There is no lack of quarters, for within a few yards you may count seven public-houses. It is a strange place, with alleys which are stairs for side streets, and these leading into queer places, back yards and pigstyes, and little gardens thriving with pot-herbs. Everything is on a slope, overtopped by the green hill behind. Half way up the street, in what looks like a market-place, lie a number of boats, as if for ornament. You can hardly imagine them to have been hauled up from the beach. Some of the shops are curiosities in their appearance and display of wares; yet there are traders in Bay Town who could buy up two or three of your fashionable shopkeepers in the watering-places.
“Yer master wants ye,” said a messenger to a young fellow who sat smoking his pipe in the King’s Head, while Martha, the hostess, fried a chop for my dinner.
“Tell him I isn’t here: I isn’t a coomin’,” was the answer, with a touch of Yorkshire, which I heard frequently afterwards.
From the talk that went on I gathered that Bay Town likes to amuse itself as well as other places. All through the past winter a ball or dance had been held nearly every evening, in the large rooms which, it appears, are found somewhere belonging to the very unpretending public-houses. On the other hand, church and chapel are well attended, and the singing is hearty. Weddings and funerals are made the occasion of festivals, and great is the number of guests. Martha assured me that two hundred persons were invited when her father was buried; and even for a child, the number asked will be forty or fifty; and all get something to eat and drink. It was commonly said in the neighbourhood that the head of a Bay Town funeral procession would be at the church before the tail had left the house. The church is on the hill-top, nearly a mile away. A clannish feeling prevails. Any lad or lass who should chose to wed with an outsider, would be disgraced. Ourselves to ourselves, is the rule. On their way home from church, the young couple are beset by invitations to drink at door after door, as they pass, and jugs of strong liquor are bravely drained, and all the eighteen hundred inhabitants share in the gladness. Hence the perpetuation of Todds and Poads. However, as regards names, the most numerous which I saw were Granger and Bedlington, or Bettleton, as the natives call it.
The trade in fish has given place to trade in coal; and Bay Town owns about eighty coal brigs and schooners, which sail to Edinburgh, to London, to ports in France, and one, which belongs to a man who a few years ago was a labourer, crosses the ocean to America. There are no such miserable paupers as swarm in the large towns. Except the collier crews, the folk seldom leave the parish; and their farthest travel is to Hartlepool in the steamer which calls in the bay on her way from Scarborough.
I chose to finish the walk to Whitby by the road; and in a few minutes, so steep is the hill, was above Bay Town, and looking on the view bounded by the massy Peak. Near where the lane enters the high road stands the church, a modern edifice, thickly surrounded with tombstones. Black with gilt letters, appears to be the favourite style; and among them are white stones, bearing outspread gilt wings and stars, and an ornamental border. The clannish feeling loves to keep alive the memory of the departed; and one might judge that it has the gift of “powetry,” and delights in epitaphs. Let us read a few: we shall find “drowned at sea,” and “mariner,” a frequent word in the inscriptions:
Partner dear my life is past,
My love for you was to the last;
Therefore for me no sorrow take,
But love my children for my sake.
An old man of eighty-two is made to say:
From raging storms at sea
The Lord he did me save,
And here my tottering limbs is brought
To moulder in the grave.
Lancelot Moorsom, aged seventy-four, varies the matter thus: