The Dickens Country :: CHAPTER I. PORTSMOUTH AND CHATHAM.

CHAPTER I. PORTSMOUTH AND CHATHAM.

The writer of an article in a well-known magazine conceived the idea of preparing a map of England that should indicate, by means of a tint, those portions especially associated with Charles Dickens and his writings. This map makes manifest the fact that the country thus most intimately connected with the novelist is the south-eastern portion of England, having London as the centre and Rochester as the “literary capital,” and including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, and Warwickshire, with an offshoot extending to the northern boundary of Yorkshire.

All literary pilgrims, and particularly the devotees of Charles Dickens, regard as foremost among literary shrines inviting special homage the scene of the nativity of “Immortal Boz.” Like the birthplaces of many an eminent personage who first saw the light in the midst of a humble environment, the dwelling in which Dickens was born is unpretentious enough, and remains unaltered. The modest abode rented shortly after marriage by John Dickens (the future novelist’s father), from June, 1809, to June, 1812, stands in Commercial Road, Portsmouth, the number of the house having been recently changed from 387 to 393. The district was then known as Landport, in the Island of Portsea, but is now incorporated with Portsmouth; a comparatively rural locality at that time, it has since developed into a densely populated neighbourhood, covered with houses and bisected by the main line of the municipal tramways.[1] It is, however, yet within the memory of middle-aged people when this area of brick and mortar consisted of pasture land in which trees flourished and afforded nesting-places for innumerable birds—a condition of things recalled by the names bestowed upon some of the streets hereabouts, such as Cherry Garden Lane and Elm Road—but now “only children flourish where once the daisies sprang.”

The birthplace of Charles Dickens, which less than half a century ago overlooked green fields, is an interesting survival of those days of arboreal delights; and the broad road, on the west side of which it is situated, leads to Cosham and the picturesque ruin of Porchester Castle. In 1809 John Dickens was transferred from Somerset House to the Navy Pay-Office at Portsmouth Dockyard, and, with his young wife, made his home here, in which were born their first child (Frances Elizabeth) in 1810, and Charles on February 7, 1812. This domicile is a plain, red-brick building containing four rooms of moderate size and two attics, with domestic offices; in front there is a small garden, separated from the public roadway by an iron palisading; and a few steps, with a hand-rail, lead from the forecourt to the hooded doorway of the principal entrance. The front bedroom is believed to be the room in which Dickens was born. From the apartments in the rear there is still a pleasant prospect, overlooking a long garden, where flourishes an eminently fine specimen of the tree-mallow. On the death of Mrs. Sarah Pearce, the owner and occupier (and last surviving daughter of John Dickens’s landlord), the house was offered for sale by public auction on Michaelmas Day, 1903, when, much to the delight of the townspeople as well as of all lovers of the great novelist, it was purchased by the Portsmouth Town Council for preservation as a Dickens memorial, and with the intention of adapting it for the purposes of a Dickens Museum. The purchase price was £1,125, a sum exceeding by five hundred pounds the amount realized on the same occasion by the adjoining freehold residence (No. 395), which is identical in character—an interesting and significant testimony as to the sentimental value attaching to the birthplace of “Boz.”

