‘Year by year do Beauty’s daughters
In the sweetest gloves and shawls
Troop to taste the Chattenham waters,
And adorn the Chattenham balls.
‘Nulla non donanda lauru
Is that city: you could not,
Placing England’s map before you,
Light on a more favoured spot.’
Praed has a poem called ‘Arrivals at a Watering-Place,’ but it is not one of the most successful of his efforts. Nor have seaside places in general been made the subject of very excellent verse. Brighton is the one exception. Of that ‘favoured spot,’ James Smith, of ‘Rejected Addresses’ fame, was, perhaps, the first to write flatteringly. ‘Long,’ he declared—
‘Long shalt thou laugh thy enemies to scorn,
Proud as Phœnicia, queen of watering-places!
Boys yet unbreech’d, and virgins yet unborn,
On thy bleak downs shall tan their blooming faces.’
The prophecy, one need not say, has been amply fulfilled. And the poets still conspire to sing the praises of ‘Old Ocean’s bauble, glittering Brighton.’ Everybody remembers the stirring exhortation of Mortimer Collins:
‘If you approve of flirtations, good dinners,
Seascapes divine, which the merry winds whiten;
Nice little saints, and still nicer young sinners,
Winter at Brighton!’
Nor has Mr. Ashby-Sterry proved himself at all less enthusiastic. Brighton in November, he says, ‘is what one should remember’:
‘If spirits you would lighten,
Consult good Doctor Brighton,
And swallow his prescriptions and abide by his decree;
If nerves be weak or shaken,
Just try a week with Bacon;
His physic soon is taken at our London-by-the-Sea.’
Something might be said of the delights of foreign sojourn in the Recess; but space fails me. Reference may, however, be made to Mr. Locker’s graceful ‘Invitation to Rome’ and ‘The Reply’ to it, from which I take this typical tribute to the Italian capital:
‘Some girls, who love to ride and race,
And live for dancing, like the Bruens,
Confess that Rome’s a charming place—
In spite of all the stupid ruins!’