Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/227

 ii s. v. MAR. 9, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

183

Sardinian Ambassador, and the evenings were spent at Dickens's house. But Burnett determined to give up the stage, intending that he and Fanny should devote their time to the teaching of music and singing. Hullah advised them to set up in Manchester. So to Manchester they went, and after being there three or four weeks were attracted by the preaching of the Rev. James Griffin, with whom and with his wife they formed a close friendship, becoming members of his con- gregation and giving their services to the improvement of the singing. The friendship, however, was to be only too short, for, as Mr. Griffin relates, barely seven years had passed " before our beloved friend's health began to show serious signs of decline/' She came to London to consult Sir James Clark, and from there was taken to her sister's house. On her brother visiting her, she said she " was quite calm and happy, relied upon the mediation of Christ, and had no terror at all." She felt sorrow at parting from her husband and infants. Her last anxiety was for the little boy, who was deformed, and she spoke about " an invention she would have liked to have tried." This child did not long survive her, according to Claudius Clear. Mr. Griffin tells us ~that Harry, was a singular little creature meditative and quaint in a remarkable degree. He was the original, as Dickens told his sister, of little Paul Dombey. Harry had been taken to Brighton, as little Paul was represented to have been, and there for hours, lying on the beach with his books, talked as remarkably as Paul Dombey. He was never tired of reading his Bible and his hymns, and was always happy. He died in the arms of John Griffin, Mr. Griffin's nephew. Mr. Griffin further says :

" On the death of our beloved friend, I went to London, in compliance with her dying request, to officiate at her funeral. Her grave was selected in a secluded and picturesque nook in Highgate Cemetery . . . . Mr. Dickens appeared to feel it very deeply. He spoke to me in terms of great respect and affection for his departed sister he had always so spoken of her as I accom- panied him in his brougham on my way to my brother's house. His behaviour to myself was I most courteous and kind."

The Rev. James Griffin's testimony of her j is : ' Sincerity, truthfulness, and integrity were transparent in all she said and did."

In May, 1849, appeared the first number of ' David Copperfield,' and Forster well re- marks that

^Dickens never stood so high as at its completion. Ihe popularity it obtained at the outset increased to a degree not approached bv any previous book except ' Pickwick.' "

This was followed by ' Bleak House ' in September 17th. 1853. The review in The Athenaeum was by Chorley, and states that " this novel shows progress on the part of its writer in more ways than one. .. .progress in art to be praised. . . .progress in exaggeration to- be deprecated. At its commencement the- impression made is strange. Were its opening" pages in anywise accepted as representing the world we live in, the reader might be excused for feeling as though he belonged to some orb where eccentrics, Bedlamites, ill-directe.d and dispro- portioned people were the only inhabitants .... In his own particular walk apart from the exaggerations complained of, and the personalities against which many have protested Mr. Dickens has rarely, if ever, been happier than in ' Bleak House.' "

The summers of 1853, 1854, and 185$ were spent by Dickens in Boulogne, which he- described as being " as quaint, picturesque, good a place as he knew, the country walks delightful." " If this were but 300 miles farther off, how the English would rave about it ! " The house he .took was in the midst of a garden full of thousands of roses,, of which his good landlord allowed him to pick as he pleased ; it stood on a hillside, backed up by woods of young trees, with the Haute VilJe in front.

Dickens was evidently not aware of the French custom of the husband adopting his wife's surname, and was puzzled at his landlord being known as M. Beaucourt- Mutuel. This person was

" extraordinarily popular in Boulogne, people in the shops brightening up at the mention of his name, and congratulating us on being his tenants."

Dickens records of him, "I never did see such a gentle, kind heart."

My cousin, M. Henri Mory of Boulogne,. tells me that about 1878 he paid a visit to Mariette Pasha, who at that time occupied the house in the Rue Beaurepaire in which Dickens had lived. He describes it as "a picturesque place : there are some bridges thrown across the little stream of Beaure- paire, and a garden with luxuriant vegeta- tion, owing to the freshness of the water." Near this house, a few years ago, was estab- lished a college in a building rendered vacant by the expulsion of the Sisters of Nazareth.*

" Dickens [continues M. Mory] gave proof of excellent taste in the choice of this residence ; it is a veritable nest for a poet. He could medi- tate there in entire tranquillity, listening to the murmuring of the water and to the song of the innumerable birds peopling the valley."

for 310,000 francs, April 16th, 1905. In the parlour is a bust of Dickens presented by the Dickens Society ('Tablettes Boulonnaises, ' par A. Lefebvre, No. XXXII.).
 * The town of Boulogne bought the property