Information
A frequent summer visitor to the Herne Bay area, the journalist and playwright Douglas Jerrold would also have had first hand knowledge of Margate. As one of the subjects of his popular ‘Mrs. Caudle’s Curtain Lectures’(1846), it provides a good example of Mrs. Caudle’s ability to use any occasion to expose her husband’s perceived failings.
Quotations
Mrs. Caudle browbeats her husband into taking the family to Margate, sweeping aside his objections.
‘What will I do at Margate? Why, isn’t there bathing, and picking up shells; and aren’t there the packets ( the steamboats), with the donkeys; and the last new novel – whatever it is, to read – for the only place where I really relish a book is at the seaside. No, it isn’t that I like salt with my reading, Mr. Caudle! I suppose you call that a joke? You might keep your jokes for the day-time, I think.‘
Tiring of Margate after a few days, she uses it, with magnificent perversity, as yet another opportunity to castigate her husband for cruel neglect of her feelings.
‘Other men can take their wives half over the world; but you think it quite enough to bring me down here to this hole of a place, where I know every pebble on the beach like an old acquaintance – where there’s nothing to be seen but the same machines – the same jetty – the same donkeys – the same everything.‘
Place | Extract |
| Herne | org... |
| Herne Bay | The following excerpt was titled ‘Mrs... |
| Margate | Caudle’s Curtain Lectures’(1846), it provides a good example of Mrs... |
| Reculver | literatureandplace... |
| Sheerness | When he was four, his family moved to Sheerness, his father having acquired the lease of a theatre in the High Street, Blue Town, the oldest part of Sheerness... |
