The Brighton Road Part 22

"The carriage was called, and came; but, in the half-hour's interval, the liquor had proved too potent for the old man; his host's generous purpose was answered, and the Duke's old grey head lay stupefied on the table.

Nevertheless, when his post-chaise was announced, he staggered to it as well as he could, and, stumbling in, bade the postilions drive to Arundel.

"They drove him for half an hour round and round the Pavilion lawn; the poor old man fancied he was going home.

"When he awoke that morning, he was in a bed at the Prince's hideous house at Brighton. You may see the place now for sixpence; they have fiddlers there every day, and sometimes buffoons and mountebanks hire the Riding-House and do their tricks and tumbling there. The trees are still there, and the gravel walks round which the poor old sinner was trotted."

[Sidenote: CHARLES, DUKE OF NORFOLK]

Very telling indignation, no doubt, but the gross defect of Thackeray's "Four Georges" is its want of sincerity. Sympathy is wasted on that Duke, who was one of the filthiest voluptuaries of his age, or of any other since that of Heliogabalus. Charles Howard, eleventh Duke of Norfolk, was not merely a b.e.s.t.i.a.l drunkard, like his father before him, capable of drinking all his contemporaries under the table; but was a swinish creature in every way. Gorging himself to repletion with food and drink, he would make himself purposely sick, in order to begin again. A contemporary account of him as a member of the Beefsteak Club described him as a man of huge unwieldy fatness, who, having gorged until he had eaten himself into incapacity for speaking or moving, would motion for a bell to be rung, when servants, entering with a litter, would carry him off to bed. It was well written of him:

On Norfolk's tomb inscribe this placard: He lived a beast and died a blackguard.

This "very old," "poor old man" of Thackeray's misplaced sympathy did not, as a matter of fact, live to a very great age. He died in 1815, aged sixty-nine.

Practical joking was elevated to the status of a fine art at Brighton by the Prince and his merry men. A characteristic story of him is that told of a drive to Brighton races, when he was accompanied in his great yellow barouche by Townsend, the Bow Street runner, who was present to protect the Prince from insult or robbery at the hands of the mult.i.tude. "It was a position," says my authority, "which gave His Royal Highness an opportunity to practise upon his guardian a somewhat unpleasant joke.

Turning suddenly to Townsend, just at the termination of a race, he exclaimed, 'By Jove, Townsend, I've been robbed; I had with me some damson tarts, but they are now gone.' 'Gone!' said Townsend, rising; 'impossible!' 'Yes,' rejoined the Prince, 'and you are the purloiner,' at the same time taking from the seat whereon the officer had been sitting the crushed crust of the a.s.serted missing tarts, and adding, 'This is a sad blot upon your reputation as a vigilant officer.' 'Rather say, your Royal Highness, a sad stain upon my escutcheon,' added Townsend, raising the gilt-b.u.t.toned tails of his blue coat and exhibiting the fruit-stained seat of his nankeen inexpressibles."

x.x.xV

But it was not this practical-joking Prince who first discovered Brighton.

It would never have attained its great vogue without him, but it would have been the health resort of a certain circle of fas.h.i.+on--an inferior Bath, in fact. To Dr. Richard Russell--the name sometimes spelt with one "l"--who visited the little village of Brighthelmstone in 1750, belongs the credit of discovering the place to an ailing fas.h.i.+onable world. He died in 1759, long ere the sun of royal splendour first rose upon the fis.h.i.+ng-village; but even before the Prince of Wales first visited Brighthelmstone in 1782, it had attained a certain popularity, as the "Brighthelmstone Guide" of July, 1777, attests, in these halting verses:

This town or village of renown, Like London Bridge, half broken down, Few years ago was worse than Wapping, Not fit for a human soul to stop in; But now, like to a worn-out shoe, By patching well, the place will do.

You'd wonder much, I'm sure, to see How it's becramm'd with quality.

