IN THE NORTH.
In 1837 Dickens’s thoughts were concentrated upon a new serial story,
“Nicholas Nickleby,” in which he determined to expose the shortcomings
of cheap boarding-schools then flourishing in Northern England, his
first impressions of which were picked up when, as a child, he sat “in
by-places, near Rochester Castle, with a head full of Partridge, Strap,
Tom Pipes, and Sancho Panza.” The time had arrived (he thought) when, by
means of his writings, he could secure a large audience, to whom he
might effectively present the actual facts concerning the alleged
cruelties customarily practised at those seminaries of which he had
heard so much. Having thus resolved to punish the culprits by means of
his powerful pen, and, if possible, to suppress the evils of the system
they favoured, the novelist and his illustrator, “Phiz,” departed from
London by coach on a cold winter’s day in January, 1838, for Greta
Bridge, in the North Riding, with the express intention of obtaining
authoritative information regarding the subject of the schools, for in
that locality were situated some of the most culpable of those
institutions. Greta Bridge takes its name from a lofty bridge of one
arch, erected on the line of Watling Street, upon the site of a more
ancient structure, over the river Greta, a little above its junction
with the Tees.
The parish of Rokeby, in the petty sessional division of Greta Bridge,
is celebrated as the scene of Sir Walter Scott’s poem, “Rokeby,” which
was written on the spot, and does no more than justice to the beautiful
scenery of the neighbourhood.
Dickens and “Phiz” broke their journey at Grantham, at which town they
arrived late on the night of January 30, and put up at the George—“the
very best inn I have ever put up at.” Early the next morning they
continued their journey by the Glasgow mail, “which charged us the
remarkably low sum of £6 fare for two places inside.” Snow began to
fall, and the drifts grew deeper, until there was “no vestige of a
track” over the wild heaths as the coach approached the destination of
the two fellow-travellers, who were half frozen on their arrival at
Greta Bridge. In the story the author gives the name of the hostelry
where Squeers and his party alighted from the coach as the George and
New Inn; but, in so doing, he indulges in an artistic license, for he
thus bestows upon one house the respective signs of two distinct inns at
Greta Bridge, situated about half a mile from each other. The George
stands near the bridge already referred to, the public portion of the
premises having since been converted into a private residence. The New
Inn has also been changed, and is now a farmhouse called Thorpe Grange;
built before the railway era for Mr. Morrit, the landlord of the George,
it not only rivalled the older establishment, but absorbed its custom,
the owner claiming it as the veritable inn of Dickens’s story.[67] It
seems very probable that the novelist himself put up at the New Inn
during his brief tour of investigation in 1838; writing thence to his
wife at this date, he said that at 11 p.m. the mail reached “a bare
place with a house standing alone in the midst of a dreary moor, which
the guard informed us was Greta Bridge. I was in a perfect agony of
apprehension, for it was fearfully cold, and there were no outward signs
of anybody being up in the house. But to our great joy we discovered a
comfortable room, with drawn curtains and a most blazing fire. In half
an hour they gave us a smoking supper and a bottle of mulled port (in
which we drank your health), and then we retired to a couple of capital
bedrooms, in each of which there was a rousing fire halfway up the
chimney. We have had for breakfast toast, cakes, a Yorkshire pie, a
piece of beef about the size and much the shape of my portmanteau, tea,
coffee, ham and eggs, and are now going to look about us....”[68] After
exploring the immediate neighbourhood, Dickens, accompanied by “Phiz,”
went by post-chaise to Barnard Castle, four miles from Greta Bridge, and
just over the Yorkshire border, there to deliver a letter given to him
by Mr. Smithson (a London solicitor, who had a Yorkshire connection),
and to visit the numerous schools thereabouts. This letter of
introduction bore reference (as the author explains in his preface to
“Nicholas Nickleby”) to a supposititious little boy who had been left
with a widowed mother who didn’t know what to do with him; the poor lady
had thought, as a means of thawing the tardy compassion of her relations
on his behalf, of sending him to a Yorkshire school. “I was the poor
lady’s friend, travelling that way; and if the recipient of the letter
could inform me of a school in his neighbourhood, the writer would be
very much obliged.” The result of this “pious fraud” (as Dickens himself
termed it) has become a matter of history. The person to whom the
missive was addressed was a farmer (since identified as John S——, of
Broadiswood), who appears in the story as honest John Browdie. Not being
at home when the novelist called upon him, he journeyed through the snow
to the inn where Dickens was staying, and entreated him to advise the
widow to refrain from sending her boy to any of those wretched schools
“while there’s a harse to hoold in a’ Lunnun, or a goother to lie asleep
in!” The old coaching-house where this memorable interview is believed
to have taken place was the still existing Unicorn at Bowes. Another inn
associated with this tour of inspection is the King’s Head, Barnard
Castle,[69] where Dickens made a brief stay, and where he observed,
across the way, the name of “Humphreys, clockmaker,” over a shop door,
this suggesting the title of his next work, “Master Humphrey’s Clock.”
It was at Bowes where he obtained material which served him for
depicting the “internal economy” of Dotheboys Hall, in the school
presided over by William Shaw, who, it has since transpired, was by no
means the worst of his tribe. As a matter of fact, he won respect from
his neighbours, and is remembered by many of his pupils (some of whom
attained high positions in various professions) as a worthy and much
injured man. In “Nicholas Nickleby,” however, he became a scapegoat for
others who thoroughly deserved the punishment inflicted upon Shaw. Even
to-day many of the people at Bowes regard Dickens’s attack as unjust so
far as that particular schoolmaster is concerned, and visitors to the
place are advised to refrain from alluding to Dotheboys Hall.
There is no lack of evidence to prove the general accuracy of the
novelist’s description, and to him we owe a deep debt of gratitude for
so successful an attempt to annihilate those terrible “Caves of
Despair.” Bowes is situated high up on the moorland, and may now be
reached by railway from Barnard Castle. The village consists principally
of one street nearly three-quarters of a mile in length, running east to
west, and is lighted with oil lamps, under a village lighting committee.
Shaw’s house (known generally as Dotheboys Hall until recent times)
stands at the western extremity of Bowes. The present tenants have
altered somewhat the original appearance of the house by attempting to
convert it into a kind of suburban villa—in fact, it is now called “The
Villa.” Prior to these structural changes it was a long, low building of
two storeys. The classroom and dormitories were demolished a few years
ago, but the original pump, at which Shaw’s pupils used to wash, is
still in the yard at the back of the house, and an object of great
interest to tourists.
