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diff --git a/27572.txt b/27572.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..343179c --- /dev/null +++ b/27572.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1950 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Dickens-Land, by J. A. Nicklin + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Dickens-Land + +Author: J. A. Nicklin + +Illustrator: E. W. Haslehust + +Release Date: December 20, 2008 [EBook #27572] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DICKENS-LAND *** + + + + +Produced by Carla Foust and The Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was +produced from images generously made available by The +Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries) + + + + + +Transcriber's note + + +Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice. A printer +error has been changed, and it is listed at the end. All other +inconsistencies are as in the original. + + + + + [Illustration: CHALK, HOUSE WHERE DICKENS SPENT HIS HONEYMOON] + + + + + DICKENS-LAND + + Described by J. A. NICKLIN + + Pictured by E. W. HASLEHUST + + [Illustration] + + BLACKIE AND SON LIMITED LONDON GLASGOW AND BOMBAY 1911 + + + + + Beautiful England + + _Volumes Ready_ + + OXFORD + THE ENGLISH LAKES + CANTERBURY + SHAKESPEARE-LAND + THE THAMES + WINDSOR CASTLE + CAMBRIDGE + NORWICH AND THE BROADS + THE HEART OF WESSEX + THE PEAK DISTRICT + THE CORNISH RIVIERA + DICKENS-LAND + WINCHESTER + THE ISLE OF WIGHT + CHESTER AND THE DEE + YORK + + _Uniform with this Series_ + + Beautiful Ireland + + LEINSTER + ULSTER + MUNSTER + CONNAUGHT + + + + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + + Page + + Chalk, House where Dickens spent his honeymoon _Frontispiece_ + + Gadshill Place from the Gardens 8 + + Rochester from Strood 14 + + Restoration House, Rochester 20 + + Cobham Park 26 + + Cooling Church 32 + + Aylesford 38 + + Maidstone, All Saints' Church and the Palace 42 + + Jasper's Gateway 46 + + Chalk Church 50 + + Shorne Church 54 + + The Leather Bottle, Cobham 58 + + + + +[Illustration] + + +The central shrine of a literary cult is at least as often its hero's +home of adoption as his place of birth. To the Wordsworthian, +Cockermouth has but a faint, remote interest in comparison with Grasmere +and Rydal Mount. Edinburgh, for all its associations with the life and +the genius of Scott, is not as Abbotsford, or as that beloved Border +country in which his memory has struck its deepest roots. And so it is +with Dickens. The accident of birth attaches his name but slightly to +Landport in South-sea. The Dickens pilgrim treads in the most palpable +footsteps of "Boz" amongst the landmarks of a Victorian London, too +rapidly disappearing, and through the "rich and varied landscape" on +either side of the Medway, "covered with cornfields and pastures, with +here and there a windmill or a distant church", which Dickens loved from +boyhood, peopled with the creatures of his teeming fancy, and chose for +his last and most-cherished habitation. + +What Abbotsford was to Scott, that, almost, to Dickens in his later +years was Gadshill Place. From his study window in the "grave red-brick +house" "on his little Kentish freehold"--a house which he had "added to +and stuck bits upon in all manner of ways, so that it was as pleasantly +irregular and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas as the +most hopeful man could possibly desire"--he looked out, so he wrote to a +friend, "on as pretty a view as you will find in a long day's English +ride.... Cobham Park and Woods are behind the house; the distant Thames +is in front; the Medway, with Rochester and its old castle and +cathedral, on one side." On every side he could not fail to reach, in +those brisk walks with which he sought, too strenuously, perhaps, health +and relaxation, some object redolent of childish dreams or mature +achievement, of intimate joys and sorrows, of those phantoms of his +brain which to him then, as to hundreds of thousands of his readers +since, were not less real than the men and women of everyday encounter. +On those seven miles between Rochester and Maidstone, which he +discovered to be one of the most beautiful walks in England, he might be +tempted to strike off at Aylesford for a short stroll to such a +pleasant old Elizabethan mansion as Cobtree Hall, the very type, it may +be, of Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, or for a longer tramp to Town Malling, +from which he may well have borrowed many strokes for the picture of +Muggleton, that town of sturdy Kentish cricket. Sometimes he would walk +across the marshes to Gravesend, and returning through the village of +Chalk, would pause for a retrospective glance at the house where his +honeymoon was spent and a good part of _Pickwick_ planned. In the latter +end of the year, when he could take a short cut through the stubble +fields from Higham to the marshes lying further down the Thames, he +would often visit the desolate churchyard where little Pip was so +terribly frightened by the convict. Or, descending the long slope from +Gadshill to Strood, and crossing Rochester Bridge--over the balustrades +of which Mr. Pickwick leaned in agreeable reverie when he was accosted +by Dismal Jemmy--the author of _Great Expectations_ and _Edwin Drood_ +would pass from Rochester High Street--where Mr. Pumblechook's seed shop +looks across the way at Miss Twinkleton's establishment--into the Vines, +to compare once more the impression on his unerring "inward eye" with +the actual features of that Restoration House which, under another name, +he assigned to Miss Havisham, and so round by Fort Pitt to the Chatham +lines. And there--who can doubt?--if he seemed to hear the melancholy +wind that whistled through the deserted fields as Mr. Winkle took his +reluctant stand, a wretched and desperate duellist, his thoughts would +also stray to the busy dockyard town and "a blessed little room" in a +plain-looking plaster-fronted house from which dated all his early +readings and imaginings. + +Between the "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy" and +the strong, self-reliant man whose fame had filled two continents, +Gadshill Place was an immediate link. Everyone knows the story which +Dickens tells of a vision of his former self meeting him on the road to +Canterbury. + + "So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and + so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, + and the widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or + black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very + queer small boy. + + "'Halloa!' said I to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?' + + "'At Chatham,' says he. + + "'What do you do there?' say I. + + "'I go to school,' says he. + + "I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very + queer small boy says, 'This is Gadshill we are coming to, where + Falstaff went out to rob those travellers and ran away.' + + "'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I. + + "'All about him,' said the very queer small boy. 'I am old (I am + nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top + of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!' + + "'You admire that house?' said I. + +[Illustration: GADSHILL PLACE FROM THE GARDENS] + + "'Bless you, sir,' said the very queer small boy, 'when I was not + more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be + brought to look at it. And now I am nine I come by myself to look + at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond + of it, has often said to me, If you were to be very persevering, + and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it. + Though that's impossible!' said the very queer small boy, drawing a + low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his + might. + + "I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy; + for that house happens to be _my_ house, and I have reason to + believe that what he said was true." + +As the queer small boy in the _Uncommercial Traveller_ said, Gadshill +Place is at the very top of Falstaff's hill. It stands on the south side +of the Dover road;--on the north side, but a little lower down, is "a +delightfully oldfashioned inn of the old coaching days", the "Sir John +Falstaff";--surrounded by a high wall and screened by a row of limes. +The front view, with its wooden and pillared porch, its bays, its dormer +windows let into the roof, and its surmounting bell turret and vane, +bears much the same appearance as it did to the queer small boy. But +amongst the many additions and alterations which Dickens was constantly +making, the drawing-room had been enlarged from a smaller existing one, +and the conservatory into which it opens was, as he laughingly told his +younger daughter, "positively the last improvement at Gadshill"--a jest +to prove sadly prophetic, for it was uttered on the Sunday before his +death. The little library, too, on the opposite side of the porch from +the drawing-room and conservatory, was a converted bedroom. Its aspect +is familiar to most Dickens-lovers from Sir Luke Fildes's famous picture +of "The Empty Chair". In summer, however, Dickens used to do his work +not in the library but in a Swiss chalet, presented to him by Fechter, +the great actor, which stood in a shrubbery lying on the other side of +the highroad, and entered by a subway that Dickens had excavated for the +purpose. The chalet now must be sought in the terrace garden of Cobham +Hall. When Dickens sat at his desk in a room of the chalet, "up among +the branches of the trees", the five mirrors which he had put in +reflected "the leaves quivering at the windows, and the great fields of +waving corn, and the sail-dotted river". The birds and butterflies flew +in and out, the green branches shot in at the open windows, and the +lights and shadows of the clouds and the scent of flowers and of +everything growing for miles had the same free access. No imaginative +artist, whether in words or colour, could have desired a more inspiring +environment. The back of the house, looking southward, descends by one +flight of steps upon a lawn, where one of the balustrades of the old +Rochester Bridge had, when this was demolished, been fitted up as a +sundial. The lawn, in turn, communicates with flower and vegetable +gardens by another flight of steps. Beyond is "the much-coveted meadow" +which Dickens obtained, partly by exchange, from the trustees--not of +Watts's Charity, as Forster has stated, but of Sir Joseph Williamson's +Free School at Rochester. It was in this field that the villagers from +neighbouring Higham played cricket matches, and that, just before +Dickens went to America for the last time, he held those quaint +footraces for all and sundry, described in one of his letters to +Forster. Though the landlord of the Falstaff, from over the way, was +allowed to erect a drinking booth, and all the prizes were given in +money; though, too, the road from Chatham to Gadshill was like a fair +all day, and the crowd consisted mainly of rough labouring men, of +soldiers, sailors, and navvies, there was no disorder, not a flag, rope, +or