It (the school in Boulogne) was confined to English boys who were sent there, presumably, with a view to their becoming proficient in the French language. I was very young then, and although two of my brothers were at the school, I felt rather sad and forlorn. I cannot say I look back on my days there with any degree of pleasure. I did not quite like dining off tin plates, nor was the food altogether appetizing. Very pale veal with very, very watery gravy and the usual stick-jaw pudding were most often the delicacies put before us.

From this sad farewell it was a relief to turn to the more cheering prospect of getting Harry ready to enter Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Here was the one nephew Georgina could take pride in-the only one who never disappointed his father, the steady lad with a consistently good academic record. Had he not been promoted to the place of Head Censor at Wimbledon? And a few months before, during his father's absence in America, lie had capably organized and directed the affairs of the Higham cricket club, calling its working-class members together and addressing them - quite as if, at nineteen he were himself the squire of Gad's Hill.

But for all his youthful promise, Harry must be warned, his father felt, against the family pattern of extravagance. "Now, observe attentively," ran the paternal admonition. "We must have no shadow of debt. Square up everything whatsoever that it has been necessary to buy. Let not a farthing be outstanding on any account, when we begin with your allowance. Be particular in the minutest detail." The yearly allowance of £250, to cover all expenses, Dickens considered a handsome one, especially since he would furnish Harry's wines. Already there had been ordered and sent to Cambridge "three dozen sherry, two dozen port, six bottles of brandy, and three dozen light claret". The father-son relationship was to be built on open confidence: "If ever you find yourself on the verge of any perplexity or difficulty, come to me. You will never find me hard with you while you are manly and truthful." As Dickens had done when Plorn left, he urged upon Harry a study of the New Testament, as the one unfailing guide in life".

Within a few weeks of his matriculation at Michaelmas, Harry began to justify the hopes of his father and aunt by winning a £50 scholarship. "I have a great success in the boy-line to announce to you," Dickens hastened to tell Forster, even daring to predict that Harry might eventually win a fellowship. But there was not to be any spoiling the young man with too much money. As soon as his scholarship began, his allowance was reduced by £50. That winter, while Dickens was frequently absent from home, it was Georgina who received and communicated matters relating to Harry's finances.

The chalet had been given to him by Charles Fechter, the actor, in the beginning of 1865, and was so delightful to him that he used to love to work there in the summer time. This is how he himself described it: "My room is up among the branches of the trees, and the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches shoot in at the open windows ; and the lights and shadows of the clouds come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers and, indeed, of everything that is growing for miles and miles is most delicious." It was indeed an ideal spot, where there was nothing to disturb him or arrest the play of his fancy or interfere with the working of his imagination.

At luncheon time he would occasionally stroll into the dining-room to take a biscuit and a glass of sherry. But at such times his mind was far away; walking about the room in deep thought he would speak but little, though he used on some such occasions in an abstracted sort of way to watch the movements of the goldfinch in his cage, who had been taught to draw his water from a small glass well by means of a very light chain and a thimble. This was a task which was far from arduous, and which, judging from the perky way in which he used to look round at us while drinking out of the thimble, was one which he thoroughly enjoyed.

I can recall with the utmost vividness the long walks in the afternoon when his desk work was done, ten miles or more, when I and the dogs were sometimes his sole companions. He rarely went out without his dogs, and I remember the villagers used to talk about Mr. Dickens with his roost of dogs, a quaint expression in that connection.

I remember him as being at his best either at Christmas time or at other times when Gad's Hill was full of guests, for he loved social intercourse and was a perfect host. At such times he rose to the very height of the occasion, and it is quite impossible to express in words his geniality and brilliancy amid a brilliant circle.

