Highways and Byways in Sussex Part 19

[Sidenote: THACKERAY'S PRAISE]

Among other writers who have found Brighton good to work in I might name the authors of _The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton_ and _A System of Synthetic Philosophy_. Mr. William Black was for many years a familiar figure on the Kemp Town parade, and Brighton plays a part in at least two of his charming tales--_The Beautiful Wretch_, and an early and very sprightly novel called _Kilmeny_. Brighton should be proud to think that Mr. Herbert Spencer chose her as a retreat in which to come to his conclusions; but I doubt if she is. Thackeray's affection is, however, cherished by the town, his historic praise of "merry cheerful Dr.

Brighton" having a commercial value hardly to be over-estimated.

Brighton in return gave Thackeray Lord Steyne's immortal name and served as a background for many of his scenes.

Although Brighton has still a fis.h.i.+ng industry, the spectacle of its fishermen refraining from work is not an uncommon one. It was once the custom, I read, and perhaps still is, for these men, when casting their nets for mackerel or herring, to stand with bare heads repeating in unison these words: "There they goes then. G.o.d Almighty send us a blessing it is to be hoped." As each barrel (which is attached to every two nets out of the fleet, or 120 nets) was cast overboard they would cry:--

Watch, barrel, watch! Mackerel for to catch, White may they be, like a blossom on a tree.

G.o.d send thousands, one, two, and three, Some by their heads, some by their tails, G.o.d sends thousands, and never fails.

When the last net was overboard the master said, "Seas all!" and then lowered the foremast and laid to the wind. If he were to say, "Last net," he would expect never to see his nets again.

[Sidenote: BRIGHTON'S FAIR DAUGHTERS]

"There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the world," wrote Richard Jefferies some twenty years ago. "They are so common that gradually the standard of taste in the mind rises, and good-looking women who would be admired in other places pa.s.s by without notice. Where all the flowers are roses you do not see a rose." (s.h.i.+rley Brooks must have visited Brighton on a curiously bad day, for seeing no pretty face he wrote of it as "The City of the Plain.") Richard Jefferies, who lived for a while at Hove, blessed also the treelessness of Brighton. Therein he saw much of its healing virtue. "Let nothing,"

he wrote, "cloud the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which fall at Brighton. Watch the pebbles on the beach; the foam runs up and wets them, almost before it can slip back, the suns.h.i.+ne has dried them again. So they are alternately wetted and dried. Bitter sea and glowing light, bright clear air, dry as dry--that describes the place. Spain is the country of sunlight, burning sunlight; Brighton is a Spanish town in England, a Seville."

[Sidenote: THE PAVILION]

The princ.i.p.al inland attraction of Brighton is still the Pavilion, which is indeed the town's symbol. On pa.s.sing through its very numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist, saying something similar) is still unimproved: "One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped." Cobbett in his rough and homely way also said something to the point about the Prince's pleasure-house: "Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulb; put all these, pretty promiscuously, but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your architecture."

To its ordinary museum in the town Brighton has added the collection of stuffed birds made by the late Mr. E. T. Booth, which he housed in a long gallery in the road that leads to the d.y.k.e. Mr. Booth, when he shot a bird in its native haunts, carried away some of its surroundings in order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment. Hence every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipit's eggs found on the Ba.s.s Rock, in a nest invisible to the spectator. The collection in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is of course more considerable, and finer, but some of Mr. Booth's cases are certainly superior, and his collection has the special interest of having been made by one man.

[Sidenote: CRITICISM BY JUG]

Brighton has another very interesting possession in the collection of old domestic pottery in the museum: an a.s.semblage (the most entertaining and varied that I know) of jugs and mugs, plates and ornaments, all English, all quaint and characteristic too, and mostly inscribed with mottoes or decorated with designs in celebration of such events as the battle of Waterloo, or the discomfiture of Mr. Pitt, or a victory of Tom Cribb. Others are ceramic satires on the drunkard's folly or the inconstancy of women. Why are the potters of our own day so dull?

History is still being made, human nature is not less frail; but I see no genial commentary on jug or dish. Is it the march of Taste?

CHAPTER XVIII

ROTTINGDEAN AND WHEATEARS

Ovingdean--Charles II.--The introduction of Mangel Wurzel--Rottingdean as a shrine--Mr. Kipling's Suss.e.x poem--Thomas Fuller on the Wheatear--Mr. Hudson's description of the traps--The old prosperous days for shepherds--Luring larks--A fight on the beach--The town that failed.

Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of ma.s.sive houses is the new road that leads to Rottingdean. The old road fell into the sea some few years ago--the fourth or fifth to share that fate. But the pleasantest way thither is on foot over the turf that tops the white cliffs.

