<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></SPAN>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
<h3>EASTBOURNE</h3>
<blockquote><p>Select Eastbourne. The "English Salvator Rosa"—Sops and Ale—Beau
Chef—"The Breeze on Beachy Head"—Shakespeare and the Cliff—"To a
Seamew"—The new lighthouse—Parson Darby and his cave—East Dean's
bells—The Two Sisters—Friston's Selwyn monument—West Dean.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Eastbourne is the most select, or least democratic, of the Sussex
watering places. Fashion does not resort thither as to Brighton in the
season, but the crowds of excursionists that pour into Brighton and
Hastings are comparatively unknown at Eastbourne; which is in a sense a
private settlement, under the patronage of the Duke of Devonshire.
Hastings is of the people; Brighton has a character almost continental;
Eastbourne is select. Lawn tennis and golf are its staple products, one
played on the very beautiful links behind the town hard by Compton
Place, the residence of the Duke; the other in<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_319" id="Page_319"></SPAN></span> Devonshire Park. It is
also an admirable town for horsemanship.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE ENGLISH SALVATOR ROSA</div>
<p>Eastbourne has had small share in public affairs, but in 1741 John
Hamilton Mortimer, the painter, sometimes called the Salvator Rosa of
England, was born there. From a memoir of him which Horsfield prints, I
take passages: "Bred on the sea-coast, and amid a daring and rugged race
of hereditary smugglers, it had pleased his young imagination to walk on
the shore when the sea was agitated by storms—to seek out the most
sequestered places among the woods and rocks, and frequently, and not
without danger, to witness the intrepidity of the contraband
adventurers, who, in spite of storms and armed excisemen, pursued their
precarious trade at all hazards. In this way he had, from boyhood,
become familiar with what amateurs of art call 'Salvator Rosa-looking
scenes'; he loved to depict the sea chafing and foaming, and fit 'to
swallow navigation up'—ships in peril, and pinnaces sinking—banditti
plundering, or reposing in caverns—and all such situations as are
familiar to pirates on water, and outlaws on land....</p>
<p>"Of his eccentricities while labouring under the delusion that he could
not well be a genius without being unsober and wild, one specimen may
suffice. He was employed by Lord Melbourne to paint a ceiling at his
seat of Brocket Hall, Herts; and taking advantage of permission to angle
in the fish-pond, he rose from a carousal at midnight, and seeking a
net, and calling on an assistant painter for help, dragged the preserve,
and left the whole fish gasping on the bank in rows. Nor was this the
worst; when reproved mildly, and with smiles, by Lady Melbourne, he had
the audacity to declare, that her beauty had so bewitched him that he
knew not what he was about. To plunder the fish-pond and be impertinent
to the lady was not the way to obtain patronage. The impudent painter
collected his pencils together, and returned to London to enjoy his
inelegant pleasures and ignoble company."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_320" id="Page_320"></SPAN></span>Horsfield states that "a custom far more honoured by the breach than the
observance heretofore existed in the manor of Eastbourne; in compliance
with which, after any lady, or respectable farmer or tradesman's wife,
was delivered of a child, certain quantities of food and of beer were
placed in a room adjacent to the sacred edifice; when, after the second
lesson was concluded, the whole agricultural portion of the worshippers
marched out of church, and devoured what was prepared for them. This was
called <i>Sops and Ale</i>."</p>
<div class="sidenote">EASTBOURNE RUG</div>
<p>John Taylor the water Poet, whom we saw, at Goring, the prey of fleas
and the Law, made another journey into the county between August 9th and
September 3rd, 1653, and as was usual with him wrote about it in
doggerel verse. At Eastbourne he found a brew called Eastbourne Rug:—</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>No cold can ever pierce his flesh or skin</div>
<div>Of him who is well lin'd with Rug within;</div>
<div>Rug is a lord beyond the Rules of Law,</div>
<div>It conquers hunger in a greedy maw,</div>
<div>And, in a word, of all drinks potable,</div>
<div>Rug is most puissant, potent, notable.</div>
<div>Rug was the Capital Commander there,</div>
<div>And his Lieutenant-General was strong beer.</div>
</div></div>
