April Meeting The Romantic Seaside, a talk by Jane Darcy

Lured to the Court Hall, the Lit. Soc.’s  Lonely Hearts assembled to hear a lively discourse from a vivacious, ebullient Jane Darcy on the topic of  “The Romantic Seaside” Lorna Challand’s introduction reviewed the speaker’s oeuvre in which melancholy seemed to feature prominently but the black bile disease and the  attendant humours propounded by the physicians of Antiquity were displaced by a thoroughly modern one which saw the lecture punctuated by frequent bursts of audience laughter. 

The narrative began in the mid-eighteenth century as some doctors deserted their old haunts in spa towns for seaside villages where they became enthusiastic proponents of seabathing. Contemporary cultural influences like Dutch landscape painting, which presented the coast as a liminal space, and the Enlightenment vogue for Natural Theology, which saw the hand of the Creator all-present in Nature, helped turbocharge seabathing’s surging popularity. Medical treatment then was still driven by concepts of correcting imbalances of humours and excretions of toxins which explained the enthusiasm for emetics, purgatives and bloodletting. 

Dr. Richard Russell of Lewes was an early pioneer of therapeutic seabathing at Brighton. Physicians, possibly with an eye to their fee schedule, micromanaged the prescription of the treatment with a Dr. White recommending “the dip” last less than 2 minutes, with the maximum permitted “dosage” being twice a day or 3 times a week. Just as modern sports generate a demand for essential “accoutrements” so Georgian seabathing spawned bathing chariots with awnings, flannel swimsuits, oilskin caps, bathing guides or “dippers”and a macho, extreme-sport fringe of men who swam naked – usually at another part of the beach. In the spirit of Enlightenment empiricism, a Dr. Anderson interviewed experienced bathing assistants before issuing an advisory code for female bathers on what to do if pregnant, menstruating or seeking to cure infertility. Much of the medical advice was devoid of logic and consistency so preliminary “tonics”, alcohol and hearty meals were prescribed on occasion. Male voyeurism, aided by powerful telescopes placed on viewpoints, was a parallel activity recorded in cartoons by Rowlandson – a sort of Donald McGill of the time.  

Seabathing was incorporated into contemporary literature. The speaker described Jane Austen’s Sanditon as the lost novel of seabathing, recounted the bathing misfortunes of Matthew Bramble, the main protagonist in Tobias Smollet’s  Humphrey Clinker, at Scarborough and told of Boswell’s surprise at Brighton to find that Dr. Johnson was a strong swimmer.  

Jane Darcy’s favourite seaside venue was the south coast of the Isle of Wight, visited by a litany of literary luminaries – Darwin, Turgenev, Keats, George Eliot, Karl Marx, Wordsworth, Charles Lamb and Tennyson. Perhaps not surprising that the last left the island complaining of too many tourists! The magnet for the tourists was now sea air and sea views. “Picturesque” travellers cherished rugged vistas marked by variety, singularity and grandeur.

The audience expressed their appreciation of a lecture marked by extensive research, learning lightly worn and an irrepressible, mischievous humour, with a resounding round of applause. 

Bill Doherty