Part 3

As a reader, too, Dickens stood pre-eminent. It has lately transpired that his very first public reading took place, early in the fifties, at Chatham, in aid of the Rochester and Chatham Mechanics’ Institution, and the subject of the reading was the “Christmas Carol.” He gave public readings from his own works both in Great Britain and America, and an entertaining account of these tours may be found in Mr. George Dolby’s volume, “Charles Dickens as I Knew Him.” There can be no doubt that the mental tension caused by these readings (which covered a period of some fifteen years), supplemented by the strain of literary and editorial labours, curtailed the brilliant career of England’s greatest novelist. It was at his charming rural retreat, Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester (his home from 1856), that Charles Dickens breathed his last, on June 9th, 1870, in his fifty-ninth year. “Before the news of his death even reached the remoter parts of England,” says Forster, “it had been flashed across Europe; was known in the distant continents of India, Australia, and America; and not in English-speaking communities only, but in every country of the civilised earth, had awakened grief and sympathy. In his own land it was as if a personal bereavement had befallen everyone.” Although he himself would have preferred to lie in the small graveyard under the ancient wall of Rochester Castle, or in the pretty Kentish churchyard of Cobham or Shorne, public sentiment favoured the suggestion that the mortal remains of Charles Dickens should be interred in Westminster Abbey; and there, in Poets’ Corner, they were laid to rest, quietly and unostentatiously. What Carlyle said of him, a few days later, will meet with universal acceptance:--

“The good, the gentle, high gifted, ever friendly, noble Dickens,--every inch of him an Honest Man.”

F. G. KITTON.

NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS

[Sidenote: =The Birthplace of Charles Dickens, No. 387, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea=

_see page 3_]

[Sidenote: =Rochester High Street, showing the “moon-faced” clock=

_see page 1_]

Charles Dickens was born at No. 387, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea, on Friday, February 7th, 1812. He was the second son of John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay office, who married Miss Elizabeth Barrow, and had a family of eight children, two of whom died in childhood. Of his very earliest days Charles Dickens retained many distinct and durable impressions. He even recollected the small front garden of the house at Portsea, from which he was taken away at the age of two years, and where he played with his elder sister whilst watched by a nurse through the kitchen window on a level with the gravel walk. Referring to these early memories, he described “how he thought the Rochester High Street must be at least as wide as Regent Street, which he afterwards discovered to be little better than a lane, how the public clock in it, supposed to be the finest clock in the world, turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a clock as a man’s eyes ever saw; and how, in its town hall, which had appeared to him once so glorious a structure that he had set it up in his mind as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the palace for Aladdin, he had painfully to recognise a mere mean little heap of bricks, like a chapel gone demented.” In “The Seven Poor Travellers” Dickens gave another picture of the same spot. “The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red brick building as if Time carried on business there and hung out his sign.”

[Sidenote: =No. 15, Furnival’s Inn, Holborn=

_see page 4_]

In 1836 Charles Dickens lived at 15, Furnival’s Inn, and it was here that he “thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number,” which was published March 31st, 1837. Two days later the author married Miss Catherine Hogarth, and after spending their honeymoon in the village of Chalk, near Gad’s Hill, the young couple continued to reside for some time in apartments on the top floor of this house.

[Sidenote: =“The Leather Bottle,” Cobham=

_see page 5_]

“The Leather Bottle,” immortalised in “The Pickwick Papers,” is situated at Cobham, opposite the church. “‘And really,’ added Mr. Pickwick, after half an hour’s walking had brought them to the village, ‘really, for a misanthrope’s choice, this is one of the prettiest and most desirable places of residence I ever met with.’

“In this opinion also both Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass expressed their concurrence; and, having been directed to the ‘Leather Bottle,’ a clean and commodious village ale-house, the three travellers entered, and at once inquired for a gentleman of the name of Tupman.”

[Sidenote: =The Old Curiosity Shop=

_see page 9_]

The Old Curiosity Shop in Portugal Street, said to be the house assigned by the novelist for the residence of Little Nell and her grandfather, was “one of those receptacles for old and curious things, which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town, and to hide their musty treasure from the public eye in jealousy and distrust.” It is possibly the best known among the landmarks of places made famous by Dickens.

[Sidenote: =The Grave of Little Nell=

_see page 8_]

“They saw the vault covered and the stone fixed down. Then, when the dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave in that calm time, when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them--then, with tranquil and submissive hearts, they turned away, and left the child with God.”

