This afternoon portion of the fair is called the gig-fair, because people come driving in their gigs to it; i. e. it is the pleasure-fair, where smart people from all quarters come to see, and to be seen. The second day of the fair, I believe, is the earliest on which very genteel people make their appearance, and then you may often see numbers of country families of good standing mingling in the moving mass of Vanity Fair. It is amusing enough to sit at a window, and look over all the stirring and motley scene. To see the eternal stream of smart dresses and fair faces go by. Round and round they move, in one dense throng, every one apparently driven forward by the weight of the coming crowd; and, taking into consideration the press, the noise, the weariness of such thronged and continued walking, one is apt to wonder how any human beings can find pleasure in it. But that they do find pleasure, and an intense pleasure, their eager and multitudinous flocking thither sufficiently denote. They come out of a quietness that presents a little noise and dissipation as an agreeable contrast. They come to attractions adapted to their taste. The greater part of them are full of youth and expectation. There is no occasion on which so many country flames are struck up as at a fair. And in truth, you see numbers of fine healthy forms of both sexes in this crowd, and beautiful faces in numbers sufficient to make you feel with the poet:
The ancient spirit is not dead;
Old times, thought I, are breathing there;
Proud was I that my country bred
Such strength, a dignity so fair.
It is a time, in fact, of universal country jollity, pleasure-taking, love-making, present-making, treating, and youthful entertainment, enjoyed to an extent that people of different tastes can form no conception of. Many an important connexion is dated from the fair; many a freak, a pleasure, a piece of wit and fun, are thence registered, and talked of at country firesides to the latest period of life; and these are all so much part and parcel of our common nature, that there must be a stony place in the heart which does not strongly sympathise with the actors and partakers of them. Joy, therefore, to all fair-goers! and with the growth of greater intelligence and taste, long may the healthy capacity of being lightly pleased retain its hold on the robust forms and sweet faces of English Rural Life.
I have often thought that we have artists who go all over the world in quest of novelties of scene, costume, character, and grouping, many of whom, if they came to an English fair, with minds capable of entering into what they saw, might give us scenes and figures of more real interest than they often bring back after years of absence. The dancing-scene before Holloway’s; the figures and coquetting of country belles and their lovers; and the picturesque simplicity of the old men gazing like children on some wonder-promising showman, and now full of consternation and amaze at some of them finding their purses clean vanished from their pockets, would form good subjects for the pencil.
CHAPTER X.
THE RURAL WATERING-PLACE.
A great deal has been written about our fashionable watering-places, but there is another class of watering-places quite as amusing in their way, of which the public knows little or nothing. There are the rural watering-places, which are part and parcel of our subject, without which any picture of rural life would be incomplete; and which I shall here therefore take due notice of. These are the resort of what may be styled the burgher and agricultural part of our population. The farmer, the shopkeeper, the occupant of the clerk’s desk, or the mercantile warehouse,—each and all of these feel the want of a periodical relaxation from business and care, and the want of that change of scene and circumstance, that may give a fresh feeling of both mental and physical renovation. These, as they stand wearily sweltering in the hot field, or bending over the everlasting counter, suddenly see in their mind’s eye the flashing of the sea, and feel the breezes blow upon them like a new life. They resolve on the instant “to go to the salt-water” before the summer is over, and begin contriving when and how it shall be, and what wives and children, or old cronies, can go with them. The farmer sees that the only time for him will be in the interval between hay and corn harvest, and speedily he has inoculated some of his friends with the same desire. Many a jolly company is thus speedily made, and at the fixed time away they go, in gigs and tax-carts, or on scampering horses, with more life and spirit than most people return from more celebrated places. In Lancashire the better class of the operatives in the manufacturing districts, consider it as necessary “to go to the salt-water” in the summer, as to be clothed and fed all the rest of the year. From Preston, Blackburn, Bolton, Oldham, and all those great spinning and weaving towns, you see them turning out by whole wagon and cart-loads, bound for Blackpool and such places; and they who have not seen the swarming loads of these men and women and children, their fast driving, and their obstreperous merriment, have not seen one of the most curious scenes of English life.
In one of those strolls through different parts of the country in which I have so often indulged myself, and in which I have always found so much enjoyment, from the varieties of scenery and character which they laid open to me, I once came upon a watering-place on the coast, that afforded me no small matter for a day or two’s amusement. What could have been the cause of the setting up of such a place as a scene of pleasurable resort, it would be difficult to tell, except that it possessed a most bounteous provision of two great articles in demand in the autumnal months in cities—salt water and fresh air, for which a thousand inconveniences would be endured. It was situated quite on the flat coast of a flat country, a few miles from one of its sea-ports, yet near enough to obtain speedily thence all those good things which hungry mortals require—and who are so hungry as people bathing in sea water, and imbibing sea air, and taking three times their usual exercise without being distinctly aware of it?
