ng. Looking back on the holiday, it would seem to us a somewhat
vacant time compared to one spent in wandering from village to village.
I mean if we do not take into account that first impression which the
sea invariably makes on us on returning to it after a long absence--the
shock of recognition and wonder and joy as if we had been suffering
from loss of memory and it had now suddenly come back to us. That brief
moving experience over, there is little the sea can give us to compare
with the land. How could it be otherwise in our case, seeing that we
were by it in a crowd, our movements and way of life regulated for us in
places which appear like overgrown and ill-organized convalescent homes?
There was always a secret intense dislike of all parasitic and holiday
places, an uncomfortable feeling which made the pleasure seem poor and
the remembrance of days so spent hardly worth dwelling on. And as we
are able to keep in or throw out of our minds whatever we please, being
autocrats in our own little kingdom, I elected to cast away most of the
memories of these comparatively insipid holidays. But not all, and of
those I retain I will describe at least two, one in the present chapter
on the East Anglian coast, the other later on.

It was cold, though the month was August; it blew and the sky was grey
and rain beginning to fall when we came down about noon to a small town
on the Norfolk coast, where we hoped to find lodging and such comforts
as could be purchased out of a slender purse. It was a small modern
pleasure town of an almost startling appearance owing to the material
used in building its straight rows of cottages and its ugly square
houses and villas. This was an orange-brown stone found in the
neighbourhood, the roofs being all of hard, black slate. I had never
seen houses of such a colour, it was stronger, more glaring and
aggressive than the reddest brick, and there was not a green thing to
partially screen or soften it, nor did the darkness of the wet weather
have any mitigating effect on it. The town was built on high ground,
with an open grassy space before it sloping down to the cliff in which
steps had been cut to give access to the beach, and beyond the cliff
we caught sight of the grey, desolate, wind-vexed sea. But the rain was
coming down more and more heavily, turning the streets into torrents,
so that we began to envy those who had found a shelter even in so ugly a
place. No one would take us in. Hou