berley Church._]

[Sidenote: A TRAVELLING CIRCUS]

[Sidenote: A TIME-HONOURED JOKE]

This reminds me that I saw recently at Petworth, whither we are now
moving, a travelling circus whose programme included a comic interlude
that cannot have received the slightest modification since it was first
planned, perhaps hundreds of years ago. It was sheer essential elemental
horse-play straight from Bartholomew Fair, and the audience received it
with rapture that was vouchsafed to nothing else. The story would be too
long to tell; but briefly, it was a dumb show representation of the
visit of a guest (the clown) to a wife, unknown to her husband. The
scenery consisted of a table, a large chest, a heap of straw and a huge
barrel. The fun consisted in the clown, armed with a bladder on a
string, hiding in the barrel, from which he would spring up and deliver
a sounding drub upon the head of whatever other character--husband or
policeman--might be passing, to their complete perplexity. They were, of
course, incapable of learning anything from experience. At other times
he hid himself or others in the straw, in the chest, or under the table.
When, in a country district such as this, one hears the laughter that
greets so venerable a piece of pantomime, one is surprised that circus
owners think it worth while to secure novelties at all. The primitive
taste of West Sussex, at any rate, cannot require them.

[Illustration: _Pulborough Church._]

CHAPTER X

PETWORTH

Pulborough and its past--Stopham--Fittleworth--The natural
advantages of the Swan--Petworth's feudal air--An historical
digression naming many Percies--The third Earl of Egremont--The
Petworth pictures--Petworth Park--Cobbett's opinion--The
vicissitudes of the Petworth ravens--Tillington's use to business
men--A charming epitaph--Noah Mann of the Hambledon Club.

Petworth is not on the direct road to Horsham, which is our next centre,
but it is easily gained from Arundel by rail (changing at Pulborough),
or by road through Bury, Fittleworth, and Egdean.

[Sidenote: AN ANCIENT FORTRESS]

Pulborough is now nothing: once it was a Gibraltar, guarding Stane
Street for Rome. The fort was on a mound west of the railway,
corresponding with the church mound on the east. Here probably was a
catapulta and certainly a vigilant garrison. Pulborough has no invader
now but the floods, which every winter transform the green waste at her
fee