We have an old walled town, rich in cool public wells of water, on the
top of a hill within and above the present business-town; and if it were
some hundreds of miles further from England, instead of being, on a clear
day, within sight of the grass growing in the crevices of the
chalk-cliffs of Dover, you would long ago have been bored to death about
that town. It is more picturesque and quaint than half the innocent
places which tourists, following their leader like sheep, have made
impostors of. To say nothing of its houses with grave courtyards, its
queer by-corners, and its many-windowed streets white and quiet in the
sunlight, there is an ancient belfry in it that would have been in all
the Annuals and Albums, going and gone, these hundred years if it had but
been more expensive to get at. Happily it has escaped so well, being
only in our French watering-place, that you may like it of your own
accord in a natural manner, without being required to go into convulsions
about it. We regard it as one of the later blessings of our life, that
BILKINS, the only authority on Taste, never took any notice that we can
find out, of our French watering-place. Bilkins never wrote about it,
never pointed out anything to be seen in it, never measured anything in
it, always left it alone. For which relief, Heaven bless the town and
the memory of the immortal Bilkins likewise!
There is a charming walk, arched and shaded by trees, on the old walls
that form the four sides of this High Town, whence you get glimpses of
the streets below, and changing views of the other town and of the river,
and of the hills and of the sea. It is made more agreeable and peculiar
by some of the solemn houses that are rooted in the deep streets below,
bursting into a fresher existence a-top, and having doors and windows,
and even gardens, on these ramparts. A child going in at the courtyard
gate of one of these houses, climbing up the many stairs, and coming out
at the fourth-floor window, might conceive himself another Jack,
alighting on enchanted ground from another bean-stalk. It is a place
wonderfully populous in children; English children, with governesses
reading novels as they walk down the shady lanes of trees, or nursemaids
interchanging gossip on the seats; French children with their smiling
bonnes in snow-white caps, and themselves—if little boys—in straw
head-gear like bee-hives, work-baskets and church hassocks. Three years
ago, there were three weazen old men, one bearing a frayed red ribbon in
his threadbare button-hole, always to be found walking together among
these children, before dinner-time. If they walked for an appetite, they
doubtless lived en pension—were contracted for—otherwise their poverty
would have made it a rash action. They were stooping, blear-eyed, dull
old men, slip-shod and shabby, in long-skirted short-waisted coats and
meagre trousers, and yet with a ghost of gentility hovering in their
company.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account