The approach to the beach was down a cutting in the chalk cliff between grass banks, where there was a hand winch to wind the fishing boats well above the high-tide mark in stormy weather. Each perambulator had to be got down separately by two Nannies, the one behind straining on the handle to act as brake, the one in front walking backwards holding on to the folded hood in case the whole machine got out of control and plunged down the steep descent. Not till all three perambulators, one of ours and two from The Dene, were safely stowed on a little bit of level ground at the bottom were the younger children allowed to get out and stagger across the shingle to the place which the senior Nanny had chosen for the morning’s camp. Here rugs were spread and the most tremendous amount of dressing took place before we were allowed to paddle. In those days no one had thought of anything better than heavy blue serge for little girls to wear at the sea. Our cuffs were unbuttoned and turned up to the elbows, our skirts were gathered into a handful behind and twisted like a rope and rammed into our voluminous serge knickerbockers, which must have given us a curiously bunchy look, and we were allowed to take our shoes and stockings off and put sandshoes on. Then the legs of our knickerbockers were rolled up as high as they would go and with awful warnings against getting wet we were let loose with spades and buckets. What happened to the younger children I don’t remember. Certainly the Nannies wouldn’t have trusted them to us and equally they would never have spoilt their morning’s chat – ‘talking about Him and Her’ we used to call it – by escorting their young charges to the water. I can only suppose that the babies played with pebbles or banged their pails on the stones for sheer joy of the noise till some one stopped them.
If it was a lucky morning the tide was low so that we could dig in the wet sand and explore the rocks, and just on the turn so that we could bathe later on when the grownups came down; a great host of parents and friends and relations accompanied by the third contingent of cousins in perambulators from The Elms. They could not come earlier because they had a governess as well as a nurse and they are harder to get started.
And now everything was in train for bathing. That science had made but little progress since the days of Leech’s drawings of pretty ladies coming out of the canvas hoods of bathing machines and horrible old bathing women with bonnets, apparently walking about in the sea all fully dressed. On the beach above high-water mark was a row of bathing machines, little houses with pointed roofs and a door at each end with a flight of steps to let down. When the tide was right for bathing the boatmen used to push them down the shingly slope to the water’s edge and it was our great ambition to get into the machines and go down to the sea in triumph. Of all uncomfortable places for bathing Rottingdean was perhaps the worst. The sea there was of such paralysing coldness that you could only dash in, swim violently about, and dash out again. The beach was entirely composed of shingle except at the lowest of tides when a little sand appeared among the rocks. The chalk cliffs afflicted one with blindness by their glare on sunny days and though they sheltered one from the north wind when it happened to blow, they were no protection against the more usual south-west gale which flattened you against them and blew what sand there was into your face. There were many days when the sea was fringed with a line of seaweed and dirt through which you had to wade to open water. When the wind blew from the east, the late contents of your waste-paper basket drifted ashore from the rubbish tip further up the Channel. Yet in spite of all these drawbacks there was a glamour about the beach at Rottingdean that no discomfort could dispel.
I always shared a machine with Lily Ridsdale who could brave the stormiest seas and had me under her charge. Inside the little house it was deliciously snug. There was a seat along each side and a little window with a wooden shutter that one could pull across. I can still smell the damp seaweedy smell and feel the wet sandy floor under my bare feet. The machine was like a door into a different world. You had gone up a ladder from a beach full of friends, with boats and cliffs and everything safe; you emerged through the further door upon a waste of waters which were already lapping round the foot of your ladder. It needed some courage to make the first strokes in that cold tossing sea, but with Lily one was quite safe and could swim out to the end of the pier and back. How one kept afloat at all in the dresses one had to wear then I can’t imagine. My grandmother had brought me a particularly fashionable one from Paris. It was of heavy dark blue serge in two pieces. The knickerbocker part was very baggy and buttoned just above the knee; the tunic part had a very full skirt knee length, puffed sleeves, a high neck and enormous collar or cape embroidered with daisies. I don’t know why I wasn’t pulled down by the sheer weight to a fishy death, but it was the thing and one accepted it. On the shore my mother would sit, watch in hand, anxiously counting the minutes, and the moment our time was up she waved a white handkerchief and we had to come in.
