<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></SPAN>CHAPTER VII</h2>
<h3>ARUNDEL AND NEIGHBOURHOOD</h3>
<blockquote><p>A feudal town—Castles ruined and habitable—The old religion and
the new—Bevis of Southampton—Lord Thurlow lays an egg—A noble
park—A song in praise of Sussex—The father of cricket.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Seen from the river or from the east side of the Arun valley, Arundel is
the most imposing town in Sussex. Many are larger, many are equally old,
or older; but none wears so unusual and interesting an air, not even
Lewes among her Downs.</p>
<p>Arundel clings to the side of a shaggy hill above the Arun. Castle,
cathedral, church—these are Arundel; the town itself is secondary,
subordinate, feudal. The castle is what one likes a castle to be—a mass
of battlemented stone, with a keep, a gateway, and a history, and yet
more habitable than ever. So many of the rich make no effort to live in
their ancestral halls; and what might be a home, carrying on the
tradition of<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></SPAN></span> ages, is so often only a mere show, that to find an
historic castle like Arundel still lived in is very gratifying. In
Sussex alone are several half-ruined houses that the builders could
quickly make habitable once more. Arundel Castle, in spite of time and
the sieges of 1102, 1139, and 1643, is both comfortable and modern;
Arundel still depends for her life upon the complaisance of her
over-lord.</p>
<div class="sidenote">MODERN MEDIEVALISM</div>
<p>I know of no town with so low a pulse as this precipitous little
settlement under the shadow of Rome and the Duke. In spite of picnic
parties in the park, in spite of anglers from London, in spite of the
railway in the valley, Arundel is still medieval and curiously foreign.
On a very hot day, as one climbs the hill to the cathedral, one might be
in old France, and certainly in the Middle Ages.</p>
<p>Time's revenges have had their play in this town. Although the church is
still bravely of the establishment, half of it is closed to the Anglican
visitor (the chancel having been adjudged the private property of the
Dukes of Norfolk), and the once dominating position of the edifice has
been impaired by the proximity of the new Roman Catholic church of St.
Philip Neri, which the present Duke has been building these many years.
Within, it is finished, a very charming and delicate feat in stone; but
the spire has yet to come. The old Irish soldier, humorous and
bemedalled, who keeps watch and ward over the fane, is not the least of
its merits.</p>
<p>Although the chancel of the parish church has been closed, permission to
enter may occasionally be obtained. It is rich in family tombs of great
interest and beauty, including that of the nineteenth Earl of Arundel,
the patron of William Caxton. In the siege of Arundel Castle in 1643,
the soldiers of the parliamentarians, under Sir William Waller, fired
their cannon from the church tower. They also turned the church into a
barracks, and injured much stone work beyond repair. A fire beacon
blazed of old on the spire to serve as a mark for vessels entering Littlehampton harbour.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></SPAN></span>Bevis of Southampton, the giant who, when he visited the Isle of Wight,
waded thither, was a warder at Arundel Castle; where he ate a whole ox
every week with bread and mustard, and drank two hogsheads of beer.
Hence "Bevis Tower." His sword Morglay is still to be seen in the
armoury of the castle; his bones lie beneath a mound in the park; and
the town was named after his horse. So runs a pretty story, which is,
however, demolished with the ruthlessness that comes so easily to the
antiquary and philologist. Bevis Tower, science declares, was named
probably after another Bevis—there was one at the Battle of Lewes, who
took prisoner Richard, King of the Romans, and was knighted for
it—while Arundel is a corruption of "hirondelle," a swallow. Mr. Lower
mentions that in recent times in Sussex "Swallow" was a common name in
stables, even for heavy dray horses. But before accepting finally the
swallow theory, we ought to hear what Fuller has to say:—"Some will
have it so named from <i>Arundel</i> the <i>Horse</i> of <i>Beavoice</i>, the great
<i>Champion</i>. I confess it is not without precedence in <i>Antiquity</i> for
<i>Places</i> to take <i>names</i> from <i>Horses</i>, meeting with the <i>Promontory
Bucephalus</i> in Peloponesus, where some report the <i>Horse</i> of <i>Alexander</i>
buried, and Bellonius will have it for the same cause called <i>Cavalla</i>
at this day. But this <i>Castle</i> was so called long before that <i>Imaginary
Horse</i> was <i>foled</i>, who cannot be fancied elder than his Master
Beavoice, flourishing after the Conquest, long before which <i>Arundel</i>
was so called from the river <i>Arund</i> running hard by it."</p>
<div class="sidenote">LORD THURLOW LAYS AN EGG</div>
<p>The owls that once multiplied in the keep have now disappeared. They
were established there a hundred years or so ago by the eleventh Duke,
and certain of them were known by the names of public men. "Please, your
Grace, Lord Thurlow has laid an egg," is an historic speech handed down
by tradition. Lord Thurlow, the owl in question, died at a great age in
1859.</p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page071.png" id="page071.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page071.png" width-obs='513' height-obs='700' alt="The Arun at North Stoke" /></p>
<h4><i>The Arun at North Stoke.</i></h4>
<div class="sidenote">ARUNDEL PARK</div>
<p>To walk through Arundel Park is to receive a vivid <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></SPAN></span>impression of the
size and richness of our little isolated England. Two or three great
towns could be hidden in it unknown to each other. Valley succeeds to
valley; new herds of deer<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></SPAN></span> come into sight at almost every turn; as far
as the eye can see the grass hills roll away. Those accustomed to parks
whose deer are always huddled close and whose wall is never distant, are
bewildered by the vastness of this enclosure. Yet one has also the
feeling that such magnificence is right: to so lovely a word as Arundel,
to the Premier Duke and Hereditary Earl Marshal of England, should
fittingly fall this far-spreading and comely pleasaunce. Had Arundel
Park been small and empty of deer what a blunder it would be.</p>
<p>Walking west of Arundel through the vast Rewell Wood, we come suddenly
upon Punch-bowl Green, and open a great green valley, dominated by the
white façade of Dale Park House, below Madehurst, one of the most remote
of Sussex villages.</p>
<div class="sidenote">SLINDON</div>
<p>By keeping due west for another mile Slindon is reached. This village is
one of the Sussex backwaters, as one might say. It lies on no road that
any one ever travels except for the purpose of going to Slindon or
coming from it; and those that perform either of these actions are few.
