The Brighton of my Boyhood 



should die. A little while after they gave 

 me a medal of his late Majesty King 

 George III. in the kind of wig he 

 ordinarily wore, going up to Heaven, 

 assisted by an angel and greeted by the 

 words, ''Well done, thou good and faith- 

 ful servant," issuing from a cloud. And so 

 for the w^hen-a-bouts of my childhood I 

 will ask you to go and look in your history- 

 book. 



My Brighton was a little town of a few 

 thousand inhabitants, which had been 

 growing up around the old fishing-village 

 of Brighthelmstone ever since a great 

 London doctor had begun to send his royal 

 and noble patients to regain in sea-air and 

 sea-bathing the strength they wasted in 

 the racket of London life. The principal 

 streets were Church Street and North 

 Street running through the town from 

 east to west, the latter taking a large 

 curve northwards towards Henfield after 

 passing the church. Out of North Street 

 Great Russell Street, West Street, Middle 

 Street, Ship Street, East Street ran south- 

 wards to the sea — some of them so downhill 

 that as you went down the brick foot-ways 

 the exuberant scent of the sea came up to 

 greet you, and you saw it shimmer and 

 heave at the end of the street. At the 



