Part 28 (1/2)
[Sidenote: DR. JOHNSON AT LEWES]
Dr. Johnson was once in Lewes, on a day's visit to the Sh.e.l.leys, at the house which bears their name at the south end of the town. One of the little girls becoming rather a nuisance with her questions, the Doctor lifted her into a cherry tree and walked off. At dinner, some time later, the child was missed, and a search party was about to set out when the Doctor exclaimed, ”Oh, I left her in a tree!” For many years the tree was known as ”Dr. Johnson's cherry tree.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: _St. Ann's Church, Southover._]
[Sidenote: THE FIFTH]
Lewes is ordinarily still and leisurely, with no bustle in her steep streets save on market days: an abode of rest and unhastening feet. But on one night of the year she lays aside her grey mantle and her quiet tones and emerges a Bacchante robed in flame. Lewes on the 5th of November is an incredible sight; probably no other town in the United Kingdom offers such a contrast to its ordinary life. I have never heard that Lewes is notably Protestant on other days in the year, that any intolerance is meted out to Roman Catholics on November 4th or November 6th; but on November 5th she appears to believe that the honour of the reformed church is wholly in her hands, and that unless her voice is heard declaiming against the tyrannies and treacheries of Rome all the spiritual labours of the eighth Henry will have been in vain.
No fewer than eight Bonfire Societies flourish in the town, all in a strong financial position. Each of these has its bonfire blazing or smouldering at a street corner, from dusk to midnight, and each, at a certain stage in the evening, forms into procession, and approaching its own fire by devious routes, burns an effigy of the Pope, together with whatever miscreant most fills the public eye at the moment--such as General Booth or Mr. Kruger, both of whom I have seen incinerated amid cheers and detonations.
[Sidenote: LEWES ROUSERS]
The figures are not lightly cast upon the flames, but are conducted thither ceremoniously, the ”Bishop” of the society having first pa.s.sed sentence upon them in a speech bristling with local allusions. These speeches serve the function of a _revue_ of the year and are sometimes quite clever, but it is not until they are printed in the next morning's paper that one can take their many points. The princ.i.p.al among the many distractions is the ”rouser,” a squib peculiar to Lewes, to which the bonfire boys (who are, by the way, in great part boys only in name, like the postboys of the past and the cowboys of the present) have given laborious nights throughout the preceding October. The rouser is much larger and heavier than the ordinary squib; it is propelled through the air like a rocket by the force of its escaping sparks; and it bursts with a terrible report. In order to protect themselves from the ravages of the rouser the people in the streets wear spectacles of wire netting, while the householders board up their windows and lay damp straw on their gratings. Ordinary squibs and crackers are also continuously ignited, while now and then one of the sky rockets discharged in flights from a procession, elects to take a horizontal course, and hurtles head-high down the crowded street.
So the carnival proceeds until midnight, when the firemen, who have been on the alert all the evening, extinguish the fires. The Bonfire Societies subsequently collect information as to any damage done and make it good: a wise course, to which they owe in part the sanction to renew the orgie next year. Other towns in Suss.e.x keep up the glorious Fifth with some spirit, but nowhere in England is there anything to compare with the thoroughness of Lewes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Ouse at South Street, Lewes._]
[Sidenote: THE LEWES MARTYRS]
[Sidenote: RICHARD WOODMAN]
To some extent Lewes may consider that she has reason for the display, for on June 22, 1557, ten men and women were tied to the stake and burned to death in the High Street for professing a faith obnoxious to Queen Mary. Chief of these courageous enthusiasts were Richard Woodman and Derrick Carver. Woodman, a native of Buxted, had settled at Warbleton, where he was a prosperous iron master. All went well until Mary's accession to the throne, when the rector of Warbleton, who had been a Protestant under Edward VI., turned, in Foxe's words, ”head to tayle” and preached ”clean contrary to that which he had before taught.”
Woodman's protests carried him to imprisonment and the stake.
Altogether, Lewes saw the death of sixteen martyrs.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _The Ouse at Piddinghoe._]
CHAPTER XXVII
THE OUSE VALLEY
The two Ouses--Three round towers--Thirsty labourers--Tels...o...b..--The hills and the sea--Mrs. Marriott Watson's Down poem--Newhaven--A Suss.e.x miller--Seaford's past--A politic smuggler--Electioneering ingenuity--Bishopstone.
The road from Lewes to the sea runs along the edge of the Ouse levels, just under the bare hills, pa.s.sing through villages that are little more than homesteads of the sheep-farmers, albeit each has its church--Iford, Rodmell, Southease, Piddinghoe--and so to Newhaven, the county's only harbour of any importance since the sea silted up the Sh.o.r.eham bar. You may be as much out of the world in one of these minute villages as anywhere twice the distance from London; and the Downs above them are practically virgin soil. The Brighton horseman or walker takes as a rule a line either to Lewes or to Newhaven, rarely adventuring in the direction of Iford Hill, Highdole Hill, or Tels...o...b.. village, which nestles three hundred feet high, over Piddinghoe. By day the waggons ply steadily between Lewes and the port, but other travellers are few. Once evening falls the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation.
[Sidenote: THE OUSE VALLEY]
The air of this valley is singularly clear, producing on fine days a blue effect that is, I believe, peculiar to the district. In the sketches of a Brighton painter in water colours, Mr. Clem Lambert, who has worked much at Rodmell, the spirit of the river valleys of Suss.e.x is reproduced with extraordinary fidelity and the minimum loss of freshness.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Rodmell._]
Horsfield, rather than have no poetical blossom to deck his page at the mention of the Lewes river, quotes a pa.s.sage from ”The Task”: