Turning to the right within the Close, and passing the secluded residences of several “grave and reverend seigniors,” we may find, on the farther side, King’s School, an educational establishment of good repute and old foundation, pleasantly and quietly situated. The school is supervised by certain “worthy and approved good masters,” successors to the amiable Doctor Strong and assistants, under whose careful tutorship David Copper-field was educated after his adoption by Miss Betsy Trotwood. In the commencement of chapter 16 of his autobiography, David thus describes the place:—
“Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again. I went, accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies—a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grass-plot—and was introduced to my new master, Doctor Strong.”
Doctor Strong’s Private Residence—at which “some of the higher scholars boarded”—is an antiquated house, situated at the corner of Lady’s Green (No. 1), at a short distance eastward. Here David was a frequent visitor, learning particulars of the Doctor’s history, and becoming intimate with the various personages therewith connected. Pleasant reminiscences of the doings and sayings of Mrs. Markleham—“the Old Soldier” (so called by the boys “on account of her generalship, and the skill with which she marshalled great forces of relations against the Doctor”)—the tender associations which cluster round the story of Annie, the good doctor’s true-hearted wife; with a casual recollection of the family cousin—Mr. Jack Maldon—(no better than he should be)—may combine to enhance the interest of a visit to this old-fashioned but comfortable home.
Crossing the Lady’s Green towards the gate of the ancient Augustinian Monastery, and proceeding onwards by Monastery Street, we may find at the end and corner of the street, on the left hand, a noteworthy antique-looking house, partly incorporated with a second gate of the old Monastery, at present the residence of a gentleman of the medical profession. In bygone time this house was a point of considerable attraction to David during his later school-days at Canterbury, as being the home of “The Eldest Miss Larkins,” his second love. In chapter 18, as we may remember, is contained a very pleasant piece of natural sketching, entitled “A Retrospect,” comprising, inter alia, the story of his youthful passion. David says:—
“I worship the eldest Miss Larkins. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark, black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a chicken, for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds. . . . Everything that belongs to her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. Mr. Larkins (a gruff old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his head) is fraught with interest to me. . . . I regularly take walks outside Mr. Larkins’s house in the evening, though it cuts me to the heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room, where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two or three occasions, in a sickly spooney manner, round and round the house after the family are gone to bed, wondering which is the eldest Miss Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins’s instead), wishing that a fire would burst out; that the assembled crowd would stand appalled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back for something she had left behind, and perish in the flames.”
The Drawing-Room here mentioned is situated above the old Monastery Gate, between the two towers which stand on either side. We may recollect it was here that David, having received an invitation to a private ball given at the Larkins’s, enjoyed his first dance with “his dear divinity;” afterwards being introduced to Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower from the neighbourhood of Ashford, “a friend of the family,” and—alas for David!—the future husband of the eldest Miss Larkins—
“I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium. . . . I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain, elderly gentleman, who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says, ‘Oh, here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr. Copperfield.’ I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified. . . . I think I am in a happy dream. I waltz again with the eldest Miss Larkins. She says I waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear divinity.”
Proceeding westward, we pass along the opposite roadway which faces the house above referred to, by Church Street St. Paul, and Burgate Street, to the Old Cathedral entrance.
As the Rambler returns, again traversing Mercery Lane, there may be noted on the left—No. 14—a respectable Butcher’s Shop, now in the keeping of Mr. Cornes. It is evident from its position, near Christ Church Gate, that this was the establishment where flourished, in days of yore, that obnoxious “young butcher” who was “the terror of the youth of Canterbury,” and the especial enemy of the pupils at King’s School. In chapter 18—“A Retrospect”—Copperfield writes as follows:—
“There is a vague belief abroad that the beef suet with which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked young butcher, with rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue. His main use of this tongue is to disparage Dr. Strong’s young gentlemen. He says publicly that if they want anything he’ll give it ’em. He names individuals among them (myself included) whom he could undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient reasons I resolve to fight the butcher.
“It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall. I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our boys; the butcher by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow. In another moment I don’t know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher; we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident; sometimes I see nothing, but sit gasping on my second’s knee; sometimes I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face, without appearing to discompose him at all. At last I awake, very queer about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off, congratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and publican, and putting on his coat as he goes, from which I augur justly that the victory is his.”