CHATHAM.
Mr. Pickwick’s description (taken from his note-book sixty years since) is a fairly correct view of the general appearance of Chatham at present:—
“The principal productions of these towns appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers, and dockyardmen. The commodities chiefly exposed for sale in the public streets are marine stores, hard-bake, apples, flat-fish, and oysters. The streets present a lively and animated appearance, occasioned chiefly by the conviviality of the military.”
In this city five years of Dickens’s boyhood were passed. Mr. Dickens, senior, was appointed in 1816 to a clerkship at the Naval Pay Office, in connection with the Royal Dockyard, and the Dickens family here resided till little Charles was nine years of age.
On arrival at the Chatham Station, we may enter the town on the right from the railway exit (north side of the line), shortly passing under an archway into Railway Street—formerly Rome Lane—in which was once situated the elementary school where the boy first attended, with his sister Fanny. Revisiting Chatham in after years, Dickens found that it had been pulled down
“Ages before, but out of the distance of the ages, 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.”
At the upper end of Railway Street we proceed (right) by the High Street, and at a short distance (left) by Fair Row to the Brook. Turning to the left, we shall find, standing immediately beyond the corner, on the west side, the old Residence of the Dickens Family, No. 18, next door to Providence Chapel. The house is a modest-looking dwelling of three storeys, with white-washed plaster front as in former days, six steps leading up to the front door, and a small garden before and behind. The chapel previously referred to has been, in more recent years, used for meetings of the Salvation Army, since becoming a clothing factory. During the residence of the family at Chatham, the minister of this place of worship was a Mr. William Giles, who was also the schoolmaster of Clover Lane Academy. For the last two years of Charles’s Chatham experience he was placed under the educational supervision of this young Baptist minister, whose influence seems to have been favourable to the development of his pupil’s youthful talents.
Regaining the High Street by Fair Row, and turning to the left for a short distance onwards, we reach, on the right hand of the street, past the Mitre Hotel, Clover Street, on the south side of which (at the corner of Richard Street) the Academy, with its playground behind, may still be seen. Forster says:—
“Charles had himself a not ungrateful sense in after years, that this first of his masters, in his little-cared-for childhood, had pronounced him to be a boy of capacity; and when, about half-way through the publication of Pickwick, his old teacher sent a silver snuff-box with admiring inscription to ‘the inimitable Boz,’ it reminded him of praise far more precious obtained by him at his first year’s examination in the Clover Lane Academy.”
Coming through Clover Street, and turning (right) into the New Road, we shortly regain the neighbourhood of Chatham Station, on the south side of which a road in the westward direction leads to Fort Pitt, now the Chatham Military Hospital. Pickwickians will remember that Fort Pitt was indicated by Lieutenant Tappleton, the friend of the choleric Doctor Slammer, as being in the vicinity of a field where the quarrel between the doctor and Mr. Winkle could be adjusted. This old field, and the contiguous land surrounding the Fort, now form The Recreation Ground of the City. Visitors may hence obtain an interesting and comprehensive view of the town and neighbourhood. We are, doubtless, all familiar with the happy termination of the affair of honour above referred to; the unworthy Jingle being at the bottom of the mischief. Full particulars of the dilemma may be found in chapter 2 of “The Pickwick Papers.”
Returning to the New Road, the Rambler, passing St. Bartholomew’s Hospital (founded in the eleventh century) on the right, may proceed by Star Hill, in the outskirts of Rochester. On the south side (left) of the descent there may be noted en passant the new building of the Rochester Conservative Club, which stands on the site of The Old Theatre. Here the versatile Mr. Jingle and his melancholic friend, “elegantly designated Dismal Jemmy,” were engaged to perform “in the piece that the Officers of the Fifty-second” got up, when Mr. Pickwick commenced his travels, May 1827.
The theatre was demolished December 1884.
Continuing the route, we soon arrive at the central street of the old City of