And thus we come to dear, delightful Broadstairs, which, like every Thanet coast-town or village, is set down in a gap, or “gate,” of the cliffs, by which, as by a staircase, you land and ascend from the sea. Here the gap is a bay, rather larger than most, hence the adjective, “Broad.” It was anciently “Broadstowe,” but why never “Bradgate” or “Broadgate” I cannot imagine. At any rate, it matters little. The point is that here is Broadstairs, very much the same place as that Dickens knew and loved. Let an anathema be here pronounced against that man who shall ever contemplate remodelling this cheery little holiday-place—the delight of children, I was about to say—really the delight of all who know it! And I think that anathema should be made retrospective and launched against whoever they were who built the great ugly barrack hotel on the south cliff. The striking alteration that has been effected in the remodelling of the so-called “Bleak House” may, however, be welcomed, in spite of the change thus made in the appearance it wore in the time of Dickens. “Fort House,” which is its proper name, was really so ugly that everyone who is not a Dickens fanatic must rejoice at the blest change.

Dickens first made the acquaintance of Broadstairs in 1837, and he did not finally desert it as a holiday resort until 1859. Enthusiasts for whom no detail of Dickens’s life is too small or insignificant have discovered that his first lodgings were in High Street, at the house now numbered “31.” It has been entirely rebuilt, but their enthusiasm is of a dreadnought quality superior to such accidents, and they flock to see the place because the conclusion of “Pickwick” was written there: in the house that no longer exists. One would think some peculiar virtue lingered in the air. Lawn House, and Number 40, Albion Street, now incorporated with the “Albion Hotel,” were favoured by him before he took Fort House, in 1850. There he wrote a portion of “David Copperfield,” but positively not a line of “Bleak House”; and that name, given later and still surviving, is a quite unwarranted title, unless indeed it may be taken as descriptive of its undoubtedly bleak and exposed situation.

Dickens, in 1843, described Broadstairs as “a little fishing place; intensely quiet”; but presently the growing popularity of it began to qualify his pleasure. In 1847 he wrote: “Vagrant music is getting to that height here, and is so impossible to be escaped from, that I fear Broadstairs and I must part company in time to come. Unless it pours of rain, I cannot write half an hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells, or glee-singers. There is a violin of the most torturing kind under the window now (time, ten in the morning) and an Italian box of music on the steps, both in full blast.” And so after 1859 place knew Dickens no more.

“Broadstairs,” says a booklet issued in recent years, setting forth the desirability of the building-land round about it, “has been vastly altered and improved since Dickens’s time. Mansions and villas have sprung up in all directions, public thoroughfares have improved, or been newly constructed, promenades have been formed along the sea front, commanding extensive prospects of land and marine scenery, charming gardens have been laid out.”

This is a builder’s, an auctioneer’s, and land-agent’s idea of a vastly improved place; but, although Broadstairs is still delightful, I do not think any one else will be found to agree with the ideas put forward by these interested persons. Most people would prefer the comparative seclusion of forty years earlier. But you are not to suppose it to have been altered to any appreciable degree. The surroundings have been vastly changed, but the little bay with the queer old jetty is the same, although something, I know not what, has recently been done to the jetty, something in which plenteous tar is concerned.

BROADSTAIRS: YORK GATE

You go down to the harbour past the Droit Office and through the old archway called “York Gate,” built, according to the inscription upon it, by George Culmer in 1540, and repaired by Sir George Henniker in 1795. This gateway, it is rather surprising to learn, was built as a defence against the foreign foe. It may, when fitted with its wooden door, “slammed, barred, and bolted,” have detained an enemy for a brief space, but it can never have been a formidable obstacle. The suggestion may be ventured that it was designed to detain the fierce foeman only until the feeble folk of Broadstairs of old could snatch up a few belongings and hurry away. The flimsy old stone and black-flint archway is liberally cobbled with brick, and valerian and grasses grow on its mouldering walls.

Down along the jetty Broadstairs looks its best. Here is the “Tartar Frigate” inn, flint-faced, and here, too, the lifeboat-house, with the Mary Barton lifeboat, presented in 1897, whose chief exploit was the saving of ninety-three lives on July 14th, 1911. So, you see, Broadstairs knows something else beside holiday sunshine and calm days. The old figurehead of a Highlander here, built on to the side of a sail-loft, hints as much. From what far-away shipwreck it derived is forgotten; and the Highlander, although still looking out with mien so dauntless, is now a much-scarred and battered veteran. He once, you notice, drew a sword, but his right hand and sword are gone.

Broadstairs is extraordinarily self-contained, tightly packed, cheerful, and bustling, but there are quiet nooks in it; appropriately named, too. “Serene Place” is one of them. The electric tramways which now quarter so much of Thanet do not trouble the little town, but pass by some distance at the back, up along the wilderness tableland of “Dumpton Park Drive,” and a kind of God-forsaken No Man’s Land, horribly dreary and depressing, which stretches between Broadstairs and Ramsgate.