IN SOUTHERN ENGLAND.
Portsmouth is justly proud of the fact that it is the native place of
certain distinguished men—to wit, Charles Dickens, Sir Walter Besant,
and Brunel the great engineer.
In 1838, when engaged upon “Nicholas Nickleby,” Dickens renewed
acquaintance with the town, of which it is fair to suppose he could
remember but little, seeing that he was only about two years of age when
his father was recalled to London, taking with him wife and family. He,
however, astonished Forster (who accompanied him thither) by readily
recalling memories of his childhood there, and distinctly remembering
such details as the exact shape of the military parade.
Dickens’s particular object in then journeying to Portsmouth (not on
foot, as did Nicholas and Smike) was doubtless for the express purpose
of obtaining local colour for “Nickleby,” as presented in chapters
xxiii. and xxiv. He succeeded in finding suitable lodging for Vincent
Crummles at Bulph the pilot’s in St. Thomas’s Street (conjectured to be
No. 78), for Miss Snevellicci at a tailor’s in Lombard Street, while
Nickleby and his companion were quartered at a tobacconist’s on the
Common Hard, which he describes as “a dirty street leading down to the
dockyard.” The old Portsmouth Theatre, the scene of Nicholas’s early
triumphs on the stage, plays a prominent part in the tale. This
primitive building, which stood in the High Street, was destroyed many
years ago; it occupied the site of the Cambridge Barracks; the present
house is styled “The New Theatre Royal.” The story is current in
Portsmouth that Dickens, on the occasion just referred to, called upon
the manager at the old theatre and actually asked for a small part.
Whether this tradition be true or false, we are justified in assuming
that he and Forster went behind the scenes and chatted with the players,
the result being the portrayal of those inimitable descriptions which
treat of the company of Mr. Vincent Crummles, and of the “great bespeak”
for Miss Snevellicci. Apropos of the theatre itself, as it appeared to
the hero of the story, we read: “It was not very light, but Nicholas
found himself close to the first entrance on the prompter’s side, among
bare walls, dusty scenes, mildewed clouds, heavily daubed draperies, and
dirty floors. He looked about him; ceiling, pit, boxes, gallery,
orchestra, fittings, and decorations of every kind—all looked coarse,
cold, gloomy, and wretched. ‘Is this a theatre?’ whispered Smike in
amazement. ‘I thought it was a blaze of light and finery.’ ‘Why, so it
is,’ replied Nicholas, hardly less surprised; ‘but not by day, Smike—not
by day!’” Matters theatrical have improved vastly since then, and
provincial theatres now vie with those in the Metropolis in regard to
the comfort and magnificence of their appointments.
Plymouth, in a much less degree, is also associated with Dickens. There
are slight references to the town in “David Copperfield” and “Bleak
House.” He visited Plymouth in 1858 and in 1861, staying at the West Hoe
Hotel on the first occasion, when he gave public readings in a handsome
room at Stonehouse, “on the top of a windy and muddy hill, leading
(literally) to nowhere; and it looks (except that it is new and
_mortary_) as if the subsidence of the waters after the Deluge might
have left it where it is.”[58] In 1861 we find Plymouth again included
in the itinerary of an Autumn Reading tour. Dickens’s connection with
Brighton was of a more intimate character, his acquaintance with “the
Queen of watering-places” beginning as early as 1837, when he resumed
the writing of “Oliver Twist.” “We have a beautiful bay-windowed
sitting-room here, fronting the sea,” he informed Forster; “but I have
seen nothing of B.’s brother who was to have shown me the lions, and my
notions of the place are consequently somewhat confined, being limited
to the pavilion, the chain pier, and the sea. The last is quite enough
for me....” During his stay he attended a performance at the theatre of
a comedy entitled “No Thoroughfare,” this being, curiously enough, the
exact title of the only story he ever took part himself in dramatizing
three years before his death. In 1841 he again journeyed by coach, the
Brighton Era, to Brighton, and busied himself there with “Barnaby
Rudge,” making his temporary home at the Old Ship Hotel at No. 38,
King’s Road—not the more modern establishment of that name in Ship
Street.[59] In May, 1847, Dickens lodged for some weeks at No. 148,
King’s Road, for the recovery of his wife’s health after the birth of a
son, christened Sydney Smith Haldemand. He went there first with Mrs.
Dickens and her sister and the eldest boy (the latter just recovered
from an attack of scarlet fever), and was joined at the latter part of
the time by his two little daughters. In the spring of 1850 he was again
at the King’s Road lodgings, his thoughts being then concentrated upon
the new weekly journal, _Household Words_, the first number of which
appeared in March of that year.
[Illustration: AMESBURY CHURCH. (_Page 100._)
Where Tom Pinch played the organ for nothing, and Mr. Pecksniff
heard himself denounced.]
