Two Books on the South Coast
Sussex. By S. P. B. Mais. (Richards. 6s.) Famous South-Coast Pleasure Resorts : Past and. Present. By Harold Clunn. (Whittingham. 7s. 6d.) MR. MATS has amply justified his courage in writing a new book about Sussex. The ground has been traversed many times before, but not quite in this way : he tells us nothing new (and a few things that are inaccurate, as, for instance, that Camber sands are " lonely "—had Mr. Mais visited them last Sunday afternoon he would not have thought so) but he writes with such real knowledge and his enthusiasm is infectious.
To review such a book is unnecessary. It is written from the heart, and is as bouyant and as vigorous as the airs of Beachy Head ; it is compact in size, pleasantly written, well illustrated, a companion that should accompany our rambles through this enchanted county.
Mr. Clunn's Famous South-Coast Pleasure Resorts is a work of a very different kind. There- is some curious history in these pages, interspersed with much that is undeniably dull to anyone but a resident of Brighton, Bournemouth, Hastings, Eastbourne, Torquay, Folkestone or Worthing. the seven towns with which Mr. Clunn is concerned. Yet the history of our South Coast is the history of middle-class industrial England in miniature : at Hove, for instance (" haughty Hove," as the author styles it), we may trace the change in our manners and customs, from the Georgian bow-windowed opulence of Brunswick Square, to the spacious mid-Victorianism of Adelaide Crescent, and, finally, at the Eastern limit, to the centrally-heated, non-basement, sun- parlour-cum-garage constructions of neo-Georgian POrtslade.
A hundred years ago, in Hove, a well-known botanist dreamed a dream. He saw a great glass dome, larger than St. Paul's, or St. Peter's, covering all the land where Palmeira Square now stands. The interior was to contain a tropical garden, cedars of Lebanon, palms, a pond, a rock garden, and the entire crest of the dome was to be a gigantic aviary. Those were prosperous days in England, and our botanist was soon able to translate his dream into reality.
The Antheum, as this erection was called, duly arose in its glory of girders and glass. The public flocked to see it, " all being filled with admiration for the boldness of its con- ception and the marvellous skill with which it had been constructed. Already the walks had been partly laid out and the place stocked with many thousands of plants."
Yet our botanist and his advisers were assailed by a fearful doubt. When the scaffolding was removed, would their building stand ? The dome was not a perfect round, but an oblate spheroid : what if it should collapse, involving thousands of holiday makers in its ruin ?
Fortunately the disaster, when it occurred, took place in the evening, and no lives were lost. At seven o'clock there was a loud crackling noise, the girders bent, cracked, then crashed down one after another. The whole top of the Antheum fell in with a noise like the firing of cannon, and dissipated for ever this early-Victorian dream.
Twenty years later the rubbish of the Antheum was removed to allow the present beautiful Square to be erected, and in it another but less tragic incident occurred in 1912, when a spinster, outraged in her fin-de-siacle sense of the proprieties, brought an action against her next door neighbour, a bachelor, for sleeping on his balcony. The bachelor won his action, and future historians may remember with interest this early exponent of Nature Cure.
Mr. Clunn has some bitter words for the conservatism of Hove, whose Councillors refuse to vie with Brighton and other South Coast " resorts " in advertising their town. We confess our sympathies are entirely with them. In these days of cheap cars, the whole population of England can sort itself out according to its taste. There is room for Peacehaven, and even, we must suppose, for Bungalow Town near the delightful old port of Shoreham, since people elect to live in these places. But why should Angmering ape Littlehampton, Bournemouth be concerned with Brighton, or music disturb the meditations of retired Brigadier-Generals on the Brunswick Lawns ? There is room for everybody along our South Coast. In this age of iron, Shanks's mare can still give solitude to those who love it. Mr. Clunn tells us little of the open spaces, the thyme, the sea. His theme is the life of cities, the visits of kings, the building of hotels, the planning of promenades, and on these topics he speaks with authority.
Our " resorts " are certainly improving their amenities, and already their attractions compare favourably with the commercialized gaiety of the Riviera. But their greatest amenity is rarely advertised. No sea coast in the world ; not St. Raphael with its pines ; nor Santa Margherita in the spring, in its terraced glory of broom ; nor Miami in its tropical luxuriance ; nor the virginal waters of any Northern fjord, can compare with " our blunt, bow-headed, whale- backed Downs " : their beauty is a thing apart and the physical toll which they claim for their appreciation will always ensure that only those worthy of them shall see from their summits the " dim, blue goodness of the Weald."
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