Mr. Punch at the Seaside Part 9

A WET DAY AT THE SEASIDE

Why does not some benefactor to his species discover and publish to a grateful world some rational way of spending a wet day at the seaside?

Why should it be something so unutterably miserable and depressing that its mere recollection afterwards makes one shudder?

This is the first really wet day that we have had for a fortnight, but what a day! From morn to dewy eve, a summer's day, and far into the black night, the pitiless rain has poured and poured and poured. I broke the unendurable monotony of gazing from the weeping windows of my seaside lodging, by rus.h.i.+ng out wildly and plunging madly into the rainy sea, and got drenched to the skin both going and returning. After changing everything, as people say but don't mean, and thinking I saw something like a break in the dull leaden clouds, I again rushed out, and called on Jones, who has rooms in an adjacent terrace, and, with some difficulty, persuaded him to accompany me to the only billiard table in the miserable place. We both got gloriously wet on our way to this haven of amus.e.m.e.nt, and were received with the pleasing intelligence that it was engaged by a private party of two, who had taken it until the rain ceased, and, when that most improbable event happened, two other despairing lodgers had secured the reversion.

Another rush home, another drenching, another change of everything, except the weather, brought the welcome sight of dinner, over which we fondly lingered for nearly two mortal hours.

But one cannot eat all day long, even at the seaside on a wet day, and accordingly at four o'clock I was again cast upon my own resources.

I received, I confess, a certain amount of grim satisfaction at seeing Brown--b.u.mptious Brown, as we call him in the City, he being a common councilman, or a liveryman, or something of that kind--pa.s.s by in a fly, with heaps of luggage and children, all looking so depressingly wet,--and if he had not the meanness to bring with him, in a half-dozen hamper, six bottles of his abominable Gladstone claret! He grinned at me as he pa.s.sed, like a Chester cat, I think they call that remarkable animal, and I afterwards learnt the reason. He had been speculating for a rise in wheat, and, as he vulgarly said, the rain suited his book, and he only hoped it would last for a week or two! Ah! the selfishness of some men! What cared he about my getting wet through twice in one day, so long as it raised the price of his wretched wheat?

My wife coolly recommended me to read the second volume of a new novel she had got from the Library, called, I think, _East Glynne_, or some such name, but how can a man read in a room with four stout healthy boys and a baby, especially when the said baby is evidently very uncomfortable, and the four boys are playing at leap-frog? Women have this wonderful faculty, my wife to a remarkable extent. I have often, with unfeigned astonishment, seen her apparently lost in the sentimental troubles of some imaginary heroine, while the noisy domestic realities around her have gone on unheeded.

I again took my place at the window, and gazed upon the melancholy sea, and remembered, with a smile of bitter irony, how I had agreed to pay an extra guinea a week for the privilege of facing the sea!--and such a sea! It was, of course, very low water--it generally is at this charming place; and the sea had retired to its extremest distance, as if utterly ashamed of its dull, damp, melancholy appearance. And there stood that ridiculous apology for a pier, with its long, lanky, bandy legs, on which I have been dragged every evening to hear the band play. Such a band! The poor wheezy cornet was bad enough, but the trombone, with its two notes that it jerked out like the snorts of a starting train, was a caution. Oh! that poor "_Sweetheart_", with which we were favoured every evening! I always pictured her to myself sitting at a window listening, enraptured, to a serenade from that trombone!

But there's no band to-night, not a solitary promenader on the bandy-legged pier, I even doubt if the pier master is sitting as usual at the receipt of custom, and I pull down the blind, to shut out the miserable prospect, with such an energetic jerk that I bring down the whole complicated machinery, and nearly frighten baby into a fit, while the four irreverent boys indulge in a loud guffaw.

Thank goodness, on Sat.u.r.day I exchange our miserable, wheezy, asthmatic band for the grand orchestra of the Covent Garden Promenade Concerts, and the awful perfume of rotten seaweed for the bracing atmosphere of glorious London.

AN OUTSIDER.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BOATMAN SECURING A LIVELY-HOOD]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON HIS HONEYMOON TOO!

_Man with Sand Ponies._ "Now then, Mister, you an' the young lady, a pony apiece? 'Ere y'are!"

_Sn.o.bley_ (_loftily_). "Aw--I'm not accustomed to that cla.s.s of animal."

_Man_ (_readily_). "Ain't yer, sir? Ne' mind." (_To boy._) "'Ere, Bill, look sharp! Gent'll have a donkey!"]

SEASIDE SPLITTERS

[Ill.u.s.tration:

LOW-TIED

ROCKS

SEE-WEED

MUSCLE GATHERERS

A KNAW WESTER

HIGH TIED]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIFE WOULD BE PLEASANT, BUT FOR ITS "PLEASURES."--_Sir Cornewall Lewis_

In consequence of the English watering-places being crowded, people are glad to find sleeping accommodation in the bathing-machines.

_Boots_ (_from Jones's Hotel_). "I've brought your shaving water, sir; and you'll please to take care of your boots on the steps, gents: the tide's just a comin' in!"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RETURNING HOME FROM THE SEASIDE

All the family have colds, except the under-nurse, who has a face-ache.

Poor materfamilias, who originated the trip, is in despair at all the money spent for nothing, and gives way to tears. Paterfamilias endeavours to console her with the reflection that "_he_ knew how it would be, but that, after all, St. John's Wood, where they live, is such a healthy place that, with care and doctoring, they _will soon be nearly as well as if they had never left it_!"

[_Two gay bachelors may be seen contemplating paterfamilias and his little group. Their interest is totally untinged with envy._

[Ill.u.s.tration: OVERHEARD AT SCARBOROUGH

"Do you know anything good for a cold?"

"Yes."

"What is it?"

"Have you got the price of two Scotch whiskies on you?"

"No."

"Then it's no use my telling you."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Sn.o.bson_ (_to inhabitant of out-of-way seaside resort_).

"What sort of people do you get down here in the summer?"

_Inhabitant._ "Oh, all sorts, zur. There be fine people an' common people, an' some just half-an'-half, like yourself, zur."]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OYSTERS AT WHITSTABLE FROZEN IN THEIR BEDS!