Nearly all provincial towns in England were visited by Dickens during
his acting and reading tours, and many can boast of more intimate
relations with the novelist. It was from Liverpool, on January 4, 1842,
that he embarked on board the _Britannia_ for the United States—his
first memorable visit to Transatlantic shores—and in 1844 he presided at
a great public meeting held in the Mechanics’ Institution, then sadly in
need of funds, on which occasion he delivered a powerful speech in
support of the objects of that foundation. Referring to the building, he
said: “It is an enormous place. The lecture-room ... will accommodate
over thirteen hundred people.... I should think it an easy place to
speak in, being a semicircle with seats rising one above another to the
ceiling.”
Respecting this function, we learn from a contemporary report that long
before the hour appointed for the opening of the doors the street was
crowded with persons anxious to obtain admission, so anxious were they
to see and hear the young man (then only in his thirty-third year) who
had given them “Pickwick,” “Oliver Twist,” and “Nicholas Nickleby.” At
the termination of his speech a vote of thanks was accorded to the
novelist, who, in replying thereto, concluded his acknowledgments by
quoting the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless us every one.” An interesting
incident lay in the fact that the young lady who presided at the
pianoforte was Miss Christina Weller, who, with her father, was
introduced to the author of “Pickwick,” thus causing considerable
merriment.
[Illustration: DOTHEBOYS HALL, BOWES. (_Page 126._)
Visited by Dickens when writing “Nicholas Nickleby.”]
In 1847 Dickens and his distinguished company of amateur actors gave a
representation in Liverpool of Ben Jonson’s comedy, “Every Man in His
Humour,” for the benefit of Leigh Hunt. The Reading tours in the fifties
and sixties again called him to that busy mercantile centre, one of the
readings taking place in St. George’s Hall—“the beautiful St. George’s
Hall,” as he described it: “brilliant to see when lighted up, and for a
reading simply perfect.” One of the closing incidents of his life was
the great Liverpool banquet, which took place on April 10, 1869, in St.
George’s Hall, after his country Readings, the late Marquis of Dufferin
presiding, the function being made memorable by an eloquent speech by
the novelist, replying to a remonstrance from Lord Houghton against his
(Dickens’s) objection to entering public life.[70] While sojourning at
Liverpool he usually stayed at the Adelphi Hotel. In 1844 he made
Radley’s Hotel his headquarters.
It is quite in accordance with our expectations to find frequent mention
of Liverpool throughout Dickens’s works. For descriptive passages we
must turn to the pages of “Martin Chuzzlewit” and certain of his minor
writings, where we discover interesting and important references “to
that rich and beautiful port,” as he calls it in one instance. Apropos
of the return to England of Martin Chuzzlewit the younger and his
faithful companion Mark Tapley after their trying experiences in the New
Country, the novelist, in thus depicting Liverpool and the Mersey,
doubtless records his own impressions of some two years previous on his
arrival there at the termination, in 1842, of his American tour:
“It was mid-day and high-water in the English port for which the _Screw_
was bound, when, borne in gallantly upon the fulness of the tide, she
let go her anchor in the river.
“Bright as the scene was—fresh, and full of motion; airy, free, and
sparkling—it was nothing to the life and exaltation in the hearts of the
two travellers at sight of the old churches, roofs, and darkened
chimney-stacks of home. The distant roar that swelled up hoarsely from
the busy streets was music in their ears; the lines of people gazing
from the wharves were friends held dear; the canopy of smoke that
overhung the town was brighter and more beautiful to them than if the
richest silks of Persia had been waving in the air. And though the
water, going on its glistening track, turned ever and again aside to
dance and sparkle round great ships, and heave them up, and leaped from
off the blades of oars, a shower of diving diamonds, and wantoned with
the idle boats, and swiftly passed, in many a sporting chase, through
obdurate old iron rings, set deep into the stonework of the quays, not
even it was half so buoyant and so restless as their fluttering hearts,
when yearning to set foot once more on native ground.”
In one of “The Uncommercial Traveller” papers (1860) will be found this
vivid pen-picture of the slums of Liverpool, favoured by seafaring men
of the lower class, a district probably little altered since those lines
were penned:
“A labyrinth of dismal courts and blind alleys, called ‘entries,’ kept
in wonderful order by the police, and in much better order than by the
Corporation, the want of gaslight in the most dangerous and infamous of
these places being quite unworthy of so spirited a town.... Many of
these sailors’ resorts we attained by noisome passages so profoundly
dark that we felt our way with our hands. Not one of the whole number we
visited was without its show of prints and ornamental crockery, the
quantity of the latter, set forth on little shelves and in little cases
in otherwise wretched rooms, indicating that Mercantile Jack must have
an extraordinary fondness for crockery to necessitate so much of that
bait in his traps ... etc.”[71]
With the characteristics of that other great Lancashire town,
Manchester, the novelist became, perhaps, even more intimate.
“Manchester is (_for_ Manchester) bright and fresh,” he wrote to Miss
Hogarth from the Queen’s Hotel in 1869, where he stayed on the occasion
of his Farewell Readings in the provinces, and where the chimney of his
sitting-room caught fire and compelled him to “turn out elsewhere to
breakfast.” Long before this date—that is, in 1843—the people of
Manchester were first privileged to meet him on the occasion of a bazaar
in the Free Trade Hall in aid of the fund for improving the financial
condition of the Athenæum, then sadly in debt. The bazaar was followed
by a soirée, held in the same building, under the presidency of Dickens,
who then delivered a speech which has been described as “a masterpiece
of graceful eloquence.” The subject thereof forcibly appealed to
him—viz., the education of the very poor, for he did not believe in the
old adage that averred a little learning to be a “dangerous thing,” but
rather that the most minute particle of knowledge is preferable to
complete and consummate ignorance. This memorable function is noteworthy
also by reason of the fact that among the speakers who addressed the
vast audience were Disraeli and Cobden. Dickens expressed a wish to
become a member of the Athenæum, but left Manchester without going
through the necessary formalities—an oversight soon rectified, however.
