July 3. 19 1 5 
LAND AND WATER 
THE SUMMER SEA 
By J. D. SYMON 
THIS YEAR the summer sea will be only a memory 
to very many who in normal times would now be 
preparmg for the annual exodus, that family 
portent of which the comic journals will never 
grow weary. Many beaches, it is true, still offer 
a sate playground for bare-legged infancy and sportive age 
but others are m a grim state of defence ; the cliff-heads' 
seamed with trenches and serried with wire entanglements 
forbid the usual pleasant strolling, and the alert sentinel 
bars the familiar approach. 
With the insistence of pleasure denied, the sea therefore 
becomes more than ever a pleasure of memory, and therein hes 
one of the compensations of a world subverted. The image of 
remembered summers, beside and on the sea, takes a sharper 
focus, and bnngs to us, " though inland far we be," some touch 
of the glory and refreshment of days that were. And chiefly 
perhaps one recalls, with the heightened contrast of times 
when the high seas hold a strange menace, days of peaceful 
voyaging, drawn out to nearly a fortnight, upon an Atlantic 
so kindly as to belie its stormy name. Not one chance sea- 
farer in a hundred is so favoured. Even our skipper could not 
remember such a passage. The toil-worn metaphor of the 
miU-pond held for once no exaggeration. 
The shock of the Titanic's fate, scarcely a month byegone, 
had led careful owners to prescribe a course far to south- 
ward. In the warm latitude of the Azores the ship's company 
or some of them, were able to read with fuU understanding 
Columbus s exquisite account of the later days of his first 
westward voyage— those mornings perfect as an Andulusian 
spring and soft nights when the sailor almost fancied he should 
m i u, "'ghtingale. Sea and sky kept one unclouded, un- 
ruffled blue, and even when the prow at length stood north- 
westward and one later evening the twinkle of Cape Cod 
light proclaimed the New World at hand, that early summer 
speU pursued us to the colder region, and the cruise ended on 
a summer sea. 
Some weeks later, when the calendar proclaimed fuU 
summer, it was far otherwise. The returning course knew 
no deviation from the accepted track, and from Cape Race 
eastward the vessel threaded long phalanxes of ice, phantom 
cathedrals and palaces, beating to southward in endless 
procession across our bows. Then the shrewd North spoke 
in no uncertain terms, and old Atlantic, risen in a brief half- 
hour, played havoc with the deck games that had seemed so 
easy and congenial on sheltered St. Lawrence. Those 
who, as the spires of Quebec swam into the distance had 
promised themselves a summer sea, were sadly cheated. 
That hdf-hour of heave and roll sent all but a dozen of 
the hardiest below to repent, amid much tribulation, a mis- 
spent life. 
/ ^S^^ course of memory, still faring eastward, leads us still 
lurther east, and does not end at Liverpool. For to the 
At antic succeeds a picture of the North Sea in its happiest 
July mood, and of a short and pleasant passage that closed at 
sunset, as all good voyages should, off the low coast of 
Denmark lying reposeful in the level Ught. Holiday was in 
the air, and the strip of beach still held some groups of holiday- 
makers, taking the last enjoyment of long hours of sunshine 
Your seaside crowd seldom lacks for colour, but in Denmark 
the accent is heightened Ijy the picturesque holiday custom 
of the Danish girls, who discard the hat of town, and wear 
instead flaming silk handkerchiefs, very beautiful in their 
design, swathed round the head turban-wise. They gleamed 
bnght m the gathering dusk and were the last glimmering 
pomts of all to fade out of the picture as with nightfall the 
steamer came to her moorings. Nox ahstulit aim colorem. 
Ihe tag of Virgil came home with new meaning 
Two nights later we were afloat again, still further north 
and east on the narrow waters of the Baltic, amber under an 
amber sky from which the reflection of the unseen sun 
refused to fade, and kept track around the pole until the 
afterglow quickened into dawn. That light had all the home- 
like suggestion of summer evenings in Northern Scotland and 
Aarhuis slowly receding astern seemed no foreign town 
The air was sharper there, but the sea still slept in summed 
stillness and next morning broke with the fervour of full Tulv 
It IS well t" be up eariy if you would enjoy the waters of the 
hrZ "i.r n '*' pageantry of shipping, for there in one 
hour you will see more ships pass than in any other waterway 
On the starboard bow lies Elsinore, something exotic in her 
towers. You will not see" the platform before the Castle," but 
yonder beneath a group of wind-bent trees is Hamlet's fabled 
grave, a pious fraud invented to satisfy yearning American 
tourists, and close by, but invisible from here, is that other 
invention, Opheha's pool. 
