IN EAST ANGLIA.
Dickens must have become first acquainted with Eastern England during
his reporting days, as many of the scenes in “Pickwick” are laid in the
chief town of Suffolk. The merging, in 1899, of the _Suffolk Chronicle_
into the _Suffolk Times and Mercury_ revived an incident in Dickens’s
career as a reporter, in stating that it was the _Suffolk Chronicle_
which, in 1835, brought him down to Ipswich for the purpose of assisting
in reporting the speeches in connection with the Parliamentary election
at that time being contested in the county. We are further assured by
the same authority that “Boz” (then actually engaged upon the opening
chapters of “Pickwick”) stayed at the Great White Horse in Tavern Street
for two or three weeks, and it has been reasonably surmised that the
night adventure with “the middle-aged lady in the yellow curl-papers,”
ascribed to Mr. Pickwick, was a veritable experience of the young author
himself. It is said that, in consequence of this embarrassing mischance,
Dickens entertained a feeling of prejudice against the house, and never
liked the place afterwards. If this be correct, it accounts for the
somewhat disparaging remarks in “Pickwick” concerning the hotel: “Never
were such labyrinths of uncarpeted passages, such clusters of mouldy,
badly-lighted rooms, such huge numbers of small dens for eating or
sleeping in, beneath any one roof, as are collected together between the
four walls of the Great White Horse at Ipswich.” Nevertheless, the
famous hostelry still flourishes, and makes the most of its Pickwickian
associations, even to the extent of revealing to visitors the identical
bedroom (No. 16), where the adventure occurred. Over the principal hotel
entrance we may yet see the stone presentment of a “rampacious” white
horse, “distantly resembling an insane cart-horse”; but the building
generally has since been altered in the direction of certain
improvements necessitated by the requirements of present-day
travellers.[64]
[Illustration: THE COMMON HARD, PORTSMOUTH. (_Page 102._)
Nickleby and Snipe lodged “at a tobacconist’s shop on the Common
Hard,” now known as “The Old Curiosity Shop.”]
We can readily conceive that the description of the coach journey to
Ipswich, starting from the Bull Inn, Whitechapel, and rattling along the
Whitechapel and Mile End Roads, “to the admiration of the whole
population of that pretty densely-populated quarter,” and so to
Suffolk’s county town (as duly set forth in the twenty-second chapter of
“Pickwick”), is a personal reminiscence of Dickens himself when
fulfilling his engagement with the _Suffolk Chronicle_.
While busy with newspaper responsibilities, to which he had pledged
himself, he evidently made the best use of the opportunities thus
afforded of noting certain topographical details of the town, finding
“in a kind of courtyard of venerable appearance,” near St. Clement’s
Church, a suitable locale for the incident of the unexpected meeting of
Sam Weller and Job Trotter; the “green gate,” which Job was seen to open
and close after him, is locally believed to be one that adjoins the
churchyard a few yards from Church Street, the inhabitants taking great
pride in pointing it out as the precise spot where Alfred Jingle’s
body-servant embraced Sam “in an ecstasy of joy.” In regard to these
scenes Ipswich is mentioned by name, but it has been conjectured that
the town also figures in “Pickwick” under the successful disguise of
“Eatanswill,” although Norwich has been mentioned in this connection.
Certainly the weight of such evidence as that proffered by the _Suffolk
Times and Mercury_ favours the belief that Ipswich stood for the
unflattering portrait, and, but for the facts as averred by that
journal, we should possibly never have had Mr. Pickwick’s nocturnal
misadventure, nor heard of the rival editors of the _Eatanswill Gazette_
and the _Eatanswill Independent_.
Dickens’s reporting expedition in Suffolk during the electoral campaign
of 1835 doubtless compelled him to include in his itinerary several of
the leading towns in the county, where political meetings would
naturally be held, and among them Bury St. Edmunds, where, according to
tradition, he put up at the Angel Inn, his room being No. 11. In
describing this hostelry, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald says that it is “a
solemn, rather imposing, and stately building, of a gloomy slate colour,
and of the nature of a family hotel.... It has yards and stabling behind
it, which must have flourished in the old posting times.” Standing in
Market Square, it continues to this day to be the principal hotel in the
place, and remains in much the same condition as when the novelist knew
it about seventy years ago. Bury St. Edmunds, like Ipswich, has won
immortality in the pages of “Pickwick,” where it is referred to as “a
handsome little town of thriving and cleanly appearance,” its well-paved
streets being specially commended. In one of “The Uncommercial
Traveller” papers he calls it “a bright little town.”
We are told that the coach, with Mr. Pickwick among the passengers newly
arrived from Eatanswill, pulled up at the “large inn, situated in a
wide, open street, nearly facing the old abbey.” “And this,” said Mr.
