Here is the beach at Pett Level, Sussex, a few miles west of Brighton. Today we have a Londoner’s reflections on the seaside and walking around Sussex, up to 15 miles a day. Mary Lamb was in Brighton with her brother Charles and a friend. She is writing to Dorothy Wordsworth up in the Lake District. Seaside holidays 200 years ago! A little taste of her summer in our winter.
I resolved to learn to look out of the window, a habit I never could attain in my life, and I have given it up as a thing quite impracticable—yet when I was at Brighton last summer, the first week I never took my eyes off from the sea, not even to look in a book. I had not seen the sea for sixteen years.
Mrs. Morgan, who was with us, kept her liking, and continued her seat in the window till the very last, while Charles and I played truant and wandered among the hills, which we magnified into little mountains and almost as good as Westmoreland scenery. Certainly we made discoveries of many pleasant walks which few of the Brighton visitors have ever dreamed of—for like as is the case in the neighbourhood of London, after the first two or three miles we were sure to find ourselves in a perfect solitude.
I hope we shall meet before the walking faculties of either of us fail. You say you can walk fifteen miles with ease,—that is exactly my stint, and more fatigues me; four or five miles every third or fourth day, keeping very quiet between, was all Mrs. Morgan could accomplish.
God bless you and yours. Love to all and each one.
I am ever yours most affectionately M. LAMB.
From The Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, 1796-1820, Edited by E. V. Lucas
Will Turnstone 