Chapter IV: Dickens (4)

You know all about public affairs, Irish churches, and party
squabbles. A vast amount of electioneering is going on about here;
but it has not hurt us; though Gladstone has been making speeches,
north, east, south, and west of us. I hear that C----is on his way
here in the Russia. Gad's Hill must be thrown open.....

Your most affectionate

CHARLES DICKENS.

We had often talked together of the addition to his _répertoire_ of some scenes from "Oliver Twist," and the following letter explains itself:--

Glasgow, Wednesday, December 16, 1868.

Mr Dear ----: ...And first, as you are curious about the Oliver
murder, I will tell you about that trial of the same at which you
_ought_ to have assisted. There were about a hundred people present
in all. I have changed my stage. Besides that back screen which you
know so well, there are two large screens of the same color, set
off, one on either side, like the "wings" at a theatre. And besides
those again, we have a quantity of curtains of the same color, with
which to close in any width of room from wall to wall. Consequently,
the figure is now completely isolated, and the slightest action
becomes much more important. This was used for the first time on the
occasion. But behind the stage--the orchestra being very large and
built for the accommodation of a numerous chorus--there was ready,
on the level of the platform, a very long table, beautifully
lighted, with a large staff of men ready to open oysters and set
champagne corks flying. Directly I had done, the screens being
whisked off by my people, there was disclosed one of the prettiest
banquets you can imagine; and when all the people came up, and the
gay dresses of the ladies were lighted by those powerful lights of
mine, the scene was exquisitely pretty; the hall being newly
decorated, and very elegantly; and the whole looking like a great
bed of flowers and diamonds.

Now, you must know that all this company were, before the wine went
round, unmistakably pale, and had horror-stricken faces. Next
morning, Harness (Fields knows--Rev. William--did an edition of
Shakespeare--old friend of the Kembles and Mrs. Siddons), writing to
me about it, and saying it was "a most amazing and terrific thing,"
added, "but I am bound to tell you that I had an almost irresistible
impulse upon me to _scream_, and that, if any one had cried out, I
am certain I should have followed." He had no idea that on the night
P----, the great ladies' doctor, had taken me aside and said, "My
dear Dickens, you may rely upon it that if only one woman cries out
when you murder the girl, there will be a contagion of hysteria all
over this place." It is impossible to soften it without spoiling it,
and you may suppose that I am rather anxious to discover how it goes
on the 5th of January!!! We are afraid to announce it elsewhere,
without knowing, except that I have thought it pretty safe to put it
up once in Dublin. I asked Mrs. K----, the famous actress, who was
at the experiment: "What do _you_ say? Do it, or not?" "Why, of
course, do it," she replied. "Having got at such an effect as that,
it must be done. But," rolling her large black eyes very slowly, and
speaking very distinctly, "the public have been looking out for a
sensation these last fifty years or so, and by Heaven they have got
it!" With which words, and a long breath and a long stare, she
became speechless. Again, you may suppose that I am a little
anxious! I had previously tried it, merely sitting over the fire in
a chair, upon two ladies separately, one of whom was G----. They had
both said, "O, good gracious! if you are going to do _that_, it
ought to be seen; but it's awful." So once again you may suppose I
am a little anxious!...

Not a day passes but Dolby and I talk about you both, and recall
where we were at the corresponding time of last year. My old
likening of Boston to Edinburgh has been constantly revived within
these last ten days. There is a certain remarkable similarity of
tone between the two places. The audiences are curiously alike,
except that the Edinburgh audience has a quicker sense of humor and
is a little more genial. No disparagement to Boston in this, because
I consider an Edinburgh audience perfect.

I trust, my dear Eugenius, that you have recognized yourself in a
certain Uncommercial, and also some small reference to a name rather
dear to you? As an instance of how strangely something comic springs
up in the midst of the direst misery, look to a succeeding
Uncommercial, called "A Small Star in the East," published to-day,
by the by. I have described, with _exactness_, the poor places into
which I went, and how the people behaved, and what they said. I was
wretched, looking on; and yet the boiler-maker and the poor man with
the legs filled me with a sense of drollery not to be kept down by
any pressure.

The atmosphere of this place, compounded of mists from the highlands
and smoke from the town factories, is crushing my eyebrows as I
write, and it rains as it never does rain anywhere else, and always
does rain here. It is a dreadful place, though much improved and
possessing a deal of public spirit. Improvement is beginning to
knock the old town of Edinburgh about, here and there; but the
Canongate and the most picturesque of the horrible courts and wynds
are not to be easily spoiled, or made fit for the poor wretches who
people them to live in. Edinburgh is so changed as to its
notabilities, that I had the only three men left of the Wilson and
Jeffrey time to dine with me there, last Saturday.

I read here to-night and to-morrow, go back to Edinburgh on Friday
morning, read there on Saturday morning, and start southward by the
mail that same night. After the great experiment of the 5th,--that
is to say, on the morning of the 6th,--we are off to Belfast and
Dublin. On every alternate Tuesday I am due in London, from
wheresoever I may be, to read at St. James's Hall.

