We can readily conceive that the description of the coach journey to Ipswich, starting from the Bull Inn, Whitechapel, and rattling along the Whitechapel and Mile End Roads, “to the admiration of the whole population of that pretty densely-populated quarter,” and so to Suffolk’s county town (as duly set forth in the twenty-second chapter of “Pickwick”), is a personal reminiscence of Dickens himself when fulfilling his engagement with the Suffolk Chronicle.

While busy with newspaper responsibilities, to which he had pledged himself, he evidently made the best use of the opportunities thus afforded of noting certain topographical details of the town, finding “in a kind of courtyard of venerable appearance,” near St. Clement’s Church, a suitable locale for the incident of the unexpected meeting of Sam Weller and Job Trotter; the “green gate,” which Job was seen to open and close after him, is locally believed to be one that adjoins the churchyard a few yards from Church Street, the inhabitants taking great pride in pointing it out as the precise spot where Alfred Jingle’s body-servant embraced Sam “in an ecstasy of joy.” In regard to these scenes Ipswich is mentioned by name, but it has been conjectured that the town also figures in “Pickwick” under the successful disguise of “Eatanswill,” although Norwich has been mentioned in this connection. Certainly the weight of such evidence as that proffered by the Suffolk Times and Mercury favours the belief that Ipswich stood for the unflattering portrait, and, but for the facts as averred by that journal, we should possibly never have had Mr. Pickwick’s nocturnal misadventure, nor heard of the rival editors of the Eatanswill Gazette and the Eatanswill Independent.

Dickens’s reporting expedition in Suffolk during the electoral campaign of 1835 doubtless compelled him to include in his itinerary several of the leading towns in the county, where political meetings would naturally be held, and among them Bury St. Edmunds, where, according to tradition, he put up at the Angel Inn, his room being No. 11. In describing this hostelry, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald says that it is “a solemn, rather imposing, and stately building, of a gloomy slate colour, and of the nature of a family hotel.... It has yards and stabling behind it, which must have flourished in the old posting times.” Standing in Market Square, it continues to this day to be the principal hotel in the place, and remains in much the same condition as when the novelist knew it about seventy years ago. Bury St. Edmunds, like Ipswich, has won immortality in the pages of “Pickwick,” where it is referred to as “a handsome little town of thriving and cleanly appearance,” its well-paved streets being specially commended. In one of “The Uncommercial Traveller” papers he calls it “a bright little town.”

We are told that the coach, with Mr. Pickwick among the passengers newly arrived from Eatanswill, pulled up at the “large inn, situated in a wide, open street, nearly facing the old abbey.” “And this,” said Mr. Pickwick, “is the Angel. We alight here, Sam...;” whereupon a private room was ordered, and then dinner, everything being arranged with caution, for it will be remembered that Mr. Pickwick and his faithful attendant were in quest of that thorough-paced adventurer Alfred Jingle, Esq., “of No Hall, Nowhere,” intent upon frustrating probable intentions on his part of practising further deceptions. Here, at Bury, the “Mulberry man” (otherwise Job Trotter) was found by Sam in the pious act of reading a hymn-book, a discovery which proved to be the initial stage of Mr. Pickwick’s adventure at the boarding-school for young ladies—Westgate House—which, we are told, is a well-known residence called Southgate House, although there are other antique-looking schools for girls on the Westgate side of the town that seem more or less to answer the description.

More than two decades later—i.e., in 1861—Dickens again visited both Ipswich and Bury St. Edmunds, when he gave readings from his works, beginning the series at Norwich, where, writing from the recently-demolished Royal Hotel in the Market Place, he spoke of his audience in that city as “a very lumpish audience indeed ... an intent and staring audience. They laughed, though, very well, and the storm made them shake themselves again. But they were not magnetic, and the great big place (St. Andrew’s Hall) was out of sorts somehow.”[65]

On the last day of the year 1848, Dickens contemplated an excursion with Leech, Lemon, and Forster to some old cathedral city then unfamiliar to him, believing the sight of “pastures new” would afford him the necessary mental refreshment. “What do you say to Norwich and Stanfield Hall?” he queried of Forster, and it was decided forthwith that the three friends should depart thence. Stanfield Hall had just gained unenviable notoriety as the scene of a dreadful tragedy—the murder of Jeremy, the Recorder of Norwich, by Rush, afterwards executed at Norwich Castle. They arrived between the Hall and Potass Farm as the search was going on for the pistol, and the novelist was fain to confess that the place had nothing attractive about it, unless such a definition might be applied to a “murderous look that seemed to invite such a crime.”

Quaint old Norwich, as it has been justly termed (although its quaintness and picturesqueness have suffered woefully in recent years through commercial innovations), did not appeal to Dickens, who declared it to be “a disappointment”—everything there save the ancient castle, “which we found fit for a gigantic scoundrel’s exit,” alluding, of course, to Rush. The castle no longer serves as the county prison, and its gruesome associations are practically obliterated by the wholesome use to which the massive Norman structure is devoted, that of museum and art gallery under civic control.

