<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
<h3>CROWBOROUGH AND MAYFIELD</h3>
<blockquote><p>Crowborough the suburban—Rotherfield's three rivers—The extra
ribs—Wild flowers and railway companies—The perfect hill—An arid
district—St. Dunstan and the Devil—Why Tunbridge Wells waters are
chalybeate—St. Dunstan's feats—An unencouraging <i>memento
mori</i>—Mayfield church—Mayfield street—The diary of Mr. Walter
Gale, schoolmaster.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In the spring of this year (1903) the walls and fences of Crowborough
were covered with the placards of a firm of estate agents describing the
neighbourhood (in the manner of the great George Robins) as "Scotland in
Sussex." The simile may be true of the Ashdown Forest side of the Beacon
(although involving an unnecessary confusion of terms), but "Hampstead
in Sussex" would be a more accurate description of Crowborough proper.
Never was a fine remote hill so be-villa'd. The east slope is all
scaffold-poles and heaps of bricks, new churches and chapels are
sprouting, and the many hoardings announce that Follies, Pierrots, or
conjurors are continually imminent. Crowborough itself has shops that
would not disgrace Croydon, and a hotel where a Lord Mayor might feel at
home. Houses in their own grounds are commoner than cottages, and near
the summit the pegs of surveyors and the name-boards of avenues yet to
be built testify to the charms which our Saxon Caledonia has already
exerted.</p>
<p>But to say this is not to say all. Crowborough may be populous and
over-built; but it is still a glorious eminence, the healthiest and most
bracing inland village in the county, and<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></SPAN></span> the key to its best moorland
country. Since Crowborough's normal visitor either plays golf or is
contented with a very modest radius, the more adventurous walker may
quickly be in the solitudes.</p>
<p>In the little stone house below the forge Richard Jefferies lived for
some months at the end of his life.</p>
<div class="sidenote">ROTHERFIELD</div>
<p>Crowborough is crowned by a red hotel which can never pass into the
landscape; Rotherfield, its companion hill on the east, on the other
side of the Jarvis Brook valley, is surmounted by a beautiful church
with a tall shingled spire, that must have belonged to the scene from
the first. This spire darts up from the edge of the forest ridge like a
Pharos for the Weald of Kent. The church was dedicated to St. Denis of
Paris by a Saxon chieftain who was cured of his ills by a pilgrimage to
the Saint's monastery. That was in 792. In the present church, which
retains the dedication, is an ancient mural painting representing the
martyrdom of St. Lawrence. There is also a Burne-Jones window.</p>
<p>Were it not for Rotherfield both Sussex and Kent would lack some of
their waterways, for the Rother and the Ouse rise here, and also the
Medway. A local saying credits the women of Rotherfield with two ribs
more than the men, to account for their superior height.</p>
<p>Under a hedge half-way between Rotherfield and Jarvis Brook grow the
largest cowslips in Sussex, as large as cowslips may be without changing
their sex. But this is all cowslip country—from the field of Rother to
the field of Uck. And it is the land of the purple orchis too, the
finest blooms of which are to be found on the road between Rotherfield
and Mayfield; but you must scale a fence to get them, because (like all
the best wild flowers) they belong to the railway.</p>
<p>Between Rotherfield and Mayfield is a little hill, trim and conical as
though Miss Greenaway had designed it, and perfect in deportment, for it
has (as all little conical hills should have) a white windmill on its
top. Around the mill is a circular track<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></SPAN></span> for carts, which runs nearer
the sails than any track I remember ever to have dared to walk on.
Standing by this mill one opens many miles of Kent and Surrey: due north
the range of chalk Downs on which is the Pilgrim's Way, between Merstham
and Westerham, and in front of that Toy's Hill and Ide Hill and their
sandy companions, on the north edge of the Weald.</p>
<p>Mayfield is a city on a hill on the skirts of the hot hop district of
which Burwash is the Sussex centre. To walk about it even in April is no
exhilaration; but in August one thinks of Sahara. I lived in Mayfield
one August and could barely keep awake; and we used to look across at
the rolling chalk Downs in the south, between Ditchling and Lewes, and
long for their cool, wind-swept heights. They can be hot too, but chalk
is never so hot as sand, and a steady climb to a summit, over turf
odorous of wild thyme, is restful beside the eternal hills and valleys
of the hop district.</p>
<div class="sidenote">SAINT DUNSTAN</div>
<p>Mayfield has the best street and the best architecture of any of these
highland villages. Also it has the distinction of having done most for
mankind, since without Mayfield there would have been no water to cure
jaded London ladies and gentlemen at Tunbridge Wells. According to
Eadmer, who wrote one of the lives of Dunstan, that Saint, when
Archbishop of Canterbury, built a wooden church at Mayfield and lived in
a cell hard by. St. Dunstan, who was an expert goldsmith, was one day
making a chalice (or, as another version of the legend says, a
horseshoe) when the Devil appeared before him. Instantly recognising his
enemy, and being aware that with such a foe prompt measures alone are
useful, St. Dunstan at once pulled his nose with the tongs, which
chanced happily to be red hot. Wrenching himself free, the Devil leaped
at one bound from Mayfield to Tunbridge Wells, where, plunging his nose
into the spring at the foot of the Pantiles, he "imparted to the water
its chalybeate qualities," and thus made the fortune of the town as a
health resort. To St. Dunstan therefore, indirectly, are all drinkers of
these wells indebted. For other<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></SPAN></span> drinkers he introduced or invented the
practice of fixing pins in the sides of drinking cups, in order that a
thirsty man might see how he was progressing and a bibulous man be
checked.</p>
<div class="sidenote">MAYFIELD</div>
<p>When consecrating his little church at Mayfield St. Dunstan discovered
it to be a little out of the true position, east and west. He therefore
applied his shoulder and rectified the error.</p>
<p>The remains of Mayfield Palace, the old abode of the Archbishops of
Canterbury, join the church. After it had passed into the hands of the
crown—for Cranmer made a bargain with the King by which Mayfield was
exchanged for other property—Sir Thomas Gresham lived here, and Queen
Elizabeth has dined under its roof. The Palace is to be seen only
occasionally, for it is now a convent, Mayfield being another of the
county's many Roman Catholic outposts. In the great dining-room are the
tongs which St. Dunstan used.</p>
<p>The church, dedicated to Mayfield's heroic saint, has one of the broader
shingled spires of Sussex, as distinguished from the slender spires of
which Rotherfield is a good example. Standing high, it may be seen from
long distances. The tower is the original Early English structure. Four
more of the old Sussex iron tomb slabs may be seen at Mayfield. In the
churchyard, says Mr. Lower, was once an inscription with this
uncomplimentary first line:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>O reader, if that thou canst read,</div>
</div></div>
<p>It continued:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div class="i1">Look down upon this stone;</div>
<div>Death is the man, do you what you can,</div>
<div class="i1">That never spareth none!</div>
</div></div>
<p>In Mayfield's street even the new houses have caught comeliness from
their venerable neighbours. It undulates from gable to gable, and has
two good inns. The old timbered house in the middle of the east side is
that to which Richard Jefferies refers without enthusiasm in the passage
which I<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></SPAN></span> quote in a later <SPAN href="#Page_401">chapter</SPAN> from his essay on Buckhurst Park. In
Louis Jennings' <i>Field Paths and Green Lanes</i> the house comes in for
eulogy.</p>
<p>Vicar of Mayfield in 1361 and following years was John Wickliffe, who
has too often been confused with his great contemporary and namesake,
the reformer. And the village claims as a son Thomas May (1595-1650),
playwright, translator of Lucan's "Pharsalia," secretary to Parliament
and friend of Ben Jonson.</p>
<p>In the Sussex Archæological Collections is printed the journal of Walter
Gale, schoolmaster at Mayfield in the latter half of the eighteenth
century, from which a few extracts may be given:</p>
<p>"1750. I found the greatest part of the school in a flow, by reason of
the snow and rain coming through the leads. The following extempore
verse I set for a copy:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>Abandon every evil thought</div>
<div>For they to judgment will be brought.</div>
</div></div>
<p>In passing the Star I met with Mr. Eastwood; we went in and spent 2<i>d.</i>
apiece.</p>
<div class="sidenote">PRESAGES OF DEATH</div>
<p>"I went to Mr. Sawyer's.... One of his daughters said that she expected
a change in the weather as she had last night dreamt of a deceased
person." The editor remarks that this superstition still lingers (or did
fifty years ago) in the Weald of Sussex. Walter Gale adds:—"I told them
in discourse that on Thursday last the town clock was heard to strike 3
in the afternoon twice, once before the chimes went, and a 2nd time
pretty nearly a ¼ of an hour after.... The strikes at the 2nd striking
seemed to sound very dull and mournfully; this, together with the
crickets coming to the house at Laughton just at our coming away, I look
upon to be sure presages of my sister's death."</p>
<p>A year later:—"My mother, to my great unhappiness, died<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></SPAN></span> in the 83rd
year of her age, agreeable to the testimony I had of a death in our
family on the 10th of May last."</p>
<p>"Mr. Rogers came to the school, and brought with him the four volumes of
<i>Pamela</i>, for which I paed him 4<i>s.</i> 6<i>d.</i>, and bespoke Duck's <i>Poems</i>
for Mr. Kine, and a <i>Caution to Swearers</i> for myself.</p>
<p>"Sunday. I went to church at Hothley. Text from St. Matthew 'Take no
thought, saying, What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, or
wherewithal shall we be clothed,' and I went to Jones', where I spent
2<i>d.</i>, and there came Thomas Cornwall, and treated me with a pint of
twopenny.</p>
<p>"Mr. James Kine came; we smoaked a pipe together and we went and took a
survey of the fair; we went to a legerdemain show, which we saw with
tolerable approbation.</p>
<p>"May 28th. Gave attendance at a cricket-match, played between the
gamesters at Burwash and Mayfield to the advantage of the latter."</p>
<div class="sidenote">OLD KENT</div>
<p>A series of quarrels with old Kent occupy much of the diary. Old Kent,
it seems, used to enter the school house and vilify the master, not, I
imagine, without cause. Thus:—"He again called me upstart, runagate,
beggarly dog, clinched his fist in my face, and made a motion to strike
me, and declared he would break my head. He did not strike me, but
withdrew in a wonderful heat, and ended all with his general maxim, 'The
greater scholler, the greater rogue!'"</p>
<p>Mr. Gale was removed from the school in 1771 for neglecting his duties.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></SPAN></span></p>
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