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david Jarman
Dickens and Lewes
If you google ‘Dickens and Lewes’, you will draw a
complete blank. But although I am loath to undermine
anyone’s touching faith in the omniscience of
search engines, there are a couple of connections,
albeit fairly tenuous ones.
Charles Dickens married Catherine Hogarth on
2nd April, 1836 at St Luke’s in Chelsea. His initial
choice of best man was John Macrone, the publisher
of Sketches by Boz. But wiser counsels prevailed and
Dickens was obliged to write to Macrone,‘The
unanimous voice of the ladies, confirms the authority
of Mrs Macrone. They say, with her, that I must
be attended to the place of execution, by a single
man: I have therefore engaged a substitute.’
The ‘substitute’ was Thomas Beard. He and Macrone
were the only wedding guests not related to
the happy couple in what, as Beard later recalled, was
‘altogether a very quiet piece of business’.
Thomas Beard (1807-91) came of an old Sussex
family, who for some generations had been brewers.
His father, Nathaniel (1776-1855) was born at Rottingdean,
where he inherited considerable property.
In 1806 he married Catherine Charlotte, daughter
of Sir Thomas Carr, of Cobb Place, Beddingham,
sometime High Sheriff of Sussex. When Nathaniel
moved his family, circa 1832, to London, Thomas
became a journalist on the Morning Herald. It was
while he was there that he first met Dickens. They
subsequently worked together on the Morning
Chronicle.
Beard became a lifelong friend. The letters of
Dickens are full of dinner invitations to Beard and
entreaties to join him on long walks in the
Gadshill area. Always a welcome house guest, Beard
joined the Dickens family, in villeggiatura, in Broadstairs,
Bonchurch, Boulogne and elsewhere.
While not following his father into brewing, it
would seem that Thomas was something of a bon
vivant. Dickens often entices him to dinner with
the prospect of a tasty haunch of venison or an assurance
that the ‘best wine on the premises is to be
www.vivaLewes.CoM
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broached on the occasion’.
There’s a long-standing joke in the letters referring
to Beard’s fondness for ‘curaçao and biscuits’.
Only one of the four Beard brothers, William (1812-
1905), went into the family business at the Star Lane
Brewery, later becoming a partner in Windus, Beard
and Co, wine and spirit merchants trading from
Steward’s Inn Lane. I take him to be the W. Beard
listed as resident of 16, High Street, Southover until
the 1906 Kelly’s Directory.
Another of the brothers, Francis Carr Beard (1814-
93), became a doctor. In a letter dated 14th February,
1859, Dickens writes to appoint him as his personal
physician. Thereafter letters to Thomas are progressively
outnumbered by those to Francis on medical
matters.
Alas, I can find no evidence that Dickens ever came
to Lewes himself. The best I can offer is a letter
from Dickens to Thomas Beard in July, 1843 that
was forwarded to Lewes where Thomas was staying.
And on 14th October, 1867 he writes to his doctor,
‘My dear Frank Beard, I have your letter from
Lewes...’
None of this, I readily concede, warrants an immediate,
revised edition of Colin Brent’s exemplary
guidebook to Lewes. (to be continued)
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