John Lamson
P.S.--I meant Jerome's twenty-five thousand to be used as he used it.--J.L. DICKENS DICKENS did not live to be an old man, as "old age" is reckoned in our own time. When the end came, on the evening of the 9th day of June, 1870, he had lived only four moths beyond his fifty-eight year. The news of his death was received as a universal calamity throughout the civilized world. The "London Times," in suggesting that the only fitting resting-place for the remains of such a man was in the Abbey in which the most illustrious Englishmen are laid, declared: "Statesmen, men of science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race, might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the death of Dickens. . . . However pre-eminent in station, ability, or public services, they will not have been, like our great and genial novelist, the intimate of every household. Indeed, such a position is attained not even by one man in an age."
Dickens had left instructions that he be buried privately, without previous public announcement of time or place, and without monument or memorial. He had preferred to lie in the small graveyard under Rochester Castle wall, or in the little churches of Cobham or Shorne; but all these were found to be closed. The demand that he be placed among England's great dead in Westminster Abbey, united in by all England from the dean of the Abbey to the humblest citizen, finally prevailed. It was arranged that there should be only such ceremonial as would be consistent with the injunction for privacy. And on the morning of Tuesday, the 14th of June, all was carried out with the knowledge of those only who by right might assist at the burial.
Flowers were put up on the stone flag in the floor under which the body lay; and for years after the burial fresh flowers were newly strewn there by those who came to the spot as to a shrine. The inscription upon the stone is: DICKENS