Commonplace 137 George & England PART TWO: Surrey.
George lived in several English towns, but he probably always aspired to a home in Surrey click. In the late 1800s, Surrey was all beautiful rolling hills (some of these known as Downs) and dense woodland, with the benefit of being close enough to London for commuting, and far enough away from the 'Smoke' to be free of the filth and disease of a typical over-populated metropolis. George enjoyed countryside walks and amateur botany, and was always on the hunt for the perfect soil on which to live - click to check out Surrey's geological conditions - but probably one of the most compelling reasons to seek out a Surrey address was that some of the UK's most celebrated, popular and rich authors had chosen that county for their stately homes.
The Roman road of Stane (aka Stone) Street runs through Surrey from London to Chichester on the south coast of West Sussex. Henry VIII built his ill-fated Nonsuch Palace near Epsom click. Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede... which reminds me of the old Christmas cracker joke: Q: Where was Magna Carta signed? A: at the bottom. The Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard (1517-1547), a poet, soldier, patriot and courtier to Henry VIII is a towering presence of the English Renaissance, and gave us almost single-handedly, the sonnet form. Played here with bravura by Glaswegian David O'Hara click.
So, who followed after Surrey to live in...Surrey? And where did they live? And were any of them associated with George? Of course some of them were.
I am grateful to the late Robert M Cooper for his quaint 'The Literary Guide to Southern England'; Mr Cooper was allegedly born in Manchester, though here click he writes this about a companion publication:
'This book was written for the person who unabashedly loves travel, loves England, and loves English literature. In short, for somebody remarkably like the person I was when I began to plan my first trip to Britain and looked for just such a book.' Hmm...
Burford Bridge:
There is that famous story of George attending the meeting of the Omar Khyyam Club at the Burford Bridge Hotel near Dorking held to celebrate the life of Meredith, where the old man who was frail and too ill for much revelry, acknowledged George by personally stopping to greet him - probably the highest point of peer respect George ever enjoyed. Subsequently, George went to tea at Meredith's Box Hill place many times, sometimes uninvited.
Mickleham was the 'Box Hill' where lived George Meredith, in a house named Flint Cottage. Box Hill is a much more historic place than might be expected click and click.
Dorking: Meredith's ashes were buried with those of his wife in Dorking cemetery in 1909. In 1871, 'The Battle of Dorking' was fought in the pages of the novella by George Tomkyns Chesney, one of a raft of 'Invasion' novels telling of England's vulnerabilities click. Was this an influence on HG Wells? Or to Robert Harris in 'Fatherland' (1992) click, or Ridley Scott and 'The Man In The High Castle' (2015) click.
For George, before Dorking, there was Epsom...
Epsom: click to find out more of its, and Surrey's, affection for George. Not exactly a reliable account, but I blame the sources more than the author of this piece.
Epsom is also famous for its salts click. What an interesting product, useful for treating many ailments including indigestion (a George default complaint), for improving soil, and to ease the pain of sore muscles. It is found in saline springs nearby to the town, where the chalk of the South Downs meets the London clay - a nightmare of geology for those choosing to live for crackpot reasons on the 'right' soil.
As everyone knows, limestone is composed of fossilised marine organisms, indicating the area was once submerged under a watery world. The writer JG Ballard (1930-2009) (a personal favourite of mine) click, who some might think of as a modern Wells, wrote 'The Drowned World' (1962) when he moved to Shepperton, Surrey, the place he remained in for the rest of his life.
Is there something about Surrey that works on the mind of the wordsmith?? Jane Austen, Ian McEwan and JK Rowling have all written books with settings or characters associated with the county. George brings it into 'The Whirlpool', 'In The Year of Jubilee', 'Our Friend The Charlatan', and 'The Paying Guest'. And, Surrey was George's last residence in England before he sailed for France. When he was nostalgic for England, would it have been the back streets of Wakefield, or the leafy lanes of Surrey in his mind's eye?
George lived in several English towns, but he probably always aspired to a home in Surrey click. In the late 1800s, Surrey was all beautiful rolling hills (some of these known as Downs) and dense woodland, with the benefit of being close enough to London for commuting, and far enough away from the 'Smoke' to be free of the filth and disease of a typical over-populated metropolis. George enjoyed countryside walks and amateur botany, and was always on the hunt for the perfect soil on which to live - click to check out Surrey's geological conditions - but probably one of the most compelling reasons to seek out a Surrey address was that some of the UK's most celebrated, popular and rich authors had chosen that county for their stately homes.
