Dickens' London Part 12

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 d.i.c.kens 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. d.i.c.kens, 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 bra.s.s plate, flas.h.i.+ng forth the legend: 'Seminary for young ladies: Miss Twinkleton.' The house-front is so old and worn, and the bra.s.s plate is so s.h.i.+ning and staring, that the general result has reminded imaginative strangers of a battered old beau with a large modern eye-gla.s.s stuck in his left eye."

To-day there is noticeable but little change, and the charm of Rochester in literary a.s.sociation, if only with respect to d.i.c.kens, is far greater than many another city greater and more comprehensive in its scope.

In the opening scenes of the earlier work d.i.c.kens 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 fict.i.tious 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." d.i.c.kens 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 hoa.r.s.e Cathedral bell, its hoa.r.s.e rooks hovering about the Cathedral tower, its hoa.r.s.er and less distinct rooks in the stalls far beneath."

For the d.i.c.kens 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 d.i.c.kens' "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 princ.i.p.al 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--d.i.c.kens, 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, bra.s.s to Charles d.i.c.kens:

"CHARLES d.i.c.kENS. Born at Portsmouth, seventh of February, 1812.

"Died at Gads.h.i.+ll 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 pa.s.sed, and with the a.s.sociations 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 d.i.c.kens 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 d.i.c.kens 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 Hertfords.h.i.+re, near St. Albans.

This is an excellent ill.u.s.tration 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 d.i.c.kens 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.

d.i.c.kens' 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-fas.h.i.+oned 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 gla.s.sy waters scarcely curve upon the sh.o.r.e--the fis.h.i.+ng-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 s.h.i.+pping) 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 b.a.l.l.s, is but dimly traditional now. There is a '_bleak chamber_' in our watering-place which is yet called the a.s.sembly '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 sh.o.r.e, and s.h.i.+ning 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 d.i.c.kens to the Kent coast was in one of the _Household Words_ articles, ent.i.tled "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 d.i.c.kens' intimacies with the land of his birth, he had also a fondness for foreign sh.o.r.es, 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 coupe 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 d.i.c.kens 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