Part 1 (1/2)

Highways & Byways in Suss.e.x.

by E.V. Lucas.

PREFACE

Readers who are acquainted with the earlier volumes of this series will not need to be told that they are less guide-books than appreciations of the districts with which they are concerned. In the pages that follow my aim has been to gather a Suss.e.x bouquet rather than to present the facts which the more practical traveller requires.

The order of progress through the country has been determined largely by the lines of railway. I have thought it best to enter Suss.e.x in the west at Midhurst, making that the first centre, and to zig-zag thence across to the east by way of Chichester, Arundel, Petworth, Horsham, Brighton (I name only the chief centres), Cuckfield, East Grinstead, Lewes, Eastbourne, Hailsham, Hastings, Rye, and Tunbridge Wells; leaving the county finally at Withyham, on the borders of Ashdown Forest. For the traveller in a carriage or on a bicycle this route is not the best; but for those who would explore it slowly on foot (and much of the more characteristic scenery of Suss.e.x can be studied only in this way), with occasional a.s.sistance from the train, it is, I think, as good a scheme as any.

I do not suggest that it is necessary for the reader who travels through Suss.e.x to take the same route: he would probably prefer to cover the county literally strip by strip--the Forest strip from Tunbridge Wells to Horsham, the Weald strip from Billingshurst to Burwash, the Downs strip from Racton to Beachy Head--rather than follow my course, north to south, and south to north, across the land. But the book is, I think, the gainer by these tangents, and certainly its author is happier, for they bring him again and again back to the Downs.

It is impossible at this date to write about Suss.e.x, in accordance with the plan of the present series, without saying a great many things that others have said before, and without making use of the historians of the county. To the collections of the Suss.e.x Archaeological Society I am greatly indebted; also to Mr. J. G. Bishop's _Peep into the Past_, and to Mr. W. D. Parish's _Dictionary of the Suss.e.x Dialect_. Many other works are mentioned in the text.

The history, archaeology, and natural history of the county have been thoroughly treated by various writers; but there are, I have noticed, fewer books than there should be upon Suss.e.x men and women. Carlyle's saying that every clergyman should write the history of his parish (which one might amend to the history of his paris.h.i.+oners) has borne too little fruit in our district; nor have lay observers arisen in any number to atone for the shortcoming. And yet Suss.e.x must be as rich in good character, pure, quaint, shrewd, humorous or n.o.ble, as any other division of England. In the matter of honouring ill.u.s.trious Suss.e.x men and women, the late Mark Antony Lower played his part with _The Worthies of Suss.e.x_, and Mr. Fleet with _Glimpses of Our Suss.e.x Ancestors_; but the Suss.e.x ”Characters,” where are they? Who has set down their ”little unremembered acts,” their eccentricities, their sterling southern tenacities? The Rev. A. D. Gordon wrote the history of Harting, and quite recently the Rev. C. N. Sutton has published his interesting _Historical Notes of Withyham, Hartfield, and Ashdown Forest_; and there may be other similar parish histories which I am forgetting. But the only books that I have seen which make a patient and sympathetic attempt to understand the people of Suss.e.x are Mr. Parish's _Dictionary_, Mr. Egerton's _Suss.e.x Folk and Suss.e.x Ways_, and ”John Halsham's” _Idlehurst_. How many rare qualities of head and heart must go unrecorded in rural England.

I have to thank my friend Mr. C. E. Clayton for his kindness in reading the proofs of this book and in suggesting additions.

E. V. L.

_December 12, 1903._

HIGHWAYS AND BYWAYS IN SUSs.e.x

CHAPTER I

MIDHURST

The fitting order of a traveller's progress--The Downs the true Suss.e.x--Fas.h.i.+on at bay--Mr. Kipling's topographical creed--Midhurst's advantages--Single railway lines--Queen Elizabeth at Cowdray--Montagus domestic and homicidal--The curse of Cowdray--Dr. Johnson at Midhurst--Cowdray Park.

If it is better, in exploring a county, to begin with its least interesting districts and to end with the best, I have made a mistake in the order of this book: I should rather have begun with the comparatively dull hot inland hilly region of the north-east, and have left it at the cool chalk Downs of the Hamps.h.i.+re border. But if one's first impression of new country cannot be too favourable we have done rightly in starting at Midhurst, even at the risk of a loss of enthusiasm in the concluding chapters. For although historically, socially, and architecturally north Suss.e.x is as interesting as south Suss.e.x, the crown of the county's scenery is the Downs, and its most fascinating districts are those which the Downs dominate. The farther we travel from the Downs and the sea the less unique are our surroundings.

Many of the villages in the northern Weald, beautiful as they are, might equally well be in Kent or Surrey: a visitor suddenly alighting in their midst, say from a balloon, would be puzzled to name the county he was in; but the Downs and their dependencies are essential Suss.e.x. Hence a Suss.e.x man in love with the Downs becomes less happy at every step northward.

[Sidenote: THE INVIOLATE HILLS]

One cause of the unique character of the Suss.e.x Downs is their virginal security, their una.s.sailable independence. They stand, a silent undiscovered country, between the seething pleasure towns of the seaboard plain and the trim estates of the Weald. Londoners, for whom Suss.e.x has a special attraction by reason of its proximity (Brighton's beach is the nearest to the capital in point of time), either pause north of the Downs, or rush through them in trains, on bicycles, or in carriages, to the sea. Houses there are among the Downs, it is true, but they are old-established, the homes of families that can remember no other homes. There is as yet no fas.h.i.+on for residences in these alt.i.tudes. Until that fas.h.i.+on sets in (and may it be far distant) the Downs will remain essential Suss.e.x, and those that love them will exclaim with Mr. Kipling,

G.o.d gave all men all earth to love, But since man's heart is small, Ordains for each one spot shall prove Beloved over all.

Each to his choice, and I rejoice The lot has fallen to me In a fair ground--in a fair ground-- Yea, Suss.e.x by the sea!

[Sidenote: MIDHURST]

If we are to begin our travels in Suss.e.x with the best, then Midhurst is the starting point, for no other spot has so much to offer: a quiet country town, gabled and venerable, unmodernised and unambitious, with a river, a Tudor ruin, a park of deer, heather commons, immense woods, and the Downs only three miles distant. Moreover, Midhurst is also the centre of a very useful little railway system, which, having only a single line in each direction, while serving the traveller, never annoys him by disfiguring the country or letting loose upon it crowds of vandals. Single lines always mean thinly populated country. As a pedestrian poet has sung:--