W IIITBY.
PEOPLE who, as they profess, never wish to leave the soil of England—and such people there are—but who desire to know what a foreign town is like, may to a great extent gratify such a curiosity by a visit to Whitby. No doubt there are many little villages scattered about our coasts which for a moment recall a dirty corner of Rotterdam or Naples, as the case may be, but no place we know of any considerable size departs so far from the recognised type of the English watering-place as this decayed old port of Yorkshire. The ranges of moors amid which it lies offer nothing striking in their outline, but they enclose pretty dales, fringed with wood and bordered by ranges of broken cliffs, which the tumbling " becks " that drain the higher downs have carved out in their passage to the sea. Through a series of these one of the most picturesque bits of railway in England makes its way from the plain round York to the mouth of the Esk and the land- locked harbour which must always have been as attractive to sea- faring men as that of Marseilles.
The traveller, even if untouched by enthusiasm either for the home of the nuns in " Marmion " or for the scene of " Sylvia's Lovers," and looking only on Whitby as a spot representing an indefinite quantity of fresh air, cannot but be struck, even from the railway carriage, which has spoilt so many first impressions, with the peculiar aspect of the place. Entering it towards evening, one feels grateful to the red-roofed town that welcomes one like a field of poppies with its broad flood of sunset colour. The Londoner accustomed to Southern seaports has to get used to the unwonted absence of the sun full in his eyes on the esplanade at mid-day, and wonders how there is so much shade to enjoy at an hour when Brighton or Dawlish are insupportable. Towards evening he feels still more fortunate to stand in the shadow of the ugly mass of modern houses which spoil the West Cliff, and watch the pene- trating western beams, as they reveal all the subtle purples and grays of the many cast shadows and few slate roofs that heighten the splendid vermilion and russets of the masses of piled-up, tile-covered houses leaning against the opposite cliff, with a strip of green meadow above them ; and still higher, the sombre group of church, churchyard, and ruined abbey that crowns the whole. A few tender rose-coloured lines run in and out the crumbling rock, and lead the eye through the confusion of the hard grey rubbish, scanty shrubs, and lumber of the shore, to their reflections in the winding harbour or on the wet sand. It is such hues as these that constitute the pictorial value of the scene, in which foliage or flowers have no part. At a glance you see that Whitby is not a flowery land. Trees do not, as in some spots, encircle it and fill up every vacant corner, but grow in certain places like carefully tended luxuries for the delectation of the rich. On the moors beyond, one sees only scanty hedgerows, for the pretty winding dales "dwell in deep retreats " of their own, and one turns with relief to the vivid ochres and strong browns of the sails of the craft that sway lazily to and fro like a bed of African marigolds in a breeze, or turn up their shiny dripping hulls, that fall over on the sands as the water ebbs away from them.
The dwellings of Whitby divide themselves into three groups. There is the very old town under the East Cliff ; there is the very new mass of stuccoed houses, devoted wholly to visitors, on the West Cliff ; and there is an intermediate group, also on the West Hill, occupied by the bond fide residents. These entirely ignore the
Modern additions to the town. They are not glad, like the visitors, of shade at noonday, for they remember that there is such a season as winter, and that on a cliff of 200 feet high facing the north it is no trifle. So they solve the question of " aspect v. pros- pect," which perplexes builders, by turning their backs on ocean and his magnificence, and frankly accepting whatever thesouthera inland view may bring them—a railway station, a brick-field, or sights even more unlovely—and go in for all the sun they cam insure when it is most needed. They are snug-looking, red-brick. edifices, such as Bewick drew, with a peaceful, old-world, self-con- tained look, suggesting that had the Abbey been on their side of the valley, they would have formed a committee, voted it into the- chair, and constituted themselves a cathedral town,—in default of which they could only assume the prim and exclusive aspect. peculiar to such retreats. They appear to be of the Queen. Anne or Georgian era, with sashes framed flush with the walls, innocent of the Building Act, and but rarely giving way to the innovation of bow windows, with neatly carved' doorways of the classical Adams pattern, pedimeuted fronts,. many flights of stone steps, and trim gardens, well fenced from. the public gaze,—houses, in fact, such as the latest school of archi- tects would like to transport bodily to London, for the latest school of artists in which to paint the hoops, patches, and powder of the Grandisonian epoch.
