The first bathing machine in the world appeared at Margate. It was a changing room on wheels and, pushed a little distance into the sea, it preserved a prudish swimmer's modesty. Books about sea water and health became best sellers. In 1791, the Royal Sea-Bathing Infirmary was founded on the western cliffs of Margate. But nothing improved the tone of the place. In 1824, a traveler wrote, "From an obscure fishing village, Margate, in the course of little more than half a century, has risen into a well-frequented, if not fashionable, watering-place." A hundred years later, Baedeker's Great Britain described Margate as "one of the most popular, though not one of the most fashionable watering-places in England." So it had always been crummy and Cockneyfied, just like this; people down from London for the day shunting back and forth on the Front in the cold rain, and walking their dogs and gloomily fishing and looking at each other.
I had thought of staying. I'll find a boardinghouse, I thought, and spend the rest of the day milling around and watching the progress of the gang fight between the Skinheads and the Mods. I'll have fish and chips and a stick of Margate rock and a pint of beer. Tomorrow, after a big English breakfast, I'll sling on my knapsack and set off for Broadstairs and Ramsgate and Sandwich, along the coastal path.
The Skinheads had started scuffling, pulling the Mods off their motor scooters. The policemen went after them with raised truncheons. I had no stomach for this. And did I have to spend the night here to confirm what I could easily predict? I was repelled by the tough ugly youths, the aimless people, the nasty music, the stink of frying, the gusts of violence. I decided not to stay. Why should I suffer a bad night in a dreary place just to report on my suffering? I wanted to see the whole coast in a fairly good mood. So I kept walking; I strolled down Marine Parade, past the ruined pier, and I climbed out of Margate in the rain that cold May afternoon and started my tour around the kingdom's coast.
2. An Evening Train to Deal
WHEN I HAD
seen the hungry ocean gain
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
and compared it to the way some birdbrains kicked the yellow chalk cliffs apart, broke them like crockery and threw the shards onto the Promenade, I concluded that man did more damage than the tides. Outside Margate, the cliffs were broken, and initials and names and dates gouged into them; they had been hacked and scorched. This was the result of the boisterous spirits of the roaming gangs that visited the town and found there was not enough to do there. They also wrote with the chalk: MADNESS, it said on the Promenade—it was homage to a pop group—and PUNX and I WANT TO SKREW YOU.
I climbed some stairs that passed through a "gate"—a cut—in the chalk cliffs and then walked along the path at the top to Cliftonville. This was a sedate suburb of Margate, full of small damp bungalows and ragged sparrows. A hawk flew slowly near the edge of the cliff, and gulls nagged nearer the sea. It was not quiet, what with the gulls and the surf sighing and the wind scraping the hedges, but it was noisy in a peaceful way.
Many signs said DANGEROUS CLIFFS and warned walkers not to go too close to the edge. The chalk was collapsing, and I could see that large bluffs had toppled to the shore. It reminded me that in the few coastal parts of Britain where I had hiked, there had been signs warning of breaking cliffs and unsafe paths. What I had seen of the Dorset coast was slipping into the Channeclass="underline" portions of pasture land and meadows had fallen, and the fences had gone with them in a tangle of posts and wire. These chalk cliffs of Kent—so white and sturdy when seen from a distance—were frail and friable, and this coast made Britain seem like a country consisting of stale cake that softened and broke in the rain.
The rain was patchy. I saw through its drapes two blind men—one black, one white—being led along the path by two sighted ladies. The black man said, "Just how wide is it?" The white one said, "The dogs need a little space to play." A pair of dogs trotted behind this party, and the men tapped their canes as they went past me. Farther on, I heard music. It was "We'll Gather Lilacs in the Spring Again," being played by a man seated at an organ in an open-air amphitheater. The wind whipped at the folding chairs around him and made their canvas flutter and flap. There were more than five hundred chairs, and all of them were empty. The man went on playing and pulling out stops while the chairs flapped under the gray sky. I continued down the path, along the cloud-mottled water of the sea, and on this drab afternoon I heard a nightingale singing in a hedge. "The nightingale sings of adulterous wrong." T. S. Eliot was here having a mild nervous breakdown in 1921, staying at the Albemarle Hotel right over there in Cliftonville.
The sun came out as I walked along the North Foreland, past Kingsgate with its small pretty cove and its modern castle on one bluff, and a handsome lighthouse like a white peppermill just behind it on a higher point of land. There were cooing doves in the trees, and the high box hedges of the big houses were like fortifications.
Only four miles from Margate and it was the England of fresh paint and flower gardens and tall chimneys. And there was a clearer intimation of this area's respectability: the road smelled of private schools—it was a certain kind of soap and a certain kind of cooking and the sound of young voices and laughter coming from the open windows of large rooms. An hour ago it had been Skinheads and chip shops and rain on Margate Sands, and now this breezy bourgeois headland in bright sunshine, as I approached Broadstairs. I thought: Mexico is one landscape—one visible thing—and all of Arabia is one thing; but I began to suspect that every mile of England was different.
Broadstairs was full of flesh-colored flowers. There were no Skinheads here, no Nazi slogans, no signs saying anarchy!—that was always a popular one in public toilets in England. There were about thirty Mods drinking cider on the Front, passing half-gallon bottles back and forth. These boys had removed their jackets and crash helmets and shirts, and they sat in the sun on the green park benches. There was no loud music, no honky-tonk at Broadstairs; the Front was genteel—the iron ornateness of Victorian porches.
"Charles Dickens lived in this house," the sign said on a brick house with a brick turret that was smack on the coastal path at the edge of Broadstairs. Dickens had said that Broadstairs beat "all watering-places into what the Americans call 'sky-blue fits.'" This residence had been given the name Bleak House, and in its gift shop it was possible to buy potholders and tea towels and key chains stamped Bleak House—Broadstairs. Upstairs, the novelist's desk and wash basin were on view and could be seen for a small charge. It was of particular interest to me that Dickens had written most of American Notes in this house. He sat at this desk and looked out that window and dipped this pen in that inkpot and wrote, "To represent me as viewing America with ill-nature, coldness or animosity, is merely to do a very foolish thing, which is always a very easy one."
There was a fortuneteller's shop on the Front at Broadstairs, with a sign saying OLANDAH CLAIRVOYANTE. She was said to be the wisest woman in Europe. A testimonial letter taped onto her window said, "Dear Olondo, Whenever I feel depressed, which is every day, I take your letter out and read it and feel so much better—"
Which is every day? I went into the shop. Olandah was seated behind a curtain. She wore a scarf on her head and what looked like stage make-up and beads. Her expression was full of weary suspicion and she stared with such seriousness, I thought she had terrible news for me.