DOI Heft:
September 13, 1884
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17757#0129
122
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[September 13, 1884
A WOMAN'S REASON.
Algernon. “Hebe’s a House that seems as if it would suit us, Eliza ;
close to Hyde Park Corner, you know ! ”
Wife of Ms Bosom (passionately humane). “What! Live near St. George’s
Hospital !—and hear the Shrieks from the Dissecting-room '! Never! ! ! ”
RATHER ODD NOOKS AND CORNERS.
(From our own Holiday Haunted Gusher.)
Briscombe ! who has ever heard of it ? Go and ask the mild-eyed seafaring
folk of Pinkney, the trim, bright, sparkling, well-to-do little watering-place,
with its tiny Gambling Club, two opposition Italian Opera Houses, and lending
Library, all in full swing, only a mile and a half away on the coast, round the
corner, and they will shake their flaxen heads at you knowingly, and tell you
“ not they.” Yet here it is, within twenty-seven miles or so of a single branch
line, lying like some brine-washed jewel right in the very midst of a delicious
tangle of limestone boulders, wild moorland, and impenetrable pine-wood, all
piled up upon each other, till the resinous life-giving coves seem to bury them-
selves snugly in the humming corn-fields around, and then dip suddenly down
into the depths of the waveless sea-stretches of Mediterranean blue that lave
the yellow sand outside !
And what yellow sand ! I have been on the famed eastern coasts of burning
Borneo during the solstice, and trudged, in search of nothing in particular,
over the buffalo-rearing paxamentas of Guadaloupe; but I have never seen
anything finer than the vellow sand of this coy, dimpling, little English bay.
One minute on it is sufficient. Eyes, boots, mouth, neck—every pocket about
you, are instantly filled. There is no getting rid of it. Che sard sard. And
when you once have experienced it, you understand the force of the quaint
local couplet that has it, honestly enough,
“ Many may come to Briscombe Bay.
None but a fool you ’ll get to stay.”
4 Yet here am I standing in the window of the old Inn, having ordered a
“snack” for lunching-time, and a gallon of clear, sweet “ October,”—for I’m
as parched as a lime-kiln, and as scarred with brambles from head to foot as a
wounded pecadillo_ fresh from the last grim fight that has settled Master Toro,
cosas d' Espartos, in an Andalusian arena—and as I give an encouraging touch
under the chin to the pretty fresh-coloured, brown-eyed Dorsetshire lassie who
is laying the snow-white cloth, her four burly brothers, whom I had not pre-
viously noticed lying curled up with their long sea-boots on here and there about
the room under the rough old benches on the sandy floor, start up with an oath,
and ask me “ What I mean by it ? ” But a half-crown between these good, honest-
souled, simple folk, as I scramble through the window,
upsetting a few neat geranium-pots with a laugh in my
hurry, soon settles the matter, and in ten minutes more
I can see them all four rolling down the steep of “ Dun-
combe’s Head,” grappled together in true South-coaster
style, contending for the sole possession of the bright
“siller bit” they cannot agree to divide without this
characteristic little break out of fraternal feeling.
But my bustling Worcestershire lassie tells me—wel-
come news !—that “ luncheon be a steaming,” and I sit
down to one of the famed treats of Briscombe, scalded
lobster, and raw sand eels. Nom d’u?i ecrevisse! was
there every such royal shell-fish seen before ? I have
dined at Delmonico’s, and had their famous tinned
Bluepoint pinchers, “stuffed with hominy,” as a chasse
cafe, and 1 have eaten your true scalloppas de Tarragon,
the common Ebro crayfish, by the dozen in the moonlight
on the top of the Escurial; but give me a Briscombe
lobster in pluribus naturaKbus, and I will match him
against the grottos of the HEgean or the very storehouses
of Billingsgate itself. Look at this glorious fellow ! He
is seven feet ten from eye to tail-fin if he is an inch,
and, as wTe have to split his smoking claws, each the
size of a chine of prize pork, but with more “flesh”
on it, with a coal-hammer and a couple of crowbars,
I think of Horace in his villa at Avunoulum, and of
that celebrated breakfast of
“ Milites ter rubros,
Et triste feroces-”
that caused his historic quarrel wdth Lucullus the Elder.
But what eating is this! Fine, creamy, and full; firm as
a bolster, and with all the flavour of a tapped tar-barrel.