In 1852, on the occasion of the inauguration of the Manchester Public
Free Libraries, the novelist accepted an invitation to be present at an
important meeting held at Campfield, the “first home” of these free
libraries (formerly known as “The Hall of Science”); the meeting was
attended by a number of distinguished men, including Bulwer Lytton,
Thackeray, John Bright, Peter Cunningham, etc., and it naturally fell to
Dickens to make a speech, having the use of literature as its theme.
Thackeray, by the way, had prepared a careful oration, but, after
delivering half a sentence, ignominiously sat down! Public oratory was
not his forte. In 1858 Dickens presided at the annual meeting of the
Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire, held in the
Manchester Athenæum and the Free Trade Hall, and handed prizes to
candidates from more than a hundred local mechanics’ institutes
affiliated to the association. “Knowledge has a very limited power
indeed,” he observed, in the speech delivered on behalf of the
Manchester Mechanics’ Institute in Cooper Street, “when it informs the
head alone; but when it informs the head and heart too, it has power
over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.”
We are reminded that this peroration is an echo of words in “Hard Times”
(written four years previously), and that his exhortation to the
Manchester audience practically reproduced the leading thought in that
powerful novel—a story which impelled the admiration of Ruskin, who,
commenting upon it, said that the book “should be studied with close and
earnest care by persons interested in social questions.” In “Hard Times”
Manchester is disguised as matter-of-fact Coketown, and the presentment
is easily recognisable:
“It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the
smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood, it was a town of
unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a savage. It was a
town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents
of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.
It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with
evil-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows, where
there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston
of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an
elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large
streets, all very like one another, and many small streets, still more
like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all
went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same
pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as
yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and
the next. These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from
the work by which it was sustained; against them were to be set off
comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and
elegancies of life which made we will not ask how much of the fine lady,
who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. You saw nothing in
Coketown but what was severely workful....
“In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost
fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly
bricked out as killing airs and gasses were bricked in; at the heart of
the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets upon
streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a
violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole one unnatural
family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death;
in the last close nook of the great exhausted receiver, where the
chimneys, for want or air to make a draught, were built in an immense
variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a
sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it.”
Of Coketown on a sunny midsummer day (for “there was such a thing
sometimes, even in Coketown”) the author exhibits a realistic picture.
“Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze
of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew
the town was there because you knew there could have been no such sulky
blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now
confusedly bending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of
heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth as the wind rose and fell
or changed its quarter—a dense, formless jumble, with sheets of
cross-light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness. Coketown
in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could
be seen ... the streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the
sun was so bright that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping
over Coketown, and could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from
low underground doorways and factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts,
and palings, wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The
whole town seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot
oil everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it; the dresses of the
Hands were soiled with it; the mills throughout their many stories oozed
and trickled it. The atmosphere of those Fairy palaces[72] was like the
breath of the simoon, and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled
languidly in the desert. But no temperature made the melancholy-mad
elephants more mad or more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down
at the same rate, in hot weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair
weather and foul. The measured motion of their shadows on the walls was
the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods;
while for the summer hum of insects it could offer, all the year round,
from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whir of shafts and
wheels.
“Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger
more sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills.
Sun-blinds and sprinklings of water a little cooled the main streets and
shops, but the mills and the courts and the alleys baked at a fierce
heat. Down upon the river, that was black and thick with dye, some
Coketown boys, who were at large—a rare sight there—rowed a crazy boat,
which made a spurious track upon the water as it jogged along, while
every dip of an oar stirred up vile smells.”[73]
Apropos of “Hard Times,” it may be mentioned that in 1854 Dickens stayed
at the Bull Hotel in Preston, when he visited that town expressly for
the purpose of witnessing the effects of a strike in a manufacturing
town. He failed, however, to secure much material here for the story,
for he wrote: “Except the crowds at the street-corners reading the
placards _pro_ and _con_, and the cold absence of smoke from the
mill-chimneys, there is very little in the streets to make the town
remarkable.” He expected to find in Preston a model town, instead of
which it proved to be, in his estimation, a “nasty place,” while to the
Bull he referred in disrespectful terms as an “old, grubby, smoky, mean,
intensely formal red-brick house, with a narrow gateway and a dingy
yard.” Preston figures in the early chapters of “George Silverman’s
Explanation,” a cellar in that town being the birthplace of the
principal character, the Rev. George Silverman.
[Illustration: THE RED LION, BARNET. (_Page 173._)
Dickens and Forster dined here in March, 1838, to celebrate the
birth of Miss Mary (Mamie) Dickens.]
Reverting to Manchester, it must not be forgotten that Dickens, in the
capacity of an actor, journeyed thither four times, appearing with his
amateur company first at the Theatre Royal in 1847 for the benefit of
Leigh Hunt, twice in 1852 at the Old Free Trade Hall, and again in that
building in 1857. Needless to say, the performances attracted vast and
enthusiastic audiences, and were eminently successful both artistically
and financially.
The Free Trade Hall, too, was the scene of his public Readings in
Manchester, and it is recorded that he was accustomed to stay at Old
Trafford as the guest of Mr. John Knowles, of the Theatre Royal. This
large house was then surrounded by an extensive wood, and considered to
be a lonely and remote place, but is now near a network of railways, and
the reverse of rural.[74]
About the year 1841 Charles Dickens’s elder sister Fanny (nearly two
years his senior) married Henry Burnett, an accomplished operatic
singer, who had retired from performing on the stage, and taken up his
abode in Manchester as an instructor in music, Mrs. Burnett, herself a
musician of considerable acquirements, assisting her husband in
conducting the choir of Rusholme Road Congregational Chapel, where they
worshipped, and the pastor of which was the Rev. James Griffin, who has
recorded in print his recollections of the Burnetts. There is,
consequently, a link of a distinctly personal kind connecting Dickens
with Manchester, which is made additionally interesting by the fact that
the little crippled son of the Burnetts (who lived in Upper Brook
Street) was the prototype of Paul Dombey. It may be added that Mr.
Burnett unconsciously posed for some of the characteristics of Nicholas
Nickleby, while in Fanny Dorrit there are certain indications suggesting
that her portrait was inspired by the novelist’s sister.
In a literary sense, Manchester can boast of other Dickensian
associations, for here resided the originals of the delightful Cheeryble
Brothers, who (the author assures us in his preface to “Nicholas
Nickleby”) were “very slightly and imperfectly sketched” from life.
