Part 19 (1/2)
[Sidenote: THACKERAY'S PRAISE]
Among other writers who have found Brighton good to work in I might name the authors of _The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton_ and _A System of Synthetic Philosophy_. Mr. William Black was for many years a familiar figure on the Kemp Town parade, and Brighton plays a part in at least two of his charming tales--_The Beautiful Wretch_, and an early and very sprightly novel called _Kilmeny_. Brighton should be proud to think that Mr. Herbert Spencer chose her as a retreat in which to come to his conclusions; but I doubt if she is. Thackeray's affection is, however, cherished by the town, his historic praise of ”merry cheerful Dr.
Brighton” having a commercial value hardly to be over-estimated.
Brighton in return gave Thackeray Lord Steyne's immortal name and served as a background for many of his scenes.
Although Brighton has still a fis.h.i.+ng industry, the spectacle of its fishermen refraining from work is not an uncommon one. It was once the custom, I read, and perhaps still is, for these men, when casting their nets for mackerel or herring, to stand with bare heads repeating in unison these words: ”There they goes then. G.o.d Almighty send us a blessing it is to be hoped.” As each barrel (which is attached to every two nets out of the fleet, or 120 nets) was cast overboard they would cry:--
Watch, barrel, watch! Mackerel for to catch, White may they be, like a blossom on a tree.
G.o.d send thousands, one, two, and three, Some by their heads, some by their tails, G.o.d sends thousands, and never fails.
When the last net was overboard the master said, ”Seas all!” and then lowered the foremast and laid to the wind. If he were to say, ”Last net,” he would expect never to see his nets again.
[Sidenote: BRIGHTON'S FAIR DAUGHTERS]
”There are more handsome women in Brighton than anywhere else in the world,” wrote Richard Jefferies some twenty years ago. ”They are so common that gradually the standard of taste in the mind rises, and good-looking women who would be admired in other places pa.s.s by without notice. Where all the flowers are roses you do not see a rose.” (s.h.i.+rley Brooks must have visited Brighton on a curiously bad day, for seeing no pretty face he wrote of it as ”The City of the Plain.”) Richard Jefferies, who lived for a while at Hove, blessed also the treelessness of Brighton. Therein he saw much of its healing virtue. ”Let nothing,”
he wrote, ”cloud the descent of those glorious beams of sunlight which fall at Brighton. Watch the pebbles on the beach; the foam runs up and wets them, almost before it can slip back, the suns.h.i.+ne has dried them again. So they are alternately wetted and dried. Bitter sea and glowing light, bright clear air, dry as dry--that describes the place. Spain is the country of sunlight, burning sunlight; Brighton is a Spanish town in England, a Seville.”
[Sidenote: THE PAVILION]
The princ.i.p.al inland attraction of Brighton is still the Pavilion, which is indeed the town's symbol. On pa.s.sing through its very numerous and fantastic rooms one is struck by their incredible smallness. Sidney Smith's jest (if it were his; I find Wilberforce, the Abolitionist, saying something similar) is still unimproved: ”One would think that St. Paul's Cathedral had come to Brighton and pupped.” Cobbett in his rough and homely way also said something to the point about the Prince's pleasure-house: ”Take a square box, the sides of which are three feet and a half, and the height a foot and a half. Take a large Norfolk turnip, cut off the green of the leaves, leave the stalks nine inches long, tie these round with a string three inches from the top, and put the turnip on the middle of the top of the box. Then take four turnips of half the size, treat them in the same way, and put them on the corners of the box. Then take a considerable number of bulbs of the crown-imperial, the narcissus, the hyacinth, the tulip, the crocus, and others; let the leaves of each have sprouted to about an inch, more or less according to the size of the bulb; put all these, pretty promiscuously, but pretty thickly, on the top of the box. Then stand off and look at your architecture.”
To its ordinary museum in the town Brighton has added the collection of stuffed birds made by the late Mr. E. T. Booth, which he housed in a long gallery in the road that leads to the d.y.k.e. Mr. Booth, when he shot a bird in its native haunts, carried away some of its surroundings in order that the taxidermist might reproduce as far as possible its natural environment. Hence every case has a value that is missing when one sees merely the isolated stuffed bird. In one instance realism has dictated the addition of a clutch of pipit's eggs found on the Ba.s.s Rock, in a nest invisible to the spectator. The collection in the Natural History Museum at South Kensington is of course more considerable, and finer, but some of Mr. Booth's cases are certainly superior, and his collection has the special interest of having been made by one man.
[Sidenote: CRITICISM BY JUG]
Brighton has another very interesting possession in the collection of old domestic pottery in the museum: an a.s.semblage (the most entertaining and varied that I know) of jugs and mugs, plates and ornaments, all English, all quaint and characteristic too, and mostly inscribed with mottoes or decorated with designs in celebration of such events as the battle of Waterloo, or the discomfiture of Mr. Pitt, or a victory of Tom Cribb. Others are ceramic satires on the drunkard's folly or the inconstancy of women. Why are the potters of our own day so dull?
History is still being made, human nature is not less frail; but I see no genial commentary on jug or dish. Is it the march of Taste?
CHAPTER XVIII
ROTTINGDEAN AND WHEATEARS
Ovingdean--Charles II.--The introduction of Mangel Wurzel--Rottingdean as a shrine--Mr. Kipling's Suss.e.x poem--Thomas Fuller on the Wheatear--Mr. Hudson's description of the traps--The old prosperous days for shepherds--Luring larks--A fight on the beach--The town that failed.
Beyond Kemp Town's serene and silent line of ma.s.sive houses is the new road that leads to Rottingdean. The old road fell into the sea some few years ago--the fourth or fifth to share that fate. But the pleasantest way thither is on foot over the turf that tops the white cliffs.
By diverging inland between Brighton and Rottingdean, just beyond the most imposing girls' school in the kingdom, Ovingdean is reached, one of the nestling homesteads of the Downs. It is chiefly known as providing Harrison Ainsworth with the very pretty t.i.tle of one of his stories, _Ovingdean Grange_. The gallant novelist, however, was a poor historian in this book, for Charles the Second, as we have seen, never set foot east of Brighton on the occasion of his journey of escape over the Suss.e.x Downs. The legend that lodges him at Ovingdean, although one can understand how Ovingdean must cherish it, cannot stand. (Mock Beggars'
Hall, in the same romance, is Southover Grange at Lewes.)
Peace hath her victories no less renowned than war. Ovingdean is famous not only for its false a.s.sociation with Charles the Second but as the burial place of Thomas Pelling, an old-time Vicar, ”the first person who introduced Mangul Wurzel into England.”
[Sidenote: ROTTINGDEAN]
Rottingdean to-day must be very much of the size of Brighton two centuries ago, before fas.h.i.+on came upon it; but the little village is hardly likely ever to creep over its surrounding hills in the same way.