I think you will find "Fatal Zero" (by Percy Fitzgerald) a very
curious analysis of a mind, as the story advances. A new beginner in
A.Y.R. (Hon. Mrs. Clifford, Kinglake's sister), who wrote a story in
the series just finished, called "The Abbot's Pool," has just sent
me another story. I have a strong impression that, with care, she
will step into Mrs. Graskell's vacant place. W---- is no better, and
I have work enough even in that direction.

God bless the woman with the black mittens, for making me laugh so
this morning! I take her to be a kind of public-spirited Mrs.
Sparsit, and as such take her to my bosom. God bless you both, my
dear friends, in this Christmas and New Year time, and in all times,
seasons, and places, and send you to Gad's Hill with the next
flowers!

Ever your most affectionate

C.D.

All who witnessed the reading of Dickens in the "Oliver Twist" murder scene unite in testifying to the wonderful effect he produced in it. Old theatrical _habitués_ have told me that, since the days of Edmund Kean and Cooper, no mimetic representation had been superior to it. I became so much interested in all I heard about it, that I resolved early in the year 1869 to step across the water (it is only a stride of three thousand miles) and see it done. The following is Dickens's reply to my announcement of the intended voyage:--

A.Y.R. Office, London, Monday, February 15, 1869.

My Dear Fields: Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! It is a remarkable instance
of magnetic sympathy that before I received your joyfully welcomed
announcement of your probable visit to England, I was waiting for
the enclosed card to be printed, that I might send you a clear
statement of my Readings. I felt almost convinced that you would
arrive before the Farewells were over. What do you say to _that_?

The final course of Four Readings in a week, mentioned in the
enclosed card, is arranged to come off, on

Monday, June 7th;

Tuesday, June 8th;

Thursday, June 10th; and

Friday, June 11th: last night of all.

We hoped to have finished in May, but cannot clear the country off
in sufficient time. I shall probably be about the Lancashire towns
in that month. There are to be three morning murders in London not
yet announced, but they will be extra the London nights I send you,
and will in no wise interfere with them. We are doing most
amazingly. In the country the people usually collapse with the
murder, and don't fully revive in time for the final piece; in
London, where they are much quicker, they are equal to both. It is
very hard work; but I have never for a moment lost voice or been
unwell; except that my foot occasionally gives me a twinge. We shall
have in London on the 2d of March, for the second murder night,
probably the greatest assemblage of notabilities of all sorts ever
packed together. D---- continues steady in his allegiance to the
Stars and Stripes, sends his kindest regard, and is immensely
excited by the prospect of seeing you. Gad's Hill is all ablaze on
the subject. We are having such wonderfully warm weather that I fear
we shall have a backward spring there. You'll excuse east-winds,
won't you, if they shake the flowers roughly when you first set foot
on the lawn? I have only seen it once since Christmas, and that was
from last Saturday to Monday, when I went there for my birthday, and
had the Forsters and Wilkie to keep it. I had had ----'s letter
four days before, and drank to you both most heartily and lovingly.

I was with M---- a week or two ago. He is quite surprisingly infirm
and aged. Could not possibly get on without his second wife to take
care of him, which she does to perfection. I went to Cheltenham
expressly to do the murder for him, and we put him in the front row,
where he sat grimly staring at me. After it was over, he thus
delivered himself, on my laughing it off and giving him some wine:
"No, Dickens--er--er--I will NOT," with sudden emphasis, --"er--have
it--er--put aside. In my--er--best times--er--you remember them, my
dear boy--er--gone, gone! --no,"--with great emphasis again,--"it
comes to this--er --TWO MACBETHS!" with extraordinary energy. After
which he stood (with his glass in his hand and his old square jaw of
its old fierce form) looking defiantly at Dolby as if Dolby had
contradicted him; and then trailed off into a weak pale likeness of
himself as if his whole appearance had been some clever optical
illusion.

I am away to Scotland on Wednesday next, the 17th, to finish there.
Ireland is already disposed of, and Manchester and Liverpool will
follow within six weeks. "Like lights in a theatre, they are being
snuffed out fast," as Carlyle says of the guillotined in his
Revolution. I suppose I shall be glad when they are all snuffed out.
Anyhow, I think so now.

The N----s have a very pretty house at Kensington. He has quite
recovered, and is positively getting fat. I dined with them last
Friday at F----'s, having (marvellous to relate!) a spare day in
London. The warm weather has greatly spared F----'s bronchitis; but
I fear that he is quite unable to bear cold, or even changes of
temperature, and that he will suffer exceedingly if east-winds
obtain. One would say they must at last, for it has been blowing a
tempest from the south and southwest for weeks and weeks.

