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CHAPTER XII.

SHOTTERMILL.

1862. AGE 34.

ROOKBANK Cottage stands upon the summit of a steep little Surrey hill, at the base of which flows a brook; crossing it, the pedestrian must imagine himself in Sussex, or if he linger upon the bridge and look to the right he faces Hampshire, and half a mile of the stream's course will bring him into that county.

Shottermill is a mile from Haslemere, once a coaching town, en route for Portsmouth and London; and also one of the rotten boroughs. In 1862 Haslemere was still a cosy little town, at whose principal shop might have been bought most commodities ranging from a watering-pot to a ham! This was a shop managed by one Clarke; a barber, who, when tugging at a customer's hair, would give advice as to what not to do in gardening; for instance, not to dig snow into the ground as he had once done to his cost, how nothing throve that year owing to the lowered temperature of the earth.

Clarke had a word to say about the famous Hind Head murder-of his conversation with the barber who met the two murderers at the Devil's Punch Bowl

how that barber sidled near the ditch as the two men approached, and was asked roughly, 'What are you afraid of, man?' to which he replied with show of effrontery, 'I aint a-fear'd,' adding to his listener, ‘If ever I told a lie in my life, that was one.'

The murder happened in this manner. Three sailors were making their way to London from Portsmouth, but at Liphook, E. Cafey and J. Marshall spent their last shilling in drink, and at night on reaching Hind Head just where the grass sloped smoothly into the middle of the Bowl,' these two sailors fell upon their companion, robbed and then dragged his body some way down the green sward into the Bowl. E. Cafey and J. Marshall were caught, sentenced, and hanged; their bones gleam on the gibbet in Turner's print of Hind Head Hill.

How often Dickens must have walked and 'posted' along the Portsmouth road, is known by his description of it in Nicholas Nickleby :-" They walked upon the rim of the Devil's Punch Bowl; and Smike listened with greedy interest as Nicholas read the inscription upon the stone, which, reared upon that wild spot, tells of a murder committed there by night. The grass on which they stood, had once been dyed with gore; and the blood of the murdered man had run down drop by drop, into the hollow which gives the place its name. The Devil's Bowl,' thought Nicholas, as he looked into the void, never held fitter liquor than that!'"

The inimitable Dickens hits off the character of this part of the county with a touch: we quote again from Nicholas :

"Onward they kept [Nicholas and Smike], with

THE DEVIL'S PUNCHBOWL.

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steady purpose, and entered at length upon a wide and spacious tract of downs, with every variety of little hill and plain to change their verdant surface. Here, there shot up, almost perpendicularly, into the sky, a height so steep as to be hardly accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides; and there, stood a mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other; and undulations, shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side, bounded the view in each direction; while frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose from the ground a flight of crows, which cawing and wheeling round the nearest hills, as if uncertain of their course, suddenly poised themselves upon the wing and skimmed down the long vista of some opening valley, with the speed of light itself."

Portsmouth-road, in coaching days, must have been a pretty sight at one o'clock, at which time the coaches crossed each other at the Bowl-post-chaises, horsemen, horns winding, vendors crying, and numbers of little children running barefooted alongside the coaches, throwing nosegays, made of purple and white heather, broom and whortle-berries, at the passengers, and catching coppers in return.

Now and again, at night, a portmanteau would be stolen; one containing a quantity of gold was so cut off a post-chaise by a man named Pimm, who invested his ill-gotten coin in purchasing land; he built two paper-mills at Barford, a beautiful steep valley; but

the mills never prospered, one reason being their inaccessibility.

There is no such country as the borders of Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire, for long varied country rambles. In 1862, Shottermill was quite primitive, a time when the pedestrian after tramping to the bottom of the Bowl was rewarded by a sight of the Osmunda growing gloriously.

And who so well qualified to enjoy these walks as the subject of our Memoir? An old friend, Walter White, speaks of these rambles with Anne Gilchrist. She was very fond of walking. The movement, the air and sunshine, the aspects of nature, brought out her bright points, and animated her conversation. Many

"

a walk have I had with her across the breezy heaths, and into the deep lanes of Guildford and Haslemere. She liked to linger where a gate opened a prospect, and there talk our subject out.

"Heartiness, that made you at once feel at home, was the prevailing characteristic of her hospitality, especially when illumined by a crackling wood fire. And she seemed never better pleased than when a visitor took her by surprise."

CHAPTER XIII.

LETTER FROM DANTE GABRIEL

M

ROSSETTI.

1862-1863. AGE 34-35.

RS. GABRIEL ROSSETTI died in February, 1862. Dante Rossetti writes about his loss March 2nd, from 45, Upper Albany Street:

"My dear Mrs. Gilchrist: I thank you sincerely in my turn for the words of sorrow and sympathy, which, coming from you, seem more terribly real than any I have received. I remember clearly the mistrustful feeling of insufficiency with which I sat down to write to you so short a time ago, and know now what it is both to write and to receive even the sincerest words at such a time.

"I have now to be thankful for obligations connected with my work which were a source of anxiety before; for without them it seems to me that I could never work again. But I already begin to find the inactive moments the most unbearable, and must hope for the power, as I feel most surely the necessity, of working steadily without delay. Of my dear wife I do not dare to speak now, nor to attempt any vain conjecture

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