The Dickens Country :: CHAPTER VIII. IN THE MIDLANDS AND HOME COUNTIES.

CHAPTER VIII. IN THE MIDLANDS AND HOME COUNTIES.

The year 1838, in which Charles Dickens, accompanied by “Phiz,” hazarded that bitter coach-ride to the northern wilds of Yorkshire, is memorable also for another “bachelor excursion,” the two friends travelling by road through the Midlands in the late autumn, en route for Warwickshire. They started from the coach office near Hungerford Street, Strand, having booked seats to Leamington, where, on arrival, after a very agreeable (but very cold) journey, they found “a roaring fire, an elegant dinner, a snug room, and capital beds” awaiting them. The “capital inn” affording these creature comforts to the two benumbed passengers was Copps’s Royal Hotel, to which reference is made in “Dombey and Son” as the establishment favoured by Mr. Dombey during his stay at Leamington, the scene of his introduction to the lady who became his second wife.

GAD’S HILL PLACE. (Page 205.)
The home of Charles Dickens from 1857 to 1870. Photochrom Co., Ltd.

The next morning Dickens and “Phiz” drove in a post-chaise to Kenilworth, “with which we were both enraptured” (the novelist observed in a letter to his wife), “and where I really think we must have lodgings next summer, please God that we are in good health and all goes well. You cannot conceive how delightful it is. To read among the ruins in fine weather would be perfect luxury.”[91] A similar opinion is recorded in his private diary: “Away to Kenilworth—delightful—beautiful beyond expression. Mem.: What a summer resort!—three months lie about the ruins—books—thinking—seriously turn this over next year.” Thence they proceeded to Warwick Castle, to which Dickens referred with less enthusiasm in the same epistle as “an ancient building, newly restored, and possessing no very great attraction beyond a fine view and some beautiful pictures”; thence to Stratford-on-Avon, where both novelist and artist “sat down in the room where Shakespeare was born, and left our autographs and read those of other people, and so forth.” Dickens’s entry in the diary recording this circumstance is reminiscent of Alfred Jingle’s staccato style; thus: “Stratford—Shakespeare—the birthplace, visitors, scribblers, old woman—Qy. whether she knows what Shakespeare did, etc.” The secretary and librarian of Shakespeare’s birthplace (Mr. Richard Savage) informs me that he has understood that these signatures of Dickens and “Phiz” were written upon one of the plaster panels in the birth-room, but have since been destroyed; the church albums for the years 1848 and 1852 contain signatures of Dickens and of the members of his amateur theatrical company, then touring to raise funds for charitable purposes.[92]

It is evident that Dickens’s first impressions of Stratford were recalled in “Nicholas Nickleby,” where Mrs. Nickleby remarks, in her usual inconsequent manner, upon the visit of herself and her husband to the birthplace, and their lodging at a hostelry in the town. Warwick, Kenilworth, and the neighbourhood the author remembered when writing the twenty-seventh chapter of “Dombey and Son,” in the description of that “most enchanting expedition” to the castle: “Associations of the Middle Ages, and all that, which is so truly exquisite,” exclaimed Cleopatra with rapture; “such charming times! So full of faith! So vigorous and forcible! So picturesque! So perfectly removed from the commonplace!... Pictures at the castle, quite divine!” “Those darling bygone times,” she observed to Mr. Carker, bent upon showing him the beauties of that historic pile, “with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated!” Cleopatra and the rest of the little party “made the tour of the pictures, the walls, crow’s nest, and so forth,” and the castle “being at length pretty well exhausted,” and Edith Grainger having completed a sketch of the exterior of the ancient building (concerning which sketch Mr. Carker fawningly avowed that he was unprepared “for anything so beautiful, and so unusual altogether”), a stroll among the haunted ruins of Kenilworth, “and more rides to more points of view ... brought the day’s expedition to a close.”

THE LEATHER BOTTLE, COBHAM. (Page 210.)
Dickens, in his early days, stayed at the Leather Bottle on more than one occasion, and in 1841 spent a day and a night here with Forster.

