No parish church is more difficult to drive up to than St. Andrew's at Farnham. If you know the way you can come to a corner of the churchyard by a side street, but Farnham goes to church chiefly by alleys and footpaths. The churchyard is more striking than the church, much of which is new. The thick turf, shaven and level, runs to the foot of mossy brick walls; an avenue of pollarded elms leads from the south door; all round stand little, old red houses. Six o'clock on a sunny autumn evening is the time to wait in Farnham churchyard. Every three hours the mellow, feeble bells ring a chime which suits September twilight:-- "Life let us cherish While yet the taper glows, And the fresh floweret Pluck ere it close. Away with every toil and care, And cease the rankling thorn to wear; With manful hearts life's conflict meet, Till Death sounds the retreat." Vernon House, a Tudor building changed from its old name, Culver Hall, and altered so as to front on West Street, has an unhappy memory of the Parliament wars. Charles the First lodged there one December night, a closely guarded prisoner on his way from Hurst Castle to Windsor. A month later he was to leave Windsor for Whitehall. He had little to give his host, and gave him all he had. It was a white morning cap of quilted silk, which Mr. George Vernon, inheriting from his grandfather, left in 1732 to his grandson, "desiring it may always go to the next heir male of my family, as a testimony of our steadfast loyalty and adherence to the Crown, which is the only bounty my family ever received for all the losses and expenses they sustained for the royal cause, which amounted to several thousands of pounds." [Illustration: _In Farnham Churchyard._] I had nearly forgotten Farnham's painter. He was Stephen Elmer, and a picture of his, "The Last Supper," hangs in the church tower. But his forte was painting fish and game, dead and alive. In a curious old pamphlet, "_The Earwig, or An Old Woman's Remarks on the present Exhibition of Pictures of the Royal Academy--a critical pamphlet published in Fleet Street_, 1781, I find the following entries. Of the painters and subjects, Mr. Elmer and Mrs. Robinson belong to Surrey. The rest supply the setting:-- "10. Thais--Sir Joshua Reynolds, R.A.--The face was painted from the famous Emily Bertie ... It was a cruel _snouch_ in the Painter, a fine Girl having paid him seventy-five guineas for an hour's work, and being unable to pay for the other half of her portrait, to exhibit her with such a sarcastic allusion to her private life--to call her Thais--to put a torch in her hand, and direct her to set flames to the temple of Chastity. Such rigorous punishment seldom is inflicted by a rich man on a pretty woman, merely from her want of money. 79. Damn'd bad. 106. Mrs. Mahon in the character of Elvira--J. Roberts.--Painting, painted.