We were going by a corner of it to see the landing of the passengers from the Calais boat, and to gloat upon what the misery of their passage had left of them; but before we could reach the deck they had found shelter in their special train for London. It used to be one of the chief amusements of the visitors at Folkestone to witness such dishevelled debarkations at their own
THE SHELTER UNDER THE LEAS
piers, and we had promised ourselves the daily excitement of the spectacle; but the arrival of the boats had been changed so as to coincide with our lunch hour, and we pretended that it would have been indelicate to indulge ourselves with it when really it was merely inconvenient.
There are entertainments of an inoffensive vaudeville sort in the pavilion on the pier, and yet milder attractions in the hall of the Leas Pavilion, which for some abstruse reason is sunk some ten or twelve feet below the surrounding level. The tea was yet milder than the other attractions: than the fair vocalist; than the prestidigitator who made a dozen different kinds of hats out of a square piece of cloth, and personated their historical wearers in them; than the cinematograph; than the lady orchestra which so often played pieces “By Desire” that the programme was almost composed of them. A diversion in the direction of ice-cream was not lavishly fortunate: the ice-cream was a sort of sweetened and extract-flavored snow which was hardly colder than the air outside.
At Folkestone we were early warned against the air of the sea-level, which we would find extremely relaxing, whereas that of the Leas, fifty feet above was extremely bracing. We were not able always to note the difference, but at times we found the air even on the Leas extremely relaxing when the wind was in a certain quarter. Once, in a long, warm rain, I found myself so relaxed in the street back of the Leas, that but for the seasonable support of a garden wall against which I rested, I do not know how I should have found strength to get home. You constantly hear, in England, of the relaxing and bracing effects of places that are so little separated by distance, that you wonder at the variance of their hygienic qualities. But once master the notion and you will be able to detect differences so subtle and so constant that from bench to bench on the Leas at Folkestone you will be sensible of being extremely relaxed and extremely braced, though the benches are not twenty rods apart. The great thing is to forget these differences, and to remember only that the birds are singing, and the sun shining equally for all the benches.
The sun is, of course, the soft English sun, which seems nowise akin to our flaming American star, but is quite probably the centre of the same solar system. The birds are in the wilding shrubs and trees which clothe the front of the cliffs, and in the gardened spaces on the relaxing levels, spreading below to the sands of the sea; and they are in the gardens of the placid, handsome houses which stand detached behind their hedges of thorn or laurel. This is their habit through the whole town, which is superficially vast, and everywhere agreeably and often prettily built. It is overbuilt, in fact, and well towards a thousand houses lie empty, and most of those which are occupied are devoted to lodgings and boarding-houses, while hotels, large and little, abound. There are no manufactures, and except in the season and the preparatory season, there is no work. Folkestone has become very fashionable, but it is no longer the resort of the conservative or the aristocratic, or even the æsthetic. These turn to other air and other conditions, where they may step out-of-doors, or wander informally about the fields or over the sands. A great number of smaller places, more lately opened, along the everywhere beautiful English shore, supply simplicity at a far lower rate than you can buy formality in Folkestone.