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 features prominently in
‘David
Copperfield’ and
‘A
Tale of Two Cities’ and is referred to in other
novels and articles.
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
‘The
Uncommercial Traveller’.
