game that the sporting squires at least found it. noble sportsmen do not nowadays, when detained by stress of weather in a country inn, while away the tedium of the afternoon by backing the raindrops racing down the window-panes and betting fortunes on the result. no, that very real bogey, ‘agricultural depression,’ has stopped that kind of full-blooded prank, and the titled in these progressive times find their account on the ‘front page’ of company-promoters’ swindles instead. they barter good names for gold, and lick the boots of wealthy rogues, instead of kicking their bodies. where their fathers scorned to go the sons delight to be. would the fathers have done the like had ‘agricultural depression’ come earlier?

the noblemen and the sporting squires of old lived in one mad whirl of excitement. they gambled on every incident in their lives, and sometimes even on their death-beds; like the old gamester who, when the doctor told him he would be dead the next morning, offered to bet him that he would not! we are not told whether or not the medical man backed his professional opinion.

old sportsmen

one of the most illuminating side-lights on these truly corinthian folk is the story which tells how lord albert conyngham and that classic sportsman,{141} mr. george payne, were travelling from london to poole by post-chaise in the last decade of the coaching days—that is to say, between 1830 and 1840. they found the journey tedious, and so played écarté, in which they grew so interested that they continued playing all day and into the night, the chaise being lit with the aid of a patent lamp which mr. payne always took with him on a long journey. the play was high; ￡100 a game, with bets on knaves and sequences, and had been continued with varying success, until when they were passing in the darkness of night through the new forest, mr. payne, who had been a heavy loser for some time, had a run of luck. in midst of this exciting play the post-boy, who, in the secluded glades of the forest, had managed to lose the road, stopped the chaise and, dismounting, tapped at the window. but so engrossed were the two travellers in the cards that they had not noticed that the conveyance was standing still, and the post-boy stood tapping there for a long while before he was heard.

‘what on earth do you want?’ angrily asked the winning gambler, indignant at this interruption.

‘please, sir,’ replied the post-boy, ‘i’ve lost my way.’

‘then,’ rejoined mr. payne, pulling up the window with a bang, ‘come and tell us when you’ve found it, and be damned to you!’