Mrs. Long, of Zion Place, Broadstairs, the wife of an old coastguardman, who was stationed at the Preventive Station when Dickens lodged at Fort House, also remembered the novelist. The coastguard men are also immortalized in Our English Watering Place, as "a steady, trusty, well-conditioned, well-conducted set of men, with no misgiving about looking you full in the face, and with a quiet, thorough-going way of passing along to their duty at night, carrying huge sou'wester clothing in reserve, that is fraught with all good prepossession. They are handy fellows—neat about their houses, industrious at gardening, would get on with their wives, one thinks, in a desert island—and people it too soon."
Mrs. Long says "Mr. Dickens was a very nice sort of gentleman, but he didn't like a noise." The windows of Fort House, she reminds us, overlooked the coastguard station, and whenever the children playing about made more noise than usual, he used to tell her husband gently "to take the children away," or "to keep the people quiet." This little story fully confirms Dickens's often-expressed feeling of dislike, which subsequently grew intolerable, to Broadstairs as a watering-place.
After taking a turn or two on the lively Promenade,—made bright by the rich masses of flesh-coloured flowers of the valerian which fringe its margin,—to enjoy the sunshine and air, and watch the holiday folks, we bid adieu to Broadstairs, and proceed to Margate.
Of Margate there is not much to say. We reach it by an early afternoon train of the London, Chatham, and Dover Railway, to get the quickest service by the South-Eastern Railway on to Canterbury. Our stay at Margate is consequently very limited.
To some minds this popular Cockney watering-place has great attractions; its broad sands, its beautiful air, and its boisterous amusements, negro-melodies, merry-go-rounds, and the like; but it was a place seldom visited by Dickens, although he was so often near it. Only twice in the Life is it recorded that he came here; once being in 1844, when he wrote to Forster respecting the theatre as follows:—
"'Nota Bene.—The Margate Theatre is open every evening, and the four Patagonians (see Goldsmith's Essays) are performing thrice a week at Ranelagh.' A visit from me"—Forster goes on to say—"was at this time due, to which these were held out as inducements; and there followed what it was supposed I could not resist, a transformation into the broadest farce of a deep tragedy by a dear friend of ours. 'Now you really must come. Seeing only is believing, very often isn't that, and even Being the thing falls a long way short of believing it. Mrs. Nickleby herself once asked me, as you know, if I really believed there ever was such a woman; but there will be no more belief, either in me or my descriptions, after what I have to tell of our excellent friend's tragedy, if you don't come and have it played again for yourself, 'by particular desire.' We saw it last night, and oh! if you had but been with us! Young Betty, doing what the mind of man without my help never can conceive, with his legs like padded boot-trees wrapped up in faded yellow drawers, was the hero. The comic man of the company, enveloped in a white sheet, with his head tied with red tape like a brief, and greeted with yells of laughter whenever he appeared, was the venerable priest. A poor toothless old idiot, at whom the very gallery roared with contempt when he was called a tyrant, was the remorseless and aged Creon. And Ismene, being arrayed in spangled muslin trousers very loose in the legs and very tight in the ankles, such as Fatima would wear in Blue Beard, was at her appearance immediately called upon for a song! After this can you longer—?'"
He speaks in a letter to Forster, dated September, 1847, of "improvements in the Margate Theatre since his memorable first visit." It had been managed by a son of the great comedian Dowton, and the piece which Dickens then saw was As You Like It, "really very well done, and a most excellent house." It was Mr. Dowton's benefit, and "he made a sensible and modest kind of speech," which impressed Dickens, who thus concludes his letter:—"He really seems a most respectable man, and he has cleaned out this dusthole of a theatre into something like decency."
There is also the following significant mention of Margate in chapter nineteen of Bleak House:—
"It is the hottest long vacation known for many years. All the young clerks are madly in love, and according to their various degrees, pant for bliss with the beloved object at Margate, Ramsgate, or Gravesend."