Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 47

Owing to a curious lapse of memory, I omitted to say that Sompting, near Worthing, should be famous as the home of Edward John Trelawny, author of _The Adventures of a Younger Son_, and the friend of Sh.e.l.ley and Byron. In his Sompting garden, in his old age, Trelawny grew figs, equal, he said, to those of his dear Italy, and lived again his vigorous, picturesque, notable life. Suss.e.x thus owns not only the poet of "Adonais," but the friend who rescued his heart from the flames that consumed his body on the sh.o.r.es of the Gulf, and bearing it to Rome placed over its resting place in the Protestant cemetery the words from the _Tempest_ (his own happy choice):--

"Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange."

The old man, powerful and capricious to the last, died at Sompting in 1881, within a year of ninety. His body was removed to Gotha for cremation, and his ashes lie beside Sh.e.l.ley's heart in Rome.

Among the wise men of Lewes I ought not to have overlooked William Durrant Cooper (1812-1875), a shrewd Suss.e.x enthusiast and antiquary, who as long ago as 1836 printed at his own cost a little glossary of the county's provincialisms. The book, publicly printed in 1853, was, of course, superseded by Mr. Parish's admirable collection, but Mr. Cooper showed the way. One of his examples of the use of the West Suss.e.x p.r.o.noun _en_, _un_, or _um_ might be noted, especially as it involves another quaint confusion of s.e.x. _En_ and _un_ stand for him, her or it; _um_ for them. Thus, "a blackbird flew up and her killed 'n"; that is to say, he killed it.

[Sidenote: THE ANGEL'S FAN]

Among the Harleian MSS. at the British Museum is the account of a supernatural visitation to Rye in 1607. The visitants were angels, their fortunate entertainer being a married woman. She, however, by a lapse in good breeding, undid whatever good was intended for her. "And after that appeared unto her 2 angells in her chamber, and one of them having a white fan in her hand did let the same fall; and she stooping to take it upp, the angell gave her a box on the eare, rebukinge her that she a mortall creature should presume to handle matters appertayninge to heavenlie creatures."

[Sidenote: ROBERTSON OF BRIGHTON]

It was an error to omit from Chapter XVII all reference to Frederick William Robertson--Robertson of Brighton--who from 1847 until 1853 exerted his extraordinary influence from the pulpit of Trinity Chapel, opposite the post-office, and from his home at 9, Montpellier Terrace.

Of Robertson's quickening religion I need not speak; but it is interesting to know that much of his magnetic eloquence was the result of the meditations which he indulged in his long and feverish rambles over the Downs. His favourite walk was to the d.y.k.e (before exploitation had come upon it), and he loved also the hills above Rottingdean.

Robertson, says Arnold's memoir, "would walk any man 'off his legs,' as the saying goes. He not only walked; he ran, he leaped, he bounded. He walked as fast and as incessantly as Charles d.i.c.kens, and, like d.i.c.kens, his mind was in a state of incessant activity all the time. There was not a bird of the air or a flower by the wayside that was not known to him. His knowledge of birds would have matched that of the collector of the Natural History Museum in his favourite d.y.k.e Road."

Robertson often journeyed into Suss.e.x on little preaching or lecturing missions (he found the auditors of Hurstpierpoint "very bucolic"), and his family were fond of the retirement of Lindfield. On one occasion Robertson brought them back himself, writing afterwards to a friend that in that village he "strongly felt the beauty and power of English country scenery and life to calm, if not to purify, the hearts of those whose lives are habitually subjected to such influences."

Mr. Arnold's book, I might add, has some pleasant pages about Suss.e.x and Brighton in Robertson's day, with glimpses of Lady Byron, his ardent devotee, and, at Old Sh.o.r.eham, of Canon Mozley.

And here I might mention that for a very charming account of a still earlier Brighton, though not the earliest, the reader should go to a little story called _Round About a Brighton Coach Office_, which was published a few years ago. It has a very fragrant old-world flavour.

To Chichester, I should have recorded, belongs a Suss.e.x saint, Saint Richard, Bishop of Chichester in the thirteenth century, and a great man. In 1245 he found the Suss.e.x see an Augaean stable; but he was equal to the labour of cleansing it. He deprived the corrupt clergy of their benefices with an unhesitating hand, and upon their successors and those that remained he imposed laws of comeliness and simplicity. His reforms were many and various: he restored hospitality to its high place among the duties of rectors; he punished absentees; he excommunicated usurers; while (a revolutionist indeed!) priests who spoke indistinctly or at too great a pace were suspended. Also, I doubt not, he was hostile to locked churches. Furthermore, he advocated the Crusades like another Peter the Hermit.

