Broadstairs has good sands, precipitous chalk cliffs, and a very fine sea-view. The railway station is about a mile from the pier, and the town is approached by a well-kept road ("the main street of our watering-place. . . . You may know it by its being always stopped up with donkey chaises. Whenever you come here and see the harnessed donkeys eating clover out of barrows drawn completely across a narrow thoroughfare, you may be quite sure you are in our High Street"), with villas standing in their own gardens, most of which are brightened by summer flowers, notably the blue clematis (Clematis Jackmani) and by those charming seaside evergreens the Escallonia and the Euonymus. As we near the sea, the shops become more numerous, and, on the right-hand side, we have no difficulty in finding (although we heard it had been altered considerably) the house "No. 12, High Street," in which Dickens lived when he first visited Broadstairs. It is a plain little dwelling of single front, with a small parlour looking into the street, and has one story over—just the place that seems suited to the financial position of the novelist when he was commencing life. The house is now occupied by Mr. Bean, plumber and glazier, whose wife courteously shows us over it, and into the back yard and little garden, kindly giving us some pears from an old tree growing there, whereon we speculate as to whether Dickens himself had ever enjoyed the fruit from the same old tree. He appears to have lived in this house during his visits in 1837 and 1838. We ask the good lady if she is aware that Charles Dickens had formerly stayed in her house, and she replies in the negative, so we recommend her to get her husband to put up a tablet outside to the effect "Charles Dickens lived here, 1837," in imitation of the example of the Society of Arts in Furnival's Inn. There can be no doubt as to the identity of the house, for we take the precaution of ascertaining that the numbers have not been altered.
Our efforts to discover "Lawn House," where Dickens stayed on his visits from 1838 to 1848, are attended with some difficulty. First we are told it lay this way, then that, and then the other; a smart villa in a new road is pointed out to us as the object of our search, which we at once reject, as being too recent. But we are patient and persevering, feeling, with Mr. F.'s aunt, that "you can't make a head and brains out of a brass knob with nothing in it. You couldn't do it when your Uncle George was living; much less when he's dead!" Finally, we appeal to some one who looks like the "oldest inhabitant," and obtain something like a clue. We are eventually directed to a veritable "Lawn House," which is the last house on the left as you approach "Fort House." It must have changed in respect of its surroundings since forty years have passed, and although there is nothing outside to indicate it as such, it seems fair to assume that this was the house described in the Life as "a small villa between the hill and the cornfield." The present occupier, who has no recollection of Dickens ever having been there, courteously allows us to see the hall and dining-room. The house is of course a great improvement upon "No 12, High Street."
A few steps from "Lawn House" lead us to the drive approaching "Fort House," pleasantly surrounded by a sloping lawn and shrubbery. John Forster, alluding to it in the Life, says:—
"The residence he most desired there, 'Fort House,' stood prominently at the top of a breezy hill on the road to Kingsgate, with a cornfield between it and the sea, and this in many subsequent years he always occupied."
Alas! the cornfield is no more, but "Fort House," or "Bleak House," as it is indifferently termed locally, remains intact. It is the most striking object of the place, standing on a cliff overlooking the sea, the harbour, and the town (made familiar by several photographs and engravings), with its curious verandahs and blinds, as seen in the vignette of J. C. Hotten's interesting book, Charles Dickens: The Story of His Life. An excellent photograph is published in the town, of which we are glad to secure a copy.
In the sixth chapter of Bleak House it is called "an old-fashioned house with three peaks in the roof in front, and a severe sweep leading to the porch." In the same chapter there is a minute account of the interior, too lengthy to be quoted; but the description does not resemble Fort House. We are kindly permitted by the occupier to see the study in which the novelist worked, a privilege long to be remembered. This room is approached by "a little staircase of shallow steps" from the first floor, as described in Bleak House; but it will be borne in mind that the "Bleak House" of the novel is placed in Hertfordshire, near St. Albans, and not at Broadstairs, although many persons still believe that Fort House is the original of the story. From the study we have a lovely view of the sea—the balmy breeze of a summer's day lightly fanning the waves, and just sufficing to move the delicate filamentous foliage of the tamarisk trees now standing in the place where the cornfield was. Even at the time we see it, changed as all its surroundings are, we can imagine the enjoyment which Dickens had in this healthy spot on the North Downs.
In that interesting "book for an idle hour" called The Shuttlecock Papers, Mr. J. Ashby-Sterry thus sympathetically alludes to "Bleak House":—"What a romantic place this is to write in, is it not? What a glorious study to work in! Indeed, both from situation and association, it would be impossible to find a better place for writing, were it not that one feels that so much superb work has been done on this very spot by so great an artist, that the mere craftsman is inclined to question whether it is worth while for him to write at all."
How well Dickens loved Broadstairs is told in his letter of the 1st September, 1843, addressed to Professor Felton, of Cambridge, U. S. A., as follows:—
"This is a little fishing-place; intensely quiet; built on a cliff, whereon—in the centre of a tiny semi-circular bay—our house stands; the sea rolling and dashing under the windows. Seven miles out are the Goodwin Sands (you've heard of the Goodwin Sands?), whence floating lights perpetually wink after dark, as if they were carrying on intrigues with the servants. Also there is a lighthouse called the North Foreland on a hill behind the village, a severe parsonic light, which reproves the young and giddy floaters, and stares grimly out upon the sea. Under the cliff are rare good sands, where all the children assemble every morning and throw up impossible fortifications, which the sea throws down again at high-water. Old gentlemen and ancient ladies flirt after their own manner in two reading-rooms, and on a great many scattered seats in the open air. Other old gentlemen look all day long through telescopes and never see anything.