exists, and purveys souvenirs, prints, drawings, etc., to the Dickens
admirers who throng his shop "in season" and out, and from all parts of
the globe, with the balance, as usual, in favour of the Americans.
Rumour has it, and it has been said before, that some "collector" (from
America, of course) has purchased this humble shrine, and intends to erect
it again across the seas, but no verification of this is possible at this
writing.
Whether it had any real being in Dickens' story, the enthusiast, in view
of the facts, must decide for him or herself.
_"And now at length he's brought_
_Unto fair London City_
_Where, in Fleet Street,_
_All those many see 't_
_That will not believe my ditty."_
--_Butler._
A half-century ago Temple Bar might have been described as a gateway of
stone separating the Strand from Fleet Street--the City from the shire.
This particular structure was erected from designs by Sir Christopher Wren
in 1670, and from that day until long after Dickens' death, through it
have passed countless throngs of all classes of society, and it has always
figured in such ceremony of state as the comparatively infrequent visits
of the sovereign to the City. The invariable custom was to close the gate
whenever the sovereign had entered the City, "and at no other time."
The ceremony was simple, but formal: a herald sounds a trumpet--another
herald knocks--a parley--the gates are thrown open and the lord mayor,
_pro tempo._, hands over the sword of the City to the sovereign. It was
thus in Elizabeth's time, and it had changed but little throughout
Victoria's reign.
The present structure is Temple Bar only in name, being a mere guide-post
standing in the middle of the roadway; not very imposing, but it serves
its purpose. The former structure was removed in the eighties, and now
graces the private park of an estate at Walthamstow.
For long before it was taken down, its interior space was leased to
"Childs," the bankers, as a repository or storage-place for their old
ledgers. Thus does the pomp of state make way for the sordidness of trade,
and even the wealthy corporation of the City of London was not above
turning a penny or two as additional revenue.
The following details of Furnival's Inn, which since Dickens' time has
disappeared, are pertinent at this time.
"Firnivalles Inn, now an Inn of Chancery, but some time belonging to Sir
William Furnival, Knight," is the introduction to the description given by
Stow in his "Annals." The greater part of the old inn was taken down in
the time of Charles I., and the buildings remaining in Dickens' day,
principally occupied as lawyers' offices, were of comparatively modern
construction. Since, these too, have disappeared, and there is little to
call it to mind but the location the inn once occupied.
The Gothic hall, with its timber roof,--part of the original structure
(_tempo_ Richard II.),--was standing as late as 1818, when the entire inn
was rebuilt by one Peto, who it is to be inferred built the row in which
were the lodgings occupied by Dickens.
In the west end of London changes have been none the less rapid than in
the east. The cutting through of Northumberland Avenue, from Trafalgar
Square to the river, laid low the gardens and mansion of Northumberland
House. Of this stately mansion it is said that it looked more like a
nobleman's mansion than any other in London. It was built, in about 1600,
by the Earl of Northampton, and came into the hands of the Percies in
1642. Stafford House is perhaps the most finely situated mansion in the
metropolis, occupying the corner of St. James' and the Green Parks, and
presenting four complete fronts, each having its own architectural
character. The interior, too, is said to be the first of its kind in
London. The mansion was built by the Duke of York, with money lent by the
Marquis of Stafford, afterward Duke of Sutherland; but the Stafford family
became owners of it, and have spent at least a quarter of a million
sterling on the house and its decorations. Apsley House, at the corner of
Piccadilly and Hyde Park, is the residence of the Dukes of Wellington, and
is closely associated with the memory of _the_ duke. The shell of the
house, of brick, is old; but stone frontages, enlargements, and
decorations were afterward made. The principal room facing Hyde Park,
with seven windows, is that in which the Great Duke held the celebrated
Waterloo Banquet, on the 18th of June in every year, from 1816 to 1852.
In the seventeenth century the Strand was a species of country road,
connecting the city with Westminster; and on its southern side stood a
number of noblemen's residences, with gardens toward the river. The
pleasant days are long since past when mansions and personages, political
events and holiday festivities, marked the spots now denoted by Essex,
Norfolk, Howard, Arundel, Surrey, Cecil, Salisbury, Buckingham, Villiers,
Craven, and Northumberland Streets--a very galaxy of aristocratic names.