stake displaced, and no drunkenness whatever. As striking a tribute, +if rightly considered, as ever was exacted by a strong and winning +personality! One of those oddities in which Dickens delighted was +elicited by a hurdle race for strangers. The man who came in second ran +120 yards and leaped over ten hurdles with a pipe in his mouth and +smoking it all the time. "If it hadn't been for your pipe," said the +Master of Gadshill Place, clapping him on the shoulder at the +winning-post, "you would have been first." "I beg your pardon, sir," he +answered, "but if it hadn't been for my pipe, I should have been +nowhere." + +To the hospitable hearth of Gadshill Place were drawn, by the fame of +the "Inimitable Boz", a long succession of brilliant men and women, +mostly of the Anglo-Saxon race, whether English or American; and if not +in the throngs for which at Abbotsford open house was kept, yet with a +frequency which would have made literary work almost impossible for the +host without remarkable steadiness of purpose and regularity of habits. +For Longfellow and his daughters he "turned out", that they might see +all of the surrounding country which could be seen in a short stay, "a +couple of postilions in the old red jackets of the old red royal Dover +road, and it was like a holiday ride in England fifty years ago". + +In his study in the late and early months, and his Swiss chalet through +the summer, Dickens would write such novels as _Great Expectations_, and +the unfinished _Mystery of Edwin Drood_, taking his local colour from +spots which lay within the compass of a reasonable walk; and others, +such as _A Tale of Two Cities_ and _Our Mutual Friend_, to which the +circumstances of time and place furnished little or nothing except their +influence on his mood. Some of the occasional papers which, in the +character of "The Uncommercial Traveller", he furnished to _All the +Year Round_, have as much of the _genius loci_ as any of his romances. +Even to-day the rushing swarm of motor cars has not yet driven from the +more secluded nooks of Kent all such idylls of open-air vagabondage as +this:-- + + "I have my eyes upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either + side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road dust and + the trees, a skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in + abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant + river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life. To + gain the milestone here, which the moss, primroses, violets, + bluebells and wild roses would soon render illegible but for + peering travellers pushing them aside with their sticks, you must + come up a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all the tramps + with carts or caravans--the gipsy tramp, the show tramp, the Cheap + Jack--find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place, + and all turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the + pot. Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that + have scorched its grass!" + +The Kentish road that Dickens thus describes is certainly the Dover Road +at Gadshill, from which, of course, there is a steep declivity whether +the route is westward to Gravesend or eastwards to Strood and Rochester. +In Strood itself Dickens found little to interest him, though the view +of Rochester from Strood Hill is an arresting one, with the stately +mediaevalism of Castle and Cathedral emerging from a kind of haze in +which it is hard to distinguish what is smoke-wreath and what a mass of +crowding roofs. The Medway, which divides Strood from the almost +indistinguishably overlapping towns of Rochester, Chatham, and +Brompton, is crossed by an iron bridge, superseding the old stone +structure commemorated in _Pickwick_. Mr. Pickwick's notes on "the four +towns" do not require very much modification to apply to their present +state. + + "The principal productions", he wrote, "appear to be soldiers, + sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard men. The + commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are + marine stores, hard-bake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The + streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned + chiefly by the conviviality of the military.... The consumption of + tobacco in these towns must be very great, and the smell which + pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious to those who are + extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to + the dirt, which is their leading characteristic, but to those who + view it as an indication of traffic and commercial prosperity, it + is truly gratifying." + +[Illustration: ROCHESTER FROM STROOD] + +This description is much less true of Rochester than of its three +neighbours, and does no justice to the aspects which Dickens himself +presented in the Market Town of _Great Expectations_, and the +Cloisterham of _Edwin Drood_. Amid the rather sordid encroachments of a +modern industrialism, Rochester still keeps something of the air of an +old-world country town, and in the precincts of its Cathedral there +still broods a cloistral peace. The dominating feature of the town, from +whatever side approached, is the massive ruin of the Norman Keep of +Bishop Gundulf, the architect also of London's White Tower. Though +the blue sky is its only roof, and on the rugged staircase the dark +apertures in the walls, where rafters and floors were once, show like +gaping sockets from which the ravens and daws have picked out the eyes, +it seems to stand with all the immovable strength of some solid rock on +which the waves of rebellion or invasion would have dashed and broken. +It is easy to believe the saying of Lambarde, in his _Perambulation of +Kent_, that "from time to time it had a part in almost every tragedie". +But the grimness of its grey walls is relieved by a green mantle of +clinging ivy, and though it can no longer be said of the Castle that it +is "bathed, though in ruins, with a flush of flowers", the beautiful +single pink grows wild on its ramparts. + +From the Castle to the "Bull" in the High Street is a transition which +seems almost an anachronism. It is but to follow in the traces of the +Pickwick Club. The covered gateway, the staircase almost wide enough for +a coach and four, the ballroom on the first floor landing, with +card-room adjoining, and the bedroom which Mr. Winkle occupied inside +Mr. Tupman's--all are there, just as when the club entertained Alfred +Jingle to a dinner of soles, a broiled fowl and mushrooms, and Mr. +Tupman took him to the ball in Mr. Winkle's coat, borrowed without +leave, and Dr. Slammer of the 97th sent his challenge next morning to +the owner of the coat. The Guildhall, with its gilt ship for a vane, and +its old brick front, supported by Doric stone columns, is not so +memorable because Hogarth played hop-scotch in the colonnade during his +_Five Days' Peregrination by Land and Water_, as for the day when +Pumblechook bundled Pip off to be bound apprentice to Jo before the +Justices in the Hall, "a queer place, with higher pews in it than a +church ... and with some shining black portraits on the walls". This was +the Town Hall, too, which Dickens has told us that he had set up in his +childish mind "as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the +palace for Aladdin", only to return and recognize with saddened, +grown-up eyes--exaggerating the depreciation a little, for the sake of +the contrast--"a mere mean little heap of bricks, like a chapel gone +demented". Close by the Guildhall is the Town Clock, "supposed to be the +finest clock in the world", which, alas! "turned out to be as moon-faced +and weak a clock as a man's eyes ever saw". + +On the north side of the High Street, not many yards from the Bull, is a +Tudor two-storied, stone-built house, with latticed windows and gables. +This is the Charity founded by the will of Richard Watts in 1579, to +give lodging and entertainment for one night, and fourpence each, to +"six poor travellers, not being rogues or proctors". It furnished the +theme to the Christmas cycle of stories, _The Seven Poor Travellers_, +the narrator, who treats the waifs and strays harboured one Christmas +eve at the Charity to roast turkey, plum pudding, and "wassail", +bringing up the number to seven, "being", as he says, "a traveller +myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be". + +Farther up the High Street towards Chatham, about a quarter of a mile +from Rochester Bridge, are two sixteenth-century houses, with fronts of +carved oak and gables, facing each other across the street. One has +figured in both _Great Expectations_ and _Edwin Drood_, for it is the +house of Mr. Pumblechook, the pompous and egregious corn and seedsman, +and of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer, still more pompous and egregious. The +other--Eastgate House, now converted into a museum--is the "Nun's +House", where Miss Twinkleton kept school, and had Rosa Bud and Helen +Landless for pupils. + +From the hum and traffic of the cheerfully frequented High Street to the +calm and hush of the Cathedral precincts entrance is given by Chertsey's +or College Yard Gate, which abuts on the High Street about a hundred +yards north of the Cathedral. It was this Gate which Sir Luke Fildes +sketched, as he has recorded in an interesting letter published in _A +Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land_, by W. R. Hughes, for the background of +his drawing of "Durdles Cautioning Sapsea". There are, however, two +other gatehouses, the "Prior's", a tower over an archway, containing a +single room approached by a "postern stair", and "Deanery Gate", a +quaint old house adjoining the Cathedral which has ten rooms, some of +them beautifully panelled. Its drawing-room on the upper floor bears a +strong resemblance to the room--as depicted by Sir Luke Fildes--in which +Jasper entertained his nephew and Neville Landless, but the artist +believes that he never saw the interior. It is not unlikely that Dickens +took some details from each of the gatehouses to make a composite +picture of "Mr. Jasper's own gatehouse", which seemed so to stem the +tide of life, that while the murmur of the tide was heard beyond, not a +wave would pass the archway. + +Rochester Cathedral, which overshadows, though in a less insistent and +tragic manner, the whole human interest of _Edwin Drood_ almost as much +as Notre Dame overshadows the human interest in Victor Hugo's romance, +preserves some remains of the original Saxon and Norman churches on the +site of which it was erected. Its Early English and Decorated Gothic +came off lightly from three restorations, but the tower is +nineteenth-century vandalism. The Norman west front enshrines in the +riches of its sculptured portal, with its five receding arches, figures +of the Saviour and his twelve apostles, and on two shafts are carved +likenesses of Henry I and his Queen. Freeman has pronounced it to be far +the finest example of Norman architecture of its kind. The Chapter House +door, a magnificent example of Decorated Gothic, is adorned with +effigies representing the Christian and Jewish