And so on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLIFFS, BRIGHTHELMSTONE, 1789. _From an aquatint after Rowlandson._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. RICHARD RUSSELL. _From the portrait by Zoffany._]

[Sidenote: GUIDES TO BRIGHTON]

Brighthelmstone, indeed, has had more Guides written upon it than even Bath has had, and very curious some of them are become in these days. They range from lively to severe, from grave to gay, from the serious screeds of Russell and Dr. Relhan, his successor, to the light and airy, and not too admirable puffs of to-day. But, however these guides may vary, they all agree in harking back to that shadowy Brighthelm who is supposed to have given his peculiar name to the ancient fisher-village here established time out of mind. In the days when "County Histories" were first let loose, in folio volumes, upon an unoffending land, historians, archaeologists, and other interested parties seemed at a loss for the derivation of the place-name, and, rather than confess themselves ignorant of its meaning, they conspired together to invent a Saxon archbishop, who, dying in the odour of sanct.i.ty and the ninth century, bequeathed his appellation to what is now known, in a contracted form, as Brighton.

But the man is not known who has una.s.sailable proofs to show of this Brighthelm's having so honoured the fisher-folk's hovels with his name.

Thackeray, greatly daring, considering that the Fourth George is the real patron--saint, we can hardly say; let us make it king--of the town, elected to deliver his lectures upon the "Four Georges" at Brighton, among other places, and to that end made, with monumental a.s.surance, a personal application at the Town Hall for the hire of the banqueting-room in the Royal Pavilion.

But one of the Aldermen, who chanced to be present, suggested, with extra-aldermanic wit, that the Town Hall would be equally suitable, intimating at the same time that it was not considered as strictly etiquette to "abuse a man in his own house." The witty Alderman's suggestion, we are told, was acted upon, and the Town Hall engaged forthwith.

It argued considerable courage on the lecturer's part to declaim against George the Fourth anywhere in that town which His Majesty had, by his example, conjured up from almost nothingness. It does not seem that Thackeray was, after all, ill received at Brighton; whence thoughts arise as to the ingrat.i.tude and fleeting memories of them that were either in the first or second generation, advantaged by the royal preference for this bleak stretch of sh.o.r.e beneath the bare South Downs, open to every wind that blows. Surely grat.i.tude is well described as a "lively sense of favours to come," and they, no doubt, considered that the statue they had erected in the Steyne gardens to him was a full discharge of all obligations. Nor is the history of that effigy altogether creditable. It was erected in 1828, as the result of a movement among Brighton tradesfolk in 1820, to honour the memory of one who had incidentally made the fortunes of so many among them; but although the subscription list remained open for eight years and a half, it did not provide the 3.000 agreed upon to be paid to Chantrey, the sculptor of it.

The bronze statue presides to-day over a cab-rank, and the sea-salt breezes have strongly oxidised the face to an a.r.s.enical green; insulting, because greenness was not a distinguis.h.i.+ng trait in the character of George the Fourth.

[Sidenote: LAST OF THE REGENCY.]

The surrounding s.p.a.ce is saturated with memories of the Regency; but the roysterers are all gone and the recollection of them is dim. Prince and King, the Barrymores--h.e.l.lgate, Newgate, and Cripplegate--brothers three; Mrs. Fitzherbert, "the only woman whom George the Fourth ever really loved," and whom he married; Sir John Lade, the reckless, the frolicsome, historic in so far that he was the first who publicly wore trousers: these, with others innumerable, are long since silent. No more are they heard who with unseemly revelry affronted the midnight moon, or upset the decrepit watchman in his box. Those days and nights are done, nor are they likely to be revived while the Brighton policemen remain so big and muscular.

With the death of George the Fourth the play was played out. William the Fourth occasionally patronised Brighton, but decorum then obtained, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert not only disliked the memory of the last of the Georges, but could not find at the Pavilion the privacy they desired. The Queen therefore sold it to the then Commissioners of Brighton in 1850, for the sum of 53,000, and never afterwards visited the town.

x.x.xVI

The Pavilion and the adjoining Castle Square, where one of the old coach booking-offices still survives as a railway receiving-office, are to most people the ultimate expressions of antiquity at Brighton; but there remains one landmark of what was "Brighthelmstone" in the ancient parish church of St. Nicholas, standing upon the topmost eyrie of the town, and overlooking from its crowded and now disused graveyard more than a square mile of crowded roofs below. It is probably the place referred to by a vivacious Frenchman who, a hundred and twenty years ago, summed up "Brigtemstone" as "a miserable village, commanded by a cemetery and surrounded by barren mountains."

From here you can, with some trouble, catch just a glimpse of the Watery horizon through the grey haze that rises from countless chimney-pots, and never a breeze but blows laden with the scent of soot and smoke. Yet, for all the changed fortune that changeful Time has brought this h.o.a.ry and grimy place, it has not been deprived of interesting mementoes. You may, with patience, discover the tombstone of Phoebe Ha.s.sall, a centenarian of pith and valour, who, in her youthful days, in male attire, joined the army of His Majesty King George the Second and warred with her regiment in many lands; and all around are the resting-places of many celebrities, who, denied a wider fame, have yet their place in local annals; but prominent, in place and in fame, is the tomb of that Captain Tettersell who (it must be owned, for a consideration) sailed away one October morn of 1651 across the Channel, carrying with him the hope of the clouded Royalists aboard his grimy craft.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. NICHOLAS, THE OLD PARISH CHURCH OF BRIGHTHELMSTONE.]

His altar-tomb stands without the southern doorway of the church, and reads curiously to modern ears. That not one of all the many who have had occasion to print it has transcribed the quaintness of that epitaph aright seems a strange thing, but so it is:

P.M.S.

Captain NICHOLAS TETTERSELL, through whose Prudence ualour an Loyalty Charles the second King of England & after he had escaped the sword of his merciless rebells and his fforses received a fatall ouerthrowe at Worcester Sept{r} 3{d} 1651, was ffaithfully preserued & conueyed into ffrance. Departed this life the 26{th} day of Iuly 1674.

Within this monument doth lye, Approued Ffaith, hono{r} and Loyalty.

In this Cold Clay he hath now tane up his statio{n}, At once preserued y{e} Church, the Crowne and nation.

When Charles y{e} Greate was nothing but a breat{h} This ualiant soule stept betweene him & death.

Usurpers threats nor tyrant rebells frowne Could not afrright his duty to the Crowne; Which glorious act of his Church & state, Eight princes in one day did Gratulate Professing all to him in debt to bee As all the world are to his memory Since Earth Could not Reward his worth have give{n}, Hee now receiues it from the King of heauen.

The escape of Charles the Second, after many perilous adventures, belongs to the larger sphere of English history. Driven, after the disastrous result of Worcester Fight, to wander, a fugitive, through the land, he sought the coast from the extreme west of Dorsets.h.i.+re, and only when he reached Suss.e.x did he find it possible to embark and sail across the Channel to France. Hunted by relentless Roundheads, and sheltered on his way only by a few faithful adherents, who in their loyalty risked everything for him, he at length, with his small party, reached the village of Brighthelmstone and lodged at the inn then called the "George."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE AQUARIUM, BEFORE DESTRUCTION OF THE CHAIN PIER.]

That evening, after much negotiation, Colonel Gunter, the King's companion, arranged with Nicholas Tettersell, master of a small trading craft, to convey the King across to Fecamp, to sail in the early hours of the following morning, October 14th. How they sailed, and the account of their wanderings, are fully set forth in the "narrative" of Colonel Gunter.

x.x.xVII

A new era for Brighton and the Brighton Road opened in November, 1896, with the coming of the motor-car. Already the old period of the coaching inns had waned, and that of gigantic and palatial hotels, much more luxurious than anything ever imagined by the builders of the Pavilion, had dawned; and then, as though to fitly emphasize the transition, the old Chain Pier made a dramatic end.

The Chain Pier just missed belonging to the Georgian era, for it was not begun until October, 1822, but, opened the following year, it had so long been a feature of Brighton--and so peculiar a feature--that it had come, with many, to typify the town, quite as much as the Pavilion itself. It was, moreover, additionally remarkable as being the first pleasure-pier built in England. It had long been failing and, condemned as dangerous, would soon have been demolished; but the storm of December 4th, 1896, spared that trouble. It was standing when day closed in, but when the next morning dawned, its place was vacant.

Since then, those who have long known Brighton have never visited it without a sense of loss; and the Palace Pier, opposite the Aquarium, does not fill the void. It is a vulgarity for one thing, and for another typifies the Hebraic week-end, when the sons and daughters of Judah descend upon the town. Moreover, it is absolutely uncharacteristic, and has its counterparts in many other places.