moist feeding-ground. Among the stones by the waste places there are
pale-green wrinkled leaves, and the large yellow petals of the
sea-poppy. The bright colour is pleasant, but it is a flower best left
ungathered, for its odour is not sweet. On the wiry sward the light pink
of the sea-daisies (or thrift) is dotted here and there: of these gather
as you will. The presence even of such simple flowers, of such
well-known birds, distinguishes the solitary from the trodden beach. The
pier is in view, but the sea is different here.
Drive eastwards along the cliffs to the rough steps cut down to the
beach, descend to the shingle, and stroll along the shore to
Rottingdean. The buttresses of chalk shut out the town if you go to
them, and rest near the large pebbles heaped at the foot. There is
nothing but the white cliff, the green sea, the sky, and the slow ships
that scarcely stir.
In the spring, a starling comes to his nest in a cleft of the cliff
above; he shoots over from the dizzy edge, spreads his wings, borne up
by the ascending air, and in an instant is landed in his cave. On the
sward above, in the autumn, the yellow lip of the toad-flax, spotted
with orange, peers from the grass as you rest and gaze--how far?--out
upon the glorious plain.
Or go up on the hill by the race-course, the highest part near the sea,
and sit down there on the turf. If the west or south wind blow ever so
slightly the low roar of the surge floats up, mingling with the rustle
of the corn stacked in shocks on the slope. There inhale unrestrained
the breeze, the sunlight, and the subtle essence which emanates from
the ocean. For the loneliest of places are on the borders of a gay
crowd, and thus in Brighton--the by-name for all that is crowded and
London-like--it is possible to dream on the sward and on the shore.
In the midst, too, of this most modern of cities, with its swift,
luxurious service of Pullman cars, its piers, and social pleasures,
there exists a collection which, in a few strokes, as it were, sketches
the ways and habits and thoughts of old rural England. It is not easy to
realise in these days of quick transit and still quicker communication
that old England was mostly rural.
There were towns, of course, seventy years ago, but even the towns were
penetrated with what, for want of a better word, may be called country
sentiment. Just the reverse is now the case; the most distant hamlet
which the wanderer in his autumn ramblings may visit, is now more or
less permeated with the feelings and sentiment of the city. No written
history has preserved the daily life of the men who ploughed the Weald
behind the hills there, or tended the sheep on the Downs, before our
beautiful land was crossed with iron roads; while news, even from the
field of Waterloo, had to travel slowly. And, after all, written history
is but words, and words are not tangible.
But in this collection of old English jugs, and mugs, and bowls, and
cups, and so forth, exhibited in the Museum, there is the real
presentment of old rural England. Feeble pottery has ever borne the
impress of man more vividly than marble. From these they quenched their
thirst, over these they laughed and joked, and gossiped, and sang old
hunting songs till the rafters rang, and the dogs under the table got up
and barked. Cannot you see them? The stubbles are ready now once more
for the sportsmen.
With long-barrelled flint-lock guns they ranged over that wonderful map
of the land which lies spread out at your feet as you look down from the
Dyke. There are already yellowing leaves; they will be brown after a
while, and the covers will be ready once more for the visit of the
hounds. The toast upon this mug would be very gladly drunk by the
agriculturist of to-day in his silk hat and black coat. It is just what
he has been wishing these many seasons.
"Here's to thee, mine honest friend,
Wishing these hard times to mend."
Hard times, then, are nothing new.
"It is good ale," is the inscription on another jug; that jug would be
very welcome if so filled in many a field this very day. "Better luck
still" is a jug motto which every one who reads it will secretly respond
to. Cock-fighting has gone by, but we are even more than ever on the
side of fair play, and in that sense can endorse the motto, "May the
best cock win." A cup desires that fate should give
"Money to him who has spirit to use it,
And life to him who has courage to lose it."
A mug is moderate of wishes and somewhat cynical:--
"A little health, a little wealth,
A little house, and freedom;
And at the end a little friend,
And little cause to need him."
The toper, if he drank too deep, sometimes found a frog or newt at the
bottom (in china)--a hint not to be too greedy. There seem to have been
sad dogs about in those days from the picture on this piece--one
sniffing regretfully at the bunghole of an empty barrel:--
"This cask when stored with gin I loved to taste,
But now a smell, alas! must break my fast."
Upon a cup a somewhat Chinese arrangement of words is found:--
More beer score Clarke
for my the his
do trust pay sent
I I must has
shall if you maltster
what for and the
These parallel columns can be deciphered by beginning at the last word,
"the," on the right hand, and reading up. With rude and sometimes grim
humour our forefathers seem to have been delighted. The teapots of our
great grandmothers are even more amusingly inscribed and illustrated. At
Gretna Green the blacksmith is performing a "Red-Hot Marriage," using
his anvil for the altar.
"Oh! Mr. Blacksmith, ease our pains,
And tie us fast in wedlock's chains."
The china decorated with vessels and alluding to naval matters shows how
popular was the navy, and how deeply everything concerning Nelson's men
had sunk into the minds of the people. Some of the line of battleships
here represented are most cleverly executed--every sail and rope and gun
brought out with a clearness which the best draughtsman could hardly
excel. It is a little hard, however, to preserve the time-honoured
imputation upon Jack's constancy in this way on a jug:--
"A sailor's life's a pleasant life,
He freely roams from shore to shore;
In every port he finds a wife--
What can a sailor wish for more?"
Some enamoured potter having produced a masterpiece as a present to his
lady destroyed the design, so that the service he gave her might be
unique. After gazing at these curious old pieces, with dates of 1754,
1728, and so forth, the mind becomes attuned to such times, and the jug
with the inscription, "Claret, 1652," seems quite an easy and natural
transition.
From the Brighton of to-day it is centuries back to 1754; but from 1754
to 1652 is but a year or two. And after studying these shelves, and
getting, as it were, so deep down in the past, it is with a kind of Rip
Van Winkle feeling that you enter again into the sunshine of the day.
The fair upon the beach does not seem quite real for a few minutes.
Before the autumn is too far advanced and the skies are uncertain, a few
hours should be given to that massive Down which fronts the traveller
from London, Ditchling Beacon, the highest above the sea-level. It is
easy of access, the train carries you to Hassock's Gate--the station is
almost in a copse--and an omnibus runs from it to a comfortable inn in
the centre of Ditchling village. Thence to the Down itself the road is
straight and the walk no longer than is always welcome after riding.
After leaving the cottages and gardens, the road soon becomes enclosed
with hedges and trees, a mere country lane; and how pleasant are the
trees after the bare shore and barren sea! The hand of autumn has
browned the oaks, and has passed over the hedge, reddening the haws. The
north wind rustles the dry hollow stalks of plants upon the mound, and
there is a sense of hardihood in the touch of its breath.
The light is brown, for a vapour conceals the sun--it is not like a
cloud, for it has no end or outline, and it is high above where the
summer blue was lately. Or is it the buff leaves, the grey stalks, the
dun grasses, the ripe fruit, the mist which hides the distance that
makes the day so brown? But the ditches below are yet green with
brooklime and rushes. By a gateway stands a tall campanula or
bell-flower, two feet high or nearly, with great bells of blue.
A passing shepherd, without his sheep, but walking with his crook as a
staff, stays and turns a brown face towards me when I ask him the way.
He points with his iron crook at a narrow line which winds up the Down
by some chalk-pits; it is a footpath from the corner of the road. Just
by the corner the hedge is grey with silky flocks of clematis; the
hawthorn is hidden by it. Near by there is a bush, made up of branches
from five different shrubs and plants.
First hazel, from which the yellow leaves are fast dropping; among this
dogwood, with leaves darkening; between these a bramble bearing berries,
some red and some ripe, and yet a pink flower or two left. Thrusting
itself into the tangle, long woody bines of bittersweet hang their
clusters of red berries, and above and over all the hoary clematis
spreads its beard, whitening to meet the winter. These five are all
intermixed and bound up together, flourishing in a mass; nuts and edible
berries, semi-poisonous fruit, flowers, creepers; and hazel, with
markings under its outer bark like a gun-barrel.
