Some of Dickens’s most vivid memories of the town must have been of the dockyard area where his father worked in the Naval Pay Office. The sounds and bustle of the narrow streets leading down towards the riverside and the seediness of their second-hand shops are evoked towards the beginning of ‘David Copperfield’ (1849-50) when David has to sell his jacket on his runaway journey to his aunt in Dover. The essence of the town as it must have lingered in the mind of the 10 year old Charles is also felt by the young fugitive: ‘ … and toiling into Chatham, - which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks’. It was as a writer at the height of his powers, however, that Dickens summoned up the cacophonous activity of Chatham Dockyard working at full stretch in another article he wrote for ‘All The Year Round.’ in 1863. The article filters the Dockyard through the naïve vision of the captivated child who now has an adult’s perception of the grim reality of the activity he is witnessing.
Quotations
It resounded with the noise of hammers beating upon iron; and the great sheds or slips under which the mighty men-of –war are built, loomed business-like when contemplated from the other side of the river. For all that, however, the Yard made no display, but kept itself snug under hill-sides of corn-fields, hop-gardens, and orchards; its great chimneys smoking with a quiet – almost a lazy – air, like giants smoking tobacco; and the great Shears moored off it, looking meekly and inoffensively out of proportion, like the Giraffe of the machinery creation. The store of cannon on the neighbouring gin-wharf, had an innocent toy-like appearance, and the one red-coated sentry on duty over them was a mere toy figure, with a clock-work movement. As the hot sunlight sparkled on him he might have passed for the identical little man who had the little gun, and whose bullets they were made of lead, lead, lead. … Ding, clash, dong, BANG, Boom, Rattle, clash, BANG, Clink, BANG,DONG, BANG, Clatter, BANG BANG BANG! What on earth is this! This is, or soon will be, the Achilles, iron armour-plated ship. Twelve hundred men are working at her now; twelve hundred men working on stages over her sides, over her bows, over her stern, under her keel, between her decks, down in her hold, within her and without, crawling and creeping into the finest curves of her lines wherever it is possible for men to twist. Twelve hundred hammerers, measurers, caulkers, armourers, forgers, smiths, shipwrights; twelve hundred dingers, clashers, dongers, rattlers, clinkers, bangers bangers bangers! Yet all this stupendous uproar around the rising Achilles is as nothing to the reverberations with which the perfected Achilles shall resound upon the dreadful day when the full work is in hand for which this is but note of preparation – the day when the scuppers that are now fitting like great dry thirsty conduit-pipes shall run red.
Dickens was obviously enjoying the summer in Broadstairs when he wrote this letter entreating his friend Mark Lemon and his wife to come visit the family in Broadstairs...
By the time this letter was written (1843) Dickens knew Broadstairs well and had come to establish certain routines there as this letter delightfully depicts in which Dickens christens himself Boz, his early pseudonym...
In this letter to his friend Macready, Dickens ‘solemnly declares’ his affection for Broadstairs and proclaims it to be ‘the finest feature in all creation’...
Although the fictitious donkey-chaser, Miss Betsey Trotwood, lived in Dover, her real-life equivalent, Miss Pearson Strong, lived in Broadstairs along Victoria Parade...
Fond of Broadstairs as he was, Dickens was however not oblivious to the dramatic weather that it could host, nor to the fact that it was chosen by many (including himself) as a place of pure air and therefore beneficial to the health...
The situation must indeed have been unbearable as it nearly drove Dickens from the town he cherished so much as he mentions in this letter to John Forster...
Dickens’s remembered delight in those early walks with his father is clear in every line of the description he gives in ‘The Pickwick Papers’ (1837)of the same walk undertaken by Mr...
Then, as now, Cobham, only a short walk from Dickens’s home, contained a charming collection of buildings – Cobham Hall, the church, Cobham College, Owletts...
The 13 pathetic little lozenge-shaped gravestones huddled together in Cooling churchyard indicate the high level of infant mortality in the Hoo Peninsula in the eighteenth century...
He embarked on a long-term programme of repairs and improvements, which included the digging of a new well, raising the roof to provide more rooms, installing a shower and making a study out of a china cupboard...
From his long walks in the area, which took him around the villages of the Hoo Peninsula to the bustling Thames waterside, Dickens must have been familiar with the chaotic, emotionally charged scenes of departure for new lives in the colonies, which were a feature of Gravesend life...
Although Dickens was familiar with much of the Kent coast, it is not clear whether he had hitherto visited Herne Bay, but one reply he made to Broadstairs...
They make a day’s excursion with some acquaintances to Pegwell Bay, where after an eventful journey by recalcitrant donkeys, their nerves are soothed by a pleasant lunch at the Pegwell Bay hotel...
Although not mentioned by name, Rochester is clearly the ‘market town’ used as a very specific background in ‘Great Expectations’ (1860), one of the major novels Dickens wrote at Gad’s Hill Place...
