The country lying between London and the English Channel is one of the most varied and diversified in all England. The "men of Kent" and the "Kentish men" have gone down in history in legendary fashion. The Roman influences and remains are perhaps more vivid here to-day than elsewhere, while Chaucer has done perhaps more than all others to give the first impetus to our acquaintanceship with the pleasures of the road.

"The Pilgrim's Way," the old Roman Watling Street, and the "Dover Road" of later centuries bring one well on toward the coaching days, which had not yet departed ere Mr. Pickwick and his friends had set out from the present "Golden Cross" Hotel at Charing Cross for "The Bull" at Rochester.

One should not think of curtailing a pilgrimage to what may, for the want of a more expressive t.i.tle, be termed "d.i.c.kens' Kent," without journeying from London to Gravesend, Cobham, Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Maidstone, Canterbury, and Broadstairs. Here one is immediately put into direct contact, from the early works of "Pickwick," "Copperfield," and "Chuzzlewit," to the last unfinished tale of "Edwin Drood."

No end of absorbing interest is to be found in the footsteps of Pickwick and Jingle, and Copperfield and his friend Steerforth.

To-day one journeys, by a not very progressive or up-to-date railway, by much the same route as did Mr. Pickwick and his friends, and reaches the Medway at Strood and Rochester through a grime and gloom which hardly existed in d.i.c.kens' time to the same compromising extent that it does to-day. Bricks, mortar, belching chimneys, and roaring furnaces line the route far into the land of hops.

Twenty miles have pa.s.sed before those quiet scenes of Kentish life, which imagination has led one to expect, are in the least apparent. The route _via_ the river towns of Woolwich, Erith, Gravesend, and Dartford, or _via_ Lee, Eltham, and Bexley, is much the same, and it is only as the train crosses the Medway at Strood--the insignificant and uninteresting suburb of Rochester--that any environment of a different species from that seen in London itself is to be recognized. The ancient city of Rochester, with its overgrown and significantly busy dockyard appendage of Chatham, is indicative of an altogether different _raison d'etre_ from what one has. .h.i.therto connected the scenes of d.i.c.kens' stories.

Kent as a whole, even the Kent of d.i.c.kens, would require much time to cover, as was taken by the "Canterbury" or even the "Pickwickian"

pilgrims, but a mere following, more or less rapidly, of the Dover Road, debouching therefrom to Broadstairs, will give a vast and appreciative insight into the personal life of d.i.c.kens as well as the novels whose scenes are here laid.

The first shrine of moment _en route_ would be the house at Chalk, where d.i.c.kens spent his honeymoon, and lived subsequently at the birth of his son, Charles d.i.c.kens, the younger. Gad's Hill follows closely, thence Rochester and Chatham. The pond on which the "Pickwickians" disported themselves on a certain occasion, when it was frozen, is still pointed out at Rochester, and "The Leather Bottle" at Cobham, where Mr. Pickwick and Mr. Winkle made inquiries for "a gentleman by the name of Tupman," is a very apparent reality; and with this one is well into the midst of the Kent country, made famous by Charles d.i.c.kens.

Aside from d.i.c.kens' later connection with Rochester, or, rather, Gad's Hill Place, there is his early, and erstwhile happy, life at Chatham to be reckoned with. Here, his father being in employment at the dockyard, the boy first went to school, having been religiously and devotedly put through the early stages of the educative process by his mother.

His generally poor health and weakly disposition kept him from joining in the rough games of his schoolmates, and in consequence he found relaxation in the a.s.sociation of books. Indeed, it was at this time that the first seeds of literary ambition took root, with the result that a certain weedy thing, called "A Tragedy," grew up under the t.i.tle of "Misnar, the Sultan of India," which at least gave the young author fame among his immediate juvenile circle.

At the age of nine, his father left Chatham, and d.i.c.kens was removed with the rest of the family to London, where his early pitiful struggles began, which are recorded elsewhere.

There is a peculiar fascination about both the locality and the old residence of Charles d.i.c.kens--Gad's Hill Place--which few can resist. Its lofty situation on a ridge between the Thames and the Medway gives Gad's Hill several commanding views, including the busy windings of the latter, where the Dutch fleet anch.o.r.ed in Elizabeth's reign.

