 6. Chichester and the Plain On leaving Chichester, West Street becomes the Portsmouth Road and passes through Fishborn A pleasant but dusty village. A mile or so beyond, and a little to the south, is Boschum, on one of the several arms of Chichester Harbour, once of some importance, but now chiefly mud. Boschum is the most interesting village in what may be called the Celci Peninsula. Yet how has its glory diminished? What is now a quiet abode of fishermen and the tarrying place of yachtsmen and artists? There are few Royal Academy exhibitions without the spire of Boschum Church, has been in its time a very factory of history. Vespasian's camp was hard-buy, and it is possible that certain Roman remains that have been found here were once part of his palace. Boschum claims to be the scene of Canute's encounter with the encroaching tide, which may be the case, although one has always thought of the king rebuking his flatterers, rather by the margin of the ocean itself, than inland at an estuary's edge. But beyond question, Canute had a palace here, and his daughter was buried in the church. Earl Godwin, father of Harold, last of the Saxons, dwelt here also. Da me basium! Give me a kiss. He is fabled to have said to Archbishop Eithelnoth, and on receiving it to have taken the salute as acquiescence in the request Da me basium! Probably the earliest, and also the most expensive, recorded example in England of this particular form of humour. It was from Boschum that Harold sailed on that visit to the Duke of Normandy, which resulted in the Battle of Hastings. In the Bayer tapestry he may be seen riding to Boschum with his company, and also putting up prayers for the success of his mission. Of this success we shall see more when we come to battle. Boschum furthermore claims Hubert of Boschum, the author of the Book of Beckett's Martyrdom, who was with St Thomas of Canterbury, when the assassins stabbed him to the death. The church is of great age. It is even claimed that the tower is the original Saxon, the circumstance that, in the representation of the edifice in the Bayer tapestry there is no tower, has been urged against this theory, although architectural realism in the embroidery has never been very noticeable. The bells, it is told, were once carried off in a Danish raid, but they brought their captors no luck, rather the reverse, since they so weighed upon the ship that she sank. When the present bells ring, the ancient submerged peel is said to ring also in sympathy at the bottom of the channel. A pretty habit which would suggest that bell-metal is happily and wisely superior to changes of religion, were it not explained by the unromantic principles of acoustics. A heavy pole, known as the staff of Bevis of Southampton and Arundel, was of old kept in Boschum Church. At high water, Boschum is a fair abode of peace. Whenever a straggling arm of the harbour is brimming full, when their still surfaces reflect the sky with a brighter light, and the fishing boats ride erect, Boschum is serenely beautiful and restful. But at low tide she is a slut. The withdrawing floods lay bare vast tracts of mud. The ships heel over into attitudes disreputably oblique. Stagnation reigns. Chidum by Boschum is widely famous for its wheat. Chidum white, or hedge wheat, was first produced a little more than a century ago by Mr. Woods, a farmer. He noticed one afternoon, probably on a Sunday when farmers are most noticing, an unfamiliar patch of wheat growing in a hedge. It contained thirty ears, in which were fourteen hundred corns. Mr. Woods carefully saved it and sowed it. The crop was eight pounds and a half. These he sowed, and the crop was forty-eight gallons. Thus it multiplied, until the time came to distribute it to other farmers at a high price. The cultivation of Chidum wheat by Mr. Woods at one side of the county, synchronized with the breeding of the best south-down sheep by John Elman at the other, as we shall see later. South of Chichester stretches the Manhood Peninsula, of which Selce is the principal town, the part of Sussex, most neglected by the traveller. In a county of hills, the stranger is not attracted by a district that might almost have been hewn out of Holland. But the ornithologist knows its value, and in a world increasingly bustling and progressive, there is a curious fascination in so remote and deliberate a region, over which, even in the finest weather, and during the busiest harvest, a suggestion of desolation broods. Nothing one feels can ever introduce success into this plain, and so thinking, one is at peace. A tramway between Chichester and Selce has to some extent opened up the east side of the peninsula, but the west is still remote, and will probably remain so. The country is, however, not interesting. A dead level of dusty road and grass, or arable land, broken only by hedges, dykes, white cottages, and the many homesteads, within their ramparts of windswept elms. Wheat and oats are the prevailing crops, still for the most part, cut and bound by hand. Of the villages in the centre of the peninsula, Seidelscham is the most considerable, with its handsome square church tower, and its huge red tide mill, now silent and weather-worn, standing mournfully at the head of the dry harbour of Pagham, whose waters once turned its wheels. On the west, on the shores of the Boscham estuary, or Chichester harbour, are the sleepy, amphibious villages of Appeldram, famous once for its salt and its smugglers, Burdom, and Earnley. Let no one be tempted to take a direct line across the fields from Selce to Earnley, for dykes and canals must effectively stop him. Indeed, cross-country walking in this part of the country is practically an impossibility, except by continuous deviations and doublings. In attempting one day to reach Earnley from Selce in this way, after giving up on the beach in despair, I came across several adders, and I once found one crossing a road absolutely in Selce. Selce is a straggling white village, or town, overpopulous with visitors in summer, empty, save for its regular inhabitants, in winter. The oldest and truest part of Selce is a fishing village on the east shore of the bill, a little settlement of tarred tenements and lobster pots. Selce Church, now on the confines of the town, once stood a mile or more away. Wither it was removed, the stones being numbered, and, like Temple Bar, again set up. The chancell was, however, not removed, but left desolate in the fields. Selce Bill is a tongue of land projecting into a shallow sea, a lighthouse being useless to warn strange mariners of the sand-banks of this district, a light ship known as the Oars, flashes its rays far out in the channel. The sea has played curious pranks on the Selce coast. Beneath the beach, and a large tract of the sea, now lies what was once, four hundred years ago, a park of deer, which, in its most prosperous day, extended for miles. The shallow water covering it is still called the park by the fishermen, who drop their nets, where once the bucks and does of Selce were wont to graze. But the sea has obliterated more than the pastureage of the deer. A mile distant from the present shore stood the first monastery erected in Sussex after Wilfred's conversion of the South Saxons to Christianity, although St. Wilfred eventually found a home in Sussex and worked hard among its people. His first attempt to bring Christianity to the county was, according to his friend Edda's, Vita Wilfredi, ill-starred. I quote the story, A great gale blowing from the south-east, the swelling waves threw them on the unknown coast of the South Saxons. The sea, too, left the ship and men, and retreating from the land and leaving the shore uncovered, retired into the depths of the abyss. And the heathen, coming with a great army, intended to seize the ship to divide the spoil of money, to take them captives forthwith, and to put to the sword those who resisted, to whom our great bishop spoke gently and peaceably, offering much money wishing to redeem their souls. But they with stern and cruel hearts, like Pharaoh, would not let the people of the Lord go, saying proudly that all that the sea threw on the land became as much theirs as their own property. And the idolatrous chief priest of the heathen, standing on a lofty mound, strove like barlam to curse the people of God, and to bind their hands by his magic arts. Then one of the bishop's companions hurled like David, a stone blessed by all the people of God, which struck the cursing magician in the forehead, and pierced his brain when an unexpected death surprised, as it did Goliath, falling back a corpse in sandy places. The heathen therefore preparing to fight, vainly attacked the people of God, but the Lord fought for the few, even as Gideon by the command of the Lord with three hundred warriors, slew at one attack twelve thousand of the Midianites. And so the comrades of our holy bishop well armed and brave, though few in number, they were a hundred and twenty men, the number of the years of Moses, determined and agreed that none should turn his back in flight from the other, but would either win death with glory or life with victory, for both alike are easy to the Lord. So St. Wilfrith, with his clerk, fell on his knees, and lifting his hands to heaven, again sought help from the Lord, for as Moses triumphed when her and Aaron supported his hands, by frequently imploring the protection of the Lord, when Joshua, the son of Nun, was fighting with the people of God against Amalek, thus these few Christians after thrice repulsing the fierce and untamed heathen routed them with great slaughter, with a loss, strange to say, of only five on their side. And their great priest, Wilfrith, prayed to the Lord his God, who immediately ordered the sea to return a full hour before it won't, so that when the heathen on the arrival of their king were preparing for a fourth attack, with all their forces, the rising sea covered with its waves the whole of the shore, and floated the ship, which sailed into the deep, but greatly glorified by God and returning him thanks, with a south wind they reached Sandwich, a harbour of safety. The Sussex people, it would seem, do not take kindly to missionaries, for John Wesley records that he had less success in this county than in all England. Between Celci and Bogner lies Pagam, famous in the pages of Knox's ornithological rambles, but otherwise unknown. Of the lost glories of Pagam, which was once a harbour, but is now dry, let Mr Knox speak. Here in the dead long summer days, when not a breath of air has been stirring, have I frequently remained for hours, stretched on the hot shingle, and gazed at the osprey as he sawed aloft, or watched the little islands of mud at the turn of the tide, as each gradually rose from the receding waters, and was successfully taken possession of by flocks of sandpipers and ring-dotterls, after various circumvolutions on the part of each detachment, now simultaneously presenting their snowy breasts to the sunshine, now suddenly turning