“Those who take an interest in this tale,” he adds, “will be glad to
learn that the Brothers Cheeryble live; that their liberal charity,
their singleness of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded
benevolence, are no creation of the author’s brain, but are prompting
every day (and oftenest by stealth) some munificent deed in that town of
which they are the pride and honour.” The actual models whence he
portrayed the Cheerybles with approximate accuracy were the brothers
Grant, William and Daniel, merchants, of Ramsbottom and Manchester, with
whom the novelist declared he “never interchanged any communication in
his life.” From evidence recently forthcoming, however, we learn that in
1838 (the year prior to the publication of “Nickleby”) he and Forster
were the guests of Mr. Gilbert Winter, of Stocks House, Cheetham Hill
Road, Manchester, to whom they went with a letter of introduction from
Harrison Ainsworth. Stocks House (demolished in 1884) was formerly
surrounded by a moat, a portion of which was filled up at the time of
the construction of the old road to Bury, the fine old mansion probably
representing the manor-house of Cheetham Manor, given as a reward to the
Earls of Derby after the Battle of Bosworth Field. It was at Stocks
House that Dickens became acquainted with the Grants; indeed, Forster
practically admits this when he says: “A friend now especially welcome
was the novelist Mr. Ainsworth, with whom we visited, during two of
those years (1838 and 1839), friends of art and letters in his native
Manchester, from among whom Dickens brought away the Brothers
Cheeryble....” The Rev. Hume Elliot informs us that although William and
Daniel Grant had residences in Manchester, they preferred to live
together at Springside, Ramsbottom, “which they made a veritable home of
hospitality and good works,”[75] and it is fair to assume that Dickens
must have seen at their home the original of David, “the apoplectic
butler,” or ascertained from an authentic source the peculiarities of
Alfred, who served the Grants in a like capacity and possessed similar
idiosyncrasies.
There are two houses in Manchester associated with the Grants. One of
these, now a parcel-receiving office of the London and North-Western
Railway Company, is in Mosley Street, and the other (a more important
place) stands at the lower end of Cannon Street (No. 15), a large, roomy
warehouse, occupied by a paper dealer, who caused the name “Cheeryble
House” to be placed on the front of the building.[76]
The rare combination of the qualities of charity and humanity with sound
business instincts, such as are ascribed to the Cheeryble Brothers, was
exactly true of the Grants. On the death of William Grant (the elder
brother) in 1842, the novelist (writing from Niagara Falls to his
American friend, Professor Felton), said: “One of the noble hearts who
sat for the Cheeryble Brothers is dead. If I had been in England I would
certainly have gone into mourning for the loss of such a glorious life.
His brother is not expected to survive him. [He died in 1855, at the age
of seventy-five.] I am told that it appears from a memorandum found
among the papers of the deceased that in his lifetime he gave away
£600,000, or three million dollars.” There is a marble tablet to the
memory of William Grant in St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Ramsbottom,
recording his “vigour of understanding, his spotless integrity of
character, and his true benevolence of heart.... If you are in poverty,”
the inscription continues, “grieve for the loss of so good a friend; if
born to wealth and influence, think of the importance of such a trust,
and earn in like manner by a life of charitable exertion the respect and
love of all who knew you, and the prayers and blessings of the poor.”
Honoured descendants of the two philanthropists are still surviving in
the city which cherishes their memory.
In 1847 the novelist presided at a meeting of the Mechanics’ Institute
in Leeds, thus proving his practical interest in the welfare of working
men—an interest again testified in 1855, when he visited Sheffield for
the purpose of reading the “Christmas Carol” in the Mechanics’ Hall on
behalf of the funds of the Institute in that busy town. After the
reading, the Mayor begged his acceptance of a handsome service of table
cutlery and other useful articles of local manufacture, the gift of a
few gentlemen in Sheffield, as a substantial manifestation of their
gratitude to him.
In a letter to Wilkie Collins, dated August 29, 1857, Dickens said: “I
want to cast about whether you and I can go anywhere—take any tour—see
anything—whereon we could write something together. Have you any idea
tending to any place in the world? Will you rattle your head and see if
there is any pebble in it which we could wander away and play at marbles
with?” This was written just after the conclusion of the readings and
theatrical performances in aid of the Douglas Jerrold fund, Dickens
experiencing a sense of restlessness when the excitement attending them
had subsided, and seeming anxious “to escape from himself” by means of a
pilgrimage with a congenial companion, and such as might provide
material for a series of papers in _Household Words_. Arrangements were
speedily made with this object, and the two friends started forthwith
“on a ten or twelve days’ expedition to out-of-the-way places, to do (in
inns and coast corners) a little tour in search of an article and in
avoidance of railroads.” They decided for a foray upon the fells of
Cumberland, Dickens having discovered (in “The Beauties of England and
Wales” and other topographical works) descriptions of “some promising
moors and bleak places thereabout.” To the Lake district they
accordingly departed in September, and their adventures are related in
“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices” (published in _Household Words_
during the latter part of the same year), the authors skilfully
collaborating in the preparation of the record, nearly all the
descriptive passages emanating from the pen of Dickens. Almost the first
thing attempted by the travellers was the climbing of Carrock Fell, “a
gloomy old mountain 1,500 feet high.” “Nobody goes up,” said Dickens to
Forster; “guides have forgotten it.” The proprietor of a little inn,
however, volunteered his services as guide, and the party of enthusiasts
ascended in a downpour of rain. The Two Idle Apprentices (who bear the
respective names Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle, the former being the
pseudonym favoured by Dickens) concluded that to perform the feat “would
be the culminating triumph of Idleness.” “Up hill and down hill, and
twisting to the left, and with old Skiddaw (who has vaunted himself a
great deal more than his merits deserve, but that is rather the way of
the Lake country) dodging the apprentices in a picturesque and pleasant
manner. Good, weatherproof, warm, pleasant houses, well white-limed,
scantily dotting the road.... Well-cultivated gardens attached to the
cottages.... Lonely nooks, and wild; but people can be born, and
married, and buried in such nooks, and can live, and love, and be loved
there as elsewhere, thank God!” The village is portrayed as consisting
of “black, coarse-stoned, rough-windowed houses, some with outer
staircases, like Swiss houses, a sinuous and stony gutter winding up
hill and round the corner by way of street.”[77] The ascent of the
mountain was safely achieved, but during the descent Collins
unfortunately fell into a watercourse and sprained his ankle, an
accident which proved to be a serious hindrance. They slept that night
at Wigton, which (we are told) “had no population, no business, no
streets to speak of.” In _Household Words_ may be found an elaborate,
amusing (but doubtless accurate) description of Wigton marketplace as
seen at night nearly fifty years ago, and written with Dickens’s
customary power, illustrating his marvellous acuteness of observation:
“Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain all
down the street.... ‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and
believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes. I see the
houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts, and their
dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning. As every
little puff of wind comes down the street, I see a perfect train of rain
let off along the wooden stalls in the market-place and exploded against
me. I see a very big gas-lamp in the centre, which I know, by a secret
instinct, will not be lighted to-night. I see a pump, with a trivet
underneath its spout whereon to stand the vessels that are brought to be
filled with water. I see a man come to the pump, and he pumps very hard;
but no water follows, and he strolls empty away.... I see one, two,
three, four, five linen-drapers’ shops in front of me. I see a
linen-draper’s shop next door to the right, and there are five more
linen-drapers’ shops round the corner to the left. Eleven homicidal
linen-drapers’ shops within a short stone’s-throw, each with its hands
at the throats of all the rest! Over the small first-floor of one of
these linen-drapers’ shops appears the wonderful inscription: _BANK_....
