trongly."

Admirers of the great novelist are much indebted to Mr. Robert Langton,
F. R. Hist. Soc., for his _Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens_, a
book quite indispensable to a tramp in this neighbourhood, the charming
illustrations by the late Mr. William Hull, the author, and others
rendering the identification of places perfectly easy. Dickens says, "If
anybody knows to a nicety where Rochester ends and Chatham begins, it is
more than I do." "It's of no consequence," as Mr. Toots would say, for
the High Street is one continuous thoroughfare, but as a matter of fact,
a narrow street called Boundary Lane on the north side of High Street
separates the two places.

A few words of recapitulation as to early family history[19] may be
useful here. John Dickens, who is represented as "a fine portly man,"
was a Navy pay-clerk, and Elizabeth his wife (_nee_ Barrow), who is
described as "a dear good mother and a fine woman," the parents of the
future genius, resided in the beginning of this century at 387, Mile End
Terrace, Commercial Road, Landport, Portsea,[20] "and is so far in
Portsea as being in the island of that name." Here Charles Dickens was
born, at twelve o'clock at night, on Friday, 7th February, 1812. He was
the second child and eldest son of a rather numerous family consisting
of eight sons and daughters, and was baptized at St. Mary's, Kingston
(the parish church of Portsea), under the names of Charles John
Huff_h_am; the last of these is no doubt a misspelling, as the name of
his grandfather, from whom he took it, was Huffam, but Dickens himself
scarcely ever used it. In the old family Bible now in possession of Mr.
Charles Dickens it is Huffam in his father's own handwriting. The
Dickens family left Mile End Terrace on 24th June, 1812, and went to
live in Hawke Street, Portsea, from whence, in consequence of a change
in official duties of the elder Dickens, they removed to Chatham in 1816
or 1817, and resided there for six or seven years, until they went to
live in London.

Bearing these circumstances in mind, it is very natural that we should
determine on an early pilgrimage to Chatham, and Sunday morning sees us
at the old church--St. Mary's--where Dickens himself must often have
been taken as a child, and where he saw the marriage of his aunt Fanny
with James Lamert, a Staff Doctor in the Army,--the Doctor Slammer of
_Pickwick_,--of whom Mr. Langton says:--"The regimental surgeon's
kindly manner, an