Part 15 (2/2)

It was not long ago that a masterpiece was discovered at Beeding, in one of those unlikely places in which with ironical humour fine pictures so often hide themselves. It hung in a little general shop kept by an elderly widow. After pa.s.sing unnoticed or undetected for many years, it was silently identified by a dealer who happened to be buying some biscuits. He made a casual remark about it, learned that any value that might be set upon it was sentimental rather than monetary, and returned home. He laid the matter before one or two friends, with the result that they visited Beeding in a party a day or so later in order to bear away the prize. Outside the shop they held a council of war. One was for bidding at the outset a small but sufficient sum for the picture, another for affecting to want something else and leading round to the picture, and so forth; but in the discussion of tactics they raised their voices too high, so that a visitor of the widow, sitting in the room over the shop, heard something of the matter. Suspecting danger, but wholly unconscious of its nature, she hurried downstairs and warned her friend of a predatory gang outside who were not to be supplied on any account with anything they asked for. The widow obeyed blindly. They asked for tea--she refused to sell it; they asked for biscuits--she set her hand firmly on the lid; they mentioned the picture--she was a rock.

Baffled, they withdrew; and the widow, now on the right scent, took the next train to Brighton to lay the whole matter before her landlord. He took it up, consulted an expert, and the picture was found to be a portrait of Mrs. Jordan, the work either of Romney or Lawrence.

[Sidenote: THE FURNITURE SWINDLE]

Furniture is the usual prey of the dealer who lounges casually through old villages in the guise of a tourist, asking for food or water at old cottages and farmhouses, and using his eyes to some purpose the while.

Pictures are rare. The search for chests, turned bed-posts, fire-backs, Chippendale chairs, warming pans, grandfather's clocks, and other indigenous articles of the old simple homestead which are thought so decorative in the sophisticated villa and establish the artistic credit and taste of their new owner, has been prosecuted in Suss.e.x with as much energy as elsewhere--not only by the professional dealer, but by amateurs no less unwilling to give an ignorant peasant fifteen s.h.i.+llings for an article which they know to be worth as many pounds. But suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say, begun to spread, and the palmiest days of the spoliation of the country are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is always the under dog, the amateur the upper. A London dealer informs me that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade. An oak chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman can give it (and the profession of wormholer, is now, I believe, recognised) is deposited in a tumble-down, half-timbered home in a country village, whose occupant is willing to take a share in the game; a ticket marked ”Ginger-beer; sold Here” is placed in the window, and the trap is ready. It is almost beyond question that everyone who bids for this chest, which has, of course, been in the family for generations, is hoping to get it at a figure much lower than is just; it is quite certain that whatever is paid for it will be too much. Ugly as the situation is, I like to think of this biting of the biter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Chanctonbury Ring._]

CHAPTER XVI

CHANCTONBURY, WAs.h.i.+NGTON, AND WORTHING

Chanctonbury Ring--The planter of the beeches--The Gorings--Thomas Fuller on the Three s.h.i.+rleys--As.h.i.+ngton's chief--Warminghurst and the phantasm--Was.h.i.+ngton--An expensive mug of beer--Findon--A champion pluralist--Cissbury--John Selden's wit and wisdom--Thomas a Becket's figs--Worthing's precious climate--Sompting church.

For nothing within its confines is Steyning so famous as for the hill which rises to the south-west of it--Chanctonbury Ring. Other of the South Downs are higher, other are more commanding: Wols...o...b..ry, for example, standing forward from the line, makes a bolder show, and Firle Beacon daunts the sky with a braver point; but when one thinks of the South Downs as a whole it is Chanctonbury that leaps first to the inward eye. Chanctonbury, when all is said, is the monarch of the range.

The words of the Suss.e.x enthusiast, refusing an invitation to spend a summer abroad, express the feeling of many of his countrymen:--

For howsoever fair the land, The time would surely be That brought our Wealden blackbird's note Across the waves to me.

And howsoever strong the door, 'Twould never keep at bay The thought of Fulking's violets, The scent of Holmbush hay.

And ever when the day was done, And all the sky was still, How I should miss the climbing moon O'er Chanctonbury's hill!

[Sidenote: CHANCTONBURY RING]

It is Chanctonbury's crown of beeches that lifts it above the other hills. Uncrowned it would be no more noticeable than Fulking Beacon or a score of others; but its dark grove can be seen for many miles. In Wiston House, under the hill, the seat of the Goring family, to whom belong the hill and a large part of the country that it dominates, is an old painting of Chanctonbury before the woods were made, bare as the barest, without either beech or juniper, and the eye does not notice it until all else in the picture has been examined. The planter of Chanctonbury's Ring, in 1760, was Mr. Charles Goring of Wiston, who wrote in extreme old age in 1828 the following lines:--

How oft around thy Ring, sweet Hill, A Boy, I used to play, And form my plans to plant thy top On some auspicious day.

How oft among thy broken turf With what delight I trod, With what delight I placed those twigs Beneath thy maiden sod.

And then an almost hopeless wish Would creep within my breast, Oh! could I live to see thy top In all its beauty dress'd.

That time's arrived; I've had my wish, And lived to eighty-five; I'll thank my G.o.d who gave such grace As long as e'er I live.

Still when the morning Sun in Spring, Whilst I enjoy my sight, Shall gild thy new-clothed Beech and sides, I'll view thee with delight.

Most of the trees on the side of Chanctonbury and its neighbours were self-sown, children of the clumps which Mr. Goring planted. I might add that Mr. Charles Goring was born in 1743, and his son, the present Rev.

John Goring, in 1823, when his father was eighty; so that the two lives cover a period of one hundred and sixty years--true Suss.e.x longevity.

Wiston House (p.r.o.nounced Wisson) is a grey Tudor building in the midst of a wide park, immediately under the hill. The lofty hall, dating from Elizabeth's reign, is as it was; much of the remainder of the house was restored in the last century. The park has deer and a lake. The Goring family acquired Wiston by marriage with the f.a.ggs, and a superb portrait of Sir John f.a.gg, in the manner of Vandyck with a fine flavour of Velasquez, is one of the treasures of the house.

[Sidenote: SIR ANTHONY s.h.i.+RLEY]

Before the f.a.ggs came the s.h.i.+rleys, a family chiefly famous for the three wonderful brothers, Anthony, Robert, and Thomas.

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