<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></SPAN>CHAPTER IX</h2>
<h3>AMBERLEY AND PARHAM</h3>
<blockquote><p>Sussex fish—A straw-blown village—A painter of Sussex light—A
castle only in name—Parham's treasures—The Parham
heronry—Storrington and the sagacious Jack Pudding—A Sussex
audience.</p>
</blockquote>
<div class="sidenote">SUSSEX FISH</div>
<p>Five miles to the north of Arundel by road (over the Arun at Houghton's
ancient bridge, restored by the bishops of Chichester in the fifteenth
century), and a few minutes by rail, is Amberley, the fishing metropolis
of Sussex, where, every Sunday in the season, London anglers meet to
drop their lines in friendly rivalry. "Amerley trout" (as Walton calls
them) and Arundel mullet are the best of the Arun's treasures; and this
reminds me of Fuller's tribute to Sussex fish, which may well be quoted
in this watery neighbourhood: "Now, as this County is eminent for both
<i>Sea</i> and <i>River-</i>fish, <span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></SPAN></span>namely, an <i>Arundel Mullet</i>, a <i>Chichester
Lobster</i>, a <i>Shelsey Cockle</i>, and an <i>Amerly Trout</i>; so <i>Sussex</i>
aboundeth with more <i>Carpes</i> than any other of this Nation. And though
not so great as <i>Jovius</i> reporteth to be found in the <i>Lurian Lake</i> in
<i>Italy</i>, weighing more than fifty pounds, yet those generally of great
and goodly proportion. I need not adde, that <i>Physicians</i> account the
galls of <i>Carpes</i>, as also a stone in their heads, to be <i>Medicinable</i>;
only I will observe that, because <i>Jews</i> will not eat <i>Caviare</i> made of
<i>Sturgeon</i> (because coming from a fish wanting Scales, and therefore
forbidden in the <i>Levitical Law</i>); therefore the <i>Italians</i> make greater
profit of the <i>Spaun</i> of <i>Carps</i>, whereof they make a <i>Red Caviare</i>,
well pleasing the <i>Jews</i> both in <i>Palate</i> and <i>Conscience</i>. All I will
adde of <i>Carps</i> is this, that <i>Ramus</i> himself doth not so much redound
in <i>Dichotomies</i> as they do; seeing no one bone is to be found in their
body, which is not <i>forked</i> or divided into two parts at the end
thereof."</p>
<p>Amberley proper, as distinguished from Amberley of the anglers, is a
mile from the station and is built on a ridge. The castle is the extreme
western end of this ridge, the north side of which descends
precipitously to the marshy plain that extends as far as Pulborough.
Standing on the castle one sees Pulborough church due north—height
calling unto height. The castle is now a farm; indeed, all Amberley is a
huge stockyard, smelling of straw and cattle. It is sheer Sussex—chalky
soil, whitewashed cottages, huge waggons; and one of the best of Sussex
painters, and, in his exquisite modest way, of all painters living,
dwells in the heart of it—Edward Stott, who year after year shows
London connoisseurs how the clear skin of the Sussex boy takes the
evening light; and how the Southdown sheep drink at hill ponds beneath a
violet sky; and that there is nothing more beautiful under the stars
than a whitewashed cottage just when the lamp is lit.</p>
<div class="sidenote">AMBERLEY AND PARHAM</div>
<p>Amberley has no right to lay claim to a castle, for the old ruins are
not truly, as they seem, the remains of a castellated<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></SPAN></span> stronghold, but
of a crenellated mansion. John Langton, Bishop of Chichester in the
fourteenth century, was the first builder. Previously the Church lands
here had been held very jealously, and in 1200 we find Bishop Gilbert de
Leofard twice excommunicating, and as often absolving, the Earl of
Arundel for poaching (as he termed it) in Houghton Forest. The Church
lost Amberley in the sixteenth century. William Rede, who succeeded
Langton to both house and see, wishing to feel secure in his home,
craved permission to dig a moat around it and to render it both hostile
and defensive. Hence its lion-like mien; but it has known no warfare,
and the castle's mouldering walls now give what assistance they can in
harbouring live stock. Twentieth-century sheds lean against
fourteenth-century masonry; faggots are stored in the moat; lawn tennis
is played in the courtyard; and black pigeons peep from the slits cut
for arquebusiers.</p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page087.png" id="page087.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page087.png" width-obs='526' height-obs='700' alt="Amberley Castle" /></p>
<h4><i>Amberley Castle.</i></h4>
<p>Amberley Castle only once intrudes itself in history: Charles II.,
during his flight in 1651, spent a night there under the protection of
Sir John Briscoe, as we saw in <SPAN href="#CHAPTER_III">Chapter III.</SPAN></p>
<p>In winter, if you ask an Amberley man where he dwells, he says,
"Amberley, God help us." In summer he says, "Amberley—where <i>would</i> you
live?"</p>
<p>From Amberley to Parham one keeps upon the narrow ridge for a mile or
so, branching off then to the left. Parham's advance guard is seen all
the way—a clump of fir trees, indicating that the soil there changes to
sand.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A NOBLE DAME</div>
<p>For two possessions is Parham noted: a heronry in the park, and in the
house a copy of Montaigne with Shakespeare's autograph in it. The house,
a spreading Tudor mansion, is the seat of Lord Zouche, a descendant of
the traveller, Robert Curzon, who wrote <i>The Monasteries of the Levant</i>,
that long, leisurely, and fascinating narrative of travel. In addition
to Montaigne, it enshrines a priceless collection of armour, of
incunabula and Eastern MSS. Among the pictures are full lengths of Sir
Philip Sidney and Lady Sidney, and that<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></SPAN></span> Penelope D'Arcy—one of Mr.
Hardy's "Noble Dames"—who promised to marry three suitors in turn and
did so. We see her again at Firle Place.</p>
<p>A hiding hole for priests and other refugees is in the long<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></SPAN></span> gallery,
access to it being gained through a window seat. There was hidden
Charles Paget after the Babington conspiracy.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE PARHAM HERONS</div>
<p>Parham Park has deer and a lake and an enchanted forest of sombre trees.
On the highest ground in this forest is the clump of firs in which the
famous herons build. The most interesting time to visit the heronry is
in the breeding season, for then one sees the lank birds continually
homing from the Amberley Wild Brooks with fishes in their bills and long
legs streaming behind. The noise is tremendous, beyond all rookeries.
Mr. Knox's <i>Ornithological Rambles</i>, from which I have already quoted
freely, has this passage: "The herons at Parham assemble early in
February, and then set about repairing their nests, but the trees are
never entirely deserted during the winter months; a few birds, probably
some of the more backward of the preceding season, roosting among their
boughs every night. They commence laying early in March, and the greater
part of the young birds are hatched during the early days of April.
