Newhaven

“ To the westward of Newhaven is the elegant chain-pier, erected for the special accommodation of steam-vessels; and along the coast, and the intervening space between that and the city, numerous villas, cottages, and gardens, contribute great beauty and animation to the scenery, which is here peculiarly rich and variegated. On the opposite shore of Fife is seen the picturesque village of Aberdour, with its feudal keep and richly-wooded declivities. ”

“ The people of Newhaven fitted out a ship, and sent her richly laden for England, to procure a patent for the colony and a charter for the city. After the ship had been at sea some weeks, there happened in New-England a violent storm, which induced the people of Newhaven to fast and pray, to inquire of the Lord whether their ship was in that storm or not. This was a real fast: for the people neither eat nor drank from sunrise to sunset. ”

“ It has the same treeless, marshy sides, highly embanked for the formation of water meadows, the same strong, scouring tide, the same violent current, but, luckily for the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway, not the same bar. The entry at Newhaven is particularly easy, the best in the county, and would be fairly easy even without the dredging that is carried on, or the breakwater that defends it from the south-west. ”

“ The route now follows the coast road from Newhaven westwards. From the Portobello coastguard station, four miles from Newhaven Bridge, a road runs across the downs to the beautiful little village of Telscombe, nestling in a secluded combe in the heart of the hills; by-roads and footpaths also lead here by delightful ways from Southease and Piddinghoe. The church is old and interesting, quite unspoilt by any attempt at restoration; note the beautiful font on a marble platform. ”

“ Although the establishment of a harbour has operated greatly to the advantage of Newhaven, by giving additional value to every rood of ground in its vicinity, it has not materially interfered with the internal economy of the village, which retains most of those ancient characteristics which for ages has given its inhabitants an isolated position in the community. ”

“ Nor make I the least doubt but that, if I lived at Newhaven, Seaford, Brighthelmstone, or any of those towns near the chalk-cliffs of the Sussex coast, by proper observations, I should see swallows stirring at periods of the winter, when the noons were soft and inviting, and the sun warm and invigorating. ”

“ Newhaven, which had been a very important place in the coaching-days, was a big three-storeyed house with twenty-five bedrooms and stabling for a hundred horses. It stood at a junction of roads about 1,100 feet above sea-level in a most lonely place, and in the zenith of its popularity there was seldom a bedroom empty, the house being quite as gay as if it had been in London itself. It had been specially built for the coach traffic by the then Duke of Devonshire, whose mansion, Chatsworth House, was only a few miles distant. ”

“ Wherewith she (and not he) ran away lightly up the stairs, turning just one glance downward as she reached the landing. Newhaven was looking up from below with an "enchanted" smile—the word is Trix's own; I should probably have used a different one.
Was then the curate of Poltons utterly defeated—brought to his knees, only to be spurned? It seemed so; and he came down to dinner that night with a subdued and melancholy expression. ”

“ You can do nothing with Newhaven except leave it a port. Littlehampton refuses to be the pleasure ground that its landlord desires it to be. Bosham is still the ancient harbour and village which its history demands that it should be. Shoreham will not consent to become a lesser Worthing or a second Brighton, and this is the more remarkable from the fact that these harbour towns and villages are geographically more in touch with London than those other towns whose special character it is to lie sheltered by the hills and far from the gaps by which a railway could approach them from the north. ”

“ He had set before her everything that he had done, and all that he had learnt, since she fetched him away from Fleet Street three days before, and had given her all details with one exception—that of the little matter of the squinting man who had presented himself at Newhaven, which small particular he was as yet keeping to himself, for reasons of his own. ”

“ In fact, it is a fishwife's boast that she will run with a weight which it takes two men to put on her back. By reason of this great strength on the part of the women, and their immemorial habit of exercising it; perhaps also from other causes far back in the early days of Jutland, where these curious Newhaven fishing-folk are said to have originated,—it has come about that the Newhaven men are a singularly docile and submissive race. ”

