MARGATE
Margate the Merry, to which we enter by electric tramway, is the
oldest and most popular of English seaside resorts: and also, in some
opinions, the most vulgar. However that may be, and dismissing the
claims of Rollicking Ramsgate and Southend (to say nothing of Blackpool
and Yarmouth) to pre-eminence in vulgarity, Merry Margate is certainly
a very crowded and unselect place in August and on occasions of popular
holiday. There is then no doubting the reality of Margate, I assure
you, nor, for the matter of that, is it anything less substantial in
winter, for the extensive brickiness of it is a solemn fact; but in
the dull winter months of short days and bad weather it is something
like an elaborate theatrical set scene with the lights turned down
and most of the company off the stage. The alleged merriment of
Margate, which resides chiefly in the same alliteration that renders
Ramsgate “rollicking,” is not a local product. It is imparted by the
holiday-makers. At other times the town is extremely sedate; but
always (except when a March east wind is blowing) its air is charged
with vitality. On one of those occasions, however, Margate looking
north-east, on the most exposed north-easterly verge of Kent, the best
thing to do is to stay indoors, beside the biggest fire you can induce
the grate to hold. Perhaps even the very bestest thing to do is to have
that fire in one’s bedroom, and retire to rest with hot-water bottles.
For more than a century and a half Margate has been a holiday-place,
and therefore wears an air of permanency which not even Brighton can
beat, although its front is more miscellaneous and less stately. In
fact, it looks whimsically as though one side of Gower Street had
come down from London, for a change--and had not yet benefited by
it! Matthew Arnold must have been similarly impressed when he wrote
that this was a “brick-and-mortar image of English Protestantism,
representing it in all its prose, all its uncomeliness--let me add,
all its salubrity.” He had, you perceive, an unworthy affection for
the tawdry rags of Continental Roman Catholicism, however insalubrious
their nature, and in spite of his much-advertised craving for
“sweetness and light.”
Arnold’s sneer at Protestantism offended many, but we have travelled
far and swiftly on the down-grade in the last half-century, and
the thing that would once have seemed impossible has come to pass:
Protestantism has become a term of abuse. We have lived to see _that_!
“Margate” may have been originally the “Meer-geat,” the Anglo-Saxon
for “sea-gate”; or more probably the name derived from the “mere,” or
little stream, which flowed down to the sea past St. John’s Church,
along the line of the street now called The Brooks; “mere” being a
well-known Kentish word for a stream. However that may be, Margate is
really of ancient origin: an historical fact rather obscured by the
growth of the town. Still, one has only to seek that old parish church
of St. John to perceive that this was an established place in Norman
times. Strange though it may seem, “Margate” was once considered a
separate village or hamlet on the seashore, as we read in the itinerary
of John Leland, in the time of Henry the Eighth: “Meregate lyith in
St. John’s paroche in Thanet v miles upward from Reculver; there is a
village and a peere for shyppes now sore decayed.”
[Illustration: FROM THE PALIMPSEST BRASS, MARGATE CHURCH.]
[Illustration: FROM THE PALIMPSEST BRASS, MARGATE CHURCH.]
It is an extremely dark and rather dirty church, tucked away in an
obscure situation, and thus not often seen by the chance visitor. It
stands at the back of the harbour, among little odd Georgian streets,
and tiny squares of a kind of dolls’-house type, and is surrounded by
a mangy churchyard containing trees which look as though they were
longing for the country. There are no fewer than thirteen brasses here,
all greatly worn, including that to John Daundelyon already mentioned,
and a late example, dated 1615, to Roger Morris, with a ship in full
sail and an inscription describing him as “one of the six principall
Masters of Attendance of his Mai^{ties} Navye Royall.” But the most
curious is the fragment of a palimpsest brass hinged in a frame on the
south wall of the chancel. The original was evidently a very large
example of Flemish make and is curiously engraved with vine-tendrils,
a shield of arms displaying three helmets on a field of crosses, two
odd nude creatures on stilts, one kicking the other, reckless of
maintaining his equilibrium; and a little monkish figure trying to
catch monstrous butterflies as big as himself with a net smaller than
the butterflies. This futile endeavour may or may not be intended as
a satire upon the vanity of human wishes; but, in any case, it is a
matter for rejoicing that butterflies larger than turkeys do not exist.
A favourite way of reaching Margate from London before the era of
steamships and railways was by what most of the passengers called “the
’oy,” a conveyance which appeared in print with an “H” denied it in
speech. The “Margate Hoy” was a type of sailing-vessel by which our
ancestral holiday-makers arrived with much pleasure, or intolerable
discomfort as the case might be, after a calm voyage of ten hours, or
a tempestuous passage of fifteen. The hoys set sail from the Thames,
near the Customs House quay, and conveyed passengers at the extremely
moderate fare of half a crown. In after-years, when steamships replaced
these clumsy, bluff-bowed old sailing-vessels, which after all looked
and behaved like sailing-barges, the “Husbands’ Boat,” steaming from
London on Saturdays, became the main feature of the Margate season.
To-day there are still Saturday steamers, of a very up-to-date type,
to Margate and Ramsgate; but the term “Husbands’ Boat” is altogether
outworn and hopelessly stale, now that uxoriousness is no longer even
the mark of the middle class and the ideal is, at the best of it, for
husbands and wives to make holiday apart, or, at the worst of it, with
some one else’s partner.
Margate saw the invention of the bathing-machine about 1765, by that
modest Quaker, Benjamin Beale. The immodest modesty of that cumbrous
and supremely uncomfortable affair has made the English at the seaside
the laughing-stock of other nations; but brother Broadbrim’s invention
still lags superfluous on many a seaside scene, although bathing-tents
actively dispute possession.
The visitor will not have been long in Margate before his attention
is drawn to men distributing bills inviting all and sundry to “Go and
see the Grotto!” Among the attractions of this place, set forth on
these leaflets, is “two thousand square feet of shellwork”--a kind of
decoration sufficient to make the artistic shudder. The “Grotto,” which
is really an excavation in the chalk, is situated in Bellevue Place
along “The Dane,” a thoroughfare about half a mile from the front. It
consists of a passage some 60 ft. in length, ending in a chamber about
12 ft. square. Both passage and chamber are lined with common shells
set in cement and displayed in geometrical and floral devices. A great
deal of nonsensical legend has accumulated about this place, which is
said to be a work of immemorial antiquity. That accepted archæologist,
Miss Marie Corelli, in her book “Cameos,” declares it to be “one
of the World’s Wonders,” and “a curious and beautiful subterranean
temple”; and believes it to be a work of the Vikings; a catacomb where
they buried their dead. Unfortunately for this view, we have only
to refer to Charles Knight’s book, “The Land we Live In,” published
about 1850, to read that “the shellwork was done by an ingenious
artisan of Margate who some years ago went to America.” The chamber
was originally, in fact, the basement-room of the little house above,
and the plaster ceiling of it remains. Thus do the Vikings vanish and
feminine archæologists become discredited!
To witness Margate in the spring preparing to awake from her winter
sleep and to make ready for early visitors is alike amusing and
pathetic. The long, empty vista of seaside promenade has as yet no
promenaders, but a scattered army of painters and gardeners is busy
upon seats, shelters, railings, and flower-beds. Everything is being
swept and garnished; and so long and so thoroughly has Margate been
looked after by a Town Council, that the parlour-maidenly neatness has
spread even to the sands, and you may see Corporation men walking by
the sad sea-waves picking up and neatly disposing of the seaweed and
other jetsam which the rude and sportive winds have left in unseemly
fashion on the ocean’s melancholy marge. Even those ridiculous chalk
cliffs are not allowed to present any jagged, picturesque outlines.
They are pretty freely cased with brick; but, it must in justice be
allowed that they have not been so nearly converted into brick walls as
have been the cliffs at Ramsgate. And in another matter, too, Margate
has not gone to extremes. Dogs (unless things have latterly been
pressed to extremity) may still bark on Margate sands. They may not do
so at Hastings, on penalty of the owner being fined by the local Sir
Oracles.
“Going it!” is said to be the note of Margate. No one who has been
there in August will dispute that. Those who do not wish to “go it,”
and would rather enjoy a quiet, contemplative holiday, had better
go elsewhere. Margate makes merry (this alliteration is positively
infectious) from early morn till dewy eve. You awake to a concert of
sounds, in which the bugling and clarionetting of early brake-parties
is brassily prominent, and at night are sent to sleep by the slowly
expiring minstrelsy of varied bands. Let it be added that the air of
Margate is so forceful that even those constitutionally and mentally
averse from all that “going it!” may be taken to mean let themselves go
here. There was once a highly respectable curate who “went it!” to such
an extent--but that is not our business.
Both Ramsgate and Margate claim the story of the typically pursy,
Perkyn Middlewick type of city man who, stepping on to the railway
platform on the arrival of the train and feeling already the enliving
effect of the atmosphere, exclaimed, “Isn’t this invigorating?”
“No, sir,” returned a porter, “it’s Margate” (or Ramsgate, as the case
may be).
Some few have not the capacity for enjoyment. Sometimes you see, along
these crowded sands, tearful small boys who have somehow missed the
note of the place. “I have brought you out to enjoy yourself, sir,”
said a robustious father to such an one; “and if you don’t begin to do
it pretty quick, you’d better go home!”
Margate has a wonderful reputation for its rough, vigorous, revivifying
air; it is also known at one season of the year--may it be hinted
without offence?--for its very rough, vigorous coast population. A
once well-known actor who long since joined the great majority and
exchanged his fame for oblivion used to illustrate this in one of
his breezy anecdotes. He and a friend, in a sailing-vessel, found
themselves in difficulties in a fog. Suddenly conscious, by sounds and
dim lights, that they were off a coast town, they hailed the shore:
“Ahoy! ahoy! Where are we?” A thunderous voice responded through the
fog, “Go to ----,” whereupon Ryder, the actor in question, turning to
his friend, exclaimed: “All right, my boy--Margate!”
