102 THE DOVER ROAD 



However, the strange man who died on September 

 20, 1830, at the " Crispin and Crispianus " apparently 

 satisfied Doctor Humphrey Wickham of the truth 

 of his story, and that his real name was Charles 

 Parrott Hanger, instead of " Charley Roberts," by 

 which he had been knov/n at Strood and the neighbour- 

 hood for twenty years. During this time he had acted 

 as ostler at the coaching inns of Rochester and 

 Chatham ; had tramped the country, selling laces, 

 thread, tape, and other small wares ; and on Sundays 

 shaved labourers. He had deserted his wife years 

 before. She was long dead, and he had a son 

 apprenticed to a firm of ironmongers at Birmingham. 

 To this son he left all he was possessed of, makii.g 

 the doctor his executor. It will not be imagined 

 that this ex-ostler, dying in a room of the " Crispin 

 and Crispianus," where he was lodged by the landlady 

 out of charity, had anything to bequeath ; but the 

 doctor paid over, as executor, the sum of £1000 to 

 Charles Henry Hanger, the son of this eccentric. 



XXI 



And so, as Mr. Samuel Pepys might say, into 

 Rochester. 



Rochester was to Dickens variously " Mudfog," 

 " Great Winglebury," " Dullborough," and " Cloister- 

 ham." It cannot be said that any of these names 

 form anything like an adequate word-picture of the 

 place. As names, they vary from good to indifferent, 

 and very bad, but none of them shadow forth the 

 real Rochester, which is rather a busy place than other- 

 wise : none, for instance, are so happily descriptive 

 as that under which a waggish fellow introduced a 

 wealthy distiller to an assemblage of Polish notables — as 

 " Count Caskowisky." I might pluck a feather from 

 Dickens' wing with which to furnish forth a wounding 