But I wash it all down with the “sweet October,” j
and turn me out to take holiday stock of hospitable j
little Briscombe. Nothing much to look at from the
Esplanade,—a few planks, mine Inn of scalded-lobster j
memories, some half-dozen Insurance offices peeping out
coyly here and there from the Hush of pine-wood literally
here making a clean sweep of the shore, an old beached
East Indiaman or two, and the Battery. That is all! I
make for this latter. Some of these fine Cheshire salts,
lazing about in their tanned uicturesqueness, with red
wolsey kerchiefs, overalls, and oil-skins, gazing to lee-
ward with that keen half-weather-beaten look that has
stood them in good stead on many a dark Newfoundland
night,—“These are the men,” I say to myself, “who
will tell me something about the ways and manners of
dear quaint little Briscombe.”
But, as I near them, some clear off seawards, some j
mount the flag-staff, while others man a yawl, or cast j
about, in a happy-go-lucky kind of way, for a stray crab
or two in Hoxley Cove. Not though my old friend, the
Coast-guard. He doesn’t budge. As I near him I note
that the oolite is lying loose on the beach, while the Toxi-
derma japonica (the Wild Throttlewort) is growing in
blooming patches on the green sandstone lamince of the
tesselated cliff. I have paused for not more than a
minute on a red ant’s nest. It all makes a pretty pic-
ture ; and as I slip down over a couple of jelly-fish, and
pick myself up, rather the worse for the tumble, it is
easy to believe that this chuckling, unsympathetic old
man before me is probably one of the descendants of
that very Hengist who, with his sixty sworn followers,
landed on this very spot thirteen centuries before, with
no luggage but the one single “comb” between them,
from which the place, according to Fullarton, is evi-
dently named. But, as I write, I see the Landlord of
the spruce little Inn that has given me such loyal
luncheon fare for nothing-—for I have not yet paid my
bill— crunching the stout Dorset shingle under his feet,
and ash staff in hand, hastening this way with a couple
of South Coast Tiger-Mastiffs. So am I off for a ramble
among the lichen-covered moss-grown crags that lead
one sharply away from sweet winsome Briscombe, into
the tangle of birchwood pine and heather that hides her
from the profaner eyes of excursionising man. As I
leave my new-found seaside nook, and struggle through
the coppice, I hear the bay of the good Tiger-Mastiffs
on the shore beneath. And I hurry on once more as fast
as I can under the broil of a pure English summer sky,
wondering when I shall see bright little blithesome
Briscombe again !
Artistic Crux.—The one thing that can never be well
drawn is—a Cricket-Match.
PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.
[September 13, 1884
A WOMAN'S REASON.
Algernon. “Hebe’s a House that seems as if it would suit us, Eliza ;
close to Hyde Park Corner, you know ! ”
Wife of Ms Bosom (passionately humane). “What! Live near St. George’s
Hospital !—and hear the Shrieks from the Dissecting-room '! Never! ! ! ”
RATHER ODD NOOKS AND CORNERS.
(From our own Holiday Haunted Gusher.)
Briscombe ! who has ever heard of it ? Go and ask the mild-eyed seafaring
folk of Pinkney, the trim, bright, sparkling, well-to-do little watering-place,
with its tiny Gambling Club, two opposition Italian Opera Houses, and lending
Library, all in full swing, only a mile and a half away on the coast, round the
corner, and they will shake their flaxen heads at you knowingly, and tell you
“ not they.” Yet here it is, within twenty-seven miles or so of a single branch
line, lying like some brine-washed jewel right in the very midst of a delicious
tangle of limestone boulders, wild moorland, and impenetrable pine-wood, all
piled up upon each other, till the resinous life-giving coves seem to bury them-
selves snugly in the humming corn-fields around, and then dip suddenly down
into the depths of the waveless sea-stretches of Mediterranean blue that lave
the yellow sand outside !
And what yellow sand ! I have been on the famed eastern coasts of burning
Borneo during the solstice, and trudged, in search of nothing in particular,
over the buffalo-rearing paxamentas of Guadaloupe; but I have never seen
anything finer than the vellow sand of this coy, dimpling, little English bay.
One minute on it is sufficient. Eyes, boots, mouth, neck—every pocket about
you, are instantly filled. There is no getting rid of it. Che sard sard. And
when you once have experienced it, you understand the force of the quaint
local couplet that has it, honestly enough,
“ Many may come to Briscombe Bay.
None but a fool you ’ll get to stay.”
