Five years since Covid-19 hit Brighton

It is five years to the day since the first confirmed case of a coronavirus was registered in Brighton. Five days later the virus was officially named Covid-19 by the World Health Organisation. On 9 March, only eight persons in Brighton & Hove had been confirmed as contracting the virus. On 23 March the government announced a widespread lock down regulated by fairly draconian rules. Though the news hardly connected directly with Brighton Beach, the fact is that we - my wife and two children - navigated sanely through lock down largely thanks to daily early-morning trips to the pebbles.

In 2021, the Argus published an article reflecting back on the start of it all.

‘Today marks one year since the first confirmed case of coronavirus in Brighton and Hove. On 6 February 2020, the government announced that a British national had contracted the disease. About an hour later, it was established the patient was from Brighton.

For most, the virus was nothing more than worrying news reports from China - images of medical personnel in hazmat suits dousing down Wuhan’s streets with disinfectant. But, a few days later, those jarring images were being taken in the city. Footage appeared of a bio-hazard technician as he cleared the County Oak Medical Centre. The Carden Hill GP practice had been closed because of an ‘urgent operational health and safety reason’. Soon after, another coronavirus case was confirmed to be a Brighton and Hove resident and the story exploded. National and international media descended on the city, asking whether the country was ready for a pandemic as further cases were confirmed. The city became the nation’s opening fight with the virus. It was a first-glimpse of the UK’s battle with Covid-19, which has now claimed more than 100,000 lives across the nation.’

Later, it was established that the virus had not been passed to anyone in the city at the time, but that four individuals had caught the virus from in the French Alps. Moreover, the Argus reported: ‘The diligence of the so-called “super spreader” who promptly identified himself as a potential virus patient, as well as the track-and-trace efforts from Public Health England, had saved the city from becoming the centre of an epidemic. The Lombardy region in Italy would soon prove how devastating a localised outbreak of the virus can be.’

The five photos above are of my family at roughly monthly intervals. The first one - on the left - was taken two days after lock down, as some kind of spontaneous response to Covid-19. I’m not sure why I staged it - and the subsequent photos - in that way, though it’s likely I wanted to landmark the astonishing and deadly turn of events suddenly impacting all our lives. 

Here are two entries from my personal diary.

11 February 2020

‘The Coronavirus, now officially called Covid-19, continues to cause headlines, and particularly here in Brighton, as this city has become the British hotbed for the virus. Two surgeries have been closed, and several schools have reported that some individuals are self-isolating. As yet, there doesn’t seem to have been a case that was actually contracted in this country, but it’s early days. Some tens of thousands of people have been infected, and over a thousand have died. But, equally, there are thousands dying from ordinary flu across the world, and it’s quite difficult to keep a sense of perspective. At present, it seems every individual who gets the virus in this country is being tracked, and helped, but we’re talking a dozen or so cases, what happens when hundreds and thousands have the disease, then it’s no longer containable, and everyone must take pot luck.’

Saturday 18 April 2020

‘Half of humanity under social distancing curbs’ reads one headline this morning. Another, more local and of intense interest to us, reads ‘Coronavirus: Brighton council closes Madeira Drive to cars’. Most likely this will bring an end to our early morning jaunts to the beach. We’ve had four weeks of near-daily visits to the seafront, during which I’ve done my yoga exercises, Hat has exercised or run, and the boys have practised skateboarding and football. I might try to find alternative parking - on Marine Parade perhaps - but even if I do we’re going to be spending 10-15 minutes walking either way, and there won’t be a place to skateboard or football probably. Alas. The Council says it’s proud to be taking this action, aimed at giving those doing exercise more space - i.e. along the road as well as the pavement (which is already one of the widest in the city).’

Arnold Bennett in Brighton

Here is Arnold Bennett, the most successful British author of the early 20th century, writing in his diary exactly 115 years ago today.

3 February 1910

‘The other morning I watched the sea-gulls helping the scavenger to scavenge the remains of the daily fish market on the beach. Rain. Strong wind. They could not alight. They had a lot of balancing and steering to do. They dived again and again for the same bit of offal, missing it, till they got it. Then each prize-winner sailed off against the wind with difficulty towards the Palace Pier, and out of my sight somewhere; but some seemed to swallow the piece en route. I was watching them alight in the water the other day; all did exactly the same; a planing descent, then, close on water, 2 or 3 half-flaps, a raising of the head, and they were afloat.’

Bennett was born into a large family in Hanley, Staffordshire, in 1867. Aged 16, he left school to work for his solicitor father, but in 1889, he escaped to London where an interest in journalism led him to become an editor, and then editor-in-chief, of a magazine called Woman. His debut novel - A Man from the North - was published in 1898, and gave him sufficient confidence, a couple of years later, to give up his day job and become a full-time writer. 

