ill Place,
and of Charles Dickens and his family. "As a girl," said this lady, "I
was an admiring reader of his works, and I longed to see and know the
author; but little did I think that my high ambition would ever be
gratified." That a warm friendship existed between his admirer and
Charles Dickens, who subsequently became her near neighbour, is
evidenced by the fact that, in reply to her request, he allowed this
lady the great privilege of reading the catastrophe of that
exquisitely-pathetic and nobly-altruistic story of _A Tale of Two
Cities_, some weeks before its publication, as appears from the
following letter:--

"GAD'S HILL PLACE,
"HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT.
"_Sunday evening, Sixteenth Oct., 1857._

"MY DEAR MRS. HULKES,

"My daughter has shown me your note, and it has
impressed me with the horrible determination to
become a new kind of Bluebeard, and lay an awful
injunction of secrecy on you for five mortal
weeks.

"Here is the remainder of the _Tale of Two
Cities_. Not half-a-dozen of my oldest and most
trusty literary friends have seen it. It is a real
pleasure to me to entrust you with the
catastrophe, and to ask you to keep a grim and
inflexible silence on the subject until it is
published. When you have read the proofs, will you
kindly return them to me?

"With my regard to Mr. Hulkes,

"Believe me always,
"Faithfully yours,
"CHARLES DICKENS.

"MRS. HULKES."

Mrs. Hulkes said that when Dickens went to Paris in 1863, he jokingly
said to her, "I am going to Paris; what shall I bring you?" She replied,
"A good photograph of yourself, as I do not like the one you gave me;
and I hear the French people are more successful than the English, or
their climate may help them." And he brought a photograph of himself, of
which there were only four printed. It now graces Mrs. Hulkes'
drawing-room, and represents the novelist very life-like in full face,
head and bust. The photograph was taken by Alphonse Maze, and has been
exquisitely engraved in Mr. Kitton's _Charles Dickens by Pen and
Pencil_.

Mrs. Hulkes mentioned a curious and interesting circu