Word: arnolds
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...year, according to scholars, that Matthew Arnold wrote his poem Dover Beach, England was the richest, most powerful, most industrially sophisticated nation in the world. Progress was the nation's goddess, in whose honor was staged the Great Exhibition of 1851, a festival of English wealth and material advancement. While England celebrated itself, Arnold was on his honeymoon in the seaport town of Dover, writing a brief poem that eventually would be remembered by many more people than would remember the Great Exhibition, indeed would become the most anthologized poem in English. But Dover Beach was not a celebration...
...world looks a good deal different from the one that appeared to Arnold. The imperial impulse that brought Europe to its glory eventually helped bring it to its knees, and the world's richest, most powerful, most industrially sophisticated nation now lies to the west of England, on the far side of an ocean. In 1851 Arnold could stand in his country, gaze across the Channel at France and behold the world's two giants. These days one may behold the world's two giants from the moon or from the Bering Strait. But where, metaphorically, is our Dover Beach...
...searching for a modern Dover Beach, it might help to pause first at Arnold's. What must have been, in Arnold's time, an attractively hectic seaside resort and sailing port seems strangely lifeless now, in spite of the fact that Dover remains one of the largest passenger ports in the world. Huge, squat ferries chug efficiently and frequently between Dover and Calais. Travelers walk a few steps from a train to a boat and are off. The ease and speed with which a Channel crossing is now done may have deprived Dover of its 19th century character, except...
Exactly where Mr. and Mrs. Arnold honeymooned, no one seems to know. In fact nothing in the Dover town records or in the town history books mentions Arnold or his famous poem. If the Arnolds stopped at the grandest of the town's hotels in 1851, it would have been the Lord Warden, a square, elegant, four- story structure where Dickens gave readings and Napoleon III stayed the night. In those days one would not simply hop a train after a ship ride, but would plan to spend some restful time in Dover before proceeding inland...
...former Lord Warden Hotel now houses the customs and excise offices. From a window on the top floor, it is still possible to hear "the grating roar of pebbles" that Arnold heard on the beach at night. A recent morning was very still. The steel-and-concrete docks jutted out into the harbor; a hovercraft bobbed passively on the water; passengers moved single file from a ferry to a train that soon started up, shrieked metal on metal and moved on. The sea continually changed color and direction, the sun laying a slice of silver on the horizon, which faded...