THE SUN INN, CANTERBURY. ([Page 203].)
“It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little room in it” (“David Copperfield”).
The same year found him again at Edinburgh, and giving, for charitable purposes, a public Reading of the “Carol” in the Music Hall there, at the conclusion of which the Lord Provost presented him with a massive silver wassail-cup, which he bequeathed to his eldest son, and which is now in the possession of Mr. W. H. Lever, of Port Sunlight, Cheshire. His paid Readings subsequently took him to the leading cities in Scotland, and in 1868 he wrote from the Royal Hotel, Glasgow (his customary quarters there): “The atmosphere of this place, compounded of mists from the Highlands and smoke from the town factories, is crushing my eyebrows as I write, and it rains as it never does rain anywhere else, and always does rain here. It is a dreadful place, though much improved, and possessing a deal of public spirit.”[90]
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.”