This is the last of the plain. Now every step exposes the climber to the
force of the unchecked wind. The harebells swing before it, the bennets
whistle, but the sward springs to the foot, and the heart grows lighter
as the height increases. The ancient hill is alone with the wind. The
broad summit is left to scattered furze and fern cowering under its
shelter. A sunken fosse and earthwork have slipped together. So lowly
are they now after these fourteen hundred years that in places the long
rough grass covers and conceals them altogether.
Down in the hollow the breeze does not come, and the bennets do not
whistle, yet gazing upwards at the vapour in the sky I fancy I can hear
the mass, as it were, of the wind going over. Standing presently at the
edge of the steep descent looking into the Weald, it seems as if the
mighty blast rising from that vast plain and glancing up the slope like
an arrow from a tree could lift me up and bear me as it bears a hawk
with outspread wings.
A mist which does not roll along or move is drawn across the immense
stage below like a curtain. There is indeed, a brown wood beneath; but
nothing more is visible. The plain is the vaster for its vague
uncertainty. From the north comes down the wind, out of the brown autumn
light, from the woods below and twenty miles of stubble. Its stratum and
current is eight hundred feet deep.
Against my chest, coming up from the plough down there (the old plough,
with the shaft moving on a framework with wheels), it hurls itself
against the green ramparts, and bounds up savagely at delay. The ears
are filled with a continuous sense of something rushing past; the
shoulders go back square; an iron-like feeling enters into the sinews.
The air goes through my coat as if it were gauze, and strokes the skin
like a brush.
The tide of the wind, like the tide of the sea, swirls about, and its
cold push at the first causes a lifting feeling in the chest--a gulp and
pant--as if it were too keen and strong to be borne. Then the blood
meets it, and every fibre and nerve is filled with new vigour. I cannot
drink enough of it. This is the north wind.
High as is the hill, there are larks yonder singing higher still,
suspended in the brown light. Turning away at last and tracing the
fosse, there is at the point where it is deepest and where there is
some trifling shelter, a flat hawthorn bush. It has grown as flat as a
hurdle, as if trained espalierwise or against a wall--the effect, no
doubt, of the winds. Into and between its gnarled branches, dry and
leafless, furze boughs have been woven in and out, so as to form a
shield against the breeze. On the lee of this natural hurdle there are
black charcoal fragments and ashes, where a fire has burnt itself out;
the stick still leans over on which was hung the vessel used at this
wild bivouac.
Descending again by the footpath, the spur of the hill yonder looks
larger and steeper and more ponderous in the mist; it seems higher than
this, a not unusual appearance when the difference in altitude is not
very great. The level we are on seems to us beneath the level in the
distance, as the future is higher than the present. In the hedge or
scattered bushes, half-way down by the chalk-pit, there grows a
spreading shrub--the wayfaring tree--bearing large, broad, downy leaves
and clusters of berries, some red and some black, flattened at their
sides. There are nuts, too, here, and large sloes or wild bullace. This
Ditchling Beacon is, I think, the nearest and the most accessible of the
southern Alps from London; it is so near it may almost be said to be in
the environs of the capital. But it is alone with the wind.
THE SOUTHDOWN SHEPHERD
The shepherd came down the hill carrying his greatcoat slung at his back
upon his crook, and balanced by the long handle projecting in front. He
was very ready and pleased to show his crook, which, however, was not so
symmetrical in shape as those which are represented upon canvas. Nor was
the handle straight; it was a rough stick--the first, evidently, that
had come to hand.
As there were no hedges or copses near his walks, he had to be content
with this bent wand till he could get a better. The iron crook itself he
said was made by a blacksmith in a village below. A good crook was often
made from the barrel of an old single-barrel gun, such as in their
decadence are turned over to the bird-keepers.
About a foot of the barrel being sawn off at the muzzle end, there was a
tube at once to fit the staff into, while the crook was formed by
hammering the tough metal into a curve upon the anvil. So the gun--the
very symbol of destruction--was beaten into the pastoral crook, the
emblem and implement of peace. These crooks of village workmanship are
now subject to competition from the numbers offered for sale at the
shops at the market towns, where scores of them are hung up on show, all
exactly alike, made to pattern, as if stamped out by machinery.
