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 him inviting Forster "to join him at 11 A.M. in a fifteen-mile ride out and ditto in, lunch on the road, with a six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street." Charles Dickens's residence in Doughty Street was but of short duration--from 1837 to 1840 only; but there he completed _Pickwick_, and wrote _Oliver Twist_, _Memoirs of Grimaldi_, _Sketches of Young Gentlemen_, _Sketches of Young Couples_, and _The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby_. His eldest daughter Mary was born here.