With regard to the most original character in the story, those who knew Clement’s Inn, where I myself once resided, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, will be able at once to identify Mrs. Gudgeon, who lived in one of the streets running into Clare Market.  Her business was that of night coffee-stall keeper.  At one time, I believe—­but I am not certain about this—­she kept a stall on the Surrey side of Waterloo Bridge, and it might have been there that, as I have been told, her portrait was drawn for a specified number of early breakfasts by an unfortunate artist who sank very low, but had real ability.  Her constant phrase was ‘I shall die o’ laughin’—­I know I shall!’ On account of her extra-ordinary gift of repartee, and her inexhaustible fund of wit and humour, she was generally supposed to be an Irishwoman.  But she was not:  she was cockney to the marrow.  Recluse as Rossetti was in his later years, he had at one time been very different, and could bring himself in touch with the lower orders of London in a way such as was only known to his most intimate friends.  With all her impudence, and I may say insolence, Mrs. Gudgeon was a great favourite with the police, who were the constant butts of her chaff.

With regard to the gipsies, although I knew George Borrow intimately, and saw a great deal of Mr. Watts-Dunton’s other Romany Rye friend, the late Frank Groome, I did not know Sinfi Lovell or Rhona Boswell.  But I may say that those who have said that Sinfi Lovell was painted from the same model as Mr. Meredith’s Kiomi are mistaken.  Sinfi Lovell was extremely beautiful, whereas Kiomi, I believe, was never very beautiful.  But that they are represented as being contemporaries and friends is shown by D’Arcy’s mention of Kiomi in Scott’s oyster-rooms.  The characters who figure in the early Raxton scenes I cannot speak of for reasons which may be pretty obvious; nor can I speak of the Welsh chapters in Aylwin, which have been a good deal discussed in recent numbers of Notes and Queries.  But being myself an East Anglian by birth—­one of my Christian names is St. Edmund, because I was born at Bury St. Edmunds—­I can say something about what the East Anglian papers call ‘Aylwinland,’ and of the truth of the pictures of the east coast to be found in the story, Since Aylwin was published an interesting attempt has been made by a correspondent in the Lowestoft Standard (25th August 1900) to identify Pakefield Church as the ‘Raxton’ Church of the story, and the writer of the letter mentions the most remarkable, and to me quite new fact, that although the guide-books of Lowestoft and the district are quite silent as to a curious crypt at the east end of Pakefield Church, there is exactly such a crypt as that described in Aylwin, and that in the early days of the correspondent in question it was used as a storehouse for bones.  The readers of Aylwin will remember the author’s words:  ’The crypt is much older than the church, and of an entirely different architecture.  It was once the depository of the bones of Danish warriors killed before the Norman conquest.’