Somewhat similar testimony--although not specifically limited to
Margate--may be found in the pages of a familiar novelist; Mr. Thomas
Hardy remarking, in that beautiful story “A Pair of Blue Eyes,” that
“it has been calculated by philosophers that more ‘damns’ go up to
heaven from the Channel, in the course of a year, than from all the
five oceans put together.”
It is a profane way of stating a fact of which no one will be concerned
to deny the truth.
Not only the seafaring and the coastwise populations indulge in
strong language: conversation in general along the roads is decidedly
over-proof. There is too much “damyer” about the roadside intercourse
of these parts, produced largely by the animosities of motorists and
the drivers of chars-à-bancs, who do not love one another, but unite
and make common cause against the electric tramways in vituperation.
The tramways, the chars-à-banc traffic, and the motor-cars have
indeed greatly changed the aspect of Thanet and its seaside resorts.
The “oldest inhabitant” of some few years hence will be able to
tell strange tales of a time when he knew of rural roads and saw
wild-flowers:
THE GAFFER’S STORY
“Yes, I’m a ’underd an’ six, an’ healthy enough in a general way,
But that don’t signify much in these times, when ye meet a couple o’
dozen centurions a day.
I can manage a dozen mile afoot; can dig, read, an’ holler, an’
chaw,
But, lor’ bless ye! that’s nothing now: lots do all that, an’ more.
An’ in Ireland, they tell me, centurions grow on every
blackberry-bush, so to speak,
An’ corsties the Guv’ment in ole-age pensions thousands an’
thousands a week.
I suppose it must be something, don’t ye think, in the hair?
For at Brighton, where the hair is, there’s dozens an’ dozens o’
centurions _there_.
No, I don’t mean the ’air of yer ’ed, but the hair of the sky--
It’s difficult to make you townsfolk unnerstand, however you try.
An’ ‘Centenarians’ _you_ say. Why, no! Centurions _I’ve_ allus
carled ’em, an’ allus shell,
Although I daresay that way o’ yourn may do ’most as well.
I don’t ’old with yer new-fangled words: they’re all very fine--
Like now, when you have your dinner, you say you are ‘going to
dine.’
You don’t seem to me to get fatter on ‘dining’ than ‘dinner:’
’Fact, it seems some’ow to me, you’re all o’ you worried
an’ thinner.
Eh! what was the country like when I wer’ young?
Well, it’s an old, old story now, forgotten ever so long.
In them days there was hedges, an’ ellums in the hedge-rows,
An’ hazels, an’ blackberry brakes, an’ bracken, an’ goodness knows
How many wild-flowers there. The roads suttingly was rather muddy;
But the children used to go to the hedges for what they carled
‘Nature Study.’
‘Not much nature now,’ you say. No: ye see the world got so clever,
it ’ad to go,
An’ now if ye wanted to see a cowslip or a buttercup, I don’t know
what ye could do:
P’raps they’ve got a speciment or two in the Natural Mystery Museum,
An’ if I was you, I’d go to South Kensington, an’ try an’ see ’em.
‘Hist’ry,’ you say, ‘not Myst’ry’; well, maybe so, ’tis arl the
same to me--
_I_ don’t care, not at arl, whichever o’ them it be!
Pretty things, an’ simple they was: I ’aven’t seen none fer half a
sentry, I’m sure;
’Cos the gardeners took ’em in hand, an’ cultivated ’em till they
didn’t resemble their own selves no more.
Look ahere! Ye see this yer flower what looks like a double-daffodil
gone mad:--
Well: _that_ was ’riginally a buttercup, before it was
super-cultivated, me lad!
They cut down the hedges an’ trees, an’ straightened every one o’
the winding ways
That was to be found everywhere in them oncultivated days.
For, ye see, they’d got moty-cars of such extryornary power
Which ’ud do well up to 80 or 90 miles an hour.
An’ when, after coming, sudden-like, round the corners, they’d
killed a good proportion of the population,
They was looked upon with something near vexation.
With a long, straight road, when a motor’s heard, an ’umming in
the distance,
You can ’op aside like winking, an’ so save your existence;
But on a winding road it wasn’t no manner o’ good, I declare,
They was onto, an’ over you, before ackshully you knew they was
there.
An’ now there’s rails, ’stead of hedges, an’ there ain’t now no
dust, nor trees;
An’ England’s just the same from end to end, an’ never no kind o’
diff’rence you sees.
Why, when I wer’ a lad, there were ’ardly two places the same:
Each ’ad it’s own character, just as every one its own name.
But now they tell me the Orkneys is a’most the same as Pegwell Bay,
An’ Paddington an’ Penzance own brothers, an’ Hastings an’
Eastbourne, an’ such places as they,
Ain’t got never a pin to choose between:--
Ah! things is very diff’rent to what they used to been.”