<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
<h3>FOREST COUNTRY AGAIN</h3>
<blockquote><p>Balcombe—The iron furnace and the iron horse—Leonard Gale of
Tinsloe Forge—Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt of Crabbet—"The Old
Squire"—Frederick Locker-Lampson of Rowfant—The Rowfant
books—"To F. L."—The Rowfant titmice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>On leaving the train at Balcombe, one is quickly on the densely wooded
Forest Ridge of Sussex, here fenced and preserved, but farther east,
when it becomes Ashdown Forest, consisting of vast tracts of open
moorland and heather. Balcombe has a simple church, protected by a
screen of Scotch firs; its great merit is its position as the key to a
paradise for all who like woodland travel. From Balcombe to Worth is one
vast pheasant run, with here and there a keeper's cottage or a farm:
originally, of course, a series of plantations growing furnace wood for
the ironmasters. In Tilgate Forest, to the west of Balcombe Forest, are
two large sheets of water, once hammer-ponds, walking west from which,
towards Horsham, one may be said to traverse the Lake Country of Sussex.
A strange transformation, from Iron Black Country to Lake Country!—but
nature quickly recovers herself, and were the true Black Country's
furnaces extinguished, she would soon make even that grimy tract a haunt
of loveliness once more.</p>
<p>No longer are heard the sounds of the hammers, but Balcombe Forest,
Tilgate Forest, and Worth Forest have still a constant reminder of
machinery, for very few minutes pass from morning to night without the
rumble of a train on the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></SPAN></span> main line to Brighton, which passes through
the very midst of this wild game region, and plunges into the earth
under the high ground of Balcombe Forest. I know of no place where the
trains emit such a volume of sound as in the valley of the Stanford
brook, just north of the tunnel.</p>
<p>The noise makes it impossible ever quite to lose the sense of modernity
in these woods, as one may on Shelley Plain, a few miles west, or at
Gill's Lap, in Ashdown Forest; unless, of course, one's imagination is
so complaisant as to believe it to proceed from the old iron furnaces.
This reminds me that Crabbet, just to the north of Worth (where church
and vicarage stand isolated on a sandy ridge on the edge of the Forest),
was the home of one of the most considerable of the Sussex ironmasters,
Leonard Gale of Tinsloe Forge, who bought Crabbet, park and house, in
1698—since "building," in his own words, is a "sweet impoverishing."</p>
<div class="sidenote">WORTH CHURCH</div>
<p>But we must pause for a moment at Worth, because its church is
remarkable as being the largest in England to preserve its Saxon
foundations. Sussex, as we have seen, is rich in Saxon relics, but the
county has nothing more interesting than this. The church is cruciform,
as all churches should be, and there is a little east window in the
north transept through which, it is conjectured, arrows were intended to
be shot at marauding Danes; for an Englishman's church was once his
castle. Archæologists familiar with Worth church have been known to pass
with disdain cathedrals for which the ordinary person cannot find too
many fine adjectives.</p>
<div class="sidenote">MR. BLUNT'S BALLAD</div>
<div class="sidenote">THE OLD SQUIRE</div>
<p><br/>To regain Crabbet. The present owner, Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, poet,
patriot, and breeder of Arab horses, who is a descendant of the Gales,
has a long poem entitled "Worth Forest," wherein old Leonard Gale is a
notable figure. Among other poems by the lord of Crabbet is the very
pleasantly English ballad of</p>
<p class="center"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></SPAN></span>THE OLD SQUIRE.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the hunting of the hare</div>
<div class="i1">Better than that of the fox;</div>
<div>I like the joyous morning air,</div>
<div class="i1">And the crowing of the cocks.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the calm of the early fields,</div>
<div class="i1">The ducks asleep by the lake,</div>
<div>The quiet hour which Nature yields</div>
<div class="i1">Before mankind is awake.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the pheasants and feeding things</div>
<div class="i1">Of the unsuspicious morn;</div>
<div>I like the flap of the wood-pigeon's wings</div>
<div class="i1">As she rises from the corn.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the blackbird's shriek, and his rush</div>
<div class="i1">From the turnips as I pass by,</div>
<div>And the partridge hiding her head in a bush,</div>
<div class="i1">For her young ones cannot fly.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like these things, and I like to ride</div>
<div class="i1">When all the world is in bed,</div>
<div>To the top of the hill where the sky grows wide,</div>
<div class="i1">And where the sun grows red.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>The beagles at my horse heels trot,</div>
<div class="i1">In silence after me;</div>
<div>There's Ruby, Roger, Diamond, Dot,</div>
<div class="i1">Old Slut and Margery,—</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>A score of names well used, and dear,</div>
<div class="i1">The names my childhood knew;</div>
<div>The horn, with which I rouse their cheer,</div>
<div class="i1">Is the horn my father blew.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the hunting of the hare</div>
<div class="i1">Better than that of the fox;</div>
<div>The new world still is all less fair</div>
<div class="i1">Than the old world it mocks.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I covet not a wider range</div>
<div class="i1">Than these dear manors give;</div>
<div>I take my pleasures without change,</div>
<div class="i1">And as I lived I live.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></SPAN></span>I leave my neighbours to their thought;</div>
<div class="i1">My choice it is, and pride,</div>
<div>On my own lands to find my sport,</div>
<div class="i1">In my own fields to ride.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>The hare herself no better loves</div>
<div class="i1">The field where she was bred,</div>
<div>Than I the habit of these groves,</div>
<div class="i1">My own inherited.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I know my quarries every one,</div>
<div class="i1">The meuse where she sits low;</div>
<div>The road she chose to-day was run</div>
<div class="i1">A hundred years ago.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>The lags, the gills, the forest ways;</div>
<div class="i1">The hedgerows one and all,</div>
<div>These are the kingdoms of my chase,</div>
<div class="i1">And bounded by my wall.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Nor has the world a better thing,</div>
<div class="i1">Though one should search it round,</div>
<div>Than thus to live one's own sole king,</div>
<div class="i1">Upon one's own sole ground.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the hunting of the hare;</div>
<div class="i1">It brings me day by day,</div>
<div>The memory of old days as fair,</div>
<div class="i1">With dead men past away.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>To these, as homeward still I ply,</div>
<div class="i1">And pass the churchyard gate,</div>
<div>Where all are laid as I must lie,</div>
<div class="i1">I stop and raise my hat.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>I like the hunting of the hare;</div>
<div class="i1">New sports I hold in scorn.</div>
<div>I like to be as my fathers were,</div>
<div class="i1">n the days e'er I was born.</div>
</div></div>
<div class="sidenote">THE ROWFANT BOOKS</div>
<p>We are indeed just now in a bookish and poetical district, for a little
more than a mile to the east of Crabbet, in a beautiful Tudor house in a
hollow close to the station, lived Frederick Locker-Lampson, the London
lyricist; and here are treasured the famous Rowfant books and
manuscripts which<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></SPAN></span> he brought together—the subject of graceful verses
by many of his friends. Not the least charming of these tributes
(printed in the <i>Rowfant Catalogue</i> in 1886) are Mr. Andrew Lang's
lines:</p>
<p class="center">TO F. L.</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>I mind that Forest Shepherd's saw,</div>
<div class="i1">For, when men preached of Heaven, quoth he;</div>
<div>"It's a' that's bricht, and a' that's braw,</div>
<div class="i1">But Bourhope's guid eneuch for me!"</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Beneath the green deep-bosomed hills</div>
<div class="i1">That guard Saint Mary's Loch it lies,</div>
<div>The silence of the pasture fills</div>
<div class="i1">That shepherd's homely paradise.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Enough for him his mountain lake,</div>
<div class="i1">His glen the hern went singing through,</div>
<div>And Rowfant, when the thrushes wake,</div>
<div class="i1">May well seem good enough for YOU.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>For all is old, and tried, and dear,</div>
<div class="i1">And all is fair, and round about</div>
<div>The brook that murmurs from the mere</div>
<div class="i1">Is dimpled with the rising trout.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>But when the skies of shorter days</div>
<div class="i1">Are dark and all the "ways are mire,"</div>
<div>How bright upon your books the blaze</div>
<div class="i1">Gleams from the cheerful study fire.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>On quartos where our fathers read,</div>
<div class="i1">Enthralled, the Book of Shakespeare's play,</div>
<div>On all that Poe could dream of dread,</div>
<div class="i1">And all that Herrick sang of gay!</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Fair first editions, duly prized,</div>
<div class="i1">Above them all, methinks, I rate</div>
<div>The tome where Walton's hand revised</div>
<div class="i1">His wonderful receipts for bait!</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Happy, who rich in toys like these</div>
<div class="i1">Forgets a weary nation's ills,</div>
<div>Who from his study window sees</div>
<div class="i1">The circle of the Sussex hills.</div>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></SPAN></span></p>
<div class="sidenote">THE RESOLUTE TITMICE</div>
<p>Rowfant was once the scene of one of the most determined struggles in
history. The contestants were a series of Titmice and the G.P.O., and
the account of the war may be read in the Natural History Museum at
South Kensington:—"In 1888, a pair of the Great Titmouse (<i>Parus
major</i>) began to build their nest in the post-box which stood in the
road at Rowfant, and into which letters, &c., were posted and taken out
by the door daily. One of the birds was killed by a boy, and the nest
was not finished. In 1889, a pair completed the nest, laid seven eggs,
and began to sit; but one day, when an unusual number of post-cards were
dropped into, and nearly filled, the box, the birds deserted the nest,
which was afterwards removed with the eggs. In 1890, a pair built a new
nest and laid seven eggs, and reared a brood of five young, although the
letters posted were often found lying on the back of the sitting bird,
which never left the nest when the door of the box was opened to take
out the letters. The birds went in and out by the slit."</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></SPAN></span></p>
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