In March, 1848, Dickens and his wife, accompanied by Mrs. Macready, spent three weeks in Brighton at Junction House, where they were “very comfortably (not to say gorgeously) accommodated”; and for a short time during the spring of 1853, when engaged upon “Bleak House,” he rented rooms at No. 1, Junction Parade. Of all his Brighton residences, however, that which justly claims priority is the celebrated Bedford Hotel, whence (in November, 1848) we find letters addressed to his friends Frank Stone, A.R.A. (who was then designing illustrations for “The Haunted Man”) and Mark Lemon. To the artist he said: “The Duke of Cambridge is staying at this house, and they are driving me mad by having Life Guards bands under our windows playing our overtures (i.e., the overtures in connection with the amateur performances by Dickens and his friends)!... I don’t in the abstract approve of Brighton. I couldn’t pass an autumn here, but it is a gay place for a week or so; and when one laughs or cries, and suffers the agitation that some men experience over their books, it’s a bright change to look out of window, and see the gilt little toys on horseback going up and down before the mighty sea, and thinking nothing of it.”[60] In February, 1849, Dickens spent another holiday at Brighton, accompanied by his wife and sister-in-law and two daughters, and they were joined by the genial artist John Leech and his wife. They had not been in their lodgings a week when both his landlord and his landlord’s daughter went raving mad, this untoward circumstance compelling the lodgers to seek quarters elsewhere—at the Bedford Hotel. “If,” wrote Dickens, when relating the adventure to Forster, “you could have heard the cursing and crying of the two; could have seen the physician and nurse quoited out into the passage by the madman at the hazard of their lives; could have seen Leech and me flying to the doctor’s rescue; could have seen our wives pulling us back; could have seen the M.D. faint with fear; could have seen three other M.D.’s come to his aid; with an atmosphere of Mrs. Gamps, strait-waistcoats, struggling friends and servants, surrounding the whole, you would have said it was quite worthy of me, and quite in keeping with my usual proceedings.” The Reading tour in 1861 again took him to Brighton and the Bedford, and one of his audiences included the Duchess of Cambridge and a Princess. “I think they were pleased with me, and I am sure I was with them.”

Apart from these personal associations, Brighton derives particular interest from the fact that it figures largely in “Dombey and Son.” It was at the Bedford where Mr. Dombey stayed during his weekend visits to Brighton for the purpose of seeing his children, and where Major Bagstock enjoyed the privilege of dining with that purse-proud City merchant. It was to Brighton that Little Paul was sent to school, first as a pupil of the austere and vinegary Mrs. Pipchin. “The castle of this ogress and child-queller was in a steep by-street at Brighton, where the soil was more than usually chalky, flinty, and sterile, and the houses were more than usually brittle and thin; where the small front-gardens had an unaccountable property of producing nothing but marigolds, whatever was sown in them; and where snails were constantly discovered holding on to the street doors, and other public places they were not expected to ornament, with the tenacity of cupping-glasses.” Here also was the superior and “very expensive” establishment of Dr. Blimber—“a great hot-house, in which there was a forcing apparatus incessantly at work,” where, we are told, “mental green peas were produced at Christmas, and intellectual asparagus all the year round. Mathematical gooseberries (very sour ones, too) were common at untimely seasons, and from mere sprouts of bushes, under Dr. Blimber’s cultivation. Every description of Greek and Latin vegetable was got off the driest twigs of boys under the frostiest circumstances.” We learn on excellent authority that Dr. Blimber and his school really existed at Brighton, the prototype of the worthy pedagogue being Dr. Everard, whose celebrated seminary was familiarly called the “Young House of Lords,” from the aristocracy of the pupils. It seems that during the Christmas holidays it became customary with Dr. Everard to organize dances for the boys (such as that so delightfully described in the fourteenth chapter of “Dombey and Son”). In those days, curly locks were considered an indispensable accessory to full dress, and the whole of the afternoon preceding the ball Dr. Everard’s house was pervaded by a strong smell of singed hair and curling-tongs.[61] “There was such ... a smell of singed hair that Dr. Blimber sent up the footman with his compliments, and wished to know if the house was on fire.”