<p>Possibly it was in order to contest the supremacy of Rug (which one may
ask for in Eastbourne to-day in vain) that Newhaven Tipper sprang into
being.</p>
<p>The Martello towers, which Pitt built during the Napoleonic scare at the
beginning of last century, begin at Eastbourne, where the cliffs cease,
and continue along the coast into Kent. They were erected probably quite
as much to assist in allaying public fear by a tangible and visible
symbol of defence as from any idea that they would be a real service in
the event of invasion. Many of them have now disappeared.</p>
<div class="sidenote">BEACHY HEAD</div>
<p>Eastbourne's glory is Beachy Head, the last of the Downs, which stop
dead at the town and never reappear in Sussex again. The range takes a
sudden turn to the south at Folkington,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_321" id="Page_321"></SPAN></span> whence it rolls straight for
the sea, Beachy Head being the ultimate eminence. (The name Beachy has,
by the way, nothing to do with the beach: it is derived probably from
the Normans' description—"beau chef.") About Beachy Head one has the
South Downs in perfection: the best turf, the best prospect, the best
loneliness, and the best air. Richard Jefferies, in his fine essay, "The
Breeze on Beachy Head," has a rapturous word to say of this air (poor
Jefferies, destined to do so much for the health of others and so little
for his own!).—"But the glory of these glorious Downs is the breeze.
The air in the valleys immediately beneath them is pure and pleasant;
but the least climb, even a hundred feet, puts you on a plane with the
atmosphere itself, uninterrupted by so much as the tree-tops. It is air
without admixture. If it comes from the south, the waves refine it; if
inland, the wheat and flowers and grass distil it. The great headland
and the whole rib of the promontory is wind-swept and washed with air;
the billows of the atmosphere roll over it.</p>
<p>"The sun searches out every crevice amongst the grass, nor is there the
smallest fragment of surface which is not sweetened by air and light.
Underneath the chalk itself is pure, and the turf thus washed by wind
and rain, sun-dried and dew-scented, is a couch prepared with thyme to
rest on. Discover some excuse to be up there always, to search for stray
mushrooms—they will be stray, for the crop is gathered extremely early
in the morning—or to make a list of flowers and grasses; to do
anything, and, if not, go always without any pretext. Lands of gold have
been found, and lands of spices and precious merchandise: but this is
the land of health."</p>
<p>Seated near the edge of the cliff one realises, as it is possible
nowhere else to realise, except perhaps at Dover, the truth of Edgar's
description of the headland in <i>King Lear</i>. It seems difficult to think
of Shakespeare exploring these or any Downs, and yet the scene must have
been in his own experience;<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_322" id="Page_322"></SPAN></span> nothing but actual sight could have given
him the line about the crows and choughs:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>Come on, sir; here's the place:—stand still.—How fearful</div>
<div>And dizzy 't is, to cast one's eyes so low!</div>
<div>The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air,</div>
<div>Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down</div>
<div>Hangs one that gathers samphire—dreadful trade!</div>
<div>Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:</div>
<div>The fishermen, that walk upon the beach,</div>
<div>Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,</div>
<div>Diminish'd to her cock; her cock, a buoy</div>
<div>Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge,</div>
<div>That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes,</div>
<div>Cannot be heard so high.—I'll look no more,</div>
<div>Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight</div>
<div>Topple down headlong.</div>
</div></div>
<div class="sidenote">"TO A SEAMEW"</div>
<p>Choughs are rare at Beachy Head, but jackdaws and gulls are in great and
noisy profusion; and this reminds me that it was on Beachy Head in
September, 1886, that the inspiration of one of the most beautiful
bird-poems in our language came to its author—the ode "To a Seamew" of
Mr. Swinburne. I quote five of its haunting stanzas:</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>We, sons and sires of seamen,</div>
<div class="i1">Whose home is all the sea,</div>
<div>What place man may, we claim it;</div>
<div>But thine——whose thought may name it?</div>