Charles Dickens, like David Copperfield, was ushered into the world “on a Friday,” and, when less than a month old, underwent the ordeal of baptism at the parish church of Portsea, locally and popularly known as St. Mary’s, Kingston, and dating from the reign of Edward III. In 1882 a plan for its restoration and enlargement was proposed, but a few years later the authorities resolved to demolish it altogether and build a larger parochial church from designs by Sir Arthur Blomfield, A.R.A., the foundation stone of which was laid by Queen Victoria early in the spring of 1887, one half of the estimated cost being defrayed by an anonymous donor. On its completion the people of Portsmouth expressed a desire to perpetuate the memory of Charles Dickens by inserting in the new building a stained-glass window, but were debarred by a clause in the novelist’s will, where he conjured his friends on no account to make him “the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever,” as he rested his claim to the remembrance of his country upon his published works. It is not common knowledge that three baptismal names were bestowed upon Dickens, viz., Charles John Huffam, the first being the Christian name of his maternal grandfather, the second that of his father, while the third was the surname of his godfather, Christopher Huffam (incorrectly spelt “Huffham” in the church register), who is described in the London Postal Directory of that time as a “rigger in His Majesty’s Navy”; he lived at Limehouse Hole, near the lower reaches of the Thames, which afterwards played a conspicuous part in “Our Mutual Friend” (“Rogue Riderhood dwelt deep and dark in Limehouse Hole, amongst the riggers, and the mast, oar, and block-makers, and the boat-builders, and the sail-lofts, as in a kind of ship’s hold stored full of waterside characters, some no better than himself, some very much better, and none much worse”). It is interesting to know that the actual font used at the ceremony of Charles Dickens’s baptism has been preserved, and is now in St. Stephen’s Church, Portsea.

John Dickens, after a four years’ tenancy of No. 387, Mile End Terrace, went to reside in Hawke Street, Portsea. Here he remained from Midsummer Day, 1812, until Midsummer Day, 1814, when he was recalled to London by the officials at Somerset House.

I have spared no trouble in endeavouring to discover the house in Hawke Street which John Dickens and his family occupied. Mr. Robert Langton, in his “Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens” (second edition), states that it is the “second house past the boundary of Portsea,” which, however, is not very helpful, as the following note (kindly furnished by the Town Clerk of Portsmouth) testifies:

“I cannot understand what the connection can be between Hawke Street and the borough boundary. The town of Portsea, no doubt, had a recognised boundary, because at one time the greater part of it was encircled by ramparts, but Hawke Street did not come near those ramparts. The old borough boundary was outside the ramparts, both of Portsmouth and Portsea, and therefore Hawke Street did not touch that boundary. Since then the borough boundary has been extended on more than one occasion, and, of course, these boundaries could not touch Hawke Street.” A letter sent by me to the Portsmouth newspapers having reference to this subject brought me into communication with a Southsea lady, who informs me that an old gentleman of her acquaintance (an octogenarian) lived in his youth at No. 8, Hawke Street, and he clearly remembers that the Dickens family resided at No. 16. Hawke Street, in those days, he says, was a most respectable locality, the tenants being people of a good class, while there were superior lodging-houses for naval officers who desired to be within easy reach of their ships in the royal dockyard, distant about five minutes’ walk. No. 16, Hawke Street is a house of three floors and a basement; three steps lead to the front door, and there are two bay-windows, one above the other. The tenant whom John Dickens succeeded was Chatterton, harpist to the late Queen Victoria.

Forster relates, as an illustration of Charles Dickens’s wonderfully retentive memory, that late in life he could recall many minor incidents of his childhood, even the house at Portsea (i.e., his birthplace in Commercial Road), and the nurse watching him (then not more than two years old) from “a low kitchen window almost level with the gravel walk” as he trotted about the “small front garden” with his sister Fanny.

Dickens’s memory obviously failed him on this point, for he was a mere infant of barely five months old when his parents left Commercial Road to reside in Hawke Street, a fact which he had probably forgotten, and of which Forster had no knowledge, as no mention is made by him of the latter street. Here the family had lived two years when John Dickens was recalled to London. I therefore venture to suggest that the novelist vaguely recalled certain incidents of his childhood associated with Hawke Street. True, there is no “small front garden” at No. 16 (indeed, all the houses here are flush with the sidewalk), but at the back is a garden overlooked by the kitchen window, which has an old-fashioned, broad window-seat.

On quitting Portsea for the Metropolis, John Dickens and his family occupied lodgings in Norfolk Street (now Cleveland Street), on the east side of the Middlesex Hospital. In a short time, however, he was again “detached,” having received instructions to join the staff at the Navy Pay-Office at Chatham Dockyard. The date of departure is given by Forster as 1816, and in all probability the Dickens family again took lodgings until a suitable home could be found. After careful research, the late Mr. Robert Langton discovered that from June, 1817 (probably midsummer), until Lady Day, 1821, their abode was at No. 2 (since altered to No. 11), Ordnance Terrace. There little Charles passed some of the happiest years of his childhood, and received the most durable of his early impressions.

