William Henry Hudson writes about Chichester

1900 William Henry Hudson

To those who know not Chichester, that same tall, star-pointing spire in a green level land with round blue hills beyond, is not only a thing of beauty, a symbol of remembrancer; but seen at a distance day by day, from many points, may come to be even more than all these to the mind. An ancient town, remote and rural; the sights and sound and quietude of nature, as in a village around and in it, where men may lead cleaner, saner, less strenuous lives than in the great centres of population, and have other and better ideals.

But it is not so; for Chichester is not in itself sacred, no pleasant, nor fragrant to the nostrils. On the contrary, I am here always conscious of an odour not easily described. Perhaps it come nearest in character to an effluvium ascending in warm and damp weather from the long-covered old forgotten cesspools, mixed with something more subtle or volatile like a fragrance that has lost its pleasantness. It may be musk, with which the town dames perfumed themselves in bygone centuries, still clinging to the old spot, and it may be ghost old incense, which filled the sacred buildings every day for ages before its ceremonial use was discontinued. This odour, or this mixture of smells, of which the natives are not conscious, and the sights which meet the eye, have in my case a profoundly depressing effect. This depression is probably the malady commonly known as "the chichesters", from which many persons who visit this town are said to suffer.

As to the sights; when you enter and walk in the streets, you encounter a strange procession of signs, advancing to meet you, not always singly but often in twos and threes. They are implements of husbandry, arms of all colours and degrees, castles, railways, telegraphs, globes, ships, tuns, anchors, crosses, and all sort of objects. Products of the earth, too, are there, and signs that have rural associations - barley mows, wheatsheafs, chestnuts, oaks, bushes, etc., etc. These are followed by creatures, wild and domestic, outlandish and familiar, real and faculoud - the most wonderful happy family on the globe. Behind a lively unicorn, run, trot, and prance a number of horses of all colours, and after these, white harts; then cows, spotted and red, and dogs, and bulls, and lambs, and swans, and eagles, and after them all a playful dolphin. Nor is this all; to the procession of birds and beasts and fishes, succeed things great and beautiful and magnificent - fountains and rainbows, and the sun in his glory, and the rising sun, and the moon and half-moon, and doubtless many stars and constelations; and angels, too, and beautiful thoughts and emotions, good intents, and hope, and I daresay faith and charity to keep her company.

These, the reader will understand, are public-house signs and names. They are symbol and descriptions not of things in nature and the soul, but of something better and dearer to the Chichesterians, and their chief good. As to beauty in the moral or material world -
The bubbles that swim
On the beaker;s brim
And break on the lips while meeting
Is the most beautiful sight they know, and their joy for ever.

The amazing sight of all these signs, and other sight that are happily rare in small rural towns, led me to make a few inquiries, and the result may interest those of my readers who care to hear something (not to much) about the little ways and vagaries of their own species.

There are 12,000 souls in the town; that is to say, an adult male population of 3,000. This number includes a rather large body of clergymen and minister, and perhaps a couple of hundred highly respectable persons who do not go to bars. To provide this village population with drink there are seventy public-houses, besides several wine and spirit merchants, and grocers with licences. To keep all these houses open, al these taps perpetually running, there must be an immense quantity of liquor consumed. At eight o'clock in the morning you will find men at all bars, often in groups of three or four or half a dozen, standing, pipe in mouth and tankard in hand; and at eleven at night, when closing-time comes, out of every door a goodly crowd of citizens are seen stumbling forth, surprised and sorry, no doubt, that the day has ended so soon. In the streets, near the railway station, at the Market Cross, and at various corners, you will see groups of the most utterly drink-degraded wretches it is possible to find anywhere in the kingdom - men with soulless bloated faces and watery eyes, dressed like tramps - standing idle with their hands in their pockets. But there is not a penny there, or they would not be standing in the mud and rain; and as for doing any work, they are past that. Here that rare spectacle, a man without a shirt, has met my sight, not once or twice, but several times, the naked flesh showing through the rents of a ragged jacket buttoned or pinned up to the neck. These loathly human objects are strangely incongruous at that spot, under the great spire, in sight of the green open healthy downs, in perhaps the richest agricultural district in England.

But, it may be said, even allowing that every adult male in Chichester drinks every day, and drinks deeply, also allowing for market-day, when farmers and others who come into the town on business no doubt consume a good deal of beer and spirits, how is it possible for so many licensed houses to exist?