Quitting Stratford the next day, Dickens and his companion intended to proceed to Bridgnorth; but were dismayed to find there were no coaches, which fact compelled them to continue their journey to Shrewsbury and Chester by way of Birmingham and Wolverhampton, “starting by eight o’clock through a cold, wet fog, and travelling, when the day had cleared up, through miles of cinder-paths, and blazing furnaces, and roaring steam-engines, and such a mass of dirt, gloom, and misery, as I never before witnessed.”[93] His impressions of the Black Country are vividly portrayed in the forty-third and succeeding chapters of “The Old Curiosity Shop,” and there is good reason to suppose that a portion at least of the itinerary of the pilgrimage of little Nell and her grandfather, after their flight from London to escape from the evil influence of Quilp, was based upon his own tour, undertaken two years previously. Indeed, so far as the above-mentioned chapter is concerned, there is evidence of this in a letter to Forster, apropos of the story, where the novelist says: “You will recognise a description of the road we travelled between Birmingham and Wolverhampton; but I had conceived it so well in my mind that the execution does not please me so well as I expected.”

With regard to the depressing effect wrought upon the mind of the traveller through the Black Country, it is gratifying to know that a project is seriously contemplated by which this scene of waste and desolation may be restored to its original condition by reafforestation. Sir Oliver Lodge recently presided at an important meeting held in Birmingham to consider the question, and it was agreed that, now that the mineral wealth of the locality had been exhausted, it was only right that the surface of the land should be altered for good by a system of tree-planting, the land itself being rendered useless for mining, agriculture, and habitation.

Birmingham is mentioned frequently throughout the works of Dickens, who visited the city on several occasions, staying at one time at the old Hen and Chickens Inn. He must have known this important manufacturing centre in his journalistic days, for he made it the scene of that well-remembered incident recorded in the fiftieth chapter of “The Pickwick Papers,” where Mr. Pickwick calls upon Mr. Winkle, senior, with a difficult and delicate commission. When the post-coach conveying Mr. Pickwick and his friends drew near it was quite dark, “the straggling cottages by the roadside; the dingy hue of every object visible; the murky atmosphere; the paths of cinders and brick-dust; the deep red glow of furnace fires in the distance; the volumes of dense smoke issuing heavily forth from high, toppling chimneys, blackening and obscuring everything around; the glare of distant lights; the ponderous waggons which toiled along the road laden with clashing rods of iron, or piled with heavy goods—all betokened their rapid approach to the great working town of Birmingham. As they rattled through the narrow thoroughfares leading to the heart of the turmoil, the sights and sounds of earnest occupation struck more forcibly on the senses. The streets were thronged with working people. The hum of labour resounded from every house, lights gleamed from the long casement windows in the attic stories, and the whirl of wheels and noise of machinery shook the trembling walls. The fires, whose lurid, sullen light had been visible for miles, blazed fiercely up in the great works and factories of the town. The din of hammers, the rushing of steam, and the dead, heavy clanking of engines, was the harsh music which arose from every quarter.” The postboy, driving briskly through the open streets and past the “handsome and well-lighted shops” on the outskirts of the town, drew up at the Old Royal Hotel, where they were shown to a comfortable apartment. The Old Royal survives in name only, the present building having been so altered and modernized as to bear no resemblance to the three-storied structure, with its plain, square front and Georgian porch, which temporarily sheltered Mr. Pickwick. The residence of the elder Mr. Winkle (“a wharfinger, Sir, near the canal”), whose name is a familiar one in Birmingham, is believed to be a certain red-brick building in Easy Row, in close proximity to the Old Wharf, a house which, with its white steps leading to the doorway, answers fairly well to the description given in the book.

In 1844 Dickens presided at a meeting of the Polytechnic Institution at Birmingham, and delivered a powerful oration upon the subject of education, comprehensive and unsectarian.