By diverging inland between Brighton and Rottingdean, just beyond the most imposing girls' school in the kingdom, Ovingdean is reached, one of the nestling homesteads of the Downs. It is chiefly known as providing Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty t.i.tle of one of his stories, _Ovingdean Grange_. The gallant novelist, however, was a poor historian in this book, for Charles the Second, as we have seen, never set foot east of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the Suss.e.x Downs. The legend that lodges him at Ovingdean, although one can understand how Ovingdean must cherish it, cannot stand. (Mock Beggars'

Hall, in the same romance, is Southover Grange at Lewes.)

Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. Ovingdean is famous not only for its false a.s.sociation with Charles the Second but as the burial place of Thomas Pelling, an old-time Vicar, "the first person who introduced Mangul Wurzel into England."

[Sidenote: ROTTINGDEAN]

Rottingdean to-day must be very much of the size of Brighton two centuries ago, before fas.h.i.+on came upon it; but the little village is hardly likely ever to creep over its surrounding hills in the same way.

The past few years, however, have seen its growth from an obscure and inaccessible settlement to a shrine. It is only of quite recent date that a glimpse of Rottingdean has become almost as necessary to the Brighton visitor as the journey to the d.y.k.e. Had the Legend of the Briar Rose never been painted; had Mulvaney, Ortheris and Learoyd remained unchronicled and the British soldier escaped the label "Absent-minded Beggar," Rottingdean might still be invaded only occasionally; for it was when, following Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Mr. Rudyard Kipling found the little white village good to make a home in, that its public life began. Although Mr. Kipling has now gone farther into the depths of the county, and the great draughtsman, some of whose stained gla.s.s designs are in the church, is no more, the habit of riding to Rottingdean is likely, however, to persist in Brighton. The village is quaint and simple (particularly so after the last 'bus is stabled), but it is valuable rather as the key to some of the finest solitudes of the Downs, in the great uninhabited hill district between the Race Course at Brighton and Newhaven, between Lewes and the sea, than for any merits of its own. One other claim has it, however, on the notice of the pilgrim: William Black lies in the churchyard.

[Sidenote: "BLUE GOODNESS OF THE WEALD"]

Mr. Kipling, as I have said, has now removed his household G.o.ds farther inland, to Burwash, but his heart and mind must be still among the Downs. The Burwash country, good as it is, can (I think) never inspire him to such verse as he wrote in _The Five Nations_ on the turf hills about his old home:--

No tender-hearted garden crowns, No bosomed woods adorn Our blunt, bow-headed, whale-backed Downs, But gnarled and writhen thorn-- Bare slopes where chasing shadows skim, And through the gaps revealed Belt upon belt, the wooded, dim Blue goodness of the Weald.

Clean of officious fence or hedge, Half-wild and wholly tame, The wise turf cloaks the white cliff edge As when the Romans came.

What sign of those that fought and died At s.h.i.+ft of sword and sword?

The barrow and the camp abide, The sunlight and the sward.

Here leaps ash.o.r.e the full Sou'west All heavy-winged with brine, Here lies above the folded crest The Channel's leaden line; And here the sea-fogs lap and cling, And here, each warning each, The sheep-bells and the s.h.i.+p-bells ring Along the hidden beach.

We have no waters to delight Our broad and brookless vales-- Only the dewpond on the height Unfed, that never fails, Whereby no tattered herbage tells Which way the season flies-- Only our close-bit thyme that smells Like dawn in Paradise.

Here through the strong and salty days The unshaded silence thrills; Or little, lost, Down churches praise The Lord who made the Hills: But here the Old G.o.ds guard their round, And, in her secret heart, The heathen kingdom Wilfrid found Dreams, as she dwells, apart.

[Sidenote: WHEATEARS]

Of old the best wheatear country was above Rottingdean; but the South Down shepherds no longer have the wheatear money that used to add so appreciably to their wages in the summer months. A combination of circ.u.mstances has brought about this loss. One is the decrease in wheatears, another the protection of the bird by law, and a third the refusal of the farmers to allow their men any longer to neglect the flocks by setting and tending snares. But in the seventeenth, eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, wheatears were taken on the Downs in enormous quant.i.ties and formed a part of every south county banquet in their season. People visited Brighton solely to eat them, as they now go to Greenwich for whitebait and to Colchester for oysters.

This is how Fuller describes the little creature in the _Worthies_--"_Wheatears_ is a bird peculiar to this County, hardly found out of it. It is so called, because fattest when Wheat is ripe, whereon it feeds; being no bigger than a Lark, which it equalleth in _fineness_ of the flesh, far exceedeth in the _fatness_ thereof. The worst is, that being onely seasonable in the heat of summer, and naturally larded with lumps of fat, it is soon subject to corrupt, so that (though abounding within _fourty_ miles) _London Poulterers_ have no mind to meddle with them, which no care in carriage can keep from Putrefaction. That _Palate-man_ shall pa.s.s in silence, who, being seriously demanded his judgment concerning the abilities of a great _Lord_, concluded him a man of very weak parts, '_because once he saw him, at a_ great Feast, _feed on_ CHICKENS _when there were_ WHEATEARS _on the Table_.' I will adde no more in praise of this _Bird_, for fear some _female Reader_ may fall in _longing_ for it, and unhappily be disappointed of her desire." A contemporary of Fuller, John Taylor, from whom I have already quoted, and shall quote again, thus unscientifically dismisses the wheatear in one of his doggerel narratives:--

Six weeks or thereabouts they are catch'd there, And are well-nigh 11 months G.o.d knows where.

