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_Highways and Byways in Sussex_
BY E. V. LUCAS
WITH . ILLUSTRATIONS . BY
FREDERICK L. GRIGGS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1921
_COPYRIGHT._
_First Edition printed February 1904._
_Reprinted, April 1904, 1907, 1912, 1919, 1921._
[Illustration: _The Barbican, Lewes Castle._ _Frontispiece._]
PREFACE
Readers who are acquainted with the earlier volumes of this series will
not need to be told that they are less guide-books than appreciations of
the districts with which they are concerned. In the pages that follow my
aim has been to gather a Sussex bouquet rather than to present the facts
which the more practical traveller requires.
The order of progress through the country has been determined largely by
the lines of railway. I have thought it best to enter Sussex in the west
at Midhurst, making that the first centre, and to zig-zag thence across
to the east by way of Chichester, Arundel, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton
(I name only the chief centres), Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Lewes,
Eastbourne, Hailsham, Hastings, Rye, and Tunbridge Wells; leaving the
county finally at Withyham, on the borders of Ashdown Forest. For the
traveller in a carriage or on a bicycle this route is not the best; but
for those who would explore it slowly on foot (and much of the more
characteristic scenery of Sussex can be studied only in this way), with
occasional assistance from the train, it is, I think, as good a scheme
as any.
I do not suggest that it is necessary for the reader who travels through
Sussex to take the same route: he would probably prefer to cover the
county literally strip by strip--the Forest strip from Tunbridge Wells
to Horsham, the Weald strip from Billingshurst to Burwash, the Downs
strip from Racton to Beachy Head--rather than follow my course, north to
south, and south to north, across the land. But the book is, I think,
the gainer by these tangents, and certainly its author is happier, for
they bring him again and again back to the Downs.
It is impossible at this date to write about Sussex, in accordance with
the plan of the present series, without saying a great many things that
others have said before, and without making use of the historians of the
county. To the collections of the Sussex Archaeological Society I am
greatly indebted; also to Mr. J. G. Bishop's _Peep into the Past_, and
to Mr. W. D. Parish's _Dictionary of the Sussex Dialect_. Many other
works are mentioned in the text.
The history, archaeology, and natural history of the county have been
thoroughly treated by various writers; but there are, I have noticed,
fewer books than there should be upon Sussex men and women. Carlyle's
saying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish
(which one might amend to the history of his parishioners) has borne too
little fruit in our district; nor have lay observers arisen in any
number to atone for the shortcoming. And yet Sussex must be as rich in
good character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous or noble, as any other
division of England. In the matter of honouring illustrious Sussex men
and women, the late Mark Antony Lower played his part with _The Worthies
of Sussex_, and Mr. Fleet with _Glimpses of Our Sussex Ancestors_; but
the Sussex "Characters," where are they? Who has set down their "little
unremembered acts," their eccentricities, their sterling southern
tenacities? The Rev. A. D. Gordon wrote the history of Harting, and
quite recently the Rev. C. N. Sutton has published his interesting
_Historical Notes of Withyham, Hartfield, and Ashdown Forest_; and there
may be other similar parish histories which I am forgetting. But the
only books that I have seen which make a patient and sympathetic
attempt to understand the people of Sussex are Mr. Parish's
_Dictionary_, Mr. Egerton's _Sussex Folk and Sussex Ways_, and "John
Halsham's" _Idlehurst_. How many rare qualities of head and heart must
go unrecorded in rural England.
I have to thank my friend Mr. C. E. Clayton for his kindness in reading
the proofs of this book and in suggesting additions.
E. V. L.
_December 12, 1903._
P.S.--The sheets of the one-inch ordnance map of Sussex are fourteen in
all, their numbers running thus:
_________________________________________________________
| | | | | |
| 300 | 301 | 302 | 303 | 304 |
| Alresford | Haslemere | Horsham | T. Wells | Tenterden |
|___________|___________|_________|__________|___________|
| | | | | |
| 316 | 317 | 318 | 319 | 320 |
| Fareham |Chichester |Brighton | Lewes | Hastings |
|___________|___________|_________|__________|___________|
| | | | |
| 331 | 332 | 333 | 334 |
|Portsmouth | Bognor | Worthing|Eastbourne|
|___________|___________|_________|__________|
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
In the present edition a number of small errors have been corrected and
a new chapter amplifying certain points and supplying a deficit here and
there has been added. The passage about Stane Street is reprinted from
the _Times Literary Supplement_ by kind permission.
E. V. L.
_April 20, 1904_
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
MIDHURST 1
CHAPTER II
MIDHURST'S VILLAGES 9
CHAPTER III
FIRST SIGHT OF THE DOWNS 23
CHAPTER IV
CHICHESTER 28
CHAPTER V
CHICHESTER AND THE HILLS 39
CHAPTER VI
CHICHESTER AND THE PLAIN 54
CHAPTER VII
ARUNDEL AND NEIGHBOURHOOD 68
CHAPTER VIII
LITTLEHAMPTON 75
CHAPTER IX
AMBERLEY AND PARHAM 84
CHAPTER X
PETWORTH 93
CHAPTER XI
BIGNOR 107
CHAPTER XII
HORSHAM 112
CHAPTER XIII
ST. LEONARD'S FOREST 123
CHAPTER XIV
WEST GRINSTEAD, COWFOLD AND HENFIELD 130
CHAPTER XV
STEYNING AND BRAMBER 135
CHAPTER XVI
CHANCTONBURY, WASHINGTON, AND WORTHING 145
CHAPTER XVII
BRIGHTON 160
CHAPTER XVIII
ROTTINGDEAN AND WHEATEARS 177
CHAPTER XIX
SHOREHAM 184
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVIL'S DYKE AND HURSTPIERPOINT 192
CHAPTER XXI
DITCHLING 207
CHAPTER XXII
CUCKFIELD 211
CHAPTER XXIII
FOREST COUNTRY AGAIN 221
CHAPTER XXIV
EAST GRINSTEAD 227
CHAPTER XXV
HORSTED KEYNES TO LEWES 233
CHAPTER XXVI
LEWES 239
CHAPTER XXVII
THE OUSE VALLEY 255
CHAPTER XXVIII
ALFRISTON 264
CHAPTER XXIX
SMUGGLING 273
CHAPTER XXX
GLYNDE AND RINGMER 280
CHAPTER XXXI
UCKFIELD AND BUXTED 292
CHAPTER XXXII
CROWBOROUGH AND MAYFIELD 301
CHAPTER XXXIII
HEATHFIELD AND THE "LIES" 307
CHAPTER XXXIV
EASTBOURNE 318
CHAPTER XXXV
PEVENSEY AND HURSTMONCEUX 328
CHAPTER XXXVI
HASTINGS 340
CHAPTER XXXVII
BATTLE ABBEY 348
CHAPTER XXXVIII
WINCHELSEA AND RYE 358
CHAPTER XXXIX
ROBERTSBRIDGE 376
CHAPTER XL
TUNBRIDGE WELLS 390
CHAPTER XLI
THE SUSSEX DIALECT 405
CHAPTER XLII
BEING A POSTSCRIPT TO THE SECOND EDITION 417
INDEX 439
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE BARBICAN, LEWES CASTLE _Frontispiece_
COWDRAY 4
BLACKDOWN 10
COWDRAY 22
CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL 31
CHICHESTER CROSS 35
THE RUINED NAVE OF BOXGROVE 39
BOXGROVE PRIORY CHURCH 41
BOXGROVE FROM THE SOUTH 43
EAST LAVANT 49
BOSHAM 54
ARUNDEL 68
THE ARUN AT NORTH STOKE 71
GATEWAY, AMBERLEY CASTLE 84
AMBERLEY CASTLE 87
AMBERLEY CASTLE, ENTRANCE TO CHURCHYARD 89
AMBERLEY CHURCH 91
PULBOROUGH CHURCH 93
AT PULBOROUGH 95
STOPHAM BRIDGE 97
THE ROTHER AT FITTLEWORTH 99
ALMSHOUSE AT PETWORTH 101
PETWORTH CHURCHYARD 104
THE CAUSEWAY, HORSHAM 112
COTTAGES AT SLINFOLD 118
RUDGWICK 121
CHURCH STREET, STEYNING 135
STEYNING CHURCH 138
BRAMBER 140
COOMBES CHURCH 142
CHANCTONBURY RING 145
SOMPTING 153
LANCING 157
NEW SHOREHAM CHURCH 185
OLD SHOREHAM BRIDGE 188
OLD SHOREHAM CHURCH 189
POYNINGS, FROM THE DEVIL'S DYKE 193
HANGLETON HOUSE 196
MALTHOUSE FARM, HURSTPIERPOINT 200
DITCHLING 207
OLD HOUSE AT DITCHLING 208
CUCKFIELD CHURCH 212
EAST MASCALLS--BEFORE RENOVATION 219
THE JUDGE'S HOUSES, EAST GRINSTEAD 228
ON THE OUSE, ABOVE LEWES 239
HIGH STREET, SOUTHOVER 241
ANN OF CLEVES' HOUSE, SOUTHOVER 246
ST. ANN'S CHURCH, SOUTHOVER 251
THE OUSE AT SOUTH STREET, LEWES 253
THE OUSE AT PIDDINGHOE 255
RODMELL 256
PIDDINGHOE 258
SOUTHOVER GRANGE 261
NEAR TARRING NEVILLE 263
GLYNDE 282
FRAMFIELD 293
IN BUXTED PARK 298
BEACHY HEAD 318
BEACHY HEAD FROM THE SHORE 325
PEVENSEY CASTLE 329
WESTHAM 333
HURSTMONCEUX CASTLE 335
BATTLE ABBEY--THE GATEWAY 349
MOUNT STREET, BATTLE 352
BATTLE ABBEY, THE REFECTORY 355
THE LANDGATE, RYE 359
SEDILIA AND TOMBS OF GERVASE AND
STEPHEN ALARD, WINCHELSEA 363
THE YPRES TOWER, RYE 365
COURT LODGE, UDIMORE 370
UDIMORE CHURCH 372
BREDE PLACE 373
BREDE PLACE, FROM THE SOUTH 375
BODIAM CASTLE 377
SHOYSWELL, NEAR TICEHURST 388
THE PANTILES, TUNBRIDGE WELLS 391
BAYHAM ABBEY 396
ASHDOWN FOREST, FROM EAST GRINSTEAD 403
MAP OF THE COUNTY OF SUSSEX _End paper_
[Illustration]
HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SUSSEX
CHAPTER I
MIDHURST
The fitting order of a traveller's progress--The Downs the true
Sussex--Fashion at bay--Mr. Kipling's topographical
creed--Midhurst's advantages--Single railway lines--Queen Elizabeth
at Cowdray--Montagus domestic and homicidal--The curse of
Cowdray--Dr. Johnson at Midhurst--Cowdray Park.
If it is better, in exploring a county, to begin with its least
interesting districts and to end with the best, I have made a mistake in
the order of this book: I should rather have begun with the
comparatively dull hot inland hilly region of the north-east, and have
left it at the cool chalk Downs of the Hampshire border. But if one's
first impression of new country cannot be too favourable we have done
rightly in starting at Midhurst, even at the risk of a loss of
enthusiasm in the concluding chapters. For although historically,
socially, and architecturally north Sussex is as interesting as south
Sussex, the crown of the county's scenery is the Downs, and its most
fascinating districts are those which the Downs dominate. The farther we
travel from the Downs and the sea the less unique are our surroundings.
Many of the villages in the northern Weald, beautiful as they are, might
equally well be in Kent or Surrey: a visitor suddenly alighting in their
midst, say from a balloon, would be puzzled to name the county he was
in; but the Downs and their dependencies are essential Sussex. Hence a
Sussex man in love with the Downs becomes less happy at every step
northward.
[Sidenote: THE INVIOLATE HILLS]
One cause of the unique character of the Sussex Downs is their virginal
security, their unassailable independence. They stand, a silent
undiscovered country, between the seething pleasure towns of the
seaboard plain and the trim estates of the Weald. Londoners, for whom
Sussex has a special attraction by reason of its proximity (Brighton's
beach is the nearest to the capital in point of time), either pause
north of the Downs, or rush through them in trains, on bicycles, or in
carriages, to the sea. Houses there are among the Downs, it is true, but
they are old-established, the homes of families that can remember no
other homes. There is as yet no fashion for residences in these
altitudes. Until that fashion sets in (and may it be far distant) the
Downs will remain essential Sussex, and those that love them will
exclaim with Mr. Kipling,
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since man's heart is small,
Ordains for each one spot shall prove
Beloved over all.
* * * * *
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
The lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground--in a fair ground--
Yea, Sussex by the sea!
[Sidenote: MIDHURST]
If we are to begin our travels in Sussex with the best, then Midhurst is
the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer: a quiet
country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernised and unambitious, with a
river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and
the Downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the
centre of a very useful little railway system, which, having only a
single line in each direction, while serving the traveller, never annoys
him by disfiguring the country or letting loose upon it crowds of
vandals. Single lines always mean thinly populated country. As a
pedestrian poet has sung:--
My heart leaps up when I behold
A single railway line;
For then I know the wood and wold
Are almost wholly mine.
And Midhurst being on no great high road is nearly always quiet. Nothing
ever hurries there. The people live their own lives, passing along their
few narrow streets and the one broad one, under the projecting eaves of
timbered houses, unrecking of London and the world. Sussex has no more
contented town.
The church, which belongs really to St. Mary Magdalen, but is popularly
credited to St. Denis, was never very interesting, but is less so now
that the Montagu tomb has been moved to Easebourne. Twenty years ago, I
remember, an old house opposite the church was rumoured to harbour a
pig-faced lady. I never had sight of her, but as to her existence and
her cast of feature no one was in the least doubt. Pig-faced ladies
(once so common) seem to have gone out, just as the day of Spring-heeled
Jack is over. Sussex once had her Spring-heeled Jacks, too, in some
profusion.
[Illustration: _Cowdray._]
[Sidenote: ELIZABETH AT COWDRAY]
Cowdray Park is gained from the High Street, just below the Angel Inn,
by a causeway through water meadows of the Rother. The house is now but
a shell, never having been rebuilt since the fire which ate out its
heart in 1793: yet a beautiful shell, heavily draped in rich green ivy
that before very long must here and there forget its earlier duty of
supporting the walls and thrust them too far from the perpendicular to
stand. Cowdray, built in the reign of Henry VIII., did not come to its
full glory until Sir Anthony Browne, afterwards first Viscount Montagu,
took possession. The seal was put upon its fame by the visit of Queen
Elizabeth in 1591 (Edward VI. had been banqueted there by Sir Anthony in
1552, "marvellously, nay, rather excessively," as he wrote), as some
return for the loyalty of her host, who, although an old man, in 1588,
on the approach of the Armada, had ridden straightway to Tilbury, with
his sons and his grandson, the first to lay the service of his house at
her Majesty's feet. A rare pamphlet is still preserved describing the
festivities during Queen Elizabeth's sojourn. On Saturday, about eight
o'clock, her Majesty reached the house, travelling from Farnham, where
she had dined. Upon sight of her loud music sounded. It stopped when she
set foot upon the bridge, and a real man, standing between two wooden
dummies whom he exactly resembled, began to flatter her exceedingly.
Until she came, he said, the walls shook and the roof tottered, but one
glance from her eyes had steadied the turret for ever. He went on to
call her virtue immortal and herself the Miracle of Time, Nature's
Glory, Fortune's Empress, and the World's Wonder. Elizabeth, when he had
made an end, took the key from him and embraced Lady Montagu and her
daughter, the Lady Dormir; whereupon "the mistress of the house (as it
were weeping in the bosome) said, 'O happie time! O joyfull daie!'"
[Sidenote: A QUEEN'S DIVERSIONS]
These preliminaries over, the fun began. At breakfast next morning three
oxen and a hundred and forty geese were devoured. On Monday, August
17th, Elizabeth rode to her bower in the park, took a crossbow from a
nymph who sang a sweet song, and with it shot "three or four" deer,
carefully brought within range. After dinner, standing on one of the
turrets she watched sixteen bucks "pulled down with greyhounds" in a
lawn. On Tuesday, the Queen was approached by a pilgrim, who first
called her "Fairest of all creatures," and expressed the wish that the
world might end with her life and then led her to an oak whereon were
hanging escutcheons of her Majesty and all the neighbouring noblemen and
gentlemen. As she looked, a "wilde man" clad all in ivy appeared and
delivered an address on the importance of loyalty. On Wednesday, the
Queen was taken to a goodlie fish-pond (now a meadow) where was an
angler. After some words from him a band of fishermen approached,
drawing their nets after them; whereupon the angler, turning to her
Majesty, remarked that her virtue made envy blush and stand amazed.
Having thus spoken, the net was drawn and found to be full of fish,
which were laid at Elizabeth's feet. The entry for this day ends with
the sentence, "That evening she hunted." On Thursday the lords and
ladies dined at a table forty-eight yards long, and there was a country
dance with tabor and pipe, which drew from her Majesty "gentle
applause." On Friday, the Queen knighted six gentlemen and passed on to
Chichester.
[Sidenote: A DESPERADO POET]
A year later the first Lord Montagu died. He was succeeded by another
Anthony, the author of the "Book of Orders and Rules" for the use of the
family at Cowdray, and the dedicatee of Anthony Copley's _Fig for
Fortune_, 1596. Copley has a certain Sussex interest of his own, having
astonished not a little the good people of Horsham. A contemporary
letter describes him as "the most desperate youth that liveth. He did
shoot at a gentleman last summer, and did kill an ox with a musket, and
in Horsham church he threw his dagger at the parish clerk, and it stuck
in a seat of the church. There liveth not his like in England for sudden
attempts." Subsequently the conspirator-poet must have calmed down, for
he states in the dedication to my lord that he is "now winnowed by the
fan of grace and Zionry." To-day he would say "saved." Copley, after
narrowly escaping capital punishment for his share in a Jesuit plot,
disappeared.
The instructions given in Lord Montagu's "Booke of Orders and Rules"
illustrate very vividly the generous amplitude of the old Cowdray
establishment. Thus:--
MY CARVER AND HIS OFFICE.
I will that my carver, when he cometh to the ewerye boorde, doe
there washe together with the Sewer, and that done be armed
(videlt.) with an armeinge towell cast about his necke, and putt
under his girdle on both sides, and one napkyn on his lefte
shoulder, and an other on the same arme; and thence beinge broughte
by my Gentleman Usher to my table, with two curteseyes thereto, the
one about the middest of the chamber, the other when he cometh to
ytt, that he doe stande seemely and decently with due reverence and
sylence, untill my dyett and fare be brought uppe, and then doe his
office; and when any meate is to be broken uppe that he doe carrye
itt to a syde table, which shalbe prepared for that purpose and
there doe ytt; when he hath taken upp the table, and delivered the
voyder to the yeoman Usher, he shall doe reverence and returne to
the ewrye boorde there to be unarmed. My will is that for that day
he have the precedence and place next to my Gentleman Usher at the
wayter's table.
MY GENTLEMEN WAYTERS.
I will that some of my Gentlemen Wayters harken when I or my wiffe
att any tyme doe walke abroade, that they may be readye to give
their attendance uppon us, some att one tyme and some att another
as they shall agree amongst themselves; but when strangeres are in
place, then I will that in any sorte they be readye to doe such
service for them as the Gentleman Usher shall directe. I will
further that they be dayly presente in the greate chamber or other
place of my dyett about tenn of the clocke in the forenoone and
five in the afternoone without fayle for performance of my service,
unles they have license from my Stewarde or Gentleman Usher to the
contrarye, which if they exceede, I will that they make knowne the
cause thereof to my Stewarde, who shall acquaynte me therewithall.
I will that they dyne and suppe att a table appoynted for them, and
there take place nexte after the Gentlemen of my Horse and chamber,
accordinge to their seniorityes in my service.
[Sidenote: THE HOUSE OF MONTAGU]
The third Viscount Montagu was not remarkable, but his account books are
quaint reading. From July, 1657, to July, 1658, his steward spent
_L_1,945 10_s._ solely in little personal matters for his master. Among
the disbursements were, on September 11th, fourteen pence "for washing
Will Stapler"; on November 22nd, 1_s._ 4_d._ to the Lewes carrier "for
bringing a box of puddings for my mistress and my master"; on January
17th, _L_4 to "Mr. Fiske the dancing-master for teaching my master to
dance, being two months"; and on April 21st, seven shillings "for a
Tooth for my Lord."
The fifth Viscount was a man of violent temper. On reaching Mass one day
and finding it half done, he drew his pistol and shot the chaplain. The
outcry all over the country was loud and vengeful, and my lord lay
concealed for fifteen years in a hiding-hole contrived in the masonry of
Cowdray for the shelter of persecuted priests. The peer emerged only at
night, when he roamed the close walks, repentant and sad. Lady Montagu
would then steal out to him, dressing all in white to such good purpose
that the desired rumours of a ghost soon flew about the neighbourhood.
The curse of Cowdray, which, if genuinely pronounced, has certainly been
wonderfully fulfilled, dates from the gift of Battle Abbey by Henry
VIII. to Sir Anthony Browne, the father of Queen Elizabeth's host and
friend. Sir Anthony seized his new property, and turned the monks out
of the gates, in 1538. Legend says that as the last monk departed, he
warned his despoiler that by fire and water his line should perish. By
fire and water it perished indeed. A week after Cowdray House was
burned, in 1793, the last Viscount Montagu was drowned in the Rhine. His
only sister (the wife of Mr. Stephen Poyntz) who inherited, was the
mother of two sons both of whom were drowned while bathing at Bognor.
When Mr. Poyntz sold the estate to the Earl of Egmont, we may suppose
the curse to have been withdrawn.
[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON AT COWDRAY]
Among the treasures that were destroyed in the fire were the Roll of
Battle Abbey and many paintings. Dr. Johnson visited Cowdray a few years
before its demolition; "Sir," he said to Boswell, "I should like to stay
here four-and-twenty hours. We see here how our ancestors lived."
According to the _Tour of Great Britain_, attributed to Daniel Defoe,
but probably by another hand, Cowdray's hall was of Irish oak. In the
large parlour were the triumphs of Henry VIII. by Holbein. In the long
gallery were the Twelve Apostles "as large as life"; while the marriage
of Cupid and Psyche, a tableau that never failed to please our
ancestors, was not wanting.
The glory of the Montagus has utterly passed. The present Earl of Egmont
is either an absentee or he lives in a cottage near the gates; and the
new house, which is hidden in trees, is of no interest. The park,
however, is still ranged by its beautiful deer, and still possesses an
avenue of chestnut trees and rolling wastes of turf. It is everywhere as
free as a heath.
CHAPTER II
MIDHURST'S VILLAGES
Hanging in chains--A wooded paradise--Fernhurst--Shulbrede
Priory--Blackdown--Tennyson's Sussex home--Thomas Otway--Kate
Hotspur's Grave--A Sussex ornithologist--The friend of
owls--William Cobbett looks at the Squire--The charms of South
Harting--Lady Mary Caryll's little difficulties--Gilbert White in
Sussex--The old field routine--Witchcraft at South Harting--The
Rother--Easebourne--West Lavington and Cardinal Manning.
The road from Midhurst to Blackdown ascends steadily to Henley,
threading vast woods and preserves. On the left is a great common, on
the right North Heath, where the two Drewitts were hanged in chains
after being executed at Horsham, in 1799, for the robbery of the
Portsmouth mail--probably the last instance of hanging in chains in this
country. For those that like wild forest country there was once no
better ramble than might be enjoyed here; but now (1903) that the King's
new sanatorium is being built in the midst of Great Common, some of the
wildness must necessarily be lost. A finer site could not have been
found. Above Great Common is a superb open space nearly six hundred feet
high, with gorse bushes advantageously placed to give shelter while one
studies the Fernhurst valley, the Haslemere heights and, blue in the
distance, the North Downs. Sussex has nothing wilder or richer than the
country we are now in.
A few minutes' walk to the east from this lofty common, and we are
immediately above Henley, clinging to the hill side, an almost Alpine
hamlet. Henley, however, no longer sees the travellers that once it did,
for the coach road, which of old climbed perilously through it, has been
diverted in a curve through the hanger, and now sweeps into Fernhurst by
way of Henley Common.
[Illustration: _Blackdown._]
[Sidenote: FERNHURST]
Fernhurst, beautifully named, is in an exquisite situation among the
minor eminences of the Haslemere range, but the builder has been busy
here, and the village is not what it was.
[Sidenote: SHULBREDE PRIORY]
Two miles to the north-west, on the way to Linchmere, immediately under
the green heights of Marley, is the old house which once was Shulbrede
Priory. As it is now in private occupation and is not shown to
strangers, I have not seen it; but of old many persons journeyed
thither, attracted by the quaint mural paintings, in the Prior's room,
of domestic animals uttering speech. "Christus natus est," crows the
cock. "Quando? Quando?" the duck inquires. "In hac nocte," says the
raven. "Ubi? Ubi?" asks the cow, and the lamb satisfies her: "Bethlehem,
Bethlehem."
One may return deviously from Shulbrede to Midhurst (passing in the
heart of an unpopulated country a hamlet called Milland, where is an old
curiosity shop of varied resources) by way of one of the pleasantest and
narrowest lanes that I know, rising and falling for miles through silent
woods, coming at last to Chithurst church, one of the smallest and
simplest and least accessible in the county, and reaching Midhurst again
by the hard, dry and irreproachable road that runs between the heather
of Trotton Common.
On the eastern side of Fernhurst, to which we may now return, a mile on
the way to Lurgashall, was once Verdley Castle; but it is now a castle
no more, merely a ruined heap. Utilitarianism was too much for it, and
its stones fell to Macadam. After all, if an old castle has to go, there
are few better forms of reincarnation for it than a good hard road.
While at Fernhurst it is well to walk on to Blackdown, the best way,
perhaps, being to take the lane to the right about half a mile beyond
the village, and make for the hill across country. Blackdown, whose
blackness is from its heather and its firs, frowns before one all the
while. The climb to the summit is toilsome, over nine hundred feet, but
well worth the effort, for the hill overlooks hundreds of square miles
of Sussex and Surrey, between Leith Hill in the north and Chanctonbury
in the south.
[Sidenote: TENNYSON'S SUSSEX HOME]
Aldworth, Tennyson's house, is on the north-east slope, facing Surrey.
The poet laid the foundation stone on April 23 (Shakespeare's birthday),
1868: the inscription on the stone running "Prosper thou the work of our
hands, O prosper thou our handiwork." Of the site Aubrey de Vere
wrote:--"It lifted England's great poet to a height from which he could
gaze on a large portion of that English land which he loved so well, see
it basking in its most affluent summer beauty, and only bounded by 'the
inviolate sea.' Year after year he trod its two stately terraces with
men the most noted of their time." Pilgrims from all parts journeyed
thither--not too welcome; among them that devout American who had worked
his way across the Atlantic in order to recite _Maud_ to its author: a
recitation from which, says the present Lord Tennyson, his father
"suffered." Tennyson has, I think, no poems upon his Sussex home, but I
always imagine that the dedication of _The Death of Oenone and other
Poems_, in 1894, must belong to Blackdown:--
There on the top of the down,
The wild heather round me and over me June's high blue,
When I look'd at the bracken so bright and the heather so brown,
I thought to myself I would offer this book to you,
This, and my love together,
To you that are seventy-seven,
With a faith as clear as the heights of the June-blue heaven,
And a fancy as summer-new
As the green of the bracken amid the gloom of the heather.
The most interesting village between Midhurst and the western boundary,
due west, is Trotton, three miles distant on the superb road to
Petersfield, of which I have spoken above. There is no better road in
England. Trotton is quiet and modest, but it has two great claims on
lovers of the English drama. In the "Ode to Pity" of one of our Sussex
poets we read thus of another:--
But wherefore need I wander wide
To old Ilissus' distant side,
Deserted streams and mute?
Wild Arun, too, has heard thy strains,
And echo, 'midst my native plains,
Been soothed by pity's lute.
There first the wren thy myrtles shed
On gentlest Otway's infant head,
To him thy cell was shown;
And while he sung the female heart,
With youth's soft notes unspoiled by art,
Thy turtles mixed their own.
[Sidenote: THOMAS OTWAY]
So wrote William Collins, adding in a note that the Arun (more properly
the Rother, a tributary of the Arun) runs by the village of Trotton, in
Sussex, where Thomas Otway had his birth. The unhappy author of _Venice
Preserv'd_ and _The Orphan_ was born at Trotton in 1652, the son of
Humphrey Otway, the curate, who afterwards became rector of Woolbeding
close by. Otway died miserably when only thirty-three, partly of
starvation, partly of a broken heart at the unresponsiveness of Mrs.
Barry, the actress, whom he loved, but who preferred the Earl of
Rochester. His two best plays, although they are no longer acted, lived
for many years, providing in Belvidera, in _Venice Preserv'd_ and
Monimia, in _The Orphan_ (in which he "sung the female heart") congenial
_roles_ for tragic actresses--Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Oldfield, Mrs. Cibber,
Mrs. Siddons and Miss O'Neill. Otway was buried in the churchyard of St.
Clement Danes, but a tablet to his fame is in Trotton church, which is
of unusual plainness, not unlike an ecclesiastical barn. Here also is
the earliest known brass to a woman--Margaret de Camoys, who lived about
1300.
[Sidenote: HOTSPUR'S LADY]
The transition is easy (at Trotton) from Otway to Shakespeare, from
_Venice Preserv'd_ to _Henry IV._
HOTSPUR (to LADY PERCY). Come, Kate, thou art perfect in lying
down: come quick, quick; that I may lay my head in thy lap.
_Lady P._ Go, ye giddy goose. [_The music plays._
_Hot._ Now I perceive, the devil understands Welsh;
And 't is no marvel' he's so humorous,
By'r lady, he's a good musician.
_Lady P._ Then should you be nothing but musical; for you are
altogether governed by humours. Lie still, ye thief, and hear the
lady sing in Welsh.
_Hot._ I had rather hear Lady, my brach, howl in Irish.
_Lady P._ Wouldst have thy head broken?
_Hot._ No.
_Lady P._ Then be still.
_Hot._ Neither: 'tis a woman's fault.
_Lady P._ Now God help thee!
_Hot._ To the Welsh lady's bed.
_Lady P._ What's that?
_Hot._ Peace! she sings.
[_A Welsh song sung by_ LADY MORTIMER.
_Hot._ Come, Kate, I'll have your song too.
_Lady P._ Not mine, in good sooth.
_Hot._ Not yours, in good sooth! 'Heart, you swear like a
comfit-maker's wife. 'Not you, in good sooth'; and, 'As true as I
live'; and,
'As God shall mend me'; and, 'As sure as day':
And giv'st such sarcenet surety for thy oaths,
As if thou never walk'dst further than Finsbury.
Swear me, Kate, like a lady as thou art,
A good mouth-filling oath; and leave 'in sooth,'
And such protest of pepper-gingerbread,
To velvet-guards and Sunday-citizens.
Come, sing.
_Lady P._ I will not sing.
_Hot._ 'Tis the next way to turn tailor, or be redbreast teacher.
An the indentures be drawn, I'll away within these two hours; and
so come in when ye will. [_Exit._
My excuse for introducing this little scene is that Kate, whose real
name was Elizabeth, lies here. Her tomb is in the chancel, where she
reposes beside her second husband Thomas, Lord Camoys, beneath a slab on
which are presentments in brass of herself and her lord. It was this
Lord Camoys who rebuilt Trotton's church, about 1400, and who also gave
the village its beautiful bridge over the Rother at a cost, it used to
be said, of only a few pence less than that of the church.
Trotton has still other literary claims. At Trotton Place lived Arthur
Edward Knox, whose _Ornithological Rambles in Sussex_, published in
1849, is one of the few books worthy to stand beside White's _Natural
History of Selborne_. In Sussex, as elsewhere, the fowler has prevailed,
and although rare birds are still occasionally to be seen, they now
visit the country only by accident, and leave it as soon as may be,
thankful to have a whole skin. Guns were active enough in Knox's time,
but to read his book to-day is to be translated to a new land. From time
to time I shall borrow from Mr. Knox's pages: here I may quote a short
passage which refers at once to his home and to his attitude to those
creatures whom he loved to study and studied to love:--"I have the
satisfaction of exercising the rites of hospitality towards a pair of
barn owls, which have for some time taken up their quarters in one of
the attic roofs of the ancient, ivy-covered house in which I reside. I
delight in listening to the prolonged snoring of the young when I ascend
the old oak stairs to the neighbourhood of their nursery, and in hearing
the shriek of the parent birds on the calm summer nights as they pass to
and fro near my window; for it assures me that they are still safe; and
as I know that at least a qualified protection is afforded them
elsewhere, and that even their arch-enemy the gamekeeper is beginning
reluctantly, but gradually, to acquiesce in the general belief of their
innocence and utility, I cannot help indulging the hope that this bird
will eventually meet with that general encouragement and protection to
which its eminent services so richly entitle it."
[Sidenote: COBBETT LOOKS AT THE SQUIRE]
One more literary association: it was at Trotton that William Cobbett
looked at the squire. "From Rogate we came on to Trotton, where a Mr.
Twyford is the squire, and where there is a very fine and ancient church
close by the squire's house. I saw the squire looking at some poor
devils who were making 'wauste improvements, ma'am,' on the road which
passes by the squire's door. He looked uncommonly hard at me. It was a
scrutinising sort of look, mixed, as I thought, with a little surprise,
if not of jealousy, as much as to say, 'I wonder who the devil you can
be?' My look at the squire was with the head a little on one side, and
with the cheek drawn up from the left corner of the mouth, expressive of
anything rather than a sense of inferiority to the squire, of whom,
however, I had never heard speak before."
[Sidenote: HARTING'S RICHES]
By passing on to Rogate, whose fine church not long since was restored
too freely, and turning due south, we come to what is perhaps the most
satisfying village in all Sussex--South Harting. Cool and spacious and
retired, it lies under the Downs, with a little subsidiary range of its
own to shelter it also from the west. Three inns are ready to refresh
the traveller--the Ship, the White Hart (a favourite Sussex sign), and
the Coach and Horses (with a new signboard of dazzling freshness); the
surrounding country is good; Petersfield and Midhurst are less than an
hour's drive distant; while the village has one of the most charming
churches in Sussex, both without and within. Unlike most of the county's
spires, South Harting's is slate and red shingle, but the slate is of an
agreeable green hue, resembling old copper. (Perhaps it is copper.) The
roof is of red tiles mellowed by weather, and the south side of the
tower is tiled too, imparting an unusual suggestion of warmth--more, of
comfort--to the structure; while on the east wall of the chancel is a
Virginian creeper, which, as autumn advances, emphasises this effect.
Within, the church is winning, too, with its ample arches, perfect
proportions, and that aesthetic satisfaction that often attends the
cruciform shape. An interesting monument of the Cowper and Coles
families is preserved in the south transept--three full-size coloured
figures. In the north transept is a spiral staircase leading to the
tower, and elsewhere are memorials of the Fords and Featherstonhaughs of
Up-Park, a superb domain over the brow of Harting's Down, and of the
Carylls of Lady Holt, of whom we shall see more directly. The east
window is a peculiarly cheerful one, and the door of South Harting
church is kept open, as every church door should be, but as too many in
Sussex are not.
In the churchyard, beneath a shed, are the remains of two tombs, with
recumbent stone figures, now in a fragmentary state. At the church gates
are the old village stocks.
[Sidenote: MRS. JONES' MULYGRUBES]
Harting has a place in literature, for one of the Carylls was Pope's
friend, John (1666-1736), a nephew of the diplomatist and dramatist.
Pope's Caryll, who suggested _The Rape of the Lock_, lived at Lady Holt
at West Harting (long destroyed) and also at West Grinstead, where, as
we shall see, the poem was largely written. Mr. H. D. Gordon, rector of
Harting for many years, wrote a history of his parish in 1877: a very
interesting, gossipy book; where we may read much of the Caryll family,
including passages from their letters--how Lady Mary Caryll had the kind
impulse to take one of the parson's nine daughters to France to educate
and befriend, but was so thoughtless as to transform into a pretty
Papist; how Lady Mary disliked Mrs. Jones, the steward's wife; and many
other matters. I quote a passage from a letter of Lady Mary's about Mrs.
Jones, showing that human nature was not then greatly different from
what it is to-day:--"Mr. Joans and his fine Madam came down two days
before your birthday and expected to lye in the house, but as I
apprehended the consequence of letting them begin so, I made an excuse
for want of roome by expecting company, and sent them to Gould's [Arthur
Gould married Kate Caryll, and lived at Harting Place], where they
stayed two nights. I invited them the next day to dinner and they came,
but the day following Madam huff'd (I believe), for she went away to
Barnard's, and wou'd not so much as see the desert [dessert]; however, I
don't repent it, he has been here at all the merryment, and I believe
you'll find it better to keep them at a civil distance than other ways,
for she seems a high dame and not very good humoured, for she has been
sick ever since of the mulygrubes." Mrs. Jones soon afterwards succumbed
either to the mulygrubes or a worse visitation. Lady Mary thus broke the
news:--"Mr. Jones's wife dyed on Sunday, just as she lived, an
Independent, and wou'd have no parson with her, because she sayd she
cou'd pray as well as they. He is making a great funerall, but I believe
not in much affection, for he was all night at a merry bout two days
before she died."
On the arrival of the young Squire Caryll at Lady Holt with his bride,
in 1739, Paul Kelly, the bailiff, informed Lady Mary that the villagers
conducted their lord and lady home "with the upermost satisfaction"--a
good phrase.
Mr. Gordon writes elsewhere in his book of a famous writer whom
Hampshire claims: "For at least forty years (1754-1792) Gilbert White
was an East Harting squire. The bulk of his property was at Woodhouse
and Nye woods, on the northern slope of East Harting, and bounded on the
west by the road to Harting station. The passenger from Harting to the
railway has on his right, immediately opposite the 'Severals' wood,
Gilbert White's Farm, extending nearly to the station. White had also
other Harting lands. These were upon the Downs, viz.:--a portion of the
Park of Uppark on the south side, and a portion of Kildevil Lane, on the
North Marden side of Harting Hill. Gilbert White was on his mother's
side a Ford, and these lands had been transmitted to him through his
great uncle, Oliver Whitby, nephew to Sir Edward Ford."
[Sidenote: THE OLD FIELD ROUTINE]
A glimpse of the old Sussex field routine, not greatly changed in the
remote districts to-day, was given to Mr. Gordon thirty years ago by an
aged labourer. This was the day:--"Out in morning at four o'clock.
Mouthful of bread and cheese and pint of ale. Then off to the harvest
field. Rippin and moen [reaping and mowing] till eight. Then morning
brakfast and small beer. Brakfast--a piece of fat pork as thick as your
hat [a broad-brimmed wideawake] is wide. Then work till ten o'clock:
then a mouthful of bread and cheese and a pint of strong beer
['farnooner,' _i.e._, forenooner; 'farnooner's-lunch,' we called it].
Work till twelve. Then at dinner in the farm-house; sometimes a leg of
mutton, sometimes a piece of ham and plum pudding. Then work till five,
then a _nunch_ and a quart of ale. Nunch was cheese, 'twas skimmed
cheese though. Then work till sunset, then home and have supper and a
pint of ale. I never knew a man drunk in the harvest field in my life.
Could drink six quarts, and believe that a man might drink two gallons
in a day. All of us were in the house [_i.e._, the usual hired servants,
and those specially engaged for the harvest]: the yearly servants used
to go with the monthly ones.
"There were two thrashers, and the head thrasher used always to go
before the reapers. A man could cut according to the goodness of the
job, half-an-acre a day. The terms of wages were _L_3 10_s._ to 50_s._
for the month.
"When the hay was in cock or the wheat in shock, then the Titheman come;
you didn't dare take up a field without you let him know. If the
Titheman didn't come at the time, you tithed yourself. He marked his
sheaves with a bough or bush. You couldn't get over the Titheman. If you
began at a hedge and made the tenth cock smaller than the rest, the
Titheman might begin in the middle just where he liked. The Titheman at
Harting, old John Blackmore, lived at Mundy's [South Harting Street].
His grandson is blacksmith at Harting now. All the tithing was quiet.
You didn't dare even set your eggs till the Titheman had been and ta'en
his tithe. The usual day's work was from 7 to 5."
[Sidenote: A SUSSEX WITCH]
Like all Sussex villages, Harting has had its witches and possessors of
the evil eye. Most curious of these was old Mother Digby (_nee_ Mollen),
who, in Mr. Gordon's words, lived at a house in Hog's Lane, East
Harting, and had the power of witching herself into a hare, and was
continually, like Hecate, attended by dogs. Squire Russell, of Tye Oak,
always lost his hare at the sink-hole of a drain near by the old lady's
house. One day the dogs caught hold of the hare by its hind quarters,
but it escaped down the drain, and Squire Russell, instantly opening the
old beldame's door, found her rubbing the part of her body corresponding
to that by which the hound had seized the hare. Squire Caryll, however,
declined to be hard on the broomstick and its riders, as the following
entry in the records of the Court Leet, held for the Hundred of Dumford
in 1747, shows:--"Also we present the Honble. John Caryll, Esq., Lord of
this Mannor, for not having and keeping a Ducking Stool within the said
Hundred of Dumford according to law, for the ducking of scolds and other
disorderly persons."
[Sidenote: THE BEACON FIRES]
The road from South Harting to Elsted runs under the hills, which here
rise abruptly from the fields, to great heights, notably Beacon Hill,
like a huge green mammoth, 800 feet high, on which, before the days of
telegraphy, lived the signaller, who passed on the tidings of danger on
the coast to the next beacon hill, above Henley, and so on to London. In
the days of Napoleon, when any moment might reveal the French fleet, the
Sussex hill tops must often have smouldered under false alarms. The next
hill in the east is Treyford Hill, above Treyford village, whose church
tower, standing on a little hill of its own nearly three hundred feet
high, might take a lesson in beauty from South Harting's, although its
spire has a slenderness not to be improved. Next to Treyford Hill is
Didling Hill, above Didling, and then Linch Down, highest of all in
these parts, being 818 feet.
Elsted, which has no particular interest, possesses an inn, the Three
Horse Shoes, on a site superior to that of many a nobleman's house. It
stands high above a rocky lane, commanding a superb sidelong view of the
Downs and the Weald.
Midhurst's river is the Rother (not to be confounded with the Rother in
the east of Sussex), which flows into the Arun near Hardham. It is wide
enough at Midhurst for small boats, and is a very graceful stream on
which to idle and watch the few kingfishers that man has spared. One may
walk by its side for miles and hear no sound save the music of
repose--the soft munching of the cows in the meadows, the chuckle of the
water as a rat slips in, the sudden yet soothing plash caused by a
jumping fish. Around one's head in the evening the stag-beetle buzzes
with its multiplicity of wings and fierce lobster-like claws
out-stretched.
Following the Rother to the west one comes first to Easebourne, a shady
cool village only a few steps from Midhurst, once notable for its
Benedictine Priory of nuns. Henry VIII. put an end to its religious
life, which, however, if we may believe the rather disgraceful
revelations divulged at an episcopal examination, for some years had not
been of too sincere a character. In Easebourne church is the handsome
tomb of the first Viscount Montagu (the host of Queen Elizabeth), which
was brought hither from Midhurst church some forty years ago. Beyond
Easebourne, on the banks of the Rother, is Woolbeding, amid lush grass
and foliage, as green a spot as any in green England.
[Sidenote: MR. LA THANGUE'S HOME]
On the eastern side of the town (with a diversion into Queen Elizabeth's
sombre wood-walk) one may come by the side of the river part of the way
to West Lavington, which stands high on a slope facing the Downs, with
pine woods immediately beneath it, perhaps as fair a site as any church
can claim. The grave of Richard Cobden, the Free Trader, a native of
Heyshott, near by, is in the churchyard. Here, in 1850, Henry Edward
Manning, afterwards Cardinal, preached his last sermon for the Church of
England. It is, indeed, Manning country, for besides being curate and
rector of Woollavington with Graffham (four or five miles to the
south-east) from 1833 until his secession, he was for nine years
Archdeacon of Chichester; he married Miss Sargent, daughter of the late
rector and sister of Mrs. Samuel Wilberforce of Woollavington; and while
rector, he rebuilt both churches. Graffham is interesting also as being
the present home of one of the most truthful of living painters, Mr.
Henry La Thangue, whose scenes of peasants at work (in the manner of
Barbizon) and studies of sunlight spattering through the trees are among
the triumphs of modern English art.
[Sidenote: CIDER'S DISAPPEARANCE]
One more village and we will make for the hills. A mile beyond the
eastern gate of Cowdray Park is Lodsworth, still a paradise of apple
orchards, but no longer famous for its cider as once it was. Arthur
Young had the pleasure of tasting some Lodsworth cider of a superior
quality at Lord Egremont's table at the beginning of the last century,
but I doubt if Petworth House honours the beverage to-day. Cider, except
in the cider country, becomes less and less common.
[Illustration: _Cowdray._]
CHAPTER III
FIRST SIGHT OF THE DOWNS
The Sussex hills--Gilbert White's praise--Britons, Romans,
Saxons--Charles the Second's ride through Sussex.
Between Midhurst and Chichester, our next centre, rise the Downs, to a
height of between seven hundred and eight hundred feet. Although we
shall often be crossing them again before we leave the county, I should
like to speak of them a little in this place.
The Downs are the symbol of Sussex. The sea, the Weald, the heather
hills of her great forest district, she shares with other counties, but
the Downs are her own. Wiltshire, Berkshire, Kent and Hampshire, it is
true, have also their turf-covered chalk hills, but the Sussex Downs are
vaster, more remarkable, and more beautiful than these, with more
individuality and charm. At first they have been known to disappoint the
traveller, but one has only to live among them or near them, within the
influence of their varying moods, and they surely conquer. They are the
smoothest things in England, gigantic, rotund, easy; the eye rests upon
their gentle contours and is at peace. They have no sublimity, no
grandeur, only the most spacious repose. Perhaps it is due to this
quality that the Wealden folk, accustomed to be overshadowed by this
unruffled range, are so deliberate in their mental processes and so
averse from speculation or experiment. There is a hypnotism of form: a
rugged peak will alarm the mind where a billowy green undulation will
lull it. The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than
soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that
sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland.
Thunder-clouds empurple the turf and blacken the hangers, but they
cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line; rain throws over
the range a gauze veil of added softness; a mist makes them more
wonderful, unreal, romantic; snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise
they are magical, a background for Malory; at sunset they are the lovely
home of the serenest thoughts, a spectacle for Marcus Aurelius. Their
combes, or hollows, are then filled with purple shadow cast by the
sinking sun, while the summits and shoulders are gold.
[Sidenote: GILBERT WHITE IN SUSSEX]
Gilbert White has an often-quoted passage on these hills:--"Though I
have now travelled the Sussex downs upwards of thirty years, yet I still
investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year
by year, and I think I see new beauties every time I traverse it. This
range, which runs from Chichester eastward as far as East Bourn, is
about sixty miles in length, and is called the South Downs, properly
speaking, only round Lewes. As you pass along you command a noble view
of the wild, or weald, on one hand, and the broad downs and sea on the
other. Mr. Ray used to visit a family [Mr. Courthope, of Danny] just at
the foot of these hills, and was so ravished with the prospect from
Plumpton Plain, near Lewes, that he mentions those scapes in his _Wisdom
of God in the Works of the Creation_ with the utmost satisfaction, and
thinks them equal to anything he had seen in the finest parts of Europe.
For my own part, I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing
in the shapely-figured aspect of the chalk hills in preference to those
of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless. Perhaps I may
be singular in my opinion, and not so happy as to convey to you the same
idea; but I never contemplate these mountains without thinking I
perceive somewhat analogous to growth in their gentle swellings and
smooth fungus-like protuberances, their fluted sides, and regular
hollows and slopes, that carry at once the air of vegetative dilatation
and expansion:--Or, was there even a time when these immense masses of
calcareous matter were thrown into fermentation by some adventitious
moisture, were raised and leavened into such shapes by some plastic
power; and so made to swell and heave their broad backs into the sky, so
much above the less animated clay of the wild below?"
