The Natural History of the Gent

by Albert Smith

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.

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.