Churches, which are +surrounded by Holy Fathers and Angels who pray for the soul, +emblematically represented as a small nude form above them. But it is +about the stone-vaulted crypt, where even by daylight "the heavy pillars +which support the roof engender masses of black shade", with "lanes of +light" between, and about the winding staircase and belfry of the great +tower that the spells of the Dickens magic especially cling, and Jasper +and Durdles revisit these haunts by the glimpses of the moon as +persistently as Quasimodo and the sinister Priest beset with their +ghostly presences the belfry of the great Paris minster. + +Of the historic imagination Dickens had little or none. He could not +evoke, and never had the faintest desire to evoke, a Past that was +divided from the Present by an unbridgeable chasm. Thus Rochester +Castle, though he seldom failed to bring his guests to view it, +affected him only with a remote sense of antiquity such as he would have +experienced, no more and no less, amongst the Pyramids. But he was +keenly sensitive to the influences of a Past which still survived and, +by the continuity of a corporate life, made an integral part in the +Present. The Cathedral life, in which by virtue of their office canons +and dean were living relics of antiquity, and as much the contemporaries +as the successors of the ecclesiastics who lay crumbling in the crypt, +stirred this sense in him as it had been stirred by the ancient Inns of +London. Almost the last words that he wrote were a tribute to the beauty +of the venerable fane in which, beneath the monument of the founder of +that quaint Charity rendered so famous by his story of _The Seven Poor +Travellers_, a simple brass records his birth, death, and burial-place, +"To connect his memory with the scenes in which his earliest and his +latest years were passed, and with the associations of Rochester +Cathedral and its neighbourhood which extended over all his life". + +[Illustration: RESTORATION HOUSE, ROCHESTER] + +In the old cemetery of St. Nicholas' Church, on the north side of the +Cathedral, it was Dickens's desire to be buried, and his family would +have carried out his wishes had it not been that the burial-ground had +been closed for years and no further interments were allowed. On the +south side of the Cathedral is the delightfully oldfashioned terrace +known as Minor Canon Row--Dickens's name for it is Minor Canon +Corner--where the Reverend Septimus Crisparkle kept house with the +"china shepherdess" mother. The "Monks' Vineyard" of _Edwin Drood_ +exists as "The Vines". Here under a group of elms called "The Seven +Sisters" Edwin Drood and Rosa sat when they decided to break their +engagement, and opposite "The Seven Sisters" is the "Satis House" of +_Great Expectations_, where the lonely and embittered Miss Havisham +taught Estella the cruel lessons of a ruined life. It is really +Restoration House--Satis House is on the site of the mansion of Master +Richard Watts, to whose apologies for no better entertainment of his +Sovereign, Queen Elizabeth answered "Satis"--and it takes its name from +having received the restored Merry Monarch under its roof on his way to +London and the throne. Pepys, who was terrified by the steepness of the +castle cliff and had no time to stay to service at the Cathedral, when +he had been inspecting the defences at Chatham, found something more to +his mind in a stroll by Restoration House, and into the Cherry Garden, +where he met a silly shopkeeper with a pretty wife, "and did kiss her". + +Dickens would often follow this route of Pepys, but in the reverse +direction, that is, through the Vines to Chatham and its lines of +fortification, where Mr. Pickwick, Mr. Winkle, and Mr. Snodgrass became +so hopelessly entangled in the sham fight which they had gone over from +Rochester to see. At No. 11 Ordnance Terrace the little Charles Dickens +lived from 1817 to 1821, and at No. 18 St. Mary's Place from 1821 to +1823, the financial troubles, which eventually drove the family into the +Marshalsea debtors' prison, and Charles himself into the sordid drudgery +of the blacking-shop by Hungerford Stairs, having already enforced a +migration to a cheaper and meaner house. In Clover Street (then Clover +Lane) the little Dickens went to a school kept by a Mr. William Giles, +who years afterwards sent to him, when he was halfway through with +_Pickwick_, a silver snuff-box inscribed to the "Inimitable Boz". To the +Mitre Inn, in the Chatham High Street, where Nelson had many times put +up, Dickens was often brought by his father to recite or sing, standing +on a table, for the amusement of parties of friends. He speaks of it in +the "Holly Tree Inn" as + + "The inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go to + see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an + ecclesiastical sign--the 'mitre'--and a bar that seemed to be the + next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug. I loved the + landlord's youngest daughter to distraction--but let that pass. It + was in this inn that I was cried over by my little rosy sister, + because I had acquired a black eye in a fight." + +When the little Charles Dickens was taken away to London inside the +stage-coach Commodore--his kind master on the night before having come +flitting in among the packing-cases to give him Goldsmith's _Bee_ as a +keepsake--he was leaving behind for ever, in the playing-field near +Clover Lane and the grounds of Rochester Castle and the green drives of +Cobham Park, the untroubled dreams of happy childhood. And though he +could not know this, yet, as he sat amongst the damp straw piled up +round him in the inside of the coach, he "consumed his sandwiches in +solitude and dreariness" and thought life sloppier than he had expected +to find it. And in _David Copperfield_ he has thrown back into those +earlier golden days the shadow of his London privations by bringing the +little Copperfield, footsore and tired, toiling towards dusk into +Chatham, "which, in that night's aspect is a mere dream of chalk and +drawbridges and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's +arks". No doubt the terrible old Jew in the marine-stores shop, who +rated and frightened David with his "Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you +want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh--goroo, +goroo!"--until the helpless little fellow was obliged to close with an +offer of a few pence instead of half a crown for his waistcoat, is the +portrait of some actual Jew dealer whom, in one of the back streets of +Chatham, the keen eyes of the precocious child, seeming to look at +nothing, had curiously watched hovering like a hideous spider on the +pounce behind his grime-encrusted window. + +It was old associations that led Dickens so often in his walks from +Gadshill Place to Chatham. But the neighbourhood which gave him most +pleasure, combining as it did with similar associations an exquisite +beauty, was, Forster tells us, the sylvan scenery of Cobham Park. The +green woods and green shades of Cobham would recur to his memory even in +far-off Lausanne, and the last walk that he ever enjoyed--on the day +before his fatal seizure--was through these woods, the charm of which +cannot be better defined than in his own description in _Pickwick_: + + "A delightful walk it was; for it was a pleasant afternoon in June, + and their way lay through a deep and shady wood, cooled by the + light wind which gently rustled the thick foliage, and enlivened by + the songs of the birds that perched upon the boughs. The ivy and + the moss crept in thick clusters over the old trees, and the soft + green turf overspread the ground like a silken mat. They emerged + upon an open park, with an ancient hall, displaying the quaint and + picturesque architecture of Elizabeth's time. Long vistas of + stately oaks and elm trees appeared on every side; large herds of + deer were cropping the fresh grass; and occasionally a startled + hare scoured along the ground with the speed of the shadows thrown + by the light clouds, which swept across a sunny landscape like a + passing breath of summer." + +The mission on which Mr. Pickwick and his two disciples were engaged +was, it will be remembered, to convert Mr. Tupman from his resolution +to forsake the world in a fit of misanthropy, induced by the +faithlessness of Rachel Wardle. + + "'If this,' said Mr. Pickwick, looking about him--'If this were the + place to which all who are troubled with our friend's complaint + came, I fancy their old attachment to this world would very soon + return.'" + +Mr. Pickwick was right, for when they arrived at the village, and +entered that "clean and commodious village alehouse", the "Leather +Bottle", they found Mr. Tupman set down at a table "well covered with a +roast fowl, bacon, ale, and et ceteras", and "looking as unlike a man +who had taken leave of the world as possible". + +The "ancient hall" of Cobham consists of two Tudor wings, with a central +block designed by Inigo Jones. It has a splendid collection of Old +Masters, and a music room which the Prince Regent pronounced to be the +finest room in England. In the terrace flower garden at the back of the +Hall, it may be mentioned again here, is the Swiss chalet from Gadshill +Place, which served Dickens for a study in the summer months. The +circuit of Cobham Park is about seven miles, and it is crossed by the +"Long Avenue", leading to Rochester, and the "Grand Avenue", which, +sloping down from the tenantless Mausoleum, opens into Cobham village. +The inn to which Mr. Tupman retired, in disgust with life, still +retains the title of the "Leather Bottle", but has mounted for its sign +a coloured portrait of Mr. Pickwick addressing the Club in +characteristic attitude. It was in Cobham village that Mr. Pickwick made +his notable discovery of the stone with the mysterious inscription--an +inscription which the envious Blotton maintained was nothing more than +BIL STUMPS HIS MARK. Local tradition suggests that Dickens intended the +episode for a skit upon archaeological theories about the dolmens known +as Kit's Coty House, and that a Strood antiquary keenly resented the +satire. However that may be, Kit's Coty House is not at Cobham, but some +miles away, near Aylesford. In Cobham church there is perhaps the finest +and most complete series of monumental brasses in this country, most of +them commemorating the Lords of Cobham. + +[Illustration: COBHAM PARK] + +Out of the Cobham woods it is not a long walk to the little village of +Shorne, where Dickens was fond of sitting on a hot summer afternoon in +its pretty, shaded churchyard. This is believed to be the spot which he +has described in _Pickwick_ as "one of the most peaceful and secluded +churchyards in Kent, where wild flowers mingle with the grass, and the +soft landscape around forms the fairest spot in the garden of England". +A picturesque lane leads into the road from Rochester to Gravesend, on +the outskirts of the village of Chalk. Here, in a corner house on the +south side of the road, Dickens spent his honeymoon, and many of the +earlier chapters of _Pickwick_ were written. In February of