Rottingdean will be famous in most minds as being the rival of Brattleboro, Vt., as the home of Rudyard Kipling. Sightseers came from Brighton in droves and stared the author out of countenance, as they did at Brattleboro, and he removed to the still less known, and a great deal less accessible, village of Burwash in Kent. Thus passed the fame of Rottingdean.
Brighton has been called London-on-Sea, and with some truth, but as the sun shines here with frequency it differs from London in that respect.
Brighton is a brick and iron built town, exceedingly unlovely, but habitable. Its two great towering sea-front hotels look American, but they are a great deal more substantially built. There are two rivals for popular favour, the Grand and the Metropole. They are much alike in all their appointments, but there are fewer tea-drinkers and after-dinner sleepers (and snorers) at the Metropole. There is also a famous old coaching house, the Ship Hotel (most curiously named), which caters particularly for automobilists.
Brighton is the typical seaside resort of Britain. It is like nothing on the Continent; it is not even as attractive a place as most Continental resorts; but it is the best thing in Britain.
Brighton and Hove have a sea-front of perhaps three miles. Houses and hotels line the promenade on one side, a pebbly beach and the sea on the other.
The attractions of Brighton are conventional and an imitation of those in London. In addition one bathes, in summer, in the lapping waves, and in winter sits in a glass shelter which breaks the wind, and gazes seaward.
There are theatrical attractions and operas in the theatre, and vocal and instrumental concerts on the pier, all through the year. There are also various sorts of functions which go on in the turnip-topped Royal Pavilion of the Georges, which once seen will ever afterward be avoided.
It is not always bright and sunny at Brighton. We were storm-bound at the Metropole for two days, and the Channel waves dashed up over the pier and promenade and drowned out the strollers who sought to take their constitutional abroad.
We sat tight in the hotel and listened to Sousa marches, "Hiawatha," and "The Belle of New York" strummed out by a none too competent band. A genial fat-faced old lady of uncertain age tried to inveigle us into a game of bridge, but that was not what we came for, so we strenuously refused.
The flood-tide of holiday trippers at Brighton is in August. This is the month when, at certain periods of the day, the mile length of roadway from railway station to sea is a closely packed crowd of excursionists; when the long expanse of sea-front and sand presents its most animated spectacle of holiday-keeping people; when the steamers plying along the Sussex coast, or to France, the white-sailed yachts, the rowing-boats, and motor-boats are the most numerous; and when the hundred and one entertainers and providers of all kinds do their busiest trade.