To walk with him in the streets of London was in itself a revelation ; a royal progress; people of all degrees and classes taking off their hats and greeting him as he passed. One such occasion I can particularly recall. It was at the Zoo, and my father and I were walking down the broad walk when we saw, a little distance away from us, a lady and gentleman coming towards us with a bright and pretty girl of about fourteen or fifteen running ahead of them. Suddenly the little girl, catching sight of my father, ran back to her mother crying out delightedly, "Oh, mummy! mummy! it is Charles Dickens." My father, who had heard and seen it all, was strangely embarrassed; but, oh, so pleased, so truly delighted. It was a pretty scene; but such things were constantly happening. It was this popular adulation he courted and wooed ; but it never spoilt him. He remained to the end modest and quite untouched by any appearance of affectation or self-conceit.

I have been asked what is my strongest outstanding memory of him, or whether there are any particular phrases or remarks of his which live in my memory. The first part of the question is difficult to answer ; but as to my remembering any particular phrases or remarks that fell from him, it is highly improbable that I should do so, for the simple reason that in ordinary conversation he never talked for the sake of mere effect ; he never turned a sentence or coined an epigram with a view to its being recorded, as some literary and learned people are inclined to do. He was as simple and natural in his speech as he was in his manner, which was always quiet, refined, and entirely free from ostentation.

He was particularly tidy, both in his dress and in his habits; in dress, always neat and dapper, but with a marked inclination to somewhat bright - not to say startling - colours, especially in the matter of waistcoats. In his habits his methods of tidiness were very marked, so pronounced, indeed, as to fail to meet with the entire approval of us small boys.

I never went into Parliament, although I had three good seats offered to me at different times. My reasons for this were threefold: first the cost, secondly the fear of the double strain, and thirdly, a disinclination to put my conscience into a whip's pocket. As to, the first objection, when I enquired in one case as to what would be the necessary outlay on my part, I was told that the election would cost about £1,000 and I should be expected to pay a further £600 a year to the party funds, which was more than I could possibly afford, having regard to my large family. As to the second objection, I had several cases in my mind where men had broken down under the double work in Parliament and at the Bar. The third objection is best told in a story. In Gladstone's great Home Rule election, the exact date of which I cannot recall, I was asked to stand for Rochester. I think it was probably present to the minds of both parties that having regard to my father's close association with that town, I should have been elected on whatever platform I happened to stand; but I was asked to represent Rochester as a Radical by one of the principal Radicals in the town and a strong supporter of Home Rule for Ireland. I felt therefore that I ought to explain the situation and I said to him: "I am afraid you do not quite understand the position. The fact is that I am entirely opposed to Gladstone's Home Rule Bill."

In dealing with this subject one has necessarily to discuss in the first instance from what point of view and with what end should the consideration of such a question be approached. To begin with, one vital point should never be lost sight of, namely, that the real and main object of punishment is to deter others, to prevent crime in the future and put it out of the power of the particular offender to prey on society. This sounds and is in fact a truism, but it is one which has in the past been often lost sight of and indeed often wholly ignored. Revenge or anger should not be allowed to enter into or dominate the judge's mind. Now no one who knows the facts can deny, I think, that the sentences passed in the last century, even as late as the 'eighties, were quite appalling in their ferocity. I can use no milder term. In the cases where prisoners have been charged with being habitual criminals the accused have often drawn the judge's attention to their first conviction years ago, and urged that they never had a chance. I have tried many such cases and have been shocked at the manner in which the prisoners used to be treated at the outset of their lives...

There is one other feature in criminal administration which cannot and ought not to be lost sight of. If punishment is to be effective as a deterrent, prisons must surely be places to be avoided, while the labour imposed should be of such a character as to make a man shrink from undergoing it. I wonder what "hard labour" means nowadays? What of the administration inside the prison? We must take care not to fall into the dangerous habit of "molly-coddling" the inmates or even of making their prisons "happy places for criminals to live in." Are not good and kind-hearted reformers of prison life in danger of going a little too far in that direction? The prisons are meant to smash crime, not to invite it. The obvious way to avoid such a contingency is so to arrange the prisons as entirely to segregate the real professional criminals and to keep them wholly and entirely apart from the others. Much has been done to this end in particular prisons, but this must be ineffective unless the prisons they are confined in are entirely separate and distinct, with totally different discipline and independent rules from the others.