al authorities for the necessary
underground work, Dickens constructed a passage beneath the road[223]
from his front lawn; and in the shrubbery thus rendered accessible, and
which he then laid out very prettily, he placed afterwards a Swiss
chalet[224] presented to him by Mr. Fechter, which arrived from Paris in
ninety-four pieces fitting like the joints of a puzzle, but which proved
to be somewhat costly in setting on its legs by means of a foundation of
brickwork. Once up, however, it was a great resource in the summer
months, and much of Dickens's work was done there. "I have put five
mirrors in the chalet where I write,"[225] he told an American friend,
"and they reflect and refract, in all kinds of ways, the leaves that are
quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the
sail-dotted river. My room is up among the branches of the trees; and
the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches
shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds
come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and
indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most
delicious." He used to make great boast, too, not only of his crowds of
singing birds all day, but of his nightingales at night.

[Illustration: THE CHALET.]

One or two more extracts from letters having reference to these changes
may show something of the interest to him with which Gadshill thus grew
under his hands. A sun-dial on his back-lawn had a bit of historic
interest about it. "One of the balustrades of the destroyed old
Rochester Bridge," he wrote to his daughter in June 1859, "has been
(very nicely) presented to me by the contractors for the works, and has
been duly stone-masoned and set up on the lawn behind the house. I have
ordered a sun-dial for the top of it, and it will be a very good object
indeed." "When you come down here next month," he wrote to me, "we have
an idea that we shall show you rather a neat house. What terrific
adventures have been in action; how many overladen vans were knocked up
at Gravesend, and had to be dragged out of Chalk-turnpike in the dead of
the night by the whole equine power of this establishment; shall be
revealed at another time." That was in the autumn of 1860, when, on the
sale of his London house, its contents were transferred to his country
home. "I shall have an alteration or two to show you at Gadshill that
greatly improve the l