A sympathetic notice of the Castle is also contained in the Seven Poor Travellers. It begins:—
"Sooth to say, he [Time] did an active stroke of work in Rochester in the old days of the Romans, and the Saxons, and the Normans, and down to the times of King John, when the rugged Castle—I will not undertake to say how many hundreds of years old then—was abandoned to the centuries of weather which have so defaced the dark apertures in its walls, that the ruin looks as if the rooks and daws had picked its eyes out."
And this, the most touching reference of all, occurs in "One Man in a Dockyard," contributed by Dickens[7] to Household Words in 1851:—
"There was Rochester Castle, to begin with. I surveyed the massive ruin from the Bridge, and thought what a brief little practical joke I seemed to be, in comparison with its solidity, stature, strength, and length of life. I went inside; and, standing in the solemn shadow of its walls, looking up at the blue sky, its only remaining roof, (to the disturbance of the crows and jackdaws who garrison the venerable fortress now,) calculated how much wall of that thickness I, or any other man, could build in his whole life,—say from eight years old to eighty,—and what a ridiculous result would be produced. I climbed the rugged staircase, stopping now and then to peep at great holes where the rafters and floors were once,—bare as toothless gums now,—or to enjoy glimpses of the Medway through dreary apertures like sockets without eyes; and, looking from the Castle ramparts on the Old Cathedral, and on the crumbling remains of the old Priory, and on the row of staid old red-brick houses where the Cathedral dignitaries live, and on the shrunken fragments of one of the old City gates, and on the old trees with their high tops below me, felt quite apologetic to the scene in general for my own juvenility and insignificance. One of the river boatmen had told me on the bridge, (as country folks do tell of such places,) that in the old times, when those buildings were in progress, a labourer's wages 'were a penny a day, and enough too.' Even as a solitary penny was to their whole cost, it appeared to me, was the utmost strength and exertion of one man towards the labour of their erection."
Dickens always took his friends to the Keep of Rochester Castle. He naturally considered it as one of the sights of the old city. It was equally attractive to his friends, for a curious adventure is recorded in Forster's Life, in connection with a visit which the poet Longfellow made there in 1842, and which he recollected a quarter of a century afterwards, and recounted to Forster during a second visit, together with a curious experience in the slums of London with Dickens. The first of these adventures is thus described by Forster:—"One of them was a day at Rochester, when, met by one of those prohibitions which are the wonder of visitors and the shame of Englishmen, we overleapt gates and barriers, and setting at defiance repeated threats of all the terrors of law, coarsely expressed to us by the custodian of the place, explored minutely the castle ruins." Happily such a circumstance could not now take place, for, by the present excellent regulations of the Corporation of the city of Rochester, every visitor can explore the Castle and grounds to his heart's content.
On arriving at either railway station, Strood or Rochester Bridge, the Castle is the first object to claim attention. Our attention is constantly directed to it during our stay in the pleasant city; it is a landmark when we are on the tramp; and it is the last object to fade from our view as we regretfully take our departure.
* * * * * *
My fellow-tramp favours me with the following note:—
The Dedication of Rochester Castle to the Public.