idy outlandish place; rough
stone houses in half mourning, a few coarse yellow-stone lodging houses
with black roofs (bills in all the windows), five bathing-machines, five
girls in straw hats, five men in straw hats (wishing they had not come);
very much what Broadstairs would have been if it had been born Irish,
and had not inherited a cliff. "But this is a capital little homely inn,
looking out upon the sea; with the coast of Scotland, mountainous and
romantic, over against the windows; and though I can just stand upright
in my bedroom, we are really well lodged. It is a clean nice place in a
rough wild country, and we have a very obliging and comfortable
landlady." He had found indeed, in the latter, an acquaintance of old
date. "The landlady at the little inn at Allonby, lived at Greta-Bridge
in Yorkshire when I went down there before _Nickleby_; and was smuggled
into the room to see me, after I was secretly found out. She is an
immensely fat woman now. 'But I could tuck my arm round her waist then,
Mr. Dickens,' the landlord said when she told me the story as I was
going to bed the night before last. 'And can't you do it now?' I said.
'You insensible dog! Look at me! Here's a picture!' Accordingly I got
round as much of her as I could; and this gallant action was the most
successful I have ever performed, on the whole."

On their way home the friends were at Doncaster, and this was Dickens's
first experience of the St. Leger and its saturnalia. His companion had
by this time so far recovered as to be able, doubled-up, to walk with a
thick stick; in which condition, "being exactly like the gouty admiral
in a comedy I have given him that name." The impressions received from
the race-week were not favourable. It was noise and turmoil all day
long, and a gathering of vagabonds from all parts of the racing earth.
Every bad face that had ever caught wickedness from an innocent horse
had its representative in the streets; and as Dickens, like Gulliver
looking down upon his fellow-men after coming from the horse-country,
looked down into Doncaster High-street from his inn-window, he seemed to
see everywhere a then notorious personage who had just poisoned his
betting-companion. "Everywhere I see the late Mr. Palmer with his
betting-book in his hand. Mr. Palmer sits next me at the theatre; Mr.
Palmer goes before me down the street; Mr. Palmer follows me into the
chemist's shop where I go to buy rose water after breakfast, a