“A better and quicker audience,” he afterwards remarked, “never listened to man”; and, in honour of the event, the large hall was profusely decorated with artificial flowers, these also forming the words “Welcome, Boz,” in letters about 6 feet high, while about the great organ were immense transparencies bearing designs of an allegorical character. In 1857 he was elected one of the first honorary members of the Birmingham and Midland Institute, in which institution he had always taken an active interest. In January, 1853, at the rooms of the Society of Artists, Temple Row, a large company assembled to witness the presentation to Dickens of a silver-gilt salver and diamond ring, in recognition of valuable services rendered in aid of the fund then being raised for the establishment of the Institute, and as a token of appreciation of his “varied literary acquirements, genial philosophy, and high moral teaching.” At the great banquet which followed this interesting function, he offered to give Readings from his books in further aid, and the promise was fulfilled in December, 1853, with the result that nearly £500 were added to the fund; to commemorate these first public Readings, Mrs. Dickens became the recipient of a silver flower-basket.

Other Readings were given in Birmingham in the sixties. In September, 1869, he opened the session of the Midland Institute, the ceremony being rendered memorable by a powerful speech, in which he thus briefly declared his political creed:

“My faith in the people governing is, on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the people governed is, on the whole, illimitable.” In 1870, as President of the Institute, he distributed at the Town Hall the prizes and certificates awarded to the most successful students; one of the prize-winners was a Miss Winkle, whose name (so reminiscent of “Pickwick”) was received with good-humoured laughter, and it is recorded that the novelist, after making some remarks to the lady in an undertone, observed to the audience that he had “recommended Miss Winkle to change her name!”

THE HOUSE AT CHALK IN WHICH DICKENS SPENT HIS HONEYMOON, APRIL, 1836. (Page 211.)
Some of the earlier chapters, of “Pickwick” were written here.

If a brief note in the diary (under date October 31, 1838) may be accepted as evidence, the travellers stayed at the White Lion in Factory Road, Wolverhampton. Twenty years later (August and November, 1858) Dickens gave public Readings here, and on the first occasion there was a performance of “Oliver Twist” at the local theatre, “in consequence (he opined) of the illustrious author honouring the town with his presence.” Writing at this time of the appearance of the country through which he had then passed, he said that it “looked at its blackest”; “all the furnaces seemed in full blast, and all the coal-pits to be working.... It is market-day here (Wolverhampton), and the ironmasters are standing out in the street (where they always hold high change), making such an iron hum and buzz that they confuse me horribly. In addition there is a bellman announcing something—not the Readings, I beg to say—and there is an excavation being made in the centre of the open place, for a statue, or a pump, or a lamppost, or something or other, round which all the Wolverhampton boys are yelling and struggling.”[94]

Reverting to the tour of 1838, Dickens and “Phiz” left Wolverhampton for Shrewsbury (the next stage), making their quarters at the old-fashioned Lion Hotel, which establishment the novelist revisited during the provincial Reading tour of 1858, when he thus described the inn to his elder daughter:

“We have the strangest little rooms (sitting-room and two bedrooms altogether), the ceilings of which I can touch with my hand. The windows bulge out over the street, as if they were little stern windows in a ship. And a door opens out of the sitting-room on to a little open gallery with plants in it, where one leans over a queer old rail, and looks all downhill and slantwise at the crookedest black and yellow old houses, all manner of shapes except straight shapes. To get into this room we come through a china closet; and the man in laying the cloth has actually knocked down, in that repository, two geraniums and Napoleon Bonaparte.” This quaint establishment, alas! has been modernized (if not entirely rebuilt) since those days, and presents nothing of the picturesqueness that attracted the author of “Pickwick.” Shrewsbury, however, still retains and cherishes several of its “black and yellow” (i.e., half-timbered) houses, and it is probably this town which we find thus portrayed in the forty-sixth chapter of “The Old Curiosity Shop”: “In the streets were a number of old houses, built of a kind of earth or plaster, crossed and re-crossed in a great many directions with black beams, which gave them a remarkable and very ancient look. The doors, too, were arched and low, some with oaken portals and quaint benches, where the former inhabitants had sat on summer evenings. The windows were latticed in little diamond panes, that seemed to wink and blink upon the passengers as if they were dim of sight.” On the night of their arrival at Shrewsbury, Dickens and “Phiz” were present at a “bespeak” at the theatre, and witnessed a performance of “The Love Chase,” a ballet (“with a phenomenon!”),[95] followed by divers songs, and the play of “A Roland for an Oliver.” “It is a good theatre,” was the novelist’s comment, “but the actors are very funny. Browne laughed with such indecent heartiness at one point of the entertainment that an old gentleman in the next box suffered the most violent indignation. The bespeak party occupied two boxes; the ladies were full-dressed, and the gentlemen, to a man, in white gloves with flowers in their button-holes. It amused us mightily, and was really as like the Miss Snevellicci business as it could well be.”[96]

