CHAPTER X.

THE GAD’S HILL COUNTRY.

About midway between Gravesend and Rochester, on the old Dover Road, and in the parish of Higham, is Gad’s Hill, immortalized both by Shakespeare and Dickens. With regard to the derivation of the name there seems to be a little doubt, some regarding it as a corruption of “God’s Hill,” while others incline to the belief that it must be traced to the word “gad” (_i.e._, rogue), for, even prior to Shakespeare’s time, unwary travellers were here waylaid by highwaymen, and for such audacious thefts from the person this particular spot became notorious.

In 1558 a ballad was published entitled “The Robbery at Gad’s Hill,” and in 1590 Sir Roger Manwood, Chief Baron of the Exchequer, wrote: “Many robberies were done in the bye-ways at Gadeshill, on the west part of Rochester and at Chatham, down on the east part of Rochester, by horse-thieves, with such fat and lusty horses as were not like hackney horses, nor far-journeying horses, and one of them sometimes wearing a vizard grey beard ... and no man durst travel that way without great company.” In the first part of Shakespeare’s “King Henry the Fourth” (Act I., Scene 2) Poins thus addresses Prince Henry: “But, my lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four o’clock, early at Gadshill! there are pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to London with fat purses: I have visors for you all; you have horses for yourselves.”[113]

To present-day pedestrians, who have no need to fear unwelcome attentions from “knights of the road,” the chief attraction of this locality is the house which stands upon the brow of the hill, reposing in delightful grounds, and commanding magnificent views of the surrounding landscape. This is Gad’s Hill Place, the home of Charles Dickens, where he resided from 1856 until his death on “that fateful day” in June, 1870. One of the most remarkable incidents of the novelist’s life was the realization of his boyhood’s ambition to live there, in the very house which he so often admired when, during his early years at Chatham, he accompanied his father on walking expeditions thence to Strood and beyond, and which, as his parent foretold, might really become his home if he worked hard, and were to be very persevering. The desire to own the property never left him; indeed, it may be said that, as time passed, his craving to possess it increased, and we may imagine his delight when, in 1855, he learned from his trusty henchman, W. H. Wills, that the place was available for purchase.

Having spent the final years of his active career at Gad’s Hill Place, it is natural that Gad’s Hill Place and its environment should be regarded as the very heart of Dickens land, so replete is it with Dickensian memories and associations.

Gad’s Hill Place is a red brick building, with bay windows and a porch in the principal front, a slated roof with dormers, surmounted by a cupola or bell-turret, the latter a conspicuous and familiar object to all accustomed to travel by road between Gravesend and Rochester. The house was erected in 1779 by a then well-known character in those parts, one Thomas Stevens, an illiterate man who had been an hostler, and who, after marrying his employer’s widow, adopted the brewing business, amassed wealth, and eventually became Mayor of Rochester. On relinquishing the business he retired to his country seat at Gad’s Hill, and at his death the house was purchased by the Rev. James Lynn (father of the late Mrs. Lynn Linton, the authoress), who, like Dickens, had fallen in love with the house when a youth, and resolved to buy it as soon as the opportunity offered. It was not until 1831 that he was enabled to take up his residence there, and Mrs. Lynn Linton, in recording her impressions of her home at that date, recalled the liveliness of the road: “Between seventy and eighty coaches, ‘vans,’ and mail-carts passed our house during the day, besides private carriages, specially those of travellers posting to or from Dover. Regiments, too, often passed on their way to Gravesend, where they embarked for India; and ships’ companies, paid off, rowdy, and half-tipsy, made the road really dangerous for the time being. We used to lock the two gates when we heard them coming, shouting and singing, up the hill, and we had to stand many a mimic siege from the bluejackets trying to force their way in.”[114] To counteract these obvious drawbacks there were natural advantages—the luxuriant gardens, orchard, and shrubberies, while the trees near the house offered a veritable sanctuary for song-birds. The worthy clergyman occupied Gad’s Hill Place until his decease in 1855, when, for want of an heir, the property had to be sold. Shortly afterwards his daughter and W. H. Wills met at a dinner-party, and in the course of conversation it transpired that the estate would presently be in the market. On learning this, Dickens immediately entered into negotiations for acquiring it, with the result that before many months had elapsed he became the owner. “I have always in passing looked to see if it was to be sold or let,” he wrote to his friend M. de Cerjat, “and it has never been to me like any other house, and it has never changed at all.”

After drawing a cheque (on March 14, 1856) for the amount of the purchase-money, £1,790, he discovered that, by an extraordinary coincidence, it was a Friday, the day of the week on which (as he frequently remarked) all the important events of his life had happened, so that he and his family had come to regard that day of the week as his lucky day.

Dickens did not, however, obtain possession of the coveted house until February of the following year, after which, for a brief period, he made it merely a summer abode, Tavistock House being his town residence during the rest of the year. In April, 1857, he stayed with his wife and sister-in-law at Waite’s Hotel, Gravesend, to be at hand to superintend the beginning of a scheme of alterations and improvements in his new home, which were carried on for the space of several months. The winter of 1859-1860 was the last spent at Tavistock House, and he and his family then settled down at Gad’s Hill. “I am on my little Kentish freehold,” he observed to M. de Cerjat, “looking on as pretty a view out of my study window as you will find in a long day’s English ride. My little place is a grave red-brick house, which I have added to and stuck bits upon in all manner of ways, so that it is as pleasantly irregular, and as violently opposed to all architectural ideas, as the most hopeful man could possibly desire. The robbery was committed before the door, on the man with the treasure, and Falstaff ran away from the identical spot of ground now covered by the room in which I write. A little rustic alehouse, called the Sir John Falstaff, is over the way, has been over the way ever since, in honour of the event. Cobham Woods and Park are behind the house, the distant Thames in front, the Medway, with Rochester and its old castle and cathedral, on one side. The whole stupendous property is on the old Dover Road.”

Continued ownership brought increased liking, and he was never tired of devising and superintending improvements, such as the addition of a new drawing-room and conservatory, the construction of a well (a process “like putting Oxford Street endwise”), and the engineering of a tunnel under the road, connecting the front-garden with the shrubbery, with its noble cedars, where, in the midst of foliage, was erected the Swiss châlet presented to him in 1865 by Fechter, the actor, and which now stands in Cobham Park. Concerning this châlet—in an upper compartment of which he was fond of working, remote from disturbing sounds—he sent a charming account of his environment to his American friend James T. Fields: “Divers birds sing here all day, and the nightingales all night. The place is lovely and in perfect order.... I have put five mirrors in the chalet where I write, and they reflect and refract, in all kinds of ways, the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river. My room is up among the branches of the trees, and the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and, indeed, of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most delicious.”

Externally, the main building of Gad’s Hill Place underwent but little alteration, presenting throughout the period of the owner’s occupation much the same appearance as when he knew it in the days of his childhood, the back of the building becoming gradually hidden from view by clustering masses of ivy and Virginia creeper. One of the bedrooms was transformed into a study, which he lined with books and occasionally wrote in; but the study proper (called by him the library) was the front room on the ground-floor, on the right of the entrance-hall, rendered familiar by the large engraving published in the _Graphic_ at the time of the novelist’s death. With regard to this study, or library, it may be mentioned that it was his delight to be surrounded by a variety of objects for his eye to rest upon in the intervals of actual writing, prominent among them being a bronze group representing a couple of frogs in the act of fighting a duel with swords, and a statuette of a French dog-fancier, with his living stock-in-trade tucked under his arms and in his pockets, while a vase of flowers invariably graced his writing-table. A noteworthy feature of his sanctum was the door, the inner side of which he disguised by means of imitation book-backs, transferred thither from Tavistock House; these are still preserved as a “fixture.” These book-backs, with their humorous titles, create considerable interest and amusement for such as are privileged to enter the apartment so intimately associated with “Boz.”

Among those invited to his attractive “Kentish freehold,” as Dickens frequently termed it, “where cigars and lemons grew on all the trees,” was Sir Joseph Paxton, the famous landscape gardener and designer of the Crystal Palace. Hans Andersen, another honoured guest, received most agreeable impressions of Gad’s Hill Place. He described the breakfast-room as “a model of comfort and holiday brightness. The windows were overhung, outside, with a profusion of blooming roses, and one looked out over the garden to green fields and the hills beyond Rochester.” Dickens’s happiest hours in his Gad’s Hill home were those when it was filled with cherished friends, both English and American, to whom he played the part of an ideal host, devoting the greater portion of each day to their comfort and amusement, and accompanying them on pedestrian excursions to Rochester and other favourite localities in the neighbourhood, or driving with them to more remote places, such as Maidstone and Canterbury. But what seemed to afford him the utmost delight were the walks with friends to the charming village of Cobham, there to refresh at the famous Leather Bottle, the quaint roadside alehouse where, as every reader of “Pickwick” remembers, the disconsolate Mr. Tupman was discovered at the parlour table having just enjoyed a hearty meal of “roast fowl, bacon, ale, and etceteras, and looking as unlike a man who had taken his leave of the world as possible.” The Pickwickian traditions of this popular house of refreshment are maintained by the enthusiastic landlord, who realizes the importance of preserving the Dickensian associations. The room in which Mr. Tupman drowned his sorrows in the comfort afforded by a substantial meal remains practically the same to-day, with this difference, that the walls are covered with portraits, engravings, autograph letters, and other interesting items relating to the novelist and his writings—a veritable Dickens museum. Cobham Hall, the Elizabethan mansion of Lord Darnley, with its magnificent park, where the Fechter châlet was re-erected after Dickens’s death, and especially Cobham Woods, always proved irresistible attractions to the “Master,” and he and his dogs enjoying their constitutional were a familiar sight to his neighbours.

The villages of Shorne and Chalk, with their ancient churches and peaceful churchyards, he frequently visited with “a strange recurring fondness.” Mr. E. Laman Blanchard has recorded that he often met, and exchanged salutations with, Dickens during his pedestrian excursions on the highroad leading from Rochester to Gravesend, and generally they passed each other at about the same spot—at the outskirts of the village of Chalk, where a picturesque lane branched off towards Shorne and Cobham. “Here,” says Mr. Blanchard, “the brisk walk of Charles Dickens was always slackened, and he never failed to glance meditatively for a few moments at the windows of a corner house on the southern side of the road, advantageously situated for commanding views of the river and the far-stretching landscape beyond. It was in that house he lived immediately after his marriage, and there many of the earlier chapters of ‘Pickwick’ were written.”

The village of Cooling, standing so bleak and solitary in the Kentish fenland bordering the southern banks of the Thames, possessed a weird fascination for “Boz.” Here, in the midst of those dreary marshes, much of the local colouring of “Great Expectations” was obtained. Indeed, the story opens with the night scene between Pip and the escaped convict in Cooling churchyard, and in the same chapter we have Pip’s early impressions of the strange and desolate neighbourhood in which he lived with Mr. and Mrs. Joe Gargery. “Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles from the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard, and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgina, wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark, flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes, and mounds, and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair, from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all, and beginning to cry, was Pip.”

“The marshes,” Pip continues, “were just a long black horizontal line then, ... and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright. One of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered—like an unhooped cask upon a pole—an ugly thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate.” Then, in a later chapter, he refers to the old battery out on the marshes. “It was pleasant and quiet out there,” he says, “with the sails on the river passing beyond the earthwork, and sometimes, when the tide was low, looking as if they belonged to sunken ships that were still sailing on at the bottom of the water.”

Visitors to Cooling cannot fail to notice in the churchyard a long row of curious gravestones which mark the resting-place of members of the Comport family of Cowling Court (Cooling was originally called Cowling), these memorials dating from 1771, the year recorded on a large headstone standing in close proximity. These suggested to Dickens, of course, the idea of the “five little stone lozenges” under which the five little brothers of Pip lay buried. Within a short distance from the churchyard we may identify, in a short row of cottages, the original of Joe’s forge, while an old-fashioned inn with a weather-board exterior, and bearing the sign of the Horseshoe and Castle, is regarded as the prototype of the Three Jolly Bargemen, a favourite resort of Joe Gargery after his day’s work at the forge.

The ancient and picturesque city of Rochester, so beloved by Dickens and so replete with memories of the “Master,” deserves a chapter to itself. With the exception of London, no town figures so frequently or so prominently in his books as Rochester, from “The Pickwick Papers” to the unfinished romance of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” where it is thinly disguised as “Cloisterham.” Dickens’s acquaintance with Rochester began in the days of his boyhood, when he lived with his father at Chatham, and, as a natural result of his unusual powers of observation, he even then stored up his youthful impressions of the quaint old houses, the Cathedral, and its neighbour, the rugged ruins of the Norman Castle overlooking the Medway. How those juvenile impressions received something of a shock in after-years we are informed by Forster, for childhood exaggerates what it sees, and Rochester High Street he remembered as a thoroughfare at least as wide as Regent Street, whereas it proved to his maturer judgment to be “little better than a lane,” while the public clock in it, once supposed by him to be the finest clock in the world, proved eventually to be “as moon-faced and weak a clock as a man’s eyes ever saw.” Even the grave-looking Town Hall, “which had appeared to him once so glorious a structure” that he associated it in his mind with Aladdin’s palace, he reluctantly realized as being, in reality, nothing more than “a mere mean little heap of bricks, like a chapel gone demented.” “Ah! who was I,” he observes on reflection, “that I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so changed, to it? All my early readings and early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the worse!”

Rochester has undergone many topographical changes (not necessarily for the better) since that memorable morning in 1827 when Mr. Pickwick leaned over the balustrades of the old stone bridge “contemplating nature and waiting for breakfast.” To begin with, the bridge itself has been demolished, and an elliptical iron structure takes its place. The view, too, which Mr. Pickwick admired of the banks of the Medway, with the cornfields, pastures, and windmills, is more obscured to-day by that discomforting symbol of commercialism, smoke, so constantly pouring from the ever-increasing number of lofty shafts appertaining to the various cement works which flourish here. From the other side of the bridge Mr. Pickwick could obtain a pleasant glimpse of the river, with its numerous sailing-barges, in the direction of Chatham; but the prospect, alas! is now completely blotted out by hideous railway viaducts. Happily, in spite of modern innovations, those who appreciate the old-world air of our English cities will find much to charm them in the precincts of the Cathedral, sufficiently remote from the bustle and noise of the High Street to enable it to preserve the quiet serenity which invariably encompasses our venerable minsters. Besides the picturesque stone gateways here, much remains in the High Street and elsewhere to remind us of what Rochester looked like in days of old; as Dickens writes in “The Seven Poor Travellers”: “The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces.” Of these surviving specimens of ancient domestic architecture, many will regard Eastgate House as the most interesting from an archæological point of view, while to the Dickens student there is an additional attraction in the fact that it is the original of the Nuns’ House in “Edwin Drood,” the boarding-school for young ladies over which Miss Twinkleton presided, and where Rosa Bud received her education.

For many years during the last century Eastgate House was actually in use as a ladies’ school, and eventually became the headquarters of the Rochester Men’s Institute. Quite recently the civic authorities, with commendable good sense, availed themselves of the opportunity of acquiring the property, which they have thoroughly and tastefully reinstated and converted into a public museum; and I must add to this statement the significant fact that a room has been permanently set apart for an exhibition of mementoes of Charles Dickens—both gifts and loans—thus, in a sense, stultifying the old proverb, that “a prophet is not without honour save in his own country.” On one of the inside beams of Eastgate House is carved the date “1591,” and the rooms are adorned with carved mantelpieces and plaster enrichments.

Nearly opposite Eastgate House is another picturesque half-timbered building, which, with its three gables and its projecting bay-windows supported by carved brackets, is a veritable ornament to this portion of the High Street. We recognise it as the one-time residence of two of Dickens’s characters, viz., of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer in “Edwin Drood”—“Mr. Sapsea’s premises are in the High Street over against the Nuns’ House”—and of Mr. Pumblechook, the seed merchant in “Great Expectations.” But there exists in Rochester a specimen of domestic architecture of even greater interest than those just described. This is Restoration House, pleasantly situated facing an open space called “The Vines”—the Monks’ Vineyard of “Edwin Drood.” Restoration House is the Satis House of “Great Expectations,” where lived that strange creature Miss Havisham; as a matter of fact, there exists in Rochester an actual Satis House, the name being transferred by Dickens to the old manor-house associated with Pip and Estella, and with that “immensely rich and grim lady” the aforesaid Miss Havisham. Restoration House, which dates from Elizabeth’s reign, afforded temporary lodging to Charles II. in 1660, who subsequently honoured his host, Sir Francis Clarke, with a series of large tapestries of English workmanship, which are still preserved.

In Rochester High Street the visitor cannot fail to observe, on the north side, a stone-fronted building with three gables, having over the entrance-gate a curiously inscribed tablet, which reads thus:

Richard Watts, Esquire, by his Will dated 22nd August, 1579, founded this Charity for Six Poor Travellers, who, not being Rogues or Proctors, May receive gratis for one Night Lodging, Entertainment, and Fourpence each.

This quaint institution, founded by Master Richard Watts, Rochester’s sixteenth-century philanthropist, still flourishes, and it is an exceptional thing for a night to pass without its full complement of applicants for temporary board and lodging, according to the terms formulated by the charitable founder, by whom also were established several almshouses situated on the Maidstone Road, endowed for the support and maintenance of impoverished Rochester townsfolk. Watts’s Charity, in the High Street, is immortalized by Dickens in the Christmas number of _Household Words_, 1854, entitled “The Seven Poor Travellers,” in which the story of Richard Doubledick is one of the most touching things the novelist ever penned. Dickens, doubtless, frequently visited the Charity during his Gad’s Hill days, for he delighted in escorting his American friends and others around the old city, and pointing out to them its more striking features. In one of the visitors’ books, in which many distinguished names are recorded, will be found (under date May 11, 1854, the year of publication of the above-mentioned Christmas number) the bold autographs of Charles Dickens and his friend Mark Lemon.