Chatham, on the river Medway, derives its name from the Saxon word Ceteham or CÆttham, meaning “village of cottages.” It is anything but a “village” now, having since that remote age developed into a river port and a populous fortified town. Remains of Roman villas have been found in the neighbourhood, thus testifying to its antiquity. Chatham is one of the principal royal shipbuilding establishments in the kingdom. The dockyard was founded by Elizabeth before the threatened invasion of the Spanish Armada, and removed to its present site in 1662; it is now nearly two miles in length, and controlled by an Admiral-Superintendent, with a staff of artisans and labourers numbering about five thousand. Dickens describes and mentions Chatham in several of his writings, and in one of the earliest he refers to it by the name of “Mudfog.”[2]

In “The Seven Poor Travellers” he says of Chatham: “I call it this town because if anybody present knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is more than I do.”[3]

Mr. Pickwick’s impressions of Chatham and the neighbouring towns of Rochester, Strood, and Brompton were that the principal productions “appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyard men,” and that “the commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine stores, hard-bake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters.” He observed that the streets presented “a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military.” “The consumption of tobacco in these towns,” Mr. Pickwick opined, “must be very great, and the smell which pervades the streets must be exceedingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking. A superficial traveller might object to the dirt, which is their leading characteristic, but to those who view it as an indication of traffic and commercial prosperity it is truly gratifying.” Were Mr. Pickwick to revisit Chatham, he would find many of these characteristics still prevailing, and could not fail to note, also, that during the interval of more than sixty years the town had undergone material changes in the direction of modern improvements. When poor little David Copperfield fled from his distressing experiences at Murdstone and Grinby’s, hoping to meet with a welcome from Betsy Trotwood at Dover, he wended his weary way through Rochester; and as he toiled into Chatham, it seemed to him in the night’s aspect “a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks.”[4]

NORFOLK (NOW CLEVELAND) STREET, FITZROY SQUARE. (Page 7.)
Dickens and his parents resided in Norfolk Street in 1816, after their removal from Hawke Street, Portsea.

Dickens himself, when a boy, must have seen the place frequently under similar conditions. The impressions he then received of Chatham and the neighbourhood were permanently fixed upon the mental retina, to be recalled again and again when penning his stories and descriptive pieces. In an article written by him in collaboration with Richard Hengist Horne, he supplies a picture of Chatham as it subsequently appeared when the military element on the main thoroughfares seemed paramount: “Men were only noticeable by scores, by hundreds, by thousands, rank and file, companies, regiments, detachments, vessels full for exportation. They walked about the streets in rows or bodies, carrying their heads in exactly the same way, and doing exactly the same thing with their limbs. Nothing in the shape of clothing was made for an individual, everything was contracted for by the millions. The children of Israel were established in Chatham, as salesmen, outfitters, tailors, old clothesmen, army and navy accoutrement makers, bill discounters, and general despoilers of the Christian world, in tribes rather than in families.”[5]

John Dickens’s official connection with the Navy Pay Department offered facilities for little Charles to roam unchecked about the busy dockyard, where he experienced delight in watching the ropemakers, anchor-smiths, and others at their labours, and in gazing with curious awe at the convict hulks (or prison ships), and where he found constant delight in observing the innumerable changes and variety of scenes; on one day witnessing the bright display of military tactics on Chatham “Lines,” on another enjoying a sail on the Medway with his father, when on duty bound for Sheerness in the Commissioners’ yacht, a quaint, high-sterned sailing-vessel, pierced with circular ports, and dating from the seventeenth century; she was broken up at Chatham in 1868.