Of the modern stuccoed town, its big hotel, its lodgings, itr bathing, its nursemaids and children, its saunterers, its too. numerous bands, its smart new library, with a becoming supply of Mrs. Gaskell's novel, there is as little to say as there would .be of any other watering-place. Whitby, as compared to. Scarborough, enjoys the reputation of being a quiet spot. There• are no public balls or other amusements, and flirting is not elevated into a public duty. But like a "quiet street" in London, it is. victimised by brass and other bands, which nightly take up each' other's wondrous tale, until the arrival of Sunday evening comes to be watched for with a nervous eagerness. There are, however,. other amusements. There is a Zatuiel-like conjuror in a scarlet jerkin, who is worth looking at, not on account of his cleverness, but because, in these days of scientific education, a professor who
take his stand on the good old fire-eating trick, and that. alone, is a sight not often to be met with. And there is a town crier with a bell, and a solemn delivery, who utters " not-tices'r of fish sales, of the advent of green peas and gooseberries, of things lost, of the departure of the Scarborough steamboat, or any other trifling excitement which may promote the general interest• everybody feels in everybody else. He believes in himself like a City toastmaster, and it is not the thing to chaff him.
All towns have their peculiar industries, and Jet is well known to be the industry of Whitby. Jet meets you at every turn and in every shape ; even the large black Newfoundland dogs, glossy from their bath, and having nothing to do but that, at as if carved: out of jet. Surely no modern manufacture of trumpery ever rivalled this in ugliness. With a refinement of cruelty, some• workers embed sections of ammonites in it ; others, and this is the ne plus ultra of richness, surround it with fretwork of alabaster, and you may have a card-tray of this glittering inconclusive- material with the classic features of Victor Emmanuel staring at. you in jet from the bottom. One wonders who can buy such things, but there are some people who must have the speciality of the place they are in, however base and trivial it may be, and those who acquire mosaics at Rome, beads at Venice, inlaid wood at. Sorrento, carved paper-knives in Switzerland, iron brooches at Berlin, marble paper-weights in Derbyshire, and " all the fun of the fair" wherever they go, will surely not fail to carry away some dark memorials of Whitby.
Even the finest prospects have their dreary moments, and these are commonly less of cloud or storm than of blank sunshine, such as• falls with no mitigation on sea and cliff at noon, when a mean- ingless blaze illumines the earth, reducing all shadows to their least expression. Meaningless it is to us, however joyful to nature, and this impossibility of sharing with her in her happiest moments, this transient feeling of solitariness, suggests that a power which can be so out of harmony with us may one day rise up and become our enemy. When we feel this, let us go " down in the city"— into the old town, where, at least, humanity is in the ascendant, especially on market day, and near the bridge. Here is the heart of Whitby, and here it looks most like a foreign town. There are many places along the river and port where bridges would be- highly convenient ; luckily there is but one, so if you go there, you must see everybody pass. And you will not be alone in the pastime of seeing. People know how to idle here in a way never attained in an inland town, save in Italy. A group of idlers in an ordinary
The market is held in the one long, narrow, main street of the old town, which it quite fills. It is a pretty sight, and it is diffi-
cult to realise that one is in England—especially as the pretty, soft cadence of the dialect is barely intelligible to a Southerner— as one threads one's way through the busy crowd, buying, selling, staring, chaffering, and talking. There are stalls, with heaps of unlimited currants, round red plums, like penny cakes of paint, little green apples funnily wrinked about the blossom end, as if old before their time ; rudimentary pears, which it would hardly
pay even a Yankee to imitate in wood ; and cottage-garden flowers tied up in what comes nearer one's ideal of a posy' than any- thing met with since one's nursery days, with such an abundance of candituft among them as too surely tells of the hard-caked gardens and unkindly soil, where that ugly but hardy plant gradually usurps the space of flowers of sweeter growth. But this is not only a fruit and vegetable market. You find out that 'quick' animals, to use a Yorkshire phrase, are sold here, by an uncomfortable flutter at your elbow, and become aware of a lusty damsel with two strings of live fowls hanging over her arm, —the heads of the poor beasts hanging downwards, their wings vainly beating the air ; or by the squeaks proceeding from a surging cartful of pigs, imperfectly restrained by a hurdle put generally over them, on the principle on which a water-carrier floats a round bit of wood on the surface of his pail. The ducks sit in couples in baskets, and taking matters quietly and respectably, but not without watchfulness, have much the best of it. Further on is a Cheap Jack, with a braided cap and sunburnt face, vending, with great eloquence and an auctioneer's hammer—which sometimes decides timid buyers — cheap mantelpiece ornaments, knives, mirrors, and the Challenge Budget' of songs, to serious-faced girls, who bang their heads meditatively, and old matrons, who grow young over their purchases, and try to think they have bar- gains. Later in the day some of the market women go away to their tea, and are succeeded by sailor husbands, who look most curiously out of place, as they sell their things in a sort of amateur fashion, not with the twang of the genuine salesman, but with a cry as of one drawing up a boat or heaving an anchor, the voice ending abruptly, as with the regular sea-dog's bark.
Herrings are sold everywhere, of course, but their peculiar market is on a sort of wooden quay, neither good land nor water, but like the Bompjes of Rotterdam, and encumbered at this season with barrels piled one upon another, all to be packed with this fish. You crunch little heaps of salt at every step, as you move among them, and through the ranks of fish-wives, with brown faces and black elf locks, who bring the herrings from the boats to the barrels. Alongside of you comes up an oozy, squashy sound of the advancing tide, that sets the boats see-sawing, and breaks up the reflections of the houses and the bridge.
Leaving the throngs of the market and the quay, it is a relief to pursue the long street and its quaint broken lines of old houses, with here and there a delicately carved window or doorway. Here you may see an external staircase, a marvel of timber fram- ing, wedged in between two houses, and leading to different flats in one of them ; here a group of whimsical dwellings furnished with wooden galleries on each storey, painted in green, red, and white, and dull blue, and rising one above another, tier upon tier, like the poop of a Great Harry or some such ship of the olden time. At intervals you come upon openings sloping down to the harbour, and opening upon all the pleasant sights there, spars and cunning ropes, masts and cordage cutting the slope of the green landscape beyond, a multiplicity of lines that gently perplex, but never tease the eye ; on the other side are narrow entries leading to interminable flights of steep steps, that run up to square roods of garden niched under the shadow of the cliff, and to the plea- sant field above, where the old Abbey stands. These flights of steps are a feature of Whitby, by the absence of which it would lose much of its character. They meet you in all sorts of unexpected places, and make up all manner of picturesque per- spectives. Often they have been quite worn out into a dangerous- looking slope, and a new set have been added beside them, but the old are left for the donkeys that carry milk in their tin pan- niers and for the barefooted boys that lead them. A grand speci- men of each kind of staircase takes you up to the platform of the old Abbey—a splendid example of transition from round to pointed Gothic, which a little care might have preserved
English town wears an air of listless boredom quite unlike the almost entire to our own days—and to the much less ancient demeanour of the lively knots that congregate at street corners parish church, built of stone, suspiciously resembling the Abbey here. Indeed the men do not do much, on land at least ; perhaps ruins, and capable of accommodating the residents and most of they have the feeling of old Mucklebaekit in the " Antiquary," and of -Eolus in the iEneid, who both knew where their power ended, and where that of the other sex began. the visitors, who may be seen on Sunday from the opposite hill scaling the long flight of steps like pilgrims of Mont Blanc viewed from the Brevent. This church is chiefly in a very debased Per- pendicular style, with no visible roofs, and windows of all sizes and shapes. Inside, says Murray, " it has been so filled with pews and galleries," that it is " strongly suggestive of a ship's cabin." It is true that it suggests a ship's cabin, not owing to the pews and galleries—things not often found inside ships—but on account of the roof, which is composed of neat white-painted planking, supported by transverse beams, and pierced with an un- common quantity of massively-framed skylights made exactly after the naval pattern. There are tombs of shipwrecked sailors, churchwardens' special seats, special pews deep in green baize "for strangers," all turned so that every one can stare comfort- ably at every one else. The first lesson on Sunday, describing the navies of Solomon and the glories of the Queen of Sheba, seemed quaintly appropriate in a naval town whose ships once traded with the Baltic and the Mediterranean, and brought home blubber and whalebone, and built the vessels in which Captain Cook circumnavigated the globe. But the "ivory, apes, and peacocks" of Whitby are no more, or have migrated to the ports of the adjoining counties, and of Scotland. It has no foreign trade now, though it still builds ships which go to foreign ports, and besides the jet—which happily makes but little show in the old town—its chief occupation is that of fishing. You may find a pair of walrus tusks set up as an archway here and there among the farms,—where, by the way, they use fishing-nets over the ricks to keep the scanty thatch down ; and in its curiosity shops—for Wardour Street is not unrepresented here—there are china punch-bowls, ostrich eggs engraved and inscribed, and flat bits of bone or ivory, meant for women's stay-bones, and covered with points of the compass and such quaint patterns as the sweetheart of the destined wearer might think of carving during a tedious voyage. And there is one bit of furniture peculiar (we believe) to this district,—the " bride-wain," or chest for wedding-clothes, which, roughly carved with Tudor roses or Elizabethan patterns, may now and then be met with. There are, too, a few other things iu the way of old plate and old Wedgwood ware, but not much, for one or two artists and a famous lace collector have been beforehand with the public, and gleaned most of what time has spared.
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