sub-editor of _Household Words_ (Mr. W. H. Wills), when I said to him:
'You see that house? It has always a curious interest for me, because when
I was a small boy down in these parts, I thought it the most beautiful
house (I suppose because of its famous old cedar-trees) ever seen. And my
poor father used to bring me to look at it, and used to say that if ever
I grew up to be a clever man perhaps I might own that house, or such
another house. In remembrance of which, I have always, in passing, looked
to see if it was to be sold or let, and it has never been to me like any
other house, and it has never changed at all.' We came back to town and my
friend went out to dinner. Next morning he came to me in great excitement,
and said, 'It is written that you are to have that house at Gad's Hill.
The lady I had allotted to take down to dinner yesterday began to speak of
that neighbourhood. "You know it?" I said; "I have been there to-day."
"Oh, yes," she said, "I know it very well; I was a child there in the
house they call Gad's Hill Place. My father was the rector, and lived
there many years. He has just died, has left it to me, and I want to sell
it." So,' says the sub-editor, 'you must buy it, now or never!' I did, and
hope to pass next summer there."
It is difficult to regard the numerous passages descriptive of places in
Dickens' books without reverence and admiration. The very atmosphere
appears, by his pen, to have been immortalized.
Even the incoherences of Jingle have cast a new cloak of fame over
Rochester's Norman Cathedral and Castle!
"'Ah! fine place, glorious pile--frowning walls--tottering arches--dark
nooks--crumbling staircases. Old Cathedral too--earthy smell--pilgrims'
feet wore away the old steps--little Saxon doors--confessionals like
money-takers' boxes at theatres--queer customers those monks--Popes and
Lord Treasurers and all sorts of fellows, with great red faces and broken
noses, turning up every day--buff jerkins too--matchlocks--sarcophagus--
fine place--old legends too--strange stories: capital,' and the stranger
continued to soliloquize until they reached the Bull Inn, in the High
Street, where the coach stopped."
[Illustration: DICKENS' STUDY AT GAD'S HILL PLACE.
_From a painting by Luke Fildes, R. A._]
A further description of the Cathedral by Dickens is as follows:
"A certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters, and the
churchyard, after dark, which not many people care to encounter. The cause
of this is not to be found in any local superstition that attaches to the
precincts, but it is to be sought in the innate shrinking of dust with the
breath of life in it from dust out of which the breath of life has passed;
also in the ... reflection, 'If the dead do, under any circumstances,
become visible to the living, these are such likely surroundings for the
purpose that I, the living, will get out of them as soon as I can.'"
With Durdles and Jasper, from the pages of "Edwin Drood," also, one can
descend into the crypt of the earlier Norman church, the same they visited
by moonlight, when Durdles kept tapping the wall "just where he expected
to disinter a whole family of 'old 'uns.'"
In numerous passages Dickens has truly immortalized what perforce would
otherwise have been very insignificant and unappealing structures. The
Bull Inn, most interesting of all, is unattractive enough as a hostelry.
It would be gloomy and foreboding in appearance indeed, and not at all
suggestive of the cheerful house that it is, did it but lack the
association of Dickens.
No. 17 in the inn is the now famous bedroom of Mr. Pickwick, and the
present coffee-room now contains many relics of Dickens purchased at the
sale held at Gad's Hill Place after the author's death.
Chatham Lines, the meadows, the Cathedral and Castle, "Eastgate House,"
the Nuns' House of "Edwin Drood," "Restoration House," the "Satis House"
of "Great Expectations," serve in a way to suggest in unquestionable
manner the debt which Dickens laid upon Rochester and its surroundings.
"Eastgate House" is said to be the original of the home of Mr. Sapsea, the
auctioneer and estate agent in "Edwin Drood."
The date of Eastgate House, 1591, is carved on a beam in one of the upper
rooms. Dickens, in "Edwin Drood," alludes to Eastgate House as follows:
"In the midst of Cloisterham [Rochester] stands the 'Nuns' House,' a
venerable brick edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived
from the legend of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclosing its old
courtyard is a resplendent brass plate, flashing forth the legend:
'Seminary for young ladies: Miss Twinkleton.' The house-front is so old
and worn, and the brass plate is so shining and staring, that the general
result has reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a
large modern eye-glass stuck in his left eye."
