the highest post of honour. But every man has failings as well as virtues, and, according to Bismarck’s dictum, the greater the man the greater the mistakes he will sometimes make. A leading trait of Mr. Ross’s mind appears to have been that Hastings as a town should be co-equal with Hastings as a borough, and that the former had been surrepticiously deprived of its chartered possessions; hence his feverish activity on every opportunity for reclamation, notwithstanding that each successive effort proved the attempt to be both expensive and abortive. When discussing the postal and boundary question, Mr. Ross said he had no animus against St. Leonards, but a review of his conduct against that town for a long series of years would prove that statement to be incorrect. As early as 1837, when the large house in Seymour Place (now 23 Grand Parade) was occupied by the Dowager Queen Adelaide, Mr. Ross, as a bookseller in Castle Street, published a view of the house as “the Residence of the Queen Dowager, Hastings”. This was a source of annoyance to the Queen’s attendants, the Queen having been medically advised to take up her winter residence at St. Leonards, and the said house being professedly in St. Leonards although not within the jurisdiction of the St Leonards Commissioners. It was, however, within twenty houses of their boundary and a mile away from the town over which the Hastings Commissioners had control. Mr. Ross’s published view was equally an annoyance to Mr. Waghorne, who built his “Royal Mansion” and to all others whose property was in the same neighbourhood. In consequence of this, Mr. Southall, the librarian, was applied to to(sic) get out a view of “The Queen Dowager’s Residence, St. Leonards”, which was quickly done, and the two sets of inhabitants, east and west of the Archway became more socially united than before.
Ross's Guide
In one edition of his Hastings and St Leonards Guide Mr. Ross referred to St. Leonards as having obtained its position by “backdoor influence”, and he repeated that uncomplimentary sentence, at the Council meeting (vide page 30) when censuring the Postmaster General for declining to alter the postal arrangements. In another edition, published in 1843, there is a statement, under a line of capitals “Grand Parade Hastings”, that “the most modern part of the town consists of a splendid range of buildings between the gate of St. Leonards and the Victorian parade”, whilst, on the next leaf of the Guide says “About two miles to the westward of Hastings is situated the new town of St. Leonards”. In a later edition the Guide informs its readers that “Adjoining the west end of Hastings is the new town of St. Leonards, commenced by Mr. Burton in 1828”. These several sentences speak for themselves; but, to show that Mr. Ross was not so free from animosity as he professed to be, the following extracts are from pages 116 and 117 of the last-named edition of his Guide: “The Health -
