“Keep it there, sonny; keep it there, if yer ’and’s cold!”
Chorus of touts: “This way, gents, for the large yacht, Moss Rose. ’Ere y’are, lidy, for the King George. Now sir, come along; I’ve bin wyting for yer. Now miss, just goin’ to start!”
The Ramsgate Town Council has heroically attempted to provide amusement for holiday-makers, and has sought (perhaps with a success only indifferent) to disguise the more urban and grimly commercial aspects of the place around the harbour. After all, there is not much of Ramsgate sands. Measured by the shores of Yarmouth, let us say, they are very small, and are crowded to extremity. The new Marine Drive, constructed in 1891 at a cost of £80,000, and intended to connect the East and West Cliffs, has been with much ingenuity provided with elaborate rockeries planted with rock-plants and provided with ornamental waters; but the highly dangerous electric tramways, plunging down the steep gradients and sharp curves, detract greatly from the front.
Personally, I am much more impressed with the curious old market, and with its fine display of flowers, fruit, and vegetables. The market, and (one must not forget these) the extraordinary number of public-houses facing the harbour, are sufficient to attract even the most casual notice. I knew a person with a bent for philosophical inquiry who was greatly struck by never seeing any one enter these places of refreshment. He commented upon this curious fact to one of those broad-beamed fishermen which only the coast of Kent seems able to produce. This worthy answered with a smile, “Lor’ bless you, sir, I knows every nail and every knot-hole in every one on ’em. The customers goes in, right enough, early; and they don’t come out till closing-time.” The moral of this would appear to be that philosophers should begin their observations at an earlier hour.
CHAPTER XIV
PEGWELL BAY—EBBSFLEET—THE LANDINGS OF HENGIST AND OF ST. AUGUSTINE—RICHBOROUGH
But to have done with Ramsgate. We may perhaps explore to the very end of the West Cliff, where rows of great ugly houses look out seaward from that height, and where the bastioned cliffs crumble and are cobbled horribly with brick and plaster. But one gets no joy of those grim grey buttresses that front the waves.
Passing, instead, up the main street, to the surviving Norman church of St. Lawrence, we note there the brasses to Nicholas Manston, wearing the Collar of SS.; and his daughter and wife. Then, down the lengthy Nethercourt Hill, we come to Pegwell Bay.
When the Tuggs family made holiday at Ramsgate they went, of course, to Pegwell Bay: famous then, as now, for its shrimps and for the various places where shrimp-teas, chiefly in little earwiggy arbours, might be obtained: “Mr. and Mrs. Tuggs and the Captain ordered lunch in the little garden—small saucers of large shrimps, dabs of butter, crusty loaves, and bottled ale.” That is the ritual to be observed by all who, coming to Pegwell Bay, want to do their duty by the place.
“I know a shore where white cliffs face the sea,
Along the margin of a noble bay;
Whose air resounds with nigger minstrelsy—
And motor-cars are tuppence all the way.