Starting from the Bull, and walking along the somewhat narrow but picturesque street towards Chatham,—"the streets of Cloisterham city are little more than one narrow street by which you get into it and get out of it: the rest being mostly disappointing yards with pumps in them and no thoroughfare—exception made of the Cathedral close, and a paved Quaker settlement, in color and general conformation very like a Quakeress's bonnet, up in a shady corner,"—we pass in succession the Guildhall, the City Clock, Richard Watts's Charity, the College Gate (Jasper's Gatehouse), Eastgate House (the Nuns' House), and, nearly opposite it, the residence of Mr. Sapsea, which, as we ourselves discover, was also the residence of "Uncle Pumblechook." The latter buildings are about a quarter of a mile from Rochester Bridge, and are splendid examples of sixteenth-century architecture, with carved oaken-timbered fronts and gables and latticed bay-windows. Eastgate House—the "Nuns' House" of Edwin Drood, described as "a venerable brick edifice, whose present appellation is doubtless derived from the legend of its conventual uses"—is especially beautiful, and its "resplendent brass plate on the trim gate" is still so "shining and staring." The date, 1591, is on one of the inside beams, and the fine old place abounds with quaint cosy rooms with carved oak mantel-pieces, and plaster enrichments to the ceilings, as well as mysterious back staircases and means of exit by secret passages. Charles II. is said to have been entertained here by Colonel Gibbons, the then owner, when he visited Chatham and inspected the Royal George; but this has been recently disputed. For many years during this century, the house has been occupied as a Ladies' School, and the old pianos used for practice by the pupils are there still, the keys being worn into holes. We wonder whether Rosa Bud and Helena Landless ever played on them! Looking round, we half expect to witness the famous courting scene in Edwin Drood, and afterwards "the matronly Tisher to heave in sight, rustling through the room like the legendary ghost of a dowager in silken skirts, [with her] 'I trust I disturb no one; but there was a paper-knife—Oh, thank you, I am sure!'" An excellent local institution, called "The Rochester Men's Institute," has its home here. The house has been immortalized by Mr. Luke Fildes in one of the illustrations to Edwin Drood ("Good-bye, Rosebud, darling!"), where, in the front garden, the girls are cordially embracing their charming school-fellow, and Miss Twinkleton looks on approvingly, but perhaps regretfully, at the possible non-return of some of the young ladies. Mrs. Tisher is saluting one of the girls. There is a gate opening into the street, with the lamp over it kept in position by an iron bracket, just as it is now, heaps of ladies' luggage are scattered about, which the housemaid and the coachman are removing to the car outside; and one pretty girl stands in the gateway waving a farewell to the others with her handkerchief.
We feel morally certain that Eastgate House is also the prototype of Westgate House in the Pickwick Papers, although, for the purposes of the story, it is therein located at Bury St. Edmund's. The wall surrounding the garden is about seven feet high, and a drop from it into the garden would be uncommonly suggestive of the scene which took place between Sam Weller and his master in the sixteenth chapter, on the occasion of the supposed intended elopement of one of the young ladies of Miss Tomkins's Establishment—which also had the "name on a brass plate on a gate"—with Mr. Charles FitzMarshall, alias Mr. Alfred Jingle. The very tree which Mr. Pickwick "considered a very dangerous neighbour in a thunderstorm" is there still—a pretty acacia.
Mr. Sapsea's House.
Mr. Sapsea's Father.
The house opposite Eastgate House was of course Mr. Sapsea's dwelling—"Mr. Sapsea's premises are in the High Street over against the Nuns' House. They are of about the period of the Nuns' House, irregularly modernized here and there." A carved wooden figure of Mr. Sapsea's father in his rostrum as an auctioneer, with hammer poised in hand, and a countenance expressive of "Going—going—gone!" was many years ago fixed over a house (now the Savings Bank) in St. Margaret's, Rochester, and was a regular butt for practical jokes by the young officers of the period, although they never succeeded in their attempts to pull it down. To us the house appears to be an older building than Eastgate House, with much carved oak and timber work about it, and in its prime must have been a most delightful residence. The lower part is now used as business premises, and from the fact that it contains the little drawers of a seedsman's shop, it answers very well to the description of Mr. Pumblechook's "eminently convenient and commodious premises"—indeed there is not a little in common between the two characters. "Mr. Pumblechook's premises in the High Street of the market town [says Pip] were of a peppercorny and farinaceous character, as the premises of a corn chandler and seedsman should be. It appeared to me that he must be a very happy man indeed to have so many little drawers in his shop; and I wondered when I peeped into one or two of the lower tiers, and saw the tied-up brown paper packets inside, whether the flower seeds and bulbs ever wanted of a fine day to break out of those jails, and bloom." Part of these premises is used as a dwelling-house, and Mr. Apsley Kennette, the courteous assistant town-clerk, to whom we were indebted for much kind attention, has apartments on the upper floors of the old mansion, the views from which, looking into the ancient city, are very pretty. There is a good deal of oak panelling and plaster enrichment about the interior, restored by Mr. Kennette, who in the course of his renovations found an interesting wall fresco.