in company with his father; and when spending his honeymoon at
Chalk, he no doubt roamed in the beautiful lanes around the village.
In 1840, after spending a vacation at Broadstairs, he posted back to
London with Maclise and Forster by way of Chatham, Rochester and
Cobham, and the three spent two agreeable days in revisiting
well-remembered scenes.

Again in 1841 Dickens and Forster passed a day and night in
Cobham and its neighbourhood, sleeping at the "Leather Bottle,"
and when he ultimately became a resident at Gad's Hill the whole
district was the greatest pleasure to him. His biographer, writing
of the year 1856, says: "Round Cobham, skirting the park and
village and passing the 'Leather Bottle,' famous in the pages of
Pickwick, was a favourite walk with Dickens."

He would often take his friends and visitors with him on these
walks, and would never miss the old village inn. W. P. Frith has
told us of how, when he formed one of the party on one of these
occasions, "we went to the 'Leather Bottle,'" and, no doubt, the
company was merry and reminiscent on the association of the village
with the novelist and his immortal book.

The happy thing to be remembered to-day is that neither the village,
park, nor inn have changed since those historic days, so that little
imagination is required by the pilgrim to recall to his mind the
scenes and characters which have made them familiar to lovers of
Dickens in every English-speaking country.