the +following year--1837--Dickens and his wife returned to the same +lodgings, shortly after the birth of his eldest son. Chalk church is +about a mile from the village. There was formerly above the porch the +figure of an old priest in a stooping attitude, holding an upturned jug. +Dickens took a strange interest in this quaint carving, and it is said +that, whenever he passed it, he took off his hat or gave it a nod, as to +an old acquaintance. + +Very different to the soft and genial landscapes about Cobham is the +grey and desolate aspect of another haunt which Dickens loved to +frequent. This was the "meshes" around Cooling. In winter, when it was +possible to make a short cut across the stubble fields, he would visit +Cooling churchyard not less seldom than in summer he would go to sit in +the churchyard of Shorne. First, however, he would have to pass through +the village of Higham, where, too, was his nearest railway station, +though he often preferred to walk over and entrain at Gravesend or +Greenhithe. But the pleasant tinkle of harness bells was a familiar +sound in the night to the Higham villagers, as the carriage was sent +down from Gadshill Place to meet the master or his friends returning +from London by the ten o'clock train. Dickens took a kindly and active +interest in the affairs of the village, and the last cheque which he +ever drew was for his subscription to the Higham Cricket Club. + +The flat levels that stretch away from beyond Higham towards the estuary +of the Thames are more akin to the characteristics of Essex than of +Kent. The hop gardens are dwarfed and stunted, and presently hops, corn, +and pasture give place to fields of turnips, which show up like masses +of jade on the chocolate-coloured soil. The bleak churchyard of Cooling, +overgrown with nettles, lies amongst these desolate reaches, which +resound at evening with the shrill, unearthly notes of sea-gulls, +plovers, and herons. Beyond the churchyard are the marshes, "a dark, +flat wilderness", as Dickens has described it in _Great Expectations_, +"intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle +feeding on it"; still farther away is the "low, leaden line" of the +river, and the "distant, savage lair", from which the wind comes +rushing, is the sea. It was in this churchyard that the conception of +the story sprang into life, and there are actually not five but ten +little stone lozenges in one row, with three more at the back of them, +which suggested to Dickens the five little prematurely cut off brothers +of Pip. The grey ruins of Cooling Castle attracted him no less than the +grey and weather-beaten churchyard. Besides some crumbling and broken +walls there is a gate tower, with an inscription on fourteen copper +plates, the writing in black, the ground of white enamel, with a seal +and silk cords in their proper colours, which made known to all and +sundry the purpose for which Lord Cobham--whose granddaughter married, +for one of her five husbands, Sir John Oldcastle, the Lollard +martyr--had erected this castle. + + "Knoweth that beth and schul be + That i am mad in help of the cuntre + In knowyng of whych thyng + This is chartre and witnessyng." + +No forge stands now on the site of Joe Gargery's smithy, where, as the +hammer rang on the anvil to the refrain-- + + "Beat it out, beat it out--Old Clem! + With a clink for the stout--Old Clem! + Blow the fire, blow the fire--Old Clem! + Roaring drier, soaring higher--Old Clem!"-- + +Pip would see visions of Estella's face in the glowing fire or at the +wooden window of the forge, looking in from the darkness of the night, +and flitting away. But though the smithy has gone, the "Three Jolly +Bargemen", where Joe would smoke his pipe by the kitchen fire on a +Saturday night, still survives as the "Three Horseshoes"--the inn to +which the secret-looking man who stirred his rum and water with a file, +brought Magwitch's two one-pound notes for Pip, and the redoubtable +Jaggers, the autocrat of the Old Bailey, with his burly form, great +head, and huge, cross-examining forefinger announced to Pip his Great +Expectations. Down the river in the direction of yonder "distant savage +lair", from which the wind comes rushing, lie those long reaches, +between Kent and Essex, "where the river is broad and solitary, where +the waterside inhabitants are very few, and where lone public-houses are +scattered here and there"--the lonely riverside on which Pip and Herbert +sought a hiding-place for Magwitch until the steamer for Hamburg or the +steamer for Rotterdam could be boarded, as she dropped down the tide +from the Port of London. Whether on the Kent or the Essex side, the cast +of the scenery corresponds with equal closeness to Dickens's +description. Slimy stakes stick out of the mud, and slimy stones stick +out of the mud, and red landmarks and tide-marks stick out of the mud, +and old roofless buildings slip into the mud, and all about is +stagnation and mud! The desolate flat marshes look still more weird by +reason of the tall pollards that lean over them like spectres. Far away +are the rising grounds, between which and the marshes there appears no +sign of life except here and there in the foreground a melancholy gull. +The course which the boat bearing the hunted man took from Mill Pond +stairs through the crowded shipping of the Pool, past the floating +Custom House at Gravesend, and onwards, skirting the little creeks and +mudbanks where the Thames widens to the sea--when every sound of the +tide flapping heavily at irregular intervals against the shore, and +every ripple, were fraught with the terror of pursuit--exemplifies in +the most striking way the rapidity and instinctive ease of Dickens's +observation. Forster says:-- + + "To make himself sure of the actual course of a boat in such + circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might + have, Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to + Southend. Eight or nine friends, and three or four members of his + family, were on board, and he seemed to have no care, the whole of + that summer day (22nd of May, 1861), except to enjoy their + enjoyment and entertain them with his own in shape of a thousand + whims and fancies; but his sleepless observation was at work all + the time, and nothing had escaped his keen vision on either side of + the river." + +Scattered amongst the deserted reaches along the riverside may be seen +such lonely farmhouses or taverns as suggest the aspect of the alehouse, +"not unknown to smuggling adventurers"--for the "owling", that is, the +smuggling industry had flourished for centuries in these parts--to which +the fugitives were led by a twinkling light in the window up a little +cobbled causeway, and where Dickens placed that amphibious creature, "as +slimy and smeary as if he had been low-water mark too", who exhibited a +bloated pair of shoes "as interesting relics that he had taken from the +feet of a drowned seaman washed ashore". This type of the gruesome +long-shoremen whom Dickens had encountered in his waterside rambles, as +he collected the materials for _Great Expectations_, was afterwards +elaborated in the Rogue Riderhood of _Our Mutual Friend_. + +"Swamp, mist, and mudbank"--if that is the dominant impression made by +the view of the Thames off the Cooling marshes, it is not the only and +the invariable impression. Even the bleak churchyard, at the foot of the +cold, grey tower, is sometimes strewn by the light and flying gust "with +beautiful shadows of clouds and trees". And from the Old Battery, where +Joe would smoke his pipe with a far more sagacious air than anywhere +else, as Pip strove to initiate him into the mysteries of reading and +writing by the aid of a broken slate and a short piece of slate pencil, +it is "pleasant and quiet" to watch the vessels standing out to sea with +their white sails spread, and the light struck aslant, afar off, upon a +cloud or sail or green hillside or silvery water line. + +[Illustration: COOLING CHURCH] + +To the west of Cooling Castle, beyond wide fields--turnips or +cabbages--of the colour of dark-green jade, the Church of Cliffe, with +its lichgate, standing out boldly from its ridge of chalk, overlooks a +straggling village of old and weather-boarded houses. It would be +into the road from Cliffe to Rochester, at a point about half a mile +from Cooling, that Uncle Pumblechook's chaise-cart would debouch when he +took Mrs. Joe to Rochester market "to assist him in buying such +household stuffs and goods as required a woman's judgment". + +Between the scenery about Cooling and Cliffe and the scenery of the +valley of the Medway from Rochester to Maidstone there is all the +difference between a November fog and a brilliant summer's day. At the +foot of Rochester Castle, from which the long vista of the valley, lying +between two chalk ranges of hills that form the watershed of the Medway, +stretches far away to a distant horizon, the Esplanade extends along the +east side of the river, and there it was that Edwin Drood and Rosa met +for the last time and to speak of their separate plans. For a few miles +along the valley the natural beauty of the scene is spoilt by the cement +works of Borstal, Cuxton, and Wouldham, and the brickworks of Burham. +The piles of clay and chalk, the beehive furnaces, and the chimneys +vomiting smoke and flame, almost reproduce the characteristics of the +Black Country or of a northern manufacturing district. But, when Burham +has been left behind, the bright emerald pastures, the tender green of +springing corn or the gold of waving harvests, and the orchards, a +dazzling sight in May with the snowy clouds of pear and plum and cherry +blooms, and the delicate pink-and-white of the apple blossom, more than +justify the appellation claimed for Kent of the garden of England. +Opposite to Cuxton, on the western bank, the village of Snodland stands +at the junction of Snodland Brook with the Medway. It has been +conjectured that Snodland Weir, a mile or so up the brook, was in +Dickens's mind when he described Mr. Crisparkle's pilgrimages to +Cloisterham Weir in the cold rimy mornings, and his discovery, first of +Edwin Drood's watch in a corner of the weir, and then, after diving +again and again, of his shirt-pin "sticking in some mud and ooze" at the +bottom. The nearest weir on the Medway is at Allington, seven or eight +miles above Rochester, and Cloisterham Weir was but "full two miles" +away. + +Before Allington can be reached, in ascending the Medway, the river is +spanned by an ancient stone bridge, of pointed arches and triangular +buttresses, at Aylesford. The ancient Norman church, and the red roofs +and crowding gables of the picturesque and historic village, are set in +a circle of elm trees, with a background of rising chalk downs beyond. +Those who have investigated with perhaps "an excess"--as Wordsworth +would say--"of scrupulosity" all the details of Pickwickian topography +are inclined to believe that the wooden bridge, upon which the chaise +hired by the Club to make the journey from Rochester to Dingley Dell +came hopelessly to grief, was Aylesford Bridge, transmuted for the nonce +from Kentish ragstone into