Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 25

I like the calm of the early fields, The ducks asleep by the lake, The quiet hour which Nature yields Before mankind is awake.

I like the pheasants and feeding things Of the unsuspicious morn; I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings As she rises from the corn.

I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush From the turnips as I pa.s.s by, And the partridge hiding her head in a bush, For her young ones cannot fly.

I like these things, and I like to ride When all the world is in bed, To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide, And where the sun grows red.

The beagles at my horse heels trot, In silence after me; There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot, Old s.l.u.t and Margery,--

A score of names well used, and dear, The names my childhood knew; The horn, with which I rouse their cheer, Is the horn my father blew.

I like the hunting of the hare Better than that of the fox; The new world still is all less fair Than the old world it mocks.

I covet not a wider range Than these dear manors give; I take my pleasures without change, And as I lived I live.

I leave my neighbours to their thought; My choice it is, and pride, On my own lands to find my sport, In my own fields to ride.

The hare herself no better loves The field where she was bred, Than I the habit of these groves, My own inherited.

I know my quarries every one, The meuse where she sits low; The road she chose to-day was run A hundred years ago.

The lags, the gills, the forest ways; The hedgerows one and all, These are the kingdoms of my chase, And bounded by my wall.

Nor has the world a better thing, Though one should search it round, Than thus to live one's own sole king, Upon one's own sole ground.

I like the hunting of the hare; It brings me day by day, The memory of old days as fair, With dead men past away.

To these, as homeward still I ply, And pa.s.s the churchyard gate, Where all are laid as I must lie, I stop and raise my hat.

I like the hunting of the hare; New sports I hold in scorn.

I like to be as my fathers were, In the days e'er I was born.

[Sidenote: THE ROWFANT BOOKS]

We are indeed just now in a bookish and poetical district, for a little more than a mile to the east of Crabbet, in a beautiful Tudor house in a hollow close to the station, lived Frederick Locker-Lampson, the London lyricist; and here are treasured the famous Rowfant books and ma.n.u.scripts which he brought together--the subject of graceful verses by many of his friends. Not the least charming of these tributes (printed in the _Rowfant Catalogue_ in 1886) are Mr. Andrew Lang's lines:

TO F. L.

I mind that Forest Shepherd's saw, For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he; "It's a' that's bricht, and a' that's braw, But Bourhope's guid eneuch for me!"

Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills That guard Saint Mary's Loch it lies, The silence of the pasture fills That shepherd's homely paradise.

Enough for him his mountain lake, His glen the hern went singing through, And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake, May well seem good enough for YOU.

For all is old, and tried, and dear, And all is fair, and round about The brook that murmurs from the mere Is dimpled with the rising trout.

But when the skies of shorter days Are dark and all the "ways are mire,"

How bright upon your books the blaze Gleams from the cheerful study fire.

On quartos where our fathers read, Enthralled, the Book of Shakespeare's play, On all that Poe could dream of dread, And all that Herrick sang of gay!

Fair first editions, duly prized, Above them all, methinks, I rate The tome where Walton's hand revised His wonderful receipts for bait!

Happy, who rich in toys like these Forgets a weary nation's ills, Who from his study window sees The circle of the Suss.e.x hills.

[Sidenote: THE RESOLUTE t.i.tMICE]

Rowfant was once the scene of one of the most determined struggles in history. The contestants were a series of t.i.tmice and the G.P.O., and the account of the war may be read in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington:--"In 1888, a pair of the Great t.i.tmouse (_Parus major_) began to build their nest in the post-box which stood in the road at Rowfant, and into which letters, &c., were posted and taken out by the door daily. One of the birds was killed by a boy, and the nest was not finished. In 1889, a pair completed the nest, laid seven eggs, and began to sit; but one day, when an unusual number of post-cards were dropped into, and nearly filled, the box, the birds deserted the nest, which was afterwards removed with the eggs. In 1890, a pair built a new nest and laid seven eggs, and reared a brood of five young, although the letters posted were often found lying on the back of the sitting bird, which never left the nest when the door of the box was opened to take out the letters. The birds went in and out by the slit."

CHAPTER XXIV

EAST GRINSTEAD

Sackville College--John Mason Neale--_Theodosius; or, The Force of Love_, at the East Grinstead Theatre--Three martyrs--Brambletye House--Forest Row--The garden of the author of _The English Flower Garden_--Diamond Jubilee clock-faces--"Big-on-Little" and the reverend and irreverend commentator.

East Grinstead, the capital of north-east Suss.e.x, is interesting chiefly for Sackville College, that haunt of ancient peace of which John Mason Neale, poet, enthusiast, divine, historian, and romance-writer for children, was for many years the distinguished Warden. Nothing can exceed the quiet restfulness of the quadrangle. The college gives shelter to five brethren and six sisters (one of whom shows the visitor over the building), and to a warden and two a.s.sistants. Happy collegians, to have so fair a haven in which to pa.s.s the evening of life. East Grinstead otherwise has not much beauty, its commanding pinnacled church tower being more impressive from a distance, and its chief street mingling too much that is new with its few old timbered facades, charming though these are.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Judge's Houses, East Grinstead._]

The town, when it would be frivolous, to-day depends upon the occasional visits of travelling entertainers; but in the eighteenth century East Grinstead had a theatre of its own, in the main street, a play-bill of which, for May, 1758, is given in Boaden's _Life of Mrs. Siddons_. It states that "Theodosius; or, the Force of Love," is to be played, for the benefit of Mrs. P. Varanes by Mr. P., "who will strive as far as possible to support the character of this fiery Persian Prince, in which he was so much admired and applauded at Hastings, Arundel, Petworth, Midhurst, Lewes, &c." The attraction of the next announcement is the precise converse: "Theodosius, by a young gentleman from the University of Oxford, who never appeared on any stage."

[Sidenote: n.o.bILITY AND THE ALTAR]

The play-bill continues with a delicate hint: "Nothing in Italy can exceed the altar in the first scene of the play. Nevertheless, should any of the n.o.bility or gentry wish to see it ornamented with flowers, the bearer will bring away as many as they choose to favour him with."

Finally: "N.B.--The great yard dog that made so much noise on Thursday night during the last act of King Richard the Third, will be sent to a neighbour's over the way."

The Suss.e.x Martyrs, to whom a memorial, as we shall see, has recently been raised above Lewes, are usually a.s.sociated with that town; but on July 18, 1556, Thomas Dungate, John Forman, and Anne, or Mother, Tree, were burned for conscience' sake at East Grinstead.

Between East Grinstead and Forest Row, on the east, just under the hill and close to the railway, are the remains of Brambletye House, a rather florid ruin, once the seat of the great Suss.e.x family of Lewknor. In its heyday Brambletye must have been a very fine place. Horace Smith's romance which bears its name, and for which Horsfield, in his _History of Suss.e.x_, predicted a career commensurable with that of the Waverley novels, is now, I fear, justly forgotten. The slopes of Forest Row, which was of old a settlement of hunting lodges belonging to the great lords who took their pleasure in Ashdown Forest, are now bright with new villas. From Forest Row, Wych Cross and Ashdown Forest are easily gained; but of this open region of dark heather more in a later chapter.

Between Kingscote and West Hoathly, a short distance to the south-west of East Grinstead, is another "tye"--Gravetye, a tudor mansion in a deep hollow, the home of Mr. William Robinson, the author of _The English Flower Garden_. Last April, the stonework, of which there is much, was a ma.s.s of the most wonderful purple aubretia, and the wild garden between the house and the water a paradise of daffodils.

The church of West Hoathly (called West Ho-ly), which stands high on the hill to the south, has a slender shingled spire that may be seen from long distances. The tower has, however, been injured by the very ugly new clock that has been lately fixed in a position doubtless the most convenient but doubtless also the least comely. To nail to such a delicate structure as West Hoathly church the kind of dial that one expects to see outside a railway station is a curious lapse of taste.

Hever church, in Kent, has a similar blemish, probably dating from one of the recent Jubilee celebrations, which left few loyal villages the richer by a beautiful memorial. Surely it should be possible to obtain an appropriate clock-face for such churches as these.

West Hoathly has some iron tombstones, such as used to be cast in the old furnace days, which are not uncommon in these parts. Opposite the church is a building of great antiquity, which has been allowed to forget its honourable age.

[Sidenote: "BIG-ON-LITTLE"]

We are now on the fringe of the Suss.e.x rock country, to which we come again in earnest when we reach Maresfield, and of which Tunbridge Wells is the capital. But not even Tunbridge Wells with its famous toad has anything to offer more remarkable than West Hoathly's "Big-on-Little,"

in the Rockhurst estate. I am tempted to quote two descriptions of the rock, from two very different points of view. An antiquary writing in the eighteenth century (quoted by Horsfield) thus begins his account:--"About half a mile west of West Hoadley church there is a high ridge covered with wood; the edge of this is a craggy cliff, composed of enormous blocks of sand stone. The soil hath been entirely washed from off them, and in many places, from the interstices by which they are divided, one perceives these crags with bare broad white foreheads, and, as it were, overlooking the wood, which clothes the valley at their feet. In going to the place, I pa.s.sed across this deep valley, and was led by a narrow foot-path almost trackless up to the cliff, which seems as one advances to hang over one's head. The mind in this pa.s.sage is prepared with all the suspended feelings of awe and reverence, and as one approaches this particular rock, standing with its stupendous bulk poised, seemingly in a miraculous manner and point, one is struck with amazement. The recess in which it stands hath, behind this rock, and the rocks which surround it, a withdrawn and recluse pa.s.sage which the eye cannot look into but with an idea of its coming from some more secret and holy adyt. All these circ.u.mstances, in an age of tutored superst.i.tion, would give, even to the finest minds, the impressions that lead to idolatry."