Richard's own life was exquisitely thoughtful and simple. An anecdote of his brother, who a.s.sisted him in the practical administration of the diocese, helps us to this side of his character. "You give away more than your income," remarked this almoner-brother one day. "Then sell my silver," said Richard, "it will never do for me to drink out of silver cups while our Lord is suffering in His poor. Our father drank heartily out of common crockery, and so can I. Sell the plate."

Richard penetrated on foot to the uttermost corners of his diocese to see that all was well. He took no holiday, but would often stay for a while at Tarring, near Worthing, with Simon, the parish priest and his great friend. Tradition would have Richard the planter of the first of the Tarring figs, and indeed, to my mind, he is more welcome to that honour than Saint Thomas a Becket, who competes for the credit--being more a Suss.e.x man. In his will Richard left to Sir Simon de Terring (sometimes misprinted Ferring) his best palfrey and a commentary on the Psalms.

[Sidenote: SAINT RICHARD]

The Bishop died in 1253 and he was at once canonised. To visit his grave in the nave of Chichester Cathedral (it is now in the south transept) was a sure means to recovery from illness, and it quickly became a place of pilgrimage. April 3 was set apart in the calendar as Richard's day, and very pleasant must have been the observance in the Chichester streets. In 1297 we find Edward I. giving Lovel the harper 6_s._ 6_d._ for singing the Saint's praises; but Henry VIII. was to change all this.

On December 14th, 1538, it being, I imagine, a fine day, the Defender of the Faith signed a paper ordering Sir William Goring and William Ernely, his Commissioners, to repair to Chichester Cathedral and remove "the bones, shrine, &c., of a certain Bishop ... which they call S.

Richard," to the Tower of London. That the Commissioners did their work we know from their account for the same, which came to __40. In the reformed prayer-book, however, Richard's name has been allowed to stand among the black letter saints.

[Sidenote: BISHOP WILBERFORCE]

Under Chichester I ought also to have mentioned John William Burgon (1813-1888), Dean of Chichester for the last twelve years of his life and the author of that admirable collection of half-length appreciations, _The Lives of Twelve Good Men_, one of whom, Bishop Wilberforce, lived within call at Woollavington, under the s.h.a.ggy escarpment of the Downs some ten miles to the north-east. Dean Burgon thus happily touches off the Bishop in his South Down retreat:--

... "But it was on the charms of the pleasant landscape which surrounded his Suss.e.x home that he chiefly expatiated on such occasions, leaning rather heavily on some trusty arm--(I remember how he leaned on _mine_!)--while he tapped with his stick the bole of every favourite tree which came in his way (by-the-by, _every_ tree seemed a favourite), and had something to tell of its history and surpa.s.sing merits. Every farm-house, every peep at the distant landscape, every turn in the road, suggested some pleasant remark or playful anecdote. He had a word for every man, woman, and child he met,--for he knew them all. The very cattle were greeted as old acquaintances. And how he did delight in discussing the flora of the neighbourhood, the geological formations, every aspect of the natural history of the place!"

[Sidenote: BURPHAM AND HARDHAM]

A very properly indignant friend has reminded me of the claims of Burpham in the following words. "Two miles up the Arun valley from Arundel is Burpham, a pretty village on the west edge of the Downs and overhanging the river. Between South Stoke and Arundel the old course of the Arun runs in wide curves, and in modern times a straight new bed has been cut, under Arundel Park and past the Black Rabbit, making, with the old curves, the form of the letter B. Burpham lies at the head of the lower loop of the B, and while there is plenty of water in the loop to row up with the flood tide and down with the ebb, the straight main stream diverts nearly all the holiday traffic and leaves Burpham the most peaceful village within fifty miles of London. The seclusion is the more complete because the roads from the South end in the village and there is no approach by road from East or West or North. The Church contains a Lepers' window, and pa.s.sengers by the railway can see, to the right of the red roofs of the village and over the line of low chalk cliffs, a white path still called the Lepers' Path, which winds away in to the lonely hollows of the Downs.

"A curious feature of Burpham is a high rampart of earth, running eastward from the cliff by the river, which according to local tradition was constructed in the days of the Danish pirates. It is said to be doubtful whether the rampart was erected by the Saxon villagers for their own protection, or by the Danes as their first stronghold on the rising ground after they had sailed up the Arun from Littlehampton. The fine name of the neighbouring Warningcamp Hill, from which there is a great outlook over the flat country past Arundel Castle to Chichester Cathedral and the cliffs of the Isle of Wight, suggests memories of the same period."