To-day there is noticeable but little change, and the charm of Rochester
in literary association, if only with respect to Dickens, is far greater
than many another city greater and more comprehensive in its scope.
In the opening scenes of the earlier work Dickens treated of Rochester,
but the whole plot of his last novel, "Edwin Drood," is centred in the
same city.
"For sufficient reasons, which this narrative ["Edwin Drood"] will itself
unfold as it advances, a fictitious name must be bestowed upon the old
Cathedral town. Let it stand in these pages as Cloisterham. It was once
possibly known to the Druids by another name, and certainly to the Romans
by another; and a name more or less in the course of many centuries can be
of little moment in its dusty chronicles." Dickens describes it thus:
"An ancient city, Cloisterham, and no meet dwelling-place for any one with
hankerings after the noisy world. A monotonous, silent city, deriving an
earthy flavour throughout from its cathedral crypt, and so abounding in
vestiges of monastic graves that the Cloisterham children grow small salad
in the dust of abbots and abbesses, and make dirt-pies of nuns and friars;
while every ploughman in its outlying fields renders to once puissant Lord
Treasurers, Archbishops, Bishops, and such like, the attention which the
Ogre in the story-book desired to render to his unbidden visitor, and
grinds their bones to make his bread.... In a word, a city of another and
a bygone time is Cloisterham, with its hoarse Cathedral bell, its hoarse
rooks hovering about the Cathedral tower, its hoarser and less distinct
rooks in the stalls far beneath."
For the Dickens pilgrim, the first landmark that will strike his eye will
be the Corn Exchange, "with its queer old clock that projects over the
pavement" ("Edwin Drood"). Watts' Charity, a triple-gabled edifice in the
High Street, has become world-famous through Dickens' "Christmas Story."
"Strictly speaking," he says, "there were only six poor travellers, but
being a traveller myself, and being withal as poor as I hope to be, I
brought the number up to seven."
The building is to be recognized both by the roof angles and the
inscriptions on the walls, the principal one of which runs thus:
RICHARD WATTS ESQ.,
_by his Will, dated 22 Aug. 1579,_
_founded this Charity_
_for Six poor Travellers,_
_who not being Rogues or Proctors_
_may receive gratis for one night,_
_Lodging, Entertainment,_
_and Fourpence each._
Could good Richard Watts come forth some morning from his resting-place in
the south transept over the way, he would have the pleasure of seeing how
efficiently the trustees are carrying on their work.
The visitor, too, who desires to see the preparation for the coming
evening's guests, may calculate on being no less "curtuoslie intreated"
than the guests proper. In the little parlour to the left, as we enter
from the street door, is the famous book containing the names and
signatures of numerous celebrities whose curiosity has led them
hither--Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and J. L. Toole amongst the number. From
the kitchen is served out the meat for the supper, which consists of half
a pound of beef, a pint of coffee, and half a loaf for each poor
traveller.
In the south transept of Rochester Cathedral is a plain, almost mean,
brass to Charles Dickens:
"CHARLES DICKENS. Born at Portsmouth, seventh of February, 1812.
"Died at Gadshill Place, by Rochester, ninth of June, 1870.
"Buried in Westminster Abbey. To connect his memory with the scenes
in which his earliest and latest years were passed, and with the
associations of Rochester Cathedral and its neighbourhood, which
extended over all his life, this tablet, with the sanction of the
Dean and Chapter, is placed by his Executors."
This recalls the fact that the great novelist left special instructions in
his will: _"I conjure my friends on no account to make me the subject of
any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. I rest my claims to the
remembrance of my country upon my published works."_
It was in this transept that Charles Dickens was to have been laid to
rest. The grave, in fact, had been dug, and all was ready, when a telegram
came deciding that Westminster Abbey, and not Rochester, should be the
long last home of the author.
Great interest attaches itself to Broadstairs, where Dickens lived upon
returning from his journey abroad in company with his wife and "Phiz," in
1851. "Bleak House" is still pointed out here, and is apparently revered
with something akin to sentiment if not of awe.