THE CORN EXCHANGE, ROCHESTER. (Page 214.)
“It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement ... as if Time carried on business there and hung out his sign” (“Seven Poor Travellers”).

From the diary we learn that the friends journeyed by post-coach from Shrewsbury over the Welsh border to Llangollen, passing two aqueducts by the way—“beautiful road between the mountains—old abbey at the top of mountain, Denis Brien or Rook Castle—Hand Hotel—Mrs. Phillips—Good.” The parish of Llangollen is intersected by the celebrated aqueduct of Pont-y-Lycylltan, and contiguous thereto stands Valle Crucis Abbey. Thence the itinerary included Bangor, Capel Curig, Conway, Chester, Birkenhead, Manchester (Adelphi Hotel), and Cheadle. There is good reason for supposing that Dickens, during this tour, availed himself of the opportunity of visiting the peaceful and picturesque village of Tong, on the north-eastern borders of the county of Salop, and that he probably posted there from Shrewsbury; for he assured the late Archdeacon Lloyd that Tong Church is the veritable church described in “The Old Curiosity Shop” as the scene of little Nell’s death.

“It was a very aged, ghostly place; the church had been built many hundreds of years ago, and had once had a convent or monastery attached; for arches in ruins, remains of oriel windows, and fragments of blackened walls, were yet standing; while other portions of the old building, which had crumbled away and fallen down, were mingled with the churchyard earth and overgrown with grass, as if they too claimed a burying-place and sought to mix their ashes with the dust of men.” Tong Church was erected about the year 1411, and is a fine specimen of Gothic architecture of the Early Perpendicular period. Owing to its fine monuments it is called “The Westminster Abbey of the Midlands.” There yet remain the original oak choir-stalls with the miserere seats and carved poppy-heads; the old oak roof with its sculptured bosses; the painted screens in the aisles, of very rich workmanship; and the beautiful Vernon Chantry, called “The Golden Chapel,” from its costly ornamentation, referred to in the story as the “baronial chapel.” The sacred edifice underwent various reparations during the period between 1810 and 1838, still presenting, however, an exceedingly picturesque aspect when the novelist beheld it in the latter year. Although a more thorough restoration took place in 1892, we are assured that no old features have been destroyed, but doubtless much of the halo of antiquity, which imparts a poetical charm to such structures, is not so evident as of yore. That Dickens derived inspiration from Tong and its environment for the “local colouring” in chap. xlvi. and later chapters of “The Old Curiosity Shop” it is impossible to doubt.

THE GUILDHALL, ROCHESTER. (Page 214.)
Where Pip was bound prentice to Joe Gargery. Hogarth and his friends played hopscotch under the colonnade in 1732.

