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
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
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 publichouse,
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