I Remember Sussex, And As I Remember
It I Must, If Only For Example, Set Down My Roll-Call Of
Such names,
as - Fittleworth, where the Inn has painted panels; Amberley in the
marshes; delicate Fernhurst, and Ditchling under its
Hill; Arundel,
that is well known to every one; and Climping, that no one knows, set
on a lonely beach and lost at the vague end of an impassable road; and
Barlton, and Burton, and Duncton, and Coldwatham, that stand under in
the shadow and look up at the great downs; and Petworth, where the
spire leans sideways; and Timberley, that the floods make into an
island; and No Man's Land, where first there breaks on you the distant
sea. I never knew a Sussex man yet but, if you noted him such a list,
would answer: 'There I was on such and such a day; this I came to
after such and such a run; and that other is my home.' But it is not
his recollection alone which moves him, it is sound of the names. He
feels the accent of them, and all the men who live between Hind-head
and the Channel know these names stand for Eden; the noise is enough
to prove it. So it is also with the hidden valleys of the lie de
France; and when you say Jouy or Chevreuse to a man that was born in
those shadows he grows dreamy - yet they are within a walk of Paris.
But the wonderful thing about a name like Charmes is that it hands
down the dead. For some dead man gave it a keen name proceeding from
his own immediate delight, and made general what had been a private
pleasure, and, so to speak, bequeathed a poem to his town. They say
the Arabs do this; calling one place 'the rest of the warriors', and
another 'the end', and another 'the surprise of the horses': let those
who know them speak for it. I at least know that in the west of the
Cotentin (a sea-garden) old Danes married to Gaulish women discovered
the just epithet, and that you have 'St Mary on the Hill' and 'High
Town under the Wind' and 'The Borough over the Heath', which are
to-day exactly what their name describes them. If you doubt that
England has such descriptive names, consider the great Truth that at
one junction on a railway where a mournful desolation of stagnant
waters and treeless, stonewalled fields threatens you with experience
and awe, a melancholy porter is told off to put his head into your
carriage and to chant like Charon, 'Change here for Ashton under the
Wood, Moreton on the Marsh, Bourton on the Water, and Stow in the
Wold.'
Charmes does not fulfil its name nor preserve what its forgotten son
found so wonderful in it. For at luncheon there a great commercial
traveller told me fiercely that it was chiefly known for its
breweries, and that he thought it of little account.
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