A Literary Pilgrimage Among the Haunts of Famous British Authors

by Theodore F. Wolfe

DICKENSLAND: GAD'S HILL AND ABOUT

Chaucer's Pilgrims—Falstaff—Dickens's Abode—Study—Grounds—Walks—Neighbors—Guests—Scenes of Tales—Cobham—Rochester—Pip's Church-Yard—Satis House, etc.

Gad's Hill House

"TO go to Gad's Hill," said Dickens, in a note of invitation, "you leave Charing Cross at nine o'clock by North Kent Railway for Higham." Guided by these directions and equipped with a letter from Dickens's son, we find ourselves gliding eastward among the chimneys of London and, a little later, emerging into the fields of Kent,—Jingle's region of "apples, cherries, hops, and women." The Thames is on our left; we pass many river-towns,—Dartford where Wat Tyler lived, Gravesend where Pocahontas died,—but most of our way is through the open country, where we have glimpses of fields, parks, and leafy lanes, with here and there picturesque camps of gypsies or of peripatetic rascals "goin' a-hoppin'." From wretched Higham a walk of half an hour among orchards and between hedges of wild-rose and honeysuckle brings us to the hill which Shakespeare and Dickens have made classic ground, and soon we see, above the tree-tops, the glittering vane which surmounted the home of the world's greatest novelist. The name Gad's (vagabond's) Hill is a survival of the time when the depredations of highwaymen upon "pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings and traders riding to London with fat purses" gave to this spot the ill repute it had in Shakespeare's day: it was here he located Falstaff's great exploit. The tuft of evergreens which crowns the hill about Dickens's retreat is the remnant of thick woods once closely bordering the highway, in which the "men in buckram" lay concealed, and the robbery of the franklin was committed in front of the spot where the Dickens house stands. By this road passed Chaucer, who had property near by, gathering from the pilgrims his "Canterbury Tales." In all time to come the great master of romance who came here to live and die will be worthily associated with Shakespeare and Chaucer in the renown of Gad's Hill. In becoming possessor of this place, Dickens realized a dream of his boyhood and an ambition of his life. In one of his travellers' sketches he introduces a "queer small boy" (himself) gazing at Gad's Hill House and predicting his future ownership, which the author finds annoying "because it happens to be my house and I believe what he said was true." When at last the place was for sale, Dickens did not wait to examine it; he never was inside the house until he went to direct its repair. Eighteen hundred pounds was the price; a thousand more were expended for enlargement of the grounds and alterations of the house, which, despite his declaration that he had "stuck bits upon it in all manner of ways," did not greatly change it from what it was when it became the goal of his childish aspirations. At first it was his summer residence merely,—his wife came with him the first summer,—but three years later he sold Tavistock House, and Gad's Hill was thenceforth his home. From the bustle and din of the city he returned to the haunts of his boyhood to find restful quiet and time for leisurely work among these "blessed woods and fields" which had ever held his heart. For nine years after the death of Dickens Gad's Hill was occupied by his oldest son; its ownership has since twice or thrice changed.

