Our English Watering-Place
IN the Autumn-time of the year, when the great metropolis is so
much hotter, so much noisier, so much more dusty or so much more
water-carted, so much more crowded, so much more disturbing and
distracting in all respects, than it usually is, a quiet sea-beach
becomes indeed a blessed spot. Half awake and half asleep, this
idle morning in our sunny window on the edge of a chalk-cliff in
the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are a faithful
resorter, we feel a lazy inclination to sketch its picture.
The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as
still before us as if they were sitting for the picture. It is
dead low-water. A ripple plays among the ripening corn upon the
cliff, as if it were faintly trying from recollection to imitate
the sea; and the world of butterflies hovering over the crop of
radish-seed are as restless in their little way as the gulls are in
their larger manner when the wind blows. But the ocean lies
winking in the sunlight like a drowsy lion - its glassy waters
scarcely curve upon the shore - the fishing-boats in the tiny
harbour are all stranded in the mud - our two colliers (our
watering-place has a maritime trade employing that amount of
shipping) have not an inch of water within a quarter of a mile of
them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, like faint fish of an
antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, ropes and rings,
undermost parts of posts and piles and confused timber-defences
against the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled
sea-weed and fallen cliff which looks as if a family of giants had
been making tea here for ages, and had observed an untidy custom of
throwing their tea-leaves on the shore.
In truth, our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high and
dry by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, we
must reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little
semicircular sweep of houses, tapering off at the end of the wooden
pier into a point in the sea, was a gay place, and when the
lighthouse overlooking it shone at daybreak on company dispersing
from public balls, is but dimly traditional now. There is a bleak
chamber in our watering-place which is yet called the Assembly
'Rooms,' and understood to be available on hire for balls or
concerts; and, some few seasons since, an ancient little gentleman
came down and stayed at the hotel, who said that he had danced
there, in bygone ages, with the Honourable Miss Peepy, well known
to have been the Beauty of her day and the cruel occasion of
innumerable duels. But he was so old and shrivelled, and so very
rheumatic in the legs, that it demanded more imagination than our
watering-place can usually muster, to believe him; therefore,
except the Master of the 'Rooms' (who to this hour wears knee-
breeches, and who confirmed the statement with tears in his eyes),
nobody did believe in the little lame old gentleman, or even in the
Honourable Miss Peepy, long deceased.
As to subscription balls in the Assembly Rooms of our watering-
place now, red-hot cannon balls are less improbable. Sometimes, a
misguided wanderer of a Ventriloquist, or an Infant Phenomenon, or
a juggler, or somebody with an Orrery that is several stars behind
the time, takes the place for a night, and issues bills with the
name of his last town lined out, and the name of ours ignominiously
written in, but you may be sure this never happens twice to the
same unfortunate person. On such occasions the discoloured old
Billiard Table that is seldom played at (unless the ghost of the
Honourable Miss Peepy plays at pool with other ghosts) is pushed
into a corner, and benches are solemnly constituted into front
seats, back seats, and reserved seats - which are much the same
after you have paid - and a few dull candles are lighted - wind
permitting - and the performer and the scanty audience play out a
short match which shall make the other most low-spirited - which is
usually a drawn game. After that, the performer instantly departs
with maledictory expressions, and is never heard of more.
But the most wonderful feature of our Assembly Rooms, is, that an
annual sale of 'Fancy and other China,' is announced here with
mysterious constancy and perseverance. Where the china comes from,
where it goes to, why it is annually put up to auction when nobody
ever thinks of bidding for it, how it comes to pass that it is
always the same china, whether it would not have been cheaper, with
the sea at hand, to have thrown it away, say in eighteen hundred
and thirty, are standing enigmas. Every year the bills come out,
every year the Master of the Rooms gets into a little pulpit on a
table, and offers it for sale, every year nobody buys it, every
year it is put away somewhere till next year, when it appears again
as if the whole thing were a new idea. We have a faint remembrance
of an unearthly collection of clocks, purporting to be the work of
Parisian and Genevese artists - chiefly bilious-faced clocks,
supported on sickly white crutches, with their pendulums dangling
like lame legs - to which a similar course of events occurred for
several years, until they seemed to lapse away, of mere imbecility.
Attached to our Assembly Rooms is a library. There is a wheel of
fortune in it, but it is rusty and dusty, and never turns. A large
doll, with moveable eyes, was put up to be raffled for, by five-
and-twenty members at two shillings, seven years ago this autumn,
and the list is not full yet. We are rather sanguine, now, that
the raffle will come off next year. We think so, because we only
want nine members, and should only want eight, but for number two
having grown up since her name was entered, and withdrawn it when
she was married. Down the street, there is a toy-ship of
considerable burden, in the same condition. Two of the boys who
were entered for that raffle have gone to India in real ships,
since; and one was shot, and died in the arms of his sister's
lover, by whom he sent his last words home.
This is the library for the Minerva Press. If you want that kind
of reading, come to our watering-place. The leaves of the
romances, reduced to a condition very like curl-paper, are thickly
studded with notes in pencil: sometimes complimentary, sometimes
jocose. Some of these commentators, like commentators in a more
extensive way, quarrel with one another. One young gentleman who
sarcastically writes 'O!!!' after every sentimental passage, is
pursued through his literary career by another, who writes
'Insulting Beast!' Miss Julia Mills has read the whole collection
of these books. She has left marginal notes on the pages, as 'Is
not this truly touching? J. M.' 'How thrilling! J. M.'
'Entranced here by the Magician's potent spell. J. M.' She has
also italicised her favourite traits in the description of the
hero, as 'his hair, which was DARK and WAVY, clustered in RICH
PROFUSION around a MARBLE BROW, whose lofty paleness bespoke the
intellect within.' It reminds her of another hero. She adds, 'How
like B. L. Can this be mere coincidence? J. M.'
You would hardly guess which is the main street of our watering-
place, but you may know it by its being always stopped up with
donkey-chaises. Whenever you come here, and see harnessed donkeys
eating clover out of barrows drawn completely across a narrow
thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are in our High Street.
Our Police you may know by his uniform, likewise by his never on
any account interfering with anybody - especially the tramps and
vagabonds. In our fancy shops we have a capital collection of
damaged goods, among which the flies of countless summers 'have
been roaming.' We are great in obsolete seals, and in faded pin-
cushions, and in rickety camp-stools, and in exploded cutlery, and
in miniature vessels, and in stunted little telescopes, and in
objects made of shells that pretend not to be shells. Diminutive
spades, barrows, and baskets, are our principal articles of
commerce; but even they don't look quite new somehow. They always
seem to have been offered and refused somewhere else, before they
came down to our watering-place.
Yet, it must not be supposed that our watering-place is an empty
place, deserted by all visitors except a few staunch persons of
approved fidelity. On the contrary, the chances are that if you
came down here in August or September, you wouldn't find a house to
lay your head in. As to finding either house or lodging of which
you could reduce the terms, you could scarcely engage in a more
hopeless pursuit. For all this, you are to observe that every
season is the worst season ever known, and that the householding
population of our watering-place are ruined regularly every autumn.
They are like the farmers, in regard that it is surprising how much
ruin they will bear. We have an excellent hotel - capital baths,
warm, cold, and shower - first-rate bathing-machines - and as good
butchers, bakers, and grocers, as heart could desire. They all do
business, it is to be presumed, from motives of philanthropy - but
it is quite certain that they are all being ruined. Their interest
in strangers, and their politeness under ruin, bespeak their
amiable nature. You would say so, if you only saw the baker
helping a new comer to find suitable apartments.
So far from being at a discount as to company, we are in fact what
would be popularly called rather a nobby place. Some tip-top
'Nobbs' come down occasionally - even Dukes and Duchesses. We have
known such carriages to blaze among the donkey-chaises, as made
beholders wink. Attendant on these equipages come resplendent
creatures in plush and powder, who are sure to be stricken
disgusted with the indifferent accommodation of our watering-place,
and who, of an evening (particularly when it rains), may be seen
very much out of drawing, in rooms far too small for their fine
figures, looking discontentedly out of little back windows into
bye-streets. The lords and ladies get on well enough and quite
good-humouredly: but if you want to see the gorgeous phenomena who
wait upon them at a perfect non-plus, you should come and look at
the resplendent creatures with little back parlours for servants'
halls, and turn-up bedsteads to sleep in, at our watering-place.
