"Literary London," "which remains unchanged."

66

My sketch completed, I opened Mr. Snowden Ward's delightful "In Real Dickens Land" -I had brought the book with me- and learned that Mr. Dickens moved from his small rooms in Furnival's, where Pickwick" was begun, to 48 Doughty Street, where the book was finished, in March, 1837; that "at this time Mary Hogarth, his wife's younger sister, and Fred, his own next younger brother, were living with him, for even in the Furnival's Inn days he commenced that open-hearted hospitality, always beginning with the members of his own family, and which throughout his life was one of his great characteristics. It was a gay, happy, enthusiastic household," continues Ward, "working hard, laughing hard, and playing hard; always busy, always restless, and every member enthusiastically bound up in the happiness of all the rest. But a great shock and a great separation were in store for them. On May 7th the whole party had been to some entertainment and returned home in the best of spirits, when, almost as soon as they entered the house, poor Mary Hogarth fell back into Dickens's arms and died almost immediately. The terrible impression made upon him by this loss

remained through all his life, and coloured many of his scenes of pathos." Her tombstone bears the simple epitaph written by Dickens "Young, beautiful, and good, God numbered her among his angels at the early age of seventeen." The shock was so great that for two months the publication of "Pickwick" was interrupted. It was in this house, too, that Dickens's second daughter, Kate Macready, now Mrs. Perugini, was born in 1839. At the close of that year the family moved from Doughty Street to No. 1 Devonshire Terrace.

That same afternoon I again made my way through the narrow hall and out into the mouldy little plantation and began work on the rear extension. The June sun had mounted high enough in the interim to send its rays over the next roof, throwing a long slant of light into the desolate yard, as a watchman manages the gleam of a bull's-eye lantern when in search of some mysterious prowler.

The elder of the two ladies, hearing my step on the oilcloth, rose from her armchair, felt her way along the narrow, dark passageway, moved noiselessly to where I sat, and stood looking over my shoulder to assure herself, no doubt, of my promises that no polluting touch of any

kind should drop from my fingers. A moment later she crept back to the angle of the extension wall and settled herself slowly into a flat, drawn-out Chinese chair, with a ready-to-beshaved attitude, her head tilted back, her slippered feet touching the end bar. The companion lady now brought out not only a newspaper but a parrot in a tin, circular cage — a red-and-green parrot with a topknot, white, horned beak, and an insistent voice. The paper she spread over the recumbent figure, which promptly went to sleep. The cage she deposited on the bricks on one side of the Chinese chair.

I worked on, the old lady breathing gently, the paper crinkling and readjusting itself to the dear woman's pulsations, the parrot regarding me all the time out of one yellow eye, ready to shriek out at any move on my part that would disturb the serenity of the sleeping figure.

Yes, there is no question that Mr. Dickens was greatly blessed in the variety, in the quality, and in the quantity of the various delightful characters living within reach of his pen.

CHAPTER IV

THE GEORGE AND VULTURE, MR. PICKWICK'S HEADQUARTERS WHEN HE

STOPPED IN LONDON

HERE are nooks and cracks and crannies in London Town through which

THERE are Town you can

hardly squeeze your way with a wheel-barrow, let alone a cab or hansom. The little crooked turn to the left a footway that leads to and fronts the George and Vulture is one of them. Even with my easel and stool hugging the opposite wall and my feet drawn well under me, half the hungry and thirsty crowd on their way to luncheon stumbled over my toes. My surroundings were very much as if I had camped out near my own office in Exchange Place say at its angle with New Street or opposite the members' entrance of the New York Stock Exchange on a day when everything was "kiting."

To-day my easel was breasting a surging tide of telegraph boys in their tin-can caps

tilted over their left eyebrows; perspiring brokers making calculations with their lips, their eyes on the turn of the street; lads in white aprons carrying flat baskets - portable luncheons, perhaps; porters with bundles; bank messengers with books; human drift from the slums; idlers; sightseers a motley, congested, and ill-assorted crowd swaying, stumbling, apologising, swearing, or staring as they came plump up against my foot or the leg of my stool. And yet, strange to say, not one of them called for the police, or threatened violence, or lost his temper. Only one passer-by, and he a Bobby, stopped long enough to touch his hat in respectful salute and remark:

"I shall 'ave to arsk you to move on, sir." But he never did "arsk," nor did he intend to. I got that from the way his forefinger touched his hat brim; from the tone of his voice and from the way he at once went off duty-off from my vicinity.

And I could not have moved on had he "arsked" me. I must either remain where I was, pasted up against the opposite wall, or my sketch must be abandoned; for this was the real, well-authenticated, unquestioned, original entrance of the famous George and Vulture Inn.