Dover, as everyone remembers, was the destination of poor little ragged David Copperfield, who, tramping wearily from London, went thither in quest of his aunt, Betsy Trotwood. In 1852 Dickens stayed for three months at No. 10, Camden Crescent, and in 1861 he took apartments at the Lord Warden Hotel.
The autumn of 1855 was spent by Dickens and his family at No. 3, Albion Villas, Folkestone, “a very pleasant little house overlooking the sea,” whither he went, on the eve of the publication of “Little Dorrit,” to “help his sluggish fancy.” In “Reprinted Pieces” we find Folkestone disguised as “Pavilionstone,” thus named after the Pavilion Hotel, originally a modest-looking building erected on the sea-front in 1843, but recently transformed into a huge establishment in order to meet the requirements of modern-day travellers en route to and from Boulogne. Even at the time this article was written,[111] the hotel is described as containing “streets of rooms” and handsome salons. Folkestone of to-day differs considerably from Folkestone of fifty years ago, having developed during the interval into a fashionable watering-place of an almost resplendent character. Nevertheless, in Dickens’s presentment it is not impossible, even now, to detect the tone and colouring of old Folkestone, with its “crooked street like a crippled ladder,” etc. “Within a quarter of a century—circa 1830,” Dickens remarks, “it was a little fishing town, and they do say that the time was when it was a little smuggling town.... The old little fishing and smuggling town remains.... There are break-neck flights of ragged steps, connecting the principal streets by back-ways, which will cripple the visitor in half an hour.... In connection with these break-neck steps I observe some wooden cottages, with tumbledown outhouses, and backyards 3 feet square, adorned with garlands of dried fish.... Our situation is delightful, our air delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild thyme, and decorated with millions of wild flowers, are, in the faith of the pedestrian, perfect.” He informs us that the harbour is a tidal one—“At low water we are a heap of mud, with an empty channel in it”—and delineates, with the sense of a keen observer, the effects of high and low tide upon the shipping, while the following is a typical example of Dickensian humour: “The very little wooden lighthouse shrinks in the idle glare of the sun. And here I may observe of the very little wooden lighthouse, that when it is lighted at night—red and green—it looks so like a medical man’s, that several distracted husbands have at various times been found, on occasions of premature domestic anxiety, going round it, trying to find the night-bell!”[112]
Strange to relate, Maidstone, the county town, is mentioned only twice in Dickens’s writings—namely, in “David Copperfield” and “The Seven Poor Travellers”; but there is a hint of his intention to give more prominence to it in “Edwin Drood” by making the county gaol the scene of Jasper’s imprisonment. It is conjectured that Maidstone is the Muggleton of “Pickwick,” there described as “a corporate town, with a mayor, burgesses, and freemen,” with “an open square for the market-place, and in the centre a large inn,” etc. That he knew the locality well, even at this date, there can be no doubt—indeed, it has been suggested that those remarkable Druidical stones near by, known as Kit’s Coty House, with names, initials, and dates scratched thereon, may have originated the idea of Mr. Pickwick’s immortal discovery of the stone inscribed by “Bill Stumps.” Another Pickwickian link with the neighbourhood is Cob-tree Hall, an Elizabethan house near Aylesford, justly regarded as the original of the Manor House at Dingley Dell, which, with its surroundings, answers admirably to the description in the fourth chapter of “Pickwick.”
We know that in later years he was fond of walking between Maidstone and Rochester, the seven miles constituting, in his opinion, “one of the most beautiful walks in England”; and not infrequently, when living at Gad’s Hill, he would drive there with friends for a picnic, the horses bestridden by “a couple of postillions in the old red jackets of the old red royal Dover road.” “It was like a holiday ride in England fifty years ago,” he said to Longfellow, commenting upon one of these delightful excursions. Pilgrims in Dickens land would do well to visit Kit’s Coty House and Blue Bell Hill, where, from the higher elevations, a prospect is revealed of enchanting beauty; from such a point of vantage we behold an extensive view of the valley, in which are seen little hamlets, cornfields, hop gardens, orchards, and spinneys, with the river Medway meandering in the direction of Rochester, and gradually widening as it approaches that ancient town.
The picturesque and charming city of Canterbury, as portrayed in “David Copperfield,” has changed in a much less degree than many other English cathedral towns within the last twenty years or so. In that delightful story, so replete with the autobiographical element, we read: “The sunny street of Canterbury, dozing, as it were, in the hot light; ... its old houses and gateways, and the stately gray cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers” (chap. xiii.). “Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober pleasure that calmed my spirits and eased my heart.... The venerable cathedral towers and the old jackdaws and rooks, whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered gateways, once stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses; the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden—everywhere, on everything, I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit” (chap. xxxix.). In 1861, when giving a public Reading at Canterbury, Dickens stayed at the Fountain Hotel, in St. Margaret’s Street, which is recognised locally as “the County Inn” where Mr. Dick slept when visiting David Copperfield. The “little inn” where Mr. Micawber put up is probably the Sun Hotel in Sun Street; Dr. Strong’s school is the still-flourishing King’s School in the cathedral precincts, its Norman staircase being an object of great antiquarian interest.
EASTGATE HOUSE, ROCHESTER. ([Page 217].)
The original of the Nuns’ House in “Edwin Drood.”
SAPSEA’S HOUSE, ROCHESTER. ([Page 217].)
“The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables with old beams and timbers” (“Seven Poor Travellers”).
An ancient and picturesque house near the old west gate (No. 71, St. Dunstan’s Street) is regarded as the probable original of Mr. Wickfield’s residence; while the home of Dr. Strong is identified with the old building at the corner (No. 1) of Lady Wootton’s Green.