Mr. Punch at the Seaside, J. A. Hammerton [romantic books to read .txt] 📗

I was told it was greatly improved—that there were alterations in the sea-front suggestive of the best moments of the Thames Embankment—that quite "smart" people daily paraded the pier. So having had enough of "Urn-bye", I moved on. The improvements scarcely made themselves felt at the railway station. Seemingly they had not attracted what Mr. Jeames would call "the upper suckles." There were the customary British middle-class matron from Peckham, looking her sixty summers to the full in a sailor hat; the seaside warrior first cousin to the billiard-marker captain with flashy rings, beefy hands, and a stick of pantomime proportions, and the theatrical lady whose connection with the stage I imagine was confined to capering before the footlights. However, they all were there, as I had seen them any summer these twenty years.

But I had been told to go to the Pier, and so to the Pier I went, glancing on my way at the entertainers on the sands, many of whom I found to be old friends. Amongst them was the "h"-less phrenologist, whose insight into character apparently satisfied the parents of any child whose head he selected to examine. Thus, if he said that a particularly stupid-looking little boy would make a good architect, schoolmaster, or traveller for fancy goods, a gentleman in an alpaca-coat and a wide-awake hat would bow gratified acquiescence, a demonstration that would also be evoked from a lady in a dust cloak, when the lecturer insisted that a giggling little girl would make a "first-rate dressmaker and cutter-out."

Arrived at the Pier, I found there was twopence to pay for the privilege of using the extension, which included a restaurant, a band, some talented fleas, and a shop with a window partly devoted to the display of glass tumblers, engraved with legends of an amusing character, such as "Good old Mother-in-Law", "Jack's Night Cap", "Aunt Julia's Half Pint", and so on. There were a number of seats and shelters, and below the level of the shops was a landing-stage, at which twice a day two steamers from or to London removed or landed passengers. During the rest of the four-and-twenty hours it seemed to be occupied by a solitary angler, catching chiefly seaweed. The Band, in spite of its uniform, was not nearly so military as that at "Urn Bye." It contained a pianoforte—an instrument upon which I found the young gentleman who sold the programmes practising during a pause between the morning's selection and the afternoon's performances. But still the Band was a very tuneful one, and increased the pleasure that the presence of so many delightful promenaders was bound to produce. Many of the ladies who walked round and round, talking courteously to 'Arry in all his varieties, wore men's habits, pur et simple (giving them the semblance of appearing in their shirt-sleeves), while their heads were adorned with fair wigs and sailor hats, apparently fixed on together.

These free-and-easy-looking damsels did not seem to find favour in the eyes of certain other ladies of a sedater type, who regarded them (over their novels) with undisguised contempt. These other ladies, I should think, from their conversation and appearance, must have been the very flowers of the flock of Brixton Rise, and the cr�me de la cr�me of Peckham Rye society. Of course there were a number of more or less known actors and actresses from London, some of them enjoying a brief holiday, and others engaged in the less lucrative occupation of "resting."

However, the dropping of "h's", even to the accompaniment of sweet music, sooner or later becomes monotonous, and so, after awhile, I was glad to leave the Pier for the attractions of the Upper Cliff. On my way I passed a Palace of Pleasure or Varieties, or Something wherein a twopenny wax-work show seemed at the moment to be one of its greatest attractions. This show contained a Chamber of Horrors, a scene full of quiet humour of Napoleon the Third Lying in State, and an old effigy of George the Third. The collection included the waxen head of a Nonconformist minister, who, according to the lecturer, had been "wery good to the poor", preserved in a small deal-box. There was also the "Key-Dyevie" of Egypt, General Gordon, and Mrs. Maybrick. Tearing myself away from these miscellaneous memories of the past, I ascended to the East Cliff, which had still the "apartments-furnished" look that was wont to distinguish it of yore. There was no change there; and as I walked through the town, which once, as a watering-place, was second only in importance to Bath,—which a century ago had for its M.C. a rival of Beau Nash,—I could not help thinking how astonished the ghosts of the fine ladies and gentlemen who visited "Meregate" in 1789 must