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’.
Dover 1848.
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