SUSSEX ROADS 15 



then have been a precarious business. Sussex roads 

 in especial had a most unenviable name for miriness, 

 and wheeled traffic was so difficult that for many years 

 after this period the farmers and others continued to 

 take their womenkind about in the pillion fashion here 

 caricatured by Henry Bunbury. 



Horace Walpole. indeed, travelling in Sussex in 

 1749, visiting Arundel and Cowdray, acquired a too 

 intimate acquaintance with their phenomenal depth 

 of mud and ruts, inasmuch as he — finicking little 

 gentleman — was compelled to alight precipitately from 

 his overturned chaise, and to foot it like any common 

 fellow. One quite pities his daintiness in the narration 

 of his sorrows, picturesquely set forth by that accom- 

 plished letter-writer arrived home to the safe seclusion 

 of Strawberry Hill. He writes to George Montagu, 

 and dates August 26th, 1749 : 



" Mr. Chute and I returned from our expedition 

 miraculously well, considering all our distresses. If 

 you love good roads, conveniences, good inns, plenty 

 of postilions and horses, be so kind as never to go into 

 Sussex. We thought ourselves in the northest part 

 of England ; the whole county has a Saxon air, and 

 the inhabitants are savage, as if King George the 

 Second was the first monarch of the East Angles. 

 Coaches grow there no more than balm and spices : 

 we were forced to drop our post-chaise, that resembled 

 nothing so much as harlequin's calash, which was 

 occasionallv a chaise or a baker's cart. We iourneved 

 over alpine mountains ' (Walpole, you will observe, 

 was, equally with the evening journalist of these happy 

 times, not unaccustomed to exaggerate) " drenched in 

 clouds, and thought of harlequin again, when he was 

 driving the chariot of the sun through the morning 

 clouds, and was so glad to hear the aqua vitce man crying 

 a dram. ... I have set up my staff, and finished my 

 pilgrimages for this year. Sussex is a great damper of 

 curiosity." 



Thus he prattles on, delightfully describing the 

 peculiarities of the several places he visited with this 



