It seems, then, that when Cæsar came off here, the site upon which almost half the present town of Dover is built was under water. The peculiar site of Dover can perhaps most readily be noted by one who climbs the bare chalk hills that bear on their summits the defences known as the Western Heights. Keeping to rearward of the Citadel, and walking round the shoulders of these hills, one sees that a deep and narrow valley runs down to the sea-beach, contracting almost to the likeness of a narrow gorge where the old town commences, and widening again where it meets the sea. Here, where the site broadens, and where steep streets give place to flatness, rolled the tides up the little estuary of the River Dour when Cæsar’s triremes anchored off the primitive port, and antiquaries point out the place, near the present Round Tower Street, where, so late as 1509, a tower was raised, to which vessels lying in the harbour were moored by iron rings. This is almost the only natural feature of Dover that has changed during nineteen centuries. Walk to the outmost verge of the Admiralty Pier and look back upon the town, and you will see it lying in the hollow, with the gaunt and horrid stucco houses of its “front” hiding the old streets that crouch behind in narrow ways. You will see the Castle Hill and the Western Heights, twin eminences guarding the land and the open roadstead of the Downs; and, although the grey Castle crowns one cliff and the modern fortifications crest the other, yet, for all the ages during which man has been burrowing galleries here and piling up stonework and masonry there, if Cæsar could revisit the scene of his ineffectual descent upon Britain, he would find no difficulty in recognizing it. Only, the estuary where he beached his vessels is long since silted up and is buried beneath many feet of the rubble and refuse, the shards and potsherds that mark the passing of many busy generations. Here, on these ancient dust-heaps and kitchen-middens stands the chief business street of Dover, Snargate Street, running parallel with the sea, but now separated from it by the breadth of the Harbour and many intermediate alleys, smelling vehemently of tar and stale reminiscences of ocean. Snargate Street is long and narrow, a model neither of cleanliness nor of convenience, and it crouches humbly beneath the towering cliffs which rise on its landward side, cut, carved, and tunnelled; honeycombed with stores, forts, and galleries, and grimed with the smoke from the clustered chimneys of the houses below. Other short and frowzy alleys run against the soiled chalk, and end there with a whimsical abruptness. Elbow room here is none, and to find it, one ventures upon the Harbour quays, toward the Docks and the Basins, where little gangways and iron swing-bridges lead to culs-de-sac, or end in sudden and precipitous descents into the water, causing the unwonted stranger frequently to retrace his steps and to swear freely. But, if one avoids these cryptic curse-compelling places, the Harbour is a very interesting place; much more so than the “front,” where people walk up and down aimlessly, the women dressed to kill, and glaring at one another as they pass, like strange cats on a roof-top. Here, instead, is the reality of life, and a variety that is lacking beyond. In the basins floats generally a strange and fortuitous concourse of vessels; schooners, yachts, cutters, hoys, smacks, brigantines, “billy-boys,” and steamers of every age, size, and trade, from the neat passenger-boats, with their decks holystoned to wonderment, to the dirty ocean-tramp, or the inky, wallowing collier; together with other craft whose names are unknown to the landsman. Likewise, there are many of the mercantile marine about. One may not, contrary to general belief, know these by their dress, for there is no peculiarity in the raiment of the mercantile Jack—except perhaps for its raggedness, poor fellow—by which he may be recognized. Rather would one know him by his anxious expression of countenance and by that inveterate habit of his, ashore, of leaning heavily against walls and posts, or anything capable of giving support. You may notice poor Jack’s favourite haunts hereabouts by the bare and burnished appearance of the brick and paint bordering on the Docks, and situated at a height of about four feet from the ground, where his shoulders have rubbed immemorially.
XLII
SHAKESPEARE CLIFF
Since we are in the way of it, it comes naturally to include Shakespeare Cliff in this little survey. You reach it from here either by a hideous contrivance called the Shaft, fashioned in the cliffs that frown down upon Snargate Street, or by Limekiln Street beyond. Here, on the way, is Archcliffe Fort, between the Citadel and the sea. They say, who should know, that it is heavily armed, but it is not at all impressive: old boots, tin cans, brick-bats, cabbage-stalks, and rusty umbrella-frames rarely are; and of these there are rich and varied deposits lying in the fosse, amid the scanty grass where industrious sheep endeavour to earn a living. Indeed, this is the most eloquent picture of mild-eyed Peace I have ever seen, and Landseer’s painting which shows a sheep snuffling in the mouth of a dismantled cannon is quite weak beside it.
