Frederic George Kitton

“ Dickens delighted to entertain his friends at the Albion, where, upon one of the walls, hangs an original letter containing a description of Broadstairs, penned by the novelist himself:
“A good sea—fresh breezes—fine sands—and pleasant walks—with all manner of fishing-boats, lighthouses, piers, bathing-machines, are its only attractions; but it is one of the freshest and freest little places in the world.” Here, too, is jealously preserved an ancient oak chest on which he was wont to sit while he and his intimates quaffed the old hostelry’s unrivalled milk-punch. ”

“ So bountiful in its abundance was the surrounding country, and so lean and scant the village, that one might have thought the village had sown and planted everything it once possessed to convert the same into crops. This would account for the bareness of the little shops, the bareness of the few 182 boards and trestles designed for market purposes in a corner of the street, the bareness of the obsolete inn and inn yard, with the ominous inscription, ‘Excise Office,’ not yet faded out from the gateway, as indicating the very last thing that poverty could get rid of.... ”

“ Pilgrims in Dickens land would do well to visit Kit’s Coty House and Blue Bell Hill, where, from the higher elevations, a prospect is revealed of enchanting beauty; from such a point of vantage we behold an extensive view of the valley, in which are seen little 202 hamlets, cornfields, hop gardens, orchards, and spinneys, with the river Medway meandering in the direction of Rochester, and gradually widening as it approaches that ancient town. ”

“ For, when other shifting recollections of Frederic Kitton fade x away—accidents of a common interest, chances of a brief and busy acquaintanceship—the impression that remains, and will always remain with those who knew him, is the haunting impression of a sweet and winning simplicity, an absolute sincerity of life and word, that knew no use for the thing he said but that it should be the thing he thought, and that never (so it seemed) thought anything of man, or woman, or child but what was kind and Christian and noble-hearted. ”

“ But who would ever have imagined that their dwellings may bring grave responsibility and grave trouble to those who take up their abode in a house which the presence of their genius has hallowed? I live in Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, London—a dear house, in a nice, quiet, shady garden, where grow fine large old plantains (out of the Square proper) , and where in summer, from every window of the house, you may imagine yourself in the country—the real country! That sounds very grand and luxurious in London ”

“ In Household Words may be found an elaborate, amusing (but doubtless accurate) description of Wigton marketplace as seen at night nearly fifty years ago, and written with Dickens’s customary power, illustrating his marvellous acuteness of observation:
“Wigton market was over, and its bare booths were smoking with rain all down the street.... ‘I see,’ said Brother Francis, ‘what I hope and believe to be one of the most dismal places ever seen by eyes. I see the houses with their roofs of dull black, their stained fronts, and their dark-rimmed windows, looking as if they were all in mourning. ”

“ IN DICKENS LAND.
“Kent, sir! Everybody knows Kent. Apples, cherries, hops, and women.” Thus did Alfred Jingle briefly summarize for the behoof of Tracy Tupman the principal characteristics of the county which, by general consent, is termed “the Garden of England,” a designation richly merited through its sylvan charms and other natural beauties.
This division of south-eastern England is rightly considered as the very heart of Dickens land, for the reason that no other locality (excepting, of course, the great Metropolis) possesses such numerous associations with the novelist and his writings. ”

“ The air among the houses was of so strong a piscatory flavour that one might have supposed sick fish went up to be dipped in it, as sick people went down to be dipped in the sea. A little fishing was done in the port, and a quantity of strolling about by night, and looking seaward, particularly at those times when the tide made, and was near flood. Small tradesmen, who did no business whatever, sometimes unaccountably realized large fortunes, and it was remarkable that nobody in the neighbourhood could endure a lamp-lighter. ”

“ Pickwick could obtain a pleasant glimpse of the river, with its numerous sailing-barges, in the direction of Chatham; but the prospect, alas! is now completely blotted out by hideous railway viaducts. Happily, in spite of modern innovations, those who appreciate the old-world air of our English cities will find much to charm them in the precincts of the Cathedral, sufficiently remote from the bustle and noise of the High Street to enable it to preserve the quiet serenity which invariably encompasses our venerable minsters. ”

“ Dickens first made acquaintance with many provincial towns during his early newspaper days, when, as a reporter, he galloped by road in post-chaises, both by day and night, to remote parts of the country, meeting with strange adventures, sometimes experiencing awkward predicaments, from which he invariably succeeded in extricating himself and in reaching his destination in good time for publication, his carefully-prepared notes being transcribed, not infrequently, during “the smallest hours of the night in a swift-flying carriage and pair,” by the light of a blazing wax-candle. ”

“ Looking northward from this high elevation, we may view the marshes, which flat and dreary expanse is relieved by a glimpse of the Thames, widening as it approaches seaward, and bearing upon its silvery bosom a number of vessels, both steamships and sailing ships, the ruddy brown sails of the barges giving colour to the scene. To the east is the valley of the Medway, the prospect including a distant view of Rochester, crowned by the rugged keep of the old Castle and by the Cathedral tower. ”

“ In 1858 Dickens presided at the annual meeting of the Institutional Association of Lancashire and Cheshire, held in the Manchester Athenæum and the Free Trade Hall, and handed prizes to candidates from more than a hundred local mechanics’ institutes affiliated to the association. “Knowledge has a very limited power indeed,” he observed, in the speech delivered on behalf of the Manchester Mechanics’ Institute in Cooper Street, “when it informs the head alone; but when it informs the head and heart too, it has power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates the universe.” ”

“ Kitton was only forty-eight when he died, and the work which he had done was large in bulk and rich in testimony to his industry; but he was far from accomplishing the volume of work which he had already set before himself. It is no secret that the short “Life of Dickens” which he published two and a half years ago was only regarded by himself as the framework upon which he proposed to construct a much more elaborate biography, to be at least as long as Forster’s “Life,” fortified by a vast array of facts which Forster had not been disposed, or careful enough, to collect. ”

