2 (NOW 11) ORDNANCE TERRACE, CHATHAM. ([Page 11].)
Occupied by John Dickens and his family, 1817-1821.
Little Charles must have been acquainted, too, with the prototype of Joe, the Fat Boy in “Pickwick,” whose real name was James Budden, and whose father kept the Red Lion Inn at the corner of High Street and Military Road, Chatham, where the lad’s remarkable obesity attracted general attention. The Mitre Inn and Clarence Hotel at Chatham, described in 1838 as “the first posting-house in the town,” is also associated with Dickens’s early years, and remains very much as it was when he knew it as a boy. At the period referred to the landlord of this fine old hostelry was a Mr. Tribe, with whose family Mr. and Mrs. John Dickens and their children were on visiting terms; indeed, it is recorded that, at the evening parties held at the Mitre, Charles distinguished himself by singing solos (usually old sea songs), and sometimes duets with his sister, both being mounted on a dining table for a stage. The Mitre is historically interesting by reason of the fact that Lord Nelson used to reside there when on duty at Chatham, a room he occupied being known as “Nelson’s Cabin.”[8]
In the eighteenth chapter of “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” we find the place disguised as “The Crozier”—“the orthodox hotel” at Cloisterham (i.e., Rochester)—and in “The Holly-Tree Inn” it is thus directly immortalized: “There was an inn in the cathedral town where I went to school, which had pleasanter recollections about it than any of these.... It was the inn where friends used to put up, and where we used to go and see parents, and to have salmon and fowls, and be tipped. It had an ecclesiastical sign—the Mitre—and a bar that seemed to be the next best thing to a bishopric, it was so snug.”[9]
John Dickens had by nature a very generous disposition, which inclined him to be too lavish in his expenditure. This idiosyncrasy, coupled with the ever-increasing demands of a young and growing family, compelled him to realize the immediate necessity for retrenchment. Hitherto his income (ranging from £200 to £350 per annum) amply sufficed to provide for the comfort of wife and children; but the time had arrived when rigid economy became imperative, and early in 1821 he removed into a less expensive and somewhat obscure habitation at No. 18, St. Mary’s Place (otherwise called “The Brook”), Chatham, situated in the valley through which a brook (now covered over) flows into the Medway. The house on “The Brook,” with a “plain-looking whitewashed plaster front, and a small garden before and behind,” still exists; it is a semi-detached, six-roomed tenement, of a much humbler type than that in Ordnance Terrace, and stands next to what is now the Drill Hall of the Salvation Army, but which, in John Dickens’s time, was a Baptist meeting-house called Providence Chapel. While the Dickens dwelling-place remains unaltered, the neighbourhood has since greatly deteriorated. The locality was then more rural and not so crowded as now, many of the people living there being of a quite respectable class. The minister then officiating at Providence Chapel was William Giles, whose son William had been educated at Oxford, and afterwards kept a school in Clover Lane (now Clover Street, the playground since covered by a railway station), Chatham, whence he moved to larger premises close by, still to be seen at the corner of Rhode Street and Best Street. Both Charles and his elder sister Fanny attended here as day scholars, and the boy, under Mr. Giles’s able tuition, made rapid progress with his studies. Apropos of Mr. Giles, it should be mentioned that when his intelligent pupil had attained manhood and achieved fame as the author of “Pickwick,” his old schoolmaster sent him, as a token of admiration, a silver snuff-box, the lid bearing an inscription addressed “To the Inimitable Boz.” For a considerable time afterwards Dickens jocosely alluded to himself, in letters to intimate friends, as “the Inimitable.” By the way, where is that snuff-box now?
St. Mary’s Place is in close proximity to the old parish church of St. Mary, where the Dickens family worshipped during their residence in Chatham. It dates from the early part of the twelfth century, but having lately undergone a process of rebuilding, the edifice no longer possesses that quaintness which formerly characterized it, both externally and internally. The present structure, standing on a site which has been occupied by a church from Saxon times, has been erected from the designs of the late Sir Arthur Blomfield, already mentioned as the architect of the new parochial church of St. Mary, Kingston. Happily, there are preserved in St. Mary’s, Chatham, some interesting remains of the Norman edifice (A.D. 1120), notably a fine doorway and staircase, and the columns of the central arch of the nave. Instead of the diminutive bell-turret originally surmounting the roof of the nave, a lofty detached tower now constitutes the most striking feature of the church, which was consecrated on October 28, 1903, in the presence of Lord Roberts. It has been suggested that the description of Blunderstone Church in “David Copperfield” recalls in some respects the old parish church of Chatham, so familiar to Dickens in his boyhood, although the picture was partly drawn from Blundeston Church, Suffolk: “Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! with a window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and is seen many times during the morning’s service by Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames.”[10] Dame Peggotty was no doubt to some extent depicted from Charles Dickens’s nurse of those days, Mary Weller, who afterwards married Thomas Gibson, a shipwright in the dockyard, and whose death took place in 1888.
In the registers at Chatham Church are recorded the entries of the baptism of three children born in the parish to John and Elizabeth Dickens, the parents of the novelist; and Mary Allen, an aunt of Charles, was married by license there on December 11, 1821, to Dr. Lamert, a regimental surgeon, who afterwards figured in “Pickwick” as Dr. Slammer. In the church registers may be found several names subsequently used by Dickens in his stories—names of persons who lived in the district—Sowerby (Sowerberry), Tapley, Wren, Jasper, Weller, etc., the Tapleys and the Wellers being well-known cognomens, for there are vaults in the church belonging to the former family, and a gravestone in the churchyard erected to the latter. At the west end of the church there are two inscriptions to the family of Stroughill, who lived in Ordnance Terrace, and to whom reference has already been made. The Vicar, in his appeal for subscriptions in aid of the restoration fund, expressed a hope that the people of Chatham would contribute towards the cost of a memorial in the church to Charles Dickens. Apropos, I may mention that the Council of that flourishing institution the Dickens Fellowship have, very rightly, approached the Corporation of Chatham with the suggestion that they should place commemorative tablets on the two houses in Chatham in which he spent some of the happiest years of his boyhood, and the Corporation have consented.
18 ST. MARY’S PLACE, THE BROOK, CHATHAM. ([Page 14].)
The Dickens family resided in the house next to Providence Chapel, 1821-1823.
From an upper window at the side of the house, No. 18, St. Mary’s Place, an old graveyard was plainly visible, and frequently at night little Charles and his sister would gaze upon the God’s-acre and at the heavens above from that point of vantage. Some thirty years later he recalled the circumstances in a poetical little story entitled “A Child’s Dream of a Star,”[11] a touching reminiscence of these early days, where he says: “There was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.