timber. However that may be, there is a +matter of genuine history which has signalized in no common way this +old-world village. At this ford, the lowest on the Medway, the Jutes +under Hengist and Horsa routed the British in a battle which decided the +predominating strain of race in future Men of Kent and Kentish Men: +natives of Kent, that is, according as they dwell on the right or left +bank of the Medway. A farmhouse with the name of Horsted, at the point +farther back where the Rochester to Maidstone road is joined by the road +from Chatham, stands, it is believed, on the grave of Horsa. And about a +mile and a half north of Aylesford, a grey old cairn, set on a green +sward in the midst of a cornfield, is also closely associated with the +first great victory won by English people on the soil which they were +destined to make their own and distinguish with their name. In his +_Short History of the English People_ J. R. Green says of this +cromlech:-- + + "It was from a steep knoll on which the grey weather-beaten stones + of this monument are reared that the view of their first + battlefield would break on the English warriors; and a lane which + still leads down from it through peaceful homesteads, would guide + them across the ford which has left its name in the little village + of Aylesford. The Chronicle of the conquering people tells nothing + of the rush that may have carried the ford, or of the fight that + went straggling up through the village. It only tells that Horsa + fell in the moment of victory, and the flint heap of Horsted, which + has long preserved his name, and was held in after-time to mark his + grave, is thus the earliest of those monuments of English valour of + which Westminster is the last and noblest shrine. The victory of + Aylesford did more than give East Kent to the English; it struck + the keynote of the whole English conquest of Britain." + +This cromlech, known as Kit's Coty House, consists of three upright +dolmens of sandstone, with a fourth, much larger, crossing them above +horizontally. In a neighbouring field there is another group of stones, +scattered in disarray amongst the brushwood, to which, as also to +Stonehenge and other so-called "Druidical" remains, there attaches the +local superstition that they cannot be counted. It would be pleasanter +to believe that the current story, to which reference has already been +made, that Dickens was poking fun at the antiquarian's reverence for +this hoary relic in his narrative of Mr. Pickwick's "BIL STUMPS" +inscription, is altogether erroneous. Certainly it is open to anyone who +wishes to be incredulous, for there is as much dissimilarity as possible +between the massive cromlech near Aylesford and the small slab that Mr. +Pickwick discovered at Cobham. + +The most salient feature in the Medway valley between Rochester and +Maidstone is the height of Blue Bell, or Upper Bell. Here Dickens, who, +as he said, had come to realize that the Rochester to Maidstone road +passed through some of the most beautiful scenery in England, would +often picnic with his visitors. Undulating slopes of pasture and +cornfields, hop gardens, orchards, and woodlands, with many a deep-sunk +lane embowered in overarching trees that rise from hedgerow clusters of +dog-rose, ivy, and honeysuckle, and with snugly nestling homesteads and +quaintly-cowled "oast-houses" sprinkled here and there, sweep across the +valley, through which the river winds in sinuous curves, onwards to a +long range of hills upon the skyline. + +Somewhere in this district Dickens came across the types of the +oldfashioned and jovially comfortable home of the English yeoman, +represented by his Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, and of the little country +town, represented by the Muggleton of _Pickwick_, in which local +enthusiasm for cricket was ardent, if the standard of skill was somewhat +low. The most plausible identification of the home of Mr. Wardle is with +Cobtree Hall, which divides the parishes of Boxley and Allington, and it +is probable that the original of Muggleton was Town Malling, which is +also known as West Malling. + +In the Jubilee Edition of _Pickwick_ Mr. Charles Dickens the Younger +introduced a woodcut of High Street, Town Malling, with a note to the +following effect:-- + + "Muggleton, perhaps, is only to be taken as a fancy sketch of a + small country town; but it is generally supposed, and probably with + sufficient accuracy, that, if it is in any degree a portrait of any + Kentish town, Town Malling, a great place for cricket in Mr. + Pickwick's time, sat for it." + +Town Malling does not correspond with the description of Muggleton in +its distance from Rochester. It is only seven and a half, instead of +fifteen miles, from Rochester. And it is not a corporate town. But: + + "Everybody whose genius has a topographical bent knows perfectly + well that Muggleton is a corporate town, with a mayor, burgess and + freemen, and anybody who has consulted the addresses of the mayor + to the freemen, or the freemen to the mayor, or both to the + corporation, or all three to Parliament, will learn from thence + what they ought to have known before, that Muggleton is an ancient + and loyal borough, mingling a zealous advocacy of Christian + principles with a devoted attachment to commercial rights; in + demonstration whereof, the mayor, corporation, and other + inhabitants have presented, at divers times, no fewer than one + thousand four hundred and twenty petitions against the continuance + of negro slavery abroad, and an equal number against any + interference with the factory system at home; sixty-eight in favour + of the sale of livings in the Church, and eighty-six for abolishing + Sunday trading in the street." + +[Illustration: AYLESFORD] + +If Town Malling has not had so distinguished a political history as that +which Dickens assigned to Muggleton, it has a pretty cricket ground, +not far removed from the High Street, and the reputation of having in +past years distinguished itself in the local cricket of this district of +Kent. It is not difficult to believe, then, that Dumkins and Podder here +made their gallant stand for All Muggleton against the Dingley Dellers, +and that at the Swan--otherwise the Blue Lion--the Pickwick fellowship +shared the conviviality of the rival teams, until Mr. Snodgrass's notes +of the evening's transactions faded away into a blur in which there was +an indistinct reference to "broiled bones" and "cold without". The +stately ruins of a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Bishop Gundulf, give to +the town an attraction of a severer kind. + +From Town Malling to Cobtree Hall, supposing the double identification +to be correct, should be a walk of not above two miles "through shady +lanes and sequestered footpaths", the delightful scenery of which made +Mr. Pickwick feel regret to arrive in the main street of "Muggleton". +The distance, however, is in fact something more than two miles as the +crow flies. Cobtree Hall is a green-muffled Elizabethan mansion, of red +brick, faced with stone, and looks out over an undulating country of +orchards and hop fields. It has been altered and enlarged since the days +of _Pickwick_, but the kitchen is just such another large, oldfashioned +kitchen as befits the Christmas games and wassail that had been kept up +at Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, "by old Wardle's forefathers from time +immemorial". The dining-room, though modernized, has a massive marble +mantlepiece not unsuited to that "capacious chimney up which you could +have driven one of the new patent cabs, wheels and all", and in which a +blazing fire used to roar every evening, not only when its warmth was +grateful, but for a symbol, as it were, of old Wardle's attachment to +his fireside. This was the kind of antiquity which made the most direct +appeal to Dickens's sentiment and imagination--not a remote and historic +antiquity, but the furthest extent of a living link between the Present +and the Past. In many an old house of Kentish yeoman or squire Dickens +would have seen some such long, dark-panelled room as the best +sitting-room at Manor Farm, with four-branched, massive silver +candlesticks in all sorts of recesses and on all kinds of brackets; with +samplers and worsted landscapes of ancient date on the walls; with a +very old lady in lofty cap and faded silk gown in the chimney corner, +where she had sat on her little stool as a girl more than half a century +before, and with a hearty, rubicund host presiding over a mighty bowl of +wassail, something smaller than an ordinary washhouse copper, in which +the hot apples would "hiss and bubble with a rich look and a jolly sound +that were perfectly irresistible". Or when the carpet was up, the +candles burning brightly, and family, guests, and servants were all +ranged in eager lines, longing for the signal to start an oldfashioned +country dance as, from a shady bower of holly and evergreens at the +upper end of the room, the two best fiddles and only harp of the nearest +market town prepared to strike up, it is no wonder that such a lover of +unspoilt, natural manners as Boz declared, "If any of the old English +yeomen had turned into fairies when they died, it was just the place in +which they would have held their revels." + +A triangular piece of ground, with a sprinkling of elms about it, is all +that is left of the rookery in which Mr. Tupman met with an accident +from the unskilful marksmanship of Winkle. At the back of the house is +the pond where Mr. Winkle's reputation as a sportsman led him into +another catastrophe, and his skating exposed itself as of anything but a +graceful and "swan-like" style; where, too, Mr. Pickwick revived the +sliding propensities of his boyhood with infinite zest until the ice +gave way with a "sharp, smart crack", and Mr. Pickwick's hat, gloves, +and handkerchief, floating on the surface, were all of Mr. Pickwick that +anyone could see. + +Cobtree Hall, it has been mentioned, divides the parishes of Boxley and +Allington, the initials of which are carved on a beam in the kitchen +that suggests Phiz's plate of "Christmas Eve at Mr. Wardle's". In +Aylesford the tomb of the prototype, according to local tradition, of +"Mr. Wardle" bears the inscription, "Also to the memory of Mr. W. Spong, +late of Cobtree, in the Parish of Boxley, who died November 15th, 1839". +Boxley village is near the ancient Pilgrims' Road to Canterbury, and +here Alfred Tennyson stayed in 1842. Park House, nearer the Medway, was +the home of Edward Lushington, who married Tennyson's sister Cecilia, +and in its grounds Tennyson found the setting for the prologue to the +"Princess". The "happy faces" of "the multitude, a thousand heads", by +which the "sloping pasture" was "sown", under "broad ambrosial aisles of +lofty lime", had probably come from Maidstone on the annual jaunt of +that town's Mechanics' Institute. The village of Allington stands on the +other side of the Medway, though the boundaries of the parish extend +beyond the right bank of the river. Allington Castle, which the Medway +half-encircles with a sweeping bend, was one of the seven chief castles +of Kent. It was here that Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, diplomatist, +poet, and lover of Anne Boleyn, who with the gallant and ill-fated +Surrey "preluded", in a more exact sense than it could be said of +Chaucer, "those melodious bursts that fill the spacious times of great +Elizabeth", was able to proclaim, in an epistle to "Mine own John +Poins": + +[Illustration: MAIDSTONE, ALL SAINTS' CHURCH AND THE PALACE] + + "I am here in Kent and Christendome, + Among the Muses where I read and rhyme". + +Hither there comes, in Tennyson's "Queen Mary", to Sir Thomas Wyatt, the +younger, his man William, with news of "three thousand men on Penenden +heath all calling after you, and your worship's name heard into +Maidstone market, and your worship the first man in Kent". And Wyatt +sets out to lead a rising which will end on Tower Hill, and setting out, +looks back and cries: + + "Ah, grey old castle of Allington, green field + Beside the brimming Medway, it may chance + That I shall never look upon you more". + +"The brimming Medway."