Garter at Richmond; Thackeray and Alfred Tennyson joined in the celebration; and the generous giver was in his best vein. I have rarely seen Dickens happier than he was amid the sunshine of that day. Jerrold and Thackeray returned to town with us; and a little argument between them about money and its uses, led to an avowal of Dickens about himself to which I may add the confirmation of all our years of intercourse. "No man," he said, "attaches less importance to the possession of money, or less disparagement to the want of it, than I do."

Vague mention of a "next book" escaped in a letter at the end of July, on which I counselled longer abstinence. "Good advice," he replied, "but difficult: I wish you'd come to us and preach another kind of abstinence. Fancy the Preventive men finding a lot of brandy in barrels on the rocks here, the day before yesterday! Nobody knows anything about the barrels, of course. They were intended to have been landed with the next tide, and to have been just covered at low water. But the water being unusually low, the tops of the barrels became revealed to Preventive telescopes, and descent was made upon the brandy. They are always at it, hereabouts, I have no doubt. And of course B would not have had any of it. O dear no! certainly not."

His reading was considerable and very various at these intervals of labour, and in this particular summer took in all the minor tales as well as the plays of Voltaire, several of the novels (old favourites with him) of Paul de Kock, Ruskin's Lamps of Architecture, and a surprising number of books of African and other travel

for which he had insatiable relish: but the notices of all this in his letters were few. "By the bye, I observe, reading that wonderful book the French Revolution again, for the 500th time, that Carlyle, who knows everything, don't know what Mumbo Jumbo is. It is not an Idol. It is a secret preserved among the men of certain African tribes, and never revealed by any of them, for the punishment of their women. Mumbo Jumbo comes in hideous form out of the forest, or the mud, or the river, or where not, and flogs some woman who has been backbiting, or scolding, or with some other domestic mischief disturbing the general peace. Carlyle seems to confound him with the common Fetish; but he is quite another thing. He is a disguised man; and all about him is a freemasons' secret among the men.' "I finished the Scarlet Letter yes

terday. It falls off sadly after that fine opening scene. The psychological part of the story is very much overdone, and not truly done I think. Their suddenness of meeting and agreeing to go away together, after all those years, is very poor. Mr. Chillingworth ditto. The child out of nature altogether. And Mr. Dimmisdale certainly never could have begotten her." In Mr. Hawthorne's earlier books he had taken especial pleasure; his Mosses from an Old Manse having been the first book he placed in my hands on his return from America, with reiterated injunctions to read it. I will add a word or two of what he wrote of the clever story of another popular writer, because it hits well the sort of ability that has become so common, which escapes the highest point of cleverness, but stops short only at the very verge of it. "The story extremely good indeed; but

all the strongest things of which it is capable, missed. It shows just how far that kind of power can go. It is more like a note of the idea than anything else. It seems to me as if it were written by somebody who lived next door to the people, rather than inside of 'em."

I joined him for the August regatta and stayed a pleasant fortnight. His paper on "Our Wateringplace" appeared while I was there, and great was the local excitement. His own restlessness with fancies for a new book had now risen beyond bounds, and for the time he was eager to open it in that prettiest quaintest bit of English landscape, Strood valley, which reminded him always of a Swiss scene. I had not left him many days when these lines followed me.

I very nearly packed up a portmanteau and went away, the day before yesterday, into the mountains of Switzerland; alone! Still the victim of an intolerable restlessness, I shouldn't be at all surprised if I wrote to you one of these mornings from under Mont Blanc. I sit down between whiles to think of a new story, and, as it begins to grow, such a torment of a desire to be anywhere but where I am; and to be going I don't know where, I don't know why; takes hold of me, that it is like being driven away. If I had had a passport, I sincerely believe I should have gone to Switzerland the night before last. I should have remembered our engagement-say, at Paris, and have come back for it; but should probably have left by the next express train.”

At the end of November, when he had settled himself in his new London abode, the book was begun; and as generally happened with the more important incidents of his life, but 1 vays: ccidentally, begun on a Friday.

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CHAPTER XIX.

HAUNTED MAN AND HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

1848-1850.

Friendly Plea for Mr. Macrone-Completion of Christmas Tale-The "Ghost" Story and the "Bargain"-The Tetterby Family-Moral of the Story-Copperfield Sales-Letter from Russia-The Periodical taking Form-Hopes of Success-Doubts respecting it-New Design chosen-Names proposed-Appearance of First Number— Earliest Contributors-His Opinion of Mr. Sala-Child's Dream of a Star-A Fancy derived from his Childhood.

IT has been seen that his fancy for his Christmas book of 1848 first arose to him at Lausanne in the summer of 1846, and that, after writing its opening pages in the autumn of the following year, he laid it aside under the pressure of his Dombey. These lines were in the letter that closed his 1848 Broadstairs holiday. "At last I am a mentally matooring of the Christmas book-or, as poor Macrone* used to write, 'booke,'

* The mention of this name may remind me to state that I have received, in reference to the account in my first volume of Dickens's repurchase of his Sketches from Mr. Macrone, a letter from the solicitor and friend of that gentleman so expressed that I could have greatly wished to revise my narrative into nearer agreement with its writer's wish. But farther enquiry, and an examination of the books of Messrs. Chapman and Hall, have confirmed the statement given. Mr. Hansard is in error in supposing that unsold impressions" of the books were included in the transaction (the necessary requirement being simply that the small remainders on hand should be transferred with

'boke,' 'buke,' &c." It was the first labour to which he applied himself at his return.

In London it soon came to maturity; was published duly as The Haunted Man, or the Ghost's Bargain; sold largely, beginning with a subscription of twenty thousand; and had a great success on the Adelphi stage, to which it was rather cleverly adapted by Lemon. He had placed on its title page originally four lines from Tennyson's "Departure,"

"And o'er the hills, and far away

Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,

Thro' all the world IT follow'd him;"

but they were less applicable to the close than to the opening of the tale, and were dropped before publica

"

a view to being "wasted"): I know myself that it could not have included any supposed right of Mr. Macrone to have a novel written for him, because upon that whole matter, and his continued unauthorised advertisements of the tale, I decided myself the reference against him and Mr. Hansard may be assured that the 2000 was paid for the copyright alone. For the same copyright, a year before, Dickens had received £250, both the first and second series being included in the payment; and he had already had about the same sum as his half share of the profits of sales. I quote the close of Mr. Hansard's letter. Macrone no doubt was an adventurer, but he was sanguine to the highest degree. He was a dreamer of dreams, putting no restraint on his exultant hopes by the reflection that he was not dealing justly towards others. But reproach has fallen upon him from wrong quarters. He died in poverty, and his creditors received nothing from his estate. But that was because he had paid away all he had, and all he had derived from trust and credit, to authors." This may have been so, but Dickens was not among the authors so benefited. The Sketches repurchased for the high price I have named never afterwards really justified such an outlay.