Part 20 (2/2)
Rose-red eve on the seas that heave sinks fair as dawn when the first ray peers; Winds are glancing from sunbright Lancing to Sh.o.r.eham, crowned with the grace of years;
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Old Sh.o.r.eham Bridge._]
[Sidenote: A Sh.o.r.eHAM EPITAPH]
In the churchyard there was once (and may be still, but I did not find it) an epitaph on a child of eight months, in the form of a dialogue between the deceased and its parents. It contained these lines:--
”'I trust in Christ,' the blessed babe replied, Then smil'd, then sigh'd, then clos'd its eyes and died.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Old Sh.o.r.eham Church._]
Sh.o.r.eham's notoriety as a pocket borough--it returned two members to Parliament, who were elected in the north transept of the church--came to a head in 1701, when the nave means by which Mr. Gould had proved his fitness were revealed. It seemed that Mr. Gould, who had never been to Sh.o.r.eham before, directed the crier to give notice with his bell that every voter who came to the King's Arms would receive a guinea in which to drink Mr. Gould's good health. This fact being made public by the defeated candidate, Mr. Gould was unseated. At the following election, such was the enduring power of the original guinea, he was elected again.
After the life of the harbour, the chief interest of Sh.o.r.eham is its river, the Adur, a yellow, sluggish, shallow stream, of great width near the town, which at low tide dwindles into a streamlet trickling through a desert of mud, but at the full has the beauty of a lake. Mr.
Swinburne, in the same poem from which I have been quoting, thus describes the river at evening:--
Skies fulfilled with the sundown, stilled and splendid, spread as a flower that spreads, Pave with rarer device and fairer than heaven's the luminous oyster-beds, Gra.s.s-embanked, and in square plots ranked, inlaid with gems that the sundown sheds.
[Sidenote: MR. HENLEY'S POEM]
To the Adur belongs also another lyric. It is printed in _Hawthorn and Lavender_, to which I have already referred, and is one of Mr. Henley's most characteristic and remarkable poems:--
In Sh.o.r.eham River, hurrying down To the live sea, By working, marrying, breeding, Sh.o.r.eham Town, Breaking the sunset's wistful and solemn dream, An old, black rotter of a boat Past service to the labouring, tumbling flote, Lay stranded in mid-stream; With a horrid list, a frightening lapse from the line, That made me think of legs and a broken spine; Soon, all too soon, Ungainly and forlorn to lie Full in the eye Of the cynical, discomfortable moon That, as I looked, stared from the fading sky, A clown's face flour'd for work. And by and by The wide-winged sunset wanned and waned; The lean night-wind crept westward, chilling and sighing; The poor old hulk remained, Stuck helpless in mid-ebb. And I knew why-- Why, as I looked, my heart felt crying.
For, as I looked, the good green earth seemed dying-- Dying or dead; And, as I looked on the old boat, I said:-- ”_Dear G.o.d, it's I!_”
The Adur is no longer the home of birds that once it was, but in the early morning one may still see there many of the less common water fowl. The road to Portsmouth is carried across the Adur by the Norfolk Suspension Bridge, to cross which one must pay a toll,--not an unpleasant reminder of earlier days.
Old Sh.o.r.eham, a mile up the river, is notable for its wooden bridge across the Adur to the Old Suss.e.x Pad, at one time a famous inn for smugglers. Few Royal Academy exhibitions are without a picture of Old Sh.o.r.eham Bridge and the quiet cruciform church at its eastward end.
[Sidenote: THE LOYAL CLERK]
A pleasant story tells how, in some Suss.e.x journey, William IV. and his queen chanced to be pa.s.sing through Sh.o.r.eham, coming from Chichester to Lewes, one Sunday morning. The clerk of Old Sh.o.r.eham church caught sight through the window of the approaching cavalcade, and leaping to his feet, stopped the sermon by announcing: ”It is my solemn duty to inform you that their Majesties the King and Queen are just now crossing the bridge.” Thereupon the whole congregation jumped up and ran out to show their loyalty.
CHAPTER XX
THE DEVIL'S d.y.k.e AND HURSTPIERPOINT
Suss.e.x and Leith Hill--The d.y.k.e hill--Two recollections--Bustard hunting on the Downs--The Queen of the gipsies--The Devil in Suss.e.x--The feeble legend of the d.y.k.e--Poynings--Newtimber--Pyecombe and shepherds' crooks--A Patcham smuggler--Wols...o...b..ry--Danny--An old Suss.e.x diary--Fish-culture in the past--Thomas Marchant's Sunday head-aches--Albourne and Bishop Juxon--Twineham and Squire Stapley--Zoological remedies--How to make oatmeal pudding.
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