Dotheboys Hall, in “Nicholas Nickleby,” is said to have borne a close resemblance to Shaw’s Academy at Bowes, Yorkshire; but Dickens in his

[Sidenote: =Dotheboys Hall at Bowes, Yorkshire=

_see page 12_]

preface to the book disclaimed his intention of identifying the infamous Mr. Squeers with the master of any particular school by his words, “Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class and not of an individual.” “‘The fact is it ain’t a Hall,’ observed Squeers, drily.... ‘We call it a hall up in London because it sounds better, but they don’t know it by that name in these parts. A man may call his house an island if he likes; there’s no Act of Parliament against that, I believe.’ ... The school was a long cold-looking house, one storey high, with a few straggling outbuildings behind and a barn and stable adjoining.”

[Sidenote: =Dickens’s Favourite Raven=

_see page 15_]

This raven was the original of “Grip” in “Barnaby Budge.” To the great grief of Dickens the bird died, after it had been ailing only a few days, on March 12th, 1841. After death the famous raven was stuffed, and when sold at the Dickens sale realised £126.

“‘I make _him_ come?’ cried Barnaby, pointing to the bird. ‘Him, who never goes to sleep, or so much as winks! Why, any time of night, you may see his eyes in my dark room, shining like two sparks. And every night, and all night too, he’s broad awake, talking to himself, thinking what he shall do to-morrow, where we shall go, and what he shall steal, and hide, and bury. _I_ make _him_ come! Ha, ha, ha!’”

[Sidenote: =No. 1, Devonshire Terrace=

_see page 22_]

In 1839 Dickens removed from Doughty Street to No. 1, Devonshire Terrace, a handsome house with a garden of considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a high brick wall facing the York Gate into Regent’s Park. The house is entered at the side, and the front looks into Marylebone Road. The windows of the lower and first-floor rooms are largely bowed, and Dickens described it as “a house of great promise (and great premium), undeniable situation, and excessive splendour.” He lived here until 1850, and in these years much of his best work was done, including “Master Humphrey’s Clock,” “The Old Curiosity Shop.” “Barnaby Budge,” “American Notes,” “Martin Chuzzlewit,” “A Christmas Carol,” “The Cricket on the Hearth,” “Dombey and Son,” “The Haunted Man,” and “David Copperfield.”

[Sidenote: =Tavistock House, Tavistock Square=

_see page 17_]

After leaving Devonshire Terrace, Dickens resided for nearly nine years, dating from November 1851, at Tavistock House, which has of late been demolished. During this period he wrote “Bleak House,” “Hard Times,” a part of “Little Dorrit,” and “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Hans Christian Andersen, after visiting Dickens in Tavistock House, gave the following description of his home:--

“In Tavistock Square stands Tavistock House. This and the strip of garden in front of it are shut out from the thoroughfare by an iron railing. A large garden, with a grass plat and high trees, stretches behind the house, and gives it a countrified look in the midst of this coal and gas steaming London. In the passage from street to garden hung pictures and engravings. On the first floor was a rich library, with a fireplace and a writing-table, looking out on the garden; and here it was that in winter Dickens and his friends acted plays to the satisfaction of all parties.”

[Sidenote: =Eastgate House, Rochester=

_see page 18_]

Eastgate House, the original of the Nuns’ House in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” forms one of the most picturesque bits of the Rochester High Street, one side of the old building being half hidden from the roadway by overhanging trees. “Cloisterham” in “Edwin Drood,” of course, represents Rochester.

“In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns’ House: a veritable brick edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legends of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclosing its courtyard is a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend: ‘Seminary for Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.’ The house front is so old and worn, and the brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general result has reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a large modern eyeglass stuck in his blind eye.”

[Sidenote: =Gad’s Hill Place, near Rochester=

_see page 26_]

Gad’s Hill Place was the novelist’s last residence, where he wrote “The Uncommercial Traveller,” “Great Expectations,” “Our Mutual Friend,” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

On this house Dickens had fixed his choice in his boyish days. It had always held a prominent place amid the recollections connected with his childhood. Forster wrote of Dickens that “upon first seeing it as he came from Chatham with his father, and looking up at it with admiration, he had been promised that he might live in it himself, or some such house, when he came to be a man, if he would only work hard enough.” It is pleasant to record that this ambition was gratified in after life, when the dream of his boyhood was realised.

[Sidenote: =Restoration House, Rochester=

_see page 28_]

Restoration House, Rochester, is of interest as being the “Satis House” of “Great Expectations,” in which Miss Havisham lived. Restoration House must not, however, be confused with Satis House, Rochester, from which Dickens took the name.

“‘Enough House!’ said I. ‘That’s a curious name, miss.’

“‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think.’

