Part 12 (1/2)
In some respects there is no more interesting spot in Suss.e.x than the mangold field on Mr. Tupper's farm that contains the Roman pavements.
Approaching this scene of alien treasure one observes nothing but the mangolds; here and there a rough shed as if for cattle; and Mr. Tupper, the grandson of the discoverer of the mosaics, at work with his hoe.
This he lays on one side on the arrival of a visitor, taking in his hand instead a large key. So far, we are in Suss.e.x pure and simple; mangolds all around, cattle sheds in front, a Suss.e.x farmer for a companion, the sky of Suss.e.x over all, and the twentieth century in her nonage. Mr.
Tupper turns the key, throws open the creaking door--and nearly two thousand years roll away. We are no longer in Suss.e.x but in the province of the Regni; no longer at Bignor but Ad Decimum, or ten miles from Regnum (or Chichester) on Stane Street, the direct road to Londinum, in the residence of a Roman Colonial governor of immense wealth, probably supreme in command of the province.
The fragments of pavement that have been preserved are mere indications of the splendour and extent of the building, which must have covered some acres--a welcome and imposing sight as one descended Bignor Hill by Stane Street, with its white walls and columns rising from the dark weald. The pavement in the first shed which Mr. Tupper unlocks has the figure of Ganymede in one of its circular compartments; and here the hot-air pipes, by which the villa was heated, may be seen where the floor has given way. A head of Winter in another of the sheds is very fine; but it is rather for what these relics stand for, than any intrinsic beauty, that they are interesting. They are perfect symbols of a power that has pa.s.sed away. Nothing else so brings back the Roman occupation of Suss.e.x, when on still nights the clanking of armour in the camp on the hill-top could be heard by the trembling Briton in the Weald beneath; or by day the ordered sounds of marching would smite upon his ears, and, looking fearfully upwards, he would see a steady file of warriors descending the slope. I never see a Suss.e.x hill crowned by a camp, as at Wols...o...b..ry, without seeing also in imagination a flash of steel. Perhaps one never realises the new terror which the Romans must have brought into the life of the Suss.e.x peasant--a terror which utterly changed the Downs from ramparts of peace into coigns of minatory advantage, and transformed the gaze of security, with which their gra.s.sy contours had once been contemplated, into anxious glances of dismay and trepidation--one never so realises this terror as when one descends Ditchling Beacon by the sunken path which the Romans dug to allow a string of soldiers to drop unperceived into the Weald below. That semi-subterranean pa.s.sage and the Bignor pavements are to me the most vivid tokens of the Roman rule that England possesses.
[Sidenote: PARSON DORSET]
Charlotte Smith, the sonneteer and novelist, was the daughter of Nicholas Turner, of Bignor Park, which contains, I think, the plainest house I ever saw in the country. Charlotte Smith, who was all her life very true to Suss.e.x both in her work and in her homes--she was at school at Chichester, and lived at Woolbeding and Brighton--was born in 1749. A century ago her name was as well known as that of Mrs. Hemans was later.
To-day it is unknown, and her poems and novels are unread, nor will they, I fear, be re-discovered. Her sister, Catherine Turner, afterwards Mrs. Dorset, was the author of _The Peac.o.c.k at Home_, a very popular book for children at the beginning of the last century, suggested by Roscoe's _b.u.t.terfly's Ball_. Mrs. Dorset, by the way, married a son of the vicar of Walberton and Burlington, whose curious head-dress gave to an odd-looking tree on Bury hill the name of Parson Dorset's wig--for the parson was known by his eccentricities far from home. The old story of advice to a flock: ”Do as I say, not as I do,” is told also of him.
[Sidenote: VILLAGE HUMILITY]
The little village of West Burton, east of Bignor, is a.s.sociated in my mind with an expression of the truest humility. A kindly villager had given me a gla.s.s of water, and I unfolded my map and spread it on her garden wall to consult while I drank. ”Why,” she said, ”you don't mean to say a little place like West Burton is marked on a map.” This is the very antipodes of the ordinary provincial pride, which would have the world's axis project from the ground hard by the village pump. But pride of place is not, I think, a Suss.e.x characteristic.