--the epithet is as just as Tennyson's descriptive +epithet almost invariably proves to be. For at Allington the Medway, +which from Aylesford Bridge to Allington Lock has dwindled to a narrow +stream, swells out into a broad expanse, where many boats can easily +move abreast. If the Cloisterham Weir of _Edwin Drood_ were really the +nearest weir on the Medway to Rochester, then Allington Lock would be +the place. But it has been pointed out on an earlier page that the +distances do not tally in the novel and in actuality, and Dickens may +have had in mind the weir on Snodland Brook. + +The country round Maidstone abounds in the "happy valleys" portrayed in +the epilogue to the "Princess", with "grey halls alone among their +massive groves", and "here and there a rustic tower Half lost in belts +of hop and breadths of wheat". The gyres and loops of the Medway, too, +afford through the screen of woodlands and orchards "the shimmering +glimpses of a stream". To the credulous enthusiasm of an early +eighteenth-century native of Strood, that Anne Pratt who did for English +wild flowers what White of Selborne did for English wild birds, +"travellers who have beheld in other lands the various scenes of +culture--the olive grounds of Spain or Syria, the vineyards of Italy, +the cotton plantations of India, or the rose fields of the East--have +generally agreed that not one of them all equals in beauty our English +hop gardens". To Dickens himself such a panegyric of the Kentish hop +gardens would have scarcely seemed exaggeration, but he would have +hastened to add the dismal antithesis of the missionary bishop--"Only +man is vile". He had barely settled-in at Gadshill Place when he +wrote:-- + + "Hop-picking is going on, and people sleep in the garden, and + breathe in at the keyhole of the house door. I have been amazed, + before this year, by the number of miserable base wretches, hardly + able to crawl, who go hop-picking. I find it is a superstition that + the dust of the newly picked hop, falling freshly into the throat, + is a cure for consumption. So the poor creatures drag themselves + along the roads, and sleep under wet hedges, and get cured soon and + finally." + +The county town of Kent is situated not only on the Medway, but on the +pilgrim road to Canterbury, and of a monastic hospital for pilgrims and +other poor travellers there still survive some relics. Overlooking the +river stand some fine old houses, and the conspicuous grey square tower +of All Saints, built by the proud Archbishop Courtenay, the enemy of +Wicliffe, in the fourteenth century. Here is the tomb of Grocyn, that +"lord of splendid lore Orient from old Hellas' shore", who was appointed +master of the collegiate church in 1506. One of the sixteen palaces that +the Archbishops of Canterbury could boast in days gone by is preserved +as the local school of science and art, a dedication to public use which +commemorates the Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887. The Corporation +Museum is an even more interesting and beautiful structure. It was +Chillington Manor House, a seat of the Cobham family, and, though it has +had a new wing annexed to it, it is an exceptionally well preserved and +beautiful example of Elizabethan domestic architecture, with its +latticed windows, jutting gables, elaborately moulded timber, and +pillared chimneys. In the panel of an oak fireplace is a carved head of +Dickens, by a local carver named Hughes, who was employed at Gadshill +Place. To Maidstone Jail Dickens proposed to carry Sir Luke Fildes, in +order that he might make a picture of Jasper in the condemned cell, and +do something which would surpass Cruikshank's illustration to _Oliver +Twist_, in which Fagin's terror-stricken vigil in the murderer's cell is +portrayed. + +At Maidstone the southern limit may be considered to have been reached +of the district of Kent which can be distinguished as "Dickens-land" in +the most intimate sense, as lying within the radius of the novelist's +habitual walks and drives from his residence at Gadshill. It does not +enter into the scope of this brief essay to describe topographically +other parts of Kent. But it will be excusable to glance very slightly at +Dickens's associations with Canterbury--though this is the subject of a +separate monograph in this series--Broadstairs, Deal, Dover, and the +famous London-to-Dover road through Rochester, Chatham, and Canterbury. + +[Illustration: JASPER'S GATEWAY] + +No one, perhaps, who has ever read _Little Dorrit_, whatever else in the +novel may slip the memory, fails to recall the oracular utterance of +Mr. F.'s aunt that "There's milestones on the Dover road". To the +opening of _A Tale of Two Cities_ the colour and atmosphere of the time +in which it is set, and of the drama which is to be developed, are given +at once by the alarm of the passengers of the Dover coach as they walk +up Shooter's Hill to ease the horses, when the furious galloping of a +horseman is heard behind them--the supposed highwayman proving to be, +however, Jerry Cruncher, messenger at Tellson's Bank by day, and at +night an "agricooltural character" of ghoulish avocations. David +Copperfield trudged the Dover road, footsore and hungry, when he left +Murdstone and Grinby's blacking warehouse to throw himself on the +compassion of Betsy Trotwood, "and got through twenty-three miles on the +straight road" to Rochester and Chatham on a certain Sunday. Afterwards, +when he had found a home and a protecting providence with his aunt, he +met with his "first fall in life" on the Canterbury coach, being asked +by the coachman to resign the box seat to a seedy gentleman, who +proclaimed that "'Orses and dogs is some men's fancy. They're wittles +and drink to me." + + "I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. + When I booked my place at the coach office, I had had 'Box Seat' + written against the entry, and had given the bookkeeper half a + crown. I was got up in a special greatcoat and shawl, expressly to + do honour to that distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon + it a good deal; and had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And + here, in the very first stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man + with a squint, who had no other merit than smelling like a livery + stables, and being able to walk across me, more like a fly than a + human being, while the horses were at a canter." + +Pip, in _Great Expectations_, makes many expeditions to and fro on the +Dover road, between Rochester and London, and on one of them, riding +outside, has the two convicts, bound for the hulks moored off the +marshes, as fellow passengers on the back seat. + +At Canterbury it is not possible to establish the identity of Dr. +Strong's house--"a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air +about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws +who came down from the Cathedral towers, and walked with a clerkly +bearing on the grass plot"--but Canon Benham has asserted his conviction +that Mr. Wickfield's house--where David made the acquaintance of Agnes +and of Uriah Heap--is at the corner of Broad Street and Lady Wotton's +Green, though it is another residence, by the West Gate, which is +represented on the picture postcards. + +The Royal Fountain Hotel in St. Margaret's Street (formerly the Watling +Street) is recognized as the County Inn at which Mr. Dick used to sleep +when he went over to Canterbury to visit David Copperfield at Dr. +Strong's school. All the little bills which he contracted there, it will +be remembered, were referred to Miss Trotwood before they were paid; a +circumstance which caused David to think "that Mr. Dick was only +allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it". A less pretentious +establishment, the "little inn" where Mr. Micawber put up on his first +visit to Canterbury, and "occupied a little room in it partitioned off +from the commercial, and strongly flavoured with tobacco smoke", is +probably the Sun Inn in Sun Street. Here Mr. and Mrs. Micawber +entertained David to "a beautiful little dinner"-- + + "Quite an elegant dish of fish; the kidney end of a loin of veal + roasted; fried sausage meat; a partridge and a pudding. There was + wine, and there was strong ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber made + us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands." + +Local tradition at Broadstairs used to point to Fort House, on the cliff +by the Coastguard Station, as the holiday residence at which Dickens +wrote most of _Bleak House_. But though it has been rechristened from +the title of the novel, by an owner who demolished Dickens's summer +home, and built the existing pseudo-Gothic structure on its foundations, +no part of _Bleak House_ was written at Broadstairs. Dickens, however, +for many summers, visited the little town on the curving bay between +Margate and Ramsgate; the Albion Hotel, where he notes that "the +landlord has delicious hollands", No. 12 (now 31) High Street, and Lawn +House, near Fort House, receiving him at different times. At Broadstairs +he wrote a portion of _Pickwick_, of _Nicholas Nickleby_, and _The Old +Curiosity Shop_, and he also stayed there while engaged on the _American +Notes_, _Dombey and Son_, and _David Copperfield_. He forsook it at +last, because it had become too noisy, but he has left an agreeable +picture of it in _Our Watering Place_; but a passage in a letter to +Forster invests it with still gayer colours: + + "It is the brightest day you ever saw. The sun is sparkling on the + water so that I can hardly bear to look at it. The tide is in, and + the fishing boats are dancing like mad. Upon the green-topped + cliffs the corn is cut and piled in shocks; and thousands of + butterflies are fluttering about, taking the bright little red + flags at the mastheads for flowers, and panting with delight + accordingly." + +To the characters and the _mise en scene_ of his novels, however, +Broadstairs appears to have contributed nothing, except that the lady +whose aversion to donkeys furnished so strong an idiosyncrasy to Miss +Betsy Trotwood's character was a native, not of Dover, as in the novel, +but of Broadstairs. + +Dover, besides giving a local habitation to David's aunt, is associated +with _The Tale of Two Cities_, since it was here that Mr. Lorry made the +startling revelation to Miss Manette that her father had been "Recalled +to Life". The vignette of eighteenth-century Dover is executed with true +Dickensian verve: + +[Illustration: CHALK CHURCH] + + "The little narrow, crooked town of Dover hid itself away from the + beach, and ran its head into the chalk cliffs like a marine + ostrich. The beach was a desert of heaps of sea and stones tumbling + wildly about, and the sea did what it liked, and what it liked was + destruction. It thundered at the town, and thundered at the cliffs, + and brought the coast down, madly. The air among the houses was of + so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick + fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be + dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a + quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward: + particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. + Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes + unaccountably realized large fortunes, and it was remarkable that + nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamplighter." + +It was to Dover that Dickens went when he was labouring with unusual +difficulty over _Bleak House_, and lamenting his inability to "grind +sparks out of this dull anvil". At Dover, on his Second Series of +Readings, he found "the audience with the greatest sense of humour", and +"they laughed with such really cordial enjoyment, when Squeers read the +boy's letters, that the contagion" was irresistible even to Dickens +himself. + +Deal, as it was in 1853, is rapidly but vigorously sketched in chapter +xlv of _Bleak House_. Esther Summerson arrives from a night journey by +coach, eager and anxious to help, if possible, Richard Carstone, the +unhappy victim of the fatal chancery lawsuit: + + "At last we came into the narrow streets of Deal; and very gloomy + they were, upon a raw misty morning. The long flat beach, with its + little irregular houses, wooden and brick, and its litter of + capstans, and great boats, and sheds, and bare upright poles with + tackle and blocks, and loose gravelly waste places overgrown with + grass and weeds, wore as dull an appearance as any place I ever + saw. The sea was heaving under a thick white fog; and nothing else + was moving but a few early rope-makers, who, with the yarn twisted + round their bodies, looked as if, tired of their present state of + existence, they were twisting themselves into cordage. But when we + got into a warm room in an excellent hotel, and sat down, + comfortably washed and dressed, to an early breakfast (for it was + too late to think of going to bed), Deal began to look more + cheerful.... Then the fog began to rise like a curtain; and numbers + of ships, that we had had no idea were near, appeared. I don't know + how many sail the waiter told us were then lying in the Downs. Some + of these vessels were of grand size: one was a large Indiaman, just + come home; and when the sun shone through the clouds, making + silvery pools in the dark sea, the way in which these ships + brightened, and shadowed, and changed, amid a bustle of boats + putting off from the shore to them, and from them to the shore, and + a general life and motion in themselves and everything around them, + was most beautiful." + +That Dickens was essentially a "Kentish Man", in spite of the absence of +a birth qualification, in spite, too, of his long residence in London, +and of his peculiarly intimate knowledge of the byways and nooks and +corners of London, ample proof has by this time been given. To this, +however, may be added Forster's significant statement that, "Excepting +always the haunts and associations of his childhood, Dickens had no +particular sentiment of locality, and any special regard for houses he +had lived in was not a thing noticeable in him". This was not +surprising. The conditions of life in a modern capital under most +circumstances, but especially for anyone who has made many removes, tend +to produce the impression that a man's rooftree only represents the +transient shelter of a caravanserai, rather than an abiding habitation +on which memory has stamped indelible traces. Nor can even the most +extended associations of maturity take the place of the imperishable +links forged in the most susceptible years of fresh and sensitive +childhood. For Dickens this vital distinction was emphasized both by +natural idiosyncrasy and by the pressure of events which shaped his +destiny. + + "If it should appear," he says, speaking of himself under the mask + of David Copperfield, "from anything I may set down in this + narrative, that I was a child of close observation, or that as a + man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim + to both of these characteristics." + +The change from Chatham and Rochester to London was indissolubly +connected in his mind with a change in the family fortunes that deprived +him of the ordinary advantages and pleasures open to any average boy of +even the lower middle classes. It ushered in a period of misery and +degradation that he could never recall without acute suffering. The few +years of happiness which he enjoyed before he was carried away to London +in the stage coach "Commodore", at the age of nine, were divided from a +strenuous and successful manhood by so dark a gulf as to concentrate all +the powers of recollection upon them with a desperate kind of intensity. +It was the realization of a childish ambition conceived in that halcyon +era which drew him to Gadshill, and he returned again and again to the +contemplation of his earliest dreams and imaginings. He wrote from +Gadshill of his old nurse--the original, it can hardly be doubted, of +Peggotty:-- + + "I feel much as I used to do when I was a small child, a few miles + off [i.e. at Ordnance Terrace, Chatham], and somebody--_who_, I + wonder, and which way did _she_ go when she died?--hummed the + evening hymn, and I cried on the pillow--either with the remorseful + consciousness of having kicked somebody else, or because still + somebody else had hurt my feelings in the course of the day". + +For the second number of _Household Words_, when he "felt an uneasy +sense of there being a want of something tender, which would apply to +some universal household knowledge", he composed a little paper about "a +child's dream of a star". It was the story of a brother and sister, +constant child companions, who used to make friends of a star, watching +it together until they knew when and where it would rise, and always +bidding it good-night, so that when the sister dies, the lonely brother +still connects her with the star, which he then sees opening as a sea +of light, and its rays making a shining pathway from earth to heaven. It +was his sister Fanny, who had often wandered with him at night in St. +Mary's Churchyard, near their home at Chatham, looking up at the stars, +and her death, shortly before the paper was written, had revived the +fancy of childhood. In _The Uncommercial Traveller_ he revisits +"Dullborough", and the first discovery he makes is that the station has +swallowed up the playing field of the school to which he went during his +last two years at Chatham. + +[Illustration: SHORNE CHURCH] + + "It was gone. The two beautiful hawthorn trees, the hedge, the + turf, and all those buttercups and daisies, had given place to the + stoniest of jolting roads; while, beyond the station, an ugly dark + monster of a tunnel kept its jaws open, as if it had swallowed them + and were ravenous for more destruction. The coach that had carried + me away, was melodiously called Timpson's Blue-eyed Maid [it was + really called the 'Commodore'], and belonged to Timpson, at the + coach office up street; the locomotive engine that had brought me + back was called severely No. 97, and belonged to S.E.R., and was + spitting ashes and hot water over the blighted ground.... Here, in + the haymaking time, had I been delivered from the dungeons of + Seringapatam, an immense pile (of haycock), by my countrymen, the + victorious British (boy next door and his two cousins), and had + been recognized with ecstasy by my affianced one (Miss Green), who + had come all the way from England (second house in the terrace) to + ransom me and marry me." + +In playful vein Dickens professes to record his disappointment at +failing to receive any recognition from a "native", in the person of a +phlegmatic greengrocer, when he revisits Rochester, and revives the +associations of haunts beloved in childhood. + + "Nettled by his phlegmatic conduct, I informed him that I had left + the town when I was a child. He slowly returned, quite unsoftened, + and not without a sarcastic kind of complacency, Had I? Ah! and did + I find it had got on tolerably well without me? Such is the + difference (I thought when I had left him a few hundred yards + behind, and was by so much in a better temper) between going away + from a place and remaining in it. I had no right, I reflected, to + be angry with the greengrocer for his want of interest; I was + nothing to him; whereas he was the town, the cathedral, the bridge, + the river, my childhood, and a large slice of my life, to me." + +That is one side of the medal, but the other is displayed in _David +Copperfield_, when little Mr. Chillip, the doctor, welcomes David back +to England: + + "'We are not ignorant, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his + little head again, 'down in our part of the country, of your fame. + There must be great excitement here, sir,' said Mr. Chillip, + tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger. 