[The Newcomes by William Makepeace Thackeray]@TWC D-Link bookThe Newcomes CHAPTER IX 3/29
Hark to the twanging horn! it is the early coach going out to London.
Your eye follows it, and rests on the pinnacles built by the beloved GEORGE.
See the worn-out London roue pacing the pier, inhaling the sea air, and casting furtive glances under the bonnets of the pretty girls who trot here before lessons! Mark the bilious lawyer, escaped for a day from Pump Court, and sniffing the fresh breezes before he goes back to breakfast and a bag full of briefs at the Albion! See that pretty string of prattling schoolgirls, from the chubby-cheeked, flaxen-headed little maiden just toddling by the side of the second teacher, to the arch damsel of fifteen, giggling and conscious of her beauty, whom Miss Griffin, the stern head-governess, awfully reproves! See Tomkins with a telescope and marine jacket; young Nathan and young Abrams, already bedizened in jewellery, and rivalling the sun in oriental splendour; yonder poor invalid crawling along in her chair; yonder jolly fat lady examining the Brighton pebbles (I actually once saw a lady buy one), and her children wondering at the sticking-plaister portraits with gold hair, and gold stocks, and prodigious high-heeled boots, miracles of art, and cheap at seven-and-sixpence! It is the fashion to run down George IV., but what myriads of Londoners ought to thank him for inventing Brighton! One of the best of physicians our city has ever known, is kind, cheerful, merry Doctor Brighton.
Hail, thou purveyor of shrimps and honest prescriber of Southdown mutton! There is no mutton so good as Brighton mutton; no flys so pleasant as Brighton flys; nor any cliff so pleasant to ride on; no shops so beautiful to look at as the Brighton gimcrack shops, and the fruit shops, and the market.
I fancy myself in Mrs.Honeyman's lodgings in Steyne Gardens, and in enjoyment of all these things. If the gracious reader has had losses in life, losses not so bad as to cause absolute want, or inflict upon him or her the bodily injury of starvation, let him confess that the evils of this poverty are by no means so great as his timorous fancy depicted.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|