Again it is reiterated: the names are, for the most part, actually those
now given to great hotels which occupy the former sites of these noble
mansions.
The residences of the nobility and gentry were chiefly in the western part
of the metropolis. In this quarter there have been large additions of
handsome streets, squares, and terraces within the last fifty years.
First, the district around Belgrave Square, usually called Belgravia.
Northeast from this, near Hyde Park, is the older, but still fashionable
quarter, comprehending Park Lane and Mayfair. Still farther north is the
modern district, sometimes called Tyburnia, being built on the ground
adjacent to what once was "Tyburn," the place of public executions. This
district, including Hyde Park Square and Westbourne Terrace, early became
a favourite place of residence for city merchants. Lying north and
northeast from Tyburnia are an extensive series of suburban rows of
buildings and detached villas, which are ordinarily spoken of under the
collective name, St. John's Wood, Regent's Park forming a kind of rural
centre to the group.
New thoroughfares and the need thereof make a wholly new set of
conditions, and such landmarks as have survived the stress of time and
weather are thoroughly suggestive and reminiscent of the past, and are
often the only guide-posts left by which one may construct the
surroundings of a former day.
Of this the stranger is probably more observant than the Londoner born and
bred. The gloomy, crowded streets--for they are gloomy, decidedly, most of
the time during five months of the year--do not suggest to the native
emotions as vivid as to the stranger, who, with a fund of reading for his
guide, wanders through hallowed ground which is often neglected or
ignored by the Londoner himself.
As for the general architectural effect of London as a type of a great
city, it is heightened or lowered accordingly as one approves or
disapproves of the artistic qualities of soot and smoke.
Fogs are the natural accompaniment of smoke, in the lower Thames valley,
at least, and the "London particular"--the pea-soup variety--is a thing to
be shuddered at when it draws its pall over the city. At such times, the
Londoner, or such proportion of the species as can do so, hurries abroad,
if only to the Surrey Hills, scarce a dozen miles away, but possessed of
an atmosphere as different as day is from night.
Our own Nathaniel Hawthorne it was who wrote, "There cannot be anything
else in its way so good in the world as this effect" (of fog and smoke)
"on St. Paul's in the very heart and densest tumult of London. It is much
better than staring white; the edifice would not be nearly so grand
without this drapery of black." Since we are told that the cost of the
building was defrayed by a tax on all coals brought into the port of
London, it gets its blackness by right. This grime is at all events a
well-established fact, which has to be accepted.
Mr. G. A. Sala, a friend and contemporary of Dickens, also wrote in
favour of the smoky chimneys. He says about St. Paul's: "It is really the
better for all the incense which all the chimneys since the time of Wren
have offered at its shrine, and are still flinging up every day from their
foul and grimy censers." As a flower of speech, this is good, but as
criticism it is equivalent to saying the less seen of it the better. M.
Taine, the French critic, evidently thought otherwise; he wrote of
Somerset House:
"A frightful thing is the huge palace in the Strand which is called
Somerset House. Massive and heavy piece of architecture, of which the
hollows are inked, the porticoes blackened with soot, where in the cavity
of the empty court is a sham fountain without water, pools of water on the
pavement, long rows of closed windows. What can they possibly do in these
catacombs? It seems as if the livid and sooty fog had even befouled the
verdure of the parks. But what most offends the eyes are the colonnades,
peristyles, Grecian ornaments, mouldings, and wreaths of the houses, all
bathed in soot. Poor antique architecture--what is it doing in such a
climate?"
To decide what style of architecture prevails in the medley of different
periods constituting London is indeed difficult. One authority concludes
that the "dark house in the long, unlovely street," of which Tennyson
tells, and Mme. de Staël vituperates, covers the greater number of acres.
The fact is, each of the districts constituting London as it now is,
_i. e._, Belgravia, Tyburnia, Bayswater, Kensington, Chelsea, etc., has
the impress and character of the time of its greatest popularity and
fashion and of the class by which it was principally inhabited. It has
always been the city's fate to have its past overgrown and stifled by the
enthralling energy and life of the present. It is as a hive that has never
been emptied of its successive swarms. This is more or less the fate of
all towns that live.