The safe arrival of my boy's ship in Australia has been telegraphed
home, but I have not yet heard from him. His post will be due a week
or so hence in London. My next boy is doing very well, I hope, at
Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Of my seafaring boy's luck in getting a
death-vacancy of First Lieutenant, aboard a new ship-of-war on the
South American Station, I heard from a friend, a captain in the
Navy, when I was at Bath the other day; though we have not yet heard
it from himself. Bath (setting aside remembrances of Roderick Random
and Humphrey Clinker) looked, I fancied, just as if a cemetery-full
of old people had somehow made a successful rise against death,
carried the place by assault, and built a city with their
gravestones; in which they were trying to look alive, but with very
indifferent success.

C---- is no better, and no worse. M---- and G---- send all manner of
loves, and have already represented to me that the red-jacketed
post-boys must be turned out for a summer expedition to Canterbury,
and that there must be lunches among the cornfields, walks in Cobham
Park, and a thousand other expeditions. Pray give our pretty M----
to understand that a great deal will be expected of her, and that
she will have to look her very best, to look as I have drawn her. If
your Irish people turn up at Gad's at the same time, as they
probably will, they shall be entertained in the yard, with muzzled
dogs. I foresee that they will come over, haymaking and hopping, and
will recognize their beautiful vagabonds at a glance.

I wish Reverdy Johnson would dine in private and hold his tongue. He
overdoes the thing. C---- is trying to get the Pope to subscribe,
and to run over to take the chair at his next dinner, on which
occasion Victor Emmanuel is to propose C----'s health, and may all
differences among friends be referred to him. With much love always,
and in high rapture at the thought of seeing you both here,

Ever your most affectionate

C.D.

A few weeks later, while on his reading tour, he sent off the following:--

Adelphi Hotel, Liverpool, Friday, April 9, 1869.

My Dear Fields: The faithful Russia will bring this out to you, as a
sort of warrant to take you into loving custody and bring you back
on her return trip.

I have been "reading" here all this week, and finish here for good
to-night. To-morrow the Mayor, Corporation, and citizens give me a
farewell dinner in St. George's Hall. Six hundred and fifty are to
dine, and a mighty show of beauty is to be mustered besides. N----
had a great desire to see the sight, and so I suggested him as a
friend to be invited. He is over at Manchester now on a visit, and
will come here at midday to-morrow, and go back to London with us on
Sunday afternoon. On Tuesday I read in London, and on Wednesday
start off again. To-night is No. 68 out of one hundred. I am very
tired of it, but I could have no such good fillip as you among the
audience, and that will carry me on gayly to the end. So please to
look sharp in the matter of landing on the bosom of the used-up,
worn-out, and rotten old Parient. I rather think that when the 12th
of June shall have shaken off these shackles, there _will_ be borage
on the lawn at Gad's. Your heart's desire in that matter, and in the
minor particulars of Cobham Park, Rochester Castle, and Canterbury
shall be fulfilled, please God! The red jackets shall turn out again
upon the turnpike road, and picnics among the cherry-orchards and
hop-gardens shall be heard of in Kent. Then, too, shall the
Uncommercial resuscitate (being at present nightly murdered by Mr.
W. Sikes) and uplift his voice again.

The chief officer of the Russia (a capital fellow) was at the
Reading last night, and Dolby specially charged him with the care of
you and yours. We shall be on the borders of Wales, and probably
about Hereford, when you arrive. Dolby has insane projects of
getting over here to meet you; so amiably hopeful and obviously
impracticable, that I encourage him to the utmost. The regular
little captain of the Russia, Cook, is just now changed into the
Cuba, whence arise disputes of seniority, etc. I wish he had been
with you, for I liked him very much when I was his passenger. I like
to think of your being in _my_ ship!

---- and ---- have been taking it by turns to be "on the point of
death," and have been complimenting one another greatly on the
fineness of the point attained. My people got a very good impression
of ----, and thought her a sincere and earnest little woman.

The Russia hauls out into the stream to-day, and I fear her people
may be too busy to come to us to-night. But if any of them do, they
shall have the warmest of welcomes for your sake. (By the by, a very
good party of seamen from the Queen's ship Donegal, lying in the
Mersey, have been told off to decorate St. George's Hall with the
ship's bunting. They were all hanging on aloft upside down, holding
to the gigantically high roof by nothing, this morning, in the most
wonderfully cheerful manner.)

My son Charley has come for the dinner, and Chappell (my Proprietor,
as--isn't it Wemmick?--says) is coming to-day, and Lord Dufferin
(Mrs. Norton's nephew) is to come and make _the_ speech. I don't
envy the feelings of my noble friend when he sees the hall.
Seriously, it is less adapted to speaking than Westminster Abbey,
and is as large....

I hope you will see Fechter in a really clever piece by Wilkie. Also
you will see the Academy Exhibition, which will be a very good one;
and also we will, please God, see everything and more, and
everything else after that. I begin to doubt and fear on the subject
of your having a horror of me after seeing the murder. I don't
think a hand moved while I was doing it last night, or an eye looked
away. And there was a fixed expression of horror of me, all over the
theatre, which could not have been surpassed if I had been going to
be hanged to that red velvet table. It is quite a new sensation to
be execrated with that unanimity; and I hope it will remain so!

