Romantic Landscape · Rock Sublime: The Sussex Coast in the British Imagination

Various features of Sussex — its sparse population, rugged chalk downlands which meet the sea in white cliffs, and its saturation with romanticised history — lend themselves to creating the entire Sussex coast as a sublime, Romantic arena. The coast is the gateway to the frontier for an island nation (before the invention of the aeroplane), and so the sight of its distinctive landmarks instills bitter sadness leaving and sweet joy in returning. Smuggling, on which the economy of many small coastal towns historically depended, is the archetypal Romantic profession — less brutal than the pirate, and with an air of Robin Hood. Even today, smuggling forms the thematic basis for various tourist attractions in the region, such as “Smuggler’s Adventure” in St. Clements Caves.

This poem directly ties the sublime beauty of the Sussex landscape in the British imagination to a national identity attached to it, yearning for it, while simultaneously naturalising the idea of this “little island” having a position of dominance over the seas; as “mother of half the rolling world." However, it is this very position which creates the necessity for the “home-born” to leave the island for so many years in the first place.

Like Noyes’ poem, Kipling uses famously evocative language to tie identity to a yearning for the Sussex landscape and the beauty of its cliffs and downs. However, it does so with a radically different aim – not to situate it within a global empire, but instead to provoke a protective instinct against the development and despoliation of this landscape, which was an ongoing threat at the time.

Kipling’s “Smuggler’s Song” is the archetypal depiction of the Romantic smuggler, smuggling in desired goods not only for the profit of the local community, but to bring access to goods which would otherwise be unattainable by them. The community is united in their open secret, together against the crown. Even the children learn that they are to hear nothing, see nothing, and say nothing to law enforcement attempting to prevent the practice.

This illustration depicts the scene imagined in Kipling’s poem: the idyllic, coastal Sussex town, its church spire (where the Parson takes his smuggled Brandy) visible above, the noble smugglers riding past with their goods, and those uninvolved (but nevertheless reliant and benefitting) doing their part by staring very intently at a nearby wall.