An account of Dickensian Rochester which omitted to mention the Bull Inn would be unpardonably incomplete. The Bull, the historic Bull of “The Pickwick Papers,” which the imperturbable Mr. Jingle averred to Mr. Pickwick was a “good house” with “nice beds,” is naturally one of the principal sights of Rochester from the point of view of the Dickens admirer and student, and Dickens pilgrims from all parts of the world immediately direct their steps thither on their arrival in the city. Situated on the south side of the High Street, within a short distance of Rochester Bridge, the Bull and Victoria Hotel (to give its full designation) has an exceedingly unprepossessing brick frontage, its only decorative feature being the Royal Arms over the entrance. Why does the famous coaching-inn bear the double sign of the Bull and _Victoria_? It originated in this way: One stormy day at the end of November, 1836, the late Queen Victoria (then Princess), with her mother the Duchess of Kent, stopped at the Bull; they were travelling to London from Dover, and the royal party, warned of the possibility of their carriage being upset in crossing the bridge, stayed at the hostelry all night, the apartment in which England’s future Sovereign slept being the identical room previously allocated to Mr. Tupman in “Pickwick.” Naturally, in order to commemorate the royal visit, the inn was called by its present designation, although popularly known simply as the Bull. Some portions of the establishment still retain their old-world characteristics, although it must be confessed that the appearance of the majority of the dormitories and living-rooms partakes more of the early Victorian period than of an earlier date; one might conjecture, too, that the house had been refronted during the beginning of the nineteenth century. The place is replete with Pickwickian associations; here we may see the veritable staircase where the stormy interview occurred between the irate Dr. Slammer and Alfred Jingle; here, too, is the actual ball-room, which, with its glass chandeliers and “elevated den” for the musicians, has remained unaltered since the description of it appeared in “Pickwick.” The sleeping apartments of Messrs. Tupman and Winkle (“Winkle’s bedroom is inside mine,” said Mr. Tupman) may be identified in those numbered 13 and 19 respectively, while Mr. Pickwick’s room is distinguished as “No. 17,” which tradition declares was occupied on at least one occasion by Dickens himself, and now contains some pieces of furniture formerly in use at Gad’s Hill Place. Although much less prominently than in “Pickwick,” the Bull is introduced in other works of Dickens. It appears, for example, in one of the “Sketches by Boz,” entitled “The great Winglebury Duel” (written before “Pickwick”), where “the little town of Great Winglebury” and “the Winglebury Arms” are undoubtedly intended for Rochester and its principal hostelry. In “Great Expectations” the Bull is again introduced as the Blue Boar, where it will be remembered that, in honour of the important event of Pip being bound apprentice to Joe Gargery (the premium having been paid by Miss Havisham), arrangements were made for a dinner at the Blue Boar, attended by the servile Pumblechook, the Hubbles, and Mr. Wopsle. “Among the festivities indulged in rather late in the evening,” observes Pip, who did not particularly enjoy himself on the occasion, “Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins’s Ode, and ‘threw his blood-stain’d sword in thunder down,’ with such effect that a waiter came in and said, ‘The commercials underneath sent up their compliments, and it wasn’t the Tumblers’ Arms!’”

It was recently rumoured that the Bull, not proving satisfactorily remunerative, stood in danger of demolition, and that a new hotel, possessing those improvements which present-day travellers regard as indispensable, would be erected on the site. Needless to say, all Dickens lovers would deplore the realization of such a proposal.

* * * * * * * *

I venture to conclude with a few supplementary remarks concerning Gad’s Hill Place, the bourne to which all devout Dickens worshippers make a pilgrimage, among whom our American cousins are undoubtedly the most ardent enthusiasts.

Dickens paid the purchase-money for Gad’s Hill Place on March 14, 1856; it was a Friday, and handing the cheque for £1,790 to Wills, he observed: “Now, isn’t it an extraordinary thing—look at the day—Friday! I have been nearly drawing it half a dozen times, when the lawyers have not been ready, and here it comes round upon a Friday as a matter of course.” He frequently remarked that all the important events of his life happened to him on a Friday. Referring to this transaction, Mrs. Lynn Linton, in “My Literary Life,” says: “We sold it cheap, £1,700, and we asked £40 for the ornamental timber. To this Dickens and his agent made an objection; so we had an arbitrator, who awarded us £70, which was in the nature of a triumph.” The house contains fourteen rooms and the usual offices; there are greenhouses, stables, a kitchen-garden, a farmyard, etc., the property comprising eleven acres of land, a considerable portion of which Dickens subsequently acquired through private negotiations with the respective owners.

At Gad’s Hill Dickens produced some of his best work. During the period of his residence here (1857-1870), he wrote the concluding chapters of “Little Dorrit,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” “Great Expectations,” “Our Mutual Friend,” and the fragment of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” concerning which Longfellow entertained a very high opinion, believing that it promised to be one of the finest of his stories; he also contributed to _All The Year Round_ those remarkable papers published under the general title of “The Uncommercial Traveller,” perhaps the most delightful of his minor writings.

It was on June 8, 1870, that Dickens, while at dinner, suddenly became very ill and almost immediately lost consciousness, from which he never recovered. On the following day his spirit fled, and it is no exaggeration to say that never has the death of a distinguished man caused greater consternation throughout the civilized world than did the unexpected passing of the great novelist.

Not many weeks had elapsed after this sad event when Gad’s Hill Place and its contents were disposed of by public auction. The house, with eight acres of meadow-land, was virtually bought in by Charles Dickens the younger at the much enhanced price of £7,500. For a time the novelist’s eldest son made it his home; but, as he informed the present writer, the increasing needs of his large and growing young family could not be sufficiently accommodated, and this determined him to sell the place—a decision which naturally caused those interested in its fate to fear the possibility of its falling into the hands of an unsympathetic proprietor, who would fail to appreciate or to cherish the unique associations. After being a considerable time on the market, the property was purchased in 1879 by Captain (now Major) Austin F. Budden, then of the 12th Kent Artillery Volunteers, and Mayor of Rochester from that year until 1881.

It was during Major Budden’s occupancy of Gad’s Hill Place, in the late summer of 1888, that I accompanied my friend the late Mr. W. R. Hughes (author of “A Week’s Tramp in Dickens Land”) on a memorable visit to this famous residence. We met with a most friendly reception from the genial host and his wife, and were privileged to inspect every point of interest within and without—the library with its curious dummy book-backs, the dining-room where “the Master” succumbed to the fatal seizure, the conservatory (his “last improvement”), the well (with the Major’s mare, Tell-tale, busily drawing water), the grave of the pet canary, the tunnel under the Dover road, etc. Perhaps the most unexpected treat was the view from the roof of the building, whence it is easy to realize the charming environment. Looking northward from this high elevation, we may view the marshes, which flat and dreary expanse is relieved by a glimpse of the Thames, widening as it approaches seaward, and bearing upon its silvery bosom a number of vessels, both steamships and sailing ships, the ruddy brown sails of the barges giving colour to the scene. To the east is the valley of the Medway, the prospect including a distant view of Rochester, crowned by the rugged keep of the old Castle and by the Cathedral tower.[115] To the south the beautifully undulating greensward of Cobham Park and the umbrageous Cobham Woods complete this wonderful panorama of Nature.

In 1889 (the year following that of our visit) Gad’s Hill Place narrowly escaped destruction by fire. It is the old story—a leakage of gas, a naked light, and an explosion; happily, Major Budden’s supply of hand-grenades did their duty and saved the building. Shortly afterwards the house and accompanying land were again in the market, and in 1890 a purchaser was found in the Hon. Francis Law Latham, Advocate-General at Bombay. This gentleman, however, could not enter into possession until his return to England a few months later. Meanwhile Major Budden took up his residence elsewhere, so that during a part of the year 1891 Gad’s Hill Place was empty and deserted, pathetically contrasting with those ever-to-be-remembered days when Charles Dickens and his hosts of friends enlivened the neighbourhood with cricket matches, athletic sports, etc. Mr. Latham is still the tenant-owner of Gad’s Hill Place, and, needless to say, thoroughly appreciates the unique associations of his attractive home, where he hopes to spend in quiet and secluded retirement the remaining years of a busy life.

FOOTNOTES

[1]Almost the whole of the Isle of Portsea, with the old parishes of Portsmouth and Portsea, is now included in the Borough of Portsmouth, Landport being one of the divisions of the ancient parish of Portsea; while the old Portsmouth parish still remains but a small one, that of Portsea is of considerable dimensions, and divided into several parishes. One of the streets east of Commercial Road is called “Dickens Street,” in honour of the novelist.

[2]“The Mudfog Papers.”

[3]Christmas Number of _Household Words_, 1854.

[4]“David Copperfield,” chap. xiii.

[5]“One Man in a Dockyard” (_Household Words_, September 6, 1851).

[6]“One Man in a Dockyard” (_Household Words_, September 6, 1851).

[7]“The Wreck of the Golden Mary” (Christmas Number of _Household Words_, 1856).

[8]See “The Guest” in the Christmas Number of _Household Words_, 1855.

[9]See “The Guest” in the Christmas Number of _Household Words_, 1855; Langton’s “Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens,” 1883.

[10]“David Copperfield,” chap. ii.

[11]_Household Words_, April 6, 1850.

[12]_Household Words_, Christmas Number, 1852.

[13]“David Copperfield,” chap. iv.

[14]_Ibid._

[15]“Great Expectations,” chap. xix.

[16]_All the Year Round_, June 30, 1860.

[17]_Vide_ “St. Pancras, Past and Present,” by Frederick Muller, 1874.

[18]To Mr. R. B. Prosser (editor of _St. Pancras Notes and Queries_) I am indebted for much useful information respecting the early London homes of Charles Dickens. He has discovered that in the parish rate-book for October 8, 1823, the name of John Dickens appears as the tenant of No. 16, Bayham Street, and also at No. 18; in the next rate-book (January 21, 1824) No. 16 is marked “empty.” In 1866 the Metropolitan Board of Works renumbered Bayham Street (then consisting of about a hundred and fifty houses), incorporating therewith Bayham Street South and Fleming Place.

[19]The Fox-under-the-Hill stood at the foot of Ivy Bridge Lane, which formed a boundary between Westminster City and the Liberty of the Duchy of Lancaster (Savoy). Between Salisbury Stairs (adjoining the little tavern) and London Bridge there plied three halfpenny steamboats, named respectively the _Ant_, the _Bee_, and the _Cricket_, whereof the latter two came to an untimely end. The building of the Hotel Cecil has wiped out Cecil and Salisbury Streets, and entirely transformed this locality, including the destruction of the quaint ale-house itself.

[20]Possibly a mistake of the rate-collector. The name Roylance is not uncommon in the district.

[21]In 1820 Seymour Street, with the site of Euston Square Station, was a huge brick-field, with a solitary “wine vaults” stuck in the middle of it.

[22]A writer in Hone’s “Year-Book,” 1826, says: “Somers Town is full of artists, as a reference to the Royal Academy Catalogue will evince. In Clarendon Square still lives, I believe, Scriven, the engraver, an artist of great ability and, in his day, of much consideration. In the same neighbourhood dwells the venerable Dr. Wilde, who may be justly termed the best engraver of his age for upwards of half a century.”

W. H. Wills (assistant editor on _All the Year Round_), in recalling Somers Town of this period, refers to its “aristocracy,” and to the Polygon as its “Court centre,” situated in the middle of Clarendon Square. “In and around it,” he says, “Art and Literature nestled in cosy coteries, with half-pay officers (including one Peninsular Colonel), city merchants, and stockbrokers.... The most eminent historical engravers of that day dated their works, ‘as the Act directs,’ from Somers Town.” Theodore Hook lived in Clarendon Square, and Peter Pindar, Sir Francis Burdett, with other notabilities, in close proximity thereto.

The houses which comprised the Polygon prior to 1890 were demolished by the Midland Railway Company in the following year, and the buildings now occupying the site were erected by the Company for habitation by persons of the labouring class who were displaced by the acquisition of the property.

[23]Another popular novelist, William Black, also lived in this house, and, it is believed, in the selfsame rooms.

[24]The office of the _Morning Chronicle_ was at No. 332, Strand, opposite Somerset House, the building having been recently demolished for improvements in widening the thoroughfare.

[25]Reprinted as “Mr. Minns and his Cousin” in “Sketches by Boz.”

[26]A writer in _Middlesex and Hertfordshire Notes and Queries_, July, 1895, states that Dickens also occupied for some months a suite of rooms in Wood’s Hotel (Furnival’s Inn) on the first-floor, south-east corner of the main building.

[27]The date of Edmund Yates’s residence here was 1854 _et seq._ The rent of his house (he says) was £70 a year, “on a repairing lease” (which means an annual outlay of from £25 to £30 to keep the bricks and mortar and timbers together), and the accommodation consisted of a narrow dining-room, a little back bedroom, two big drawing-rooms, two good bedrooms, three attics, with kitchen and cellar in the basement. This description conveys an idea of the character and rental value of Dickens’s home, five doors distant.

[28]The property hereabouts is owned by the Doughty family, and belongs to the notorious Tichborne estate.

[29]I am indebted for many of these particulars to Mr. E. J. Line, author of an illustrated article entitled “The Thames Valley of Charles Dickens,” printed in the _Richmond and Twickenham Times_, December 24, 1903.

[30]“Jack Straw’s Castle, also known as the Castle Hotel, which stands on elevated ground near the large pond and the flagstaff, has been somewhat modernized of late years. It has been generally supposed that the name of this hostelry is derived from the well-known peasant leader in the terrible rising of Richard II.’s time; but Professor Hales assures us there is no sufficient authority for the tradition, for the present designation is perhaps not older than the middle of the eighteenth century, the original sign being most likely The Castle, without any preceding genitive, Richardson, for example, thus referring to it in ‘Clarissa Harlowe,’ 1748. For the connection of Jack Straw with Hampstead there is apparently no historic defence.”—_The Home Counties Magazine_, April, 1899.

[31]Serjeant (afterwards Justice) Talfourd, to whom “Pickwick” was dedicated. He composed a sonnet “To Charles Dickens, on his ‘Oliver Twist,’” and declared that this story was the most delightful he had ever read.

[32]“Some Recollections of Mortality,” first printed in _All the Year Round_, May 16, 1863.

[33]This church figures prominently in Hogarth’s paintings of “The Rake’s Progress.” It was the scene also of Byron’s baptism and of the marriage of the Brownings.

Apropos, it may be mentioned that in 1843, during Dickens’s residence in the parish of St. Marylebone, he took sittings for a year or two in the Little Portland Street Unitarian Chapel, for whose officiating minister, Edward Tagart, he had a warm regard, which continued long after he had ceased to be a member of the congregation.

[34]“A Week’s Tramp in Dickens Land,” by W. R. Hughes, 1891.

[35]The Euston and Victoria Hotel no longer exists. It stood in Euston Grove, at No. 14, Euston Square (north side).

[36]No. 1, Devonshire Terrace was at one time the home of George du Maurier, the well-known _Punch_ artist. It is now partly utilized as solicitors’ offices.

[37]The artist removed to another residence in the Square, not more than a couple of houses from that of Dickens.

[38]_I.e._, no workmen.

[39]First printed in “The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[40]First printed in “The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[41]Tavistock House was for many years the residence of James Perry (editor of Dickens’s old paper, the _Morning Chronicle_, in its best days), and was then noted for its reunions of men of political and literary distinction. Eliza Cook, the poetess, also lived in Tavistock House when she left Greenhithe, Kent, and Mary Russell Mitford (authoress of “Our Village”) became an honoured guest there in 1818. The house was afterwards divided, and the moiety, which still retained the name of Tavistock, became the home of Frank Stone.

From the front windows of Tavistock House, which stood immediately on the right on entering the railed-in garden or square, the spire of St. Pancras Church was plainly visible, being but a short distance away. The pillars of the gateway leading to the enclosure were (and are) surmounted by quaint lamps with iron supports. Dickens held the lease from the Duke of Bedford at a “peppercorn” ground-rent.

[42]The portrait-bust was probably that executed in marble by Dickens’s beloved friend Angus Fletcher (“Poor Kindheart,” as the novelist called him), whose mother was an English beauty and heiress. He died in 1862. At the sale of Dickens’s effects in 1870, the bust realized fifty-one guineas, and it would be interesting to know its present destination. The pair of reliefs after Thorwaldsen were disposed of on the same occasion for eight and a half guineas.

[43]“Mary Boyle—Her Book,” 1901.

[44]I quote the opening lines of this eccentric effusion:

“‘Great men,’ no doubt, have a great deal to answer for. No one will deny that. Their ‘genius,’ which brings them to the front, and which causes men, women, and children to worship them for the pleasure their beautiful gifts procure to eyes, ears, and senses, brings them all much responsibility.

“But who would ever have imagined that their dwellings may bring grave responsibility and grave trouble to those who take up their abode in a house which the presence of their genius has hallowed? I live in Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London—a dear house, in a nice, quiet, shady garden, where grow fine large old plantains (out of the Square proper), and where in summer, from every window of the house, you may imagine yourself in the country—the real country! That sounds very grand and luxurious in London; and though the mere fact of living in the house has very nearly brought upon me the most terrible fate which can befall a human being nowadays—namely, _that of a sane person shut up in a lunatic asylum, put there for the purpose of being slowly or ‘accidentally’ murdered_—I cling to the spot because I have spent the happiest, the most interesting, and the most illumined part of my life there; also days of the most bitter anguish, the most heart-crushing despair, when I was obliged to leave the dear home and husband for some time, because I could not stop crying. The thought of my loss and the shipwreck of my life was too vivid, too much for me. I went away and returned when I had got calm enough to restrain my tears, but with the sun set for ever on what remained to me of the summer of middle life. I love the dear home, too, because my darling puggies are buried in the garden under the mulberry-tree, without a tombstone, alas! because ever since they died I have been planning to have a pretty monument made to mark the spot where they lay, and that when I have thought I could afford myself that pleasure somebody has generally stolen my money ... and I have to put off ordering the intended _work of art_, which I mean it to be, till I feel ‘flush’ again. I was a slave to my dear Dan for nearly thirteen years, and I think I must have loved that dog as much as anybody ever loved anything in this world.

“I must not let you wonder too long what I am driving at, my readers, by telling you that, through the mere fact of living in what had been a house where a great man had lived, I nearly got locked up in a lunatic asylum. You must think me insane, I fancy, to say such a thing, and I must confess that you might guess every mortal and immortal thing under the sun, but you would never guess how this most frightful occurrence took place.

“Those who have read Charles Dickens’s ‘Life,’ by Mr. Forster, will know that he is the ‘great man’ who had lived at Tavistock House for twelve [ten] years. People from all parts of the world have come to look at the house Charles Dickens lived in, and see the interior of the house, a request which I have frequently complied with.”

On another page Mrs. Weldon says: “Although three keepers got into Tavistock House and actually laid hold of me, I escaped their delicate intentions, as I consider, by a merciful interposition of Providence....”

At the Dickens Birthday Celebration, the dancers were attired in the costumes of Dickens characters, and Mrs. Weldon appeared in wig and gown—a very fascinating Serjeant Buzfuz.

[45]The neuralgic pain in his foot, originating, he believed, in a prolonged walk in the snow, continued to cause acute suffering, and completely prostrated him at intervals.

[46]At Sotheby’s, on December 4, 1902, were sold the office table, two chairs, and a looking-glass, which for many years were in daily requisition by Dickens at the office of _All the Year Round_.

[47]Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, in the _St. James’s Gazette_, March 6, 1899.

[48]These interesting conjectures are culled from the _Wiltshire Advertiser_, February 4, 1904.

[49]“The Real Dickens Land,” by H. Snowden Ward, 1903.

[50]“Bleak House,” chap. lvi.

[51]Letter to Forster, January 27, 1869.

[52]“The Pickwick Papers,” chap. xxxiv.

[53]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[54]“... A strong place perched upon the top of a high rock, around which, when the tide is in, the sea flows, leaving no road to the mainland.”—“A Child’s History of England,” chap. ix.

[55]In the early part of the last century the Logan, or Rocking, Stone could be easily swayed to and fro, its poise being so accurate that a hand-push would set it in motion and cause it to rock. In April, 1824, this huge rock was overthrown by a party of sailors, and, filled with remorse for this foolish act, the leader of the party (Lieutenant Goldsmith, nephew of the poet) determined to replace it at his own expense, the stone being swung back with pulleys to its original resting-place in November of the same year, amid great local rejoicing. But its rocking propensities were sadly diminished, and at the present time have ceased altogether.

[56]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[57]Forster’s “Life of Dickens.”

[58]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[59]Thackeray wrote some of the early numbers of “Vanity Fair” at the Old Ship Inn, and caused George Osborne and his bride to spend the first few days of their married life there.

[60]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.” This passage reminds us of the following contemporary reference in “Vanity Fair,” chap. xxii.: “But have we any leisure for a description of Brighton?—for Brighton, a clean Naples, with genteel lazzaroni; for Brighton, that always looks brisk, gay, and gaudy, like a harlequin’s jacket....”

[61]_Vide_ “Mary Boyle—Her Book,” 1901. Miss Boyle, an intimate friend of Dickens, pleasingly records her recollections of Dr. Everard’s school, where, as a girl, she was very popular among his pupils, and much in request at the dances. Her partners included the late and the present Lords Northampton, Mr. Frederick Leveson-Gower, and her cousins, the sons of Sir Augustus Clifford.

[62]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[63]See _Punch_, August 25, 1849. In the background of the drawing are represented the ruins of Cook’s Castle.

[64]In March, 1902, the Great White Horse was sold by public auction, and purchased by the lessee for £14,500.

[65]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[66]For this information I am indebted to Dr. John Bately, of Gorleston, who has made a careful study of the subject, and to whom I am similarly obliged for useful suggestions respecting “Blunderstone Rookery,” the original of which (he is convinced) is the Rectory, not the Hall. Is it not probable that Dickens combined the features of both places, and so produced a composite portrait?

[67]The Morrit Arms is now the only establishment of the kind in Greta Bridge.

[68]“Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[69]The King’s Head, in the Market Place, Barnard Castle, has been enlarged since 1838, but the older portion remains much as it was then.

[70]See “The Speeches of Charles Dickens.”

[71]“Poor Mercantile Jack,” in _All the Year Round_, March 10, 1860.

[72]Elsewhere in the book the author tells us that the great factories looked like Fairy palaces when illumined at night.

[73]The late Mr. Robert Langton, author of “The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens,” states that Dickens, in “Hard Times,” is unsuccessful in his attempt to render the Lancashire dialect—that the utterances put into the mouths of Stephen Blackpool and others in the book “are very far from being correct,” a matter upon which, from his long residence in Manchester, that critic is qualified to speak. Mr. Langton points out that the inscription on the sign of the Pegasus’ Arms, at which inn Sleary’s circus company put up, “Good malt makes good beer,” etc., was taken from an old sign, the Malt Shovel, existing until 1882 at the foot of Cheetham Hill.

[74]See the _Manchester Evening Chronicle_, January 7, 1904. In this paper were published during 1903-1904 a series of interesting articles on “Dickens and Manchester,” whence some of these details are culled.

[75]“The County of the Cheerybles,” by the Rev. Hume Elliot.

[76]Many of these details are quoted from the _Manchester Evening News_, October 27, 1903.

[77]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[78]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[79]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[80]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[81]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[82]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[83]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.” It is now rumoured that, in the thinning-out process adopted by the Wigton magistrates, some of the oldest established licensed houses in the county are threatened with extinction, all of those in Hesket-New-Market being objected to. Happily, the house immortalized by Dickens will escape, being no longer an inn.

[84]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.” We are told that “a portion of the lazy notes from which these lazy sheets are taken” was written at the King’s Arms Hotel.

[85]“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices.”

[86]_Ibid._

[87]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[88]The successful horses on this day were Impérieuse (St. Leger), Blanche of Middlebec (Municipal Stakes), Skirmisher (Her Majesty’s Plate), and Meta (Portland Plate).

[89]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[90]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[91]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[92]In 1898 the Birthplace Visitors’ Books for May, 1821, to September, 1848, in which are preserved the autographs of Sir Walter Scott, Dickens, Washington Irving, and a host of celebrities, were sold at Sotheby’s auction-rooms, the four volumes realizing £56.

[93]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[94]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[95]_I.e._, an infant phenomenon, _à la_ Crummles in “Nicholas Nickleby.”

[96]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.” The reference to “the Miss Snevellicci business” is an allusion to the theatrical incident in “Nicholas Nickleby,” chap. xxiv.

[97]The diary records, under date October 29, 1838: “Hatfield expenses on Saturday, £1 12s.”

[98]Christmas number of _All the Year Round_, 1863.

[99]“The Poor Man and his Beer” in _All the Year Round_, April 30, 1859.

[100]The Christmas number of _All the Year Round_, 1861.

[101]“Travelling Abroad.”

[102]Probably that portion descriptive of Cobham village and park was penned here. His landlord, Thomas White, was still living in 1883.

[103]Miller’s “Jottings of Kent,” 1871.

[104]It would seem, from the published correspondence of 1859, that the house (No. 40, Albion Street) occupied by him twenty years previously had been absorbed by the hotel.

[105]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[106]“The Letters of Charles Dickens.”

[107]“Our Watering-Place,” first published in _Household Words_ August 2, 1851, was reprinted as “Our English Watering-Place.”

[108]See the letter to Mrs. Charles Dickens, September 3, 1850.

[109]_Ibid._

[110]“A Week’s Tramp in Dickens Land,” by W. R. Hughes, F.L.S.

[111]“Out of Town,” first printed in _Household Words_, September 29, 1855.

[112]“Out of Town.”

[113]In the same play, curiously enough, one of the minor characters is named “Gadshill.”

[114]“A Week’s Tramp in Dickens Land,” by W. R. Hughes, 1891.

[115]It is generally admitted that the tower of Rochester Cathedral is altogether out of harmony with the rest of this Norman edifice. It was designed by Cottingham, and erected in 1825 to replace the earlier tower, which was surmounted by a thick stunted spire. A fund has been raised to which the late Dean, Dr. Reynolds Hole, so generously contributed, for the purpose of substituting a tower approximating in character the older structure.

At the time of publication (December, 1904) the lowering and re-casing of the tower and the addition of a 66 ft. spire are completed.

INDEX

_The titles of the writings of Dickens are printed in italics._

A Adelaide Street, Strand, 32. Adelphi, 30. Ainsworth, H., 54. Alamode beef-houses, 31. Alderbury, 100. Aldwych, 80. Allonby, 144. “All the Year Round,” 78, 79, 222. Amesbury, 100. Anderson, Hans Christian, 70, 210. “Animal Magnetism,” 172. Athenæum Club, 80. Austin, Henry, 49; and Tavistock House, 66.

B Bagstock, Major, and Brighton, 106. Bangor, 169. _Barnaby Rudge_, 60, 103. Barnard Castle, 125. Barnet, 55, 173. Bath, 85, 87-93. _Battle of Life_, 63. Beard, Thomas, 82. Beckhampton, 87. Birkenhead, 169. Birmingham, 163-166. Black Country, the, 163. Blackfriars Bridge, 35. Blanchard, E. Laman, 211. _Bleak House_, 27, 42, 56, 69, 71, 82, 103, 172, 176, 195. Blimber’s, Dr., establishment at Brighton, 106. Blimber, Dr., original of, 106. Blunderstone, original of, 16, 117, 120. Blundeston, original of Blunderstone, 16, 117, 120. Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, 107-111. Bowes, 126. Boyle, Mary, 72, 107. Bridgnorth, 163. Brighton, 63, 103-107. Bristol, 83. Broadstairs, 54, 64, 188-197. Brompton, New, 8. Browdie, John, original of, 126. Budden, James, original of Fat Boy, 12. Burnett, Henry, 137. Bury St. Edmunds, 114, 115.

C Canterbury, 190, 202, 203, 205, 210 Capel Curig, 169. Carlisle, 146. Carlyle, Thomas, 72. Carracross, a village of Peggotty Huts, 119. Carrock Fell, 142. Cassell and Co., 28. Chalk, 186, 187, 211. Chandos Street, Covent Garden, 37, 39. Charing Cross Hospital, 38. Charing Cross railway-bridge, 30. Charlotte Street, Blackfriars, 35. Chatham, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 25, 26, 183, 185, 186, 204, 205, 214, 215. Cheadle, 169. Cheeryble Brothers, originals of, 138. Chelmsford, 49. Chertsey, 55. Chesney Wold, 172, 173. Chester, 163. _Child’s Dream of a Star_, 17. _Child’s Story_, 18. _Chimes, The_, 62, 82. Cholmeley, original of Tony Weller, 22. _Christmas Carol_, 60, 73, 171. Clare Market, 80. Clatford, 86. Clifton, 84. Cloisterham (Rochester), 214. Coaches: “Brighton Era,” 103. “Commodore,” 20, 22. Cooper Company’s, Bristol, 85. “Glasgow Mail,” 124. Timpson’s “Blue-eyed Maid,” 21. Cobham, 20, 186, 208, 210. Cobham Hall, 211. Cob-Tree Hall, Aylesford, 201. Coketown, original of, 133. Collins, Wilkie, 72, 141. Conway, 169. Cook, Eliza, 69. Cooling, 212-214. Cornwall, trip into, with Stanfield, Maclise, and Forster, 95. Covent Garden, 30. Coventry, 170. _Cricket on the Hearth_, 60. Cumberland, 141.

D “Daily News,” 81. _David Copperfield_, 3, 8, 9, 12, 16, 19, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 40, 42, 44, 45, 50, 60, 63, 103, 108, 110, 117-122, 193, 195, 199, 200, 202. Dawson, Dr., at school with Dickens, 40. Debtors’ prison, Southwark, 28. Dedlock Arms, original of, 173. Dibabses, home of, 95. Dickens, Alfred Tennyson, 61. Dickens, Charles: Birth, 1; baptism, 3; childhood days, 6, 7; at school in Chatham, 11, 14; Chatham days, 18-20; leaves Chatham for London, 20; boyhood and youth in London, 23-48; first employment, 29; school again, 39; clerk at a solicitor’s and then at attorneys’, 41; takes to journalism, 44; studies shorthand, 44; reporter on the “True Sun,” “Mirror of Parliament,” and “Morning Chronicle,” 46; first attempt at authorship, 47; commences _Pickwick_, 50; marriage, 51; birth of his son Charles, 51; of his daughters, Mary and Kate, 54; of his sons, Walter Landor, Francis Jeffrey, Alfred Tennyson, Henry Fielding, and daughter, Dora Annie, 61; and of Sidney Smith Haldemand, 63; birth of son, Edward Bulwer Lytton, 71; takes Gad’s Hill Place, 73; return from America, 95; death, June 9, 1870, 222. Dickens, Mrs. Charles, 88, 166. Dickens, Charles Culliford Boz, 51, 64. Dickens, Dora Annie, 61. Dickens, Edward Bulwer Lytton, 71. Dickens, Elizabeth, mother of Charles, 3, 26, 33, 38. Dickens Fellowship, 17. Dickens, Francis Elizabeth, 3. Dickens, Francis Jeffrey, 61. Dickens, Henry Fielding, 61. Dickens, John, 2, 5-20, 23, 26, 28, 33, 37, 39, 41, 43, 94. Dickens, Kate, 54. Dickens, Mary, 54, 59. Dickens Road, 193. Dickens, Sidney Smith Haldemand, 63. Dickens Street, Portsmouth, 2. Dickens, Walter Landor, 61. Dingley Dell, 201. _Dinner at Poplar Walk_, 47. Doctors’ Commons, 44. _Dombey and Son_, 33, 60, 63, 106, 162. Dombey, burial of, 61. Dombey, Mr., and Brighton, 106. Dombey, Mr., marriage of, 61. Dombey, original of, 138. Dombey, Paul, at school in Brighton, 106. Doncaster, 149, 153-5. Dorrit, Fanny, original of, 138. Dotheboys Hall, 126. Dover, 8, 197, 198-199, 206, 219. Drury Lane, 31, 80. “Dullborough” (Chatham), 21, 185, 186.

E Eastgate House, Rochester, 216. “Eatanswill,” 114. Edinburgh, 155-157, 159. Egg, Augustus, 110. Ellis and Blackmore, attorneys who employed Dickens, 41, 43. Empty chair, 209. Engelhart, 25. Essex, 1, 49. Everard, Dr., original of Dr. Blimber, 106. Exeter, 93.

F Fielding’s “Tom Thumb,” 71. Fields, James T., 77. Fildes, Luke, 78. Fitzgerald, Percy, 81, 114. Fleet Prison, 28. Folkestone, 198, 199-200. Folkestone, original of Pavilionstone, 199. Frith, W. P., R.A., 73. _Frozen Deep, The_, 72.

G Gad’s Hill, 184, 201, 204-212, 218, 220, 221-224. Gaiety Theatre, 80. Garland Family, 35. Genoa, 61, 62, 110. _George Silverman’s Explanation_, 136. Giles, William, 15, 21. Glasgow, 158, 159. Glencoe, 157. “Golden dog licking a golden pot,” 35. “Golden Lucy,” original of, 12. Gounod, 74. Grant, William and Daniel, Originals of the Cheeryble Brothers, 138. Grantham, 124. Gravesend, 184, 204, 206, 211. Gray’s Inn, 50. _Great Expectations_, 21, 71, 212, 220, 222. Great North Road, 173. Great Winglebury, 220. Greta Bridge, 123. Grewgious’s chambers in Staple Inn, 51. Grip the raven, 60. _Guest, The_, 13. Guild of Literature and Art, 177. Guy’s Hospital, 35.

H Hackney churchyard, 179. Hampshire, 1. Hampstead, 39, 55. _Hard Times_, 71, 132-136. Hatfield, 174. _Haunted Man_, 60, 104. Hertford, 173. Hesket-New-Market, 148. Higham, 204. Hogarth, Catherine Thomson, 51. Hogarth, George, 51. Hogarth, Mary, 51. Hogarth, Miss, 51, 63. Holl, Frank, 25. _Holly Tree Inn_, 13. Horne, R. H., 9. Hotels: _see_ _Inns_. “Household Words,” 79, 104, 141. House of Commons Reporters, Gallery, 46. Huffam, Christopher, 4. Humphrey, Master, original of 126. Hungerford Market, 30, 39. Hungerford Stairs, Strand, 29 35, 39. Hungerford Street, 32, 160. Hungerford Suspension Bridge, 30. Hunt, Leigh, 128, 137.

I Inns and Hotels: Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, 129. Adelphi Hotel, Manchester, 169. Albion Hotel, Broadstairs, 188. Angel Inn, Bury St. Edmunds, 114. Angel, Doncaster, 153. Beaufort Arms, Bath, 93. Bedford Hotel, Brighton, 104, 105, 106. Black Prince, Chandos Street, 38. Blue Boar, Rochester, 220. Bull Hotel, Preston, 136. Bull Hotel, Rochester, 218. Bull Inn, Whitechapel, 113. Bush Inn, Bristol, 84. Castle Hotel, Coventry, 170. Catherine Wheel, Beckhampton, 87. Clarence Hotel, Chatham, 12. Copp’s Royal Hotel, Leamington, 160. County Inn, Canterbury, 202. Cross Keys, London, 21. Crozier Inn, Chatham, 13. Down Hotel, Clifton, 85. Fountain Hotel, Canterbury, 202. Fox-under-the-Hill, Adelphi, 30. George Hotel, Grantham, 124. George Inn, Greta Bridge, 124. Golden Cross, London, 22. Great White Horse, Ipswich, 112. Green Dragon, Alderbury, 100. Hen and Chickens Inn, Birmingham, 164. Horseshoe and Castle, Cooling, 212. Hotel Cecil, London, 31. Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead, 56. Kennedy’s Hotel, Edinburgh, 156. Kennett Inn, Beckhampton, 87. King’s Arms, Lancaster, 149. King’s Head, Barnard Castle, 126. Leather Bottle, Cobham, 210. Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury, 167. Lord Warden Hotel, Dover, 199. Malt Shovel, Cheetham Hill, 136. Marquis of Ailesbury’s Arms, Clatford, 86. Mitre Inn, Chatham, 12. New Inn, Greta Bridge, 124. New London Inn, Exeter, 94. Old Coach and Horses, Isleworth, 55. Old Royal Hotel, Birmingham, 165. Old Ship Hotel, Brighton, 103. Pavilion Hotel, Folkestone, 199. Plough, Blundeston, 117. Queen’s Head, Hesket-New-Market, 149. Queen’s Hotel, Manchester, 131. Queen’s Hotel, St. Albans, 176. Radley’s Hotel, Liverpool, 129. Red Lion Inn, Chatham, 12. Red Lion, High Barnet, 173. Red Lion, Parliament Street, 37. Royal Hotel, Bath, 93. Royal Hotel, Edinburgh, 157. Royal Hotel, Glasgow, 159. Royal Hotel, Norwich, 115. Royal Hotel, Yarmouth, 120. St. James’s (now Berkeley) Hotel, 78. Salisbury Arms, Hatfield, 174, 175. Saracen’s Head, Bath, 87. Shepherd’s Shord Inn, 87. Ship Inn, Allonby, 136. Sondes Arms, Rockingham, 173. Star and Garter, Richmond, 55. Sun Hotel, Canterbury, 202. Three Jolly Bargemen, Cooling, 214. Unicorn, Bowes, 126. Victoria Hotel, Euston, 63. Waite’s Hotel, Gravesend, 207. Waterloo Hotel, Edinburgh, 156. West Hoe Hotel, Plymouth, 103. White Hart, Bath, 89. White Hart, Stevenage, 182. White Lion, Wolverhampton, 167. Wood’s Hotel (Furnival’s Inn), 52. York House Hotel, Bath, 93. Ipswich, 49, 112, 115. Isle of Wight, 107. Italy, Dickens sojourn in, 62.

J Jerrold, Douglas, 141, 176. Joe the Fat Boy, original of, 12. Johnson’s Court, Fleet Street, 48. Jones, William, schoolmaster, 39. Jonson’s “Every Man in His Humour,” 128.

K Kean, Charles, 94. Kenilworth, 160, 162. Kent, 1, 183. King’s Bench Prison, 28, 29. King’s College School, 63. Kingsgate Street, Holborn, 80. Kingsway, 80. Kit’s Coty House, 201. Knebworth, 177, 179.

L Lamert, Dr., original of Dr. Slammer, 16. Lamert, James, 29, 39. Lancaster, 149-153. Landor, Walter Savage, 88. Landseer, Sir E., 54, 61. Land’s End, 95. Lankester, Mrs. and Dr., 108. Lausanne, 63. _Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices_, 141-155. Leamington, 160. Leather Bottle, Cobham, 210. Leech, John, 105, 108, 109, 110, 120. Leeds, 140, 153. “Leg o’ mutton swarry” located, 93. Lemon, Mark, 71, 109, 120. _Lighthouse, The_, 72. Limehouse Hole, 4. Lincoln’s Inn Fields (Forster’s residence and Tulkinghorn’s chambers), 62, 82, 190. Linton, Mrs. Lynn, 206, 221. _Little Dorrit_, 21, 29, 71, 72, 199, 222. Little Nell, original of, 88. Liverpool, 128. Llangollen, 169. London, 1, 20, 23. Longfellow, H. W., 60, 222. “Love Chase,” The, 169. Lowestoft, 117. Lowther Arcade, 33. Lupin, Mrs., original of her “establishment,” 100. Lynn, Rev. J., 206. Lytton, Lord, 177.

M Maclise, D., 54, 88. Macready, 47, 61, 109. “Mad Lucas,” 179. Maidstone, 200, 201, 210. Maidstone, original of Muggleton, 201. Manchester, 131-140, 169. Manchester, original of Coketown, 133. Margate, 197. Marlborough Downs, 85, 99. Marshalsea Prison, 28, 29, 33, 35, 36. _Martin Chuzzlewit_, 50, 60, 95, 98, 129. Marylebone Church, 61. Maryport, 147. _Master Humphreys Clock_, 126. Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, 28. Micawber, Mrs., 27. Micawber, Mr., 28. Millais, Sir John, 78. Mitford, Mary Russell, 69. Molloy, Mr., solicitor who employed Dickens, 41. “Monthly Magazine,” 47. Mopes, original of, 180. “Morning Chronicle,” 46, 49, 51, 155. Mount St. Michael, 96. _Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings_, 174. _Mudfog Papers_, 8. Muggleton, original of, 201. Murdstone and Grinby’s, 8, 30. _Mystery of Edwin Drood_, 13, 51, 78, 201, 214, 216, 217.

N Naples, 110. New Inn, 80. Newnham, Mrs., 12. Newspaper Press Fund, 93. New York, 110. _Nicholas Nickleby_, 54, 57, 95, 123-127, 162, 168, 169. Norfolk, 1. North Foreland, 189, 191. Norwich, 114, 115, 116. _No Thoroughfare_, 103.

O _Old Curiosity Shop_, 35, 60, 88, 163, 168, 169, 170, 188. _Oliver Twist_, 51, 54, 57, 103, 167, 173. _One Man in a Dockyard_, 9. _Our Mutual Friend_, 4, 27, 77, 179, 222. _Our School_, 39. _Our Watering-Place_, 191, 197. _Out of Town_, 199.

P Parliament Street, 36. Paris, 110. Pavilionstone, original of, 199. Paxton, Sir Joseph, 210. Pearce, Mrs. Sarah, 3. Peggotty, Dame, original of, 16. Peggotty’s hut at Yarmouth, 119. Petersham, 54. “Phiz,” 120, 123, 124, 125, 160, 167, 168, 169, 174. Pickwick, Mr., original of, 89. _Pickwick Papers_, 8, 10, 22, 28, 34, 42, 50 51, 54, 84, 86, 89, 112, 156, 164, 186, 188, 201, 210, 214, 215, 218-221. Pipchin, Mrs., original of, 33. Pipchin, Mrs., at Brighton, 106. Plymouth, 94, 103. _Poor Man and his Beer_, 175. Portsea, 2. Portsmouth, 2, 3, 5, 101, 102. Portugal Street, 80. Preston, 136. Proctor (“Barry Cornwall”), 61. Prudential Insurance Company, 52. “Punch,” 109.

Q Queen Victoria, 219.

