Charles Dickens was born at No. 387, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea, on Friday, February 7th, 1812. He was the second son of John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy Pay office, who married Miss Elizabeth Barrow, and had a family of eight children, two of whom died in childhood. Of his very earliest days Charles Dickens retained many distinct and durable impressions. He even recollected the small front garden of the house at Portsea, from which he was taken away at the age of two years, and where he played with his elder sister whilst watched by a nurse through the kitchen window on a level with the gravel walk. Referring to these early memories, he described “how he thought the Rochester High Street must be at least as wide as Regent Street, which he afterwards discovered to be little better than a lane, how the public clock in it, supposed to be the finest clock in the world, turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a clock as a man’s eyes ever saw; and how, in its town hall, which had appeared to him once so glorious a structure that he had set it up in his mind as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the palace for Aladdin, he had painfully to recognise a mere mean little heap of bricks, like a chapel gone demented.” In “The Seven Poor Travellers” Dickens gave another picture of the same spot. “The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red brick building as if Time carried on business there and hung out his sign.”

In 1836 Charles Dickens lived at 15, Furnival’s Inn, and it was here that he “thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number,” which was published March 31st, 1837. Two days later the author married Miss Catherine Hogarth, and after spending their honeymoon in the village of Chalk, near Gad’s Hill, the young couple continued to reside for some time in apartments on the top floor of this house.

“The Leather Bottle,” immortalised in “The Pickwick Papers,” is situated at Cobham, opposite the church. “‘And really,’ added Mr. Pickwick, after half an hour’s walking had brought them to the village, ‘really, for a misanthrope’s choice, this is one of the prettiest and most desirable places of residence I ever met with.’

“In this opinion also both Mr. Winkle and Mr. Snodgrass expressed their concurrence; and, having been directed to the ‘Leather Bottle,’ a clean and commodious village ale-house, the three travellers entered, and at once inquired for a gentleman of the name of Tupman.”

The Old Curiosity Shop in Portugal Street, said to be the house assigned by the novelist for the residence of Little Nell and her grandfather, was “one of those receptacles for old and curious things, which seem to crouch in odd corners of this town, and to hide their musty treasure from the public eye in jealousy and distrust.” It is possibly the best known among the landmarks of places made famous by Dickens.

“They saw the vault covered and the stone fixed down. Then, when the dusk of evening had come on, and not a sound disturbed the sacred stillness of the place when the bright moon poured in her light on tomb and monument, on pillar, wall, and arch, and most of all (it seemed to them) upon her quiet grave in that calm time, when all outward things and inward thoughts teem with assurances of immortality, and worldly hopes and fears are humbled in the dust before them—then, with tranquil and submissive hearts, they turned away, and left the child with God.”

Dotheboys Hall, in “Nicholas Nickleby,” is said to have borne a close resemblance to Shaw’s Academy at Bowes, Yorkshire; but Dickens in his

preface to the book disclaimed his intention of identifying the infamous Mr. Squeers with the master of any particular school by his words, “Mr. Squeers is the representative of a class and not of an individual.” “‘The fact is it ain’t a Hall,’ observed Squeers, drily.... ‘We call it a hall up in London because it sounds better, but they don’t know it by that name in these parts. A man may call his house an island if he likes; there’s no Act of Parliament against that, I believe.’ ... The school was a long cold-looking house, one storey high, with a few straggling outbuildings behind and a barn and stable adjoining.”

This raven was the original of “Grip” in “Barnaby Budge.” To the great grief of Dickens the bird died, after it had been ailing only a few days, on March 12th, 1841. After death the famous raven was stuffed, and when sold at the Dickens sale realised £126.

“‘I make him come?’ cried Barnaby, pointing to the bird. ‘Him, who never goes to sleep, or so much as winks! Why, any time of night, you may see his eyes in my dark room, shining like two sparks. And every night, and all night too, he’s broad awake, talking to himself, thinking what he shall do to-morrow, where we shall go, and what he shall steal, and hide, and bury. I make him come! Ha, ha, ha!’”

In 1839 Dickens removed from Doughty Street to No. 1, Devonshire Terrace, a handsome house with a garden of considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a high brick wall facing the York Gate into Regent’s Park. The house is entered at the side, and the front looks into Marylebone Road. The windows of the lower and first-floor rooms are largely bowed, and Dickens described it as “a house of great promise (and great premium), undeniable situation, and excessive splendour.” He lived here until 1850, and in these years much of his best work was done, including “Master Humphrey’s Clock,” “The Old Curiosity Shop.” “Barnaby Budge,” “American Notes,” “Martin Chuzzlewit,” “A Christmas Carol,” “The Cricket on the Hearth,” “Dombey and Son,” “The Haunted Man,” and “David Copperfield.”

