At the beginning of this year, Charles Dickens was still living at the
Palazzo Peschiere, Genoa, with his family. In February, he went with his
wife to Rome for the Carnival, leaving his sister-in-law and children at
Genoa; Miss Hogarth joining them later on at Naples. They all returned
to Rome for the Holy Week, and then went to Florence, and so back to
Genoa. He continued his residence at Genoa until June of this year, when
he returned to England by Switzerland and Belgium, the party being met
at Brussels by Mr. Forster, Mr. Maclise, and Mr. Douglas Jerrold, and
arriving at home at the end of June. The autumn months, until the 1st
October, were again spent at Broadstairs. And in this September was the
first amateur play at Miss Kelly's theatre in Dean Street, under the
management of Charles Dickens, with Messrs. Jerrold, Mark Lemon, John
Leech, Gilbert A'Beckett, Leigh, Frank Stone, Forster, and others as his
fellow-actors. The play selected was Ben Jonson's "Every Man in his
Humour," in which Charles Dickens acted Captain Bobadil. The first
performance was a private one, merely as an entertainment for the actors
and their friends, but its success speedily led to a repetition of the
same performance, and afterwards to many other performances for public
and charitable objects. "Every Man in his Humour" was shortly after
repeated, at the same little theatre, for a useful charity which needed
help; and later in the year Beaumont and Fletcher's play of "The Elder
Brother" was given by the same company, at the same place, for the
benefit of Miss Kelly. There was a farce played after the comedy on each
occasion--not always the same one--in which Charles Dickens and Mark
Lemon were the principal actors.
The letters which we have for this year, refer, with very few
exceptions, to these theatricals, and therefore need no explanation.
He was at work at the end of this year on another Christmas book, "The
Cricket on the Hearth," and was also much occupied with the project of
_The Daily News_ paper, of which he undertook the editorship at its
starting, which took place in the beginning of the following year, 1846.
[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]