Gad's Hill—House and Grounds

Its elevated site and commanding view render it one of the most conspicuous, as it is one of the most lovely, spots in Kent. The mansion is an unpretentious, old-fashioned, two-storied structure of fourteen rooms. Its brick walls are surmounted by Mansard roofs above which rises a bell-turret; a pillared portico, where Dickens sat with his family on summer evenings, shades the front entrance; wide bay-windows project upon either side; flowers and vines clamber upon the walls, and a delightfully home-like air pervades the place. It seems withal a modest seat for one who left half a million dollars at his death. At the right of the entrance-hall we see Dickens's library and study, a cosy room shown in the picture of "The Empty Chair:" here are shelves which held his books; the panels he decorated with counterfeit book-backs; the nook where perched the mounted remains of his raven, the "Grip" of "Barnaby Rudge." By this bay-window, whence he could look across the lawn to the cedars beyond the highway, stood his chair and the desk where he wrote many of the works by which the world will know him alway. Behind the study was his billiard-room, and upon the opposite side of the hall the parlor, with the dining-room adjoining it at the back, both bedecked with the many mirrors which delighted the master. Opening out of these rooms is a conservatory, paid for out of "the golden shower from America" and completed but a few days before Dickens's death, holding yet the ferns he tended. The dining-room was the scene of much of that emphatic hospitality which it pleased the novelist to dispense, his exuberant spirits making him the leader in all the jollity and conviviality of the board. Here he compounded for bibulous guests his famous "cider-cup of Gad's Hill," and at the same table he was stricken with death; on a couch beneath yonder window, the one nearest the hall, he died on the anniversary of the railway accident which so frightfully imperilled his life. From this window we look out upon a lawn decked with shrubbery and see across undulating cornfields his beloved Cobham. From the parquetted hall, stairs lead to the modest chambers,—that of Dickens being above the drawing-room. He lined the stairway with prints of Hogarth's works, and declared he never came down the stairs without pausing to wonder at the sagacity and skill which had produced the masterful pictures of human life. The house is invested with roses, and parterres of the red geraniums which the master loved are ranged upon every side. It was some fresh manifestation of his passion for these flowers that elicited from his daughter the averment, "Papa, I think when you are an angel your wings will be made of looking-glasses and your crown of scarlet geraniums." Beneath a rose-tree not far from the window where Dickens died, a bed blooming with blue lobelia holds the tiny grave of "Dick" and the tender memorial of the novelist to that "Best of Birds." The row of gleaming limes which shadow the porch was planted by Dickens's own hands. The pedestal of the sundial upon the lawn is a massive balustrade of the old stone bridge at near-by Rochester, which little David Copperfield crossed "foot-sore and weary" on his way to his aunt, and from which Pickwick contemplated the castle-ruin, the cathedral, the peaceful Medway. At the left of the mansion are the carriage-house and the school-room of Dickens's sons. In another portion of the grounds are his tennis-court and the bowling-green which he prepared, where he became a skilful and tireless player. The broad meadow beyond the lawn was a later purchase, and the many limes which beautify it were rooted by Dickens. Here numerous cricket matches were played, and he would watch the players or keep the score "the whole day long." It was in this meadow that he rehearsed his readings, and his talking, laughing, weeping, and gesticulating here "all to himself" excited among his neighbors suspicion of his insanity. From the front lawn a tunnel constructed by Dickens passes beneath the highway to "The Wilderness," a thickly wooded shrubbery, where magnificent cedars uprear their venerable forms and many sombre firs, survivors of the forest which erst covered the countryside, cluster upon the hill-top. Here Dickens's favorite dog, the "Linda" of his letters, lies buried. Amid the leafy seclusion of this retreat, and upon the very spot where Falstaff was routed by Hal and Poins ("the eleven men in buckram"), Dickens erected the chaletDickens's Chalet sent to him in pieces by Fechter, the upper room of which—up among the quivering boughs, where "birds and butterflies fly in and out, and green branches shoot in at the windows"—Dickens lined with mirrors and used as his study in summer. Of the work produced at Gad's Hill—"Two Cities," "Uncommercial Traveller," "Mutual Friend," "Edwin Drood," and many tales and sketches of "All the Year Round"—much was written in this leaf-environed nook; here the master wrought through the golden hours of his last day of conscious life, here he wrote his last paragraph and at the close of that June day let fall his pen, never to take it up again. From the place of the chalet we behold the view which delighted the heart of Dickens,—his desk was so placed that his eyes would rest upon this view whenever he raised them from his work,—the fields of waving corn, the green expanse of meadows, the sail-dotted river.