After leaving Devonshire Terrace, Dickens resided for nearly nine years, dating from November 1851, at Tavistock House, which has of late been demolished. During this period he wrote “Bleak House,” “Hard Times,” a part of “Little Dorrit,” and “A Tale of Two Cities.”

Hans Christian Andersen, after visiting Dickens in Tavistock House, gave the following description of his home:—

“In Tavistock Square stands Tavistock House. This and the strip of garden in front of it are shut out from the thoroughfare by an iron railing. A large garden, with a grass plat and high trees, stretches behind the house, and gives it a countrified look in the midst of this coal and gas steaming London. In the passage from street to garden hung pictures and engravings. On the first floor was a rich library, with a fireplace and a writing-table, looking out on the garden; and here it was that in winter Dickens and his friends acted plays to the satisfaction of all parties.”

Eastgate House, the original of the Nuns’ House in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” forms one of the most picturesque bits of the Rochester High Street, one side of the old building being half hidden from the roadway by overhanging trees. “Cloisterham” in “Edwin Drood,” of course, represents Rochester.

“In the midst of Cloisterham stands the Nuns’ House: a veritable brick edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legends of its conventual uses. On the trim gate enclosing its 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 eyeglass stuck in his blind eye.”

Gad’s Hill Place was the novelist’s last residence, where he wrote “The Uncommercial Traveller,” “Great Expectations,” “Our Mutual Friend,” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”

On this house Dickens had fixed his choice in his boyish days. It had always held a prominent place amid the recollections connected with his childhood. Forster wrote of Dickens that “upon first seeing it as he came from Chatham with his father, and looking up at it with admiration, he had been promised that he might live in it himself, or some such house, when he came to be a man, if he would only work hard enough.” It is pleasant to record that this ambition was gratified in after life, when the dream of his boyhood was realised.

Restoration House, Rochester, is of interest as being the “Satis House” of “Great Expectations,” in which Miss Havisham lived. Restoration House must not, however, be confused with Satis House, Rochester, from which Dickens took the name.

“‘Enough House!’ said I. ‘That’s a curious name, miss.’

“‘Yes,’ she replied; ‘but it meant more than it said. It meant, when it was given, that whoever had this house could want nothing else. They must have been easily satisfied in those days, I should think.’

“To be sure, it was a deserted place, down to the pigeon-house in the brewery-yard, which had been blown crooked on its pole by some high wind, and would have made the pigeons think themselves at sea, if there had been any pigeons there to be rocked by it. But there were no pigeons in the dovecot, no horses in the stables, no pigs in the sty....”

The Bull Hotel is a commodious establishment of ancient and respectable repute, and the principal posting-house of Rochester. It is the celebrated inn where the Pickwickians stayed on the occasion of their first visit to Rochester, and which Mr. Jingle so laconically summed up in the phrase, “good house—nice beds.”

The house itself has changed very little. A fine oak staircase leads up to the ball-room, where Mr. Jingle masqueraded in Mr. Winkle’s dress-suit with extraordinary results.

In “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” Dickens described the Old Gatehouse at Rochester, facing Pump Lane, with its archway, which stands angle-wise in the street. There is a small postern at the back of the gate. This building was the residence of Mr. Tope, “chief verger and showman” of the Cathedral, with whom lodged Mr. John Jaspar, the uncle of Edwin Drood. The house is a gabled wooden structure, two storeys high, built over the stone gateway. Dickens pictured it as “an old stone gatehouse crossing the Close, with an arched thoroughfare passing beneath it.”

This house formed the basis for a short story called, “The Seven Poor Travellers,” which appeared in the Christmas number of Household Words for 1854. The inscription over the doorway of this striking-looking building runs as follows:—

RICHARD WATTS, Esq.,
by his will dated 22 August, 1579,
founded this charity
for six poor travellers.
Who not being Rogues, or Proctors,
may receive gratis for one night,
Lodging, Entertainment,
and four-pence each.

Dickens called it “a clean white house of a staid and venerable air, with a quaint old door (an arched door), choice, little, long, low lattice windows, and a roof of three gables.”

Charles Dickens died on the 9th of June, 1870. Five days later he was buried in Westminster Abbey, with, according to Forster, only such ceremonial as would strictly obey all injunctions of privacy. The solemnity lost nothing by its simplicity. “All day long,” wrote Dean Stanley, two days after the funeral, “there was a constant pressure to the spot, and many flowers were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many tears shed by unknown eyes.” On the stone are inscribed the words:

CHARLES DICKENS,
Born February the Seventh, 1812. Died June the Ninth, 1870.