The Sun.
London, England, 1827-08-30 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR.

SIR,—As every thing seems to be still very
flat in London; perhaps you can make room for
a few more marvels from Margate; for really it is
a very marvellous place, and the beauty Of it is,
it grows more and more marvellous every days
I assure you, I have now been in iiPargate almost
three days, and I declare to you, upon my
honour and conscience, it does not seem to me to
be much more than a Month. Every tiring, as my
friend Air. Napoleon Pipp Shufilebotham, observes
—every thing is so extreme attractive that if a
body had five-and.-twentv senses, itietead of five,
there would be plenty of employment at Margate
for every one of them. I told you, the other
day, how we had been honouring the Duke of
Wellington by gulping oysters and bot-iled stout
aboard our fishing boats ; but I made a sad hole
in my manners by not telling you that the idea
of the thing originated with a very ingenious
little gentleman of the name of Watts ; and who
is said to be concocting something still more
magnificent for the gratification of the Margate
visitors. Mr. Watts was formerly, I believe, the
steward of a steamer ; but he had a soul above
corkscrews ; and he is now a sort of operative
master of the revels here ; a cutter-out of
aquatic comicalities, under the great Dr.
Jarvis, of jetty celebrity. What they mot!
to bring out next I know not ; but in my
humble opinion, they will never be able to
beat the balloon they sent up last Monday, in
honour of the Duke of Wellington; for it was
of the exact size and form of a two-gallon
stone bottle, and it did not burst until it had got
nearly fifty yards overhead ! Nothing can go
beyond that, I should think. However, they
ought to bestir themselves, for visiters pour in
faster and faster every day. The steamers have
already brought down twelve thousand more
visiters than they ever did on any former season,
that is to say, up to the present time, this 23d of
August. Your London readers may stare, but
'tis a fact ; I know it by the two shillings a-head
paid for pier dues. Blessings on the man who
first invented steamers ! ought to be the wish of
every Margate man, one would think ; but yet it
is not so. " Sir," said a lodging-house keeper
to me the other day—for, generally speaking,
they are pretty polite, and always say Sir when
they address a man whose coat looks as if there
was something in its pockets—" Sir," said he,
" them steamers are shocking dettry mental to
Margate : before they were invented the people
as come here were hp-toppingish people, who
would take a ready furnished house, or a floor or
two, at a good bold price, and stay here for a
month or six weeks at a stretch ; and then a man
had some chance in the world ; but now, these
steamers bring down nothing but shoals of tag-
rag and bob tail, who can't afford to stay above a
day or two at farthest, and therefore stodge them-
selves into the inns and public-houses ; whilst all
the genteel people run away to Ramsgate or Broad-
stairs, to avoid the concatenation of such riff-raff:
and all the lodging houses are left well nigh
empty. No, Sir, don't tell me of steaming—it
has tee-totally destroyed the
ge,dility of Mar-
gate ! " Now,that is what I should set down
as what Mr. Cobbett would call " a nasty ill-
natured speech of a disappointed dabbler in big
rents ;" but I did not get a much more satisfac-
tory opinion upon steaming, from a very fat and
worthy inn-keeper—seated in state at the head
of his table d'hote with thirty or forty well-
'dressed dinner-eaters before him—each with a
bottle of port, sherry, or Bucellas, at six shillings
per bot., by the side of his plate. " Why, Sir,"
said he—laying down his tools and wiping his
mouth with the corner of the table cloth, " Why
Sir, I can't say much for steaming ; it may be
good, or it may not—something may be said
pro and con ; but, as I was saying, I can say
this—that we are thankful for all things—Allow
me to help you to a little more lobster sauce to
your turbot ?" I took the lobster sauce and left
j the steamers to their fate—convinced that, how-
ever ungrateful mankind may be, the mankind of
Margate are more ungrateful than any other ;
otherwise they would say—" Blessings be on the
man who first invented steamers." As to the
gentility of Margate being destroyed, and nothing
coming to it but tag-rag and bob-tail, I don't
believe a word of it ; for the women all wear
bonnets ala v,indmilt, as big as the biggest in
Bond-street; and the men cock their hats aside,
and handle silver forks as dextrously as Mr.
Theodore Hook himself could do. Besides, if
the gentility of Margate is destroyed, what
business have they to talk of their " table
d'hote"—and to call their little three
cornered toy-shops "Boulevards de Paris P"
Every body knows that none but unquestionably
genteel people could duly estimate such refine-
ments and, therefore, it is really scandalous to say
the gentility of Margate has been totally destroyed
by steaming. " Why, Sir, no longer ago than
yesterday, I heard the Widow Wabbleton, of
Portsoken, who is down here with her five
charming daughters, all bonnetted a la wind-
mill—l heard her with my own ears, in the mut-
ton market of Margate, address the butcher's
wife as Madame Bouchere; " Madame Bou-
chere ;" said the highly respectable widow,
" voulez vous have the goodness to send the
coutelets de mouton at eleven precisely, as we
do oFuvi
First,
do
patronise
will,
always takes our dejeune a la fourchette at that
my lady,"
replied the butcher's wife ;—and if all that was
not quite genteel, I don't know what is. And then
again, if the gentility of Margate is destroyed,
hour ?
Bing
f?
ThAiniiiedt,y—et
he does ; and he has even added a grey pony to
Thanes,--
would uu dd he co
his brown one, and drives a la tandem, with
a postilion, instead of single, as he used to do !
And Mr. Irish Johnstone, too, would he reside
at Margate, and parade its parades m • ornmg,
noon, and night, if Margate was .not decidedly
genteel ? Assuredly not. I could give you a
hundred other proofs of our gentility, but, un-
fortunately, I have not room enough ; and,
therefore, I will reserve the others for my next
letter ; for really I think (and I have no doubt
you will agree with me) that such a vile slander
ought to be amply contradicted.--I remain, Mr.
Editor, your most obedient, P. P.
"—lwnAetililonsutteht:ent

P.S.—I am sorry to say we have had some
blowing weather here. Last night, when the
Eclipse steamer came down with a cargo of
ladies and gentlemen from London, it blew so
hard that she could not approach the Jarvisian
jetty, and as it was only half-flood tide she could
not get within the pier. Consequently, she was
compelled to stand out to sea again without
landing a single soul of them ; and there she
w
with the angry waves, for more
than two hours. Nobody felt much alarm about
awas,
' it, because they had little Captain Large aboard
buffetting
of her, and he is allowed to be the best steam
captain going and, indeed, they were all safely
landed eventually ; but it was a distressing thing
i to see sixty or seventy ladies, particularly ine9n-

venitnced, lashed all crow to her gunwale with
silk handkerchiefs, and an old gentleman crawl-
ing about arne them upon his hands and
kf?Atis endeavouring to do away with their dis-
tress, offering them his pocket brandy bottle.