In March, 1848, Dickens and his wife, accompanied by Mrs. Macready,
spent three weeks in Brighton at Junction House, where they were “very
comfortably (not to say gorgeously) accommodated”; and for a short time
during the spring of 1853, when engaged upon “Bleak House,” he rented
rooms at No. 1, Junction Parade. Of all his Brighton residences,
however, that which justly claims priority is the celebrated Bedford
Hotel, whence (in November, 1848) we find letters addressed to his
friends Frank Stone, A.R.A. (who was then designing illustrations for
“The Haunted Man”) and Mark Lemon. To the artist he said: “The Duke of
Cambridge is staying at this house, and they are driving me mad by
having Life Guards bands under our windows playing _our_ overtures
(_i.e._, the overtures in connection with the amateur performances by
Dickens and his friends)!... I don’t in the abstract approve of
Brighton. I couldn’t pass an autumn here, but it is a gay place for a
week or so; and when one laughs or cries, and suffers the agitation that
some men experience over their books, it’s a bright change to look out
of window, and see the gilt little toys on horseback going up and down
before the mighty sea, and thinking nothing of it.”[60] In February,
1849, Dickens spent another holiday at Brighton, accompanied by his wife
and sister-in-law and two daughters, and they were joined by the genial
artist John Leech and his wife. They had not been in their lodgings a
week when both his landlord and his landlord’s daughter went raving mad,
this untoward circumstance compelling the lodgers to seek quarters
elsewhere—at the Bedford Hotel. “If,” wrote Dickens, when relating the
adventure to Forster, “you could have heard the cursing and crying of
the two; could have seen the physician and nurse quoited out into the
passage by the madman at the hazard of their lives; could have seen
Leech and me flying to the doctor’s rescue; could have seen our wives
pulling us back; could have seen the M.D. faint with fear; could have
seen three other M.D.’s come to his aid; with an atmosphere of Mrs.
Gamps, strait-waistcoats, struggling friends and servants, surrounding
the whole, you would have said it was quite worthy of me, and quite in
keeping with my usual proceedings.” The Reading tour in 1861 again took
him to Brighton and the Bedford, and one of his audiences included the
Duchess of Cambridge and a Princess. “I think they were pleased with me,
and I am sure I was with them.”
Apart from these personal associations, Brighton derives particular
interest from the fact that it figures largely in “Dombey and Son.” It
was at the Bedford where Mr. Dombey stayed during his weekend visits to
Brighton for the purpose of seeing his children, and where Major
Bagstock enjoyed the privilege of dining with that purse-proud City
merchant. It was to Brighton that Little Paul was sent to school, first
as a pupil of the austere and vinegary Mrs. Pipchin. “The castle of this
ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton, where the
soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses
were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens
had an unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds,
whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered
holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not
expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses.” Here also
was the superior and “very expensive” establishment of Dr. Blimber—“a
great hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at
work,” where, we are told, “mental green peas were produced at
Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical
gooseberries (very sour ones, too) were common at untimely seasons, and
from mere sprouts of bushes, under Dr. Blimber’s cultivation. Every
description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of
boys under the frostiest circumstances.” We learn on excellent authority
that Dr. Blimber and his school really existed at Brighton, the
prototype of the worthy pedagogue being Dr. Everard, whose celebrated
seminary was familiarly called the “Young House of Lords,” from the
aristocracy of the pupils. It seems that during the Christmas holidays
it became customary with Dr. Everard to organize dances for the boys
(such as that so delightfully described in the fourteenth chapter of
“Dombey and Son”). In those days, curly locks were considered an
indispensable accessory to full dress, and the whole of the afternoon
preceding the ball Dr. Everard’s house was pervaded by a strong smell of
singed hair and curling-tongs.[61] “There was such ... a smell of singed
hair that Dr. Blimber sent up the footman with his compliments, and
wished to know if the house was on fire.”
