<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></SPAN>CHAPTER XV</h2>
<h3>STEYNING AND BRAMBER</h3>
<blockquote><p>Saint Cuthman and his mother—Steyning's architecture—Steyning's
wise passiveness—Bramber castle—A corrupt pocket borough—A
Taxidermist-humorist—Joseph Poorgrass in Sussex—The widow of
Beeding and the Romney—A digression on curio-hunting.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Of great interest and antiquity is Steyning, the little grey and red
town which huddles under the hill four miles to Henfield's south-west.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE ADVENTURES OF CUTHMAN</div>
<p>The beginnings of Steyning are lost in the distance. Its church was
founded, probably in the eighth century, by St. Cuthman, an early
Christian whose adventures were more than usually quaint. He began by
tending his father's sheep, with which occupation his first miracle was
associated. Being called one day to dinner, and having no one to take
his place as shepherd, he drew a circle round the flock with his crook,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></SPAN></span>
and bade the sheep, in the name of the Lord, not to stray beyond it. The
sheep obeyed, and thenceforward on repeating the same manœuvre he
left them with an easy mind. In course of time his father died, and
Cuthman determined to travel; intense filial piety determined him to
take his aged mother with him. In order to do this he constructed a
wheelbarrow couch, which he partly supported by a cord over his
shoulders. Thus united, mother and son fared forth into the cold world;
which was, however, warmed for them by the watchful interest taken in
Cuthman by a vigilant Providence. One day, for example, the cord of the
barrow broke in a hayfield, where Cuthman, who supplied its place by
elder twigs, was the subject of much ridicule among the haymakers.
Immediately a heavy storm broke over the field, destroying the crop; and
not only then, but ever afterwards in the same field—possibly to this
day—has haymaking been imperilled by a similar storm. So runs the
legend.</p>
<p>The second occasion on which the cord broke and let down Cuthman's
mother was at Steyning. Cuthman took the incident as a divine intimation
that the time had come to settle, and he thereupon first built for his
mother and himself a hut and afterwards a church. The present church
stands on its site. Cuthman was buried there. So, also, was Ethelwulf,
father of Alfred the Great, whose body afterwards was moved to
Winchester. Alfred the Great had estates at Steyning, as elsewhere in
Sussex.</p>
<p>While Cuthman was building his church a beam shifted, making a vast
amount of new labour necessary. But as the Saint sorrowfully was
preparing to begin again, a stranger appeared, who pointed out how the
mischief could be repaired in a more speedy manner and with less toil.
Cuthman and his men followed his instructions, and all was quickly well
again. Cuthman thereupon fell on his knees and asked the stranger who he
was. "I am He in whose name thou buildest this temple," he replied, and vanished.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page138.png" id="page138.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page138.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='394' alt="Steyning Church" /></p>
<h4><i>Steyning Church.</i></h4>
<p>The present church, which stands on the site of St. Cuthman's, is only a
reminder of what it must have been in its best days. When one faces the
curiously chequered square tower, an impression of quiet dignity is
imparted; but a broadside view is disappointing by reason of the high
deforming roof, giving an impression as of a hunched back. (One sees the
same effect at Udimore, in the east of Sussex.) Within are two rows of
superb circular arches, with zigzag mouldings, on massive columns.</p>
<div class="sidenote">STEYNING AND HISTORY</div>
<p>Steyning has an importance in English history that is not generally
credited to it. Edward the Confessor gave a great part of the land to
the Abbey at Fécamp, whose church is, or was, the counterpart of
Steyning's. These possessions Harold took away, an act that, among
others, decided William, Duke of Normandy, upon his assailing, and
conquering, course. Steyning should be proud. To have brought the
Conqueror over is at least as worthy as to have come over with him, and
far more uncommon.</p>
<p>In Church Street stands Brotherhood Hall, a very charming ancient
building, long used as a Grammar School, flanked by overhanging houses,
which, though less imposing, are often more quaint and ingratiating.
Most of Steyning, indeed, is of the past, and the spirit of antiquity is
visibly present in its streets.</p>
<p>The late Louis Jennings, in his <i>Rambles among the Hills</i>, was
fascinated by the placid air of this unambitious town—as an American
might be expected to be in the uncongenial atmosphere of age and
serenity. "One almost expects," he wrote, "to see a fine green moss all
over an inhabitant of Steyning. One day as I passed through the town I
saw a man painting a new sign over a shop, a proceeding that so aroused
my curiosity that I stood for a minute or two to look on. The painter
filled in one letter, gave a huge yawn, looked up and down two or three
times as if he had lost something, and finally descended from his perch
and disappeared. Five weeks later I passed that way again, and it is a
fact that the same man was at work<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></SPAN></span><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</SPAN></span> on the same sign. Perhaps when the
reader takes the walk I am about to recommend to his attention—a walk
which comprises some of the finest scenery in Sussex—that sign will be
finished, and the accomplished artist will have begun another; but I
doubt it. There is plenty of time for everything in Steyning." I am told
that Steyning was incensed when this criticism was printed (there was
even talk of an action for libel); but it seems to me that whatever may
have been intended, the words contain more of compliment than censure.
In this hurrying age, it is surely high praise to have one's "wise
passiveness" (as Wordsworth called it) so emphasised. The passage calls
to mind Diogenes requesting, as the greatest of possible boons, that
Alexander the Great would stand aside and not interrupt the sunshine;
only at Steyning would one seek for Diogenes to-day. No commendation of
Steyning in the direction of its enterprise, briskness, smartness, or
any of the other qualities which are now most in fashion, would so
speedily decide a wise man to pitch his tent there as Mr. Jennings'
certificate of inertia.</p>
<div class="sidenote">STEYNING HARBOUR</div>
<p>Steyning, if still disposed to stand on its defence, might plead
external influence, beyond the control of man, as an excuse for some of
its interesting placidity. For this curiously inland town was once a
port. In Saxon times (when Steyning was more important than Birmingham),
the Adur was practically an estuary of the sea, and ships came into
Steyning Harbour, or St. Cuthman's Port, as it was otherwise called.
There is notoriously no such quiet spot as a dry harbour town. In those
days, Steyning also had a mint.</p>
<p>Bramber, a little roadside village less than a mile south-east of
Steyning, also a mere relic of its great days, was once practically on
the coast, for the arm of the sea which narrowed down at Steyning was
here of great breadth, and washed the sides of the castle mound. The
last time I came into Steyning was by way of the bostel down Steyning
Round Hill. The old place seems more than ever medieval as one descends<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></SPAN></span>
upon it from the height (the best way to approach a town); and sitting
among the wild thyme on the turf I tried to reconstruct in imagination
the scene a thousand years ago, with the sea flowing over the meadows of
the Adur valley, and the masts of ships clustered beyond Steyning
church. Once one had the old prospect well in the mind's eye, the
landscape became curiously in need of water.</p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page140.png" id="page140.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page140.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='463' alt="Bramber" /></p>
<h4><i>Bramber.</i></h4>
<div class="sidenote">BRAMBER</div>
<p>After rain, Bramber is a pleasant village, but when the dust flies it is
good neither for man nor beast. All that remains of the castle is
crumbling battlement and a wall of the keep, survivals of the renovation
of the old Saxon stronghold by William de Braose, the friend of the
Conqueror and the Sussex founder of the Duke of Norfolk's family. Picnic
parties now frolic among the ruins, and enterprising boys explore the
rank overgrowth in the moat below.</p>
<p>The castle played no part in history, its demolition being due probably
to gunpowder pacifically fired with a view to obtaining building
materials. But during the Civil War the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></SPAN></span> village was the scene of an
encounter between Royalists and Roundheads. A letter from John Coulton
to Samuel Jeake of Rye, dated January 8, 1643-4, thus describes the
event:—"The enemy attempted Bramber bridge, but our brave Carleton and
Evernden with his Dragoons and our Coll.'s horse welcomed them with
drakes and musketts, sending some 8 or 9 men to hell (I feare) and one
trooper to Arundel Castle prisoner, and one of Capt. Evernden's Dragoons
to heaven." A few years later, as we have seen, Charles II. ran a grave
risk at Bramber while on his way to Brighton and safety.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A POCKET BOROUGH</div>
<p>Bramber was, for many years, a pocket borough of the worst type. George
Spencer, writing to Algernon Sidney after the Bramber election in 1679,
says:—"You would have laughed to see how pleased I seemed to be in
kissing of old women; and drinking wine with handfuls of sugar, and
great glasses of burnt brandy; three things much against the stomach."
In 1768, eighteen votes were polled for one candidate and sixteen for
his rival. One of the tenants, in a cottage valued at about three
shillings a week, refused <i>£</i>1000 for his vote. Bramber remained a pocket
borough until the Reform Bill. William Wilberforce, the abolitionist,
sat for it for some years; there is a story that on passing one day
through the village he stopped his carriage to inquire the name.
