The publication of the "Pictures," though I have dealt with it as a
sort of complement to Dickens' sojourn in Italy, carries us to the
year 1846. But before going on with the history of that year, there
are one or two points to be taken up in the history of 1845. The first
is the performance, on the 21st of September, of Ben Jonson's play of
"Every Man in his Humour," by a select company of amateur actors,
among whom Dickens held chief place. "He was the life and soul of the
entire affair," says Forster. "I never seem till then to have known
his business capabilities. He took everything on himself, and did the
whole of it without an effort. He was stage director, very often stage
carpenter, scene arranger, property man, prompter, and band-master.
Without offending any one, he kept every one in order. For all he had
useful suggestions.... He adjusted scenes, assisted carpenters,
invented costumes, devised playbills, wrote out calls, and enforced,
as well as exhibited in his own proper person, everything of which he
urged the necessity on others." Dickens had once thought of the stage
as a profession, and was, according to all accounts, an amateur actor
of very unusual power. But of course he only acted for his amusement,
and I don't know that I should have dwelt upon this performance, which
was followed by others of a similar kind, if it did not, in Forster's
description, afford such a signal instance of his efficiency as a
practical man. The second event to be mentioned as happening in 1845,
is the publication of another very pretty Christmas story, "The
Cricket on the Hearth."
Though Dickens had ceased to edit _The Daily News_ on the 9th of
February, 1846, he contributed to the paper for some few weeks longer.
But by the month of May his connection with it had entirely ceased;
and on the 31st of that month, he started, by Belgium and the Rhine,
for Lausanne in Switzerland, where he had determined to spend some
time, and commence his next great book, and write his next Christmas
story.
A beautiful place is Lausanne, as many of my readers will know; and a
beautiful house the house called Rosemont, situated on a hill that
rises from the Lake of Geneva, with the lake's blue waters stretching
below, and across, on the other side, a magnificent panorama of snowy
mountains, the Simplon, St. Gothard, Mont Blanc, towering to the sky.
This delightful place Dickens took at a rent of some £10 a month. Then
he re-arranged all the furniture, as was his energetic wont. Then he
spent a fortnight or so in looking about him, and writing a good deal
for Lord John Russell on Ragged Schools, and for Miss Coutts about her
various charities; and finally, on the 28th of June, as he announced
to Forster in capital letters, BEGAN DOMBEY.
But as the Swiss pine with home-sickness when away from their own
dear land, so did this Londoner, amid all the glories of the Alps,
pine for the London streets. It seemed almost as if they were
essential to the exercise of his genius. The same strange mental
phenomenon which he had observed in himself at Genoa was reproduced
here. Everything else in his surroundings smiled most congenially. The
place was fair beyond speech. The shifting, changing beauty of the
mountains entranced him. The walks offered an endless variety of
enjoyment. He liked the people. He liked the English colony. He had
made several dear friends among them and among the natives. He was
interested in the politics of the country, which happened, just then,
to be in a state of peculiar excitement and revolution. Everything was
charming;--"but," he writes, "the toil and labour of writing, day
after day, without that magic-lantern (of the London streets) is
IMMENSE!" It literally knocked him up. He had "bad nights," was "sick
and giddy," desponding over his book, more than half inclined to
abandon the Christmas story altogether for that year. However, a short
trip to Geneva, and the dissipation of a stroll or so in its
thoroughfares, to remind him, as it were, of what streets were like,
and a week of "idleness" "rusting and devouring," "complete and
unbroken," set him comparatively on his legs again, and before he left
Lausanne for Paris on the 16th of November, he had finished three
parts of "Dombey," and the "Battle of Life."
Of the latter I don't know that I need say anything. It is decidedly
the weakest of his Christmas books. But "Dombey" is very different
work, and the first five numbers especially, which carry the story to
the death of little Paul, contain passages of humour and pathos, and
of humour and pathos mingled together and shot in warp and woof, like
some daintiest silken fabric, that are scarcely to be matched in the
language. As I go in my mind through the motherless child's short
history--his birth, his christening, the engagement of the wet-nurse,
the time when he is consigned to the loveless care of Mrs. Pipchin,
his education in Dr. Blimber's Academy under the classic Cornelia, and
his death--as I follow it all in thought, now smiling at each
well-remembered touch of humour, and now saddened and solemnized as
the shadow of death deepens over the frail little life, I confess to
something more than critical admiration for the writer as an artist. I
feel towards him as towards one who has touched my heart. Of course it
is the misfortune of the book, regarding it as a whole, that the
chapters relating to Paul, which are only an episode, should be of
such absorbing interest, and come so early. Dickens really wrote them
too well. They dwarf the rest of the story. We find a difficulty in
resuming the thread of it with the same zest when the child is gone.