The Downs have a human and historic as well as scenic interest. On many
of their highest points are the barrows or graves of our British
ancestors, who, could they revisit the glimpses of the moon, would find
little change, for these hills have been less interfered with than any
district within twice the distance from London. The English dislike of
climbing has saved them. They will probably be the last stronghold of
the horse when petrol has ousted him from every other region.
[Sidenote: ROMAN AND SAXON]
After the Briton came the Roman, to whose orderly military mind such a
chain of hills seemed a series of heaven-sent earthworks. Every point in
a favourable position was at once fortified by the legionaries. Standing
upon these ramparts to-day, identical in general configuration in spite
of the intervening centuries, one may imagine one's self a Caesarian
soldier and see in fancy the hinds below running for safety.
After the Romans came the Saxons, who did not, however, use the heights
as their predecessors had. Yet they left even more intimate traces, for,
as I shall show in a later chapter on Sussex dialect, the language of
the Sussex labourer is still largely theirs, the farms themselves often
follow their original Saxon disposition, the field names are unaltered,
and the character of the people is of the yellow-haired parent stock.
Sussex, in many respects, is still Saxon. In a poem by Mr. W. G. Hole is
a stanza which no one that knows Sussex can read without visualising
instantly a Sussex hill-side farm:--
The Saxon lies, too, in his grave where the plough-lands swell;
And he feels with the joy that is Earth's
The Spring with its myriad births;
And he scents as the evening falls
The rich deep breath of the stalls;
And he says, "Still the seasons bring increase and joy to the
world--It is well!"
[Sidenote: THE ESCAPE OF CHARLES II.]
Standing on one of these hills above the Hartings one may remember an
event in English history of more recent date than any of the periods
that we have been recalling--the escape of Charles II in 1651. It was
over these Downs that he passed; and it has been suggested that a
traveller wishing for a picturesque route across the Downs might do well
to follow his course.
According to the best accounts Charles was met, on the evening of
October 13, near Hambledon, in Hampshire (afterwards to be famous as the
cradle of first-class cricket), by Thomas and George Gunter of Racton,
with a leash of greyhounds as if for coursing. The King slept at the
house of Thomas Symonds, Gunter's brother-in-law, in the character of a
Roundhead. The next morning at daybreak, the King, Lord Wilmot and the
two Gunters crossed Broad Halfpenny Down (celebrated by Nyren), and
proceeding by way of Catherington Down, Charlton Down, and Ibsworth
Down, reached Compting Down in Sussex. At Stanstead House Thomas Gunter
left the King, and hurried on to Brighton to arrange for the crossing to
France. The others rode on by way of the hills, with a descent from
Duncton Beacon, until they reached what promised to be the security of
Houghton Forest. There they were panic-stricken nearly to meet Captain
Morley, governor of Arundel Castle, and therefore by no means a King's
man. The King, on being told who it was, replied merrily, "I did not
much like his starched mouchates." This peril avoided, they descended to
Houghton village, where the Arun was crossed, and so to Amberley, where
in Sir John Briscoe's castle the King slept.[1]
[Sidenote: ROUNDHEADS OUTWITTED]
On Amberley Mount the King's horse cast a shoe, necessitating a drop to
one of the Burphams, at Lee Farm, to have the mishap put right.
Ascending the hills again the fugitives held the high track as far as
Steyning. At Bramber they survived a second meeting with Cromwellians,
three or four soldiers of Col. Herbert Morley of Glynde suddenly
appearing, but being satisfied merely to insult them. At Beeding, George
Gunter rode on by way of the lower road to Brighton, while the King and
Lord Wilmot climbed the hill at Horton, crossing by way of White Lot to
Southwick, where, according to one story, in a cottage at the west of
the Green was a hiding-hole in which the King lay until Captain Nicholas
Tattersall of Brighton was ready to embark him for Fecamp. George
Gunter's own story is, however, that the King rode direct to Brighton.
He reached Fecamp on October 16. Two hours after Gunter left Brighton,
"soldiers came thither to search for a tall black man, six feet four
inches high"--to wit, the Merry Monarch.
Such is the bare narrative of Charles' Sussex ride. If the reader would
have it garnished and spiced he should turn to the pages of Ainsworth's
_Ovingdean Grange_, where much that never happened is set forth as
entertainingly (or so I thought when I read it as a boy) as if it were
truth.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] That is the story as the Amberley people like to have it, but
another version makes him ride from Hambledon to Brighton in one day; in
which case he may have avoided Amberley altogether.
CHAPTER IV
CHICHESTER
William Collins--The Smiths of Chichester--Hardham's snuff--C. R.
Leslie's reminiscence--The headless Ravenswood--Chichester
Cathedral--Roman Chichester--Mr. Spershott's recollections--A
warning to swearers--The prettiest alms-house in England.
I have already quoted some lines by Collins on Otway; it is time to come
to Collins himself.
When Music, heavenly maid, was young,
While yet in early Greece she sung,
The Passions oft, to hear her shell,
Throng'd around her magic cell--
The perfect ode which opens with these unforgettable lines belongs to
Chichester, for William Collins was born there on Christmas Day, 1721,
and educated there, at the Prebendal school, until he went to
Winchester. William Collins was the son of the Mayor of Chichester, a
hatter, from whom Pope's friend Caryll bought his hats. I have no wish
to tell here the sad story of Collins' life; it is better to remember
that few as are his odes they are all of gold. He died at Chichester in
1759, and was buried in St. Andrew's Church.
With eyes up-raised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sat retired;
And, from her wild sequester'd seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul:
And, dashing soft from rocks around
Bubbling runnels join'd the sound;
Through glades and glooms the mingled measure stole,
Or, o'er some haunted stream, with fond delay,
Round an holy calm diffusing,
Love of peace, and lonely musing,
In hollow murmurs died away.
[Sidenote: GEORGE SMITH'S ECLOGUE]
Collins is Chichester's great poet. She had a very agreeable minor poet,
too, in George Smith, one of the Three Smiths--all artists: William,
born in 1707, painter of portraits and of fruit and flower pieces, and
George and John, born in 1713 and 1717, who painted landscapes,--known
collectively as the Smiths of Chichester. I mention them rather on
account of George Smith's poetical experiments than for the brothers'
fame as artists; but there is such a pleasant flavour in one at least of
his _Pastorals_ that I have copied a portion of it. It is called "The
Country Lovers; or, Isaac and Marget going to Town on a Summer's
Morning." The town is probably Chichester--certainly one in Sussex and
near the Downs. Isaac speaks first:--
Come! Marget, come!--the team is at the gate!
Not ready yet!--you always make me wait!
I omit a certain amount of the dialogue which follows, but at last
Marget exclaims:--
Well, now I'm ready, long I have not staid.
ISAAC.
One kiss before we go, my pretty maid.
MARGET.
Go! don't be foolish, Isaac--get away!
Who loiters now?--I thought I could not stay!
There!--that's enough! why, Isaac, sure you're mad!
ISAAC.
One more, my dearest girl--
MARGET.
Be quiet, lad.
See both my cap and hair are rumpled o'er!
The tying of my beads is got before!
ISAAC.
There let it stay, thy brighter blush to show,
Which shames the cherry-colour'd silken bow.
Thy lips, which seem the scarlet's hue to steal,
Are sweeter than the candy'd lemon peel.
MARGET.
Pray take these chickens for me to the cart;
Dear little creatures, how it grieves my heart
To see them ty'd, that never knew a crime,
And formed so fine a flock at feeding time!
The pretty poem ends with fervid protestations of devotion from Isaac:--
For thee the press with apple-juice shall foam!
For thee the bees shall quit their honey-comb!
For thee the elder's purple fruit shall grow!
For thee the pails with cream shall overflow!
But see yon teams returning from the town,
Wind in the chalky wheel-ruts o'er the down:
We now must haste; for if we longer stay,
They'll meet us ere we leave the narrow way.
Another of Chichester's illustrious sons is Archbishop Juxon, who stood
by the side of Charles I. on the scaffold and bade farewell to him in
the words "You are exchanging from a temporal to an eternal crown--a
good exchange."
[Sidenote: HARDHAM'S SNUFF]
Yet another, of a very different type, is John Hardham. "When they
talked of their Raphaels, Correggios, and stuff," wrote Goldsmith of Sir
Joshua Reynolds,
He shifted his trumpet, and only took snuff.
Had it not been for Chichester the great painter might never have had
the second of these consolations, for the only snuff he liked was
Hardham's No. 37, and Hardham was a native of Chichester. Before he
became famous as a tobacconist, Hardham was, by night, a numberer of the
pit for Garrick at Drury Lane. One day he happened to blend Dutch and
rappee and poured the mixture into a drawer labelled 37. Garrick so
liked the pinch of it which he chanced upon, that he introduced a
reference to its merits in some of his comic parts, with the result that
Hardham's little shop in Fleet Street soon became a resort, and no nose
was properly furnished without No. 37. As Colton wrote, in his
_Hypocrisy_:--
A name is all. From Garrick's breath a puff
Of praise gave immortality to snuff;
Since which each connoisseur a transient heaven
Finds in each pinch of Hardham's 37.
The wealth that came to the tobacconist he left to the city of
Chichester to relieve it of certain of its poor rates; and the citizens
still magnify Hardham's name. He died in 1772 and had the good sense to
restrict the expense of his funeral to ten pounds.
[Sidenote: WILKIE'S BUMPS]
Chichester was the scene of a pleasant incident recorded by Leslie in
his _Autobiographical Recollections_. He was staying with Wilkie at
Petworth, the guest of their patron, and the patron of so many other
painters, Lord Egremont, of whom we shall learn more when Petworth is
reached. They all drove over to Chichester after a visit to Goodwood.
Lord Egremont, says Leslie, "had some business to transact at
Chichester; but one of his objects was to show us a young girl, the
daughter of an upholsterer, who was devoted to painting, and considered
to be a genius by her friends. She was not at home; but her mother said
she could soon be found, 'if his lordship would have the goodness to
wait a short time.' The young lady soon appeared, breathless and
exhausted with running. Lord Egremont mentioned our names, and she said,
looking up to Wilkie with an expression of great respect, 'Oh, sir! it
was but yesterday I had your head in my hands.' This puzzled him, as he
did not know she was a phrenologist.
"'And what bumps did you find?' said Lord Egremont.
"'The organ of veneration, very large,' was her answer; and Wilkie,
making her a profound bow, said:
"'Madam, I have a great veneration for genius.'
"She showed us an unfinished picture from _The Bride of Lammermoor_. The
figure of Lucy Ashton was completed, and, she told us, was the portrait
of a young friend of hers; but Ravenswood was without a head, and this
she explained by saying, 'there are no handsome men in Chichester. But,'
she continued, her countenance brightening, 'the Tenth are expected here
soon.'" (The Tenth was noted for its handsome officers.)
Leslie does not carry the story farther. Whether poor Ravenswood ever
gained his head; whether if he did so it was a military one, or, as a
last resource, a Chichester one; and where the picture, if completed,
now is, I do not know, nor have I succeeded in discovering any more of
the young lady. But passing through the streets of the town I was
conscious of the absence of the Tenth.
Chichester is a perfect example of an English rural capital, thronged on
market days with tilt carts, each bringing a farmer or farmer's wife,
and rich in those well-stored ironmongers' shops that one never sees
elsewhere. But it is more than this: it is also a cathedral town, with
the ever present sense of domination by the cloth even when the cloth is
not visible. Chichester has its roughs and its public houses (Mr. Hudson
in his _Nature in Downland_ gives them a caustic chapter); it also has
its race-week every July, and barracks within hail; yet it is always a
cathedral town. Whatever noise may be in the air you know in your heart
that quietude is its true characteristic. One might say that above the
loudest street cries you are continually conscious of the silence of the
close.
[Illustration: _Chichester Cathedral._]
[Sidenote: CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL]
Chichester's cathedral is not among the most beautiful or the most
interesting, but there is none cooler. It dates from the eleventh
century and contains specimens of almost every kind of church
architecture; but the spire is comparatively new, having been built in
1866 to take the place of its predecessor, which suddenly dropped like
an extinguisher five years before. Seen from the Channel it rises, a
friendly landmark (white or gray, according to the clouds), and while
walking on the Downs above or on the plain around, one is frequently
pleased to catch an unexpected glimpse of its tapering beauty. I have
heard it said that Chichester is the only English cathedral that is
visible at sea.
Within, the cathedral is disappointing, offering one neither richness on
the one hand nor the charm of pure severity on the other. A cathedral
must either be plain or coloured, and Chichester comes short of both
ideals; it has no colour and no purity. Its proportions are, however,
exquisite, and it is impossible to remain here long without passing
under the spell of the stone. Yet had it, one feels, only radiance, how
much finer it would be.
For the completest contrast to the vastness of the cathedral one may
cross into North Street and enter the portal of the toy church of St.
Olave, which dates from the 14th century, and is remarkable, not only
for its minuteness, but as being one of the churches of Chichester
which, in my experience, is not normally locked and barred.
[Sidenote: ROMAN CHICHESTER]
That Chichester was built by the Romans in the geometrical Roman way you
may see as you look down from the Bell Tower upon its four main
streets--north, south, east and west--east becoming Stane-street and
running direct to London. Chichester then was Regnum. On the departure
of the Romans, Cissa, son of Ella, took possession, and the name was
changed to Cissa's Ceastre, hence Chichester. Remnants of the old walls
still stand; and a path has been made on the portion running from North
Street down to West Gate.
[Sidenote: A CLERICAL STRONGHOLD]
More attractive, because more human, than the cathedral itself are its
precincts: the long resounding cloisters, the still, discreet lanes
populous with clerics, and most of all that little terrace of
ecclesiastical residences parallel with South Street, in the shadow of
the mighty fane, covered with creeping greenness, from wistaria to
ampelopsis, with minute windows, inviolable front doors and trim front
gardens, which (like all similar settlements) remind one of alms-houses
carried out to the highest power. Surely the best of places in which to
edit Horace afresh or find new meanings in St. Augustine.
[Illustration: _Chichester Cross._]
There is a tendency for the cathedral to absorb all the attention of the
traveller, but Chichester has other beauties, including the Market
Cross, which is a mere child of stone, dating only from the reign of
Henry VIII.; St. Mary's Hospital in North Street; and the remains of the
monastery of the Grey Friars in the Priory Park. Young Chichester now
plays cricket where of old the monks caught fish and performed their
duties. It was probably on the mound that their Calvary stood; the last
time I climbed it was to watch Bonnor, the Australian giant, practising
in the nets below, too many years ago.
Like all cathedral towns Chichester has beautiful gardens, as one may
see from the campanile. There are no lawns like the lawns of Bishops,
Deans, and Colleges; and few flower beds more luxuriantly stocked.
Chichester also has a number of grave, solid houses, such as Miss
Austen's characters might have lived in; at least one superb specimen of
the art of Sir Christopher Wren, a masterpiece of substantial red brick;
and a noble inn, the Dolphin, where one dines in the Assembly room, a
relic of the good times before inns became hotels.
[Sidenote: SPERSHOTT'S RECOLLECTIONS]
We have some glimpses of old Chichester in the reminiscences (about
1720-1730) of James Spershott, a Chichester Baptist Elder, who died in
1789, aged eighty. I quote a passage here and there from his paper of
recollections printed in the Sussex Archaeological Collections:--
"Spinning of Household Linnen was in use in most Families, also making
their own Bread, and likewise their own Household Physick. No Tea, but
much Industrey and good Cheer. The Bacon racks were loaded with Bacon,
for little Porke was made in these times. The farmers' Wifes and
Daughters were plain in Dress, and made no such gay figures in our
Market as nowadays. At Christmas, the whole Constellation of Pattypans
which adorn'd their Chimney fronts were taken down. The Spit, the Pot,
the Oven, were all in use together; the Evenings spent in Jollity, and
their Glass Guns smoking Top'd the Tumbler with the froth of Good
October, till most of them were slain or wounded, and the Prince of
Orange, and Queen Ann's Marlborough, could no longer be resounded...."
[Sidenote: THE DEATH OF A SWEARER]
Here is Mr. Spershott's account of a Chichester calamity:--"Jno. Page,
Esq., native of this city, coming from London to Stand Candidate Here, a
great number of voters went on Horseback to meet him. Among the rest Mr.
Joshua Lover, a noted School Master, a sober man in the general but of
flighty Passions. As he was setting out, one of his Scollers, Patty
Smith (afterwards my Spouse) asked him for a Coppy, and in haste he
wrote the following:--
Extreames beget Extreames, Extreames avoid
Extreames without Extreames are not Enjoyed.
"He set off in High Carrier, and turning down Rooks's Hill before the
Sqr., rideing like a madman To and fro, forward and backward Hallooing
among the Company, the Horse at full speed fell with him and kill'd him.
A Caution to the flighty and unsteady; and a verification of his Coppy."
Again: "Robt. Madlock, a most Prophane Swarer, being Employ'd in
Cleaning the outside of the Steeple," fell, owing to a breaking rope,
and soon after died. Mr. Spershott adds: "A warning to Swarers." Another
entry states: "In my younger years there were many very large corpulent
Persons in the City, both of Men and Women. I could now recite by name
between twenty and thirty, the great part of that number so Prodigious
that like other animals Thoroughly fatted, they could hardly move
about."
One of Chichester's epitaphs runs thus:--
Here lies a true soldier, whom all must applaud;
Much hardship he suffer'd at home and abroad;
But the hardest engagement he ever was in,
Was the battle of Self in the conquest of Sin.
[Sidenote: THE PERFECT ALMSHOUSE]
I have left until the last the prettiest thing in this city of comely
streets and houses--St. Mary's Hospital, at the end of Lion Street (out
of North Street): the quaintest almshouse in the world. The building
stands back, behind the ordinary houses, and is gained by a passage and
a courtyard. You then enter what seems to be a church, for at the far
end is an altar beneath an unmistakably ecclesiastical window. But when
the first feeling of surprise has passed, you discover that there is
only a small chancel at the east end of the building, on either side of
which are little dwellings. Each of these is occupied by a nice little
old woman, who has two rooms, very minute and cosy, with a little supply
of faggots close at hand, and all the dignity of a householder, although
the occupant only of an infinitesimal toy house within a house. How do
they agree, one wonders, these little old ladies of a touchy age under
their great roof?
Different accounts are given of the origin of St. Mary's Hospital. Mr.
Lower says that it was founded in 1229 for a chaplain and thirteen
bedesmen. In 1562 a warden and five inmates were the prescribed
occupants. Now there are eight sets of rooms, each with its demure
tenant, all of whom troop into the little chapel at fixed hours. Mrs.
Evans, sacristan, who does the honours, would tell me nothing as to the
process of selection by which she and the seven other occupants came to
be living there; all that she could say was that she was very happy to
be a Hospitaller, and that by no possibility could one of the little
domiciles ever fall to me.
[Illustration: _The Ruined Nave of Boxgrove._]
CHAPTER V
CHICHESTER AND THE HILLS.
Goodwood--The art of being a park--The Cenotaph of Lord
Darnley--Boxgrove--Cowper at Eastham--The Charlton Hunt--A famous
run--Huntsman and Saint--Present day hunting in Sussex--Mr. Knox's
delectable day with his gun--Kingly Bottom--The best white
violets--A demon bowler--Two epitaphs.
Chichester may have a cathedral and a history, but nine out of ten
strangers know of it only as a station for Goodwood race-course; towards
which, in that hot week at the end of July, hundreds of carriages toil
by the steep road that skirts the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's park.
Goodwood Park gives me little pleasure. I miss the deer; and when the
first park that one ever knew was Buxted, with its moving antlers above
the brake fern, one almost is compelled to withhold the word park from
any enclosure without them. It is impossible to lose the feeling that
the right place for cattle--even for Alderneys--is the meadow. Cows in a
park are a poor makeshift; parks are for deer. To my eyes Goodwood
House has a chilling exterior; the road to the hill-top is steep and
lengthy; and when one has climbed it and crossed the summit wood, it is
to come upon the last thing that one wishes to find in the heart of the
country, among rolling Downs, sacred to hawks and solitude--a Grand
Stand and the railings of a race-course! Race-courses are for the
outskirts of towns, as at Brighton and Lewes; or for hills that have no
mystery and no magic, like the heights of Epsom; or for such mockeries
of parks as Sandown and Kempton. The good park has many deer and no
race-course.
And yet Goodwood is superb, for it has some of the finest trees in
Sussex within its walls, including the survivors of a thousand cedars of
Lebanon planted a hundred and fifty years ago; and with every step
higher one unfolds a wider view of the Channel and the plain. Best of
these prospects is, perhaps, that gained from Carne's seat, as the
Belvedere to the left of the road to the racecourse is called; its name
deriving from an old servant of the family, whose wooden hut was
situated here when Carne died, and whose name and fame were thus
perpetuated. The stones of the building were in part those of old Hove
church, near Brighton, then lately demolished.
[Sidenote: THE CENOTAPH OF DARNLEY]
In Goodwood House, which is shown on regular days, are fine Vandycks and
Lelys, relics of the two Charles', and above all the fascinatingly
absorbing "Cenotaph of Lord Darnley," a series of scenes in the life of
that ill-fated husband. It may be said that among all the treasures of
Sussex there is nothing quite so interesting as this.
[Illustration: _Boxgrove Priory Church._]
[Sidenote: BOXGROVE]
Leaving Chichester by East Street (or Stane Street, the old Roman road
to London) one comes first to West Hampnett, famous as the birthplace,
in 1792, of Frederick William Lillywhite, the "Nonpareil" bowler, whom
we shall meet again at Brighton. A mile and a half beyond is Halnaker,
midway between two ruins, those of Halnaker House to the north and
Boxgrove Priory to the south. Of the remains of Halnaker House, a Tudor
mansion, once the home of the De la Warrs, little may now be seen; but
Boxgrove is still very beautiful, as Mr. Griggs' drawings prove. The
Priory dates from the reign of Henry I., when it was founded very
modestly for three Benedictine monks, a number which steadily grew.
Seven Henries later came its downfall, and now nothing remains but some
exquisite Norman arches and a few less perfect fragments. Boxgrove
church is an object of pilgrimage for antiquaries and architects, the
vaulting being peculiarly interesting. At the Halnaker Arms in 1902 was
a landlady whom few cooks could teach anything in the matter of pastry.
[Sidenote: THE EARTHAM DILLETANTE]
The next village on Stane Street, or rather a little south of it, about
two miles beyond Halnaker, is Eartham; which brings to mind William
Hayley, the friend and biographer of Cowper and the author of _The
Triumphs of Temper_, perhaps the least read of any book that once was
popular. Hayley succeeded his father as squire of Eartham; here he
entertained Cowper and other friends; here Romney painted. When need
came for retrenchment, Hayley let Eartham to Huskisson, the statesman,
and moved to Felpham, on the coast, where we shall meet with him again.
Cowper's occupations upon this charming Sussex hillside are recorded in
Hayley's account of the visit: "_Homer_ was not the immediate object of
our attention while Cowper resided at Eartham. The morning hours that we
could bestow on books were chiefly devoted to a complete revisal and
correction of all the translations, which my friend had finished, from
the Latin and Italian poetry of Milton; and we generally amused
ourselves after dinner in forming together a rapid metrical version of
Andreini's _Adamo_. But the constant care which the delicate health of
Mrs. Unwin required rendered it impossible for us to be very assiduous
in study, and perhaps the best of all studies was to promote and share
that most singular and most exemplary tenderness of attention with which
Cowper incessantly laboured to counteract every infirmity, bodily and
mental, with which sickness and age had conspired to load this
interesting guardian of his afflicted life.... The air of the south
infused a little portion of fresh strength into her shattered frame, and
to give it all possible efficacy, the boy, whom I have mentioned, and a
young associate and fellow student of his, employed themselves regularly
twice a day in drawing this venerable cripple in a commodious
garden-chair round the airy hill of Eartham. To Cowper and to me it was
a very pleasing spectacle to see the benevolent vivacity of blooming
youth thus continually labouring for the ease, health, and amusement of
disabled age."
[Sidenote: COWPER IN SUSSEX]
The poet and Mrs. Unwin, after much trepidation and doubt, had left
Weston Underwood on August 1, 1792; they slept at Barnet the first
night, Ripley the next, and were at Eartham by ten o'clock on the third.
They stayed till September. Cowper describes Hayley's estate as one of
the most delightful pleasure grounds in the world. "I had no conception
that a poet could be the owner of such a paradise, and his house is as
elegant as his scenes are charming." The poet, apart from his rapid
treatment of _Adamo_, did not succeed independently in attaining to
Hayley's fluency among these surroundings. "I am in truth so
unaccountably local in the use of my pen," he wrote to Lady Hesketh,
"that, like the man in the fable, who could leap well nowhere but at
Rhodes, I seem incapable of writing at all except at Weston." Hence the
only piece that he composed in our county was the epitaph on Fop, a dog
belonging to Lady Throckmorton. But while he was at Eartham Romney drew
his portrait in crayons.
[Illustration: _Boxgrove from the South._]
Cowper always looked back upon his visit with pleasure, but, as he
remarked, the genius of Weston Underwood suited him better--"It has an
air of snug concealment in which a disposition like mine feels itself
peculiarly gratified; whereas now I see from every window woods like
forests and hills like mountains--a wilderness, in short, that rather
increases my natural melancholy.... Accordingly, I have not looked out
for a house in Sussex, nor shall."
The simplest road from Chichester to the Downs is the railway. The
little train climbs laboriously to Singleton, and then descends to
Cocking and Midhurst. By leaving it at Singleton one is quickly in the
heart of this vast district of wooded hills, sometimes wholly forested,
sometimes, as in West Dean park, curiously studded with circular clumps
of trees.
[Sidenote: THE CHARLTON HUNT]
The most interesting spot to the east of the line is Charlton, once so
famous among sporting men, but now, alas, unknown. For Charlton was of
old a southern Melton Mowbray, the very centre of the aristocratic
hunting county. The Charlton Hunt had two palmy periods: before the Duke
of Monmouth's rebellion, and after the accession of William III.
Monmouth and Lord Grey kept two packs, the Master being Squire Roper.
With the fall of Monmouth Roper fled to France, to hunt at Chantilly,
but on the accession of William III. he returned to Sussex, the hounds
resumed their old condition, and the Charlton pack became the most
famous in the world. On the death of Mr. Roper--in the hunting field, in
1715, at the age of eighty-four--the Duke of Bolton took the Mastership,
which he held until the charms of Miss Fenton the actress (the Polly
Peachum of _The Beggars' Opera_) lured him to the tents of the women.
Then came the glorious reign of the second Duke of Richmond, when sport
with the Charlton was at its height. The Charlton Hunt declined upon his
death, in 1750, became known as the Goodwood Hunt, and wholly ceased to
be at the beginning of the last century.
The crowning glory of the Charlton Hunt was the run of Friday, January
26, 1738, which is thus described in an old manuscript:--
[Sidenote: A FAMOUS RUN]
A FULL AND IMPARTIAL ACCOUNT OF THE REMARKABLE CHASE AT CHARLTON,
ON FRIDAY, 26TH JANUARY, 1738.
It has long been a matter of controversy in the hunting world to
what particular country or set of men the superiority belonged.
Prejudices and partiality have the greatest share in their
disputes, and every society their proper champion to assert the
pre-eminence and bring home the trophy to their own country. Even
Richmond Park has the Dymoke. But on Friday, the 26th of January,
1738, there was a decisive engagement on the plains of Sussex,
which, after ten hours' struggle, has settled all further debate
and given the brush to the gentlemen of Charlton.
PRESENT IN THE MORNING:--
The Duke of Richmond, Duchess of Richmond, Duke of St Alban's, the
Lord Viscount Harcourt, the Lord Henry Beauclerk, the Lord
Ossulstone, Sir Harry Liddell, Brigadier Henry Hawley, Ralph
Jennison, master of His Majesty's Buck Hounds, Edward Pauncefort,
Esq., William Farquhar, Esq., Cornet Philip Honywood, Richard
Biddulph, Esq., Charles Biddulph, Esq., Mr. St. Paul, Mr. Johnson,
Mr. Peerman, of Chichester; Mr. Thomson, Tom Johnson, Billy Ives,
Yeoman Pricker to His Majesty's Hounds; David Briggs and Nim Ives,
Whippers-in.
At a quarter before eight in the morning the fox was found in
Eastdean Wood, and ran an hour in that cover; then into the Forest,
up to Puntice Coppice through Heringdean to the Marlows, up to
Coney Coppice, back to the Marlows, to the Forest West Gate, over
the fields to Nightingale Bottom, to Cobden's at Draught, up his
Pine Pit Hanger, where His Grace of St. Alban's got a fall; through
My Lady Lewknor's Puttocks, and missed the earth; through Westdean
Forest to the corner of Collar Down (where Lord Harcourt blew his
first horse), crossed the Hackney-place down the length of Coney
Coppice, through the Marlows to Heringdean, into the Forest and
Puntice Coppice, Eastdean Wood, through the Lower Teglease across
by Cocking Course down between Graffham and Woolavington, through
Mr. Orme's Park and Paddock over the Heath to Fielder's Furzes, to
the Harlands, Selham, Ambersham, through Todham Furzes, over Todham
Heath, almost to Cowdray Park, there turned to the limekiln at the
end of Cocking Causeway, through Cocking Park and Furzes; there
crossed the road and up the hills between Bepton and Cocking. Here
the unfortunate Lord Harcourt's second horse felt the effects of
long legs and a sudden steep; the best thing that belonged to him
was his saddle, which My Lord had secured; but, by bleeding and
Geneva (contrary to Act of Parliament) he recovered, and with some
difficulty was got home. Here Mr. Farquhar's humanity claims your
regard, who kindly sympathised with My Lord in his misfortunes, and
had not power to go beyond him. At the bottom of Cocking Warren
the hounds turned to the left across the road by the barn near
Heringdean, then took the side near to the north-gate of the Forest
(Here General Hawley thought it prudent to change his horse for a
true-blue that staid up the hills). Billy Ives likewise took a
horse of Sir Harry Liddell's, went quite through the Forest and run
the foil through Nightingale Bottom to Cobden at Draught, up his
Pine Pit Hanger to My Lady Lewknor's Puttocks, through every mews
she went in the morning; went through the Warren above Westdean
(where we dropt Sir Harry Liddell) down to Benderton Farm (here
Lord Harry sank), through Goodwood Park (here the Duke of Richmond
chose to send three lame horses back to Charlton, and took Saucy
Face and Sir William, that were luckily at Goodwood; from thence,
at a distance, Lord Harry was seen driving his horse before him to
Charlton). The hounds went out at the upper end of the Park over
Strettington-road by Sealy Coppice (where His Grace of Richmond got
a summerset), through Halnaker Park over Halnaker Hill to Seabeach
Farm (here the Master of the Stag Hounds, Cornet Honywood, Tom
Johnson, and Nim Ives were thoroughly satisfied), up Long Down,
through Eartham Common fields and Kemp's High Wood (here Billy Ives
tried his second horse and took Sir William, by which the Duke of
St. Alban's had no great coat, so returned to Charlton). From
Kemp's High Wood the hounds took away through Gunworth Warren,
Kemp's Rough Piece, over Slindon Down to Madehurst Parsonage (where
Billy came in with them), over Poor Down up to Madehurst, then down
to Houghton Forest, where His Grace of Richmond, General Hawley,
and Mr. Pauncefort came in (the latter to little purpose, for,
beyond the Ruel Hill, neither Mr. Pauncefort nor his horse Tinker
cared to go, so wisely returned to his impatient friends), up the
Ruel Hill, left Sherwood on the right hand, crossed Ofham Hill to
Southwood, from thence to South Stoke to the wall of Arundel River,
where the glorious 23 hounds put an end to the campaign, and killed
an old bitch fox, ten minutes before six. Billy Ives, His Grace of
Richmond, and General Hawley were the only persons in at the death,
to the immortal honour of 17 stone, and at least as many campaigns.
[Sidenote: JOHNSON THE EXEMPLAR]
In Singleton church is a record of the Charlton Hunt in the shape of a
memorial to one of the huntsmen, the moral of which seems to be that we
must all be huntsmen too:--
"Near this place lies interred
THOMAS JOHNSON,
who departed this life at Charlton,
December 20th, 1774.
"From his early inclination to fox-hounds, he soon became an experienced
huntsman. His knowledge in the profession, wherein he had no superior,
and hardly an equal, joined to his honesty in every other particular,
recommended him to the service, and gained him the approbation, of
several of the nobility and gentry. Among these were the Lord CONWAY,
Earl of CARDIGAN, the Lord GOWER, the Duke of MARLBOROUGH, the Hon. M.
SPENCER. The last master whom he served, and in whose service he died,
was CHARLES, Duke of RICHMOND, LENNOX, and AUBIGNY, who erected this
monument in memory of a good and faithful servant, as a reward to the
deceased, and an incitement to the living.
'Go, and do thou likewise.' (St. Luke, x. 37).
'Here Johnson lies; what human can deny
Old Honest Tom the tribute of a sigh?
Deaf is that ear which caught the opening sound;
Dumb that tongue which cheer'd the hills around.
Unpleasing truth: Death hunts us from our birth
In view, and men, like foxes, take to earth.'"
[Sidenote: THE SUSSEX PACKS]
A few words on the packs of Sussex at the present time may be
interesting in this connection. Chief is the Southdown Fox Hounds, a
very fine, fast pack brought to a high state of perfection by the late
master, the Hon. Charles Brand. They hunt the open and hill country
between the Adur and Cuckmere, between Haywards Heath and the sea. In
the north are the Crawley and Horsham Fox Hounds, which have large
woodlands, high hedges, and some stiff ploughed soil to their less easy
lot. The hounds are bigger and heavier than the South Downers. Smaller
packs are Lord Leconfield's Fox Hounds, which have the Charlton country;
the Eastbourne Fox Hounds, to which the East Sussex Fox Hounds allotted
a share of the western part of their country east of the Cuckmere; and
the Burstow and Eridge packs. Of Harriers, the best are the Brighton
Harriers, so long hunted by Mr. Hugh Gorringe of Kingston-by-Sea, a very
smart pack lately covering the ground between the Adur and Falmer, and
now adding the Brookside Harriers' country to their own domain, the two
packs having been amalgamated. In the east are the Bexhill Harriers and
the Hailsham Harriers; and in the west the South Coast Harriers, for the
Chichester country. Sussex, in addition to possessing the Warnham
Staghounds, is much raided by the Surrey Staghounds. The Crowhurst Otter
Hounds also visit the Sussex streams now and then. Foot Beagles may be
numerous but I know only of the Brighton pack.
[Sidenote: MR. KNOX'S SETTER]
And here let me give Mr. Knox's description of a day's shooting, in the
gentlemanly way, on the Sussex Downs, following, in his _Ornithological
Rambles_, upon some remarks on the battue. "How different is the pursuit
of the pheasant with the aid of spaniels in the thick covers of the
weald, or tracking him with a single setter among some of the wilder
portions of the forest range!--intently observing your dog and
anticipating the wily artifices of some old cock, with spurs as long as
a dragon's, who will sometimes lead you for a mile through bog, brake,
fern, and heather, before the sudden drop of your staunch companion, and
a rigidity in all his limbs, satisfy you that you have at last compelled
the bird to squat under that wide holly-bush, from whence you kick him
up, and feel some little exultation as you bring him down with a
snap-shot, having only caught a glimpse of him through the evergreen
boughs, as he endeavoured to escape by a rapid flight at the opposite
side of the tree.
[Sidenote: A SUSSEX BAG]
"And then the woodcock-shooting in November--I must take you back once
more to my favourite Downs. With the first full moon during that month,
especially if the wind be easterly or the weather calm, arrive flights
of woodcocks, which drop in the covers, and are dispersed among the
bushy valleys, and even over the heathery summits of the hills. If it
should happen to be a propitious year for beech-mast--the great
attraction to pheasants on the Downs, as is the acorn in the weald--you
may procure partridges, pheasants, hares, and rabbits in perhaps equal
proportions, with half a dozen woodcocks to crown the bag.
[Illustration: _East Lavant._]
"The extensive, undulating commons and heaths dotted with broken patches
of Scotch firs and hollies on the ferruginous sand north of the Downs,
afford--where the manorial rights are enforced--still greater variety of
sport. On this wild ground, accompanied by my spaniels and an old
retriever, and attended only by one man, to carry the game, I have
enjoyed as good sport as mortal need desire on this side of the Tweed.
Here is a rough sketch of a morning's work.
[Sidenote: PARTRIDGE AND WOODCOCK]
"Commencing operations by walking across a turnip-field, two or three
coveys spring wildly from the farther end, and fly, as I expect, to the
adjoining common, where they are marked down on a brow thickly clothed
with furze. Marching towards them with spaniels at heel, up jumps a hare
under my nose, then another, then a rabbit. I reload rapidly, and on
reaching the gorse 'put in' the dogs. Whirr! there goes a partridge! The
spaniels drop to the report of my gun, but the fluttering wings of the
dying bird rouse two of his neighbours before I am ready, and away they
fly, screaming loudly. The remainder are flushed in detail and I succeed
in securing the greater part of them. Now for the next covey. They were
marked down in that little hollow where the heather is longer than
usual--a beautiful spot! But before I reach it, up they all spring in an
unexpected quarter; that cunning old patriarch at their head had
cleverly called them together to a naked part of the hill from whence he
could observe my manoeuvres, and a random shot sent after him with
hearty good will proved totally ineffective.
"Now the spaniels are worming through the thick sedges on either side of
the brook which intersects the moor, and by their bustling anxiety it is
easy to see that game is afoot. Keeping well in front of them, I am just
in time for a satisfactory right and left at two cock pheasants, which
they had hunted down to the very edge of the water before they could
persuade them to take wing. Now for that little alder coppice at the
further end of the marshy swamp. Hark to that whipping sound so
different from the rush of the rising pheasant or the drumming flight of
the partridge! I cannot see the bird, but I know it is a woodcock. This
must be one of his favourite haunts, for I perceive the tracks of his
feet and the perforations of his bill in every direction on the black
mud around. Mark! again. A second is sprung, and as he flits between the
naked alders a snap-shot stops his career. I now emerge at the farther
end, just where the trees are thinner than elsewhere. A wisp of snipes
utter their well-known cry and scud over the heath; one of these is
secured. The rest fly towards a little pool of dark water lying at a
considerable distance from the common, a well-known rendezvous for
those birds. Cautiously approaching, down wind, I reach the margin. Up
springs a snipe; but just as my finger is on the trigger, and when too
late to alter my intention, a duck and mallard rise from among the
rushes and wheel round my head. One barrel is fortunately left, and the
drake comes tumbling to the ground. Three or four pheasants, another
couple of woodcocks, a few more snipes, a teal or two, and half a dozen
rabbits picked up at various intervals, complete the day's sport, and I
return home, better pleased with myself and my dogs than if we had
compassed the destruction of all the hares in the county, or assisted at
the immolation of a perfect hecatomb of pheasants."
[Sidenote: KINGLY BOTTOM]
Kingly Bottom is the most interesting spot to the west of Singleton. One
may reach it either through Chilgrove, or by walking back towards
Chichester as far as Binderton House, turning then to the right and
walking due west for a couple of miles. Report says that the yews in
Kingly Bottom, or Kingly Vale, mark a victory of Chichester men over a
party of marauding Danes in 900, and that the dead were buried beneath
the barrows on the hill. The story ought to be true. The vale is
remarkable for its grove of yews, some of enormous girth, which extends
along the bottom to the foot of the escarpment. The charge that might be
brought against Sussex, that it lacks sombre scenery and the elements of
dark romance, that its character is too open and transparent, would be
urged to no purpose in Kingly Vale, which, always grave and silent, is
transformed at dusk into a sinister and fantastic forest, a home for
witchcraft and unquiet spirits.
So it seems to me; but among the verses of Bernard Barton, the Quaker
poet and the friend of Charles Lamb, I lately chanced upon a sonnet
"written on hearing it remarked that the scenery [of Kingly Bottom] was
too gloomy to be termed beautiful; and that it was also associated with
dolorous recollections of Druidical sacrifices." In this poem Barton
takes a surprisingly novel line. "Nay, nay, it is not gloomy" he begins,
and the end is thus:--
Nor fancy Druid rites have left a stain
Upon its gentle beauties:--loiter there
In a calm summer night, confess how fair
Its moonlight charms, and thou wilt learn how vain
And transitory Superstition's reign
Over a spot which gladsome thoughts may share.
The ordinary person, not a poet, would, I fear, prefer to think of
Kingly Bottom's Druidical past.
[Sidenote: THE MARDEN VIOLETS]
The last time I was in Kingly Bottom--it was in April--after leaving the
barrows on the summit of the Bow Hill, above the Vale, I walked by
devious ways to East Marden, between banks thick with the whitest and
sweetest of sweet white violets. East Marden, however, has no inn and is
therefore not the best friend of the traveller; but it has the most
modest and least ecclesiastical-looking church in the world, and by
seeking it out I learned two secrets: the finest place for white violets
and the finest place to keep a horse. There is no riding country to
excel this hill district between Singleton and the Hampshire border.
At the neighbouring village of Stoughton, whither I meant to walk (since
an inn is there) was born, in 1783, the terrible George Brown--Brown of
Brighton--the fast bowler, whose arm was as thick as an ordinary man's
thigh. He had two long stops, one of whom padded his chest with straw. A
long stop once held his coat before one of Brown's balls, but the ball
went through it and killed a dog on the other side. Brown could throw a
4-1/2 oz. ball 137 yards, and he was the father of seventeen children.
He died at Sompting in 1857.
[Sidenote: CHURCHYARD POETRY]
Of Racton, on the Hampshire border, and its association with Charles
II., I have already spoken. Below, it is Westbourne, a small border
village in whose churchyard are two pleasing epitaphs. Of Jane, wife of
Thomas Curtis, who died in 1719, it is written:--
She was like a lily fresh and green,
Soon cast down and no more seen.
and of John Cook:
Pope said an honest man
Is the noblest work of God.
If Pope's assertion be from error clear,
One of God's noblest works lies buried here.
[Illustration: _Bosham._]
CHAPTER VI
CHICHESTER AND THE PLAIN
Bosham and history--An expensive pun--The Bosham bells--Chidham
wheat--The Manhood peninsula--Selsey's adders--Selsey Bill--St.
Wilfrid and the Sussex heathen--Pagham Harbour in its palmy
days--Bognor--Felpham's great rider--Mr. Hayley and Mrs. Opie--An
epitaph and a poem--A fairy's funeral--William Blake in Sussex--The
trial of a traitor.
On leaving Chichester West Street becomes the Portsmouth Road and passes
through Fishbourne, a pleasant but dusty village. A mile or so beyond,
and a little to the south, is Bosham, on one of the several arms of
Chichester Harbour, once of some importance but now chiefly mud. Bosham
is the most interesting village in what may be called the Selsey
peninsula. Yet how has its glory diminished! What is now a quiet abode
of fishermen and the tarrying-place of yachtsmen and artists (there are
few Royal Academy exhibitions without the spire of Bosham church) has
been in its time a very factory of history. Vespasian's camp was hard
by, and it is possible that certain Roman remains that have been found
here were once part of his palace. Bosham claims to be the scene of
Canute's encounter with the encroaching tide; which may be the case,
although one has always thought of the king rebuking his flatterers
rather by the margin of the ocean itself than inland at an estuary's
edge. But beyond question Canute had a palace here, and his daughter was
buried in the church.
[Sidenote: A COSTLY PUN]
Earl Godwin, father of Harold, last of the Saxons, dwelt here also. "Da
mihi basium"--give me a kiss--he is fabled to have said to Archbishop
Aethelnoth, and on receiving it to have taken the salute as acquiescence
in the request--"Da mihi Bosham": probably the earliest and also the
most expensive recorded example in England of this particular form of
humour.
It was from Bosham that Harold sailed on that visit to the Duke of
Normandy which resulted in the battle of Hastings. In the Bayeux
tapestry he may be seen riding to Bosham with his company, and also
putting up prayers for the success of his mission. Of this success we
shall see more when we come to Battle. Bosham furthermore claims Hubert
of Bosham, the author of the _Book of Becket's Martyrdom_, who was with
Saint Thomas of Canterbury when the assassins stabbed him to the death.
The church is of great age; it is even claimed that the tower is the
original Saxon. The circumstance that in the representation of the
edifice in the Bayeux tapestry there is no tower has been urged against
this theory, although architectural realism in embroidery has never been
very noticeable. The bells (it is told) were once carried off in a
Danish raid; but they brought their captors no luck--rather the reverse,
since they so weighed upon the ship that she sank. When the present
bells ring, the ancient submerged peal is said to ring also in sympathy
at the bottom of the Channel--a pretty habit, which would suggest that
bell metal is happily and wisely superior to changes of religion, were
it not explained by the unromantic principles of acoustics.
A heavy pole, known as the staff of Bevis of Southampton (and Arundel),
was of old kept in Bosham church.
At high water Bosham is the fair abode of peace. When every straggling
arm of the harbour is brimming full, when their still surfaces reflect
the sky with a brighter light, and the fishing boats ride erect, Bosham
is serenely beautiful and restful. But at low tide she is a slut: the
withdrawing floods lay bare vast tracts of mud; the ships heel over into
attitudes disreputably oblique; stagnation reigns.
[Sidenote: CHIDHAM WHEAT]
Chidham, by Bosham, is widely famous for its wheat. Chidham White, or
Hedge, wheat was first produced a little more than a century ago by Mr.
Woods, a farmer. He noticed one afternoon (probably on a Sunday, when
farmers are most noticing) an unfamiliar patch of wheat growing in a
hedge. It contained thirty ears, in which were fourteen hundred corns.
Mr. Woods carefully saved it and sowed it. The crop was eight pounds and
a half. These he sowed, and the crop was forty eight gallons. Thus it
multiplied, until the time came to distribute it to other farmers at a
high price. The cultivation of Chidham wheat by Mr. Woods at one side of
the county, synchronised with the breeding of the best Southdown sheep
by John Ellman at the other, as we shall see later.
South of Chichester stretches the Manhood peninsula, of which Selsey is
the principal town: the part of Sussex most neglected by the traveller.
In a county of hills the stranger is not attracted by a district that
might almost have been hewn out of Holland. But the ornithologist knows
its value, and in a world increasingly bustling and progressive there is
a curious fascination in so remote and deliberate a region, over which,
even in the finest weather and during the busiest harvest, a suggestion
of desolation broods. Nothing, one feels, can ever introduce Success
into this plain, and so thinking, one is at peace.
[Sidenote: THE MONOTONY OF MANHOOD]
A tramway between Chichester and Selsey has to some extent opened up the
east side of the peninsula, but the west is still remote and will
probably remain so. The country is, however, not interesting: a dead
level of dusty road and grass or arable land, broken only by hedges,
dykes, white cottages, and the many homesteads within their ramparts of
wind-swept elms. Wheat and oats are the prevailing crops, still for the
most part cut and bound by hand. Of the villages in the centre of the
peninsula Sidlesham is the most considerable, with its handsome square
church tower and its huge red tide-mill, now silent and weather-worn,
standing mournfully at the head of the dry harbour of Pagham, whose
waters once turned its wheels. On the west, on the shores of the Bosham
estuary, or Chichester Harbour, are the sleepy amphibious villages of
Appledram, famous once for its salt and its smugglers, Birdham, and
Earnley. Let no one be tempted to take a direct line across the fields
from Selsey to Earnley, for dykes and canals must effectually stop him.
Indeed, cross country walking in this part of the country is practically
an impossibility, except by continuous deviations and doublings. In
attempting one day to reach Earnley from Selsey in this way (after
giving up the beach in despair), I came upon several adders, and I once
found one crossing a road absolutely in Selsey.
Selsey is a straggling white village, or town, over populous with
visitors in summer, empty, save for its regular inhabitants, in winter.
The oldest and truest part of Selsey is a fishing village on the east
shore of the Bill, a little settlement of tarred tenements and lobster
pots. Selsey church, now on the confines of the town, once stood a mile
or more away; whither it was removed (the stones being numbered) and,
like Temple Bar, again set up. The chancel was, however, not removed,
but left desolate in the fields.
Selsey Bill is a tongue of land projecting into a shallow sea. A
lighthouse being useless to warn strange mariners of the sandbanks of
this district, a lightship known as the Owers flashes its rays far out
in the channel. The sea has played curious pranks on the Selsey coast.
