The
election was a very exciting one, and the great novelist, it was said,
found food for one of his novels in the ever-famous Eatonswill, and the
ultra-abusive editors. Four years afterwards Dickens leased a cottage at
Alphington, a village about a mile and a half away from Exeter, for his
father and mother, who resided there for three and a half years. Dickens
frequently came to see them, and "Mr. Micawber," with his ample seals
and air of importance, made a great impression on the people of the
village. Dickens freely entered into the social life of Exeter, and he
was a regular visitor on these occasions at the old "Turk's Head Inn,"
adjoining the Guildhall, where it was said he picked up the "Fat Boy" in
_Pickwick_. Mrs. Lupin of the "Blue Dragon" appeared as a character in
_Martin Chuzzlewit_, and "Pecksniff" was a local worthy whom he grossly
and unpardonably caricatured.
[Illustration: "MILE END COTTAGE," ALPHINGTON.]
On leaving Exeter we crossed the river by the Exe bridge and followed
the course of that stream on our way to regain the sea-coast, entering
the suburb of St. Thomas the Apostle, where at a church mentioned in
1222 as being "without the walls," we saw the tower from which the vicar
was hanged for being concerned in the insurrection of 1549.
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