A Christmas tale
Did Dickens find inspiration in Cheshire?

IT has often been said that Charles Dickens had a close association with Cheshire and actually sculpted some of his stories from the characters he met in the county.

Stanthorne Hall, near Middlewich, and the experiences of a jilted bride there, were, allegedly, the basis for ‘Great Expectations’.

Another curious, but lesser known, connection arises from the visit of a Mr J.H.Siddons who wrote an article for the magazine Figaro, parts of which were subsequently printed in the Chester Courant, of March, 1879.

Mr Siddons related that he was on his way to Northwich and at two o’clock on a wintry morning alighted at a little railway station which, given the date, may have been Hartford or Winsford.

A tall young man accosted him and said that he had come for the mail bag which he was to take to Northwich in six hours’ time. If the traveller wished for supper, a bed and a breakfast at his house, at a local inn, he was welcome.

So began the Christmas adventure of Mr Siddons.

"Presently at the inn," wrote Mr Siddons "a wiry terrier stretched himself at my feet. Turning round I saw a gawky girl with some reddish hair. The image of Tilly Slowboy was fixing itself on my mind, when the idea was strengthened by the appearance of a plump, round rosy little woman. Dot, by Jove, I mentally ejaculated.

"Supper finished and a brief breakfast and I was in John’s trap bowling away to Northwich. We passed a fine old house of the kind of architecture popularly called Elizabethan. ‘Who lives there?’ I asked. ‘That house belongs to Mr Hogarth. He’s in the music line’.

"’Hogarth, I half muttered, that’s the name of Charles Dickens’ father-in-law.’ ‘Yes sir, it is; and Mr Dickens do come down sometimes and he’s been and put me and all my family into a Christmas story.’

"’Then you’re John Perrybingle?’ ‘That’s not my name, sir, and my wife’s name isn’t Dot; but Mr Hogarth told me, says he ‘It’s all the same’ and Molly is called Tilly Slowboy. There’s Tip too, our dog, he has got into the book likewise.’"

Added Mr Siddons: "Meeting Dickens a week or two later I remarked the coincidence.
'
" 'Yes’, said he, ‘the family formed a good dramatic personae to begin with. I added Caleb and the blind girl, because I fell in with their prototypes…’"

So there we have it, Mr Siddons had found the kernel of Dickens’ story, ‘The Cricket on the Hearth’.

Or had he? George Hogarth lived with his numerous family in Chelsea and there is no record of him residing in Cheshire. He was, however, in the ‘music-line’, as a music critic for the Daily News, in 1846.

What we do know is that Dickens did have a relative in Cheshire, The family came from Staffordshire and his grandmother, old Mrs Dickens, is said to have been the housekeeper at Crewe Hall, in the days of John Crewe MP.

She lived there to a ripe old age and was a wonderful teller of tales, both of fairyland and of a historical nature. She died when Charles was twelve.

Dickens is supposed to have based his fictional characters on real ones. Mrs Nickleby on his mother; Micawber on his father; Copperfield on his own story etc..

In 1845, he revived a notion of establishing a new periodical.

"And I would call it, sir – The Cricket.
A cheerful creature that chirrups on the Hearth."

Dickens abandoned the idea but turned it into the basis for a book and this fairy tale of home was being played, at one time, in twelve London theatres. With a Christmas Carol, the book was chosen for Dickens’ first public readings.

Is it too romantic a notion to believe that a little Cheshire family found their way into literary immortality?

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