This post is contributed by our new blog co-editor, Michelle Crowther. Michelle is a Learning and Research Librarian at Canterbury Christ Church University in Kent and also a PhD candidate. She can be found on Twitter at @HumLib_cccu.

Dickens was an avid traveller: both before his rise to fame and during his career.  There are 43 blue plaques on buildings in the UK proudly declaring an affiliation with Charles Dickens, but there are many more places that could also tell a tale. In this first article on Dickens’ visits to UK towns, we visit the North East, where there is an apocryphal story that Dickens visited Redcar. I suppose that is a bit of a spoiler alert for what is about to come next, but it’s worth telling anyway. I first became aware of the story about five years ago when I was having lunch at the Black Bull in Ugthorpe and spotted this article hanging above the fireplace.

As a frequent visitor to Redcar myself, I enjoyed telling the story to family and friends – “Did you know, Charles Dickens visited Redcar!”

A couple of years later, whilst visiting Winkies Castle Museum, I learned that Charles Dickens was reputed to have stopped off at Marske-by-the-Sea as well. As this is three miles from Redcar, both visits are plausible – if he was in one, why not the other?

I was unable to source the Angus Macpherson book mentioned in the article but found a website that was happy to perpetuate the story. It stated that Dickens visited Loftus [1], Redcar and Marske in 1844 where “he saw the turrets of Marske Hall [2], searched for the graves of Captain Cook’s parents in St Germaine’s churchyard and stayed overnight in the Dundas Hotel” (Proud). I was also able to find an account in a popular local history book that “Charles Dickens, on a brief visit in 1844, described Redcar and Coatham as ‘a long cell’ and apparently took one look before getting back on the train to Marske” (Christal and Crossley). It was at this point sadly that the story began to unravel.

Redcar was indeed described as “a long cell” in an unsigned article entitled “Musical Prize Fight” which appeared in All The Year Round on 12 November 1859. However, this was 15 years after the reputed 1844 visit and authored by John Hollingshead. In the Newcastle Daily Chronicle of 30 June 1864, an article signed ‘Echo’ argues:

If … Mr Hollingshead had not happened to be staying in Redcar five years ago, ten to one but Lofthouse’s band contest would now be among the things that were. It was that clever writer who gave the Cleveland village’s “musical prize fights” a start. He wrote an article in All the Year Round, under the title I have placed in inverted commas, and so made Lofthouse celebrated. There yet lingers a tradition in the village as to his visit … [and] the good folk in and around Lofthouse talk knowingly about “the year when Dickens was here!”. It irks me to remove such a pleasing delusion as this; but I must repeat that it was Hollingshead, author of “A Night on the Monument” and other similar queer papers, and not Charles Dickens, who visited Lofthouse. (“Teesside Talk” 2).

Thirteen years later, the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News of 14 July 1877 repeats this version of events:

How many years is it since Mr John Hollingshead discovered Lofthouse in Cleveland (hard by the sandy town of Redcar), chanced upon a contest of brass bands there and wrote a charmingly humorous paper thereon in Household Words? We cannot say.[3] (“A musical prize fight” 415).

It seems evident that Dickens did not attend the brass band concert in Loftus in 1859, and that instead, it was Hollingshead’s visit which was conflated with Dickens’s, a common mistake when quoting from Household Words or All the Year Round. However, the story gained momentum with first-hand accounts. In 1905, Rev. F. Grant James wrote an article in the Shipley Times and Express in which he argued:

About … June 23rd 1844 or 1845 Charles Dickens visited Marske. “Grannie” Herbert … “when a slip of a girl” saw him looking for the nameless grave of Captain Cook’s father in Marske churchyard. He stayed the night at Bulman’s “The Dundas Arms” (now Marske Farm) and the next day driving to Loftus, where he was to lecture, overtook the Marske Brass Band, Thomas Farthing among them, in a waggon, also bound for Loftus to take part in the grand band contest. This contest was indeed a great and all-absorbing event. Charles Dickens was forced to stay a night in Loftus on account of it. He was due the next day in Whitby, and wanted to get on, but no one would leave until the contest was decided. In the ‘Golden Lion’ he was bluntly told by a musical enthusiast, who was also an expert coachman, “I’d as li’ef drive to ___ as Whitby tonight”. So Charles Dickens had to stay… (“By-gone Marske” 2).

