Ramsgate

“ He is really capital to sail about with. I read your letter yesterday while sitting out on a Bench with her—his Wife—a brave Woman, of the O’Dowd sort; and she wanted to know all about you and yours. We like Ramsgate very much: genial air: pleasant Country: good Harbour, Piers, etc.: and the Company, though overflowing, not showy, nor vulgar: but seemingly come to make the most of a Holiday. ”

“ Anything so grand had never before been witnessed in Ramsgate, and it was unanimously conceded that the inhabitants of the Isle of Thanet had done honour to themselves by sparing neither trouble nor expense in showing honour to him who for upwards of half a century had been one of their most respected fellow-citizens, and during all this time had never allowed an opportunity to pass without giving substantial proofs of his goodwill, wherever required, without distinction of creed or nationality. ”

“ For as Gentlemen usually dress after a walk, so do Gents dress before one: and if they do not appear in their “best” to walk up and down the pier—which at Ramsgate is the chief straw that the sinking ennuyés clutch at—and stare superciliously at all whom they do not know, they think they are snobs—the snob 84being to the Gent what the Gent is to the Gentleman.
The prevalence of Gents at Ramsgate, in such numbers that the fine weather brings them out like bluebottles, is easily accounted for. There is a certain class of families who go to Ramsgate every year, because they were there the last. ”

“ A fine collection of prints, carvings, enamels, and objects of ancient art also adorned his Ramsgate house. As a landscape artist in water-colour he displayed appreciable skill.
Pugin was of moderate stature, rather thick set, with a heavy complexion, high brow, and keen grey eyes. Quick in movement, a frank and voluble talker whether at work or at table, master of a fund of anecdote and a dramatic manner of narration, he fairly overflowed, when in health, with energy and humour. ”

“ Both Ramsgate and Margate claim the story of the typically pursy, Perkyn Middlewick type of city man who, stepping on to the railway platform on the arrival of the train and feeling already the enliving effect of the atmosphere, exclaimed, “Isn’t this invigorating?”
“No, sir,” returned a porter, “it’s Margate” (or Ramsgate, as the case may be) .
Some few have not the capacity for enjoyment. Sometimes you see, along these crowded sands, tearful small boys who have somehow missed the note of the place. “I have brought you out to enjoy yourself, sir,” said a robustious father to such an one ”

“ Here the cliffs of Thanet die away to the marshes and levels of Pegwell Bay and Sandwich Flats; and the early fisher-folk, for safety’s sake, preferred to live away from the shore, upon which an enemy might (and often did) unexpectedly land. When Ramsgate first began to grow, its inhabitants, seeking a respectable remote antiquity, affected to believe the place-name derived from “Roman’s Gate,” but even the credulous old Hasted, the eighteenth-century historian of Kent, could not accept that etymology. ”

“ Under Elizabeth, Ramsgate was still unimportant though possessed of a fair before the reign of Henry VIII. After 1668 the growth of trade increased its prosperity, and at the beginning of the reign of George I. the pier was enlarged and pier-wardens appointed to collect the droits. ”

“ Every shop in Ramsgate was closed on this occasion, and his funeral cortège was followed by an immense crowd halfway to Canterbury, on its way to Wanstead in Essex, where he was buried. He left a fortune of 300,000l. ”

“ She's got to be reckoned with, dearest. In threatening the single lives of people's eldest sons she's leaving even the eternal chorus-girl down the course, and in releasing one man for the Front she's quite likely to capture another who counts considerably more!
The Ramsgates thought they'd got a perfect jewel of a chauffeuse—smart, businesslike, knew town well, knew when she might exceed the speed limit and when she mightn't, thoroughly understood her car and so on. And then one day Pegwell came back from the Front on sick leave. As soon as he was well enough he went for a drive every day. ”

“ To the end of life, Ramsay remained the same kindly, genial, honourable man, whose appearance in any of the social circles he frequented, was the signal for 'quips and cranks and wreathèd smiles' to go round, and for the feast of reason and the flow of soul to commence. His squat, podgy figure waddling down the High Street on his way to his shop in the Luckenbooths, his head covered with the quaint three-cornered hat of the period, beneath which peeped his tie-wig, was one of the familiar sights of Edinburgh, to be pointed out to strangers with a pride and an affection that never diminished. ”

“ No, sir, claret is the liquor for boys: port for men: but he who aspires to be a hero must drink brandy!” Most toper sentiments! But Ramsay did not stint his guests, and these were constantly of a noble order. Lord Bute, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Bath, Lord Chesterfield, and the Duke of Richmond were often at the painter’s table, discussing all sorts of political questions with him. Every man was a politician in those days, especially after dinner. But Ramsay was not content to be simply a talker upon the topics of the day—he became also a writer. ”

“ In no scene does Ramsay exhibit his wonderful knowledge of the human heart to such advantage as in the one before us. Peggy and Patie then sing a duet, taking alternate verses, into which are introduced many of the old Scots songs,—'The Broom o' Cowdenknowes,' 'Milking the Ewes,' 'Jenny Nettles,' 'Thro' the Wood, Laddie,' 'The Boatman,' 'Maggie Lauder,' 'The Lass o' Patie's Mill,' and the curtain falls over one of the most delightful scenes illustrative of pure affection, in modern drama. ”

“ The gathering in of the members of a family around the domestic board, in times of peril and distress, is one of the luxuries of the heart that in peace we cannot know. The arrival of John Ramsay at the present moment was a source of the liveliest happiness to his parents. They needed a cheerful as well as a resolute comforter. John had, only twenty-four hours previous, left Sumpter near Rocky Mount—immediately after the battle with the British convoy was won. He was sent with despatches to Colonel Williams, a Whig partisan of note, who was now supposed to be in the neighborhood of the Saluda. ”

“ A complete edition of his Poems appeared in London in 1731 and in Dublin in 1733. With a touch of vanity he expressed the fear lest “the coolness of fancy that attends advanced years should make me risk the reputation I had acquired.” He was already on terms of intimacy with the leading men of letters in Scotland and England. He corresponded with Hamilton of Bangour (q.v.) , Somerville (q.v.) , Gay (q.v.) and Pope. Gay visited him in Edinburgh, and Pope praised his pastoral-compliments which were undoubtedly responsible for some of Ramsay's unhappy poetic ventures beyond his Scots vernacular. ”

“ In Willie Shakspeare's melodious numbers I forget the dark days for trade, and in auld Chaucer's Tales, and Spenser's 'Queen,' in John Milton's majestic flow, in Giles and Phineas Fletcher, in rare Ben and our ain Drummond, I tine the sorrows o' the day in the glories o' the days that are past.'
That we may accept Ramsay's account of the studies of Patie, the Gentle Shepherd, as a type of his own is warranted by something more than tradition. The internal evidence of his works throws a strong colour of probability over the theory. ”

“ Scotland honored herself when she honored her poet Ramsay. Happy is the nation that appreciates her sons who bid her people look within to find enduring treasure. To Ramsay, the prophet’s words apply: “And they that be of thee shall build the old waste places; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations and thou shalt be called ... the restorer of paths to dwell in.”
The second Allan Ramsay (1713–84) , an accomplished scholar and gentleman, was the son of the poet. Being carefully educated by his father and sent to Rome to study art, he became an able portrait-painter. ”

“ The arrival of Ramsay and his party was so unexpected, that, at first, Lady Barclay imagined they had been betrayed, and that the boat was filled with armed men from the king’s cutter, who had come on shore with a view of forcing a entrance into the cave. In a minute every preparation was made for defence; for it had long been arranged, that in case of an unexpected attack, the women should make all the resistance in their power, and which the nature of the place enabled them to do. ”

“ Since he belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator, as his mother spoke, with heavenly bliss. ”