Looking over the cliff’s edge, just beyond, is a view of the beach below, where the South Eastern Railway runs on a wooden viaduct, entering a double tunnel through the chalky mass of Shakespeare Cliff, rising sheer from the sea to a height of three hundred and fifty feet. A narrow footpath leads to the breezy summit, surmounted by a Coastguard Station, and here you may gaze, if you have good nerves, over the brink of the precipice, and listen to the hissing of the pebbles far down below, as the waves drag them back and forth:
... Here’s the place: stand still.
How fearful
And dizzy ’tis, to cast one’s eyes so low!
The crows and choughs that wing the midway air
Show scarce so gross as beetles: half-way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!
Methinks he seems no bigger than his head:
The fishermen that walk upon the beach
Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark,
Diminished to her cock; her cock, a buoy
Almost too small for sight; the murmuring surge
That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes,
Cannot be heard so high; I’ll look no more,
Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight
Topple down headlong.
How eloquent is that passage from King Lear!
Just past Shakespeare Cliff come the twin workings of the Channel Tunnel and the coal-mine, those notorious fiascos which have cost the South Eastern shareholders so much, and have afforded journalists so large an amount of good “copy.” From the cliff-top, a steep and winding stairway cut in the chalk leads down to the beach and the Dover coal mine and the beginnings of the Channel Tunnel. Much money has been sunk in both. Some day the Tunnel will be completed; but no one expects coal ever to be commercially mined here.
Turn we, though, from these projects to the Admiralty Pier, that centre of interest to visitors and Dover folks alike. Some one—I know not whom—has styled the Admiralty Pier “the pier of the realm,” and truly, though you search these coasts, you shall find nothing to compare with it, as a pier. Plymouth Breakwater is a great deal more impressive, but then, it is not a pier, but is set down in midst of a tempestuous Sound, where no one can get at it without risk and trouble. And the Admiralty Pier owes its very great fame largely to the ease with which you can reach it and promenade up and down its almost interminable pavings. Crowds come to see the boats off or in, and people are always sweeping the seas with telescopes and field-glasses, finding a perennial joy in so doing, difficult to be understood. The boats come in, the tidal trains run out along the huge stone causeway; passengers pallid and cold, muffled up in overcoats, glancing around with lack-lustre eyes, crawl miserably from the decks and cabins of the Channel steamers under the amused scrutiny of the callous crowd, and seat themselves thankfully in the waiting train. Other steamers wait impatiently, shrieking intermittently; and other trains bring down intending passengers for the night crossing to France. Sometimes strange scenes are witnessed on the night mail, when passengers are streaming from the boat-express across the gangways. Quiet gentlemen with little luggage and a marked disinclination for the society of their fellows are discovered, as they lurk in remote corners of the deck, seeking to sneak quietly out of the “very front door of England,” by other gentlemen—gentlemen with broad shoulders and square-toed boots—who tap them on the shoulder with an equal absence of fuss or demonstration, and these quiet gentlemen usually say—not without a certain start of surprise, you may be sure—“Oh! I’ll come quietly.” Then the three (for they are usually two who thus accost one of these undemonstrative and retiring passengers) step again on to the Admiralty Pier, and apparently abandon their Continental trip, for they go up to London by the next train. Sometimes a quiet gentleman refuses to “come quietly” when his shoulder is tapped, and then those who do the tapping are obliged to resort to the painful, not to say humiliating, process of snapping a pair of handcuffs on his wrists, much to the surprise of the passengers. But whether gentlemen elect to go quietly or to take it fighting is not much matter: the result is the same. Sometimes these quiet ones came back to Dover after a while, and were accommodated in free quarters on the Castle Hill; presently revisiting the harbour as masons under Government employ. They come here no longer, for the convict prison on the hill is deserted, and the harbour-works are now carried on with paid labour.