'You must find + it a trying occupation, sir!'" + +A feature of Dickens's literary manner, so insistent that the most +superficial reader cannot miss it, is the individual and almost human +aspect which a street or a landscape, a house or a room, takes on in his +description. A typical example may be selected in Mr. Wickfield's +house-- + + "A very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long, low + lattice windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved + heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied the whole + house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the + narrow pavement below." + +It was the outcome of an acute nervous sensibility, amounting at times +to an almost neurotic irritability, such as peeps out from his +confession that the shape of Earl Grey's head, when he was a +Parliamentary reporter in the Gallery, "was misery to me and weighed +down my youth". This peculiarity of temperament had established itself +when, a little delicate and highly strung child, he used to transfer the +scenes and happenings of the novels to which he stole away from the +other boys at their play, into the setting of his own existence, and +"every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every +foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own connected with +these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them". + +There has seldom, perhaps, been such an absence of complexity in genius +of a high order as there was in Dickens's character. But though there +was no complexity, there were two very different aspects--acute +sensibility was not incompatible with a virile and buoyant spirit. And +so Dickens's associations with the country which he loved best and knew +most intimately were, on the one side, those of a dreamy childhood, on +the other, of a lusty zest in outdoor life and the rustic jollity of an +old-world "Merry England". The sports and revels of Manor Farm, Dingley +Dell, have all the exuberance of Lever's Irish novels. Dickens must have +often taken part in merry-makings such as he describes, on flying visits +that are not recorded in Forster, before he sat down to write about them +during his honeymoon at Chalk. As the Master of Gadshill, his lithe, +upright figure, clad in loose-fitting garments, and rather dilapidated +shoes, was a familiar sight to all the country neighbours, as he swung +along the shady lanes, banked high with hedges that were full of +violets, purple and white, ferns, and lichens, and mosses. Often he +would call at the oldfashioned "Crispin and Crispianus", on the north +side of the London road just out of Strood, for a glass of ale, or a +little cold brandy and water, and sit in the corner of the settle +opposite the fireplace, looking at nothing but seeing everything. In the +chapter on "Tramps" in _The Uncommercial Traveller_, he imagines himself +to be the travelling clockmaker, who sees to something wrong with the +bell of the turret stable clock up at Cobham Hall, and after being +regaled in the enormous servants' hall with beef and bread, and powerful +ale, sets off through the woods till the town lights appear right in +front, and lies for the night at the ancient sign of Crispin and +Crispianus. The floating population of the roads,--the travelling +showman, the cheap jack, the harvest and hopping tramps, the young +fellows who trudge along barefoot, their boots slung over their +shoulders, their shabby bundles under their arms, their sticks newly cut +from some roadside wood, and the truculently humorous tramp, who tells +the Beadle: "Why, blow your little town! who wants to be in it? Wot does +your dirty little town mean by comin' and stickin' itself in the road to +anywhere?"--all are closely scanned and noted, as they mount or descend +Strood Hill in perennial procession. Dickens was himself a sturdy and +inveterate pedestrian. When he suffered from insomnia he would think +nothing of rising in the middle of the night and taking a thirty miles' +spin before breakfast. + +[Illustration: THE LEATHER BOTTLE, COBHAM] + + "Coming in just now," he wrote in his third year at Gadshill, + "after twelve miles in the rain, I was so wet that I have had to + change and get my feet into warm water before I could do anything." + +In February, 1865, he wrote: + + "I got frost-bitten by walking continually in the snow, and getting + wet in the feet daily. My boots hardened and softened, hardened and + softened, my left foot swelled, and I still forced the boot on; sat + in it to write, half the day; walked in it through the snow, the + other half; forced the boot on again next morning; sat and walked + again; and being accustomed to all sorts of changes in my feet, + took no heed. At length, going out as usual, I fell lame on the + walk, and had to limp home dead lame, through the snow, for the + last three miles--to the remarkable terror, by the way, of the two + big dogs." + +It is hardly necessary to say that Dickens never so absorbed the local +spirit and genius of that part of rural England which he knew and loved +best as the Brontes absorbed the spirit of the Yorkshire moorlands, or +Mr. Hardy the spirit of Wessex, or Mr. Eden Phillpotts the spirit of +Dartmoor, or Sir A. Quiller-Couch the spirit of the "Delectable Duchy". +He was too busy and preoccupied a man for this, and had too much of his +life and work behind him, when he made his permanent home in +"Dickens-land". And Gadshill was too near to the bustle and stir of +Chatham to furnish a purely idyllic environment or entirely +unsophisticated rusticity. But it is not unduly fanciful to discover the +influence of Kentish scenery, with its bright, clear atmosphere, its +undulating slopes of green woodland and green hop fields, pink-and-white +orchards, and golden harvests--the prettiest though not the most +beautiful scenery in England--upon his conception of a typical + + "English home--grey twilight pour'd + On dewy pastures, dewy trees, + Softer than sleep--all things in order stored, + A haunt of ancient Peace". + +Though no local name is attached to it, and no local tradition +identifies it with any particular spot, there is no difficulty in fixing +in the very heart of "Dickens-land" the picture upon which the "Battle +of Life" is opened: the joyous dance of two girls, "quite unconstrained +and careless", "in one little orchard attached to an old stone house +with a honeysuckle porch", "while some half-dozen peasant women standing +on ladders, gathering the apples from the trees, stopped in their work +to look down, and share their enjoyment". + + "As they danced among the orchard trees, and down the groves of + stems and back again, and twirled each other lightly round and + round, the influence of their airy motion seemed to spread and + spread, in the sunlighted scene, like an expanding circle in the + water. Their streaming hair and fluttering skirts, the elastic + grass beneath their feet, the boughs that rustled in the morning + air--the flushing leaves, their speckled shadows on the soft green + ground--the balmy wind that swept along the landscape, glad to turn + the distant windmill, cheerily--everything between the two girls, + and the man and team at plough upon the ridge of land, where they + showed against the sky as if they were the last things in the + world--seemed dancing too." + +Something, too, of the love of good cheer, quaint old Christmas customs, +of junketings in ancient farmhouse kitchens and the parlours of ancient +hostelries, which has made Dickens the early Victorian apostle of +Yuletide "wassail", can be derived from his having "powlert up and down" +in a county abounding with comfortable manor houses and cosy inns. It is +a ripe and mellow tradition of good cheer, that is quite distinct from +the bovine stolidity of a harvest home in George Eliot's Loamshire or +the crude animalism of Meredith's Gaffer Gammon. For Kent, even from +the time of Caesar's Commentaries, has been "the civil'st place of all +the isle". + +That is the aspect of Dickens's country on the one side--the side which, +some years before he established himself at Gadshill, he mapped out, +already knowing it intimately, to show to Forster in a brief excursion: + + "You will come down booked for Maidstone (I will meet you at + Paddock-wood), and we will go thither in company over a most + beautiful little line of railroad. The eight miles walk from + Maidstone to Rochester, and a visit to the Druidical altar on the + wayside, are charming. This could be accomplished on the Tuesday; + and Wednesday we might look about us at Chatham, coming home by + Cobham on Thursday." + +The other side--the dreary marshes lying between the Medway and the +Thames, a dark, flat wilderness intersected by dykes and mounds and +gates--had associations not less intimate. In _David Copperfield_ +Dickens transferred the dreams and the events of his childhood to an +alien setting. In _Great Expectations_ he invents a fictitious story in +harmony with scenes in which he delighted to retrace his childish +memories. Again, the amphibian creatures which he lightly sketches in +_Great Expectations_, and more elaborately in _Our Mutual Friend_, had +first impressed themselves on his imagination as he rambled, a tiny, +eager-eyed boy, about the dockyards and waterside alleys of Chatham, or +made trips to Sheerness with "Mr. Micawber", that is to say, his +father, in the Navy Pay yacht, though he long afterwards pursued his +studies of them more exhaustively at Wapping and the Isle of Dogs, and +in expeditions with the Thames police. It was from a walk with Leech +through Chatham by-streets that he gathered the hint of Charley Hexam +and his father, for _Our Mutual Friend_, from the sight of "the +uneducated father in fustian and the educated boy in spectacles". + +But when Dickens took Rochester once more for the background of a story +in _Edwin Drood_ there seems, to us in our knowledge of the event, +something almost ominous. It suggests Waller's famous simile of the stag +that returns to die where it was roused. Dickens's last visit to the +town was to stimulate his imagination for the conference between +Datchery and the Princess Puffer at the entrance to the "Monks' +Vineyard". On the last day of his life he was busy, in the chalet in the +garden at Gadshill Place, embodying the fancies which he had gathered +and fused on that last visit. On the last page which he was to write he +endeavoured to record--for the last time--his sense of the atmosphere of +the old city. + + "A brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and + ruins are surpassingly beautiful, with the lusty ivy gleaming in + the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of + glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from + gardens, woods, and fields--or, rather, from the one great garden + of the whole of the cultivated island in its yielding + time--penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and + preach the Resurrection and the Life. The cold stone tombs of + centuries ago grow warm, and flecks of brightness dart into the + sternest marble corners of the building, fluttering there like + wings." + +On the eve of that last day he had more than once expressed his +satisfaction at having finally abandoned all intention of exchanging +Gadshill for London. He had done this still more impressively a few days +before. + + "While he lived, he said, he should wish his name to be more and + more associated with the place; and he had a notion that when he + died, he should like to lie in the little graveyard belonging to + the Cathedral at the foot of the Castle wall." + +Half of his wish had to go unfulfilled; the other half has been realized +in a different but a profounder sense than that in which it is +conceived. While he lives, in the creations of his humour and pathos, +airy things of fun and frolic, tenderness and tears, his name is more +and more associated "with the scenes"--to borrow the words of the +memorial tablet in Rochester Cathedral--"in which his earliest and his +latest years were passed", scenes that "from the associations ... which +extended over all his life" have the best right to be known as +"Dickens-land". + +_Printed by Blackie & Son, Ltd., Glasgow_ + + * * * * * + +Transcriber's note + + +The following changes have been made to the text: + +Page 19: "by an unbridgable chasm" changed to "by an unbridgeable +chasm". + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dickens-Land, by J. A. 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