The boy unconsciously stored up the pictures of life, and character, and scenery thus brought to his notice, to be recalled and utilized as valuable material by-and-bye. Of the great dockyard he afterwards wrote: “It resounded with the noise of hammers beating upon iron, and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-of-war are built loomed business-like when contemplated from the opposite side of the river.... Great chimneys smoking with a quiet—almost a lazy—air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the giant shears moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, like the giraffe of the machinery creation.”[6]

The famous Chatham Lines (constituting the fortifications of the town), are immortalized in “Pickwick” as the scene of the review at which Mr. Pickwick and his friends were present and got into difficulties; and the field adjacent to Fort Pitt (now the Chatham Military Hospital, standing on high ground near the railway station), was the locality selected for the intended duel between the irate Dr. Slammer and the craven (but innocent) Mr. Winkle, both field and the contiguous land surrounding Fort Pitt being now a public recreation ground, whence is obtainable a fine panoramic view of Chatham and Rochester. The “Lines” are today locally understood as referring to an open space near Fort Pitt, which is used as an exercising ground for the soldiers at the barracks near by. All this portion of the country possessed great attractions for Dickens in later years; it was rendered familiar to him when, as a lad, he accompanied his father in walks about the locality, thus hallowed by old associations.

Ordnance Terrace, Chatham, retains much the same aspect it possessed at the time of John Dickens’s residence there (1817-1821)—a row of three-storied houses, prominently situated on high ground within a short distance of the Chatham railway station. The Dickens abode was the second house in the terrace (now No. 11), whose front is now overgrown with a Virginia creeper, and so redeems its bareness. In describing the place, the late Mr. W. R. Hughes says: “It has the dining-room on the left-hand side of the entrance and the drawing-room on the first floor, and is altogether a pleasantly-situated, comfortable and respectable dwelling.” At Ordnance Terrace, we are assured by Forster, it was that little Charles (“a very queer, small boy,” as he afterwards described himself at this period) lived with his parents from his fifth to his ninth year; the child’s “first desire for knowledge, and his greatest passion for reading, were awakened by his mother, who taught him the first rudiments, not only of English, but also, a little later, of Latin.” The same authority states that he and his sister Fanny presently supplemented these home studies by attending a preparatory day-school in Rome Lane (now Railway Street), and that when revisiting Chatham in his manhood he tried to discover the place, found it had been pulled down “ages” before to make room for a new street; but there arose, nevertheless, “a not dim impression that it had been over a dyer’s shop, that he went up steps to it, that he had frequently grazed his knees in doing so, and that, in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady little shoe, he generally got his leg over the scraper.” Other recollections of the Ordnance Terrace days flashed upon him when engaged upon his “Boz” sketches; for example, the old lady in the sketch entitled “Our Parish” was drawn from a Mrs. Newnham who lived at No. 5 in the Terrace, and the original of the Half-Pay Captain (in the same sketch) was another near neighbour: at No. 1 there resided a winsome, golden-haired maiden named Lucy Stroughill, whom he regarded as his little sweetheart, and who figures as “Golden Lucy” in one of his Christmas stories,[7] while her brother George, “a frank, open, and somewhat daring boy,” is believed to have inspired the creation of James Steerforth in “David Copperfield.”

2 (NOW 11) ORDNANCE TERRACE, CHATHAM. (Page 11.)
Occupied by John Dickens and his family, 1817-1821.

Little Charles must have been acquainted, too, with the prototype of Joe, the Fat Boy in “Pickwick,” whose real name was James Budden, and whose father kept the Red Lion Inn at the corner of High Street and Military Road, Chatham, where the lad’s remarkable obesity attracted general attention. The Mitre Inn and Clarence Hotel at Chatham, described in 1838 as “the first posting-house in the town,” is also associated with Dickens’s early years, and remains very much as it was when he knew it as a boy. At the period referred to the landlord of this fine old hostelry was a Mr. Tribe, with whose family Mr. and Mrs. John Dickens and their children were on visiting terms; indeed, it is recorded that, at the evening parties held at the Mitre, Charles distinguished himself by singing solos (usually old sea songs), and sometimes duets with his sister, both being mounted on a dining table for a stage. The Mitre is historically interesting by reason of the fact that Lord Nelson used to reside there when on duty at Chatham, a room he occupied being known as “Nelson’s Cabin.”[8]