R Ramsgate, 110. Readings in London, 78. “Red Lions” Club, 109. “Reporting” experiences, 83. _Reprinted Pieces_, 199. Residences of Dickens: Bonchurch: Winterbourne, 107. Brighton: Bedford Hotel, 104. Junction House, 104. Junction Parade, 104. King’s Road, 104. Broadstairs: 40, Albion Street, 188. Fort House, 193. 12, High Street, 188. Lawn House, 193. Chatham: Ordnance Terrace, 7, 11, 14, 17. St. Mary’s Place, The Brook, 14-17. Dover: 10, Camden Crescent, 199. Lord Warden Hotel, 199. Edinburgh: Royal Hotel, 157. Folkestone: 3, Albion Villas, 199. Gad’s Hill, 73, 184, 201, 204-212, 221-224. Gravesend: Waite’s Hotel, 207. London: Bayham Street, Camden Town, 23. Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, 43, 49. Buckingham Street, Strand, 45, 49. Cecil Street, Strand, 45. Chester Place, Regent’s Park, 63. Devonshire Terrace, 36, 58. Doughty Street, W.C., 51, 53, 57, 61. Fitzroy Street, W., 43. Furnival’s Inn, 45, 49, 52. Gloucester Place, Hyde Park, 77. Gower Street, N., 26, 29, 33. Hampstead, 39. Hanover Terrace, Regent’s Park, 76. Highgate, 43. Hyde Park Place, 77. Johnson Street, Somers Town, 39, 42. Lant Street, Borough, 33. Little College Street, N.W., 33, 38. Norfolk Street, Fitzroy Square, 7, 45. North End, 43. Osnaburgh Terrace, Euston, 62. Polygon, Somers Town, 42. Somers Place, Hyde Park, 77. Southwick Place, Hyde Park, 77. Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, 64-76, 207. Victoria Hotel, Euston, 63. Wylde’s Farm, Hampstead, 56. Lowestoft: Somerleyton Hall, 117. Petersham: Elm Cottage, 54. Portsmouth: Commercial Road, 2. Hawke Street, 5. Twickenham: Ailsa Park Villas, 54. Restoration House, Rochester, 217. Richmond, 54, 56. Rochester, 1, 8, 20, 123, 184, 201, 202, 204, 208, 210, 211, 214-221. Rockingham Castle, 171, 172, 173. Rogers, Samuel, 61. Rokeby, 124. “Roland for an Oliver,” 168. Rolls, Charles, 25. Rothamsted, 175. Rowland Hill’s Chapel, 35. Roylance, Mrs., original of Mrs. Pipchin, 33, 38.

S St. Albans, 176. St. George’s Church, Borough, 29, 35. St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea, 51. St. Martin’s Lane, 31. St. Martin’s Church, 32, 33. St. Mary’s Church, Somers Town, 40. St. Wighton waterfall, 96. Salem House, 40. Salisbury, 99. Sardinia Street, 80. Satis House, Rochester, 217. “Sea-Serpents” Club, 109 Selous, Angelo, 25. Selous, Henry, 25. _Seven Poor Travellers_, 7, 200, 216, 218. Shanklin, Isle of Wight, 107. Shaw, William, original of Squeers, 126. Sheerness, 10. Sheffield, 140. Shepherd’s Shord, 87. Shorne, 187, 211. Shrewsbury, 163, 167-169. _Sketches by Boz_, 42, 44, 220. Skimpole’s, Harold, residence, 42. Slammer, Dr., original of, 16. Smith, Sydney, 61. Smithson, Mrs., 125. Somerset House, 5, 37. Squeers, original of, 126. Stanfield, Clarkson, 61, 72. Stanfield Hall, 116. Staple Inn, 51. Steerforth, James, original of, 12. Stevenage, 177-182. Stone, Frank, 64, 110. Stone, Marcus, R.A., 64. Stonehenge, 99. Stonehouse, Devonport, 103. Strand, 30. Stratford-on-Avon, 161. Strood, 8, 205. Strougill, Lucy, original of Golden Lucy, 12, 16. Suffolk, 1, 49. “Suffolk Chronicle,” 112. “Suffolk Times and Mercury,” 112. Surrey, 1. Sussex, 1. Swiss châlet, 208.

T Tagart, Edward, 58. _Tale of Two Cities_, 71, 198, 222. Talfourd, 54, 57, 61, 110. Temple, The, 81. Thackeray and Dickens, the reconciliation, 81. Theatricals at Tavistock House, 71. Tintagel, 96. _Tom Tiddler’s Ground_, 180-182. Tong, 169-170. Traddles’s apartments in Gray’s Inn, 50. Trotwood, Betsy, original of, 193. Tulkinghorn’s chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 62. Twickenham, 54.

U _Uncommercial Traveller_, 21, 58, 115, 130, 184, 185, 198, 222. “Used Up,” 172.

W Ward, E. M., R.A., 73. Warren’s Blacking Manufactory, 29, 33, 39. Warwick, 1, 161, 162. Washington, 110. Watson, Hon. Richard and Mrs., 171. Watts’s (Richard) Charity, Rochester, 217. Waugh, Rev. F. G., 80. Weldon, Mrs. Georgina, 74; as Serjeant Buzfuz, 76. Weller, Mary, original of Dame Peggotty, 16. Weller, Tony, original of, 22. Wellington House Academy, 39. Westgate House, original of, 115. Westlock’s (John) apartments in Furnival’s Inn, 50, 51. Westminster Bridge, 36. White, Rev. James, 107. Whitechapel, 113. Wigton, 143. Wilkie, Sir David, 61. Wills, W. H., 205, 207, 221. “Wiltshire Advertiser,” 87. Winkle, Mr., the elder’s abode, 165. Wolverhampton, 163, 167. _Wreck of the “Golden Mary_,” 12.

Y Yarmouth, 117, 119-122.

THE THACKERAY COUNTRY

By LEWIS MELVILLE

Large Crown 8vo. 3/6 cloth

Containing 32 full-page Illustrations and a Map

“THE THACKERAY COUNTRY” treats of those localities which are of primary interest to those who are acquainted with the life and writings of the great novelist. Mr. Melville deals with Thackeray’s London homes and the salient features and associations of their neighbourhood. He goes with Thackeray to Paris, and follows the course of his travels on the Continent and in America, giving special attention to those places that are made the background of well-known scenes in the novels. He is careful to give all the biographical information connected with Thackeray’s residences from his arrival in England from India at the age of six until his death.

The volume is illustrated with thirty-two full-page plates reproduced from photographs specially taken for the book by Catharine W. Barnes Ward, and a map.

CONTENTS

CHAP. Preface Introductory I. Thackeray’s Early Homes II. Thackeray and the Charterhouse III. Pendennis-land, Cambridge, and the Temple IV. The Neighbourhood of Thackeray’s London Homes—1. Tyburnia; 2. Bloomsbury V. The Neighbourhood of Thackeray’s London Homes—3. St. James’s and Mayfair VI. Thackeray’s Clubs and some Bohemian Resorts VII. The Neighbourhood of Thackeray’s London Homes—4. Kensington; 5. Brompton VIII. Thackeray in Paris IX. Thackeray on the Continent X. Thackeray in America Index

THE FASCINATION OF LONDON

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SHOREDITCH and the East End

STRAND

THE THAMES

WESTMINSTER

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“The book, and the series of which it is a part, will be welcomed by those who already possess that detailed knowledge of London and its associations in which Sir Walter Besant delighted, and a perusal of its pages by those less fortunate will do much to add to the number of his disciples.”—_County Council Times._

THE ROMANCE OF LONDON

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PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

The Romance of London, as the title is intended to convey, is a book designed to bring before the reader pictorially, and with interestingly written descriptive matter, the survivals of the London of the Middle Ages, of Tudor times, and of the picturesque seventeenth century.

That these relics are so numerous will surprise many people who have not cared to explore London’s antiquities. How many, for instance, have seen all the Norman buildings in the City? The Keep of the Tower, with its perfectly-preserved Chapel, is the chief of the Norman structures; but besides this there is the grand old Church of St. Bartholomew-the-Great, West Smithfield, the crypt of St. Mary-le-Bow Church in Cheapside, and the newly-discovered Norman portions of the crypt beneath the Guildhall.

The magnificent Norman nave of St. Paul’s which survived the Great Fire of 1666, was unfortunately demolished when the scheme of restoration was abandoned.

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BLACK’S GUIDES TO LONDON

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WHERE GREAT MEN LIVED IN LONDON

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The power of appreciating associations might almost take rank as a sixth sense, it is so keenly developed in some people and entirely lacking in others. The fact that Cromwell lived in this house and that Milton was born in the other, lifts the happy possessors of this sense into another region straightway; the aroma of the past is as perceptible to them as a fine scent or a beautiful scene. To such people the little handbook now published will give great delight. It is divided into two parts, the first containing the names of the great dead who once inhabited London and peopled its streets, with information regarding their houses; and the other giving a list of the streets in London wherein once lived any men or women whose names have not died with them. It is of great interest to see what distinguished inhabitants once occupied the streets wherein one lives or where one’s friends live. As a reference book this little volume will be indispensable to many, but it is much more than a mere reference book.

PUBLISHED BY ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK . SOHO SQUARE . LONDON, W.

Transcriber’s Notes

—Retained copyright information from the printed edition: this eBook is public-domain in the country of publication.

—Silently corrected a few palpable typos.

—In the text versions only, text in italics is delimited by _underscores_.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Dickens Country, by Frederic G. Kitton