It was while summering at Broadstairs, a quiet watering-place on the Kentish coast, that the writer had perhaps the best opportunity to study Dickens's characteristics—the most notable of which most certainly was his love for children. Apparently adoring his own, he still had room in his great heart for other people's darlings. Had it been more generally known that for several seasons Dickens made Broadstairs his abiding-place, that pretty little sea-side resort would have been crowded with visitors. As it was, several of his intimate friends, among them the artists Stone and Egg, made Broadstairs their summer home.

Those twenty-mile rambles, so frequently alluded to, would alone have made Dickens interesting to younger people, who were continually arranging to meet the author and his frequent companion, Miss Hogarth, on the cliffs or sands between Pegwalt Bay and Margate.

Once Dickens came to the rescue of some children who had been overtaken by the tide. Miss Hogarth and the writer were of the party. Dickens summoned donkey-boys from Margate and sent the youngsters home at a gallop. They arrived just as the tide was washing the white cliffs.

Only once in several years did the writer hear Charles Dickens's voice in angry tones. This was the occasion, and it was indelibly impressed on his memory:

"Mamie" (Miss Mary Dickens) and "Katie" (Catharine, named after her mother, whom Dickens always addressed as Kate) were very pretty and interesting girls; indeed, they were the little belles of Broadstairs. They frequently had juvenile tea parties at "Bleak House," as Dickens's Broadstairs home was called. It was situated on a high bluff, and stood alone—a very picturesque but mournful and deserted-looking building, as peculiar in its style as the author's house in Devonshire Terrace, London. Dickens's library had a seaward and an inland view. He was then writing Dombey and Son, and he had told Miss Hogarth that he must not be disturbed. But notwithstanding this injunction, the tea party, rather formidable in numbers, tired of cake and bread and butter, scoured the house and turned it into a Bedlam, gentle Mamie, however, protesting.

BLEAK HOUSE, BROADSTAIRS.
(From an old print.)

At a moment when Dickens was evidently very much engrossed, the children, with a wild rush, broke in on his quietude. The writer, wittingly, or perhaps impelled by force of numbers, found himself within a few feet of the desk where Dickens was writing, and was very much alarmed as Dickens looked angrily on the crowd. But he loved children too well to be angry with them long. Rising from his seat, the frown melting into the smile that always endeared him to young people, he spread his arms and simply shooed us from the room, like the geese that we were, and bade us seek Miss Hogarth, who never seemed to tire of entertaining her niece's guests. But on this occasion the abashed marauders, deeming "discretion" to be "the better part of valor," crept into the garden, where Charlie was engaged in the innocent though perhaps dangerous pastime of gathering some very dubious-looking plums from a tree that had seen better days. Miss Hogarth, having doubtless been interviewed by Dickens, led the young people to understand, later in the day, that strangers would not be admitted to Bleak House until further notice, thus practically breaking up the tea parties. We subsequently learned that Dickens had frequently been disturbed, and it was necessary that silence should reign for a season.

Very little has been written, if indeed anything, of this interesting summer home of the noted author—Bleak House. It was surrounded by high and gloomy brick walls that gave the old place a dreary and forbidding appearance. Its very quaintness moved Dickens to make it his temporary abiding-place. It may have been interesting, but it seemed to the good people of Broadstairs, as they looked on the most exposed spot in all the little place, that only courageous hearts could live at Bleak House. And during a frightful storm, that sunk fishing-smacks and damaged the coast, devastating the esplanade and destroying not a few farm-houses, the frightened residents at morning's dawn looked with pale faces in the direction of Bleak House, almost expecting to find it in ruins. But in spite of its exposed position, the house bravely withstood the gale, although chimney-pots and trees were blown down. The family was naturally alarmed, and betook themselves to apartments adjoining the library on the esplanade. The library and assembly-rooms were the public resort of Broadstairs's quality. But Dickens was rarely if ever seen at the gatherings.

Dickens remarked a few days later to the writer's father that the gale had been an alarming and thrilling experience.