And now came the most exciting part of the morning. Far above us on the cliff was a capstan from which long wire ropes, over which everybody tripped, hung down to the beach. A hook at the end of this rope was attached to the bathing machine and a donkey began to walk round and round the capstan hauling us up. It was delirious joy to feel the little house beginning to move, to hear first the swish of the waves against the side and then the scrunch of wheels on shingle as the donkey pursued his round and we went higher and higher up the beach. Then we were unhooked and a small, damp, dishevelled, sandy figure precipitated herself down the steps with her bundle. Those serge bathing dresses were beyond human power to wring out unaided and a very horny-handed old boatman, or sometimes Mr Trunky Thomas himself, who owned the machines, if he happened to be doing nothing particular on the beach at the moment, used to twist them into ropes and hang them out to dry. Then there were warm buns to eat while Nanny dried and brushed my hair.
By this time a little crowd was collecting on the pier and if my brother and I could find a suitable escort (for we were never allowed to do anything alone, possibly with reason), we had permission to join it. An uncle, or good-natured Julian Ridsdale, would volunteer to look after us and off we would go to see the arrival of the Daddy Long-legs. This was the most preposterous machine which came on railway lines through the sea from Brighton every day. Huge blocks of concrete had been laid in the sea with lines on them and along these rolled a kind of elevated platform with four immensely long legs ending in great boxes with wheels inside them. It was more like a vision of the Martians than anything you ought to see at a peaceful seaside village. We were never allowed to go in it, partly because no grown-up thought it amusing enough to go with us and partly because it had a habit of sticking somewhere opposite the ventilating shaft of the Brighton main sewer and not being moved till nightfall. When it had discharged its passengers at the pier it took on a fresh load and stalked back again to Brighton leaving us in gaping admiration.
Now the voices of the Nannies were heard summoning us to be packed up. The babies were stowed into their perambulators, the perambulators were pulled and pushed up the steep ascent and the phalanx returned up the village street. As we approached North End House we saw Ernest, the garden boy, come out with a bucket of water and a syringe. These were the well-known preparations for the peculiar Rottingdean methods of window-cleaning. It was rather disconcerting if you were sitting in the drawing-room window seat to have a syringe full of water suddenly battering the panes. Ernest and the housemaid frequently had ‘words’ on the subject of squirting the windows before she had got them properly shut. We should have loved to help, but Nanny wouldn’t hear of it, so we had to follow her in.
The bathing things were spread to dry on the warm brick path or on the sweetbriar hedge. The house and garden were very still under the noontide sun and the scent of the sweetbriar was in the air. A cock crowed from the stable-yard next door and a sheep bell sounded somewhere up on Windmill Hill. My baby sister was left asleep in the perambulator in the garden while my brother and I were sent upstairs to rest. We took off our beach things, pulled the whi
te honeycomb counterpanes off our beds and lay down. Then Nanny came up and drew the curtains. The room was luminous with sunlight penetrating the blue Morris chintz and I could quite well see my angel at the foot of my bed pulling away the curtain of darkness to let in the light, till at last I fell asleep.
For more information on Angela Thirkell,
visit the Angela Thirkell Society website at
www.angelathirkellsociety.com
About the Author
ANGELA THIRKELL (1890–1961), granddaughter of the pre-Raphaelite painter Sir Edward Burne-Jones, cousin of Rudyard Kipling and mother to novelist Colin MacInnes, was born in Kensington Square, London. A prolific author, she wrote over thirty novels in her lifetime, mostly set in Barsetshire.
Three Houses, a memoir of her childhood, was her first book and became an immediate success on its publication in 1931.
Copyright
Allison & Busby Limited
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First published in Great Britain in 1931.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2012.
Copyright © 1931 by ANGELA THIRKELL
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1234–2
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