I see a sweet-meat shop, which the proprietor calls a ‘Salt
Warehouse.’... And I see a watchmaker’s, with only three great pale
watches of a dull metal hanging in his window, each on a separate pane.
“... There is nothing more to see, except the curl-paper bill of the
theatre ... and the short, square, chunky omnibus that goes to the
railway, and leads too rattling a life over the stones to hold together
long. Oh yes! Now I see two men with their hands in their pockets ...
they are looking at nothing very hard, very hard ... they spit at times,
but speak not. I see it growing darker, and I still see them, sole
visible population of the place, standing to be rained upon, with their
backs towards me, and looking at nothing very hard.
“... The murky shadows are gathering fast, and the wings of evening and
the wings of coal are folding over Wigton.... And now the town goes to
sleep, undazzled by the large unlighted lamp in the market-place; and
let no man wake it.”[78]
From Wigton the friends proceeded to Allonby, on the coast of
Cumberland, here resolving to begin their writing, to record their
impressions while fresh in their minds. They found a comfortable
lodging, a “capital little homely inn,” the Ship, overlooking the watery
expanse, and by a curious coincidence the landlady previously lived at
Greta Bridge, Yorkshire, when Dickens went there in quest of the cheap
boarding-schools.
[Illustration: THE ALBION HOTEL, BROADSTAIRS. (_Page 189._)
Dickens stayed at this hotel on several occasions, and in 1839
lodged at a house “two doors from the Albion,” and there “Nickleby”
was finished.]
The Ship still flourishes as a “family and commercial hotel and
posting-house, commanding extensive views of the Solway Firth and the
Scottish hills.” Dickens thought Allonby the dullest place he ever
entered, rendered additionally dull by “the monotony of an idle sea,”
and in sad contrast to the expectations formed of it. “A little place
with fifty houses,” said Dickens in a letter home, “five
bathing-machines, five girls in straw hats, five men in straw hats, and
no other company. The little houses are all in half-mourning—yellow
stone or white stone, and black; and it reminds me of what Broadstairs
might have been if it had not inherited a cliff, and had been an
Irishman.”
In the opinion of Mr. Francis Goodchild, Allonby was the most
“delightful place ever seen.” “It was what you might call a primitive
place. Large? No, it was not large. Who ever expected it would be large?
Shape? What a question to ask! No shape. Shops? Yes, of course (quite
indignant). How many? Who ever went into a place to count the shops?
Ever so many. Six? Perhaps. A library? Why, of course (indignant again).
Good collection of books? Most likely—couldn’t say—had seen nothing in
it but a pair of scales. Any reading-room? Of course there was a
reading-room! Where? Where! Why, over there. Where was over there? Why,
_there_! Let Mr. Idle carry his eye to that bit of waste ground above
high-water mark, where the rank grass and loose stones were most in a
litter, and he could see a sort of a long ruinous brick loft, next door
to a ruinous brick outhouse, which loft had a ladder outside to get up
by. That was the reading-room, and if Mr. Idle didn’t like the idea of a
weaver’s shuttle throbbing under a reading-room, that was his look-out.
_He_ was not to dictate, Mr. Goodchild supposed (indignant again), to
the company.” In short, he declared that “if you wanted to be primitive,
you could be primitive here, and if you wanted to be idle, you could be
idle here,” as were the local fishermen, who (apparently) never fished,
but “got their living entirely by looking at the ocean.” The “public
buildings” at Allonby were the two small bridges over the brook “which
crawled or stopped between the houses and the sea.” As if to make amends
for these shortcomings, Nature provided fine sunsets at Allonby, “when
the low, flat beach, with its pools of water and its dry patches,
changed into long bars of silver and gold in various states of
burnishing,” “and there were fine views, on fine days, of the Scottish
coast.”[79]
From Allonby the two apprentices proceeded to the county town, Carlisle,
putting up at “a capital inn,” kept by a man named Breach.
[Illustration: LAWN HOUSE, BROADSTAIRS. (_Page 193._)
Dickens occupied Lawn House in the summer of 1840, and the archway
is mentioned in a letter to his wife dated September 3, 1850.]
Carlisle “looked congenially and delightfully idle.... On market morning
Carlisle woke up amazingly, and became (to the two idle apprentices)
disagreeably and reproachfully busy. There were its cattle-market, its
sheep-market, and its pig-market down by the river, with raw-boned and
shock-headed Rob Roys hiding their Lowland dresses beneath heavy plaids,
prowling in and out among the animals, and flavouring the air with fumes
of whisky. There was its corn-market down the main street, with hum of
chaffering over open sacks. There was its general market in the street,
too, with heather brooms, on which the purple flower still flourished,
and heather baskets primitive and fresh to behold. With women trying on
clogs and caps at open stalls, and ‘Bible stalls’ adjoining. With ‘Dr.
