G. R. Sims visits Poppyland

'Dagonet' in Poppyland

Of course it was inevitable. Clement Scott was paid by the Great Eastern Railway to popularise the area around Cromer. He invented Poppyland, and the tourists followed.

George Robert Sims, 'Dagonet' of The Referee magazine, followed in the footsteps of Scott and Swinburne and took himself off to Poppyland in July 1887.

'The Garden of Sleep', Sidestrand
Created from an original image, by Google Gemini

The Referee - Sunday 24 July 1887

Some remarkably sensational reports of the mobbing of the Empress of Austria at Cromer have been "communicated" to the Press. I hope they are not true, as I am just off to Cromer myself in search of perfect rest and quietness.

If I am mobbed and followed I shall be exceedingly annoyed. I have shaved off my beard and my moustache in order to disguise myself; but one is never safe.

The postman who delivers your letters tells the policeman, and the policeman tells the boatman, and the boatman tells the visitors, and so it gets abroad, and you are pointed out and stared at.

I have already written a letter to the local papers requesting that my incognito may be respected, and that there may be no public reception or anything of that sort, and I hope I shall be allowed to go about in my blazer and my bath-chair in peace and quietness.

How I fare in "Poppyland" I will let you know next week. 

 

The Referee - Sunday 7 August 1887

l am still a hermit. I am still utterly without news of the great world, from which I have solemnly separated myself. I have not seen a newspaper or read a single item of news since the 28th of July.

The sensation is delightful—one breathes a purer moral atmosphere at once. I believe that if I could keep my mind innocent of the news of the world for a whole twelvemonth, I should never want to return to it at all. The simple pleasures of the rural recluse would then suffice me.

When one finds oneself in a peaceful and secluded vale, far from the madding crowd, it seems to me sacrilege to drag into it the London police, reports and the Westminster debates. Why sully the purity and peace of the lovely spot with the crime and depravity of the great city, and the envy, hatred, and all uncharitableness of the Westminster war of words?

There is a sweet, poppy-crowned eminence, on which I sit amid the waving corn, my sole companions the butterflies and bees. Above me sings a gentle lark, hovering between earth and heaven.

One day I brought to this sweet solitude my humble luncheon, which the fair daughter of the mill had wrapped up in a sheet of the Daily Telegraph—a sheet which had probably come to the mill from Cromer enveloping some article purchased in the little town upon the cliffs.

When I had finished my luncheon I laid the paper down by my side and went to sleep. When I awoke the scene was changed. The ground near me was seared and blasted, the corn was burnt, the poppies had drooped their heads and died, the bees and the butterflies had flown far away, and the lark, its song hushed and its little eyes filled with tears, sat on a hill afar off, and contemplated its ruined home.

The ruin did not extend far. It was only a square patch of ground that had gone wrong, but that square patch was the one I had covered with a page of a London newspaper.

My fancy tells me that this sheet contained the reports of London crime and vice as told in the police-courts, or the record of bad blood and bad language told at Westminster, and that the grass withered and the ground became desolate, and the butterflies were frightened away, and the lark's nest was ruined by its baleful influence.

People who go ferreting about and finding a reason for everything might have discovered that I had let my lighted pipe fall out of my mouth as I dozed off, and that a spark from the pipe had ignited a box of vesuvians on the ground by my side, and that was the cause of the disaster.

But I insist on believing that the occurrence was a gentle hint to me to respect the virginal innocence of the place, and to abstain from introducing the echoes of the metropolitan inferno into this silent and unsullied paradise.

You can drop off to sleep in Poppyland, I assure you. Poppyland it is called not only because of the red flowers that grow so luxuriantly around. but because the air is an opiate that sends everybody off to sleep, man, woman, and child.

If there were enough inhabitants in the district to make a chorus, the chorus that they would sing would be, "We're all nodding." The animals get drowsy here directly they are born. The inhabitants are never really wide awake, and efforts made by visitors to keep their eyes open are ludicrous in the extreme.

I dare say I shall be doubted if I try to convey to the reader the things that I have seen with my own eyes in this great garden of sleep. The strong air affects all who come within its influence. Nature is perpetually waving a chloroformed handkerchief in the faces of the Poppylanders, and there are few who fight off the drowsiness which steals over them.

