A Rolls in Dickens country lives up to great expectations
GRAND TOUR
Two British institutions combine in Kent as Daniel Pembrey explores the background to Charles Dickens’s best-loved novel in a Rolls-royce Wraith
In arguably Charles Dickens’s best-loved work, a lawyer called Jaggers announces, “The communication I have got to make is that he has great expectations”, the subject being the orphanhero of the story, Pip. I can’t help but share Pip’s sense of wonderment at his unexpected windfall as I enter the grand Rolls-royce showroom in Berkeley Square, Mayfair, London.
A sparkling new black-and-white Wraith two-door coupé is waiting. Easing into the enveloping driver’s seat, I can see there are few more vivid experiences of having arrived. The fibre optic “starlight” headliner above, depicting the night skies over the factory at Goodwood, adds a mythic dimension to this drive.
Like Rolls-royce and its iconic bonnet mascot, Dickens’s creations are known the world over. Characters such as Scrooge and Oliver Twist travel easily down the generations and across cultures. Yet it was Great Expectations – Dickens’ coming-ofage book with more than a hint of the autobiographical – that proved perhaps his most consistently engaging work.
“It is a novel which addresses the fundamental questions we all have to face,” says Dr Tony Williams, of the Dickens Fellowship. “Who are we? What is our way in the world going to be?”
Similar to Pip, Dickens grew up in Kent in humble circumstances. His father was imprisoned as a debtor, and Dickens struggled with his own transformation into a man of means in London. In his mid-40s, he bought Gad’s Hill Place, a large brick house near Rochester, to where he moved his family from the capital. It was at this stage of his life that he began writing Great Expectations.
The Wraith takes some getting used to in the melee of London traffic. A two-door coupé it may be, but, at over 17ft, its length comfortably surpasses that of a Range Rover Sport. Out on the freer-flowing eastbound A2, its credentials as a “gentleman’s grand tourer” become clear.
The build quality ensures an overwhelming sense of ease and grace, with no shortage of power – indeed, the 6.6-litre twin-turbocharged V12 is the most powerful car engine Rolls-royce has ever built. Its performance has helped lower the average age of Rolls-royce owners to the early 40s.
Today, Gad’s Hill Place is a school, but it is half-term and I am granted admission. Dickens’s study is now used by the deputy headmaster but it has altered little since the author’s day. Dickens had a tendency to act out the scenes of his stories, and he was often seen talking to himself as he tramped the nearby marshes on afternoon walks.
One such walk would have taken him to the 13th-century St James’s church in Cooling on the Hoo Peninsula. It inspired the opening scene in which Pip, visiting family graves, is accosted by Magwitch – “a fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg…” Mist often envelopes the site, giving an intensely atmospheric feel.
For my visit, the day is bright and an opportunity to admire the fastback profile of the car, which calls to mind the streamline moderne designs of the Thirties, as well as nautical themes. It is quite the contrast to the ominous “hulk” prison ships once moored in the Thames Estuary, from which Magwitch had escaped.
Hulks were converted from ships built at Chatham Dockyard, which is celebrating its 400th anniversary this year with a series of events catering particularly to families (the pirate theme features big). Dickens’s father worked here as a pay clerk and the site was the NASA of its day, covering more than 400 acres at its zenith. You get a sense of its scale from the ropery, a quarter-mile-long facility that still makes rope and features a marvellously piquant, resinous smell.
Lodging for the night is Read’s at Faversham, which Dickens would have passed on his way to the coast at Broadstairs, a favourite summer spot. A restaurant with rooms, Read’s is an unusually handsome red brick former farmhouse set in four acres of mature grounds. Owners Rona and David Pitchford have managed the superb dining experience here for 41 years and maintain a large kitchen garden. Next door stands the Macknade food shop with a further bounty of fresh produce. Small wonder this area is referred to as the Garden of England.
In Rochester, there is an annual summer Dickens Festival (there is an annual Dickensian Christmas Festival, too). It is a vibrant, sunny scene between the castle, cathedral and High Street, with costumes ranging from true Victorian top hats and lace to science fiction reinterpretations. The self-effacing star of the show is Gerald Dickens, a great-great-grandson who bears a striking likeness to his ancestor and is himself a storyteller and actor.
My last stop is Restoration House, a jewel of an Elizabethan residence just off the High Street, open to the public on certain days. It was a property that obsessed Dickens. He turned it into Satis House, the decaying home of the doomed Miss Havisham and the beautiful but haughty Estella. The contrast with the intimate, exquisitely restored interiors today could hardly be greater.
The most dramatic scene in the novel is when Pip discovers the true identity of his benefactor. With that comes a deeper sense of maturation and self-knowledge on Pip’s part. Maybe it is the same for a Wraith owner, I reflect, on my way back to London.
At first you cannot help being dazzled by the glamour, but the real joy of driving this car comes from the meticulous attention to detail – the double bulkhead suppressing all engine noise, the sublime softness of the ride, the discreet thrum in the steering wheel if you happen to relax unduly and cross a motorway lane marker.
Rolls-royce co-founder Henry Royce was not a man to lord the car’s status over others. Contemporaries recount Royce tending to the prized fruit trees and roses in his garden after dark, such was the length of his working days. Royce’s down-to-earth, indefatigable, perfectionist approach to engineering informed the essence of this car and the way it feels today. “First to thine own self be true,” goes the motto at Gad’s Hill school. So it goes with a Rolls-royce, too.
The Wraith has helped lower the average age of Rolls-royce owners to the early 40s