Without doubt Dickens’s principal motive in journeying to Norfolk and Suffolk in 1848 was to obtain “local colour” for “David Copperfield,” the writing of which he was then meditating. He stayed for a time at Somerleyton Hall, near Lowestoft, as the guest of Sir Morton Peto, the well-known civil engineer and railway contractor, under whose guidance he first made acquaintance with that portion of Suffolk, studying it carefully, and afterwards portraying it in the story with characteristic exactitude. Two miles from Somerleyton Hall (now the residence of Sir Saville Crossley, M.P.) is Blundeston, a typical English village, which, thinly disguised as Blunderstone, appears in the book as the birthplace of David. The novelist afterwards confessed that he noticed the name on a direction-post between Lowestoft and Yarmouth, and at once adapted it because he liked the sound of the word; the actual direction-post still standing as he saw it.

There is a little uncertainty respecting the identity of the “Rookery” where David first saw the light, the Rectory being regarded by some careful students of the topography of “Copperfield” as the possible original, whence can be obtained a fairly distinct view of the church porch and the gravestones in the churchyard. Local tradition, however, favours Blundeston Hall, the present tenant-owner of which (Mr. T. Hardwich Woods) remembers that when very young he was taken by the old housekeeper down the “long passage ... leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front entrance,” and shown the “dark storeroom” opening out of it. While staying in the neighbourhood Dickens visited Blundeston Hall, which presented a weird and gloomy appearance before its recent restoration, and the fact is recalled that for a brief space he contemplated the prospect from one of the side windows facing the church, then plainly visible from this point, but the view is now obstructed by trees.

“In no other residence hereabouts,” observes Mr. Woods, “do rooms and passages coincide so exactly with the descriptions given in the novel.” In the garden we may still behold the “tall old elm-trees” in which there were formerly some rooks’ nests, but no rooks. (“David Copperfield all over!” cried Miss Betsey. “David Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust because he sees the nests!”)

The roadside tavern referred to in the fourth chapter as “our little village alehouse” may be recognised in the Plough at Blundeston, to the recently-stuccoed front of which are affixed the initials “R. E. B.” and the date “1701” in wrought-iron.

Blundeston Church, like many others in East Anglia, has a round tower (probably Norman), but no spire, as mentioned in the story; the high-backed pews and quaint pulpit have since been replaced by others of modern workmanship, but happily the ancient rood-screen with its painted panels has survived such sacrilegious treatment. The porch, with a sun-dial above the entrance, is still intact. “There is nothing,” says little David, “half so green that I know anywhere as the grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and I think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?’” It is interesting to know that it was at Blundeston House (now called The Lodge) where the poet Gray stayed with his friend the Rev. Norton Nicholls (rector of the adjoining parishes of Lound and Bradwell), and here he found that sublime quietude which his soul loved.

That popular seaside resort, Great Yarmouth, was first seen by Dickens at the close of 1848, and he thought it “the strangest place in the wide world, one hundred and forty-six miles of hill-less marsh between it and London”; substituting the word “country” for “marsh,” the statement would be practically correct. Strongly impressed by the exceptional and Dutch-like features of this flat expanse, on the eastern margin of which stands the celebrated seaport, he forthwith decided to “try his hand” at it, with the result (as everyone knows) that he placed there, on the open Denes, the home of Little Em’ly and the Peggottys. In all probability the idea of causing them to live in a discarded boat arose from his having seen a humble abode of this character when perambulating the outskirts of Yarmouth, for such domiciles were not uncommon in those days, and might be met with both in Yarmouth and Lowestoft; indeed, we are told that even now the little village of Carracross, on the west coast of Ireland, consists of seventeen superannuated fishing-boats, one of which dates from about 1740. Apropos of Peggotty’s boat, it may be remarked that the old inverted boat, bricked up and roofed in, which revealed itself in 1879 during the process of demolition, has hitherto been considered as the veritable domicile immortalized in “Copperfield”; but the cherished belief is not worthy of credence, being unsupported by trustworthy evidence, an important point antagonistic to that conjecture being the fact that Peggotty’s boat stood on the open Denes upon its keel (“Phiz” notwithstanding), whereas that discovered in Tower Road was put keel uppermost, by a shrimper, on garden ground in the midst of a noisome locality called by the inappropriate name “Angel’s Piece,” with no “sandy waste” surrounding it.[66]

At Yarmouth Dickens made his headquarters at the Royal Hotel, on the sea-front, having John Leech and Mark Lemon as congenial companions, for illness prevented Forster from remaining with them. The old town, and the flat, sandy expanse of uncultivated land between river and sea, already alluded to as the Denes, deeply imprinted itself upon Dickens’s mental retina, and he conveys his impressions thereof through the medium of his boy-hero:

“It looked rather spongy and sloppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles, which would account for it.