Charles Dickens: A Life (3 page)

John Dickens and his young family lived in
Rochester
and
Chatham
from 1817 to 1822, first at
No
.
2 Ordnance Terrace
above Rochester, then from 1821 at No. 18 St Mary’s Place, near the dockyards. Dickens was sometimes taken by his father up the
Medway
in the naval yacht. He went to school here from the age of nine.

Chalk village
: Dickens spent his honeymoon here in 1836 in
Mrs Nash’s cottage
, working on
The Pickwick Papers
.

Gad’s Hill
: Dickens saw the house as a child, purchased it in 1856, made it his country home thereafter and died there. He loved walking in
Cobham Woods
, showing friends the beauties of the Kentish countryside and Rochester, and taking a boat on the Medway. He wished to be buried in the country, and the family first chose
Shorne Churchyard
and then
Rochester Cathedral
, but were persuaded that Westminster Abbey was the appropriate place. His body was taken on a special train from
Higham Station
to Charing Cross early in the morning of 14 June, accompanied by the family mourners.

Adelphi Theatre
, Strand: Dickens was inspired by the character acting of Charles Mathews, who was the star here in the 1820s and 1830s. Many dramatizations of Dickens’s early novels and Christmas stories were played here from 1834 on.

Buckingham Street
: Dickens lodged here in 1834, and put David Copperfield into lodgings here.

No. 18 Bentinck Street
: Dickens lodged here in 1833.

No. 31 Berners Street
: Maria and Nelly Ternan lived in lodgings here autumn 1858 to spring 1859, when they moved to Houghton Place (see North London map).

Cecil Street
: Dickens lodged here briefly in 1832. The street has disappeared under the Shell building.

No. 3 Chandos Street
: Dickens was set to work in the window of the blacking warehouse here, where he was noticed by Charles Dilke, who gave him half-a-crown.

Coldbath Fields Prison
: Dickens was an obsessive visitor of prisons and this was a favourite, the governor Augustus Tracey a close friend. It was built on Mount Pleasant, where the Post Office now has a sorting office.

No. 1 Devonshire Terrace
: home of Dickens from December 1839 until December 1851, let out when he went abroad.

No. 48 Doughty Street
: Dickens bought lease in 1837, lived here until December 1839. Now the Charles Dickens Museum.

No. 13 Fitzroy Street
: Dickens lodged here occasionally with his parents in 1832.

Furnival’s Inn
: Dickens moved to chambers here in 1834, and to better rooms on his marriage in 1836. His first child, Charley, was born here January 1837. They moved out March 1837.

Garrick Club
: Dickens a member from 1837, resigning and rejoining frequently.

No. 4 Gower Street North
: Dickens lived here with parents in 1823, his mother hoping to establish a school.

Hungerford Stairs, Warren’s blacking factory
: the factory, set beside the river stairs before the Embankment was built, was reached through the old Hungerford Market, over which Charing Cross Station was built in 1864.

No. 34 Keppel Street
: Dickens installed John Dickens in a doctor’s house here, and was present at his father’s death in 1851.

No. 58 Lincoln’s Inn Fields
: John Forster lodged here from 1834, expanding steadily into more rooms to take his growing book collection. He left on his marriage in 1856.

Lyceum Theatre
, Strand: theatre well known to Dickens.
A
Tale of Two Cities
played here in 1860, Dickens’s friend Fechter was the lessee in 1864, Mrs Ternan made her last stage appearance here in 1866.

No. 70 Margaret Street
: Dickens lodged here with parents early in 1831.

Marylebone Workhouse
: a very large group of buildings, where Dickens served on a jury in 1840.

No. 46 Montagu Square
: John Forster lived here after his marriage in 1856.

No. 10 Norfolk Street
(now Cleveland Street): Dickens lodged here with parents 1815–16 and again in 1829.

No. 9 Osnaburgh Terrace
: Dickens rented a house briefly here in 1844 when Devonshire Terrace was let to a tenant. His children were moved to No. 25 Osnaburgh Street during his American trip in 1842.

Piazza Coffee House
in Covent Garden: meeting place for Dickens, Forster and friends. Dickens also put up here, e.g., in December 1844.

