The Keeleys were there, husband and wife, the former declining to dance; but when Sir Roger de Coverley struck up, he was loudly called upon to do so, and a vehement dispute began between the two sets, which should secure him in their ranks. That inimitable comedian showed so much fun in the apparent hesitation of his choice as to elicit roars of laughter, which were followed by thunders of applause, when the winning side claimed Keeley as their own.
In those days, before the guests went into dinner at Tavistock House, the children of the family were admitted into the drawing-room, and seldom have I seen more lovely boys, or sweeter or more graceful little girls; and it is still a pleasure to me to talk over that happy past with Kate Perugini and her sister, with Harry Dickens and his pretty wife, who venerates the memory of the father-in-law she never knew, and brings up her beautiful children to do the same.
In 1853, the Dickens family were settled at Boulogne-sur-Mer, having rented a charming house on the hill just outside the town, called Villa des Moulineaux, which name it derived from some neighbouring water-mills. It was well situated, and the house, which you approached through (I might almost say) an avenue of splendid hollyhocks, was built against the side of the hill, so that you reached the rez-de-chaussée by a flight of steps, and stepped out of the top floor into a garden-path. It commanded an extensive view of Boulogne, old and new, and its picturesque harbour, while on the heights the Napoleon Column was visible, which commemmorated Napoleon the First’s intended invasion of England.
DOUGLAS JERROLD
Charles Dickens in his invitation that I should come and visit him for some weeks, provided me with an escort, in the person of the late Mr Peter Cunningham, the agreeable editor of Horace Walpole’s correspondence, and in his company I performed the voyage. Many and pleasant were my fellow-guests in that happy summer. Douglas Jerrold, with his flow of conversation, which elicited so rich a return in that of his host; if I might make use of a homely simile, I would say, that brace of talkers reminded me of Bryant & May’s matches “on a superior scale.” It was here also I learned to know and value Wilkie Collins, the popular writer of fiction.
Charles Dickens was an indefatigable pedestrian, and took most extensive walks in the neighbourhood, and it was amusing to find that the friends who on the first days after their arrival gladly agreed to accompany him, mostly slackened by degrees in their readiness to do so, and had such urgent demands for correspondence or literary work as to detain them at home. He was thus often reduced to the society of his sister-in-law and myself, who, from so constantly sharing in his walks, had got into excellent condition.
During the time I was at Boulogne there was a fair, and a camp, and a theatre, and many minor excitements, but these halycon days were suddenly clouded over by the outbreak of that dreadful epidemic, diphtheria, which was at first called the “Boulogne sore-throat.” It caused a panic in our little household; mother and children were shipped off at a moment’s notice, and the rest quickly followed, with no small regret at the breaking up of so good a time.
It was in the year 1857 that Charles Dickens took possession of the little house of Gad’s Hill, within a walk of Rochester. I thought the dwelling characteristic of the man, for it was situated on the high road, frequented by all sorts and conditions of men—the tramp and vagrant in their tatters, the well-dressed and joyous holiday-makers, emigrants travelling to the sea-coast, military men changing quarters, pedestrians, equestrians. From the opposite garden of the wayside inn, which bore the traditional sign of the “Falstaff,” came the sound of the bowling of skittles, with an old-fashioned ring in its merriment. The smooth lawn with its flower-beds, the hay-fields beyond, and the beautiful woods of Cobham Park in the distance, represented to my fancy the tenderness of Charles Dickens’ sentiment, and the freshness and the delicacy of his imagination.
GAD’S HILL.