[219] On New Year's Day he had written from Paris. "When in London Coutts's advised me not to sell out the money for Gadshill Place (the title of my estate sir, my place down in Kent) until the conveyance was settled and ready."
[220] Two houses now stand on what was Sir Francis Head's estate, the Great and Little Hermitage, occupied respectively by Mr. Malleson and Mr. Hulkes, who became intimate with Dickens. Perry of the Morning Chronicle, whose town house was in that court out of Tavistock-square of which Tavistock House formed part, had occupied the Great Hermitage previously.
[221] By the obliging correspondent who sent me this History of Rochester, 8vo. (Rochester, 1772), p. 302.
[222] "As to the carpenters," he wrote to his daughter in September 1860, "they are absolutely maddening. They are always at work yet never seem to do anything, L. was down on Friday, and said (with his eye fixed on Maidstone and rubbing his hands to conciliate his moody employer) that 'he didn't think there would be very much left to do after Saturday the 29th.' I didn't throw him out of window."
[223] A passage in his paper on Tramps embodies very amusingly experience recorded in his letters of this brick-work tunnel and the sinking of the well; but I can only borrow one sentence. "The current of my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer to want a little body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the country; and I was at one time honoured with the attendance of as many as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six." Bits of wonderful observation are in that paper.
[224] This was at the beginning of 1865. "The châlet," he wrote to me on the 7th of January, "is going on excellently, though the ornamental part is more slowly put together than the substantial. It will really be a very pretty thing; and in the summer (supposing it not to be blown away in the spring), the upper room will make a charming study. It is much higher than we supposed."
[225] As surely, however, as he did any work there, so surely his indispensable little accompaniments of work (ii. 226) were carried along with him; and of these I will quote what was written shortly after his death by his son-in-law, Mr. Charles Collins, to illustrate a very touching sketch by Mr. Fildes of his writing-desk and vacant chair. "Ranged in front of, and round about him, were always a variety of objects for his eye to rest on in the intervals of actual writing, and any one of which he would have instantly missed had it been removed. There was a French bronze group representing a duel with swords, fought by a couple of very fat toads, one of them (characterised by that particular buoyancy which belongs to corpulence) in the act of making a prodigious lunge forward, which the other receives in the very middle of his digestive apparatus, and under the influence of which it seems likely that he will satisfy the wounded honour of his opponent by promptly expiring. There was another bronze figure which always stood near the toads, also of French manufacture, and also full of comic suggestion. It was a statuette of a dog-fancier, such a one as you used to see on the bridges or quays of Paris, with a profusion of little dogs stuck under his arms and into his pockets, and everywhere where little dogs could possibly be insinuated, all for sale, and all, as even a casual glance at the vendor's exterior would convince the most unsuspicious person, with some screw loose in their physical constitutions or moral natures, to be discovered immediately after purchase. There was the long gilt leaf with the rabbit sitting erect upon its haunches, the huge paper-knife often held in his hand during his public readings, and the little fresh green cup ornamented with the leaves and blossoms of the cowslip, in which a few fresh flowers were always placed every morning—for Dickens invariably worked with flowers on his writing-table. There was also the register of the day of the week and of the month, which stood always before him; and when the room in the châlet in which he wrote his last paragraph was opened, some time after his death, the first thing to be noticed by those who entered was this register, set at 'Wednesday, June 8'—the day of his seizure." It remains to this day as it was found.
[226] Dickens's interest in dogs (as in the habits and ways of all animals) was inexhaustible, and he welcomed with delight any new trait. The subjoined, told him by a lady friend, was a great acquisition. "I must close" (14th of May 1867) "with an odd story of a Newfoundland dog. An immense black good-humoured Newfoundland dog. He came from Oxford and had lived all his life at a brewery. Instructions were given with him that if he were let out every morning alone, he would immediately find out the river; regularly take a swim; and gravely come home again. This he did with the greatest punctuality, but after a little while was observed to smell of beer. She was so sure that he smelt of beer that she resolved to watch him. Accordingly, he was seen to come back from his swim, round the usual corner, and to go up a flight of steps into a beer-shop. Being instantly followed, the beer-shop-keeper is seen to take down a pot (pewter pot), and is heard to say: 'Well, old chap! Come for your beer as usual, have you?' Upon which he draws a pint and puts it down, and the dog drinks it. Being required to explain how this comes to pass, the man says, 'Yes ma'am. I know he's your dog ma'am, but I didn't when he first come. He looked in ma'am—as a Brickmaker might—and then he come in—as a Brickmaker might—and he wagged his tail at the pots, and he giv' a sniff round, and conveyed to me as he was used to beer. So I draw'd him a drop, and he drunk it up. Next morning he come agen by the clock and I drawed him a pint, and ever since he has took his pint reglar.'"
[227] This was the Carol and Pickwick. "We are reduced sometimes," he adds, "to a ludicrous state of distress by the quantity of silver we have to carry about. Arthur Smith is always accompanied by an immense black leather-bag full." Mr. Smith had an illness a couple of days later, and Dickens whimsically describes his rapid recovery on discovering the state of their balances. "He is now sitting opposite to me on a bag of £40 of silver. It must be dreadfully hard."
[228] A letter to his eldest daughter (23rd of Aug.) makes humorous addition. "The man who drove our jaunting car yesterday hadn't a piece in his coat as big as a penny roll, and had had his hat on (apparently without brushing it) ever since he was grown-up. But he was remarkably intelligent and agreeable, with something to say about everything. For instance, when I asked him what a certain building was, he didn't say 'Courts of Law' and nothing else, but 'Av yer plase Sir, its the foor Coorts o' looyers, where Misther O'Connell stood his trial wunst, as ye'll remimbir sir, afore I till ye ov it.' When we got into the Phœnix Park, he looked round him as if it were his own, and said 'That's a Park sir, av ye plase!' I complimented it, and he said 'Gintlemen tills me as they iv bin, sir, over Europe and never see a Park aqualling ov it. Yander's the Vice-regal Lodge, sir; in thim two corners lives the two Sicretaries, wishing I was thim sir. There's air here sir, av yer plase! There's scenery here sir! There's mountains thim sir! Yer coonsider it a Park sir? It is that sir!'"