In the last decade of the eighteenth century, the king was prescribed sea bathing to guard against a relapse of his madness.
Weymouth was chosen, since it was already the site of a lodge belonging to his brother,
Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester (
1743–1805).
The town was thus assured a place among the most fashionable seaside resorts, along witih
Brighton, which was favored by the Prince Regent.
According to an
1815 guidebook to spas and resorts, whereas
Weymouth was once “small and meanly built”, it had become “within the last twenty or thirty years”—that is,
since the advent of royal residence—a city of “rapid enlargements, and many elegant buildings, . . a very respectable place”.
The guidebook notes that royal patronage persisted with the residence of
Charlotte, the popular Princess of Wales (
1796–1817),
who spent a summer at Gloucester Lodge and had promised to return. (Instead, by the time of
John Jamesʼs visit to Weymouth,
Charlotte was mourned by the nation.) According to historical statistical measures of elite status among seaside resorts,
Weymouth did continue to rank high and grow fast in the first third of the century
(
Feltham, Guide to All the Watering and Sea‐Bathing Places, 490–91;
Walton, The English Seaside Resort, 12, 77–78).
Weymouthʼs royal associations would have appealed to
John James,
just as his mother,
Catherine Tweddale Ruskin (
1763–1817), was reconciled
to living for a time in the comparatively “shabby” seacoast town of
Dysart by the prospect of “a number of Gentlemans seats close beside it,
and a variety of beautifull walks—besides the
sea which to me is a most delightful Object”
(
Catherine Ruskin to John James Ruskin, 25 October 1808, in
Burd, ed., Ruskin Family Letters, 26).
John James would have been reassured by
Weymouthʼs marketing of respectability, as suggested
by the guidebookʼs invoking of
Princess Charlotte—a code meant, perhaps, to disassociate
Weymouth
from the moral stigma that clung to
Brighton owing to its connection with
Charlotteʼs prodigal father,
George IV.
Nonetheless,
Weymouthʼs fashionableness may have seemed a cut above the Ruskinsʼ status; and in any case,
the southern coastal resorts may have required too lengthy a journey for a short summer holiday.
It is telling that, for their first visit to a resort as a family, the Ruskins chose
Sandgate,
a comparatively small, modest, and even unnoticed place. As late as the decades around the turn of the twentieth century,
Sandgate ranked only one hundreth in population among the nationʼs resorts (
Walton, The English Seaside Resort, 65).
The holiday in
Sandgate must have occurred in summer
1821, since
Margaret reflected on the excursion in
January 1822.
She looked back on it fondly, framing the visit in terms of homeliness: “I hope . . . we shall be permitted to enjoy our home and english comforts
[in the coming months] and if we are to travel it may only be on such journey as our Sandgate one”.
Even
John at age three considered
Sandgate as the standard for what was “fine and . . . beautiful”, comparing its pleasures
favorably to the stone rolling and stick gathering to be had on
Duppas Hill in
Croydon
(
Margaret to John James Ruskin, 30 January 1822,
Ruskin Family Letters, 107, 108).
At about the time of their visit,
Sandgate, according to the
Guide to All the Watering and Sea‐Bathing Places,
was “a very pretty village”, which had “suddenly and deservedly started into notice as a watering place”.
It could boast “neither a ball nor assembly room” like nearby
Dover,
Folkestone, or
Hythe, but for the Ruskins
the point probably was that “the lovers of dancing” would gravitate to those resorts, leaving the family to quiet walks on the cliffs,
commanding a prospect of the French coast; to exploring an Elizabethan castle, its fortress “lately . . . converted into a martello tower”,
a reminder of the contest with Napoleonic
France; and to taking advantage of a “good circulating library” and “lodgings . . . on reasonable terms” (p. 423).
For what became the Ruskinsʼ most favored seaside resort, however, they evidently sought quiet and respectability combined with somewhat grander pretensions.
Hastings
With a severe glance directed presumably at Brighton, the local author of an 1804 guidebook to Hastings declared
that “[o]ne circumstance must, above all others, render Hastings dear to those who have a regard to morality—Vice
has not yet erected her standard here;—the numerous tribe of professional gamblers, unhappy profligates,
and fashionable swindlers find employment and rapine elsewhere. Innocent recreational delight, card assemblies,
billiards, riding, walking, reading, fishing, and other modes of pastime banish care from the mind,
whilst the salubrity of the atmosphere impels disease from the body. The society of Hastings are gay without profligacy,
and enjoy life without mingling in its debaucheries”
(, 1–2).
Quoting this pronouncement a decade later in
1815, the
Guide to All the Watering and Sea‐Bathing Places deemed the statement fitting,
but presents
Hastings as equivocally poised between decline from its prosperous past as a trading, fishing, and shipbuilding center and its ambition for its rebirth as a tourist resort.
