"You see I never felt the necessity or propriety of being locally accurate to Rochester or its buildings. Dickens, of course, meant Rochester; yet, at the same time, he chose to be obscure on that point, and I took my cue from him. I always thought it was one of his most artistic pieces of work; the vague, dreamy description of the Cathedral in the opening chapter of the book. So definite in one sense, yet so locally vague.
"Very faithfully yours,
"Luke Fildes.
"W. R. Hughes, Esq."
The College Yard Gate (a) must therefore be regarded as the typical Jasper's Gatehouse, but, with the usual novelist's license, some points in all three Gatehouses have been utilized for effect. So we can imagine the three friends in succession going up the "postern stair;" and, further on in the story, we can picture that mysterious "single buffer, Dick Datchery, living on his means," as a lodger in the "venerable architectural and inconvenient" official dwelling of Mr. Tope, minutely described in the eighteenth chapter of Edwin Drood, as "communicating by an upper stair with Mr. Jasper's," watching the unsuspecting Jasper as he goes to and from the Cathedral.
Chapters twelve, fourteen, and twenty-three refer to Jasper's Gatehouse, and its proximity to the busy hum of human life, in very vivid terms, especially chapter twelve:—
"Among these secluded nooks there is little stir or movement after dark. There is little enough in the high tide of the day, but there is next to none at night. Besides that, the cheerfully frequented High Street lies nearly parallel to the spot (the old Cathedral rising between the two), and is the natural channel in which the Cloisterham traffic flows, a certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters, and the churchyard after dark, which not many people care to encounter. . . . One might fancy that the tide of life was stemmed by Mr. Jasper's own Gatehouse. The murmur of the tide is heard beyond; but no wave passes the archway, over which his lamp burns red behind the curtain, as if the building were a Lighthouse. . . .
"The red light burns steadily all the evening in the Lighthouse on the margin of the tide of busy life. Softened sounds and hum of traffic pass it, and flow on irregularly into the lonely precincts; but very little else goes by save violent rushes of wind. It comes on to blow a boisterous gale. . . . John Jasper's lamp is kindled, and his Lighthouse is shining, when Mr. Datchery returns alone towards it. As mariners on a dangerous voyage, approaching an iron-bound coast, may look along the beams of the warning light to the haven lying beyond it that may never be reached, so Mr. Datchery's wistful gaze is directed to this beacon and beyond. . . ."
The sensation of calm in passing suddenly out of the busy High Street of Rochester into the subdued precincts of the Cathedral, as above described, is very marked and peculiar, and must be experienced to be realized.
Among the many interesting ancient buildings in "the lonely precincts" may be mentioned the old Episcopal Palace of the Bishops of Rochester. My friend Mr. George Payne, F.S.A., Hon. Sec. of the Kent Archæological Society, who now lives there, writes me that:—"it is impossible to say when it was first built, but it was rebuilt circa 1200, the Palace which preceded it having been destroyed by fire. Bishop Fisher was appointed to the See in 1504, and mainly resided at Rochester. The learned prelate here entertained the great Erasmus in 1516, and Cardinal Wolsey in 1527. In 1534 Bishop Fisher left Rochester never to return, being beheaded on Tower Hill, June 22nd, 1535. The front of the Palace has been coated with rough plaster work dusted over with broken tile, but the rear walls are in their original state, being wholly composed of rag, tufa, and here and there Roman tiles. The cellars are of the most massive construction, and many of the rooms are panelled."
