Commonplace 90 George & The East Sussex Coast PART ONE Brighton.
"It was a blazing hot day in August. Baker Street was like an oven, and the glare of the
sunshine upon the yellow brickwork of the house across the road was painful to the eye...
Parliament had risen. Everybody was out of town, and I yearned for the glades of the New Forest or the shingle of Southsea. A depleted bank account had caused me to postpone my holiday ..."
["The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" (1893)] click to read the story.
(Dr) Arthur Conan Doyle put these words into the mouth of Dr John Watson, Sherlock Holmes' sidekick. Doyle had been a GP in Southsea when he wrote the first Sherlock Holmes story, A Study in Scarlet, published in 1887. The beaches in Southsea are mainly pebbles - part of the Bagshot Beds geological formation click - or 'shingle', if you want to be kind to the tourist trade.
George never made it to Southsea, but he did confuse it with Southampton, just up the coast, when he asked his brother, Algernon, if his intended wife-to-be came from Southsea or Southampton (it was the latter). Ida Starr from The Unclassed would have taken the Isle of Wight ferry from the more commercial, less sea-sidey bit of the island (Southsea is part of the island of Portsmouth).
In September 1886, George took a train trip down to the Sussex resort of Brighton. According to Pierre Coustillas in the first of his three-part biography:
... it was an odd choice as he detested the town with its crowds of lower-class twanging cockneys (sic). Odd choice indeed - if you believe George was stumbling like a dingbat into a world he could never have anticipated. Was he ever a stumbling dingbat? Of course not.
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George Herriman's E. Pluribus Dingbat,
head of the Dingbat Family. |
Brighton is just 70 miles from the capital. In the days when rail ruled, it was a shortish hop down the London, Brighton and South Coast Line from London Bridge Station (situated very close to Lambeth in south London). George had lived in London for seven years - had it never crossed his mind before to go to Brighton? The man who made no secret of how much he liked coastal locations and fresh air would surely not have ignored the nation's most famous seaside resort.
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| London Bridge Station c 1850 |
He could have gone anywhere 'select' - into Kent and to Broadstairs, to follow in Dickens' footsteps; Margate, to follow in Turner's... but he chose Sussex and Brighton. As the whole south coast was liable to a summertime invasion of day tripping and longer-term tourists, and as Londoners (including 'Cockneys'!) lived close enough up along the railway track to make the trip a possibility, then George was barking up the wrong tree if he wanted to avoid anyone with the wrong accent. It cannot have come as a shock that the most celebrated seaside town was chock-a-block full of Demos.
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| Brighton 1916 |
One 27th September 1886, George wrote to his sister, Madge:
I am just back from the Sussex coast, whither I was driven last Thursday by sheer break-down.
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| Brighton Pierrots by Walter Sickert 1915 |
As there is a break in the collected correspondence (the previous entry is August 20th), can we assume the
break-down was caused by the lack of whatever he got from the proximity of the Gaussens who were away for the summer in their country residence in Lechdale? (It certainly wasn't overwork.) Might it have been the spectre of sexual frustration that drove him to the fleshpots of the south coast? It would make sense for a man in pursuit of sexual gratification to not soil his own back yard - 70 miles seems a reasonable distance to travel to satisfy a need.
He went on:
I went to Brighton, but found the place impossible, a more hideous & vulgar sea-side town the mind of man has not conceived. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks click. He spent one night in Brighton - but he could have got the train straight away the moment he stepped out of the railway station to anywhere - saw how busy it was, how common, and turned on his heels and bought a ticket to east or western destinations. But a night in Brighton was what he chose.
He goes on:
So on Friday morning I walked along the eastward, - through Rottingdean, Newhaven, Seaford, to Eastbourne. And here at length was rest. Surely there is no more beautiful watering place. It is handsomely built, with broad, clean streets, almost all of them avenued with fine, thick chestnuts. I could not discover a dirty thoroughfare, & saw no single blackguard, - yet there is a population of twenty-thousand or so.... It is clear Eastbourne in future will be my health-resort. Return fare from London is only 7/6d. & I find very decent lodgings. It is worth pointing out George was paying 15/- weekly alimony to his estranged wife Marianne aka Nell for her entire maintenance. Talk about priorities.
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| The Royal Pavilion at Brighton |
Thanks to the Prince Regent's appreciation of the healthful benefits of its natural mineral waters (and the fact it was within easy reach of the capital), Brighton became famous for its zestful fresh air and possibility of healthy activities. It then evolved into a more egalitarian and bohemian watering hole, with a colourful night-life and a reputation for sin.
When George visited, he knew full-well what was on the menu in the Lanes come twilight. More than any other place in England, Brighton was/is seen as the personification of the ideal destination for a 'dirty weekend'. For anyone not familiar with this concept, then look and learn here
click. It would not be nonsense to suggest George - occasionally with Morley Roberts in tow - sought out sexual release in the town (now a city) famed for its legendary sex trade. Brighton was known as 'Piccadilly on Sea' - Piccadilly Circus in London being then, as now, a place where prostitutes hang out selling their wares - and where the lovely Rupert Everett once plied a modest trade as a rent boy
click. The fact that George claims to find it less than salubrious is probably a smokescreen to confuse his real opinion and his interest in the town. He could hardly talk to his sister about what he really got up to there! George was not going to wallow in his sin - he was too suppressed for that - guilt-ridden forbidden fruit had to be a cast-iron secret. Dirty George Gissing could only come out to play in the anonymity of Brighton's Nether World. Or Nethers haha
When he had sucked Brighton dry of its stimulation (or, as in the biography above mentioned:
Driven away by the vulgarity of the place), he moved on to Eastbourne - the very opposite of Brighton. George liked this more select sort of place so much, he suggested to his Wakefield family that a move to Eastbourne would be the best bet for them all, and would solve everyone's problems. And with Brighton within walking distance (if you like 25 mile walks across windy chalk coastal uplands), he could set off for healthy sessions of physical activity without arousing suspicion, and return from a weekend of tramping the Downs and not have to explain his lack of energy.
And, before we go... that return railway ticket he probably bought for his trip to Brighton - would he have paid for an Eastbourne-London single to make his way home, or did he return to Brighton to board the London train and use the ticket he had already paid for? Might have needed to spend another night there. George, ever the man of mystery.
JOIN ME IN PART TWO FOR THE DELIGHTS OF EASTBOURNE!
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