Folkestone

“ It is one of Folkestone's best effects, that black quietness under the very feet of a crowd. They no longer heard the band even, only a remote suggestion of music filtered to them over the brow. The black-treed slopes fell from them to the surf below, and out at sea were the lights of many ships. Away to the westward like a swarm of fire-flies hung the lights of Hythe. ”

“ Haven't I as much right to be in Folkestone as you have?"
"That is mere evasion. When I see a man who is usually rather carefully and very neatly dressed, walking in the streets of a seaport town without hat or a stick and with a collar that looks as if it had been used to clean out a saucepan, and great stains on his clothes, I am justified in inferring that something unusual has happened to him." ”

“ The business of getting out of Folkestone is a weariful affair, for there are not only the heavy rises in the roads to be surmounted, but the great rolling chalk hills that shut in the valleys reverberate the heat of the sun to a degree that is often stifling, and in these latter days the tiresome hindmost suburbs of Folkestone conspire to render the explorer's lot a hard one, going back dustily inland, beyond Radnor Park, until they join forces with what was once the rural village of Cheriton Street. ”

“ There is no love felt for modern Folkestone by the inhabitants of the old town, who resent the prices to which things have been forced up by the neighbourhood of the over-wealthy, and resent still more the occasional descent from the fashionable Leas of dainty parties bent on exploring the queer nooks, and amusing themselves with a sight of the quaint characters, that still abound by the fishing-harbour. ”

“ Then there is the daily trade of the Continent—the flowers, fruit, eggs, and vegetables which arrive nightly in huge consignments and make the quays such scenes of life and bustle. Yes, Folkestone is a busy and interesting seaport as well as a pleasant harbour and holiday place.
But everything is not quite modern in Folkestone. There lies to the north of the Outer Harbour an old town, of whose existence comparatively few of the thousands of visitors who come to it or pass through it annually know anything. Those who love the old rather than the new ”

“ But Folkestone, like other towns, is just as full of architecture as a wood is full of trees. As the train winds on its causeway over the sloping town you perceive below you thousands of squat little homes, neat, tended, respectable, comfortable, prim, at once unostentatious and conceited. ”

“ It is a relief to turn away from this evidence of Folkestone's prosperity, and to secure a quiet hillside nook whence, on one of those insufferably hot days invariably selected for elaborate evolutions and parades, to watch the sweating Tommies harried up and down the blistering valley in the service of their country, to the raucous and unintelligible yells of commanding officers, comfortably and coolly supervising their heated efforts from the easeful vantage-point of horseback. ”

“ At Folkestone the weather looked ugly in the extreme; the wind roared, and the sea flashed in the darkness, while the packet rocked and throbbed with an uneasy motion. At first Gavrolles hesitated, but his horror of sea-sickness yielded to his intense longing to be again among certain choice spirits on his native soil, and with a few shivering compatriots he crept on board. Among those who followed him were the two men who had watched him so curiously at Charing Cross. ”

“ The extreme Western end of Folkestone touches a more pleasing note than the rest. There neutral tints and unimaginative Middle Victorian ideals give place to red-brick and terra-cotta houses of tasteful design, and thus point the moral that most of Folkestone was built too early. ”

“ CHAPTER XIV—FOLKESTONE TO BOULOGNE WE waited for the weather a day and a night at Folkestone, which, though one of the gateways of England, is a poor and primitive place to lie in. Most of the time we were on the mud, and to get up into England we had to climb a craggy precipice called the quay-wall. Nevertheless, the harbor (so styled) is picturesque, and in the less respectable part of the town, between the big hotels and band-stands and the mail-steamers ”

“ Modern Folkestone is already, by effluxion of time, becoming sharply divided into modern and more modern. The ancient Folkestone we have seen to be the fishing village, the first development from whose humble but natural existence, in days when seaside holidays began to be an institution and the "resorts" set out upon their career of artificiality, was the "Pavilionstone" of Dickens and Cubitt. ”

“ This is one of the principal ports in cross-Channel communications, the steamers serving Boulogne, 30 m. distant. The older part of Folkestone lies in a small valley which here opens upon the shore between steep hills. The more modern portions extend up the hills on either hand. To the north the town is sheltered by hills rising sharply to heights of 400 to 500 ft., on several of which, such as Sugarloaf and Castle Hills, are ancient earthworks. ”

“ You have seen him becoming more refined and careful day by day, more carefully dressed, less clumsy in the ways and methods of social life. You have seen the gulf widening between himself and his former low associates. I have brought you at last to the vision of him, faultlessly dressed and posed, in an atmosphere of candlelight and chanting, in his own sitting in one of the most fashionable churches in Folkestone.... All the time I have refrained from the lightest touch upon the tragic note that must now creep into my tale. ”

“ Up there, on the lofty downs, those bold, grassy chalk-hills, you look309 down across a mile or so of apparently level land, at whose seaward extremity the clustered houses of the town are massed against the sea. But, coming down into those levels, it is seen that the Old Town lies in a hollow on the shore, while fashionable Folkestone occupies a lofty cliff-top; the famous “Leas,” intermediate between them being the business districts, including Tontine Street and Rendezvous Street.
Not all Old Folkestone survives, nor is even that which remains exactly as it was. ”

“ Ingoldsby’s description of the Folkestone of his day, early in the nineteenth century, still in part holds good. To him it was “a collection of houses which its maligners call a fishing-town, and its well-wishers a watering-place. A limb of the Cinque Ports, it has (or lately had) a corporation of its own and has been thought considerable enough to give a second title to a noble family. Rome stood on seven hills—Folkestone seems to have been built upon seventy. ”

“ As Gertrude Folyat had gone farther and farther away from her boy-lover, she had seen him dwindling in stature, but with a microscopic clarity. Having a very human dislike of seeing things as they were presented to her she pumped up a sea of sentiment, dived into it and saw blurred the newly-revealed figure. That sufficed until in the gaieties of Folkestone—she never questioned the gaiety of what was presented to her for pleasure—and the excitement and opulence of life at Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace, she was able to forget him altogether. ”

“ Folkestone, a young English gentleman of not less than two hundred-weight, lolled on a hammock, smoking a chibouque, and reading a magazine; while straight between us two aristocratic loafers, Vandemonian Jack, aged about a century, was mechanically sawing firewood in the hot, sickly sunshine. This is one of the jobs that it takes a man of four or five score years to perform ungrudgingly ”

“ It was in vain that I protested I had paid already. “When I get to Folkestone,” I said, “I should see some one who could prove my identity,” &c. The man grinned. “It will be a long time before you get to Folkestone,” he said, and he went away. ”

“ She dressed and went out to meet Mr. Boyne, carrying in her handbag the treasured message from Folkestone Pier, together with her powder-puff, her little mirror, and a few hairpins.
She had no idea, however, that at the moment when she was dressing to dine with her aunt's benefactor, a lady with red-brown hair, having taken tea at the Pavilion Hotel in Folkestone, was in a first-class carriage in a boat express for London, and that that same lady had only arrived in Folkestone a couple of hours before, and on meeting the boat had handed in the message at the office at the harbour. ”

“ There is a choice of ways into Folkestone—by steeply-rising Sandgate Hill, or by the flat lower road, where a modern toll-gate stands to exact its dues for the convenience. This way the cyclist saves the climb, and pilgrims in general are spared the villa roads of the hill approach to the town, coming to it instead through pleasant woods, with the tangled abandon of the Leas undercliff rising up to the left.
Folkestone chiefly interests the Ingoldsby pilgrim because of that eloquent and humorous description of the old town to be found in "The Leech of Folkestone." ”

“ It is overbuilt, in fact, and well towards a thousand houses lie empty, and most of those which are occupied are devoted to lodgings and boarding-houses, while hotels, large and little, abound. There are no manufactures, and except in the season and the preparatory season, there is no work. Folkestone has become very fashionable, but it is no longer the resort of the conservative or the aristocratic, or even the æsthetic. ”

“ Kipps. Folkestone, you know, is a Sea Front, and it values people by sheer vulgar prosperity. We're not prosperous, and we live in a back street. We have to live here because this is our house. It's a mercy we haven't to 'let.' One feels one hasn't opportunities. ”

“ It was an astonishing coincidence that I should have run against this woman in this out of the way place. I had left her but a few days since apparently firmly rooted in the Hampstead Road, and now, behold, as I step ashore from the barge, she is almost the first person that I meet. And yet the coincidence, which had evidently hit her as hard as it had me, like most coincidences, tended to disappear on closer inspection. The only really odd feature was my own presence in Folkestone. ”

“ Kenneth Dowsett is implicated in the murder of your poor girl."
Carton set his teeth in great agitation. "If he is! if he is!" he said; but he could say no more.
Bill Foster was back.
"There's a train to Folkestone," he cried, "the South-Eastern line, at 11.47. You can catch it easily. If there's no boat handy from Folkestone to Boulogne, you'll be able to hire one there. The steamers take two hours going across. You can get there in four. Train arrives at Folkestone at 1.27. By six o'clock you can be in Boulogne. Jump into my trap, gentlemen." ”

“ PHILIPOT, JOHN (1589?–1645) , Somerset herald, son of Henry Philpot and his wife, daughter and coheiress of David Leigh, servant to the archbishop of Canterbury, was born at Folkestone, Kent, between 1587 and 1592. His father, who possessed considerable property in Folkestone, and who had been mayor of the town, was lessee of the rectorial tithes, and was buried in the parish church in 1603. ”

“ Viscount Folkestone was elected President, and was continued in the chair for life by annual re-election. He died on 17th February 1761, and was buried at Britford. His second wife survived as Dowager Viscountess Folkestone, till 25th September 1782. ”

“ She sees through her arts, when we stay with her in Town, and has given her some rare good smackings, I can tell you! To you, as I say, being a stranger, she is the most beautiful child in Folkestone—there is not another on the Leas to touch her ”

“ Before I left Dover, it transpired that a man had been arrested in Folkestone who was carrying with him enough of Atlas dynamite to have wrecked a whole square. The movements of each of us had been watched by the continental police, and had been wired to England. There had been a moment at which the two boxes had been laid on the same bench on the platform at Jemelle, and I have often since pictured to myself the imbroglio which might have ensued if they had been accidentally exchanged. ”

“ William Bouverie, and died as Rebecca, Viscountess Folkestone, on 4th May 1764, her husband having succeeded his father as the second Viscount on 17th February 1761. The noble widower married, thirdly, on 22d July 1765, Anne, daughter of Sir Thomas Hales, Bart., and widow of Anthony Duncombe, Lord Feversham (who had been also Baron of Downton, in Wiltshire) . Although the third wife, she was the first Countess, for on the 31st October following, William, Viscount Folkestone, was created Earl of Radnor [1] and Baron Pleydell-Bouverie, of Coleshill. ”

“ Many from Liége have escaped to Antwerp or into Holland, thousands are rushing from Namur into the bosom of France. But from Louvain and Brussels and Tirlemont they flock to Ostend. The steamers of the Channel service are crowded with those who have money and can obtain the necessary laissez-passers. Your town of Folkestone is encumbered with arrivals. Were stones pillows there would be a head for every stone. But those who have neither money nor passports—and many of these were rich a week ago—remain, as Mademoiselle has told you, to weep, and stretch their arms towards the sea. ”

“ This Weald of Kent is bordered all along by the southern side of the hilly range we have mentioned; but strange to say, although a very level piece of ground was to be had through this district, the high road perversely pursued its way up and down the hills, by Lenham and Charing, till it thought fit to descend to Ashford, and thence once more make its way to Folkestone. Thus a great part of the Weald of Kent was totally untravelled ”