Each village-made crook had an individuality, that of the
blacksmith--somewhat rude, perhaps, but distinctive--the hand shown in
the iron. While talking, a wheatear flew past, and alighted near the
path--a place they frequent. The opinion seems general that wheatears
are not so numerous as they used to be. You can always see two or three
on the Downs in autumn, but the shepherd said years ago he had heard of
one man catching seventy dozen in a day.
Perhaps such wholesale catches were the cause of the comparative
deficiency at the present day, not only by actual diminution of numbers,
but in partially diverting the stream of migration. Tradition is very
strong in birds (and all animated creatures); they return annually in
the face of terrible destruction, and the individuals do not seem to
comprehend the danger. But by degrees the race at large becomes aware of
and acknowledges the mistake, and slowly the original tracks are
deserted. This is the case with water-fowl, and even, some think, with
sea-fish.
There was not so much game on the part of the hills he frequented as he
had known when he was young, and with the decrease of the game the foxes
had become less numerous. There was less cover as the furze was ploughed
up. It paid, of course, better to plough it up, and as much as an
additional two hundred acres on a single farm had been brought under the
plough in his time. Partridges had much decreased, but there were still
plenty of hares: he had known the harriers sometimes kill two dozen a
day.
Plenty of rabbits still remained in places. The foxes' earths were in
their burrows or sometimes under a hollow tree, and when the word was
sent round the shepherds stopped them for the hunt very early in the
morning. Foxes used to be almost thick. He had seen as many as six
(doubtless the vixen and cubs) sunning themselves on the cliffs at
Beachy Head, lying on ledges before their inaccessible breeding-places,
in the face of the chalk.
At present he did not think there were more than two there. They
ascended and descended the cliff with ease, though not, of course, the
straight wall or precipice. He had known them fall over and be dashed to
pieces, as when fighting on the edge, or in winter by the snow giving
way under them. As the snow came drifting along the summit of the Down
it gradually formed a projecting eave or cornice, projecting the length
of the arm, and frozen.
Something like this may occasionally be seen on houses when the
partially melted snow has frozen again before it could quite slide off.
Walking on this at night, when the whole ground was white with snow, and
no part could be distinguished, the weight of the fox as he passed a
weak place caused it to give way, and he could not save himself. Last
winter he had had two lambs, each a month old, killed by a fox which ate
the heads and left the bodies; the fox always eating the head first,
severing it, whether of a hare, rabbit, duck, or the tender lamb, and
"covering"--digging a hole and burying--that which he cannot finish. To
the buried carcase the fox returns the next night before he kills again.
His dog was a cross with a collie: the old sheep-dogs were shaggier and
darker. Most of the sheep-dogs now used were crossed with the collie,
either with Scotch or French, and were very fast--too fast in some
respects. He was careful not to send them much after the flock,
especially after feeding, when, in his own words, the sheep had "best
walk slow then, like folk"--like human beings, who are not to be
hastened after a meal. If he wished his dog to fetch the flock, he
pointed his arm in the direction he wished the dog to go, and said,
"Put her back." Often it was to keep the sheep out of turnips or wheat,
there being no fences. But he made it a practice to walk himself on the
side where care was needed, so as not to employ the dog unless
necessary.
There is something almost Australian in the wide expanse of South Down
sheepwalks, and in the number of the flocks, to those who have been
accustomed to the small sheltered meadows of the vales, where forty or
fifty sheep are about the extent of the stock on many farms. The land,
too, is rented at colonial prices, but a few shillings per acre, so
different from the heavy meadow rents. But, then, the sheep-farmer has
to occupy a certain proportion of arable land as well as pasture, and
here his heavy losses mainly occur.
There is nothing, in fact, in this country so carefully provided against
as the possibility of an English farmer becoming wealthy. Much downland
is covered with furze; some seems to produce a grass too coarse, so that
the rent is really proportional. A sheep to an acre is roughly the
allowance.
From all directions along the roads the bleating flocks concentrate at
the right time upon the hillside where the sheep-fair is held. You can
go nowhere in the adjacent town except uphill, and it needs no hand-post
to the fair to those who know a farmer when they see him, the stream of
folk tender thither so plainly. It rains, as the shepherd said it would;
the houses keep off the drift somewhat in the town, but when this
shelter is left behind, the sward of the hilltop seems among the clouds.
The descending vapours close in the view on every side. The actual field
underfoot, the actual site of the fair, is visible, but the surrounding
valleys and the Downs beyond them are hidden with vast masses of grey
mist. For a moment, perhaps, a portion may lift as the breeze drives it
along, and the bold, sweeping curves of a distant hill appear, but
immediately the rain falls again and the outline vanishes. The glance
can only penetrate a few hundred yards; all beyond that becomes
indistinct, and some cattle standing higher up the hill are vague and
shadowy.
Like a dew, the thin rain deposits a layer of tiny globules on the coat;
the grass is white with them hurdles, flakes, everything is as it were
the eighth of an inch deep in water. Thus on the hillside, surrounded by
the clouds, the fair seems isolated and afar off. A great cart-horse is
being trotted out before the little street of booths to make him show
his paces; they flourish the first thing at hand--a pole with a red flag
at the end--and the huge frightened animal plunges hither and thither in
clumsy terror. You must look out for yourself and keep an eye over your
shoulder, except among the sheep-pens.
There are thousands of sheep, all standing with their heads uphill. At
the corner of each pen the shepherd plants his crook upright: some of
them have long brown handles, and these are of hazel with the bark on;
others are ash, and one of willow. At the corners, too, just outside,
the dogs are chained, and, in addition, there is a whole row of dogs
fastened to the tent pegs. The majority of the dogs thus collected
together from many miles of the Downs are either collies, or show a very
decided trace of the collie.
One old shepherd, an ancient of the ancients, grey and bent, has spent
so many years among his sheep that he has lost all notice and
observation--there is no "speculation in his eye" for anything but his
sheep. In his blue smock frock, with his brown umbrella, which he has
had no time or thought to open, he stands listening, all intent, to the
conversation of the gentlemen who are examining his pens. He leads a
young restless collie by a chain; the links are polished to a silvery
brightness by continual motion; the collie cannot keep still; now he
runs one side, now the other, bumping the old man, who is unconscious of
everything but the sheep.
At the verge of the pens there stand four oxen with their yokes, and the
long slender guiding-rod of hazel placed lightly across the necks of the
two foremost. They are quite motionless, except their eyes, and the
slender rod, so lightly laid across, will remain without falling. After
traversing the whole field, if you return you will find them exactly in
the same position. Some black cattle are scattered about on the high
ground in the mist, which thickens beyond them, and fills up the immense
hollow of the valley.
In the street of booths there are the roundabouts, the swings, the rifle
galleries--like shooting into the mouth of a great trumpet--the shows,
the cakes and brown nuts and gingerbread, the ale-barrels in a row, the
rude forms and trestle tables; just the same, the very same, we saw at
our first fair five-and-twenty years ago, and a hundred miles away. It
is just the same this year as last, like the ploughs and hurdles, and
the sheep themselves. There is nothing new to tempt the ploughboy's
pennies--nothing fresh to stare at.
The same thing year after year, and the same sounds--the dismal barrel
organs, and brazen instruments, and pipes, wailing, droning, booming.
How melancholy the inexpressible noise when the fair is left behind, and
the wet vapours are settling and thickening around it! But the
melancholy is not in the fair--the ploughboy likes it; it is in
ourselves, in the thought that thus, though the years go by, so much of
human life remains the same--the same blatant discord, the same
monotonous roundabout, the same poor gingerbread.
The ploughs are at work, travelling slowly at the ox's pace up and down
the hillside. The South Down plough could scarcely have been invented;
it must have been put together bit by bit in the slow years--slower than
the ox; it is the completed structure of long experience. It is made of
many pieces, chiefly wood, fitted and shaped and worked, as it were,
together, well seasoned first, built up, like a ship, by cunning of
hand.
None of these were struck out--a hundred a minute--by irresistible
machinery ponderously impressing its will on iron as a seal on wax--a
hundred a minute, and all exactly alike. These separate pieces which
compose the plough were cut, chosen, and shaped in the wheelwright's
workshop, chosen by the eye, guided in its turn by long knowledge of
wood, and shaped by the living though hardened hand of man. So
complicated a structure could no more have been struck out on paper in a
deliberate and single plan than those separate pieces could have been
produced by a single blow.