Then begins a long panorama of terraced coast, where the 
villas of the affluent nestle upon wooded slopes, and at last, 
low on the horizon, peers up the green dome of Copenhagen's 
Marmorkirke, and soon the opening vista of her harbour invites 
the boat to enter. But the distance is still great, it is only 
very slowly that the Danish capital unfolds her infinite charm 
of changing colour and other worldly architecture, most 
curious of all that spire where four green dragons, inverted, 
hft their tails entwined to heaven. The flavour of an older 
commerce still lingers about those Copenhagen wharfs and 
quays, it seems as if only sailing ships should lie there, and 
only merchants hostile to the Hanseatic League should 
congregate about her red-gabled warehouses. And the 
costume should not be later than the seventeenth century. 
It is a dream city to the new-comer as he lingers about the 
harbour, but within, the dream, although still very pleasant 
changes to the intensely modern in boulevards of almost 
Parisian style and hveliness. For Copenhagen is the Paris 
of the North. 
Not quite sea-girt, but sea-penetrated, this city of Viking 
descent takes her pleasure by the sea on summer evenings. 
A httle way to the north, within an easy tram or train journey 
merrymaking households congregate, after the day's worki 
at Skodsborg and Klamperborg. where the stranger finds 
endless amusement in a new phase of out-door cafe Ufe. From 
the dim-ht gardens you look out upon a wine-dark unruffled 
sea. and the last light yields ghmpses of the coast of Sweden 
Just opposite, dim on the horizon lies Malmoe, witness of 
BothweU's last decrepit days. There the wreck of James 
Hepburn, whose dashing presence caught Queen's Mary's 
fancy at the tourney, tottered downward to the grave taking 
what comfort it could from the cold northern sun. aiid frorn 
deep drinking bouts with Captain Clarke the pirate. But 
these dull reflections are out of place— confound the historic 
sense !— amid the gaiety of Skodsborg. Hold your peace 
Dryasdust ! To-morrow vou shall cross the summer sea to 
Malmne. and moralise your fill, old bore, alone. 
There is excellent music here in the c«//-conce>'/. You may 
hnger enjoying it until quite late, although these Danish 
summer nights are scarcely balmy, but snell, as the Scots say 
Ihe rheumatic, however, need have no fear of the sharp sea 
^^^1-aI ^ thoughtful waiter as he serves your inner man wiU 
unbidden, bind a comfortable shawl about your crazy shoulders' 
These shawls, white with a coloured border, give the swathed 
groups at the tables a curious ghostly effect in the half-light • 
It IS something Oriental, something Moorish, outlandish quite' 
Might not this prudent custom, adopted nearer home break 
the restrictions of climate on outdoor cafe life ? But that is a 
scheme for other and calmer days. This summer we have 
other business in hand, with a Baltic mined and closed, a 
North Sea held in the iron grip of war. 
To these clearer pictures succeeds a medley of impressions 
—of the Mediterranean sleeping under the summer moon 
midnight glimpses of tranquil sea caught at intervals through 
the arched caverns of Spezia, and again a moving expanse of 
sapphire water stretching away from the characterless coast 
.at Livita Vecchia, where, by the way (to descend to the grossly 
material), latter day pilgrims to Rome will find welcome colYee 
and rolls, when the night express from Turin draws up for a 
nioment at the ancient port. And from that Italian memory 
rises another curious seaside fancy, distant and perhaps a little 
incongruous, but still Italian in its suggestion, although the 
scene was the most prosaic Barathrum of English sea-side 
places. Again it is night, sultry after a blazing August day. 
Looking down from a cliff head to a beach far below one saw a 
many-coloured crowd around a lighted booth where mummers, 
at this distance inaudible, were plying the trade of Ig Pagliacci. 
Along on the beach, figures, in light flowing draperies, moved 
to and fro, indistinct in the twilight, of exaggerated smallness. 
Something of a vanished world seemed to stir in that micro- 
cosm of pleasure. It seemed not of these prosaic islands, but 
some fragment torn from the life of old Pompeii, the languid 
close of one of her burning days beside her summer sea. And 
to-day we know that that careless modern crowd was living 
also on the edge of a slumbering volcano ! 
