"I listen not to the country people telling it was experimented by a goose, which was put in and came out again with life (though without feathers); but hearken seriously to those who judiciously impute the subsidency of the earth in the interstice aforesaid to some underground hollowness made by that water in the passage thereof."
The Swallows are really fissures in the chalk bed of the stream, which runs as it were over the top of a long chalk sponge. In rainless summers there is only enough water to fill the bottom of the sponge, and the top channel runs dry. Brayley has some amusing calculations as to the amount of water which the sponge drinks:—
"From calculations made on different days, after measuring the height and velocity of the current received into these pools, it was ascertained, when both were in activity, that the swallows of the outer pool engulphed 72 imperial gallons per second, 4,320 per minute, and 259,200 per hour; and those of the inner pool, 23 imperial gallons per second, 1,380 per minute, and 82,800 per hour."
Seventy-two gallons—a good-sized tankful—of water in a second is very pretty swallowing; an early instance of thinking imperially. To Camden, in the Britannia, the disappearing water suggests another image. The inhabitants can boast, like the Spaniards, of having a bridge that feeds several flocks of sheep.
Mickleham is almost the centre of the Fanny Burney country. At Mickleham church she was married to General d'Arblay; Juniper Hall is half-a-mile from the church; Norbury Park lies west of the Mole; Camilla Lacey south of Norbury Park at West Humble.
Fanny Burney, retired from her post of Maid of Honour and receiving a pension of £100 a year, met M. d'Arblay in January, 1793, when she was staying with her friends the Locks at Norbury Park. He was living at Juniper Hall with other French émigrés—a brilliant little colony; Madame de Staël was there, and de Narbonne, and de Lally Tollendal, and Talleyrand. The General began as tutor, and the course of Fanny Burney's acquaintance with Juniperians, as her sister Mrs. Phillips used to call them, and particularly with her French master, perhaps may be given in a few extracts from her correspondence:—
Madame de Staël Holstein to Miss Burney,
Written from Juniper Hall, Dorking, Surrey, 1793.
"When J learned to read english J begun by milton, to know all or renounce all in once. J follow the same system in writing my first english letter to Miss burney; after such an enterprize nothing can affright me. J feel for her so tender a friendship that it melts my admiration, inspires my heart with hope of her indulgence, and impresses me with the idea that in a tongue even unknown J could express sentiments so deeply felt.
"My servant will return for a french answer. J intreat miss burney to correct the words but to preserve the sense of that card.