Many friends came to Dickens in this pleasant Kentish home,—Forster, Maclise, Reade, Macready, Leech, Collins, Yates, Hans Christian Andersen, Mr. and Mrs. Fields, Longfellow and his daughters, Fechter and his wife: some of them were guests here for many days together. The master was the most genial of hosts, apparently the happiest of men, with the hearty laugh which Montaigne says never comes from a bad heart. After the morning task in library or chalet he gave the rest of the day to exercise and recreation, often at games with his guests in the grounds, but taking daily in rain or shine the long walks which made his lithe figure and rapid gait familiar to all the cottagers and field-laborers of the countryside. It is pleasant to hear the loving testimony of these simple folk—many of them descendants of the "men of Kent" who followed the standard of Wat Tyler from Blackheath to London—concerning Dickens's uniform kindness, his helpful generosity, his scrupulous regard of the rights of inferiors, the traits which won their hearts. One rustic neighbor declares, "Dickens was a main good man, sir: it was a sorry day for the neighborhood when he was taken away." Near the gate of Gad's Hill House is a wayside inn, the "Sir John Falstaff," which for more than two centuries has stood for remembrance of that worthy's exploit at this place. Its weather-worn sign bears portraits of Falstaff and Prince Hal and a picture of the "Merry Wives of Windsor" putting Falstaff into the basket. The name of a son of the recent keeper of this hostelry, Edward Trood, doubtless suggested the title of the "Mystery" which must, alas! remain a mystery evermore.

From the inn a lane leads to a sightly summit surmounted by a monument which Dickens called "Andersen's Monument," because it was the resort of that illustrious author while a guest at Gad's Hill. Its far-reaching prospect is indeed alluring: on every hand vast, wave-like expanses of forest and orchard, moor and mead, sweep away to the horizon, while northward, beyond great cornfields and market-gardens, we see twenty miles of the Thames—"stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life"—bordered here by a wilderness of low-lying marsh. A walk beloved of Dickens brings us to one of his favorite haunts,—a dreary church-yard on the margin of this marsh. It lies in the dismal, ague-haunted "hundred of Loo," a peninsula between the Thames and the Medway having a broad hem of desolate fens along the river-banks—a weird, little known region, whose ancient reputation was unsavory. A wooden finger on a post directs us to Cooling,—Dickens makes Pip say that this direction was never accepted, no one ever came,—a forlorn hamlet which straggles about the ruins of Cooling Castle. This was an ancient seat of the Cobhams; through a Cobham heiress it passed to Oldcastle, leader of the Lollards, who shut himself up here and was dragged hence to martyrdom. It is noteworthy that this Oldcastle has been thought to be the original of Falstaff, the hero of Gad's Hill. Of the stronghold little remains save the machicolated gate-way, flanked with ponderous round towers bearing quaint inscriptions. The water of the moat is green and stagnant, suggesting frogs and rheumatism, and the space it encloses is occupied by the cottage of a farmer. The forge and cottage of Joe Gargery are not found in the wretched village,—indeed, we should be sorry to find that splendid fellow and the good Betty so poorly housed,—but beyond the narrow street and at the verge of the marshes we come to a low, quaint, square-towered old church, which rises from a wind-swept, nettle-grown church-yard, the sceneScenes of Great Expectations of the opening chapter of "Great Expectations." Yonder mound, whose gravestone is inscribed to George Comfort, "Also Sarah, Wife of the Above," stands for the tomb of Pip's parents; and sunken in the grass at our feet is the row of little gravestones whose curious shape led Pip to believe that his little brothers (whose graves they marked) "had been born on their backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken them out in this stage of existence." Over this low wall which divides God's-acre from the marshes the convict climbed, and we, standing upon it, look across the scene of his chase and capture, which Pip witnessed from Joe's back. On this sombre autumn afternoon of our visit the landscape is startlingly like that the terrified boy beheld: we see the same far-stretching waste of marshes,The Marshes the intersecting dikes, the low, leaden line of the river beyond, dark mists hanging heavy over all, while the chill wind blows in our faces from its "savage lair" in the sea. Upon yonder flat tombstone in the far corner of the church-yard Dickens sat and lunched with Fields when he last walked to this place. Hidden now in the mists, but not far distant, and reached by a foot-path from the road to Chalk, is a dirty and dilapidated Thames-side inn, whose creaking sign-board reads, "Ship and Lobster:" this is The Ship of "Great Expectations," where Pip and his party slept the night preceding their attempt to put Magwich on the steamer, and the open river below the little causeway is the scene of their mischance and the transport's recapture.

Cobham