Loving Memories of a Very Faithful Follower

Abstract

On being asked to write this paper upon Charles Dickens from a personal point of view, my first impulse was to describe him under the most delightful aspect in which he ever stood in my regard, namely, whenever he welcomed me to the last and brightest of all his charming homes, at Gadshill Place, near Higham, by Rochester. But, on second thoughts, it seemed far more suitable that I should recall him to my recollection in the midst of the surroundings the nearest of all to his own large heart, and the most familiar to everybody in his great fictions, meaning the enormous labyrinth and swarming multitudes of his beloved London.... So emphatically had Dickens made London his own that countless parts of it had come to be known generically as ‘Dickens’s London’. And I perfectly well remember one day, when I was lunching with Matthew Arnold, on my expressing to him my anguish at the rapid disappearance of these historical spots, his saying to me, ‘I so perfectly agree with you that I should like to see them all placed carefully under glass.’ …