Mantle’s Dispensary for the Cure of all Human Maladies and no charge for
advice,’ and with ‘Dr. Mantle’s Laboratory of Medical, Chemical, and
Botanical Science,’ both healing institutions established on one pair of
trestles, one board, and one sun-blind. With the renowned phrenologist
from London begging to be favoured (at 6d. each) with the company of
clients of both sexes, to whom, on examination of their heads, he would
make revelations ‘enabling him or her to know themselves.’”[80]
Maryport, a few miles south of Allonby, was also inspected, and is
described as “a region which is a bit of waterside Bristol, with a slice
of Wapping, a seasoning of Wolverhampton, and a garnish of
Portsmouth”—in fact, a kind of topographical salad. To the
supposititious query addressed to it by one of the apprentices, “Will
_you_ come and be idle with me?” busy Maryport metaphorically shakes its
head, and sagaciously answers in the negative, for she declares: “I am a
great deal too vaporous, and a great deal too rusty, and a great deal
too muddy, and a great deal too dirty altogether; and I have ships to
load, and pitch and tar to boil, and iron to hammer, and steam to get
up, and smoke to make, and stone to quarry, and fifty other disagreeable
things to do, and I can’t be idle with you.” Thus thrown upon his own
resources, this idle apprentice goes “into jagged uphill and downhill
streets, where I am in the pastry-cook’s shop at one moment, and next
moment in savage fastnesses of moor and morass, beyond the confines of
civilization, and I say to those murky and black-dusty streets: ‘Will
_you_ come and be idle with me?’ To which they reply: ‘No, we can’t
indeed, for we haven’t the spirits, and we are startled by the echo of
your feet on the sharp pavement, and we have so many goods in our
shop-windows which nobody wants, and we have so much to do for a limited
public which never comes to us to be done for, that we are altogether
out of sorts, and can’t enjoy ourselves with anyone.’ So I go to the
Post-office and knock at the shutter, and I say to the Postmaster: ‘Will
_you_ come and be idle with me?’ This invitation is refused in cynical
terms: ‘No, I really can’t, for I live, as you may see, in such a very
little Post-office, and pass my life behind such a very little shutter,
that my hand, when I put it out, is as the hand of a giant crammed
through the window of a dwarf’s house at a fair, and I am a mere
Post-office anchorite in a cell made too small for him, and I can’t get
in, even if I would.’”[81] Maryport of to-day differs considerably from
Maryport of nearly half a century since, and it is doubtful if its
inhabitants will recognise the presentment.
Hesket-New-Market, “that rugged old village on the Cumberland Fells,”
was included in this itinerary of irresponsible travelling, and of the
ancient inn where Idle and Goodchild sojourned, and of the contents of
their apartments, we have quite a pre-Raphaelite picture:
“The ceiling of the drawing-room was so crossed and recrossed by beams
of unequal lengths, radiating from a centre in the corner, that it
looked like a broken star-fish.... It had a snug fireside, and a couple
of well-curtained windows, looking out upon the wild country behind the
house. What it most developed was an unexpected taste for little
ornaments and nick-nacks, of which it contained a most surprising
number.... There were books, too, in this room.... It was very pleasant
to see these things in such a lonesome byplace; so very agreeable to
find these evidences of taste, however homely, that went beyond the
beautiful cleanliness and trimness of the house; so fanciful to imagine
what a wonder the room must be to the little children born in the gloomy
village—what grand impressions of it those of them who became wanderers
over the earth would carry away; and how, at distant ends of the world,
some old voyagers would die, cherishing the belief that the finest
apartment known to man was once in the Hesket-New-Market Inn, in rare
old Cumberland.”[82] Dickens does not give the name of the inn, but I
have ascertained that it was the Queen’s Head, and that it is now a
dwelling-house, having the curious-timbered ceiling intact, and still
retaining its old-fashioned character. An enclosure, fronting the
building, has been planted with shrubs by the present occupier, where it
used to be paved and open to the street—“a sinuous and stony gutter
winding uphill and round the corner,” as Dickens termed the roadway
through the still quaint and interesting village of Hesket-New-Market.
On September 12, 1857, Dickens announced that he and his companion were
on their way to Doncaster, _en route_ for London. Breaking the journey
at Lancaster, they stopped at another delightful hostelry, the King’s
Arms in Market Street. “We are in a very remarkable old house here,”
wrote Dickens to his sister-in-law, “with genuine old rooms and an
uncommonly quaint staircase. I have a state bedroom, with two enormous
red four-posters in it, each as big as Charley’s room at Gad’s
Hill.”[83] A more detailed description, however, appears in the printed
record, where we read that “the house was a genuine old house of a very
quaint description, teeming with old carvings and beams, and panels, and
having an excellent old staircase, with a gallery or upper staircase cut
off from it by a curious fence-work of old oak, or of the old Honduras
mahogany wood. It was, and is, and will be for many a long year to come,
a remarkably picturesque house; and a certain grave mystery lurking in
the depth of the old mahogany panels, as if they were so many deep pools
of dark water—such, indeed, as they had been much among when they were
trees—gave it a very mysterious character after nightfall.”[84]
In “The Lazy Tour” some particulars are given concerning a curious
custom at the King’s Arms, where they give you bride-cake every day
after dinner. This melodramatic love-story is presented in the form of a
narrative by one of the half-dozen “noiseless old men in black” who
acted as waiters at the inn, whence we learn that the strange custom
originated in the traditional murder, by poison, of a young bride in an
apartment afterwards known as the Bride’s Chamber, the criminal being
subsequently hanged at Lancaster Castle. Around the legend, in which
money and pride and greed and cruel revenge play a prominent part,
Dickens threw the halo of his wondrous fancy, and so stimulated public
interest in the hostelry that visitors thereto were eager to see the
alleged haunted chamber with its antique bedstead of black oak, and to
taste the bride-cake in memory of the unfortunate young woman.
[Illustration: FORT HOUSE, BROADSTAIRS. (_Page 194._)
As it was before the recent alterations. The “airy nest” of Dickens,
1850-1851. A portion of “David Copperfield” was written here.]