In the summer and autumn of 1849 Dickens went with his family, for the
first time, to Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, where he hired for six months
the attractive villa, Winterbourne, belonging to the Rev. James White
(an author of some repute and a keen lover of books), with whom his
intimacy, already begun, now ripened into a lifelong friendship. The
novelist had in June of that year passed a brief period at Shanklin,
whence he wrote to his wife: “I have taken a most delightful and
beautiful house, belonging to White, at Bonchurch—cool, airy, private
bathing; everything delicious. I think it is the prettiest place I ever
saw in my life at home or abroad.... A waterfall in the grounds, which I
have arranged with a carpenter to convert into a perpetual
shower-bath.”[62]
He liked the place exceedingly at first, and considered that the views
from the summit of the highest downs “are only to be equalled on the
Genoese shore of the Mediterranean.” The variety of walks in the
neighbourhood struck him as extraordinary; the people were civil, and
everything was cheap, while he fully appreciated the fact that the place
was certainly cold rather than hot in the summertime, and the
sea-bathing proved “delicious.” Here at Bonchurch he was joined by John
Leech, and soon settled down to work, being then engaged upon the early
portion of “David Copperfield,” varying his literary occupations by
taking part, with his customary zest, in dinners at Blackgang and
picnics of “tremendous success” on Shanklin Down. One of these
festivities he particularly remembered, when he expressly stipulated
that the party should be provided with materials for a fire and a great
iron pot to boil potatoes in, these, with the comestibles, being
conveyed to the ground in a cart. Doubtless this was the veritable
function described by the late Mrs. Phœbe Lankester (“Penelope”). Her
husband, Dr. Lankester (to whom Dickens referred as “a very good, merry
fellow”), and other distinguished men of science then staying at
Sandown, belonged to a select and notable club founded originally by the
younger members of the British Association, and called the “Red Lions.”
The Bonchurch party, headed by Dickens, constituted themselves into a
temporary rival club, called the “Sea Serpents,” and picnics were
arranged between the two factions, the meetings usually taking place at
Cook’s Castle. “Well do I recollect,” observes Mrs. Lankester, “the
jolly procession from Sandown as it moved across the Downs, young and
old carrying aloft a banner bearing the device of a noble red lion
painted in vermilion on a white ground. Wending up the hill from the
Bonchurch side might be seen the ‘Sea Serpents,’ with their ensign
floating in the wind—a waving, curling serpent, cut out of yards and
yards of calico, and painted of a bronzy-green colour with fiery red
eyes, its tail being supported at the end by a second banner-holder.
Carts brought up the provisions on either side, and at the top the
factions met to prepare and consume the banquet on the short, sweet
grass under shadow of a rock or a tree. Charles Dickens delighted in the
fun. He usually boiled the potatoes when the fire had been lighted by
the youngsters, and handed them round in a saucepan, and John Leech used
to make sketches of us, one of which is still to be seen in the
collection from _Punch_, and is called ‘Awful Appearance of a “Wopps” at
a Picnic.’[63] I was very young then, and did not fully realize what it
was to eat potatoes boiled by Charles Dickens, or to make a figure in a
sketch by Leech.” On one of these jovial occasions a race was run, after
the repast, between Mark Lemon and Dr. Lankester, both competitors of
abnormal stoutness, Macready officiating as judge, after which the merry
party adjourned to Dickens’s villa for tea and music.
His stay at Bonchurch was enlivened, too, by visits from such cherished
friends as Justice Talfourd, Frank Stone, and Augustus Egg, social
intercourse with whom formed agreeable interludes between severe spells
of literary work. Unhappily, the enervating effect of the climate
presently began to prostrate him, and after a few weeks’ residence he
complained of insomnia, extreme mental depression, and a “dull, stupid
languor.” Commenting upon his physical condition, he remarked: “It’s a
mortal mistake—that’s the plain fact. Of all the places I ever have been
in, I have never been in one so difficult to exist in pleasantly. Naples
is hot and dirty, New York feverish, Washington bilious, Genoa exciting,
Paris rainy; but Bonchurch—smashing. I am quite convinced that I should
die here in a year.” His wife, sister-in-law, and the Leeches were also
affected, but not to the same extent, and, finding it impossible to
endure much longer the distressing symptoms, he determined to leave
Bonchurch at the end of September and “go down to some cold place,” such
as Ramsgate, for a week or two, hoping thus to shake off the effects. In
the interval he completed the fifth number of “Copperfield,” after
which, during the remainder of the holiday, he and his party (by way of
relaxation) indulged in such amusements as “great games of rounders
every afternoon, with all Bonchurch looking on.” These revels were
disagreeably interrupted by a serious accident to John Leech, who, while
bathing in a rough sea, was knocked over by an immense wave, which
resulted in congestion of the brain, and necessitated, first, the
placing of “twenty of his namesakes on his temple,” and then, as the
illness developed, the continuous application of ice to the head, with
blood-letting from the arm. The unfortunate artist becoming gradually
worse, Dickens essayed the effect of mesmerism, in the virtue of which
he apparently had faith, and succeeded in obtaining a period of
much-needed sleep for the relief of the invalid, whose condition
thenceforth improved until complete restoration of his customary health
became assured, enabling him for many subsequent years to delight the
world with his inimitable pencil. As already intimated, Dickens remained
in the Island until the expiration of the time originally planned for
this seaside holiday; but although he brought away many happy
associations, he never renewed acquaintance with Bonchurch.