The publicans themselves told me how it was managed. They assert, and complain bitterly, that there are thirty or forty licensed houses too many in Chichester, and that if they had to pay anything approaching to the rents paid for houses of this description in other towns, they could not live. Fortunately (and this is the silver lining to the poor publican's cloud) the rents are nominal, and in very many instances the houses are rent-free. The brewers own them, and find it more to their profit to give the house rent-free than to close it. The brewers, in fact pay a heavy premium to the drink-sellers, lest any of their seventy precious licences should be lost.

As there are some extremists about just now, it is perhaps as well to say that I do not agree with them; and that, though not so enthusiastic as a clerical acquaintance of mine, who assures me that he "simply adores gin", I am by no means an abstained. Wine is among the kindly fruits of the earth which I appreciate, and failing that I can drink either ale or stout, or a mixture of both. But the perpetual swilling in Chichester is enough to turn the stomach of even the most tolerant man.

And the clergy and ministers of the gospel - there are, besides the cathedral, at least twenty churches and chapels in this small town - what are they doing in the matter? Nothing, I fear, and probably have long discovered that nothing is to be done. The churches open on Sundays at an hour when the seventy public-houses are closed, and a certain number of women and a few married men attend the services. The cathedral has at least two services every day, and you will as a rule find six or eight to a dozen persons at the afternoon service; and these few are women, or strangers who have come in to look at the building. The eloquence, if there is any, the lessons, the sweet and beautiful voice singing " the anthems clear", are all wasted on the desert breath of the vast vacant interior. The ghostly men walk the town like ghosts indeed, and are unseen or unnoticed, and at an immeasurable distance from the people they brush against; and they are like pilgrims and passengers in the city, whom nobody knows; nor does anyone inquire who they are, and what they are doing there.

On a rainy miserable day that was a market-day, when the wind was cold and the streets were foul with mud; and the bellowings, bleatings and gruntings of the animals, and the smell of the same, filled the air, I greatly suffered from "the chichesters", fled into the cathedral and broke my resolution never to enter that interesting part of the interior from which the non-paying public, the poor undistinguished herd of which I am a member, are excluded. I paid a coin and signed my name, and was one of a small exploring party of persons, damp and depressed as myself, under the guidance of a sexton or verger. HE, unlike us, was in rather a merry mood, and gave a humorous colour to old traditions and historical incidents. When we had duly cursed Cromwell the Destroyer, as I daresay we had cursed hum in many another noble building and in many a ruin, we came in our rambles to an ancient small chapel when we saw some curious old monkish wood-carvings which the Puritans ought in consistency to have destroyed, but did not. Here were oak seats in rows, and on the back of each one was a carving representing some humorous, fanciful, or grotesque scene, but I looked attentively at only one, the first that caught my eye. In this, a fox sat at ease in a chair, his legs crossed, his brush thrown carelessly like along coat-tail across his lap, a stringed instrument on which he was merrily playing in his hand; his foot was pressed on the bosom of a goose, lying, poor wretch, screaming and flapping its wings at his feet; while he, inclining his sharp nose a little, was looking down much amused at the struggles of his victim. Opposite to him, in another chair, sat an ape, listening to the performance with all the gravity in the world.

Perhaps, thought I, those harsh and gloomy-minded men, who, in their zeal for their unlovely religion, destroyed so many works that had been a joy to men for centuries, had after all some sense of humour; and, with swords to hack in their hands, relented when they looked at this wicked and most comical fox.

I was still occupied with this carving when some person threw open a door, and called excitedly to our guide that a drove of pigs had broken or got into the cathedral grounds, and he was wanted at once to help get them out. "I am not surprised", I remarked. "The whole town swarms with pigs". "Market-day!" he cried, and, apologising for leaving us so unceremoniously, he rushed away to give the assistance required.

I followed and gained the street, then took shelter from the driving rain under the ancient famous Market Cross, a richly decorated stone pavilion, with many empty niches from which the stone effigies of great men were thrown down and shattered by the destructive Cromwellians.

This structure stands at the meeting of four streets - East, West, South, and North Streets. Formerly the cattle-market was held at this spot, and the narrow busy thoroughfares were then filled with cattle, sheep, and pigs and people buying and selling. A woman in a shop close by told me that about thirty years ago, when she was a child, the calves were always penned in the street directly before the house where she lived with her parents. The calves were brought in the day before market-day; and all night long, and a great part of the next day, the distressful lowings of the poor beasts sounded through the house; and so great was its effect on her that up to the present time, after so many years, she cannot hear a calf calling without experiencing a sudden sense of misery and desolation which is torture to her mind. So vivid are the impressions received, and so lasting the associations formed, pleasant and painful, in a child's min! these seemingly trivial associations have a subtle influence, and are part of the character, a harmony or discord according to their nature; and altogether they count for much in the little obscure history and tragedy of each individual life.