d family, guests, and servants were all
ranged in eager lines, longing for the signal to start an oldfashioned
country dance as, from a shady bower of holly and evergreens at the
upper end of the room, the two best fiddles and only harp of the nearest
market town prepared to strike up, it is no wonder that such a lover of
unspoilt, natural manners as Boz declared, "If any of the old English
yeomen had turned into fairies when they died, it was just the place in
which they would have held their revels."

A triangular piece of ground, with a sprinkling of elms about it, is all
that is left of the rookery in which Mr. Tupman met with an accident
from the unskilful marksmanship of Winkle. At the back of the house is
the pond where Mr. Winkle's reputation as a sportsman led him into
another catastrophe, and his skating exposed itself as of anything but a
graceful and "swan-like" style; where, too, Mr. Pickwick revived the
sliding propensities of his boyhood with infinite zest until the ice
gave way with a "sharp, smart crack", and Mr. Pickwick's hat, gloves,
and handkerchief, floating on the surface, were all of Mr. Pickwick that
anyone could see.

Cobtree Hall, it has been mentioned, divides the parishes of Boxley and
Allington, the initials of which are carved on a beam in the kitchen
that suggests Phiz's plate of "Christmas Eve at Mr. Wardle's". In
Aylesford the tomb of the prototype, according to local tradition, of
"Mr. Wardle" bears the inscription, "Also to the memory of Mr. W. Spong,
late of Cobtree, in the Parish of Boxley, who died November 15th, 1839".
Boxley village is near the ancient Pilgrims' Road to Canterbury, and
here Alfred Tennyson stayed in 1842. Park House, nearer the Medway, was
the home of Edward Lushington, who married Tennyson's sister Cecilia,
and in its grounds Tennyson found the setting for the prologue to the
"Princess". The "happy faces" of "the multitude, a thousand heads", by
which the "sloping pasture" was "sown", under "broad ambrosial aisles of
lofty lime", had probably come from Maidstone on the annual jaunt of
that town's Mechanics' Institute. The village of Allington stands on the
other side of the Medway, though the boundaries of the parish extend
beyond the right bank of the river. Allington Castle, which the Medway
half-encircles with a sweeping bend, was one of the seven chief castles
of Kent. It was here that Sir Thomas Wyatt, the elder, diplomatist,
poet, and lover of Anne Boleyn