Through England with Dickens page 2

We follow Mr. Pickwick the twenty-five miles to Ipswich, where, in spite of the encroachment of tramlines on the narrow streets, there is still preserved for our delight the "overgrown tavern," the "inn known far and wide by the appellation of the Great White Horse, rendered the more conspicuous by a stone statue of some rampacious animal with flowing mane and tail, distantly resembling an insane cart horse, which is elevated above the principal door."

The undoubted size of this inn was much exaggerated by Dickens, who referred to its "labyrinths of uncarpeted passages," its "clusters of mouldy, ill-lighted rooms," and we have often wondered if Dickens - who, we know, visited the town a year or so before writing "The Pickwick Papers" - met there with a similar adventure as that ascribed to Mr. Pickwick, where he mistook his room and became involved with a "middle-aged lady in yellow curl-papers."

As a novel of travel "The Old Curiosity Shop" is second only to "Pickwick." It is principally concerned with the one long pilgrimage of Little Nell and her grandfather; and so precise is the description of the route taken and the places passed that it has been possible to trace out the exact itinerary, although not a single town or village is mentioned by name.

From London the child and the old man went by way of Hampstead, where from the heights they were able to look back "at old Saint Paul's looming through the smoke"; then the way was via Uxbridge, Chalfont, Amersham to Aylesbury, in the churchyard of which they met the Punch and Judy showmen, Codlin and Short, with whom they journeyed as far as Banbury, "the town where the races were to begin next day." Under cover of the bustle of the racecourse the two travellers were able to free themselves from the undesirable attentions of Codlin, "the friend," and accepted the hospitality of the kind schoolmaster at Warmington, five miles away. A stay of two nights was made here, and then the journey was continued to Warwick. Just before reaching the town Mrs. Jarley was encountered - probably at Gaydon - and with that famous lady of the waxworks the couple stayed several weeks until the gambling propensities of the old grandfather showed signs of reviving, which urged Nell to get farther on the way beyond the temptations of crowds and cities.

In Wolverhampton, Little Nell fainted from fatigue, to be rescued by the kind schoolmaster of Warmington, who was on his way to a new appointment as clerk and schoolmaster at a village some distance away. After a necessary period for rest, the party proceeded, Little Nell in a wagon - "what a soothing, luxurious, drowsy way of travelling, to lie inside that slowly-moving mountain, listening to the tinkling of horses' bells" - and so, after passing through Shifnal, they came within sight of "the blue Welsh mountains, far away," to Tong, that peaceful and secluded village, where the faithful little soul died a few months later.

In "Bleak House" there is a spirited account of the ride taken by Inspector Bucket and Esther Summerson from London, through St. Albans, near which Bleak House was situated, and along the Great North Road in a snowstorm such as Dickens had experienced on the same road and written about a dozen years or more before, so fixedly were the associations of that coach ride in 1838 implanted in his recollection. It was probably at the George at Grantham, "a spacious inn, solitary, but a comfortable, substantial building," that Inspector Bucket resolved to turn back, realizing that Lady Dedlock had changed clothes with Jenny, the brickmaker's wife, at St. Albans, and had returned to London instead of going on to Chesney Wold, as the inspector had anticipated. Rock-ingham Castle, the original of Chesney Wold of "Bleak House," is not far from Grantham.

To return to the Great North Road, and Nicholas Nickleby, Squeers and the pupils en route for "Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire." Half-way between Grantham and Newark the coach met with an accident, and the passengers took refuge in a wayside inn, "a lonely place with no very great accommodation in the way of apartments... one public room with a sanded floor and a chair or two." This may well have been the Wheatsheaf at Long Ben-nington. Here the party, waiting for the return of the guard from Grantham with another coach, endeavoured to amuse themselves and beguiled the weary waiting with the stories of the Five Sisters of York and the Baron Grogzwig.

At the end of the following day the Dotheboys party arrived at the George and New inn, Greta Bridge. The decay of coaching left many of these old inns derelict, and the George and New inn is now Thorpe Grange, a pretty cottage about half a mile outside the village.

In later years Dickens immortalised this inn as the Holly Tree in the charming story of the little runaway couple told by Boots of the Holly Tree inn.

"The delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire," is Bowes, and "Dotheboys Hall" ("but you needn't call it a Hall down here," Squeers told Nicholas) is at the far end of the village. It is now known as the Villa. At Barnard Castle, a couple of miles away, the King's Head inn should be noted, as it was here that Dickens stayed and had the interview with the original of John Browdie. A clockmaker opposite the inn was named Humphrey, and from him Dickens took the name of his periodical, "Master Humphrey's Clock," which he started in 1840.

The birthplace of David Copperfield was at Blunder-stone, in Suffolk. The real name of the village is Blundeston. It is not far from Lowestoft, and the rectory there is pointed out as the Rookery where Mrs. Copperfield lived. Whether Dickens purposely made a mistake in its name or not cannot be said. "I saw the name on a direction post near Yarmouth," he wrote the friend to whom the story was dedicated; and to another friend he wrote that he "chose Blunderstone for the sound of its name." And very appropriate was the name, too. There is much in the early part of "David Copperfield" to endear us to this unspoiled Suffolk village, but if we venture into Yarmouth in the hope of seeing the original of Mr. Peggotty's house-boat, that "Aladdin's palace, roc's egg arid all," we shall be disappointed. But the "wonderful house" had an actual prototype in James Sharman's Black Hut, which stood in Dickens's time on a sandy waste.

Chigwell is only a dozen miles from London. It is still "an out of the way rural place," and a most pleasant afternoon can be spent in the vicinity of the King's Head, the original Maypole of " Barnaby Rudge." "With its overhanging stories, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging out and projecting over the pathway," looking, as Dickens said, "as if it were nodding in its sleep." Here, if we will, we can easily bring to life again poor, mad Barnaby, Maypole Hugh, Dolly Varden and Mr. Haredale; old John Willet with his staring, stolid face, and the memorable set of the Maypole cronies; little Solomon Daisy, the parish clerk and bellringer; short Tom Cobb, the general chandler; and long Phil Parkes, the ranger.