But though the remainder of the book inevitably suffers in this way,
it ought not to suffer unduly. Even apart from little Paul the novel
is a fine one. Pride is its subject, as selfishness is that of "Martin
Chuzzlewit." Mr. Dombey, the city merchant, has as much of the
arrogance of caste and position as any blue-blooded hidalgo. He is as
proud of his name as if he had inherited it from a race of princes.
That he neglects and slights his daughter, and loves his son, is
mainly because the latter will add a sort of completeness to the
firm, and make it truly Dombey _and Son_, while the girl, for all
commercial purposes, can be nothing but a cipher. And through his
pride he is struck to the heart, and ruined. Mr. Carker, his
confidential agent and manager, trades upon it for all vile ends,
first to feather his own nest, and then to launch his patron into
large and unsound business ventures. The second wife, whom he marries,
certainly with no affection on either side, but purely because of her
birth and connections, and because her great beauty will add to his
social prestige--she, with ungovernable pride equal to his own,
revolts against his authority, and, in order to humiliate him the
more, pretends to elope with Carker, whom in turn she scorns and
crushes. Broken thus in fortune and honour, Mr. Dombey yet falls not
ignobly. His creditors he satisfies in full, reserving to himself
nothing; and with a softened heart turns to the daughter he had
slighted, and in her love finds comfort. Such is the main purport of
the story, and round it, in graceful arabesques, are embroidered,
after Dickens' manner, a whole world of subsidiary incidents thronged
with all sorts of characters. What might not one say about Dr.
Blimber's genteel academy at Brighton; and the Toodles family, so
humble in station and intellect and so large of heart; and the
contrast between Carker the manager and his brother, who for some
early dishonest act, long since repented of, remains always Carker the
junior; and about Captain Cuttle, and that poor, muddled nautical
philosopher, Captain Bunsby, and the Game Chicken, and Mrs. Pipchin,
and Miss Tox; and Cousin Feenix with wilful legs so little under
control, and yet to the core of him a gentleman; and the apoplectic
Major Bagstock, the Joey B. who claimed to be "rough and tough and
devilish sly;" and Susan Nipper, as swift of tongue as a rapier, and
as sharp? Reader, don't you know all these people? For myself, I have
jostled against them constantly any time the last twenty years. They
are as much part of my life as the people I meet every day.
But there is one person whom I have left out of my enumeration, not
certainly because I don't know him, for I know him very well, but
because I want to speak about him more particularly. That person is my
old friend, Mr. Toots; and the special point in his character which
induces me to linger is the slight touch of craziness that sits so
charmingly upon him. M. Taine, the French critic, in his chapters on
Dickens, repeats the old remark that genius and madness are near
akin.[20] He observes, and observes truly, that Dickens describes so
well because an imagination of singular intensity enables him to _see_
the object presented, and at the same time to impart to it a kind of
visionary life. "That imagination," says M. Taine, "is akin to the
imagination of the monomaniac." And, starting from this point, he
proceeds to show, here again quite truly, with what admirable
sympathetic power and insight Dickens has described certain cases of
madness, as in Mr. Dick. But here, having said some right things, M.
Taine goes all wrong. According to him, these portraits of persons who
have lost their wits, "however amusing they may seem at first sight,"
are "horrible." They could only have been painted by "an imagination
such as that of Dickens, excessive, disordered, and capable of
hallucination." He seems to be not far from thinking that only our
splenetic and melancholy race could have given birth to such literary
monsters. To speak like this, as I conceive, shows a singular
misconception of the instinct or set purpose that led Dickens to
introduce these characters into his novels at all. It is perfectly
true that he has done so several times. Barnaby Rudge, the hero of the
book of the same name, is half-witted. Mr. Dick, in "David
Copperfield," is decidedly crazy. Mr. Toots is at least simple. Little
Miss Flite, in "Bleak House," haunting the Law Courts in expectation
of a judgment on the Day of Judgment, is certainly not _compos
mentis_. And one may concede to M. Taine that some element of sadness
must always be present when we see a human creature imperfectly gifted
with man's noblest attribute of reason. But, granting this to the
full, is it possible to conceive of anything more kindly and gentle in
the delineation of partial insanity than the portraits which the
French critic finds horrible? Barnaby Rudge's lunatic symptoms are
compatible with the keenest enjoyment of nature's sights and sounds,
fresh air and free sunlight, and compatible with loyalty and high
courage. Many men might profitably change their reason for his
unreason. Mr. Dick's flightiness is allied to an intense devotion and
gratitude to the woman who had rescued him from confinement in an
asylum; there lives a world of kindly sentiments in his poor
bewildered brains. Of Mr. Toots, Susan Nipper says truly, "he may not
be a Solomon, nor do I say he is, but this I do say, a less selfish
human creature human nature never knew." And to this one may add that
he is entirely high-minded, generous, and honourable. Miss Flite's
crazes do not prevent her from being full of all womanly sympathies.
