Our English Watering-Place Page #3

"Our English Watering-Place" is a travelogue by Charles Dickens that paints a vivid picture of the seaside town of Brighton in the mid-19th century. Through a blend of personal observation, humor, and social commentary, Dickens explores the town's vibrant atmosphere, its residents, and the diverse array of visitors it attracts. The narrative captures the essence of seaside life, highlighting themes of leisure, class, and the interplay of urban and natural landscapes. Dickens's keen eye for detail and his ability to evoke strong imagery make this work a delightful reflection on the charm and complexities of this popular English destination.

• Short story

								

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.
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