As becomes one of the oldest ports in the kingdom, Gravesend—it was called Gravesham in Domesday Book—is a town of narrow streets, of quaint shops and houses, of old-fashioned inns and close courts and alleys. The face which it turns to the river is like that of a battered old sailor—scarred, sun-beaten, weather-worn, but pleasant and honest withal. As in most seafaring towns, there is one long, cramped street, in which the houses seem to elbow each other, running, a little back from the river, almost from end to end! Far as it is removed from the sea, there is a fine salt-water savour about Gravesend, and it has also the recommendation of being situated in a pleasant country, for, after ascending its steep streets and threading here and there a leafy lane, there bursts upon the sight a glorious stretch of agricultural land, beautifully uneven, with hills of gentle slope, and occasional patches of woodland and garden and copse.
Of the history of Gravesend there is little that need be said. James II. lived here, as Lord High Admiral, when he was Duke of York, and escaped hence in a girl’s clothes when he was flying from his enemies. On a hill behind the town there stands an old windmill, which is also a landmark, and which occupies the site of a beacon, the lighting of which was a call to arms. Aymer de Valence, one of the heroes of Thackeray’s boyhood, and of many thousands of other boys of his period, founded and endowed a church just outside Gravesend when Edward II. was king. In 1780 five thousand soldiers were marched here to make a sham attack on Tilbury Fort, and were handsomely refreshed, at the expense of the General, when they had energetically stormed that fortification with blank cartridge. About that time, or a little later, there was a great scheme to make a tunnel under the Thames, between the town and the fort, which scheme ended in nothing but the formation of a company which appears to have spent fifteen or sixteen thousand pounds to no purpose.
GRAVESEND.
At the present day Gravesend is much resorted to, first for the sake of Rosherville Gardens, and then for tea and shrimps, for which it has a reputation quite unique. Sam Weller’s pieman could make a beef, mutton, or “a weal-and-hammer” out of the same festive kitten. The good folk of Gravesend can serve up shrimps in ways so various, and so tempting, that it is possible to dine off shrimps alone. At Gravesend, too, whitebait may be eaten with as much pleasure as at Greenwich, and the visitor to one of the inns of the place may watch the boatmen fishing for the whitebait which is shortly to be served up to him hot from the kitchen.
It is at Gravesend, indeed, that whitebait is now caught in most profusion. The boatmen pursue the dainty little fish in small open boats, and take it in long, peak-shaped nets, very small of mesh and delicate of workmanship. Whitebait first became celebrated in connection with the British Parliament towards the end of the last century, when Sir Robert Preston, member for Dover, was in the habit of asking his friend, Mr. Rose, Secretary of the Treasury, to dine with him at Dagenham when the session closed. Whitebait must have been had at Dagenham in plenty, and Mr. Rose made favourable report of it to Mr. Pitt; so it came about that the Premier was invited to try the whitebait for himself. Then it was that an annual Ministerial dinner was organised, the scene of the whitebait banquets changing from Dagenham to Greenwich, with an occasional dinner at Blackwall. “Yesterday,” says the Morning Post of September 10th, 1835, “the Cabinet Ministers went down the river in the Ordnance Barges to Blackwall, to the ‘West India’ Tavern, to partake of their annual fish dinner. Covers were laid for thirty-five.” And for something like that number covers still continue to be laid, though the Ministerial whitebait dinner now depends on the taste of Premiers, and is no longer de rigueur.