“To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no pigeons in the dovecot, no horses in the stables, no pigs in the sty....”

[Sidenote: =The Bull Hotel, Rochester=

_see page 28_]

The Bull Hotel is a commodious establishment of ancient and respectable repute, and the principal posting-house of Rochester. It is the celebrated inn where the Pickwickians stayed on the occasion of their first visit to Rochester, and which Mr. Jingle so laconically summed up in the phrase, “good house--nice beds.”

The house itself has changed very little. A fine oak staircase leads up to the ball-room, where Mr. Jingle masqueraded in Mr. Winkle’s dress-suit with extraordinary results.

[Sidenote: =The Gatehouse, Rochester=

_see page 34_]

In “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” Dickens described the Old Gatehouse at Rochester, facing Pump Lane, with its archway, which stands angle-wise in the street. There is a small postern at the back of the gate. This building was the residence of Mr. Tope, “chief verger and showman” of the Cathedral, with whom lodged Mr. John Jaspar, the uncle of Edwin Drood. The house is a gabled wooden structure, two storeys high, built over the stone gateway. Dickens pictured it as “an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it.”

[Sidenote: =Watts’s Charity, The House of the Six Poor Travellers, Rochester=

_see page 35_]

This house formed the basis for a short story called, “The Seven Poor Travellers,” which appeared in the Christmas number of _Household Words_ for 1854. The inscription over the doorway of this striking-looking building runs as follows:--

RICHARD WATTS, ESQ.,

BY HIS WILL DATED 22 AUGUST, 1579, FOUNDED THIS CHARITY FOR SIX POOR TRAVELLERS. WHO NOT BEING ROGUES, OR PROCTORS, MAY RECEIVE GRATIS FOR ONE NIGHT, LODGING, ENTERTAINMENT, AND FOUR-PENCE EACH.

Dickens called it “a clean white house of a staid and venerable air, with a quaint old door (an arched door), choice, little, long, low lattice windows, and a roof of three gables.”

[Sidenote: =The Grave of Dickens in Westminster Abbey. From a painting by S. Luke Fildes, R.A.=

_see page 38_]

Charles Dickens died on the 9th of June, 1870. Five days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, with, according to Forster, only such ceremonial as would strictly obey all injunctions of privacy. The solemnity lost nothing by its simplicity. “All day long,” wrote Dean Stanley, two days after the funeral, “there was a constant pressure to the spot, and many flowers were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many tears shed by unknown eyes.” On the stone are inscribed the words:

CHARLES DICKENS,

BORN FEBRUARY THE SEVENTH, 1812. DIED JUNE THE NINTH, 1870.

SOME PORTRAITS OF CHARLES DICKENS

[Sidenote: =“Boz” (Charles Dickens). From a drawing by S. Laurence; in the possession of Mr. Horace N. Pym=

_see page 2_]

In 1837 Dickens sat for his portrait to his friend Samuel Laurence, an artist distinguished for remarkable skill in the art of portrait-sketching. Shortly after the death of Mr. Laurence in 1884, his drawings were disposed of by auction at the sale of his effects on June 12th, and the “Boz” portrait which is here reproduced then became the property of Mr. Horace N. Pym, the editor of “Caroline Fox’s Journal.” Of this portrait Mr. F. G, Kitton writes in “Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil”: “The artist has admirably succeeded in rendering with marvellous skill the fire and beauty of the eyes--the sensitiveness and mobility of the mouth.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1839. From the picture by Daniel Maclise, R.A.=

_see page 7_]

This painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1840, and is now in the National Portrait Gallery. Thackeray referred to it in terms of the highest praise. “Look at the portrait of Mr. Dickens,” he wrote, “well arranged as a picture, good in colour and light and shadow, and as a likeness perfectly amazing; a looking-glass could not render a better _fac-simile_. Here we have the real identical man Dickens; the artist must have understood the inward ‘Boz’ as well as the outward before he made this admirable representation of him. What cheerful intellectuality is about the man’s eyes, and a large forehead! The mouth is too large and full, too eager and active, perhaps; the smile is very sweet and generous.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens reading “The Chimes” to his friends at 58, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, Monday, the 2nd of Dec., 1844=

_see page 10_]

A portrait, reproduced from an engraving by C. H. Jeens after the original sketch by Daniel Maclise, R. A., which is now in the South Kensington Museum. Forster called it “An occasion rather memorable in which was the germ of those readings to larger audiences, by which, as much as by his books, the world knew him in his later life.” With reference to Maclise’s pencil-drawing he continued, “It will tell the reader all he can wish to know. He will see of whom the party consisted; and may be assured (with allowance for a touch of caricature to which I may claim to be considered myself as the chief and very marked victim) that in the grave attention of Carlyle, the eager interest of Stanfield and Maclise, the keen look of poor Laman Blanchard, Fox’s rapt solemnity, Jerrold’s skyward gaze, and the tears of Harness and Dyce, the characteristic points of the scene are sufficiently rendered.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens, his wife, and her sister=

