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tower (probably Norman), but no spire, as mentioned in the story; the high-backed pews and quaint pulpit have since been replaced by others of modern workmanship, but happily the ancient rood-screen with its painted panels has survived such sacrilegious treatment.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.

THE GEORGE, GRETA BRIDGE. ([Page 123].)
Dickens visited this inn when collecting material for “Nicholas Nickleby,” and here Mr. Squeers alighted from the coach on his return from London with the new boys.

“As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might improve it, and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast-and-water, it would have been nicer....