Our informant next spoke of the wonderful partiality of Dickens to cricket; he would stand out all night if he could watch a cricket match. The matches were always played in Mr. Dickens's field, and the business meetings of the club were held monthly at the Falstaff. Mr. Trood was Treasurer of the club. Occasionally there was a dinner.
A circumstance was related which made a profound impression on our friend. The family at Gad's Hill Place were very fond of music, and on one occasion there were present as visitors two great violinists, one a German and the other an Italian, and it was a debated question among the listeners outside the gates, where the music could be distinctly heard, which played the better. Mr. Trood had just returned from Gravesend in the cool of the summer evening, about ten o'clock, and stood in the road opposite listening, "spellbound," to the delightful music. Miss Dickens played the accompaniments.
Mr. Trood spoke with a lively and appreciative recollection of the Christmas sports that were held in a field at the back of Gad's Hill Place, and of the good order and nice feeling that prevailed at those gatherings, although several thousand people were present. Among the games that were played, the wheeling of barrows by blind-folded men seemed to tickle him most.
Our octogenarian friend also spoke of the great love of Dickens for scarlet geraniums. Hundreds of the "Tom Thumb" variety were planted in the beds on the front lawn and in the back garden at Gad's Hill Place.
Soon after the terrible railway accident at Staplehurst, Dickens came over to the Falstaff and spoke to Mr. Trood, who congratulated him. Said Dickens, "I never thought I should be here again." It is a wonderful coincidence to record, that a young gentleman named Dickenson, who subsequently became intimate with the novelist, changed places (so as to get the benefit of meeting the fresh air) with a French gentleman in the same carriage who was killed, and Mr. Dickenson escaped! The accident happened on the 9th June, 1865, and Dickens died on the "fatal anniversary," 9th June, 1870.
Mr. Trood confirmed his daughter's (Mrs. Latter's) account of the fraças with the men and performing bears, given in another chapter, adding, "That was a concern."
* * * * * *
The beautiful city of Exeter is not far from Taunton, and we naturally avail ourselves of the opportunity of stopping there for a few hours, and stroll over to see the village of Alphington. It was here, in the year 1839, that Charles Dickens took and furnished Mile End Cottage for his father and mother and their youngest son. He thus describes the event in a letter to Forster:—"I took a little house for them this morning (5th March, 1839), and if they are not pleased with it I shall be grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond the city on the Plymouth road there are two white cottages: one is theirs, and the other belongs to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms, but there is an excellent parlour with two other rooms on the ground floor, there is really a beautiful little room over the parlour which I am furnishing as a drawing-room, and there is a splendid garden. The paint and paper throughout is new and fresh and cheerful-looking, the place is clean beyond all description, and the neighbourhood I suppose the most beautiful in this most beautiful of English counties." The negotiations with the landlady and the operation of furnishing the house are most humorously pourtrayed in the same letter.
The cottage is also described in Nicholas Nickleby, which he was writing at the time. Mrs. Nickleby, in allusion to her old home, calls it "the beautiful little thatched white house one storey high, covered all over with ivy and creeping plants, with an exquisite little porch with twining honeysuckles and all sorts of things."
Fifty years have passed since the parents of the novelist went to live at Alphington, which, notwithstanding the subsequent growth of the city, still continues to be a pretty suburb with fine views of the Ide Hills to the westward, and Heavitree to the eastward. Our efforts to obtain any reminiscences of the Dickens family in the village were quite unsuccessful—so long a time had elapsed since their departure—although, to oblige us, the vicar of the place kindly made enquiries, and took some interest in the matter.