The Roman road of Stane (aka Stone) Street runs through Surrey from London to Chichester on the south coast of West Sussex. Henry VIII built his ill-fated Nonsuch Palace near Epsom click. Magna Carta was signed at Runnymede... which reminds me of the old Christmas cracker joke: Q: Where was Magna Carta signed? A: at the bottom. The Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard (1517-1547), a poet, soldier, patriot and courtier to Henry VIII is a towering presence of the English Renaissance, and gave us almost single-handedly, the sonnet form. Played here with bravura by Glaswegian David O'Hara click.
 |
| Henry Howard, the Earl of Surrey. Attributed to William Scrots 1546. click In proto-type cycling shorts, flanked by heraldic hoverboards? |
I am grateful to the late Robert M Cooper for his quaint 'The Literary Guide to Southern England'; Mr Cooper was allegedly born in Manchester, though here click he writes this about a companion publication:
'This book was written for the person who unabashedly loves travel, loves England, and loves English literature. In short, for somebody remarkably like the person I was when I began to plan my first trip to Britain and looked for just such a book.' Hmm...
Anyhoo...
Amongst those literary figures linked to Surrey and to George (albeit tenuously!), are:
Staines is linked to Dr Thomas Arnold, father of Matthew Arnold. The Dr was headmaster at
Rugby public school (public school in the UK means privately run as in expensive fee-paying) where Thomas Hughes click was a pupil. Hughes wrote 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' and went to Tennessee to start the colony that Eduard Bertz, George's man-wife, briefly lived click.
Farnham: JM Barrie and his wife lived in Black Lake Cottage, near to Farnham. They should have taken its name as a sign, because they fell out over an affair she had and JM Barrie divorced her, acrimoniously to the max. George was very drawn to Mrs Barrie himself, and once commented that he didn't know how such a stunner could be married to a weed like Barrie. George, ever the judge of female horseflesh, eh? haha.
Woking: HG Wells lived at 143, Maybury Road. As covered in previous Commonplaces.
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| Woking's love of HG made into a War of the Worlds sculpture. |
There is that famous story of George attending the meeting of the Omar Khyyam Club at the Burford Bridge Hotel near Dorking held to celebrate the life of Meredith, where the old man who was frail and too ill for much revelry, acknowledged George by personally stopping to greet him - probably the highest point of peer respect George ever enjoyed. Subsequently, George went to tea at Meredith's Box Hill place many times, sometimes uninvited.
 |
| The Burford Bridge Hotel - needs a blue plaque? click |
Meredith had lived in other Surrey locations, most of them off the A3, the link between London and Portsmouth, Meredith's shameful to him birthplace, only about an hour down the road. When at Box Hill, where he lived for nearly forty years, Meredith entertained many noted literary figures, including Thomas Hardy (George was jealous of him and mentioned Mrs Hardy's husband-baiting), Alphonse Daudet (George admired and liked his work), and Arthur Conan Doyle, JM Barrie. RL Stevenson (George admitted his harsh criticism of Stevenson was pure jealousy) Henry James (who kind of admired George's writings) and Edith Wharton.
Dorking: Meredith's ashes were buried with those of his wife in Dorking cemetery in 1909. In 1871, 'The Battle of Dorking' was fought in the pages of the novella by George Tomkyns Chesney, one of a raft of 'Invasion' novels telling of England's vulnerabilities click. Was this an influence on HG Wells? Or to Robert Harris in 'Fatherland' (1992) click, or Ridley Scott and 'The Man In The High Castle' (2015) click.
Epsom: click to find out more of its, and Surrey's, affection for George. Not exactly a reliable account, but I blame the sources more than the author of this piece.
Epsom is also famous for its salts click. What an interesting product, useful for treating many ailments including indigestion (a George default complaint), for improving soil, and to ease the pain of sore muscles. It is found in saline springs nearby to the town, where the chalk of the South Downs meets the London clay - a nightmare of geology for those choosing to live for crackpot reasons on the 'right' soil.
As everyone knows, limestone is composed of fossilised marine organisms, indicating the area was once submerged under a watery world. The writer JG Ballard (1930-2009) (a personal favourite of mine) click, who some might think of as a modern Wells, wrote 'The Drowned World' (1962) when he moved to Shepperton, Surrey, the place he remained in for the rest of his life.
Is there something about Surrey that works on the mind of the wordsmith?? Jane Austen, Ian McEwan and JK Rowling have all written books with settings or characters associated with the county. George brings it into 'The Whirlpool', 'In The Year of Jubilee', 'Our Friend The Charlatan', and 'The Paying Guest'. And, Surrey was George's last residence in England before he sailed for France. When he was nostalgic for England, would it have been the back streets of Wakefield, or the leafy lanes of Surrey in his mind's eye?
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