“ The father of the enamoured girl was an old proud baronet; her mother, a sister of the Chief-Justice, Earl of Mansfield. A marriage with consent of parents was consequently impossible. The young people, nevertheless, contrived to get themselves united in wedlock.
Allan Ramsay’s Monument, Princes Street Gardens.
The speedily developed talent of Ramsay, the illustrious patronage they secured to him, and the very considerable wealth which he acquired must have in time made him an acceptable relation to those proud people. A time came when their descendants held the connection even as an honour. ”

“ From 1707 to 1711 thus did Allan Ramsay 'live and learn,'—a youth whose nature, fired by the memories of Scotland's greatness in years gone by, already longed to add something of value to the cairn of his country's literature. Such, too, were the facts of which, at his request, the worthy lawyer, Mr. James Ross, was placed in possession when he was called on to decide whether his friend, the 'poetically-minded wigmaker,' should be regarded as a persona grata from the point of view of a prospective son-in-law. ”

“ Ramsay possessed all the qualities constituting a song-writer of great and varied genius. His work exhibits ease and elasticity of rhythm, liquid smoothness of assonance, sympathetic beauty of thought, with subtle skill in wedding sense to sound. Though his verse lacked the dainty finish of Herrick and Waller, the brilliant facet-like sparkle of Carew, Suckling, and Lovelace, the tender grace of Sedley, and the half-cynical, half-regretful, but wholly piquant epicureanism, of Rochester and Denham, yet Ramsay had a charm all his own. Witness the 'Lass o' Patie's Mill' ”

“ Ramsay, she thought, stepping back and screwing up her eyes. (It must have altered the design a good deal when she was sitting on the step with James. There must have been a shadow.) When she thought of herself and Charles throwing ducks and drakes and of the whole scene on the beach, it seemed to depend somehow upon Mrs. Ramsay sitting under the rock, with a pad on her knee, writing letters. (She wrote innumerable letters, and sometimes the wind took them and she and Charles just saved a page from the sea.) But what a power was in the human soul! ”

“ Ramsay was a successful poet, and not too much of a poet to be also a successful man of business. He exchanged wig-making for bookselling, kept a shop in the High Street of Edinburgh, and finally retired to a villa which he had built for himself on the Castle Hill. A good-humoured, care-defying man, he enjoyed life in an easy way, and was not disposed to repine when his road lay down the hill. ”

“ Who is John Ramsay?"
"He is a trooper, sir, and out with General Sumpter. We don't see him often now, for he is afraid to come home, excepting when the Tories are away."
"These Tories are very troublesome, Mary," said Butler, laughing; "they annoy us all, on our side of the question. But love John Ramsay, my dear, and don't be ashamed of it, for I'll warrant he is a brave fellow, and deserves a pretty girl with a true heart, for his love to his country."
"That he does!" replied Mary, "for his greatest fault is that he ventures too much. ”

“ In this double direction of Ramsay’s literary likings,—his respectful obeisance to the literary merits of his London contemporaries, and his fonder private affection for the old poets of his Scottish vernacular,—we have the key to his own literary life.
Between 1712 and 1718, or between Ramsay’s twenty-sixth and his thirty-third year, just when the reign of Queen Anne was passing into that of George I., the Edinburgh public became more and more alive to the fact that they had a poet among them in the guise of a wig-maker. ”

“ Ramsay said almost fiercely. "Gathered together bit by bit, pieced like some perfect old mosaic. It has been the one delight in a hard and gloomy life. All the house is the same. And the name of Dr. Alfred Ramsay is becoming known. Then it is all kicked away by a sudden and unexpected tragedy. Sit down."
Brownsden sat down obediently in a Cromwellian chair upholstered in speaking tapestry. It was his cue to get the other to talk. ”

“ I will have revenge upon that dastard; there is no time to lose; five minutes for reflection, and then to act,” thought Ramsay, as he twisted up this timely notice, which, it must be evident to the reader, must have been sent by one who had been summoned to the council. Ramsay’s plans were soon formed; he dispatched a trusty messenger to the Jesuit’s, desiring him to communicate immediately with the others, and upon what plan to proceed. He then wrote a note to Vanslyperken, requesting his immediate presence, and hastened to the morning apartment of Wilhelmina. ”