“ Dickens noticed, among other topographical features, the steepness of Park Street, which (he said) “was very much like the perpendicular streets a man sees in a dream, which he cannot get up for the life of him.” He remembered, too, that the White Hart Hotel (the proprietor of which establishment was the Moses Pickwick who owned the very coach on which Sam Weller saw inscribed “the magic name of Pickwick”) stood “opposite the great Pump Room, where the waiters, from their costume, might be mistaken for Westminster boys, only they destroy the illusion by behaving themselves so much better.” ”

“ You must think me insane, I fancy, to say such a thing, and I must confess that you might guess every mortal and immortal thing under the sun, but you would never guess how this most frightful occurrence took place.
“Those who have read Charles Dickens’s ‘Life,’ by Mr. Forster, will know that he is the ‘great man’ who had lived at Tavistock House for twelve [ten] years. People from all parts of the world have come to look at the house Charles Dickens lived in, and see the interior of the house, a request which I have frequently complied with.” ”

“ Dickens’s happiest hours in his Gad’s Hill home were those when it was filled with cherished friends, both English and American, to whom he played the part of an ideal host, devoting the greater portion of each day to their comfort and amusement, and accompanying them on pedestrian excursions to Rochester and other favourite localities in the neighbourhood, or driving with them to more remote places, such as Maidstone and Canterbury. ”

“ Within a short distance from the churchyard we may identify, in a short row of cottages, the original of Joe’s forge, while an old-fashioned inn with a weather-board exterior, and bearing the sign of the 214 Horseshoe and Castle, is regarded as the prototype of the Three Jolly Bargemen, a favourite resort of Joe Gargery after his day’s work at the forge.
The ancient and picturesque city of Rochester, so beloved by Dickens and so replete with memories of the “Master,” deserves a chapter to itself. ”

“ There is a repose about Lant Street, in the Borough, which sheds a gentle melancholy upon the soul. There are always a good many houses to let in the street; it is a by-street, too, and its dulness is soothing. A house in Lant Street would not come within the denomination of a first-rate residence in the strict acceptation of the term, but it is a most desirable spot, nevertheless. ”

“ About midway between Gravesend and Rochester, on the old Dover Road, and in the parish of Higham, is Gad’s Hill, immortalized both by Shakespeare and Dickens. With regard to the derivation of the name there seems to be a little doubt, some regarding it as a corruption of “God’s Hill,” while others incline to the belief that it must be traced to the word “gad” (i.e., rogue) , for, even prior to Shakespeare’s time, unwary travellers were here waylaid by highwaymen, and for such audacious thefts from the person this particular spot became notorious. ”

“ On September 12, 1857, Dickens announced that he and his companion were on their way to Doncaster, en route for London. Breaking the journey at Lancaster, they stopped at another delightful hostelry, the King’s Arms in Market Street. “We are in a very remarkable old house here,” wrote Dickens to his sister-in-law, “with genuine old rooms and an uncommonly quaint staircase. I have a state bedroom, with two enormous red four-posters in it, each 150 as big as Charley’s room at Gad’s Hill.” ”

“ In referring afterwards to the “readings” and “imaginations” which he described as brought away from Chatham, he again observes with David: “The picture always rises in my mind of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I, sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own in my mind connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them” [14] —words that were written down as fact some years before they found their way into the story. ”

“ With the characteristics of that other great Lancashire town, Manchester, the novelist became, perhaps, even more intimate. “Manchester is (for Manchester) bright and fresh,” he wrote to Miss Hogarth from the Queen’s Hotel in 1869, where he stayed on the occasion of his Farewell Readings in the provinces, and where the chimney of his sitting-room caught fire and compelled him to “turn out elsewhere to breakfast.” ”

“ Unless it pours of rain, I cannot write half an hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells, or glee-singers. There is a violin of the most torturing kind under the window now (time, ten in the morning) , and an Italian box of music on the steps, both in full blast.” Dickens did not desert the town just yet, however, as in 1851 (in order to escape the excitement in London caused by the Great Exhibition) he decided to let the town house (Devonshire Terrace) for a few months, and engaged Fort House from the beginning of May until November, his longest sojourn at Broadstairs. ”

“ It was generally believed that the failure to secure tenants for the guild houses under the special regulations was due chiefly to the fact of their being regarded as little better than almshouses, and too remote from London to be easily accessible; it must not be forgotten, too, that true genius looks askance at acts of charity performed in its behalf, the spirit of independence which usually characterizes it rebelling at anything that appears to assume the form of patronage, although it must be admitted that the guild rules give no cause for suspicion on that score. ”

“ Presently the day arrived when the lonesome lad followed his parents to the Metropolis, leaving behind him, alas! everything that gave his “ailing little life its picturesqueness or sunshine”; for he was really a very sickly boy, and for that reason unable to join with zest in the more vigorous sports of his playfellows, which explains his fondness for reading, so unusual in lads of his age.
Little Charles was only ten years old when he bade farewell to Chatham, and took his place as a passenger in the stage-coach “Commodore.” ”

“ Our situation is delightful, our air delicious, and our breezy hills and downs, carpeted with wild thyme, and decorated with millions of wild flowers, are, in the faith of the pedestrian, perfect.” He informs us that the harbour is a tidal one—“At low water we are a heap of mud, with an empty channel in it”—and delineates, with the sense of a keen observer, the effects of high and low tide upon the shipping, while the following is a typical example of Dickensian humour: “The very little wooden lighthouse shrinks in the idle glare of the sun. ”