In the eighteenth chapter of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” we find the place disguised as “The Crozier”—“the orthodox hotel” at Cloisterham (i.e., Rochester)—and in “The Holly-Tree Inn” it is thus directly immortalized: “There was an inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it than any of these.... It was the inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go and see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign—the Mitre—and a bar that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug.”[9]

John Dickens had by nature a very generous disposition, which inclined him to be too lavish in his expenditure. This idiosyncrasy, coupled with the ever-increasing demands of a young and growing family, compelled him to realize the immediate necessity for retrenchment. Hitherto his income (ranging from £200 to £350 per annum) amply sufficed to provide for the comfort of wife and children; but the time had arrived when rigid economy became imperative, and early in 1821 he removed into a less expensive and somewhat obscure habitation at No. 18, St. Mary’s Place (otherwise called “The Brook”), Chatham, situated in the valley through which a brook (now covered over) flows into the Medway. The house on “The Brook,” with a “plain-looking whitewashed plaster front, and a small garden before and behind,” still exists; it is a semi-detached, six-roomed tenement, of a much humbler type than that in Ordnance Terrace, and stands next to what is now the Drill Hall of the Salvation Army, but which, in John Dickens’s time, was a Baptist meeting-house called Providence Chapel. While the Dickens dwelling-place remains unaltered, the neighbourhood has since greatly deteriorated. The locality was then more rural and not so crowded as now, many of the people living there being of a quite respectable class. The minister then officiating at Providence Chapel was William Giles, whose son William had been educated at Oxford, and afterwards kept a school in Clover Lane (now Clover Street, the playground since covered by a railway station), Chatham, whence he moved to larger premises close by, still to be seen at the corner of Rhode Street and Best Street. Both Charles and his elder sister Fanny attended here as day scholars, and the boy, under Mr. Giles’s able tuition, made rapid progress with his studies. Apropos of Mr. Giles, it should be mentioned that when his intelligent pupil had attained manhood and achieved fame as the author of “Pickwick,” his old schoolmaster sent him, as a token of admiration, a silver snuff-box, the lid bearing an inscription addressed “To the Inimitable Boz.” For a considerable time afterwards Dickens jocosely alluded to himself, in letters to intimate friends, as “the Inimitable.” By the way, where is that snuff-box now?

St. Mary’s Place is in close proximity to the old parish church of St. Mary, where the Dickens family worshipped during their residence in Chatham. It dates from the early part of the twelfth century, but having lately undergone a process of rebuilding, the edifice no longer possesses that quaintness which formerly characterized it, both externally and internally. The present structure, standing on a site which has been occupied by a church from Saxon times, has been erected from the designs of the late Sir Arthur Blomfield, already mentioned as the architect of the new parochial church of St. Mary, Kingston. Happily, there are preserved in St. Mary’s, Chatham, some interesting remains of the Norman edifice (A.D. 1120), notably a fine doorway and staircase, and the columns of the central arch of the nave. Instead of the diminutive bell-turret originally surmounting the roof of the nave, a lofty detached tower now constitutes the most striking feature of the church, which was consecrated on October 28, 1903, in the presence of Lord Roberts. It has been suggested that the description of Blunderstone Church in “David Copperfield” recalls in some respects the old parish church of Chatham, so familiar to Dickens in his boyhood, although the picture was partly drawn from Blundeston Church, Suffolk: “Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! with a window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen many times during the morning’s service by Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames.”[10] Dame Peggotty was no doubt to some extent depicted from Charles Dickens’s nurse of those days, Mary Weller, who afterwards married Thomas Gibson, a shipwright in the dockyard, and whose death took place in 1888.