Here I think lies the charm these characters had for Dickens. As he
was fond of showing a soul of goodness in the ill-favoured and
uncouth, so he liked to make men feel that even in a disordered
intellect all kindly virtues might find a home, and a happy one. M.
Taine may call this "horrible" if he likes. I think myself it would be
possible to find a better adjective.
Dickens was at work on "Dombey and Son" during the latter part of the
year 1846, and the whole of 1847, and the early part of 1848. We left
him on the 16th of November, in the first of these years, starting
from Lausanne for Paris, which he reached on the evening of the 20th.
Here he took a house--a "preposterous" house, according to his own
account, with only gleams of reason in it; and visited many theatres;
and went very often to the Morgue, where lie the unowned dead; and had
pleasant friendly intercourse with the notable French authors of the
time, Alexandre Dumas the Great, most prolific of romance writers; and
Scribe of the innumerable plays; and the poets Lamartine and Victor
Hugo; and Chateaubriand, then in his sad and somewhat morose old age.
And in Paris too, with the help of streets and crowded ways, he
wrote the great number of Dombey, the number in which little Paul
dies. Three months did Dickens spend in the French capital, the
incomparable city, and then was back in London, at the old life of
hard work; but with even a stronger infusion than before of private
theatricals--private theatricals on a grandiose scale, that were
applauded by the Queen herself, and took him and his troupe starring
about during the next three or four years, hither and thither, and
here and there, in London and the provinces. "Splendid strolling"
Forster calls it; and a period of unmixed jollity and enjoyment it
seems to have been. Of course Dickens was the life and soul of it all.
Mrs. Cowden Clarke, one of the few survivors, looking back to that
happy time, says enthusiastically, "Charles Dickens, beaming in look,
alert in manner, radiant with good humour, genial-voiced, gay, the
very soul of enjoyment, fun, good taste, and good spirits, admirable
in organizing details and suggesting novelty of entertainment, was of
all beings the very man for a holiday season."[21] The proceeds of the
performances were devoted to various objects, but chiefly to an
impossible "Guild of Literature and Art," which, in the sanguine
confidence of its projectors, and especially of Dickens, was to
inaugurate a golden age for the author and the artist. But of all
this, and of Dickens' speeches at the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, and
Glasgow Athenæum, in the December of 1847, I don't know that I need
say very much. The interest of a great writer's life is, after all,
mainly in what he writes; and when I have said that "Dombey" proved to
be a pecuniary success, the first six numbers realizing as much as
£2,820, I think I may fairly pass on to Dickens' next book, the
"Haunted Man."
This was his Christmas story for 1848; the last, and not the worst of
his Christmas stories. Both conception and treatment are thoroughly
characteristic. Mr. Redlaw, a chemist, brooding over an ancient wrong,
comes to the conclusion that it would be better for himself, better
for all, if, in each of us, every memory of the past could be
cancelled. A ghostly visitant, born of his own resentment and gloom,
gives him the boon he seeks, and enables him to go about the world
freezing all recollection in those he meets. And lo the boon turns out
to be a curse. His presence blights those on whom it falls. For with
the memory of past wrongs, goes the memory of past benefits, of all
the mutual kindlinesses of life, and each unit of humanity becomes
self-centred and selfish. Two beings alone resist his influence--one,
a creature too selfishly nurtured for any of mankind's better
recollections; and the other a woman so good as to resist the spell,
and even, finally, to exorcise it in Mr. Redlaw's own breast.
