han mansion as Cobtree Hall, the very type, it may
be, of Manor Farm, Dingley Dell, or for a longer tramp to Town Malling,
from which he may well have borrowed many strokes for the picture of
Muggleton, that town of sturdy Kentish cricket. Sometimes he would walk
across the marshes to Gravesend, and returning through the village of
Chalk, would pause for a retrospective glance at the house where his
honeymoon was spent and a good part of _Pickwick_ planned. In the latter
end of the year, when he could take a short cut through the stubble
fields from Higham to the marshes lying further down the Thames, he
would often visit the desolate churchyard where little Pip was so
terribly frightened by the convict. Or, descending the long slope from
Gadshill to Strood, and crossing Rochester Bridge--over the balustrades
of which Mr. Pickwick leaned in agreeable reverie when he was accosted
by Dismal Jemmy--the author of _Great Expectations_ and _Edwin Drood_
would pass from Rochester High Street--where Mr. Pumblechook's seed shop
looks across the way at Miss Twinkleton's establishment--into the Vines,
to compare once more the impression on his unerring "inward eye" with
the actual features of that Restoration House which, under another name,
he assigned to Miss Havisham, and so round by Fort Pitt to the Chatham
lines. And there--who can doubt?--if he seemed to hear the melancholy
wind that whistled through the deserted fields as Mr. Winkle took his
reluctant stand, a wretched and desperate duellist, his thoughts would
also stray to the busy dockyard town and "a blessed little room" in a
plain-looking plaster-fronted house from which dated all his early
readings and imaginings.

Between the "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy" and
the strong, self-reliant man whose fame had filled two continents,
Gadshill Place was an immediate link. Everyone knows the story which
Dickens tells of a vision of his former self meeting him on the road to
Canterbury.

"So smooth was the old high road, and so fresh were the horses, and
so fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester,
and the widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or
black-smoked, out to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very
queer small boy.

"'Halloa!' said I to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'

"'At Chatham,' says he.

"'What do you do there?' say I.

"'I go to schoo