As a matter of fact, it is not the original of "Bleak House" at all, that
particular edifice being situate in Hertfordshire, near St. Albans.
This is an excellent illustration of the manner in which delusive legends
grow up on the smallest foundations. On the cliff overlooking the little
pier and close to the coast-guard station, stands Fort House, a tall and
very conspicuous place which Charles Dickens rented during more than one
summer. This is now known as Bleak House because, according to a tradition
on which the natives positively insist, "Bleak House" was written there.
Unfortunately for the legend, it is the fact that, although "Bleak House"
was written in many places,--Dover, Brighton, Boulogne, London, and where
not,--not a line of it was written at Broadstairs.
Dickens' own description of Broadstairs was, in part, as follows:
"Half awake and half asleep, this idle morning in our sunny window on the
edge of a chalk cliff in the old-fashioned watering-place to which we are
a faithful resorter, we feel a lazy inclination to sketch its picture.
"The place seems to respond. Sky, sea, beach, and village, lie as still
before us as if they were sitting for the picture. But the ocean lies
winking in the sunlight like a drowsy lion--its glassy waters scarcely
curve upon the shore--the fishing-boats in the tiny harbour are all
stranded in the mud--our two colliers (our watering-place has a maritime
trade employing that amount of shipping) have not an inch of water within
a quarter of a mile of them, and turn, exhausted, on their sides, like
faint fish of an antediluvian species. Rusty cables and chains, ropes and
rings, undermost parts of posts and piles and confused timber defences
against the waves, lie strewn about, in a brown litter of tangled seaweed
and fallen cliff.
"In truth, our watering-place itself has been left somewhat high and dry
by the tide of years. Concerned as we are for its honour, we must
reluctantly admit that the time when this pretty little semi-circular
sweep of houses tapering off at the end of the wooden pier into a point in
the sea, was a gay place, and when the lighthouse overlooking it shone at
daybreak on company dispersing from public balls, is but dimly traditional
now. There is a '_bleak chamber_' in our watering-place which is yet
called the Assembly 'Rooms.'...
"... We have a church, by the bye, of course--a hideous temple of flint,
like a great petrified haystack....
"Other population than we have indicated, our watering-place has none.
There are a few old used-up boatmen who creep about in the sunlight with
the help of sticks, and there is a poor imbecile shoemaker who wanders his
lonely life away among the rocks, as if he were looking for his
reason--which he will never find. Sojourners in neighbouring
watering-places come occasionally in flys to stare at us, and drive away
again.
"... And since I have been idling at the window here, the tide has risen.
The boats are dancing on the bubbling water: the colliers are afloat
again; the white-bordered waves rush in; the children--
"'Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back;'
the radiant sails are gliding past the shore, and shining on the far
horizon; all the sea is sparkling, heaving, swelling up with life and
beauty, this bright morning." ("Our Watering-Place.")
Another reference of Dickens to the Kent coast was in one of the
_Household Words_ articles, entitled "Out of Season." The Watering-Place
"out of season" was Dover, and the place without a cliff was Deal.
Writing to his wife of his stay there, he says:
"I did nothing at Dover (except for _Household Words_), and have not begun
'Little Dorrit,' No. 8, yet. But I took twenty-mile walks in the fresh
air, and perhaps in the long run did better than if I had been at work."
One can hardly think of Deal or Dover without calling to mind the French
coast opposite, often, of a clear day, in plain view.
In spite of Dickens' intimacies with the land of his birth, he had also a
fondness for foreign shores, as one infers from following the scope of his
writings.
Of Boulogne, he writes in "Our French Watering-Place" (_Household Words_,
November 4, 1854):
"Once solely known to us as a town with a very long street, beginning with
an abattoir and ending with a steamboat, which it seemed our fate to
behold only at daybreak on winter mornings, when (in the days before
continental railroads), just sufficiently awake to know that we were most
uncomfortably asleep, it was our destiny always to clatter through it, in
the coupé of the diligence from Paris, with a sea of mud behind, and a sea
of tumbling waves before."
An apt and true enough description that will be recognized by many.
Continuing, he says, also truly enough:
"But our French watering-place, when it is once got into, is a very
enjoyable place."
