st and lunch; and though, at this particular
period, the enormous pressure of his engagements compelled him to work
"double tides," and often far into the night, yet he was essentially a
day-worker, not a night-worker. Like the great German poet Goethe, he
preferred to exercise his art in the fresh morning hours, when the
dewdrops, as it were, lay bright upon his imagination and fancy. And
for relaxation and sedative, when he had thoroughly worn himself out
with mental toil, he would have recourse to the hardest bodily
exercise. At first riding seems to have contented him--fifteen miles
out and fifteen miles in, with a halt at some road-side inn for
refreshment. 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 heyday of
youth, but afterwards, to the very last. He was always on those alert,
quick feet of his, perambulating London from end to end, and in every
direction; perambulating the suburbs, perambulating the "greater
London" that lies within a radius of twenty miles, round the central
core of metropolitan houses. In short, he was everywhere, in all
weathers, at all hours. Nor was London, smaller and greater, his only
walking field. He would walk wherever he was--walked through and
through Genoa, and all about Genoa, when he lived there; knew every
inch of the Kent country round Broadstairs and round Gad's Hill--was,
as I have said, always, always, always on his feet. But if he would
pedestrianize everywhere, London remained the walking ground of his
heart. As Dr. Johnson held that nothing equalled a stroll down Fleet
Street, so did Dickens, sitting in full view of Genoa's perfect bay,
and with the blue Mediterranean sparkling at his feet, turn in thought
for inspiration to his old haunts. "Never," he writes to Forster, when
about to begin "The Chimes," "never did I stagger so upon a threshold
before. I seem as if I had plucked myself out of my proper soil when I
left Devonshire Terrace, and could take root no more until I return to
it.... Did I tell you how many fountains we have here? No matter. If
they played nectar, they wouldn't please me half so well as the West
Middlesex Waterworks at Devonshire Terrace.... Put me down on Waterloo
Bridge at eight o'clock in the evening, with leave to roam about as
long as I like, and I would come home, as you know, panting to go on.
I am sadly st