<div>Free birds live higher than freemen,</div>
<div class="i1">And gladlier ye than we——</div>
<div>We, sons and sires of seamen,</div>
<div class="i1">Whose home is all the sea.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>For you the storm sounds only</div>
<div class="i1">More notes of more delight</div>
<div>Than earth's in sunniest weather:</div>
<div>When heaven and sea together</div>
<div>Join strengths against the lonely</div>
<div class="i1">Lost bark borne down by night,</div>
<div>For you the storm sounds only</div>
<div class="i1">More notes of more delight.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div> *
*
*
* *</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_323" id="Page_323"></SPAN></span>The lark knows no such rapture,</div>
<div class="i1">Such joy no nightingale,</div>
<div>As sways the songless measure,</div>
<div>Wherein thy wings take pleasure:</div>
<div>Thy love may no man capture,</div>
<div class="i1">Thy pride may no man quail;</div>
<div>The lark knows no such rapture,</div>
<div class="i1">Such joy no nightingale.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>And we, whom dreams embolden,</div>
<div class="i1">We can but creep and sing</div>
<div>And watch through heaven's waste hollow</div>
<div>The flight no sight may follow</div>
<div>To the utter bourne beholden</div>
<div class="i1">Of none that lack thy wing:</div>
<div>And we, whom dreams embolden,</div>
<div class="i1">We can but creep and sing.</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div> *
*
*
* *</div>
</div><div class="stanza">
<div>Ah, well were I for ever,</div>
<div class="i1">Wouldst thou change lives with me,</div>
<div>And take my song's wild honey,</div>
<div>And give me back thy sunny</div>
<div>Wide eyes that weary never,</div>
<div class="i1">And wings that search the sea;</div>
<div>Ah, well were I for ever,</div>
<div class="i1">Wouldst thou change lives with me.</div>
</div></div>
<div class="sidenote">PARSON DARBY</div>
<p>The old lighthouse on Beachy Head, the Belle Tout, which first flung its
beams abroad in 1831, has just been superseded by the new lighthouse
built on the shore under the cliff. Near the new lighthouse is Parson
Darby's Hole—a cavern in the cliff said to have been hewed out by the
Rev. Jonathan Darby of East Dean as a refuge from the tongue of Mrs.
Darby. Another account credits the parson with the wish to provide a
sanctuary for shipwrecked sailors, whom he guided thither on stormy
nights by torches. In a recent Sussex story by Mr. Horace Hutchinson,
called <i>A Friend of Nelson</i>, we find the cave in the hands of a powerful
smuggler, mysterious and accomplished as Lavengro, some years after
Darby's death.</p>
<div class="sidenote">UNDER BEACHY HEAD</div>
<p>A pleasant walk from Eastbourne is to Birling Gap, a great<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_324" id="Page_324"></SPAN></span> smuggling
centre in the old days, where the Downs dip for a moment to the level of
the sea. Here at low tide one may walk under the cliffs. Richard
Jefferies, in the essay from which I have already quoted, has a
beautiful passage of reflections beneath the great bluff:—"The sea
seems higher than the spot where I stand, its surface on a higher
level—raised like a green mound—as if it could burst in and occupy the
space up to the foot of the cliff in a moment. It will not do so, I
know; but there is an infinite possibility about the sea; it may do what
it is not recorded to have done. It is not to be ordered, it may
overleap the bounds human observation has fixed for it. It has a potency
unfathomable. There is still something in it not quite grasped and
understood—something still to be discovered—a mystery.</p>
<p>"So the white spray rushes along the low broken wall of rocks, the sun
gleams on the flying fragments of the wave, again it sinks, and the
rhythmic motion holds the mind, as an invisible force holds back the
tide. A faith of expectancy, a sense that something may drift up from
the unknown, a large belief in the unseen resources of the endless space
out yonder, soothes the mind with dreamy hope.</p>
<p>"The little rules and little experiences, all the petty ways of narrow
life, are shut off behind by the ponderous and impassable cliff; as if
we had dwelt in the dim light of a cave, but coming out at last to look
at the sun, a great stone had fallen and closed the entrance, so that
there was no return to the shadow. The impassable precipice shuts off
our former selves of yesterday, forcing us to look out over the sea
only, or up to the deeper heaven.</p>