In December, 1858, Dickens was entertained at a public dinner at the Castle Hotel, Coventry, on the occasion of receiving a gold repeater watch of special construction by the watchmakers of the town. This gift was tendered as a mark of gratitude for his Reading of the “Christmas Carol,” given a year previously in aid of the funds of the Coventry Institute. In acknowledging this testimonial the recipient said:

“This watch, with which you have presented me, shall be my companion in my hours of sedentary working at home and in my wanderings abroad. It shall never be absent from my side, and it shall reckon off the labours of my future days.... And when I have done with time and its measurement, this watch shall belong to my children; and as I have seven boys, and as they have all begun to serve their country in various ways, or to elect into what distant regions they shall roam, it is not only possible, but probable, that this little voice will be heard scores of years hence—who knows?—in some yet unfounded city in the wilds of Australia, or communicating Greenwich time to Coventry Street, Japan.... From my heart of hearts I can assure you that the memory of to-night, and of your picturesque and ancient city, will never be absent from my mind, and I can never more hear the lightest mention of the name of Coventry without having inspired in my breast sentiments of unusual emotion and unusual attachment.” The novelist bequeathed the watch (and the chain and seals worn with it) to his “dear and trusty friend” John Forster.

In 1849 Dickens was an honoured guest at Rockingham Castle, Northamptonshire, the home of his friends the Hon. Richard Watson and Mrs. Watson. Writing thence to Forster, he said: “Picture to yourself, my dear F., a large old castle, approached by an ancient keep (gateway), portcullis, etc., filled with company, waited on by six-and-twenty servants ... and you will have a faint idea of the mansion in which I am at present staying....” His visits to Rockingham were often repeated, and in the winter of 1850 he there supervised the construction of “a very elegant little theatre,” of which he constituted himself the manager, and early in the following year the theatre opened with performances of “Used Up,” and “Animal Magnetism,” with the novelist himself and members of his family in the cast of both plays. Charles Dickens the younger considered that Rockingham Castle bears much more than an accidental resemblance to Chesney Wold, the Lincolnshire mansion of Sir Leicester Dedlock in “Bleak House,” upon which story his father was engaged at the period here referred to. Indeed, the author himself confessed as much to Mrs. Watson when he said: “In some of the descriptions of Chesney Wold I have taken many bits, chiefly about trees and shadows, from observations made at Rockingham.”

The castle is situated on a breezy eminence overlooking the valley of the Welland, which river overflows occasionally and floods the surrounding country, suggesting the watery Lincolnshire landscape described in the second chapter of “Bleak House.” At the end of the terrace is the Yew Walk, corresponding with the Ghost’s Walk at Chesney Wold, and there is a sundial in the garden, also referred to in the story. After passing under the archway, flanked by ancient bastion towers (the remains of a former castle), a general view is obtained of the north front of the mansion, one of the principal apartments in which is the long drawing-room, the veritable drawing-room of Chesney Wold, except that the fireplace is surmounted by a carved overmantel instead of a portrait, while the family presentments at Rockingham are in the hall, and not in the drawing-room, as related of those at Chesney Wold. The village of Rockingham consists of one street, which ascends the hill in the direction of the castle lodge; on the right as we enter the village stands “a small inn” called the Sondes Arms, the prototype of the Dedlock Arms, which bears the date 1763. The “solemn little church” in the park, with its old carved oak pulpit, has been restored and enlarged within the last thirty years. A footpath leading to the church from the village street undoubtedly answers to Lawrence Boythorn’s disputed right-of-way, concerning which that impulsive gentleman waxes eloquent in the ninth chapter of “Bleak House.”

Of the county of Hertford Dickens always retained agreeable memories; he frequently followed the advice once offered by him to W. H. Wills, to “take a cheery flutter into the air of Hertfordshire.” During the early years of his literary career he indulged a fondness for horse exercise, and, generally accompanied by Forster, would ride to some destination a few miles out of London, take luncheon at some favourite hostelry, and thus enjoy a day’s recreation. Their usual refreshment-house on the Great North Road was the Red Lion at High Barnet, in which town Oliver Twist, footsore and weary, found a temporary resting-place on a cold doorstep, and wondered at the great number of taverns there existing, for (as related in the story) “every other house in Barnet was a tavern, large or small.” We read in the same story that the infamous Bill Sikes, in his flight after the murder of Nancy, eventually reached Hatfield, turning down “the hill by the church of the quiet village, and, plodding along the little street, crept into a small public-house....” It is evident that Dickens knew Hatfield intimately, the topography of which has since undergone considerable alteration in consequence of the invasion of the Great Northern Railway. The “small public-house” entered by Sikes was in all probability that quaint little ale-house the Eight Bells, still flourishing at the bottom of the main street, while the “little post-office,” where he recognised the mail from London, at that time adjoined the Salisbury Arms (now a private residence), at which establishment Dickens himself doubtless stayed on the night of October 27, 1838, when he and “Phiz” made their “bachelor excursion” to the West Country.[97] Hatfield is introduced in “Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings,”[98] for here, in the rural churchyard, Mr. Lirriper was buried; not that Hatfield was his native place (explains the bereaved widow pathetically), “but that he had a liking for the Salisbury Arms, where we went upon our wedding-day, and passed as happy a fortnight as ever happy was.” In after-years she “put a sandwich and a drop of sherry in a little basket and went down to Hatfield churchyard, outside the coach, and kissed my hand and laid it with a kind of a proud and swelling love on my husband’s grave, though, bless you! it had taken me so long to clear his name that my wedding-ring was worn quite fine and smooth when I laid it on the green, green, waving grass.”

ROCHESTER ABOUT 1810. (Page 215.)
From old prints.

Mr. Lirriper’s youngest brother, by the way, who was something of a scapegrace, also retained a sneaking affection for the Salisbury Arms, derived from less sentimental reasons; here he enjoyed himself for the space of a fortnight, and left without paying his bill, an omission speedily rectified by the kind-hearted Mrs. Lirriper, in the innocent belief that it was fraternal affection which induced her unprincipled brother-in-law to favour Hatfield with his presence.

In 1859 Dickens became much interested in a working men’s club established at Rothamsted by the late Sir John Bennet Lawes, the renowned scientist, the purpose of this club being to enable all agricultural labourers of the parish to enjoy their ale and pipes independently of the public-house. The novelist, accompanied by his brother-in-law, Henry Austin, drove to Rothamsted for the express purpose of inspecting this novel institution, which numbers to-day nearly 200 members, and was so delighted with what he saw and heard respecting it that he not only published an article on the subject,[99] but eagerly recommended the formation of such clubs in other country neighbourhoods. Sir John Lawes is, of course, the prototype of Friar Bacon in the article aforesaid, where the worthy baronet’s beautiful manor-house (in which his son and heir now resides) is thus described: “The sun burst forth gaily in the afternoon, and gilded the old gables, and old mullioned windows, and old weathercock, and old clock-face, of the quaint old house which is the dwelling of the man we sought. How shall I describe him? As one of the most famous practical chemists of the age? That designation will do as well as another—better, perhaps, than most others. And his name? Friar Bacon.... We walked on the trim garden terrace before dinner, among the early leaves and blossoms; two peacocks, apparently in very tight new boots, occasionally crossing the gravel at a distance. The sun shining through the old house-windows now and then flashed out some brilliant piece of colour from bright hangings within, or upon the old oak panelling; similarly, Friar Bacon, as we paced to and fro, revealed little glimpses of his good work.”

In “Bleak House” Hertfordshire plays a conspicuous part, and it is generally believed that the original of John Jarndyce’s residence, which gives its name to the story, is to be discovered in or near St. Albans, as mentioned in the book itself. Indeed, a picturesque Early Georgian building at the top of Gombards Road (on the northern outskirts of the city) has been christened “Bleak House” in the supposition that it was the veritable home of Mr. Jarndyce; and there appears to be some justification for this, as the position of the house in its relation to the abbey church, and the characteristics of the locality, are in harmony with the details particularized in the story. There is evidence, too, that Dickens lodged in St. Albans when engaged upon the early chapters of his novel; he and Douglas Jerrold stayed at the Queen’s Hotel in Chequer Street, and it was then rumoured in the town that the object of Dickens’s visit was to obtain “local colour.” His younger brother Frederick and his friend Peter Cunningham lived for a while in St. Albans, and it is remembered by some of the older inhabitants that the author of “Pickwick” occasionally journeyed to St. Albans, when opportunities arose, for a gossip with those boon companions in their country retreat.

