Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/539

 US. V. JUNE 8, 1912. ]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

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accompanied by an extremely handsome centrepiece, with the design of figures representing the Seasons ; but the kindly donor shrank from sending Winter to one whom he would fain connect with none save the brighter and milder days, and he had struck the fourth figure from the design. Dickens said to Forster : " I never look at it that I don't think most of the Winter." Forster adds: "The gift had yet too surely foreshadowed the truth, for the winter was never to come to him. "

On the 30th of May Dickens left London for Gadshill, to spend the last ten days of his life in the home so dear to him. He was now at the very height of his fame. Few writers before him had achieved such a reputation, and his public readings had caused him to be known personally to thousands an advantage enjoyed by no other author before or since. At her own earnest request, he had visited our beloved sovereign Queen Victoria, who received him in private audience ; and the sale of the work now in progress, ' Edwin Drood,' far exceeded all anticipations, so that full of pleasant thoughts he repaired to his abode of peace to enjoy the glorious summer weather and his garden all bright with flowers. During these last days he worked on his novel in the Swiss chalet presented to him by Fechter. The upper room made a charming study, and in it, he told an American friend,

' : I have put five mirrors, and they reflect and refract, in all kinds of ways, the leaves that are quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the sail-dotted river."

There, among the branches of the trees, amidst the singing of birds and the scent of the flowers, he passed the whole of the 8th of June, only going once to the house for luncheon, and returning to the chalet, where almost the last lines he wrote made reference to such a June morning as this had been, with a brilliant sun shining over the old city of Rochester, and

4i the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, .scents from gardens, woods, and fields or, rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its yielding time penetrate into the Cathedral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the Resurrection and the Life." Returning to the house, he wrote some letters, inc hiding ,one to his friend Charles Kent, a man greatly loved by all who knew him, and to whom frequent reference has been made in our columns. In this letter he arranged to see Kent in London next day. Dinner had begun when Miss Hogarth

saw with alarm a singular expression of trouble and pain in his face. " For an hour," he then told her, " he had been very ill," but he wished dinner to go on. These were his last coherent words, and at ten minutes past six on the evening of the following day, Thursday, the 9th of June, the fifth aniversary of the terrible railway accident at Staplehurst, he died. He had lived four months beyond his 58th year.

Only those who remember the 10th of June, 1870, can realize how the bright sun of that summer day seemed blotted out. Throughout Britain indeed, tliroughout the world there were but three words on men's lips : " Dickens is dead." The Times in its leader well said : "It will be felt by millions as nothing less than a personal bereavement." In reference to his marvellous powers it remarked :

" It is certainly a wonderful phenomenon that a book like ' Pickwick,' the pages of which overflow with humour, and are marked in every sentence with the keenest observation of men and things, should have been produced by a young man of 24."

The Times also paid high tribute to the moral influence of Dickens' s writings and to his eminently kindly nature, full of sympathy for all around him.

" This, without being paraded, makes itself manifest in his works, and we have no doubt whatever that much of the active benevolence of the present day, the interest in humble persons and humble things, and the desire to seek out .and relieve every form of misery, is due to the influence of his works. We feel we have lost one of the foremost Englishmen of the age."

Forster tells us that Dickens

" had a notion that when he died he should like to lie in the little graveyard belonging to the Cathedral at the foot of the Castle wall of Ro- chester."

But this was not in accordance with the nation's wish, and The Times, in a leading article on the 13th of June, echoed the uni- versal desire that he should be laid to rest in Westminster Abbey :

" Among those whose sacred dust lies there, or whose names are recorded on the walls, very few are more worthy than Charles Dickens of such a home. We see indeed, with the modesty which especially -distinguished him, he has in his will expressed a wish to be buried with as much simplicity and privacy as possible. If his relatives should think it their duty to adhere to this direction, we shall defer to their decision with profound respect. But the Dean of West- minster is not precluded from preferring a request

I that Dickens may be buried in the only tomb in England wort hy of him .... If his friends prefer it, let them have as quiet a funeral as they

i please, their wishes will be religiously respected.

I But let him lie in the Abbey, where English-