"David Copperfield" was published between May, 1849, and the autumn of
1850, and marks, I think, the culminating point in Dickens' career as
a writer. So far there had been, not perhaps from book to book, but on
the whole, decided progress, the gradual attainment of greater ease,
and of the power of obtaining results of equal power by simpler means.
Beyond this there was, if not absolute declension, for he never wrote
anything that could properly be called careless and unworthy of
himself, yet at least no advance. Of the interest that attaches to the
book from the fact that so many portions are autobiographical, I have
already spoken; nor need I go over the ground again. But quite apart
from such adventitious attractions, the novel is an admirable one.
All the scenes of little David's childhood in the Norfolk home--the
Blunderstone rookery, where there were no rooks--are among the most
beautiful pictures of childhood in existence. In what sunshine of love
does the lad bask with his mother and Peggotty, till Mrs. Copperfield
contracts her disastrous second marriage with Mr. Murdstone! Then how
the scene changes. There come harshness and cruelty; banishment to Mr.
Creakle's villainous school; the poor mother's death; the worse
banishment to London, and descent into warehouse drudgery; the strange
shabby-genteel, happy-go-lucky life with the Micawbers; the flight
from intolerable ills in the forlorn hope that David's aunt will take
pity on him. Here the scene changes again. Miss Betsy Trotwood, a fine
old gnarled piece of womanhood, places the boy at school at
Canterbury, where he makes acquaintance with Agnes, the woman whom he
marries far, far on in the story; and with her father, Mr. Wickham, a
somewhat port wine-loving lawyer; and with Uriah Heep, the fawning
villain of the piece. How David is first articled to a proctor in
Doctors' Commons, and then becomes a reporter, and then a successful
author; and how he marries his first wife, the childish Dora, who
dies; and how, meanwhile, Uriah is effecting the general ruin, and
aspiring to the hand of Agnes, till his villanies are detected and his
machinations defeated by Micawber--how all this comes about, would be
a long story to tell. But, as is usual with Dickens, there are
subsidiary rills of story running into the main stream, and by one of
these I should like to linger a moment. The head-boy, and a kind of
parlour-boarder, at Mr. Creakles' establishment, is one Steerforth,
the spoilt only son of a widow. This Steerforth, David meets again
when both are young men, and they go down together to Yarmouth, and
there David is the means of making him known to a family of
fisherfolk. He is rich, handsome, with an indescribable charm,
according to his friends' testimony, and he induces the fisherman's
niece, the pretty Em'ly, to desert her home, and the young
boat-builder to whom she is engaged, and to fly to Italy. Now to this
story, as Dickens tells it, French criticism objects that he dwells
exclusively on the sin and sorrow, and sets aside that in which the
French novelist would delight, viz., the mad force and irresistible
sway of passion. To which English criticism may, I think, reply, that
the "pity of it," the wide-working desolation, are as essentially part
of such an event as the passion; and, therefore, even from an
exclusively artistic point of view, just as fit subjects for the
novelist.
While "David Copperfield" was in progress, Dickens started on a new
venture. He had often before projected a periodical, and twice, as we
have seen,--once in _Master Humphrey's Clock_, and again as editor of
_The Daily News_,--had attempted quasi-journalism or its reality. But
now at last he had struck the right vein. He had discovered a means of
utilizing his popularity, and imparting it to a paper, without being
under the crushing necessity of writing the whole of that paper
himself. The first number of _Household Words_ appeared on the 30th of
March, 1850.
The "preliminary word" heralds the paper in thoroughly characteristic
fashion, and is, not unnaturally, far more personal in tone than the
first leading article of the first number of _The Daily News_, though
that, too, be it said in passing, bears traces, through all its
officialism, of having come from the same pen.[22] In introducing
_Household Words_ to his new readers, Dickens speaks feelingly,
eloquently, of his own position as a writer, and the responsibilities
attached to his popularity, and tells of his hope that a future of
instruction, and amusement, and kindly playful fancy may be in store
for the paper. Nor were his happy anticipations belied. All that he
had promised, he gave. _Household Words_ found an entrance into
innumerable homes, and was everywhere recognized as a friend. Never
did editor more strongly impress his own personality upon his staff.