their dusky backs, so that the dazzled eye lost sight of them from the contrast, while the prolonged cry of the Titeril, and the melancholy note of the pee-wit from the distant swamp, have mingled with the scream of the turn, and the taunting laugh of the gull. Titeril is the Sussex provincial name for the Wimbrel end-foot note. Here have I watched the oyster-catcher, as he flew from point to point, and cautiously waded into the shallow water, and the patient Heron, that pattern of a fisherman, as with retracted neck and eyes fixed on vacancy, he has stood for hours without a single snap motionless as a statue. Here, too, have I pursued the guillemot, or craftily endeavoured to cut off the retreat of the diver, by mooring my boat across the narrow passage, through which alone he could return to the open sea without having recourse to his reluctant wings. Nor can I forget how often, during the Siberian winter of 1838, when a whole gale, as the sailors have it, has been blowing up from the northeast, I used to take up my position on the long and narrow ridge of shingle, which separated this paradise from the raging waves without, and sheltered behind a hillock of seaweed, with my long duck-gun and a trusty double, or half-buried in a hole in the sand, I used to watch the legions of water-birds as they neared the shore, and dropped distrustfully among the breakers, at a distance from the desired haven, until, gaining confidence from the accession of numbers, some of the bolder spirits the pioneers of the army would flap their wings, rise from the white waves and make for the calm water. Here they come! I can see the pied golden eye, preeminent among the advancing party, now the potchard, with his copper-coloured head and neck, may be distinguished from the darker-sculpt duck, already the finger is on the trigger, and perhaps they suddenly veer to the right and left, far beyond the reach of my longest barrel, or it may be come swishing overhead, and leave a companion or two struggling on the shingle, or floating on the shallow waters of the harbour. Pagam harbour is now reclaimed, and where once was mud, or at high tide, shallow water, is rank, grass and thistles. One ship that seems to have waited a little too long before making for the open sea again, now lies high and dry, a forlorn hulk. Pagam church is among the airiest that I know, with a shingle spire, the counterpart of boschums on the other side of the peninsula. The walk from Pagam to Bogna along the sand is uninspiring, and not too easy, for the sand can be very soft. About a mile west of Bogna, one is driven in land, just after passing, as perfect an example of the simple yet luxurious seaside home as I remember to have seen, all on one floor, thatched, shaded by trees, surrounded by its garden, and facing the channel. Among the unattractive types of town, few are more dismal than the watering place Moenke. Bogna must, I fear, come under this heading. Its reputation, such as it is, was originally made by Princess Charlotte, daughter of George III, who found the air recuperative, and who was probably not unwilling to lend her prestige to a resort, as her brother George was doing at Brighton, and her sister Amelia had done at Worthing. But before the Princess Charlotte, Sir Richard Hottam, the Hatter, had come, determined at any cost to make the town popular. One of his methods was to rename it Hot Hampton. His efforts were, however, only moderately successful, and he died in 1799, leaving, to what Horsefield calls, his astonished heirs, only eight thousand pounds out of a great fortune. The name Hot Hampton soon vanished. The local authorities of Bogna seem to be keenly alive to the value of enterprise, for their walls are covered with instructions as to what may or may not be done in the interests of cleanliness and popularity. A new sea wall has been built, receptacles for waste paper continually confront one, and deck chairs at tuppence for three hours are practically unavoidable. And yet Bogna remains a dull place, once the visitor has left his beech abode, tent or bathing-box whichever it might be. It seems to be a town without resources, but it has the interest, denied one in more fashionable watering-places, of presenting old and new Bogna at the same moment. Not that old Bogna is really old, but it is instructive to see the kind of crescent which was considered the last word in architectural enterprise when our great-grandmothers were young, and would take the sea air. From Bogna it is a mere step to Felpham, a village less than a mile to the east. Whether or not one goes there today is a matter of taste, but a hundred years ago to admit a visit was to confess oneself a boar, for William Haley, the poet and friend of genius, lived there, and his castellated stucco house became a shrine. At that day it seems to have been no uncommon sight for the visitor to Bogna to be refreshed by the spectacle of the poet falling from his horse. According to his biographer, Cowper's Johnny of Norfolk, Haley descended to earth almost as often as Alice's white knight, partially from the high spirit of his steed, and partly from a habit which he never abandoned, of wearing military spurs and carrying an umbrella. The memoir of the poet contains this agreeable passage. The editor was once riding gently by his side on the Stony Beach of Bogna, when the wind suddenly reversed his umbrella as he unfolded it. His horse with a single but desperate plunge pitched him on his head in an instant. On another occasion, on the same visit, he was tossed into the air on the downs at the precise moment when an interested friend whom they had just left, being apprehensive of what would happen, was anxiously viewing him from his window through a telescope. Those who look through telescopes are rarely so fortunate. It is odd that Haley, a delicate and heavy man suffering from hip disease, should have taken so little hurt. Although he had a covered passage for horse exercise in the grounds of his villa, no amount of practice seems to have improved his seat. This covered way has been removed, but a mulberry tree planted by Haley still flourishes. Whenever Haley was ill he became an object of intense interest to visitors at Bogna. Binstead's library in the town exhibited a daily bulletin, and in 1819 the Prince and Princess of Saxe-Coburg called upon him, while the Princess of Hess-Homberg on her return sent a prescription from Germany. Mrs. Opie, the novelist who stayed with Mr. Haley every summer, and also served as a magnet to devout sojourners at Bogna, has left an account of the poet's habits, which is vastly more entertaining than his poetry. He rose at six or earlier, and at once composed some devotional verse. At breakfast he read to Mrs. Opie. Afterwards Mrs. Opie read to him. At eleven they drank coffee, and before he dressed for dinner a very temperate meal Mrs. Opie sang. After dinner there was more reading allowed, the matter being either manuscript compositions of Mr. Haley's or modern publications. Mr. Haley took cocoa and Mrs. Opie tea, and afterwards Mrs. Opie read aloud or sang. At nine the servants came to prayers, which were original compositions of Mr. Haley's, read by him in a very impressive manner, and before bed Mrs. Opie sang one of Mr. Haley's hymns. Haley's grave is at Felpham, and his epitaph by Mrs. Opie may be read by the industrious on the wall of the church. Among the many epitaphs on his neighbours by Haley himself, who had a special knack of mortuary verse, is this on a Felpham blacksmith. My sledge and hammer lie reclined. My bellows too have lost their wind. My fires extinct, my forge decayed, and in the dust my vice is laid. My coal is spent, my iron gone, the nails are driven, my work is done. The last verses that Haley wrote have more charm and delicacy than perhaps anything else among his works. Ye gentle birds that perch aloof and smooth your pinions on my roof, preparing for departure hence air winter's angry threats commence. Like you my soul would smooth her plume for longer flights beyond the tomb. May God, by whom is seen and heard departing man and wandering bird, in mercy mark us for his own, and guide us to the land unknown. But it is not Haley that gives its glory to Felpham. The glory of Felpham is that William Blake was happy there for nearly three years. It was at Felpham that he saw the Fairy's Funeral. Did you ever see a Fairy's Funeral, ma'am? he asked a visitor. Never, sir. I have. I was walking alone in my garden. There was great stillness among the branches and flowers, and more than common sweetness in the air. I heard a low and pleasant sound, and I knew not whence it came. At last I saw the broad leaf of a flower move, and underneath it I saw a procession of creatures of the size and colour of green and grey grasshoppers bearing a body laid out on a rose leaf, which they buried with songs, and then disappeared. It was a Fairy's Funeral. Blake settled at Felpham to be near Haley, for whom he had a number of commissions to execute. He engraved illustrations to Haley's works, and painted eighteen heads for Haley's library. Among them Shakespeare, Homer, and Haley himself, but all have vanished. The present owner knows not where. In some verses which Blake addressed to Anna Flaxman, the wife of the sculptor, in September 1800, a few days before moving from London to the Sussex Coast, he says, This song to the flower of Flaxman's joy, To the blossom of hope for a sweet decoy, Do all that you can, and all that you may, To entice him to Felpham, and far away. Away to sweet Felpham, for heaven is there. The ladder of angels descends through the air. On the turret its spiral does softly descend. Through the village then winds. At my cot it does end. Blake's house still stands, a retired, thatched cottage, facing the sea, but some distance from it. In a letter to Flaxman a little later, he says, Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides its golden gates. The windows are not obstructed by vapours. Voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard. Their forms more distinctly seen. And my cottage is also a shadow of their houses. Beside the sea, Blake communed with the spirits of Dante and Homer, Milton, and the Hebrew prophets. Blake's sojourn at Felpham ended in 1803. A grotesque and annoying incident marred its close. The story of which, as told by the poet in a letter to Mr. Butler, certainly belongs to the history of Sussex. It should, however, first be stated that an ex-soldier in the Royal Dragoons, named John Skollfield, had accused Blake of uttering seditious words. The letter runs, His enmity arises from my having turned him out of my garden, into which he was invited as an assistant by a gardener at work therein, without my knowledge that he was so invited. I desired him as politely as possible to go out of the garden. He made me an impertinent answer. I insisted on his leaving the garden. He refused. I still persisted in desiring his departure. He then threatened to knock out my eyes, with many abominable