From the painting by Ary Scheller, in the National Portrait Gallery
CHARLES DICKENS IN 1855
Rischgitz Collection
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE
Where Dickens resided for nearly nine years, dating from November, 1851.
(From “Rambles in Dickens-Land,” by R. Allbut. Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. S. T. Freemantle & Co.)
man becomes unusually and startlingly himself. A good caricature will sometimes seem more like the original than the original: so it is in the greatest moments of social life. He is an unfortunate man; a man unfitted to value life and certainly unfitted to value Dickens, who has not sat at some table or talked in some company in which every one was in character, each a beautiful caricature of himself.