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Certain Personal Matters - Of the Art of Staying at the Seaside · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter twenty nine of Certain Personal Matters. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: Recording by Graham Scott, Cheltenham, England, Certain Personal Matters by H. G.
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  Speaker 1: Wells on the art of staying at the seaside a
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  Speaker 1: meditation at Eastbourne. To stay at the seaside properly, one
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  Speaker 1: should not think. But even in staying at the seaside,
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  Speaker 1: there are intervals, waking moments when meals come, even if
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  Speaker 1: there are no appointed meal times. Moreover, now and then
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  Speaker 1: one must go to buy tobacco, a matter one can
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  Speaker 1: trust to no hireling, lest you get it dry. It
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  Speaker 1: cannot be always seaside, even as it cannot be always
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  Speaker 1: may and through the GAP's thought creeps in going over
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  Speaker 1: the cliff and along the parade, and down by the
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  Speaker 1: circulating library to the cigar divan, where they sell periq tobacco.
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  Speaker 1: The swinging of one's legs seems to act like a
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  Speaker 1: pendulum to the clockwork of one's brain. One meditates all
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  Speaker 1: the way, and chiefly on how few people there are
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  Speaker 1: who can really to a critical adept be said to
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  Speaker 1: stay at the seaside. People seem to think that one
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  Speaker 1: can take a ticket to Eastbourne or Bogner or Ventna
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  Speaker 1: and come and stay at the seaside straight away, Just
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  Speaker 1: as I have known new hatched undergraduates tell people they
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  Speaker 1: were going to play billiards. Thousands and thousands of people
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  Speaker 1: think they have stayed at the seaside and have not,
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  Speaker 1: just as thousands of people erroneously imagine they have played whist.
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  Speaker 1: For the latter have played not whist but bumble puppy,
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  Speaker 1: and the former have only frequented a watering place for
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  Speaker 1: a time your truce. Staying at the sea side is
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  Speaker 1: an art demanding not only railway fairs, but special aptitude
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  Speaker 1: and moreover, needing culture. Like all worthy arts, the most
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  Speaker 1: insurmountable difficulty of the beginner is the classical simplicity of
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  Speaker 1: the whole thing. To stay at the seaside properly, you
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  Speaker 1: just spread yourself out on the extreme edge of the
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  Speaker 1: land and let the sunlight soak in. Your eyes are
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  Speaker 1: fixed upon the horizon. Some have it that your head
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  Speaker 1: should be towards the sea, but the best authorities think
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  Speaker 1: that this determines blood to that region, and so stimulates thought.
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  Speaker 1: This is all the positive instruction. The rest is prohibition.
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  Speaker 1: You must not think, and you must not move. Neither
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  Speaker 1: may you go to sleep. In a few minutes, the
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  Speaker 1: adept becomes as a god, even as a god that
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  Speaker 1: sits upon the lotus leaf. New light and color come
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  Speaker 1: into the sky and sea, and the surges chant his praises.
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  Speaker 1: But those who are not of the elect get pins
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  Speaker 1: and needles all over them. It must be freely admitted
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  Speaker 1: that staying at the seaside such as this, staying at
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  Speaker 1: the seaside in its perfection, is a thing for a
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  Speaker 1: select few. You want a broad stretch of beach and
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  Speaker 1: all the visible sea to yourself. You cannot be disturbed
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  Speaker 1: by even the most idyllic children trying to bury you
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  Speaker 1: with sand and such like playfulness, nor by boat loads
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  Speaker 1: of the democracy rowing athwart your sea and sky. And
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  Speaker 1: the absence of friend or wife goes without saying. I
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  Speaker 1: notice down here a very considerable quantity of evidently married pairs,
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  Speaker 1: and the huge majority of the rest of the visitors
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  Speaker 1: run in couples, and utter all appearances engaged. If they
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  Speaker 1: are not, I would submit that they ought to be.
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  Speaker 1: Probably there is a certain satisfaction in sitting by the
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  Speaker 1: sea with the girl you are in love with, or
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  Speaker 1: your wife, for the matter. With that, just as many
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  Speaker 1: people undoubtedly find tea with milk and sugar very nice.
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  Speaker 1: But the former is no more the way to get
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  Speaker 1: the fall and perfect pleasure of staying at the seaside
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  Speaker 1: than the latter is the way to get the full
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  Speaker 1: and perfect flavor of the tea. True staying at the
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  Speaker 1: seaside is neither the repetition of old conversations in new surroundings,
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  Speaker 1: nor the exposure of one's affections to ozone. It is
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  Speaker 1: something infinitely higher. It is pure quiescence. It is the
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  Speaker 1: experience of a waking inanition, savoring of Buddha and the divine. Now.
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  Speaker 1: Staying at the seaside is so rarely done well because
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  Speaker 1: of the littleness of man. To do it properly needs
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  Speaker 1: many of the elements of greatness. Your common man, while
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  Speaker 1: he has life in him, can let neither himself nor
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  Speaker 1: the universe alone. He must be asserting himself in some way,
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  Speaker 1: even if it is only by flinging pebbles at a stick.
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  Speaker 1: That self forgetfulness, which should be a delight, is a
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  Speaker 1: terror to him. He brings dogs down to the beach
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  Speaker 1: to stand between him and the calm of nature, and yelp.
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  Speaker 1: He does worse than that the meditative man, going daily
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  Speaker 1: over by the cliff and along the parade to get
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  Speaker 1: his ounce of tobacco. As a sad spectacle of what
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  Speaker 1: human beings may be driven to. In this way, one
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  Speaker 1: sees altogether some hundreds of people there who have heard,
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  Speaker 1: perhaps that staying at the seaside is good, and who
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  Speaker 1: have anyhow got thus far towards it and stopped. They
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  Speaker 1: have not the faintest idea how to make themselves happy.
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  Speaker 1: The general expression is veiled curiosity. They sit mostly with
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  Speaker 1: their backs to the sea, talking poorly of indifferent topics,
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  Speaker 1: and watching one another. Most obviously they want hints of
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  Speaker 1: what to do with themselves. Behind them is a bank
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  Speaker 1: of flowers like those in Battersea Park, and another parallel parade,
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  Speaker 1: and beyond a bathing machines. The peer completely cuts the horizon.
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  Speaker 1: Out of the background, there is a stout lady in
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  Speaker 1: dark blue bathing. The only glances directed seaward are furtive
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  Speaker 1: ones at her. Many seem to be doubting whether this
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  Speaker 1: is not what they came down for Others lean dubiously
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  Speaker 1: to the invitations of the boatmen. Others again listen to
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  Speaker 1: vocalists and dramatic outcasts, who, for hapns render obvious the
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  Speaker 1: reason of their professional degradation. It seems eccentric to travel
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  Speaker 1: seventy or eighty miles to hear a man without a
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  Speaker 1: voice demonstrate that he is unfit to have one, But
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  Speaker 1: they do. Any One curious in these matters need only
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  Speaker 1: go to a watering place to see, and what is
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  Speaker 1: worse to hear for himself. After an excursion train to Eastbourne,
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  Speaker 1: upwards of a thousand people have been seen thus heaped
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  Speaker 1: together over an oblong space of a mile long by
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  Speaker 1: twenty yards wide. Only three miles away there was a
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  Speaker 1: towering white cliff overhanging a practically deserted beach, and one
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  Speaker 1: sea gull circled above one solitary, motionless soupine man really
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  Speaker 1: staying at the sea side. You cannot walk six miles
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  Speaker 1: anywhere along the South coast without coming upon one of
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  Speaker 1: these heaps of people called a water place. There will
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  Speaker 1: be a town of houses behind, wherein the people lodge
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  Speaker 1: until as they think they have stayed a sufficient time
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  Speaker 1: at the sea, and they return hot cross and mystified
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  Speaker 1: to London. The seafront will be bricked or paved for
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  Speaker 1: a mile or so, and there will be rows of
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  Speaker 1: boats and bathing machines and other contrivances to screen off
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  Speaker 1: the view of the sea. And as we have indicated,
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  Speaker 1: watering places and staying by the seaside are incompatible things.
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  Speaker 1: The true stayer by the seaside goes into the watering
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  Speaker 1: place because he must, because there is little food, and
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  Speaker 1: that uncooked, and no tobacco between the cliffs and the sea.
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  Speaker 1: Having purchased what he needs, he flees forth again. What
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  Speaker 1: time the whole selvage of England becomes watering place, there
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  Speaker 1: will be no more staying by the seaside at all
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  Speaker 1: in the land. But this is a gloomy train of
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  Speaker 1: thought that we will not pursue. There have been those
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  Speaker 1: who assert that one end of staying at the seaside
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  Speaker 1: is bathing, But it is easy to show that this
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  Speaker 1: is not so. Your proper bathing place is up the river,
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  Speaker 1: where the trees bend to the green and brown shadows
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  Speaker 1: of the water. There the bath is sweet, fresh out
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  Speaker 1: of the sky, or but just filtered through the blue
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  Speaker 1: hills of the distant watershed, and it is set about
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  Speaker 1: with flowers. But the sea, the sea has stood there
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  Speaker 1: since the beginning of things, and with small prospect of change,
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  Speaker 1: says mister Kipling, to all eternity. The water in the sea,
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  Speaker 1: geologists tell us, has not been changed for fifty million years.
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  Speaker 1: The same chemist who sets me against all my food
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  Speaker 1: with his chemical names, speaks of the sea as a
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  Speaker 1: weak solution of drowned men. Be that as it may,
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  Speaker 1: it leaves the skin harsh with salt and the hair sticky. Moreover,
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  Speaker 1: it is such a promiscuous bathing place. However, we need
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  Speaker 1: scarcely deprecate the sea as a bath, for what need
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  Speaker 1: is there of that, when the river is clearly better.
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  Speaker 1: No one can deny that the river is better. People
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  Speaker 1: who bathe in the sea bathe by mistake, because they
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  Speaker 1: have come to the side of the sea and know
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  Speaker 1: not how else to use it. So too, with the boating.
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  Speaker 1: It is hard to imagine how human beings who have
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  Speaker 1: drifted down streams and watched the brown fish in the shallows,
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  Speaker 1: and peered through the tall sedges at the forget me nots,
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  Speaker 1: and fought with the ropes of the water lilies, and
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  Speaker 1: heard the ripple under the boughs, can ever think of
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  Speaker 1: going to and fro pitching spasmodically in front of a
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  Speaker 1: watering place. And as for fishing, they catch fish at sea, indeed,
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  Speaker 1: but it is not fishing at all. Neither rods nor
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  Speaker 1: flies have they, And there is an end to that matter.
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  Speaker 1: An Eastbourne meditative man, returning to where he stays with
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  Speaker 1: his daily ounce of tobacco already a fire, sees in
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  Speaker 1: the streets what are called by the natives cheery bangs,
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  Speaker 1: crowded with people, and further cabriolets and such vehicles holding
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  Speaker 1: parties and families. The good folks are driving away from
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  Speaker 1: the sea for the better part of the day, going
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  Speaker 1: to battle and other places inland. The puzzle of what
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  Speaker 1: to do with their sea is too much for them,
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  Speaker 1: and they are going away for a little to rest
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  Speaker 1: their minds. Regarded as a center of drives, one might
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  Speaker 1: think an inland place would be preferable to a seaside town,
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  Speaker 1: which at best commands but a half circle. However that
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  Speaker 1: may be, the fact remains that one of the chief
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  Speaker 1: occupations of your common visitor to the seaside is going
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  Speaker 1: away from it. Than this fact, there can be nothing
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  Speaker 1: more conclusive in support of my argument that ordinary people
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  Speaker 1: are absolutely ignorant and incapable of staying by the seaside.
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  Speaker 1: End of Chapter twenty nine,