The surroundings seem from all times to have been a kind of Mecca to tramps and petty showmen. That d.i.c.kens had an irresistible love for this spot would be clear from the following extract from his works:

"I have my eye on a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side by a wood, and having, on one hand, between the road dust and the trees, a skirting patch of gra.s.s. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean...."

Gad's Hill Place is a comfortable, old-fashioned, creeper-clad house, built about a century since, and is on the spot mentioned in Shakespeare's "Henry IV." as the scene of the robbery of the travellers. The following extract from a mediaeval record book is interesting:

"1586, September 29th daye, was a thiefe yt was slayne, buried." Again "1590, Marche the 17th daie, was a thiefe yt was at Gadshill wounded to deathe, called Robert Writs, buried."

The "Falstaff" Inn is nearly opposite Gad's Hill Place, and dates probably from Queen Anne's time. It formerly had an old-fashioned swinging sign, on one side of which was painted Falstaff and the Merry Wives of Windsor. In its long sanded room there was a copy of Shakespeare's monument in Westminster Abbey. Fifty years ago about ninety coaches pa.s.sed this inn daily.

In the garden at Gad's Hill Place d.i.c.kens had erected a Swiss chalet presented to him by Fechter, the actor. Here he did his writing "up among the branches of the trees, where the birds and b.u.t.terflies fly in and out."

The occupiers of Gad's Hill Place since the novelist's death have been Charles d.i.c.kens, the younger, Major Budden, and latterly the Honourable F.

W. Latham, who graciously opens certain of the apartments to visitors.

In the immediate neighbourhood of Rochester is Cobham, with its famous Pickwickian inn, "The Leather Bottle," where Mr. Tupman sought retirement from the world after the elopement of Miss Wardle with Alfred Jingle.

d.i.c.kens himself was very fond of frequenting the inn in company with his friends.

The visitor will have no need to be told that the ancient hostelry opposite the village church is the "Leather Bottle" in question, so beloved of Mr. Pickwick, since the likeness of that gentleman, painted vividly and in the familiar picturesque att.i.tude, on the sign-board, loudly proclaims the fact. It should be one of the fixed _formulae_ of the true d.i.c.kensian faith that all admirers of his immortal hero should turn in at the "Leather Bottle" at Cobham, and do homage to Pickwick in the well-known parlour, with its magnificent collection of d.i.c.kens relics, too numerous to enumerate here, but of great and varied interest, the present proprietor being himself an ardent d.i.c.kens enthusiast.

Here is a shrine, at once worthy, and possessed of many votive offerings from all quarters.

d.i.c.kens' personality, as evinced by many of his former belongings, which have found a place here, pervades the bar parlour. So, too, has the very spirit and sentiment of regard for the novelist made the "Leather Bottle's" genial host a marked man. He will tell you many anecdotes of d.i.c.kens and his visits here in this very parlour, when he was living at Higham.

The "mild and bitter," or the "arf and arf," is to-day no less pungent and aromatic than when d.i.c.kens and his friends regaled themselves amid the same surroundings.

It should be a part of the personal experience of every d.i.c.kens enthusiast to journey to the "unspoilt" village of Cobham and spend a half-day beneath the welcoming roof of the celebrated "Leather Bottle."

The great love of d.i.c.kens for Rochester, the sensitive clinging to the scenes of that happy, but all too short childhood at Chatham, forms an instance of the magnetic power of early a.s.sociations.

"I have often heard him say," said Forster, "that in leaving the neighbourhood of Rochester he was leaving everything that had given his early life its picturesqueness or sunshine."

What the Lake District is to Wordsworthians, Melrose to lovers of Scott, and Ayr to Burns, Rochester and its neighbourhood is to d.i.c.kens enthusiasts throughout the English-speaking world.

The very subtlety of the spell in the former cases holds aloof many an average mortal who grasps at once the home thrusts, the lightly veiled satire, the poor human foibles, fads, and weaknesses in the characters of d.i.c.kens. The ordinary soul, in whom the "meanest flower that grows"

produces no tears, may possibly be conscious of a lump in his throat as he reads of the death of Jo or Little Nell. The deaths of f.a.gin and Bill Sikes are, after all, a more native topic to the ma.s.ses than the final exit of Marmion.

Not only so, but the very atmosphere of the human abodes, to say nothing of minute and readily identified descriptions of English scenery, permeates the stories of d.i.c.kens.

