Rambles in Dickens' Land [Illustrated]

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• The book has been corrected for spelling and grammatical errors
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It is one of the magic legacies left by the great romancers, that the scenes and characters which they described should possess for most of us an air of reality, so convincing as sometimes to put staid history to the blush. The novelist’s ideals become actual to the popular mind; while commonplace truth hides itself among its dry-as-dust records, until some curious antiquary or insistent pedant drags it forth to make a nine days’ wonder. We sigh over “Juliet’s Tomb” in spite of the precisians, sup in the inn kitchen at Pennaflor with Gil Blas at our elbow, and shudder through the small hours outside the haunted House of the Black Cat in Quaker Philadelphia. At Tarascon they show you Tartarin’s oriental garden; and you must hide the irrepressible smile, for Tartarin is painfully real to these good cap-shooters. The other day an illustrated magazine published pictures of Alexander Selkirk’s birthplace, and labelled them “The Home of Robinson Crusoe.” The editor who chose that caption was still under the spell of Defoe. To him, as to the vast majority, Crusoe the imaginary seemed vividly real, while the flesh-and-blood Selkirk was but a name. And you have that catholic sympathy which is the true test of the perfect lover of romance, read “David Copperfield” once again, and then, by way of experiment, spend an afternoon in Canterbury. You will find yourself expecting at one moment to see Mr. Micawber step jauntily out of the Queen’s Head Inn, at another to catch a glimpse of the red-haired Heep slinking along North Lane to his “’umble dwelling.” You will probably meet a dozen buxom “eldest Miss Larkinses,” and obnoxious butcher-boys—perhaps even a sweet Agnes Wickfield, or a Miss Betsy Trotwood driving in from Dover. And, above all, you will certainly enjoy yourself, and thank your gods for Charles Dickens.

Mr. Would-be Wiseman may affect to sneer at our pilgrimages to this and other places connected with the imaginary names of fiction; but he must recognise the far-reaching influence for good exercised by symbols and associations over the human mind. The sight of a loved home after many years—the flutter of one’s country’s flag in foreign lands—these things touch keenly our better nature. In a like manner is the thoughtful man impressed when he treads a pathway hallowed by the writings of some favourite poet or romancer. The moral lesson which the author intended to convey, his insight into character or loving eye for Nature’s beauties, and many exquisite passages from his books appeal to us all the more, when we recall them in the very rooms where they were written—among the gloomy streets or breezy hills which he has filled with his inventions. Says Washington Irving in his essay on Stratford: “I could not but reflect on the singular gift of the poet; to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of Nature; to give to things and places a charm and character not their own, and to turn this ‘working-day’ world into a perfect fairyland. He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. Under the wizard influence of Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a complete delusion. . . . I had been surrounded with fancied beings; with mere airy nothings conjured up by poetic power; yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jaques soliloquise beneath his oak; had beheld the fair Rosalind and her companion adventuring through the woodlands; and, above all, had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his contemporaries, from the august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender and the sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand honours and blessings on the bard who has thus gilded the dull realities of life with innocent illusions.” Wherefore, in spite of the sneers of Master Would-be Wiseman, let us continue to make these pleasant pilgrimages; not alone for our own satisfaction and betterment, but also in memory of those who have opened before us so many delectable lands of fancy, and given us so many agreeable companions of the road.