My own history with Sussex goes back a long time.  I first moved to the county at the age of 23 when I took a [...]]]> I’m diverging from my usual topics today to publish something that is of mainly local interest to those who live in the county of Sussex in the South of England.

My own history with Sussex goes back a long time.  I first moved to the county at the age of 23 when I took a job as a computer programmer in Hastings.  I soon fell in love with this region which although only 60 miles or so from London feels very remote from the capital.  While some of the towns of Sussex are quite large, you can also visit many tiny villages and sometimes you find yourself driving up little lanes that seem to be in the deepest countryside.  Although it can be busy in the day time, when you drive out after 9.00pm it often feels like you have the county to yourself along with the foxes and the owls.

However, my time in Sussex has been intermittent, with periods spent in other parts of the country due to work commitments.  Now we have moved back down here, and I feel that we are going to stay.  Now I find that Kipling expresses my feelings about a more permanent residency in Sussex in his poem, The Recall:

Under their feet in the grasses
My clinging magic runs,
They shall return as strangers,
They shall remain as sons.

Many writers have lived in Sussex.  I have previously written about Hilaire Belloc who made his home in the west of the county, and now in this article its the turn of Rudyard Kipling who’s love for his adopted Sussex is reflected in countless articles, books and poems.   David Arscott has published a fine collection of Kipling’s Sussex writings under the title A Sussex Kipling, a well-produced book published by his own Pomegranate Press which is based in the county town of Lewes and specialises in Sussex titles.

Kipling of course published many books the best known of which are perhaps The Jungle Books which he wrote in Vermont USA (a time when he met and interviewed Mark Twain) and Stalky and Co which he wrote in Devon UK.  But when he moved to Sussex in 1897 he continued his prolific output with the equally well-known Kim, Just So Stories, Puck of Pooks Hill and many articles and poems, leading to the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907.  Much of his output seems dated today, particularly for its militaristic and imperialistic themes, but there is also much that seems to be timeless.

But to get back to the Sussex connection.  David Arscott opens his book with the statement,

Rudyard Kipling was a much-travelled man, but to only two parts of the world did he commit both his heart and his pen.  The first of these was India, the land of his infancy and of his early manhood.  The second was Sussex, the land of his maturity.

Firle Beacon from Windover Hill

Kipling’s residency in Sussex began in Rottingdean near Brighton, where he moved to a house called The Elms which he was neighbours with his Aunt Georgie and her husband the artist Sir Edward Burne Jones.  Kipling was immediately enamoured of Sussex and wrote his famous poem “Sussex by the Sea” soon after moving to Rottingdean.

So one shall Baltic pines content
As one some Surrey glade,
Or one the palm-grove’s droned lament
Before Levuka’s Trade
Each to his choice, and I rejoice
That lot has fallen to me
In a fair ground – in a fair ground -
Yea, Sussex by the sea!

Kipling arrived in Sussex at a time when travel by motor car was becoming a practical possibility and David Arscott has devoted a chapter of his book to Kipling love of the motor-car. While not driving himself due to poor eyesight, Kipling loved being driven around Sussex exploring its many towns and villages.  We read of his experiences with early cars such as the Locomobile (“yes, I have a hell and a half of a motor!”), and the Lanchester (“smells like a fried fish shop and spits her condenser water boiling, over our knees”).  David Arscott includes some fascinating accounts of car journeys around the county, and Kipling certainly had to use his knowledge of the internal working of the motor-car, for breakdowns seems to have been a frequent occurrence.  However, Kipling was well able to wax lyrical about the car,

But the chief end of the car, so far as I am concerned, is the discovery of England.  To me it is a land of stupefying marvels and mysteries; and a day in the car in an English county is a day in some fairy museum where all the exhibits are alive and real and yet none the less delightfully mixed up with books. For instance in six hours I can go from the land of the Ingoldsby Legends by way of the Norman Conquest and the Barons’ War into Richard Jefferies’ country, and so through the Regency, one of Arthur Young’s less-known tours, and Celia’s Arbour, into Gilbert White’s territory.

The path across the Downs near Lullington

In 1902 the Kiplings moved to Batemans, a large 17th century house in Burwash, which at the time had no bathroom and no electricity.  Batemans is now owned by the National Trust and is open to the public.  Its full of Kipling memorabilia and David Arscott’s book has made me want to visit it again as he confirms that Kipling’s study is much as he left as can be seen at the excellent photo-gallery on the National Trust site.