You have no idea how they take it to heart.
We have a pier - a queer old wooden pier, fortunately without the
slightest pretensions to architecture, and very picturesque in
consequence. Boats are hauled up upon it, ropes are coiled all
over it; lobster-pots, nets, masts, oars, spars, sails, ballast,
and rickety capstans, make a perfect labyrinth of it. For ever
hovering about this pier, with their hands in their pockets, or
leaning over the rough bulwark it opposes to the sea, gazing
through telescopes which they carry about in the same profound
receptacles, are the Boatmen of our watering-place. Looking at
them, you would say that surely these must be the laziest boatmen
in the world. They lounge about, in obstinate and inflexible
pantaloons that are apparently made of wood, the whole season
through. Whether talking together about the shipping in the
Channel, or gruffly unbending over mugs of beer at the public-
house, you would consider them the slowest of men. The chances are
a thousand to one that you might stay here for ten seasons, and
never see a boatman in a hurry. A certain expression about his
loose hands, when they are not in his pockets, as if he were
carrying a considerable lump of iron in each, without any
inconvenience, suggests strength, but he never seems to use it. He
has the appearance of perpetually strolling - running is too
inappropriate a word to be thought of - to seed. The only subject
on which he seems to feel any approach to enthusiasm, is pitch. He
pitches everything he can lay hold of, - the pier, the palings, his
boat, his house, - when there is nothing else left he turns to and
even pitches his hat, or his rough-weather clothing. Do not judge
him by deceitful appearances. These are among the bravest and most
skilful mariners that exist. Let a gale arise and swell into a
storm, let a sea run that might appal the stoutest heart that ever
beat, let the Light-boat on these dangerous sands throw up a rocket
in the night, or let them hear through the angry roar the signal-
guns of a ship in distress, and these men spring up into activity
so dauntless, so valiant, and heroic, that the world cannot surpass
it. Cavillers may object that they chiefly live upon the salvage
of valuable cargoes. So they do, and God knows it is no great
living that they get out of the deadly risks they run. But put
that hope of gain aside. Let these rough fellows be asked, in any
storm, who volunteers for the life-boat to save some perishing
souls, as poor and empty-handed as themselves, whose lives the
perfection of human reason does not rate at the value of a farthing
each; and that boat will be manned, as surely and as cheerfully, as
if a thousand pounds were told down on the weather-beaten pier.
For this, and for the recollection of their comrades whom we have
known, whom the raging sea has engulfed before their children's
eyes in such brave efforts, whom the secret sand has buried, we
hold the boatmen of our watering-place in our love and honour, and
are tender of the fame they well deserve.
So many children are brought down to our watering-place that, when
they are not out of doors, as they usually are in fine weather, it
is wonderful where they are put: the whole village seeming much too
small to hold them under cover. In the afternoons, you see no end
of salt and sandy little boots drying on upper window-sills. At
bathing-time in the morning, the little bay re-echoes with every
shrill variety of shriek and splash - after which, if the weather
be at all fresh, the sands teem with small blue mottled legs. The
sands are the children's great resort. They cluster there, like
ants: so busy burying their particular friends, and making castles
with infinite labour which the next tide overthrows, that it is
curious to consider how their play, to the music of the sea,
foreshadows the realities of their after lives.
It is curious, too, to observe a natural ease of approach that
there seems to be between the children and the boatmen. They
mutually make acquaintance, and take individual likings, without
any help. You will come upon one of those slow heavy fellows
sitting down patiently mending a little ship for a mite of a boy,
whom he could crush to death by throwing his lightest pair of
trousers on him. You will be sensible of the oddest contrast
between the smooth little creature, and the rough man who seems to
be carved out of hard-grained wood - between the delicate hand
expectantly held out, and the immense thumb and finger that can
hardly feel the rigging of thread they mend - between the small
voice and the gruff growl - and yet there is a natural propriety in
the companionship: always to be noted in confidence between a child
and a person who has any merit of reality and genuineness: which is
admirably pleasant.