Bury, the next hamlet in the east, under the hills, has curious cricket traditions. In June, 1796, the married women of Bury beat the single women by 80 runs, and thereupon, uniting forces, challenged any team of women in the county. Not only did the women of Bury s.h.i.+ne at cricket, but in a Suss.e.x paper for 1791 I find an account of two of Bury's daughters a.s.suming the names of Big Ben and Mendoza and engaging in a hardly contested prize fight before a large gathering. Big Ben won.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Causeway, Horsham._]
CHAPTER XII
HORSHAM
Horsham stone--Horsham and history--Pressing to death--Juvenile hostility to statues--Horsham's love of pleasure--Percy Bysshe Sh.e.l.ley's boyhood--a letter of invitation--Sedition in Suss.e.x--a Slinfold epitaph--Rudgwick's cricket poet--Warnham pond--Stane Street--Cobbett at Billingshurst--The new Christ's Hospital.
Horsham is the capital of West Suss.e.x: a busy agricultural town with horse dealers in its streets, a core of old houses, and too many that are new. There is in England no more peaceful and prosperous row of venerable homes than the Causeway, joining Carfax and the church, with its pollarded limes and chestnuts in line on the pavement's edge, its graceful gables, jutting eaves, and glimpses of green gardens through the doors and windows. The sweetest part of Horsham is there. Elsewhere the town bustles. (I should, however, mention the very picturesque house--now cottages--on the left of the road as one leaves the station: as fine a ma.s.s of timbers, gables, and oblique lines as one could wish, making an effect such as time alone can give. The days of such relics are numbered.)
[Sidenote: HORSHAM STONE]
Horsham not only has beautiful old houses of its own, but it has been the cause of beautiful old houses all over the county; since nothing so adds to the charm of a building as a roof of Horsham stone, those large grey flat slabs on which the weather works like a great artist in harmonies of moss, lichen, and stain. No roofing so combines dignity and homeliness, and no roofing except possibly thatch (which, however, is short-lived) so surely pa.s.ses into the landscape. But Horsham stone is no longer used. It is to be obtained for a new house only by the demolition of an old; and few new houses have rafters sufficiently stable to bear so great a weight. Our ancestors built for posterity: we build for ourselves. Our ancestors used Suss.e.x oak where we use fir.
Not only is Horsham stone on the roofs of the neighbourhood: it is also on the paths, so that one may step from flag to flag for miles, dryshod, or at least without mud.
Horsham's place in history is unimportant: but indirectly it played its part in the fourteenth century, by supplying the War Office of that era with bolts for cross bows, excellent for slaying Scots and Frenchmen.
The town was famous also for its horseshoes. In the days of Cromwell we find Horsham to have been princ.i.p.ally Royalist; one engagement with Parliamentarians is recorded in which it lost three warriors to Cromwell's one. In the reign of William III. a young man claiming to be the Duke of Monmouth, and travelling with a little court who addressed him as ”Your Grace,” turned the heads of the women in many an English town--his good looks convincing them at once, as the chronicler says, that he was the true prince. Justices sitting at Horsham, however, having less susceptibility to the testimony of handsome features, found him to be the son of an innkeeper named Savage, and imprisoned him as a vagrant and swindler.
[Sidenote: PRESSING TO DEATH]
Horsham was the last place in which pressing to death was practised. The year was 1735, and the victim a man unknown, who on being charged with murder and robbery refused to speak. Witnesses having been called to prove him no mute, this old and horrible sentence, proper (as the law considered) to his offence and obstinacy, was pa.s.sed upon him. The executioner, the story goes, while conveying the body in a wheelbarrow to burial, turned it out in the roadway at the place where the King's Head now stands, and then putting it in again, pa.s.sed on. Not long afterwards he fell dead at this spot.
The church of St. Mary, which rises majestically at the end of the Causeway, has a slender s.h.i.+ngled spire that reaches a great height--not altogether, however, without indecision. There is probably an alt.i.tude beyond which s.h.i.+ngles are a mistake: they are better suited to the more modest spire of the small village. The church is remarkable also for length of roof (well covered with Horsham stone), and it is altogether a singularly commanding structure. Within is an imposing plainness. The stone effigy of a knight in armour reclines just to the south of the altar: son of a branch of the Braose family--of Chesworth, hard by, now in ruins--of whose parent stock we shall hear more when we reach Bramber. The knight, Thomas, Lord Braose, died in 1395. The youth of Horsham, hostile invincibly, like all boys, to the stone nose, have reduced that feature to the level of the face; or was it the work of the Puritans, who are known to have shared in the nasal objection? South of the churchyard is the river, from the banks of which the church would seem to be all Horsham, so effectually is the town behind it blotted out by its broad back. On the edge of the churchyard is perhaps the smallest house in Suss.e.x: certainly the smallest to combine Gothic windows with the sale of ginger-beer.