ROUND THE WORLD PAPERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 11783, 12 October 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

ROUND THE WORLD PAPERS.

No. XIII.

[BY the REV. J. BERRY.]

LONDON AT THE SEASIDEBRIGHTON. Oxf, difference I note between the Eng'and of the present and the past is the universal practice of taking summer holidays. This is one among the many evidences of the increase in physical comfort, the result of the greater prosperity of the middle and working classes. So when in Augu.-t ttie aristocrats fly away to the country and the Continent the shopkeepers, clerks, etc , make for the seaside. The great manufacturing towns each take a week's holiday in turn. The mills are silent by common consent, and the tall chimneys cease to empty their black smoke into the air. Even Lancashire has then a week of blue sky. The English town population betakes itself to the seashore. When Yorkshire folk crowd Harrogate and Scarborough until the humblest beds are at a premium, and Lancashire spinners flock to their favourite Blackpool or Southport, middle-class Londoners find their way to their south const, and, of these resorts, Brighton is still the most popular. Not that Brighton is visited by the middle classes onlythe huge and costly hotels here, that are possible only to the rich, show that. But society comes here in layers by recognised though unwritten laws. Poorer folk have their innings from Whitsuntide to August. From September to the end of the year Brighton is the haunt of swells. How many visitors this town receives in the course of the year I dare not guess. The resident population of Brighton and Hove, which adjoins, is 150.000. Additional visitors to the extent of 50,000 more are easily accommodatedthe more the merrier. TIPS.

Tfc has often been on the point of my pencil to write of the extent to which tipping has grown, and I may as well mention it here. To get from the cab at the Victoria Station to the Brighton train I had to tip three separate port One took our luggage from the cab to the luggage-room, "while we got refreshment at the station and waited for the train ; another took our baggage from the luggage-room to the train ; and a third labelled the luggage. Each man would do the one thing only, and each must have his tip. No. 3 would not put the labels on the luggage at the request of No. 2. He kept us waiting there and pretended not to hear. I soon guessed the reason. He waited for me to ask, and to tip him. There was a fourth tip during this little interval of an hour—to "the waiter at the restaurant. I have seen three good tips dropped into the hand of a porter in less than five minutes. This practice has its good side, like almost everything else. It makes the waiter or the porter eager to serve you, when he might he indolent or disobliging, and the crowds are so great, a.nd these big stations with their many platforms are so bewildering, that you are entirely at the mercy of. these men, so the tip is the easiest, if not the only, way out of the difficulty. So the colonial* who is unaccustomed to this sort of tiling quickly acquires the habit. He soon learns to recognise the peculiar expectant look, the way in which the hand is in readiness to receive, and the cold disdain which almost makes him feel ill if the tip is not considered sufficient. A smart railway porter draws a much larger income here than a guard or an engine-driver, into whose hands the lives of tens of thousands are entrusted. The handling of baggage is better paid than the handling of bodies! -Well, BRIGHTON

is a most interesting place to visit, though it is not much patronised by Australians. I Lave not met one during the fortnight that I have been here. Prom the east to the western end the promenade is about three miles long. The English Channel here is less interesting than might be expected, as the ocean-going steamers and vessels are beyond the range of vision. But no one who has been on this promenade can ever forget it. The two great piers are respectfully 1100 ft and 1700 ft long, and are brilliantly lighted with electricity at night. Each of them will hold many thousands of people. On them are shops, concert-rooms, handstands, penny-in-the-slot side shows, refreshment-rooms, and attractions enough to keep a young man and his sweetheart amused for hours, with sea breezes thrown in. On the shore, besides the usual bath- ■ ing vans and donkeys, there are wide asphalted walks, with seats everywhere (for the use of which you must pay a penny). Between, these and the highway there is a, broad, well-kept lawn, fringed with flowers. There is nothing of the kind in Europe more brilliant than this lawn at what is called Church Parade. It is " the tiling" here, after church, to walk on this green grass, Prayer-book in hand, dressed in gay attire. It would need a lady to describe the brilliant costumes, the fine figures, and the many-coloured parasols which beautify the scene. To me, the buildings facing the sea are even more interesting. There are long rows of houses, with stately Corinthian columns in front, the best examples I know of the best house architecture in England 100 years ago. Among these are plainer buildings, with semi-circular bow windows from basement to cornice. Then there are shops, of course, and great costly modern (hotelsiless sumptuous perhaps than the best American hotels, but as good as can be done on this side of the Atlantic. As to the shops, jewellers predominate. I never saw so many of these in proportion to others. The reason is, as I suppose, that people travel in a liberal and amiable, frame of mind, and with their money loosely held. Yet is not jewellery the one thing which people should buy at home, where they know the seller, and are least likely to be imposed upon? I must say a word about the bathchairs here, with, the chairmen. There are hundreds of them moving on the promenade with slow dignity. If anyone wants to form an idea, how many people in England are " gone in the legs" he should come here. An