We have a preventive station at our watering-place, and much the
same thing may be observed - in a lesser degree, because of their
official character - of the coast blockade; a steady, trusty, well-
conditioned, well-conducted set of men, with no misgiving about
looking you full in the face, and with a quiet thorough-going way
of passing along to their duty at night, carrying huge sou'-wester
clothing in reserve, that is fraught with all good prepossession.
They are handy fellows - neat about their houses - industrious at
gardening - would get on with their wives, one thinks, in a desert
island - and people it, too, soon.
As to the naval officer of the station, with his hearty fresh face,
and his blue eye that has pierced all kinds of weather, it warms
our hearts when he comes into church on a Sunday, with that bright
mixture of blue coat, buff waistcoat, black neck-kerchief, and gold
epaulette, that is associated in the minds of all Englishmen with
brave, unpretending, cordial, national service. We like to look at
him in his Sunday state; and if we were First Lord (really
possessing the indispensable qualification for the office of
knowing nothing whatever about the sea), we would give him a ship
to-morrow.
We have a church, by-the-by, of course - a hideous temple of flint,
like a great petrified haystack. Our chief clerical dignitary,
who, to his honour, has done much for education both in time and
money, and has established excellent schools, is a sound, shrewd,
healthy gentleman, who has got into little occasional difficulties
with the neighbouring farmers, but has had a pestilent trick of
being right. Under a new regulation, he has yielded the church of
our watering-place to another clergyman. Upon the whole we get on
in church well. We are a little bilious sometimes, about these
days of fraternisation, and about nations arriving at a new and
more unprejudiced knowledge of each other (which our Christianity
don't quite approve), but it soon goes off, and then we get on very
well.
There are two dissenting chapels, besides, in our small watering-
place; being in about the proportion of a hundred and twenty guns
to a yacht. But the dissension that has torn us lately, has not
been a religious one. It has arisen on the novel question of Gas.
Our watering-place has been convulsed by the agitation, Gas or No
Gas. It was never reasoned why No Gas, but there was a great No
Gas party. Broadsides were printed and stuck about - a startling
circumstance in our watering-place. The No Gas party rested
content with chalking 'No Gas!' and 'Down with Gas!' and other such
angry war-whoops, on the few back gates and scraps of wall which
the limits of our watering-place afford; but the Gas party printed
and posted bills, wherein they took the high ground of proclaiming
against the No Gas party, that it was said Let there be light and
there was light; and that not to have light (that is gas-light) in
our watering-place, was to contravene the great decree. Whether by
these thunderbolts or not, the No Gas party were defeated; and in
this present season we have had our handful of shops illuminated
for the first time. Such of the No Gas party, however, as have got
shops, remain in opposition and burn tallow - exhibiting in their
windows the very picture of the sulkiness that punishes itself, and
a new illustration of the old adage about cutting off your nose to
be revenged on your face, in cutting off their gas to be revenged
on their business.
Other population than we have indicated, our watering-place has
none. There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep about in the
sunlight with the help of sticks, and there is a poor imbecile
shoemaker who wanders his lonely life away among the rocks, as if
he were looking for his reason - which he will never find.
Sojourners in neighbouring watering-places come occasionally in
flys to stare at us, and drive away again as if they thought us
very dull; Italian boys come, Punch comes, the Fantoccini come, the
Tumblers come, the Ethiopians come; Glee-singers come at night, and
hum and vibrate (not always melodiously) under our windows. But
they all go soon, and leave us to ourselves again. We once had a
travelling Circus and Wombwell's Menagerie at the same time. They
both know better than ever to try it again; and the Menagerie had
nearly razed us from the face of the earth in getting the elephant
away - his caravan was so large, and the watering-place so small.
We have a fine sea, wholesome for all people; profitable for the
body, profitable for the mind. The poet's words are sometimes on
its awful lips:
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand.
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
Yet it is not always so, for the speech of the sea is various, and
wants not abundant resource of cheerfulness, hope, and lusty
encouragement. And since I have been idling at the window here,
the tide has risen. The boats are dancing on the bubbling water;
the colliers are afloat again; the white-bordered waves rush in;
the children
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back;
the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and shining on the
far horizon; all the sea is sparkling, heaving, swelling up with
life and beauty, this bright morning.
-THE END-
Charles Dickens' short story: Our English Watering-Place
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