This would be our case even if we had only our own rollicking tars to deal with; but, if, as one of the advocates of harbour proposes, we are to be favoured with excursionists on their way to and from St. Valery (and Saints Valerius and Leonardus having sworn eternal friendship) we are to have a continuous influx of French hawkers with their abominable prints and snuff-boxes, their infamous books and their bestial oaths, compared with which English swearing is Euphemism itself, to say nothing of the female importations with their spécialité à vendre. If, I say, these be some of the advantages likely to accrue to Hastings from the possession of a harbour, I humbly submit to Capt. Claxton that any paterfamiliâs(sic) may fairly decline the proposed favour without forfeiting all claim to common sense. I can only say for myself that if I could have foreseen the possibility even of such a nuisance the many thousand pounds I have laid out in this locality would certainly have found another destination. I am confirmed in this view by a naval relative of mine who has just returned from visiting Weymouth, with which he was formerly well acquainted. He says that the harbour is a magnificent work, but that it has entirely changed the character of the place, which is no longer to be recognised. So it would be with us.”
Reference to St. Valery in the above letter arose from the expressed hope of the Rev. J. A. Hatchard’s that the Town Council would renew the negotiations with St. Valery which they abandoned a few years before. The reverend gentleman was in error as to negotiations. It was simply a reply to questions put to the Mayor of Hastings by the Mayor of St. Valery, as to what facilities we had for landing and shipping passengers and goods en route to and from London. To these questions there could have been but one answer – namely that there were no suitable facilities, and that if a harbour were constructed, the two railway companies were not at all likely to support it against their own respective interests and arrangements of Dover, Folkestone and Newhaven.
The Further Reference to “abominable French prints and snuff boxes” as likely to be brought over by French hawkers if a harbour were constructed, was, in itself, a weak argument against such construction; but the suggestion of a possibility of an importation of such debasing objects was, perhaps, justified by the fact that a considerable number had already been imported either by French or English agency, and that even in St. Leonard(sic) such things, with their immoral representations, were passed from hand to hand at public houses and other places, without any but a feigned attempt at secrecy.