The first map of London was published in 1563 by Ralph Ugga; it shows the
same main arteries as exist to-day--the Strand, "Chepe," and Fleet. In a
later map of 1610, London and Westminster appear as small neighbouring
towns with fields around them; Totten Court, a country village; Kensington
and Marylebone secluded hamlets; Clerkenwell and St. Gyllis quite isolated
from the main city while Chelsey was quite in the wilds.
Even the great devastating fires did not destroy the line of the public
highways. After that of 1666 Sir Christopher Wren wished to remodel the
town and make it regular, symmetrical, and convenient; but, although he
was the prevailing spirit in the rebuilding of London city, and no
important building during forty years was erected without his judgment,
his plan for regulating and straightening the streets did not take effect.
Much of the picturesque quality of the city is owing to its irregularity
and the remains of its past. Wren rebuilt no less than sixty churches, all
showing great variety of design. St. Paul's, the third Christian church
since early Saxon times on the same site, was his masterpiece.
Of his immediate predecessor, Inigo Jones, the Banqueting House in
Whitehall, now used as a museum, remains a fragment of the splendid palace
designed by him for James I. The classical revival began with Gibbs, when
he built St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, whose Greek portico is the best and
most perfect Greek example in London, if we except the caryatides of St.
Pancras. The brothers Adam also flourished at this time, and introduced
grace of line and much artistic skill in domestic establishments which
they built in "The Adelphi" and elsewhere. Chambers with Somerset House,
and Sir John Soane with the Bank of England, continued the classical
traditions, but its full force came with Nash, "the apostle of plaster,"
who planned the Quadrant and Regent Street, from Carlton House to Regent's
Park, and the terraces in that locality, in the tawdry pseudo-classic
stuccoed style, applied indiscriminately to churches, shops, and what
not. Not till the middle of the nineteenth century did the Gothic revival
flourish. Pugin, Britton, and Sir John Barry then became prominent. The
last named built the Houses of Parliament.
The demand for originality in street architecture is to be seen in the
tall, important blocks of residential flats and new hotels now rising up
in every quarter. Not beautiful and in many cases not even intelligible,
they are unmistakable signs of the times, showing the process of
transformation which is going on rapidly, sweeping away much that is
beautiful to meet the requirements of modern life.
London is perhaps never to be doomed to the curse of the sky-scraper, as
it is known in America; the results of such an innovation would be too
dire to contemplate, but like every other large city, it is under the
spell of twentieth century ideas of progress, and the results, a score or
more years hence, will, beyond doubt, so change the general aspect and
conditions of life that the spirit of the Victorian era in architecture
and art will have been dissipated in air, or so leavened that it will be a
glorified London that will be known and loved, even better than the rather
depressing atmosphere which has surrounded London and all in it during the
thirty-five rapid years which have passed since Dickens' death.
Such, in brief, is a survey of the more noticeable architectural and
topographical features of London, which are indicating in no mean fashion
the effect of Mr. Whistler's dictum: "Other times, other lines."
Of no place perhaps more true than of London, yet, on the other hand, in
no other place, perhaps, does the tendency make way so slowly.
THE COUNTY OF KENT
The country lying between London and the English Channel is one of the
most varied and diversified in all England. The "men of Kent" and the
"Kentish men" have gone down in history in legendary fashion. The Roman
influences and remains are perhaps more vivid here to-day than elsewhere,
while Chaucer has done perhaps more than all others to give the first
impetus to our acquaintanceship with the pleasures of the road.
"The Pilgrim's Way," the old Roman Watling Street, and the "Dover Road" of
later centuries bring one well on toward the coaching days, which had not
yet departed ere Mr. Pickwick and his friends had set out from the present
"Golden Cross" Hotel at Charing Cross for "The Bull" at Rochester.
One should not think of curtailing a pilgrimage to what may, for the want
of a more expressive title, be termed "Dickens' Kent," without journeying
from London to Gravesend, Cobham, Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone,
Canterbury, and Broadstairs. Here one is immediately put into direct
contact, from the early works of "Pickwick," "Copperfield," and
"Chuzzlewit," to the last unfinished tale of "Edwin Drood."
