Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 28

[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON AT LEWES]

Dr. Johnson was once in Lewes, on a day's visit to the Sh.e.l.leys, at the house which bears their name at the south end of the town. One of the little girls becoming rather a nuisance with her questions, the Doctor lifted her into a cherry tree and walked off. At dinner, some time later, the child was missed, and a search party was about to set out when the Doctor exclaimed, "Oh, I left her in a tree!" For many years the tree was known as "Dr. Johnson's cherry tree."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _St. Ann's Church, Southover._]

[Sidenote: THE FIFTH]

Lewes is ordinarily still and leisurely, with no bustle in her steep streets save on market days: an abode of rest and unhastening feet. But on one night of the year she lays aside her grey mantle and her quiet tones and emerges a Bacchante robed in flame. Lewes on the 5th of November is an incredible sight; probably no other town in the United Kingdom offers such a contrast to its ordinary life. I have never heard that Lewes is notably Protestant on other days in the year, that any intolerance is meted out to Roman Catholics on November 4th or November 6th; but on November 5th she appears to believe that the honour of the reformed church is wholly in her hands, and that unless her voice is heard declaiming against the tyrannies and treacheries of Rome all the spiritual labours of the eighth Henry will have been in vain.

No fewer than eight Bonfire Societies flourish in the town, all in a strong financial position. Each of these has its bonfire blazing or smouldering at a street corner, from dusk to midnight, and each, at a certain stage in the evening, forms into procession, and approaching its own fire by devious routes, burns an effigy of the Pope, together with whatever miscreant most fills the public eye at the moment--such as General Booth or Mr. Kruger, both of whom I have seen incinerated amid cheers and detonations.

[Sidenote: LEWES ROUSERS]

The figures are not lightly cast upon the flames, but are conducted thither ceremoniously, the "Bishop" of the society having first pa.s.sed sentence upon them in a speech bristling with local allusions. These speeches serve the function of a _revue_ of the year and are sometimes quite clever, but it is not until they are printed in the next morning's paper that one can take their many points. The princ.i.p.al among the many distractions is the "rouser," a squib peculiar to Lewes, to which the bonfire boys (who are, by the way, in great part boys only in name, like the postboys of the past and the cowboys of the present) have given laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much larger and heavier than the ordinary squib; it is propelled through the air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks; and it bursts with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting, while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on their gratings. Ordinary squibs and crackers are also continuously ignited, while now and then one of the sky rockets discharged in flights from a procession, elects to take a horizontal course, and hurtles head-high down the crowded street.

So the carnival proceeds until midnight, when the firemen, who have been on the alert all the evening, extinguish the fires. The Bonfire Societies subsequently collect information as to any damage done and make it good: a wise course, to which they owe in part the sanction to renew the orgie next year. Other towns in Suss.e.x keep up the glorious Fifth with some spirit, but nowhere in England is there anything to compare with the thoroughness of Lewes.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Ouse at South Street, Lewes._]

[Sidenote: THE LEWES MARTYRS]

[Sidenote: RICHARD WOODMAN]

To some extent Lewes may consider that she has reason for the display, for on June 22, 1557, ten men and women were tied to the stake and burned to death in the High Street for professing a faith obnoxious to Queen Mary. Chief of these courageous enthusiasts were Richard Woodman and Derrick Carver. Woodman, a native of Buxted, had settled at Warbleton, where he was a prosperous iron master. All went well until Mary's accession to the throne, when the rector of Warbleton, who had been a Protestant under Edward VI., turned, in Foxe's words, "head to tayle" and preached "clean contrary to that which he had before taught."

Woodman's protests carried him to imprisonment and the stake.

Altogether, Lewes saw the death of sixteen martyrs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Ouse at Piddinghoe._]

CHAPTER XXVII

THE OUSE VALLEY

The two Ouses--Three round towers--Thirsty labourers--Tels...o...b..--The hills and the sea--Mrs. Marriott Watson's Down poem--Newhaven--A Suss.e.x miller--Seaford's past--A politic smuggler--Electioneering ingenuity--Bishopstone.

The road from Lewes to the sea runs along the edge of the Ouse levels, just under the bare hills, pa.s.sing through villages that are little more than homesteads of the sheep-farmers, albeit each has its church--Iford, Rodmell, Southease, Piddinghoe--and so to Newhaven, the county's only harbour of any importance since the sea silted up the Sh.o.r.eham bar. You may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as anywhere twice the distance from London; and the Downs above them are practically virgin soil. The Brighton horseman or walker takes as a rule a line either to Lewes or to Newhaven, rarely adventuring in the direction of Iford Hill, Highdole Hill, or Tels...o...b.. village, which nestles three hundred feet high, over Piddinghoe. By day the waggons ply steadily between Lewes and the port, but other travellers are few. Once evening falls the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation.

[Sidenote: THE OUSE VALLEY]

The air of this valley is singularly clear, producing on fine days a blue effect that is, I believe, peculiar to the district. In the sketches of a Brighton painter in water colours, Mr. Clem Lambert, who has worked much at Rodmell, the spirit of the river valleys of Suss.e.x is reproduced with extraordinary fidelity and the minimum loss of freshness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Rodmell._]

Horsfield, rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the mention of the Lewes river, quotes a pa.s.sage from "The Task":

Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain Of s.p.a.cious meads, with cattle sprinkled o'er, Conducts the eye along his sinuous course Delighted.

Dr. Johnson's remark that one green field is like another green field, might, one sees, be extended to rivers, for Cowper was, of course, describing the Ouse at Olney.

