had been gradually getting overcast, and now the sky was dark and lowering, save where the glory of the departing sun piled up masses of gold and burning fire, decaying embers of which gleamed here and there through the black veil, and shone redly down upon the earth. The wind began to moan in hollow murmurs, as the sun went down, carrying glad day elsewhere; and a train of dull clouds coming up against it menaced thunder and lightning. Large drops of rain soon began to fall, and, as the storm clouds came sailing onward, others supplied the void they left behind, and spread over all the sky. Then was heard the low rumbling of distant thunder, then the lightning quivered, and then the darkness of an hour seemed to have gathered in an instant."
We pass Dulwich—where Mr. Snodgrass and Emily Wardle were married—a fact that recalls kindly recollections of Mr. Pickwick and his retirement there, as recorded in the closing pages of the Pickwick Papers, where he is described as "employing his leisure hours in arranging the memoranda which he afterwards presented to the secretary of the once famous club, or in hearing Sam Weller read aloud, with such remarks as suggested themselves to his mind, which never failed to afford Mr. Pickwick great amusement." He is subsequently described as "somewhat infirm now, but he retains all his former juvenility of spirit, and may still be frequently seen contemplating the pictures in the Dulwich Gallery, or enjoying a walk about the pleasant neighbourhood on a fine day."
Although it is but a short distance—under thirty miles—to Rochester, the journey seems tedious, as the "iron-horse" does not keep pace with the pleasurable feelings of eager expectation afloat in our minds on this our first visit to "Dickens-Land"; it is therefore with joyful steps that we leave the train, and, the storm having passed away, find ourselves in the cool of the summer evening on the platform of Strood and Rochester Bridge Station.
CHAPTER III.
ROCHESTER CITY.
"The silent High Street of Rochester is full of gables, with old beams and timbers carved into strange faces. It is oddly garnished with a queer old clock that projects over the pavement out of a grave red brick building, as if Time carried on business there, and hung out his sign."—The Seven Poor Travellers.
"The town was glad with morning light."—The Old Curiosity Shop.
Mudfog, Our Town, Dullborough, the Market Town, and Cloisterham were the varied names that Charles Dickens bestowed upon the "ancient city" of Rochester. Every reader of his works knows how well he loved it in early youth, and how he returned to it with increased affection during the years of his ripened wisdom. Among the first pages of the first chapter of Forster's Life we find references to it:—"That childhood exaggerates what it sees, too, has he not tenderly told? How he thought that the Rochester High-street must be at least as wide as Regent Street which he afterwards discovered to be little better than a lane; how the public clock in it, supposed to be the finest clock in the world, turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a clock as a man's eyes ever saw; and how in its Town Hall, which had appeared to him once so glorious a structure that he had set it up in his mind as the model from which the genie of the Lamp built the palace for Aladdin, he had painfully to recognize a mere mean little heap of bricks, like a chapel gone demented. Yet, not so painfully either when second thoughts wisely came. 'Ah! who was I, [he says] that I should quarrel with the town for being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so changed, to it? All my early readings and early imaginations dated from this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the wiser and so much the worse!'"
It would occupy too much space in this narrative to adequately give even a brief historical sketch of the City of Rochester, which is twenty-nine miles from London, situated on the river Medway, and stands on the chalk on the margin of the London basin; but we think lovers of Dickens will not object to a recapitulation of a few of the most noteworthy circumstances which have happened here, and which are not touched upon in the chapters relating to the Castle and Cathedral.
According to the eminent local antiquary, Mr. Roach Smith, F.S.A., the name of the city has been thus evolved:—"The ceastre or chester is a Saxon affix to the Romano-British (DU)RO. The first two letters being dropped in sound, it became Duro or Dro, and then ROchester, and it was the Roman station Durobrovis." The ancient Britons called it "Dur-brif," and the Saxons "Hrofe-ceastre"—Horf's castle, of which appellation some people think Rochester is a corruption.
Rochester is a place of great antiquity, and so far back as a.d. 600 it seems to have been a walled city. Remains of the mediæval Wall exist in very perfect condition, at the back of the Eagle Inn in High Street, and in other parts of the city. In 676 Rochester was plundered by Ethelred, King of Mercia; and in 884 the Danes sailed up the Medway and besieged it, but were effectually repulsed by King Alfred. About 930, when three Mints were established there by Athelstan, it had grown to be one of the principal ports of the kingdom. William the Conqueror gave the town to his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. Fires in 1130 and 1137 nearly destroyed it.
Not a few royal and distinguished personages have visited Rochester on various occasions, among others Henry VIII., who came there in 1522, accompanied by the Emperor Charles V. Queen Elizabeth came in 1573, when she stayed five days, and attended the Cathedral service on Sunday. She came again in 1583, with the Duke of Anjou, and showed him her "mighty ships of war lying at Chatham." King James I. also visited the city in 1604 and 1606. On the latter occasion His Majesty, who was accompanied by Christian IV., King of Denmark, attended the Cathedral, and afterwards inspected the Navy. Charles II. paid it a visit just before the restoration in 1660, and again subsequently. It is believed that on both occasions he stayed at Restoration House (the "Satis House" of Great Expectations) hereafter referred to. Mr. Richard Head presented His Majesty with a silver ewer and basin on the occasion of the restoration. James II. came down to the quiet old city December 19th, 1688, and sojourned with Sir Richard Head for a week at a house (now No. 46 High Street), from whence he ignominiously escaped to France by a smack moored off Sheerness. Mr. Stephen T. Aveling mentioned to us that "it is curious that Charles the Second 'came to his own' in Rochester, and that James the Second 'skedaddled' from the same city."[4] Her Majesty when Princess Victoria stayed at the Bull Inn in 1836 for a night with her mother, the Duchess of Kent, on their way from Dover to London. It was a very tempestuous night, some of the balustrades of Rochester Bridge having been blown into the river, and the Royal Princess was advised not to attempt to cross the bridge.
"On the last day of June 1667 (says Mr. W. Brenchley Rye in his pleasant Visits to Rochester), Mr. Samuel Pepys, after examining the defences at Chatham shortly after the disastrous expedition by the Dutch up the Medway, walked into Rochester Cathedral, but he had no mind to stay to the service, … 'afterwards strolled into the fields, a fine walk, and there saw Sir F. Clarke's house (Restoration House), which is a pretty seat, and into the Cherry Garden, and here met with a young, plain, silly shopkeeper and his wife, a pretty young woman, and I did kiss her!'" David Garrick was living at Rochester in 1737, for the purpose of receiving instruction in mathematics, etc., from Mr. Colson. In 1742, Hogarth visited the city, in that celebrated peregrination with his four friends, and played hop-scotch in the courtyard of the Guildhall. Dr. Johnson came here in 1783, and "returned to London by water in a common boat, landing at Billingsgate."
The city formerly possessed many ancient charters and privileges granted to the citizens, but these were superseded by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835.
The Guildhall, "marked by a gilt ship aloft,"—"where the mayor and corporation assemble together in solemn council for the public weal,"—is
