Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-09-12
AT BREEZY BRIGHTON.
The Most Famous of All Well-Kn0Wn
English Watering Places.
IT'S AS METROPOLITAN AS LONDON,
Yet Filled With the Oldest, Quaintest, Most
Charming Features.
THE LAST OF THE SEASIDE SERIES


whatever one may be out of sorts in English
travel; whether weariness, dreariness or
positive illness may have prompted the
coming; with whatever desperation one may
have escaped London and its irrevocable
griminess and hardness, a sunniness and
good-natured laziness possess the soul when
ever Paddington Is left behind and ones
face is at last set toward that most famous
of all English watering places, bright,
breezy, historic and glorious old Brighton.
London smoke and dust may blacken
summer skies behind; London fog and smut
may make its millions of hurrying, harry
ing humans more iend-like by day than by
night; the fog and its shapes may still
canter beside your train beyond the sweet
lavender fields of Mitcham; there may still
be black fog at Clapham Junction; where
the porters below and steam and puff and
get all sorts of people and all manner of
luggage into wrong carriages; there may be
a yellow fog at Croydon Junction, where
the oncoming passengers are as safrony as
! pilgrims to Arab shrines; there may be
white fog at Red Hill Junction, bringing
| up to the station with the country yokels,
the milk cans and vegetables the affairs of
sleeping fields; at Three Bridges all kinds
of fogs may be Tapping and wringing from
their spongy folds an endless ooze, drip and
drizzle; and you may sit through the long
passage of Clayton tunnel like clammy
frog in a miasmatic cave; still, when your
| train has leaped out of the tunnel, you may
nearly always be certain of the sunshine.
OUT OF IONDON's HTB-RIJB
The knotty kinks in your being are
loosened. The tension of your whole ma
ture, keyed to its highest pitch from resis-
tance Of the bullyings of briefest London
experiences relaxes as if by magic. The
hard wrinkles leave your face, and in the
little strip of mirror opposite, you see your
own countenance mantled with sunny
smile. Why not?
Even If alone and unknown, myriad of
goodly companions have crept in beside you
to accompany you on your journey. The
little bit OF English hill and vale stretches
of copse. trails of hedge, ribbons of high
way, CLEANS of white cottage wall and
flashes of red tiling between the tunnel and
Brighton, are now all too brief for reminder,
rejoinder and zess.
How the odd things and old folk of old
Brighton and new come crowding into the
mindl History, romance and song all send
their familiar hosts. There is old King
Canute, SO pulled with his own greatness
that when his chair was placed upon the
Goodwin Sands he commanded the incoming
tide to stay its onward march, and got for
his bravado an inglorious ducking in the
presence of his entire court.
FAMOUS HEROES OF HISTORY.
90 A.
man conqueror, cannot be disassociated
from the place. Then every school child
knows of Earl Goodwin, Earl of Brighton
manor, who tempting his sovereign to play
the fool, was choked to death in attempting
to swallow a bread crust. The rare old
Flemish pirates came over once and took all
the town away. Brigthelmston it was
called in those DAYS, and when it was built
up again the French came and made
bonfire of it. It was time now for Brighton
to be put in a state of defense. So they
built blockhouse, a gun garden and four
gates, call done. of fynte and sand in a war
lyke manner"
Then came the era of the "Auncient
Mariners" when war ragged for two centuries
between landsmen and seamen over the
election of "headboroughs'' and scoun-
cilors," when the "Auncient Mariners"
swore by the good old rule,
The simple plan,
That they should take who have the power
And they should keep who can,
that they should evermore rule in Bright
on; and the landsmen swore, s'Odds fish,
handspikes and tackling" that "by the
rood, we'll have our share, the final COM
promise being that the sea folk should elect
8 and the 1andsmen out of ."the 12 aun-
cientest, gravest and wysest inhabitants of
the town for assistants to the constable in
every publique cause" out of which came
many of the raciest and most mirth pro-
voking BALLADS that olden England ever
knew.
OLD TIME RAPID TRANSIT.
About hundred years ago the London
mail coaches were bowled down to Brighton
at mad gallop during daylight, and the
present steamship service between New
Haven and Dieppe was foreshadowed' by a
service of packets between Brighton and |
Dieppe. The route was advertised as bring
ing London and Paris 90 miles nearer than |
by way of Dover and Calais, and trim
"pacquet" sailed every evening the moment
the foaming horses dashed up with the Lon
don coach to the ''Old Ship inn, and the |
mails and passengers could be hustled on |
board.
Half the literature of the last century
teemed with scenes and incidents from these |
then wonderful old journeys, and the crack |
of whips, the notes of the coach horns and |
the screech of the wheels down the frosty !
hillways seem to float into your carriage !
window to this very hour, welcome and |
melodious still
But George ~, good old Dr. Richard |
Russell and Thackeray, the three who most |
made Brighton famous, send you the clear
est cut faces and most pleasant companions |
with which to enter Brighton.
DUCKING "A MONARCH.
Who has not the memory of fbroad-beamed |
Martha Gum, 'the principal bathing wo- !
man" of Brighton, who once had the honor
of ducking King George, and who can still |
be seen here in hundred buxom proto-
types, as well as her own original self, in a |
weird crayon drawing. holding pink-faced
boy in lawn, with chestnut curls the infant
King of unsayory memory, with the cobalt
sea at her feet, and lone bathing machine,
labeled "Smoaker & Co.," in the awful
perspective? 1t is a sight that will leave
smile on your face past many weary
Journey. Z
Then there was "the principal bathing
man" who also ducked King George. He
was known to local fame as 'Old Smoaker,"
and appears and reappears deathlessly
through old tales and ballads, ever ripe for
use as the travelling play actors utility
man. He is here still, bless him! in scores
of gray old fellows, bronzed and broad,
CHEEKY and mellow, sort of salty cross be-
tween Santa Claus, Neptune and porpoise,
morn temDtinp than a siren to the amhrace |