While acknowledging the townʼs strong suit in its impressive history and romantic landscape, this guidebook description harps on losses:
“The present is a new town; the old one having been swallowed up by an inundation”, and the coast continues to erode;
Hastings “had formerly a good harbour”, which has lain in ruin since Elizabethan times; “trade . . . is inconsiderable,
compared to what it once enjoyed”, though the boat builders continue to maintain a “high reputation”; and with “only one inn, properly so called”,
“accommodations and attendance are frequently subjects of complaint”. Yet
Hastings “every year . . . seems to obtain fresh accessions of visitors”,
and development is underway: “the promenade lately obtained . . . is a great improvement”
(
Feltham, Guide to All the Watering and Sea‐Bathing Places, 317, 318, 319, 320–21, 316). Whatever merit may have been warranted by these judgments,
the assessment at least attests to an ancient coastal town striving to transform its economy
from traditional but declining maritime occupations to modern tourism servicing the rising middle class.
This entrepreneurial activity may have been what intrigued the Ruskins—particularly
John James—when they visited
Hastings, probably for the first time in
1826.
The
1820s was a peak decade for
Hastings as a resort (
Walton, The English Seaside Resort, 58).
Taking advantage of the rising tide of fashion for seeking health and pleasure at the seaside,
the town was turning to account its decayed advantages as a port and fishery, able to offer the kind a beachfront well adapted for bathing—a
wide coastal frontage with a gentle declivity for easy access to the sea. The town could also parlay resources
appealing to a broader range of tourist engagement. The area was rich with historical asssociations,
and its landscape was both picturesque and interesting to naturalists.
Such variety and flexibility of touristic appeal,
Walton argues, gave seaside resorts an edge over the older inland spas,
which had little besides their mineral springs to recommend them. Also, unlike the traditional spas
with their rigid social codes, the seaside resorts welcomed children (see
The English Seaside Resort,
106–7, 16–17, 42–43, 217). As characterized in the letterpress for
Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England (
1814–26),
“
Hastings, as a public watering‐place . . . may boast the charm of uniting social and elegant pleasure with rural tranquillity”
(
W. B. Cooke and G. Cooke, Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England, n.p.).
To package the emerging resort industry of
Hastings with its picturesque and historical resources, artistic and antiquarian enterprises
featured the town in publications of the
1820s. The most ambitious work focused on
Hastings particularly was an
1824 illustrated history,
The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings,
written and illustrated by
W. G. Moss (dates unknown). As “draughtsman to His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge”,
Moss created the topographical, architectural, and antiquarian drawings, on which the engravings were based.
The work was published by subscription, listing numerous royal subscribers, headed by
George IV.
The attention thus garnered for
Hastings may have helped the town to build a case for an elite clientele.
Thus, notwithstanding the declaration by the
Hastings Guide
that the town set itself apart from resorts that harbored morally disreputable pleasures,
Mossʼs stately work indicates how a bid for patronage by the late‐Georgian aristocracy could be accommodated along with appeal to the evanglical middle class.
As
Walton remarks, the visiting public at the resorts was formed from a “complex pattern of demand”,
woven from “differing visiting publics, aristocratic and commercial . . . centered on the metropolis”, and reflecting a
“wide range of social attributes, attitudes and expectations, which could be subsumed under each [social] label”, including
“many shades of religious commitment” (
The English Seaside Resort, 14). A spectrum of desirably polite but moral society could be cultivated
with the aid of an intelligent and appealing print and visual culture.
Mossʼs work perhaps more accurately reflects the appeal of a watering place like
Hastings to as a middle‐class family in the
1820s,
as compared with a grander illustrated publication such as the
Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England, which reached its conclusion in
1826.
The latter was a scheme by the engravers
William Bernard Cooke (
1778–1855) and his brother
George Cooke (
1781–1834) to employ several artists,
chiefly
J. M. W. Turner, in producing watercolor drawings of coastal scenes to be engraved and published in parts. In
1811, when the Cookes first floated
the idea with
Turner, the scheme was novel, since most English topographical works were devoted to the countryʼs interior. The ambitious project was delayed by quarrels and professional setbacks, however,
and when it reached its final collected form in
1826, many expectations had been thwarted, including a spin‐off project to be entitled
“Views at Hastings and Its Vicinity” (
Shanes, Turnerʼs Rivers, Harbours, and Coasts, 6, 9 and 5–12 passim). The letterpress, also a disappointment, was originally prepared
by
William Combe (
1742–1823), best known for
The Tour of Doctor Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque (
1812),
illustrated by
Thomas Rowlandson for the publisher
Rudolph Ackermann. For the collected
1826 volumes,
Combeʼs text was revised by
Barbara Hofland (
1770–1844),
the childrenʼs writer, whose spouse was a landscape artist. Updating the letterpress,
Hofland highlighted several of the seacoast locations as having achieved
popularity for bathing and seaside recreation—
Margate,
Ramsgate,
Hastings,
Brighton,
Weymouth,
Lyme,
Teignmouth,
Comb‐Martin,
Lynemouth, and
Minehead—but
the emphasis was at variance with the engravings, few of which foregrounded such activities.
