IN “DICKENSLAND"

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 689, 14 June 1929, Page 13

IN “DICKENSLAND"

AUCKLANDERS VISIT ADDRESS TO FELLOWSHIP “A Visit to Dickensland” was the subject of an address given by Mr. AY. E. Arey to members 01 the Auckland Dickens Fellowship last evening. When Mr. Arey visited England recently he travelled to many of the scenes made famous in the novelist’s works. At Westminster Abbey Mr. Arey laid a wreath on Dickens’s grave on behalf of the Auckland Fellowship. While in London he visited the old “George Inn.” the counterpart of the “White Hart,” where Sam Weller was discovered by Air. Pickwick, and the building which was originally the Marshalsea Prison, where Little Dorrit’s father languished. Mr. Arey’s account of his visit to Rochester and Gad’s Hill was particularly interesting. He visited the house at Gad’s Hill where Dickens spent the last 13 years ot his life and where he died while working on “Edwin brood.” The present owner of the house has kept many of the mementoes of Dickens intact, although the chalet where Dickens did his last work has been removed to a site about six miles away. The president, of the fellowship, the Rev. A. B. Chappell, gave a description of Landport (Portsmouth), where Dickens was born and where he passed his, childhood. Mr. Preston Chambers gave a reading of Dickens’s descriptions of the London streets by day and night. .