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gentleman of the tender age of eight, running off with his sweetheart, aged seven, to Gretna Green.

Mr. Johnstone dramatized it for the Strand. Theatre, and, we may mention, it was the means of introducing the now celebrated Miss Herbert to the London boards. A much better version was produced at the Adelphi, Mr. Benjamin Webster playing, with all those peculiar and delicate touches of nature he is capable of, the rôle of Cobbs, "the Boots."

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CHAPTER XXII.

"LITTLE DORRIT.”—TAVISTOCK HOUSE

THEATRICALS.

HE leading events in our author's career from the time we now begin to approach will be

fresh in the memories of most readers. In the Christmas week of this year the first number of "Little Dorrit" appeared, and on its completion, twenty months later, was issued by Messrs. Bradbury and Evans, with illustrations by "Phiz," and dedicated to Clarkson Stanfield, R.A., the eminent landscape painter. This work was written with the express intention of showing the procrastination and formal routine of the Government administration of business, happily designated as "The Circumlocution Office," and the Tite Barnacle's family, who impede the machinery by their inefficiency and supercilious know-nothing propensities.

Soon after it was published, Lord Lytton unwittingly furnished a specimen of the mode in which the despatch of public business is conducted. Receiving an important deputation at the Colonial Office (when he was Minister), it appeared that, though a memorial had been sent in, and due notice given, he had heard.

nothing of the matter till five minutes before, if indeed he had heard of it at all; in explanation of which he somewhat naïvely remarked that in such offices "papers of importance passed through several departments, and required time for inspection-first they were sent to the Emigration Board, then to another office, and then to the Secretary of State, who might refer it to some other department." One cannot fail to observe the extreme vagueness of the final resting-place of the unfortunate document. "Some other department." What other department? This is what Mr. Clennam and his mechanical partner were always "wanting to know."

The work met with an immense sale in the serial form, but it is not now so popular as some of the other works of Mr. Dickens. The story was dramatized, and well represented at the Strand Theatre.

We come now to note Dickens's change of residence from Tavistock House, Tavistock Square, to Gad's Hill Place, Kent, or, as the great man himself always wrote it, with that amplitude and unmistakeable clearness which made him write, not only the day of the month, but the day of the week, in full at the head of his letters-Gad's Hill Place, Higham by Rochester, Kent. How he came to live here is pleasantly told by a friend.*

"Though not born at Rochester, Mr. Dickens spent some portion of his boyhood there; and was wont to tell how his father, the late Mr. John

* Daily News, 15 June, 1870.

Dickens, in the course of a country ramble, pointed out to him as a child the house at Gad's Hill Place, saying, 'There, my boy; if you work and mind your book, you will, perhaps, one day live in a house like that.' This speech sunk deep, and in after years, and in the course of his many long pedestrian rambles through the lanes and roads of the pleasant Kentish country, Mr. Dickens came to regard this Gad's Hill House lovingly, and to wish himself its possessor. This seemed an impossibility. The property was so held that there was no likelihood of its ever coming into the market; and so Gad's Hill came to be alluded to jocularly, as representing a fancy which was pleasant enough in dreamland, but would never be realized.

"Meanwhile the years rolled on, and Gad's Hill became almost forgotten. Then a further lapse of time, and Mr. Dickens felt a strong wish to settle in the country, and determined to let Tavistock House. About this time, and by the strangest coincidences, his intimate friend and close ally, Mr. W. H. Wills, chanced to sit next to a lady at a London dinnerparty, who remarked, in the course of conversation, that a house and grounds had come into her possession of which she wanted to dispose. The reader will guess the rest. The house was in Kent, was not far from Rochester, had this and that distinguishing feature which made it like Gad's Hill and like no other place; and the upshot of Mr. Wills's dinnertable chit-chat with a lady whom he had never met

before was, that Charles Dickens realized the dream of his youth, and became the possessor of Gad's Hill." The purchase was made in the Spring of 1856.

In the "Uncommercial Traveller," under the head of " Travelling Abroad," No. VII., Dickens makes this mention of it :

So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh were the horses, and so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed, or black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.

"Halloa!" said I to the very queer small boy, "where do you live?"

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I took him up in a moment, and we went on.

"This is Gad's Hill

Presently, the very queer small boy says, we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those

travellers, and ran away."

"You know something about Falstaff, eh?" said I.

"All about him," said the very queer small boy.

"I am old (I am nine) and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill and look at the house there, if you please!"

"You admire that house?" said I.

"Bless you, sir!" said the very queer small boy, "when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, 'If you

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