"Bramber? Why, that's the place I'm Member for."</p>
<p>Bramber possesses a humorist in taxidermy, whose efforts win more
attention than the castle. They are to be seen in a small museum in its
single street, the price of admission being for children one penny, for
adults twopence, and for ladies and gentlemen "what they please"
(indicating that the naturalist also knows human nature). In one case,
guinea-pigs strive in cricket's manly toil; in another, rats read the
paper and play dominoes; in a third, rabbits learn their lessons in
school; in a fourth, the last scene in the tragedy of the <i>Babes of the
Wood</i> is represented, Bramber Castle in the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></SPAN></span> distance strictly
localising the event, although Norfolk usually claims it.</p>
<p>Isolated in the fields south of Bramber are two of the quaintest
churches in the county—Coombes and Botolphs. Neither has an attendant
village.</p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page142.png" id="page142.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page142.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='454' alt="Coombes Church" /></p>
<h4><i>Coombes Church.</i></h4>
<div class="sidenote">JOSEPH POORGRASS IN FACT</div>
<p>The owl story, which crops up all over the country and is found in
literature in Mr. Hardy's novel <i>Far from the Madding Crowd</i>, the scene
whereof is a hundred miles west of Sussex, has a home also at Upper
Beeding, the little dusty village beyond Bramber across the river. Mr.
Hardy gives the adventure to Joseph Poorgrass; at Beeding, the hero is
one Kiddy Wee. His rightful name was Kidd; but being very small the
village had invented this double diminutive. Lost in the wood he cried
for help, just as Poorgrass did. "Who? who?" asked the owl. "Kiddy Wee
o' Beedin'," was the reply.</p>
<div class="sidenote">A DEALER OUTWITTED</div>
<p>It was not long ago that a masterpiece was discovered at Beeding, in one
of those unlikely places in which with ironical humour fine pictures so
often hide themselves. It hung in a little general shop kept by an
elderly widow. After passing unnoticed<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></SPAN></span> or undetected for many years, it
was silently identified by a dealer who happened to be buying some
biscuits. He made a casual remark about it, learned that any value that
might be set upon it was sentimental rather than monetary, and returned
home. He laid the matter before one or two friends, with the result that
they visited Beeding in a party a day or so later in order to bear away
the prize. Outside the shop they held a council of war. One was for
bidding at the outset a small but sufficient sum for the picture,
another for affecting to want something else and leading round to the
picture, and so forth; but in the discussion of tactics they raised
their voices too high, so that a visitor of the widow, sitting in the
room over the shop, heard something of the matter. Suspecting danger,
but wholly unconscious of its nature, she hurried downstairs and warned
her friend of a predatory gang outside who were not to be supplied on
any account with anything they asked for. The widow obeyed blindly. They
asked for tea—she refused to sell it; they asked for biscuits—she set
her hand firmly on the lid; they mentioned the picture—she was a rock.
Baffled, they withdrew; and the widow, now on the right scent, took the
next train to Brighton to lay the whole matter before her landlord. He
took it up, consulted an expert, and the picture was found to be a
portrait of Mrs. Jordan, the work either of Romney or Lawrence.</p>
<div class="sidenote">THE FURNITURE SWINDLE</div>
<p>Furniture is the usual prey of the dealer who lounges casually through
old villages in the guise of a tourist, asking for food or water at old
cottages and farmhouses, and using his eyes to some purpose the while.
Pictures are rare. The search for chests, turned bed-posts, fire-backs,
Chippendale chairs, warming pans, grandfather's clocks, and other
indigenous articles of the old simple homestead which are thought so
decorative in the sophisticated villa and establish the artistic credit
and taste of their new owner, has been prosecuted in Sussex with as much
energy as elsewhere—not only by the professional dealer, but by
amateurs no less unwilling to give<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></SPAN></span> an ignorant peasant fifteen
shillings for an article which they know to be worth as many pounds. But
suspicion of the plausible furniture collector has, I am glad to say,
begun to spread, and the palmiest days of the spoliation of the country
are probably over. It must not, however, be thought that the peasant is
always the under dog, the amateur the upper. A London dealer informs me
that the planting of spurious antiques in old cottages has become a
recognised form of fraud among less scrupulous members of the trade. An
oak chest bearing every superficial mark of age that a clever workman
can give it (and the profession of wormholer, is now, I believe,
recognised) is deposited in a tumble-down, half-timbered home in a
country village, whose occupant is willing to take a share in the game;
a ticket marked "Ginger-beer; sold Here" is placed in the window, and
the trap is ready. It is almost beyond question that everyone who bids
for this chest, which has, of course, been in the family for
generations, is hoping to get it at a figure much lower than is just; it
is quite certain that whatever is paid for it will be too much. Ugly as
the situation is, I like to think of this biting of the biter.</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></SPAN></span></p>
<p class="center"><SPAN name="page145.png" id="page145.png"></SPAN><ANTIMG src="images/page145.png" width-obs='700' height-obs='594' alt="Chanctonbury Ring" /></p>
<h4><i>Chanctonbury Ring.</i></h4>
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