When the summer heat of the capital became too much for the ebullient hero of Surtees’s popular ‘Jorrocks’s Jaunts and Jollities’, he decided upon ‘an aquatic excursion’ to Margate – ‘the most delightful place in the whole world’. Jorrocks and his friends travelled from London by the ‘Royal Adelaide’, probably on what was known as the ‘husbands’ boat’, a Saturday service which in the 1830s, before the advent of the railways, was still the quickest way of reuniting London businessmen and their families, albeit under the mocking gaze of the locals. Jorrocks and company stayed at one of the oldest Margate hotels, the White Hart (demolished in the late 1960s)
Quotations
It was nearly eight o’clock ere the Royal Adelaide touched the point of the far-famed Margate Jetty ,a fact that was announced as well by the usual bump, and scuttle to the side to get out first, as by the band striking up God save the King, and the mate demanding the tickets of the passengers. … By a salutary regulation of the sages who watch over the interests of the town, ‘all manner of persons,’are prohibited from walking upon the jetty during this ceremony, but the platform of which it is composed being very low, those who stand on the beach outside the rails, are just about on a right level to shoot their impudence cleverly into the ears of the new-comers who are paraded along two lines of gaping, quizzing, laughing, joking, jeering citizens, who fire volleys of wit and satire upon them as they pass. … When they got to the gate at the end, the tide of fashion became obstructed by the kissings of husbands and wives, the greetings of fathers and sons, the officiousness of porters, the cries of flymen , the importunities of innkeepers, the cards of bathing-women, the salutations of donkey drivers, the programmes of librarians , and the rush and push of the inquisitive …
The return trip to London is further enlivened by the customary race between two rival steam packets :
Monday morning drew the cockneys from their roosts betimes, to take their farewell splash and dive in the sea . As the day advanced, the bustle and confusion on the shore and in the town increased, and everyone seemed on the move. The ladies paid their last visits to the bazaars and shell shops, and children extracted the last ounce of exertion from the exhausted leg-weary donkeys. Meanwhile the lords of the creation strutted about, some in dressing -gowns, others, ' full puff ', with bags and boxes under their arms – while sturdy porters were wheeling barrows full of luggage to the jetty. … At the end of the jetty, on each side, lay the Royal Adelaide and the Magnet, with as fierce a contest for patronage as ever was witnessed. Both decks were crowded with anxious faces – for the Monday’s steam-boat race is as great an event as a Derby, and a cockney would as lieve lay on an outside horse as patronise a boat that was likely to let another pass her by. Nay, so high is the enthusiasm carried, that books are regularly made on the occasion, and there is as much clamour for bets as in the ring at Epsom or Newmarket.
Jorrocks and his friends travelled from London by the ‘Royal Adelaide’, probably on what was known as the ‘husbands’ boat’, a Saturday service which in the 1830s, before the advent of the railways, was still the quickest way of reuniting London businessmen and their families, albeit under the mocking gaze of the locals...
