Read Charles Dickens: A Life for Free Online Page B

the
Chatham
, the small naval yacht in which he sailed on Pay Office business to Sheerness and back. They had to be punctually at the dockyard to catch the tide, there was the bustle of the sailors handling ropes and sails as they moved through a mass of shipping, Upnor Castle on the far side of the river with its grey towers, the slop and splash of brown water as the Medway widened between its mud banks, a few churches in sight, low islands and ancient forts, Hoo Ness and Darnet Ness, rebuilt to guard against Napoleon. After hours of sailing, as they approached Sheerness and the Thames estuary, the far Essex bank came into view five miles away across a world of water. This landscape and the sludge-coloured tidal rivers haunted him all his life and became part of the fabric of his late novels. His father also pointed out, when they were walking together, the house set on the top of Gad’s Hill, on the Rochester to Gravesend road, where Sir John Falstaff held up the travellers and was commemorated by an inn named for him. Gad’s Hill Place was a plain, solid brick house with wide views over the countryside stretching away below, and it immediately appealed to the child. He decided he would like to live in it, his father told him that if he worked very hard he might one day do so, and a version of this exchange was repeated whenever they passed it, as they did many times during the years in Kent. Years later he summed up what he liked about its situation to a friend: ‘Cobham Woods and Park are behind the house; the distant Thames in front; the Medway, with Rochester, and its old castle and cathedral on one side. The whole stupendous property is on the old Dover Road.’ 23
    Their parents’ closest friends among the neighbours were the Newnhams, a retired tailor and his genteel and kindly wife, with a comfortable income. Newnham lent John Dickens money and, unlike most of his creditors, who were disappointed by his failure to repay loans, kept in friendly touch with the family even after they left Chatham. The youngest Dickens was given the name ‘Augustus Newnham’ in their honour, but the Newnhams were more interested in the daughters, and in due course left small legacies to Letitia and Fanny. Although John Dickens was now earning a substantial salary of more than £350 a year, he was getting into difficulties again. In the summer of 1819 he borrowed £200 from a man he knew in London, at Kennington Green, which he agreed to pay back at £26 a year; it should have taken a little more than eight years, but his financial incompetence was such that he was still paying it off thirty years later. Worse, he asked his brother-in-law Thomas Barrow to guarantee a deal that brought him £200 in cash, and then failed to make the required payments to the third party involved. Barrow was obliged to pay back the £200 and more, and he was so angry that he told Dickens he would not have him under his roof again.
    In 1821 they were obliged to leave Ordnance Terrace and move down the hill to a house in a less salubrious street: No. 18 St Mary’s Place, next to a Baptist chapel and close to the dockyard. There were two more children in the family by now: Harriet born in the summer of 1819, and Frederick a year later. Money was tight, John Dickens was not popular with his relations in London, and there were no more trips to the metropolitan pantomime. A big fire in Chatham gave him a chance to earn something by his pen, and he wrote it up for
The Times
, which printed the story and paid him. He gave two guineas to the fund for the victims of the fire, probably more than his fee for writing the piece, but it showed the world that he was a gentleman.
    That winter of 1821 their aunt married Dr Lamert and left with him for Cork in Ireland, where he had a new appointment. They took the Dickenses’ maid Jane Bonny with them, and left James Lamert to lodge with them. He was fond of Charles, and kept up the visits to the theatre. And now Fanny