Beneath the beach and a large tract of the sea now lies what was once,
four hundred years ago, a park of deer, which in its most prosperous day
extended for miles. The shallow water covering it is still called the
park by the fishermen, who drop their nets where the bucks and does of
Selsey were wont to graze.
[Sidenote: SUSSEX REPELS ST. WILFRID]
But the sea has obliterated more than the pasturage of the deer; a mile
distant from the present shore stood the first monastery erected in
Sussex after Wilfrid's conversion of the South Saxons to Christianity.
Although Saint Wilfrid eventually found a home in Sussex and worked hard
among its people, his first attempt to bring Christianity to the county
was, according to his friend Edda's _Vita Wilfridi_, ill-starred. I
quote the story:--
"A great gale blowing from the South-east, the swelling waves threw them
on the unknown coast of the South Saxons. The sea too left the ship and
men, and retreating from the land and leaving the shore uncovered,
retired into the depths of the abyss.
"And the heathen, coming with a great army, intended to seize the ship,
to divide the spoil of money, to take them captives forthwith, and to
put to the sword those who resisted. To whom our great bishop spoke
gently and peaceably, offering much money, wishing to redeem their
souls.
"But they with stern and cruel hearts like Pharaoh would not let the
people of the Lord go, saying proudly that, 'All that the sea threw on
the land became as much theirs as their own property.'
"And the idolatrous chief priest of the heathen, standing on a lofty
mound, strove like Balaam to curse the people of God, and to bind their
hands by his magic arts.
"Then one of the bishop's companions hurled, like David, a stone,
blessed by all the people of God, which struck the cursing magician in
the forehead and pierced his brain, when an unexpected death surprised,
as it did Goliath, falling back a corpse in sandy places.
"The heathen therefore preparing to fight, vainly attacked the people of
God. But the Lord fought for the few, even as Gideon by the command of
the Lord, with 300 warriors slew at one attack 12,000 of the Midianites.
"And so the comrades of our holy bishop, well-armed and brave, though
few in number (they were 120 men, the number of the years of Moses),
determined and agreed that none should turn his back in flight from the
other, but would either win death with glory, or life with victory (for
both alike are easy to the Lord). So S. Wilfrith with his clerk fell on
his knees, and lifting his hands to Heaven again sought help from the
Lord. For, as Moses triumphed when Hur and Aaron supported his hands, by
frequently imploring the protection of the Lord, when Joshua the son of
Nun was fighting with the people of God against Amalek, thus these few
Christians after thrice repulsing the fierce and untamed heathen, routed
them with great slaughter, with a loss strange to say of only five on
their side.
"And their great priest (Wilfrith) prayed to the Lord his God, who
immediately ordered the sea to return a full hour before its wont. So
that when the heathen, on the arrival of their king, were preparing for
a fourth attack with all their forces, the rising sea covered with its
waves the whole of the shore, and floated the ship, which sailed into
the deep. But, greatly glorified by God, and returning Him thanks, with
a South wind they reached Sandwich, a harbour of safety."
[Sidenote: JOHN WESLEY'S TESTIMONY]
The Sussex people, it would seem, do not take kindly to missionaries,
for John Wesley records that he had less success in this county than in
all England.
Between Selsey and Bognor lies Pagham, famous in the pages of Knox's
_Ornithological Rambles_, but otherwise unknown. Of the lost glories of
Pagham, which was once a harbour, but is now dry, let Mr. Knox
speak:--"Here in the dead long summer days, when not a breath of air
has been stirring, have I frequently remained for hours, stretched on
the hot shingle, and gazed at the osprey as he soared aloft, or watched
the little islands of mud at the turn of the tide, as each gradually
rose from the receding waters, and was successively taken possession of
by flocks of sandpipers and ring-dotterels, after various
circumvolutions on the part of each detachment, now simultaneously
presenting their snowy breasts to the sunshine, now suddenly turning
their dusky backs, so that the dazzled eye lost sight of them from the
contrast; while the prolonged cry of the titterel,[2] and the melancholy
note of the peewit from the distant swamp, have mingled with the scream
of the tern and the taunting laugh of the gull.
[Sidenote: PAGHAM'S LOST GLORIES]
"Here have I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point,
and cautiously waded into the shallow water; and the patient heron, that
pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck, and eyes fixed on
vacancy, he has stood for hours without a single snap, motionless as a
statue. Here, too, have I pursued the guillemot, or craftily endeavoured
to cut off the retreat of the diver, by mooring my boat across the
narrow passage through which alone he could return to the open sea
without having recourse to his reluctant wings. Nor can I forget how
often, during the Siberian winter of 1838, when 'a whole gale,' as the
sailors have it, has been blowing from the north-east, I used to take up
my position on the long and narrow ridge of shingle which separated this
paradise from the raging waves without, and sheltered behind a hillock
of seaweed, with my long duck-gun and a trusty double, or half buried in
a hole in the sand, I used to watch the legions of water-birds as they
neared the shore, and dropped distrustfully among the breakers, at a
distance from the desired haven, until, gaining confidence from
accession of numbers, some of the bolder spirits--the pioneers of the
army--would flap their wings, rise from the white waves, and make for
the calm water. Here they come! I can see the pied golden-eye
pre-eminent among the advancing party; now the pochard, with his
copper-coloured head and neck, may be distinguished from the darker
scaup-duck; already the finger is on the trigger, when, perhaps, they
suddenly veer to the right and left, far beyond the reach of my longest
barrel or, it may be, come swishing overhead, and leave a companion or
two struggling on the shingle or floating on the shallow waters of the
harbour."
Pagham Harbour is now reclaimed, and where once was mud, or, at high
tide, shallow water, is rank grass and thistles. One ship that seems to
have waited a little too long before making for the open sea again, now
lies high and dry, a forlorn hulk. Pagham church is among the airiest
that I know, with a shingle spire, the counterpart of Bosham's on the
other side of the peninsula.
The walk from Pagham to Bognor, along the sand, is uninspiring and not
too easy, for the sand can be very soft. About a mile west of Bognor one
is driven inland, just after passing as perfect an example of the simple
yet luxurious seaside home as I remember to have seen: all on one floor,
thatched, shaded by trees, surrounded by its garden and facing the
Channel.
[Sidenote: EARLY BOGNOR]
Among the unattractive types of town few are more dismal than the
watering-place _manque_. Bognor must, I fear, come under this heading.
Its reputation, such as it is, was originally made by Princess
Charlotte, daughter of George III., who found the air recuperative, and
who was probably not unwilling to lend her prestige to a resort, as her
brother George was doing at Brighton, and her sister Amelia had done at
Worthing. But before the Princess Charlotte Sir Richard Hotham, the
hatter, had come, determined at any cost to make the town popular. One
of his methods was to rename it Hothampton. His efforts were, however,
only moderately successful, and he died in 1799, leaving to what
Horsfield calls "his astonished heirs" only _L_8,000 out of a great
fortune. The name Hothampton soon vanished.
The local authorities of Bognor seem to be keenly alive to the value of
enterprise, for their walls are covered with instructions as to what may
or may not be done in the interests of cleanliness and popularity; a new
sea-wall has been built; receptacles for waste paper continually
confront one, and deck chairs at twopence for three hours are
practically unavoidable. And yet Bognor remains a dull place, once the
visitor has left his beach abode--tent or bathing box, whichever it may
be. It seems to be a town without resources. But it has the interest,
denied one in more fashionable watering-places, of presenting old and
new Bognor at the same moment; not that old Bognor is really old, but it
is instructive to see the kind of crescent which was considered the last
word in architectural enterprise when our great-grandmothers were young
and would take the sea air.
[Sidenote: A POET ON HORSEBACK]
From Bognor it is a mere step to Felpham, a village less than a mile to
the east. Whether or not one goes there to-day is a matter of taste; but
a hundred years ago to omit a visit was to confess one's-self a boor,
for William Hayley, the poet and friend of genius, lived there, and his
castellated stucco house became a shrine. At that day it seems to have
been no uncommon sight for the visitor to Bognor to be refreshed by the
spectacle of the poet falling from his horse. According to his
biographer, Cowper's Johnny of Norfolk, Hayley descended to earth almost
as often as Alice's White Knight, partly from the high spirit of his
steed, and partly from a habit which he never abandoned of wearing
military spurs and carrying an umbrella. The memoir of the poet contains
this agreeable passage: "The Editor was once riding gently by his side,
on the stony beach of Bognor, when the wind suddenly reversed his
umbrella as he unfolded it; his horse, with a single but desperate
plunge, pitched him on his head in an instant.... On another occasion,
on the same visit ... he was tost into the air on the Downs, at the
precise moment when an interested friend whom they had just left, being
apprehensive of what would happen, was anxiously viewing him from his
window, through a telescope." Those who look through telescopes are
rarely so fortunate. It is odd that Hayley, a delicate and heavy man
suffering from hip-disease, should have taken so little hurt. Although
he had a covered passage for horse exercise in the grounds of his villa,
no amount of practice seems to have improved his seat. This covered way
has been removed, but a mulberry tree planted by Hayley still
flourishes.
Whenever Hayley was ill he became an object of intense interest to
visitors at Bognor. Binsted's Library in the town exhibited a daily
bulletin; and in 1819 the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Coburg called upon
him, while the Princess of Hesse Homburg on her return sent a
prescription from Germany.
[Sidenote: HAYLEY HOUR BY HOUR]
Mrs. Opie, the novelist, who stayed with Mr. Hayley every summer, and
also served as a magnet to devout sojourners at Bognor, has left an
account of the poet's habits which is vastly more entertaining than his
poetry. He rose at six or earlier and at once composed some devotional
verse. At breakfast, he read to Mrs. Opie; afterwards Mrs. Opie read to
him. At eleven they drank coffee, and before he dressed for dinner, a
very temperate meal, Mrs. Opie sang. After dinner there was more reading
aloud, the matter being either manuscript compositions of Mr. Hayley's,
or modern publications. Mr. Hayley took cocoa and Mrs. Opie tea, and
afterwards Mrs. Opie read aloud or sang. At nine, the servants came to
prayers, which were original compositions of Mr. Hayley's, read by him
in a very impressive manner, and before bed, Mrs. Opie sang one of Mr.
Hayley's hymns.
Hayley's grave is at Felpham, and his epitaph by Mrs. Opie may be read
by the industrious on the wall of the church. Among the many epitaphs on
his neighbours by Hayley himself, who had a special knack of mortuary
verse, is this on a Felpham blacksmith:--
My sledge and hammer lie reclined;
My bellows too have lost their wind;
My fire's extinct; my forge decay'd,
And in the dust my vice is laid;
My coal is spent, my iron gone;
The nails are driven--my work is done.
The last verses that Hayley wrote have more charm and delicacy than
perhaps anything else among his works:
Ye gentle birds that perch aloof,
And smooth your pinions on my roof,
Preparing for departure hence
Ere winter's angry threats commence;
Like you, my soul would smooth her plume
For longer flights beyond the tomb.
May God, by whom is seen and heard
Departing man and wandering bird,
In mercy mark us for his own,
And guide us to the land unknown.
[Sidenote: A FAIRY'S FUNERAL]
But it is not Hayley that gives its glory to Felpham. The glory of
Felpham is that William Blake was happy there for nearly three years. It
was at Felpham that he saw the fairy's funeral. "Did you ever see a
fairy's funeral, ma'am?" he asked a visitor. "Never, sir!" "I have!... I
was walking alone in my garden; there was great stillness among the
branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air; I heard
a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw
the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath I saw a procession of
creatures, of the size and colour of green and grey grasshoppers,
bearing a body laid out on a rose-leaf, which they buried with songs,
and then disappeared. It was a fairy's funeral!"
Blake settled at Felpham to be near Hayley, for whom he had a number of
commissions to execute. He engraved illustrations to Hayley's works,
and painted eighteen heads for Hayley's library--among them,
Shakespeare, Homer, and Hayley himself; but all have vanished, the
present owner knows not where.
In some verses which Blake addressed to Anna Flaxman, the wife of the
sculptor, in September, 1800, a few days before moving from London to
the Sussex coast, he says:--
This song to the flower of Flaxman's joy;
To the blossom of hope, for a sweet decoy;
Do all that you can and all that you may
To entice him to Felpham and far away.
Away to sweet Felpham, for Heaven is there;
The ladder of Angels descends through the air,
On the turret its spiral does softly descend,
Through the village then winds, at my cot it does end.
[Sidenote: THE PROPHETS AT FELPHAM]
Blake's house still stands, a retired, thatched cottage, facing the sea,
but some distance from it. In a letter to Flaxman a little later, he
says, "Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual
than London. Heaven opens here on all sides its golden gates; the
windows are not obstructed by vapours; voices of celestial inhabitants
are more distinctly heard, their forms more distinctly seen; and my
cottage is also a shadow of their houses." Beside the sea Blake communed
with the spirits of Dante and Homer, Milton and the Hebrew Prophets.
Blake's sojourn at Felpham ended in 1803. A grotesque and annoying
incident marred its close, the story of which, as told by the poet in a
letter to Mr. Butler, certainly belongs to the history of Sussex. It
should, however, first be stated that an ex-soldier in the Royal
Dragoons, named John Scholfield, had accused Blake of uttering seditious
words. The letter runs:--"His enmity arises from my having turned him
out of my garden, into which he was invited as an assistant by a
gardener at work therein, without my knowledge that he was so invited. I
desired him, as politely as possible, to go out of the garden; he made
me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the garden; he
refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure. He then threatened
to knock out my eyes, with many abominable imprecations, and with some
contempt for my person; it affronted my foolish pride. I therefore took
him by the elbows, and pushed him before me until I had got him out.
There I intended to have left him; but he, turning about, put himself
into a posture of defiance, threatening and swearing at me. I, perhaps
foolishly and perhaps not, stepped out at the gate, and, putting aside
his blows, took him again by the elbows, and, keeping his back to me,
pushed him forward down the road about fifty yards--he all the while
endeavouring to turn round and strike me, and raging and cursing, which
drew out several neighbours. At length when I had got him to where he
was quartered, which was very quickly done, we were met at the gate by
the master of the house--the Fox Inn--(who is the proprietor of my
cottage) and his wife and daughter, and the man's comrade, and several
other people. My landlord compelled the soldiers to go indoors, after
many abusive threats against me and my wife from the two soldiers; but
not one word of threat on account of sedition was uttered at that time."
[Sidenote: WILLIAM BLAKE, TRAITOR]
As a result, Blake was haled before the magistrates and committed for
trial. The trial was held in the Guildhall at Chichester, on January
11th, 1804. Hayley, in spite of having been thrown from his horse on a
flint with, says Gilchrist, Blake's biographer, "more than usual
violence" was in attendance to swear to the poet's character, and
Cowper's friend Rose, a clever barrister, had been retained. According
to the report in the County paper, "William Blake, an engraver at
Felpham, was tried on a charge exhibited against him by two soldiers for
having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions, such as 'd--n the
king, d--n all his subjects, d--n his soldiers, they are all slaves;
when Buonaparte comes, it will be cut-throat for cut-throat, and the
weakest must go to the wall; I will help him; &c., &c.'" Blake
electrified the court by calling out "False!" in the midst of the
military evidence, the invented character of which was, however, so
obvious that an acquittal resulted. "In defiance of all decency," the
spectators cheered, and Hayley carried off the sturdy Republican (as he
was at heart) to Mid Lavant, to sup at Mrs. Poole's.
[Sidenote: BLAKE'S FLASHING EYE]
Mr. Gilchrist found an old fellow who had been present at the trial,
drawn thither by the promise of seeing the great man of the
neighbourhood, Mr. Hayley. All that he could remember was Blake's
flashing eye.
The Fox Inn, by the way, is still as it was, but the custom, I fancy,
goes more to the Thatched House, which adds to the charms of refreshment
a museum containing such treasures as a petrified cocoanut, the skeleton
of a lobster twenty-eight years old, and a representation of Moses in
the bulrushes.
A third and fourth great man, of a different type both from Hayley and
Blake, met at Felpham in 1819. One was Cyril Jackson, Dean of Christ
Church, who, lying on his death-bed in the Manor House, was visited by
the other--his old pupil, the First Gentleman in Europe.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The Sussex provincial name for the whimbrel.
[Illustration: _Arundel._]
CHAPTER VII
ARUNDEL AND NEIGHBOURHOOD
A feudal town--Castles ruined and habitable--The old religion and
the new--Bevis of Southampton--Lord Thurlow lays an egg--A noble
park--A song in praise of Sussex--The father of cricket.
Seen from the river or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel is
the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old,
or older; but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even
Lewes among her Downs.
Arundel clings to the side of a shaggy hill above the Arun. Castle,
cathedral, church--these are Arundel; the town itself is secondary,
subordinate, feudal. The castle is what one likes a castle to be--a mass
of battlemented stone, with a keep, a gateway, and a history, and yet
more habitable than ever. So many of the rich make no effort to live in
their ancestral halls; and what might be a home, carrying on the
tradition of ages, is so often only a mere show, that to find an
historic castle like Arundel still lived in is very gratifying. In
Sussex alone are several half-ruined houses that the builders could
quickly make habitable once more. Arundel Castle, in spite of time and
the sieges of 1102, 1139, and 1643, is both comfortable and modern;
Arundel still depends for her life upon the complaisance of her
over-lord.
[Sidenote: MODERN MEDIEVALISM]
I know of no town with so low a pulse as this precipitous little
settlement under the shadow of Rome and the Duke. In spite of picnic
parties in the park, in spite of anglers from London, in spite of the
railway in the valley, Arundel is still medieval and curiously foreign.
On a very hot day, as one climbs the hill to the cathedral, one might be
in old France, and certainly in the Middle Ages.
Time's revenges have had their play in this town. Although the church is
still bravely of the establishment, half of it is closed to the Anglican
visitor (the chancel having been adjudged the private property of the
Dukes of Norfolk), and the once dominating position of the edifice has
been impaired by the proximity of the new Roman Catholic church of St.
Philip Neri, which the present Duke has been building these many years.
Within, it is finished, a very charming and delicate feat in stone; but
the spire has yet to come. The old Irish soldier, humorous and
bemedalled, who keeps watch and ward over the fane, is not the least of
its merits.
Although the chancel of the parish church has been closed, permission to
enter may occasionally be obtained. It is rich in family tombs of great
interest and beauty, including that of the nineteenth Earl of Arundel,
the patron of William Caxton. In the siege of Arundel Castle in 1643,
the soldiers of the parliamentarians, under Sir William Waller, fired
their cannon from the church tower. They also turned the church into a
barracks, and injured much stone work beyond repair. A fire beacon
blazed of old on the spire to serve as a mark for vessels entering
Littlehampton harbour.
Bevis of Southampton, the giant who, when he visited the Isle of Wight,
waded thither, was a warder at Arundel Castle; where he ate a whole ox
every week with bread and mustard, and drank two hogsheads of beer.
Hence "Bevis Tower." His sword Morglay is still to be seen in the
armoury of the castle; his bones lie beneath a mound in the park; and
the town was named after his horse. So runs a pretty story, which is,
however, demolished with the ruthlessness that comes so easily to the
antiquary and philologist. Bevis Tower, science declares, was named
probably after another Bevis--there was one at the Battle of Lewes, who
took prisoner Richard, King of the Romans, and was knighted for
it--while Arundel is a corruption of "hirondelle," a swallow. Mr. Lower
mentions that in recent times in Sussex "Swallow" was a common name in
stables, even for heavy dray horses. But before accepting finally the
swallow theory, we ought to hear what Fuller has to say:--"Some will
have it so named from _Arundel_ the _Horse_ of _Beavoice_, the great
_Champion_. I confess it is not without precedence in _Antiquity_ for
_Places_ to take _names_ from _Horses_, meeting with the _Promontory
Bucephalus_ in Peloponesus, where some report the _Horse_ of _Alexander_
buried, and Bellonius will have it for the same cause called _Cavalla_
at this day. But this _Castle_ was so called long before that _Imaginary
Horse_ was _foled_, who cannot be fancied elder than his Master
Beavoice, flourishing after the Conquest, long before which _Arundel_
was so called from the river _Arund_ running hard by it."
[Sidenote: LORD THURLOW LAYS AN EGG]
The owls that once multiplied in the keep have now disappeared. They
were established there a hundred years or so ago by the eleventh Duke,
and certain of them were known by the names of public men. "Please, your
Grace, Lord Thurlow has laid an egg," is an historic speech handed down
by tradition. Lord Thurlow, the owl in question, died at a great age in
1859.
[Illustration: _The Arun at North Stoke._]
[Sidenote: ARUNDEL PARK]
To walk through Arundel Park is to receive a vivid impression of the
size and richness of our little isolated England. Two or three great
towns could be hidden in it unknown to each other. Valley succeeds to
valley; new herds of deer come into sight at almost every turn; as far
as the eye can see the grass hills roll away. Those accustomed to parks
whose deer are always huddled close and whose wall is never distant, are
bewildered by the vastness of this enclosure. Yet one has also the
feeling that such magnificence is right: to so lovely a word as Arundel,
to the Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, should
fittingly fall this far-spreading and comely pleasaunce. Had Arundel
Park been small and empty of deer what a blunder it would be.
Walking west of Arundel through the vast Rewell Wood, we come suddenly
upon Punch-bowl Green, and open a great green valley, dominated by the
white facade of Dale Park House, below Madehurst, one of the most remote
of Sussex villages.
[Sidenote: SLINDON]
By keeping due west for another mile Slindon is reached. This village is
one of the Sussex backwaters, as one might say. It lies on no road that
any one ever travels except for the purpose of going to Slindon or
coming from it; and those that perform either of these actions are few.
Yet all who have not seen Slindon are by so much the poorer, for Slindon
House is nobly Elizabethan, with fine pictures and hiding-places, and
Slindon beeches are among the aristocracy of trees. And here I should
like to quote a Sussex poem of haunting wistfulness and charm, which was
written by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who once walked to Rome and is an old
dweller at Slindon:--
[Sidenote: A SOUTH COUNTRY SONG]
THE SOUTH COUNTRY.
When I am living in the Midlands,
That are sodden and unkind,
I light my lamp in the evening:
My work is left behind;
And the great hills of the South Country
Come back into my mind.
The great hills of the South Country
They stand along the sea:
And it's there walking in the high woods
That I could wish to be,
And the men that were boys when I was a boy
Walking along with me.
The men that live in North England
I saw them for a day:
Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,
Their skies are fast and grey:
From their castle-walls a man may see
The mountains far away.
The men that live in West England
They see the Severn strong,
A-rolling on rough water brown
Light aspen leaves along.
They have the secret of the Rocks,
And the oldest kind of song.
But the men that live in the South Country
Are the kindest and most wise,
They get their laughter from the loud surf,
And the faith in their happy eyes
Comes surely from our Sister the Spring,
When over the sea she flies;
The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,
She blesses us with surprise.
I never get between the pines,
But I smell the Sussex air,
Nor I never come on a belt of sand
But my home is there;
And along the sky the line of the Downs
So noble and so bare.
A lost thing could I never find,
Nor a broken thing mend;
And I fear I shall be all alone
When I get towards the end.
Who will there be to comfort me,
Or who will be my friend?
I will gather and carefully make my friends
Of the men of the Sussex Weald,
They watch the stars from silent folds,
They stiffly plough the field.
By them and the God of the South Country
My poor soul shall be healed.
If I ever become a rich man,
Or if ever I grow to be old,
I will build a house with deep thatch
To shelter me from the cold,
And there shall the Sussex songs be sung
And the story of Sussex told.
I will hold my house in the high wood
Within a walk of the sea,
And the men who were boys when I was a boy
Shall sit and drink with me.
[Sidenote: NEWLAND, NYREN, AND SILVER BILLY]
Richard Newland, the father of serious cricket, came from this parish.
He was born in 1718, or thereabouts, and in 1745 he made 88 for England
against Kent. He was left-handed, and the finest bat ever seen in those
days. He taught Richard Nyren, of Hambledon, all the skill and judgment
that that noble general possessed; Nyren communicated his knowledge to
the Hambledon eleven, and the game was made. An interest in historical
veracity compels me to add that William Beldham--Silver Billy--talking
to Mr. Pycroft, discounted some of Nyren's praise. "Cricket," he said,
"was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least [he was born in
1766]; but that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard
Newland, of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard
Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play Newland. Now a
second-rate man of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what
the rest of Sussex then were." But this is disregarding the
characteristic uncertainty of the game.
If one would spend a day far from mankind, on high ground, there is no
better way than to walk from Arundel through Houghton Forest (where, as
we have seen, Charles II. avoided the Governor) to Cocking.
CHAPTER VIII
LITTLEHAMPTON
A children's paradise--Wind-swept villages--Cary and
Coleridge--Sussex folklore--Climping--Richard Jefferies and
Sussex--John Taylor the Water Poet--Highdown Hill--A miller in love
with death--A digression on mills and millers--Treason at
Patching--A wife in a thousand--A Sussex truffler--The Palmer
triplets.
Littlehampton is favoured in having both sea and river. It also has
lawns between the houses and the beach, as at Dieppe, and is as nearly a
children's paradise as exists. The sea at low tide recedes almost beyond
the reach of the ordinary paddler, which is as it should be except for
those that would swim. A harbour, a pier, a lighthouse, a windmill--all
these are within a few yards of each other. On the neighbouring beach,
springing from the stones, you find the yellow-horned poppy, beautiful
both in flower and leaf, and the delicate tamarisk makes a natural hedge
parallel with the sea, to Worthing on the one side, and to Bognor on the
other.
The little villages in the flats behind the eastern tamarisk
hedge--Rustington, Preston, Ferring, are, in summer, veritable sun
traps, with their white walls dazzling in radiance. Such trees as grow
about here all bow to the north-east, bent to that posture by the
prevailing south-west winds. A Sussex man, on the hills or south of
them, lost at night, has but to ascertain the outline of a tree, and he
may get his bearings. If he cannot see so much as that he has but to
feel the bark for lichen, which grows on the north east, or lee, side.
It was at Littlehampton in September, 1817, that Coleridge met Cary, the
translator of Dante. Cary was walking on the beach, reciting Homer to
his son. Up came a noticeable man with large grey eyes: "Sir, yours is a
face I should know. I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge."
[Sidenote: A CHURCH DUEL]
The county paper for February 27, 1796, has this paragraph: "On Monday
last a duel was fought betwixt Mr. R----n and Lieut. B----y, both of
Littlehampton, in a field near that place, which, after the discharge of
each a pistol, terminated without bloodshed. The dispute, we understand,
originated about a pew in the parish church."
A local proverb says that if you eat winkles in March it is as good as a
dose of medicine; which reminds me that Sussex has many wise sayings of
its own. Here is a piece of Sussex counsel in connection with the
roaring month:--
If from fleas you would be free,
On the first of March let all your windows closed be.
I quote two other rhymes:--
If you would wish your bees to thrive
Gold must be paid for every hive;
For when they're bought with other money
There will be neither swarm nor honey.
The first butterfly you see,
Cut off his head across your knee,
Bury the head under a stone
And a lot of money will be your own.
On Whit Sunday the devout Sussex man eats roast veal and gooseberry
pudding. A Sussex child born on Sunday can neither be hanged nor
drowned.
[Sidenote: "CLIMPING FOR PERFECTION"]
West of Littlehampton is an architectural treasure, in the shape of
Climping church, which no one should miss. The way is over the ferry and
along the road to the first signboard, when one strikes northward
towards Ford, and comes suddenly upon this squat and solid fane. A Saxon
church stood here, built by the Prioress of Leominster, before the
Conquest: to Roger de Montgomerie was the manor given by the Conqueror,
as part of the earldom of Arundel and Chichester, together with
Atherington manor, much of which is now, like Selsey's park, under the
Channel. De Montgomerie gave Climping manor to the nuns of Almanesches,
by whom the present Norman fortress-tower (with walls 4-1/4 feet thick)
was added, and in 1253 John de Climping, the vicar, rebuilt the
remainder. The church is thus six and a half centuries old, and parts of
it are older. "Bosham, for antiquity; Boxgrove, for beauty; and
Climping, for perfection" is the dictum of an antiquary quoted by the
present vicar in a little pamphlet-history of his parish. As regards the
Norman doorway, at any rate, he is right: there is nothing in Sussex to
excel that; while in general architectural attraction the building is of
the richest. It is also a curiously homely and ingratiating church.
One of the new windows, representing St. Paul, has a peculiar interest,
as the vicar tells us:--"St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome shortly after
Caractacus, the British Chief, whose daughter, Claudia, married Pudens,
both friends of the Apostle (2 Tim. iv. 21). Pudens afterwards commanded
the Roman soldiers stationed at Regnum (Chichester), and if St. Paul
came to Britain, at Claudia's request (as ancient writers testify), he
certainly would visit Sussex. How close this brings us here in Sussex to
the Bible story!"
At Baylies Court, now a farmhouse, the Benedictine monks of Seez, also
proteges of Robert de Montgomerie, had their chapel, remains of which
are still to be seen.
Climping, which otherwise lives its own life, is the resort of golfers
(who to the vicar's regret play all Sunday and turn Easter Day into "a
Heathen Festival") and of the sportsmen of the Sussex Coursing Club, who
find that the terrified Climping hare gives satisfaction beyond most in
the county.
Of Ford, north of Climping, there is nothing to say, except that popular
rumour has it that its minute and uninteresting church (the antithesis
of Climping) was found one day by accident in a bed of nettles.
[Sidenote: JEFFERIES IN SUSSEX]
A good eastern walk from Littlehampton takes one by the sea to Goring,
and then inland over Highdown Hill to Angmering, and so to Littlehampton
again or to Arundel, our present centre. Goring touches literature in
two places. The great house was built by Sir Bysshe Shelley, grandfather
of the poet; and in the village died, in 1887, Richard Jefferies, author
of _The Story of My Heart_, after a life of ill-health spent in the
service of nature. Many beautiful and sympathetic descriptions of Sussex
are scattered about in Jefferies' books of essays, notably, "To
Brighton," "The South Down Shepherd," and "The Breeze on Beachy Head" in
_Nature near London_; "Clematis Lane," "Nature near Brighton," "Sea, Sky
and Down," and "January in the Sussex Woods" in _The Life of the
Fields_; "Sunny Brighton" in _The Open Air_, and "The Country-Side,
Sussex" and "Buckhurst Park" in _Field and Hedgerow_. Jefferies had a
way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which
makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing;
but I think I could lead anyone to Clematis Lane. I might, by the way,
have remarked of South Harting that the luxuriance of the clematis in
its hedges is unsurpassed.
John Taylor, the water poet, has a doggerel narrative entitled "A New
Discovery by Sea with a Wherry from London to Salisbury," 1623, wherein
he mentions a woful night with fleas at Goring, and pens a couplet
worthy to take a place with the famous description of a similar
visitation in _Eothen_:--
Who in their fury nip'd and skip'd so hotly,
That all our skins were almost turned to motley.
[Sidenote: JOHN TAYLOR AND THE CONSTABLE]
Taylor gives us in the same record a pleasant picture of the Sussex
constable in 1623:--
The night before a Constable there came,
Who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name,
My businesse, and a troupe of questions more,
And wherefore we did land vpon that shore?
To whom I fram'd my answers true and fit,
(According to his plenteous want of wit)
But were my words all true or if I ly'd
With neither I could get him satisfi'd.
He ask'd if we were Pyrats? We said No,
(_As if we had we would haue told him so_)
He said that Lords sometimes would enterprise
T' escape and leaue the Kingdome in disguise:
But I assur'd him on my honest word
That I was no disguised Knight or Lord.
He told me then that I must goe sixe miles
T' a Justice there, Sir John or else Sir Giles:
I told him I was lothe to goe so farre,
And he told me he would my journey barre.
Thus what with Fleas and with the seuerall prates
Of th' officer, and his _Ass_-sociats
We arose to goe, but Fortune bade us stay:
The Constable had stolne our oares away,
And borne them thence a quarter of a mile
Quite through a Lane beyond a gate and stile;
And hid them there to hinder my depart,
For which I wish'd him hang'd with all my heart.
A plowman (for us) found our Oares againe,
Within a field well fil'd with Barley Graine.
Then madly, gladly, out to sea we thrust,
'Gainst windes and stormes, and many a churlish Gust,
By _Kingston_ Chappelle and by _Rushington_,
By _Little-Hampton_ and by _Middleton_.
[Sidenote: THE MILLER AND SWEET DEATH]
Highdown, above Goring, is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a
hill should be according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a
sweeping view of the coast and the Channel; but its fame as a resort of
holiday makers comes less from its position and height than from the
circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it. John Oliver was the
miller of Highdown Hill. When not grinding corn he seems to have busied
himself with thoughts upon the necessary end of all things, to such an
extent that his meditations on the subject gradually became a mania.
His coffin was made while he was still a young man, and it remained
under his bed until its time was ripe, fitted--to bring it to a point of
preparedness unusual even with the Chinese, those masters of
anticipatory obsequies--with wheels, which the miller, I doubt not,
regularly oiled. John Oliver did not stop there. Having his coffin
comfortably at hand, he proceeded to erect his tomb. This was built in
1766, with tedious verses upon it from the miller's pen; while in an
alcove near the tomb was a mechanical arrangement of death's-heads which
might keep the miller's thoughts from straying, when, as with Dr.
Johnson's philosopher, cheerfulness would creep in.
The miller lived in the company of his coffin, his tomb, and his
_mementi mori_, until 1793, when at the age of eighty-four his hopes
were realised. Those who love death die old.
Between two and three thousand persons attended the funeral; no one was
permitted to wear any but gay clothes; and the funeral sermon was read
by a little girl of twelve, from the text, Micah vii. 8, 9.
[Sidenote: A DIGRESSION ON MILLS]
The mill of John Oliver has vanished, nothing but a depression in the
turf now indicating where its foundations stood. Too many Sussex
windmills have disappeared. Clayton still has her twain, landmarks for
many miles--I have seen them on exceptionally clear days from the
Kentish hills--and other windmills are scattered over the county; but
many more than now exist have ceased to be, victims of the power of
steam. There is probably no contrast aesthetically more to the
disadvantage of the modern substitute than that of the steam mill of
to-day with the windmill of yesterday. The steam mill is always ugly,
always dusty, always noisy, usually in a town. The windmill stands high
and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded
by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is
elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. No one would
paint a steam mill; a picture with a windmill can hardly be a failure.
Constable, who knew everything about the magic of windmills, painted
several in Sussex--one even at Brighton.
Brighton now has but one mill. There used to be many: one in the West
Hill road, a comelier landmark than the stucco Congregational tower that
has taken its place close by and serves as the town's sentinel from
almost every point of approach. In 1797 a miller near Brighton
anticipated American enterprise by moving his mill bodily to a place two
miles distant by the help of eighty oxen.
Another weakness of steam mills is that they are apparently without
millers--at least there is no unmistakable dominating presence in a
white hat, to whom one can confidently apply the definite article, as in
the mill on the hill. Millers' men there are in plenty, but the miller
is lacking. This is because steam mills belong to companies. Thus, with
the passing of the windmill we lose also the miller, that notable figure
in English life and tradition; always jolly, if the old songs are true;
often eccentric, as the story of John Oliver has shown; and usually a
character, as becomes one who lives by the four winds, or by water--for
the miller of tradition was often found in a water-mill too. The
water-miller's empire has been threatened less than that of the
windmill, for there is no sudden cessation of water power as of wind
power. Sussex still has many water-mills--cool and splashing homes of
peaceful bustle. Long may they endure.
Highdown Hill has other associations. In 1812 the Gentlemen of the Weald
met the Gentlemen of the Sea-coast at cricket on its dividing summit.
The game, which was for one hundred guineas, was a very close thing, the
Gentlemen of the Weald winning by only seven runs. Among the Gentlemen
of the Sea-coast was Mr. Osbaldeston, while the principal Gentleman of
the Weald was Mr. E. H. Budd.
A mile north of Highdown Hill, in a thickly wooded country, are Patching
and Clapham; Patching celebrated for its pond, which washes the
high-road to Arundel, and Clapham for its woods. Three hundred and more
years ago Patching Copse was the scene of a treasonable meeting between
William Shelley, an ancestor of the poet, one branch of whose family
long held Michelgrove (where Henry VIII. was entertained by our
plotter's grandfather), and Charles Paget: sturdy Roman Catholics both,
who thus sought each other out, on the night of September 16, 1583, to
confer as to the possibility of invading England, deposing Elizabeth,
and setting Mary Queen of Scots upon the throne. Nothing came of the
plot save the imprisonment of Shelley (who was condemned to death but
escaped the sentence) and the flight of Paget, to hatch further treason
abroad.
[Sidenote: THE PERFECT WIFE]
The last Shelley to hold Michelgrove, now no more, was Sir John, who,
after it had been in the family for three hundred and fifty years, sold
it in 1800. This was the Sir John Shelley who composed the following
epitaph in Clapham church (one of Sir Gilbert Scott's restorations) to
commemorate the very remarkable virtues of his lady--untimely snatched
from his side:--
Here Lyeth the Body of Wilhelmina Shelley
who departed this Life the 21st of March 1772
Aged Twenty three years.
She was a pattern for the World to follow:
Such a being both in form and mind perhaps never existed before.
A most dutiful, affectionate, and Virtuous Wife,
A most tender and Anxious parent,
A most sincere and constant Friend,
A most amiable and elegant companion;
Universally Benevolent, generous, and humane;
The Pride of her own Sex,
The admiration of ours.
She lived universally belov'd, and admir'd
She died as generally rever'd, and regretted,
A loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing Her,
By none to be compar'd to _that_ of her disconsolate, affectionate, Loving,
& in this World everlastingly Miserable Husband,
Sir JOHN SHELLEY,
Who has caused this inscription to be Engrav'd.
Horsfield tells us that "the beechwoods in this parish [Patching] and
its immediate neighbourhood are very productive of the Truffle
(_Lycoperdon tuber_). About forty years ago William Leach came from the
West Indies, with some hogs accustomed to hunt for truffles, and
proceeding along the coast from the Land's End, in Cornwall, to the
mouth of the River Thames, determined to fix on that spot where he found
them most abundant. He took four years to try the experiment, and at
length settled in this parish, where he carried on the business of
truffle-hunter till his death."
Angmering, which we may take on our return to Arundel, is a typically
dusty Sussex village, with white houses and thatched roofs, and a rather
finer church than most. On our way back to Arundel, in the middle of a
wood, a little more than a mile from Angmering, to the west, we come
upon an interesting relic of a day when tables bore nobler loads than
now they do: a decoy pond formed originally to supply wild duck to the
kitchen of Arundel Castle, but now no longer used. The long tapering
tunnels of wire netting, into which the tame ducks of the decoy lured
their wild cousins, are still in place, although the wire has largely
perished.
[Sidenote: THE PALMER TRIPLETS]
At an old house near the Decoy (now converted into cottages), which any
native will gladly and amusedly point out, lived, in the reign of Henry
VIII., Lady Palmer, the famous mother of the Palmer triplets, who were
distinguished from other triplets, not only by being born each on a
successive Sunday but by receiving each the honour of knighthood. The
curious circumstances of their birth seem to be well attested.
[Illustration: _Gateway, Amberley Castle._]
CHAPTER IX
AMBERLEY AND PARHAM
Sussex fish--A straw-blown village--A painter of Sussex light--A
castle only in name--Parham's treasures--The Parham
heronry--Storrington and the sagacious Jack Pudding--A Sussex
audience.
[Sidenote: SUSSEX FISH]
Five miles to the north of Arundel by road (over the Arun at Houghton's
ancient bridge, restored by the bishops of Chichester in the fifteenth
century), and a few minutes by rail, is Amberley, the fishing metropolis
of Sussex, where, every Sunday in the season, London anglers meet to
drop their lines in friendly rivalry. "Amerley trout" (as Walton calls
them) and Arundel mullet are the best of the Arun's treasures; and this
reminds me of Fuller's tribute to Sussex fish, which may well be quoted
in this watery neighbourhood: "Now, as this County is eminent for both
_Sea_ and _River-_fish, namely, an _Arundel Mullet_, a _Chichester
Lobster_, a _Shelsey Cockle_, and an _Amerly Trout_; so _Sussex_
aboundeth with more _Carpes_ than any other of this Nation. And though
not so great as _Jovius_ reporteth to be found in the _Lurian Lake_ in
_Italy_, weighing more than fifty pounds, yet those generally of great
and goodly proportion. I need not adde, that _Physicians_ account the
galls of _Carpes_, as also a stone in their heads, to be _Medicinable_;
only I will observe that, because _Jews_ will not eat _Caviare_ made of
_Sturgeon_ (because coming from a fish wanting Scales, and therefore
forbidden in the _Levitical Law_); therefore the _Italians_ make greater
profit of the _Spaun_ of _Carps_, whereof they make a _Red Caviare_,
well pleasing the _Jews_ both in _Palate_ and _Conscience_. All I will
adde of _Carps_ is this, that _Ramus_ himself doth not so much redound
in _Dichotomies_ as they do; seeing no one bone is to be found in their
body, which is not _forked_ or divided into two parts at the end
thereof."
Amberley proper, as distinguished from Amberley of the anglers, is a
mile from the station and is built on a ridge. The castle is the extreme
western end of this ridge, the north side of which descends
precipitously to the marshy plain that extends as far as Pulborough.
Standing on the castle one sees Pulborough church due north--height
calling unto height. The castle is now a farm; indeed, all Amberley is a
huge stockyard, smelling of straw and cattle. It is sheer Sussex--chalky
soil, whitewashed cottages, huge waggons; and one of the best of Sussex
painters, and, in his exquisite modest way, of all painters living,
dwells in the heart of it--Edward Stott, who year after year shows
London connoisseurs how the clear skin of the Sussex boy takes the
evening light; and how the Southdown sheep drink at hill ponds beneath a
violet sky; and that there is nothing more beautiful under the stars
than a whitewashed cottage just when the lamp is lit.
[Sidenote: AMBERLEY AND PARHAM]
Amberley has no right to lay claim to a castle, for the old ruins are
not truly, as they seem, the remains of a castellated stronghold, but
of a crenellated mansion. John Langton, Bishop of Chichester in the
fourteenth century, was the first builder. Previously the Church lands
here had been held very jealously, and in 1200 we find Bishop Gilbert de
Leofard twice excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of
Arundel for poaching (as he termed it) in Houghton Forest. The Church
lost Amberley in the sixteenth century. William Rede, who succeeded
Langton to both house and see, wishing to feel secure in his home,
craved permission to dig a moat around it and to render it both hostile
and defensive. Hence its lion-like mien; but it has known no warfare,
and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in
harbouring live stock. Twentieth-century sheds lean against
fourteenth-century masonry; faggots are stored in the moat; lawn tennis
is played in the courtyard; and black pigeons peep from the slits cut
for arquebusiers.
[Illustration: _Amberley Castle._]
Amberley Castle only once intrudes itself in history: Charles II.,
during his flight in 1651, spent a night there under the protection of
Sir John Briscoe, as we saw in Chapter III.
In winter, if you ask an Amberley man where he dwells, he says,
"Amberley, God help us." In summer he says, "Amberley--where _would_ you
live?"
From Amberley to Parham one keeps upon the narrow ridge for a mile or
so, branching off then to the left. Parham's advance guard is seen all
the way--a clump of fir trees, indicating that the soil there changes to
sand.
[Sidenote: A NOBLE DAME]
For two possessions is Parham noted: a heronry in the park, and in the
house a copy of Montaigne with Shakespeare's autograph in it. The house,
a spreading Tudor mansion, is the seat of Lord Zouche, a descendant of
the traveller, Robert Curzon, who wrote _The Monasteries of the Levant_,
that long, leisurely, and fascinating narrative of travel. In addition
to Montaigne, it enshrines a priceless collection of armour, of
incunabula and Eastern MSS. Among the pictures are full lengths of Sir
Philip Sidney and Lady Sidney, and that Penelope D'Arcy--one of Mr.
Hardy's "Noble Dames"--who promised to marry three suitors in turn and
did so. We see her again at Firle Place.
A hiding hole for priests and other refugees is in the long gallery,
access to it being gained through a window seat. There was hidden
Charles Paget after the Babington conspiracy.
[Sidenote: THE PARHAM HERONS]
Parham Park has deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees.
On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the
famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is
in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually
homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long
legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries.
Mr. Knox's _Ornithological Rambles_, from which I have already quoted
freely, has this passage: "The herons at Parham assemble early in
February, and then set about repairing their nests, but the trees are
never entirely deserted during the winter months; a few birds, probably
some of the more backward of the preceding season, roosting among their
boughs every night. They commence laying early in March, and the greater
part of the young birds are hatched during the early days of April.
About the end of May they may be seen to flap out of their nests to the
adjacent boughs, and bask for hours in the warm sunshine; but although
now comparatively quiet during the day, they become clamorous for food
as the evening approaches, and indeed for a long time appear to be more
difficult to wean, and less able to shift for themselves, than most
birds of a similar age. They may be observed, as late as August, still
on the trees, screaming for food, and occasionally fed by their parents,
who forage for them assiduously; indeed, these exertions, so far from
being relaxed after the setting of the sun, appear to be redoubled
during the night; for I have frequently disturbed herons when riding by
moonlight among the low grounds near the river, where I have seldom seen
them during the day, and several cottagers in the neighbourhood of
Parham have assured me that their shrill cry may be heard at all hours
of the night, during the summer season, as they fly to and fro overhead,
on their passage between the heronry and the open country.
[Illustration: _Amberley Castle, entrance to Churchyard._]
[Sidenote: MANY MIGRATIONS]
"The history or genealogy of the progenitors of this colony is
remarkable. They were originally brought from Coity Castle, in Wales, by
Lord Leicester's steward, in James the First's time, to Penshurst, in
Kent, the seat of Lord de Lisle, where their descendants continued for
more than two hundred years; from thence they migrated to Michelgrove,
about seventy miles from Penshurst and eight from Parham; here they
remained for nearly twenty years, until the proprietor of the estate
disposed of it to the late Duke of Norfolk, who, having purchased it,
not as a residence, but with the view of increasing the local property
in the neighbourhood of Arundel, pulled down the house, and felled one
or two of the trees on which the herons had constructed their nests. The
migration commenced immediately, but appears to have been gradual; for
three seasons elapsed before all the members of the heronry had found
their way over the Downs to their new quarters in the fir-woods of
Parham. This occurred about seventeen years ago [written c. 1848]."
Sussex, says Mr. Borrer, author of _The Birds of Sussex_, has two other
large heronries--at Windmill Hill Place, near Hailsham, and Brede, near
Winchelsea--and some smaller ones, one being at Molecomb, above
Goodwood.
Betsy's Oak in Parham Park is said to be so called because Queen
Elizabeth sat beneath it. But another and more probable legend calls it
Bates's Oak, after Bates, an archer at Agincourt in the retinue of the
Earl of Arundel (and in _Henry V._). Good Queen Bess, however, dined in
the hall of Parham House in 1592. At Northiam, in East Sussex, we shall
come (not to be utterly baulked) to a tree under which she truly did sit
and dine too.
[Sidenote: JACK PUDDING'S WISDOM]
Beyond Parham, less than two miles to the east, is Storrington, a quiet
Sussex village far from the rail and the noise of the world, with the
Downs within hail, and fine sparsely-inhabited country between them and
it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following
sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792:--"This is an age of
_Sights_ and _polite entertainment_ in the country as well as in the
city.--The little town of _Storrington_ has lately been visited by a
_Company of Comedians_,--_a Mountebank Doctor_,--and a _Puppet Show_.
One day the Doctor's _Jack Pudding_ finding the shillings come in but
slowly, exclaimed to his Master, 'Gad, Sir, it is not worth _our_ while
to stay here any longer, _players_ have got all the _gold_, _we_ all the
_silver_, and _Punch_ all the _copper_, so, like sagacious locusts, let
us migrate from the place we helped to impoverish."
[Illustration: _Amberley Church._]
[Sidenote: A TRAVELLING CIRCUS]
[Sidenote: A TIME-HONOURED JOKE]
This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now
moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude
that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first
planned, perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer essential elemental
horse-play straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it
with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too
long to tell; but briefly, it was a dumb show representation of the
visit of a guest (the clown) to a wife, unknown to her husband. The
scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw and a huge
barrel. The fun consisted in the clown, armed with a bladder on a
string, hiding in the barrel, from which he would spring up and deliver
a sounding drub upon the head of whatever other character--husband or
policeman--might be passing, to their complete perplexity. They were, of
course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times
he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table.