The articles were sprightly, amusing, interesting, and instructive
too--often very instructive, but always in an interesting way. That
was one of the periodical's main features. The pill of knowledge was
always presented gilt. Taking _Household Words_ and _All the Year
Round_ together--and for this purpose they may properly be regarded as
one and the same paper, because the change of name and proprietorship
in 1859[23] brought no change in form or character,--taking them
together, I say, they contain a vast quantity of very pleasant, if not
very profound, reading. Even apart from the stories, one can do very
much worse than while away an hour, now and again, in gleaning here
and there among their pages. Among Dickens' own contributions may be
mentioned "The Child's History of England," and "Lazy Tour of Two Idle
Apprentices"--being the record of an excursion made by him in 1857,
with Mr. Wilkie Collins; and "The Uncommercial Traveller" papers.
While as to stories, "Hard Times" appeared in _Household Words_; and
"The Tale of Two Cities" and "Great Expectations," in _All the Year
Round_. And to the Christmas numbers he gave some of his best and
daintiest work. Nor were novels and tales by other competent hands
wanting. Here it was that Mrs. Gaskell gave to the world those papers
on "Cranford" that are so full of a dainty, delicate humour, and "My
Lady Ludlow," and "North and South," and "A Dark Night's Work." Here,
too, Mr. Wilkie Collins wove together his ingenious threads of plot
and mystery in "The Moonstone," "The Woman in White," and "No Name."
And here also Lord Lytton published "A Strange Story," and Charles
Reade his "Very Hard Cash."
The year 1851 opened sadly for Dickens. His wife, who had been
confined of a daughter in the preceding August, was so seriously
unwell that he had to take her to Malvern. His father, to whom,
notwithstanding the latter's peculiarities and eccentricities, he was
greatly attached, died on the 31st of March; and on the 14th of April
his infant daughter died also. In connection with this latter death
there occurred an incident of great pathos. Dickens had come up from
Malvern on the 14th, to take the chair at the dinner on behalf of the
Theatrical Fund, and looking in at Devonshire Terrace on his way,
played with the children, as was his wont, and fondled the baby, and
then went on to the London Tavern.[24] Shortly after he left the
house, the child died, suddenly. The news was communicated to Forster,
who was also at the dinner, and he decided that it would be better not
to tell the poor father till the speech of the evening had been made.
So Dickens made his speech, and a brilliant one it was--it is
brilliant even as one reads it now, in the coldness of print, without
the glamour of the speaker's voice, and presence, and yet brilliant
with an undertone of sadness, which the recent death of the speaker's
father would fully explain. And Forster, who knew of the yet later
blow impending on his friend, had to sit by and listen as that dear
friend, all unconscious of the dread application of the words, spoke
of "the actor" having "sometimes to come from scenes of sickness, of
suffering, ay, even of death itself, to play his part;" and then went
on to tell how "all of us, in our spheres, have as often to do
violence to our feelings, and to hide our hearts in fighting this
great battle of life, and in discharging our duties and
responsibilities."
In this same year, 1851, Dickens left the house in Devonshire Terrace,
now grown too small for his enlarging household, and, after a long
sojourn at Broadstairs, moved into Tavistock House, in Tavistock
Square. Here "Bleak House" was begun at the end of November, the first
number being published in the ensuing March. It is a fine work of art
unquestionably, a very fine work of art--the canvas all crowded with
living figures, and yet the main lines of the composition
well-ordered and harmonious. Two threads of interest run through the
story, one following the career of Lady Dedlock, and the other tracing
the influence of a great Chancery suit on the victims immeshed in its
toils. From the first these two threads are distinct, and yet happily
interwoven. Let us take Lady Dedlock's thread first. She is the wife
of Sir Leicester Dedlock, whose "family is as old as the hills, and a
great deal more respectable," and she is still very beautiful, though
no longer in the bloom of youth, and she is cold and haughty of
manner, as a woman of highest fashion sometimes may be. But in her
past there is an ugly hidden secret; and a girl of sweetest
disposition walks her kindly course through the story, who might call
Lady Dedlock "mother." This secret, or perhaps rather the fact that
there is a secret at all, she reveals in a moment of surprise to the
family lawyer; and she lays herself still further open to his
suspicions by going, disguised in her maid's clothes, to the poor
graveyard where her former lover lies buried. The lawyer worms the
whole story out, and, just as he is going to reveal it, is murdered by
the French maid aforesaid. But the murder comes too late to save my
lady, nay, adds to her difficulties. She flies, in anticipation of the
disclosure of her secret, and is found dead at the graveyard gate. To
such end has the sin of her youth led her. So once again has Dickens
dwelt, not on the passionate side of wrongful love, but on its sorrow.