[Is it lawful--would that woman in the black gaiters, green veil,
and spectacles, hold it so--to send my love to the pretty M----?]

Pack up, my dear Fields, and be quick.

Ever your most affectionate

C.D.

It will be remembered that Dickens broke down entirely during the month of April, being completely worn out with hard work in the Readings. He described to me with graphic earnestness, when we met in May, all the incidents connected with the final crisis, and I shall never forget how he imitated himself during that last Reading, when he nearly fell before the audience. It was a terrible blow to his constitution, and only a man of the greatest strength and will could have survived it. When we arrived in Queenstown, this note was sent on board our steamer.

Loving welcome to England. Hurrah!

Office Of All The Year Round, Wednesday, May 5, 1869.

My Dear ----: I fear you will have been uneasy about me, and will
have heard distorted accounts of the stoppage of my Readings. It is
a measure of precaution, and not of cure. I was too tired and too
jarred by the railway fast express, travelling night and day. No
half-measure could be taken; and rest being medically considered
essential, we stopped. I became, thank God, myself again, almost as
soon as I could rest! I am good for all country pleasures with you,
and am looking forward to Gad's, Rochester Castle, Cobham Park, red
jackets, and Canterbury. When you come to London we shall probably
be staying at our hotel. You will learn, here, where to find us. I
yearn to be with you both again!

Love to M----.

Ever your affectionate C.D.

I hope this will be put into your hands on board, in Queenstown
Harbor.

We met in London a few days after this, and I found him in capital spirits, with such a protracted list of things we were to do together, that, had I followed out the prescribed programme, it would have taken many more months of absence from home than I had proposed to myself. We began our long rambles among the thoroughfares that had undergone important changes since I was last in London, taking in the noble Thames embankments, which I had never seen, and the improvements in the city markets. Dickens had moved up to London for the purpose of showing us about, and had taken rooms only a few streets off from our hotel. Here are two specimens of the welcome little notes which I constantly found on my breakfast-table:--

Office Of All The Year Round, London, Wednesday, May 19, 1869.

My Dear Fields: Suppose we give the weather a longer chance, and say
Monday instead of Friday. I think we must be safer with that
precaution. If Monday will suit you, I propose that we meet here
that day,--your ladies and you and I,--and cast ourselves on the
stony-hearted streets. If it be bright for St. Paul's, good; if not,
we can take some other lion that roars in dull weather. We will dine
here at six, and meet here at half past two. So IF you should want
to go elsewhere after dinner, it can be done, notwithstanding. Let
me know in a line what you say.

O the delight of a cold bath this morning, after those
lodging-houses! And a mild sniffler of punch, on getting into the
hotel last night, I found what my friend Mr. Wegg calls, "Mellering,
sir, very mellering."

With kindest regards, ever affectionately,

CHARLES DICKENS.

Office Of All The Year Round, London, Tuesday, May 25, 1869.

My Dear Fields: First, you leave Charing Cross Station, by North
Kent railway, on Wednesday, June 2d, at 2.10 for Higham Station, the
next station beyond Gravesend. Now, bring your lofty mind back to
the previous Saturday, next Saturday. There is only one way of
combining Windsor and Richmond. That way will leave us but two hours
and a half at Windsor. This would not be long enough to enable us to
see the inside of the castle, but would admit of our seeing the
outside, the Long Walk, etc. I will assume that such a survey will
suffice. That taken for granted, meet me at Waterloo Terminus (Loop
Line for Windsor) at 10.35, on Saturday morning.

The rendezvous for Monday evening will be _here at half past eight_.
As I don't know Mr. Eytinge's number in Guildford Street, will you
kindly undertake to let him know that we are going out with the
great Detective? And will you also give him the time and place for
Gad's?

I shall be here on Friday for a few hours; meantime at Gad's
aforesaid.

With love to the ladies, ever faithfully,

C.D.

During my stay in England in that summer of 1869, I made many excursions with Dickens both around the city and into the country. Among the most memorable of these London rambles was a visit to the General Post-Office, by arrangement with the authorities there, a stroll among the cheap theatres and lodging-houses for the poor, a visit to Furnival's Inn and the very room in it where "Pickwick" was written, and a walk through the thieves' quarter. Two of these expeditions were made on two consecutive nights, under the protection of police detailed for the service. On one of these nights we also visited the lock-up houses, watch-houses, and opium-eating establishments. It was in one of the horrid opium-dens that he gathered the incidents which he has related in the opening pages of "Edwin Drood." In a miserable court we found the haggard old woman blowing at a kind of pipe made of an old penny ink-bottle. The identical words which Dickens puts into the mouth of this wretched creature in "Edwin Drood" we heard her croon as we leaned over the tattered bed on which she was lying. There was something hideous in the way this woman kept repeating, "Ye'll pay up according, deary, won't ye?" and the Chinamen and Lascars made never-to-be-forgotten pictures in the scene. I watched Dickens intently as he went among these outcasts of London, and saw with what deep sympathy he encountered the sad and suffering in their horrid abodes. At the door of one of the penny lodging-houses (it was growing toward morning, and the raw air almost cut one to the bone), I saw him snatch a little child out of its poor drunken mother's arms, and bear it in, filthy as it was, that it might be warmed and cared for. I noticed that whenever he entered one of these wretched rooms he had a word of cheer for its inmates, and that when he left the apartment he always had a pleasant "Good night" or "God bless you" to bestow upon them. I do not think his person was ever recognized in any of these haunts, except in one instance. As we entered a low room in the worst alley we had yet visited, in which were huddled together some forty or fifty half-starved-looking wretches, I noticed a man among the crowd whispering to another and pointing out Dickens. Both men regarded him with marked interest all the time he remained in the room, and tried to get as near him, without observation, as possible. As he turned to go out, one of these men pressed forward and said, "Good night, sir," with much feeling, in reply to Dickens's parting word.