At a little church on the coast a few Sundays ago a London clergyman came down to officiate for the regular pastor, who was taking a holiday in town. During the evening service many of the visitors succumbed to the atmospheric influence and slumbered placidly in their pews.

The clergyman himself was observed to be making violent efforts to keep himself awake. Every now and then his eyelids would droop and his head would nod and his utterances became confused and spasmodic. At last he fell off sound asleep, and when it was time for him to go on with the service again, the clerk had to walk across and give him a gentle nudge. 

At any time that you walk along the cliff or shore you will find ladies and gentlemen fast asleep. At the hotels in Cromer, when the places at table d'hôte are vacant, the waiters generally guess what the matter, and the boots is sent off to walk along the beach and wake the visitors up and tell them that it is time for dinner.

The principal draper told me that ladies frequently drop asleep in his shop while the assistants are looking for some articles to show them.

I myself can personally testify to the soporific influence of the air. I drop off to sleep a dozen times a day, and after nightfall it is impossible for me to keep my eyes open.

The other evening, walking from Cromer to Side Strand, I sat down on a bank to tie the string of my shoe, which had come undone. I fell asleep before I could get up again, and when I awoke it was broad daylight.

When I reached the mill I found the miller and his daughter in a state of great anxiety about me. The miller had been out all night with a lantern looking for me, and when I got home he was just going to drag the pond at the bottom of the garden with a shrimping net.

In my playful way I had, previous to starting for a walk, told the miller's daughter that I thought it was just the evening to commit suicide in a nice romantic pond. When I didn't return my words were remembered, and the worst fears were entertained.

Since that evening I have been careful not to go too far from home of an evening, and directly I find myself dropping off out of doors I stick a pin in my arm as far as it will go. That keeps me awake long enough to enable me to get home and tumble into bed.

Sweet as my hermitage is, I have now and again been tempted to make excursions beyond it. I have been as far as Wroxham, the great starting point for excursions to the famous Norfolk Broads, and on board a little steam launch I have for the first time in my life made the acquaintance of the picturesque lakes and rivers, which have only of late years begun to receive the attention they deserve.

There are plenty of yachts and boats for hire at various points of the route, and I can conceive no pleasanter way of spending a fortnight than on the Broads.

You can lie on your boat and have all the pleasure of yachting without the perils of the ocean or the pains of sea sickness. It is better to hire a yacht that you can live on, for the hotel accommodation along the banks leaves much to be desired.

The rough element has not as yet introduced Its "broad" fun on these pleasant waterways, and "riparian outrages" are as yet almost unknown.

But owners of property along the banks are beginning to get a little anxious. Year by year the number of yachts and boats, and house-boats and steam launches increases, and parties have taken to landing on private grounds, and lighting fires, and picnicking, and camping for the night in other people's gardens.

The practice of shooting from the decks of the yachts is also coming into vogue, and this is causing serious uneasiness. It is bad enough for a riverside landowner to have his fowls shot at as "wild game," but when the shots whistle through the trees and lodge in the owner's leg or in his wife's back, the annoyance is considerably increased.

Gentlemen who come from London with the intention of taking a sporting tour on the Norfolk and Suffolk rivers and broads are earnestly entreated not to "pot" the inoffensive people who are quietly strolling about the gardens of their own villa residences.

It does not follow because a man lives upon the banks of a river that he is "game." There are plenty of drives in the vicinity of Cromer, but the Norfolk roads are very heavy going just at present, and there is a woful [sic] lack of sign-posts for the benefit of the strange traveller.

My bump of locality is not largely developed, and if it were the strong similarity of the winding lanes which cross and intersect each other would easily nonplus me.

Driving home from Wroxham to Side Strand—some seventeen miles—the other evening, I lost myself five times, and it was long after midnight that I eventually reached my hermitage. And then I only got there after being lost in a wood and taken in hand by a gamekeeper, who kindly got up beside me and told me when to tarn to the right and when to the left.

It was after leaving North Walsham that I got wrong, and it was entirely owing to the sibilance of sign-posts. The road for the last five miles was utterly deserted, and after nightfall we did not meet a living soul, so that to ask our way was impossible.

