174 COACHING DAYS AND COACHING WAYS 



houses as old as the Anchor on the great roads, some 

 too on this very Portsmouth Road that I am speaking 

 of, have had as full a tide of history fill their state 

 rooms and flood their broad corridors as the famous inn 

 at Liphook can boast of. But where is this history 

 now ? It is simply gone for want of being garnered. 



Not so at the Anchor ; where, thanks to a decent care 

 for memorials of the past, and to a respect for that 

 Romance which is becoming so extremely unfashion- 

 able, we are able to meet in the imagination a whole 

 crowd of distinguished guests of all centuries and all 

 ranks — kings, queens, statesmen, admirals, soldiers, 

 down to clerks in the Admiralty in the person of 

 Samuel Pepys ; who having lost his way at Cobham 

 on his way to Guildford, as already chronicled ; and 

 having dined at Guildford and congratulated himself 

 and his wife on having found it ; lost it again coming 

 over Hindhead on his way to Liphook, and arrived at 

 the Anchor at ten o'clock on August 6, 1668 — exceed- 

 ingly tremulous about highwaymen and in company 

 with an old man, whom he had procured for a guide. 

 " Here, good honest people," he writes. " And after 

 supper, to bed." I can imagine that succulent supper 

 well, taken with an appetite whetted by a long ride in 

 moorland air, and flavoured with an agreeable recollec- 

 tion of past perils safely surmounted. I can imagine 

 also the sound sleep which fell afterwards on the amiable 

 Samuel ; and the nightmares, graphically representing 

 coaches standing on their heads with their occupants 

 inside them, which, to break the monotony of a too 

 perfect repose, passed now and then under his cotton 

 night-cap. 



But more celebrated people than the theatre-loving 

 clerk of the Admiralty (was he a dramatic critic I 

 wonder like all Admiralty clerks now ?) stayed at the 

 Anchor, and before his time. Edward the Second was 

 hunting in Woolmer Forest continually ; and unless he 

 liked camping out on marshy heaths, probably put up 