Among other places, we went, a little past midnight, into one of the Casual Wards, which were so graphically described, some years ago, in an English magazine, by a gentleman who, as a pretended tramp, went in on a reporting expedition. We walked through an avenue of poor tired sleeping forms, all lying flat on the floor, and not one of them raised a head to look at us as we moved thoughtfully up the aisle of sorrowful humanity. I think we counted sixty or seventy prostrate beings, who had come in for a night's shelter, and had lain down worn out with fatigue and hunger. There was one pale young face to which I whispered Dickens's attention, and he stood over it with a look of sympathizing interest not to be easily forgotten. There was much ghastly comicality mingled with the horror in several of the places we visited on those two nights. We were standing in a room half filled with people of both sexes, whom the police accompanying us knew to be thieves. Many of these abandoned persons had served out their terms in jail or prison, and would probably be again sentenced under the law. They were all silent and sullen as we entered the room, until an old woman spoke up with a strong, beery voice: "Good evening, gentlemen. We are all wery poor, but strictly honest." At which cheerful apocryphal statement, all the inmates of the room burst into boisterous laughter, and began pelting the imaginative female with epithets uncomplimentary and unsavory. Dickens's quick eye never for a moment ceased to study all these scenes of vice and gloom, and he told me afterwards that, bad as the whole thing was, it had improved infinitely since he first began to study character in those regions of crime and woe.

Between eleven and twelve o'clock on one of the evenings I have mentioned we were taken by Dickens's favorite Detective W---- into a sort of lock-up house, where persons are brought from the streets who have been engaged in brawls, or detected in the act of thieving, or who have, in short, committed any offence against the laws. Here they are examined for commitment by a sort of presiding officer, who sits all night for that purpose. We looked into some of the cells, and found them nearly filled with wretched-looking objects who had been brought in that night. To this establishment are also brought lost children who are picked up in the streets by the police,--children who have wandered away from their homes, and are not old enough to tell the magistrate where they live. It was well on toward morning, and we were sitting in conversation with one of the officers, when the ponderous door opened and one of these small wanderers was brought in. She was the queerest little figure I ever beheld, and she walked in, holding the police officer by the hand as solemnly and as quietly if she were attending her own obsequies. She was between four and five years old, and had on what was evidently her mother's bonnet,--an enormous production, resembling a sort of coal-scuttle, manufactured after the fashion of ten or fifteen years ago. The child had, no doubt, caught up this wonderful head-gear in the absence of her parent, and had gone forth in quest of adventure. The officer reported that he had discovered her in the middle of the street, moving ponderingly along, without any regard to the horses and vehicles all about her. When asked where she lived, she mentioned a street which only existed in her own imagination, and she knew only her Christian name. When she was interrogated by the proper authorities, without the slightest apparent discomposure she replied in a steady voice, as she thought proper, to their questions. The magistrate inadvertently repeated a question as to the number of her brothers and sisters, and the child snapped out, "I told ye wunst; can't ye hear?" When asked if she would like anything, she gayly answered, "Candy, cake and _candy_." A messenger was sent out to procure these commodities, which she instantly seized on their arrival and began to devour. She showed no signs of fear, until one of the officers untied the huge bonnet and took it off, when she tearfully insisted upon being put into it again. I was greatly impressed by the ingenious efforts of the excellent men in the room to learn from the child where she lived, and who her parents were. Dickens sat looking at the little figure with profound interest, and soon came forward and asked permission to speak with the child. Of course his request was granted, and I don't know when I have enjoyed a conversation more. She made some very smart answers, which convulsed us all with laughter as we stood looking on; and the creator of "little Nell" and "Paul Dombey" gave her up in despair. He was so much interested in the little vagrant, that he sent a messenger next morning to learn if the rightful owner of the bonnet had been found. Report came back, on a duly printed form, setting forth that the anxious father and mother had applied for the child at three o'clock in the morning, and had borne her away in triumph to her home.