As a matter of fact, the winter home of the wheatear is Africa.

[Sidenote: THE SHEPHERDS' TRAPS]

The capture of wheatears--mostly illegally by nets--still continues in a very small way to meet a languid demand, but the Suss.e.x ortolan, as the little bird was sometimes called, has pa.s.sed from the bill of fare.

Wheatears (which, despite Fuller, have no connection with ears of wheat, the word signifying white tail) still abound, skimming over the turf in little groups; but they no longer fly towards the dinner table. The best and most interesting description that I know of the old manner of taking them, is to be found in Mr. W. H. Hudson's _Nature in Downland_. The season began in July, when the little fat birds rest on the Downs on their way from Scotland and northern England to their winter home, and lasted through September. In July, says Mr. Hudson, the "Shepherds made their 'coops,' as their traps were called--a T-shaped trench about fourteen inches long, over which the two long narrow sods cut neatly out of the turf were adjusted, gra.s.s downwards. A small opening was left at the end for ingress, and there was room in the pa.s.sage for the bird to pa.s.s through towards the c.h.i.n.ks of light coming from the two ends of the cross pa.s.sage. At the inner end of the pa.s.sage a horse-hair springe was set, by which the bird was caught by the neck as it pa.s.sed in, but the noose did not as a rule strangle the bird. On some of the high downs near the coast, notably at Beachy Head, at Birling Gap, at Seaford, and in the neighbourhood of Rottingdean, the shepherds made so many coops, placed at small distances apart, that the Downs in some places looked as if they had been ploughed. In September, when the season was over, the sods were carefully put back, roots down, in the places, and the smooth green surface was restored to the hills."

On bright clear days few birds would be caught, but in showery weather the traps would all be full; this is because when the sun is obscured wheatears are afraid and take refuge under stones or in whatever hole may offer. The price of each wheatear was a penny, and it was the custom of the persons in the neighbourhood who wanted them for dinner to visit the traps, take out the birds and leave the money in their place.

The shepherd on returning would collect his gains and reset the traps.

Near Brighton, however, most of the shepherds caught only for dealers; and one firm, until some twenty years ago, maintained the practice of giving an annual supper at the end of the season, at which the shepherds would be paid in the ma.s.s for their spoil.

[Sidenote: A RECORD BAG]

An old shepherd, who had been for years on Westside Farm near Brighton, spoke thus, in 1882, as Mr. Borrer relates in his _Birds of Suss.e.x_:--"The most I ever caught in one day was thirteen dozen, but we thought it a good day if we caught three or four dozen. We sold them to a poulterer at Brighton, who took all we could catch in a season at 18_d._ a dozen. From what I have heard from old shepherds, it cannot be doubted that they were caught in much greater numbers a century ago than of late. I have heard them speak of an immense number being taken in one day by a shepherd at East Dean, near Beachy Head. I think they said he took nearly a hundred dozen, so many that they could not thread them on crow-quills in the usual manner, but he took off his round frock and made a sack of it to put them into, and his wife did the same with her petticoat. This must have happened when there was a great flight. Their numbers now are so decreased that some shepherds do not set up any coops, as it does not pay for the trouble."

[Sidenote: THE LARK-GLa.s.s]

Although wheatears are no longer caught, the Brighton bird-catcher is a very busy man. Goldfinches fall in extraordinary plenty to his nets. A bird-catcher told Mr. Borrer that he once caught eleven dozen of them at one haul, and in 1860 the annual take at Worthing was 1,154 dozen. Larks are also caught in great numbers, also with nets, the old system still practised in France, of luring them with gla.s.ses, having become obsolete. Knox has an interesting description of the lark-gla.s.s and its uses:--"A piece of wood about a foot and a half long, four inches deep, and three inches wide, is planed off on two sides so as to resemble the roof of a well-known toy, yclept a Noah's ark, but, more than twice as long. In the sloping sides are set several bits of looking-gla.s.s. A long iron spindle, the lower end of which is sharp and fixed in the ground, pa.s.ses freely through the centre; on this the instrument turns, and even spins rapidly when a string has been attached and is pulled by the performer, who generally stands at a distance of fifteen or twenty yards from the decoy. The reflection of the sun's rays from these little revolving mirrors seems to possess a mysterious attraction for the larks, for they descend in great numbers from a considerable height in the air, hover over the spot, and suffer themselves to be shot at repeatedly without attempting to leave the field or to continue their course."