St James’s Hall
: Dickens did most of his London readings here. He started in St Martin’s Hall in Longacre, which burnt down in 1860, and also gave readings in Hanover Square rooms.

Somerset House
: John Dickens worked here in the Navy Pay Office 1805–9 and 1822–5.

Strand
: the
Morning Chronicle
, for which Dickens wrote, was at No. 332, and his publishers Chapman & Hall at No. 186.

Tavistock House
: bought by Dickens in 1851, intending to remain for life, but he sold it in 1860.

Verrey’s Restaurant
: Dickens’s favourite London restaurant from the 1850s.

No. 16 Wellington Street
: Dickens’s office for
Household Words
from 1850, with private rooms for himself above. It was handy for theatres, and he entertained here a good deal. In 1858, when he started
All the Year Round
, he moved along the street to the larger No. 26, furnishing the private rooms comfortably and employing a housekeeper

Ampthill Square
: Dickens found a house for his widowed mother here in 1851.

No. 16 Bayham Street
: John and Elizabeth Dickens moved here from Rochester with their family in 1822.

Euston Station
was built in 1837,
King’s Cross
in 1852,
St Pancras
in 1868.

No. 70 Gloucester Crescent
: Catherine Dickens lived here after the separation until her death.

No. 4 Grafton Terrace
: Dickens installed his widowed sister-in-law, Helen, with her children in 1860, and then his mother, who remained here until her death.

No. 2 Houghton Place
(Ampthill Square): the house bought for Fanny and Maria Ternan in 1859 and transferred to Ellen (Nelly) Ternan on her majority in 1860. There can be little doubt that it was paid for by Dickens.

No. 29 Johnson Street
: John and Elizabeth Dickens and family lived here from December 1824 to March 1827.

No. 27 Little College Street
: John and Elizabeth Dickens and family lived in lodgings here in 1824.

No. 17 The Polygon
: John and Elizabeth Dickens lived here from March 1827 to 1829.

Wellington House Academy
: Charles Dickens went to school here 1825 to 1827.

Dickens rode and walked regularly for years in the countryside north of London, and he stayed in Collins’s Farm (now Wylds) on Hampstead Heath in 1837. In 1843 he rented a ‘lonely Farm House’, Cobley’s Farm, in rural Finchley, for three months: it is all built over now. He also thought of buying a house in Highgate; and in Highgate Cemetery he buried his sister Fanny and her eight-year-old son, Harry, his father, his own baby daughter, Dora, and his mother.

Immediately north of this map are Highgate and Hampstead, where John Dickens occasionally moved to escape his creditors and also took his family in the summer, to No. 32 North End in May 1832.

D’s grandmother
Elizabeth Dickens
,
née
Ball (1745–1824), a ladies’ maid, then housekeeper to Crewe family at Crewe Hall and Mayfair (John Crewe raised to peerage 1806).

D’s grandfather
William Dickens
(
c
. 1720–85), butler to the Crewe family.

Their son
William
(1782–1825), London coffee-stallkeeper, was D’s uncle, married, childless.

Their second son was D’s father,
John Dickens
(1785–1851), Navy Pay Office clerk, married 1809
Elizabeth
née
Barrow
(1789–1863), D’s mother, one of ten children of Charles Barrow (1759–1826), also employed by the Navy Pay Office, and his wife Mary (1771–1851). For significant
Barrow children
, D’s uncles and aunts, see below.

Of the eight children of John and Elizabeth Dickens, two died in infancy (Alfred Allen and Harriet), the others being:

Frances Elizabeth (Fanny)
(1810–48), musician, married 1837 singer Henry Burnett, two sons.

Charles John Huffam
(1812–70), married 1836 Catherine Hogarth
q.v
., ten children.

Letitia Mary
(1816–93), married 1837 Henry Austin
q.v.

Frederick William
(1820–68), clerk, married 1848 Anna Weller
q.v.

Alfred Lamert
(1822–60), engineer, married 1846 Helen Dobson (1823–1915), three sons, including Edmund (1849–1910), two daughters.

Augustus Newnham
(1827–66), accountant, married 1848 Harriet Lovell, one child, abandoned 1858 for Bertha Phillips, Bertram and five other illegitimate children in Chicago.