In the registers at Chatham Church are recorded the entries of the baptism of three children born in the parish to John and Elizabeth Dickens, the parents of the novelist; and Mary Allen, an aunt of Charles, was married by license there on December 11, 1821, to Dr. Lamert, a regimental surgeon, who afterwards figured in “Pickwick” as Dr. Slammer. In the church registers may be found several names subsequently used by Dickens in his stories—names of persons who lived in the district—Sowerby (Sowerberry), Tapley, Wren, Jasper, Weller, etc., the Tapleys and the Wellers being well-known cognomens, for there are vaults in the church belonging to the former family, and a gravestone in the churchyard erected to the latter. At the west end of the church there are two inscriptions to the family of Stroughill, who lived in Ordnance Terrace, and to whom reference has already been made. The Vicar, in his appeal for subscriptions in aid of the restoration fund, expressed a hope that the people of Chatham would contribute towards the cost of a memorial in the church to Charles Dickens. Apropos, I may mention that the Council of that flourishing institution the Dickens Fellowship have, very rightly, approached the Corporation of Chatham with the suggestion that they should place commemorative tablets on the two houses in Chatham in which he spent some of the happiest years of his boyhood, and the Corporation have consented.

18 ST. MARY’S PLACE, THE BROOK, CHATHAM. (Page 14.)
The Dickens family resided in the house next to Providence Chapel, 1821-1823.

From an upper window at the side of the house, No. 18, St. Mary’s Place, an old graveyard was plainly visible, and frequently at night little Charles and his sister would gaze upon the God’s-acre and at the heavens above from that point of vantage. Some thirty years later he recalled the circumstances in a poetical little story entitled “A Child’s Dream of a Star,”[11] a touching reminiscence of these early days, where he says: “There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.

“They used to say to one another sometimes, Supposing all the children upon earth were to die, would the flowers and the water and the sky be sorry? They believed they would be sorry. For, said they, the buds are the children of the flowers, and the little playful streams that gambol down the hillsides are the children of the water, and the smallest bright specks playing at hide-and-seek in the sky all night must surely be the children of the stars; and they would all be grieved to see their playmates, the children of men, no more.

“There was one clear shining star that used to come out in the sky before the rest, near the church spire, above the graves. It was larger and more beautiful, they thought, than all the others, and every night they watched for it, standing hand in hand at a window. Whoever saw it first cried out, ‘I see the star!’ and often they cried out both together, knowing so well when it would rise, and where. So they grew to be such friends with it that, before lying down in their beds, they always looked out once again to bid it good-night; and when they were turning round to sleep they used to say, ‘God bless the star!’”

FORT PITT, CHATHAM. (Page 18.)
The playground of Dickens in his childhood, and the scene of the duel in “Pickwick.”

The Chatham days were replete with innocent delights for little Charles, whose young life overflowed with the happiness resulting therefrom. He and his schoolfellows often went to see the sham fights and siege operations on the “Lines,” and he enjoyed many a ramble with his sister and nurse in the fields about Fort Pitt; and “the sky was so blue, the sun was so bright, the water was so sparkling, the leaves were so green, the flowers were so lovely, and they heard such singing birds and saw so many butterflies, that everything was beautiful.” In “The Child’s Story,” whence these extracts are culled, we find the following undoubted allusions to some of the juvenile pleasures in which the children indulged while at Chatham: “They had the merriest games that ever were played.... They had holidays, too, and ‘twelfth-cakes,’ and parties where they danced till midnight, and real theatres, where they saw palaces of real gold and silver rise out of the real earth, and saw all the wonders of the world at once. As to friends, they had such dear friends and so many of them that I want the time to reckon them up.”[12] At home there were picture-books and toys—“the finest toys in the world and the most astonishing picture-books”—and, above all, in the little room adjoining his bedchamber a small library, consisting of the works of Fielding, Smollett, Defoe, Goldsmith, the “Arabian Nights,” and “Tales of the Genii,” which the boy perused with avidity over and over again. “They kept alive my fancy,” he said, as David Copperfield, “and my hope of something beyond that place and time ... and did me no harm, for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it.”[13] In referring afterwards to the “readings” and “imaginations” which he described as brought away from Chatham, he again observes with David: “The picture always rises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I, sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own in my mind connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them”[14]—words that were written down as fact some years before they found their way into the story.