From the outset, Bennett adopted an unmistakable style, aligned to the French realists, aiming to depict a real and gritty - rather than romantic - view of life, with all its everyday and banal activities, not least when connected with poor social conditions. At the turn of the century, he moved to Paris, then buzzing with literary and artistic talent, where he stayed for the best part of a decade. During this time he met and married Marie Marguerite Soulié. 

In early 1910, Bennett and Soulié stayed for a few winter months in Brighton at the Royal Albion Hotel as the guest of its flamboyant proprietor Sir Harry Preston. Bennet had done all his research for a new book, to be called Clayhanger, and he used his time in Brighton to write most it, averaging about 1,000 words a day. The novel was published before the end of the same year, and, by early 1911, he was writing a sequel, Hilda Lessways, part of which would be set in Brighton.

Bennett’s authorial skills were put to use during the war, by the end of which he was in charge of propaganda in France. He separated from his wife in 1921, and the following year became involved with Dorothy Cheston, an actress, who bore him a daughter. Though he continued to churn out novels, their critical reputation declined during the 1920s, his literary style coming to be seen as old-fashioned. Nevertheless, his non-fiction was much sought after, and he was famously the highest paid literary journalist in England, with a weekly column in the Evening Standard. He caught typhoid on a trip to France and died in 1931.

Bennett began keeping a diary in 1896, and continued to the end of his life. The excellent journals, which were inherited by Dorothy Cheston, are said to contain over a million words. They were edited by Newman Flower and published in three volumes by Cassell in 1932-1933, titled The Journals of Arnold Bennett 1896-1928. In his introduction, Flower says Bennett’s diaries show him in the manner of a modern Pepys; elsewhere, though, they are considered to have been inspired by the famous French diaries of Edmond and Jules De Goncourt, themselves very influential in the realist/naturalist movement.

Here is another extract from Bennett’s diary written in Brighton.

5 January 1910

‘This morning at 9:45 I began to write ‘Clayhanger’. I felt less nervous and self-conscious than usual in beginning a book. And never before have I made one-quarter so many preliminary notes and investigations. I went out for a little recess, and at 1:30 I had done 1,000 words, which was very good for a first day.

We went to the Aquarium after tea, and heard mediocre music, and saw first-rate fishes, etc., living long under highly artificial conditions. The seals and alligators seemed to be intensely bored and sick of life, but perhaps they weren’t. Then I came back and wrote half an article for the ‘Nation’ about the Hanley music-hall.

Earlier in the afternoon I went out and viewed the shore, and the launching of fishing boats. All kinds of activity in progress, spoiling to be described. But now that I am on my novel I am tied up again for six months from anything really swagger in the way of description.

Weather misty. No visible round trace of the sun. The hotel is haunted by barrel organs. In fact in various ways Brighton seems to be what London was. Its architecture is old Belgravia and Tyburnian.’

And, finally, here is an extract about Brighton not from the diaries but from Bennett’s novel Hilda Lessways:

‘The putting-on of brakes took her unawares. The train was in Brighton, sliding over the outskirts of the town. . . Hilda saw steep streets of houses that sprawled on the hilly mounds of the great town like ladders: reminiscent of certain streets of her native district, yet quite different, a physiognomy utterly foreign to her. This, then, was Brighton. That which had been a postmark became suddenly a reality, shattering her preconceptions of it, and disappointing her she knew not why. She glanced forward, through the window, and saw the cavern of the station. . .

Her first disappointment changed slowly into expectant and hopeful curiosity. The quaint irregularities of the architecture, and the vastness of the thronged perspectives, made promises to her romantic sense. The town seemed to be endless as London. There were hotels, churches, chapels, libraries, and music-shops on every hand. The more ordinary features of main streets - the marts of jewellery, drapery, and tobacco - had an air of grandiose respectability; while the narrow alleys that curved enigmatically away between the lofty buildings of these fine thoroughfares beckoned darkly to the fancy. The multiplicity of beggars, louts, and organ-grinders was alone a proof of Brighton’s success in the world; the organ-grinders, often a man and a woman yoked together, were extraordinarily English, genteel, and prosperous as they trudged in their neat, middle-class raiment through the gritty mud of the macadam, stolidly ignoring the menace of high-stepping horses and disdainful glittering wheels. Brighton was evidently a city apart. . .’ 

The caricature of Bennett above (by Oliver Herford in The American Magazine) was sourced at Wikipedia, The book cover here is one of many different editions available at Abebooks.

More about Bennett and his diaries can be found in my book Brighton in Diaries (History Press, 2011)

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