The record-union., 1891-09-12
Wakeman at Bright, Breezy, His
toric Brighton.
The Place Made Famous by George
w., Thackeray and Good Old DIR.
Richard Russell Martha Gum,
Who Ducked King Georse-The
Newcombs.
Especial Correspondence of the RECORD
UNION. Copyright, 1891.l
BRIGHToN, Eng, August 81, lS9

With whatever one may be out of sorts
in English travel; whether WEAKNESS,
dreariness or positive illness may have
prompted the coming; with whatever des-
peration one may have escaped London
and its irrevocable griminess and hard
ness, a sunniness and good-natured lazi-
ness possess the soul whenever Padding
ton is left behind and ones face is at last
set toward that most famous of all Eng
lish watering places, bright, breezy, his
toric and glorious old Brighton.
London smoke and dust may blacken
summer skies behind; London fog and
smut may make its millions of hurrying,
marrying humans more fiend-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 satfrony as pilgrims to
Arab shrines; there may be a 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 a
clammy frog in miaSmatic cave, still,
when your train has leaped out of the
tunnel, you may nearly always be certain
of the sunshine, a cloudless sky, and a
breath of blessed ozone sweeping strong
and clear from farthest southlands across
the tuneful sea.
The knotty kinks in your being are
loosened. The tension of your whole ma
ture, keyed to its highest pitch from re-
sistance Of the bullyings of briefest Lon
don 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 a
sunny smile. Why not? Even if alone
and unknown, myriad of goodly COM
panions have crept in beside you to ac-
company you on your journey. They
tempt you TO reminiscence, inyeigle you
with mellow memories, tap at the sunlit
windows of your heart, with dalliance
and invitation bland. The little bit of
English hill and vale, stretches of copse,
trails of hedge, ribbons of highway,
CLEANS of white cottage wall and flashes
of red tiIing, between the tunnel and
Brighton, are now all too brief for re-
minder, rejoinder and rest.
How the odd things and folk of old
brighton and new, come crowding into
the mind! History, romance and song all
send their familiar hosts There is old
King Canute, SO puffed 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 inglo-
rious ducking in the presence of his en-
tire court The lordly figure of William
Ea i
soclated 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
BrlgthelmSton, ii was called in those
days, and when it was built up again the
French came and made bonfire of it.
1t was time now for Brighton to be put in
state of defense. So they built block
house, gun garden and four gates, ''all
done Of Hynte and sand in a warlyke
manner
Then came the era of the "Auncient
Mariners" when war ragged for two centu-
ries between landsmen and seamen over
the election of 'headboroughs' and
councillors" when the "Auncient Mari
ners" swore by the good old rule,
The simple plan,
And they should keep who can,
That they should evermore rule in Brigh-
ton; and the landsmen swore, "Odds fish,
handspikes and tacklingr' that ssby the
rood, We'll have our share" the final
compromise being that the sea folk
should elect eight and the landsmen four
out of 1.-The twelve auncientest grayest
and wysest inhabitants of the town for
assistants to the constable in every pub
Eque cause out of which came many of
the raciest and most mirth-provolEing
ballads that olden England ever knew.
In Henry Wills time, at the dissolu-
ton of the monasteries, the manor of
Brighton, with the rectory and advow-
son, were given by the King to Anne of
Cleves for life
About hundred years ago the London
mail coaches were bowled down TO Briph-
ton at mad gallop during daylight, and
the present steamship service between
New Haven and Dieppe was foreshad-
owed by a service OF packets between
Brighton and Dieppe. The route was adj
yertlsed as bringing London and Paris
ninety miles nearer than by way of Do
yer 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 Incl
dents 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
10 this very hour, welcome and melodi-
Gus still.
But George ", good old DIR. Richard
Russell and Thackeray, the three who
most made Brighton famous, send you
the clearest cut faces and most pleasant
fNgV ions oh,
ton. Who has not the memory of broad
beamed Marthas Gum, ''the principal
bathing woman" of Brighton, who once
had the honor of ducking King George.
and who can still be seen here in an hun
dred buXom PROTOTYPES, 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 unsaVory memory, with the cobalt sea
at her feet, and a lone bathing machine
labeled Smoker IL Co." in the awful
perspective? 1t is a sight that will leave
q smile on your face past many weary
journey. Then there was 1.-THE principal
bathing man." who also ducked King
George. He was known to local fame as
"Old Smoaker," and appears and reap
pears 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.
q sort of salty cross between Santa Claus,
Neptune and porpoise, more tempt
ing than a siren to the embrace of the
waves.
But more than Martha Gum, "Old
Smoaker" or George ". to Brighton was
that luminous old pudge, the true patron
saint of the place. DR.. Russell. How he
must have chuckled to himself when ne
sent broadcast through Britain that great
treatise, The Efficacy of Sea Water in
Glandular Diseases" and saw Brighton