Happily for the boy, he remained in ignorance of the changes impending at home, and unconscious of the fact that he was about to relinquish for ever the delectations afforded by those daily visions of his childhood; the ships on the Medway, the military paradings and manoeuvres, the woods and pastures, the delightful walks with his father to Rochester and Cobham—all were to vanish, as Forster says, “like a dream”; for in 1822 John Dickens was recalled to Somerset House, and in the winter of that year he departed by coach for London, accompanied by his wife and children, excepting Charles, who was left behind for a few weeks longer in the care of the worthy schoolmaster, William Giles. Presently the day arrived when the lonesome lad followed his parents to the Metropolis, leaving behind him, alas! everything that gave his “ailing little life its picturesqueness or sunshine”; for he was really a very sickly boy, and for that reason unable to join with zest in the more vigorous sports of his playfellows, which explains his fondness for reading, so unusual in lads of his age.

Little Charles was only ten years old when he bade farewell to Chatham, and took his place as a passenger in the stage-coach “Commodore.” “There was no other inside passenger,” he afterwards observed, “and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected to find it.” Like Philip Pirrip, he might with more justice have thought that henceforth he “was for London and greatness.” Undoubtedly he experienced the same sensations as those of that youthful hero who, under similar circumstances, realized that “all beyond was so unknown and great that in a moment with a strong heave and sob I broke into tears.”[15] Reminiscences of that memorable journey are recorded in one of that charming series of papers contributed by him to All the Year Round under the general title of “The Uncommercial Traveller.” Dickens here calls his boyhood’s home “Dullborough”—“most of us come from Dullborough who come from a country town”—informing us that as he left the place “in the days when there were no railways in the land,” he left it in a stage-coach, and further takes us into his confidence by saying that he had never forgotten, nor lost the smell of, the damp straw in which he was packed, “like game, and forwarded, carriage paid, to the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.” These words were written in June, 1860, and a few months later, when penning the twentieth chapter of “Great Expectations,” he again recalled the episode: “The journey from our town to the Metropolis was a journey of about five hours. It was a little past mid-day when the four-horse stage-coach by which I was a passenger got into the ravel of traffic frayed out about the Cross Keys, Wood Street, Cheapside, London.... The coach that had carried me away was melodiously called ‘Timpson’s Blue-Eyed Maid,’ and belonged to Timpson, at the coach-office up-street.... Timpson’s was a moderate-sized coach-office (in fact, a little coach-office), with an oval transparency in the window, which looked beautiful by night, representing one of Timpson’s coaches in the act of passing a milestone on the London road with great velocity, completely full inside and out, and all the passengers dressed in the first style of fashion, and enjoying themselves tremendously.” He found, on a later visit to Rochester and Chatham, that Timpson’s had disappeared, for “Pickford had come and knocked Timpson’s down,” and “had knocked two or three houses down on each side of Timpson’s, and then had knocked the whole into one great establishment....”[16] The late Mr. Robert Langton states that Timpson was really Simpson (the coach proprietor at Chatham), and that the “Blue-Eyed Maid” was a veritable coach, to which reference is also made in the third chapter of “Little Dorrit.”

If, as Forster tells us, the “Commodore,” and not the “Blue-Eyed Maid,” conveyed little Charles to London, it was the identical vehicle by which Mr. Pickwick and his companions travelled from the Golden Cross at Charing Cross to Rochester, as duly set forth in the opening chapter of “The Pickwick Papers”; this coach was driven by old Cholmeley (or Chumley), who is said to have been the original of Tony Weller, and concerning whom some amusing anecdotes are related in “Nimrod’s Northern Tour.”

THE GOLDEN CROSS, CHARING CROSS, CIRCA 1827. (Page 22.)
Showing the hotel as it was in the Pickwickian days.
From a print in the collection of Councillor Newton, Hampstead.

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