Of the little retiring church of St. Botolph, Hardham, lying among low meadows between Burpham and Pulborough, I ought also to have spoken, for it contains perhaps the earliest complete series of mural painting in England. The church dates from the eleventh century, and the paintings, says Mr. Philip Mainwaring Johnson, who has studied them with the greatest care, cannot be much less old. The subjects are the Annunciation, the Nativity, the appearance of the Star, the Magi presenting their Gifts, and so forth, with one or two less familiar themes added, such as Herod conferring with his Counsellors and the Torments of h.e.l.l. There are the remains also of a series of Moralities drawn from the parable of Dives and Lazarus, and of a series ill.u.s.trating the life of St. George. The little church, which perhaps has every right to call itself the oldest picture gallery in England, should not be missed by any visitor to Pulborough.

[Sidenote: THE TIPTEERS]

At West Wittering in the Manhood Peninsula, a little village on which the sea has hostile designs, is still performed at Christmas a time-honoured play the actors of which are half a dozen boys or men known as the Tipteers. Their words are not written, but are transmitted orally from one generation of players to another. Mr. J. I. C. Boger, however, has taken them down for the S. A. C. The subject once again, as in some of the Hardham mural paintings, is the life of St. George, here called King George; and the play has the same relation to drama that the Hardham frescoes have to a picture. I quote a little:--

_Third Man--n.o.ble Captain:_ In comes I, the n.o.ble Captain, Just lately come from France; With my broad sword and jolly Turk [dirk]

I will make King George dance.

_Fourth Man--King George_ [_i.e._, Saint George]: In comes I, King George, That man of courage bold, With my broad sword and sphere [spear]

I have won ten tons of gold.

I fought the fiery Dragon And brought it to great slaughter, And by that means I wish to win The King of Egypt's daughter.

Neither unto thee will I bow nor bend.

Stand off! stand off!

I will not take you to be my friend.

_n.o.ble Captain:_ Why, sir, why, have I done you any kind of wrong?

_King George:_ Yes, you saucy man, so get you gone.

_n.o.ble Captain:_ You saucy man, you draw my name, You ought to be stabb'd, you saucy man.

_King George:_ Stab or stabs, the least is my fear; Point me the place And I will meet you there.

_n.o.ble Captain:_ The place I 'point is on the ground And there I will lay your body down Across the water at the hour of five.

_King George:_ Done, sir, done! I will meet you there, If I am alive I will cut you, I will slay you, All for to let you know that I am King George over Great Britain O!

[FIGHT: _King George wounds the n.o.ble Captain._]

Until the close is almost reached the West Wittering Tipteers preserve the illusion of mediaeval mummery. But the concluding song transports us to the sentiment of the modern music hall. Its chorus runs, with some callousness:--

"We never miss a mother till she's gone, Her portrait's all we have to gaze upon, We can fancy see her there, Sitting in an old armchair; We never miss a mother till she's gone."

[Sidenote: GRANDMOTHER FOWINGTON]

[Sidenote: THE PHARISEES]

Mark Antony Lower's _Contributions to Literature_, 1845, contains a pleasant essay on the South Downs which I overlooked when I was writing this book, but from which I now gladly take a few pa.s.sages. It gives me, for example, a pendent to William Blake's description of a fairy's funeral on page 64, in the shape of a description of a fairy's revenge, from the lips of Master Fowington, a friend of Mr. Lower, who was one that believed in Pharisees (as Suss.e.x calls fairies) as readily and unreservedly as we believe in wireless telegraphy. Mas' Fowington had, indeed, two very good reasons for his credulity. One was that the Pharisees are mentioned in the Bible and therefore must exist; the other was that his grandmother, "who was a very truthful woman," had seen them with her own eyes "time and often." "They was liddle folks not more than a foot high, and used to be uncommon fond of dancing. They jound[4]

hands and formed a circle, and danced upon it till the gra.s.s came three times as green there as it was anywhere else. That's how these here rings come upon the hills. Leastways so they say; but I don't know nothing about it, in tye,[5] for I never seen none an 'em; though to be sure it's very hard to say how them rings do come, if it is'nt the Pharisees that makes 'em. Besides there's our old song that we always sing at harvest supper, where it comes in--'We'll drink and dance like Pharisees.' Now I should like to know why it's put like that 'ere in the song, if it a'nt true."

[Sidenote: MAS' MEPPOM'S ADVENTURE]

Master Fowington's story of the fairy's revenge runs thus:--

"An ol' brother of my wife's gurt gran'mother _see_ some Pharisees once, and 'twould a been a power better if so be he hadn't never seen 'em, or leastways never offended 'em. I'll tell ye how it happened. Jeems Meppom--dat was his naum--Jeems was a liddle farmer, and used to thresh his own corn. His barn stood in a very _elenge_ lonesome place, a goodish bit from de house, and de Pharisees used to come dere a nights and thresh out some wheat and wuts for him, so dat de hep o' threshed corn was ginnerly bigger in de morning dan what he left it overnight.