he died he wrote to a friend: "She is so much in my thoughts
at all times, especially when I am successful, that the recollection of
her is an essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my
existence as the beating of my heart is." In a word, she was the one
great imaginative passion of his life. He is said to have pictured her
in Little Nell, and he writes after finishing that book, "Dear Mary died
yesterday when I think of it."

Have we not in this the key to all the sorrows of his domestic life?
Could he have married the woman he loved in this manner, he would
doubtless have been one of the tenderest and most devoted of husbands,
and a family life as beautiful as any of the ideal ones he has depicted
would have resulted. It is probable that he did not know Mary Hogarth
until after his marriage, when she came to live in his house, and when
his youthful fancy for his wife had begun to decline. Miss Hogarth died
instantly of heart-disease, without even a premonitory warning.

All accounts agree in calling Mrs. Dickens a very pretty, amiable, and
well-bred woman; and even if she was as infinitely incapable as
represented, that alone would seem to be insufficient cause for so
serious a trouble. Miss Georgina Hogarth, whom all describe as a very
lovely and superior person, possessed the executive ability Mrs. Dickens
lacked, it would seem; for all visitors both to Tavistock House and
Gad's Hill describe with enthusiasm the perfect order which prevailed in
the large establishments, attributing this in part at least to Dickens's
own intense love of method and passion for neatness. But no man without
the aid of feminine head and hands would have succeeded in attaining to
this perfect housekeeping, especially where the family consisted of nine
children, as in this case.

Hans Christian Andersen thus describes a visit to Gad's Hill:--

"It was a fine new house, with red walls and four bow-windows, and
a jutting entrance supported by pillars; in the gable a large
window. A dense hedge of cherry-laurel surrounded the house, in
front of which extended a neat lawn, and on the opposite side rose
two mighty cedars of Lebanon, whose crooked branches spread their
green far over another large lawn surrounded by ivy and wild
vines, the hedge being so dense and dark that no sunbeam could
penetrate it.

"As soon as I stepped into the house, Dickens came to meet me
kindly an