This little town may be said to consist of three things--a long,
narrow, and not very straight High Street, an almost equally long and
equally diverging street parallel with it, and the quay. Both the High
Street and its parallel neighbour might as easily have been straight
as not; but it is very much to their advantage to curve a little, for
not only are curves more beautiful, but they remind one of the street’s
human origin, since before there can be a High Street there must be a
path, and every one knows that no one can walk straight for more than
a very few paces. Blindfold a man and tell him to walk across a field,
and he will unconsciously bear to the left, I believe; and he will
oscillate too.
Between the High Street and its neighbour there could not well be a
greater difference; for the High Street is all bustle and business, and
its neighbour is all quietude and residential repose. But they have
this in common, that both are Georgian and red. The High Street, it
is true, has thrown out a few plate-glass shop-fronts in keeping with
twentieth-century enterprise, and a few new facades are there too;
but the character of the street is still Georgian none the less. Its
residential neighbour has made no concessions; it is eighteenth century
still. Old shipowners and merchants--yes, and maybe old smugglers
too--who lived there when George III was King would yet be quite at
home were they to revisit it under George V. Hence I like this street
the better. I like its window-frames, flush with the wall, such as
builders may no longer give us; I like its square dormer windows, its
fanlights over the door, its steps, its knockers, its blinds; its
town-hall, with a flight of steps on each side, which, after describing
an elegant curve, meet at the imposing door on the first floor; and,
more than anything, I like its almshouses, which are five hundred years
old.--So much for the little street, where Miss Greenaway might have
made studies.
No need for me to say that the houses no longer harbour the class of
resident for which they were intended; you know that as well as I do.
Successful business men have ceased to live in the hearts of towns.
Either because they genuinely want more room and air, or because a
visible token of success is a pleasant thing to have, they now build
houses on the outskirts, and the humbler folk inhabit the old houses
at a reduced rent. The town has scores of these villas dotted about
just outside its walls. From a balloon the centuries could be divided
accurately--sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth in the centre; then
a fringe of early nineteenth, then an outer fringe of later nineteenth;
and then the latest addition of all, the twentieth-century villas,
spick-and-span, and surrounded with greenery. Meanwhile, behind the
Kate Greenaway shutters in the town’s core the managers and clerks and
shop-assistants and their families are happy--and long may they be so!
As for the High Street, I can tell you about that very quickly. The
best house in it, a superb red Georgian mansion, is now the office of
the Gas Company. That gives you the High Street, does it not? There
are two book and paper shops, and both supply “Punch” only to order.
That gives you the class of town, does it not? There are assembly-rooms
where an occasional entertainment is given, and an electric theatre has
just been opened. (The assembly-rooms, by the way, have a name pretty
enough for a heroine in a novel by Mr. Hardy--Amity Hall.) At night,
however, in spite of the absence of organized harmony, the High Street
is full of melody from upper windows and tap-rooms, or from the white
building at the foot, close to the Custom House--famous in history for
a smugglers’ raid which led to the recapture of a tremendous haul of
run-goods--where the town band practises. The little town is rich in
small inns, as maritime towns always are; and it has also two large
ones, with spacious yards, relics of the brave days when gentlemen
posted, and billiard-tables whose cloth is yellow and whose cushions
have some of the inflexibility of a sea-wall.
Such is the High Street of my little town, which, while always a scene
of animation, rises to its greatest social height on Saturday nights,
when the country people come in to market, and the town-people market
too, and the youths walk up the middle four and five abreast, and the
girls walk down the middle four and five abreast, and jokes are made,
and hearts, I doubt not, are lost, and the little tap-rooms get fuller
and fuller.
And now the third thing and the best--the quay. A little Georgian
town with a quay cannot go far wrong. In its electric theatres the
cinematoscope may buzz and dazzle; sixpenny-halfpenny bazaars may be
opened; its beautiful old mansions may house gas clerks; the latest
novelties may effloresce in its shop-windows; but the quay will keep it
sweet. Ships and mariners will arrest the meddling hand of Time. For
there is something about the sea that will ever refuse to come into
line. Wherever wind-tanned men with level eyes live all day in blue
jerseys, there the lover of ancient peace may safely abide. And the
quay of my little town and the boats in her great, spreading harbour
are populous with such men. They arrest progress. Even the arrival of
petrol and the spectacle of a fishing-boat gaining the open sea in
the teeth of a headwind at a rate of ten knots an hour has not injured
them. The sea remains the sea in spite of petrol: still the capricious,
dangerous mistress, never the same for two minutes together, never
quite to be trusted, and so jealous that in no other direction may the
eyes of her subjects rove.
Two little tugs trot in and out of the harbour all day long, often
enough dragging in some three-master that they have found in the bay;
and at the moment that I write a big German barque with a green hull
lies at one wharf; a Dutch tjalck at another; and a variety of coasters
thrust their masts and spars and cordage against the evening sky and
make it more wonderful still. And in one of the shipwrights’ yards
a huge schooner into whose way a man-of-war casually loafed in the
Channel a month ago is being fitted with a new bowsprit and prow; and
since the bowsprit that the man-of-war left her resembles a birchbroom,
there is no doubt that she needs them.
I had a little talk with one of the blue jerseys about smuggling. He,
like myself, thought of the past with some regret. “I’ve no quarrel
with a little smuggling,” he said, in his caressing, rich Southern
voice. “No harm in smuggling, I says. I don’t say but what I’ve done
some in my time. I don’t say that I should have any objection to
running over to Guernsey any day and bringing back a ton of tubs. But
the difficulty is, what to do with them? And you would look so blue if
you were caught.” “True,” I said; “but surely there are safe landings
all about there?” waving my hand towards the southern borders of this
vast and mysterious harbour, so rich in creeks and sandy shores. “Yes,”
he said, “yes. But that’s not it. You couldn’t do it alone: that’s the
real trouble. And in smuggling it doesn’t do to trust any one. No,” he
said, “not even your own brother. Not in smuggling.”