The Downs and the sea are the redeeming features of Brighton

The Downs and the sea are the redeeming features of Brighton

The Downs and the sea are the redeeming features of Brighton, considered as a place of change and recreation for the over-worked of London. Without these advantages one might quite as well migrate from the City to Regent Street, varying the exercise by a stroll along the Serpentine. To a man who needs rest there is something at first sight truly frightful in the townish gregariousness of Brighton proper, with its pretentious common-place architecture, and its ceaseless bustle and rolling of wheels. But then comes into view first the sea, stretching away into infinite silence and solitude, dotted over on sunny days with pleasure-boats; and next, perpetually dashing along the league of sea-borded highway, group after group of gay riding-parties of all ages and both sexes Spanish hats, feathers, and riding-habits amazones, according to the French classic title, in the majority. First comes Papa Briggs, with all his progeny, down to the little bare-legged imitation Highlander on a shaggy Shetland pony; then a riding-master in mustachios, boots, and breeches, with a dozen pupils in divers stages of timidity and full-blown temerity; and then again loving pairs in the process of courtship or the ecstasies of the honeymoon, pacing or racing along, indifferent to the interest and admiration that such pairs always excite. Besides the groups there are single figures, military and civil, on prancing thorough-bred hacks and solid weight-carrying cobs, contrasted with a great army of hard-worked animals, at half-a-crown an hour which compose the bulk of the Brighton cavalry, for horse-hiring at Brighton is the rule, private possession the exception; nowhere else, except, perhaps, at Oxford, is the custom so universal, and nowhere do such odd, strange people venture to exhibit themselves a-horseback. As Dublin is said to be the car-drivingest, so is Brighton the horse-ridingest city in creation; and it is this most healthy, mental and physical exercise, with the summer-sea yacht excursions, which constitute the difference and establishes the superiority of this marine offshoot of London over any foreign bathing-place. Under French auspices we should have had something infinitely more magnificent, gay, gilded, and luxurious in architecture, in shops, in restaurants, cafés, theatres, and ball-rooms; but pleasure-boat sails would have been utterly unknown, and the horse-exercise confined to a few daring cavaliers and theatrical ladies.

Fonte: Tamming Horses