ELECTRIC SEA CAR is one of the sights of Brighton that can be seen nowhere else. I have travelled on so many different kinds of electric cars during recent months that I felt I must see this. Lines of rail are laid under the sea from Brighton to Rottingdean, where Bume-Jones lies buried and where Kipling lives. About 30ft above the sea is an overhead electric wire on poles like telegraph poles. The car rests on four legs, like a huge billiard-table, and under these legs are 16 wheels which run on the lines of rail. The car has two storeys, and carries 150 passengers. Two long arms, each with a wheel at the end, connect the car with the electric wire. There is, of course, a motor on board. The bell rings, and the curious thing begins to move at the rate of about three* miles an hour. It is the funniest thing in the way of travel you ever saw. The lower floor of the car is about 10ft above sea loVel, so these Brighton trippers can travel on the sea without the need of steward or,basin. But what a cumbersome contrivance!! I took the trip for the benefit of my readers, in order that I might describe it, but as a traveller, just off one of the finest Atlantic liners, I felt strangely out of place. I went to see this thing with the idea that there might be in it the germ of a possible new method of ocean travel. Ido not think so now.

Brighton has interesting associations with the past. It was here that the Rev. F. W. Robertson exercised his marvellous ministry. He preached in a plain and not verylarge church, built on the corners of two busy streets in the old part of the city. A simple marble slab on the wall outside records the fact, but though I visited the church two or three times to try and get a sight of the pulpit in which he stood it was "always locked, and I was unable to gain admission. Robertson was only 38 when he died, and at the time of his death was hardly known outside Brighton, yet his sermons are still the pulpit masterpieces of the nineteenth, century. Henry, Fawcety, the blind.

Postmaster-General—probably the best that England ever had—was M.P. for Brighton. But the one place which links the Brighton of to-day most notably with the past is THE ROYAL PAVILION.

It was built and designed by George the Fourth as a Royal residence, and it anything could add to the contempt which all Englishmen feel for the odious memory of this monarch a visit to this pavilion will surely do it. More than a. million of money was lavished upon its erection. Its architecture externally is. if anything, Hindoo. The costly columns on the outside are like turned chair spindles, and its much more costly domes are like turnips, big and little, put in two, with their pointed ends upward. The rooms within are painted and decorated in a marvellous way, the decorations being after the manner of the Chinese. Yet no cost was spared. The chandeliers are especially striking. One of these is 30ft in height. 12ft in diameter, and weighs more than a ton. It is suspended by chains of gold from the centre of a large and brilliant star, a belt of diamonds, rubies, pearls, and garnets encircling its base. Around the base crouch six winged dragons, each holding in its upturned month a. water-lily. And so on. To what a condition were architecture and art in danger of sinking in England when the King spent public "money in degrading both? I could feel no pleasure in visiting these gorgeous rooms. I seemed to see the bad men and worse women with whom the silly monarch fooled away his time, and his people's hard-earned money in the scenes of revel held there. I was thankful that Queen Victoria, early in her reign, abandoned the place. It was bought by the city authorities for less than a twentieth of its cost, and is now used as a museum and show place. The stables belinging to the pavilion are now the " Dome" in which so many ecclesiastical and other meetings are held.