But it was not this practical-joking Prince who first discovered Brighton. It would never have attained its great vogue without him, but it would have been the health resort of a certain circle of fashion—an inferior Bath, in fact. To Dr. Richard Russell—the name sometimes spelt with one “l”—who visited the little village of Brighthelmstone in 1750, belongs the credit of discovering the place to an ailing fashionable world. He died in 1759, long ere the sun of royal splendour first rose upon the fishing-village; but even before the Prince of Wales first visited Brighthelmstone in 1782, it had attained a certain popularity, as the “Brighthelmstone Guide” of July, 1777, attests, in these halting verses:
And so on. THE CLIFFS, BRIGHTHELMSTONE, 1789. DR. RICHARD RUSSELL. GUIDES TO BRIGHTON Brighthelmstone, indeed, has had more Guides written upon it than even Bath has had, and very curious some of them are become in these days. They range from lively to severe, from grave to gay, from the serious screeds of Russell and Dr. Relhan, his successor, to the light and airy, and not too admirable But the man is not known who has unassailable proofs to show of this Brighthelm’s having so honoured the fisher-folk’s hovels with his name. Thackeray, greatly daring, considering that the Fourth George is the real patron—saint, we can hardly say; let us make it king—of the town, elected to deliver his lectures upon the “Four Georges” at Brighton, among other places, and to that end made, with monumental assurance, a personal application at the Town Hall for the hire of the banqueting-room in the Royal Pavilion. But one of the Aldermen, who chanced to be present, suggested, with extra-aldermanic wit, that the Town Hall would be equally suitable, intimating at the same time that it was not considered as strictly etiquette to “abuse a man in his own house.” The witty Alderman’s suggestion, we are told, was acted upon, and the Town Hall engaged forthwith. It argued considerable courage on the lecturer’s part to declaim against George the Fourth anywhere in that town which His Majesty had, by his example, conjured up from almost nothingness. It does not seem that Thackeray was, after all, ill received at Brighton; whence thoughts arise as to the ingratitude and fleeting memories of them that were either in the first or second generation, advantaged by the royal preference for this bleak stretch of shore beneath the The bronze statue presides to-day over a cab-rank, and the sea-salt breezes have strongly oxidised the face to an arsenical green; insulting, because greenness was not a distinguishing trait in the character of George the Fourth. LAST OF THE REGENCY. The surrounding space is saturated with memories of the Regency; but the roysterers are all gone and the recollection of them is dim. Prince and King, the Barrymores—Hellgate, Newgate, and Cripplegate—brothers three; Mrs. Fitzherbert, “the only woman whom George the Fourth ever really loved,” and whom he married; Sir John Lade, the reckless, the frolicsome, historic in so far that he was the first who publicly wore trousers: these, with others innumerable, are long since silent. No more are they heard who with unseemly revelry affronted the midnight moon, or upset the decrepit watchman in his box. Those days and nights are done, nor are they likely to be revived while the Brighton policemen remain so big and muscular. With the death of George the Fourth the play was played out. William the Fourth occasionally patronised Brighton, but decorum then obtained, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert not only disliked the memory of the last of the Georges, but could not find at the Pavilion the privacy they desired. The Queen therefore sold it to the then Commissioners of |