During the time I was at Boulogne there was a fair, and a camp, and a theatre, and many minor excitements, but these halycon days were suddenly clouded over by the outbreak of that dreadful epidemic, diphtheria, which was at first called the “Boulogne sore-throat.” It caused a panic in our little household; mother and children were shipped off at a moment’s notice, and the rest quickly followed, with no small regret at the breaking up of so good a time. It was in the year 1857 that Charles Dickens took possession of the little house of Gad’s Hill, within a walk of Rochester. I thought the dwelling characteristic of the man, for it was situated on the high road, frequented by all sorts and conditions of men—the tramp and vagrant in their tatters, the well-dressed and joyous holiday-makers, emigrants travelling to the sea-coast, military men changing quarters, pedestrians, equestrians. From the opposite garden of the wayside inn, which bore the traditional sign of the “Falstaff,” came the sound of the bowling of skittles, with an old-fashioned ring in its merriment. The smooth lawn with its flower-beds, the hay-fields beyond, and the beautiful woods of Cobham Park in the distance, represented to my fancy the tenderness of Charles Dickens’ sentiment, and the freshness and the delicacy of his imagination. [Illustration: GAD’S HILL. ] [Sidenote: GAD’S HILL] Many were the summer days I passed under the roof of that little dwelling, many the hours I sat with Georgina Hogarth in the garden, or in one of the glades of a small wood which, in the sweet season, formed a charming resting-place, all hung with garlands of eglantine, with long strings of blue convolvulus, and the sweet-scented honeysuckle. These were the hours during which “Boz” was left to his work, in what I called his “lair,” for few of us would have risked disturbing him, when he had taken up his position for the morning’s labour, in the _châlet_, which his friend Fechter, the tragedian, had brought him from Paris. In the setting-up of the said _châlet_, after the manner of a child’s architectural toy, Charles had found the greatest amusement, for he was indeed one of those who find “A child’s keen delight in little things,” and the hanging of his pictures, the arranging his furniture, the annexation of a tiny conservatory, and the construction of an underground tunnel, which connected the area round the house with a small plantation of lofty cedars, under the shade of which he had erected his _châlet_, were all sources to him of intense interest.