implications, and with some contempt for my person. It affronted my foolish pride. I therefore took him by the elbows and pushed him before me, until I had got him out. There I intended to have left him, but he, turning about, put himself into a posture of defiance, threatening and swearing at me. I, perhaps foolishly and, perhaps not, stepped out at the gate, and, putting aside his blows, took him again by the elbows, and, keeping his back to me, pushed him forward down the road about fifty yards. He, all the while endeavouring to turn round and strike me, and raging and cursing, which drew out several neighbours. At length, when I had got him to where he was quartered, which was very quickly done, we were met at the gate by the master of the house, the Fox Inn, who is the proprietor of my cottage, and his wife and daughter, and the man's comrade, and several other people. My landlord compelled the soldiers to go indoors after many abusive threats against me and my wife from the two soldiers, but not one word of threat on account of sedition was uttered at that time. As a result, Blake was hailed before the magistrates and committed for trial. The trial was held in the Guild Hall at Chichester on January 11th 1804. Haley, in spite of having been thrown from his horse on a flint with, says Gilchrist, Blake's biographer, more than usual violence, was in attendance to swear to the poet's character, and Calpa's friend Rose, a clever barrister, had been retained. According to the report in the county paper, William Blake, an engraver at Felpin, was tried on a charge exhibited against him by two soldiers for having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions, such as, damn the king, damn all his subjects, damn his soldiers, they are all slaves. When Bonaparte comes it will be cut throat for cut throat, and the weakest must go to the wall. I will help him, and so on and so on. Blake electrified the court by calling out, FALSE! in the midst of the military evidence, the invented character of which was, however, so obvious, that's an acquittal resulted. In defiance of all decency, the spectators cheered, and Haley carried off the sturdy Republican, as he was at heart, to Mid-Lavent, to supp at Mrs. Pools. Mr. Gilchrist found an old fellow who had been present at the trial, drawn thither by the promise of seeing the great man of the neighborhood, Mr. Haley, all that he could remember was Blake's flashing eye. The fox-in, by the way, is still as it was, but the custom I fancy goes more to the thatched house, which adds to the charm of refreshment, a museum, containing such treasures as a petrified coconut, the skeleton of a lobster 28 years old, and a representation of Moses in the bulrushes. A third and fourth great man of a different type, both from Haley and Blake, met at Felpham in 1819. One was Cyril Jackson, dean of Christ's church, who, lying on his deathbed in the manor house, was visited by the other, his old pupil, the first gentleman in Europe. From the east side of the Arran Valley, Arundel is the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old, or older, but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even Lewis, among her downs. Arundel clings to the side of a shaggy hill above the Arran. Castle, Cathedral, Church, these are Arundel. The town itself is secondary, subordinate, feudal. The castle is what one likes a castle to be, a mass of battlemented stone, with a keep, a gateway, and a history, and yet more habitable than ever. So many of the rich make no effort to live in their ancestral halls, and what might be a home, carrying on the tradition of ages, is so often a mere show, that defined an historic castle like Arundel, still lived in, is very gratifying. In Sussex alone are several half-ruined houses, that the builders could quickly make habitable once more. Arundel Castle, in spite of time and the sieges of 1102, 1139, and 1643, is both comfortable and modern. Arundel still depends for her life upon the complacence of her overlord. I know of no town with so low a pulse as this precipitous little settlement, under the shadow of Rome and the Duke. In spite of picnic parties in the park, in spite of anglers from London, in spite of the railway in the valley, Arundel is still medieval and curiously foreign. On a very hot day, as one climbs the hill to the Cathedral, one might be in old France, and certainly in the Middle Ages. Times' revenges have had their play in this town. Although the Church is still bravely of the establishment, half of it is closed to the Anglican visitor, the Chancellor having been a judge to the private property of the Dukes of Norfolk, and the once dominating position of the edifice has been impaired by the proximity of the new Roman Catholic Church of St. Philip Nerai, which the present Duke has been building these many years. Within, it is finished, a very charming and delicate feat in stone, but the spire has yet to come. The old Irish soldier, humorous and be meddled, who keeps watch and ward over the feign, is not the least of its merits. Although the Chancellor of the parish church has been closed, permission to enter may occasionally be obtained. It is rich in family tombs of great interest and beauty, including that of the 19th Earl of Arendel, the patron of William Caxton. In the siege of Arendel Castle in 1643, the soldiers of the parliamentarians under Sir William Waller fired their cannon from the church tower. They also turned the church into a barracks, and injured much stonework beyond repair. A fire beacon blazed of old on the spire to serve as a mark for vessels entering Little Hampton Harbour. Bevis of South Hampton, the giant who, when he visited the Isle of Wight, waded thither, was a warder at Arendel Castle, where he ate a whole ox every week with bread and mustard, and drank two hogsheads of beer, hence Bevis Tower. His sword Morglay is still to be seen in the armory of the castle. His bones lie beneath a mound in the park, and the town was named after his horse. So runs a pretty story which is, however, demolished, with the ruthlessness that comes so easily to the antiquary and philologist. Bevis Tower, science declares, was named probably after another Bevis. There was one at the Battle of Lewis, who took prisoner Richard King of the Romans, and was knighted for it, while Arendel is a corruption of Irondele, a swallow. Mr. Lower mentions that in recent times in Sussex, swallow was a common name in stables, even for heavy-drey horses. But before accepting finally the swallow theory, we ought to hear what Fuller has to say. Some will have it so named from Arendel, the horse of Boe voice, the great champion. I confess it is not without precedence in antiquity for places to take names from horses, meeting with the promontory Bukephalus in Peloponnesus, where some report the horse of Alexander buried, and Bologna's will have it for the same cause, called Cavala at this day. But this castle was so called long before that imaginary horse was fold, who cannot be fancied elder than his master, Boe voice, flourishing after the conquest, long before which Arendel was so called from the river Arend, running hard by it. The owls that once multiplied in the keep have now disappeared. They were established there a hundred years or so ago by the eleventh duke, and certain of them were known by the names of public men. Please, your grace, Lord Thurlow has laid an egg, is an historic speech handed down by tradition. Lord Thurlow, the owl in question, died at a great age in 1859. To walk through Arendel Park is to receive a vivid impression of the size and richness of our little isolated England. Two or three great towns could be hidden in it unknown to each other. Valley succeeds to valley. New herds of deer come into sight at almost every turn, as far as the eye can see the grass-hills roll away. Those accustomed to parks whose deer are always huddled close, and whose wall is never distant, are bewildered by the vastness of this enclosure. Yet one has also the feeling that such magnificence is right. To so lovely a word as Arendel, to the premier duke and hereditary earl-martial of England, should fittingly fall this fast-spreading and comely pleasantce, had Arendel Park been small and empty of deer, what a blunder it would be. Walking west of Arendel through the vast rural wood, we come suddenly upon Punchbowl Green, and open a great green valley, dominated by the white facade of Dale Park House, below Maidhurst, one of the most remote of Sussex villages. By keeping due west for another mile, Slindon is reached. This village is one of the Sussex Backwaters, as one might say. It lies on no road that anyone ever travels except for the purpose of going to Slindon, or coming from it, and those that perform either of these actions are few. Yet all who have not seen Slindon are by so much the poorer, for Slindon House is nobly Elizabethan, with fine pictures and hiding-places, and Slindon beaches are among the aristocracy of trees. And here I should like to quote a Sussex poem of haunting wistfulness and charm, which was written by Mr. Hilaire Bellock, who once walked to Rome, and is an old dweller at Slindon. The South Country When I am living in the Midlands that are sodden and unkind, I light my lamp in evening, my work is left behind, and the great hills of the South Country come back into my mind. The great hills of the South Country, they stand along the sea, and it's there walking in the high woods that I could wish to be, and the men that were boys when I was a boy, walking along with me. The men that live in North England, I saw them for a day. Their hearts are set upon the waste-fells, their skies are fast and gray. From their castle walls a man may see the mountains far away. The men that live in West England, they see the seven strong, a rolling on rough water brown, light aspen leaves along. They have the secret of the rocks, and the oldest kind of song. But the men that live in the South Country are the kindest and most wise. They get their laughter from the loud surf, and the faith in their happy eyes comes surely from our sister the spring, when over the sea she flies. The violets suddenly bloom at her feet. She blesses us with surprise. I never get between the pines, but I smell the Sussex air, nor I never come on a belt of sand, but my home is there. And along the sky the line of the downs, so noble and so bare. A lost thing could I never find, nor a broken thing mend, and I fear I shall be all alone when I get towards the end. Who will be there to comfort me, or who will be my friend? I will gather and carefully make my friends of the men of the Sussex wheeled. They watched the stars from silent folds. They stiffly ploughed the field. By them and the God of the South Country my poor soul shall be healed. If I ever become a rich man, or if ever I grow to be old, I will build a house with deep thatch to shelter me from the cold, and there shall the Sussex songs be sung, and the story of Sussex told, I will hold my house in the high wood within