“ Fortunately, the curate was not there; he had a Bible class.
The next day Lord Newhaven arrived. I found him on the lawn when I strolled up, after a spell of letter-writing, about four o'clock. Lawn tennis was the order of the day, and we were all in flannels.
"Oh, here's Mark!" cried Dora, seeing me. "Now, Mark, you and Mr. Ives had better play against Trix and Lord Newhaven. That'll make a very good set."
"No, no, Mrs. Polton," said Jack Ives. "They wouldn't have a chance. Look here, I'll play with Miss Queenborough against Lord Newhaven and Wynne." ”

“ The new-comers, therefore, under pretence of spreading Christ’s kingdom, and shunning persecution, joined with the settlers at Stamford, Guilford, and Stratford, where, however, persecution domineered with as much fury as at Newhaven; for each town judged itself to be an independent Dominion; though, for fear of the Dutch and the Indians, they formed a political union, and swore to bear true allegiance to the capital Newhaven, whose authority was supreme. ”

“ On 5 July 1654 he was appointed commissioner of the united colonies, and on 26 May 1658 succeeded to the governorship of Newhaven. In September 1659 one Henry Tomlinson of Stratford molested Newman, and even caused him to be arrested at Connecticut, as a protest against a new impost on wines and liquors. The general court of Newhaven made Tomlinson humbly apologise and give security for future good behaviour. Newman died at Newhaven on 18 Nov. 1660, and was awarded a public funeral in recognition of his great services to the colony. He left a widow. ”

“ One authority goes so far as to assert “with great satisfaction.”
The church of Newhaven is not only interesting, but has a very beautiful situation on the hillside above the town. The one peculiarity in its architecture which strikes one at first sight is the position of its tower placed at the eastern end, while to the east of the tower is placed a fine semicircular apse—which has its counterpart, with other features as well, in the church of Vainville in Normandy—in which one of the small Norman windows can be seen. ”

“ This is one of the most important relics of ancient Seaford. Unhappily the church was allowed, during the later part of the eighteenth century, to fall into a terrible state of disrepair. Much has from time to time been done to restore it, but the restorations and additions have not invariably been done judiciously or with knowledge.
Newhaven, though a good harbour—in fact, the only real haven of refuge of any consequence or ease of entrance between Folkestone and the Wight—is not a place in which to waste much time. ”

“ The first village out of Lewes on the Newhaven road is Kingston (one of three Sussex villages of this name) , on the side of the hill, once the property of Sir Philip Sidney. Next is Iford, with straw blowing free and cows in its meadows; next Rodmell, whence Whiteway Bottom and Breaky Bottom lead to the highlands above: next Southease, where the only bridge over the Ouse between Lewes and Newhaven is to be crossed: a little village famous for a round church tower, of which Sussex knows but three, one other at St. Michael's, Lewes, and one at Piddinghoe, the next village. ”

“ In the 16th century the town was finally deserted by the Ouse, which now runs into the sea at Newhaven, 2 m. westward, and no revival of its prosperity occurred until the early 19th century, when it began to be frequented as a watering-place. ”

“ The lorries to and from Newhaven always took their way through the valley of the Ruther. Once or twice in that winter, as they bumped down High'nd Over from Sea-foord into Aldwoldston at evening, Ernie was surprised to find the chocolate-bodied car lying apparently derelict in the roadway at the steep entrance to the village ”

“ And this was the cause of the sudden sympathy with Jess Rutherford.
As our prigs would say:
“Art had adopted her cause and adorned her tale.”
CHAPTER V.
THE fishing village of Newhaven is an unique place; it is a colony that retains distinct features; the people seldom intermarry with their Scotch neighbors.
Some say the colony is Dutch, some Danish, some Flemish. The character and cleanliness of their female costume points rather to the latter.
Fish, like horse-flesh, corrupts the mind and manners.
After a certain age, the Newhaven fishwife is always a blackguard, and ugly ”

“ And so upon his northern road, every coppice, near or far, even [277] “Knockholt Beeches” (which reminded him of the “beechen hats”) , every little winding wood of Sussex or of Surrey brought before Cradock Nowellʼs eyes the prospect of his boyhood. He had begged to be put ashore at Newhaven, from the American trader, which had rescued him from Pomona Island, and his lonely but healthful sojourn, and then borne him to New York. ”

