[Vwoolf] Dickens ranks resorts

[Jeremy Hawthorn]

And here is Dickens, in "The Tuggses at Ramsgate" from /Sketches by Boz/.

'We must leave town immediately,' said Mr. Cymon Tuggs.
Everybody concurred that this was an indispensable preliminary to being 
genteel.  The question then arose, Where should they go?
'Gravesend?' mildly suggested Mr. Joseph Tuggs.  The idea was 
unanimously scouted.  Gravesend was /low/.
'Margate?' insinuated Mrs. Tuggs.  Worse and worse - nobody there, but 
tradespeople.
'Brighton?'  Mr. Cymon Tuggs opposed an insurmountable objection. All 
the coaches had been upset, in turn, within the last three weeks; each 
coach had averaged two passengers killed, and six wounded; and, in every 
case, the newspapers had distinctly understood that 'no blame whatever 
was attributable to the coachman.'
'Ramsgate?' ejaculated Mr. Cymon, thoughtfully.  To be sure; how stupid 
they must have been, not to have thought of that before! Ramsgate was 
just the place of all others.

T. S. Eliot recuperated in Margate in 1921, so it cannot have been that 
low by then.

Jeremy


-- 
Jeremy Hawthorn
Emeritus Professor
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
7491 Trondheim
Norway

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