To those to whom these racy descriptions appeal, it is suggested that they
familiarize themselves with the "Reprinted Pieces," edited by Charles
Dickens the younger, and published in New York in 1896, a much more
complete edition, with explanatory notes, than that which was issued in
London.
THE RIVER THAMES
Glide gently, thus for ever glide,
O Thames! that other bards may see
As lovely visions by thy side
As now, fair river! come to me.
O glide, fair stream, for ever so,
Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,
Till all our minds for ever flow
As thy deep waters now are flowing.
WORDSWORTH...
Ever present in the minds and hearts of the true Londoner is the "majestic
Thames;" though, in truth, while it is a noble stream, it is not so
all-powerful and mighty a river as romance would have us believe.
From its source, down through the Shires, past Oxford, Berks, and Bucks,
and finally between Middlesex, Surrey, and Essex, it ambles slowly but
with dignity. From Oxford to Henley and Cookham, it is at its best and
most charming stage. Passing Maidenhead, Windsor, Stains, Richmond,
Twickenham, and Hammersmith, and reaching Putney Bridge, it comes into
London proper, after having journeyed on its gladsome way through green
fields and sylvan banks for a matter of some hundred and thirty miles.
At Putney Bridge and Hammersmith is the centre of the fishing section, and
this was the background depicted by the artist who drew the wrapper for
the first serial issue of "The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club."
Putney Church is seen in the distance, with its Henry VIII. Chapel, and in
the foreground Mr. Pickwick is found dozing in his traditional punt,--that
curious box, or coffin-like, affair, which, as a pleasure craft, is
apparently indigenous to the Thames.
Above this point the river is still:
_... "The gentle Thames_
_And the green, silent pastures yet remain."_
Poets have sung its praises, and painters extolled its charms. To cite
Richmond alone, as a locality, is to call up memories of Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Walpole, Pope, Thomson, and many others whose names are known
and famed of letters and art.
Below, the work-a-day world has left its stains and its ineffaceable marks
of industry and grime, though it is none the less a charming and
fascinating river, even here in its lower reaches. And here, too, it has
ever had its literary champions. Was not Taylor--"the water poet"--the
Prince of Thames Watermen?"
If swans are characteristic of the upper reaches, the waterman or the
bargeman, assuredly, is of the lower. With the advent of the
railway,--which came into general use and effective development during
Dickens' day,--it was popularly supposed that the traffic of the "silent
highway" would be immeasurably curtailed. Doubtless it was, though the
real fact is, that the interior water-ways of Britain, and possibly other
lands, are far behind "_la belle France_" in the control and development
of this means of intercommunication.
There was left on the Thames, however, a very considerable traffic
which--with due regard for vested rights, archaic by-laws and traditions,
"customs of the port," and other limitations without number--gave, until
very late years, a livelihood to a vast riverside population.
The change in our day from what it was, even in the latter days of
Dickens' life, is very marked. New bridges--at least a half-dozen--have
been built, two or three new tunnels, steam ferries,--of a sort,--and four
railway bridges; thus the aspect of the surface of the river has perforce
changed considerably, opening up new vistas and _ensembles_ formerly
unthought of.
Coming to London proper, from "Westminster" to the "Tower," there is
practically an inexhaustible store of reminiscence to be called upon, if
one would seek to enumerate or picture the sights, scenes, and localities
immortalized by even the authors contemporary with Dickens.
Not all have been fictionists,--a word which is used in its well meant
sense,--some have been chroniclers, like the late Sir Walter Besant and
Joseph Knight, whose contributions of historical résumé are of the utmost
value. Others are mere "antiquarians" or, if you prefer, historians, as
the author of "London Riverside Churches." Poets there have been, too, who
have done their part in limning its charms, from Wordsworth's "Westminster
Bridge," on the west, written at the beginning of the nineteenth century,
to "A White-Bait Dinner at Greenwich," of Peacock, or "The Boy at the
Nore," of Tom Hood, on the east.
When, in the forties, the new Parliament Houses were approaching their
completed form, a new feature came into the prospect.