<p>"These breadths draw out the soul; we feel that we have wider thoughts
than we knew; the soul has been living, as it were, in a nutshell, all
unaware of its own power, and now suddenly finds freedom in the sun and
the sky. Straight, as if sawn down from turf to beach, the cliff shuts
off the human world, for the sea knows no time and no era; you cannot
tell<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_325" id="Page_325"></SPAN></span> what century it is from the face of the sea. A Roman trireme
suddenly rounding the white edge-line of chalk, borne on wind and oar
from the Isle of Wight towards the gray castle at Pevensey (already old
in olden days), would not seem strange. What wonder could surprise us
coming from the wonderful sea?"</p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page325.png" id="page325.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page325.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='538' alt="Beachy Head from the Shore" /></p>
<h4><i>Beachy Head from the Shore.</i></h4>
<div class="sidenote">EAST DEAN</div>
<p>The road from Birling Gap runs up the valley to East Dean and Friston,
two villages among the Downs. Parson Darby's church at East Dean is
small and not particularly interesting; but it gave Horsfield, the
county historian, the opportunity to make one of his infrequent jokes.
"There are three bells," he writes, "and 'if discord's harmony not
understood,' truly harmonious ones." Horsfield does not note that one of
these three bells bore a Latin motto which being translated signifies</p>
<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<div>Surely no bell beneath the sky</div>
<div>Can send forth better sounds than I?</div>
</div></div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_326" id="Page_326"></SPAN></span>The East Dean register contains a curious entry which is quoted in
Grose's <i>Olio</i>, ed. 1796:—"Agnes Payne, the daughter of Edward Payne,
was buried on the <i>first day of February</i>. Johan Payne, the daughter of
Edward Payne, was buried on the <i>first day of February</i>.</p>
<p>"In the death of these two sisters last mentioned is one thing worth
recording, and diligently to be noted. 'The elder sister, called Agnes,
being very sicke unto death, <i>speechless</i>, and, as was thought, past
hope of speakinge; after she had lyen twenty-four hours without speach,
at last upon a suddayne cryed out to her sister to make herself ready
and to come with her. Her sister Johan being abroad about other
business, was called for, who being come to her sicke sister,
demaundinge how she did, she very lowde or earnestly bade her sister
make ready—she staid for her, and could not go without her. Within half
an houre after, Johan was taken very sicke, which increasinge all the
night uppone her, her other sister stille callinge her to come away; in
the morninge they both departed this wretched world together. O the
unsearchable wisdom of God! How deepe are his judgments, and his ways
past fyndinge out!</p>
<p>"Testified by diverse oulde and honest persons yet living; which I
myself have heard their father, when he was alive, report.</p>
<p>"Arthur Polland, Vicar; Henry Homewood, John Pupp, Churchwardens."</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE SELWYN MONUMENT</div>
<div class="sidenote">FRISTON PLACE</div>
<p>Friston church is interesting, for it contains one of the most beautiful
monuments in Sussex, worthy to be remembered with that to the Shurleys
at Isfield. The family commemorated is the Selwyns, and the monument has
a very charming dado of six kneeling daughters and three babies laid
neatly on a tasseled cushion, under the reading desk—a quaint conceit
impossible to be carried out successfully in these days, but pretty and
fitting enough then. Of the last of the Selwyns, "Ultimus Selwynorum,"
who died aged twenty, in 1704, it is<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_327" id="Page_327"></SPAN></span> said, with that exquisite
simplicity of exaggeration of which the secret also has been lost, that
for him "the very marble might weep." Friston Place, the home of the
Selwyns, has some noble timbers, and a curious old donkey-well in the
garden.</p>
<p>West Dean, which is three miles to the west, by a bleak and lonely road
amid hills and valleys, is just a farm yard, with remains of very
ancient architecture among the barns and ricks. The village, however, is
more easily reached from Alfriston than Eastbourne.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_328" id="Page_328"></SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.