Strolling along the coast, I found a good hotel, with all the usual marks of such an establishment about it. There were quantities of people loitering about the sands in front and in the garden, and other quantities looking out of windows with the sashes up; some of them, particularly the ladies, holding colloquies out of the windows of upper stories with some of the strollers below; post-chaises, and gigs, and shandray carts, standing here and there in the side scenes; a row of bathing-machines on the shore, awaiting the hour of the tide; and a loud noise of voices from a neighbouring bowling-green. The odours of roasting and baking that came from the hotel, were of the most inviting description. I inclined to take up my abode there for a few hours at least, but on entering, I found that as to obtaining a room, or a tithe of a room, or even a chair at the table of the ordinary, it was quite out of the question. “Lord bless you, sir,” said the landlady, a woman of most surprising corporeal dimensions, in a white gown, an orange-coloured neckerchief, and a large and very rosy face, as she stood before the bar, filling the whole width of the passage; “Lord bless you, sir, if you’d give me a thousand golden guineas in a silken purse, I should not know where to put you. We’ve turned hundreds and hundreds of most genteel people away, that we have, within this very week, and the house is fit to burst now, it’s so hugeous full. But you’ll get accommodated at the town.” “What town?” said I; “is there a town near?” “Why, town we call it, but it’s the village, you know; it’s Fastside here, not more than a mile off; if you follow the bank along the shore, you’ll go straight to it. You can’t miss it.” Accordingly, following the raised embankment along the shore, I soon descried Fastside, a few scattered cottages, placed amongst their respective crofts and gardens, and here and there a farm-house, with its substantial array of ricks about it, denoting that the dwellers were well off in the world. But I soon found that all the cottages, and many of the farm-houses, had their boarders for the season, and that there was scarcely one but was full. I had the good luck to spy an equipage, and something like a departing group at the door of one of the cottages, and as it moved away, to find that I could have the use of two rooms, a parlour and chamber over it, if I liked to go to the expense. “Perhaps,” said the neat cottage housewife, “as a single gentleman, you may not like to occupy so much room, for just at this season we charge rather high.” “And pray,” said I, “what may be the enormous price you are charging for these rooms, then?” “Seven shillings a-week each room, and half-a-crown for attendance,” looking at me with an inquiring eye, as if apprehensive that I should be astounded at the sum. “What! the vast charge of sixteen and sixpence per week,” I replied, smiling, “for two rooms and attendance?” “Yes,” said the simple dame; “but then, you see, you will have to live besides, and it all comes to a good deal. But may be you are a gentleman, that doesn’t mind a trifle.” Having assured her that there would, at all events, be no insurmountable obstacle in her terms, I entered and took possession of two as rustic and nicely clean rooms as could be found under such a humble roof. I had taken a fancy to spend a few days, or a week at least, there. It was a new scene, and peopled with new characters, that might be worth studying. The cottage stood in a thoroughly rural garden, full of peas, beans, and cabbages, with a little plot round the house, gay with marigolds, hollyhocks, and roses, and sweet with rosemary and lavender. The old dame’s husband was a shrimper, or fisher for shrimps, whom I soon came to see regularly tracing the edge of the tide with his old white horse and net hung behind him. She had, besides me, it seemed, another lodger, who, she assured me, “was a very nice young man indeed, but, poor young gentleman, he enjoyed but very indifferent health. Sometimes I think he’s been crossed in love, for I happened to cast my eye on one of his books—he reads a power of books—and there was a deal about love in it. It was all in poetry, you see, and so on; and then again, I fancy he’s consumptive, though I wouldn’t like to say a word to him, lest it should cast him down, poor young man; but he reads too much, in my opinion, a great deal too much; he’s never without a book in his hands when he’s in doors; and that’s not wholesome, you are sure, to be sitting so many hours in one posture, and with his eyes fixed in one place. But God knows best what’s good for us all; and I often wonder whether he has a mother. I should be sorely uneasy on his account, if I were her.” So the good dame ran on, while she cooked me a mutton chop and took an account of what tea and sugar and such things she must send for by the postman, who was their daily carrier to the town. I listened to her talk, and looked at the pot of balm of Gilead, and the red and white balsams standing in the cottage window, and the large sleek and well-fed tabby cat sleeping on the cushion of the old man’s chair, and was sure that I was in good hands, and grew quite fond of my quarters. Before the day was over, I became acquainted with the old shrimper, who came in after his journey to the next town with his shrimps, and who was as picturesque an old fellow as you would wish to see, and full of character and anecdotes of the wrecks and sea accidents on that coast for forty years past. I had been informed all about who were the neighbours inhabiting the other cottages and farms, and had a good inkling of their different characters too. I had walked out to the bank when the tide was up, and round the garden, and actually got into conversation with “the poor young man,” my fellow lodger.