WEYMOUTH
WELL, then, here, reaching a Modern church with a tall spire, surrounded
by suburban villas, is the beginning of Weymouth. The sea in these miles
has dropped gradually down, out of sight as the road comes to the level,
and at this point you might, to all intents and purposes, be at North
Kensington, which the spot greatly resembles. But turning sharply with
the road to the right the derogatory illusion is at once dispelled, for
the sea is out there, sparkling, to the left; and, in the perfect segment
of a circle, the Esplanade of Weymouth goes sweeping round to the
harbour, with the Nothe Point fort above, and, away out in the distance,
that towering knob of limestone, the Isle of Portland. It is a
stimulating view, and has generally other and even more stimulating
constituents than those of nature, for Weymouth and Portland are places
of arms, and the ships of the Navy are usually represented by a squadron
of cruisers well in shore, with a brace or two of battleships coming,
going, or anchored easily in sight, and numbers of those ugly, imp-like
craft, torpedo-boats, flying hither and thither.
Weymouth styles itself—or others style it—“the Naples of England,” but no
one has ever yet found Naples returning the compliment and calling itself
“the Weymouth of Italy.” There is really no reason why Weymouth, instead
of seeking some fanciful resemblance based solely, it may be supposed on
the configuration of its widely curving bay, should not stand or fall by
the sufficing attractions of its own charming self. For one thing, it
would be impossible to persuade the public that Weymouth owns a Vesuvius
somewhere away in its _hinterland_, and, although the country is rich in
Roman camps, no antiquary has yet discovered a Pompeii midway between
Melcombe Regis and Dorchester.
The town is still in essentials the Weymouth of George III., the
“Budmouth” of Thomas Hardy. They are, it is true, the battleships of
Edward VII. wallowing out there, like fat pigs, where of yore the wooden
men-o’-war swam the waters like swans; but the houses at least, that face
the Esplanade in one almost unbroken row, each one like its neighbour and
all absolutely innocent either of taste or pretension, are
characteristically Georgian. Taken individually and examined, one might
go greater lengths, and say such a house was more than insipid and
commonplace—was, indeed, downright ugly—but in a long curving row the
effect is a comprehensive one of dignified restraint. At any rate, they
are constructed of good honest dull red brick, and not plastered and made
to look like stone. This bluff honesty in these days of shams and of
restless, worried-looking designs, when every new building must have its
own ready-made picturesqueness, and this total absence of anything and
everything that by remotest chance could be thought an ornament, is
grateful.
We speak of this as “Weymouth,” but it is rather, to speak by the card,
Melcombe Regis, and although the interests of both this and of Weymouth
proper, on the other side of the narrow neck of harbour, are now pooled,
it was once a sign of ignorance and a certain offence not to carefully
distinguish between the two. Their rivalries and jealousies were of old
so bitter that the river-mouth and harbour, long since bridged to make a
continuous street, was like a stream set between two alien states. The
passage was then “by a bote and a rope bent over ye haven, so yt in ye
fery bote they use no ores.”
These disputes and contentions had risen almost to the condition of a
smouldering petty local warfare in the time of Queen Elizabeth, when
means were taken to put an end to it. Thus in 1571 they were compelled
to unite, and in the familiar phrase of fairy tales have “lived happily
ever after.” Says Camden: “These stood both some time proudlie upon
their owne severall priviledges, and were in emulation one of the other,
but now, tho’ (God turne it to the good of both!) many, they are, by
authoritie of Parliament, incorporated into one bodie, conjoyned by late
by a bridge, and growne very much greater and goodlier in buildings and
by sea adventures than heretofore.”
But things widely different from trade have in later times made the
fortune of the conjoined towns of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. I suppose
the one or the other of them was bound in the course of time to be
“discovered” as a bathing-resort, but it is to George III. that Weymouth
owes a deep debt of gratitude. His son had already “discovered”
Brighthelmstone, or rather, had placed the seal of his approval upon Dr.
Russel’s earlier discovery of it; and likewise Weymouth was already on
the road to recognition when George III. came here first, in 1789.
Thirty years or so earlier, when people had begun as a strange new
experience, to bathe, the sands of Weymouth—or to adopt an attitude of
strict correctitude, the sands of Melcombe Regis—were on the way to
appreciation. Then greater folks lending their august patronage where
that of meaner people had little weight, the place was resorted to by the
famous Ralph Allen of Bath, for whom in 1763 the first bathing-machine
was constructed, and by a stream of visitors gradually ascending in the
social scale. The place long found favour with the Duke of Gloucester,
by whose recommendation the king was induced to make a visit and then a
lengthy stay, placing the apex at last upon this imposing pyramid of good
fortune. It was no fleeting glimpse of royal favour thus accorded, for
with the coming of summer the king for many years resided here at
Gloucester Lodge, the mansion facing the sea built by his brother the
Duke of Gloucester, and now the staid and grave Gloucester Hotel.
Weymouth basked happily in the splendours of that time. They were
splendours of the respectable domestic sort generally associated with
that homely monarch, who bathed from his machine in full view of his
loyal lieges and then went home to boiled mutton and turnips. He made
sober holiday on the Dorset coast while his graceless son was on the
coast of Sussex rearing a fantastical palace and playing pranks fully
matching it in extravagance of design and purse.
Weymouth’s return for all these favours is still to be seen, in the
bronze group erected by the townsfolk in 1809, to celebrate the generally
joyful occasion of his Jubilee, to perpetuate the especial gratitude of
the people for favours received, and in hopes of more to come.
Weymouth very closely reflects the prosperity of that great era, in the
Georgian streets, the quaintly bowed windows of private houses and the
now old-world shop-fronts, many of them exquisite examples of the
restrained taste and aptitude for just proportion in design
characteristic of that age, and only now beginning to be appreciated at
their true worth. It was the age of the Adams brothers, of Chippendale
and Sheraton; an age rightly come to be regarded in our time as classic
in all things in the domain of architecture and decoration. In its
unaltered purlieus Weymouth is thus singularly like the older parts of
Brighton, but now richer in vestiges of the Georgian period than the
larger and more changeful town.
That, doubtless, was a period of inflated prices in Weymouth. King,
queen, and princesses, fashionables and many soldiers sent up the ideas
of tradesfolk just as the sun expands the mercury of a thermometer.
Uncle Benjy, in _The Trumpet Major_, found Budmouth a place where money
flew away doubly as quick as it did when the famous Scot visited London
and “hadna’ been there a day when bang went saxpence.” At Budmouth in
the time of Farmer George, it was a “shilling for this and a shilling for
that; if you only eat one egg or even a poor windfall of an apple, you’ve
got to pay; and a bunch o’ radishes is a halfpenny, and a quart o’ cider
a good tuppence three-farthings at lowest reckoning. Nothing without
paying!” Ay! but if prices were no higher than these, ’twas no such
ruinous place, after all. Poor Uncle Benjy!
[Picture: Weymouth Harbour]
The most striking differences in physical geography between the
constituent parts of Weymouth are that Melcombe Regis, here on the shore
is flat as a pancake, and Weymouth, there on t’other side of the harbour,
is as hilly as a house-roof. You could have no greater dissimilarity
than that between the prudish formality which stands for the Melcombe
front and the heaped-up terraces of houses of every description at
Weymouth, which has no front at all; unless indeed the lowest tier of
houses skirting the harbour and its quays, and looking into the back
alleys and quays of Melcombe may so be styled. In those old days, to
which Weymouth dates back, no seaside town could afford so assailable a
luxury as a “front,” and the older quarters of nearly all such are
generally found, as here, folded away under the lee of a bluff, or thinly
lining the shores of an estuarial harbour. Here the Nothe Point, with
its fort mounted with heavy guns, is the rocky bluff behind which the old
town cowered from elemental and human foes, and that estuary, both by
reason of its narrow entrance, and those great forts of the Nothe and
Portland, has never been one sought by an enemy’s ship.
The harbour is not uninteresting: what harbour ever is? The comings and
goings of ships have their own romance, and bring rumours of all kinds of
outer worlds and strange peoples. You look across from the quays of
Weymouth to the quays of Melcombe, and there, beside the walls and the
old warehouses, lie the ships from many home and foreign ports, their
names duly to be read under their counters. Whence they individually
come, I do not greatly care to know. This one may only have come from
the Channel Islands with a consignment of early potatoes: and, on the
other hand, it may have won home again after who knows what romantic
doings at the Equator or within the Arctic Zone. It may have brought
treasure-trove, or on the other hand be merely carrying ordinary
commercial freights, at so low a figure that the owners are dissatisfied
and the skipper gloomy. It is well, you see, to leave a little margin
for fancy when the good ship has come to port once more and within sight
and the easiest reach of those two great features of a Christian and a
civilised land: the Church and the Public House.
In these days the town is recovering at last from the undeserved neglect
into which it fell after the illness and death of George III. and from
later disasters and indifferences; and, what with improved railway
travelling, and the added interest it obtains from being selected as the
site of a new great national harbour where more than ever the ships of
the Navy will come and go, has a great future before it.