llage of Alphington. It was here, in the
year 1839, that Charles Dickens took and furnished Mile End Cottage for
his father and mother and their youngest son. He thus describes the
event in a letter to Forster:--"I took a little house for them this
morning (5th March, 1839), and if they are not pleased with it I shall
be grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond the city on the
Plymouth road there are two white cottages: one is theirs, and the
other belongs to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms,
but there is an excellent parlour with two other rooms on the ground
floor, there is really a beautiful little room over the parlour which I
am furnishing as a drawing-room, and there is a splendid garden. The
paint and paper throughout is new and fresh and cheerful-looking, the
place is clean beyond all description, and the neighbourhood I suppose
the most beautiful in this most beautiful of English counties." The
negotiations with the landlady and the operation of furnishing the house
are most humorously pourtrayed in the same letter.

The cottage is also described in _Nicholas Nickleby_, which he was
writing at the time. Mrs. Nickleby, in allusion to her old home, calls
it "the beautiful little thatched white house one storey high, covered
all over with ivy and creeping plants, with an exquisite little porch
with twining honeysuckles and all sorts of things."

Fifty years have passed since the parents of the novelist went to live
at Alphington, which, notwithstanding the subsequent growth of the city,
still continues to be a pretty suburb with fine views of the Ide Hills
to the westward, and Heavitree to the eastward. Our efforts to obtain
any reminiscences of the Dickens family in the village were quite
unsuccessful--so long a time had elapsed since their departure--although,
to oblige us, the vicar of the place kindly made enquiries, and took
some interest in the matter.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Since this was written, Gad's Hill Place has been purchased by the
Hon. F. G. Latham. Major Budden has resigned his commission locally, and
now holds a commission in the Limerick City Artillery Militia. It is
very pleasant to place on record that in subsequent visits to
"Dickens-Land" I was always received with friendly kindness by Major and
Mrs. Budden, whose hospitality I often enjoyed. Their enthusiasm for the
late owner of Gad's Hill Place, and their willingness to show every part
of their beautiful residence