Very busy fortnight at the daytime job, so I haven’t done much new writing. But alpha-reader has just returned the MS with notes, so that’s a kick in the [deleted] to get moving again.
Today, I’ve been rereading my research notes, trying to catch the cadences of newspapers of the time. I wanted to quote some real lines—they’re strong and often funny and luckily out of copyright—but I forgot how convoluted the sentences are, and how wacky-looking the punctuation. In honor of the start of the vacation season, here’s a newspaper description of a seaside resort town circa 1815:
How very different is a watering-place from the rest of the world! In a commercial town every face you meet, carries the word “business,” everyone seems so absorbed in his own cares, as not even to be conscious of the existence of his fellow men. Life seems to have an object, you involuntarily quicken your pace, cast your eyes straight forward, and enumerate to yourself the several matters you have to transact. There is nothing of all this at a Watering-Place, there you find the inhabitants divided into two classes, gapers, and smilers. By the gapers must be understood, those who are here to spend their money, and be amused; and, by the smilers, those who are here to gain their money, and be maintained.
Now the employment of the gapers is to lie in bed all the fore part of the day, “the dewy hour of prime,” to wear a great coat, brown hat, brown shoes, bathe and ride half a mile on a donkey, with a boy behind to whip it, read the newspapers during the middle of the day, and in the evening to dine, to go to a promenade in a ball-room, where during nine-tenths of the time everyone sits still; or, to the theatre, where the pure air, and pure light of heaven are shut out, to make room for otto of roses and Argand lamps. Thus the amusements of the citizen are scarcely varied by his journey…
(from Ashton, SOCIAL ENGLAND UNDER THE REGENCY pp. 255-6)
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