It was a warm summer afternoon towards the close of the day, when Dickens went with us to visit the London Post-Office. He said: "I know nothing which could give a stranger a better idea of the size of London than that great institution. The hurry and rush of letters! men up to their chin in letters! nothing but letters everywhere! the air full of letters!--suddenly the clock strikes; not a person is to be seen, _nor_ a letter: only one man with a lantern peering about and putting one drop-letter into a box." For two hours we went from room to room, with him as our guide, up stairs and down stairs, observing the myriad clerks at their various avocations, with letters for the North Pole, for the South Pole, for Egypt and Alaska, Darien and the next street.

The "Blind Man," as he was called, appeared to afford Dickens as much amusement as if he saw his work then for the first time; but this was one of the qualities of his genius; there was inexhaustibility and freshness in everything to which he turned his attention. The ingenuity and loving care shown by the "Blind Man" in deciphering or guessing at the apparently inexplicable addresses on letters and parcels excited his admiration. "What a lesson to all of us," he could not help saying, "to be careful in preparing our letters for the mail!" His own were always directed with such exquisite care, however, that had he been brother to the "Blind Man," and considered it his special work in life to teach others how to save that officer trouble, he could hardly have done better.

Leaving the hurry and bustle of the Post-Office behind us, we strolled out into the streets of London. It was past eight o'clock, but the beauty of the soft June sunset was only then overspreading the misty heavens. Every sound of traffic had died out of those turbulent thoroughfares; now and then a belated figure would hurry past us and disappear, or perhaps in turning the corner would linger to "take a good look" at Charles Dickens. But even these stragglers soon dispersed, leaving us alone in the light of day and the sweet living air to heighten the sensation of a dream. We came through White Friars to the Temple, and thence into the Temple Garden, where our very voices echoed. Dickens pointed up to Talfourd's room, and recalled with tenderness the merry hours they had passed together in the old place. Of course we hunted out Goldsmith's abode, and Dr. Johnson's, saw the site of the Earl of Essex's palace, and the steps by which he was wont to descend to the river, now so far removed. But most interesting of all to us there was "Pip's" room, to which Dickens led us, and the staircase where the convict stumbled up in the dark, and the chimney nearest the river where, although less exposed than in "Pip's" days, we could well understand how "the wind shook the house that night like discharges of cannon, or breakings of a sea." We looked in at the dark old staircase, so dark on that night when "the lamps were blown out, and the lamps on the bridges and the shore were shuddering," then went on to take a peep, half shuddering ourselves, at the narrow street where "Pip" by and by found a lodging for the convict. Nothing dark could long survive in our minds on that June night, when the whole scene was so like the airy work of imagination. Past the Temple, past the garden to the river, mistily fair, with a few boats moving upon its surface, the convict's story was forgotten, and we only knew this was Dickens's home, where he had lived and written, lying in the calm light of its fairest mood.

* * * * *

Dickens had timed our visit to his country house in Kent, and arranged that we should appear at Gad's Hill with the nightingales. Arriving at the Higham station on a bright June day in 1869, we found his stout little pony ready to take us up the hill; and before we had proceeded far on the road, the master himself came out to welcome us on the way. He looked brown and hearty, and told us he had passed a breezy morning writing in the châlet. We had parted from him only a few days before in London, but I thought the country air had already begun to exert its strengthening influence,--a process he said which commonly set in the moment he reached his garden gate.

It was ten years since I had seen Gad's Hill Place, and I observed at once what extensive improvements had been made during that period. Dickens had increased his estate by adding quite a large tract of land on the opposite side of the road, and a beautiful meadow at the back of the house. He had connected the front lawn, by a passageway running under the road, with beautifully wooded grounds, on which was erected the Swiss châlet, a present from Fechter. The old house, too, had been greatly improved, and there was an air of assured comfort and ease about the charming establishment. No one could surpass Dickens as a host; and as there were certain household rules (hours for meals, recreation, etc.), he at once announced them, so that visitors never lost any time "wondering" when this or that was to happen.

Lunch over, we were taken round to see the dogs, and Dickens gave us a rapid biographical account of each as we made acquaintance with the whole colony. One old fellow, who had grown superannuated and nearly blind, raised himself up and laid his great black head against Dickens's breast as if he loved him. All were spoken to with pleasant words of greeting, and the whole troop seemed wild with joy over the master's visit. "Linda" put up her shaggy paw to be shaken at parting; and as we left the dog-houses, our host told us some amusing anecdotes of his favorite friends.

Dickens's admiration of Hogarth was unbounded, and he had hung the staircase leading up from the hall of his house with fine old impressions of the great master's best works. Observing our immediate interest in these pictures, he seemed greatly pleased, and proceeded at once to point out in his graphic way what had struck his own fancy most in Hogarth's genius. He had made a study of the painter's _thought_ as displayed in these works, and his talk about the artist was delightful. He used to say he never came down the stairs without pausing with new wonder over the fertility of the mind that had conceived and the hand that had executed these powerful pictures of human life; and I cannot forget with what fervid energy and feeling he repeated one day, as we were standing together on the stairs in front of the Hogarth pictures, Dr. Johnson's epitaph, on the painter:--

"The hand of him here torpid lies,
That drew the essential form of grace;
Here closed in death the attentive eyes
That saw the manners in the face."