Pickwick, “is the Angel. We alight here, Sam...;” whereupon a private
room was ordered, and then dinner, everything being arranged with
caution, for it will be remembered that Mr. Pickwick and his faithful
attendant were in quest of that thorough-paced adventurer Alfred Jingle,
Esq., “of No Hall, Nowhere,” intent upon frustrating probable intentions
on his part of practising further deceptions. Here, at Bury, the
“Mulberry man” (otherwise Job Trotter) was found by Sam in the pious act
of reading a hymn-book, a discovery which proved to be the initial stage
of Mr. Pickwick’s adventure at the boarding-school for young
ladies—Westgate House—which, we are told, is a well-known residence
called Southgate House, although there are other antique-looking schools
for girls on the Westgate side of the town that seem more or less to
answer the description.
More than two decades later—_i.e._, in 1861—Dickens again visited both
Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds, when he gave readings from his works,
beginning the series at Norwich, where, writing from the
recently-demolished Royal Hotel in the Market Place, he spoke of his
audience in that city as “a very lumpish audience indeed ... an intent
and staring audience. They laughed, though, very well, and the storm
made them shake themselves again. But they were not magnetic, and the
great big place (St. Andrew’s Hall) was out of sorts somehow.”[65]
On the last day of the year 1848, Dickens contemplated an excursion with
Leech, Lemon, and Forster to some old cathedral city then unfamiliar to
him, believing the sight of “pastures new” would afford him the
necessary mental refreshment. “What do you say to Norwich and Stanfield
Hall?” he queried of Forster, and it was decided forthwith that the
three friends should depart thence. Stanfield Hall had just gained
unenviable notoriety as the scene of a dreadful tragedy—the murder of
Jeremy, the Recorder of Norwich, by Rush, afterwards executed at Norwich
Castle. They arrived between the Hall and Potass Farm as the search was
going on for the pistol, and the novelist was fain to confess that the
place had nothing attractive about it, unless such a definition might be
applied to a “murderous look that seemed to invite such a crime.”
Quaint old Norwich, as it has been justly termed (although its
quaintness and picturesqueness have suffered woefully in recent years
through commercial innovations), did not appeal to Dickens, who declared
it to be “a disappointment”—everything there save the ancient castle,
“which we found fit for a gigantic scoundrel’s exit,” alluding, of
course, to Rush. The castle no longer serves as the county prison, and
its gruesome associations are practically obliterated by the wholesome
use to which the massive Norman structure is devoted, that of museum and
art gallery under civic control.
Without doubt Dickens’s principal motive in journeying to Norfolk and
Suffolk in 1848 was to obtain “local colour” for “David Copperfield,”
the writing of which he was then meditating. He stayed for a time at
Somerleyton Hall, near Lowestoft, as the guest of Sir Morton Peto, the
well-known civil engineer and railway contractor, under whose guidance
he first made acquaintance with that portion of Suffolk, studying it
carefully, and afterwards portraying it in the story with characteristic
exactitude. Two miles from Somerleyton Hall (now the residence of Sir
Saville Crossley, M.P.) is Blundeston, a typical English village, which,
thinly disguised as Blunderstone, appears in the book as the birthplace
of David. The novelist afterwards confessed that he noticed the name on
a direction-post between Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and at once adapted it
because he liked the sound of the word; the actual direction-post still
standing as he saw it.
There is a little uncertainty respecting the identity of the “Rookery”
where David first saw the light, the Rectory being regarded by some
careful students of the topography of “Copperfield” as the possible
original, whence can be obtained a fairly distinct view of the church
porch and the gravestones in the churchyard. Local tradition, however,
favours Blundeston Hall, the present tenant-owner of which (Mr. T.
Hardwich Woods) remembers that when very young he was taken by the old
housekeeper down the “long passage ... leading from Peggotty’s kitchen
to the front entrance,” and shown the “dark storeroom” opening out of
it. While staying in the neighbourhood Dickens visited Blundeston Hall,
which presented a weird and gloomy appearance before its recent
restoration, and the fact is recalled that for a brief space he
contemplated the prospect from one of the side windows facing the
church, then plainly visible from this point, but the view is now
obstructed by trees.
“In no other residence hereabouts,” observes Mr. Woods, “do rooms and
passages coincide so exactly with the descriptions given in the novel.”
In the garden we may still behold the “tall old elm-trees” in which
there were formerly some rooks’ nests, but no rooks. (“David Copperfield
all over!” cried Miss Betsey. “David Copperfield from head to foot!
Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it, and takes the
birds on trust because he sees the nests!”)
