OF THE GENT AT THE SEA-SIDE.
THERE is a period in the year of London existence, when that portion of
it termed the Season, _par excellence_, comes to an end with every body,
whatever their station; for very few there are who do not, somehow or
other, contrive to get out of town, when the great rush from home—that
flight of the soul of the departed Season—is at its height. Every body
who has not already gone, is going; nobody will own to staying in town,
even if compelled to do so. Houses are shut up, blinds newspapered, and
furniture tied up in bags: in fact, to make a wretched joke, whilst the
family is on the Rhine, its lamps and ottomans are all in Holland. There
are no more carriages whirling about the west-end streets: no more
thundering knocks echoing all day, and night, too, for the matter of
that, in the squares. You write letters, and get no answers: you make
calls, and find nobody at home, but a servant on board wages, who runs
out into the area to look at you before she answers the door, in great
astonishment. You think it almost disreputable to be seen about, so you
follow the rest, and go away.
This feeling extends throughout all classes of society: and going down
lower and lower, at last reaches the Gent, who copies the gentleman, but
sees, as usual, every thing through a wrong medium. In fact, his
reflection is that of a spoon, in more senses than one: making the most
outrageous images of the original, distorting all the features, but
still preserving a strange sort of identity.
The Gent has two favourite places of sea-side resort, according to his
idiosyncrasies: if joyous, he goes to Gravesend; if dreary, to Ramsgate.
Margate is neither one thing nor the other, and Brighton is really too
respectable. He cannot there show off: and to show off is the battle of
the Gent’s life. But Gravesend is delicious. The transit is cheap and
rapid; the lodgings are moderate; an effect in dress can be made at an
easy rate; and, above all, there is that largest ornamental chalk-pit in
the world, Rosherville.
We are, perhaps, wrong in putting Gravesend under the head of sea-side
resorts: but the Gent considers it to be so. And, indeed, the baths
there offer peculiar advantages, combining the properties of both fresh
and salt water, with the impurities of both, and the attributes of
neither. Yellow slippers may also be purchased in the town; and this
circumstance induces the belief, that the neighbouring water is the sea;
a delusion which appears common not only amongst the Gents, but most of
the settlers. This, however, by the way: we were speaking of
Rosherville, the paradise which mainly draws the Gents from town.
The costume of the Gent at Rosherville is analogous to the one he wears
at the promenade concerts, with the exception, that he has a more airy
cravat, of brighter hue, and smokes perpetually, except in the
ball-room; and he would do that, thinking it was “the thing,” if a board
did not warn him: showing that such warning was found absolutely
necessary. And here, whilst listening to the “military band” of the
first detachment of the Light Coldstream Indefatigables, he puts his hat
on one side, sits on a table, and tapping his short boot, which
discovers its form through his trowsers, with his equally curtailed
cane, believes, as usual, that he is _the_ man of the assembly.
The Gent has several fashions in the dancing at Rosherville, different
from those of the Casino. In the first place, he takes off his hat, and
hangs it on a peg, if there is one vacant; if not, he leaves it at the
bar. Then he bows to his partner, and, if he knows her very well, courts
at the same time: and, subsequently, he salutes the corners with great
politeness, previous to commencing the first set. But this particular
set does not stand very high in estimation. In common with other balls
for the _basse classe_, its component Gents prefer dances of intricate
and abnormal fashion: and so it is here also considered _ton_ to perform
the _Caledonians_ (which nobody ever knows all through, except the
master of the ceremonies), the _Lancers_, _Spanish Dances_, the
_Cellarius_, even the _Gavotte_, and other frantic arrangements of
gasping professors, including, of course, “_La Polka_” as it is always
termed, in their parlance. And on “Gala Nights,” still more wonderful
evolutions are gone through, all of which are due to the inventive
genius of the aforesaid inimitable M.C., whose friendship the Gent
especially prizes. For at Rosherville that great man is to be
seen—actually, really to be seen—walking like an ordinary person,
amongst ordinary fellow creatures. He is no longer a phantasy of mental
conception—not that zephyr in pumps bounding amidst new-laid eggs and
tea-things, or matchlessly performing his Marine Hornpipe in top-boots,
or Chinese Fandango in handcuffs, or Milanese Fling in the double
jack-chains; but a substantial reality,—the glass of fashion, the mould
of form, whom we can never fancy putting off the pumps of ceremony for
the high-lows of necessity—in a word, THE BARON NATHAN.
The Gent at Ramsgate would be the last to persuade that it is really a
dull place. He is one of the most strenuous upholders of that greatest
of all popular delusions suffered to go unchallenged, that English
sea-side watering-places generally are pleasant spots to emigrate to,
and Ramsgate in particular. We know, as far as we are concerned, that we
once underwent transportation for seven days to that penal settlement;
and that we never before suffered (we expect in common with every body
else) from such a ghastly gasping after the belief that we were “doing a
holiday,” as the Gent would say, as during that time.
How the Gent makes up his mind to go to Ramsgate at all we cannot make
out; but there he always is: and he divides the measure of his revelry
thereat into four goes of excitement: Going on the sands; Going out
sailing; Going on the pier; and Going to Sachett’s.
_Going on the sands_ is the weakest of the Gent’s pastimes: but he says,
with a loud laugh, that it is to see the ladies bathe. Elsewhere it
would be confined to watching children bury one another in the sand,
with small wooden spades—a performance which, like a pantomime, however
interesting on first representation, somewhat flags in interest upon
repetition. The Gent usually takes two chairs to rest upon, and stares
hard at every body else, especially the females, the while he sketches
feeble designs with his short stick, which he never by any means parts
with, on the sand.
[Illustration]
_Going out sailing_ is also a slow business—slower than a few friends
after a dinner-party for a carpet polka; or a standard five-act-play; or
a wedding breakfast; or the outside half of yesterday’s _Times_; or a
book written with a “high moral purpose;” or a Charing-Cross-to-the-Bank
omnibus—and that is saying a good deal: the Gent, however, likes it: for
then he puts on a shirt ruled with blue ink, the collar of which he
turns down: and talks of “jibs,” and “tacks,” and “sheets,” and also
alludes to the man he knows who keeps a yacht. And he takes his
cigar—his loved cigar—as soon as he leaves the harbour. And as he leaves
the harbour he stands in an attitude, and believes that the young ladies
who show their ankles on the pier imagine him to be a Red Rover.
Perhaps _Going on the pier_ is the Ramsgate Gent’s greatest treat:
because then he can put on his gay clothes, and once more think that he
is rather the thing. But in this the Gent makes a great mistake. He
dresses but once in the day, and then puts on a frock-coat, which he
wears to dinner, and all the evening; not exactly understanding, we
expect, what is the real difference between morning and evening toilets.
For as Gentlemen usually dress after a walk, so do Gents dress before
one: and if they do not appear in their “best” to walk up and down the
pier—which at Ramsgate is the chief straw that the sinking _ennuyés_
clutch at—and stare superciliously at all whom they do not know, they
think they are snobs—the snob being to the Gent what the Gent is to the
Gentleman.
The prevalence of Gents at Ramsgate, in such numbers that the fine
weather brings them out like bluebottles, is easily accounted for.
There is a certain class of families who go to Ramsgate every year,
because they were there the last. They come either from the
Pancras-cum-Bloomsbury district of London, or having shops, or
ware-rooms, or counting-houses in the City, live in suburban villas
comfortably off, and believing greatly in all conventional rules of
society, getting perhaps once a year to the Opera, thinking a great
deal of Mansion-house balls, and believing to a great degree in
fashion-books. Well, these good folks affect Ramsgate greatly, and so
take their families with them. The girls of this class pass muster
pretty well; Clapham or Chiswick academies teaching them certain
school accomplishments, which pass current for a decent education
amongst their equals—but the boys are always Gents. The same feeling
which induces their parents to believe that the more showily they can
set out their dinner-table the higher they rise in social life, makes
these sons imagine that two or three dear and flashy articles of dress
place them on a level with the well-born and well-bred Gentleman.
Accustomed in their own spheres to take the lead, they will not go
where they meet men who attain very good stations in society without
large studs or noisy-patterned cravats; and constantly associating,
one with the other, they get lost beyond all redemption. And of these
is the migratory young-man society of Ramsgate chiefly composed.
Of the same class is the Gent at Boulogne. He is at first a long time
being persuaded to go there; because he knows that his ignorance of the
language will be an awful drop to his consequence, and bring him down at
once to his elements in a very humiliating manner. But after a while,
finding that every body else knows something about it but himself, he
determines to go. And in this wise doth he deport himself.
_Imprimis_ he alloweth his mustaches to grow, which giveth him the look
of an officer-lover in a farce at the Eagle, but assimilateth to the
foreigner in nothing. He delighteth in brutal conduct to the native
functionaries, which he taketh to be a fine display of national spirit,
and thinketh that they are impressed with respect for him thereby. He
calleth the _vin ordinaire_ “rot,” but drinketh brandy to intoxication.
He shouteth with hoarse joyless laughter at French peculiarities, and
thinketh that, by so doing, he displayeth a fine-natured _naïveté_. He
deemeth the greatest discovery ever made to be that of a tavern whereat
British stout is retailed; and thinketh that he maketh a joke of
excellent pungency when he saith “Waterloo,” to a French soldier. He
careth not for the indigenous hotels, but loveth better the English
boarding-house, where he can have “a good John Bull joint, and no French
kickshaws:” John Bull being represented generally as a vulgar top-booted
man verging on apoplexy, with, evidently, few ideas of refinement,
obstinate and hard-natured; but the Gent conceiveth that upon occasions
it is ennobling to profess attachment to him.
[Illustration]
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