Every day we had out-of-door games, such as "Bowls," "Aunt Sally," and the like, Dickens leading off with great spirit and fun. Billiards came after dinner, and during the evening we had charades and dancing. There was no end to the new divertisements our kind host was in the habit of proposing, so that constant cheerfulness reigned at Gad's Hill. He went into his work-room, as he called it, soon after breakfast, and wrote till twelve o'clock; then he came out, ready for a long walk. The country about Gad's Hill is admirably adapted for pedestrian exercise, and we went forth every day, rain or shine, for a stretcher. Twelve, fifteen, even twenty miles were not too much for Dickens, and many a long tramp we have had over the hop-country together. Chatham, Rochester, Cobham Park, Maidstone,--anywhere, out under the open sky and into the free air! Then Dickens was at his best, and talked. Swinging his blackthorn stick, his lithe figure sprang forward over the ground, and it took a practised pair of legs to keep alongside of his voice. In these expeditions I heard from his own lips delightful reminiscences of his early days in the region we were then traversing, and charming narratives of incidents connected with the writing of his books.

Dickens's association with Gad's Hill, the city of Rochester, the road to Canterbury, and the old cathedral town itself, dates back to his earliest years. In "David Copperfield," the most autobiographic of all his books, we find him, a little boy, (so small, that the landlady is called to peer over the counter and catch a glimpse of the tiny lad who possesses such "a spirit,") trudging over the old Kent Road to Dover. "I see myself," he writes, "as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Rochester, footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for supper. One or two little houses, with the notice, 'Lodgings for Travellers' hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,--which in that night's aspect is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah's arks,--crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I lay down near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry's footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until morning," Thus early he noticed "the trampers" which infest the old Dover Road, and observed them in their numberless gypsy-like variety; thus early he looked lovingly on Gad's Hill Place, and wished it might be his own, if he ever grew up to be a man. His earliest memories were filled with pictures of the endless hop-grounds and orchards, and the little child "thought it all extremely beautiful!"

Through the long years of his short life he was always consistent in his love for Kent and the old surroundings. When the after days came and while travelling abroad, how vividly the childish love returned! As he passed rapidly over the road on his way to France he once wrote: "Midway between Gravesend and Rochester the widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.

"'Halloa!' said I to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'

"'At Chatham,' says he.

"'What do you do there?' said I.

"'I go to school,' says he.

"I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently the very queer small boy says, 'This is Gad's Hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.'

"'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I.

"'All about him,' said the very queer small boy. 'I am old (I am nine) and I read all sorts of books. But _do_ let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!'

"'You admire that house,' said I.

"'Bless you, sir,' said the very queer small boy, 'when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, "If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it." Though that's impossible!' said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might. I was rather annoyed to be told this by the very queer small boy; for that house happens to be _my_ house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true."

What stay-at-home is there who does not know the Bull Inn at Rochester, from which Mr. Tupman and Mr. Jingle attended the ball, Mr. Jingle wearing Mr. Winkle's coat? or who has not seen in fancy the "gypsy-tramp," the "show-tramp," the "cheap jack," the "tramp-children," and the "Irish hoppers" all passing over "the Kentish Road, bordered" in their favorite resting-place "on either side by a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees, a skirting patch of grass? Wild-flowers grow in abundance on this spot, and it lies high and airy, with the distant river stealing steadily away to the ocean, like a man's life."

Sitting in the beautiful châlet during his later years and watching this same river stealing away like his own life, he never could find a harsh word for the tramps, and many and many a one has gone over the road rejoicing because of some kindness received from his hands. Every precaution was taken to protect a house exposed as his was to these wild rovers, several dogs being kept in the stable-yard, and the large outer gates locked. But he seldom made an excursion in any direction without finding some opportunity to benefit them. One of these many kindnesses came to the public ear during the last summer of his life. He was dressing in his own bedroom in the morning, when he saw two Savoyards and two bears come up to the Falstaff Inn opposite. While he was watching the odd company, two English bullies joined the little party and insisted upon taking the muzzles off the bears in order to have a dance with them. "At once," said Dickens, "I saw there would be trouble, and I watched the scene with the greatest anxiety. In a moment I saw how things were going, and without delay I found myself at the gate. I called the gardener by the way, but he managed to hold himself at safe distance behind the fence. I put the Savoyards instantly in a secure position, asked the bullies what they were at, forced them to muzzle the bears again, under threat of sending for the police, and ended the whole affair in so short a time that I was not missed from the house. Unfortunately, while I was covered with dust and blood, for the bears had already attacked one of the men when I arrived, I heard a carriage roll by. I thought nothing of it at the time, but the report in the foreign journals which startled and shocked my friends so much came probably from the occupants of that vehicle. Unhappily, in my desire to save the men, I entirely forgot the dogs, and ordered the bears to be carried into the stable-yard until the scuffle should be over, when a tremendous tumult arose between the bears and the dogs. Fortunately we were able to separate them without injury, and the whole was so soon over that it was hard to make the family believe, when I came in to breakfast, that anything of the kind had gone forward." It was the newspaper report, causing anxiety to some absent friends, which led, on inquiry, to this rehearsal of the incident.