There seems to be a merging of two separate incidents. Hollingshead (not Dickens) attended the brass band concert in 1859, but “Grannie” Herbert was sure that the event took place 15 years earlier. What is more likely is that Dickens visited Marske in 1844 and this visit was unrelated to the brass band concert. But who are these eyewitnesses, “Grannie” Herbert and Thomas Farthing? “Grannie” Herbert is possibly Ann, the 79-year-old widow of the late John Herbert, undertaker and parish clerk, who lived in Church Street. She was born in Marske and would have been about 16 in 1844. She was married by 1859 and so it is likely if she was “a slip of a girl” that she was recalling an incident from 1844. Thomas Farthing was about 18 in 1844, and 33 in 1859. It’s probable that his memory is linked to the brass band concert. Rev. F. Grant James in his column entitled “Gather the fragments up so that nothing can be lost” had gathered, shuffled and lost the truth.

Despite the above, I decided to pursue the idea that Dickens had visited Marske and Redcar in 1844. The Yorkshire Gazette Saturday 20 April 1844 was able to corroborate that Dickens was in North Yorkshire in April 1844:

Mr Charles Dickens (Boz) has this week been on a visit to the Marquis of Normanby at Mulgrave Castle, near Whitby. His Lordship and Mr Dickens visited the romantic fishing bay of Staithes, on Tuesday last. We understand that Mr Dickens expressed himself highly delighted with the picturesque scenery of Whitby, Mulgrave, and the neighbourhood. (“Local Intelligence” 5).

Image extracted from page 216 of volume 1 of The County Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain and Ireland, by Francis Orpen Morris. Original held and digitised by the British Library.

There is a suggestion in the word “neighbourhood” that Dickens may have had a drive out to Marske whilst staying with the Marquis. It is an 18-mile drive, so not impossible, although very hilly, particularly if Dickens did stay overnight at the Dundas Arms to break his journey. His interest in Captain James Cook could have been whetted at Whitby.  However, “Grannie” Herbert had dated Charles Dickens’s visit to Marske to the 23 June 1844 as it coincided with another event: the discovery of a horde of gold guineas in Esther Greenwell’s wall. Memory may not have served well here.

To ground these accounts more, a brief peek into the events of 1844 is necessary. Dickens let his house in Devonshire Terrace for a year, as he planned to move to Italy. On the 15 June 1844, he wrote to John Bowring to say that he had spent the past fortnight finishing “the book” (Martin Chuzzlewit, the final number was published on 30 June 1844), and was going to Bath for a few days (“Letter to John Bowring”, 1844). On the evening of 24 June 1844, he wrote a letter from Osnaburgh Terrace saying that he had been yachting for two or three days (“To My Dear Sir”, 1844, qtd. in Dickens, 1882). This was with Albany Fonblanque, a keen yachtsman who was a member of the Royal Thames Yacht Club. Fonblanque may have entered the challenge cup, a sailing match from Greenwich to Coal House Point and back, which was taking place in June, or have spent a few days yachting at Cowes. The 27 June 1844 edition of the Fife Herald reported that “on Wednesday [26^th June] a dinner was given to Charles Dickens by a party of admiring friends at Greenwich to wish him God speed in his visit to Italy for some twelve months. The Marquis of Normanby presided” (76). He also requested a passport from his London address on that day (“Letter to the Earl of Aberdeen”, 1844).  This evidence suggests again that Dickens’s presence in Marske on 23 June 1844 was very unlikely.

Unwillingly to completely dismiss the visit to Marske and Redcar, I decided to check the train timetables. Could Dickens (like his traveller in his 1866 short story “Mugby Junction”) have had a “three minutes” stop? This would certainly explain his quick look up and down. Did he have a last-minute engagement in Newcastle, Darlington or Durham (somewhere with a sizable population that might have warranted a public lecture and the train fare), or was he saying goodbye to friends in Barnard Castle? A dip into Bradshaw’s General Railway brought a new twist to the story.

The Middlesbrough and Redcar Railway did not open until June 1846 when the first train pulling 14 carriages with over 400 passengers rumbled into Redcar (Durham Chronicle, 1846). This was two years after Dickens’s reputed visit. Dickens could not have taken a “run to Redcar” by train in 1844. However, Dickens may have been curious to see the bathing town of Redcar after the railway had opened.

On 4 May 1848, Dickens wrote to Rev. James White to discuss renting a house on the Isle of Wight: “I fear Bonchurch is not sufficiently bracing for my chickens, who thrive best in breezy and cool places. This has set me thinking sometimes of the Yorkshire Coast, sometimes of Dover” (“Letter to Reverend James White, 1848”). Was Dickens thinking of visiting Redcar?