a walk of the sea, and the men who were boys when I was a boy shall sit and drink with me. Richard Newland, the father of Sirius Cricket, came from this parish. He was born in 1718 or thereabouts, and in 1745 he made eighty-eight for England against Kent. He was left-handed, and the finest bat ever seen in those days. He taught Richard Niren of Hambledon all the skill and judgment that that noble general possessed. Niren communicated his knowledge to the Hambledon eleven, and the game was made. An interest in historical veracity compels me to add that William Beldom, Silver Billy, talking to Mr. Pycroft, discounted some of Niren's praise. Cricket, he said, was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least. He was born in 1766. But that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard Newland of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard Niren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play Newland. Now, a second-rate man of our parish beat Newland easily, so you may judge what the rest of Sussex then were. But this is disregarding the characteristic uncertainty of the game. If one would spend a day far from mankind on high ground, there is no better way than to walk from Arundel through Houghton Forest, where, as we have seen, Charles II avoided the Governor, to Cocking. CHAPTER VIII. LITTLE HAMPTON LITTLE HAMPTON is favoured in having both sea and river. It also has lawns between the houses and the beach, as at Dieppe, and is as nearly a children's paradise as exists. The sea at low tide recedes almost beyond the reach of the ordinary paddler, which is, as it should be, except for those that would swim. A harbour, a pier, a lighthouse, a windmill—all these are within a few yards of each other. On the neighbouring beach, springing from the stones, you find the yellow-horned poppy, beautiful both in flower and leaf, and the delicate tamarisk makes a natural hedge parallel with the sea, to Worthing on the one side and to Bogner on the other. The little villages in the flats behind the eastern tamarisk hedge, Rustington, Preston, Fering, are, in summer, veritable sun-traps with their white walls dazzling in radiance. Such trees as grow about here all bow to the north-east, bent to that posture by the prevailing south-west winds. A Sussex-man on the hills or south of them, lost at night, has but to ascertain the outline of a tree, and he may get his bearings. If he cannot see so much as that, he has but to feel the bark for Lycan, which grows on the north-east, or lee, side. It was at Little Hampton in September 1817 that Coleridge met Carey, the translator of Dante. Carey was walking on the beach, reciting Homer to his son. Up came a noticeable man with large gray eyes. Sir, yours is a face I should know. I am Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The county paper for February 27, 1796, has this paragraph. On Monday last a duel was fought betwixt Mr. R. N. and Lieutenant B. Y., both of Little Hampton, in a field near that place, which after the discharge of each a pistol terminated without bloodshed, the dispute, we understand, originated about a pew in the parish church. A local proverb says that, if you eat winkles in March, it is as good as a dose of medicine, which reminds me that Sussex has many wise sayings of its own. Here is a piece of Sussex council in connection with the roaring month. If from fleas you would be free, on the first of March let all your windows closed be. I quote two other rhymes. If you would wish your bees to thrive, gold must be paid for every hive, for when they're bought with other money there will be neither swarm nor honey. The first butterfly you see, cut off his head across your knee, bury the head under a stone, and a lot of money will be your own. On which Sunday the devout Sussex man eats roast veal and gooseberry pudding. A Sussex child born on Sunday can neither be hanged nor drowned. West of Little Hampton is an architectural treasure in the shape of climping church, which no one should miss. The way is over the ferry and along the road to the first signboard, when one strikes northward towards Ford, and comes suddenly upon this squat and solid feign. A Saxon church stood here, built by the prioresse of Liaminster, before the conquest. To Roger de Montgomerie was the manna given by the conqueror, as part of the earldom of Arundel and Chichester, together with Atherington Manna, much of which is now like Celci's Park under the channel. De Montgomerie gave climping manna to the nuns of Almanèche, by whom the present Norman fortress tower, with walls four and a quarter feet thick, was added, and in 1253 John de Climping, the vicar, rebuilt the remainder. The church is thus six and a half centuries old, and parts of it are older. Boschum for antiquity boxgrove for beauty and climping for perfection is the dictum of an antiquary quoted by the present vicar, in a little pamphlet history of his parish. As regards the Norman doorway at any rate, he is right. There is nothing in Sussex to excel that. While in general architectural attraction the building is of the richest. It is also a curiously homely and ingraciating church. One of the new windows representing St. Paul has a peculiar interest, as the vicar tells us. St. Paul was a prisoner at Rome shortly after Caracticus, the British chief, whose daughter, Claudia, married Pudens, both friends of the apostle. End note. Pudens afterwards commanded the Roman soldiers stationed at Regnum, Chichester. And if St. Paul came to Britain at Claudia's request, as ancient writers testify, he certainly would visit Sussex. How close this brings us here in Sussex to the Bible's story. At Bailey's court now, a farmhouse, the Benedictine monks of Seas, also protégés of Robert de Montgomerie, had their chapel, remains of which are still to be seen. Climping, which otherwise lives its own life, is the result of golfers, who to the vicar's regret play all Sunday and turn Easter-day into a heathen festival, and of the sportsmen of the Sussex Coursing Club, who find that the terrified climping hair gives satisfaction beyond most in the county. Of Ford, north of Climping, there is nothing to say, except that popular rumour has it that its minute and uninteresting church, the antithesis of climping, was found one day by accident in a bed of nettles. A good eastern walk from Littleampton takes one by the sea to Goring and then inland over Highdown Hill to Angmering, and so to Littleampton again, or to Arundel, our present centre. Goring touches literature in two places. The great house was built by Sir Bish Shelley, grandfather of the poet, and in the village died in 1887 Richard Jefferies, author of The Story of My Heart, after a life of ill health spent in the service of nature. Many beautiful and sympathetic descriptions of Sussex are scattered about in Jefferies' books of essays, notably To Brighton, The South Down Shepherd, and The Breeze on Beachy Head in Nature Near London, Climatis Lane, Nature Near Brighton, Sea, Sky and Down, and January in the Sussex Woods, in The Life of the Fields, Sunny Brighton in The Open Air, and The Countryside Sussex, and Buckhurst Park in Field and Hedgerow. Jefferies had a way of blending experiences and concealing the names of places, which makes it difficult to know exactly what part of Sussex he is describing, but I think I could lead anyone to Climatis Lane. I might, by the way, have remarked of South Hearting that the luxuriance of the Climatis in its hedges is unsurpassed. John Taylor, the water poet, has a dogrol narrative entitled A New Discovery by Sea with a Wery from London to Salisbury, 1623, wherein he mentions a woeful night with fleas at Goring, and pens a couplet, worthy to take a place with the famous description of a similar visitation in Aethyn, who in their fury nipped and skipped so hotly that all our skins were almost turned to motley. Taylor gives us in the same record a pleasant picture of the Sussex Constable in 1623. The night before a Constable there came who asked my trade, my dwelling, and my name, my business, and a troop of questions more, and wherefore did we land upon that shore, to whom I framed my answers true and fit, according to his plenteous want of wit, but were my words all true, or if I lied, with neither could I get him satisfied? He asked if we were pirates. We said no, as if we had, we would have told him so. He said that lords sometimes would enterprise to escape and leave the kingdom in disguise, but I assured him on my honest word that I was no disguised night or lord. He told me then that I must go six miles to a justice there, Sir John, or else Sir Giles. I told him I was loath to go so far, and he told me he would my journey bar. Thus, what with fleas and with the several parades of the officer and his associates, we arose to go. But fortune made us stay. The Constable had stolen our oars away, and borne them thence a quarter of a mile, right through a lane beyond a gate and style, and hid them there to hinder my depart, for which I wished him hanged with all my heart. A plowman for us found our oars again, within a field well filled with barley-grain. Then, madly, gladly out to sea we thrust, against winds and storms and many a churlish gust, by Kingston, Chapel, and by Rushington, by Little Hampton, and by Middleton. Highdown, above Goring, is a good hill in itself, conical in shape, as a hill should be, according to the exacting ideas of childhood, with a sweeping view of the coast and the channel. But its fame as a resort of holiday-makers comes less from its position and height, than from the circumstance that John Oliver is buried upon it. John Oliver was the miller of Highdown Hill. When not grinding corn, he seems to have busied himself with thoughts upon the necessary end of all things, to such an extent that his meditations on the subject gradually became a mania. His coffin was made while he was still a young man, and it remained under his bed until its time was ripe. Fitted, to bring it to a point of preparedness unusual even with the Chinese, those masters of anticipatory obsequies, with wheels, which the miller I doubt not regularly oiled. John Oliver did not stop there. Having his coffin comfortably at hand, he proceeded to erect his tomb. This was built in 1766, with tedious verses upon it from the miller's pen, while in an alcove near the tomb was a mechanical arrangement of death's heads, which might keep the miller's thoughts from straying, when as with Dr. Johnson's philosopher cheerfulness would creep in. The miller lived in the company of his coffin, his tomb, and his memento mori, until 1793, when at the age of eighty-four his hopes were realized. Those who love death die old. Between two and three thousand persons attended the funeral. No one was permitted to wear any but gay clothes, and the funeral sermon was read by a little girl of twelve, from the text Micah, chapter seven, verses eight and nine. The mill of John Oliver has vanished, nothing but a depression in the turf, now indicating where its foundations stood. Too many Sussex windmills have disappeared. Clayton still has her twain, landmarks for many miles. I have seen them on exceptionally clear days from the Kentish hills, and other windmills are scattered over the county, but many more than now exist have ceased to be victims of the power of steam. There is probably no contrast, aesthetically more to the disadvantage of the modern substitute than that of the steam mill of today, with the windmill of yesterday. The steam mill is always ugly, always dusty, always noisy, usually in a town. The windmill stands high and white, a thing of life and radiance and delicate beauty, surrounded by grass, in communion with the heavens. Such noise as it has is elemental, justifiable, like a ship's cordage in a gale. No one would paint a steam mill. A picture with a windmill can hardly be a failure. Constable, who knew everything about the magic of windmills, painted several in Sussex, one even at Brighton. Brighton now has but one mill. There used to be many, one in the West Hill Road, a comelier landmark than the Stucco Congregational Tower that has taken its place close by, and serves as the town's sentinel from almost every point of approach. In 1797 a miller near Brighton anticipated American enterprise by moving his mill bodily to a place two miles distant by the help of 80 oxen. Another weakness of steam mills is that they are apparently without millers. At least there is no unmistakable dominating presence in a white hat, to whom one can confidently apply the definite article, as in the mill on the hill. Millers' men there are in plenty, but the miller is lacking. This is because steam mills belong to companies. Thus with the passing of the windmill we lose also the miller, that notable figure in English life and tradition. Always jolly if the old songs are true, often eccentric as the story of John Oliver has shown, and usually a character, as becomes one who lives by the four winds, or by water, for the miller of tradition was often found in a water mill too. The water miller's empire has been threatened less than that of the windmill, for there is no sudden cessation of water power, as of wind power. Sussex still has many water mills, cool and splashing homes of peaceful bustle. Long may they endure. Highdown Hill has other associations. In 1812 the Gentleman of the Weald met the Gentleman of the Sea-coast at Cricket on its dividing summit. The game which was for one hundred guineas was a very close thing, the Gentleman of the Weald winning by only seven runs. Among the Gentleman of the Sea-coast was Mr. Osbaldston, while the principal Gentleman of the Weald was Mr. E. H. Budd. A mile north of Highdown Hill, in a thickly wooded country, are patching and Clapham. Patching celebrated for its pond which washes the high-road to Arendelle, and Clapham for its woods. Three hundred and more years ago patching cops was the scene of a treasonable meeting between William Shelly and Ancestor of the Poet, one branch of whose family long held Mitchell Grove, where Henry VIII was entertained by our plotter's grandfather, and Charles Padgett. Sturdy Roman Catholics both who thus sought each other out on the night of September 16th, 1583, to confer as to the possibility of invading England, deposing Elizabeth, and setting Mary Queen of Scots upon the throne. Nothing came of the plot save the imprisonment of Shelly, who was condemned to death but escaped the sentence, and the flight of Padgett to hatch further treason abroad. The last Shelly to hold Mitchell Grove now no more was Sir John, who after it had been in the family for 350 years, sold it in 1800. This was the Sir John Shelly who composed the following epitaph in Clapham Church, one of Gilbert Scott's restorations, to commemorate the very remarkable virtues of his lady, untimely snatched from his side. Here lies the body of Wilhelmina Shelly, who departed this life the 21st of March, 1772, aged 23 years. She was a pattern for the world to follow, such a being, both in form and mind, perhaps never existed before, a most dutiful, affectionate, and virtuous wife, a most tender and anxious parent, a most sincere and constant friend, a most amiable and elegant companion, universally benevolent, generous and humane, the pride of her own sex, the admiration of ours. She lived universally beloved and admired, she died as generally revered and regretted, a loss felt by all who had the happiness of knowing her, by none to be compared to that of her disconsolate, affectionate, loving, and in this world everlastingly miserable husband. Sir John Shelly, who has caused this inscription to be engraved. The beach wards in this parish, patching, and its immediate neighbourhood are very productive of the truffle, Lycopurd and Tuber. About forty years ago William Leach came from the West Indies, with some hogs accustomed to hunt for truffles, and proceeding along the coast from the land's end in Cornwall to the mouth of the River Thames, determined to fix on that spot where he found the most abundant. He took four years to try the experiment, and at length settled in this parish where he carried on the business of truffle hunter till his death. Angmering, which we may take on our return to Arendl, is a typically dusty Sussex village, with white houses and thatched roofs, and a rather finer church than most. On our way back to Arendl, in the middle of a wood, a little more than a mile from Angmering to the West, we come upon an interesting relic of a day when tables bore nobler loads than now they do. A decoy pond formed originally to supply wild duck to the kitchen of Arendl Castle, but now no longer used. The long tapering tunnels of wire netting into which the tamed ducks of the decoy lured their wild cousins are still in place, although the wire has largely perished. That an old house near the decoy, now converted into cottages, which any native will gladly and amusedly point out, lived in the reign of Henry VIII Lady Palmer, the famous mother of the Palmer triplets, who were distinguished from other triplets not only by being born each on a successive Sunday, but by receiving each the honour of knighthood. The curious circumstances of their birth seemed to be well attested. CHAPTER IX Five miles to the north of Arendl by road, over the Aron at Houghton's ancient bridge, restored by the bishops of Chichester in the fifteenth century, and a few minutes by rail, is Amberley, the fishing metropolis of Sussex, where every Sunday in the season London anglers meet to drop their lions in friendly rivalry. Ammerly trout, as Walton calls them, and Arendl mullet, are the best of the Arendl's treasures, and this reminds me of Fuller's tribute to Sussex's fish, which may well be quoted in this watery neighbourhood. Now, as this county is eminent for both sea and river fish, namely an Arendl mullet, a Chichester lobster, a Selsey cockle, and an Ammerly trout, so Sussex aboundeth with more carps than any other of this nation, and though not so great as Jovius reported to be found in the Lurian lake in Italy, weighing more than fifty pounds, yet those generally of great and goodly proportion. I need not add that physicians account the galls of carps, as also a stone in their heads, to be medicinable. Only I will observe that because Jews will not eat caviar made of the sturgeon, because coming from a fish wanting scales, and therefore forbidden in the Levitical Lur, therefore the Italians make greater profit of the spawn of carps, whereof they make a red caviar, well pleasing the Jews both in palate and conscience. All I will add of carps is this, that Remus himself doth not so much redound in dichotomies as they do, seeing no one bone is to be found in their body, which is not forked or divided into two parts at the end thereof. Amberley proper, as distinguished from Amberley of the Anglers, is a mile from the station, and is built on a ridge. The castle is the extreme western end of this ridge, the north side of which descends precipitously to the marshy plain that extends as far as Pulbara. Standing on the castle, one sees Pulbara Church, due north, height calling unto height. The castle is now a farm, indeed all Amberley is a huge stockyard smelling of straw and cattle. It is sheer Sussex, chalky soil, whitewashed cottages, huge wagons, and one of the best of Sussex painters, and in his exquisite modest way of all painters living, dwells in the heart of it. Edward Stott, who year after year shows London connoisseurs how the clear skin of the Sussex boy takes the evening light, and how the south-down sheep drink at hill-ponds beneath a violet sky, and that there is nothing more beautiful under the stars than a whitewashed cottage, just when the lamp is lit. Amberley has no right to lay claim to a castle, for the old ruins are not truly, as they seem, the remains of a castellated stronghold, but of a crenellated mansion. John Langton, Bishop of Chichester in the 14th century, was the first builder. Previously the church lands here had been held very jealously, and in 1200 we find Bishop Gilbert de Leofar, twice excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of Arendl for poaching, as he termed it, in Houghton Forest. The church lost Amberley in the 16th century. William Reed, who succeeded Langton to both house and sea, wishing to feel secure in his home, craved permission to dig a motor round it, and to render it both hostile and defensive, hence its lion-like mean, but it has known no warfare, and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in harboring livestock. 20th century sheds lean against 14th century masonry, faggots are stored in the moat, lawn tennis is played in the courtyard, and black pigeons peep from the slits cut for aquabosias. Amberley Castle only once intrudes itself in history. Charles II, during his flight in 1651, spent a night there, under the protection of Sir John Briscoe, as we saw in Chapter III. In winter, if you ask an Amberley man where he dwells, he says, Amberley, God help us. In summer he says, Amberley, where would you live? From Amberley to Parham, one keeps upon the narrow ridge from mylosso, branching off then to the left. Parham's advance guard is seen all the way, a clump of fir trees indicating that the soil there changes to sand. For two possessions is Parham noted, a heronry in the park, and in the house a copy of Montaigne, with Shakespeare's autograph in it. The house, a spreading Tudor mansion, is the seat of Lord Zouche, a descendant of the traveller Robert Curson, who wrote the Monasteries of the Levant, that long, leisurely, and fascinating narrative of travel. In addition to Montaigne, it enshrines a priceless collection of armour, of incunabula, and eastern manuscripts. Among the pictures are full lengths of Sir Philip Sidney and Lady Sidney, and that Penelope Darcy, one of Mr. Hardy's noble dames, who promised to marry three suitors in turn, and did so, we see her again at full place. A hiding-hole for priests and other refugees is in the Long Gallery, access to it being gained through a window-seat. There was hidden Charles Padgett after the Babbington conspiracy. Parham Park has deer and a lake, and an enchanted forest of somber trees. On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs, in which the famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank-birds continually homing from the amberly wild brooks, with fishes in their bills and long legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries. Mr. Knox's ornithological rambles, from which I have already quoted freely, has this passage. The herons at Parham assemble early in February, and then set about repairing their nests, but the trees are never entirely deserted during the winter months. A few birds, probably some of the more backward of the preceding season, roosting among their boughs every night. They commence laying early in March, and the greater part of the young birds are hatched during the early days of April. About the end of May they may be seen to flap out of their nests to the adjacent boughs, and bask for hours in the warm sunshine, but although now comparatively quiet during the day they become clamorous for food as the evening approaches, and indeed for a long time appear to be more difficult to wean and less able to shift for themselves than most birds of a similar age. They may be observed as late as August, still on the trees, screaming for food and occasionally fed by their parents who forage for them assiduously. Indeed, these exertions so far from being relaxed after the setting of the sun appear to be redoubled during the night, for I have frequently disturbed herons when riding by moonlight among the low grounds near the river, where I have seldom seen them during the day, and several cottages in the neighborhood of Parham have assured me that their shrill cry may be heard at all hours of the night during the summer season as they fly to and fro overhead on their passage between the heronry and the open country. The history or genealogy of the progenitors of this colony is remarkable. They were originally brought from Coity Castle in Wales, by Lord Lester's steward in James I's time to Penhurst in Kent, the seat of Lord Delisle, where their descendants continued for more than two hundred years. From thence they migrated to Mitchell Grove, about seventy miles from Penhurst and eight from Parham. Here they remained for nearly twenty years, until the proprietor of the estate disposed of it to the late Duke of Norfolk, who having purchased it not as a residence but with the view of increasing the local property in the neighborhood of Arundel, pulled down the house and felled one or two trees on which the herons had constructed their nests. The migration commenced immediately, but appears to have been gradual, for three seasons elapsed before all the members of the heronry had found their way over the downs to their new quarters in the fur wards of Parham. This occurred about seventeen years ago, written about eighteen forty-eight. Sussex says Mr. Bora, author of The Birds of Sussex, has two other large heronries, at Windmill Hill Place near Halesham and Breed near Winchelsea, and some smaller ones, one being at Molcom above Goodwood. Betsy's Oak in Parham Park is said to be so called because Queen Elizabeth sat beneath it, but another and more probable legend calls it Batesy's Oak, after Bates, an archer at Agincourt, in the retinue of the Earl of Arundel, and in Henry V. Good Queen Bess, however, dined in the Hall of Parham House in 1592. At Northiam, in East Sussex, we shall come not to be utterly balked to a tree under which she truly did sit, and dine, too. Beyond Parham, less than two miles to the east, is Starrington, a quiet Sussex village far from the rail and the noise of the world, with the downs within Hale and fine, sparsely inhabited country between them and it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792. This is an age of sights and polite entertainment in the country, as well as in the city. The little town of Starrington has lately been visited by a company of comedians, a Mountie Bank doctor, and a puppet show. One day the doctors at Jack Pudding, finding the shillings coming in but slowly, exclaimed to his master, It is not worth our while to stay here any longer. Players have got all the gold, we all the silver, and punch all the copper. So, like sagacious locusts, let us migrate from the place we helped to impoverish. This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, wither we are now moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude that cannot have received the slightest modification, since it was first planned perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer, essential elemental horseplay, straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too long to tell, but briefly it was a dumb show representation of the visit of a guest, the clown, to a wife unknown to her husband. The scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw, and a huge barrel. The fun consisted in the clown armed with a bladder on a string, hiding in the barrel, from which he would spring up and deliver a sounding drub on the head of whatever other character, husband or policeman, might be passing, to their complete perplexity. They were of course incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table. When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus owners think it worthwhile to secure novelties at all. The primitive taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot require them. Pettworth is not on the direct road to Horsham, which is our next centre, but it is easily gained from Arundel by rail, changing at Pulbara, or by road through Berry, Fittleworth, and Green. Pulbara is now nothing, once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stain Street for Rome. The fort was on a mound west of the railway, corresponding with the church mound on the east. Here probably was a catapulta, and certainly a vigilant garrison. Pulbara has no invader now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her feet into a silver sea, of which Pulbara is the northern shore and Amberley the southern. The Dutch polder are not flatter or greener than are these intervening meadows. The village stands high and dry above the water level, extended in long line, quite like a seaside town. Excursionists come too as to a watering place, but they bring rods and creals, and return at night with fish for the pan. Between Pulbara and Petworth lies Stopham and Fittleworth, both on the Rother, which joins the Aron, a little to the west of Pulbara. Stopham has the most beautiful bridge in Sussex, dating from the fourteenth century, and a little church filled with memorials of the Bartolot family. One of Stopham's rectors was Thomas Newcomb, a descendant of the author of The Fairy Queen, the friend of the author of Night Thoughts, and the author himself of a formidable poem in twelve books after Milton called The Last Judgment. Fittleworth has of late become an artist's mecca, partly because of its pretty woods and quaint architecture, and partly because of the warm welcome that is offered by the swan, which is probably the most ingeniously placed inn in the world. Approaching it from the north, it seems to be the end of all things. The miles of road that one has travelled apparently have been leading nowhere but to the swan. Runaway horses or unsettled chauffeurs must project their passengers literally into the open door. Coming from the south, one finds that the road narrows by this inn almost to a lane, and the swan's hospitable sign, barring the way, exerts such a spell that to enter it is a far simpler matter than to pass. The swan is a venerable and rambling building, stretching itself lazily without spread arms. One of those inns long may they be preserved from the rebuilders, in which one stumbles up or down into every room, and where eggs and bacon have an appropriateness that make them a more desirable food than ambrosia. The little parlour is wainscooted with the votive paintings, a village diploma gallery of artists who have made the swan their home. Fittleworth has a dual existence. In the south it is riparian and low, much given to anglers and visitors. In the north it is high and sandy, with clumps of furs, giving its own life and spreading gorse-covered commons at the feet of the walker. Between its southern border and Bigner Park is a superb common of sand and heather, an inland paradise for children. Petworth Station and Petworth Town are far from being the same thing, and there are few more fatiguing miles than that which separates them. A bus it is true plies between, but it is one of those long, close prisons with windows that annihilate thought by their shattering unfixedness. Petworth Spire is before one all the way, Petworth itself clustering on the side of the hill, a little town with several streets, rather than a great village all on one artery. I say several streets, but this is dead in the face of tradition, which has a joke to the effect that a long timber wagon once entered Petworth's single circular street and has never yet succeeded in emerging. I certainly met it. The town seems to be beneath the shadow of its lord even more than Arundel. It is like Pompeii with Vesuvius emitting glory far above. One must, of course, live under the same conditions if one is to feel the authentic thrill. The mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders in these feudal towns what it would be like to leave democratic London or the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath the spell of a duke of Norfolk or a barren leacon field. A spell possibly not consciously cast by them at all, but existing nonetheless, largely through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent roll, largely through the officers controlling the estates, at any rate unmistakable, as present in the very air of the streets as is the presage of a thunderstorm. Surely to be so dominated without actual influence must be very restful. Petworth must be the very home of low-pulsed peace, and yet a little oppressive too, with the great house and its traditions at the top of the town, like a weight on the forehead. I should not like to make Petworth my home, but as a place of pilgrimage and a stronghold of architectural taste, it is almost unique. In the Doomsday Book Petworth is called Peturde. It was rated at 1,080 acres and possessed a church, a mill worth a sovereign, a river containing 1,620 eels, and panage for 80 hogs. In the time of the confessor the manor was worth 18 pounds. A few years later the price went down to ten shillings. Robert de Montgomerie held Petworth till 1102, when he defied the king and lost it. Under Liza, widow of Henry I, having a brother Jocelyn de Louvain, whom she wished to benefit, Petworth was given to him. Jocelyn married Agnes, daughter of William de Percy, the descendant of one of the conqueror's chief friends, and doing so took his name. In course of time came Harry Hotspur, whose sword which he swung at the battle of Shrewsbury is kept at Petworth House. The second earl was his son, also Henry, who fought at Chevy Chase. He was not, however, slain there, as the Baladmunga says, but at St. Albans. Henry III earl fell at Tauton. Henry IV earl was assassinated at Cork Lodge, Thursk. Henry V earl led a regiment at the battle of the Spurs. Henry VI earl fell in love with Anne Boleyn, but had the good sense not to let Henry VIII see it. Thomas, his brother, was beheaded for treason. Thomas, the seventh earl, took arms against Queen Elizabeth, and was beheaded in Scotland. Henry VIII earl attempted to liberate Mary Queen of Scots, and was imprisoned in the tower, where he slew himself. Henry IX earl was accused of assisting Guyforks, and locked up for fifteen years. He was set at liberty only after paying thirty thousand pounds, and promising never to go more than thirty miles from Petworth House. This kept him out of London. The last two noble earls of Northumberland were Algernon, Lord High Admiral of England, who married Lady Anna Cecil, and planted an oak in the park. It is still there, to commemorate the union, and Jocelyn, eleventh earl, who died in 1670, leaving no son. He left, however, a daughter, a little Elizabeth, Baroness Percy, who had countless suitors, and was married three times before she was sixteen. Her third husband was Charles Seymour, sixth Duke of Somerset, who became in time the father of thirteen children. Of these all died, three girls, and a boy, Algernon, who became seventh Duke of Somerset. Through one of the daughters, Catherine, who married Sir William Wyndham, the estates fell to the present family. The next important Lord of Petworth was George O'Brien Wyndham, third earl of Egremont, the friend of art and agriculture, who collected most of the pictures. The present owner is the third Baron Leconfield. C. R. Leslie, who painted more than one picture in the Petworth Gallery, has much to say in his autobiographical recollections of its noble founder, the third earl. His generosity, courtesy, kindly thoughtfulness, and extreme modesty of bearing. One story contains half his biography. I give it in Leslie's words. After referring to his lordship's men's servants and their importance in the house, the painter continues, His own dress in the morning, being very plain, he was sometimes by strangers mistaken for one of them. This happened with a maid of one of his lady-guests, who had not been at Petworth before. She met him crossing the hall, as the bell was ringing for the servant's dinner, and said, Come, old gentleman, you and I will go to dinner together, for I can't find my way in this great house. He gave her his arm, and led her to the room where the other maids were assembled at their table, and said, You dine here, I don't dine till seven o'clock. On certain days in the week visitors are allowed to walk through the galleries of Petworth House. The parties are shown by a venerable servitor into the audit's room, a long, bare apartment, furnished with a statue and the heads of stags, and at the stroke of the hour a commissioner appears at the far door and leaves the way to the office, where a visitor's book is signed. Then the real work of the day begins, and for fifty-five minutes one passes from Dutch painters to Italian, from English to French, amid booers by Tenier, beauties by Lely, landscapes by Turner, carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The commissioner knows them all. The collection is a fine one, but the lighting is bad, and the conditions under which it is seen are not favourable to the intimate appreciation of good art. One finds one's attention wandering too often from the soldier with his little index retan to the deer on the vast lawn that extends from the windows to the lake, the lake that Turner painted and fished in. Hobimas, Van Dykes, Murilos, what are these when the sun shines, and the ceaseless mutations of a herd of deer render the middle distance fascinating? Among the more famous pictures is a peg Woffington by Hogarth, not here dallying and dangerous, but demure as a nun, also the modern midnight conversation from the same hand, three or four bewitching Romneys, a room full of beauties of the court of Queen Anne, Henry VIII by Holbein, a wonderful Claude Lorraine, a head of Cervantes attributed to Velázquez, and four views of the Thames by Turner, Hazlett in his sketches of the picture galleries of England says of this collection, we wish our readers to go to Petworth, where they will find the coolest grottoes and the finest Van Dykes in the world. Lord Leckenfields Park has not the remarkable natural formation of the Duke of Norfolk's, nor the superb situation of the Duke of Richmond and Gordon's with its channel prospects, but it is immense and imposing. Also it is unreal, it is like a park in a picture, this effect may be largely due to the circumstance that fates in Petworth Park have been more than once painted, but it is due also, I think, to the shape and colour of the house, to the lake, to the extent of the lawn, to the disposition of the knolls, and to the deer. A scene-painter, bidden to depict an English park, would produce, though he had never been out of the strand, something very like Petworth. It is the normal park of the average imagination on a large scale. Cobbett wrote thus of Petworth, the park is very fine, and consists of a parcel of those hills and dels which nature formed here when she was in one of her most sportive moods. I have never seen the earth flung about in such a wild way as round about hind head and black down, and this park forms a part of this ground. From an elevated part of it, and indeed from each of many parts of it, you see all around the country to the distance of many miles. From the south-east to the north-west, the hills are so lofty and so near that they cut the view rather short, but for the rest of the circle, you can see to a very great distance. It is upon the whole a most magnificent seat, and the Jews will not be able to get it from the present owner, though if he live many years they will give even him a twist. On an eminence in the west is a tower near a clump where ravens build, from which the other parks of this wonderful park district of Sussex may be seen. Cowdery to the west, the highest points of Goodwood to the southwest, the highest points of Arundel to the south-east, and Parham's dark forest, more easterly still. Mr Knox's account of the vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens sixty years ago is as interesting as any history of equal length on the misfortunes of man. Their sufferings at the hands of keepers and schoolboys read like a page of fox. The final disaster was the spoilation of their nest by a boy, who removed all four of the children, or squabs, as he called them. Mr Knox, who used to come every day to examine them through his glass, was in despair, until, after much meditation, he thought of an expedient. Seeking out the boy, he persuaded him to give up the one squab whose wings had not yet been clipped, and this the ornithologist carried to the clump and deposited in the ruined nest. The next morning the old birds were to be seen just as of old. And that was their last molestation. Just under the park, on the road to Midhurst, is Tillington, a little village with a rather ornamental church, which dates from 1807. There is nothing to say of Tillington, but I should like to quote a pretty sentence from Horsefield's history of Sussex concerning the monuments in the church, in a kind of writing of which we have little to-day. And as the volume for which this has been written is likely to fall chiefly into the hands of men who are occupied almost solely with the cares and business of this life, this slight reference is made to the monuments of the dead, in order that, should the reader of this book find, in the present dearth of honesty, of faithfulness, of disinterested valor and of loyalty, an aching want in his spirit for such high qualities, let him hence be taught where to go. Let him learn that, though they are rarely found in the busy haunts of men, they are still preserved, and have their home around the sanctuary of the altar of his God. Petworth should be visited by all young architects, not for the mansion, except as an object lesson for it is like a London terrace, but for the ordinary buildings in the town. It is a paradise of old-fashioned architecture. The church is hideous. The new hotel, the swan, might be at Ballum, but the old part of the town is perfect. There is an arms' house, which Mr. Griggs has drawn, in which, in its palmy days, a lady bountiful might have lived. Even the workhouse has charms. It is the only pretty workhouse I remember, with the exception, perhaps, of battle. But that is, however, self-conscious. Petworth has known, at any rate, one poet. In the churchyard was once this epitaph, now, perhaps obliterated, from a husband's hand. She was. She was. She was. What? She was all that a woman should be. She was that. In a book which takes account of Sussex men and women of the past, it is hard to keep long from cricket. To the north of Petworth, wither we now turn, is Northchapel, where was born and died one of the great men of the Hambledon Club, Noah Man, who once made ten runs from one hit, and whose son was named Horace after the cricketing baronet of the same name, by special permission. Sir Horace, by this simple act of graceful humanity, hooked for life the heart of poor Noah Man, says Niren, and in this world of hatred and contention the love even of a dog is worth living for. This is Niren's account of Noah Man. He was from Sussex, and lived at Northchapel, not far from Petworth. He kept an inn there, and used to come a distance of at least 20 miles every Tuesday to practice. He was a fellow of extraordinary activity, and could perform clever feats of agility on horseback. For instance, when he has been seen in the distance coming up the ground, one or more of his companions would throw down handkerchiefs, and these he would collect, stooping from his horse while it was going at full speed. He was a fine batter, a fine field, and the swiftest runner I ever remember. Indeed, such was his fame for speed, that whenever there was a match going forward we were sure to hear of one being made for man to run against some noted competitor, and such would come from the whole country round. Upon these occasions, he used to tell his friends, if when we are half way, you see me alongside of my man, you may always bet your money upon me, for I am sure to win, and I never saw him beaten. He was a most valuable fellow in the field, for besides being very sure of the ball, his activity was so extraordinary that he would dart all over the ground like lightning. In those days of fast bowling they would put a man behind the long stop, that he might cover both long stop and slip. The man always selected for this post was Noah. Now and then little George Lear, whom I have already described as being so fine a long stop, would