ONE OF THE WORLD’S WONDERS
THERE is something not exactly high-class in the name of Margate. Sixpenny teas are suggested, and a vulgar flavour of shrimps floats unbidden in the air, while the looming figures of Jemima and her ever-present ‘Arry obtrude themselves on the mind in spite of our best efforts to believe that Margate may be a very charming place, as its air is certainly remarkable for bracing and invigorating the system.
But there is something at Margate besides the air, the sands, and the sea; something that calls for recognition from students, antiquarians, lovers of romance, and savants of all classes and nations; something that, just because it is at plebeian Margate, has escaped the proper notice and admiration it so strongly deserves. If the curious and beautiful subterranean temple, of which I am about to speak, existed anywhere but at Margate, it would certainly be acknowledged as one of the wonders of the world, which it undoubtedly is. Thousands of people go annually to Margate, and come away again, without knowing of its existence. I have asked residents at Margate about it, and found them perfectly ignorant of its whereabouts, and I have been instrumental in sending them to see what they may be more reasonably proud of than anything in or about their town; namely, the magnificent and wonderful piece of ancient workmanship known as the ‘Shell Grotto.’
To begin with, this name is a mistake. The whole management of the place is a mistake. When a man meets you at the corner of the pier and puts a badly printed fly-leaf in your hand with the words “Go and see the Grotto” upon it, you naturally believe that it is the advertisement of a place built out of oyster-shells, where you can have tea and shrimps ad libitum; and you immediately set yourself against such allurements, preferring to be in the fresh salt air, and roam at your pleasure by the sea. It was the merest chance in the world that persuaded me to see this ‘Grotto.’ I was crumpling the fly-leaf advertisement in my hand, about to throw it away, when some words in small print caught my eye. They were, “Two thousand square feet of shell-work.” This aroused my curiosity, for I thought that even two thousand square feet of oyster-shells would be worth looking at. So I turned to the man who had given me the advertisement, and said, “Where is this Grotto?”
He was a pale, hungry-looking individual, and had a monotonous way of speaking, which probably arose out of a long and bitter experience of trying to persuade people to ‘go and see the Grotto’ who wouldn’t go.
“Up on the Dane” he replied.
“Where is the Dane?”
“Right through the town. You can’t miss it.” And he turned a filmy eye upon me with a show of interest. “Are you going to see it?”
“Yes, I think so. Is it something you have built up there?”
The man broke into a hoarse laugh.
“I built it! Lor’ bless yer ‘art, it’s been there no one knows how long! You’d be a clever one if you could tell who built it. I don’t know nothink about it, no more don’t any one else that I ever heerd on.”
I was now fairly interested in the matter, and lost no time in walking to the ‘Dane.’ My way lay right through the town, in and out some very dirty streets, smelling strongly of fish and tar, and then up a slight eminence. This eminence was the ‘Dane,’ called so for reasons that must be left to antiquarians to decide; and the third turning to the left was marked “To the Grotto.” It was quite a quarter of an hour’s walk from the pier, which is perhaps one of the reasons why so few excursionists seem to know anything about the place; and those few who have seen it, have no idea of its value as an antiquity, apart from its extreme beauty. My expectations were at first somewhat disappointed when, following the way indicated ‘To the Grotto,’ it led me to an unpretending little house, with flowers in the front garden, and a bill in the window which said, “Tea provided.”
“Perhaps,” thought I, “it is only a catch-penny after all,” and I looked suspiciously at a hanging board on which was printed, “Visitors to the Grotto are requested to ring the bell.”
I hesitated a moment, but finally rang, and prepared myself for some carefully constructed piece of humbug. The door was opened by a cheery-looking woman, to whom I said, “Can I see the Grotto?”
“Certainly,” she replied. “If you will go down those three little steps to the right, my daughter will bring you a light and show you the way.”
“Is it underground?” I asked, with some surprise.
“Oh yes,” she said, smiling affably, “quite underground.”
