On a late October day a bedraggled little girl of 11 was landed on the beach at Brighton from a small wooden boat. She had witnessed insurrection in her home land. She was one of the lucky ones to have escaped.
Brighton 1785. Image © Society of Brighton Print Collectors / Regency Society
From 24 – 26 May 2024, the Brighton Fringe promised us “the true flavours of Normandy! The entertainment was “very Brighton”. Whether it was “très Normandie” is hard to say:
First up was La Sirène à Barbe, the cabaret group based in Dieppe.
On 10 July 1833, young Mr Peter Black inserted the following advertisement in the Brighton Guardian.
Hidden away in a beautiful Edwardian house near the Ditchling Road, Brighton, is the very English studio of John Martin.
John’s studio in Brighton.
In the first weeks of the Great War, the Bioscope journal noted:
“There are very few signs of the terrible struggle in which the country is engaged to be noted at Brighton. The panic of the first week, of course, had a very bad effect, but things soon resumed their normal course. The picture theatres are doing a brisk business, and the patriotic and war films which are the order of the day are proving a great draw.” The Bioscope,10 September 1914
It was indeed the case that in Brighton and Hove, residents (and many visitors) continued to amuse themselves as well as busying themselves with their contributions to war work and fund raising.
The Napoleonic Wars had cost the lives of many tens of thousands of British soldiers between 1803 and 1814. Even before the Battle of Waterloo, prisoners from both sides of the war were being repatriated. Writing about the boats bringing these suffering men across the channel, the Journal de Paris published the following snippet on 10 May 1814:
Il en est arrivé six le 4 de ce mois à Cherbourg, avec 284 prisonniers de guerre. Le six, une gabarre française est partie du même port pour l’Angleterre, avec 400 prisonniers anglais.
[Six such boats carrying 284 prisoners arrived in Cherbourg on the 4th of this month. On the 6th, a French river barge left the same port for England, with 400 English prisoners.]
The French honorary consul’s main function is to aid French nationals on his (or her) patch of British soil. Over the years, French nationals have had their political differences: Bonapartists v. royalists; royalists v. imperialists; imperialists v. republicans and republicans v. communards. However, once any French citizen is on British soil, s/he is under the protection of the apolitical French consul in their area.
In 1940, The Brighton consul was an exception to the ‘apolitical’ rule.
Honoré Migot Honorary Consul for Brighton 1937-1947
Following the armistice of 22 June 1940 and the occupation of large parts of France by the Nazi forces, the French, yet again, became a divided nation. The government decamped to Vichy and became a puppet of the Nazi regime. General de Gaulle decamped to London and vowed to fight on – with or without the British. Most of the consular staff in London were attached to the Vichy (collaborationist) regime. Many of them hurried back home to France.
The Great War is dragging on. As the festive season approaches, Brighton is doing her best to show her support for Britain’s French Allies. On 16 December 1915, the Brighton and Hove and South Sussex Graphic certainly gave France pride of place.
In the newspaper, a journalist simply called Aigrette pens a splendid article about Madame Adolphe and her French ladies’ tailors in Preston Street. At this emporium “the reducing pencil has been hard at work and lovely bargains are on sale”. Aigrette is mightily impressed by one outfit: “a triumph of fashionable elegance.”
Alas, to our, fortunately, greater sensitivity to these matters in the 21st century, the cloth is shockingly described as “tête de nègre velour cloth of beautiful supple quality.” It is unlikely that in 2023 any fabric would be compared to a black person’s hair, however supple it may be.
Who were these women? And were they French?
What is le jeu de paume, or “real” tennis? And what has it got to do with the Brighton? Hove-based Richard White, explains.
“On 23 June 2022, I was playing a game of jeu du paume [real tennis] in the semi-finals of the World Masters (over 75s) Real Tennis Championship. The venue was the magnificent court in the Château de Fontainebleau.
Richard White at the Château de Fontainebleau in June 2022 (c) R. White
French Brighton 