Of all Hertfordshire localities with which Dickens formed an acquaintance, that claiming the most intimate association with him is the pretty little village of Knebworth, the ancestral home of the Lyttons. A warm friendship existed between Lord Lytton and his brother novelist, and when, in 1850, some private theatricals were arranged for performance in the grand banqueting-hall, with “Boz” and his goodly company of amateurs in the cast (including Leech, Lemon, Tenniel, Stanfield, Forster, and others), mirth and jollity reigned supreme. The plays went off “in a whirl of triumph” (wrote Dickens at the time), “and fired the whole length and breadth of Hertfordshire,” which is not surprising when the circumstances are recalled. At Knebworth originated that unfortunate scheme known as the “Guild of Literature and Art,” formulated by Dickens and Lord Lytton for the amelioration of the hardships of impecunious authors and artists, the funds in aid of the project being augmented by the proceeds derived from the theatrical entertainments. It was intended to erect and endow a retreat for such necessitous persons, and a block of houses (in the Gothic style) was actually built upon ground near the main road at Stevenage, given by Lord Lytton for the purpose. Unhappily, these praiseworthy efforts failed to appeal to those for whose benefit they were designed, and the guild houses, after remaining unoccupied for nearly twenty years, were converted into “suburban villas,” the rents being available for the relief of such applicants as were qualified to receive it. It was generally believed that the failure to secure tenants for the guild houses under the special regulations was due chiefly to the fact of their being regarded as little better than almshouses, and too remote from London to be easily accessible; it must not be forgotten, too, that true genius looks askance at acts of charity performed in its behalf, the spirit of independence which usually characterizes it rebelling at anything that appears to assume the form of patronage, although it must be admitted that the guild rules give no cause for suspicion on that score. Dickens, in a speech delivered in 1865, after a survey of the newly-completed and attractive domiciles, said: “The ladies and gentlemen whom we shall invite to occupy the houses we have built will never be placed under any social disadvantage. They will be invited to occupy them as artists, receiving them as a mark of the high respect in which they are held by their fellow-workers. As artists, I hope they will often exercise their calling within those walls for the general advantage; and they will always claim, on equal terms, the hospitality of their generous neighbour.” But it was not to be, and probably nothing proved so disappointing to Dickens as the almost contemptuous indifference with which this philanthropic proposal was received both by the press and the public, who ridiculed it unmercifully. As a memento of the scheme, there may be seen nearly opposite the guild houses a roadside tavern rejoicing in the sign of Our Mutual Friend, intended as a delicate compliment to the author of the story so entitled, then in course of publication.

During a visit to Knebworth in 1861, Dickens and Mr. (afterwards Sir) Arthur Helps—sometime Queen’s Secretary—called upon a most extraordinary character, locally known as “Mad Lucas,” who lived in an extremely miserly fashion in the kitchen of his house (Elmwood House, at Redcoats Green, near Stevenage). This strange recluse died of apoplexy in 1874, and was buried in Hackney Churchyard; his house, with its boarded-up windows, shored-up walls, and dilapidated roof, continued to remain an object of interest for many years afterwards, until in 1893 it was razed to the ground and the materials sold by public auction. James Lucas, “the Hertfordshire Hermit,” was really a well-educated and highly intellectual man, who inherited the estate of his father, a prosperous West India merchant, and it is conjectured that his distress at the death of his widowed mother (who lived with him) was primarily the cause of that mental aberration which assumed such an eccentric form; he even refused to bury her corpse, so that the local authorities were compelled to resort to a subterfuge in order to perform themselves the last rites. He objected to furnish his rooms, and, attired simply in a loose blanket fastened with a skewer, preferred to eat and sleep amidst the cinders and rubbish-heaps (a sanctuary for rats) which accumulated in the kitchen. Although his diet consisted of bread and cheese, red herrings, and gin, there were choice wines available for friendly visitors, a special vintage of sherry being reserved for ladies who thus honoured him. The hermit’s penchant for tramps attracted all the vagabonds in the neighbourhood, so that it became necessary for him to protect himself from insult by retaining armed watchmen and barricading the house.