give Noah the wink to be on his guard, who would gather close behind him. Then George would make a slip on purpose, and let the ball go by, when in an instant Noah would have it up, and into the wicket-keeper's hands, and the man was put out. This I have seen done many times, and this nothing but the most accomplished skill in fielding could have achieved. At a match at the Hamilton Club against all England, the club had to go in to get the runs, and there was a long number of them. It became quite apparent that the game would be closely fought. Man kept on worrying old Niren to let him go in, and although he became quite indignant at his constant refusal, our general knew what he was about in keeping him back, at length when the last but one was out. He sent man in, and there were then ten runs to get. The sensation now all over the ground was greater than anything of the kind I ever witnessed before or since. All knew the state of the game, and many thousands were hanging upon this narrow point. There was Sir Horace Mann walking about outside the ground, cutting down the daisies with his stick, a habit with him when he was agitated, the old farmers leaning forward upon their tall, old staves, and the whole multitude perfectly still. After Noah had had one or two balls, Lumpy tossed one a little too far when our fellow got in and hit it out in his grand style. Six of the ten were gained. Never shall I forget the roar that followed this hit. Then there was a dead stand for some time, and no runs were made. Ultimately, however, he gained them all, and won the game. After he was out, he up-braided Niren for not putting him in earlier. If you had let me go in an hour ago, said he, I would have served them in the same way. But the old tactician was right, for he knew Noah to be a man of such nerve and self-possession that the thought of so much depending upon him would not have had the paralyzing effect that it would upon many others. He was sure of him, and Noah afterwards felt the compliment. Man was short in stature, and when stripped as swarthy as a gypsy, he was all muscle, with no encumbrance whatever of flesh, remarkably broad in the chest with large hips and spider legs. He had not an ounce of flesh about him, but it was where it ought to be. He always played without his hat. The sun could not affect his complexion. And he took a liking to me as a boy, because I did the same. Lurgus Hall, on the roads to Northchapel, is a pleasant village with a green and a church unique among Sussex churches, by virtue of a curious wooden gallery or cloister, said to have been built as a shelter for parishioners from a distance, who would eat their nuncheon there. The church, which has distinct Saxon remains, once had forector the satirical James Bramston, author of The Art of Politics and The Man of Taste, two admirable poems in The Manor of Pope. This is his unimpeachable advice to public speakers. Those who would captivate the well-bred throng should not too often speak, nor speak too long. Church, nor church matters ever turn to sport, nor make St Stephen's Chapel dovercourt. CHAPTER 11 BIGNER Two miles due south from Petworth is Burton Park, a modest sandy pleasant, with some beautiful deer, an ugly house, and a church for the waistcoat pocket, which some American relic hunter will assuredly carry off, unless it is properly chained. Mr. Knox has an interesting anecdote of a sparrow hawk at Burton. In May 1844, he writes, I received from Burton Park an adult male sparrow hawk in full breeding plumage, which had killed itself, or rather met its death, in a singular manner. The gardener was watering plants in the greenhouse, the door being open, when a blackbird dashed in suddenly, taking refuge between his legs, and at the same moment the glass roof above his head was broken with a loud crash, and a hawk fell dead at his feet. The force of the swoop was so great that for a moment he imagined a stone hurled from a distance to have been the cause of the fracture. At Duncan, the neighbouring village under the hill, James Broadbridge was born in 1796. James Broadbridge, who was considered the best all-round cricketer in England in his day, he had a curious hit to square leg between the wicket and himself, and he was the first of whom it was said that he could do anything with the ball except make it speak. In order to get practice with worthy players, he would walk from Duncan to Brighton, just as Lambert would walk from Rygates to London, or Noah Mann ride to Hamilton from Petworth. James Broadbridge's first great match was in 1815, for Sussex against the Epsom Club, including Lambert and Lord Frederick Bo Clark, for a thousand guineas. Broadbridge, after his won't, walked from Duncan to Brighton in the morning, and he looked so much like a farmer, and so little like a cricketer, that there was some opposition to his playing, but he bowled out three and caught one, and Sussex won the money. Above Duncan rises Duncan down, which is 837 feet high, one of our mountains. But we are not to climb it just now, having business in the wheeled some four miles away to the east, past Barlovington and Sutton, at Bighna. Admires of yew trees should make a point of visiting Bighna churchyard. The village has also what is probably the quaintest grocers' shop in England, certainly the completeest contrast that imagination could devise to the modern grocers' shop of the town, plate glassed, illumined, and stored to repletion. It is close to the yew shadowed church, and is gained by a flight of steps. I should not have noticed it as a shop at all, but rather as a very curious survival of a kindly and attractive form of architecture, had not a boy, when asked the way to the Roman pavement, which is Bighna's glory, mentioned the grocers as one of the landmarks. One's connotation of grocer excluding diamond panes, oak timbers, difficult steps, and reverent antiquity, I was like to lose the way in earnest, had not a customer emerged opportunally from the crazy doorway with a basket of goods. It was natural for the boy, whose pennies had gone in oranges and sweets, to lay the emphasis on the grocery, but the house externally is the only one of its kind within miles. In some respects there is no more interesting spot in Sussex than the mangold field on Mr. Tupper's farm that contains the Roman pavements. Approaching this scene of alien treasure, one observes nothing but the mangolds, here and there a rough shed as if for cattle, and Mr. Tupper, the grandson of the discoverer of the mosaics, at work with his hoe. This he lays on one side on the arrival of a visitor, taking in his hand instead a large key. So far we are in Sussex, pure and simple. Mangolds all round, cattle sheds in front, a Sussex farmer for a companion, the sky of Sussex over all, and the 20th century in her non-edge. Mr. Tupper turns the key, throws open the creaking door, and nearly 2,000 years roll away. We are no longer in Sussex, but in the province of the Regney, no longer at Bighna, but at Decimum, or 10 miles from Regnum, or Chichester, on Stain Street, the direct road to Londonham, in the residence of a Roman colonial governor of immense wealth, probably supreme in command of the province. The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications of the splendor and extent of the building, which must have covered some acres, a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bighna Hill by Stain Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark-wield. The pavement in the first shed, which Mr. Tupper unlocks, has the figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments, and here the hot air pipes, by which the villa was heated, may be seen where the floor has given way. A head of winter in another of the sheds is very fine, but it is rather for what these relics stand for than any intrinsic beauty that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of a power that has passed away. Nothing else, so brings back the Roman occupation of Sussex, when, on still nights, the clanking of armour in the camp on the hilltop could be heard by the trembling Britain in the wheeled beneath, or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of warriors descending the slope. I never see a Sussex hill crowned by a camp, as at Walstonbury, without seeing also, in imagination, a flash of steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must have brought into the life of the Sussex peasant, a terror which utterly changed the downs from ramparts of peace into coins of military advantage, and transformed the gaze of security with which their grassy contours had once been contemplated into anxious glances of dismay and trepidation. One never so realises this terror as when one descends ditching Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the wheeled below. That semi-subterranean passage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses. Charlotte Smith, the soniteer and novelist, was the daughter of Nicholas Turner of Bignor Park, which contains, I think, the plainest house I ever saw in the country. Charlotte Smith, who was all her life very true to Sussex, both in her work and in her homes, she was at school at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeading and Brighton, was born in 1749. A century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Heemans was later. Today it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will they, I fear, be rediscovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards Mrs. Dorsett, was the author of The Peacock at Home, a very popular book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by Roscoe's Butterflies Ball. Mrs. Dorsett, by the way, married a son of the vicar of Walburton and Burlington, whose curious headdress gave to an odd-looking tree on Berry Hill the name of Parson Dorsett's Wig, for the Parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story of advice to a flock, do as I say, not as I do, is told also of him. The little village of West Burton, east of Bigner, is associated in my mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had given me a glass of water, and I unfolded my map and spread it on her garden wall to consult while I drank. Why, she said, you don't mean to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map? This is the very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride, which would have the world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump, but pride of place is not, I think, a Sussex characteristic. Berry, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket traditions. In June 1796 the married women of Berry beat the single women by eighty runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of women in the county. Not only did the women of Berry shine at cricket, but in a Sussex paper for 1791 I find an account of two of Berry's daughters, assuming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza, and engaging in a hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering, Big Ben One. End of chapter 11