THE fishing village of Newhaven is an unique place; it is a colony
that retains distinct features; the people seldom intermarry with their
Scotch neighbors.
Some say the colony is Dutch, some Danish, some Flemish. The character
and cleanliness of their female costume points rather to the latter.
Fish, like horse-flesh, corrupts the mind and manners.
After a certain age, the Newhaven fishwife is always a blackguard, and
ugly; but among the younger specimens, who have not traded too much, or
come into much contact with larger towns, a charming modesty, or else
slyness (such as no man can distinguish from it, so it answers every
purpose), is to be found, combined with rare grace and beauty.
It is a race of women that the northern sun peachifies instead of
rosewoodizing.
On Sundays the majority sacrifice appearance to fashion; these turn out
rainbows of silk, satin and lace. In the week they were all grace, and
no stays; now they seem all stays and no grace. They never look so ill
as when they change their “costume” for “dress.”
The men are smart fishermen, distinguished from the other fishermen of
the Firth chiefly by their “dredging song.”
This old song is money to them; thus:
Dredging is practically very stiff rowing for ten hours.
Now both the Newhaven men and their rivals are agreed that this song
lifts them through more work than untuned fishermen can manage.
I have heard the song, and seen the work done to it; and incline to
think it helps the oar, not only by keeping the time true, and the
spirit alive, but also by its favorable action on the lungs. It is sung
in a peculiar way; the sound is, as it were, expelled from the chest in
a sort of musical ejaculations; and the like, we know, was done by the
ancient gymnasts; and is done by the French bakers, in lifting their
enormous dough, and by our paviors.
The song, in itself, does not contain above seventy stock verses, but
these perennial lines are a nucleus, round which the men improvise the
topics of the day, giving, I know not for what reason, the preference to
such as verge upon indelicacy.
The men and women are musical and narrative; three out of four can sing
a song or tell a story, and they omit few opportunities.
Males and females suck whisky like milk, and are quarrelsome in
proportion. The men fight (round-handed), the women fleicht or scold, in
the form of a teapot--the handle fixed and the spout sawing the air.
A singular custom prevails here.
The maidens have only one sweetheart apiece!!!
So the whole town is in pairs.
The courting is all done on Saturday night, by the lady's fire. It is
hard to keep out of a groove in which all the town is running; and the
Johnstone had possessed, as mere property--a lad!
She was so wealthy that few of them could pretend to aspire to her, so
she selected for her chattel a young man called Willy Liston; a youth
of an unhappy turn--he contributed nothing to hilarity, his face was
a kill-joy--nobody liked him; for this female reason Christie
distinguished him.
He found a divine supper every Saturday night in her house; he ate, and
sighed! Christie fed him, and laughed at him.
Flucker ditto.
As she neither fed nor laughed at any other man, some twenty were
bitterly jealous of Willy Liston, and this gave the blighted youth a
cheerful moment or two.
But the bright alliance received a check some months before our tale.
Christie was _heluo librorum!_ and like others who have that taste, and
can only gratify it in the interval of manual exercise, she read very
intensely in her hours of study. A book absorbed her. She was like a
leech on these occasions, _non missura cutem._ Even Jean Carnie, her
co-adjutor or “neebor,” as they call it, found it best to keep out of
her way till the book was sucked.
One Saturday night Willy Liston's evil star ordained that a gentleman
of French origin and Spanish dress, called Gil Blas, should be the
Johnstone's companion.
Willy Liston arrived.
Christie, who had bolted the door, told him from the window, civilly
enough, but decidedly, “She would excuse his company that night.”
“Vara weel,” said Willy, and departed.
Next Saturday--no Willy came.
Ditto the next. Willy was waiting the _amende._
Christie forgot to make it.
One day she was passing the boats, Willy beckoned her mysteriously; he
led her to his boat, which was called “The Christie Johnstone”; by the
boat's side was a paint pot and brush.
They had not supped together for five Saturdays.
Ergo, Mr. Liston had painted out the first four letters of “Christie,”
he now proceeded to paint out the fifth, giving her to understand, that,
if she allowed the whole name to go, a letter every blank Saturday, her
image would be gradually, but effectually, obliterated from the heart
Listonian.
My reader has done what Liston did not, anticipate her answer. She
recommended him, while his hand was in, to paint out the entire name,
and, with white paint and a smaller brush, to substitute some other
female appellation. So saying, she tripped off.
Mr. Liston on this was guilty of the following inconsistency; he
pressed the paint carefully out of the brush into the pot. Having thus
economized his material, he hurled the pot which contained his economy
at “the Johnstone,” he then adjourned to the “Peacock,” and “away at
once with love and reason.”
Thenceforth, when men asked who was Christie Johnstone's lad, the answer
used to be, “She's seeking ane.” _Quelle horreur!!_
Newhaven doesn't know everything, but my intelligent reader suspects,
and, if confirming his suspicions can reconcile him to our facts, it
will soon be done.
But he must come with us to Edinburgh; it's only three miles.