1839. The house, situated on the east side of
the street, has twelve rooms, is single-fronted, three-storied, and not
unlike No. 2, Ordnance Terrace, Chatham. A tiny little room on the
ground-floor, with a bolt inside in addition to the usual fastening, is
pointed out as having been the novelist's study. It has an outlook into
a garden, but of late years this has been much reduced in size. A bill
in the front window announces "Apartments to let," and they look very
comfortable. Doughty Street, now a somewhat noisy thoroughfare, must
have been in Charles Dickens's time a quiet, retired spot. A large pair
of iron gates reach across the street, guarded by a gate-keeper in
livery. "It was," says Mr. Marzials in his _Life of Dickens_, "while
living at Doughty Street that he seems, in great measure, to have formed
those habits of work and relaxation which every artist fashions so as to
suit his own special needs and idiosyncrasies. His favourite time for
work was the morning between the hours of breakfast and lunch; . . . he
was essentially a day worker and not a night worker. . . . And for
relaxation and sedative when he had thoroughly worn himself with mental
toil, he would have recourse to the hardest bodily exercise. . . . At
first riding seems to have contented him, . . . but soon walking took
the place of riding, and he became an indefatigable pedestrian. He would
think nothing of a walk of twenty or thirty miles, and that not merely
in the vigorous hey-day of youth, but afterwards to the very last. . . ."

[Illustration: No. 48, Doughty Street, Mecklenburgh Square.

_Dickens's Residence_ 1837-9.]

It was at Doughty Street that he experienced a bereavement which
darkened his life for many years, and to which Forster thus alludes:--

"His wife's next younger sister Mary, who lived with them, and by
sweetness of nature even more than by graces of person had made herself
the ideal of his life, died with a terrible suddenness that for a time
completely bore him down. His grief and suffering were intense, and
affected him . . . through many after years." _Pickwick_ was temporarily
suspended, and he sought change of scene at Hampstead. Forster visited
him there, and to him he opened his heart. He says:--"I left him as much
his friend, and as entirely in his confidence, as if I had known him for
years."

[Illustration: Tavistock House, Tavistock Square.

_Dickens's Residence_ 1851-60.]

Some time afterwards, we find hi