Part 36 (1/2)
Rug was the Capital Commander there, And his Lieutenant-General was strong beer.
Possibly it was in order to contest the supremacy of Rug (which one may ask for in Eastbourne to-day in vain) that Newhaven Tipper sprang into being.
The Martello towers, which Pitt built during the Napoleonic scare at the beginning of last century, begin at Eastbourne, where the cliffs cease, and continue along the coast into Kent. They were erected probably quite as much to a.s.sist in allaying public fear by a tangible and visible symbol of defence as from any idea that they would be a real service in the event of invasion. Many of them have now disappeared.
[Sidenote: BEACHY HEAD]
Eastbourne's glory is Beachy Head, the last of the Downs, which stop dead at the town and never reappear in Suss.e.x again. The range takes a sudden turn to the south at Folkington, whence it rolls straight for the sea, Beachy Head being the ultimate eminence. (The name Beachy has, by the way, nothing to do with the beach: it is derived probably from the Normans' description--”beau chef.”) About Beachy Head one has the South Downs in perfection: the best turf, the best prospect, the best loneliness, and the best air. Richard Jefferies, in his fine essay, ”The Breeze on Beachy Head,” has a rapturous word to say of this air (poor Jefferies, destined to do so much for the health of others and so little for his own!).--”But the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze.
The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant; but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-tops. It is air without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if inland, the wheat and flowers and gra.s.s distil it. The great headland and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air; the billows of the atmosphere roll over it.
”The sun searches out every crevice amongst the gra.s.s, nor is there the smallest fragment of surface which is not sweetened by air and light.
Underneath the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus washed by wind and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a couch prepared with thyme to rest on. Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for stray mushrooms--they will be stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early in the morning--or to make a list of flowers and gra.s.ses; to do anything, and, if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise: but this is the land of health.”
Seated near the edge of the cliff one realises, as it is possible nowhere else to realise, except perhaps at Dover, the truth of Edgar's description of the headland in _King Lear_. It seems difficult to think of Shakespeare exploring these or any Downs, and yet the scene must have been in his own experience; nothing but actual sight could have given him the line about the crows and choughs:
Come on, sir; here's the place:--stand still.--How fearful And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!
The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air, Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire--dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her c.o.c.k; her c.o.c.k, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high.--I'll look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.
[Sidenote: ”TO A SEAMEW”]
Choughs are rare at Beachy Head, but jackdaws and gulls are in great and noisy profusion; and this reminds me that it was on Beachy Head in September, 1886, that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful bird-poems in our language came to its author--the ode ”To a Seamew” of Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas:
We, sons and sires of seamen, Whose home is all the sea, What place man may, we claim it; But thine----whose thought may name it?
Free birds live higher than freemen, And gladlier ye than we---- We, sons and sires of seamen, Whose home is all the sea.
For you the storm sounds only More notes of more delight Than earth's in sunniest weather: When heaven and sea together Join strengths against the lonely Lost bark borne down by night, For you the storm sounds only More notes of more delight.
The lark knows no such rapture, Such joy no nightingale, As sways the songless measure, Wherein thy wings take pleasure: Thy love may no man capture, Thy pride may no man quail; The lark knows no such rapture, Such joy no nightingale.
And we, whom dreams embolden, We can but creep and sing And watch through heaven's waste hollow The flight no sight may follow To the utter bourne beholden Of none that lack thy wing: And we, whom dreams embolden, We can but creep and sing.
Ah, well were I for ever, Wouldst thou change lives with me, And take my song's wild honey, And give me back thy sunny Wide eyes that weary never, And wings that search the sea; Ah, well were I for ever, Wouldst thou change lives with me.
[Sidenote: PARSON DARBY]
The old lighthouse on Beachy Head, the Belle Tout, which first flung its beams abroad in 1831, has just been superseded by the new lighthouse built on the sh.o.r.e under the cliff. Near the new lighthouse is Parson Darby's Hole--a cavern in the cliff said to have been hewed out by the Rev. Jonathan Darby of East Dean as a refuge from the tongue of Mrs.
Darby. Another account credits the parson with the wish to provide a sanctuary for s.h.i.+pwrecked sailors, whom he guided thither on stormy nights by torches. In a recent Suss.e.x story by Mr. Horace Hutchinson, called _A Friend of Nelson_, we find the cave in the hands of a powerful smuggler, mysterious and accomplished as Lavengro, some years after Darby's death.
[Sidenote: UNDER BEACHY HEAD]
A pleasant walk from Eastbourne is to Birling Gap, a great smuggling centre in the old days, where the Downs dip for a moment to the level of the sea. Here at low tide one may walk under the cliffs. Richard Jefferies, in the essay from which I have already quoted, has a beautiful pa.s.sage of reflections beneath the great bluff:--”The sea seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface on a higher level--raised like a green mound--as if it could burst in and occupy the s.p.a.ce up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I know; but there is an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered, it may overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It has a potency unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and understood--something still to be discovered--a mystery.