And then she disappeared, shutting her door. She evidently had no intention of proposing a shrimp tea, so I descended the steps indicated and found a closed door, which, however, was speedily opened by a fresh-faced, intelligent-looking girl, who invited me in and then proceeded to light a wax taper. The little room in which I found myself was a kind of shop, where views of Margate, shells, baskets, and other trifles were on sale; among other things, photographs of the ‘Grotto’ I had come to see. I examined one of these with increasing wonder. “Is it really like this?” I exclaimed. “Not possible!”
“Oh, it is much better than that,” said the girl, smiling. “You see, it is difficult to take a good photograph of the place, as it is so dark. If you will come this way, please, I will light the gas as we go.”
And, with lighted taper in hand, she went down a flight of rough stone steps, I following her, and in a minute we were in the subterranean temple, miscalled a Grotto, and which, as my guide lit the gas all along it, proved to be one of the most beautiful, fantastic, and interesting relics of the ancient days that exists in England or anywhere else. I had expected nothing like it. I had no idea there was such a place to be seen anywhere, least of all in Margate, and I was fairly bewildered at the fine architecture and artistic proportions of the beautiful temple in which I stood. It is spaciously and mathematically planned; a long winding passage, with exquisitely designed archways here and there, leads to the culminating point, a square room with the fragments of an altar at each end. An enormous column, as thick and as handsomely rounded as the centre column in Roslin Chapel, supports the roof; but the wonder of it all, apart from its architectural construction, is that the walls, the centre column, and the altars, are covered with shell panels, designed by the brain and worked by the hand of man, every panel different in design, and all beautifully executed. Here a sunflower, with leaves and buds, all exquisitely worked out in shells of different form and size, covers one panel; next to it, a rising sun surrounded with triangles, stars and crescents — one particularly beautiful panel has upon it a full-blown rose with leaves, thorns and buds, all perfect. Two hearts, one within the other, a sword or dagger half drawn from its hilt, a star-fish, rings entwined, and all sorts of emblematical signs, form centres for these wonderful shell-panels, each panel having a different and more or less elaborate border. The great centre column is a perfect marvel of shell-work, some portions of it being as finely worked as Florentine mosaic. The shells used are the usual ones found on the sea-shore, and are bedded in common clay. Utterly unprepared as I was for such a marvel of art and beauty, I said to my guide, —
“What is the history of this wonderful place? Does any one know anything about it?”
“Very little is known,” said the girl. “It was first discovered in 1834. The foundations for a school were being laid just above here, and one of the workmen let his spade fall. To his surprise it dropped through a hole and disappeared. A small boy was then let down through the hole to look after the spade, and when he got to the bottom he found himself just close to the centre column of the Grotto. Afterwards the entrance was found, and cleared of stones and rubbish, so that people could walk through. The piece of land on which it is has always been private property, and the lady to whom it now belongs allows us to live here for a small rental and make what we can by showing the Grotto, as long as we take good care of it. She had the gas laid on all through the place as it is now. A great many people who have seen it have said it ought to be written about in the papers, but no one has taken any parti
cular notice of it yet.”
On further inquiry, I heard that Frank Buckland, the naturalist, had paid many visits to the cave, purposing to write a book about it, had not untimely death put an end to his useful labours. His theory was, that all the shells used in the ornamentation of the place must have been taken alive — that is, with fish in them — or they could not have remained in the wonderful state of preservation in which they now are. This is, however, a difficult question, which only profound conchologists can determine.
The square room at the end of the beautiful vaulted passage looks as if intended for a place of worship, though the Christian emblem of the cross is nowhere to be seen. The walls here are richly emblazoned with designs in shells of the sun; the sun rising, setting, and in the full splendour of all his rays; these rays exquisitely worked in the minutest shells, some of them so small that one needs a microscope to judge the amount of patience, thought, and skill bestowed on their arrangement. On some of the panels in this room too, are worked urns or vases of primitive shape, from which flames are depicted ascending. Tapping the middle panel at the end of this chamber, I found that it sounded hollow. I suggested to my guide that it might be well to make some excavations there; she agreed, but averred that the present owner of the property would never allow it.