My little mare would have taken me all right if she had done the journey before, but she had come straight from London, and knew nothing of Norfolk lanes. So we turned and twisted about, vainly endeavouring to see some indication of the mill or the lighthouse on Cromer cliff to guide us.

The few sign-posts that there were were straight poles set well back in the hedge, with the indications painted straight downwards from top to bottom of the post. The writing was in many instances almost obliterated, and we had to spend a quarter of an hour at a sign-post, and use up a whole box of vestas before we could make out anything at all.

We got at last in such a hopeless muddle that we had to pull up at lonely cottages and shout. Then nightcapped heads would be thrust from the windows, and we would be told in a strong Norfolk dialect that we were five miles, or seven miles, or ten miles—as the case might be—out of the road.

When midnight boomed out from a far off church clock, and the moon had retired behind a cloud, I pulled up in hopeless despair at four cross roads. Suddenly far away in the distanoe we saw a glimmering light. "It's a house," I exclaimed. "We'll drive to it, and ask the inhabitants the way."

That house proved to be a mile off, but at last we got to it. It was a cottage, and the light was in the upper window. " Hi! hi hi!" I shouted." Within there! House! What ho!"

At last the inhabitants must have come to the conclusion that my remarks were intended for them, for the window slowly opened, and a male head came out.  What is it?" said the male head. "I beg your pardon for disturbing you," I replied, "but we are travellers, and we have lost our way. Can you tell me which road to take for Side Strand?" "Very sorry, sir," said the male head, " but I can't; we're strangers to these parts, and only came from London this week." Picture!

And I had driven a whole mile to ask that man the way. The situation was agonising, but it was ludicrous, and I laughed aloud and drove on: drove right into a thick plantation where I might have stopped all night but for the friendly gamekeeper formerly alluded to.

I have not taken any country drives late at night since. But I have taken  long country walks late at night, and have even managed to get myself lost on foot. As I frequently lose myself in trying to get from the Strand to Tottenham Court-road, this is not to be wondered at.

But it is not to advertise my want of "locality" that I am writing this paragraph. It is to relate another curious adventure which befell me in the Norfolk lanes. I was lost—lost near a lonely churchyard, late at night.

I sang snatches of song to make myself feel brave, but an uncanny feeling would creep over me. I hate to be lost in a deserted and lonely part late at night. And this time I had no one with me.

While I was getting creepier and creepier, I heard in the distance the steady scrunch of a human footstep coming nearer and nearer. "Saved! Saved!" I cried aloud, in my joy, and I puffed at my pipe with newborn confidence and hope.

At last the man came in sight. I strode forward to greet him. Before I could address him, he addressed me. "Please, sir," he said, "could you tell me if I be a-goin' right for Side Strand?"

The blow was sudden, but supreme. I reeled two paces back. Then, recovering myself, I replied, "I don't know, but if you come with me I'll ask the first person we meet."

We wandered along, looking for somebody, and at last we came to a white gate with a figure leaning over it. "Can you tell me it I am going right for the mill house at Side Strand?" I asked the figure. "Why, this is the mill at Side Strand," was the reply.

"A white gate with a figure leaning over it"
Restored and colourised using ChatGPT

And then the moon came out, and I saw that the figure leaning over the gate was the miller's, and that I was home.

These, indulgent and long-suffering reader, are some of the adventures which have befallen me during my temporary absence from the world on a "midsummer holiday."

I quote the words "A Midsummer Holiday" became it was in my hermitage that Mr. Algernon Charles Swinburne wrote the poems with that title. It was also in my hermitage that the Poppy Land Papers were written by Mr. Clement Scott, and it is in my hermitage that I am writing—

Wait! you shall know in due time. At present a disclosure would be premature; but the thought that a great poet once wrote, sitting in this very room, writing on this very table, fills me with emulation. I must write some poetry, too, but I have to pump up my poetry now. The old inspiration comes not. There is too much prose in my daily life for poetry to have much chance.

Still, it is very quiet here, and perhaps if I sit and stare out of window at the poppies and the corn an idea will come. Let me at least make the attempt.

