Why Don't Poets Like the Seaside?

It inspires a curious melancholy in them – but why? asks Tom Hodgkinson. Plus your theories

The other morning I read the following lines from TS Eliot’s “The Wasteland”, in a forthcoming piece by Idler sheds correspondent Alex Johnson:

On Margate Sands.
I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
The broken fingernails of dirty hands.
My people humble people who expect
Nothing.

Those cheerful words, says Alex, were written in a seaside shelter in Margate in 1921 when the poet was 33. I wonder why the Kentish resort made Eliot feel so hopeless? Surely at this point less nihilistic souls were actually enjoying going to Margate Sands for a holiday? The twenties were a heyday for the seaside and the classic tune “I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside” had been written in 1907.

But it seems the poets have never much liked being beside the seaside. I mentioned this poem to Mark Vernon and he sent me back these equally gloomy lines from “Dover Beach” by Matthew Arnold, published in 1867.

But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
Retreating, to the breath
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
And naked shingles of the world.

The poet goes on in equally miserable fashion. For him, the sound of the waves on the pebbles is deeply depressing:

Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.

And Arnold reckons that the ancient bards found the seaside to be pretty miserable, too.

Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
Of human misery…

What about you? Does the seaside make you feel gloomy or cheerful? I always thought I liked it, but now I’ve read these poems, I wonder whether I was deceiving myself, and that in fact there is something inherently and even eternally sad about coastal towns.

Do send us your comments.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Sir: As a poet I can say that I LOVE the seaside. Also, did you know that Mathew Arnold wrote that poem ON HIS HONEYMOON? Never marry a poet.
Luke Wright

Sir: I’d add Lowry’s seascapes. And Larkin’s views of Sunny Prestatyn.
Peter Brannelly

Sir: I cannot imagine how any poet possessed of a “larger and more comprehensive soul” (Wordsworth) could fail to be inspired by the seaside. It’s a magical place that reminds us of the timeless vastness of the universe, as well as the very small place we occupy there. My own hours spent on Aegean shores inspired very different emotions than those described in “Dover Beach”. Probably best to keep in mind that Arnold and Eliot were, to some degree, both professional cranks.
Kent Burnside, Franklin TN, USA

Sir: Few places remind us of our tiny insignificance more effectively than seasides. A welcome break from mental clutter for us cog-driven mortals, yet a weighty blob of existential doubt for word-wranglers, I’m guessing.
Yours inland, Kev Khayat

Sir: It’s all POV. Are you listening like a poet and writer, or just hanging out, expecting and doing nothing? I’m both. Occasionally I like it but most times it makes me sad. I’ve been told I spend too much time thinking and not enough time doing nothing. It seems that’s people’s secret to happiness: do nothing, expect nothing.
Allan Ingledue

Sir: I live in Southampton, and although it’s not a seaside town it is coastal, and there is a definite sadness about it. A lot of deprivation, dysfunctionality and mental health problems.
Miriam Bance

Sir: I think Larkin was all right about the sea – or as all right as he could be. He mentions the “miniature gaiety of seasides”. And Wordsworth was pretty impressed by Calais.
Ray Martin

Sir: I live in Dover and can agree the noise of waves on pebbles compares not a jot to that of the sand getting lapped at. Calais has sand. Now I think back, Dover beach was the place where I contemplated ending it all many, many years ago! I’m good now!
Neil

Sir: Please note it’s “The Waste Land” and never “The Wasteland”. (The Queen Mother, on meeting TS Eliot, asked him if he was the man who had written “The Desert Song”). When it comes to poets disliking the seaside Lewis Carroll (below) takes some beating.
David Collard

A Sea Dirge
There are certain things – as, a spider, a ghost,
The income-tax, gout, an umbrella for three –
That I hate, but the thing that I hate the most
Is a thing they call the Sea.

Pour some salt water over the floor –
Ugly I’m sure you’ll allow it to be:
Suppose it extended a mile or more,
THAT’S very like the Sea.

Beat a dog till it howls outright –
Cruel, but all very well for a spree:
Suppose that he did so day and night,
THAT would be like the Sea.

I had a vision of nursery-maids;
Tens of thousands passed by me –
All leading children with wooden spades,
And this was by the Sea.

Who invented those spades of wood?
Who was it cut them out of the tree?
None, I think, but an idiot could –
Or one that loved the Sea.

It is pleasant and dreamy, no doubt, to float
With ‘thoughts as boundless, and souls as free’:
But, suppose you are very unwell in the boat,
How do you like the Sea?

There is an insect that people avoid
(Whence is derived the verb ‘to flee’).
Where have you been by it most annoyed?
In lodgings by the Sea.

If you like your coffee with sand for dregs,
A decided hint of salt in your tea,
And a fishy taste in the very eggs –
By all means choose the Sea.

And if, with these dainties to drink and eat,
You prefer not a vestige of grass or tree,
And a chronic state of wet in your feet,
Then – I recommend the Sea.

For I have friends who dwell by the coast –
Pleasant friends they are to me!
It is when I am with them I wonder most
That anyone likes the Sea.

They take me a walk: though tired and stiff,
To climb the heights I madly agree;
And, after a tumble or so from the cliff,
They kindly suggest the Sea.

I try the rocks, and I think it cool
That they laugh with such an excess of glee,
As I heavily slip into every pool
That skirts the cold cold Sea.

From the editor’s mother: A holiday by the seaside was one of the highlights of our childhood. But the problem was always the WEATHER. This was why, when package holidays to Spain, Greece, etc, became affordable for the price of a couple of weeks in a Skegness boarding house, families in droves took advantage, and British seaside resorts became old people’s homes and places for down and outs to live on benefits. I remember, during our holidays in Cornwall, your father and I would look anxiously up at the sky early morning and see the sun was shining. We packed up a picnic, swimming costumes, etc, and almost inevitably, by 11 o’clock, the sky had clouded over and there was wind and rain for the rest of the day. What to do, especially with young children? When we were able to afford holidays in Greece, everything changed. Guaranteed hot sun, warm seas, tavernas, retsina –a totally different holiday experience. Seaside holidays in the UK will never return.
Liz Hodgkinson