Turnerʼs scenes in particular, on which the success of the publication depended,
exclude signs of modern tourism. There are two exceptions: in the drawing for
Brighton,
Brighthelmston (engraved G. Cooke),
Turner admits the “New Chain Pier, or Suspension Bridge”, crammed with a fashionable crowd, into the scene, although viewed from a non‐participantʼs perspective
in the open sea; and in
Plymouth Dock (engraved W. B. Cooke),
he places promenaders in the foreground who are so frisky with “spirit and character” that the narrator is moved to comment on “Mr. Turnerʼs power,
when he chuses to exert it, in delineating animate as well as inanimate nature”. Otherwise, the foregrounds of
Turnerʼs coastal scenes are occupied
solely by fishermen, washerwomen, smugglers, solidiers, and the like (
W. B. Cooke and G. Cooke, Picturesque Views on the Southern Coast of England, n.p.).
W. G. Mossʼs compositions are workmanlike at best, but
The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings reflects his enthusiasm
for
Hastingsʼ transformation into a seaside resort, for which he uses the phrase “improving the town”—a key term in the period,
improvement,
used to characterize large‐scale city planning and imposition of a uniform style, such as
John Nashʼs designs for
Regentʼs Park in
London,
which could pervasively alter the character of a city (
The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings, 146; and see
Summerson, Georgian London, 198; and
The Colosseum, Hornorʼs London Panorama, and the London Diorama in Regentʼs Park).
In his preface,
Moss describes himself as an invalid who came to
Hastings for convalescence, and discovered
a historical and picturesque treasure “heretofore . . . unnoticed and untouched” save by guidebooks.
Claiming to scorn guidebooks, but making an exception for the
Hastings Guide “published a few years since”,
probably referring to an edition illustrated by his own designs (here engraved as outline drawings, which would later be elaborated for the
The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings),
Moss in fact compiles a version of a guidebook, with three lengthy chapters of military and ecclesiastical history followed by a fourth chapter
that opens in the manner of a picturesque tour and goes on to highlight the improvements that have brought an “influx”
of “visitants and strangers” who have “contributed to . . . [the townʼs] rising consequence” (
Moss, The History and Antiquities of the Town and Port of Hastings, xi–xii, 123).
In
Mossʼs picturesque landscape plates—several of them engraved by
Robert Wallis (
1794–1878) and by
Edward Goodall (
1795–1870), both of whom were simultaneously
distinguishing themselves in superior contributions to the Cookesʼ
Southern Coast of England, by engraving
Turnerʼs
Ramsgate and
Folkstone (Wallis), and
Rye,
Boscastle, and
Mount Edgecomb (Goodall)
(see
Hunnisett, Steel‐engraved Book Illustration in England, 95, 101)—the artist foregrounds figures engaged in leisure pursuits,
the likes of which are only suggested by figures dotting the far distant beach or martello tower in
Turnerʼs drawings of
Ramsgate and
Folkstone.
In
Mossʼs drawings, families stroll and ladies take in the view with guidebook and parasol, gazing at
Hastings from above,
in
Minnis Rock (frontispiece), and from the beach, in
Pier Rocks (p. 127 opp.);
couples gaze out to sea
Marine Parade, seated or walking on “one of the finest promenades on the coast”, with bathing‐machines stand waiting on the beach (p. 148 and opp.);
and passengers gather around the stagecoach waiting outside town hall (p. 129 opp.). To demonstrate the “improvements in building” bringing about “the rise of
Hastings within the last few years”,
a plate features the new “handsome range of modern houses” in
Pelham Place, and a complementary plate,
Pelham Place and Crescent, even mocks up the development “as intended to be completed”
by the architect,
Joseph Kay (
1775–1847) (p. 145 and opp. 146 and opp.)—a vision that was happily outmatched by the completed building—while a contrasting plate of
East Bourn Street
gives a “specimen of
Hastings, prior to its present improvements” (p. 155 and opp.)
See the visit to
Hastings narrated in
“Harry and Lucy . . . Vol I”
along with associated contextual glosses for specific places and activities.