Brighton has another very interesting possession in the collection of old domestic pottery in the museum: an assemblage (the most entertaining and varied that I know) of jugs and mugs, plates and ornaments, all English, all quaint and characteristic too, and mostly inscribed with mottoes or decorated with designs in celebration of such events as the battle of Waterloo, or the discomfiture of Mr. Pitt, or a victory of Tom Cribb. Others are ceramic satires on the drunkard's folly or the inconstancy of women. Why are the potters of our own day so dull? History is still being made, human nature is not less frail; but I see no genial commentary on jug or dish. Is it the march of Taste?
CHAPTER XVIII
ROTTINGDEAN AND WHEATEARS
Ovingdean—Charles II.—The introduction of Mangel Wurzel—Rottingdean as a shrine—Mr. Kipling's Sussex poem—Thomas Fuller on the Wheatear—Mr. Hudson's description of the traps—The old prosperous days for shepherds—Luring larks—A fight on the beach—The town that failed.
Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of massive houses is the new road that leads to Rottingdean. The old road fell into the sea some few years ago—the fourth or fifth to share that fate. But the pleasantest way thither is on foot over the turf that tops the white cliffs.
By diverging inland between Brighton and Rottingdean, just beyond the most imposing girls' school in the kingdom, Ovingdean is reached, one of the nestling homesteads of the Downs. It is chiefly known as providing Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty title of one of his stories, Ovingdean Grange. The gallant novelist, however, was a poor historian in this book, for Charles the Second, as we have seen, never set foot east of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the Sussex Downs. The legend that lodges him at Ovingdean, although one can understand how Ovingdean must cherish it, cannot stand. (Mock Beggars' Hall, in the same romance, is Southover Grange at Lewes.)
Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. Ovingdean is famous not only for its false association with Charles the Second but as the burial place of Thomas Pelling, an old-time Vicar, "the first person who introduced Mangul Wurzel into England."
ROTTINGDEAN