Old lamps for new

by E. V. Lucas

A Georgian Town

This little town may be said to consist of three things—a long, narrow, and not very straight High Street, an almost equally long and equally diverging street parallel with it, and the quay. Both the High Street and its parallel neighbour might as easily have been straight as not; but it is very much to their advantage to curve a little, for not only are curves more beautiful, but they remind one of the street’s human origin, since before there can be a High Street there must be a path, and every one knows that no one can walk straight for more than a very few paces. Blindfold a man and tell him to walk across a field, and he will unconsciously bear to the left, I believe; and he will oscillate too.

Between the High Street and its neighbour there could not well be a greater difference; for the High Street is all bustle and business, and its neighbour is all quietude and residential repose. But they have this in common, that both are Georgian and red. The High Street, it is true, has thrown out a few plate-glass shop-fronts in keeping with twentieth-century enterprise, and a few new facades are there too; but the character of the street is still Georgian none the less. Its residential neighbour has made no concessions; it is eighteenth century still. Old shipowners and merchants—yes, and maybe old smugglers too—who lived there when George III was King would yet be quite at home were they to revisit it under George V. Hence I like this street the better. I like its window-frames, flush with the wall, such as builders may no longer give us; I like its square dormer windows, its fanlights over the door, its steps, its knockers, its blinds; its town-hall, with a flight of steps on each side, which, after describing an elegant curve, meet at the imposing door on the first floor; and, more than anything, I like its almshouses, which are five hundred years old.—So much for the little street, where Miss Greenaway might have made studies.

No need for me to say that the houses no longer harbour the class of resident for which they were intended; you know that as well as I do. Successful business men have ceased to live in the hearts of towns. Either because they genuinely want more room and air, or because a visible token of success is a pleasant thing to have, they now build houses on the outskirts, and the humbler folk inhabit the old houses at a reduced rent. The town has scores of these villas dotted about just outside its walls. From a balloon the centuries could be divided accurately—sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth in the centre; then a fringe of early nineteenth, then an outer fringe of later nineteenth; and then the latest addition of all, the twentieth-century villas, spick-and-span, and surrounded with greenery. Meanwhile, behind the Kate Greenaway shutters in the town’s core the managers and clerks and shop-assistants and their families are happy—and long may they be so!

As for the High Street, I can tell you about that very quickly. The best house in it, a superb red Georgian mansion, is now the office of the Gas Company. That gives you the High Street, does it not? There are two book and paper shops, and both supply “Punch” only to order. That gives you the class of town, does it not? There are assembly-rooms where an occasional entertainment is given, and an electric theatre has just been opened. (The assembly-rooms, by the way, have a name pretty enough for a heroine in a novel by Mr. Hardy—Amity Hall.) At night, however, in spite of the absence of organized harmony, the High Street is full of melody from upper windows and tap-rooms, or from the white building at the foot, close to the Custom House—famous in history for a smugglers’ raid which led to the recapture of a tremendous haul of run-goods—where the town band practises. The little town is rich in small inns, as maritime towns always are; and it has also two large ones, with spacious yards, relics of the brave days when gentlemen posted, and billiard-tables whose cloth is yellow and whose cushions have some of the inflexibility of a sea-wall.

Such is the High Street of my little town, which, while always a scene of animation, rises to its greatest social height on Saturday nights, when the country people come in to market, and the town-people market too, and the youths walk up the middle four and five abreast, and the girls walk down the middle four and five abreast, and jokes are made, and hearts, I doubt not, are lost, and the little tap-rooms get fuller and fuller.

And now the third thing and the best—the quay. A little Georgian town with a quay cannot go far wrong. In its electric theatres the cinematoscope may buzz and dazzle; sixpenny-halfpenny bazaars may be opened; its beautiful old mansions may house gas clerks; the latest novelties may effloresce in its shop-windows; but the quay will keep it sweet. Ships and mariners will arrest the meddling hand of Time. For there is something about the sea that will ever refuse to come into line. Wherever wind-tanned men with level eyes live all day in blue jerseys, there the lover of ancient peace may safely abide. And the quay of my little town and the boats in her great, spreading harbour are populous with such men. They arrest progress. Even the arrival of petrol and the spectacle of a fishing-boat gaining the open sea in the teeth of a headwind at a rate of ten knots an hour has not injured them. The sea remains the sea in spite of petrol: still the capricious, dangerous mistress, never the same for two minutes together, never quite to be trusted, and so jealous that in no other direction may the eyes of her subjects rove.

Two little tugs trot in and out of the harbour all day long, often enough dragging in some three-master that they have found in the bay; and at the moment that I write a big German barque with a green hull lies at one wharf; a Dutch tjalck at another; and a variety of coasters thrust their masts and spars and cordage against the evening sky and make it more wonderful still. And in one of the shipwrights’ yards a huge schooner into whose way a man-of-war casually loafed in the Channel a month ago is being fitted with a new bowsprit and prow; and since the bowsprit that the man-of-war left her resembles a birchbroom, there is no doubt that she needs them.

I had a little talk with one of the blue jerseys about smuggling. He, like myself, thought of the past with some regret. “I’ve no quarrel with a little smuggling,” he said, in his caressing, rich Southern voice. “No harm in smuggling, I says. I don’t say but what I’ve done some in my time. I don’t say that I should have any objection to running over to Guernsey any day and bringing back a ton of tubs. But the difficulty is, what to do with them? And you would look so blue if you were caught.” “True,” I said; “but surely there are safe landings all about there?” waving my hand towards the southern borders of this vast and mysterious harbour, so rich in creeks and sandy shores. “Yes,” he said, “yes. But that’s not it. You couldn’t do it alone: that’s the real trouble. And in smuggling it doesn’t do to trust any one. No,” he said, “not even your own brother. Not in smuggling.”