About the end of May they may be seen to flap out of their nests to the
adjacent boughs, and bask for hours in the warm sunshine; but although
now comparatively quiet during the day, they become clamorous for food
as the evening approaches, and indeed for a long time appear to be more
difficult to wean, and less able to shift for themselves, than most
birds of a similar age. They may be observed, as late as August, still
on the trees, screaming for food, and occasionally fed by their parents,
who forage for them assiduously; indeed, these exertions, so far from
being relaxed after the setting of the sun, appear to be redoubled
during the night; for I have frequently disturbed herons when riding by
moonlight among the low grounds near the river, where I have seldom seen
them during the day, and several cottagers in the neighbourhood of
Parham have assured me that their shrill cry may be heard at all hours
of the night, during the summer season, as they fly to and fro overhead,
on their passage between the heronry and the open country.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page089.png" id="page089.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page089.png" width-obs='582' height-obs='700' alt="Amberley Castle, entrance to Churchyard" /></p>
<h4><i>Amberley Castle, entrance to Churchyard.</i></h4>
<div class="sidenote">MANY MIGRATIONS</div>
<p>"The history or genealogy of the progenitors of this colony is
remarkable. They were originally brought from Coity Castle, in Wales, by
Lord Leicester's steward, in James the First's time, to Penshurst, in
Kent, the seat of Lord de Lisle, where their descendants continued for
more than two hundred years; from thence they migrated to Michelgrove,
about seventy miles from Penshurst and eight from Parham; here they
remained for nearly twenty years, until the proprietor of the estate
disposed of it to the late Duke of Norfolk, who,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></SPAN></span> having purchased it,
not as a residence, but with the view of increasing the local property
in the neighbourhood of Arundel, pulled down the house, and felled one
or two of the trees on which the herons had constructed their nests. The
migration commenced immediately, but appears to have been gradual; for
three seasons elapsed before all the members of the heronry had found
their way over the Downs to their new quarters in the fir-woods of
Parham. This occurred about seventeen years ago [written c. 1848]."</p>
<p>Sussex, says Mr. Borrer, author of <i>The Birds of Sussex</i>, has two other
large heronries—at Windmill Hill Place, near Hailsham, and Brede, near
Winchelsea—and some smaller ones, one being at Molecomb, above
Goodwood.</p>
<p>Betsy's Oak in Parham Park is said to be so called because Queen
Elizabeth sat beneath it. But another and more probable legend calls it
Bates's Oak, after Bates, an archer at Agincourt in the retinue of the
Earl of Arundel (and in <i>Henry V.</i>). Good Queen Bess, however, dined in
the hall of Parham House in 1592. At Northiam, in East Sussex, we shall
come (not to be utterly baulked) to a tree under which she truly did sit
and dine too.</p>
<div class="sidenote">JACK PUDDING'S WISDOM</div>
<p>Beyond Parham, less than two miles to the east, is Storrington, a quiet
Sussex village far from the rail and the noise of the world, with the
Downs within hail, and fine sparsely-inhabited country between them and
it to wander in. The church is largely modern. I find the following
sententious paragraph in the county paper for 1792:—"This is an age of
<i>Sights</i> and <i>polite entertainment</i> in the country as well as in the
city.—The little town of <i>Storrington</i> has lately been visited by a
<i>Company of Comedians</i>,—<i>a Mountebank Doctor</i>,—and a <i>Puppet Show</i>.
One day the Doctor's <i>Jack Pudding</i> finding the shillings come in but
slowly, exclaimed to his Master, 'Gad, Sir, it is not worth <i>our</i> while
to stay here any longer, <i>players</i> have got all the <i>gold</i>, <i>we</i> all the
<i>silver</i>, and <i>Punch</i> all the <i>copper</i>, so, like sagacious locusts, let
us migrate from the place we helped to impoverish."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page091.png" id="page091.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page091.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='654' alt="Amberley Church" /></p>
<h4><i>Amberley Church.</i></h4>
<div class="sidenote">A TRAVELLING CIRCUS</div>
<div class="sidenote">A TIME-HONOURED JOKE</div>
<p>This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now
moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude
that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first
planned, perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer essential elemental
horse-play straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it
with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too
long to tell; but briefly, it was a dumb show representation of the
visit of a guest (the clown) to a wife, unknown to her husband. The
scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw and a huge
barrel. The fun consisted in the clown, armed with a bladder on a
string, hiding in the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></SPAN></span> barrel, from which he would spring up and deliver
a sounding drub upon the head of whatever other character—husband or
policeman—might be passing, to their complete perplexity. They were, of
course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times
he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table.
When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that
greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus
owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive
taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot require them.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page093.png" id="page093.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page093.png" width-obs='672' height-obs='700' alt="Pulborough Church" /></p>
<h4><i>Pulborough Church.</i></h4>
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