It was over the same old bridge that poor Pip was pursued by that "unlimited miscreant" Trabb's boy in the days of his "great expectations." He says:—
"Words cannot state the amount of aggravation and injury wreaked upon me by Trabb's boy, when, passing abreast of me, he pulled up his shirt-collar, twined his side hair, stuck an arm akimbo, and smirked extravagantly by, wriggling his elbows and body, and drawling to his attendants: 'Don't know yah; don't know yah, 'pon my soul, don't know yah!' The disgrace [continues Pip] attendant on his immediately afterwards taking to crowing and pursuing me across the bridge with crows, as from an exceedingly dejected fowl who had known me when I was a blacksmith, culminated the disgrace with which I left the town, and was, so to speak, ejected by it into the open country."
There is generally a stiff breeze blowing on the bridge, and the fact may probably have suggested to the artist the positions of the characters in the river scene, one of the plates of Edwin Drood, where Mr. Crisparkle is holding his hat on with much tenacity. One other reference to the bridge occurs in the Seven Poor Travellers, where Richard Doubledick, in the year 1799, "limped over the bridge here with half a shoe to his dusty foot on his way to Chatham."
After a Pickwickian breakfast in the coffee-room of "broiled ham, eggs, tea, coffee, and sundries," we take a stroll up the High Street. We do not know what the feelings of other pilgrims in "Dickens-Land" may have been on the occasion of a first visit, but we are quite sure that to us it is a perfect revelation to ramble along this quaint street of "the ancient city," returning by way of Star Hill through the Vines, all crowded with associations of Charles Dickens. Pickwick, Great Expectations, Edwin Drood, and many of the minor works of the eminent novelist, had never before appeared so clear to us—they acquire new significance. The air is full of Dickens. At every corner, and almost at the door of every house, we half expect to be met by one or other of the characters who will claim acquaintance with us as their friends or admirers. We are simply delighted, and never tire of repeating our experience in the pleasant summer days of our week's tramp in "Dickens-Land."