I often find with writers that there is a gap between the time when they are popular and the time when they achieve “classical” status, during which their work just seems dated.  Kipling himself may be in this phase.  His politics seems terribly jingoistic, and his stories are rarely seem to hit the spot in the way they did when they were at their height of popularity.  The selections in A Sussex Kipling suggest that Kipling was no Guy de Maupassant, although David Arscott’s choices show that he certainly had a vivid sense of place and a gift for characterisation.  The subject matter sometimes seems a little weak however, as in the story “They” in which the writer visits house owned by a blind woman which she shares with a group of haunted children.

Not everyone would nowadays appreciate Kipling’s attempts to create myths in which ancient gods are personified and mingle with humans, as in the Puck of Pooks hill stories.  As David Arscott writes,

Kipling can sometimes prove difficult to fathom because he makes few concessions to readers unfamiliar with his widespread references – to the Bible and the Classics, for instance; to social and relgious nuances in his Indian stories; to the arcana of the men’s worlds he liked to infiltrate for his poems and short stories.

However, David Arscott has included a fairly interesting selection in A Sussex Kipling and they certainly give a flavour of what so entranced Kipling’s readership in the early part of the last century.

The Seven Sisters from Hope Gap

Sussex is noted for the lines of chalk hills known as the South Downs which run the whole length of the county mainly along the coastline, and provide some majestic white cliffs which stand above a sparklingly blue sea.  It is when Kipling describes this entrancing landscape that the book comes into its own:

There came at last a brilliant day, swept clear from the south-west that brought the hills within hand’s reach – a day of unstable airs and high filmy clouds.  Through no merit of my own I was free, and set the car for the third time on that known road.  As I reached the crest of the Downs I felt the soft air change, saw it glaze under the sun; and looking down at the sea, in that instant beheld the blue of the channel turn through polished silver and dulled steel to dingy pewter.

Many are the times I have had similar experiences when driving south towards my home.  Coming down through the Sussex Weald, you suddenly get a glimpse of Kipling’s “whale-backed Downs”, and climb up on one of the roads over the top of the hills and see the English Channel glistening in the sun, with perhaps a ferry heading off to France.  I know that there are countless other wonderful sights in England and around the world but I believe that this one is the equal of any.

A Sussex Kipling will have a permanent place on my shelves and is a find addition to my library of books about Sussex and the Downs.  I also discovered that David Arscott runs The Sussex Book Club which brings together as many books about Sussex as he can find.  Browsing the catalogue presents me with many other titles which doubtless I will acquire over the next few years.

I took the photographs in the above article myself.  They can be reproduced subject to Creative Commons licence.

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was one of the most [...]]]> I rarely write about out-of-print books, the focus of A Common Reader being primarily modern literature and European literature in recent translation.  However, I recently found myself turning once again to an old favourite on my shelves, The Four Men,  and felt it was worth writing about.

Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953) was one of the most prolific writers of the first half of the 20th century but is now largely forgotten.  His great friend and associate G K Chesterton is perhaps better remembered, largely because of his “Father Brown” stories about a priest/detective which have often been the subject of television and radio plays.

Belloc was a writer of essays and poems, a travel-writer and biographer and a political commentator, deeply involved in most of the controversies of the day.  Much of his writing is now redundant in the way that all comment on contemporary issues must become.  But this still leaves a large number of works which will be read as long as people enjoy good writing and want to learn more about times past.

The Four Men, describes a journey Belloc made on foot from one end of Sussex to the other, and while it is a minor classic in its own right, it is also of interest to Sussex enthusiasts because of its many references to the towns and villages of the county.  The story is told in a mythical or allegorical way.  The writer is sitting in a pub in Robertsbridge in the east of the county, when he realises that he has had enough of his travels and decides to walk home to the far west of Sussex, “where the Arun rises”.

An elderly man overhears his musings and offers to walk with him, but refuses to give his name, whereupon the writer gives him the name Grizzlebeard, also giving himself the name of “Myself”.  They set off from the George Inn at Robertsbridge and soon pick up two other travellers, The Sailor and The Poet, the four of them agreeing to travel in a group as long as it suits them.

One can assume that all four characters are different aspects of Belloc, and are largely a device to enable him to describe conversations along the road on a wide range of topics whether philosophy, religion or the attrributes of good beer and cheese.

This is a book for those who love Sussex.  Early in the book, Grizzlebeard declares that Sussex alone will escape the Day of Judgement, for,

the horrible rain of fire will fall . . . upon the whole earth, and strike all round the edges of the county, consuming Tonbridge and Appledore (but not Rye), and Horley and Ockley, and Hazelmere, and very certainly Petersfield and Havant, and there shall be an especial woe for Hayling Island; but not one hair of the head of Sussex shall be singed . . . and that in spite of Burwash and those who dwell therein.

But this is a deeply rural Sussex of the early 20th century with remote hamlets hidden from view and rarely visited, of old Inns at which a traveller can arrive in early evening and find a room, of roads unsullied by motor traffic and still the domain of horses and walkers.

The Sussex Downs, the range of hills that reaches the length of the county, features throughout the book and Belloc describes the first view of the Downs with appropriate enthusiasm:

No exiles who have seen them thus, coming back after many years, and following the road from London to the sea, hungry for home, were struck more suddenly or more suddenly uplifted by that vision of the the hills then we four men some coming upon it that morning, and I was for a moment their leader; for this was a place I had cherished ever since I was a boy.

The book is suffused with Belloc’s almost evangelistic Catholicism.  He like to write as though the Reformation never happened and that the England he loves remained with the old religion.  We read of saints and martyrs and the four men sometimes discuss old religious controversies such as the Pelagian heresy as though they were contemporary.  This is however done in a fairly light-hearted way and one can almost feel that Belloc is teasing his readers to see that the predominant Anglicanism of his time is a bit of a new-comer on the religious scene.

Despite his strong religious impulse, Belloc’s love of the English Inn surfaces throughout the book, and many of the pubs he refers to still exist:

Is there not the Bridge Inn of Amberley and the White Hart of Storrington, the Spread Eagle of Midhurst, that oldest and most revered of all the prime inns of this world, and the White Hart of Storrington, the Spread Eagle of Midhurst . . . and the White Hart of Steyning and the White Horse of Storrington and the Swan of Petworth . . . they were mortal inns, human inns, full of a common and reasonable good.

And there is no lack of celebration of beer either – Belloc often writes like a member of the Campaign for Real Ale, waxing rhapsodic over the beer he found at the Frankland Arms, Washington, West Sussex. the website for which records, “opened as coaching inn on the Worthing to London road, the inn was made famous by the publication of Hilaire Belloc’s book, “The Four Men” published in 1912. The book claims that the “swipes” he had at the Washington inn “are the very best I know”. Sadly, the Mitchell’s Brewery that supplied the beer that Belloc enjoyed so much, closed not long after the book was published“.

Even Sussex cheese gets a look-in:

In Sussex, let me tell you, we have but one cheese, the name of which is CHEESE.  It is One, and undivided, though divided into a thousand fragments, and unchanging, though changing in place and consumption.  There is in Sussex no Cheese but Cheese, and it is the same cheese from the head of the Eastern Rother to Harting Hill, and from the sea-beach to that part of Surrey which we gat from the Marches with sword and bow.  In colour it is yellow. It is neither young nor old.  Its taste is that of Cheese and nothing more.

Indeed it is hard to think of a book which exhibits more love for a county than The Four Men, and Belloc occasionally launches into a rich lyricism to describe the land he loves;

The moon stood over Chanctonbury, so removed and cold in her silver that you might almost have thought her careless of the follies of men; little clouds her attendants, shone beneath her worshipping, and they presided together over a general silence.  Her light caught the edges of the Downs.  There was no mist. She was still frosty-clear when I saw her set behind those hills.  The stars were brilliant after her setting, and deep quiet held the valley of the Adur, my little river, slipping at low tide towards the sea.

With The Four Men before us we are taken back to an earlier age, a time when rural England was still deeply rural.  And yet as one who lives in Sussex, I can say that there still are remote villages linked by bridleways on which one can walk from place to place without encountering a car.  And certainly you can walk the spine of the Downs on the South Downs Way and remember that you are largely on ancient tracks which date back to Neolithic times, as is shown by  the barrows and earth-works you encounter along the way.

I particularly liked the quite detailed desription of the route followed by Belloc.  This meant that I was able to get out a map and trace his footsteps along the way.  Much of the landscape is familiar to me, and I was able to obtain more information about Belloc’s walk by reading a public libray copy of Bob Copper’s book, Across Sussex with Belloc.  Bob Copper recreated Belloc’s walk in the 1980s

Bob Copper was himself a noted expert on Sussex, being an avid collector of folk songs and in Copper’s book we find the music for the various tunes and songs referred to by Belloc.  Across Sussex with Belloc makes a fine companion to The Four Men.  I would dearly like to buy a second hand copy of Copper’s book but with prices ranging from £35 to £95 I think I’ll have to keep a watch on ebay for the chance to win one in an auction (later note – I bought a second-hand paperback version for about £12)