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: