"In a bay-window in a one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were very funny indeed. His name is Boz. At one he disappears, and presently emerges from a bathing machine, and may be seen—a kind of salmon-coloured porpoise—splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be seen in another bay-window on the ground-floor, eating a strong lunch; after that, walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back in the sand reading a book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is disposed to be talked to; and I am told he is very comfortable indeed. He's as brown as a berry, and they do say is a small fortune to the innkeeper who sells beer and cold punch. But this is mere rumour. Sometimes he goes up to London (eighty miles or so away), and then I'm told there is a sound in Lincoln's Inn Fields at night, as of men laughing, together with a clinking of knives and forks, and wine-glasses."
And further in a letter to another correspondent recently made public:—
"When you come to London, to assist at Miss Liston's sacrifice, don't forget to remind your uncle of our Broadstairs engagement to which I hold you bound. A good sea—fresh breezes—fine sands—and pleasant walks—with all manner of fishing-boats, lighthouses, piers, bathing-machines, are its only attractions, but it's one of the freshest little places in the world, consequently the proper place for you."
In the year 1851, in a letter dated 8th September, addressed to Mr. Henry Austin, he thus alludes to a wreck which took place at Broadstairs:—
"A great to-do here. A steamer lost on the Goodwins yesterday, and our men bringing in no end of dead cattle and sheep. I stood supper for them last night, to the unbounded gratification of Broadstairs. They came in from the wreck very wet and tired, and very much disconcerted by the nature of their prize—which, I suppose after all, will have to be recommitted to the sea, when the hides and tallow are secured. One lean-faced boatman murmured, when they were all ruminating over the bodies as they lay on the pier: 'Couldn't sassages be made on it?' but retired in confusion shortly afterwards, overwhelmed by the execrations of the bystanders."
Dickens got tired of Broadstairs in 1847, for reasons given in the following letter to Forster, though he did not forsake it till some years after:—
"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."
By good luck we fall in with an "old salt," formerly one of the boatmen of Our English Watering Place who are therein immortalized by much kindly mention, with whom we have a pleasant chat about Charles Dickens. Harry Ford (the name of our friend) well remembers the great novelist, when in early days he used to come on his annual excursions with his family to Broadstairs. "Bless your soul," he says, "I can see 'Old Charley,' as we used to call him among ourselves here, a-coming flying down from the cliff with a hop, step, and jump, with his hair all flying about. He used to sit sometimes on that rail" (pointing to the one surrounding the harbour), "with his legs lolling about, and sometimes on the seat that you're a-sitting on now" (adjoining the old Look-out House opposite the Tartar Frigate Inn), "and he was very fond of talking to us fellows and hearing our tales—he was very good-natured, and nobody was liked better. And if you'll read" (continues our informant) "that story that he wrote and printed about Our Watering Place, I was the man who's mentioned there as mending a little ship for a boy. I held that child between my knees. And what's more, sir, I took 'Old Charley,' on the very last time that he came over to Broadstairs (he wasn't living here at the time), round the foreland to Margate, with a party of four friends. I took 'em in my boat, the Irene," pointing to a clinker-built strong boat lying in the harbour, capable of holding twenty people. "The wind was easterly—the weather was rather rough, and it took me three or four hours to get round. There was a good deal of chaffing going on, I can tell you."
