Part 41 (1/2)
Rye's eight bells bear the following inscription:--
To honour both of G.o.d and King Our voices shall in concert ring.
May heaven increase their bounteous store And bless their souls for evermore.
Whilst thus we join in joyful sound May love and loyalty abound.
Ye people all who hear me ring Be faithful to your G.o.d and King.
Such wondrous power to music's given It elevates the soul to heaven.
If you have a judicious ear You'll own my voice is sweet and clear.
Our voices shall with joyful sound Make hills and valleys echo round.
In wedlock bands all ye who join, With hands your hearts unite; So shall our tuneful tongues combine To laud the nuptial rite.
Ye ringers, all who prize Your health and happiness, Be sober, merry, wise, And you'll the same possess.
Hardly less interesting than the church are the by-streets of Rye, so old and simple and quiet and right; particularly perhaps Mermaid Street, with its beautiful hospital. In the High Street, which is busier, is the George Inn, the rare possessor of a large a.s.sembly room with a musicians' gallery. One only of Rye's gates is standing--the Landgate; but on the south rampart of the town is the Ypres Tower (called Wipers by the prosaic inhabitants), a relic of the twelfth century, guarding Rye once from perils by sea and now from perils by land. Standing by the tower one may hear below s.h.i.+pbuilders busy at work and observe all the low-pulsed life of the river. A mile or so away is Rye Harbour, and beyond it the sea; across the intervening s.p.a.ce runs a little train with its freight of golf players. In the east stretches Romney Marsh to the hills of Folkestone.
Extremes meet in Rye. When I was last there the pa.s.sage of the Landgate was made perilous by an approaching Panhard; the monastery of the Augustine friars on Conduit Hill had become a Salvation Army barracks; and in the doorway of the little fourteenth-century chapel of the Carmelites, now a private house, in the church square, a perambulator waited. Moreover, in the stately red house at the head of Mermaid Street the author of _The Awkward Age_ prosecutes his fascinating a.n.a.lyses of twentieth-century temperaments.
[Sidenote: RYE POTTERY]
Among the industries of Rye is the production of an ingenious variety of pottery achieved by affixing to ordinary vessels of earthenware a veneer of broken pieces of china--usually fragments of cups and saucers--in definite patterns that sometimes reach a magnificence almost Persian.
For the most part the result is not perhaps beautiful, but it is always gay, and the Rye potter who practises the art deserves encouragement. I saw last summer a piece of similar ware in a cottage on the banks of the Ettrick, but whether it had travelled thither from Rye, or whether Scotch artists work in the same medium, I do not know. Mr. Ga.s.son, the artificer (the dominating name of Ga.s.son is to Rye what that of Seiler is to Zermatt), charges a penny for the inspection of the four rooms of his house in which his pottery, his stuffed birds and other curiosities are collected. The visit must be epoch-making in any life. Never again will a broken tea-cup be to any of Mr. Ga.s.son's patrons merely a broken tea-cup. Previously it may have been that and nothing more; henceforward it is valuable material which, having completed one stage of existence, is, like the good Buddhist, entering upon another of increased radiance.
More, broken china may even become the symbol of Rye.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Court Lodge, Udimore._]
[Sidenote: PETT AND ICKLESHAM]
Between Hastings and Winchelsea are the villages of Guestling, Pett, and Icklesham, the last two on the edge of the Level. Of these, Icklesham is the most interesting, Guestling having recently lost its church by fire, and Pett church being new. Pett stands in a pleasant position at the end of the high ground, with nothing in the east but Pett Level, and the sea only a mile away. At very low tide the remains of a submerged forest were once discernible, and may still be.
Icklesham also stands on the ridge further north, overlooking the Level and the sea, with Winchelsea not two miles distant in the east. The church is a very fine one, with a most interesting Norman tower in its midst. The churchwardens accounts contain some quaint entries:
[Sidenote: CHURCHWARDENS' ACCOUNTS]
1732. Paid for ye Stokes [stocks] __4 10_s._ 8-3/4_d._
1735. January ye 13 pd for a pint of wine and for eight pound of mutton for Good[man] Row and Good[man] Winch and Goody Sutors for their being with Goody in her fitts 3_s._
1744. Fevery ye 29 paid Gudy Tayler for going to Winshelse for to give her Arthor Davy [affidavit] 1_s._ 6_d._
1746. April 26 gave the Ringers for Rejoycing when ye Rebels was beat 15_s._ (This refers to Culloden. There are two sides in every battle; how do Burns's lines run?--