4 Yet here am I standing in the window of the old Inn, having ordered a
“snack” for lunching-time, and a gallon of clear, sweet “ October,”—for I’m
as parched as a lime-kiln, and as scarred with brambles from head to foot as a
wounded pecadillo_ fresh from the last grim fight that has settled Master Toro,
cosas d' Espartos, in an Andalusian arena—and as I give an encouraging touch
under the chin to the pretty fresh-coloured, brown-eyed Dorsetshire lassie who
is laying the snow-white cloth, her four burly brothers, whom I had not pre-
viously noticed lying curled up with their long sea-boots on here and there about
the room under the rough old benches on the sandy floor, start up with an oath,
and ask me “ What I mean by it ? ” But a half-crown between these good, honest-
souled, simple folk, as I scramble through the window,
upsetting a few neat geranium-pots with a laugh in my
hurry, soon settles the matter, and in ten minutes more
I can see them all four rolling down the steep of “ Dun-
combe’s Head,” grappled together in true South-coaster
style, contending for the sole possession of the bright
“siller bit” they cannot agree to divide without this
characteristic little break out of fraternal feeling.
But my bustling Worcestershire lassie tells me—wel-
come news !—that “ luncheon be a steaming,” and I sit
down to one of the famed treats of Briscombe, scalded
lobster, and raw sand eels. Nom d’u?i ecrevisse! was
there every such royal shell-fish seen before ? I have
dined at Delmonico’s, and had their famous tinned
Bluepoint pinchers, “stuffed with hominy,” as a chasse
cafe, and 1 have eaten your true scalloppas de Tarragon,
the common Ebro crayfish, by the dozen in the moonlight
on the top of the Escurial; but give me a Briscombe
lobster in pluribus naturaKbus, and I will match him
against the grottos of the HEgean or the very storehouses
of Billingsgate itself. Look at this glorious fellow ! He
is seven feet ten from eye to tail-fin if he is an inch,
and, as wTe have to split his smoking claws, each the
size of a chine of prize pork, but with more “flesh”
on it, with a coal-hammer and a couple of crowbars,
I think of Horace in his villa at Avunoulum, and of
that celebrated breakfast of
“ Milites ter rubros,
Et triste feroces-”
that caused his historic quarrel wdth Lucullus the Elder.
But what eating is this! Fine, creamy, and full; firm as
a bolster, and with all the flavour of a tapped tar-barrel.
But I wash it all down with the “sweet October,” j
and turn me out to take holiday stock of hospitable j
little Briscombe. Nothing much to look at from the
Esplanade,—a few planks, mine Inn of scalded-lobster j
memories, some half-dozen Insurance offices peeping out
coyly here and there from the Hush of pine-wood literally
here making a clean sweep of the shore, an old beached
East Indiaman or two, and the Battery. That is all! I
make for this latter. Some of these fine Cheshire salts,
lazing about in their tanned uicturesqueness, with red
wolsey kerchiefs, overalls, and oil-skins, gazing to lee-
ward with that keen half-weather-beaten look that has
stood them in good stead on many a dark Newfoundland
night,—“These are the men,” I say to myself, “who
will tell me something about the ways and manners of
dear quaint little Briscombe.”
But, as I near them, some clear off seawards, some j
mount the flag-staff, while others man a yawl, or cast j
about, in a happy-go-lucky kind of way, for a stray crab
or two in Hoxley Cove. Not though my old friend, the
Coast-guard. He doesn’t budge. As I near him I note
that the oolite is lying loose on the beach, while the Toxi-
derma japonica (the Wild Throttlewort) is growing in
blooming patches on the green sandstone lamince of the
tesselated cliff. I have paused for not more than a
minute on a red ant’s nest. It all makes a pretty pic-
ture ; and as I slip down over a couple of jelly-fish, and
pick myself up, rather the worse for the tumble, it is
easy to believe that this chuckling, unsympathetic old
man before me is probably one of the descendants of
that very Hengist who, with his sixty sworn followers,
landed on this very spot thirteen centuries before, with
no luggage but the one single “comb” between them,
from which the place, according to Fullarton, is evi-
dently named. But, as I write, I see the Landlord of
the spruce little Inn that has given me such loyal
luncheon fare for nothing-—for I have not yet paid my
bill— crunching the stout Dorset shingle under his feet,
and ash staff in hand, hastening this way with a couple
of South Coast Tiger-Mastiffs. So am I off for a ramble
among the lichen-covered moss-grown crags that lead
one sharply away from sweet winsome Briscombe, into
the tangle of birchwood pine and heather that hides her
from the profaner eyes of excursionising man. As I
leave my new-found seaside nook, and struggle through
the coppice, I hear the bay of the good Tiger-Mastiffs
on the shore beneath. And I hurry on once more as fast
as I can under the broil of a pure English summer sky,
wondering when I shall see bright little blithesome
Briscombe again !
Artistic Crux.—The one thing that can never be well
drawn is—a Cricket-Match.