Now take the other thread--the Chancery suit--"Jarndyce _versus_
Jarndyce," a suit held in awful reverence by the profession as a
"monument of Chancery practice"--a suit seemingly interminable, till,
after long, long years of wrangling and litigation, the fortuitous
discovery of a will settles it all, with the result that the whole
estate has been swallowed up in the costs. And how about the
litigants? How about poor Richard Carstone and his wife, whom we see,
in the opening of the story, in all the heyday and happiness of their
youth, strolling down to the court--they are its wards,--and wondering
sadly over the "headache and heartache" of it all, and then saying,
gleefully, "at all events Chancery will work none of its bad influence
on _us_"? "None of its bad influence on _us_!" poor lad, whose life is
wasted and character impaired in following the mirage of the suit, and
who is killed by the mockery of its end. Thus do the two intertwined
stories run; but apart from these, though all in place and keeping,
and helping on the general development, there is a whole profusion of
noticeable characters. In enumerating them, however baldly, one
scarcely knows where to begin. The lawyer group--clerks and all--is
excellent. Dickens' early experiences stood him in good stead here.
Excellent too are those studies in the ways of impecuniosity and
practical shiftlessness, Harold Skimpole, the airy, irresponsible,
light-hearted epicurean, with his pretty tastes and dilettante
accomplishments, and Mrs. Jellyby, the philanthropist, whose eyes "see
nothing nearer" than Borrioboola-Gha, on the banks of the far Niger,
and never dwell to any purpose on the utter discomfort of the home of
her husband and children. Characters of this kind no one ever
delineated better than Dickens. That Leigh Hunt, the poet and
essayist, who had sat for the portrait of Skimpole, was not altogether
flattered by the likeness, is comprehensible enough; and in truth it
is unfair, both to painter and model, that we should take such
portraits too seriously. Landor, who sat for the thunderous and kindly
Boythorn, had more reason to be satisfied. Besides these one may
mention Joe, the outcast; and Mr. Turveydrop, the beau of the school
of the Regency--how horrified he would have been at the
juxtaposition--and George, the keeper of the rifle gallery, a fine
soldierly figure; and Mr. Bucket, the detective--though Dickens had a
tendency to idealize the abilities of the police force. As to Sir
Leicester Dedlock, I think he is, on the whole, "mine author's" best
study of the aristocracy, a direction in which Dickens' forte did not
lie, for Sir Leicester _is_ a gentleman, and receives the terrible
blow that falls upon him in a spirit at once chivalrous and human.
What between "Bleak House," _Household Words_, and "The Child's
History of England," Dickens, in the spring of 1853, was overworked
and ill. Brighton failed to restore him; and he took his family over
to Boulogne in June, occupying there a house belonging to a certain M.
de Beaucourt. Town, dwelling, and landlord, all suited him exactly.
Boulogne he declared to be admirable for its picturesqueness in
buildings and life, and equal in some respects to Naples itself. The
dwelling, "a doll's house of many rooms," embowered in roses, and with
a terraced garden, was a place after his own heart. While as to the
landlord--he was "wonderful." Dickens never tires of extolling his
virtues, his generosity, his kindness, his anxiety to please, his
pride in "the property." All the pleasant delicate quaint traits in
the man's character are irradiated as if with French sunshine in his
tenant's description. It is a dainty little picture and painted with
the kindliest of brushes. Poor Beaucourt, he was "inconsolable" when
he and Dickens finally parted three years afterwards--for twice again
did the latter occupy a house, but not this same house, on "the
property." Many were the tears that he shed, and even the garden, the
loved garden, went forlorn and unweeded. But that was in 1856. The
parting was not so final and terrible in the October of 1853, when
Dickens, having finished "Bleak House," started with Mr. Wilkie
Collins, and Augustus Egg, the artist, for a holiday tour in
Switzerland and Italy.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] "History of English Literature," vol. v.
[21] "Recollections of Writers," by Charles and Mary Cowden Clarke.
[22] As, for instance, in such expressions as this: "The stamp on
newspapers is not like the stamp on universal medicine bottles, which
licenses anything, however false and monstrous."
[23] The last number of _Household Words_ appeared on the 28th of May,
1859, and the first of _All the Year Round_ on the 30th of April,
1859.
[24] There are one or two slight discrepancies between Forster's
narrative and that of Miss Dickens and Miss Hogarth. The latter are
clearly more likely to be right on such a matter.