On a pleasant Sunday morning in October, 1869, as I sat looking out on the beautiful landscape from my chamber window at Gad’s Hill, a servant tapped at my door and gave me a summons from Dickens, written in his drollest manner on a sheet of paper, bidding me descend into his study on business of great importance.  That day I heard from the author’s lips the first chapters of “Edwin Drood” the concluding lines of which initial pages were then scarcely dry from the pen.  The story is unfinished, and he who read that autumn morning with such vigor of voice and dramatic power is in his grave.  This private reading took place in the little room where the great novelist for many years had been accustomed to write, and in the house where on a pleasant evening in the following June he died.  The spot is one of the loveliest in Kent, and must always be remembered as the last residence of Charles Dickens.  He used to declare his firm belief that Shakespeare was specially fond of Kent, and that the poet chose Gad’s Hill and Rochester for the scenery of his plays from intimate personal knowledge of their localities.  He said he had no manner of doubt but that one of Shakespeare’s haunts was the old inn at Rochester, and that this conviction came forcibly upon him one night as he was walking that way, and discovered Charles’s Wain over the chimney just as Shakespeare has described it, in words put into the mouth of the carrier in King Henry IV.  There is no prettier place than Gad’s Hill in all England for the earliest and latest flowers, and Dickens chose it, when he had arrived at the fulness of his fame and prosperity, as the home in which he most wished to spend the remainder of his days.  When a boy, he would often pass the house with his father and frequently said to him, “If ever I have a dwelling of my own, Gad’s Hill Place is the house I mean to buy.”  In that beautiful retreat he had for many years been accustomed to welcome his friends, and find relaxation from the crowded life of London.  On the lawn playing at bowls, in the Swiss summer-house charmingly shaded by green leaves, he always seemed the best part of summer, beautiful as the season is in the delightful region where he lived.

There he could be most thoroughly enjoyed, for he never seemed so cheerfully at home anywhere else.  At his own table, surrounded by his family, and a few guests, old acquaintances from town,—­among them sometimes Forster, Carlyle, Reade, Collins, Layard, Maclise, Stone, Macready, Talfourd,—­he was always the choicest and liveliest companion.  He was not what is called in society a professed talker, but he was something far better and rarer.