Yet all who have not seen Slindon are by so much the poorer, for Slindon
House is nobly Elizabethan, with fine pictures and hiding-places, and
Slindon beeches are among the aristocracy of trees. And here I should
like to quote a Sussex poem of haunting wistfulness and charm, which was
written by Mr. Hilaire Belloc, who once walked to Rome and is an old
dweller at Slindon:—</p>
<div class="sidenote">A SOUTH COUNTRY SONG</div>
<p class="center">THE SOUTH COUNTRY.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>When I am living in the Midlands,</div>
<div class="i1">That are sodden and unkind,</div>
<div>I light my lamp in the evening:</div>
<div class="i1">My work is left behind;</div>
<div>And the great hills of the South Country</div>
<div class="i1">Come back into my mind.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>The great hills of the South Country</div>
<div class="i1">They stand along the sea:</div>
<div>And it's there walking in the high woods</div>
<div class="i1">That I could wish to be,</div>
<div><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></SPAN></span>And the men that were boys when I was a boy</div>
<div class="i1">Walking along with me.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>The men that live in North England</div>
<div class="i1">I saw them for a day:</div>
<div>Their hearts are set upon the waste fells,</div>
<div class="i1">Their skies are fast and grey:</div>
<div>From their castle-walls a man may see</div>
<div class="i1">The mountains far away.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>The men that live in West England</div>
<div class="i1">They see the Severn strong,</div>
<div>A-rolling on rough water brown</div>
<div class="i1">Light aspen leaves along.</div>
<div>They have the secret of the Rocks,</div>
<div class="i1">And the oldest kind of song.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>But the men that live in the South Country</div>
<div class="i1">Are the kindest and most wise,</div>
<div>They get their laughter from the loud surf,</div>
<div class="i1">And the faith in their happy eyes</div>
<div>Comes surely from our Sister the Spring,</div>
<div class="i1">When over the sea she flies;</div>
<div>The violets suddenly bloom at her feet,</div>
<div class="i1">She blesses us with surprise.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I never get between the pines,</div>
<div class="i1">But I smell the Sussex air,</div>
<div>Nor I never come on a belt of sand</div>
<div class="i1">But my home is there;</div>
<div>And along the sky the line of the Downs</div>
<div class="i1">So noble and so bare.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>A lost thing could I never find,</div>
<div class="i1">Nor a broken thing mend;</div>
<div>And I fear I shall be all alone</div>
<div class="i1">When I get towards the end.</div>
<div>Who will there be to comfort me,</div>
<div class="i1">Or who will be my friend?</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I will gather and carefully make my friends</div>
<div class="i1">Of the men of the Sussex Weald,</div>
<div>They watch the stars from silent folds,</div>
<div class="i1">They stiffly plough the field.</div>
<div>By them and the God of the South Country</div>
<div class="i1">My poor soul shall be healed.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></SPAN></span>If I ever become a rich man,</div>
<div class="i1">Or if ever I grow to be old,</div>
<div>I will build a house with deep thatch</div>
<div class="i1">To shelter me from the cold,</div>
<div>And there shall the Sussex songs be sung</div>
<div class="i1">And the story of Sussex told.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I will hold my house in the high wood</div>
<div class="i1">Within a walk of the sea,</div>
<div>And the men who were boys when I was a boy</div>
<div class="i1">Shall sit and drink with me.</div>
</div></div>
<div class="sidenote">NEWLAND, NYREN, AND SILVER BILLY</div>
<p>Richard Newland, the father of serious cricket, came from this parish.
He was born in 1718, or thereabouts, and in 1745 he made 88 for England
against Kent. He was left-handed, and the finest bat ever seen in those
days. He taught Richard Nyren, of Hambledon, all the skill and judgment
that that noble general possessed; Nyren communicated his knowledge to
the Hambledon eleven, and the game was made. An interest in historical
veracity compels me to add that William Beldham—Silver Billy—talking
to Mr. Pycroft, discounted some of Nyren's praise. "Cricket," he said,
"was played in Sussex very early, before my day at least [he was born in
1766]; but that there was no good play I know by this, that Richard
Newland, of Slindon in Sussex, as you say, sir, taught old Richard
Nyren, and that no Sussex man could be found to play Newland. Now a
second-rate man of our parish beat Newland easily; so you may judge what
the rest of Sussex then were." But this is disregarding the
characteristic uncertainty of the game.</p>
<p>If one would spend a day far from mankind, on high ground, there is no
better way than to walk from Arundel through Houghton Forest (where, as
we have seen, Charles II. avoided the Governor) to Cocking.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></SPAN></span></p>
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