en of
Dorking. Another battle, an extra rumour or two, might have filled the
breaches with the dauntless subjects of King George. Happily, that cloud
vanished.

Round the camps and the battlefields of the heights of Leith Hill and
Holmbury cluster the names of wilder enemies than man. Bearhurst, Boars'
Hill and Wolf's Hill belong to the neighbourhood, and members of the
Surrey Archaeological Society have heard Mr. Malden discourse incisively
on the scavengers' work after the battle of Ockley, when the West Saxons
buried their dead, and there were no Danes left alive to bury theirs.

Leith Hill has another curious record of an animal. On July 27, 1876, a
tourist walking over the hill trod upon a snake, which bit him; he
managed to get to Ockley, but died in two days. The interest of the
record is that Mr. J.S. Bright, the historian of Dorking, says that the
snake was a black adder, _Coronella laevis_, while Mr. Boulenger, in his
list of Surrey snakes does not admit that the _Coronella laevis_ has
ever occurred in the county.

From Anstiebury the old high road runs steep to Dorking--a road of later
memories of sudden death than British battles. On a gallows at the foot
of the hill three highwaymen once hung in chains. A house has been built
upon the very spot.

[Illustration: _Looking towards Dorking from Westcott._]

CHAPTER XXXI

DORKING TO REIGATE

Nicknames.--Anastasius Hope.--Deepdene.--Mr. Howard's
Garden.--Betchworth Chestnuts and Castle.--Brockham badgers.--The
Straw-yards.--Bakers among the roses.--Leigh: Lie.--Leigh
Place.--Ardernes and Copleys.--Sir Thomas's notion of a
Gentleman.--Buckland's barn.

Of three dull nicknames, stuck like burrs on the mantles of Dorking's
prophets, the dullest and prosiest has stuck to the richest.
"Conversation" is a pretty severe burden for a man named plain Richard
Sharp to carry; the hideousness of the baulked elision of "Sylva" Evelyn
sets the teeth on edge (he developed into "Sylvie" as well as "Silver"
Evelyn, poor man); "Capability" Brown, the gardener, must have been
buttonholed by a thousand bores; but "Anastasius" Hope is beyond
tolerance. How should such a name be endured? Thomas Hope endured it. He
was the owner of Deepdene, the great house and garden and park a mile
west of Dorking, property that once belonged to the Howards, and in
particular to the ninth Duke of Norfolk. His father was a vastly wealthy
Amsterdam merchant, he hi