In a quiet corner under a rose-tree (Gloire de Dijon), flanked by a Yucca in bloom, the bed underneath consisting of deep blue lobelia, is a touching little memorial to a favourite canary. This consists of a narrow little board, made like a head-stone, and set aslant, on which is painted in neat letters the following epitaph:—
This is
the grave of
DICK,
the best of birds,
born
at Broadstairs,
Midsummer, 1851,
died
at Gad's Hill Place,
4th October, 1866.
No one can doubt who was the author of these simple lines. "Dick," it should be said, "was very dear both to Dickens and his eldest daughter," and he has been immortalized in Forster's Life. There is a very humorous account given of the attacks which the cats in the neighbourhood made upon him, and which were frustrated by an organized defence. The following is the passage:—
"Soon after the arrival of Dickens and his family at Gad's Hill Place, a household war broke out, in which the commander-in-chief was his man French, the bulk of the forces engaged being his children, and the invaders two cats." Writing to Forster, Dickens says:—"'The only thing new in this garden is that war is raging against two particularly tigerish and fearful cats (from the mill, I suppose), which are always glaring in dark corners after our wonderful little Dick. Keeping the house open at all points, it is impossible to shut them out, and they hide themselves in the most terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings. Hereupon French borrows Beaucourt's gun, loads the same to the muzzle, discharges it twice in vain, and throws himself over with the recoil, exactly like a clown. . . . About four pounds of powder and half a ton of shot have been fired off at the cat (and the public in general) during the week. The funniest thing is, that immediately after I have heard the noble sportsman blazing away at her in the garden in front, I look out of my room door into the drawing-room, and am pretty sure to see her coming in after the birds, in the calmest manner possible, by the back window.'"
Passing on our way the large and well-lighted servants' hall, over which is the bachelors' room,—whence in days gone by that rare literary serial, The Gad's Hill Gazette,[13] issued from a little printing press, presented by a friend to the sixth son of the novelist, who encouraged his boy's literary tastes,—we next see the stables, as usual, like everything else, in excellent order. A small statue of Fame blowing her golden trumpet surmounts the bachelors' room, and looks down upon us encouragingly.
Our attention is then turned to the well, which is stated to be two hundred and seventeen feet deep, in the shed, or pumping-room, over which is the Major's mare, "Tell-tale," cheerfully doing her daily twenty minutes' task of drawing water, which is pumped up to the cistern on the roof for the supply of the house. There is said to be never less than twenty feet of water in the well.
It may be interesting to mention that Gad's Hill Place ("the title of my estate, sir, my place down in Kent"), which is in the parish of Higham, and about twenty-six miles from London, stands on an elevation two hundred and fifty feet above mean sea-level. The house itself is built on a bed of the Thanet sands. The well is bored right through these sands, which Mr. W. H. Whitaker, F.R.S., of H. M. Geological Survey (who has kindly given me some valuable information on the subject), states "may be about forty feet thick, and the water is drawn up from the bed of chalk beneath. This bed is of great thickness, probably six hundred or seven hundred feet, and the well simply reaches the level at which the chalk is charged with water, i. e. something a little higher than the level of the neighbouring river." The chalk is exposed on the lower bases of Gad's Hill, such as the Railway Station at Higham, the village of Chalk, the town of Strood, etc.
There are humorous extracts from letters by Dickens in Forster's Life respecting the well, which may appropriately be introduced. He says:—