_see page 11_]

The original of this pencil drawing by Daniel Maclise, R.A., which was executed in 1843, a few years after the marriage of Dickens, is now in the South Kensington Museum. It was engraved by C. H. Jeens and dated by error 1842. “Never did a touch so light carry with it more truth of observation,” wrote Forster. “The likenesses of all are excellent.... Nothing ever done of Dickens himself has conveyed more vividly his look and hearing at this yet youthful time. He is in his most pleasing aspect; flattered if you will; but nothing that is known to me gives a general impression so lifelike and true of the then frank, eager, handsome face.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens as Captain Bobadil, in “Every Man in his Humour.” From a painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A.=

_see page 12_]

Dickens had the title to be called a born comedian, declared Forster, but his strength was rather in the vividness and variety of his assumptions, than in the completeness, finish, or ideality he could give to any part of them. The rendering of the novelist as Bobadil by C. R. Leslie, R.A., was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1846. The artist has represented Dickens seated upon a sofa, dressed as a bearded swashbuckler and braggadocio, just at the moment when Tib enters to announce the arrival of a visitor and Captain Bobadil declares: “A gentleman! Odds so, I am not within.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1842. From a drawing by Alfred Count D’Orsay=

_see page 13_]

Of this drawing, which is reproduced from a lithograph after a sketch by Alfred Count D’Orsay, Mr. F. G. Kitton writes in “Charles Dickens by Pen and Pencil”: “As compared with other portraits belonging to this period, the features look pinched and small, although due justice has been done to the luxuriant hair and the fashionable style of coat and stock peculiar to that day.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1851. From an etching after a daguerreotype by Mayall=

_see page 14_]

The first practitioner of daguerreotype portraiture in England was Mr. John Mayall, sen., who left America in 1845 and established himself in Regent Street, London. He soon numbered among his _clientèle_ many celebrities of the day, including Charles Dickens, who paid his first visit shortly after returning from the Continent. During a period of several years Dickens sat to Mr. Mayall, the first of these portraits being taken while he was writing “David Copperfield.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1855. From the painting by Ary Scheffer=

_see page 16_]

This famous portrait was exhibited in 1856 in the Royal Academy, and in July 1870 was purchased by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, where it now hangs. Dickens himself considered it “a fine spirited head, painted at his [Scheffer’s] very best, and with a very easy and natural appearance in it. But it does not look to me at all like, nor does it strike me that if I saw it in a gallery, I should suppose myself to be the original.... As a work of art, I see in it spirit combined with perfect ease, and yet I don’t see myself. So I come to the conclusion that I never _do_ see myself.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1844. From a miniature by Miss Margaret Gillies=

_see page 19_]

The interesting miniature by Miss Margaret Gillies has mysteriously disappeared, and is not improbably buried in some private collection. It was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1844.

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1859. After the painting by W. P. Frith, A.R.A.=

_see page 23_]

Mr. Frith’s painting was exhibited in the Royal Academy in the spring of 1860, and afterwards included in the Forster Collection at South Kensington, where it now finds a worthy resting-place. Dickens wrote of this picture in a letter from Tavistock House, dated May 31st, 1859: “It has received every conceivable pains at Frith’s hands, and ought, on his account, to be good. It is a little too much (to my thinking) as if my next-door neighbour were my deadly foe, uninsured, and had just received tidings of his house being afire; otherwise very good.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens giving a Reading, 1861=

_see page 24_]

Dickens gave his paid public Readings successively, with brief intervals, at four several periods--viz., in 1858-9, in 1861-3, in 1866-7, and in 1868-70.

“I must say [he wrote] that the intelligence and warmth of the audience are an immense sustainment, and one that always sets me up. Sometimes, before I go down to read (especially when it is in the day) I am so oppressed by having to do it that I feel perfectly unequal to the task. But the people lift me out of this directly, and I find that I have quite forgotten everything but them and the book, in a quarter of an hour.”

[Sidenote: =Charles Dickens in 1861. From a photograph by J. Watkins=

_see page 37_]

A full-face likeness of the novelist by Watkins has attained deservedly a large degree of popularity. The best remembered copy is a beautiful lithographic drawing by R. J. Lane which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1864. It is said to have been an especial favourite with Charles Lever.