The roadside tavern referred to in the fourth chapter as “our little
village alehouse” may be recognised in the Plough at Blundeston, to the
recently-stuccoed front of which are affixed the initials “R. E. B.” and
the date “1701” in wrought-iron.
Blundeston Church, like many others in East Anglia, has a round tower
(probably Norman), but no spire, as mentioned in the story; the
high-backed pews and quaint pulpit have since been replaced by others of
modern workmanship, but happily the ancient rood-screen with its painted
panels has survived such sacrilegious treatment. The porch, with a
sun-dial above the entrance, is still intact. “There is nothing,” says
little David, “half so green that I know anywhere as the grass of that
churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so quiet as
its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there when I kneel up, early in
the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room to
look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and I
think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that it can tell
the time again?’” It is interesting to know that it was at Blundeston
House (now called The Lodge) where the poet Gray stayed with his friend
the Rev. Norton Nicholls (rector of the adjoining parishes of Lound and
Bradwell), and here he found that sublime quietude which his soul loved.
That popular seaside resort, Great Yarmouth, was first seen by Dickens
at the close of 1848, and he thought it “the strangest place in the wide
world, one hundred and forty-six miles of hill-less marsh between it and
London”; substituting the word “country” for “marsh,” the statement
would be practically correct. Strongly impressed by the exceptional and
Dutch-like features of this flat expanse, on the eastern margin of which
stands the celebrated seaport, he forthwith decided to “try his hand” at
it, with the result (as everyone knows) that he placed there, on the
open Denes, the home of Little Em’ly and the Peggottys. In all
probability the idea of causing them to live in a discarded boat arose
from his having seen a humble abode of this character when perambulating
the outskirts of Yarmouth, for such domiciles were not uncommon in those
days, and might be met with both in Yarmouth and Lowestoft; indeed, we
are told that even now the little village of Carracross, on the west
coast of Ireland, consists of seventeen superannuated fishing-boats, one
of which dates from about 1740. Apropos of Peggotty’s boat, it may be
remarked that the old inverted boat, bricked up and roofed in, which
revealed itself in 1879 during the process of demolition, has hitherto
been considered as the veritable domicile immortalized in “Copperfield”;
but the cherished belief is not worthy of credence, being unsupported by
trustworthy evidence, an important point antagonistic to that conjecture
being the fact that Peggotty’s boat stood on the open Denes upon its
keel (“Phiz” notwithstanding), whereas that discovered in Tower Road was
put keel uppermost, by a shrimper, on garden ground in the midst of a
noisome locality called by the inappropriate name “Angel’s Piece,” with
no “sandy waste” surrounding it.[66]
At Yarmouth Dickens made his headquarters at the Royal Hotel, on the
sea-front, having John Leech and Mark Lemon as congenial companions, for
illness prevented Forster from remaining with them. The old town, and
the flat, sandy expanse of uncultivated land between river and sea,
already alluded to as the Denes, deeply imprinted itself upon Dickens’s
mental retina, and he conveys his impressions thereof through the medium
of his boy-hero:
“It looked rather spongy and sloppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over
the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help
wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said,
how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth
might be situated at one of the poles, which would account for it.
[Illustration: THE GEORGE, GRETA BRIDGE. (_Page 123._)
Dickens visited this inn when collecting material for “Nicholas
Nickleby,” and here Mr. Squeers alighted from the coach on his
return from London with the new boys.]
“As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a
straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so
might improve it, and also that if the land had been a little more
separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so
much mixed up, like toast-and-water, it would have been nicer....
“When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me), and smelt
the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking
about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I
had done so busy a place an injustice, and said as much to Peggotty, who
... told me it was well known ... that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the
finest place in the universe.”
David, as Ham carried him on his broad back from the carrier’s cart to
the boathouse, gazed upon the dreary amplitude of the Denes in anxious
expectation of catching a glimpse of the romantic abode for which they
were destined. “We turned down lanes,” he says, “bestrewn with bits of
chips and little hillocks of sand, and went past gasworks, rope-walks,
boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards, ship-breakers’ yards,
caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges, and a great litter of
such places, until we came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at
a distance.... I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over
the wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house
could _I_ make out”—nothing except a “ship-looking thing,” which
presently resolved itself into the identical house for which they were
bound, and proved to be—in the boy’s estimation, at least—as charming
and delightful as Aladdin’s palace, “roc’s egg and all.” It is pointed
out by Dr. Bately that the description given by Dickens (as above
quoted) of the various objects seen on the way from Yarmouth to the
South Denes really reverses their order, just as he noted them when
walking in the contrary direction. There are not many boat-builders’
yards now remaining hereabouts.