Gad's Hill at Higham can, to be sure, hardly be reckoned as a London suburb, but on the other hand it was, in a way, merely a suburban residence near enough thereto to be easily accessible.

Even in his childhood days d.i.c.kens had set his heart upon the possession of this house, which was even then known as Gad's Hill Place. His father, who at that time had not fallen upon his unfortunate state, had encouraged him to think that it might be possible, "when he should have grown to a man," did he but work hard.

At any rate d.i.c.kens was able to purchase the estate in 1856, and from that date, until his death in 1870, it was occupied by him and his family.

Writing to Forster at this time, d.i.c.kens stated that he had just "paid the purchase-money for Gad's Hill Place" (1,790). How d.i.c.kens' possession of the house actually came about is told in his own words, in a letter written to his friend, M. De Cerjet, as follows:

"I happened to be walking past (the house) a year or so ago, with my sub-editor of _Household Words_ (Mr. W. H. Wills), when I said to him: 'You see that house? It has always a curious interest for me, because when I was a small boy down in these parts, I thought it the most beautiful house (I suppose because of its famous old cedar-trees) ever seen. And my poor father used to bring me to look at it, and used to say that if ever I grew up to be a clever man perhaps I might own that house, or such another house. In remembrance of which, I have always, in pa.s.sing, looked to see if it was to be sold or let, and it has never been to me like any other house, and it has never changed at all.' We came back to town and my friend went out to dinner. Next morning he came to me in great excitement, and said, 'It is written that you are to have that house at Gad's Hill.

The lady I had allotted to take down to dinner yesterday began to speak of that neighbourhood. "You know it?" I said; "I have been there to-day."

"Oh, yes," she said, "I know it very well; I was a child there in the house they call Gad's Hill Place. My father was the rector, and lived there many years. He has just died, has left it to me, and I want to sell it." So,' says the sub-editor, 'you must buy it, now or never!' I did, and hope to pa.s.s next summer there."

It is difficult to regard the numerous pa.s.sages descriptive of places in d.i.c.kens' books without reverence and admiration. The very atmosphere appears, by his pen, to have been immortalized.

Even the incoherences of Jingle have cast a new cloak of fame over Rochester's Norman Cathedral and Castle!

"'Ah! fine place, glorious pile--frowning walls--tottering arches--dark nooks--crumbling staircases. Old Cathedral too--earthy smell--pilgrims'

feet wore away the old steps--little Saxon doors--confessionals like money-takers' boxes at theatres--queer customers those monks--Popes and Lord Treasurers and all sorts of fellows, with great red faces and broken noses, turning up every day--buff jerkins too--matchlocks--sarcophagus-- fine place--old legends too--strange stories: capital,' and the stranger continued to soliloquize until they reached the Bull Inn, in the High Street, where the coach stopped."

[Ill.u.s.tration: d.i.c.kENS' STUDY AT GAD'S HILL PLACE.

_From a painting by Luke Fildes, R. A._]

A further description of the Cathedral by d.i.c.kens is as follows:

"A certain awful hush pervades the ancient pile, the cloisters, and the churchyard, after dark, which not many people care to encounter. The cause of this is not to be found in any local superst.i.tion that attaches to the precincts, but it is to be sought in the innate shrinking of dust with the breath of life in it from dust out of which the breath of life has pa.s.sed; also in the ... reflection, 'If the dead do, under any circ.u.mstances, become visible to the living, these are such likely surroundings for the purpose that I, the living, will get out of them as soon as I can.'"

With Durdles and Jasper, from the pages of "Edwin Drood," also, one can descend into the crypt of the earlier Norman church, the same they visited by moonlight, when Durdles kept tapping the wall "just where he expected to disinter a whole family of 'old 'uns.'"

In numerous pa.s.sages d.i.c.kens has truly immortalized what perforce would otherwise have been very insignificant and unappealing structures. The Bull Inn, most interesting of all, is unattractive enough as a hostelry.

It would be gloomy and foreboding in appearance indeed, and not at all suggestive of the cheerful house that it is, did it but lack the a.s.sociation of d.i.c.kens.

No. 17 in the inn is the now famous bedroom of Mr. Pickwick, and the present coffee-room now contains many relics of d.i.c.kens purchased at the sale held at Gad's Hill Place after the author's death.