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Dover: Lock and Key of the Kingdom
Charles Dickens
The Victorian novelist Charles Dickens (1812-1870) had a hard
childhood. His father was imprisoned for debt when Charles was
only 12, and he himself was sent to work in a blacking factory.
After his father’s release he resumed his schooling for three or
four years before becoming an office boy for a solicitor. In 1828
he became a reporter for the ‘Morning Chronicle’, and he started
writing short stories and sketches for magazines under the pen
name of ‘Boz’. In early 1836 ‘Sketches by Boz’ were collected
and published, and in March of the same year the serialisation of
‘Pickwick Papers’ began. Dickens’ novels are a vivid portrayal of
social life in Victorian England, much of it derived from his own
experience, and show his abiding concern with social deprivation
and injustice.
Dickens stayed in Dover on a number of occasions and also
made frequent trips through the port on his way to the
Continent, often staying at the Lord Warden Hotel. He found that
he worked well in Dover and particularly enjoyed his walks along
the cliffs. Dover is referred to in many of Dickens’s novels and
articles and it features prominently in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and
‘David Copperfield’.
In 1852 Dickens stayed at 10 Camden Crescent for three months
while he was writing “Bleak House”. He is said to have
frequented the Pilot Field, the high ground behind Snargate
Street, lying on his back in the sun, planning his work. Although
he didn’t find Dover entirely to his liking, writing to Mary Boyle
on 22 July 1852 from Dover he said:
“My Dear Mary, you do scant justice to Dover. It is not quite to
my taste, being too bandy (I mean musical; no reference to its
legs) and infinitely too genteel. But the sea is very fine, and the
walks are quite remarkable.”
In November 1861 he stayed at the Lord Warden Hotel during
one of his reading tours and read at the Apollonian Hall, on
Snargate Street for two hours. He had a favourable reception
from his audience which he describes in a letter to Miss Hogarth.
He spoke “before a large and intelligent audience”, who
“wouldn’t go, but sat applauding like mad”, “the audience with
the greatest sense of humour certainly is Dover”. In the same
letter he describes rough weather at sea observed from the
shore:
“The storm was most magnificent at Dover… The sea came in
like a great sky of immense clouds, forever breaking suddenly
into furious rain… The unhappy Ostend packet unable to get in
or go back, beat about the Channel all Tuesday night and until
noon yesterday, when I saw her come in, with five men at the
wheel, a picture of misery inconceivable.”
Dickens himself crossed the Channel on many occasions and
probably drew on his own experiences, and observations like the
one above, for his account of cross-Channel travel in his work
‘The Uncommercial Traveller’.
childhood. His father was imprisoned for debt when Charles was
only 12, and he himself was sent to work in a blacking factory.
After his father’s release he resumed his schooling for three or
four years before becoming an office boy for a solicitor. In 1828
he became a reporter for the ‘Morning Chronicle’, and he started
writing short stories and sketches for magazines under the pen
name of ‘Boz’. In early 1836 ‘Sketches by Boz’ were collected
and published, and in March of the same year the serialisation of
‘Pickwick Papers’ began. Dickens’ novels are a vivid portrayal of
social life in Victorian England, much of it derived from his own
experience, and show his abiding concern with social deprivation
and injustice.
Dickens stayed in Dover on a number of occasions and also
made frequent trips through the port on his way to the
Continent, often staying at the Lord Warden Hotel. He found that
he worked well in Dover and particularly enjoyed his walks along
the cliffs. Dover is referred to in many of Dickens’s novels and
articles and it features prominently in ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and
‘David Copperfield’.
In 1852 Dickens stayed at 10 Camden Crescent for three months
while he was writing “Bleak House”. He is said to have
frequented the Pilot Field, the high ground behind Snargate
Street, lying on his back in the sun, planning his work. Although
he didn’t find Dover entirely to his liking, writing to Mary Boyle
on 22 July 1852 from Dover he said:
“My Dear Mary, you do scant justice to Dover. It is not quite to
my taste, being too bandy (I mean musical; no reference to its
legs) and infinitely too genteel. But the sea is very fine, and the
walks are quite remarkable.”
In November 1861 he stayed at the Lord Warden Hotel during
one of his reading tours and read at the Apollonian Hall, on
Snargate Street for two hours. He had a favourable reception
from his audience which he describes in a letter to Miss Hogarth.
He spoke “before a large and intelligent audience”, who
“wouldn’t go, but sat applauding like mad”, “the audience with
the greatest sense of humour certainly is Dover”. In the same
letter he describes rough weather at sea observed from the
shore:
“The storm was most magnificent at Dover… The sea came in
like a great sky of immense clouds, forever breaking suddenly
into furious rain… The unhappy Ostend packet unable to get in
or go back, beat about the Channel all Tuesday night and until
noon yesterday, when I saw her come in, with five men at the
wheel, a picture of misery inconceivable.”
Dickens himself crossed the Channel on many occasions and
probably drew on his own experiences, and observations like the
one above, for his account of cross-Channel travel in his work
‘The Uncommercial Traveller’.
