The ‘Bedfont Peacocks,’ as they are called, are not so perfect as they were when first cut in 1704, for the trimming of them was long neglected, and these curiously clipped evergreens require constant attention. The date on one side, and the churchwardens’ initials of the period on the other, once standing out boldly, are now only to be discerned by the Eye of Faith. The story of the Peacocks is that they were cut at the costs and charges of a former inhabitant of the village, who, proposing in turn to two sisters also living here, was scornfully refused by them. They were, says the legend, ‘as proud as peacocks,’ and the mortified suitor chose this spiteful method of typifying the fact. Of course, the story was retailed to travellers on passing through Bedfont by every coachman and guard; nor, indeed, would it be at all surprising to learn that they, in fact, really invented it, for they were masters in the art of romancing. So the Fame of the Peacocks grew. An old writer at once celebrates them, and the then landlord of the ‘Black Dog,’ in the rather neat verse:-- Harvey, whose inn commands a view Of Bedfont’s church and churchyard too, Where yew-trees into peacock’s shorn, In vegetable torture mourn. [Illustration: EAST BEDFONT.] At length they were immortalised by Hood, the elder, in a quite serious poem:-- Where erst two haughty maidens used to be, In pride of plume, where plumy Death hath trod, Trailing their gorgeous velvet wantonly, Most unmeet pall, over the holy sod; There, gentle stranger, thou may’st only see Two sombre peacocks. Age, with sapient nod, Marking the spot, still tarries to declare How once they lived, and wherefore they are there. Alas! that breathing vanity should go Where pride is buried; like its very ghost, Unrisen from the naked bones below, In novel flesh, clad in the silent boast Of gaudy silk that flutters to and fro, Shedding its chilling superstition most On young and ignorant natures as is wont To haunt the peaceful churchyard of Bedfont! If any one can unravel the sense from the tangled lines of the second verse,--as obscure as some of Browning’s poetry--let him account himself clever. The ‘Black Dog,’ once the halting-place of the long extinct ‘Driving Club,’ of which the late Duke of Beaufort was a member, has recently been demolished. A large villa stands on the site of it, at the corner of the Green, as the village is left behind. [Sidenote: _STAINES_] The flattest of flat, and among the straightest of straight, roads is this which runs from East Bedfont into Staines. That loyal bard, John Taylor, the ‘Water Poet,’ was along this route on his way to the Isle of Wight in 1647. He started from the ‘Rose,’ in Holborn, on Thursday, 19th October, in the Southampton coach:--