When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that
greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus
owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive
taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot require them.
[Illustration: _Pulborough Church._]
CHAPTER X
PETWORTH
Pulborough and its past--Stopham--Fittleworth--The natural
advantages of the Swan--Petworth's feudal air--An historical
digression naming many Percies--The third Earl of Egremont--The
Petworth pictures--Petworth Park--Cobbett's opinion--The
vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens--Tillington's use to business
men--A charming epitaph--Noah Mann of the Hambledon Club.
Petworth is not on the direct road to Horsham, which is our next centre,
but it is easily gained from Arundel by rail (changing at Pulborough),
or by road through Bury, Fittleworth, and Egdean.
[Sidenote: AN ANCIENT FORTRESS]
Pulborough is now nothing: once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stane
Street for Rome. The fort was on a mound west of the railway,
corresponding with the church mound on the east. Here probably was a
catapulta and certainly a vigilant garrison. Pulborough has no invader
now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her
feet into a silver sea, of which Pulborough is the northern shore and
Amberley the southern. The Dutch _polder_ are not flatter or greener
than are these intervening meadows. The village stands high and dry
above the water level, extended in long line quite like a seaside town.
Excursionists come too, as to a watering place, but they bring rods and
creels and return at night with fish for the pan.
Between Pulborough and Petworth lie Stopham and Fittleworth, both on the
Rother, which joins the Arun a little to the west of Pulborough. Stopham
has the most beautiful bridge in Sussex, dating from the fourteenth
century, and a little church filled with memorials of the Bartelott
family. One of Stopham's rectors was Thomas Newcombe, a descendant of
the author of _The Faerie Queene_, the friend of the author of _Night
Thoughts_, and the author himself of a formidable poem in twelve books,
after Milton, called _The Last Judgment_.
Fittleworth has of late become an artists' Mecca, partly because of its
pretty woods and quaint architecture, and partly because of the warm
welcome that is offered by the "Swan," which is probably the most
ingeniously placed inn in the world. Approaching it from the north it
seems to be the end of all things; the miles of road that one has
travelled apparently have been leading nowhere but to the "Swan."
Runaway horses or unsettled chauffeurs must project their passengers
literally into the open door. Coming from the south, one finds that the
road narrows by this inn almost to a lane, and the "Swan's" hospitable
sign, barring the way, exerts such a spell that to enter is a far
simpler matter than to pass.
[Illustration: _At Pulborough._]
[Sidenote: AN IRRESISTIBLE INN]
The "Swan" is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself
lazily with outspread arms; one of those inns (long may they be
preserved from the rebuilders!) in which one stumbles up or down into
every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make
them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlour is
wainscoted with the votive paintings--a village Diploma Gallery--of
artists who have made the "Swan" their home.
Fittleworth has a dual existence. In the south it is riparian and low,
much given to anglers and visitors. In the north it is high and sandy,
with clumps of firs, living its own life and spreading gorse-covered
commons at the feet of the walker. Between its southern border and
Bignor Park is a superb common of sand and heather, an inland paradise
for children.
Petworth station and Petworth town are far from being the same thing,
and there are few more fatiguing miles than that which separates them. A
'bus, it is true, plies between, but it is one of those long, close
prisons with windows that annihilate thought by their shattering
unfixedness. Petworth's spire is before one all the way, Petworth itself
clustering on the side of the hill, a little town with several streets
rather than a great village all on one artery. I say several streets,
but this is dead in the face of tradition, which has a joke to the
effect that a long timber waggon once entered Petworth's single,
circular street, and has never yet succeeded in emerging. I certainly
met it.
[Sidenote: THE SHADOW OF THE PEER]
The town seems to be beneath the shadow of its lord even more than
Arundel: it is like Pompeii, with Vesuvius emitting glory far above. One
must, of course, live under the same conditions if one is to feel the
authentic thrill; the mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders, in
these feudal towns, what it would be like to leave democratic London or
the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath
the spell of a Duke of Norfolk, or a Baron Leconfield--a spell possibly
not consciously cast by them at all, but existing none the less, largely
through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent-roll, largely
through the officers controlling the estates; at any rate unmistakable,
as present in the very air of the streets as is the presage of a
thunderstorm. Surely, to be so dominated, without actual influence,
must be very restful. Petworth must be the very home of low-pulsed
peace; and yet a little oppressive too, with the great house and its
traditions at the top of the town--like a weight on the forehead. I
should not like to make Petworth my home, but as a place of pilgrimage,
and a stronghold of architectural taste, it is almost unique.
[Illustration: _Stopham Bridge._]
[Sidenote: PETWORTH'S HISTORY]
[Sidenote: HOTSPUR'S DESCENDANTS]
In the Domesday Book Petworth is called Peteorde. It was rated at 1,080
acres, and possessed a church, a mill worth a sovereign, a river
containing 1,620 eels, and pannage for 80 hogs. In the time of the
Confessor the manor was worth _L_18; a few years later the price went down
to ten shillings. Robert de Montgomerie held Petworth till 1102, when he
defied the king and lost it. Adeliza, widow of Henry I., having a
brother Josceline de Louvaine whom she wished to benefit, Petworth was
given to him. Josceline married Agnes, daughter of William de Percy, the
descendant of one of the Conqueror's chief friends, and, doing so, took
his name. In course of time came Harry Hotspur, whose sword, which he
swung at the Battle of Shrewsbury, is kept at Petworth House. The second
Earl was his son, also Henry, who fought at Chevy Chase; he was not,
however, slain there, as the balladmonger says, but at St. Albans.
Henry, the third Earl, fell at Towton; Henry, the fourth Earl, was
assassinated at Cock Lodge, Thirsk; Henry, the fifth Earl, led a
regiment at the Battle of the Spurs; Henry, the sixth Earl, fell in love
with Anne Boleyn, but had the good sense not to let Henry the Eighth see
it. Thomas, his brother, was beheaded for treason; Thomas, the seventh
Earl, took arms against Queen Elizabeth, and was beheaded in Scotland;
Henry, the eighth Earl, attempted to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and
was imprisoned in the Tower, where he slew himself; Henry, the ninth
Earl, was accused of assisting Guy Fawkes and locked up for fifteen
years. He was set at liberty only after paying _L_30,000, and promising
never to go more than thirty miles from Petworth House. This kept him
out of London.
The last two noble Earls of Northumberland were Algernon, Lord High
Admiral of England, who married Lady Anna Cecil, and planted an oak in
the Park (it is still there) to commemorate the union; and Josceline,
eleventh Earl, who died in 1670, leaving no son. He left, however, a
daughter, a little Elizabeth, Baroness Percy, who had countless suitors
and was married three times before she was sixteen. Her third husband
was Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, who became in time the
father of thirteen children. Of these all died save three girls, and a
boy, Algernon, who became seventh Duke of Somerset. Through one of the
daughters, Catherine, who married Sir William Wyndham, the estates fell
to the present family. The next important Lord of Petworth was George
O'Brien Wyndham, third Earl of Egremont, the friend of art and
agriculture, who collected most of the pictures. The present owner is
the third Baron Leconfield.
[Illustration: _The Rother at Fittleworth._]
[Sidenote: THE EARL AND THE HOUSEMAID]
C. R. Leslie, who painted more than one picture in the Petworth gallery,
has much to say in his _Autobiographical Recollections_ of its noble
founder the third Earl, his generosity, courtesy, kindly thoughtfulness,
and extreme modesty of bearing. One story contains half his biography. I
give it in Leslie's words. After referring to his Lordship's
men-servants and their importance in the house, the painter continues:
"His own dress, in the morning, being very plain, he was sometimes by
strangers mistaken for one of them. This happened with a maid of one of
his lady guests, who had not been at Petworth before. She met him,
crossing the hall, as the bell was ringing for the servants' dinner, and
said: 'Come, old gentleman, you and I will go to dinner together, for I
can't find my way in this great house.' He gave her his arm, and led her
to the room where the other maids were assembled at their table, and
said: 'You dine here, I don't dine till seven o'clock.'"
[Sidenote: THE PETWORTH PICTURES]
On certain days in the week visitors are allowed to walk through the
galleries of Petworth House. The parties are shown by a venerable
servitor into the audit room, a long bare apartment furnished with a
statue and the heads of stags; and at the stroke of the hour a
commissionaire appears at the far door and leads the way to the office,
where a visitors' book is signed. Then the real work of the day begins,
and for fifty-five minutes one passes from Dutch painters to Italian,
from English to French: amid boors by Teniers, beauties by Lely,
landscapes by Turner, carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The commissionaire
knows them all. The collection is a fine one, but the lighting is bad,
and the conditions under which it is seen are not favourable to the
intimate appreciation of good art. One finds one's attention wandering
too often from the soldier with his little index rattan to the deer on
the vast lawn that extends from the windows to the lake--the lake that
Turner painted and fished in. Hobbemas, Vandycks, Murillos--what are
these when the sun shines and the ceaseless mutations of a herd of deer
render the middle distance fascinating? Among the more famous pictures
is a Peg Woffington by Hogarth, not here "dallying and dangerous," but
demure as a nun; also the "Modern Midnight Conversation" from the same
hand; three or four bewitching Romneys; a room full of beauties of the
Court of Queen Anne; Henry VIII by Holbein; a wonderful Claude Lorraine;
a head of Cervantes attributed to Velasquez; and four views of the
Thames by Turner. Hazlitt, in his _Sketches of the Picture Galleries of
England_, says of this collection:--"We wish our readers to go to
Petworth ... where they will find the coolest grottoes and the finest
Vandykes in the world."
[Sidenote: A PICTORAL PARK]
Lord Leconfield's park has not the remarkable natural formation of the
Duke of Norfolk's, nor the superb situation of the Duke of Richmond and
Gordon's, with its Channel prospects, but it is immense and imposing.
Also it is unreal: it is like a park in a picture. This effect may be
largely due to the circumstance that _fetes_ in Petworth Park have been
more than once painted; but it is due also, I think, to the shape and
colour of the house, to the lake, to the extent of the lawn, to the
disposition of the knolls, and to the deer. A scene-painter, bidden to
depict an English park, would produce (though he had never been out of
the Strand) something very like Petworth. It is the normal park of the
average imagination on a large scale.
[Illustration: _Almshouse at Petworth._]
Cobbett wrote thus of Petworth:--"The park is very fine, and consists of
a parcel of those hills and dells which nature formed here when she was
in one of her most sportive moods. I have never seen the earth flung
about in such a wild way as round about Hindhead and Blackdown, and this
park forms a part of this ground. From an elevated part of it, and,
indeed, from each of many parts of it, you see all around the country to
the distance of many miles. From the south-east to the north-west the
hills are so lofty and so near that they cut the view rather short; but
for the rest of the circle you can see to a very great distance. It is,
upon the whole, a most magnificent seat, and the Jews will not be able
to get it from the _present_ owner, though if he live many years they
will give even him a _twist_."
[Sidenote: THE YOUNG RAVENS]
On an eminence in the west is a tower (near a clump where ravens build),
from which the other parks of this wonderful park-district of Sussex may
be seen: Cowdray to the west, the highest points of Goodwood to the
south-west, the highest points of Arundel to the south-east, and
Parham's dark forest more easterly still. Mr. Knox's account of the
vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens sixty years ago is as interesting as
any history of equal length on the misfortunes of man. Their sufferings
at the hands of keepers and schoolboys read like a page of Foxe. The
final disaster was the spoliation of their nest by a boy, who removed
all four of the children, or "squabs" as he called them. Mr. Knox, who
used to come every day to examine them through his glass, was in
despair, until after much meditation he thought of an expedient. Seeking
out the boy he persuaded him to give up the one "squab" whose wings had
not yet been clipped, and this the ornithologist carried to the clump
and deposited in the ruined nest. The next morning the old birds were to
be seen, just as of old, and that was their last molestation.
Just under the park on the road to Midhurst is Tillington, a little
village with a rather ornamental church, which dates from 1807. There is
nothing to say of Tillington, but I should like to quote a pretty
sentence from Horsfield's _History of Sussex_ concerning the monuments
in the church, in a kind of writing of which we have little
to-day:--"And as the volume, for which this has been written, is likely
to fall chiefly into the hands of men who are occupied almost solely
with the cares and business of this life, this slight reference is made
to the monuments of the dead in order that, should the reader of this
book find, in the present dearth of honesty, of faithfulness, of
disinterested valour and of loyalty, an aching want in his spirit for
such high qualities, let him hence be taught where to go--let him learn
that, though they are rarely found in the busy haunts of men, they are
still preserved and have their home around the sanctuary of the altar of
his God."
[Sidenote: A TREASURY OF ARCHITECTURE]
Petworth should be visited by all young architects; not for the mansion
(except as an object-lesson, for it is like a London terrace), but for
the ordinary buildings in the town. It is a paradise of old-fashioned
architecture. The church is hideous; the new hotel, the "Swan," might be
at Balham; but the old part of the town is perfect. There is an
almshouse (which Mr. Griggs has drawn), in which in its palmy days a
Lady Bountiful might have lived; even the workhouse has charms--it is
the only pretty workhouse I remember: with the exception, perhaps, of
Battle, but that is, however, self-conscious.
Petworth has known, at any rate, one poet. In the churchyard was once
this epitaph, now perhaps obliterated, from a husband's hand:--
"She was! She was! She was, what?
She was all that a woman should be, she was that."
[Sidenote: NOAH MANN]
In a book which takes account of Sussex men and women of the past, it is
hard to keep long from cricket. To the north of Petworth, whither we now
turn, is Northchapel, where was born and died one of the great men of
the Hambledon Club, Noah Mann, who once made ten runs from one hit, and
whose son was named Horace, after the cricketing baronet of the same
name, by special permission. "Sir Horace, by this simple act of
graceful humanity, hooked for life the heart of poor Noah Mann," says
Nyren; "and in this world of hatred and contention, the love even of a
dog is worth living for."
[Illustration: _Petworth Churchyard._]
[Sidenote: GEORGE LEAR'S STRATEGY]
This is Nyren's account of Noah Mann:
"He was from Sussex, and lived at Northchapel, not far from Petworth. He
kept an inn there, and used to come a distance of at least twenty miles
every Tuesday to practise. He was a fellow of extraordinary activity,
and could perform clever feats of agility on horseback. For instance,
when he has been seen in the distance coming up the ground, one or more
of his companions would throw down handkerchiefs, and these he would
collect, stooping from his horse while it was going at full speed. He
was a fine batter, a fine field, and the swiftest runner I ever
remember: indeed, such was his fame for speed, that whenever there was a
match going forward, we were sure to hear of one being made for Mann to
run against some noted competitor; and such would come from the whole
country round. Upon these occasions he used to tell his friends, 'If,
when we are half-way, you see me alongside of my man, you may always bet
your money upon me, for I am sure to win.' And I never saw him beaten.
He was a most valuable fellow in the field; for besides being very sure
of the ball, his activity was so extraordinary that he would dart all
over the ground like lightning. In those days of fast bowling, they
would put a man behind the long-stop, that he might cover both long-stop
and slip; the man always selected for this post was Noah. Now and then
little George Lear (whom I have already described as being so fine a
long-stop), would give Noah the wink to be on his guard, who would
gather close behind him: then George would make a slip on purpose, and
let the ball go by, when, in an instant, Noah would have it up, and into
the wicket-keeper's hands, and the man was put out. This I have seen
done many times, and this nothing but the most accomplished skill in
fielding could have achieved....
"At a match of the Hambledon Club against All England, the club had to
go in to get the runs, and there was a long number of them. It became
quite apparent that the game would be closely fought. Mann kept on
worrying old Nyren to let him go in, and although he became quite
indignant at his constant refusal, our General knew what he was about in
keeping him back. At length, when the last but one was out, he sent Mann
in, and there were then ten runs to get. The sensation now all over the
ground was greater than anything of the kind I ever witnessed before or
since. All knew the state of the game, and many thousands were hanging
upon this narrow point. There was Sir Horace Mann, walking about outside
the ground, cutting down the daisies with his stick--a habit with him
when he was agitated; the old farmers leaning forward upon their tall
old staves, and the whole multitude perfectly still. After Noah had had
one or two balls, Lumpy tossed one a little too far, when our fellow got
in, and hit it out in his grand style. Six of the ten were gained.
Never shall I forget the roar that followed this hit. Then there was a
dead stand for some time, and no runs were made; ultimately, however, he
gained them all, and won the game. After he was out, he upbraided Nyren
for not putting him in earlier. 'If you had let me go in an hour ago'
(said he), 'I would have served them in the same way.' But the old
tactician was right, for he knew Noah to be a man of such nerve and
self-possession, that the thought of so much depending upon him would
not have the paralysing effect that it would upon many others. He was
sure of him, and Noah afterwards felt the compliment. Mann was short in
stature, and, when stripped, as swarthy as a gipsy. He was all muscle,
with no incumbrance whatever of flesh; remarkably broad in the chest,
with large hips and spider legs; he had not an ounce of flesh about him,
but it was where it ought to be. He always played without his hat (the
sun could not affect _his_ complexion), and he took a liking to me as a
boy, because I did the same."
[Sidenote: A LURGASHALL SATIRIST]
Lurgashall, on the road to Northchapel, is a pleasant village, with a
green, and a church unique among Sussex churches by virtue of a curious
wooden gallery or cloister, said to have been built as a shelter for
parishioners from a distance, who would eat their nuncheon there. The
church, which has distinct Saxon remains, once had for rector the
satirical James Bramston, author of "The Art of Politics" and "The Man
of Taste," two admirable poems in the manner of Pope. This is his
unimpeachable advice to public speakers:--
Those who would captivate the well-bred throng,
Should not too often speak, nor speak too long:
Church, nor Church Matters ever turn to Sport,
Nor make _St. Stephen's Chappell, Dover-Court_.
CHAPTER XI
BIGNOR
Burton and the sparrowhawk--James Broadbridge--The quaintest of
grocer's shops--A transformation scene--The Roman
pavement--Charlotte Smith the sonneteer--Parson Dorset's
advice--Humility at West Burton--Bury's Amazons.
Two miles due south from Petworth is Burton Park, a modest sandy
pleasaunce, with some beautiful deer, an ugly house, and a church for
the waistcoat pocket, which some American relic hunter will assuredly
carry off unless it is properly chained.
Mr. Knox has an interesting anecdote of a sparrowhawk at Burton. "In
May, 1844," he writes, "I received from Burton Park an adult male
sparrowhawk in full breeding plumage, which had killed itself, or rather
met its death, in a singular manner. The gardener was watering plants in
the greenhouse, the door being open, when a blackbird dashed in
suddenly, taking refuge between his legs, and at the same moment the
glass roof above his head was broken with a loud crash, and a hawk fell
dead at his feet. The force of the swoop was so great that for a moment
he imagined a stone hurled from a distance to have been the cause of the
fracture."
At Duncton, the neighbouring village, under the hill, James Broadbridge
was born in 1796--James Broadbridge, who was considered the best
all-round cricketer in England in his day. He had a curious hit to
square-leg between the wicket and himself, and he was the first of whom
it was said that he could do anything with the ball except make it
speak. In order to get practice with worthy players he would walk from
Duncton to Brighton, just as Lambert would walk from Reigate to London,
or Noah Mann ride to Hambledon from Petworth. Jim Broadbridge's first
great match was in 1815, for Sussex against the Epsom Club, including
Lambert and Lord Frederick Beauclerk, for a Thousand Guineas.
Broadbridge, after his wont, walked from Duncton to Brighton in the
morning, and he looked so much like a farmer and so little like a
cricketer that there was some opposition to his playing. But he bowled
out three and caught one and Sussex won the money.
Above Duncton rises Duncton Down, which is eight hundred and
thirty-seven feet high, one of our mountains. But we are not to climb it
just now, having business in the weald some four miles away to the east,
past Barlavington and Sutton, at Bignor.
[Sidenote: THE OLDEST GROCER'S SHOP]
Admirers of yew trees should make a point of visiting Bignor churchyard.
The village has also what is probably the quaintest grocer's shop in
England; certainly the completest contrast that imagination could devise
to the modern grocer's shop of the town, plate-glassed, illumined and
stored to repletion. It is close to the yew-shadowed church, and is
gained by a flight of steps. I should not have noticed it as a shop at
all, but rather as a very curious survival of a kindly and attractive
form of architecture, had not a boy, when asked the way to the Roman
pavement, which is Bignor's glory, mentioned "the grocer's" as one of
the landmarks. One's connotation of "grocer" excluding diamond panes,
oak timbers, difficult steps, and reverend antiquity, I was like to lose
the way in earnest, had not a customer emerged opportunely from the
crazy doorway with a basket of goods. It was natural for the boy, whose
pennies had gone in oranges and sweets, to lay the emphasis on the
grocery; but the house externally is the only one of its kind within
miles.
[Sidenote: A ROMAN VILLA]
In some respects there is no more interesting spot in Sussex than the
mangold field on Mr. Tupper's farm that contains the Roman pavements.
Approaching this scene of alien treasure one observes nothing but the
mangolds; here and there a rough shed as if for cattle; and Mr. Tupper,
the grandson of the discoverer of the mosaics, at work with his hoe.
This he lays on one side on the arrival of a visitor, taking in his hand
instead a large key. So far, we are in Sussex pure and simple; mangolds
all around, cattle sheds in front, a Sussex farmer for a companion, the
sky of Sussex over all, and the twentieth century in her nonage. Mr.
Tupper turns the key, throws open the creaking door--and nearly two
thousand years roll away. We are no longer in Sussex but in the province
of the Regni; no longer at Bignor but Ad Decimum, or ten miles from
Regnum (or Chichester) on Stane Street, the direct road to Londinum, in
the residence of a Roman Colonial governor of immense wealth, probably
supreme in command of the province.
The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications
of the splendour and extent of the building, which must have covered
some acres--a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bignor Hill by
Stane Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark
weald. The pavement in the first shed which Mr. Tupper unlocks has the
figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments; and here the
hot-air pipes, by which the villa was heated, may be seen where the
floor has given way. A head of Winter in another of the sheds is very
fine; but it is rather for what these relics stand for, than any
intrinsic beauty, that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of
a power that has passed away. Nothing else so brings back the Roman
occupation of Sussex, when on still nights the clanking of armour in the
camp on the hill-top could be heard by the trembling Briton in the Weald
beneath; or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his
ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of
warriors descending the slope. I never see a Sussex hill crowned by a
camp, as at Wolstonbury, without seeing also in imagination a flash of
steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must
have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant--a terror which utterly
changed the Downs from ramparts of peace into coigns of minatory
advantage, and transformed the gaze of security, with which their grassy
contours had once been contemplated, into anxious glances of dismay and
trepidation--one never so realises this terror as when one descends
Ditchling Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a
string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the Weald below. That
semi-subterranean passage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most
vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses.
[Sidenote: PARSON DORSET]
Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and novelist, was the daughter of
Nicholas Turner, of Bignor Park, which contains, I think, the plainest
house I ever saw in the country. Charlotte Smith, who was all her life
very true to Sussex both in her work and in her homes--she was at school
at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeding and Brighton--was born in 1749. A
century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Hemans was later.
To-day it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will
they, I fear, be re-discovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards
Mrs. Dorset, was the author of _The Peacock at Home_, a very popular
book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by
Roscoe's _Butterfly's Ball_. Mrs. Dorset, by the way, married a son of
the vicar of Walberton and Burlington, whose curious head-dress gave to
an odd-looking tree on Bury hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig--for
the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story
of advice to a flock: "Do as I say, not as I do," is told also of him.
[Sidenote: VILLAGE HUMILITY]
The little village of West Burton, east of Bignor, is associated in my
mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had
given me a glass of water, and I unfolded my map and spread it on her
garden wall to consult while I drank. "Why," she said, "you don't mean
to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map." This is the
very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride, which would have the
world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump. But pride
of place is not, I think, a Sussex characteristic.
Bury, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket
traditions. In June, 1796, the married women of Bury beat the single
women by 80 runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of
women in the county. Not only did the women of Bury shine at cricket,
but in a Sussex paper for 1791 I find an account of two of Bury's
daughters assuming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza and engaging in a
hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering. Big Ben won.
[Illustration: _The Causeway, Horsham._]
CHAPTER XII
HORSHAM
Horsham stone--Horsham and history--Pressing to death--Juvenile
hostility to statues--Horsham's love of pleasure--Percy Bysshe
Shelley's boyhood--a letter of invitation--Sedition in Sussex--a
Slinfold epitaph--Rudgwick's cricket poet--Warnham pond--Stane
Street--Cobbett at Billingshurst--The new Christ's Hospital.
Horsham is the capital of West Sussex: a busy agricultural town with
horse dealers in its streets, a core of old houses, and too many that
are new. There is in England no more peaceful and prosperous row of
venerable homes than the Causeway, joining Carfax and the church, with
its pollarded limes and chestnuts in line on the pavement's edge, its
graceful gables, jutting eaves, and glimpses of green gardens through
the doors and windows. The sweetest part of Horsham is there. Elsewhere
the town bustles. (I should, however, mention the very picturesque
house--now cottages--on the left of the road as one leaves the station:
as fine a mass of timbers, gables, and oblique lines as one could wish,
making an effect such as time alone can give. The days of such relics
are numbered.)
[Sidenote: HORSHAM STONE]
Horsham not only has beautiful old houses of its own, but it has been
the cause of beautiful old houses all over the county; since nothing so
adds to the charm of a building as a roof of Horsham stone, those large
grey flat slabs on which the weather works like a great artist in
harmonies of moss, lichen, and stain. No roofing so combines dignity and
homeliness, and no roofing except possibly thatch (which, however, is
short-lived) so surely passes into the landscape. But Horsham stone is
no longer used. It is to be obtained for a new house only by the
demolition of an old; and few new houses have rafters sufficiently
stable to bear so great a weight. Our ancestors built for posterity: we
build for ourselves. Our ancestors used Sussex oak where we use fir.
Not only is Horsham stone on the roofs of the neighbourhood: it is also
on the paths, so that one may step from flag to flag for miles, dryshod,
or at least without mud.
Horsham's place in history is unimportant: but indirectly it played its
part in the fourteenth century, by supplying the War Office of that era
with bolts for cross bows, excellent for slaying Scots and Frenchmen.
The town was famous also for its horseshoes. In the days of Cromwell we
find Horsham to have been principally Royalist; one engagement with
Parliamentarians is recorded in which it lost three warriors to
Cromwell's one. In the reign of William III. a young man claiming to be
the Duke of Monmouth, and travelling with a little court who addressed
him as "Your Grace," turned the heads of the women in many an English
town--his good looks convincing them at once, as the chronicler says,
that he was the true prince. Justices sitting at Horsham, however,
having less susceptibility to the testimony of handsome features, found
him to be the son of an innkeeper named Savage, and imprisoned him as a
vagrant and swindler.
[Sidenote: PRESSING TO DEATH]
Horsham was the last place in which pressing to death was practised. The
year was 1735, and the victim a man unknown, who on being charged with
murder and robbery refused to speak. Witnesses having been called to
prove him no mute, this old and horrible sentence, proper (as the law
considered) to his offence and obstinacy, was passed upon him. The
executioner, the story goes, while conveying the body in a wheelbarrow
to burial, turned it out in the roadway at the place where the King's
Head now stands, and then putting it in again, passed on. Not long
afterwards he fell dead at this spot.
The church of St. Mary, which rises majestically at the end of the
Causeway, has a slender shingled spire that reaches a great height--not
altogether, however, without indecision. There is probably an altitude
beyond which shingles are a mistake: they are better suited to the more
modest spire of the small village. The church is remarkable also for
length of roof (well covered with Horsham stone), and it is altogether a
singularly commanding structure. Within is an imposing plainness. The
stone effigy of a knight in armour reclines just to the south of the
altar: son of a branch of the Braose family--of Chesworth, hard by, now
in ruins--of whose parent stock we shall hear more when we reach
Bramber. The knight, Thomas, Lord Braose, died in 1395. The youth of
Horsham, hostile invincibly, like all boys, to the stone nose, have
reduced that feature to the level of the face; or was it the work of the
Puritans, who are known to have shared in the nasal objection? South of
the churchyard is the river, from the banks of which the church would
seem to be all Horsham, so effectually is the town behind it blotted out
by its broad back. On the edge of the churchyard is perhaps the smallest
house in Sussex: certainly the smallest to combine Gothic windows with
the sale of ginger-beer.
[Sidenote: A SCHOOL OF CHAMPIONS]
Horsham seems always to have been fond of pleasure. Within iron railings
in the Carfax, in a trim little enclosure of turf and geraniums, is the
ancient iron ring used in the bull-baiting which the inhabitants
indulged in and loved until as recently as 1814. That the town is still
disposed to entertainment, although of a quieter kind, its walls
testify; for the hoardings are covered with the promise of circus or
conjuror, minstrels or athletic sports, drama or lecture. In July, when
I was there last, Horsham was anticipating a _fete_, in which a mock
bull-fight and a battle of confetti were mere details; while it was
actually in the throes of a fair. The booths filled an open space to the
west of the town known as the Jew's Meadow, and among the attractions
was Professor Adams with his "school of undefeated champions." The
plural is in the grand manner, giving the lie to Cashel Byron's pathetic
plaint:--
It is a lonely thing to be a champion.
Avoiding Professor Adams, and walking due west, one comes after a couple
of miles to Broadbridge Heath, where is Field Place, the birthplace of
the greatest of Sussex poets, and perhaps the greatest of the county's
sons--Percy Bysshe Shelley. The author of _Adonais_ was born in a little
bedroom with a south aspect on August 4, 1792. His father's mother,
_nee_ Michell, was the daughter of a late vicar of Horsham and member of
an old Sussex family; another Horsham cleric, the Rev. Thomas Edwards,
gave the boy his first lessons. Field Place is still very much what it
was in Shelley's early days--the only days it was a home to him. It
stands low, in a situation darkened by the surrounding trees, a rambling
house neither as old as one would wish for aesthetic reasons nor as new
as comfort might dictate. There is no view. In the garden one may in
fancy see again the little boy, like all poetic children, "deep in his
unknown day's employ." Indeed, like all children, might be said, for is
not every child a poet for a little while? In the _Life of Shelley_ by
his cousin Thomas Medwin is printed the following letter to a friend at
Horsham, written when he was nine, which I quote not for any particular
intrinsic merit, but because it helps to bring him before us in his
Field Place days, of which too little is known:--
"_Monday, July 18, 1803._
"MISS KATE,
"HORSHAM,
"SUSSEX.
"DEAR KATE,--We have proposed a day at the pond next Wednesday, and if
you will come to-morrow morning I would be much obliged to you, and if
you could any how bring Tom over to stay all the night, I would thank
you. We are to have a cold dinner over at the pond, and come home to eat
a bit of roast chicken and peas at about nine o'clock. Mama depends upon
your bringing Tom over to-morrow, and if you don't we shall be very much
disappointed. Tell the bearer not to forget to bring me a fairing, which
is some ginger-bread, sweetmeat, hunting-nuts, and a pocket-book. Now I
end.
"I am not
"Your obedient servant,
"P. B. SHELLEY."
[Sidenote: SHELLEY IN SUSSEX]
We are proud to call Shelley the Sussex poet, but he wrote no Sussex
poems, and a singularly uncongenial father (for the cursing of whom and
the King the boy was famous at Eton) made him glad to avoid the county
when he was older. It was, however, to a Sussex lady, Miss Hitchener of
Hurstpierpoint, that Shelley, when in Ireland in 1812, forwarded the box
of inflammatory matter which the Custom House officers
confiscated--copies of his pamphlet on Ireland and his "Declaration of
Rights" broadside, which Miss Hitchener was to distribute among Sussex
farmers who would display them on their walls. These were the same
documents that Shelley used to put in bottles and throw out to sea,
greatly to the perplexity of the spectators and not a little to the
annoyance of the Government. Miss Hitchener, as well as the
revolutionary, was kept under surveillance, as we learn from the letter
from the Postmaster-General of the day, Lord Chichester:--"I return the
pamphlet declaration. The writer of the first is son of Mr. Shelley,
member for the Rape of Bramber, and is by all accounts a most
extraordinary man. I hear he has married a servant, or some person of
very low birth; he has been in Ireland for some time, and I heard of his
speaking at the Catholic Convention. Miss Hitchener, of Hurstpierpoint,
keeps a School there, and is well spoken of; her Father keeps a Publick
House in the Neighbourhood, he was originally a Smuggler and changed his
name from Yorke to Hitchener before he took the Public House. I shall
have a watch upon the daughter and discover whether there is any
Connection between her and Shelley."
[Sidenote: "THE SUSSEX MUSE"]
There Shelley's connection with Sussex may be said to end. Yet a poet,
whether he will or no, is shaped by his early surroundings. In some
verses by Mr. C. W. Dalmon called "The Sussex Muse," I find the
influence of Shelley's surroundings on his mind happily recorded:--
"When Shelley's soul was carried through the air
Toward the manor house where he was born,
I danced along the avenue at Denne,
And praised the grace of Heaven, and the morn
Which numbered with the sons of Sussex men
A genius so rare!
So high an honour and so dear a birth,
That, though the Horsham folk may little care
To laud the favour of his birthplace there,
My name is bless'd for it throughout the earth.
I taught the child to love, and dream, and sing
Of witch, hobgoblin, folk and flower lore;
And often led him by the hand away
Into St. Leonard's Forest, where of yore
The hermit fought the dragon--to this day,
The children, ev'ry Spring,
Find lilies of the valley blowing where
The fights took place. Alas! they quickly drove
My darling from my bosom and my love,
And snatched my crown of laurel from his hair."
[Illustration: _Cottages at Slinfold._]
[Sidenote: SLINFOLD]
Two miles south-west of Field Place, by a footpath which takes us beside
the Arun, here a narrow stream, and a deserted water mill, we come to
the churchyard of Slinfold, a little quiet village with a church of
almost suburban solidity and complete want of Sussex feeling. James
Dallaway, the historian of Western Sussex, was rector here from 1803 to
1834. He lived, however, at Leatherhead, Slinfold being a sinecure. A
Slinfold epitaph on an infant views bereavement with more philosophy
than is usual: in conclusion calling upon Patience thus to comfort the
parents:
Teach them to praise that God with grateful mind
For babes that yet may come, for one still left behind.
A quarter of a mile west is Stane Street, striking London-wards from
Billingshurst, and we may follow it for a while on our way to Rudgwick,
near the county's border. We leave the Roman road (which once ran as
straight as might be as far as Billingsgate, but is now diverted and
lost in many spots) at the drive to Dedisham, on the left, and thus save
a considerable corner. Dedisham, in its hollow, is an ancient
agricultural settlement: a farm and feudatory cottages in perfect
completeness, an isolated self-sufficing community, lacking nothing--not
even the yellow ferret in the cage. The footpath beyond the homestead
crosses a field where we find the Arun once again--here a stream winding
between steep banks, sure home of kingfisher and water-rats.
[Sidenote: RUDGWICK]
Rudgwick, which is three miles farther west along the hard high road, is
a small village on a hill, with the most comfortable looking
church-tower in Sussex hiding behind the inn and the general shop. In
the churchyard lies a Frusannah--a name new to me.
Rudgwick was the birthplace, in 1717, of Reynell Cotton, destined to be
the author of the best song in praise of cricket. He entered Winchester
College in 1730, took orders and became master of Hyde Abbey school in
the same city, and died in 1779. Nyren prints his song in full. This is
the heart of it:--
The wickets are pitch'd now, and measur'd the ground,
Then they form a large ring, and stand gazing around,
Since AJAX fought HECTOR, in sight of all TROY,
No contest was seen with such fear and such joy.
Ye bowlers, take heed, to my precepts attend,
On you the whole fate of the game must depend;
Spare your vigour at first, nor exert all your strength,
But measure each step, and be sure pitch a length.
Ye fieldsmen, look sharp, lest your pains ye beguile;
Move close, like an army, in rank and in file,
When the ball is return'd, back it sure, for I trow
Whole states have been ruin'd by one overthrow.
Ye strikers, observe when the foe shall draw nigh,
Mark the bowler advancing with vigilant eye:
Your skill all depends upon distance and sight,
Stand firm to your scratch, let your bat be upright.
Further west is Loxwood, on the edge of a little-known tract of country,
untroubled by railways, the most unfamiliar village in which is perhaps
Plaistow. Plaistow is on the road to nowhere and has not its equal for
quietude in England. It is a dependency of Kirdford, whence comes the
Petworth marble which we see in many Sussex churches. Shillinglee Park,
the seat of the Earl of Winterton, is hard by.
From these remote parts one may return to Horsham by way of Warnham, on
whose pond Shelley as a boy used to sail his little boat, and where
perhaps he gained that love of navigation which never left him and
brought about his death. Warnham, always a cricketing village, until
lately supplied the Sussex eleven with dashing Lucases; but it does so
no more.
[Sidenote: STANE STREET]
Before passing to the east of Horsham, something ought to be said of one
at least of the villages of the south-west, namely, Billingshurst, on
Stane Street, once an important station between Regnum and Londinum, or
Chichester and London, as we should now say. It has been conjectured
that Stane Street (which we first saw at Chichester under the name of
East Street, and again as it descended Bignor hill in the guise of a
bostel) was constructed by Belinus, a Roman engineer, who gave to the
woods through which he had to cut his way in this part of Sussex the
name, Billingshurst, and to the gate by which London was entered,
Billingsgate.
Billingshurst's place in literature was made by William Cobbett, for it
was here that he met the boy in a smock frock who recalled to his mind
so many of his deeds of Quixotry. The incident is described in the
_Rural Rides_:--
[Sidenote: COBBETT AND THE LITTLE CHAP]
"This village is seven miles from Horsham, and I got here to breakfast
about seven o'clock. A very pretty village, and a very nice breakfast,
in a very neat little parlour of a very decent public-house. The
landlady sent her son to get me some cream, and he was just such a chap
as I was at his age, and dressed just in the same sort of way, his main
garment being a blue smock-frock, faded from wear, and mended with
pieces of _new_ stuff, and, of course, not faded. The sight of this
smock-frock brought to my recollection many things very dear to me. This
boy will, I daresay, perform his part at Billingshurst, or at some place
not far from it. If accident had not taken me from a similar scene, how
many villains and fools, who have been well teased and tormented, would
have slept in peace at night, and have fearlessly swaggered about by
day!
[Illustration: _Rudgwick._]
"When I look at this little chap--at his smock-frock, his nailed shoes,
and his clean, plain, coarse shirt, I ask myself, will anything, I
wonder, ever send this chap across the ocean to tackle the base,
corrupt, perjured Republican Judges of Pennsylvania? Will this little
lively, but, at the same time, simple boy, ever become the terror of
villains and hypocrites across the Atlantic? What a chain of strange
circumstances there must be to lead this boy to thwart a miscreant
tyrant like M'keen, the Chief Justice, and afterwards Governor, of
Pennsylvania, and to expose the corruptions of the band of rascals,
called a 'Senate and a House of Representatives,' at Harrisburgh, in
that state!"
[Sidenote: A VILLAGE DISPUTE]
Billingshurst church has an interesting ceiling, an early brass (to
Thomas and Elizabeth Bartlet), and the record of one of those disputes
over pews which add salt to village life and now and then, as we saw at
Littlehampton, lead to real trouble. The verger (if he be the same) will
tell the story, the best part of which describes the race which was held
every Sunday for certain seats in the chancel, and the tactical
"packing" of the same by the winning party. In the not very remote past
a noble carved chair used to be placed in one of the galleries for the
schoolmaster, and there would he sit during service surrounded by his
boys.
One returns to Horsham from Billingshurst through Itchingfield, where
the new Christ's Hospital has been built in the midst of green fields: a
glaring red-brick settlement which the fastidiously urban ghost of
Charles Lamb can now surely never visit. "Lamb's House," however, is the
name of one of the buildings; and Time the Healer, who can do all
things, may mellow the new school into Elian congeniality.
CHAPTER XIII
ST. LEONARD'S FOREST
Recollections of the Forest--Leonardslee--Michael Drayton and the
iron country--Thomas Fuller on great guns--The serpent of St.
Leonard's Forest--The Headless Horseman--Sussex and nightingales.
To the east of Horsham spreads St. Leonard's Forest, that vast tract of
moor and preserve which, merging into Tilgate Forest, Balcombe Forest,
and Worth Forest, extends a large part of the way to East Grinstead.
Only on foot can we really explore this territory; and a compass as well
as a good map is needed if one is to walk with any decision, for there
are many conflicting tracks, and many points whence no broad outlook is
possible. Remembering old days in St. Leonard's Forest, I recall, in
general, the odoriferous damp open spaces of long grass, suddenly
lighted upon, over which silver-washed fritillaries flutter; and, in
particular, a deserted farm, in whose orchard (it must have been late
June) was a spreading tree of white-heart cherries in full bearing. One
may easily, even a countryman, I take it, live to a great age and never
have the chance of climbing into a white-heart cherry tree and eating
one's fill. Certainly I have never done it since; but that day gave me
an understanding of blackbirds' temptations that is still stronger than
the desire to pull a trigger. The reader must not imagine that St.
Leonard's Forest is rich in deserted farms with attractive orchards. I
have found no other, and indeed it is notably a place in which the
explorer should be accompanied by provisions.
[Sidenote: LEONARDSLEE]
To take train to Faygate and walk from that spot is the simplest way,
although more interesting is it perhaps to come to Faygate at the end of
the day, and, gaining permission to climb the Beacon Tower on the hill,
in the Holmbush estate, retrace one's steps in vision from its summit.
In this case one would walk from Horsham to Lower Beeding, then strike
north over Plummer's Plain. This route leads by Coolhurst and through
Manning Heath, just beyond which, by following the south, that runs for
a mile, one could see Nuthurst. Lower Beeding is not in itself
interesting; but close at hand is Leonardslee, the seat of Sir Edmund
Loder, which is one of the most satisfying estates in the county. North
and south runs a deep ravine, on the one side richly wooded, and on the
other, the west, planted with all acclimatisable varieties of Alpine
plants and flowering shrubs. The chain of ponds at the bottom of the
ravine forms one of the principal sources of the Adur. In an enclosure
among the woods the kangaroo has been acclimatised; and beavers are
given all law.
North of Plummer's Plain, in a hollow, are two immense ponds, Hammer
Pond and Hawkin's Pond, our first reminder that we are in the old iron
country. St. Leonard's Forest, and all the forests on this the forest
ridge of Sussex, were of course maintained to supply wood with which to
feed the furnaces of the iron masters--just as the overflow of these
ponds was trained to move the machinery of the hammers for the breaking
of the iron stone. The enormous consumption of wood in the iron
foundries was a calamity seriously viewed by many observers, among them
Michael Drayton, of the _Poly Olbion_, who was, however, distressed less
as a political economist than as the friend of the wood nymphs driven by
the encroaching and devastating foundrymen from their native sanctuaries
to the inhospitable Downs. Thus he writes, illustrating Lamb's criticism
of him that in this work he "has animated hills and streams with life
and passion above the dreams of old mythology":--
The daughters of the Weald
(That in their heavy breasts had long their griefs concealed),
Foreseeing their decay each hour so fast come on,
Under the axe's stroke, fetched many a grievous groan.
When as the anvil's weight, and hammer's dreadful sound,
Even rent the hollow woods and shook the queachy ground;
So that the trembling nymphs, oppressed through ghastly fear,
Ran madding to the downs, with loose dishevelled hair.
The Sylvans that about the neighbouring woods did dwell,
Both in the tufty frith and in the mossy fell,
Forsook their gloomy bowers, and wandered far abroad,
Expelled their quiet seats, and place of their abode,
When labouring carts they saw to hold their daily trade,
Where they in summer wont to sport them in the shade.
"Could we," say they, "suppose that any would us cherish
Which suffer every day the holiest things to perish?
Or to our daily want to minister supply?
These iron times breed none that mind posterity.
'Tis but in vain to tell what we before have been,
Or changes of the world that we in time have seen;
When, now devising how to spend our wealth with waste,
We to the savage swine let fall our larding mast,
But now, alas! ourselves we have not to sustain,
Nor can our tops suffice to shield our roots from rain.
Jove's oak, the warlike ash, veined elm, the softer beech,
Short hazel, maple plain, light asp, the bending wych,
Tough holly, and smooth birch, must altogether burn;
What should the builder serve, supplies the forger's turn,
When under public good, base private gain takes hold,
And we, poor woful woods, to ruin lastly sold."
[Sidenote: GREAT GUNS]
We shall learn later more of this old Sussex industry, but here, in the
heart of St. Leonard's Forest, I might quote also what another old
author, with less invention, says of it. Under the heading of Sussex
manufactures, Thomas Fuller writes, in the _Worthies_, of great guns:--
"It is almost incredible how many are made of the Iron in this
County. Count _Gondomer_ well knew their goodness, when of King
James he so often begg'd the boon to transport them. A Monke of
Mentz (some three hundred years since) is generally reputed the
first Founder of them. Surely _ingenuity_ may seem _transpos'd_, and
to have _cross'd her hands_, when about the same time a Souldier
found out Printing; and it is questionable which of the two
Inventions hath done more good, or more harm. As for Guns, it cannot
be denied, that though most behold them as _Instruments of cruelty_;
partly, because subjecting _valour_ to _chance_; partly, because
_Guns give no quarter_ (which the Sword sometimes doth); yet it will
appear that, since their invention, Victory hath not stood so long a
Neuter, and hath been determined with the loss of fewer lives. Yet
do I not believe what Souldiers commonly say, 'that _he was curs'd
in his Mother's belly, who is kill'd with a Cannon_,' seeing many
prime persons have been slain thereby."
[Sidenote: SUSSEX IRON WORKS]
Cannon were not, of course, the only articles which the old Sussex
ironmasters contrived. The old railings around St. Paul's were cast in
Sussex; and iron fire-backs were turned out in great numbers. These are
still to be seen in a few of the older Sussex cottages in their original
position. Most curiosity dealers in the country have a few fire-backs on
sale. Iron tombstones one meets with too in a few of the churches and
churchyards in the iron district. There are several at Wadhurst, for
example.
[Sidenote: THE "LAND SERPENT"]
I have seen grass snakes in plenty in St. Leonard's Forest, and was once
there with a botanist who, the day being fine, killed a particularly
beautiful one; but the Forest is no longer famous, as once it was, for
really alarming reptiles. The year 1614 was the time. A rambler in the
neighbourhood, in August of that year, ran the risk of meeting something
worth running away from; just as John Steel, Christopher Holder, and a
widow woman did. Their story may be read in the Harleian Miscellany.
_True and Wonderful_ is the title of the narrative, _A Discourse
relating a strange and monstrous Serpent (or Dragon) lately discovered,
and yet living, to the great Annoyance and divers Slaughters both of Men
and Cattell, by his strong and violent Poyson: In Sussex, two Miles
from Horsam, in a Woode called St. Leonard's Forrest, and thirtie Miles
from London, this present Month of August, 1614. With the true
Generation of Serpents._ The discourse runs thus:--"In Sussex, there is
a pretty market-towne, called Horsam, neare unto it a forrest, called
St. Leonard's Forrest, and there, in a vast and unfrequented place,
heathie, vaultie, full of unwholesome shades, and over-growne hollowes,
where this serpent is thought to be bred; but, wheresoever bred,
certaine and too true it is, that there it yet lives. Within three or
four miles compasse, are its usual haunts, oftentimes at a place called
Faygate, and it hath been seene within halfe a mile of Horsam; a wonder,
no doubt, most terrible and noisome to the inhabitants thereabouts.
There is always in his tracke or path left a glutinous and slimie matter
(as by a small similitude we may perceive in a snaile's) which is very
corrupt and offensive to the scent; insomuch that they perceive the air
to be putrified withall, which must needes be very dangerous. For though
the corruption of it cannot strike the outward part of a man, unless
heated into his blood; yet by receiving it in at any of our breathing
organs (the mouth or nose) it is by authoritie of all authors, writing
in that kinde, mortall and deadlie, as one thus saith:
"_Noxia serpentum est admixto sanguine pestis._--LUCAN.
"This serpent (or dragon, as some call it) is reputed to be nine feete,
or rather more, in length, and shaped almost in the forme of an axeltree
of a cart; a quantitie of thickness in the middest, and somewhat smaller
at both endes. The former part, which he shootes forth as a necke, is
supposed to be an elle long; with a white ring, as it were, of scales
about it. The scales along his backe seem to be blackish, and so much as
is discovered under his bellie, appeareth to be red; for I speak of no
nearer description than of a reasonable ocular distance. For coming too
neare it, hath already beene too dearely payd for, as you shall heare
hereafter.
"It is likewise discovered to have large feete, but the eye may be
there deceived; for some suppose that serpents have no feete, but glide
upon certain ribbes and scales, which both defend them from the upper
part of their throat unto the lower part of their bellie, and also cause
them to move much the faster. For so this doth, and rids way (as we call
it) as fast as a man can run. He is of countenance very proud, and at
the sight or hearing of men or cattel, will raise his necke upright, and
seem to listen and looke about, with great arrogancy. There are likewise
on either side of him discovered, two great bunches so big as a large
foote-ball, and (as some thinke) will in time grow to wings; but God, I
hope, will (to defend the poor people in the neighbourhood) that he
shall be destroyed before he grow so fledge.
"He will cast his venome about four rodde from him, as by woefull
experience it was proved on the bodies of a man and a woman comming that
way, who afterwards were found dead, being poysoned and very much
swelled, but not prayed upon. Likewise a man going to chase it, and as
he imagined, to destroy it with two mastive dogs, as yet not knowing the
great danger of it, his dogs were both killed, and he himselfe glad to
returne with hast to preserve his own life. Yet this is to be noted,
that the dogs were not prayed upon, but slaine and left whole: for his
food is thought to be, for the most part, in a conie-warren, which he
much frequents; and it is found much scanted and impaired in the
encrease it had woont to afford.
[Sidenote: SIGNED AND WITNESSED]
"These persons, whose names are hereunder printed, have seene this
serpent, beside divers others, as the carrier of Horsam, who lieth at
the White Horse in Southwarke, and who can certifie the truth of all
that has been here related.
John Steele.
Christopher Holder.
And a Widow Woman
dwelling nere Faygate."
It would be very interesting to know what John Steele, Christopher
Holder, and the widow woman really saw. Such a story must have had a
basis of some kind. A printed narrative such as this would hardly have
proceeded from a clear sky.
St. Leonard's Forest has another familiar; for there the headless
horseman rides, not on his own horse, but on yours, seated on the
crupper with his ghostly arms encircling your waist. His name is
Powlett, but I know no more, except that his presence is an additional
reason why one should explore the forest on foot.
[Sidenote: SUSSEX NIGHTINGALES]
Sussex, especially near the coast, is naturally a good nightingale
country. Many of the birds, pausing there after their long journey at
the end of April, do not fly farther, but make their home where they
first alight. I know of one meadow and copse under the north escarpment
of the Downs where three nightingales singing in rivalry in a triangle
(the perfect condition) can be counted upon in May, by night, and often
by day too, as surely as the rising and setting of the sun. But in St.
Leonard's Forest the nightingale never sings. American visitors who, as
Mr. John Burroughs once did, come to England in the spring to hear the
nightingale, must remember this.
CHAPTER XIV
WEST GRINSTEAD, COWFOLD AND HENFIELD
"The Rape of the Lock"--Knepp castle--The Cowfold
brass--Carthusians in Sussex--The Oakendene cricketers--Fourteen
Golden Orioles on Henfield common--A Henfield botanist--Dr. Thomas
Stapleton's merits--A good epitaph--Sussex humour.
West Grinstead is perhaps the most remarkable of the villages on the
line from Horsham to Steyning, by reason of its association with
literature, _The Rape of the Lock_ having been to a large extent
composed beneath a tree in the park. Yet as one walks through this broad
expanse of brake-fern, among which the deer are grazing, with the line
of the Downs, culminating in Chanctonbury Ring, in view, it requires a
severe effort to bring the mind to the consideration of Belinda's loss
and all the surrounding drama of the toilet and the card table. If there
is one thing that would not come naturally to the memory in West
Grinstead park, it is the poetry of Pope.
The present house, the seat of the Burrells, was built in 1806. It was
in the preceding mansion that John Caryll, Pope's friend, made his home,
moving hither from West Harting, as we have seen. Caryll suggested to
Pope the subject of _The Rape of the Lock_, the hero of which was his
cousin, Lord Petre. The line:--
This verse to Caryll, Muse, is due,
is the poet's testimony and thanks. John Gay, who found life a jest, has
also walked amid the West Grinstead bracken.
West Grinstead church is isolated in the fields, a curiously pretty and
cheerful building, with a very charming porch and a modest shingled
spire rising from its midst. Brasses to members of the Halsham family
are within, and a monument to Captain Powlett, whose unquiet ghost,
hunting without a head, we have just met. Hard by the church is one of
the most attractive and substantial of the smaller manor houses of
Sussex, square and venerable and well-roofed with Horsham stone.
A mile to the west, in a meadow by the Worthing road, stands the forlorn
fragment of the keep which is all that remains of the Norman stronghold
of Knepp. For its other stones you must seek the highways, the
road-menders having claimed them a hundred years ago. William de Braose,
whom we shall meet at Bramber, built it; King John more than once was
entertained in it; and now it is a ruin. Yet if Knepp no longer has its
castle, it has its lake--the largest in the county, a hundred acres in
extent, a beautiful sheet of water the overflow of which feeds the Adur.
Within a quarter of a mile of the ruin is the new Knepp Castle, which
was built by Sir Charles Merrik Burrell, son of Sir William Burrell, the
antiquary, whose materials for a history of Sussex on a grand scale,
collected by him for many years, are now in the British Museum. But
Knepp Castle, the new, with all its Holbeins, was destroyed by fire this
1904.
[Sidenote: THE NELOND BRASS]
[Sidenote: THE COWL IN SUSSEX]
To the east of the line lies Cowfold, balancing West Grinstead, a
village ranged on either side of a broad road. It is famous chiefly for
possessing, in its very pretty church, the Nelond brass, being the
effigy of Thomas Nelond, Prior of Lewes, who died in 1433. Few brasses
are finer or larger; in length it is nearly ten feet, its state is
practically perfect, and pilgrims come from all quarters to rub it. John
Nelond, in the dress of a Cluniac monk, stands with folded hands beneath
an arch, protected by the Virgin and Child, St. Pancras, and St. Thomas
a Becket. This splendid relic would, perhaps, were ours an ideal
community, be handed over to the keeping of the Carthusian monks near
by, in the Monastery of St. Hugh, the commanding building to the south
of Cowfold, whose spire is to the Weald what that of Chichester
Cathedral is to the plain between the Downs and the sea, and whose
Angelus may be heard, on favourable evenings, for many miles. The
Carthusian monks of St. Hugh's lend a very foreign air to the village
when they walk through it. Visitors are encouraged to call at the
porter's gate and explore this huge settlement--often in the very
competent care of an Irish brother; while to suffer an accident anywhere
in the neighbourhood is to be certain of a cordial glass of the
monastery's own Chartreuse.
It was at Brook Hill, just to the north of Cowfold, that William Borrer,
the ornithologist and the author of _The Birds of Sussex_, lived and
made many of his interesting observations.
Near Cowfold is Oakendene, a stronghold of cricket at the beginning of
the last century. William Wood was the greatest of the Oakendene men. He
was the best bowler in Sussex, the art having been acquired as he walked
about his farm with his dog, when he would bowl at whatever he saw and
the dog would retrieve the ball. Borrer of Ditchling, Marchant of Hurst,
Voice of Hand Cross, and Vallance of Brighton, also belonged to the
Oakendene club. Borrer and Vallance played for Brighton against
Marylebone, at Lord's, in 1792, and, when all the betting was against
them, including gold rings and watches, won the match in the second
innings by making respectively 60 and 68 not out. Another player in that
match was Jutten, the fast bowler, who when things were going against
him bowled at his man and so won by fear what he could not compass by
skill. There are too many Juttens on village greens.
Five miles south of Cowfold is Henfield, separated from Steyning, in the
south-west, by the low-lying meadows through which the Adur runs and
which in winter are too often a sheet of water.
Henfield consists of the usual street, and a quiet, retired common,
flat and marshy, with a flock of geese, some Scotch firs, and a fine
view of Wolstonbury rising in the east. It was on Henfield common that
Mr. Borrer once saw fourteen Golden Orioles on a thorn bush. Adventures
are to the adventurous, birds to the ornithologist; most of us have
never succeeded in seeing even one Oriole.
[Sidenote: STAPLETON'S MERITS]
William Borrer, the botanist, uncle of the ornithologist, was born in
Henfield and is buried there. In his Henfield garden, in 1860, as many
as 6,600 varieties of plants were growing. Beyond a small memoir on
Lichens, written in conjunction with Dawson Turner, he left no book.
Another illustrious son of Henfield was Dr. Thomas Stapleton, once Canon
of Chichester and one of the founders of the Catholic College of Douay,
of whom it was written, somewhat ambiguously, that he "was a man of mild
demeanour and unsuspected integrity." Fuller has him characteristically
touched off in the _Worthies_:--"He was bred in New Colledge in Oxford,
and then by the Bishop (Christopherson, as I take it) made Cannon of
Chichester, which he quickly quitted in the first of Queen _Elizabeth_.
Flying beyond the Seas, he first fixed at _Douay_, and there commendably
performed the office of _Catechist_, which he discharged to his
commendation.
"Reader, pardon an Excursion caused by just _Grief_ and _Anger_. Many,
counting themselves Protestants in England, do slight and neglect that
_Ordinance_ of _God_, by which their Religion was _set up_, and _gave
Credit_ to it in the first _Reformation_; I mean, CATECHISING. Did not
our _Saviour_ say even to Saint _Peter_ himself, 'Feed my Lambs, feed my
Sheep'? And why _Lambs_ first? 1. Because they were _Lambs_ before they
were _Sheep_. 2. Because, if they be not fed whilst _Lambs_ they could
never be _Sheep_. 3. Because _Sheep_ can in some sort feed themselves;
but _Lambs_ (such their tenderness) must either be _fed_ or _famished_.
Our Stapleton was excellent at this _Lamb-feeding_."
An epitaph in Henfield Church is worth copying for its quaint mixture
of mythology and theology. It bears upon the death of a lad, Meneleb
Raynsford, aged nine, who died in 1627:--
Great Jove hath lost his Gannymede, I know,
Which made him seek another here below--
And finding none--not one--like unto this,
Hath ta'en him hence into eternal bliss.
Cease, then, for thy dear Meneleb to weep,
God's darling was too good for thee to keep:
But rather joy in this great favour given,
A child on earth is made a saint in heaven.
Three miles east of Henfield, and a little to the north, is a farm the
present tenant of which has made an interesting experiment. He found in
the house an old map of the county, and identifying his own estate,
discovered a large sheet of water marked on it. On examining the site he
saw distinct traces of this ancient lake, and at once set about building
a dam to restore it. Water now, once again, fills the hollow, completely
transforming this part of the country, and bringing into it wild duck
and herons as of old. The lake is completely hidden from the
neighbouring roads and is accessible only by field paths, but it is well
worth finding.
[Sidenote: A WOODCOCK ON AN OAK]
There once hung in the parlour of Henfield's chief inn--I wonder if it
is there still--a rude etching of local origin, rather in the manner of
Buss's plates to _Pickwick_, representing an inn kitchen filled with a
jolly company listening uproariously to a fat farmer by the fire, who,
with arm raised, told his tale. Underneath was written, "Mr. West
describing how he saw a woodcock settle on an oak"--a perfect specimen
of the Sussex joke.
[Illustration: _Church Street, Steyning._]
CHAPTER XV
STEYNING AND BRAMBER
Saint Cuthman and his mother--Steyning's architecture--Steyning's
wise passiveness--Bramber castle--A corrupt pocket borough--A
Taxidermist-humorist--Joseph Poorgrass in Sussex--The widow of
Beeding and the Romney--A digression on curio-hunting.
Of great interest and antiquity is Steyning, the little grey and red
town which huddles under the hill four miles to Henfield's south-west.
[Sidenote: THE ADVENTURES OF CUTHMAN]
The beginnings of Steyning are lost in the distance. Its church was
founded, probably in the eighth century, by St. Cuthman, an early
Christian whose adventures were more than usually quaint. He began by
tending his father's sheep, with which occupation his first miracle was
associated. Being called one day to dinner, and having no one to take
his place as shepherd, he drew a circle round the flock with his crook,
and bade the sheep, in the name of the Lord, not to stray beyond it. The
sheep obeyed, and thenceforward on repeating the same manoeuvre he
left them with an easy mind. In course of time his father died, and
Cuthman determined to travel; intense filial piety determined him to
take his aged mother with him. In order to do this he constructed a
wheelbarrow couch, which he partly supported by a cord over his
shoulders. Thus united, mother and son fared forth into the cold world;
which was, however, warmed for them by the watchful interest taken in
Cuthman by a vigilant Providence. One day, for example, the cord of the
barrow broke in a hayfield, where Cuthman, who supplied its place by
elder twigs, was the subject of much ridicule among the haymakers.
Immediately a heavy storm broke over the field, destroying the crop; and
not only then, but ever afterwards in the same field--possibly to this
day--has haymaking been imperilled by a similar storm. So runs the
legend.
The second occasion on which the cord broke and let down Cuthman's
mother was at Steyning. Cuthman took the incident as a divine intimation
that the time had come to settle, and he thereupon first built for his
mother and himself a hut and afterwards a church. The present church
stands on its site. Cuthman was buried there. So, also, was Ethelwulf,
father of Alfred the Great, whose body afterwards was moved to
Winchester. Alfred the Great had estates at Steyning, as elsewhere in
Sussex.
While Cuthman was building his church a beam shifted, making a vast
amount of new labour necessary. But as the Saint sorrowfully was
preparing to begin again, a stranger appeared, who pointed out how the
mischief could be repaired in a more speedy manner and with less toil.
Cuthman and his men followed his instructions, and all was quickly well
again. Cuthman thereupon fell on his knees and asked the stranger who he
was. "I am He in whose name thou buildest this temple," he replied, and
vanished.
[Illustration: _Steyning Church._]
The present church, which stands on the site of St. Cuthman's, is only a
reminder of what it must have been in its best days. When one faces the
curiously chequered square tower, an impression of quiet dignity is
imparted; but a broadside view is disappointing by reason of the high
deforming roof, giving an impression as of a hunched back. (One sees the
same effect at Udimore, in the east of Sussex.) Within are two rows of
superb circular arches, with zigzag mouldings, on massive columns.
[Sidenote: STEYNING AND HISTORY]
Steyning has an importance in English history that is not generally
credited to it. Edward the Confessor gave a great part of the land to
the Abbey at Fecamp, whose church is, or was, the counterpart of
Steyning's. These possessions Harold took away, an act that, among
others, decided William, Duke of Normandy, upon his assailing, and
conquering, course. Steyning should be proud. To have brought the
Conqueror over is at least as worthy as to have come over with him, and
far more uncommon.
In Church Street stands Brotherhood Hall, a very charming ancient
building, long used as a Grammar School, flanked by overhanging houses,
which, though less imposing, are often more quaint and ingratiating.
Most of Steyning, indeed, is of the past, and the spirit of antiquity is
visibly present in its streets.
The late Louis Jennings, in his _Rambles among the Hills_, was
fascinated by the placid air of this unambitious town--as an American
might be expected to be in the uncongenial atmosphere of age and
serenity. "One almost expects," he wrote, "to see a fine green moss all
over an inhabitant of Steyning. One day as I passed through the town I
saw a man painting a new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused
my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter
filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three
times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch
and disappeared. Five weeks later I passed that way again, and it is a
fact that the same man was at work on the same sign. Perhaps when the
reader takes the walk I am about to recommend to his attention--a walk
which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex--that sign will be
finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another; but I
doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in Steyning." I am told
that Steyning was incensed when this criticism was printed (there was
even talk of an action for libel); but it seems to me that whatever may
have been intended, the words contain more of compliment than censure.
In this hurrying age, it is surely high praise to have one's "wise
passiveness" (as Wordsworth called it) so emphasised. The passage calls
to mind Diogenes requesting, as the greatest of possible boons, that
Alexander the Great would stand aside and not interrupt the sunshine;
only at Steyning would one seek for Diogenes to-day. No commendation of
Steyning in the direction of its enterprise, briskness, smartness, or
any of the other qualities which are now most in fashion, would so
speedily decide a wise man to pitch his tent there as Mr. Jennings'
certificate of inertia.
[Sidenote: STEYNING HARBOUR]
Steyning, if still disposed to stand on its defence, might plead
external influence, beyond the control of man, as an excuse for some of
its interesting placidity. For this curiously inland town was once a
port. In Saxon times (when Steyning was more important than Birmingham),
the Adur was practically an estuary of the sea, and ships came into
Steyning Harbour, or St. Cuthman's Port, as it was otherwise called.
There is notoriously no such quiet spot as a dry harbour town. In those
days, Steyning also had a mint.
Bramber, a little roadside village less than a mile south-east of
Steyning, also a mere relic of its great days, was once practically on
the coast, for the arm of the sea which narrowed down at Steyning was
here of great breadth, and washed the sides of the castle mound. The
last time I came into Steyning was by way of the bostel down Steyning
Round Hill. The old place seems more than ever medieval as one descends
upon it from the height (the best way to approach a town); and sitting
among the wild thyme on the turf I tried to reconstruct in imagination
the scene a thousand years ago, with the sea flowing over the meadows of
the Adur valley, and the masts of ships clustered beyond Steyning
church. Once one had the old prospect well in the mind's eye, the
landscape became curiously in need of water.
[Illustration: _Bramber._]
[Sidenote: BRAMBER]
After rain, Bramber is a pleasant village, but when the dust flies it is
good neither for man nor beast. All that remains of the castle is
crumbling battlement and a wall of the keep, survivals of the renovation
of the old Saxon stronghold by William de Braose, the friend of the
Conqueror and the Sussex founder of the Duke of Norfolk's family. Picnic
parties now frolic among the ruins, and enterprising boys explore the
rank overgrowth in the moat below.
The castle played no part in history, its demolition being due probably
to gunpowder pacifically fired with a view to obtaining building
materials. But during the Civil War the village was the scene of an
encounter between Royalists and Roundheads. A letter from John Coulton
to Samuel Jeake of Rye, dated January 8, 1643-4, thus describes the
event:--"The enemy attempted Bramber bridge, but our brave Carleton and
Evernden with his Dragoons and our Coll.'s horse welcomed them with
drakes and musketts, sending some 8 or 9 men to hell (I feare) and one
trooper to Arundel Castle prisoner, and one of Capt. Evernden's Dragoons
to heaven." A few years later, as we have seen, Charles II. ran a grave
risk at Bramber while on his way to Brighton and safety.
[Sidenote: A POCKET BOROUGH]
Bramber was, for many years, a pocket borough of the worst type. George
Spencer, writing to Algernon Sidney after the Bramber election in 1679,
says:--"You would have laughed to see how pleased I seemed to be in
kissing of old women; and drinking wine with handfuls of sugar, and
great glasses of burnt brandy; three things much against the stomach."
In 1768, eighteen votes were polled for one candidate and sixteen for
his rival. One of the tenants, in a cottage valued at about three
shillings a week, refused _L_1000 for his vote. Bramber remained a pocket
borough until the Reform Bill. William Wilberforce, the abolitionist,
sat for it for some years; there is a story that on passing one day
through the village he stopped his carriage to inquire the name.
"Bramber? Why, that's the place I'm Member for."
Bramber possesses a humorist in taxidermy, whose efforts win more
attention than the castle. They are to be seen in a small museum in its
single street, the price of admission being for children one penny, for
adults twopence, and for ladies and gentlemen "what they please"
(indicating that the naturalist also knows human nature). In one case,
guinea-pigs strive in cricket's manly toil; in another, rats read the
paper and play dominoes; in a third, rabbits learn their lessons in
school; in a fourth, the last scene in the tragedy of the _Babes of the
Wood_ is represented, Bramber Castle in the distance strictly
localising the event, although Norfolk usually claims it.
Isolated in the fields south of Bramber are two of the quaintest
churches in the county--Coombes and Botolphs. Neither has an attendant
village.
[Illustration: _Coombes Church._]
[Sidenote: JOSEPH POORGRASS IN FACT]
The owl story, which crops up all over the country and is found in
literature in Mr. Hardy's novel _Far from the Madding Crowd_, the scene
whereof is a hundred miles west of Sussex, has a home also at Upper
Beeding, the little dusty village beyond Bramber across the river. Mr.
Hardy gives the adventure to Joseph Poorgrass; at Beeding, the hero is
one Kiddy Wee. His rightful name was Kidd; but being very small the
village had invented this double diminutive. Lost in the wood he cried
for help, just as Poorgrass did. "Who? who?" asked the owl. "Kiddy Wee
o' Beedin'," was the reply.
[Sidenote: A DEALER OUTWITTED]
It was not long ago that a masterpiece was discovered at Beeding, in one
of those unlikely places in which with ironical humour fine pictures so
often hide themselves. It hung in a little general shop kept by an
elderly widow. After passing unnoticed or undetected for many years, it
was silently identified by a dealer who happened to be buying some
biscuits. He made a casual remark about it, learned that any value that
might be set upon it was sentimental rather than monetary, and returned
home. He laid the matter before one or two friends, with the result that
they visited Beeding in a party a day or so later in order to bear away
the prize. Outside the shop they held a council of war. One was for
bidding at the outset a small but sufficient sum for the picture,
another for affecting to want something else and leading round to the
picture, and so forth; but in the discussion of tactics they raised
their voices too high, so that a visitor of the widow, sitting in the
room over the shop, heard something of the matter. Suspecting danger,
but wholly unconscious of its nature, she hurried downstairs and warned
her friend of a predatory gang outside who were not to be supplied on
any account with anything they asked for. The widow obeyed blindly. They
asked for tea--she refused to sell it; they asked for biscuits--she set
her hand firmly on the lid; they mentioned the picture--she was a rock.
Baffled, they withdrew; and the widow, now on the right scent, took the
next train to Brighton to lay the whole matter before her landlord. He
took it up, consulted an expert, and the picture was found to be a
portrait of Mrs. Jordan, the work either of Romney or Lawrence.
[Sidenote: THE FURNITURE SWINDLE]
Furniture is the usual prey of the dealer who lounges casually through
old villages in the guise of a tourist, asking for food or water at old
cottages and farmhouses, and using his eyes to some purpose the while.
Pictures are rare. The search for chests, turned bed-posts, fire-backs,
Chippendale chairs, warming pans, grandfather's clocks, and other
indigenous articles of the old simple homestead which are thought so
decorative in the sophisticated villa and establish the artistic credit
and taste of their new owner, has been prosecuted in Sussex with as much
energy as elsewhere--not only by the professional dealer, but by
amateurs no less unwilling to give an ignorant peasant fifteen
shillings for an article which they know to be worth as many pounds. But
suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say,
begun to spread, and the palmiest days of the spoliation of the country
are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is
always the under dog, the amateur the upper. A London dealer informs me
that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a
recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade. An
oak chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman
can give it (and the profession of wormholer, is now, I believe,
recognised) is deposited in a tumble-down, half-timbered home in a
country village, whose occupant is willing to take a share in the game;
a ticket marked "Ginger-beer; sold Here" is placed in the window, and
the trap is ready. It is almost beyond question that everyone who bids
for this chest, which has, of course, been in the family for
generations, is hoping to get it at a figure much lower than is just; it
is quite certain that whatever is paid for it will be too much. Ugly as
the situation is, I like to think of this biting of the biter.
[Illustration: _Chanctonbury Ring._]
CHAPTER XVI
CHANCTONBURY, WASHINGTON, AND WORTHING
Chanctonbury Ring--The planter of the beeches--The Gorings--Thomas
Fuller on the Three Shirleys--Ashington's chief--Warminghurst and
the phantasm--Washington--An expensive mug of beer--Findon--A
champion pluralist--Cissbury--John Selden's wit and wisdom--Thomas
a Becket's figs--Worthing's precious climate--Sompting church.
For nothing within its confines is Steyning so famous as for the hill
which rises to the south-west of it--Chanctonbury Ring. Other of the
South Downs are higher, other are more commanding: Wolstonbury, for
example, standing forward from the line, makes a bolder show, and Firle
Beacon daunts the sky with a braver point; but when one thinks of the
South Downs as a whole it is Chanctonbury that leaps first to the
inward eye. Chanctonbury, when all is said, is the monarch of the range.
The words of the Sussex enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a
summer abroad, express the feeling of many of his countrymen:--
For howsoever fair the land,
The time would surely be
That brought our Wealden blackbird's note
Across the waves to me.
And howsoever strong the door,
'Twould never keep at bay
The thought of Fulking's violets,
The scent of Holmbush hay.
And ever when the day was done,
And all the sky was still,
How I should miss the climbing moon
O'er Chanctonbury's hill!
[Sidenote: CHANCTONBURY RING]
It is Chanctonbury's crown of beeches that lifts it above the other
hills. Uncrowned it would be no more noticeable than Fulking Beacon or a
score of others; but its dark grove can be seen for many miles. In
Wiston House, under the hill, the seat of the Goring family, to whom
belong the hill and a large part of the country that it dominates, is an
old painting of Chanctonbury before the woods were made, bare as the
barest, without either beech or juniper, and the eye does not notice it
until all else in the picture has been examined. The planter of
Chanctonbury's Ring, in 1760, was Mr. Charles Goring of Wiston, who
wrote in extreme old age in 1828 the following lines:--
How oft around thy Ring, sweet Hill,
A Boy, I used to play,
And form my plans to plant thy top
On some auspicious day.
How oft among thy broken turf
With what delight I trod,
With what delight I placed those twigs
Beneath thy maiden sod.
And then an almost hopeless wish
Would creep within my breast,
Oh! could I live to see thy top
In all its beauty dress'd.
That time's arrived; I've had my wish,
And lived to eighty-five;
I'll thank my God who gave such grace
As long as e'er I live.
Still when the morning Sun in Spring,
Whilst I enjoy my sight,
Shall gild thy new-clothed Beech and sides,
I'll view thee with delight.
Most of the trees on the side of Chanctonbury and its neighbours were
self-sown, children of the clumps which Mr. Goring planted. I might add
that Mr. Charles Goring was born in 1743, and his son, the present Rev.
John Goring, in 1823, when his father was eighty; so that the two lives
cover a period of one hundred and sixty years--true Sussex longevity.
Wiston House (pronounced Wisson) is a grey Tudor building in the midst
of a wide park, immediately under the hill. The lofty hall, dating from
Elizabeth's reign, is as it was; much of the remainder of the house was
restored in the last century. The park has deer and a lake. The Goring
family acquired Wiston by marriage with the Faggs, and a superb portrait
of Sir John Fagg, in the manner of Vandyck with a fine flavour of
Velasquez, is one of the treasures of the house.
[Sidenote: SIR ANTHONY SHIRLEY]
Before the Faggs came the Shirleys, a family chiefly famous for the
three wonderful brothers, Anthony, Robert, and Thomas.
Fuller, in the _Worthies_, gives them full space indeed considering that
none was interested in the Church. I cannot do better than quote
him:--"SIR ANTHONY SHIRLEY, second Son to Sir _Thomas_, set forth from
_Plimouth_, _May_ the 21st, 1596, in a Ship called the _Bevis of
Southampton_, attended with six lesser vessels. His design for _Saint
Thome_ was violently diverted by the contagion they found on the South
Coast of Africa, where the rain did stink as it fell down from the
heavens, and within six hours did turn into magots. This made him turn
his course to _America_, where he took and kept the city of _St. Jago_
two days and nights, with two hundred and eighty men (whereof eighty
were wounded in the service), against three thousand _Portugalls_.
"Hence he made for the Isle of _Fuego_, in the midst whereof a
Mountaine, AEtna-like, always burning; and the wind did drive such a
shower of ashes upon them, that one might have wrote his name with his
finger on the upper deck. However, in this fiery Island, they furnished
themselves with good water, which they much wanted.
"Hence he sailed to the Island of _Margarita_, which to him did not
answer its name, not finding here the _Perl Dredgers_ which he expected.
Nor was his gaine considerable in taking the Town of _Saint Martha_, the
Isle and chief town of _Jamaica_, whence he sailed more than _thirty_
leagues up the river _Rio-dolci_, where he met with great extremity.
"At last, being diseased in person, distressed for victuals, and
deserted by all his other ships, he made by _New-found-land_ to
_England_, where he arrived June 15, 1597. Now although some behold his
voyage, begun with more courage then counsel, carried on with more
valour then advice, and coming off with more honour than profit to
himself or the nation (the Spaniard being rather frighted then harmed,
rather braved then frighted therewith); yet unpartial judgments, who
measure not worth by success, justly allow it a prime place amongst the
probable (though not prosperous) English Adventures.
[Sidenote: SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY]
"SIR ROBERT SHIRLEY, youngest Son to Sir _Thomas_, was, by his Brother
_Anthony_, entred in the _Persian_ Court. Here he performed great
Service against the _Turkes_, and shewed the difference betwixt
_Persian_ and _English_ Valour; the latter having therein as much
Courage, and more Mercy, giving Quarter to Captives who craved it, and
performing Life to those to whom he promised it. These his Actions drew
the Envie of the _Persian_ Lords, and Love of the Ladies, amongst whom
one (reputed a Kins-man to the great _Sophy_) after some Opposition, was
married unto him. She had more of _Ebony_ than _Ivory_ in her
Complexion; yet amiable enough, and very valiant, a quality considerable
in that Sex in those Countries. With her he came over to _England_, and
lived many years therein. He much affected to appear in _forreign
Vestes_; and, as if his _Clothes_ were his limbs, accounted himself
never ready till he had something of the Persian Habit about him.
"At last a Contest happening betwixt him and the Persian Ambassadour (to
whom some reported Sir Robert gave a Box on the Ear) the King sent them
both into _Persia_, there mutually to impeach one another, and joyned
Doctor _Gough_ (a Senior Fellow of _Trinity colledge_ in _Cambridge_) in
commission with Sir Robert. In this Voyage (as I am informed) both died
on the Seas, before the controverted difference was ever heard in the
Court of _Persia_, about the beginning of the Reign of King _Charles_.
[Sidenote: SIR THOMAS SHIRLEY]
"Sir THOMAS SHIRLEY, I name him the last (though the eldest Son of his
Father) because last appearing in the world, men's _Activity_ not always
observing the method of their _Register_. As the Trophies of _Miltiades_
would not suffer _Themistocles_ to sleep; so the Atchievements of his
two younger brethren gave an Alarum unto his spirit. He was ashamed to
see them worne like Flowers 'in the _Breasts_ and _Bosomes_ of forreign
Princes, whilst he himself withered upon the stalk he grew on'. This
made him leave his aged Father and fair Inheritance in this _County_,
and to undertake _Sea Voyages_ into forreign parts, to the great
_honour_ of his _Nation_, but small _inriching_ of _himself_; so that he
might say to his Son, as _AEneas_ to _AEscanius_:--
'Disce, puer, Virtutem ex me verumque Laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis.'
'Virtue and Labour learn from me thy Father,
As for Success, Child, learn from others rather.'
"As to the generall performance of these _three brethren_, I know the
_Affidavit_ of a Poet carrieth but a small credit in the _court of
History_; and the _Comedy_ made of them is but a _friendly foe_ to their
Memory, as suspected more accomodated to please the present spectators,
then inform posterity. However, as the belief of Mitio (when an
_Inventory_ of his adopted _Sons misdemeanours_ was brought unto him)
embraced a middle and moderate way, _nec omnia credere nec nihil_,
neither to _believe all things nor nothing_ of what was told him: so in
the _list of their Atchievements_ we may safely pitch on the same
proportion, and, when abatement is made for _poeticall embelishments_,
the remainder will speak them Worthies in their generations."--Such were
the three Shirleys.
Wiston church, which shelters under the eastern wall of the house,
almost leaning against it, has some interesting tombs.
[Sidenote: BIOHCHANDOUNE]
Walking west from Wiston we come to the tiny hamlet of Buncton, one of
the oldest settlements in Sussex, a happy hunting ground for excavators
in search of Roman remains, and possessing in Buncton chapel a quaint
little Norman edifice. The word Buncton is a sign of modern carelessness
for beautiful words: the original Saxon form was "Biohchandoune," which
is charming.
Buncton belongs to Ashington, two miles to the north-west on the
Worthing road, a quiet village with a fifteenth-century church (a mere
child compared with Buncton Chapel) and a famous loss. The loss is
tragic, being no less than that of the parish register containing a full
and complete account, by Ashington's best scribe, of a visit of Good
Queen Bess to the village in 1591. A destroyed church may be built
again, but who shall restore the parish register? The book, however, is
perhaps still in existence, for it was deliberately stolen, early in the
eighteenth century, by a thief who laid his plans as carefully as did
Colonel Blood in his attack on the regalia, abstracting the volume from
a cupboard in the rectory, through a hole which he made in the outside
wall. No interest in the progress of Queen Elizabeth prompted him: the
register was taken during the hearing of a law suit in order that its
damning evidence might not be forthcoming.
[Sidenote: WILLIAM PENN IN SUSSEX]
While at Ashington we ought to see Warminghurst, only a mile distant,
once the abode of the Shelleys, and later of William Penn, who bought
the great house in 1676. One of his infant children is buried at
Coolham, close by, where he attended the Quakers' meeting and where
services are still held. The meeting-house was built of timber from one
of Penn's ships.
A later owner than Penn, James Butler, rebuilt Warminghurst and
converted a large portion of the estate into a deer park; but it was
thrown back into farm land by one of the Dukes of Norfolk, while the
house was destroyed, the deer exiled, and the lake drained. Perhaps it
was time that the house came down, for in the interim it had been
haunted; the ghost being that of the owner of the property, who one day,
although far distant, was seen at Warminghurst by two persons and
afterwards was found to have died at the time of his appearance.
Warminghurst in those days of park and deer, lake and timber (it had a
chestnut two hundred and seventy years old), might well be the first
spot to which an enfranchised spirit winged its way.
From Warminghurst is a road due south, over high sandy heaths, to
Washington, which, unassuming as it is, may be called the capital of a
large district of West Sussex that is unprovided with a railway.
Steyning, five miles to the east, Amberley, seven miles to the west, and
West Worthing, eight miles to the south, on the other side of the Downs,
are the nearest stations. In the midst of this thinly populated area
stands Washington, at the foot of the mountain pass that leads to
Findon, Worthing and the sea. It was once a Saxon settlement (Wasa inga
tun, town of the sons of Wasa); it is now derelict, memorable only as a
baiting place for man and beast. But there are few better spots in the
country for a modest contented man to live and keep a horse. Rents are
low, turfed hills are near, and there is good hunting.
[Sidenote: A COSTLY QUART]
The church, which was restored about fifty years ago, but retains its
Tudor tower, stands above the village. In 1866 three thousand pennies of
the reign of Edward the Confessor and Harold were turned up by a plough
in this parish, and, says Mr. Lower, were held so cheaply by their
finders that half a pint measure of them was offered at the inn by one
man in exchange for a quart of beer. Possibly Mr. Hilaire Belloc would
not think the price excessive, for I find him writing, in a "Sussex
Drinking Song":
They sell good beer at Haslemere
And under Guildford Hill;
At little Cowfold, as I've been told,
A beggar may drink his fill.
There is a good brew in Amberley too,
And by the Bridge also;
But the swipes they take in at the Washington Inn
Is the very best beer I know.
The white road to Worthing from Washington first climbs the hills and
then descends steadily to the sea. The first village is Findon, three
miles distant, but one passes on the way two large houses, Highden and
Muntham. Muntham, which was originally a shooting box of Viscount
Montagu, lord of Cowdray, was rebuilt in the nineteenth century by an
eccentric traveller in the East, named Frankland, a descendant of Oliver
Cromwell, who, settling at home again, gave up his time to collecting
mechanical appliances.
Findon is a pleasant little village at the bottom of the valley, the
home of the principal Sussex training stable, which has its galloping
course under Cissbury. Training stables may be found in many parts of
the Downs, but the Sussex turf has not played the same part in the
making of race horses as that of Hampshire and Berkshire.
Lady Butler painted the background of her picture of Balaclava at
Findon, the neighbourhood of which curiously resembles in configuration
the Russian battlefield.
[Sidenote: A FINISHED PLURALIST]
The rector of Findon in 1276, Galfridus de Aspall, seems to have brought
the art of pluralising to a finer point than most. In addition to being
rector of Findon, he had, Mr. Lower tells us, a benefice in London, two
in the diocese of Lincoln, one in Rochester, one in Hereford, one in
Coventry, one in Salisbury, and seven in Norwich. He was also Canon of
St. Paul's and Master of St. Leonard's Hospital at York.
Above Findon on the south-east rises Cissbury, one of the finest of the
South Downs, but, by reason of its inland position, less noticeable than
the hills on the line. There have been many conjectures as to its
history. The Romans may have used it for military purposes, as certainly
they did for the pacific cultivation of the grape, distinct terraces as
of a vineyard being still visible; traces of a factory of flint arrow
heads have been found (giving it the ugly name of the "Flint
Sheffield"); while Cissa, lord of Chichester, may have had a bury or
fort there. Mr. Lower's theory is that the earthworks on the summit,
whatever their later function, were originally religious, and probably
druidical.
Salvington (a little village which is gained by leaving the main road
two miles beyond Cissbury and bearing to the west) is distinguished as
the birthplace, in 1584, of one who was considered by Hugo Grotius to be
the glory of the English nation--John Selden. Nowadays, when we choose
our glories among other classes of men than jurists and wits, it is more
than possible for even cultured persons who are interested in books to
go through life very happily without knowledge at all of this great man,
the friend of great men and the writer best endowed with common sense of
any of his day. From Selden's _Table Talk_ I take a few passages on the
homelier side, to be read at Salvington:--
[Sidenote: JOHN SELDEN'S WISDOM]
FRIENDS.
Old Friends are best. King James used to call for his old Shoes;
they were easiest for his Feet.
CONSCIENCE.
Some men make it a Case of Conscience, whether a Man may have a
Pigeon-house, because his Pigeons eat other Folks' Corn. But there
is no such thing as Conscience in the Business; the Matter is,
whether he be a Man of such Quality, that the State allows him to
have a Dove-house; if so, there's an end of the business; his
Pigeons have a right to eat where they please themselves.
CHARITY.
Charity to Strangers is enjoin'd in the Text. By Strangers is there
understood those that are not of our own Kin, Strangers to your
Blood; not those you cannot tell whence they come; that is, be
charitable to your Neighbours whom you know to be honest poor
People.
CEREMONY.
Ceremony keeps up all things: 'Tis like a Penny-Glass to a rich
Spirit, or some excellent Water; without it the Water were spilt,
the Spirit lost.
Of all people Ladies have no reason to cry down Ceremony, for they
take themselves slighted without it. And were they not used with
Ceremony, with Compliments and Addresses, with Legs and Kissing of
Hands, they were the pitifullest Creatures in the World. But yet
methinks to kiss their Hands after their Lips, as some do, is like
little Boys, that after they eat the apple, fall to the Paring, out
of a Love they have to the Apple.
RELIGION.
Religion is like the Fashion: one Man wears his Doublet slashed,
another laced, another plain; but every Man has a Doublet. So every
man has his Religion. We differ about Trimming.
Alteration of Religion is dangerous, because we know not where it
will stay: 'tis like a _Millstone_ that lies upon the top of a pair
of Stairs; 'tis hard to remove it, but if once it be thrust off the
first Stair, it never stays till it comes to the bottom.
We look after Religion as the Butcher did after his Knife, when he
had it in his Mouth.
WIT.
Nature must be the ground-work of Wit and Art; otherwise whatever
is done will prove but Jack-pudding's work.
WIFE.
You shall see a Monkey sometime, that has been playing up and down
the Garden, at length leap up to the top of the Wall, but his Clog
hangs a great way below on this side: the Bishop's Wife is like
that Monkey's Clog; himself is got up very high, takes place of the
Temporal Barons, but his Wife comes a great way behind.
Selden's father was a small farmer who played the fiddle well. The boy
is said at the age of ten to have carved over the door a Latin distich,
which, being translated, runs:--
Walk in and welcome, honest friend; repose.
Thief, get thee gone! to thee I'll not unclose.
[Sidenote: SAINT THOMAS'S FIGS]
Between Salvington and Worthing lies Tarring, noted for its fig gardens.
It is a fond belief that Thomas a Becket planted the original trees from
which the present Tarring figs are descended; and there is one tree
still in existence which tradition asserts was set in the earth by his
own hand. Whether this is possible I am not sufficiently an
arboriculturist to say; but Becket certainly sojourned often in the
Archbishop of Canterbury's palace in the village. The larger part of the
present fig garden dates from 1745. I have seen it stated that during
the season a little band of _becca ficos_ fly over from Italy to taste
the fruit, disappearing when it is gathered; but a Sussex ornithologist
tells me that this is only a pretty story.
The fig gardens are perhaps sufficient indication that the climate of
this part of the country is very gentle. It is indeed unique in
mildness. There is a little strip of land between the sea and the hills
whose climatic conditions approximate to those of the Riviera: hence, in
addition to the success of the Tarring fig gardens, Worthing's fame for
tomatoes and other fruit. I cannot say when the tomato first came to the
English table, but the first that I ever saw was at Worthing, and
Worthing is now the centre of the tomato-growing industry. Miles of
glass houses stretch on either side of the town.
Worthing (like Brighton and Bognor) owed its beginning as a health
resort to the house of Guelph, the visit of the Princess Amelia in 1799
having added a _cachet_, previously lacking, to its invigorating
character. But, unlike Brighton, neither Worthing nor Bognor has
succeeded in becoming quite indispensable. Brighton has the advantage
not only of being nearer London but also nearer the hills. One must walk
for some distance from Worthing before the lonely highland district
between Cissbury and Lancing Clump is gained, whereas Brighton is partly
built upon the Downs and has her little Dyke Railway to boot. But the
visitor to Worthing who, surfeited of sea and parade, makes for the hill
country, knows a solitude as profound as anything that Brighton's
heights can give him.
[Sidenote: "HAWTHORN AND LAVENDER"]
Worthing has at least two literary associations. It was there that that
most agreeable comedy _The Importance of Being Earnest_ was written: the
town even gave its name to the principal character--John Worthing; and
it was there that Mr. Henley lived while the lyrics in _Hawthorn and
Lavender_ were coming to him. The beautiful dedication to the book is
dated "Worthing, July 31, 1901."
Ask me not how they came,
These songs of love and death,
These dreams of a futile stage,
These thumb-nails seen in the street:
Ask me not how nor why,
But take them for your own,
Dear Wife of twenty years,
Knowing--O, who so well?--
You it was made the man
That made these songs of love,
Death, and the trivial rest:
So that, your love elsewhere,
These songs, or bad or good--
How should they ever have been?
[Illustration: _Sompting._]
[Sidenote: SOMPTING]
Of the villages to the west we have caught glimpses in an earlier
chapter--Goring, Angmering, Ferring, and so forth; to the north and east
are Broadwater, Sompting and Lancing. Broadwater is perhaps a shade too
near Worthing to be interesting, but Sompting, lying under the Downs, is
unspoiled, with its fascinating church among the elms and rocks. The
church (of which Mr. Griggs has made an exquisite drawing) was built
nearly eight hundred years ago. Within are some curious fragments of
sculpture, and a tomb which Mr. Lower considered to belong to Richard
Bury, Bishop of Chichester in the reign of Henry VIII. East of Sompting
lie the two Lancings, North Lancing on the hill, South Lancing on the
coast. East of North Lancing, the true village, stands Lancing College,
high above the river, with its imposing chapel, a landmark in the valley
of the Adur and far out to sea.
[Illustration: _Lancing._]
CHAPTER XVII
BRIGHTON
A decline in interest--The storied past of Brighton--Dr. Russell's
discovery--The First Gentleman in Europe--The resources of the
Steyne--Promenade Grove--A loyal journalist--The Brighton
bathers--Smoaker and Martha Gunn--The Prince and cricket--The
Nonpareil at work--Byron at Brighton--Hazlitt's observation--Horace
Smith's verses--Sidney Smith on the M.C.--Captain Tattersall--Pitt
and the heckler--Dr. Johnson in the sea--Mrs. Pipchin and Dr.
Blimber--The Brighton fishermen--Richard Jefferies on the town--The
Cavalier--Mr. Booth's birds--Old Pottery.
Brighton is interesting only in its past. To-day it is a suburb, a lung,
of London; the rapid recuperator of Londoners with whom the pace has
been too severe; the Mecca of day-excursionists, the steady friend of
invalids and half-pay officers. It is vast, glittering, gay; but it is
not interesting.
To persons who care little for new towns the value of Brighton lies in
its position as the key to good country. In a few minutes one can travel
by train to the Dyke, and leaving booths and swings behind, be free of
miles of turfed Down or cultivated Weald; in a few minutes one can reach
Hassocks, the station for Wolstonbury and Ditchling Beacon; in a few
minutes one can gain Falmer and plunge into Stanmer Park; or, travelling
to the next station, correct the effect of Brighton's hard brilliance
amid the soothing sleepinesses of Lewes; in a few minutes on the western
line one can be at Shoreham, amid ship-builders and sail-makers, or on
the ramparts of Bramber Castle, or among the distractions of Steyning
cattle market, with Chanctonbury Ring rising solemnly beyond. Brighton,
however, knows little of these homes of peace, for she looks only out to
sea or towards London.
[Sidenote: BRIGHTON'S STORIED PAST]
Brighton was, however, interesting a hundred years ago; when the
Pavilion was the favourite resort of the First Gentleman in Europe
(whose opulent charms, preserved in the permanency of mosaic, may be
seen in the Museum); when the Steyne was a centre of fashion and folly;
coaches dashed out of Castle Square every morning and into Castle Square
every evening; Munden and Mrs. Siddons were to be seen at one or other
of the theatres; Martha Gunn dipped ladies in the sea; Lord Frederick
Beauclerck played long innings on the Level; and Mr. Barrymore took a
pair of horses up Mrs. Fitzherbert's staircase and could not get them
down again without the assistance of a posse of blacksmiths.
Brighton was interesting then, reposing in the smiles of the Prince of
Wales and his friends. But it is interesting no more,--with the Pavilion
a show place, the Dome a concert hall, the Steyne an enclosure, Martha
Gunn in her grave, the Chain Pier a memory, Mrs. Fitzherbert's house the
headquarters of the Young Men's Christian Association, and the Brighton
road a racing track for cyclists, motor cars and walking stockbrokers.
Brighton is entertaining, salubrious, fashionable, what you will. Its
interest has gone.
The town's rise from Brighthelmstone (pronounced Brighton) a fishing
village, to Brighton, the marine resort of all that was most dashing in
English society, was brought about by a Lewes doctor in the days when
Lewes was to Brighton what Brighton now is to Lewes. This doctor was
Richard Russell, born in 1687, who, having published in 1750 a book on
the remedial effects of sea water, in 1754 removed to Brighton to be
able to attend to the many patients that were flocking thither. That
book was the beginning of Brighton's greatness. The seal was set upon it
in 1783, when the Prince of Wales, then a young man just one and twenty,
first visited the town.
[Sidenote: LE PRINCE S'AMUSE]
The Prince's second visit to Brighton was in July 1784. He then stayed
at the house engaged for him by his cook, Louis Weltje, which, when he
decided to build, became the nucleus of the Pavilion. The Prince at this
time (he was now twenty-two) was full of spirit and enterprise, and in
the company of Colonel Hanger, Sir John Lade of Etchingham, and other
bloods, was ready for anything: even hard work, for in July 1784 he rode
from Brighton to London and back again, on horse-back, in ten hours. One
of his diversions in 1785 is thus described in the Press: "On Monday,
June 27, His Royal Highness amused himself on the Steyne for some time
in attempting to _shoot doves with single balls_; but with what result
we have not heard, though the Prince is esteemed a most excellent shot,
and seldom presents his piece without doing some execution. The Prince,
in the course of his diversion, either by design or accident, _lowered
the tops of several of the chimneys of the Hon. Mr. Windham's house_."
