SCARBOROUGH.—The seaside resorts of England are numberless, and yet there is a curious lack of similarity in their surroundings, their atmosphere and in their class of visitors. Scarborough is to the north of England what Bournemouth is to the south. It is select and exclusive, but the ultra smart London set is not found in its purlieus. It is a great place of resort for the old Yorkshire families—families who can trace their descent back to Norman William and behind him to the Saxon Thanes and Earls; and who look with ill-concealed disgust upon the nouveaux riches who are so painfully to the fore just now in Belgravian drawing rooms and at crushes in Mayfair. Scarborough is not wildly gay; its visitors take their pleasures sedately, and the voice of the imitation nigger-minstrel is unheard in the land. One needs to be in rude health to enjoy Scarborough, for the sea breezes come rushing in from the lap of the Atlantic to mingle with the keen air of the downs; and if one’s lungs are sound it is a delight to live. Hotel prices are fearfully and wonderfully conceived in Scarborough, but the landlords say people eat so much on account of the splendid air that they must charge high prices in self-defence.
The amusements and distractions of Scarborough? If one hunts or shoots there is plenty of sport. Several packs of hounds meet on the downs near by, and although the country is a bit stiff, the going is fairly decent. It may perhaps be considered a drawback that hounds occasionally disappear over the cliffs in the ardour of the chase, and that a too-eager hunter might easily do the same—with his rider on his back; but most men who hunt here say that they enjoy the spice of danger.
Scarborough has two features distinctively its own: its “Spa” and its cabs. Just why the long promenade where the band plays should be called the “Spa” no one knows, but the fact remains, and every Sunday all the world and his wife walk there for “Church Parade.” The Scarborough cab is really a small Victoria, drawn by one horse, ridden by a correctly-got-up tiger, who lends a picturesque air to the trap. They go well, these small horses, and gallop up and down the long hills on which Scarborough is built, with greatest ease. The “day tripper,” with his ’Arriet, is unknown here, for the simple reason that there would be nothing for him to do.
There are no stands in the streets to display “s’rimps,” “whilks” and other questionable marine delicacies, put up in brown paper bags at “tuppence the quart”; no merry-go-rounds; no cheap photographic studios; or one-horse circuses where the manager is clown, acrobat and owner in one, to tempt the taste and gratify the curiosity of the lower classes. And there are no Americans in Scarborough. It is too far from Paris, and too quiet for the extraordinary specimens of nasal tendencies, who make an annual descent upon the Continent and swarm from Dan to Beersheba. One never meets them at home, these painfully rich and newly varnished Yankees who travel through Great Britain in great state and pomp, and whose breeding is shamed by that of the scullery maid in the cosy little inns they so disdain. It is really trying to see the impression most Englishmen have of Americans—impressions gathered simply from these inflictions who, knowing no one but the green-grocer on their corner at home, come abroad to astonish the natives; and who succeed in doing nothing but in making the appellation of American to stink in the nostrils of the foreigner.
Of course there are ruins near Scarborough, and again of course the favourite drive is to these ruins. Another excursion is to a hill overlooking the town, where tradition says that unsavoury individual yclept Oliver Cromwell, once stood, or sat or performed some other operation equally important.
Politically, as becomes its staid and exclusive clientèle, Scarborough is Conservative; and has no sympathy with an old man’s visionary plans to break up a great Empire. Irish agitators appear occasionally but not often, and they rarely carry away a full purse from the collections they invariably take up.
Descriptions of places are invariably tiresome. One place is usually like another, and the best way to know a town or city is to go there; but anyone who can picture a town built up on the cliffs and down in the hollows between, with stretches of sandy beach in front, will have a fair idea of the Bournemouth of the north. The country round about Scarborough is attractive. Quaint villages quite out of the world like Symsbury, are met with at every turn; small market towns, like Yarm, where the old custom of engaging servants by the “hold fast” in the market-place on the yearly appointed day still obtains; and small seaside resorts, like Redcar and Coatbridge; with Whitby famous for its jet; all these are worth a visit. Yorkshire men are canny, and good at a bargain and no better judges of horseflesh are found anywhere. The only drawback connected with Scarborough is its distance from London, but that is really only a drawback to Londoners. The Scarborough man is rather proud of the fact. He looks with pity upon the benighted south of England man, and has no words to express his contempt for the finnicky foreigner, who comes to Scarborough and drinks sour red wine, instead of quaffing huge draughts of the glorious old Yorkshire ale.
