RAMSGATE
The old seaport and holiday-resort of Ramsgate may be reached quickly
along the desolate Dumpton Park Drive already spoken of; but the
pedestrian’s better way from Broadstairs is past that eyesore the Grand
Hotel, to the grassy cliffs’ edge. These are interrupted by some of
those “gates” and “gaps” characteristic of this part of the coast.
Crossing the bridge at Dumpton Gap, and past some fortifications,
Ramsgate itself is reached by way of Wellington Crescent, whose name,
like that of the thoroughfare near by, called the “Plains of Waterloo,”
sufficiently well dates this part of the town to the 1815–20 period.
It is well to note here that all these Ramsgate developments at
this point, on the East Cliff, and even the busy town and harbour
of Ramsgate itself, are only the expansion, since the eighteenth
century, of that original village situated one mile inland, where the
mother-church of St. Lawrence still may be found. Ramsgate--spelled
“Raunsgate” until the time of Edward the First--derives from “Ruim’s
Geat,” that is to say, the “marsh gate”; and where the busy harbour
now is the fishermen of remote times drew up their boats and dried
their nets, going home inland to St. Lawrence. Here the cliffs of
Thanet die away to the marshes and levels of Pegwell Bay and Sandwich
Flats; and the early fisher-folk, for safety’s sake, preferred to
live away from the shore, upon which an enemy might (and often did)
unexpectedly land. When Ramsgate first began to grow, its inhabitants,
seeking a respectable remote antiquity, affected to believe the
place-name derived from “Roman’s Gate,” but even the credulous old
Hasted, the eighteenth-century historian of Kent, could not accept that
etymology.
As the far more ancient, and once immeasurably more important town of
Sandwich, decayed, so Ramsgate grew; but, although Ramsgate has long
been a considerable town and has now a population exceeding 28,000,
still increasing, it was only incorporated so recently as 1884, and is
still in some respects merely a “Ville of Sandwich,” whose population
is less than 4,000. Thus is the link maintained with the ancient tale
of the Cinque Ports, when Sandwich was great and powerful and Ramsgate
a mere fishing-village.
The commercial beginnings of Ramsgate are found in the construction
of the harbour, between 1749 and 1761. The town then rapidly grew;
although the cost of dredging and maintaining the depth of water
rendered Ramsgate harbour dues among the heaviest in existence--an
undesirable prominence still maintained. The obelisk by the quayside
was erected in 1822 in memory of the embarkation of George the Fourth
for Hanover--not one of the great events of history. Five years later
the parish church of St. George was built: one of the works of Augustus
Welby Pugin. Its lofty lantern-tower, prominent in the High Street, is
fine and rather foreign-looking; but, with the rest of the building,
looks better at a distance, the material being common stock-brick, and
the architectural details very poor. Pugin, one of the great figures
of the Gothic revival in the beginning of the nineteenth century, has
long since been out-distanced by more scholarly and more artistic
architects. He was a Roman Catholic pervert, and oddly divided in his
appreciations. “There is nothing worth living for,” he said, “but
Christian architecture and a boat.” He was an enthusiastic sailor, and
was in appearance the very ideal of a pilot. He designed the Roman
Catholic church and monastery of St. Augustine, at the very extremity
of the West Cliff, overlooking Pegwell Bay, and died at his villa, “The
Grange,” adjoining, in 1854. Truth compels the addition that his Gothic
church, however highly it was once thought of by himself and others--
he considered it his best work--is extremely poor, alike in design
and in the use of the materials--black flint and stone--employed.
He seems not to have possessed that sense of texture in the use of
materials without which even the best design looks poor. It is safe to
say that even the most moderately equipped architectural student of
to-day could do better.
These remarks are applicable enough here, although we have only arrived
yet at the East Cliff; because, cresting this cliff, is the great
Granville Hotel, which was also designed by Pugin and was once also
considered a wonderful example of design. You may note how highly Pugin
was then thought of by the bust of him on the promenade in front.
The Granville does things on a lordly scale, and has an express of its
own from London. Down below it, indeed, and in direct communication,
is the railway station, on the sands, beneath the cliffs. There is a
forthright, downright manner about the railway company which rather
challenges admiration, even if the slowness and unpunctuality of its
trains and the filthiness of its carriages evoke our disgust. The
Company seems to say, “You want to go to the seaside at Ramsgate?”
and then, without more ado, not only conveys you, but, in a manner of
speaking, actually deposits you on the seashore, as near the sea as
possible; short of being actually flung into it.
The railway comes in by a black inferno of tunnel, and smokes the
cliffs to a sooty hue. And here, before you, are the famous sands of
Ramsgate, playground in the summer season of uncounted thousands of
holiday-folk. They have rendered this no place for a quiet holiday;
and effectively disprove the ancient and much-quoted saying, wrongly
attributed to Froissart, “The English take their pleasures sadly.” Can
you come away from Ramsgate sands with that belief?
It is rather curious nowadays to read Dickens’s short story, “The
Tuggses at Ramsgate,” to note that, in the novelist’s mind, a more or
less vulgar Cockney who had suddenly found himself possessed of twenty
thousand pounds, would think at once of Ramsgate as a holiday-place for
himself and family. He would probably not do so now; but the general
trend of popular literature in those days was in the same direction of
comparatively unenterprising holidays on the nearest coast-line.
Thus, according to one of the innumerable guides to Ramsgate, published
in 1864, the following concatenation of summer circumstances clearly
pointed out to the Londoner the desirability of taking holiday on
the Kentish coast in general, and at Ramsgate in particular; that is
to say: “When the weather gets so hot that soda-water bottles are
dangerous as powder-flasks, and go off like pistols; when flowers die
as soon as they are plucked, and butchers’ shops smell unpleasantly;
when the London restaurants ice their bitter ale, and pine-apple is at
a halfpenny the slice; when your hair is always moist and your listless
arms hang at your sides like bell-pulls; when old gentlemen leave off
flannel and sit in draughts with their waistcoats open, whilst elderly
ladies pearl-powder their faces ten times a day; when the warm fingers
make marks on the new novel, and dogs have disagreeable expressions
and long tongues; when the ‘catch-’em-alives’ at the grocers’ are
dotted with dead flies thicker than the currants in a Christmas
pudding, and when the trees in the squares seem powdered over with
Scotch snuff. When all these things are seen and take place, then mamma
thinks how delightful the sea-breeze must be, and suddenly discovers
that the children look pale. Then she carefully points out to papa
at breakfast that the baby is as white as melted butter, that little
Selina has nasty black marks under her eyes; and at dinner she tenderly
makes the stubborn father notice that Tom has scarcely eaten enough to
fill an egg-cup, and that Johnny has emptied both water-bottles, as
if sickening for a fever. If the stern husband should still resist,
then one day, when he is at business, the doctor is sent for, and he,
charming humbug, knows too well his duty not to prescribe ‘change of
air.’ Then, as a further precaution, Selina is put to bed, Tom is
forced to take bitter pills in orange marmalade, and Johnny made to
drink wine-glasses of pink stuff, until at last papa gives way before
the threatened doctor’s bill. Then carpets are taken up, chairs piled
one on another into barricades of legs, the picture-frames are covered
with gauze, the servants put upon board-wages, and at last the family,
with twenty boxes, goes to the seaside.”
That was the elaborate way in which excuses were made for
holiday-making in the ’60’s. Such were the methods of the English
in the days when crinolines were worn and chignons were considered
fashionable. Our fathers and mothers, it will quite readily be
perceived, were not yet emancipated from the workaday ideal that had
hitherto governed England: that grim, joyless, slogging spirit that
had made the nation great, but made it dour as well; and no one, you
know, felt really quite easy in conscience at taking holiday. To
revel in doing nothing was unknown. So some excuse, some way out of
a difficulty, had to be invented, and it generally was found in such
transparent pretexts as above. And yet Ramsgate sands were as crowded
then as now, and the “husbands’ boats” that plied from London were
full. Frith painted his celebrated picture of Ramsgate sands, showing
a merry throng, looking the “picture of health”; and so it is very
evident that a large number of people successfully adopted the holiday
for health’s sake deception.
“And now,” continues our guide, “the seaside towns get busy. Those
virtuous elderly spinsters who have lived the long winter months in
their deserted houses, solitary as spiders in their webs, wake up from
their torpidity and grow lively with the summer heat. They take from
the linen-closet the clean blinds for the bedroom windows, and the net
curtains for the ‘handsome drawing-rooms’ and ‘neat parlours’; the
faded chintz coverings are washed and ironed; and, buying a bottle of
furniture-polish, they make their poor arms ache with rubbing up the
dull tables and sideboards into a waxy lustre. The stationer sells off
his stock of embossed cards, engraved with ‘Apartments to Let,’ and the
spirited proprietors of libraries, bazaars, and assembly-rooms have
their pianos tuned, and make arrangements with musicians and singers
from London.”
To-day the August crowd is far less domestic than that pictured above;
but the same old “amusements,” plus penny-in-the-slot machines and
other inventions not dreamt of forty years ago, prevail. It is, we
will say, the harbour, midday. The weather, in nautical phrase, is
“fresh”; to the inexperienced Cockney it is “stormy”; yet the qualmy
holiday-folk are sufficiently brave, or rash, to venture for a sail
in one of the yachts now filling up. Four of them are lying alongside
the pier-wall, and are advertised to sail at 1 p.m.; but, although it
is now past two o’clock, they show no signs of moving--except the
disturbing movement imparted to them, even in harbour, by the roughness
of the waves, which already, before the voyage has begun, is rendering
many of the bold trippers dimly uncomfortable. But they have paid a
shilling each for the trip, and intend to take their shilling’s-worth,
even though they pay the penalty of being sea-sick. A Briton will at
all costs have his money’s worth, if in any way possible. That is why,
collectively, as a nation, we “rule the waves,” although, individually,
we too often lie in agonised prostration aboard, even before the
stormy winds do blow.
“Fine day for a sail,” shout the touts. It must be bad weather indeed
when these worthies cease that cry. A crowd of idle holiday-makers,
bored with holiday-making, and incapable of making holiday gracefully,
look on, without the slightest real interest. Pickpockets are busy.
Good-humoured man, easy in his mind because there is nothing in his
pockets to lose, to one of the light-fingered (not so dexterous as he
might be) fumbling awkward fingers in his coat:
“Keep it there, sonny; keep it there, if yer ’and’s cold!”
Chorus of touts: “This way, gents, for the large yacht, _Moss Rose_.
’Ere y’are, lidy, for the _King George_. Now sir, come along; I’ve bin
wyting for yer. Now miss, just goin’ to start!”
The Ramsgate Town Council has heroically attempted to provide amusement
for holiday-makers, and has sought (perhaps with a success only
indifferent) to disguise the more urban and grimly commercial aspects
of the place around the harbour. After all, there is not much of
Ramsgate sands. Measured by the shores of Yarmouth, let us say, they
are very small, and are crowded to extremity. The new Marine Drive,
constructed in 1891 at a cost of £80,000, and intended to connect
the East and West Cliffs, has been with much ingenuity provided with
elaborate rockeries planted with rock-plants and provided with
ornamental waters; but the highly dangerous electric tramways, plunging
down the steep gradients and sharp curves, detract greatly from the
front.
Personally, I am much more impressed with the curious old market,
and with its fine display of flowers, fruit, and vegetables. The
market, and (one must not forget these) the extraordinary number of
public-houses facing the harbour, are sufficient to attract even the
most casual notice. I knew a person with a bent for philosophical
inquiry who was greatly struck by never seeing any one enter these
places of refreshment. He commented upon this curious fact to one
of those broad-beamed fishermen which only the coast of Kent seems
able to produce. This worthy answered with a smile, “Lor’ bless you,
sir, I knows every nail and every knot-hole in every one on ’em. The
customers goes in, right enough, early; and they don’t come out till
closing-time.” The moral of this would appear to be that philosophers
should begin their observations at an earlier hour.