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CHAPTER III

NUMBER 48 DOUGHTY STREET, WHERE
DICKENS LIVED AND WHERE HE WROTE

THE LAST CHAPTERS OF "THE PICK-
WICK PAPERS"

HE fronts, rear elevations, stoops, and

THE

area ways of the many homes in which Mr. Dickens had his sojourn would fill any ordinary-sized sketch-book, leaving no room for those that housed his characters: Portsea, where he was born; Chatham; Bayham Street; Lant Street; Furnival's Inn; Chalk; Doughty Street; Devonshire Terrace; Tavistock House; Gad's Hill where he died—their names are legion, to say nothing of the various inns, and the several out-of-the-way places which at different times sheltered him and his family. But I had only room for one of these homes, and so I chose that of No. 48 Doughty Street.

There was no question about its identity. His name was prominently displayed in the middle of the second panel, plain as print, in

black letters over the door, or directly on the door itself, I forget which. The brisk young maid said the lady was at home and "Would I please walk into the parlour," which I did.

And a queer old parlour it was; full of everything a queer old parlour should have-a cushiony tall rocker knitted tidy-haircloth sofa and plenty of photographs sort of

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a parlour neat as a pin and as comfortable as an old slipper. And the landlady was precisely the kind of a landlady you would have expected to find in just such a parlour, with a soft, comfortable, English voice, coming to me out of the half-light of the room.

My story, to which she listened patiently, was the same that I have been telling these many years, whenever forced to invade the privacy of a family homestead, beginning with the statement that "I am a painter from over the sea" (here I extend my visiting-card), that "I have made bold to call in the hope that I might be permitted to make a drawing of the home in which" (here follows the title of the chapter covering the subject-matter of the sketch) in this instance the house in which Mr. Dickens passed the first years of his married life and where, if I were not mistaken, he wrote the last chapters of "Pickwick."

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"No, sir, you are quite right," she answered, "and I shall show you the very room out in the back yard where he finished the book. Oh, quite a tiny little place! And so you're from New York?"

She had been telescoping the distance lying between her spectacles and my bit of pasteboard, as she looked at me over their rims, and apparently satisfied with my general deportment, went on in a more cheery tone:

"Why, I don't see how I could refuse. I have so many Americans. Some of them keep their rooms for weeks. There are two here now." Suddenly she grew anxious, her eyes focussing me the closer. "You won't make any dirt or noise, will you, for our dinner hour is quite early. Some of my lady boarders use this parlour for - "

I interrupted hastily to explain that it was the outside of the house which interested me, and that as for cleanliness, I was a past master in the art! No house cat stepped as noiselessly, no chambermaid ever used a dust-pan after my departure.

My own eyes by this time had become accustomed to the dim light of the room. A June sun was burning holes in the coal smoke outside, and the possessor of the soft English

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