In 1909 in The Sheffield Independent we read:

It is related that Charles Dickens did once visit the place. He came with his big carpet bag. A few minutes’ walk took him to the sea front. There he set down his bag, looked to the right, then to the left, picked up his bag, and mournfully tramped back to the station. He left by the first available train.”  (“Charles Dickens and Redcar” 7).

It would appear that over the mists of time, the visit to Marske witnessed by “Grannie” Herbert, John Hollingshead’s visit to Loftus, and Dickens’s possible visit to Redcar by train after 1846 have become a tangled mess, which is a shame, as I’d like to think there is a grain of truth in the story somewhere. However, it doesn’t look as though Marske-by-the-Sea and Redcar will be getting their blue plaques very soon.

We’d love to have other pieces about Dickens’s travels in the UK, in Europe and in the U.S., so if you have an idea or piece of work you’d like to propose, please send it along to doctorkatiebell@gmail.com or michelle.crowther1@canterbury.ac.uk.

Notes

[1] Loftus/Lofthouse have been used interchangeably throughout this article, depending on the source. There are two places in Yorkshire with this name:  Loftus in the borough of Recar and Cleveland and Lofthouse near Leeds. Loftus (near Redcar) was formerly known as Lofthouse. What is doubly confusing is that Lofthouse near Leeds has a top-class brass band but this was established in the 20th century.

[2] There are two Marske Halls. One is in Marske, Richmondshire and the other is in Marske-by-the-Sea. Although Dickens had visited the Richmond area a decade earlier, St Germaine’s Church is in Marske-by-the-Sea and so the two should not be confused.

[3] The article actually appeared in All the Year Round.

Works Cited

“A musical prize fight.” Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 14 July 1877, p. 415.

Bradshaw’s General Railway and Steam Navigation Guide for Great Britain and Ireland, Issue 306. Bradshaw’s Railway Information Office, 1859.

“By-gone Marske.” Shipley Times and Express, 25 August 1905, p.2. British Newspaper Archive. Accessed 20 January 2022.

“Charles Dickens and Redcar.” The Sheffield Independent, 26 July 1909, p.7. British Newspaper Archive. Accessed 20 January 2022.

Chrystal, Paul and Crossley, Simon. Redcar, Marske & Saltburn Through Time. 2011.

Dickens, Charles. To John Bowring, 15 June 1844. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Katie Brandt, Emily Bell, and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). https://dickensletters.com/letters/john-bowring-15-jun-1844 , Accessed 20 Jan 2022.

Dickens, Charles. “To My Dear Sir”, 24 June 1844. The Letters of Charles Dickens: 1833 to 1856. Chapman and Hall, 1882.

Dickens, Charles. “To Earl of Aberdeen”, 26 June 1844. Charles Dickens Letters Project, ed. Leon Litvack, Katie Brandt, Emily Bell, and Jeremy Parrott (London: Dickens Fellowship). https://dickensletters.com/letters/earl-of-aberdeen-26-jun-1844, Accessed 20 Jan 2022.

Hollingshead, John. “Musical Prize Fight.” All the Year Round. Jan 1860, pp. 65. https://www.djo.org.uk/all-the-year-round/volume-ii.html.

Dickens, Charles. “To My Dear White”, 4 May 1848. The Letters of Charles Dickens: 1833 to 1856. Chapman and Hall, 1882.

The Letters of Charles Dickens: 1833 to 1856. Chapman and Hall, 1882  https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=b6g-AAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.

“Local Intelligence.” The Yorkshire Gazette, 1 June 1844, p. 5 British Newspaper Archive. Accessed 20 Jan 2022.

Proud, Keith. “Charles Dickens… the world’s first pop idol.” The Northern Echo, 14 Dec. 2011, https://www.thenorthernecho.co.uk/history/9420054.charles-dickens-worlds-first-pop-idol/ Accessed 17 Jan. 2021.

“Opening of the Middlesbro’ and Redcar Railway” Durham Chronicle, 12 June 1846, p. 8.

“Aquatic Register.” Bell’s Life in London and Sporting Chronicle, 30 Aug. 1846, pp. 5+. Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

“Teesside Talk.” Newcastle Daily Chronicle, 30 June 1844, p.2 British Newspaper Archive. Accessed 20 June 2022.

“The Sportsman’s Gazette.” Era, 10 Mar. 1844. British Library Newspapers. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

“The ‘Thames Yacht Club.” The Age, 15 June 1844, p. 5. Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.

“Weekly Compendium.” The Fife Herald, and Kinross, Strathearn and Clackmanan Advertiser, no.1164, 27 June 1844, p. 76. British Newspaper Archive. Accessed 20 Jan. 2022.