aken oftener than he did the walk through Cobham
park and woods, which was the last he enjoyed before life suddenly
closed upon him, but that here he did not like his dogs to follow.

[Illustration: THE STUDY AT GADSHILL.]

Don now has his home there with Lord Darnley, and Linda lies under one
of the cedars at Gadshill.

FOOTNOTES:

[219] On New Year's Day he had written from Paris. "When in London
Coutts's advised me not to sell out the money for Gadshill Place (the
title of my estate sir, my place down in Kent) until the conveyance was
settled and ready."

[220] Two houses now stand on what was Sir Francis Head's estate, the
Great and Little Hermitage, occupied respectively by Mr. Malleson and
Mr. Hulkes, who became intimate with Dickens. Perry of the _Morning
Chronicle_, whose town house was in that court out of Tavistock-square
of which Tavistock House formed part, had occupied the Great Hermitage
previously.

[221] By the obliging correspondent who sent me this _History of
Rochester_, 8vo. (Rochester, 1772), p. 302.

[222] "As to the carpenters," he wrote to his daughter in September
1860, "they are absolutely maddening. They are always at work yet never
seem to do anything, L. was down on Friday, and said (with his eye fixed
on Maidstone and rubbing his hands to conciliate his moody employer)
that 'he didn't think there would be very much left to do after Saturday
the 29th.' I didn't throw him out of window."

[223] A passage in his paper on Tramps embodies very amusingly
experience recorded in his letters of this brick-work tunnel and the
sinking of the well; but I can only borrow one sentence. "The current of
my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer to want a little
body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the
country; and I was at one time honoured with the attendance of as many
as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six." Bits of wonderful
observation are in that paper.

[224] This was at the beginning of 1865. "The chalet," he wrote to me on
the 7th of January, "is going on excellently, though the ornamental part
is more slowly put together than the substantial. It will really be a
very pretty thing; and in the summer (supposing it not to be blown away
in the spring), the upper room will make a charming study. It is much
higher than we supposed."

[225] As surely, however, as he did any work there, so surely his
indispensable little accompaniments of work (ii