In “Tom Tiddler’s Ground”[100] Dickens has depicted a miserly recluse named Mopes, and it is easy to discern that Lucas sat for the portrait—indeed, it is said that in reading the number he recognised the presentment, and expressed great indignation at what he considered to be a much exaggerated account of himself and his environment. In the chapter devoted to Mr. Mopes, the novelist tells us that he found his strange abode in “a nook in a rustic by-road, down among the pleasant dales and trout-streams of a green English county.” He does not think it necessary for the reader to know what county; suffice it to say that one “may hunt there, shoot there, fish there, traverse long grass-grown Roman roads there, open ancient barrows there, see many a mile of richly-cultivated land there, and hold Arcadian talk with a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, who will tell you (if you want to know) how pastoral housekeeping is done on nine shillings a week.”

Those familiar with this portion of Hertfordshire cannot fail to recognise in these allusions the neighbourhood of Stevenage, and a clue to its identity is afforded by the allusion to “ancient barrows,” for at Stevenage there are some remarkable tumuli known as the “Six Hills,” which are believed to be ancient sepulchral barrows, or repositories of the dead. If further evidence be required, it is forthcoming in the following delightful portrayal of Stevenage itself, as it appeared to Dickens over forty years ago:

“The morning sun was hot and bright upon the village street. The village street was like most other village streets: wide for its height, silent for its size, and drowsy in the dullest degree. The quietest little dwellings with the largest of window-shutters (to shut up Nothing as carefully as if it were the Mint or the Bank of England) had called in the Doctor’s house so suddenly that his brass doorplate and three stories stood among them as conspicuous and different as the Doctor himself in his broadcloth among the smock frocks of his patients. The village residences seem to have gone to law with a similar absence of consideration, for a score of weak little lath-and-plaster cabins clung in confusion about the Attorney’s red-brick house, which, with glaring doorsteps and a most terrific scraper, seemed to serve all manner of ejectments upon them. They were as various as labourers—high-shouldered, wry-necked, one-eyed, goggle-eyed, squinting, bow-legged, knock-kneed, rheumatic, crazy; some of the small tradesmen’s houses, such as the crockery shop and the harness-maker’s, had a Cyclops window in the middle of the gable, within an inch or two of its apex, suggesting that some forlorn rural Prentice must wriggle himself into that apartment horizontally, when he retired to rest, after the manner of the worm. So bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that one might have thought the village had sown and planted everything it once possessed to convert the same into crops. This would account for the bareness of the little shops, the bareness of the few boards and trestles designed for market purposes in a corner of the street, the bareness of the obsolete inn and inn yard, with the ominous inscription, ‘Excise Office,’ not yet faded out from the gateway, as indicating the very last thing that poverty could get rid of....” The village alehouse, mentioned in the first chapter of “Tom Tiddler’s Ground,” and there called the Peal of Bells, is the White Hart, Stevenage, where Dickens called on his way to see Lucas to inquire of the landlord, old Sam Cooper, the shortest route to the “ruined hermitage of Mr. Mopes the hermit,” some five miles distant. He found Tom Tiddler’s Ground to be “a nook in a rustic by-road, which the genius of Mopes had laid waste as completely as if he had been born an Emperor and a Conqueror. Its centre object was a dwelling-house, sufficiently substantial, all the window-glass of which had been long ago abolished by the surprising genius of Mopes, and all the windows of which were barred across with rough-split logs of trees nailed over them on the outside. A rick-yard, hip high in vegetable rankness and ruin, contained out-buildings, from which the thatch had lightly fluttered away ... and from which the planks and beams had heavily dropped and rotted.” After noting the fragments of mildewed ricks and the slimy pond, the traveller encountered the hermit himself, as well as he could be observed between the window-bars, “lying on a bank of soot and cinders, on the floor, in front of a rusty fireplace,” when presently began the interview with “the sooty object in blanket and skewer,” as related in the narrative with approximate exactitude.

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