The plebeian jollity of the older part of Margate, by the Harbour and the Jetty, the Fort and the Paragon, gives place westward to modern and more select Cliftonville.

The walk past Cliftonville the select, along the grassy cliffs, leads round by Foreness Point and discloses a succession of chalky nooks, “gaps,” and “gates,” where little ravines run down to the sea: every one of them pretty well peopled in the summer season. If you want a cloistered holiday, you will not be well advised to repair to the Kentish coast for it. Frankly, such a thing is not to be obtained here. But, at any rate, thus tracing the “ocean’s melancholy marge,” you do at least escape the electric tramways which cut across Thanet inland and help to vulgarise this historic isle.

A pretty inlet, called “Botany Bay,” leads to Kingsgate, and is a spot sufficiently desirable, except for the scattering of new villas there and the notice-boards of the Kingsgate Residents’ Association, prescribing what things the wayfarer may not do. These appear to be so numerous that it would seem to be almost better (as it would indeed be shorter) to specify the few things that are still allowed.

Kingsgate was known as “Bartholomew’s Gate” until 1683, when Charles the Second landed here. It is naturally picturesque, and is rendered more so by the pretentious “castle” on the headland, with the North Foreland lighthouse peering across the intervening neck. The castle, of black flint, was built in the eighteenth century by Lord Holland, who, in common with other wealthy people of what was then regarded as “good taste,” patronised the romantic Gothic spirit and built himself not only a make-believe castle but a sham convent as well. The poet Gray, he of the “Elegy,” disclosed himself as a bitter satirist, not only of Lord Holland’s castellated residence, but also of Thanet:

Passing the flint-faced “Captain Digby” inn, famed in the story of the Northern Belle shipwreck of January 1857, we come to the North Foreland, “the most easterly projection of Kent,” the cape mentioned by Ptolemy, about A.D. 150, as ???t??? ?????, or “Acantium Promontory.”

The North Foreland light, once occupying a solitary situation on the cliff-top, is now becoming the centre of a number of villas, whose windows at night form lower and of course much more feeble illuminations. But the sea is here spangled with as many lights as the land, for off the shore are those dangerous shoals, the famous Goodwin Sands. Dickens, many years ago, in the course of a sketch of Broadstairs, wrote a good description of them and of the North Foreland light, mentioning “the Goodwin Sands, whence floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on intrigues with the servants. Also there is a big lighthouse called the North Foreland, on a hill behind the village, a severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy floaters, and stares grimly out upon the sea.”

But since 1880, when the lighthouse was altered, the light has suffered a complete change, and is not now the steady-going gleam it used to be. It occults every half-minute, displaying a white and red light for twenty-five seconds, followed by an eclipse of five seconds. The effect, compared with the light that Dickens described, is something like that which would astonish the beholder if a Bishop were to wear a red tie, or take to drink.

The first lighthouse on the North Foreland was a wooden building, erected by Sir John Meldrum in 1636. This was destroyed by fire half a century later. A temporary beacon replaced it, and this in turn was succeeded by a flint octagonal tower, bearing an open brazier of coals. This was afterwards enclosed behind glass, and the coals were kept aflame throughout the night by the lightkeeper constantly playing on them with a bellows! Those certainly were the heroic times of lighthouse tending.

The licensee of the first lighthouse was given the right of levying a toll of one penny per ton on all British ships, and twopence per ton on all foreign vessels passing the Foreland, he paying the Crown an annual rent of £20 for fifty years. This grant was renewed to various other persons for other terms of fifty years. The last of these licensees bequeathed the unexpired years of his term to Greenwich Hospital, to which a renewal was granted for ninety-nine years. At the end of that period, the lighthouse was, rather belatedly, taken over by the Trinity House, whose Elder Brethren then paid the Commissioners of Greenwich Hospital about £8,000, by way of compensation.

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.

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.

St. Peter’s, the village where the mother-church of Broadstairs is situated, is a mile and a quarter in the hinterland, with tramcars whirling all round it.

“In the pretty rural churchyard of St. Peter’s,” I read, “is a headstone to mark the last resting-place of Richard Joy, the ‘Kentish Samson.’”

Now the churchyard of St. Peter’s, pretty though it may be, is so little rural that houses numerously and intimately look upon it; and the pathway through the very forest of tombstones it contains is asphalted and strictly railed in. Fortunately, however, for those interested in this mortuary way, Richard Joy’s tombstone adjoins the path, and his epitaph, surmounted by representations of thoughtful-looking cherubs and a couple of trumpets, is distinctly to be read from it.

Thus you may read:

In Memory of Mr. Richard Joy
(call’d the Kentish Samson) who
Died May 18th 1742, Aged 67

Joy, who performed many extraordinary feats of strength, including the pulling against a powerful horse, the lifting of a weight of 2,240 lbs., and the snapping of a rope that had resisted a breaking strain of 35 cwts., was one of the smuggling fraternity, and met his death by drowning when engaged in one of those contraband exploits. His sister was almost as strong as himself, and performed many remarkable feats of strength.

This is an authentic memorial, but those irresponsible books, the various Collections of Epitaphs, tell us of the following choice specimen to be found here:

It is quite easy to “collect” epitaphs on the terms of inventing them; and this, as might well be supposed, is a pure effort of the imagination.