The first village out of Lewes on the Newhaven road is Kingston (one of three Suss.e.x villages of this name), on the side of the hill, once the property of Sir Philip Sidney. Next is Iford, with straw blowing free and cows in its meadows; next Rodmell, whence Whiteway Bottom and Breaky Bottom lead to the highlands above: next Southease, where the only bridge over the Ouse between Lewes and Newhaven is to be crossed: a little village famous for a round church tower, of which Suss.e.x knows but three, one other at St. Michael's, Lewes, and one at Piddinghoe, the next village.

[Sidenote: SOUTHEASE THIRST]

The Southease rustics were once of independent mind, as may be gathered from the following extract from the "Manorial Customs of Southease-with-Heighton, near Lewes," in 1623: "Every reaper must have allowed him, at the cost of the lord or his farmer, one drinkinge in the morninge of bread and cheese, and a dinner at noone consistinge of rostmeate and other good victualls, meete for men and women in harvest time; and two drinkinges in the afternoone, one in the middest of their afternoone's work and the other at the ende of their day's work, and drinke alwayes duringe their work as neede shall require."

[Sidenote: PIDD'NHOO]

Tels...o...b.., the capital of these lonely Downs and as good an objective as the walker who sets out from Brighton, Rottingdean, or Lewes to climb hills can ask, is a charming little shy hamlet which nothing can harm, snugly reposing in its combe, above Piddinghoe. Piddinghoe (p.r.o.nounced Pidd'nhoo) is a compact village at the foot of the hill; but it has suffered in picturesqueness and character by its proximity to the commercial enterprise of Newhaven. Hussey, in his _Notes on the Churches of ... Suss.e.x_, suggests that a field north of the village was once the site of a considerable Roman villa. A local sarcasm credits Piddinghoe people with the habit of shoeing their magpies.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Piddinghoe._]

The Downs when we saw them first, between Midhurst and Chichester, formed an inland chain parallel with the sh.o.r.e: here, and eastward as far as Beachy Head, where they suddenly cease, their southern slopes are washed by the Channel. This companionship of the sea lends them an additional wildness: sea mists now and then envelop them in a cloud; sea birds rise and fall above their cliffs; the roar or sigh of the waves mingles with the cries of sheep; the salt savour of the sea is borne on the wind over the crisp turf. It was, I fancy, among the Downs in this part of Suss.e.x that Mrs. Marriott-Watson wrote the intimately understanding lines which I take the liberty of quoting:

[Sidenote: A HILL POEM]

ON THE DOWNS.

Broad and bare to the skies The great Down-country lies, Green in the glance of the sun, Fresh with the clean salt air; Screaming the gulls rise from the fresh-turned mould, Where the round bosom of the wind-swept wold Slopes to the valley fair.

Where the pale stubble shines with golden gleam The silver ploughshare cleaves its hard-won way Behind the patient team, The slow black oxen toiling through the day Tireless, impa.s.sive still, From dawning dusk and chill To twilight grey.

Far off the pearly sheep Along the upland steep Follow their shepherd from the wattled fold, With tinkling bell-notes falling sweet and cold As a stream's cadence, while a skylark sings High in the blue, with eager outstretched wings, Till the strong pa.s.sion of his joy be told.

But when the day grows old, And night cometh fold on fold, Dulling the western gold, Blackening bush and tree, Veiling the ranks of cloud, In their pallid pomp and proud That hasten home from the sea, Listen--now and again if the night be still enow, You may hear the distant sea range to and fro Tearing the shingly bourne of his bounden track, Moaning with hate as he fails and falleth back;

The Downs are peopled then; Fugitive, low-browed men Start from the slopes around Over the murky ground Crouching they run with rough-wrought bow and spear, Now seen, now hid, they rise and disappear, Lost in the gloom again.

Soft on the dew-fall damp Scarce sounds the measured tramp Of bronze-mailed sentinels, Dark on the darkened fells Guarding the camp.

The Roman watch-fires glow Red on the dusk; and harsh Cries a heron flitting slow Over the valley marsh Where the sea-mist gathers low.

Closer, and closer yet Draweth the night's dim net Hiding the troubled dead: No more to see or know But a black waste lying below, And a glimmering blank o'erhead.

Of Newhaven there is little to say, except that in rough weather the traveller from France is very glad to reach it, and on a fine day the traveller from England is happy to leave it behind. In the churchyard is a monument in memory of the officers and crew of the _Brazen_, which went down off the town in 1800, and lost all hands save one.

[Sidenote: A SUSs.e.x MILLER]

On the way to Seaford, which is nearly three miles east, sheltering under its white headland (a preliminary sketch, as one might say, for Beachy Head), we pa.s.s the Bishopstone tide mills, once the property of a st.u.r.dy and prosperous Suss.e.x autocrat named William Catt, the grower of the best pears in the county, and the first to welcome Louis Philippe (whom he had advised on milling in France) when he landed at Newhaven in exile. A good story told of William Catt, by Mr. Lower, in his _Worthies of Suss.e.x_, ill.u.s.trates not only the character of that sagacious and kindly martinet, but also of the Suss.e.x peasant in its mingled independence and dependence, frankness and caution. Mr. Catt, having unbent among his retainers at a harvest supper, one of them, a little emboldened perhaps by draughts of Newhaven "tipper," thus addressed his master. "Give us yer hand, sir, I love ye, I love ye," but, he added, "I'm danged if I beant afeared of ye, though."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Southover Grange._]