Seasonal
Visitors to Brighton
Constable’s phrase ‘the lateness of the season’ could
be assumed to be a reference to the darkening skies of winter, when
an absence of sunshine would lengthen camera exposure times and
affect the quality of his studio portraits, but he was probably
expressing his concern that the season of the year when it was fashionable
to visit Brighton was nearing its end. Twenty years earlier the
aristocracy and the upper classes of society had traditionally visited
Brighton in the summer months of June, July and August. The ‘Brighton
Ambulator’ of 1818 had calculated there were 7000 additional
residents in Brighton during the summer months between June and
October, but from November to February the number of visitors declined
to 2,300. By 1830, the fashionable season had shifted from the summer
to the autumn and winter.
Fashionable Visitors to Brighton.
.
A fashionable couple with Alfred Crowquill's Beauties of Brighton
(1826) in the background.
Even before the railway line from London to Brighton was completed
in September 1841, the ‘New Monthly Magazine’ had
declared :
“the summer months are abandoned to the trading population
of London, the early autumn is surrendered to the lawyers and when
November summons them to Westminster, the ‘beau monde’
commence their migration to encounter the gales of that inclement
season secure from any participation of the pleasure with a plebian
multitude”.
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Constable's
Photographic Portraits of Prince Albert and the Nobility