Who does not know Cobham Park? Has Dickens not invited us there in the old days to meet Mr. Pickwick, who pronounced it "delightful!--thoroughly delightful," while "the skin of his expressive countenance was rapidly peeling off with exposure to the sun"? Has he not invited the world to enjoy the loveliness of its solitudes with him, and peopled its haunts for us again and again?

Our first _real_ visit to Cobham Park was on a summer morning when Dickens walked out with us from his own gate, and, strolling quietly along the road, turned at length into what seemed a rural wooded pathway. At first we did not associate the spot in its spring freshness with that morning after Christmas when he had supped with the "Seven Poor Travellers," and lain awake all night with thinking of them; and after parting in the morning with a kindly shake of the hand all round, started to walk through Cobham woods on his way towards London. Then on his lonely road, "the mists began to rise in the most beautiful manner and the sun to shine; and as I went on," he writes, "through the bracing air, seeing the hoar frost sparkle everywhere, I felt as if all nature shared in the joy of the great Birthday. Going through the woods, the softness of my tread upon the mossy ground and among the brown leaves enhanced the Christmas sacredness by which I felt surrounded. As the whitened stems environed me, I thought how the Founder of the time had never raised his benignant hand, save to bless and heal, except in the case of one unconscious tree."

Now we found ourselves on the same ground, surrounded by the full beauty of the summer-time. The hand of Art conspiring with Nature had planted rhododendrons, as if in their native soil beneath the forest-trees. They were in one universal flame of blossoms, as far as the eye could see. Lord and Lady D----, the kindest and most hospitable of neighbors, were absent; there was not a living figure beside ourselves to break the solitude, and we wandered on and on with the wild birds for companions as in our native wildernesses. By and by we came near Cobham Hall, with its fine lawns and far-sweeping landscape, and workmen and gardeners and a general air of summer luxury. But to-day we were to go past the hall and lunch on a green slope under the trees, (was it _just_ the spot where Mr. Pickwick tried the cold punch and found it satisfactory? I never liked to ask!) and after making the old woods ring with the clatter and clink of our noontide meal, mingled with floods of laughter, were to come to the village, and to the very inn from which the disconsolate Mr. Tupman wrote to Mr. Pickwick, after his adventure with Miss Wardle. There is the old sign, and here we are at the Leather Bottle, Cobham, Kent. "There's no doubt whatever about that." Dickens's modesty would not allow him to go in, so we made the most of an outside study of the quaint old place as we strolled by; also of the cottages whose inmates were evidently no strangers to our party, but were cared for by them as English cottagers are so often looked after by the kindly ladies in their neighborhood. And there was the old churchyard, "where the dead had been quietly buried 'in the sure and certain hope' which Christmas-time inspired." There too were the children, whom, seeing at their play, he could not but be loving, remembering who had loved them! One party of urchins swinging on a gate reminded us vividly of Collins, the painter. Here was his composition to the life. Every lover of rural scenery must recall the little fellow on the top of a five-barred gate in the picture Collins painted, known widely by the fine engraving made of it at the time. And there too were the blossoming gardens, which now shone in their new garments of resurrection. The stillness of midsummer noon crept over everything as we lingered in the sun and shadow of the old village. Slowly circling the hall, we came upon an avenue of lime-trees leading up to a stately doorway in the distance. The path was overgrown, birds and squirrels were hopping unconcernedly over the ground, and the gates and chains were rusty with disuse. "This avenue," said Dickens, as we leaned upon the wall and looked into its cool shadows, "is never crossed except to bear the dead body of the lord of the hall to its last resting-place; a remnant of superstition, and one which Lord and Lady D---- would be glad to do away with, but the villagers would never hear of such a thing, and would consider it certain death to any person who should go or come through this entrance. It would be a highly unpopular movement for the present occupants to attempt to uproot this absurd idea, and they have given up all thoughts of it for the time."

It was on a subsequent visit to Cobham village that we explored the "College," an old foundation of the reign of Edward III. for the aged poor of both sexes. Each occupant of the various small apartments was sitting at his or her door, which opened on a grassy enclosure with arches like an abandoned cloister of some old cathedral. Such a motley society, brought together under such unnatural circumstances, would of course interest Dickens. He seemed to take a profound pleasure in wandering about the place, which was evidently filled with the associations of former visits in his own mind. He was usually possessed by a childlike eagerness to go to any spot which he had made up his mind it was best to visit, and quick to come away, but he lingered long about this leafy old haunt on that Sunday afternoon.