In the summer and autumn of 1849 Dickens went with his family, for the first time, to Bonchurch, Isle of Wight, where he hired for six months the attractive villa, Winterbourne, belonging to the Rev. James White (an author of some repute and a keen lover of books), with whom his intimacy, already begun, now ripened into a lifelong friendship. The novelist had in June of that year passed a brief period at Shanklin, whence he wrote to his wife: “I have taken a most delightful and beautiful house, belonging to White, at Bonchurch—cool, airy, private bathing; everything delicious. I think it is the prettiest place I ever saw in my life at home or abroad.... A waterfall in the grounds, which I have arranged with a carpenter to convert into a perpetual shower-bath.”[62]

He liked the place exceedingly at first, and considered that the views from the summit of the highest downs “are only to be equalled on the Genoese shore of the Mediterranean.” The variety of walks in the neighbourhood struck him as extraordinary; the people were civil, and everything was cheap, while he fully appreciated the fact that the place was certainly cold rather than hot in the summertime, and the sea-bathing proved “delicious.” Here at Bonchurch he was joined by John Leech, and soon settled down to work, being then engaged upon the early portion of “David Copperfield,” varying his literary occupations by taking part, with his customary zest, in dinners at Blackgang and picnics of “tremendous success” on Shanklin Down. One of these festivities he particularly remembered, when he expressly stipulated that the party should be provided with materials for a fire and a great iron pot to boil potatoes in, these, with the comestibles, being conveyed to the ground in a cart. Doubtless this was the veritable function described by the late Mrs. Phoebe Lankester (“Penelope”). Her husband, Dr. Lankester (to whom Dickens referred as “a very good, merry fellow”), and other distinguished men of science then staying at Sandown, belonged to a select and notable club founded originally by the younger members of the British Association, and called the “Red Lions.” The Bonchurch party, headed by Dickens, constituted themselves into a temporary rival club, called the “Sea Serpents,” and picnics were arranged between the two factions, the meetings usually taking place at Cook’s Castle. “Well do I recollect,” observes Mrs. Lankester, “the jolly procession from Sandown as it moved across the Downs, young and old carrying aloft a banner bearing the device of a noble red lion painted in vermilion on a white ground. Wending up the hill from the Bonchurch side might be seen the ‘Sea Serpents,’ with their ensign floating in the wind—a waving, curling serpent, cut out of yards and yards of calico, and painted of a bronzy-green colour with fiery red eyes, its tail being supported at the end by a second banner-holder. Carts brought up the provisions on either side, and at the top the factions met to prepare and consume the banquet on the short, sweet grass under shadow of a rock or a tree. Charles Dickens delighted in the fun. He usually boiled the potatoes when the fire had been lighted by the youngsters, and handed them round in a saucepan, and John Leech used to make sketches of us, one of which is still to be seen in the collection from Punch, and is called ‘Awful Appearance of a “Wopps” at a Picnic.’[63] I was very young then, and did not fully realize what it was to eat potatoes boiled by Charles Dickens, or to make a figure in a sketch by Leech.” On one of these jovial occasions a race was run, after the repast, between Mark Lemon and Dr. Lankester, both competitors of abnormal stoutness, Macready officiating as judge, after which the merry party adjourned to Dickens’s villa for tea and music.

His stay at Bonchurch was enlivened, too, by visits from such cherished friends as Justice Talfourd, Frank Stone, and Augustus Egg, social intercourse with whom formed agreeable interludes between severe spells of literary work. Unhappily, the enervating effect of the climate presently began to prostrate him, and after a few weeks’ residence he complained of insomnia, extreme mental depression, and a “dull, stupid languor.” Commenting upon his physical condition, he remarked: “It’s a mortal mistake—that’s the plain fact. Of all the places I ever have been in, I have never been in one so difficult to exist in pleasantly. Naples is hot and dirty, New York feverish, Washington bilious, Genoa exciting, Paris rainy; but Bonchurch—smashing. I am quite convinced that I should die here in a year.” His wife, sister-in-law, and the Leeches were also affected, but not to the same extent, and, finding it impossible to endure much longer the distressing symptoms, he determined to leave Bonchurch at the end of September and “go down to some cold place,” such as Ramsgate, for a week or two, hoping thus to shake off the effects. In the interval he completed the fifth number of “Copperfield,” after which, during the remainder of the holiday, he and his party (by way of relaxation) indulged in such amusements as “great games of rounders every afternoon, with all Bonchurch looking on.” These revels were disagreeably interrupted by a serious accident to John Leech, who, while bathing in a rough sea, was knocked over by an immense wave, which resulted in congestion of the brain, and necessitated, first, the placing of “twenty of his namesakes on his temple,” and then, as the illness developed, the continuous application of ice to the head, with blood-letting from the arm. The unfortunate artist becoming gradually worse, Dickens essayed the effect of mesmerism, in the virtue of which he apparently had faith, and succeeded in obtaining a period of much-needed sleep for the relief of the invalid, whose condition thenceforth improved until complete restoration of his customary health became assured, enabling him for many subsequent years to delight the world with his inimitable pencil. As already intimated, Dickens remained in the Island until the expiration of the time originally planned for this seaside holiday; but although he brought away many happy associations, he never renewed acquaintance with Bonchurch.