No end of absorbing interest is to be found in the footsteps of Pickwick
and Jingle, and Copperfield and his friend Steerforth.
To-day one journeys, by a not very progressive or up-to-date railway, by
much the same route as did Mr. Pickwick and his friends, and reaches the
Medway at Strood and Rochester through a grime and gloom which hardly
existed in Dickens' time to the same compromising extent that it does
to-day. Bricks, mortar, belching chimneys, and roaring furnaces line the
route far into the land of hops.
Twenty miles have passed before those quiet scenes of Kentish life, which
imagination has led one to expect, are in the least apparent. The route
_via_ the river towns of Woolwich, Erith, Gravesend, and Dartford, or
_via_ Lee, Eltham, and Bexley, is much the same, and it is only as the
train crosses the Medway at Strood--the insignificant and uninteresting
suburb of Rochester--that any environment of a different species from that
seen in London itself is to be recognized. The ancient city of Rochester,
with its overgrown and significantly busy dockyard appendage of Chatham,
is indicative of an altogether different _raison d'être_ from what one has
hitherto connected the scenes of Dickens' stories.
Kent as a whole, even the Kent of Dickens, would require much time to
cover, as was taken by the "Canterbury" or even the "Pickwickian"
pilgrims, but a mere following, more or less rapidly, of the Dover Road,
debouching therefrom to Broadstairs, will give a vast and appreciative
insight into the personal life of Dickens as well as the novels whose
scenes are here laid.
The first shrine of moment _en route_ would be the house at Chalk, where
Dickens spent his honeymoon, and lived subsequently at the birth of his
son, Charles Dickens, the younger. Gad's Hill follows closely, thence
Rochester and Chatham. The pond on which the "Pickwickians" disported
themselves on a certain occasion, when it was frozen, is still pointed out
at Rochester, and "The Leather Bottle" at Cobham, where Mr. Pickwick and
Mr. Winkle made inquiries for "a gentleman by the name of Tupman," is a
very apparent reality; and with this one is well into the midst of the
Kent country, made famous by Charles Dickens.
Aside from Dickens' later connection with Rochester, or, rather, Gad's
Hill Place, there is his early, and erstwhile happy, life at Chatham to
be reckoned with. Here, his father being in employment at the dockyard,
the boy first went to school, having been religiously and devotedly put
through the early stages of the educative process by his mother.
His generally poor health and weakly disposition kept him from joining in
the rough games of his schoolmates, and in consequence he found relaxation
in the association of books. Indeed, it was at this time that the first
seeds of literary ambition took root, with the result that a certain weedy
thing, called "A Tragedy," grew up under the title of "Misnar, the Sultan
of India," which at least gave the young author fame among his immediate
juvenile circle.
At the age of nine, his father left Chatham, and Dickens was removed with
the rest of the family to London, where his early pitiful struggles began,
which are recorded elsewhere.
There is a peculiar fascination about both the locality and the old
residence of Charles Dickens--Gad's Hill Place--which few can resist. Its
lofty situation on a ridge between the Thames and the Medway gives Gad's
Hill several commanding views, including the busy windings of the latter,
where the Dutch fleet anchored in Elizabeth's reign.
The surroundings seem from all times to have been a kind of Mecca to
tramps and petty showmen. That Dickens had an irresistible love for this
spot would be clear from the following extract from his works:
"I have my eye on a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side by a
wood, and having, on one hand, between the road dust and the trees, a
skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and
it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the
ocean...."
Gad's Hill Place is a comfortable, old-fashioned, creeper-clad house,
built about a century since, and is on the spot mentioned in Shakespeare's
"Henry IV." as the scene of the robbery of the travellers. The following
extract from a mediæval record book is interesting:
"1586, September 29th daye, was a thiefe yt was slayne, buried." Again
"1590, Marche the 17th daie, was a thiefe yt was at Gadshill wounded to
deathe, called Robert Writs, buried."