THE GARDEN OF SLEEP

In the garden of sleep, on the crown of the cliff, 

Where the breezes blow in with an opiate whiff,

I lazily lie on my side in the inn

From the dawn of the day till the daylight is done.

A somnolent silence my soul stealeth o'er

As the wanton waves whispering woo the shy shore.

And the slumber of sleep of the stillness is born,

Where the pretty pink poppies camp out in the corn.

The buzz of the bee as he hums in the hush,

The glow of the gold and the purple and plush,

The rose in its riot of rapturous rest,

All sing me to sleep as a babe at the breast.

Then, wafted and winged on the ambient air,

Through the ivory gate float the phantasies fair,

The dreams of delight of the drowsiness born

Where the pod of the poppy is crashed in the corn.

From the dawn and the day to the dusk and the dark,

To the hoot of the owl from the lay of the lark.

I have slumbered supine on this Lethe-laved land

Where the succulent seaweed sings songs to the sand.

And now, as the midnight moans out on the mere,

It seems in my dreams that a murmur I hear;

'Tis a bibulous boatman, who says with a sniff,

"O Crimes, and O crikey! a corpse on the cliff!"

He labours to lift me—a stagger, a screech—

And two bodies lie battered and bruised on the beach

The rude rocks re-echo the thunderous thud,

And the boulders and billows are blotted with blood.

I chide not the churl lying flaccid and fat,

But I dreamingly, dozily say, "Who was that?"

Then I pule, in a pang of papaverous pain,"

You have waked me too soon, I must slumber again."

That is my Poppy Land—my garden of sleep. I have treated it perhaps with a little poetic licence, but it is better to be too poetical than too prosy.

I have made much of the solitude and silence while I could get it, for I fear the future hermit will find both solitude and silence gone. It has got about that I have been staying in the quiet spot, and already a daily performance of The Birthplace of Podgers¹ is taking place.

Carriages draw up in front of my little white gate, and the occupants put up their opera. glasses and watch my gambols on the lawn with a tame crocodile which a friend of mine in Egypt has just sent me as a present.

Special omnibuses now run from Cromer past the mill, and draw up in the lane to let the passengers have a good look at me as I sit at the window, in a beautiful blazer and a priceless Panama hat, and smoke the short clay dear to my heart for the sake of the old Bohemian days that will come again no more. O, beautiful city of Prague! What would I give—

Really these interruptions are too bad. Here is an excursion party arrived in a waggonette at the mill, and they are wrangling with the conductor because I am not outside, and the fare was two shillings and sixpence, including a full view of DAGONET.

The conductor has come to say that if I would be so kind as to step outside and lean against the door in an easy attitude it would save him much unpleasantness with his fares. I oblige the conductor, bow to the ladies and gentlemen, and then come in and slam the door to.

But I have no sooner begun to write again than a lady in blue spectacles and a green veil comes right into the garden in a donkey-chaise, and taps at my window with her parasol. I start up indignantly. "Really, madam!" I say. Then she smiles, and hands me an Album of Confessions through the window. "Will I fill in my confession, and she'll call for it to-morrow."

Farewell peace and quietness—I am "Podgers." Last week's Referee has revealed my whereabouts, and I have become a natural curiosity of the district. They tell me that next Sunday three excursions will be run from Norwich to Cromer, and four horse vans will bring the excursionists up to the mill to see me.

I shall leave. If there is one thing I hate it is extreme publicity. The Empress of Austria has fled, and I shall fly too. Next week I shall seek another hermitage. I shall go to a lonely spot from which adventurous travellers now and again return to tell strange tales. I shall—

The miller's fair daughter is knocking at my door. "What is it, Louie?" "Please, sir, the grocer's young man's called, and he says his master's compliments, and what would be your price to write him some poetry to put on his paper bags?" "What—!"

All that was left of that grocer's young man was taken back to Cromer late at night in the miller's pony-cart. And now the Cromer police are scouring the cliffs in all directions, and asking the fishermen and the Coastguard, if they have seen anything of a person answering the description of

DAGONET

¹ Hollingshead, John: The birthplace of Podgers: an original domestic sketch in one act (London : T.H. Lacy, [1858?])