-built house, with latticed windows and gables.
This is the Charity founded by the will of Richard Watts in 1579, to
give lodging and entertainment for one night, and fourpence each, to
"six poor travellers, not being rogues or proctors". It furnished the
theme to the Christmas cycle of stories, _The Seven Poor Travellers_,
the narrator, who treats the waifs and strays harboured one Christmas
eve at the Charity to roast turkey, plum pudding, and "wassail",
bringing up the number to seven, "being", as he says, "a traveller
myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be".

Farther up the High Street towards Chatham, about a quarter of a mile
from Rochester Bridge, are two sixteenth-century houses, with fronts of
carved oak and gables, facing each other across the street. One has
figured in both _Great Expectations_ and _Edwin Drood_, for it is the
house of Mr. Pumblechook, the pompous and egregious corn and seedsman,
and of Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer, still more pompous and egregious. The
other--Eastgate House, now converted into a museum--is the "Nun's
House", where Miss Twinkleton kept school, and had Rosa Bud and Helen
Landless for pupils.

From the hum and traffic of the cheerfully frequented High Street to the
calm and hush of the Cathedral precincts entrance is given by Chertsey's
or College Yard Gate, which abuts on the High Street about a hundred
yards north of the Cathedral. It was this Gate which Sir Luke Fildes
sketched, as he has recorded in an interesting letter published in _A
Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land_, by W. R. Hughes, for the background of
his drawing of "Durdles Cautioning Sapsea". There are, however, two
other gatehouses, the "Prior's", a tower over an archway, containing a
single room approached by a "postern stair", and "Deanery Gate", a
quaint old house adjoining the Cathedral which has ten rooms, some of
them beautifully panelled. Its drawing-room on the upper floor bears a
strong resemblance to the room--as depicted by Sir Luke Fildes--in which
Jasper entertained his nephew and Neville Landless, but the artist
believes that he never saw the interior. It is not unlikely that Dickens
took some details from each of the gatehouses to make a composite
picture of "Mr. Jasper's own gatehouse", which seemed so to stem the
tide of life, that while the murmur of the tide was heard beyond, not a
wave would pass the archway.

Rochester Cathedral, which overshadows, though in a less i