"I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. When I booked my place at the coach-office, I had had 'Box Seat' written against the entry, and had given the book-keeper half-a-crown. I was got up in a special great coat and shawl, expressly to do honour to that distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon it a good deal; and had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And here, in the very first stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other merit than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a canter."
Pip, in Great Expectations, also made very many journeys to and from London, along the Dover road (the London road it is called in the novel), but the two most notable were, firstly, the occasion of his ride outside the coach with the two convicts as fellow-passengers on the back-seat—"bringing with them that curious flavour of bread-poultice, baize, rope-yarn, and hearth-stone, which attends the convict presence;" and secondly, that in which he walked all the way to London, after the sad interview at Miss Havisham's house, where he learns that Estella is to become the wife of Bentley Drummle:—
"All done, all gone! So much was done and gone, that when I went out at the gate the light of day seemed of a darker colour than when I went in. For awhile I hid myself among some lanes and bypaths, and then started off to walk all the way to London. . . . It was past midnight when I crossed London Bridge."
One more reference is made to the Dover road in Bleak House, where that most lovable of the many lovable characters in Dickens's novels, Esther Summerson, makes her journey, with her faithful little maid Charley, to Deal, in order to comfort Richard Carstone:—
"It was a night's journey in those coach times; but we had the mail to ourselves, and did not find the night very tedious. It passed with me as I suppose it would with most people under such circumstances. At one while, my journey looked hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now, I thought that I should do some good, and now I wondered how I could ever have supposed so."
When speaking of Dickens's characters, some critics have said that "he never drew a gentleman." One ventures to ask, Where is there a more chivalrous, honourable, or kind-hearted gentleman than Mr. John Jarndyce? Sir Leicester Dedlock in the same novel too, with some few peculiarities, is a thoroughly high-minded and noble gentleman of the old school. This by the way.
After walking some distance, we are able to verify one of those sage experiences of Mr. F.'s aunt:—"There's milestones on the Dover road!" for, by the light of another match, the darkness closing in, and there being no moon, we read "4 miles to Rochester." However, we tramp merrily on, with "the town lights right afore us," our minds being full of pleasant reminiscences of the scenes we have passed through, and this expedition, like many a weightier matter, "comes to an end for the time."
* * * * * *
We had on another occasion the pleasure of a long chat with Mrs. Latter of Shorne, one of the daughters of Mr. W. S. Trood, for many years landlord of the Sir John Falstaff. She said her family came from Somersetshire to reside at Gad's Mill in the year 1849, and left in 1872. The Falstaff was then a little homely place, but it has been much altered since. She knew Charles Dickens very well, and saw him constantly during his residence at Gad's Hill Place. Mrs. Latter lost two sisters while she lived at the Falstaff—one died at the age of eleven, and the other at nineteen. The last-mentioned was named Jane, and died in 1862 of brain fever. Dickens was very kind to the family at the time, took great interest in the poor girl, and offered help of "anything that his house could afford." She remembers her mother asking Dickens if it would be well to have the windows of the bedroom open. At those times people were fond of keeping invalids closed up from the air. Dickens said—"Certainly: give her plenty of air." He liked fresh air himself. Mrs. Latter said in proof of this that the curtains were always blowing about the open windows at Gad's Hill Place.