The Prince seemed to live for the Steyne. When the first scheme of the
Pavilion was completed, in 1787, his bedroom in it was so designed that
he could recline at his ease and by means of mirrors watch everything
that was happening on his favourite promenade.
The Prince was probably as bad as history states, but he had the quality
of his defects, and Brighton was the livelier for the presence of his
friends. Lyme Regis, Margate, Worthing, Lymington, Bognor--these had
nothing to offer beyond the sea. Brighton could lay before her guests a
thousand odd diversions, in addition to concerts, balls, masquerades,
theatres, races. The Steyne, under the ingenious direction of Colonel
Hanger, the Earl of Barrymore, and their associates, became an arena for
curious contests. Officers and gentlemen, ridden by other officers and
gentlemen, competed in races with octogenarians. Strapping young women
were induced to run against each other for a new smock or hat. Every
kind of race was devised, even to walking backwards; while a tame stag
was occasionally liberated and hunted to refuge.
[Sidenote: AN EARTHLY PARADISE]
To the theatre came in turn all the London players; and once the
mysterious Chevalier D'Eon was exhibited on its stage in a fencing bout
with a military swordsman. The Promenade Grove, which covered part of
the ground between New Road, the Pavilion, North Street and Church
Street, was also an evening resort in fine weather (and to read about
Brighton in its heyday is to receive an impression of continual fine
weather, tempered only by storms of wind, such as never failed to blow
when Rowlandson and his pencil were in the town, to supply that robust
humorist with the contours on which his reputation was based). The Grove
was a marine Ranelagh. Masquers moved among the trees, orchestras
discoursed the latest airs, rockets soared into the sky. In the county
paper for October 1st, 1798, I find the following florid reference to a
coming event in the Grove:--"The glittering Azure and the noble Or of
the peacock's wings, under the meridian sun, cannot afford greater
exultation to that bird, than some of our beautiful belles of fashion
promise themselves, from a display of their captivating charms at the
intended masquerade at Brighton to-morrow se'nnight."
In another issue of the paper for the same year are some extempore lines
on Brighton, dated from East Street, which end thus ecstatically:--
Nature's ever bounteous hand
Sure has bless'd this happy land.
'Tis here no brow appears with care,
What would we be, but what we are?
Before leaving this genial county organ I must quote from a paragraph in
1796 on the Prince himself:--"The following couplet of Pope may be fitly
applied to his Royal Highness:--
If to his share some manly errors fall,
Look on his face and you'll forget them all."
What could be kinder? A little earlier, in a description of these
anodyne features, the journalist had said of his Royal Highness's "arch
eyes," that they "seem to look more ways than one at a time, and
especially when they are directed towards the fair sex."
Quieter and more normal pastimes were gossip at the libraries, riding
and driving, and bathing in the sea. Bathing seems to have been taken
very seriously, with none of the present matter-of-course haphazardness.
In an old Guide to Brighton, dated 1794, I find the following
description of the intrepid dippers of that day:--"It may not be
improper here to introduce a short account of the manner of bathing in
the sea at Brighthelmston. By means of a hook-ladder the bather ascends
the machine, which is formed of wood, and raised on high wheels; he is
drawn to a proper distance from the shore, and then plunges into the
sea, the guides attending on each side to assist him in recovering the
machine, which being accomplished, he is drawn back to shore. The guides
are strong, active, and careful; and, in every respect, adapted to their
employments."
[Sidenote: "SMOAKER"]
[Sidenote: MARTHA GUNN]
Chief of the bathing women for many years was Martha Gunn, whose
descendants still sell fish in the town; chief among the men was the
famous Smoaker (his real name, John Miles) the Prince of Wales's
swimming tutor. There is a story of his pulling the Prince back by the
ear, when he had swum out too far against the old man's instructions;
while on another occasion, when the sea was too rough for safety, he
placed himself in front of his obstinate pupil in a fighting attitude,
with the words, "What do you think your father would say to me if you
were drowned? He would say, 'This is all owing to you, Smoaker. If you'd
taken proper care of him, Smoaker, poor George would still be alive.'"
Another of the pleasant stories of the Prince refers to Smoaker's
feminine correlative--Martha Gunn. One day, being in the act of
receiving an illicit gift of butter in the pavilion kitchen just as the
Prince entered the room, she slipped the pat into her pocket. But not
quite in time. Talking with the utmost affability, the Prince proceeded
to edge her closer and closer to the great fire, pocket side nearest,
and there he kept her until her sin had found her out and dress and
butter were both ruined. Doubtless his Royal Highness made both good,
for he had all the minor generosities.
An old book, quoted in Mr. Bishop's interesting volume _A Peep into the
Past_, gives the following scrap of typical conversation between Martha
and a visitor:--"'What, my old friend, Martha,' said I, 'still queen of
the ocean, still industrious, and busy as ever; and how do you find
yourself'? 'Well and hearty, thank God, sir,' replied she, 'but rather
hobbling. I don't bathe, because I a'nt so strong as I used to be, so I
superintend on the beach, for I'm up before any of 'em; you may always
find me and my pitcher at one exact spot, every morning by six o'clock.'
'You wear vastly well, my old friend, pray what age may you be'? 'Only
eighty-eight, sir; in fact, eighty-nine come next Christmas pudding;
aye, and though I've lost my teeth I can mumble it with as good relish
and hearty appetite as anybody.' 'I'm glad to hear it; Brighton would
not look like itself without you, Martha,' said I. 'Oh, I don't know,
it's like to do without me, some day,' answered she, 'but while I've
health and life, I must be bustling amongst my old friends and
benefactors; I think I ought to be proud, for I've as many bows from
man, woman, and child, as the Prince hisself; aye, I do believe, the
very dogs in the town know me.' 'And your son, how is he'? said I.
'Brave and charming; he lives in East Street; if your honour wants any
prime pickled salmon, or oysters, there you have 'em.'"
On the Prince's birthday, and on the birthday of his royal brothers,
Brighton went mad with excitement. Oxen were roasted whole, strong beer
ran like water, and among the amusements single-wicket matches were
played. One of the good deeds of the Prince was the making of a cricket
ground. Before 1791, when the Prince's ground was laid out, matches had
been played on the neighbouring hills, or on the Level. The Prince's
ground stood partly on the Level as it now is, and partly on Park
Crescent. In 1823, it became Ireland's Gardens, upon whose turf the most
famous cricketers of England played until 1847. In 1848 the Brunswick
ground at Hove was opened, close to the sea, into which the ball was
occasionally hit by Mr. C. I. Thornton. The present Hove ground dates
from 1871. I like to think that George IV., though no great cricketer
himself (he played now and then when young "with great condescension and
affability"), is the true father of Sussex cricket. He may deserve all
that Lamb, Leigh Hunt, and Thackeray said of him, but without his
influence and patronage the history of cricket would be the poorer by
many bright pages.
[Sidenote: THE NONPAREIL]
Where Montpellier Crescent now stands, was, eighty years ago, the ground
on which Frederick William Lillywhite, the Nonpareil, used to bowl to
gentlemen young or old who were prepared to put down five shillings for
the privilege. Little Wisden acted as a long stop. Lillywhite was the
real creator of round-arm bowling, although Tom Walker of the Hambledon
Club was the pioneer and James Broadbridge an earlier exponent. It was
not until 1828 that round-arm was legalised. "Me bowling, Pilch batting,
and Box keeping wicket--that's cricket," was the old man's dictum; or
"When I bowls and Fuller bats," a variant has it, bowl being pronounced
to rhyme with owl, "then you'll see cricket." He was thirty-five before
he began his first-class career, he bowled fewer than a dozen wides in
twenty-seven years, and his myriad wickets cost only seven runs a-piece.
Brighton in its palmiest days was practically contained within the
streets that bear boundary names, North Street, East Street, West
Street, and the sea, with the parish church high on the hill. On the
other side of the Steyne were the naked Downs, while the Lewes road and
the London Road were mere thoroughfares between equally bare hills, with
a few houses here and there.
During the town's most fashionable period, which continued for nearly
fifty years--say from 1785 to 1835--everyone journeyed thither; and
indeed everyone goes to Brighton to-day, although its visitors are now
anonymous where of old they were notorious. I believe that Robert
Browning is the only eminent Englishman that never visited the town.
Perhaps it does little for poets; yet Byron was there as a young man,
much in the company of a charming youth with whom he often sailed in the
Channel, and who afterwards was discovered to be a girl.
[Sidenote: HORACE SMITH]
A minor poet, Horace Smith, gives us, in _Horace in London_, a sprightly
picture of the town in 1813, from which we see that the changes between
now and then are only in externals:--
BRIGHTON.
_Solvitur acris hyems grata vice veris._
Now fruitful autumn lifts his sunburnt head,
The slighted Park few cambric muslins whiten,
The dry machines revisit Ocean's bed,
And Horace quits awhile the town for _Brighton_.
The cit foregoes his box at Turnham Green,
To pick up health and shells with Amphitrite,
Pleasure's frail daughters trip along the Steyne,
Led by the dame the Greeks call Aphrodite.
Phoebus, the tanner, plies his fiery trade,
The graceful nymphs ascend Judea's ponies,
Scale the west cliff, or visit the parade,
While poor papa in town a patient drone is.
Loose trowsers snatch the wreath from pantaloons;
Nankeen of late were worn the sultry weather in;
But now, (so will the Prince's light dragoons,)
White jean have triumph'd o'er their Indian brethren.
Here with choice food earth smiles and ocean yawns,
Intent alike to please the London glutton;
This, for our breakfast proffers shrimps and prawns,
That, for our dinner, South-down lamb and mutton.
Yet here, as elsewhere, death impartial reigns,
Visits alike the cot and the _Pavilion_,
And for a bribe with equal scorn disdains
My half a crown, and _Baring's_ half a million.
Alas! how short the span of human pride!
Time flies, and hope's romantic schemes, are undone;
Cosweller's coach, that carries four inside,
Waits to take back the unwilling bard to London.
Ye circulating novelists, adieu!
Long envious cords my black portmanteau tighten;
Billiards, begone! avaunt, illegal loo!
Farewell old Ocean's bauble, glittering Brighton.
Long shalt thou laugh thine enemies to scorn,
Proud as Phoenicia, queen of watering places!
Boys yet unbreech'd, and virgins yet unborn,
On thy bleak downs shall tan their blooming faces.
I believe that the phrase "Queen of Watering Places" was first used in
this poem.
[Sidenote: EXTINCT COURTESY]
An odd glimpse of a kind of manners (now extinct) in Brighton visitors
in its palmy days is given in Hazlitt's _Notes of a Journey through
France and Italy_. Hazlitt, like his friends the Lambs, when they
visited Versailles in 1822, embarked at Brighton. That was in 1824. He
reached the town by coach in the evening, in the height of the season,
and it was then that the incident occurred to which I have referred. In
Hazlitt's words:--"A lad offered to conduct us to an inn. 'Did he think
there was room?' He was sure of it. 'Did he belong to the inn?' 'No,' he
was from London. In fact, he was a young gentleman from town, who had
been stopping some time at the White-horse Hotel, and who wished to
employ his spare time (when he was not riding out on a blood-horse) in
serving the house, and relieving the perplexities of his
fellow-travellers. No one but a Londoner would volunteer his assistance
in this way. Amiable land of _Cockayne_, happy in itself, and in making
others happy! Blest exuberance of self-satisfaction, that overflows
upon others! Delightful impertinence, that is forward to oblige them!"
[Sidenote: THE LORD OF THE TIDES]
Brighton's decline as a fashionable resort came with the railway.
Coaches were expensive and few, and the number of visitors which they
brought to the town was negotiable; but when trains began to pour crowds
upon the platforms the distinction of Brighton was lost. Society
retreated, and the last Master of Ceremonies, Lieut. Col. Eld, died. It
was of this admirable aristocrat that Sydney Smith wrote so happily in
one of his letters from Brighton: "A gentleman attired _point device_,
walking down the Parade, like Agag, 'delicately.' He pointed out his
toes like a dancing-master; but carried his head like a potentate. As he
passed the stand of flys, he nodded approval, as if he owned them all.
As he approached the little goat carriages, he looked askance over the
edge of his starched neckcloth and blandly smiled encouragement. Sure
that in following him, I was treading in the steps of greatness, I went
on to the Pier, and there I was confirmed in my conviction of his
eminence; for I observed him look first over the right side and then
over the left, with an expression of serene satisfaction spreading over
his countenance, which said, as plainly as if he had spoken to the sea
aloud, 'That is right. You are low-tide at present; but never mind, in a
couple of hours I shall make you high-tide again.'"
Beyond its connection with George IV. Brighton has played but a small
part in history, her only other monarch being Charles II., who merely
tarried in the town for awhile on his way to France, in 1651, as we have
seen. The King's Head, in West Street, claims to be the scene of the
merry monarch's bargain with Captain Nicholas Tattersall, who conveyed
him across the Channel; but there is good reason to believe that the inn
was the George in Middle Street, now demolished, but situated on the
site of No. 44. The epitaph on Tattersall in Brighton old parish church
contains the following lines:--
When Charles ye great was nothing but a breath
This valiant soul stept betweene him and death....
Which glorious act of his for church and state
Eight princes in one day did gratulate.
The episode of the captain's cautious bargaining with the King, of which
Colonel Gunter tells in the narrative from which I have quoted in an
earlier chapter, is carefully suppressed on the memorial tablet.
[Sidenote: PHEBE HESSEL]
Another famous Brighton character and friend of George IV. was Phebe
Hessel, who died at the age of 106, and whose tombstone may be seen in
the old churchyard. Phebe had a varied career, for having fallen in love
when only fifteen with Samuel Golding, a private in Kirk's Lambs, she
dressed herself as a man, enlisted in the 5th Regiment of Foot, and
followed him to the West Indies. She served there for five years, and
afterwards at Gibraltar, never disclosing her sex until her lover was
wounded and sent to Plymouth, when she told the General's wife, and was
allowed to follow and nurse him. On leaving hospital Golding married
her, and they lived, I hope happily, together for twenty years. When
Golding died Phebe married Hessel.
In her old age she became an important Brighton character, and
attracting the notice of the Prince was provided by him with a pension
of eighteen pounds a year, and the epithet "a jolly good fellow." It was
also the Prince's money which paid the stone cutter. When visited by a
curious student of human nature as she lay on her death-bed, Phebe
talked much of the past, he records, and seemed proud of having kept her
secret when in the army. "But I told it to the ground," she added; "I
dug a hole that would hold a gallon and whispered it there." Phebe kept
her faculties to the last, and to the last sold her apples to the
Quality by the sea, returned repartees with extraordinary verve and
contempt for false delicacy, and knew as much of the quality of Brighton
liquor as if she were a soldier in earnest.
One ought to mention Pitt's visit to Brighton, in 1785, as an historical
event, if only for the proof which it offers that Sussex folk have an
effective if not nimble wit. I use Mr. Bishop's words: "Pitt during his
journey to Brighton, in the previous week, had some experience of
popular feeling in respect of the obnoxious Window Tax. Whilst horses
were being changed at Horsham, he ordered _lights_ for his carriage; and
the persons assembled, learning who was within, indulged pretty freely
in ironical remarks on _light_ and _darkness_. The only effect upon the
Minister was, that he often laughed heartily. Whilst in Brighton, a
country glove-maker hung about the door of his house on the Steyne; and
when the Minister came out, showed him a _hedger's cuff_, which he held
in one hand, and a _bush_ in the other, to explain the use of it, and
asked him if the former, being an article he made and sold, was subject
to a _Stamp Duty_? Mr. Pitt appeared rather struck with the oddity and
bluntness of the man's question, and, mounting his horse, waived a
satisfactory answer by referring him to the _Stamp Office_ for
information."
[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON IN THE SEA]
Brighton's place in literature makes up for her historical poverty. Dr.
Johnson was the first great man of letters to visit the town. He stayed
in West Street with the Thrales, rode on the Downs and, after his wont,
abused their bareness, making a joke about our dearth of trees similar
to one on the same topic in Scotland. The Doctor also bathed. Mrs.
Piozzi relates that one of the bathing men, seeing him swim, remarked,
"Why, sir, you must have been a stout-hearted gentleman forty years
ago!"--much to the Doctor's satisfaction.
[Sidenote: MRS. PIPCHIN'S CASTLE]
It was, I always think, in Hampton Place that Mrs. Pipchin, whose
husband broke his heart in the Peruvian mines, kept her establishment
for children and did her best to discourage Paul Dombey. How does the
description run?
This celebrated Mrs. Pipchin was a marvellous ill-favoured,
ill-conditioned old lady, of a stooping figure, with a mottled
face, like bad marble, a hook nose, and a hard grey eye, that
looked as if it might have been hammered at on an anvil without
sustaining any injury. Forty years at least had elapsed since the
Peruvian mines had been the death of Mr. Pipchin; but his relict
still wore black bombazeen, of such a lustreless, deep, dead,
sombre shade, that gas itself couldn't light her up after dark, and
her presence was a quencher to any number of candles. She was
generally spoken of as "a great manager" of children; and the
secret of her management was, to give them everything that they
didn't like, and nothing that they did--which was found to sweeten
their dispositions very much. She was such a bitter old lady, that
one was tempted to believe there had been some mistake in the
application of the Peruvian machinery, and that all her waters of
gladness and milk of human kindness had been pumped out dry,
instead of the mines.
The Castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep
bye-street at Brighton; where the soil was more than unusually
chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually
brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had the
unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever
was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered
holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were
not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses. In
the winter-time the air couldn't be got out of the Castle, and in
the summer-time it couldn't be got in. There was such a continual
reverberation of wind in it, that it sounded like a great shell,
which the inhabitants were obliged to hold to their ears night and
day, whether they liked it or no. It was not, naturally, a
fresh-smelling house; and in the window of the front parlour, which
was never opened, Mrs. Pipchin kept a collection of plants in pots,
which imparted an earthy flavour of their own to the establishment.
However choice examples of their kind, too, these plants were of a
kind peculiarly adapted to the embowerment of Mrs. Pipchin. There
were half-a-dozen specimens of the cactus, writhing round bits of a
lath, like hairy serpents; another specimen shooting out broad
claws, like a green lobster; several creeping vegetables, possessed
of sticky and adhesive leaves; and one uncomfortable flower-pot
hanging to the ceiling, which appeared to have boiled over, and
tickling people underneath with its long green ends, reminded them
of spiders--in which Mrs. Pipchin's dwelling was uncommonly
prolific, though perhaps it challenged competition still more
proudly, in the season, in point of earwigs.
From Mrs. Pipchin's Paul Dombey passed to the forcing-house of Dr.
Blimber, Mrs. Blimber, Miss Blimber and Mr. Feeder, B.A., also at
Brighton, where he met Mr. Toots. "The Doctor's," says Dickens, "was a
mighty fine house, fronting the sea. Not a joyful style of house
within, but quite the contrary. Sad-coloured curtains, whose proportions
were spare and lean, hid themselves despondently behind the windows. The
tables and chairs were put away in rows, like figures in a sum; fires
were so rarely lighted in the rooms of ceremony, that they felt like
wells, and a visitor represented the bucket; the dining-room seemed the
last place in the world where any eating or drinking was likely to
occur; there was no sound through all the house but the ticking of a
great clock in the hall, which made itself audible in the very garrets;
and sometimes a dull cooing of young gentlemen at their lessons, like
the murmurings of an assemblage of melancholy pigeons."--Dr. Blimber's
must have been, I think, somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Bedford
Hotel.
[Sidenote: THACKERAY'S PRAISE]
Among other writers who have found Brighton good to work in I might name
the authors of _The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton_ and _A System of
Synthetic Philosophy_. Mr. William Black was for many years a familiar
figure on the Kemp Town parade, and Brighton plays a part in at least
two of his charming tales--_The Beautiful Wretch_, and an early and very
sprightly novel called _Kilmeny_. Brighton should be proud to think that
Mr. Herbert Spencer chose her as a retreat in which to come to his
conclusions; but I doubt if she is. Thackeray's affection is, however,
cherished by the town, his historic praise of "merry cheerful Dr.
Brighton" having a commercial value hardly to be over-estimated.
Brighton in return gave Thackeray Lord Steyne's immortal name and served
as a background for many of his scenes.
Although Brighton has still a fishing industry, the spectacle of its
fishermen refraining from work is not an uncommon one. It was once the
custom, I read, and perhaps still is, for these men, when casting their
nets for mackerel or herring, to stand with bare heads repeating in
unison these words: "There they goes then. God Almighty send us a
blessing it is to be hoped." As each barrel (which is attached to every
two nets out of the fleet, or 120 nets) was cast overboard they would
cry:--
Watch, barrel, watch! Mackerel for to catch,
White may they be, like a blossom on a tree.
God send thousands, one, two, and three,
Some by their heads, some by their tails,
God sends thousands, and never fails.
When the last net was overboard the master said, "Seas all!" and then
lowered the foremast and laid to the wind. If he were to say, "Last
net," he would expect never to see his nets again.
[Sidenote: BRIGHTON'S FAIR DAUGHTERS]
"There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the
world," wrote Richard Jefferies some twenty years ago. "They are so
common that gradually the standard of taste in the mind rises, and
good-looking women who would be admired in other places pass by without
notice. Where all the flowers are roses you do not see a rose." (Shirley
Brooks must have visited Brighton on a curiously bad day, for seeing no
pretty face he wrote of it as "The City of the Plain.") Richard
Jefferies, who lived for a while at Hove, blessed also the treelessness
of Brighton. Therein he saw much of its healing virtue. "Let nothing,"
he wrote, "cloud the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which
fall at Brighton. Watch the pebbles on the beach; the foam runs up and
wets them, almost before it can slip back, the sunshine has dried them
again. So they are alternately wetted and dried. Bitter sea and glowing
light, bright clear air, dry as dry--that describes the place. Spain is
the country of sunlight, burning sunlight; Brighton is a Spanish town in
England, a Seville."
[Sidenote: THE PAVILION]
The principal inland attraction of Brighton is still the Pavilion, which
is indeed the town's symbol. On passing through its very numerous and
fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney
Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist,
saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that
St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." Cobbett in his
rough and homely way also said something to the point about the Prince's
pleasure-house: "Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet
and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk
turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches
long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put
the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips
of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the
corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the
crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and
others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or
less according to the size of the bulb; put all these, pretty
promiscuously, but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off
and look at your architecture."
To its ordinary museum in the town Brighton has added the collection of
stuffed birds made by the late Mr. E. T. Booth, which he housed in a
long gallery in the road that leads to the Dyke. Mr. Booth, when he shot
a bird in its native haunts, carried away some of its surroundings in
order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its
natural environment. Hence every case has a value that is missing when
one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance realism has
dictated the addition of a clutch of pipit's eggs found on the Bass
Rock, in a nest invisible to the spectator. The collection in the
Natural History Museum at South Kensington is of course more
considerable, and finer, but some of Mr. Booth's cases are certainly
superior, and his collection has the special interest of having been
made by one man.
[Sidenote: CRITICISM BY JUG]
Brighton has another very interesting possession in the collection of
old domestic pottery in the museum: an assemblage (the most entertaining
and varied that I know) of jugs and mugs, plates and ornaments, all
English, all quaint and characteristic too, and mostly inscribed with
mottoes or decorated with designs in celebration of such events as the
battle of Waterloo, or the discomfiture of Mr. Pitt, or a victory of Tom
Cribb. Others are ceramic satires on the drunkard's folly or the
inconstancy of women. Why are the potters of our own day so dull?
History is still being made, human nature is not less frail; but I see
no genial commentary on jug or dish. Is it the march of Taste?
CHAPTER XVIII
ROTTINGDEAN AND WHEATEARS
Ovingdean--Charles II.--The introduction of Mangel
Wurzel--Rottingdean as a shrine--Mr. Kipling's Sussex poem--Thomas
Fuller on the Wheatear--Mr. Hudson's description of the traps--The
old prosperous days for shepherds--Luring larks--A fight on the
beach--The town that failed.
Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of massive houses is the new
road that leads to Rottingdean. The old road fell into the sea some few
years ago--the fourth or fifth to share that fate. But the pleasantest
way thither is on foot over the turf that tops the white cliffs.
By diverging inland between Brighton and Rottingdean, just beyond the
most imposing girls' school in the kingdom, Ovingdean is reached, one of
the nestling homesteads of the Downs. It is chiefly known as providing
Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty title of one of his stories,
_Ovingdean Grange_. The gallant novelist, however, was a poor historian
in this book, for Charles the Second, as we have seen, never set foot
east of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the
Sussex Downs. The legend that lodges him at Ovingdean, although one can
understand how Ovingdean must cherish it, cannot stand. (Mock Beggars'
Hall, in the same romance, is Southover Grange at Lewes.)
Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. Ovingdean is famous
not only for its false association with Charles the Second but as the
burial place of Thomas Pelling, an old-time Vicar, "the first person who
introduced Mangul Wurzel into England."
[Sidenote: ROTTINGDEAN]
Rottingdean to-day must be very much of the size of Brighton two
centuries ago, before fashion came upon it; but the little village is
hardly likely ever to creep over its surrounding hills in the same way.
The past few years, however, have seen its growth from an obscure and
inaccessible settlement to a shrine. It is only of quite recent date
that a glimpse of Rottingdean has become almost as necessary to the
Brighton visitor as the journey to the Dyke. Had the Legend of the Briar
Rose never been painted; had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd remained
unchronicled and the British soldier escaped the label "Absent-minded
Beggar," Rottingdean might still be invaded only occasionally; for it
was when, following Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. Rudyard Kipling found
the little white village good to make a home in, that its public life
began. Although Mr. Kipling has now gone farther into the depths of the
county, and the great draughtsman, some of whose stained glass designs
are in the church, is no more, the habit of riding to Rottingdean is
likely, however, to persist in Brighton. The village is quaint and
simple (particularly so after the last 'bus is stabled), but it is
valuable rather as the key to some of the finest solitudes of the Downs,
in the great uninhabited hill district between the Race Course at
Brighton and Newhaven, between Lewes and the sea, than for any merits of
its own. One other claim has it, however, on the notice of the pilgrim:
William Black lies in the churchyard.
[Sidenote: "BLUE GOODNESS OF THE WEALD"]
Mr. Kipling, as I have said, has now removed his household gods farther
inland, to Burwash, but his heart and mind must be still among the
Downs. The Burwash country, good as it is, can (I think) never inspire
him to such verse as he wrote in _The Five Nations_ on the turf hills
about his old home:--
No tender-hearted garden crowns,
No bosomed woods adorn
Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs,
But gnarled and writhen thorn--
Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim,
And through the gaps revealed
Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim
Blue goodness of the Weald.
Clean of officious fence or hedge,
Half-wild and wholly tame,
The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge
As when the Romans came.
What sign of those that fought and died
At shift of sword and sword?
The barrow and the camp abide,
The sunlight and the sward.
Here leaps ashore the full Sou'west
All heavy-winged with brine,
Here lies above the folded crest
The Channel's leaden line;
And here the sea-fogs lap and cling,
And here, each warning each,
The sheep-bells and the ship-bells ring
Along the hidden beach.
We have no waters to delight
Our broad and brookless vales--
Only the dewpond on the height
Unfed, that never fails,
Whereby no tattered herbage tells
Which way the season flies--
Only our close-bit thyme that smells
Like dawn in Paradise.
Here through the strong and salty days
The unshaded silence thrills;
Or little, lost, Down churches praise
The Lord who made the Hills:
But here the Old Gods guard their round,
And, in her secret heart,
The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found
Dreams, as she dwells, apart.
[Sidenote: WHEATEARS]
Of old the best wheatear country was above Rottingdean; but the South
Down shepherds no longer have the wheatear money that used to add so
appreciably to their wages in the summer months. A combination of
circumstances has brought about this loss. One is the decrease in
wheatears, another the protection of the bird by law, and a third the
refusal of the farmers to allow their men any longer to neglect the
flocks by setting and tending snares. But in the seventeenth, eighteenth
and early part of the nineteenth centuries, wheatears were taken on the
Downs in enormous quantities and formed a part of every south county
banquet in their season. People visited Brighton solely to eat them, as
they now go to Greenwich for whitebait and to Colchester for oysters.
This is how Fuller describes the little creature in the
_Worthies_--"_Wheatears_ is a bird peculiar to this County, hardly found
out of it. It is so called, because fattest when Wheat is ripe, whereon
it feeds; being no bigger than a Lark, which it equalleth in _fineness_
of the flesh, far exceedeth in the _fatness_ thereof. The worst is, that
being onely seasonable in the heat of summer, and naturally larded with
lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding
within _fourty_ miles) _London Poulterers_ have no mind to meddle with
them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That
_Palate-man_ shall pass in silence, who, being seriously demanded his
judgment concerning the abilities of a great _Lord_, concluded him a man
of very weak parts, '_because once he saw him, at a_ great Feast, _feed
on_ CHICKENS _when there were_ WHEATEARS _on the Table_.' I will adde no
more in praise of this _Bird_, for fear some _female Reader_ may fall in
_longing_ for it, and unhappily be disappointed of her desire." A
contemporary of Fuller, John Taylor, from whom I have already quoted,
and shall quote again, thus unscientifically dismisses the wheatear in
one of his doggerel narratives:--
Six weeks or thereabouts they are catch'd there,
And are well-nigh 11 months God knows where.
As a matter of fact, the winter home of the wheatear is Africa.
[Sidenote: THE SHEPHERDS' TRAPS]
The capture of wheatears--mostly illegally by nets--still continues in a
very small way to meet a languid demand, but the Sussex ortolan, as the
little bird was sometimes called, has passed from the bill of fare.
Wheatears (which, despite Fuller, have no connection with ears of wheat,
the word signifying white tail) still abound, skimming over the turf in
little groups; but they no longer fly towards the dinner table. The best
and most interesting description that I know of the old manner of taking
them, is to be found in Mr. W. H. Hudson's _Nature in Downland_. The
season began in July, when the little fat birds rest on the Downs on
their way from Scotland and northern England to their winter home, and
lasted through September. In July, says Mr. Hudson, the "Shepherds made
their 'coops,' as their traps were called--a T-shaped trench about
fourteen inches long, over which the two long narrow sods cut neatly out
of the turf were adjusted, grass downwards. A small opening was left at
the end for ingress, and there was room in the passage for the bird to
pass through towards the chinks of light coming from the two ends of the
cross passage. At the inner end of the passage a horse-hair springe was
set, by which the bird was caught by the neck as it passed in, but the
noose did not as a rule strangle the bird. On some of the high downs
near the coast, notably at Beachy Head, at Birling Gap, at Seaford, and
in the neighbourhood of Rottingdean, the shepherds made so many coops,
placed at small distances apart, that the Downs in some places looked as
if they had been ploughed. In September, when the season was over, the
sods were carefully put back, roots down, in the places, and the smooth
green surface was restored to the hills."
On bright clear days few birds would be caught, but in showery weather
the traps would all be full; this is because when the sun is obscured
wheatears are afraid and take refuge under stones or in whatever hole
may offer. The price of each wheatear was a penny, and it was the
custom of the persons in the neighbourhood who wanted them for dinner to
visit the traps, take out the birds and leave the money in their place.
The shepherd on returning would collect his gains and reset the traps.
Near Brighton, however, most of the shepherds caught only for dealers;
and one firm, until some twenty years ago, maintained the practice of
giving an annual supper at the end of the season, at which the shepherds
would be paid in the mass for their spoil.
[Sidenote: A RECORD BAG]
An old shepherd, who had been for years on Westside Farm near Brighton,
spoke thus, in 1882, as Mr. Borrer relates in his _Birds of
Sussex_:--"The most I ever caught in one day was thirteen dozen, but we
thought it a good day if we caught three or four dozen. We sold them to
a poulterer at Brighton, who took all we could catch in a season at
18_d._ a dozen. From what I have heard from old shepherds, it cannot be
doubted that they were caught in much greater numbers a century ago than
of late. I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one
day by a shepherd at East Dean, near Beachy Head. I think they said he
took nearly a hundred dozen, so many that they could not thread them on
crow-quills in the usual manner, but he took off his round frock and
made a sack of it to put them into, and his wife did the same with her
petticoat. This must have happened when there was a great flight. Their
numbers now are so decreased that some shepherds do not set up any
coops, as it does not pay for the trouble."
[Sidenote: THE LARK-GLASS]
Although wheatears are no longer caught, the Brighton bird-catcher is a
very busy man. Goldfinches fall in extraordinary plenty to his nets. A
bird-catcher told Mr. Borrer that he once caught eleven dozen of them at
one haul, and in 1860 the annual take at Worthing was 1,154 dozen. Larks
are also caught in great numbers, also with nets, the old system still
practised in France, of luring them with glasses, having become
obsolete. Knox has an interesting description of the lark-glass and its
uses:--"A piece of wood about a foot and a half long, four inches deep,
and three inches wide, is planed off on two sides so as to resemble the
roof of a well-known toy, yclept a Noah's ark, but, more than twice as
long. In the sloping sides are set several bits of looking-glass. A long
iron spindle, the lower end of which is sharp and fixed in the ground,
passes freely through the centre; on this the instrument turns, and even
spins rapidly when a string has been attached and is pulled by the
performer, who generally stands at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards
from the decoy. The reflection of the sun's rays from these little
revolving mirrors seems to possess a mysterious attraction for the
larks, for they descend in great numbers from a considerable height in
the air, hover over the spot, and suffer themselves to be shot at
repeatedly without attempting to leave the field or to continue their
course."
To return to Rottingdean, it was above the village, seven hundred years
ago, that a "sore scrymmysche" occurred between the French and the
Cluniac prior of Lewes. The prior was defeated and captured, but the
nature of his resistance decided the enemy that it was better perhaps to
retreat to their boats. The holy man, although worsted, thus had the
satisfaction of having proved to the King that a Cluniac monk in this
country, was not, as was supposed at court, necessarily on the side of
England's foes, even though they were of his own race.
According to the scheme of this book, we should now return to Brighton;
but, as I have said, the right use to which to put Rottingdean is as the
starting point for a day among the hills. Once out and above the
village, the world is your own. A conspiracy to populate a part of the
Downs near the sea, a mile or so to the east of Rottingdean, seems
gloriously to have failed, but what was intended may be learned from the
skeleton roads that, duly fenced in, disfigure the turf. They even have
names, these unlovely parallelograms: one is Chatsworth Avenue, and
Ambleside Avenue another.
CHAPTER XIX
SHOREHAM
Hove the impeccable--The Aldrington of the past--A digression on
seaports--Old Shoreham and history--Mr. Swinburne's poem--A baby
saint--Successful bribery--The Adur--Old Shoreham church and
bridge.
The cliffs that make the coast between Newhaven and Brighton so
attractive slope gradually to level ground at the Aquarium and never
reappear in Sussex on the Channel's edge again, although in the east
they rise whiter and higher, with a few long gaps, all the way to Dover.
It is partly for this reason that the walk from Brighton to Shoreham has
no beauty save of the sea. Hove, which used to be a disreputable little
smuggling village sufficiently far from Brighton for risks to be run
with safety, is now the well-ordered home of wealthy rectitude. Mrs.
Grundy's sea-side home is here. Hove is, perhaps, the genteelest town in
the world, although once, only a poor hundred years ago, there was no
service in the church on a certain Sunday, because, as the clerk
informed the complaisant vicar, "The pews is full of tubs and the pulpit
full of tea"--a pleasant fact to reflect upon during Church Parade amid
the gay yet discreet prosperity of the Brunswick Lawns.
[Illustration: _New Shoreham Church._]
West of Hove, and between that town and Portslade-by-Sea, is Aldrington.
Aldrington is now new houses and brickfields. Thirty years ago it was
naught. But five hundred years ago it was the principal township in
these parts, and Brighthelmstone a mere insignificant cluster of hovels.
Centuries earlier it was more important still, for, according to some
authorities, it was the Portus Adurni of the Romans. The river Adur,
which now enters the sea between Shoreham and Southwick, once flowed
along the line of the present canal and the Wish Pond, and so out into
the sea. I have seen it stated that the mouth of the river was even more
easterly still--somewhere opposite the Norfolk Hotel at Brighton; but
this may be fanciful and can now hardly be proven. The suggestion,
however, adds interest to a walk on the otherwise unromantic Brunswick
Lawns. In those days the Roman ships, entering the river here, would
sail up as far as Bramber. Between the river and the sea were then some
two miles--possibly more--of flat meadow land, on which Aldrington was
largely built. Over the ruins of that Aldrington the Channel now washes.
[Sidenote: THE LIFE OF A HARBOUR]
Beyond Aldrington is Portslade, with a pretty inland village on the
hill; beyond Portslade is Southwick, notable for its green; and beyond
Southwick is Shoreham. Southwick and Shoreham both have that interest
which can never be wanting to the seaport that has seen better days. The
life of a harbour, whatever its state of decay, is eternally absorbing;
and in Shoreham harbour one gets such life at its laziest. The smell of
tar; the sound of hammers; the laughter and whistling of the loafers;
the continuous changing of the tide; the opening of the lock gates; the
departure of the tug; its triumphant return, leading in custody a
timber-laden barque from the Baltic, a little self-conscious and
ashamed, as if caught red-handed in iniquity by this fussy little
officer; the independent sailing of a grimy steamer bound for Sunderland
and more coal; the elaborate wharfing of the barque:--all these things
on a hot still day can exercise an hypnotic influence more real and
strange than the open sea. The romance and mystery of the sea may indeed
be more intimately near one on a harbour wharf than on the deck of a
liner in mid-ocean.
Shoreham has its place in history. Thence as we have seen, sailed
Charles II. in Captain Tattersall's _Enterprise_. Four hundred and
fifty years earlier King John landed here with his army, when he came to
succeed to the English throne. In the reign of Edward III. Shoreham
supplied twenty-six ships to the Navy: but in the fifteenth century the
sea began an encroachment on the bar which disclassed the harbour. It is
now unimportant, most of the trade having passed to Newhaven; but in its
days of prosperity great cargoes of corn and wine were landed here from
the Continent.
When people now say Shoreham they mean New Shoreham, but Old Shoreham is
the parent. Old Shoreham, however, declined to village state when the
present harbour was made.
[Sidenote: MR. SWINBURNE'S POEM]
New Shoreham church, quite the noblest in the county, dates probably
from about 1100. It was originally the property of the Abbey of Saumur,
to whom it was presented, together with Old Shoreham church, by William
de Braose, the lord of Bramber Castle. It is New Shoreham Church which
Mr. Swinburne had in mind (or so I imagine) in his noble poem "On the
South Coast":--
Strong as time, and as faith sublime,--clothed round with shadows
of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of
prayers and tears,--
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and
waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that
glooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest-proof, and equal ever to suns and snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a
straight stem grows.
* * * * *
Stately stands it, the work of hands unknown of: statelier, afar
and near,
Rise around it the heights that bound our landward gaze from the
seaboard here;
Downs that swerve and aspire, in curve and change of heights that
the dawn holds dear.
Dawn falls fair on the grey walls there confronting dawn, on the
low green lea,
Lone and sweet as for fairies' feet held sacred, silent and strange
and free,
Wild and wet with its rills; but yet more fair falls dawn on the
fairer sea.
* * * * *
Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the
first ray peers;
Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Shoreham, crowned with
the grace of years;
[Illustration: _Old Shoreham Bridge._]
[Sidenote: A SHOREHAM EPITAPH]
In the churchyard there was once (and may be still, but I did not find
it) an epitaph on a child of eight months, in the form of a dialogue
between the deceased and its parents. It contained these lines:--
"'I trust in Christ,' the blessed babe replied,
Then smil'd, then sigh'd, then clos'd its eyes and died."
[Illustration: _Old Shoreham Church._]
Shoreham's notoriety as a pocket borough--it returned two members to
Parliament, who were elected in the north transept of the church--came
to a head in 1701, when the naive means by which Mr. Gould had proved
his fitness were revealed. It seemed that Mr. Gould, who had never been
to Shoreham before, directed the crier to give notice with his bell that
every voter who came to the King's Arms would receive a guinea in which
to drink Mr. Gould's good health. This fact being made public by the
defeated candidate, Mr. Gould was unseated. At the following election,
such was the enduring power of the original guinea, he was elected
again.
After the life of the harbour, the chief interest of Shoreham is its
river, the Adur, a yellow, sluggish, shallow stream, of great width near
the town, which at low tide dwindles into a streamlet trickling through
a desert of mud, but at the full has the beauty of a lake. Mr.
Swinburne, in the same poem from which I have been quoting, thus
describes the river at evening:--
Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a
flower that spreads,
Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous
oyster-beds,
Grass-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that
the sundown sheds.
[Sidenote: MR. HENLEY'S POEM]
To the Adur belongs also another lyric. It is printed in _Hawthorn and
Lavender_, to which I have already referred, and is one of Mr. Henley's
most characteristic and remarkable poems:--
In Shoreham River, hurrying down
To the live sea,
By working, marrying, breeding, Shoreham Town,
Breaking the sunset's wistful and solemn dream,
An old, black rotter of a boat
Past service to the labouring, tumbling flote,
Lay stranded in mid-stream;
With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line,
That made me think of legs and a broken spine;
Soon, all too soon,
Ungainly and forlorn to lie
Full in the eye
Of the cynical, discomfortable moon
That, as I looked, stared from the fading sky,
A clown's face flour'd for work. And by and by
The wide-winged sunset wanned and waned;
The lean night-wind crept westward, chilling and sighing;
The poor old hulk remained,
Stuck helpless in mid-ebb. And I knew why--
Why, as I looked, my heart felt crying.
For, as I looked, the good green earth seemed dying--
Dying or dead;
And, as I looked on the old boat, I said:--
"_Dear God, it's I!_"
The Adur is no longer the home of birds that once it was, but in the
early morning one may still see there many of the less common water
fowl. The road to Portsmouth is carried across the Adur by the Norfolk
Suspension Bridge, to cross which one must pay a toll,--not an
unpleasant reminder of earlier days.
Old Shoreham, a mile up the river, is notable for its wooden bridge
across the Adur to the Old Sussex Pad, at one time a famous inn for
smugglers. Few Royal Academy exhibitions are without a picture of Old
Shoreham Bridge and the quiet cruciform church at its eastward end.
[Sidenote: THE LOYAL CLERK]
A pleasant story tells how, in some Sussex journey, William IV. and his
queen chanced to be passing through Shoreham, coming from Chichester to
Lewes, one Sunday morning. The clerk of Old Shoreham church caught sight
through the window of the approaching cavalcade, and leaping to his
feet, stopped the sermon by announcing: "It is my solemn duty to inform
you that their Majesties the King and Queen are just now crossing the
bridge." Thereupon the whole congregation jumped up and ran out to show
their loyalty.
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVIL'S DYKE AND HURSTPIERPOINT
Sussex and Leith Hill--The Dyke hill--Two recollections--Bustard
hunting on the Downs--The Queen of the gipsies--The Devil in
Sussex--The feeble legend of the
Dyke--Poynings--Newtimber--Pyecombe and shepherds' crooks--A
Patcham smuggler--Wolstonbury--Danny--An old Sussex
diary--Fish-culture in the past--Thomas Marchant's Sunday
head-aches--Albourne and Bishop Juxon--Twineham and Squire
Stapley--Zoological remedies--How to make oatmeal pudding.
[Illustration: _Poynings, from the Devil's Dyke._]
Had the hill above the Devil's Dyke--for the Dyke itself wins only a
passing glance--been never popularised, thousands of Londoners, and many
of the people of Brighton, would probably never have seen the Weald from
any eminence at all. The view is bounded north and west only by hills:
on the north by the North Downs, with Leith Hill standing forward, as if
advancing to meet a southern champion, and in the west, Blackdown, Hind
Head and the Hog's Back. The patchwork of the Weald is between. The view
from the Dyke Hill, looking north, is comparable to that from Leith
Hill, looking south; and every day in fine weather there are tourists on
both of these altitudes gazing towards each other. The worst slight that
Sussex ever had to endure, so far as my reading goes, is in Hughson's
_London ... and its Neighbourhood_, 1808, where the view from Leith Hill
is described. After stating that the curious stranger on the summit
"feels sensations as we may suppose Adam to have felt when he
instantaneously burst into existence and the beauties of Eden struck his
all-wondering eyes," Mr. Hughson describes the prospect. "It commands
a view of the county of Surrey, part of Hampshire, Berkshire, Nettlebed
in Oxfordshire, some parts of Bucks, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Kent and
Essex; and, by the help of a glass, Wiltshire." Not a word of Sussex.
[Sidenote: A SEA OF MIST]
The wisest course for the non-gregarious traveller is to leave the Dyke
on the right, and, crossing the Ladies' Golf Links, gain Fulking Hill,
from which the view is equally fine (save for lacking a little in the
east) and where there is peace and isolation. I remember sitting one
Sunday morning on Fulking Hill when a white mist like a sea filled the
Weald, washing the turf slopes twenty feet or so below me. In the depths
of this ocean, as it were, could be heard faintly the noises of the
farms and the chime of submerged bells. Suddenly a hawk shot up and
disappeared again, like a leaping fish.
The same spot was on another occasion the scene of a superb effort of
courageous tenacity. I met a large hare steadily breasting the hill.
Turning neither to the right nor left it was soon out of sight over the
crest. Five or more minutes later there appeared in view, on the hare's
trail, a very tired little fox terrier not much more than half the size
of the hare. He also turned aside neither to the right nor the left, but
panted wearily yet bravely past me, and so on, over the crest, after his
prey. I waited for some time but the terrier never came back. Such was
the purpose depicted on his countenance that I can believe he is
following still.
On these Downs, near the Dyke, less than a century ago the Great Bustard
used to be hunted with greyhounds. Mr. Borrer tells us in the _Birds of
Sussex_ that his grandfather (who died in 1844) sometimes would take
five or six in a morning. They fought savagely and more than once
injured the hounds.
Enterprise has of late been at work at the Dyke. A cable railway crosses
the gully at a dizzy height, a lift brings travellers from the Weald, a
wooden cannon of exceptional calibre threatens the landscape, and
pictorial advertisements of the Devil and his domain may be seen at most
of the Sussex stations. Ladies also play golf where, when first I knew
it, one could walk unharmed. A change that is to be regretted is the
exile to the unromantic neighbourhood of the Dyke Station of the Queen
of the Gipsies, a swarthy ringletted lady of peculiarly comfortable
exterior who, splendid (yet a little sinister) in a scarlet shawl and
ponderous gold jewels, used once to emerge from a tent beside the Dyke
inn and allot husbands fair or dark. She was an astute reader of her
fellows, with an eye too searching to be deceived by the removal of
tell-tale rings. A lucky shot in respect to a future ducal husband of a
young lady now a duchess, of the accuracy of which she was careful to
remind you, increased her reputation tenfold in recent years. Her name
is Lee, and of her title of Queen of the Gipsies there is, I believe,
some justification.
[Sidenote: "HE"]
Sussex abounds in evidences of the Devil's whimsical handiwork, although
in ordinary conversation Sussex rustics are careful not to speak his
name. They say "he." Mr. Parish, in his _Dictionary of the Sussex
Dialect_, gives an example of the avoidance of the dread name: "'In the
Down there's a golden calf buried; people know very well where it is--I
could show you the place any day.' 'Then why don't they dig it up? 'Oh,
it's not allowed: _he_ wouldn't let them.' 'Has any one ever tried?' 'Oh
yes, but it's never there when you look; _he_ moves it away.'" His
punchbowl may be seen here, his footprints there; but the greatest of
his enterprises was certainly the Dyke. His purpose was to submerge or
silence the irritating churches of the Weald, by digging a ditch that
should let in the sea. He began one night from the North side, at
Saddlescombe, and was working very well until he caught sight of the
beams of a candle which an old woman had placed in her window. Being a
Devil of Sussex rather than of Miltonic invention, he was not clever,
and taking the candle light for the break of dawn, he fled and never
resumed the labour. That is the very infirm legend that is told and sold
at the Dyke.
[Sidenote: HANGLETON]
I might just mention that the little church which one sees from the Dyke
railway, standing alone on the hill side, is Hangleton. Dr. Kenealy, who
defended the Claimant, is buried there. The hamlet of Hangleton, which
may be seen in the distance below, once possessed a hunting lodge of the
Coverts of Slaugham, which, after being used as labourers' cottages, has
now disappeared. The fine Tudor mansion of the Bellinghams', now
transformed into a farm house, although it has been much altered, still
retains many original features. In the kitchen, no doubt once the hall,
on an oak screen, are carved the Commandments, followed by this
ingenious motto, an exercise on the letter E:
Persevere, ye perfect men,
Ever keep these precepts ten.
[Illustration: _Hangleton House._]
From the Dyke hill one is within easy walking distance of many Wealden
villages. Immediately at the north end of the Dyke itself is Poynings,
with its fine grey cruciform church raising an embattled tower among
the trees on its mound. It has been conjectured from the similarity of
this beautiful church to that of Alfriston that they may have had the
same architect. Poynings (now called Punnings) was of importance in
Norman times, and was the seat of William FitzRainalt, whose descendants
afterwards took the name of de Ponyngs and one of whom was ennobled as
Baron de Ponyngs. In the fifteenth century the direct line was merged
into that of Percy. The ruins of Ponyngs Place, the baronial mansion,
are still traceable.
Following the road to the west, under the hills, we come first to
Fulking (where one may drink at a fountain raised by a brewer to the
glory of God and in honour of John Ruskin), then to Edburton (where the
leaden font, one of three in Sussex, should be noted), then to Truleigh,
all little farming hamlets shadowed by the Downs, and so to Beeding and
Bramber, or, striking south, to Shoreham.
[Sidenote: NEWTIMBER]
If, instead of turning into Poynings, one ascends the hill on the other
side of the stream, a climb of some minutes, with a natural amphitheatre
on the right, brings one to the wooded northern escarpment of
Saddlescombe North Hill, or Newtimber Hill, which offers a view little
inferior to that of the Dyke. At Saddlescombe, by the way, lives one of
the most learned Sussex ornithologists of the day, and a writer upon the
natural history of the county (so cavalierly treated in this book!), for
whose quick eye and descriptive hand the readers of _Blackwood_ have
reason to be grateful. Immediately beneath Newtimber Hill lies
Newtimber, consisting of a house or two, a moated grange, and a little
church, which, though only a few yards from the London road, is so
hidden that it might be miles from everywhere. On the grass bank of the
bostel descending through the hanger to Newtimber, I counted on one
spring afternoon as many as a dozen adders basking in the sun. We are
here, though so near Brighton, in country where the badger is still
found, while the Newtimber woods are famous among collectors of moths.
[Sidenote: PYECOMBE CROOKS]
If you are for the Weald it is by this bostel that you should descend,
but if still for the Downs turn to the east along the summit, and you
will come to Pyecombe, a straggling village on each side of the London
road just at the head of Dale Hill. Pyecombe has lost its ancient fame
as the home of the best shepherds' crooks, but the Pyecombe crook for
many years was unapproached. The industry has left Sussex: crooks are
now made in the north of England and sold over shop counters. I say
"industry" wrongly, for what was truly an industry for a Pyecombe
blacksmith is a mere detail in an iron factory, since the number of
shepherds does not increase and one crook will serve a lifetime and
more. An old shepherd at Pyecombe, talking confidentially on the subject
of crooks, complained that the new weapon as sold at Lewes, although
nominally on the Pyecombe pattern, is a "numb thing." The chief reason
which he gave was that the maker was out of touch with the man who was
to use it. His own crook (like that of Richard Jefferies' shepherd
friend) had been fashioned from the barrel of an old muzzle-loader. The
present generation, he added, is forgetting how to make everything: why,
he had neighbours, smart young fellows, too, who could not even make
their own clothes.
Pyecombe is but a few miles from Brighton, which may easily be reached
from it. A short distance south of the village is the Plough Inn, the
point at which the two roads to London--that by way of Clayton Hill,
Friar's Oak, Cuckfield, Balcombe and Redhill, and the other (on which we
are now standing) by way of Dale Hill, Bolney, Hand Cross, Crawley and
Reigate--become one.
On the way to Brighton from the Plough one passes through Patcham, a
dusty village that for many years has seen too many bicycles, and now is
in the way of seeing too many motor cars. In the churchyard is, or was,
a tomb bearing the following inscription, which may be quoted both as a
reminder of the more stirring experiences to which the Patcham people
were subject a hundred years ago, and also as an example of the truth
which is only half a truth:
[Sidenote: SMUGGLER AND EXEMPLAR]
Sacred to the memory of Daniel Scales, who was unfortunately shot
on Thursday Evening, Nov. 7, 1796.
Alas! swift flew the fatal lead
Which pierced through the young man's head,
He instant fell, resigned his breath,
And closed his languid eyes in death.
All ye who do this stone draw near,
Oh! pray let fall the pitying tear.
From the sad instance may we all
Prepare to meet Jehovah's call.
The facts of the case bear some likeness to the death of Mr. Bardell and
Serjeant Buzfuz's reference to that catastrophe. Daniel Scales was a
desperate smuggler who, when the fatal lead pierced him, was heavily
laden with booty. He was shot through the head only as a means of
preventing a similar fate befalling his slayer.
Just beyond Patcham, as we approach Brighton, is the narrow chalk lane
on the left which leads to the Lady's Mile, the beginning of a superb
stretch of turf around an amphitheatre in the hills by which one may
gallop all the way to the Clayton mills. The grass ride extends to
Lewes.
Preston, once a village with an independent life, is now Brighton; but
nothing can harm its little English church, noticeable for a fresco of
the murder of Thomas a Becket, a representation dating probably from the
reign of Edward I.
This, however, is a digression, and we must return to Pyecombe in order
to climb Wolstonbury--the most mountainous of the hills in this part,
and indeed, although far from the highest, perhaps the noblest in mien
of the whole range, by virtue of its isolation and its conical shape.
The earthworks on Wolstonbury, although supposed to be of Celtic origin,
were probably utilised by the Romans for military purposes. More than
any of the Downs does Wolstonbury bring before one the Roman occupation
of our country.
[Sidenote: DANNY]
Immediately below Wolstonbury, on the edge of the Weald, is Danny, an
Elizabethan house, to-day the seat of the Campions, but two hundred and
more years ago the seat of Peter Courthope, to whom John Ray dedicated
his _Collection of English Words not generally used_, and before then
the property of Sir Simon de Pierpoint. The park is small and without
deer, but the house has a facade of which one can never tire. I once saw
_Twelfth Night_ performed in its gardens, and it was difficult to
believe that Shakespeare had not the spot in mind when he wrote that
play.
[Illustration: _Malthouse Farm, Hurstpierpoint._]
The Danny drive brings us to Hurstpierpoint, or Hurst as it is generally
called, which is now becoming a suburb of Brighton and thus somewhat
losing its character, but which the hills will probably long keep sweet.
James Hannington, Bishop of Equatorial East Africa, who was murdered by
natives in 1885, was born here; here lived Richard Weeks, the antiquary;
and here to-day is the home of Mr. Mitten, most learned of Sussex
botanists.
To Hurst belongs one of the little Sussex squires to whose diligence as
a diarist we are indebted for much entertaining knowledge of the past.
Little Park, now the property of the Hannington family, where Thomas
Marchant, the diarist in question, lived, and kept his journal between
1714 and 1728, is to the north of the main street, lying low. The
original document I have not seen, but from passages printed by the
Sussex Archaeological Society I borrow a few extracts for the light they
throw on old customs and social life.
[Sidenote: FISH-BREEDING]
"October 8th, 1714. Paid 4_s._ at Lewes for 1/4 lb., of tea; 5_d._
for a quire of paper; and 6_d._ for two mousetraps.
"October 29th, 1714. Went to North Barnes near Homewood Gate to see
the pond fisht. I bought all the fish of a foot long and upwards at
50_s._ per C. I am to give Mrs. Dabson 200 store fish, over and
above the aforesaid bargain; but she is to send to me for them.
"October 30th, 1714. We fetched 244 Carps in three Dung Carts from
a stew of Parson Citizen at Street; being brought thither last
night out of the above pond.
"October 31st, 1714 (Sunday). I could not go to Church, being
forced to stay at home to look after, and let down fresh water to,
the fish; they being--as I supposed--sick, because they lay on the
surface of the pond and were easily taken out. But towards night
they sunk."
The Little Park ponds still exist, but the practice of breeding fish has
passed. In Arthur Young's _General View of the Agriculture of the County
of Sussex_, 1808, quoted elsewhere in this book, is a chapter on fish,
wherein he writes: "A Mr. Fenn of London, has long rented, and is the
sole monopolizer of, all the fish that are sold in Sussex. Carp is the
chief stock; but tench and perch, eels and pike are raised. A stream
should always flow through the pond; and a marley soil is the best. Mr.
Milward has drawn carp from his marl-pits 25lb. a brace, and two inches
of fat upon them, but then he feeds with pease. When the waters are
drawn off and re-stocked, it is done with stores of a year old, which
remain four years: the carp will then be 12 or 13 inches long, and if
the water is good, 14 or 15. The usual season for drawing the water is
either Autumn or Spring: the sale is regulated by measure, from the eye
to the fork of the tail. At twelve inches, carp are worth 50_s._ and
3_l._ per hundred; at fifteen inches, 6_l._; at eighteen inches, 8_l._
and 9_l._ A hundred stores will stock an acre; or 35 brace, 10 or 12
inches long, are fully sufficient for a breeding pond. The first year
they will be three inches long; second year, seven; third year, eleven
or twelve; fourth year, fourteen or fifteen. This year they breed."
[Sidenote: THOMAS MARCHANT'S HEADACHES]
Although fish-breeding is not what it was, many of the Sussex ponds are
still regularly dragged, and the proceeds sold in advance to a London
firm. Sometimes the purchaser wins in the gamble, sometimes the seller.
The fish are removed alive, in large tanks, and sold as they are wanted,
chiefly for Jewish tables. But we must return to Thomas Marchant:--
"January 16th (Sunday) 1715. I was not at church having a bad
headache.
"January 25th, 1715. We had a trout for supper, two feet two inches
long from eye to fork, and six inches broad; it weighed
ten-and-a-half pounds. It was caught in the Albourne Brook, near
Trussell House.... We staid very late and drank enough.
"April 15th, 1715. Paid my uncle Courtness 15_d._ for a small
bottle of Daffey's Elixir.
"July 18th, 1715. I went to Bolney and agreed with Edw. Jenner to
dig sandstone for setting up my father's tombstone, at 5_s._ I gave
him 6_d._ to spend in drink that he might be more careful.
"August 7th, (Sunday) 1715. I was not at church as my head ached
very much.
"November 22nd, 1716. Fisht the great pond and put 220 of the
biggest carp into the new pond, and 18 of the biggest tench. Put
also 358 store carp into the flat stew, and 36 tench; and also 550
very small carp into a hole in the low field.
"November 24th, 1716. Fisht the middle pond. Put 66 large carp into
the new pond, and 380 store tench into the flat stew, and 12 large
carp, 10 large tench, and 57 middle sized tench into the hovel
field stew.
"June 12th, 1717. I was at the cricket match at Dungton Gate
towards night.
"January 24th, 1718. A mountebank came to our towne to-day. He
calls himself Dr. Richard Harness. Mr. Scutt and I drank tea with
the tumbler. Of his tricks I am no judge: but he appears to me to
play well on the fiddle.
"January 30th (Friday), 1719. King Charles' Martyrdom. I was not at
church, as my head ached very much.
"February 28th, 1719. We had news of the Chevalier de St. George,
the Pretender, being taken and carried into the Castle of Milan.
"September 19th, 1719. John Parsons began his year last Tuesday. He
is to shave my face twice a week, and my head once a fortnight, and
I am to give him 100 faggots per annum.
"September 30th, 1719. Talked to Mrs. Beard, for Allan Savage,
about her horse that was seized by the officers at Brighton running
brandy.
"December 5th, 1719. My Lord Treep put a ferral and pick to my
stick. [My Lord Treep was a tinker named Treep who lived in Treep's
Lane. My Lord Burt, who is also mentioned in the diary, was a
farrier.]
"July 28th, 1721. Paid Harry Wolvin of Twineham, for killing an
otter in our parish. [An otter, of course, was a serious enemy to
the owner of stews and ponds.]
"February 7th, 1722. Will and Jack went to Lewes to see a prize
fight between Harris and another.
"September 18th, 1727. Dined at Mr. Hazelgrove's and cheapened a
tombstone."
Thomas Marchant was buried September 17, 1728.
Less than two miles west of Hurstpierpoint is Albourne, so hidden away
that one might know this part of the country well and yet be continually
overlooking it. The western high road between Brighton and London passes
within a stone's throw of Albourne, but one never suspects the
existence, close by, of this retired village, so compact and virginal
and exquisitely old fashioned. It is said that after the execution of
Charles I Bishop Juxon lived for a while at Albourne Place during the
Civil War, and once escaped the Parliamentary soldiers by disguising
himself as a bricklayer. There is a priest's hiding hole in the house.
[Sidenote: A GIANT TROUT]
Some three miles north of Albourne is Twineham, another village which,
situated only on a by-road midway between two lines of railway, has also
preserved its bloom. Here, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning
of the eighteenth centuries, at Hickstead Place, a beautiful Tudor
mansion that still stands, lived Richard Stapley, another of the Sussex
diarists whose MSS. have been selected for publication by the Sussex
Archaeological Society. I quote a few passages:--
"In ye month of November, 1692, there was a trout found in ye
Poyningswish, in Twineham, which was 29 inches long from ye top of
ye nose to ye tip of ye taile; and John fflint had him and eat him.
He was left in a low slank after a fflood, and ye water fell away
from him, and he died. The fish I saw at John fflint's house ye
Sunday after they had him: and at night they boiled him for supper,
but could not eat one halfe of him; and there was six of them at
supper; John fflint and his wife Jane, and four of their children;
and ye next day they all fell on him again, and compassed him."
Here we have the spectacle of a good man struggling with
accuracy:--"August 19th, 1698. Paid Mr. Stheward for Dr. Comber's
paraphrase on ye Common Prayer, 20_s._ and 6_d._ for carriage. I paid it
at ye end of ye kitchen table next ye chamber stairs door, and nobody
in ye room but he and I. No, it was ye end of ye table next ye parlour.
"April 26th, 1709. I bought a salmon-trout of William Lindfield of
Grubbs, in Bolney, which he caught ye night before in his net, by his
old orchard, which was wounded by an otter. The trout weighed 11 lbs.
and 1/2; and was 3 foot 2 inches long from end to end, and but 2 foot 9
inches between ye eye and ye forke." There is also a record of a salmon
trout being caught at Bolney early in the last century, which weighed
22lbs. and was sent to King George IV. at Brighton.
I must quote a prescription from the diary:--"To cure the
hoopingcough:--get 3 field mice, flaw them, draw them, and roast one of
them, and let the party afflicted eat it; dry the other two in the oven
until they crumble to a powder, and put a little of this powder in what
the patient drinks at night and in the morning." Mice played, and still
play in remote districts, a large part in the rural pharmacopeia. A
Sussex doctor once told me that he had directed the mother of a boy at
Portslade to put some ice in a bag and tie it on the boy's forehead.
When, the next day, the doctor asked after his patient, the mother
replied briskly:--"Oh, Tommy's better, but the mice are dead."
[Sidenote: OATMEAL PUDDING]
The Stapley family ate an oatmeal pudding made in the following
manner:--
Of oats decorticated take two pound,
And of new milk enough the same to dround;
Of raisins of the sun, ston'd, ounces eight;
Of currants, cleanly picked, an equal weight;
Of suet, finely sliced, an ounce at least;
And six eggs newly taken from the nest;
Season this mixture well with salt and spice;
Twill make a pudding far exceeding nice;
And you may safely feed on it like farmers.
For the receipt is learned Dr. Harmer's.
[Sidenote: THE GOOD HORSE'S REWARD]
Richard Stapley's diary was continued by his son Anthony and grandson
John. The most pleasing among the printed extracts is this:--"1736, May
the 21st. The white horse was buried in the saw-pit in the Laine's wood.
He was aged about thirty-five years, as far as I could find of people
that knew him foaled. He had been in his time as good a horse as ever
man was owner of, and he was buried in his skin being a good old
horse."
[Illustration: _Ditchling._]
CHAPTER XXI
DITCHLING
Stanmer Park and Dr. Johnson--The Roman way down Ditchling
Beacon--Sussex folk in London--Jacob's Post--The virtues of
gibbets--Mr. John Burgess's diary.
Another good walk from Brighton begins with a short railway journey to
Falmer on the Lewes line. Then strike into Stanmer Park, the seat of the
Earl of Chichester, a descendant of the famous Sussex Pelhams, with the
church and the little village of Stanmer on the far edge of it, and so
up through the hollows and valleys to Ditchling Beacon. Dr. Johnson's
saying of the Downs about Brighton, that "it was a country so truly
desolate that if one had a mind to hang oneself for desperation at being
obliged to live there, it would be difficult to find a tree on which to
fasten a rope," proves beyond question that his horse never took him
Stanmer way, for the park is richly wooded.
On Ditchling Beacon, one of the noblest of the Sussex hills and the
second if not the first in height of all the range (the surveys differ,
one giving the palm to Duncton) the Romans had a camp, and the village
of Ditchling may still be gained by the half-subterranean path that our
conquerors dug, so devised that a regiment might descend into the Weald
unseen.
[Sidenote: LONDON'S VASTNESS]
Ditchling is a quiet little village on high ground, where Alfred the
Great once had a park. The church is a very interesting and graceful
specimen of early English architecture, dating from the 13th century. A
hundred and more years ago water from a chalybeate spring on the common
was drunk by Sussex people for rheumatism and other ills; but the spring
has lost its fame. The village could not well be more out of the
movement, yet an old lady living in the neighbourhood who, when about to
visit London for the first time, was asked what she expected to find,
replied, "Well, I can't exactly tell, but I suppose something like the
more bustling part of Ditchling." A kindred story is told of a Sussex
man who, finding himself in London for the first time, exclaimed with
astonishment--"What a queer large place! Why, it ain't like Newick and
it ain't like Chailey."
[Illustration: _Old House at Ditchling._]
On Ditchling Common are the protected remains of a stake known as
Jacob's Post. A stranger requested to supply this piece of wood with the
origin of its label would probably adventure long before hitting upon
the right tack; for Jacob, whose name has in this familiar connection a
popular and almost an endearing sound, was Jacob Harris, a Jew pedlar of
astonishing turpitude, who, after murdering three persons at an inn on
Ditchling Common and plundering their house, was hanged at Horsham in
the year 1734, and afterwards suspended, as a lesson, to the gibbet, of
which this post--Jacob's Post--is the surviving relic.
[Sidenote: A CURE FOR TOOTHACHE]
All gibbets, it is said, are "good" for something, and a piece of
Jacob's Post carried on the person is sovran against toothache. A Sussex
archaeologist tells of an old lady, a resident on Ditchling Common for
more than eighty years, whose belief in the Post was so sound that her
pocket contained a splinter of it long after all her teeth had departed.
[Sidenote: JOHN BURGESS'S DIARY]
From extracts from the diary of Mr. John Burgess, tailor, sexton and
Particular Baptist, of Ditchling, which are given in the Sussex
Archaeological Collections, I quote here and there:--
"August 1st, 1785. There was a cricket match at Lingfield Common
between Lingfield in Surrey and all the county of Sussex, supposed
to be upwards of 2,000 people.
"June 29th, 1786. Went to Lewes with some wool to Mr. Chatfield,
fine wool at 8-5-0 per pack. Went to dinner with Mr. Chatfield. Had
boiled Beef, Leg of Lamb and plum Pudden. Stopped there all the
afternoon. Mr. Pullin was there; Mr. Trimby and the Curyer, &c., was
there. We had a good deal of religious conversation, particularly
Mr. Trimby.
"June 11th, 1787. Spent 3 or 4 hours with some friends in
Conversation upon Moral and religious Subjects; the inquiry was the
most easy and natural evedences of ye existence and attributes of ye
supream Being--in discussing upon the Subject we was nearly agreed
and propose meeting again every first monday after the fool Moon to
meet at 4 and break-up at 8.
"March 14th, 1788. Went to Fryersoake to a Bull Bait to Sell My
dog. I seld him for 1 guineay upon condition he was Hurt, but as he
received no Hurt I took him back again at the same price. We had a
good dinner; a round of Beef Boiled, a good piece roasted, a Lag of
Mutton and Ham of Pork and plum pudden, plenty of wine and punch.
"At Brightelmstone:--washed in ye sea."
CHAPTER XXII
CUCKFIELD
Hayward's Heath--Rookwood and the fatal tree--Timothy Burrell and
his account books--Old Sussex appetites--Plum-porridge--A luckless
lover--The original Merry Andrew--Ancient testators--Bolney's
bells--The splendour of the Slaugham Coverts--Hand Cross--Crawley
and the new discovery of walking--Lindfield--_Idlehurst_--Richard
Turner's epitaph--Ardingly.
Hayward's Heath, on the London line, would be our next centre were it
not so new and suburban. Fortunately Cuckfield, which has two coaching
inns and many of the signs of the leisurely past, is close by, in the
midst of very interesting country, with a church standing high on the
ridge to the south of the town, broadside to the Weald, its spire a
landmark for miles. Cuckfield Place (a house and park, according to
Shelley, which abounded in "bits of Mrs. Radcliffe") is described in
Harrison Ainsworth's _Rookwood_. It was in the avenue leading from the
gates to the house that that fatal tree stood, a limb of which fell as
the presage of the death of a member of the family. So runs the legend.
Knowledge of the tree is, however, disclaimed by the gatekeeper.
[Illustration: _Cuckfield Church._]
[Sidenote: THE COACHMAN'S PLANS]
Ockenden House, in Cuckfield, has been for many years in the possession
of the Burrell family, one of whom, Timothy Burrell, an ancestor of the
antiquary, left some interesting account books, which contain in
addition to figures many curious and sardonic entries and some ingenious
hieroglyphics. I quote here and there, from the Sussex Archaeological
Society's extracts, by way of illustrating the life of a Sussex squire
in those days, 1683-1714:--
1705. "Pay'd Gosmark for making cyder 1 day, whilst John Coachman was to
be drunk with the carrier's money, by agreement; and I pay'd 2_d._ to
the glasyer for mending John's casement broken at night by him when he
was drunk.
"1706. 25th March. Pd. John Coachman by Ned Virgo, that he may be drunk
all the Easter week, in part of his wages due, _L_1."
[Sidenote: ANCIENT APPETITES]
This was the fare provided on January 1, 1707, for thirteen guests:--
Plumm pottage. Plumm pottage.
Calves' head and bacon. Boiled beef, a clod.
Goose. Two baked puddings.
Pig. Three dishes of minced
Plumm pottage. pies.
Roast beef, sirloin. Two capons.
Veale, a loin. Two dishes of tarts.
Goose. Two pullets.
Plum porridge, it may interest some to know, was made thus: "Take of
beef-soup made of legs of beef, 12 quarts; if you wish it to be
particularly good, add a couple of tongues to be boiled therein. Put
fine bread, sliced, soaked, and crumbled; raisins of the sun, currants
and pruants two lbs. of each; lemons, nutmegs, mace and cloves are to be
boiled with it in a muslin bag; add a quart of red wine and let this be
followed, after half an hour's boiling, by a pint of sack. Put it into a
cool place and it will keep through Christmas."
Mr. Burrell giving a small dinner to four friends, offered them
Pease pottage.
2 carps. 2 tench. Roast leg of mutton.
Capon. Pullet. Apple pudding.
Fried oysters. Goos.
Baked pudding. Tarts. Minced pies.
It is perhaps not surprising that the host had occasionally to take the
waters of Ditchling, which are no longer drunk medicinally, or to dose
himself with hierae picrae.
One more dinner, this time for four guests, who presumably were more
worthy of attention:--
A soup take off.
Two large carps at the upper end.
Pidgeon pie, salad, veal ollaves,
Leg of mutton, and cutlets at the lower end.
Three rosed chickens.
Scotch pancakes, tarts, asparagus.
Three green gees at the lower end.
In the room of the chickens removed,
Four-souced Mackerel.
Rasins in cream at the upper end.
Calves' foot jelly, dried sweetmeats, calves' foot jelly.
Flummery, Savoy cakes.
Imperial cream at the lower end.
In October, 1709, Mr. Burrell writes in Latin: "From this time I have
resolved, as long as the dearth of provisions continues, to give to the
poor who apply for it at the door on Sundays, twelve pounds of beef
every week, on the 11th of February 4lbs. more, in all 16lbs., and a
bushel of wheat and half a bushel of barley in 4 weeks."
[Sidenote: MERRY ANDREW]
From Borde Hill to the north-east of Cuckfield, is supposed to have come
Andrew Boord, the original Merry Andrew. Among the later Boords who
lived there was George Boord, in whose copy of _Natura Brevium_ and
_Tenores Novelli_, bound together (given him by John Sackville of
Chiddingly Park) is written:--
Sidera non tot habet Celum, nec flumina pisces,
Quot scelera gerit femina mente dolos.
Dixit Boordus;
which Mr. Lower translates:
Quoth Boord, with stars the skies abound,
With fish the flowing waters;
But far more numerous I have found
The tricks of Eve's fair daughters.
This Boord would be a relative of the famous Andrew, priest, doctor and
satirist (1490-1549) who may indeed have been the author of the distich
above. It is certainly in his vein.
Andrew Boord gave up his vows as a Carthusian on account of their
"rugorosite," and became a doctor, travelling much on the Continent.
Several books are known to be his, chief among them the _Dyetary_ and
_Brevyary of Health_. He wrote also an _Itinerary of England_ and is
credited by some with the _Merrie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotham_. Lower
and Horsfield indeed hold that the Gotham intended was not the
Nottinghamshire village but Gotham near Pevensey, where Boord had
property. That he knew something of Sussex is shown by _Boord's Boke of
Knowledge_, where he mentions the old story, then a new one, that no
nightingale will sing in St. Leonard's Forest. It is the _Boke of
Knowledge_ that has for frontispiece the picture of a naked Englishman
with a pair of shears in one hand and a piece of cloth over the other
arm, saying:
I am an English man and naked I stand here,
Musing in my mund what rayment I shall were;
For now I wyll were this, and now I wyl were that;
Now I wyl were I cannot tel what.
We shall see Andrew again when we come to Pevensey.
[Sidenote: OLD WILLS]
A glimpse of the orderly mind of a pre-Reformation Cuckfield yeoman is
given in a will quoted recently in the _Sussex Daily News_, in an
interesting series of articles on the county under the title of
"Old-time Sussex":
"In the yere of our lorde god 1545. the 26 day of June, I, Thomas
Gaston, of the pish of Cukefelde, syke in body, hole, and of ppt
[perfect] memorie, ordene and make this my last will and test, in
manr. and forme folling.
Fyrst I bequethe my sowle to Almyghty god or [our] lady St. Mary
and all the holy company of heyvyng, my bodie to be buried in the
church yarde of Cukefeld.
It. (item) to the Mother Church of Chichester 4_d._
It. to the hye alter of Cuckfeld 4_d._
It. I will have at my buryall 5 masses. In lykewise at my monthes
mynd and also at my yerely mynd all the charge of the church set
apart I will have in meate and drynke and to pore people 10_s._ at
every tyme."
The high altar was frequently mentioned favourably in these old wills.
Another Cuckfield testator, in 1539, left to the high altar, "for tythes
and oblacions negligently forgotten, sixpence." The same student of the
_Calendar of Sussex Wills in the District Probate Registry at Lewes,
between 1541 and 1652_, which the British Record Society have just
published, copies the following passage from the will of Gerard Onstye,
in 1568: "To mary my daughter _L_20, the ffeatherbed that I lye upon the
bolsters and coverlete of tapestaye work with a blankett, 4 payres of
shetts that is to say four pares of the best flaxon and other 2 payre of
the best hempen the greate brasse potte that hir mother brought, the
best bord-clothe (table cloth?) a lynnen whelle (_i.e._, spinning-wheel)
that was hir mothers, the chaffing dish that hangeth in the parlor."
In those simple days everything was prized. In one of these Sussex
wills, in 1594, Richard Phearndeane, a labourer, left to his brother
Stephen his best dublett, his best jerkin and his best shoes, and to
Bernard Rosse his white dublett, his leathern dublett and his worst
breeches.
[Sidenote: THE BELLS OF BOLNEY]
Three miles west of Cuckfield is Bolney, just off the London road, a
village in the southern boundary of St. Leonard's Forest, the key to
some very rich country. Before the days of bicycles Bolney was
practically unknown, so retired is it. The church, which has a curious
pinnacled tower nearly 300 years old, is famous for its bells,
concerning whose melody Horsfield gives the following piece of counsel:
"Those who are fond of the silvery tones of bells, may enjoy them to
perfection, by placing themselves on the margin of a large pond, the
property of Mr. W. Marshall; the reverberation of the sound, coming off
the water, is peculiarly striking."
Sixty years ago this sheet of water had an additional attraction. Says
Mr. Knox, "During the months of May and June, 1843, an osprey was
observed to haunt the large ponds near Bolney. After securing a fish he
used to retire to an old tree on the more exposed bank to devour it, and
about the close of evening was in the habit of flying off towards the
north-west, sometimes carrying away a prize in his talons if his sport
had been unusually successful, as if he dreaded being disturbed at his
repast during the dangerous hours of twilight. Having been shot at
several times without effect, his visits to these ponds became gradually
less frequent, but the surrounding covers being unpreserved, and the
bird itself too wary to suffer a near approach, he escaped the fate of
many of his congeners, and even re-appeared with a companion early in
the following September, to whom he seemed to have imparted his salutary
dread of man--his mortal enemy--for during the short time they remained
there it was impossible to approach within gunshot of either of them."
The indirect road from Bolney to Hand Cross, through Warninglid and
Slaugham (parallel with the coaching road), is superb, taking us again
into the iron country and very near to Leonardslee, which we have
already seen.
[Sidenote: THE MAGNIFICENT COVERTS]
The glory of Slaugham Place is no more; but one visible sign of it is
preserved in Lewes, in the Town Hall, in the shape of its old staircase.
Slaugham Place was the seat of the Covert family, whose estates
extended, says tradition, "from Southwark to the Sea," and, says the
more exact Horsfield, from Crawley to Hangleton, above Brighton.
Slaugham Park used to cover 1200 acres, the church being within it.
Perhaps nowhere in Sussex is the change so complete as here, and within
recent times too, for Horsfield quotes, in 1835, the testimony of "an
aged person, whom the present rector buried about twenty-five years
back, who used to relate, that he remembered when the family at Slaugham
Park, or Place, consisted of seventy persons." Horsfield continues, in a
footnote (the natural receptacle of many of his most interesting
statements):--"The name of the aged person alluded to was Harding, who
died at nearly 100. According to his statement, the family were so
numerous, they kept constantly employed mechanics of every description,
who resided on the premises. A conduit, which supplied the mansion with
water, is now used by the inhabitants of the village. The kitchen
fireplace still remains, of immense size, with the irons that supported
the cooking apparatus. The arms of the Coverts, with many impalements
and quarterings, yet remain on the ruins. The principal entrance was
from the east, and the grand front to the north. The pillars at the
entrance, fluted, with seats on each side, are still there. According to
the statement of the above person, there was a chapel attached to the
mansion at the west part. The mill-pond flowed over nearly 40 acres,
according to a person's statement who occupied the mill many years." The
ruins, little changed since Horsfield wrote, stand in a beautiful
old-world garden, which the traveller must certainly endeavour to enter.
[Sidenote: THE BRIGHTON ROAD]
A mile north of Slaugham is Hand Cross, a Clapham Junction of highways,
whence Crawley is easily reached. Crawley, however, beyond a noble
church, has no interest, its distinction being that it is halfway
between London and Brighton on the high road--its distinction and its
misfortune. One would be hard put to it to think of a less desirable
existence than that of dwelling on a dusty road and continually seeing
people hurrying either from Brighton to London or from London to
Brighton. Coaches, phaetons, motor cars, bicycles, pass through Crawley
so numerously as almost to constitute one elongated vehicle, like the
moving platform at the last Paris Exhibition.
And not only travellers on wheels; for since the fashion for walking
came in, Crawley has had new excitements, or monotonies, in the shape of
walking stockbrokers, walking butchers, walking auctioneers' clerks,
walking Austrians pushing their families in wheelbarrows, walking
bricklayers carrying hods of bricks, walking acrobats on stilts--all
striving to get to Brighton within a certain time, and all accompanied
by judges, referees, and friends. At Hand Cross, lower on the road, the
numbers diminish; but every competitor seems to be able to reach
Crawley, perhaps because the railway station adjoins the high road. It
was not, for example, until he reached Crawley that the Austrian's
wheelbarrow broke down.
[Sidenote: LINDFIELD]
On the other side of the line, two miles north-east of Hayward's Heath,
is Lindfield, with its fine common of geese, its generous duck-pond, and
wide straggling street of old houses and new (too many new, to my mind),
rising easily to the graceful Early English church with its slender
shingled spire. Just beyond the church is one of the most beautiful of
timbered houses in Sussex, or indeed in England. When I first knew this
house it was a farm in the hands of a careless farmer; it has been
restored by its present owner with the most perfect understanding and
taste. For too long no one attempted to do as much for East Mascalls, a
timbered ruin lying low among the fields to the east of the village; but
quite recently it has been taken in hand.
[Illustration: _East Mascalls--before renovation._]
A quaint Lindfield epitaph may be mentioned: that of Richard Turner, who
died in 1768, aged twenty-one:--
Long was my pain, great was my grief,
Surgeons I'd many but no relief.
I trust through Christ to rise with the just:
My leg and thigh was buried first.
[Sidenote: "IDLEHURST"]
I must not betray secrets, but it might be remarked that that kindly yet
melancholy study of Wealden people and Wealden scenery, called
_Idlehurst_--the best book, I think, that has come out of Sussex in
recent years--may be read with some special appropriateness in this
neighbourhood.
North of Lindfield is Ardingly, now known chiefly in connection with the
large school which travellers on the line to Brighton see from the
carriage windows as they cross the viaduct over the Ouse. The village, a
mile north of the college, is famous as the birthplace of Thomas Box,
the first of the great wicket-keepers, who disdained gloves even to the
fastest bowling. The church has some very interesting brasses to members
of the Wakehurst and Culpeper families, who long held Wakehurst Place,
the Elizabethan mansion to the north of the village. Nicholas Culpeper
of the _Herbal_ was of the stock; but he must not be confounded with the
Nicholas Culpeper whose brass, together with that of his wife, ten sons
and eight daughters, is in the church, possibly the largest family on
record depicted in that metal. The church also has a handsome canopied
tomb, the occupant of which is unknown.
From Ardingly superb walks in the Sussex forest country may be taken.
CHAPTER XXIII
FOREST COUNTRY AGAIN
Balcombe--The iron furnace and the iron horse--Leonard Gale of
Tinsloe Forge--Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt of Crabbet--"The Old
Squire"--Frederick Locker-Lampson of Rowfant--The Rowfant
books--"To F. L."--The Rowfant titmice.
On leaving the train at Balcombe, one is quickly on the densely wooded
Forest Ridge of Sussex, here fenced and preserved, but farther east,
when it becomes Ashdown Forest, consisting of vast tracts of open
moorland and heather. Balcombe has a simple church, protected by a
screen of Scotch firs; its great merit is its position as the key to a
paradise for all who like woodland travel. From Balcombe to Worth is one
vast pheasant run, with here and there a keeper's cottage or a farm:
originally, of course, a series of plantations growing furnace wood for
the ironmasters. In Tilgate Forest, to the west of Balcombe Forest, are
two large sheets of water, once hammer-ponds, walking west from which,
towards Horsham, one may be said to traverse the Lake Country of Sussex.
A strange transformation, from Iron Black Country to Lake Country!--but
nature quickly recovers herself, and were the true Black Country's
furnaces extinguished, she would soon make even that grimy tract a haunt
of loveliness once more.
No longer are heard the sounds of the hammers, but Balcombe Forest,
Tilgate Forest, and Worth Forest have still a constant reminder of
machinery, for very few minutes pass from morning to night without the
rumble of a train on the main line to Brighton, which passes through
the very midst of this wild game region, and plunges into the earth
under the high ground of Balcombe Forest. I know of no place where the
trains emit such a volume of sound as in the valley of the Stanford
brook, just north of the tunnel.
The noise makes it impossible ever quite to lose the sense of modernity
in these woods, as one may on Shelley Plain, a few miles west, or at
Gill's Lap, in Ashdown Forest; unless, of course, one's imagination is
so complaisant as to believe it to proceed from the old iron furnaces.
This reminds me that Crabbet, just to the north of Worth (where church
and vicarage stand isolated on a sandy ridge on the edge of the Forest),
was the home of one of the most considerable of the Sussex ironmasters,
Leonard Gale of Tinsloe Forge, who bought Crabbet, park and house, in
1698--since "building," in his own words, is a "sweet impoverishing."
[Sidenote: WORTH CHURCH]
But we must pause for a moment at Worth, because its church is
remarkable as being the largest in England to preserve its Saxon
foundations. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in Saxon relics, but the
county has nothing more interesting than this. The church is cruciform,
as all churches should be, and there is a little east window in the
north transept through which, it is conjectured, arrows were intended to
be shot at marauding Danes; for an Englishman's church was once his
castle. Archaeologists familiar with Worth church have been known to pass
with disdain cathedrals for which the ordinary person cannot find too
many fine adjectives.
[Sidenote: MR. BLUNT'S BALLAD]
[Sidenote: THE OLD SQUIRE]
To regain Crabbet. The present owner, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, poet,
patriot, and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales,
has a long poem entitled "Worth Forest," wherein old Leonard Gale is a
notable figure. Among other poems by the lord of Crabbet is the very
pleasantly English ballad of
THE OLD SQUIRE.
I like the hunting of the hare
Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
And the crowing of the cocks.
I like the calm of the early fields,
The ducks asleep by the lake,
The quiet hour which Nature yields
Before mankind is awake.
I like the pheasants and feeding things
Of the unsuspicious morn;
I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings
As she rises from the corn.
I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush
From the turnips as I pass by,
And the partridge hiding her head in a bush,
For her young ones cannot fly.
I like these things, and I like to ride
When all the world is in bed,
To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,
And where the sun grows red.
The beagles at my horse heels trot,
In silence after me;
There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,
Old Slut and Margery,--
A score of names well used, and dear,
The names my childhood knew;
The horn, with which I rouse their cheer,
Is the horn my father blew.
I like the hunting of the hare
Better than that of the fox;
The new world still is all less fair
Than the old world it mocks.
I covet not a wider range
Than these dear manors give;
I take my pleasures without change,
And as I lived I live.
I leave my neighbours to their thought;
My choice it is, and pride,
On my own lands to find my sport,
In my own fields to ride.
The hare herself no better loves
The field where she was bred,
Than I the habit of these groves,
My own inherited.
I know my quarries every one,
The meuse where she sits low;
The road she chose to-day was run
A hundred years ago.
The lags, the gills, the forest ways;
The hedgerows one and all,
These are the kingdoms of my chase,
And bounded by my wall.
Nor has the world a better thing,
Though one should search it round,
Than thus to live one's own sole king,
Upon one's own sole ground.
I like the hunting of the hare;
It brings me day by day,
The memory of old days as fair,
With dead men past away.
To these, as homeward still I ply,
And pass the churchyard gate,
Where all are laid as I must lie,
I stop and raise my hat.
I like the hunting of the hare;
New sports I hold in scorn.
I like to be as my fathers were,
In the days e'er I was born.
[Sidenote: THE ROWFANT BOOKS]
We are indeed just now in a bookish and poetical district, for a little
more than a mile to the east of Crabbet, in a beautiful Tudor house in a
hollow close to the station, lived Frederick Locker-Lampson, the London
lyricist; and here are treasured the famous Rowfant books and
manuscripts which he brought together--the subject of graceful verses
by many of his friends. Not the least charming of these tributes
(printed in the _Rowfant Catalogue_ in 1886) are Mr. Andrew Lang's
lines:
TO F. L.
I mind that Forest Shepherd's saw,
For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he;
"It's a' that's bricht, and a' that's braw,
But Bourhope's guid eneuch for me!"
Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills
That guard Saint Mary's Loch it lies,
The silence of the pasture fills
That shepherd's homely paradise.
Enough for him his mountain lake,
His glen the hern went singing through,
And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake,
May well seem good enough for YOU.
For all is old, and tried, and dear,
And all is fair, and round about
The brook that murmurs from the mere
Is dimpled with the rising trout.
But when the skies of shorter days
Are dark and all the "ways are mire,"
How bright upon your books the blaze
Gleams from the cheerful study fire.
On quartos where our fathers read,
Enthralled, the Book of Shakespeare's play,
On all that Poe could dream of dread,
And all that Herrick sang of gay!
Fair first editions, duly prized,
Above them all, methinks, I rate
The tome where Walton's hand revised
His wonderful receipts for bait!
Happy, who rich in toys like these
Forgets a weary nation's ills,
Who from his study window sees
The circle of the Sussex hills.
[Sidenote: THE RESOLUTE TITMICE]
Rowfant was once the scene of one of the most determined struggles in
history. The contestants were a series of Titmice and the G.P.O., and
the account of the war may be read in the Natural History Museum at
South Kensington:--"In 1888, a pair of the Great Titmouse (_Parus
major_) began to build their nest in the post-box which stood in the
road at Rowfant, and into which letters, &c., were posted and taken out
by the door daily. One of the birds was killed by a boy, and the nest
was not finished. In 1889, a pair completed the nest, laid seven eggs,
and began to sit; but one day, when an unusual number of post-cards were
dropped into, and nearly filled, the box, the birds deserted the nest,
which was afterwards removed with the eggs. In 1890, a pair built a new
nest and laid seven eggs, and reared a brood of five young, although the
letters posted were often found lying on the back of the sitting bird,
which never left the nest when the door of the box was opened to take
out the letters. The birds went in and out by the slit."
CHAPTER XXIV
EAST GRINSTEAD
Sackville College--John Mason Neale--_Theodosius; or, The Force of
Love_, at the East Grinstead Theatre--Three martyrs--Brambletye
House--Forest Row--The garden of the author of _The English Flower
Garden_--Diamond Jubilee clock-faces--"Big-on-Little" and the
reverend and irreverend commentator.
East Grinstead, the capital of north-east Sussex, is interesting chiefly
for Sackville College, that haunt of ancient peace of which John Mason
Neale, poet, enthusiast, divine, historian, and romance-writer for
children, was for many years the distinguished Warden. Nothing can
exceed the quiet restfulness of the quadrangle. The college gives
shelter to five brethren and six sisters (one of whom shows the visitor
over the building), and to a warden and two assistants. Happy
collegians, to have so fair a haven in which to pass the evening of
life. East Grinstead otherwise has not much beauty, its commanding
pinnacled church tower being more impressive from a distance, and its
chief street mingling too much that is new with its few old timbered
facades, charming though these are.
[Illustration: _The Judge's Houses, East Grinstead._]
The town, when it would be frivolous, to-day depends upon the occasional
visits of travelling entertainers; but in the eighteenth century East
Grinstead had a theatre of its own, in the main street, a play-bill of
which, for May, 1758, is given in Boaden's _Life of Mrs. Siddons_. It
states that "Theodosius; or, the Force of Love," is to be played, for
the benefit of Mrs. P. Varanes by Mr. P., "who will strive as far as
possible to support the character of this fiery Persian Prince, in which
he was so much admired and applauded at Hastings, Arundel, Petworth,
Midhurst, Lewes, &c." The attraction of the next announcement is the
precise converse: "Theodosius, by a young gentleman from the University
of Oxford, who never appeared on any stage."
[Sidenote: NOBILITY AND THE ALTAR]
The play-bill continues with a delicate hint: "Nothing in Italy can
exceed the altar in the first scene of the play. Nevertheless, should
any of the nobility or gentry wish to see it ornamented with flowers,
the bearer will bring away as many as they choose to favour him with."
Finally: "N.B.--The great yard dog that made so much noise on Thursday
night during the last act of King Richard the Third, will be sent to a
neighbour's over the way."
The Sussex Martyrs, to whom a memorial, as we shall see, has recently
been raised above Lewes, are usually associated with that town; but on
July 18, 1556, Thomas Dungate, John Forman, and Anne, or Mother, Tree,
were burned for conscience' sake at East Grinstead.
Between East Grinstead and Forest Row, on the east, just under the hill
and close to the railway, are the remains of Brambletye House, a rather
florid ruin, once the seat of the great Sussex family of Lewknor. In its
heyday Brambletye must have been a very fine place. Horace Smith's
romance which bears its name, and for which Horsfield, in his _History
of Sussex_, predicted a career commensurable with that of the Waverley
novels, is now, I fear, justly forgotten. The slopes of Forest Row,
which was of old a settlement of hunting lodges belonging to the great
lords who took their pleasure in Ashdown Forest, are now bright with new
villas. From Forest Row, Wych Cross and Ashdown Forest are easily
gained; but of this open region of dark heather more in a later chapter.
Between Kingscote and West Hoathly, a short distance to the south-west
of East Grinstead, is another "tye"--Gravetye, a tudor mansion in a deep
hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of _The English
Flower Garden_. Last April, the stonework, of which there is much, was a
mass of the most wonderful purple aubretia, and the wild garden between
the house and the water a paradise of daffodils.
The church of West Hoathly (called West Ho-ly), which stands high on the
hill to the south, has a slender shingled spire that may be seen from
long distances. The tower has, however, been injured by the very ugly
new clock that has been lately fixed in a position doubtless the most
convenient but doubtless also the least comely. To nail to such a
delicate structure as West Hoathly church the kind of dial that one
expects to see outside a railway station is a curious lapse of taste.
Hever church, in Kent, has a similar blemish, probably dating from one
of the recent Jubilee celebrations, which left few loyal villages the
richer by a beautiful memorial. Surely it should be possible to obtain
an appropriate clock-face for such churches as these.
West Hoathly has some iron tombstones, such as used to be cast in the
old furnace days, which are not uncommon in these parts. Opposite the
church is a building of great antiquity, which has been allowed to
forget its honourable age.
[Sidenote: "BIG-ON-LITTLE"]
We are now on the fringe of the Sussex rock country, to which we come
again in earnest when we reach Maresfield, and of which Tunbridge Wells
is the capital. But not even Tunbridge Wells with its famous toad has
anything to offer more remarkable than West Hoathly's "Big-on-Little,"
in the Rockhurst estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the
rock, from two very different points of view. An antiquary writing in
the eighteenth century (quoted by Horsfield) thus begins his
account:--"About half a mile west of West Hoadley church there is a high
ridge covered with wood; the edge of this is a craggy cliff, composed of
enormous blocks of sand stone. The soil hath been entirely washed from
off them, and in many places, from the interstices by which they are
divided, one perceives these crags with bare broad white foreheads, and,
as it were, overlooking the wood, which clothes the valley at their
feet. In going to the place, I passed across this deep valley, and was
led by a narrow foot-path almost trackless up to the cliff, which seems
as one advances to hang over one's head. The mind in this passage is
prepared with all the suspended feelings of awe and reverence, and as
one approaches this particular rock, standing with its stupendous bulk
poised, seemingly in a miraculous manner and point, one is struck with
amazement. The recess in which it stands hath, behind this rock, and the
rocks which surround it, a withdrawn and recluse passage which the eye
cannot look into but with an idea of its coming from some more secret
and holy adyt. All these circumstances, in an age of tutored
superstition, would give, even to the finest minds, the impressions that
lead to idolatry."
[Sidenote: COBBETT AGAIN]
And this is Cobbett's description, in the _Rural Rides_:--"At the place,
of which I am now speaking, that is to say, by the side of this pleasant
road to Brighton, and between Turner's Hill and Lindfield, there is a
rock, which they call '_Big upon Little_,' that is to say, a rock upon
another, having nothing else to rest upon, and the top one being longer
and wider than the top of the one it lies on. This big rock is no
trifling concern, being as big, perhaps, as a not very small house. How,
then, _came_ this big upon little? What lifted up the big? It balances
itself naturally enough; but what tossed it up? I do not like to _pay_ a
parson for teaching me, while I have '_God's own Word_' to teach me; but
if any parson will tell me _how_ big _came_ upon little, I do not know
that I shall grudge him a trifle. And if he cannot tell me this; if he
say, All that we have to do is to _admire_ and _adore_; then I tell him,
that I can admire and adore without his _aid_, and that I will keep my
money in my pocket." That is pure Cobbett.
[Sidenote: WEST HOATHLY]
West Hoathly is in the midst of some of the best of the inland country
of Sussex and an excellent centre for the walker. Several places that we
have already seen are within easy distance, such as Horsted Keynes,
Worth and Worth Forest and Balcombe and Balcombe Forest.
CHAPTER XXV
HORSTED KEYNES TO LEWES
The origin of "Keynes"--The Rev. Giles Moore's expenditure--Advice
as to tithes--Lord Sheffield and cricket--The grave of Edward
Gibbon--Fletching and English History--Newick and Chailey--The
Battle of Lewes--John Dudeney and John Kimber--Leonard Mascall and
the first English carp--Advice to fruit-growers--Malling Deanery
and the assassins of Becket.
The very pretty church of Horsted Keynes, which in its lowly position is
the very antithesis of West Hoathly's hill-surmounting spire, is famous
for the small recumbent figure of a knight in armour, with a lion at his
feet, possibly a member of the Keynes family that gives its name to this
Horsted (thus distinguishing it from Little Horsted, a few miles distant
in the East): Keynes being an anglicisation of de Cahanges, a family
which sent a representative to assist in the Norman Conquest.
[Sidenote: ANCIENT ECONOMICS]
Horsted Keynes, which is situated in very pleasant country, once took
its spiritual instruction from the lips of the Rev. Giles Moore,
extracts from whose journals and account books, 1656-1679, have been
printed by the S.A.S. I quote a few passages:
"I gave my wyfe 15_s._ to lay out at St. James faire at Lindfield, all
which shee spent except 2_s._ 6_d._ which she never returned mee.
"16th Sept. I bought of Edward Barrett at Lewis a clock, for which I
payed _L_2 10, and for a new jack, at the same time, made and brought
home, _L_1 5. For two prolongers [_i.e._ save-alls] and an extinguisher
2_d._, and a payr of bellowes 5_s._"
7th May, 1656.--"I bought of William Clowson, upholsterer and itinerant,
living over against the Crosse at Chichester, but who comes about the
country with his pack on horseback:--
A fine large coverlett with birds and bucks _L_2 10 0
A sett of striped curtains and valance 1 8 0
A coarse 8 qr coverlett 1 2 0
Two middle blankets 1 4 0
One beasil or Holland tyke or bolster 1 13 6
"My mayde being sicke, I paid for opening her veine 4_d._, to the widow
Rugglesford for looking to her, I gave 1_s._; and to Old Bess, for
tending on her 3 days and 2 nights, I gave 1_s._; in all 2_s._
4_d._--this I gave her.
"Lent to my brother Luxford at the Widow Newports, never more to be
seene! 1_s._"
In 1658.--"To Wm Batchelor for bleeding mee in bed 2_s._ 6_d._, and for
barbouring mee 1_s._" A year later:--"I agreed with Mr. Batchelor of
Lindfield to barbour mee, and I am to pay him 16_s._ a yeare, beginning
from Lady Day."
In 1671.--"I bargained with Edward Waters that he should have 18_s._ in
money for the trimming of mee by the year, and deducting 1_s._ 6_d._ for
his tythes."
23rd April, 1660.--"This being King Charles II. coronation I gave my
namesake Moore's daughter then marryed 10_s._ and the fiddlers 6_d._
"I payed the Widow Potter of Hoadleigh for knitting mee one payr of
worsted stockings 2_s._ 6_d._; for spinning 2 lb of wool 14_d._, and for
carding it 2_d._
"To the collections made at 3 several sacraments I gave 3 several
sixpences."
12th May, 1673.--"I went to London, spending there, going and coming, as
_alibi apparet in particularibus_, 13_s._ 8_d._; I bought for Ann Brett
a gold ring, this being the posy, 'When this you see, remember mee,' and
at the same time I bought Patrick's _Pilgrim_, 5_s._; _The
Reasonableness of Scripture_, by Sir Chas. Wolseley, 2_s._ 6_d._; and a
Comedy called _Epsom Wells_."
Mr. Moore, having suffered in his tithes, left the following "necessary
caution" for his successor:--"Never compound with any parishioner till
you have first viewed theire lande and seen what corne they have upon it
that yeare, and may have the next."
[Sidenote: SHEFFIELD PARK]
The next station on this quiet little cross-country line to Lewes, is
Sheffield Park, the seat of Lord Sheffield. The present peer, one of the
patrons of modern Sussex cricket, took a famous team to Australia in
1891-2, and it was on his yacht that in 1894 cricket was played in the
Ice Fiord at Spitzbergen under the midnight sun, when Alfred Shaw
captured forty wickets in less than three-quarters of an hour.
Australian teams visiting England used to open their season with a match
at Sheffield Park, which contains one of the best private grounds in the
country; but the old custom has, I fancy, lapsed. In the long winter of
1890-1 several cricket matches on the ice were played on one of the
lakes in the park, with well-known Sussex players on both sides.
Sheffield Park is associated in literature with the name of Edward
Gibbon, the historian, who spent much time there in the company of his
friend, John Baker Holroyd, the first earl. Gibbon's remains lie in
Fletching church, close by. There also lies Peter Dynot, a glover of
Fletching, who assisted Jack Cade, the Sussex rebel, whom we meet later,
in 1450; while (more history) it was in the woods around Fletching
church that Simon de Montfort encamped before he climbed the hills, as
we are about to see, and fought and won the Battle of Lewes, in 1264.
The line passes next between Newick, on the east, and Chailey on the
west. Fate seems to have decided that these villages shall always be
bracketed in men's minds, like Beaumont and Fletcher, or Winchelsea and
Rye: one certainly more often hears of "Newick and Chailey" than of
either separately. Chailey has a wide breezy common from which the line
of Downs between Ditchling Beacon and Lewes can be seen perhaps to their
best advantage. Immediately to the south, and just to the west of
Blackcap, the hill with a crest of trees, is Plumpton Plain, six hundred
feet high, where the Barons formed their ranks to meet the third Harry
in the Battle of Lewes, the actual fighting being on Mount Harry, the
hill on Blackcap's east. A cross to mark the struggle, cut into the turf
of the Plain, is still occasionally visible. More noticeable is the "V"
in spruce firs planted on the escarpment to commemorate the Jubilee of
1887.
[Sidenote: THE SHEPHERD MATHEMATICIAN]
Plumpton, which is now known chiefly for its steeplechases, has had in
its day at least two interesting inhabitants. One was John Dudeney,
shepherd, mathematician, and schoolmaster, born here in 1782, who, as a
youth, when tending his sheep on Newmarket Hill, dug a study and library
in the chalk, and there kept his books and papers. He taught himself
mathematics and languages, even Hebrew, and ultimately became a
schoolmaster at Lewes. In his thorough adherence to learning Dudeney was
the completest contrast to John Kimber of Chailey, a wealthy farmer with
a consuming but unintelligent love of books, who was once, says
Horsfield, seen bringing home Macklin's Bible, a costly work in six
volumes in a sack laid across the back of a cart horse. According to the
excellent habit of the old Sussex farmers, Mr. Kimber's body was borne
to the grave in one of his wagons, drawn by his best team.
[Sidenote: FANTASTIC FRUITS]
Plumpton Place once had a moat, in which, legend has it, the first carp
swam that came into England. The house then belonged to Leonard Mascall,
whom Fuller in the _Worthies_ erroneously ascribes to Plumsted. In
Fuller's own words, which no one could better: "Leonard Mascall, of
Plumsted in this county, being much delighted in Gardening, man's
Original vocation, was the first who brought over into England, from
beyond the seas, _Carps_ and _Pippins_; the one, well-cook'd, delicious,
the other cordial and restorative. For the proof hereof, we have his own
word and witness; and did it, it seems, about the Fifth year of the
reign of King _Henry_ the Eighth, Anno Dom. 1514. The time of his death
is to me unknown." The credit of introducing carps and pippins has,
however, been denied to Mascall, who died in 1589 at Farnham Royal in
Buckinghamshire, where he was buried; but we know him beyond question to
have been an ingenious experimentalist in horticulture. He wrote and
translated several books, among them a treatise on the orchard by a monk
of the Abbey of St. Vincent in France: _A Book of the Arte of and Manner
howe to plant and graffe all sortes of trees, howe to set stones, and
sowe Pepines to make wylde trees to graffe on_, 1572. I take a few
passages from a later edition of this work:
TO COLOUR APPLES.
To have coloured Apples with what colour ye shall think good ye shall
bore or slope a hole with an Auger in the biggest part of the body of
the tree, unto the midst thereof, or thereabouts, and then look what
colour ye will have them of. First ye shall take water and mingle your
colour therewith, then stop it up again with a short pin made of the
same wood or tree, then wax it round about. Ye may mingle with the said
colour what spice ye list, to make them taste thereafter. Thus may ye
change the colour and taste of any Apple.... This must be done before
the Spring do come....
TO MAKE APPLES FALL FROM THE TREE.
If ye put fiery coles under an Apple tree, and then cast off the powder
of Brimstone therein, and the fume thereof ascend up, and touch an Apple
that is wet, that Apple shall fall incontinant.
TO DESTROY PISMIERS OR ANTS ABOUT A TREE.
Ye shall take of the saw-dust of Oke-wood oney, and straw that al about
the tree root, and the next raine that doth come, all the Pismiers or
Ants shall die there. For Earewigges, shooes stopt with hay, and hanged
on the tree one night, they come all in.
FOR TO HAVE RATH MEDLARS TWO MONTHS BEFORE OTHERS.
For to have Medlars two months sooner than others and the one shall be
better far than the other, ye shall graffe them upon a gooseberry tree,
and also a franke mulberry tree, and before ye do graffe them, ye shall
wet them in hay, and then graffe them.
[Sidenote: MALLING DEANERY]
To return to the line, for the excursion to Plumpton has taken us far
from the original route, the next station to Newick and Chailey is
Barcombe Mills, a watery village on the Ouse. The river valley contracts
as Lewes is reached, with Malling Hill on the east and Offham Hill on
the west: both taking their names from two of the quaint little hamlets
by which Lewes is surrounded. It was at Mailing Deanery that the
assassins of Thomas a Becket sought shelter on their flight from
Canterbury. The legend records how, when they laid their armour on the
Deanery table, that noble piece of furniture rose and flung the accursed
accoutrements to the ground.
On Malling Hill is the residence of a Lewes lady whose charitable
impulses have taken a direction not common among those who suffer for
others. She receives into her stable old and overworked horses, thus
ensuring for them a sleek and peaceful dotage enlivened by sugar and
carrots, and marked by the kindest consideration. The pyramidal grave
(as of a Saxon chief) of one of these dependants may be seen from the
road.
[Illustration: _On the Ouse above Lewes._]
CHAPTER XXVI
LEWES
The Museum of Sussex--The riches of Lewes--Her leisure and
antiquity--A plea from _Idlehurst_--Old Lewes disabilities--The
Norman Conquest--Lewes Castle--Sussex curiosities--Lewes among her
hills--The Battle of Lewes--The Cluniac Priory--Repellers of the
French--A comprehender of Earthquakes--The author of _The Rights of
Man_--A game of bowls--"Clio" Rickman and Thomas Tipper--Famous
Lewes men--The Fifth of November--The Sussex martyrs.
Apart from the circumstance that the curiosities collected by the
county's Archaeological Society are preserved in the castle, Lewes is the
museum of Sussex; for she has managed to compress into small compass
more objects of antiquarian interest than any town I know. Chichester,
which is compact enough, sprawls by comparison.
The traveller arriving by train no sooner alights from his carriage than
he is on the site of the kitchens of the Cluniac Priory of St. Pancras,
some of the walls of which almost scrape the train on its way to
Brighton. That a priory eight hundred years old must be disturbed before
a railway station can be built is a melancholy circumstance; but in the
present case the vandalism had its compensation in the discovery by the
excavating navvies of the coffins of William de Warenne and his wife
Gundrada (the Conqueror's daughter), the founders of the priory, which
otherwise would probably have been lost evermore.
The castle, which dominates the oldest part of the town, is but a few
minutes' stiff climb from the station; Lewes's several ancient churches
are within hailing distance of each other; the field of her battle,
where Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III., is in view from her
north-west slopes; while the new martyrs' memorial on the turf above the
precipitous escarpment of the Cliffe (once the scene of a fatal
avalanche) reminds one of what horrors were possible in the name of
religion in these streets less than four hundred years ago.
[Sidenote: THE RICHES OF LEWES]
Here are riches enough; yet Lewes adds to such mementoes of an historic
past two gaols--one civil and one naval--a racecourse, and a river, and
she is an assize town to boot. Once, indeed, Lewes was still better off,
for she had a theatre, which for some years was under the management of
Jack Palmer, of whom Charles Lamb wrote with such gusto. Added to these
possessions, she has, in Keere Street, the narrowest and steepest
thoroughfare down which a king (George IV.) ever drove a coach and four,
and a row of comfortable and serene residences (on the way to St. Ann's)
more luxuriantly and beautifully covered with leaves than any I ever
saw. (Much of Lewes in September is scarlet with Virginia creeper.)
[Illustration: _High Street, Southover._]
[Sidenote: "BRIGHTHELMSTONE, NEAR LEWES"]
[Sidenote: JOHN HALSHAM'S DREAM]
Although less than half an hour from Brighton by train, and an hour by
road, Lewes is yet a full quarter of a century behind it. She would do
well jealously to maintain this interval. Lewes was old and grey before
Brighton was thought of (indeed, it was, as we have seen, a Lewes man
that discovered Brighton--Dr. Russell, who lies in his grave in South
Malling church); let her cling to her seniority. As a town "in the
movement," as a contemporary of the "Queen of Watering Places," she
would cut a poor figure. But it is amusing to think of the old address
of a visitor to Brighton, "at Brighthelmstone, near Lewes," and to read
the county paper, _The Sussex Weekly Advertiser; or, Lewes Journal_, of
a century ago, with its columns of Lewes news and paragraphs of Brighton
correspondence. Lewes will cease to have charm the moment she
modernises. In the words of the author of _Idlehurst_, as he looked down
on the huddling little settlement from the Cliffe Hill: "Let us keep a
country town or two as preserves for clean atmospheres of body and soul,
for the almost lost secret of sitting still.... I find myself tangled
in half-dreams of a devolution by which, when national amity shall have
become mentionable besides personal pence, London shall attract to
herself all the small vice, as she does already most of the great, from
the country, all the thrusters after gain, the vulgar, heavy-fingered
intellects, the Progressive spouters, the Bileses, the speculating
brigandage, and shall give us back from the foggy world of clubs and
cab-ranks and geniuses, the poets and painters, all the nice and witty
and pretty people, to make towns such as this, conserved and purified,
into country-side Athenses; to form distinct schools of letters and art,
individual growths, not that universal Cockney mind, smoke-ingrained,
stage-ridden, convention-throttled, which now masquerades under the
forms of every clime and dialect within reach of a tourist ticket."
The customs of Lewes at the end of the Saxon rule and the beginning of
the Norman, as recorded in the pages of the Domesday Book, show that
residence in the town in those days was not unmixed delight, except,
perhaps, for murderers, for whom much seems to have been done. Thus: "If
the king wished to send an armament to guard the seas, without his
personal attendance, twenty shillings were collected from all the
inhabitants, without exception or respect to particular tenure, and
these were paid to the men-at-arms in the ships.
"The seller of a horse, within the borough, pays one penny to the mayor
(sheriff?) and the purchaser another; of an ox, a half-penny; of a man,
fourpence, in whatsoever place he may be brought within the rape.
"A murderer forfeits seven shillings and fourpence; a ravisher forfeits
eight shillings and fourpence; an adulterer eight shillings and
fourpence; an adultress the same. The king has the adulterer, the bishop
the adulteress."
[Sidenote: THE PROVIDENT DE WARENNES]
With the Conquest new life came into the town, as into South Sussex
generally. The rule of the de Braoses, who dominated so much of the
country through which we have been passing, is here no more, the great
lord of this district being William de Warenne, who had claims upon
William the Conqueror, not only for services rendered in the Conquest
but as a son-in-law. When, therefore, the contest was over, some of the
richest prizes fell to Earl de Warenne. Among them was the township of
Lewes, whose situation so pleased the Earl that he decided to make his
home there. His first action, then, was to graft upon the existing
fortress a new stronghold, the remains of which still stand.
Ten years after the victory at Hastings the memory of the blood of the
sturdy Saxons whom he had hacked down at Battle began so to weigh upon
de Warenne's conscience that he set out with Gundrada upon an expiatory
pilgrimage to Rome. Sheltering on the way in the monastery of St. Per,
at Cluny, they were so hospitably received that on returning to Lewes
William and Gundrada built a Priory, partly as a form of gratitude, and
partly as a safeguard for the life to come. In 1078, it was formally
founded on a magnificent scale. Thus Lewes obtained her castle and her
priory, both now in ruins, in the one of which William de Warenne might
sin with a clear mind, knowing that just below him, on the edge of the
water-brooks, was (in the other) so tangible an expiation.
The date of the formation of the priory spoils the pleasant legend which
tells how Harold, only badly wounded, was carried hither from Battle,
and how, recovering, he lived quietly with the brothers until his
natural death some years later. A variant of the same story takes the
English king to a cell near St. John's-under-the-Castle, also in Lewes,
and establishes him there as an anchorite. But (although, as we shall
see when we come to Battle, the facts were otherwise) all true
Englishmen prefer to think of Harold fighting in the midst of his army,
killed by a chance arrow shot into the zenith, and lying there until the
eyes of Editha of the Swan-neck lighted upon his dear corpse amid the
hundreds of the slain.
[Sidenote: THE CASTLE'S CURIOSITIES]
The de Warennes held Lewes Castle until the fourteenth century; the
Sussex Archaeological Society now have it in their fostering care.
Architecturally it is of no great interest, although it was once unique
in England by the possession of two keeps; nor has it romantic
associations, like Kenilworth or even Carisbrooke. The crumbling masonry
was assisted in its decay by no siege or bombardment; the castle has
been never the scene of human struggle. Visitors, therefore, must take
pleasure chiefly in the curiosities collected in the museum and in the
views from the roof. A few little rooms hold the treasures amassed by
the Archaeological Society; amassed, it may be said, with little
difficulty, for the soil of the district is fertile in relics. From
Ringmer come rusty shield bosses and the mouldering skull of an
Anglo-Saxon; from the old Lewes gaol come a lock and a key strong enough
to hold Jack Sheppard; and from Horsham Gaol a complete set of fetters
for ankles and wrists, once used to cramp the movements of female
malefactors. Here, in a case, is a tiny bronze thimble that tipped the
pretty finger of a Roman seamstress--one only among scores of tokens of
the Roman occupation of the county. Flint arrow heads and celts in
profusion take us back to remoter times. A Pyecombe crook hangs on one
wall, and relics of the Sussex ironworks are plentiful. The highest room
contains rubbings of our best brasses. Outside is an early Sussex
plough. In a corner is a beadle's staff that once struck terror into the
hearts of Sabbath-breaking boys; and near one of the windows is a little
brass crucifix from St. Pancras' Priory. But nothing, the custodian
tells me, so pleases visitors to this very catholic collection as the
mummied hand of a murderess.
[Sidenote: THE BATTLE OF LEWES]
Looking down and around from the roof of the keep, you are immediately
struck by the wide shallow hollow in which Lewes lies. It is something
the shape of a dairy basin, the gap to the north-west, between Malling
Hill and Offham, serving for the lip. Nothing could be flatter than the
smiling meadows, streaked with tiny streams, stretching between Lewes
and the coast line to the south-east (with the exception of one
symmetrical hillock just out of the town). Among them curls the lazy
Ouse; just beneath you Lewes sleeps, red-roofed as an Italian town,
sending up no hum of activity, listless and immovable save for a few
spirals of silent smoke. The surrounding hills are very fine: Firle
Beacon in the far east; Mount Caburn, a noble cone, in the near east;
Mount Harry to the west, on whose slopes Henry III., assisted by the
fiery Prince Edward, fought the Barons. So fiery, indeed, was this lad
that he forgot all about his father, and gave chase to a small
detachment of the enemy, catching them up, and hewing them down with the
keenest enjoyment, while the unhappy Henry was being completely worsted
by de Montfort. It was a bloody battle, made up, as old Fabian wrote, of
embittered men, with hearts full of hatred, "eyther desyrous to bring
the other out of lyfe." Great fun was made by the humorists of the time,
after the battle, over the fact that Richard, King of the Romans,
Henry's brother, was captured in a windmill in which he had taken
refuge. This mill stood near the site of the Black Horse inn. In _The
Barons' Wars_, by Mr. Blaauw, the Sussex antiquary, the whole story is
told.
Lewes has played but a small part in history since that battle; but, as
we saw when we were at Rottingdean, it was one of her Cluniac priors
that repulsed the French in 1377, and her son, Sir Nicholas Pelham, who
performed a similar service in 1545, at Seaford. As the verses on his
monument in St. Michael's Church run:--
What time the French sought to have sackt Sea-Foord,
This Pelham did repel-em back aboord.
[Illustration: _Ann of Cleves' House, Southover._]
[Sidenote: THE CLUNIAC PRIORY]
The Cluniac priory of St. Pancras was dissolved by Henry VIII. in 1537,
Thomas Cromwell, that execrable vandal, not only abolishing the monks
but destroying the buildings, which covered, with their gardens and fish
ponds, forty acres. The ruins that remain give some idea of the extent
of this wonderful priory, another relic being the adjacent mound on
which the Calvary stood, probably constructed of the earth removed for
the purpose from the Dripping Pan, as the hollow circular space is
called where Lewes now plays cricket. One very pretty possession of the
monks was allowed to stand until quite recent times--the Columbarium,
which was as large as a church and contained homes for 3,228 birds. It
has now vanished; but an idea of what it was may be gained from the
pigeon house at Alciston, a few miles distant, which belonged to Battle
Abbey.
The priory's possessions were granted to Cromwell by Henry VIII., who,
tradition asserts (somewhat directly in the face of historical
evidence), murdered one of his wives on a winding stair in the building,
and may therefore have been glad to see its demolition. Which wife it
was, is not stated, but when Cromwell went the way of all this king's
favourites, the property was transferred to Ann of Cleves, who is
supposed to have lived in the most picturesque of the old houses on the
right hand side of Southover's street as you leave Lewes for the Ouse
valley.
Southover church, in itself a beautiful structure of the grave red type,
with a square ivied tower and the most delicate vane in Sussex, is
rendered the more interesting by the possession of the leaden caskets of
William de Warenne and Gundrada and the superb tomb removed from Isfield
church and very ingeniously restored. These relics repose in a charming
little chapel built in their honour.
[Sidenote: TOM PAINE]
A notable man who had association with Lewes was Tom Paine, author of
_The Rights of Man_. He settled there as an exciseman in 1768, married
Elizabeth Ollive of the same town at St. Michael's Church in 1771, and
succeeded to her father's business as a tobacconist and grocer. Paine
was more successful as a debater than a business man. As a member of the
White Hart evening club he was more often than any other the winner of
the Headstrong Book--an old Greek Homer despatched the next morning to
the most obstinate haranguer of the preceding night. It was at Lewes
that Tom Paine's thoughts were first turned to the question of
government. He used thus to tell the story. One evening after playing
bowls, all the party retired to drink punch; when, in the conversation
that ensued, Mr. Verril (it should be Verrall) "observed, alluding to
the wars of Frederick, that the King of Prussia was the best fellow in
the world for a king, he had so much of the devil in him. This, striking
me with great force, occasioned the reflection, that if it were
necessary for a king to have so much of the devil in him, kings might
very beneficially be dispensed with."
I thought of that historic game of bowls as I watched four Lewes
gentlemen playing this otherwise discreetest of games in the meadow by
the castle gate on a fine September evening. Surely (after the historic
Plymouth Hoe) a lawn in the shadow of a Norman castle is the ideal spot
for this leisurely but exciting pastime. The four Lewes gentlemen played
uncommonly well, with bowls of peculiar splendour in which a setting of
silver glistened as they sped over the turf. After each game one little
boy bearing a cloth wiped the bowls while another registered the score.
And now I feel that no one can really be said to have seen Lewes unless
he has watched the progress of such a game: it remains in my mind as
intimate a part of the town and the town's spirit as the ruins of the
Priory, or Keere Street, or the Castle itself.
The house of Tom Paine, just off the High Street, almost opposite the
circular tower of St. Michael's, has a tablet commemorating its
illustrious owner. It also has a very curious red carved demon which
otherwise distinguishes it. Lewes was not always proud of Tom Paine; but
Cuckfield went farther. In 1793, I learn from the _Sussex Advertiser_
for that year, Cuckfield emphasised its loyalty to the constitution by
singing "God save the King" in the streets and burning Paine in effigy.
[Sidenote: "CLIO" RICKMAN]
Mention of Tom Paine naturally calls to mind his friend and biographer
(and my thrice great uncle), Thomas "Clio" Rickman, the Citizen of the
World, who was born at Lewes in 1760. Rickman began life as a Quaker,
and therefore without his pagan middle name, which he first adopted as
the signature to epigrams and scraps of verse in the local paper, and
afterwards incorporated in his signature. Rickman's connection with Tom
Paine and his own revolutionary habits were a source of distress to his
Quaker relatives at Lewes, so much so that there is a story in the
family of the Citizen being refused admission to a house in the
neighbourhood where he had eight impressionable nieces, and, when he
would visit their father, being entertained instead at the Bear. His
Bible, with sceptical marginal notes, is still preserved, with the bad
pages pasted together by a subsequent owner.
After roving about in Spain and other countries he settled as a
bookseller in London, and it was in his house and at his table that _The
Rights of Man_ was written. "This table," says an article on Rickman in
the _Wonderful Museum_, "is prized by him very highly at this time; and
no doubt will be deemed a rich relic by some of our irreligious
connoisseurs." It was shown at the Tom Paine exhibition a few years ago.
Rickman escaped prosecution, but he once had his papers seized.
[Sidenote: TIPPER'S EPITAPH]
According to his portrait Clio wore a hat like a beehive, and he
invented a trumpet to increase the sound of a signal gun. His verse is
exceedingly poor, his finest poetical achievement being the epitaph on
Thomas Tipper in Newhaven churchyard. Tipper was the brewer of the ale
that was known as "Newhaven Tipper"; but he was other things too:
Honest he was, ingenuous, blunt and kind,
And dared what few dare do, to speak his mind.
Philosophy and history well he knew,
Was versed in Physic and in surgery too,
The best old Stingo he both brewed and sold,
Nor did one knavish act to get his gold.
He played through life a varied comic part,
And knew immortal Hudibras by heart.
Charles Lamb greatly admired the end of this epitaph. Clio Rickman died
in 1834.
Among other men of note who have lived in Lewes or have had association
with it, was John Evelyn the diarist, who had some of his education at
Southover grammar school: Mark Antony Lower, the Sussex antiquary, to
whom all writers on the county are indebted; the Rev. T. W. Horsfield,
the historian of Sussex, without whose work we should also often be in
difficulties; and the Rev. Gideon Mantell, the Sussex geologist, whose
collection of Sussex fossils is preserved in the British Museum.
In St. Ann's church on the hill lie the bones of a remarkable man who
died at Lewes (in the tenth climacteric) in 1613--no less a person than
Thomas Twyne, M.D. In addition to the principles of physic he
"comprehended earthquakes" and wrote a book about them. He also wrote a
survey of the world. I quote Horsfield's translation of the florid Latin
inscription to his memory: "Hippocrates saw Twyne lifeless and his bones
slightly covered with earth. Some of his sacred dust (says he) will be
of use to me in removing diseases; for the dead, when converted into
medicine, will expel human maladies, and ashes prevail against ashes.
Now the physician is absent, disease extends itself on every side, and
exults its enemy is no more. Alas! here lies our preserver Twyne; the
flower and ornament of his age. Sussex deprived of her physician,
languished, and is ready to sink along with him. Believe me, no future
age will produce so good a physician and so renowned a man as this has.
He died at Lewes in 1613, on the 1st of August, in the tenth
climacteric, (viz. 70)."
[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON AT LEWES]
Dr. Johnson was once in Lewes, on a day's visit to the Shelleys, at the
house which bears their name at the south end of the town. One of the
little girls becoming rather a nuisance with her questions, the Doctor
lifted her into a cherry tree and walked off. At dinner, some time
later, the child was missed, and a search party was about to set out
when the Doctor exclaimed, "Oh, I left her in a tree!" For many years
the tree was known as "Dr. Johnson's cherry tree."
[Illustration: _St. Ann's Church, Southover._]
[Sidenote: THE FIFTH]
Lewes is ordinarily still and leisurely, with no bustle in her steep
streets save on market days: an abode of rest and unhastening feet. But
on one night of the year she lays aside her grey mantle and her quiet
tones and emerges a Bacchante robed in flame. Lewes on the 5th of
November is an incredible sight; probably no other town in the United
Kingdom offers such a contrast to its ordinary life. I have never heard
that Lewes is notably Protestant on other days in the year, that any
intolerance is meted out to Roman Catholics on November 4th or November
6th; but on November 5th she appears to believe that the honour of the
reformed church is wholly in her hands, and that unless her voice is
heard declaiming against the tyrannies and treacheries of Rome all the
spiritual labours of the eighth Henry will have been in vain.
No fewer than eight Bonfire Societies flourish in the town, all in a
strong financial position. Each of these has its bonfire blazing or
smouldering at a street corner, from dusk to midnight, and each, at a
certain stage in the evening, forms into procession, and approaching its
own fire by devious routes, burns an effigy of the Pope, together with
whatever miscreant most fills the public eye at the moment--such as
General Booth or Mr. Kruger, both of whom I have seen incinerated amid
cheers and detonations.
[Sidenote: LEWES ROUSERS]
The figures are not lightly cast upon the flames, but are conducted
thither ceremoniously, the "Bishop" of the society having first passed
sentence upon them in a speech bristling with local allusions. These
speeches serve the function of a _revue_ of the year and are sometimes
quite clever, but it is not until they are printed in the next morning's
paper that one can take their many points. The principal among the many
distractions is the "rouser," a squib peculiar to Lewes, to which the
bonfire boys (who are, by the way, in great part boys only in name, like
the postboys of the past and the cowboys of the present) have given
laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much
larger and heavier than the ordinary squib; it is propelled through the
air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks; and it bursts
with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages
of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting,
while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on
their gratings. Ordinary squibs and crackers are also continuously
ignited, while now and then one of the sky rockets discharged in flights
from a procession, elects to take a horizontal course, and hurtles
head-high down the crowded street.
So the carnival proceeds until midnight, when the firemen, who have
been on the alert all the evening, extinguish the fires. The Bonfire
Societies subsequently collect information as to any damage done and
make it good: a wise course, to which they owe in part the sanction to
renew the orgie next year. Other towns in Sussex keep up the glorious
Fifth with some spirit, but nowhere in England is there anything to
compare with the thoroughness of Lewes.
[Illustration: _The Ouse at South Street, Lewes._]
[Sidenote: THE LEWES MARTYRS]
[Sidenote: RICHARD WOODMAN]
To some extent Lewes may consider that she has reason for the display,
for on June 22, 1557, ten men and women were tied to the stake and
burned to death in the High Street for professing a faith obnoxious to
Queen Mary. Chief of these courageous enthusiasts were Richard Woodman
and Derrick Carver. Woodman, a native of Buxted, had settled at
Warbleton, where he was a prosperous iron master. All went well until
Mary's accession to the throne, when the rector of Warbleton, who had
been a Protestant under Edward VI., turned, in Foxe's words, "head to
tayle" and preached "clean contrary to that which he had before taught."
Woodman's protests carried him to imprisonment and the stake.
Altogether, Lewes saw the death of sixteen martyrs.
[Illustration: _The Ouse at Piddinghoe._]
CHAPTER XXVII
THE OUSE VALLEY
The two Ouses--Three round towers--Thirsty
labourers--Telscombe--The hills and the sea--Mrs. Marriott Watson's
Down poem--Newhaven--A Sussex miller--Seaford's past--A politic
smuggler--Electioneering ingenuity--Bishopstone.
The road from Lewes to the sea runs along the edge of the Ouse levels,
just under the bare hills, passing through villages that are little more
than homesteads of the sheep-farmers, albeit each has its church--Iford,
Rodmell, Southease, Piddinghoe--and so to Newhaven, the county's only
harbour of any importance since the sea silted up the Shoreham bar. You
may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as
anywhere twice the distance from London; and the Downs above them are
practically virgin soil. The Brighton horseman or walker takes as a rule
a line either to Lewes or to Newhaven, rarely adventuring in the
direction of Iford Hill, Highdole Hill, or Telscombe village, which
nestles three hundred feet high, over Piddinghoe. By day the waggons ply
steadily between Lewes and the port, but other travellers are few. Once
evening falls the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep
and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation.
[Sidenote: THE OUSE VALLEY]
The air of this valley is singularly clear, producing on fine days a
blue effect that is, I believe, peculiar to the district. In the
sketches of a Brighton painter in water colours, Mr. Clem Lambert, who
has worked much at Rodmell, the spirit of the river valleys of Sussex is
reproduced with extraordinary fidelity and the minimum loss of
freshness.
[Illustration: _Rodmell._]
Horsfield, rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the
mention of the Lewes river, quotes a passage from "The Task":
Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along his sinuous course
Delighted.
Dr. Johnson's remark that one green field is like another green field,
might, one sees, be extended to rivers, for Cowper was, of course,
describing the Ouse at Olney.
The first village out of Lewes on the Newhaven road is Kingston (one of
three Sussex villages of this name), on the side of the hill, once the
property of Sir Philip Sidney. Next is Iford, with straw blowing free
and cows in its meadows; next Rodmell, whence Whiteway Bottom and Breaky
Bottom lead to the highlands above: next Southease, where the only
bridge over the Ouse between Lewes and Newhaven is to be crossed: a
little village famous for a round church tower, of which Sussex knows
but three, one other at St. Michael's, Lewes, and one at Piddinghoe, the
next village.
[Sidenote: SOUTHEASE THIRST]
The Southease rustics were once of independent mind, as may be gathered
from the following extract from the "Manorial Customs of
Southease-with-Heighton, near Lewes," in 1623: "Every reaper must have
allowed him, at the cost of the lord or his farmer, one drinkinge in the
morninge of bread and cheese, and a dinner at noone consistinge of
rostmeate and other good victualls, meete for men and women in harvest
time; and two drinkinges in the afternoone, one in the middest of their
afternoone's work and the other at the ende of their day's work, and
drinke alwayes duringe their work as neede shall require."
[Sidenote: PIDD'NHOO]
Telscombe, the capital of these lonely Downs and as good an objective as
the walker who sets out from Brighton, Rottingdean, or Lewes to climb
hills can ask, is a charming little shy hamlet which nothing can harm,
snugly reposing in its combe, above Piddinghoe. Piddinghoe (pronounced
Pidd'nhoo) is a compact village at the foot of the hill; but it has
suffered in picturesqueness and character by its proximity to the
commercial enterprise of Newhaven. Hussey, in his _Notes on the Churches
of ... Sussex_, suggests that a field north of the village was once the
site of a considerable Roman villa. A local sarcasm credits Piddinghoe
people with the habit of shoeing their magpies.
[Illustration: _Piddinghoe._]
The Downs when we saw them first, between Midhurst and Chichester,
formed an inland chain parallel with the shore: here, and eastward as
far as Beachy Head, where they suddenly cease, their southern slopes are
washed by the Channel. This companionship of the sea lends them an
additional wildness: sea mists now and then envelop them in a cloud; sea
birds rise and fall above their cliffs; the roar or sigh of the waves
mingles with the cries of sheep; the salt savour of the sea is borne on
the wind over the crisp turf. It was, I fancy, among the Downs in this
part of Sussex that Mrs. Marriott-Watson wrote the intimately
understanding lines which I take the liberty of quoting:
[Sidenote: A HILL POEM]
ON THE DOWNS.
Broad and bare to the skies
The great Down-country lies,
Green in the glance of the sun,
Fresh with the clean salt air;
Screaming the gulls rise from the fresh-turned mould,
Where the round bosom of the wind-swept wold
Slopes to the valley fair.
Where the pale stubble shines with golden gleam
The silver ploughshare cleaves its hard-won way
Behind the patient team,
The slow black oxen toiling through the day
Tireless, impassive still,
From dawning dusk and chill
To twilight grey.
Far off the pearly sheep
Along the upland steep
Follow their shepherd from the wattled fold,
With tinkling bell-notes falling sweet and cold
As a stream's cadence, while a skylark sings
High in the blue, with eager outstretched wings,
Till the strong passion of his joy be told.
But when the day grows old,
And night cometh fold on fold,
Dulling the western gold,
Blackening bush and tree,
Veiling the ranks of cloud,
In their pallid pomp and proud
That hasten home from the sea,
Listen--now and again if the night be still enow,
You may hear the distant sea range to and fro
Tearing the shingly bourne of his bounden track,
Moaning with hate as he fails and falleth back;
The Downs are peopled then;
Fugitive, low-browed men
Start from the slopes around
Over the murky ground
Crouching they run with rough-wrought bow and spear,
Now seen, now hid, they rise and disappear,
Lost in the gloom again.
Soft on the dew-fall damp
Scarce sounds the measured tramp
Of bronze-mailed sentinels,
Dark on the darkened fells
Guarding the camp.
The Roman watch-fires glow
Red on the dusk; and harsh
Cries a heron flitting slow
Over the valley marsh
Where the sea-mist gathers low.
Closer, and closer yet
Draweth the night's dim net
Hiding the troubled dead:
No more to see or know
But a black waste lying below,
And a glimmering blank o'erhead.
Of Newhaven there is little to say, except that in rough weather the
traveller from France is very glad to reach it, and on a fine day the
traveller from England is happy to leave it behind. In the churchyard is
a monument in memory of the officers and crew of the _Brazen_, which
went down off the town in 1800, and lost all hands save one.
[Sidenote: A SUSSEX MILLER]
On the way to Seaford, which is nearly three miles east, sheltering
under its white headland (a preliminary sketch, as one might say, for
Beachy Head), we pass the Bishopstone tide mills, once the property of a
sturdy and prosperous Sussex autocrat named William Catt, the grower of
the best pears in the county, and the first to welcome Louis Philippe
(whom he had advised on milling in France) when he landed at Newhaven in
exile. A good story told of William Catt, by Mr. Lower, in his _Worthies
of Sussex_, illustrates not only the character of that sagacious and
kindly martinet, but also of the Sussex peasant in its mingled
independence and dependence, frankness and caution. Mr. Catt, having
unbent among his retainers at a harvest supper, one of them, a little
emboldened perhaps by draughts of Newhaven "tipper," thus addressed his
master. "Give us yer hand, sir, I love ye, I love ye," but, he added,
"I'm danged if I beant afeared of ye, though."
[Illustration: _Southover Grange._]
There was a hermitage on the cliff at Seaford some centuries ago. In
1372 the hermit's name was Peter, and we find him receiving letters of
protection for the unusual term of five years. In the vestry of the
church is an old monument bearing the riddling inscription: "... Also,
near this place lie two mothers, three grandmothers, four aunts, four
sisters, four daughters, four grand-daughters, three cousins--but VI
persons." A record in the Seaford archives runs thus: "Dec. 24, 1652.
Then were all accounts taken and all made even, from the beginning of
ye world, of the former Bayliffes unto the present time, and there
remained ... ye sum of twelve pounds, sixteen shillings, seven pence."
[Sidenote: THE PRICE OF TWO VOTES]
Millburgh House, Seaford, was of old called Corsica Hall, having been
built (originally at Wellingham, near Lewes, and then moved) by a
smuggler named Whitfield, who was outlawed for illicit traffic in
Corsican wine. He obtained the removal of his outlawry by presenting
George II. with a selection of his choicest vintages. Another agreeable
story of local corruption is told concerning Seaford's old
electioneering days. It was in 1798, during the candidature of Sir
Godfrey Webster of Battle Abbey. Sir Godfrey was one day addressed by
Mrs. S---- (nothing but Horsfield's delicacy keeps her name from fame) in
the following terms: "Mr. S----, sir, will vote, of course, as he
pleases--I have nothing to do or to say about him; but there is my
gardener and my coachman, both of whom will, I am sure, be entirely
guided by me. Now, they are both family men, Sir Godfrey, and I wish to
do the best I can to serve them. Now, I know you are in great doubt, and
that two sure votes are of great value: I'll tell you what you shall do.
You shall give me _L_200; nobody will know any thing about it; there will
be no danger--no bribery, Sir Godfrey, at all. I will desire the men to
go and vote for you and Colonel Tarleton, and it will all be right, and
no harm done. The bargain," adds Horsfield, "was struck--the money
paid--the votes given as promised; and the election over, the old lady
gave the two men _L_30 a piece, and pocketed the rest for the good of her
country."
[Sidenote: SEAFORD TO LEWES]
Seaford's neighbouring village, Bishopstone, in addition to its tide
mills--the only tide mills in Sussex excepting that at Sidlesham, now
disused--possessed once the oldest windmill in the county. In the very
charming little church is buried James Hurdis, author of _The Village
Curate_, whom we shall meet again at Burwash. From Bishopstone we may
return to Lewes either by the road through South Heighton, Tarring
Neville, Itford Farm, and Beddingham, or cross the river again at
Southease, and retrace our earlier steps through Rodmell and Iford. That
is the quicker way. The road through Beddingham is longer, and
interesting rather for the hills above it than for anything upon it. To
these hills we come in the next chapter.
[Illustration: _Near Tarring Neville._]
CHAPTER XXVIII
ALFRISTON
Three routes to Alfriston--West Firle--The Gages--A "Noble
Dame"--Sussex pronunciation and doggedness--The Selmeston
smugglers--Alfriston's ancient inn--The middle ages and P....
P....--Alfriston church--A miracle and a sign--An Alfriston
scholar--Dr. Benbrigg--The smallest church in Sussex--Alfriston as
a centre--A digression on walking--"A Song against
Speed"--Alciston--A Berwick genius--The Long Man of Wilmington.
Alfriston may be reached from Lewes by rail, taking train to Berwick; by
road, under the hills; or on foot or horse-back, over the hills. By
road, you pass first through Beddingham, a small village, where, it is
said, was once a monastery; then, by a southern _detour_, to West Firle,
a charming little village with a great park, which bears the same
relation to Firle Beacon that Wiston Park does to Chanctonbury Ring. The
tower in the east serves to provide a good view of the Weald for those
who do not care to climb the beacon's seven hundred feet and get a
better. The little church is rich in interesting memorials of the Gages,
who have been the lords of Firle for many a long year.
In the house is a portrait of Sir John Gage, the trusted friend of Henry
VIII., Edward VI., and Mary, and, as Constable of the Tower, the gaoler
(but a very kind one) of both Lady Jane Grey and the Princess Elizabeth,
afterwards Good Queen Bess. In Harrison Ainsworth's romance _The
Constable of the Tower_ Sir John Gage is much seen. Sir John was
succeeded at Firle by his son Sir Edward, who, as High Sheriff of
Sussex, was one of the judges of the Sussex martyrs, but who, even Foxe
admits, exercised courtesy to them. Sir Edward's son, Sir John Gage, was
the second husband of the Lady Penelope D'Arcy, Mr. Hardy's heroine,
whose portrait we saw at Parham: who, being courted as a girl by Sir
George Trenchard, Sir John Gage, and Sir William Hervey, promised she
would marry all in turn, and did so. Sir George left her a widow at
seventeen; to Sir John Gage she bore nine children.
Returning from Firle to the high road, we come next, by following for a
little a left turn, to Selmeston, the village where Mr. W. D. Parish,
the rector for very many years, collected most of the entertaining
examples of the Sussex dialect with which I have made so free in a later
chapter. The church is very simple and well-cared for, with some pretty
south windows. The small memorial tablets of brass which have been let
into the floor symmetrically among the tiles seem to me a happier means
of commemoration than mural tablets,--at least for a modest building
such as this.
[Sidenote: VAGARIES OF PRONUNCIATION]
In losing your way in this neighbourhood do not ask the passer-by for
Selmeston, but for Simson; for Selmeston, pronounced as spelt, does not
exist. Sussex men are curiously intolerant of the phonetics of
orthography. Brighthelmstone was called Brighton from the first,
although only in the last century was the spelling modified to agree
with the sound. Chalvington (the name of a village north of Selmeston)
is a pretty word, but Sussex declines to call it other than Chawton.
Firle becomes Furrel; Lewes is almost Lose, but not quite; Heathfield is
Hefful. It is characteristic of a Sussex man that he always knows best;
though all the masters of all the colleges should assemble about him and
speak reasoningly of Selmeston he would leave the congress as
incorrigible and self-satisfied a Simsonian as ever.
Many years ago Selmeston churchyard possessed an empty tomb, in which
the smugglers were wont to store their goods until a favourable time
came to set them on the road. Any objections that those in authority
might have had were silenced by an occasional tub. But of this more in
the next chapter.
[Sidenote: ALFRISTON]
And so we come to Alfriston; but, as I said, the right way was over the
hills, ascending them either at Itford (crossing the Ouse at Southease)
or by that remarkable combe, one of the finest in Sussex, with an avenue
leading to it, which is gained from a lane south of Beddingham. Firle
Beacon's lofty summit is half-way between Beddingham and Alfriston, and
from this height, with its magnificent view of the Weald, we descend
steadily to the Cuckmere valley, of which Alfriston is the capital.
Alfriston, which is now only a village street, shares with Chichester
the distinction of possessing a market cross. Alfriston's specimen is,
however, sadly mutilated, a mere relic, whereas Chichester's is being
made more splendid as I write. Alfriston also has one of the oldest inns
in the county--the "Star"--(finer far in its way than any of
Chichester's seventy and more); but Ainsworth was wrong in sending
Charles II. thither, in _Ovingdean Grange_. It is one of the inns that
the Merry Monarch never saw. The "Star" was once a sanctuary, within the
jurisdiction of the Abbot of Battle, for persons flying from justice;
and it is pleasant to sit in the large room upstairs, over the street,
and think of fugitives pattering up the valley, with fearful backward
glances, and hammering at the old door. One Birrel, in the reign of
Henry VIII., having stolen a horse at Lydd, in Kent, took refuge here.
The inn in those days was intended chiefly for the refreshment of
mendicant friars.
In 1767 the landlord was, according to a private letter, "as great a
curiosity as the house." I wish we had some information about him, for
the house is quaint and curious indeed, with its red lion sentinel at
the side (figure-head from a Dutch wreck in Cuckmere Haven), and its
carvings inside and out. The old and the new mingled very oddly when I
was lately at Alfriston. Hearing a familiar sound, as of a battledore
and a ball, in one of the rooms, I opened the door and discovered the
landlord and a groom from the racing stables near by in the throes of
the most modern of games, amid surroundings absolutely mediaeval.
[Sidenote: THE CATHEDRAL OF THE DOWNS]
The size of the grave and commanding church, which has been called the
cathedral of the South Downs, alone proves that Alfriston was once a
vastly more important place than it now is. Legend says that the
foundations were first cut in the meadow known as Savyne Croft. There
day after day the builders laid their stones, arriving each morning to
find them removed to the Tye, the field where the church now stands. At
last the meaning of the miracle entered their heads, and the church was
erected on the new site. Its shape was determined by the slumbers of
four oxen, who were observed by the architect to be sleeping in the form
of a cross. Poynings church, under the Dyke Hill, near Brighton, was
built, it has been conjectured, by the same architect. Within the
cathedral of the South Downs, which is a fourteenth century building, is
a superb east window, but it has no coloured glass. The register,
beginning with 1504, is perhaps the oldest in England. Hard by the
church is the simple little clergy house--unique in England, I
believe--dating from pre-Reformation times. It has lately been very
carefully restored.
Alfriston once had a scholar in the person of Thomas Chowne, of Frog
Firle, the old house on the road to Seaford, about a mile beyond the
village. Chowne, who died in 1639, and was buried at Alfriston, is thus
touched off by Fuller:--"Thomas Chune, Esquire, living at Alfriston in
this County, set forth a small Manuall, intituled _Collectiones
Theologicarum Conclusionum_. Indee |
