But novelists as great if not greater than Fielding have sojourned in Ealing. Thackeray was at school here, of which more anon. Dickens used often to ride over to visit his sister, Mrs. Hogarth, at Ealing Dean. Dibdin wrote many of his best songs at his house in Hanger Lane; and Edward Bulwer Lytton was at school in a house that stood in what was then called Love Lane. The school was kept by Mr. Wallington, and a correspondent of Lytton’s biographer furnishes us with an interesting sketch of school and pedagogue. “We drew up in front of a massive old-fashioned arched door in a high brick wall, above which nothing but the chimneys and projecting gables of the attic windows of Mr. Wallington’s house were visible. It was a large, ancient, time-worn edifice, in which the lord of the manor or other great man of the parish, might be supposed to have lived in the time of William and Mary or Queen Anne, but it had been disfigured by a mean-looking brick building tacked to its northern side, possibly by its present proprietor.” “I was not long in discovering that Mr. Wallington was not the scholar I had hoped to find him. Not only had he no objection to our preparing our lesson by the help of English translations, but at lessons he used a like ‘crib’ and, even with its assistance, failed as often as not, to explain the grammatical structure, or throw light upon the meaning of some passage in Sophodes or Thucydides, which had baffled Gore, by far the most advanced student of our lot. Nevertheless, by being always at his post, in cheerful readiness to take his share in our tasks, he kept us up so well to our work that there was no falling off in our previously acquired knowledge of Latin and Greek.” “In Mr. Wallington, we had always before us the example of one who in principles, as well as manners, was a gentleman in the best sense of the word; courteous in bearing, pleasant in speech, with patience, fine temper, and a tender regard for the feelings of others.” “Mr. Wallington rode ‘Bonnie Bess,’ formerly a favourite hackney of George III, for whose service she had been specially trained, and, in order to protect him against sudden assaults, had been taught to rear and trample down anyone who put out a hand to seize her bridle whenever she had a rider on her back. The story ran that Queen Charlotte, a lady of frugal mind, had sold her husband’s stud as soon as his malady had reached the stage that there was no hope that he would ever mount his horse again.” It was at Ealing too, during his schooldays that the illustrious novelist tasted the bitter sweets of a first love, and his own pen has told the story.