Wandering slowly back through the beautiful vaulted passages, I noticed at the top of one of the arches the small figure of a man in a sitting posture, carved out of one stone; the arms are tightly folded, the head is gone, but, judging from the position of the body, the head had evidently turned downwards so that the chin rested on the breast.
Full of curiosity and surprise, I turned back once more to look at the whole effect of this almost unrecognised memento of the past, and noticed how marvellously the designs harmonised together, the different colours and shapes of the shells blending so that from the foot of the steps that led into it, as far as eye could see, it looked like a miniature chapel ornamented with the finest mosaic work. It is difficult to guess for what purpose it could have been built. It is certainly not a Christian temple; nor is it Druidical, as the Druids never worshipped underground, but on hills and in forests. It is more likely to be a relic of Scandinavian mythology — it is suggestive of the sea, and may have been a burial-place of the Vikings, though it is generally believed that these bold riders of the waves preferred to let their lifeless bodies drift out to sea in ships and sink in the ‘cold, populous graves’ of the ocean they loved so well, rather than be laid in the damp and wormy earth.
Whatever it be, the Shell Grotto at Margate deserves a better name and a wider fame, and so it will prove when antiquarians and scholars shall have given it proper consideration, and have freed it from its present common surroundings. Sixpence, for seeing so beautiful and extraordinary a place, seems an absurdly small sum, considering what ‘guides,’ as a rule, charge for showing sights not half so interesting; yet that humble silver coin is the only key required to unlock the wonders of a palace almost as beautiful as one of the scenes in Hans Christian Andersen’s “Little Mermaid.”
Before leaving, I asked the gentle and obliging damsel of the Grotto if many people visited the place.
“Sometimes a great many,” she replied; “but they just scramble through, and never ask any questions. I don’t suppose they stop to think whether it is an old relic or a modern building. Some of the roughs try to pick the shells out and destroy the panels; we have to watch very carefully to prevent mischief being done.”
She showed me one place where the ruthless fingers of some particularly destructive ‘Arry had broken away the centre petals of a rose, and I was able to discern more closely than ever the exquisite beauty and fineness of the work. It would be absurd indeed to imagine such a place to be modern, for who, in these busy days, would bestow so much time, labour, and patience on the building and ornamentation of a subterranean chapel with shells? At a rough calculation, I should say that it would take a man an entire day, working hard every hour, to make one square foot of this shell-work, and there are two thousand square feet of it altogether. The trouble of collecting the shells, sorting and arranging them, the infinite patience, skill, and delicacy of finger required to bed them in the clay, apart from the knowledge of art exhibited in the plan of each design on the panels — all this taken into consideration, heightens the interest and increases the value of this Grotto as a splendid example of early artistic effort The name of the hill in which it was excavated, ‘the Dane,’ suggests the idea that perhaps when the Danish hordes ravaged the coast in the time of the ancient Britons, the place may have been used for secret worship of some kind. It was evidently not a mere hiding-place; it was not a dungeon, for the lavish ornamentation of the walls and the spaciousness of the building would, in such a case, have been quite unnecessary. At any rate, it affords a field for students of early art and architecture, and I shall be glad if my description of the place induces those who are learned in the land to visit it and give public voice to their ideas respecting its origin. It is as wonderful in its way as Fingal’s Cave, or the Blue Grotto at Capri, both of which magnificent natural structures are celebrated throughout the world; while the Shell Grotto, badly named, and badly advertised, and moreover having the disadvantage of being at over-popular Margate, remains temporarily in obscurity.
All mention of it has been lately omitted from the Margate Guide-book. I hear that it was once alluded to there, en passant, in two or three lines, but in the new editions even that allusion has dropped out. The place should be called ‘The Shell Tomb of the Vikings,’
‘The Norseman’s Cave,’ ‘The Scandinavian Shell Temple,’ any taking, descriptive title — anything but the ‘Grotto’; for, say what we will, a Margate ‘Grotto’ cannot be divided from the idea of shrimps — yea, even horrible suggestions are presented of periwinkles and pins! Everybody of taste and refinement will and must avoid a Margate ‘Grotto,’ even if they know nothing of it but its name.
If some enthusiastic worshipper of Art would but take a trip to Margate, and give the world his opinion on the design and artwork of this subterranean temple, I am sure he would tell us that we are a very dense and stupid people to be so indifferent to one of the rarest antiquities we possess. The place should be given a new and fitting title, to raise it with honour from the half-suspicious distrust and incredulity in which it is now held, and make it famous in the eyes of the public by giving us the clue to its origin; proving perhaps, as far as proof can go, that these shining, shell-embroidered walls and arched roofs have once resounded to the shouts of the strong sea-warriors whom no terrors of wind or wave could daunt, and who swore by and sometimes defied, in the plenitude of their muscular vigour and prowess, the great gods Odin and Thor.
Jane
PREFACE
THE following story offers the very simple and unadorned presentment of an ‘old-fashioned’ type of gentlewoman, — a type which may possibly still be found in quiet country towns and villages far removed from the whirl of latter-day society and the rush of modern progress. In her previous appearances ‘Jane’ has found considerable favour with a large portion of the reading public; so much so indeed that I believe I am justified in the hope that sweetness, integrity and humility are still considered admirable qualities in woman, despite her recent ‘free fights’ with the police, and her combats against existing Law and Order. It may be as well perhaps to say that the episodes of London life which occur in ‘Jane’ are drawn strictly from fact, and that ‘Mrs. Maddenham’ is a faithful representative of a particular class of ‘up-to-date’ women who consider it perfectly lawful to plunder persons of means who are foolish enough to wish to enter what is called ‘the swim.’ Numerous cases could be cited of women, and men too, who pay certain sums regularly per annum, to members of the ‘upper ten’ in order to ensure invitations to all their social entertainments; and I have in my memory now a very notorious example of a somewhat impecunious nobleman who obtained a large loan on the understanding that he was to
introduce the person who thus obliged him to the private acquaintanceship of Royalty. ‘Jane,’ however, in the uses she made of ‘Mrs. Maddenham’ was not such a simpleton as she appeared to be; and I have often thought that if two or three women like her were to join the social round, they might possibly effect some reform in what is surely a rather reprehensible method of money-making. However, with the change of times there is bound to occur a change in manners, and the modern ‘advance of woman’ is so rapidly exterminating the few vestiges of the old order of things, when fine feeling, gentleness and dignity were the natural environment of the perfect lady, that it is almost wasted labour to make any fresh appeal to what is nowadays perhaps considered merely ‘old-fashioned’ sentiment. Yet at the risk of giving dire offence to my Suffragist friends, I venture to think that though the women of ‘old fashion’ may be set down as ‘slow,’ ‘dull,’ and utterly blind to their own self-interest and advantage, it was surely better to have them so, than that they should be vulgar, pushful, assertive and noisy, — even more vulgar, pushful, assertive and noisy than the most boorish and ill-bred men. It was not to women of the Suffragette type that Dante addressed his ‘Vita Nuova’ and Petrarch his ‘Sonnets’; — it was not from a female clamourer for ‘equal rights’ that Raffaelle drew his heavenly ‘Madonna’; — and when we take time to reasonably consider how great has been man’s ideal of Womanhood all through the ages, and how he has evinced his worship of that ideal throughout all his best and highest efforts in Art and in Literature, it surely behoves us to seriously weigh the consequences of shattering the high faith he has had in us for so long. Perhaps it is already shattered, — who knows! In any case it will be rather hard if for the sake of a few political termagants the whole of our sex should lose ‘caste’ in the eyes of the ‘lords of creation’ — for lords of creation they are, no matter how much they are bullied and brow-beaten, and Nature will not allow the fact to be denied! Wherefore in the face of incontrovertible destiny it seems to me that a graceful humility is more becoming to our sex than an arrogant obstinacy, — and that we are far more likely to be happy in ourselves if we are contented with the great and unassailable position we naturally hold, — that of being the inspirers, helpers and guides of men rather than their rivals in public contests not worth the winning. The less women enter the political arena the better, — the more they remain in their own sphere of home and love and tenderness the more hope there is for the future welfare of the nation.
Delphi Collected Works of Marie Corelli Page 925