“ Soho: a cosmopolitan and bohemian district of central London, nowadays revelling in a tawdry disrepute. From the late seventeenth century until quite recently, it was densely populated with foreign immigrants, many of them French, German, Swiss, or Italian in origin.
Newhaven: a port on the English Channel in East Sussex at the mouth of the River Ouse (a short distance downstream from where Woolf drowned herself in 1941) . Septimus and Lucrezia would almost certainly have arrived at Newhaven from the French port of Dieppe. ”

“ It might be possible, Septimus thought, looking at England from the train window, as they left Newhaven; it might be possible that the world itself is without meaning. ”

“ How the two bodies ever got to Newhaven has long been the puzzle. It seems that Russell buried Goffe at first in a grave, dug partly on his own premises, and partly on those adjoining, intending by this stratagem to justify himself, should he ever be forced to deny that the bones were in his garden. But, in the years 1680 and 1684, Randolph’s fury being at its height, he probably dug up the remains of both the regicides, and sent them to Newhaven, where they were interred secretly by Dixwell and the common gravedigger of the place. ”

“ The Pope is a deceiver, and Catholic Councils are lies; but when was a Puritan preacher ever doubted, by his followers, to be an oracle from heaven?
It was in vain that the loyal pursuers came to Newhaven, after the little general had thus got his forces prepared for the contest. Wellington, with the forest of Soignies behind him, at Waterloo, was not half so confident of wearing out Napoleon, as Davenport was of beating back King Charles the Second, in his presumptuous attempt to govern his Puritan colonies. ”

“ The Brighton horseman or walker takes as a rule a line either to Lewes or to Newhaven, rarely adventuring in the direction of Iford Hill, Highdole Hill, or Telscombe village, which nestles three hundred feet high, over Piddinghoe. By day the waggons ply steadily between Lewes and the port, but other travellers are few. Once [Pg 256] evening falls the world is your own, with nothing but the bleat of sheep and the roar of the French boat trains to recall life and civilisation. ”

“ We often use nouns adjectively; and Areios is an adjective: I would therefore write this name Mars Hill, as we write Bunker Hill. Again: Whitehaven and Fairhaven are commonly written with single capitals; but, of six or seven towns called Newhaven or New Haven, some have the name in one word and some in two. Haven means a harbour, and the words, New Haven, written separately, would naturally be understood of a harbour: the close compound is obviously more suitable for the name of a city or town. In England, compounds of this kind are more used than in America ”

“ They just drag everything; they tak a' the broods; they're dooin' a worrld o' harrm. There's somethin' a dooin' aboot it in the House o' Commons, noo, but a canna till hoo it wull go. They ull be the deestrooction o' this place, if they're na pit stop to." And she shook her fist vindictively at a puffing trawler which had just pushed away from the wharf.
Whoever would see the Newhaven fishwives at their best must be on the Newhaven wharf by seven o'clock in the morning, on a day when the trawlers come in and the fish is sold. The scene is a study for a painter. ”

“ It was deposed by a certain John Crowne that the governor, John Endicott, embraced them and bade them welcome to New England, and wished more such good men would come over. They stayed for a time at Cambridge, ‘where they were held in exceedingly great esteem for their piety and parts,’ and ‘held meetings where they preached and prayed, and were looked upon as men dropped down from heaven’ (Cal. State Papers, Col. 1661–8, p. 54) . In February following Goffe and Whalley moved to Newhaven, which they reached 7 March 1661. ”

“ Along the coast westward, past pretty Gurnard Bay beloved by those who picnic, and Newtown haven, where, hidden away—much as is Buckler’s Hard across the Solent in Beaulieu River—lies the decaying Francheville, once an important harbour and town, rivalling in prosperity and population Newport itself, and then Yarmouth comes in sight almost at the extreme north-western corner of the Island.
It is a quaint, quiet, foreign-looking old place, lying low with a fine sweep of hills for a background, where a day or two can be pleasantly enough spent. ”