As did Wren, the architect of St. Paul's, so did Barry, the architect of
the Parliament Buildings, come in for many rough attacks at the hands of
statesmen or Parliamentarians, who set their sails chiefly to catch a
passing breath of popular applause, in order that they might provide for
themselves a niche or a chapter in the history of this grand building.
It was claimed that the flanking towers would mix inextricably with those
of St. Margaret's and the Abbey; that were they omitted, the structure
would be dwarfed by the aforesaid churches,--and much more of the same
sort. In its present completed form, it is a very satisfying
"Tudor-Gothic," or "Gothic-Tudor," building, admirably characteristic of
the dignity and power which should be possessed by a great national
administrative capitol.
The worst defect, if such be noticeable among its vast array of
excellencies, is the unfinished northerly, or up-river, façade.
To recall a reminiscence of Dickens' acquaintance with the locality, it
may be mentioned that in Milbank, hard by the Houses of Parliament, is
Church Street, running to the river, where Copperfield and Peggotty
followed Martha, bent upon throwing herself into the flood.
In Dickens' time, that glorious thoroughfare, known of all present-day
visitors to London, the Victoria Embankment, was in a way non-existent. In
the forties there was some agitation for a new thoroughfare leading
between the western and the eastern cities. Two there were already, one
along Holborn, though the later improvement of the Holborn Viaduct more
than trebled its efficiency, and the other, the "Royal Route,"--since the
court gave up its annual state pageant by river,--_via_ the Strand, Fleet
Street, and Ludgate Hill.
As originally projected, the "Embankment" was to be but a mere causeway,
or dyke, running parallel to the shore of the river from Westminster
Bridge to Blackfriars, "with ornamental junctions at Hungerford and
Waterloo Bridges."
Whatever the virtues of such a plan may have been, practically or
artistically, it was ultimately changed in favour of a solid filling which
should extend from the fore-shore to somewhat approximating the original
river-banks. This left the famous "Stairs" far inland, as stand York
Stairs and Essex Stairs to-day.
The result has been that, while it has narrowed the river itself, it has
made possible an ample roadway through the heart of a great city, the peer
of which does not exist elsewhere. It is to be feared, though, that it is
hardly appreciated. The London cabby appears to be fascinated with the
glare and intricacy of the Strand, and mostly the drivers of brewers'
drays and parcel delivery vans the same. The result is that, but for a few
earnest folk who are really desirous of getting to their destination
quickly, it is hardly made use of to anything like the extent which it
ought.
The Thames in London proper was, in 1850, crossed by but six bridges.
Blackfriars Railway Bridge, Charing Cross Railway Bridge, and the Tower
Bridge did not come into the _ensemble_ till later, though the two former
were built during Dickens' lifetime.
Westminster Bridge, from whence the Embankment starts, was the second
erected across the Thames. It appears that attempts were made to obtain
another bridge over the Thames besides that known as "London Bridge," in
the several reigns of Elizabeth, James I., Charles I. and II., and George
I.; but it was not until the year 1736 that Parliament authorized the
building of a second bridge, namely, that at Westminster. Prior to this
date, the only communication between Lambeth and Westminster was by
ferry-boat, near Palace Gate, the property of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, to whom it was granted by patent under a rent of £20, as an
equivalent for the loss of which, on the opening of the bridge, the see
received the sum of £2,205.
In 1739, amid great opposition from "The Most Worshipful Company of
Watermen," the first stone was laid, and in 1747 the structure was
completed, the plans having been changed _interim_ in favour of an entire
stone structure.
As it then stood Westminster Bridge was 1,066 feet long, or 260 feet
shorter than Waterloo Bridge; its width is 42 feet, height, 58 feet. The
proportions of the bridge were stated by an antiquary, since departed this
life, to be "so accurate that, if a person speak against the wall of any
of the recesses on one side of the way, he may be distinctly heard on the
opposite side; even a whisper is audible during the stillness of the
night," a circumstance of itself of little import, one would think, but
which is perhaps worth recording, as indicating the preciseness of a
certain class of historians of the time. To-day it is to be feared that
such details are accepted, if not with credulity, at least with
indifference.
This fine work not being equal to the demands which were made upon it, it
gave way in 1865 to the present graceful and larger iron-spanned
structure, which, while in no way a grand work of art, does not offend in
any way.