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.