Externally, the old King’s Arms (situated at the corner of Market Street
and King’s Street) was not of a picturesque character, although a
certain quiet dignity was imparted to the stone frontage by the broad
windows extending from roof to basement, and by the pillared doorway of
the principal entrance. When Mr. Sly left the old place in 1879, it was
pulled down, and a kind of commercial hotel erected on the site, which
narrowly escaped destruction by fire in 1897. After his day the custom
of having bride-cake was discontinued, but it is interesting to know
that the famous oak bedstead (upon which Dickens himself slept) is in
the safe possession of the Duke of Norfolk, for whom it was purchased at
a high price when the old oak fittings, etc., were disposed of about
twenty-seven years since. Mr. Sly, who died in 1896, never tired of
recalling the visit of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins, and the
former delighted the worthy landlord by presenting him with a signed
portrait of himself, inscribed, “To his good friend Mr. Sly,” which is
still retained by the family as a cherished memento. Shortly after the
publication of “The Lazy Tour” Mr. Sly obtained permission to reprint
the descriptive chapter by Dickens, for presentation to his guests; the
pamphlet contained illustrations representing the entrance-hall and
staircase, and this prefatory note: “The reader is perhaps aware that
Mr. Charles Dickens and his friend Mr. Wilkie Collins, in the year 1857,
visited Lancaster, and during their sojourn stopped at Mr. Sly’s, King’s
Arms Hotel. In the October number of _Household Words_, under the title
of ‘The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices,’ Mr. Dickens presents his
readers with a remarkable story of a Bridal Chamber, from whence the
following extracts are taken.” Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry, writing in 1897,
alludes to the King’s Arms as “a rare old place, full of antique
furniture, curios, and musical bedsteads,” and says that its proprietor,
Mr. Sly (who died about a year previously), who took the greatest pride
in his admirable old inn, liked nothing better than taking an
appreciative visitor over the place and giving amusing reminiscences of
the memorable visit of the authors of “Pickwick” and “The Woman in
White.”
[Illustration: 3 ALBION VILLAS, FOLKESTONE. (_Page 199._)
“A very pleasant house, overlooking the sea.” The opening chapters
of “Little Dorrit” were written here. The conservatory is a modern
addition.]
[Illustration: THE WOODEN LIGHTHOUSE, FOLKESTONE HARBOUR. (_Page
200._)
“I may observe of the very little wooden lighthouse, that when it is
lighted at night—red and green—it looks like a medical man’s” (“Out
of Town”).]
With regard to Lancaster itself, it would seem that Dickens’s opinion
(as expressed by Francis Goodchild) then was “that if a visitor on his
arrival (there) could be accommodated with a pole which could push the
opposite side of the street some yards farther off, it would be better
for all parties”; but, while “protesting against being obliged to live
in a trench,” he conceded Lancaster to be a pleasant place—“a place
dropped in the midst of a charming landscape, a place with a fine
ancient fragment of castle, a place of lovely walks, a place possessing
staid old houses richly fitted with old Honduras mahogany, which had
grown so dark with time that it seems to have got something of a
retrospective mirror-quality into itself, and to show the visitor, in
the depths of its grain, through all its polish, the hue of the wretched
slaves who groaned long ago under old Lancaster merchants. And Mr.
Goodchild adds that the stones of Lancaster do sometimes whisper even
yet of rich men passed away—upon whose great prosperity some of these
old doorways frowned sullen in the brightest weather—that their
slave-gain turned to curses, as the Arabian Wizard’s money turned to
leaves, and that no good ever came of it even unto the third and fourth
generation, until it was wasted and gone.”[85] Concerning the lunatic
asylum at Lancaster there is a note of approval: “An immense place ...
admirable offices, very good arrangements, very good attendants,”
followed by this truly Dickensian touch of sympathy and pathos: “Long
groves of blighted men-and-women trees; interminable avenues of hopeless
faces; numbers without the slightest power of really combining for any
earthly purpose; a society of human creatures who have nothing in common
but that they have all lost the power of being humanly social with one
another.”[86]
From Lancaster Francis Goodchild and Thomas Idle took train to Leeds,
“of which enterprising and important commercial centre it may be
observed with delicacy that you must either like it very much or not at
all.” Next day, the first of the Race Week, they proceed to Doncaster,
and put up at that noted establishment the Angel, still flourishing in
the principal thoroughfare as of yore. Here they had “very good, clean,
and quiet apartments” on the second floor, looking down into the main
street, Dickens describing his own bedroom as “airy and clean, little
dressing-room attached, eight water-jugs (I never saw such a supply),
capital sponge-bath, perfect arrangement, and exquisite neatness.”[87]
That great annual festival known as Race Week had just begun, and the
streets of Doncaster were full of jockeys, betting men, drunkards, and
other undesirable persons, from morning to night—and all night. From
their windows the apprentices gazed with interest and wonderment upon
the motley assemblage, for this was their first experience of the St.
Leger and its saturnalia.
[Illustration: THE AULA NOVA AND NORMAN STAIRCASE, PART OF THE
KING’S SCHOOL, CANTERBURY. (_Page 203._)
The oldest public school in England, dating from the seventh
century, and the original of Dr. Strong’s in “David Copperfield.”]
[Illustration: HOUSE ON LADY WOOTTON’S GREEN, CANTERBURY. (_Page
203._)
Identified as the private residence of Dr. Strong in “David
Copperfield.”]
We are assured by Forster that the description here given in “The Lazy
Tour” of Doncaster and the races emanated from the pen of Wilkie
Collins; I venture, however, to believe that Dickens is more likely to
have composed the chapter in question, for not only is it written in his
characteristic vein, but we find that when at Doncaster Thomas Idle
(_i.e._, Collins) continued to suffer severely from the accident to his
ankle, which practically incapacitated him, and evidently prevented him
from witnessing the races. In a letter written at this time Dickens
remarks: “I am not going to the course this morning, but have engaged a
carriage (open, and pair) for to-morrow and Friday.... We breakfast at
half-past eight, and fall to work for _H. W._ afterwards. Then I go out,
and—hem! look for subjects.” The first person singular here is
significant, indicating as it does that Collins did not accompany his
friend to the scenes so vividly and realistically portrayed in the final
chapter of the “Tour.” In respect of the visit to Doncaster, a
remarkable incident may be noted. Dickens, who knew nothing (and cared
less) about matters relating to the turf, invested in a “c’rect card”
containing the names of the horses and jockeys, and, merely for the fun
of the thing, wrote down three names for the winners of the three chief
races, “and, if you can believe it (he said to Forster) without your
hair standing on end, those three races were won, one after another, by
those three horses!”[88] It was the St. Leger Day, which brought
ill-fortune to many, so that Dickens’s “half-appalling kind of luck”
seemed to him especially to be a “wonderful, paralyzing coincidence.” He
sincerely believed that if a boy with any good in him, but with a
damning propensity to sporting and betting, were taken to the Doncaster
Races soon enough, it would cure him, so terrible is the revolting
exhibition of rascality and the seamy side of humanity.
* * * * * * * *
Scotland may justly lay claim to an intimate association with Charles
Dickens. With the picturesque streets of Edinburgh he first became
familiar in 1834, during his reporting days, when he and his colleague,
Thomas Beard, represented the _Morning Chronicle_ at a grand banquet
given at the Scottish capital in honour of the then Prime Minister, Earl
Grey, the two young reporters going by sea from London to Leith. This
fact explains how Dickens secured such an accurate presentment of the
old town of Edinburgh as we find in “Pickwick,” in the forty-eighth
chapter of which Arthur’s Seat is described as “towering, surly and
dark, like some gruff genius, over the ancient city he has watched so
long,” while Canongate (as seen by the hero of “The Story of the
Bagman’s Uncle”) is represented as consisting of “tall, gaunt,
straggling houses, with time-stained fronts, and windows that seemed to
have shared the lot of eyes in mortals, and to have grown dim and sunken
with age. Six, seven, eight stories high were the houses; story piled
above story, as children build with cards, throwing their dark shadows
over the roughly-paved road, and making the night darker. A few oil
lamps were scattered at long distances, but they only served to mark the
dirty entrance to some narrow close, or to show where a common stair
communicated, by steep and intricate windings, with the various flats
above.” We are told that Tom Smart’s uncle, on reaching the North Bridge
connecting the old town with the new, “stopped for a minute to look at
the strange irregular clusters of lights piled one above the other, and
twinkling afar off so high that they looked like stars, gleaming from
the castle walls on the one side and the Calton Hill on the other, as if
they illuminated veritable castles in the air.”
The coach-yard (or rather enclosure) in Leith Walk, by which Tom had to
pass on the way to his lodging, and where he saw the vision of the old
mail-coach with its passengers, actually existed at that spot, and was
owned by Mr. Croall, whose family disposed of the carriages and coaches,
but subsequently owned all the cabs in the city. Dickens afterwards
visited Edinburgh on at least four occasions, staying at the Waterloo
Hotel in 1861 and at Kennedy’s in 1868, during his Reading tours, and on
the latter occasion he observed: “Improvement is beginning to knock the
old town of Edinburgh about here and there; but the Canongate and the
most picturesque of the horrible courts and wynds are not to be easily
spoiled, or made fit for the poor wretches who people them to live
in.”[89] The Scott Monument he could not but regard as a failure,
considering that it resembles the spire of a Gothic church taken off and
stuck in the ground.
In 1841, on the eve of his departure for the United States, the
“Inimitable Boz,” accompanied by his wife, made Scotland his destination
for a summer holiday tour in “Rob Roy’s country,” as he termed it. He
had thought of Ireland, but altered his mind. The novelist received a
magnificent welcome, initiated by a public dinner in Edinburgh, at which
Professor Wilson presided. During their brief stay in the Scottish
capital Dickens found excellent accommodation at the Royal Hotel, which
was consequently besieged, and he was compelled to take refuge in a
sequestered apartment at the end of a long passage. His chambers here
were “a handsome sitting-room, a spacious bedroom, and large
dressing-room adjoining,” with another room at his disposal for writing
purposes, while from the windows he obtained a noble view, in which the
castle formed a conspicuous object. From Edinburgh he travelled to the
Highlands, with intervals of rest, and thoroughly admired the
characteristic scenery of the country. Especially was he impressed by
the Pass of Glencoe, which he had often longed to see, and which he
thought “perfectly terrible.” “The Pass,” he said, “is an awful place.
It is shut in on each side by enormous rocks, from which great torrents
come rushing down in all directions. In amongst these rocks on one side
of the Pass ... there are scores of glens high up, which form such
haunts as you might imagine yourself wandering in in the very height and
madness of a fever. They will live in my dreams for years.... They
really are fearful in their grandeur and amazing solitude.” Indeed,
“that awful Glencoe,” as he called it, exercised a kind of fascination
over him which proved irresistible, compelling him to revisit the spot
the next day, when he found it “absolutely horrific,” for “it had rained
all night, and ... through the whole glen, which is ten miles long,
torrents were boiling and foaming, and sending up in every direction
spray like the smoke of great fires. They were rushing down every hill
and mountain side, and tearing like devils across the path, and down
into the depths of the rocks.... One great torrent came roaring down
with a deafening noise and a rushing of water that was quite
appalling.... The sights and sounds were beyond description.” This and
other adventures during his journeyings hereabouts were vividly
described in letters to Forster, who has printed the major portion of
them in his biography, and a very attractive record it is.
Before returning southward, the novelist became the recipient of an
invitation to a public dinner at Glasgow; but, yearning for home, he
pleaded pressing business connected with “Master Humphrey’s Clock,” then
appearing in weekly numbers, promising, however, to return a few months
later and accept the honour then. Illness unfortunately prevented the
fulfilment of that promise, and six years elapsed (1847) before he made
acquaintance with that city, when he performed the ceremony of opening
the Glasgow Athenæum, which was followed by a soirée in the City Hall.
In 1858 he was recommended by some of the students for election as Lord
Rector of Glasgow University, in opposition to his own wish, but
received only a few votes.
[Illustration: THE SUN INN, CANTERBURY. (_Page 203._)
“It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a
little room in it” (“David Copperfield”).]
The same year found him again at Edinburgh, and giving, for charitable
purposes, a public Reading of the “Carol” in the Music Hall there, at
the conclusion of which the Lord Provost presented him with a massive
silver wassail-cup, which he bequeathed to his eldest son, and which is
now in the possession of Mr. W. H. Lever, of Port Sunlight, Cheshire.
His paid Readings subsequently took him to the leading cities in
Scotland, and in 1868 he wrote from the Royal Hotel, Glasgow (his
customary quarters there): “The atmosphere of this place, compounded of
mists from the Highlands and smoke from the town factories, is crushing
my eyebrows as I write, and it rains as it never does rain anywhere
else, and always does rain here. It is a dreadful place, though much
improved, and possessing a deal of public spirit.”[90]