LINKS WITH CHARLES DICKENS

Hokitika Guardian, 13 March 1929, Page 1

LINKS WITH CHARLES DICKENS

FAMOUS CHALET TO BE SOLD. LONDON, January 17. The chalet in which Dickens wrote the last chapter of “Edwin Drood,” as well as other works, is to be sold. It is now in the grounds of Cobhain Hall, Kent, and it was given by sons of Dickens to the sixth Lord Darnley shortly after the author’s death, and re-erected in the gardens. It originally stood in | Dickens’s garden at Gad’s Hill, two miles away. The auctioneers are authorised to sell the clnilet- only provided it is kept intact in perpetuity. Dickens’s last letter, written a few hours before bis death, is to be sold at Sotheby’s. It consists of one and a ball pages, and was written from Gad’s Hill, on Wednesday, June S. 1870, to John M. Mukelutm. On May 17, Dickens was to have attended the Queen’s Hall with his daughter, but on the 16.t1i there was an intimation of a sudden disablement. “I am sorry to report.” lie wrote to John Forster, “that in the old and boisterous endeavour to dine at preposterous hours and places, I have been pulled up by sharp attack in my foot.” There-will also be sold a lett'- which Dickens wrote a fortnight later, making a request for a voltaic band for bis right foot, “as a remedy against vvliat be supposes to be neiilargia there, originating on overwalking deep snow, to which lie is occasionally liable.” Dickens spent the whole of June Bth. writing in bis chalet, and lie was to be in London the following day. Writing that night to Mr Makeham, there were several references to “Edwin Drood.” “1 have always striven in my writings.” be added, “to express veneration for the life and lessons of our Saviour, because 1 feel it-, and because 1 re-wrote that history for my children—every one ol whom knew jt from having it repeated to them long before they could read, and almost as soon as they could speak. But I have never made proclamation of this from the-housetops."