The "Falstaff" Inn is nearly opposite Gad's Hill Place, and dates probably
from Queen Anne's time. It formerly had an old-fashioned swinging sign, on
one side of which was painted Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor. In
its long sanded room there was a copy of Shakespeare's monument in
Westminster Abbey. Fifty years ago about ninety coaches passed this inn
daily.
In the garden at Gad's Hill Place Dickens had erected a Swiss chalet
presented to him by Fechter, the actor. Here he did his writing "up among
the branches of the trees, where the birds and butterflies fly in and
out."
The occupiers of Gad's Hill Place since the novelist's death have been
Charles Dickens, the younger, Major Budden, and latterly the Honourable F.
W. Latham, who graciously opens certain of the apartments to visitors.
In the immediate neighbourhood of Rochester is Cobham, with its famous
Pickwickian inn, "The Leather Bottle," where Mr. Tupman sought retirement
from the world after the elopement of Miss Wardle with Alfred Jingle.
Dickens himself was very fond of frequenting the inn in company with his
friends.
The visitor will have no need to be told that the ancient hostelry
opposite the village church is the "Leather Bottle" in question, so
beloved of Mr. Pickwick, since the likeness of that gentleman, painted
vividly and in the familiar picturesque attitude, on the sign-board,
loudly proclaims the fact. It should be one of the fixed _formulæ_ of the
true Dickensian faith that all admirers of his immortal hero should turn
in at the "Leather Bottle" at Cobham, and do homage to Pickwick in the
well-known parlour, with its magnificent collection of Dickens relics, too
numerous to enumerate here, but of great and varied interest, the present
proprietor being himself an ardent Dickens enthusiast.
Here is a shrine, at once worthy, and possessed of many votive offerings
from all quarters.
Dickens' personality, as evinced by many of his former belongings, which
have found a place here, pervades the bar parlour. So, too, has the very
spirit and sentiment of regard for the novelist made the "Leather
Bottle's" genial host a marked man. He will tell you many anecdotes of
Dickens and his visits here in this very parlour, when he was living at
Higham.
The "mild and bitter," or the "arf and arf," is to-day no less pungent and
aromatic than when Dickens and his friends regaled themselves amid the
same surroundings.
It should be a part of the personal experience of every Dickens enthusiast
to journey to the "unspoilt" village of Cobham and spend a half-day
beneath the welcoming roof of the celebrated "Leather Bottle."
The great love of Dickens for Rochester, the sensitive clinging to the
scenes of that happy, but all too short childhood at Chatham, forms an
instance of the magnetic power of early associations.
"I have often heard him say," said Forster, "that in leaving the
neighbourhood of Rochester he was leaving everything that had given his
early life its picturesqueness or sunshine."
What the Lake District is to Wordsworthians, Melrose to lovers of Scott,
and Ayr to Burns, Rochester and its neighbourhood is to Dickens
enthusiasts throughout the English-speaking world.
The very subtlety of the spell in the former cases holds aloof many an
average mortal who grasps at once the home thrusts, the lightly veiled
satire, the poor human foibles, fads, and weaknesses in the characters of
Dickens. The ordinary soul, in whom the "meanest flower that grows"
produces no tears, may possibly be conscious of a lump in his throat as he
reads of the death of Jo or Little Nell. The deaths of Fagin and Bill
Sikes are, after all, a more native topic to the masses than the final
exit of Marmion.
Not only so, but the very atmosphere of the human abodes, to say nothing
of minute and readily identified descriptions of English scenery,
permeates the stories of Dickens.
Gad's Hill at Higham can, to be sure, hardly be reckoned as a London
suburb, but on the other hand it was, in a way, merely a suburban
residence near enough thereto to be easily accessible.
Even in his childhood days Dickens had set his heart upon the possession
of this house, which was even then known as Gad's Hill Place. His father,
who at that time had not fallen upon his unfortunate state, had encouraged
him to think that it might be possible, "when he should have grown to a
man," did he but work hard.
At any rate Dickens was able to purchase the estate in 1856, and from that
date, until his death in 1870, it was occupied by him and his family.
Writing to Forster at this time, Dickens stated that he had just "paid the
purchase-money for Gad's Hill Place" (£1,790). How Dickens' possession of
the house actually came about is told in his own words, in a letter
written to his friend, M. De Cerjet, as follows: