"He has left a rather large property (in cheese and halfpence) buried, for security's sake, in various parts of the garden. I am not without suspicions of poison. A butcher was heard to threaten him some weeks since, and he stole a clasp knife belonging to a vindictive carpenter, which was never found. For these reasons, I directed a post-mortem examination, preparatory to the body being stuffed; the result of it has not yet reached me. The medical gentleman broke out the fact of his decease to me with great delicacy, observing that 'the jolliest queer start had taken place with that 'ere knowing card of a bird, as ever he see'd'—but the shock was naturally very great. With reference to the jollity of the start, it appears that a raven dying at two hundred and fifty or thereabouts, is looked upon as an infant. This one would hardly, as I may say, have been born for a century or so to come, being only two or three years old.
"I want to know more about the promised 'tickler'—when it's to come, what it's to be, and in short all about it—that I may give it the better welcome. I don't know how it is, but I am celebrated either for writing no letters at all or for the briefest specimens of epistolary correspondence in existence, and here I am—in writing to you—on the sixth side! I won't make it a seventh anyway; so with love to all your home circle, and from all mine, I am now and always,
"Faithfully yours,
"Charles Dickens.
"I am glad you like Barnaby. I have great designs in store, but am sadly cramped at first for room."
APPENDIX B
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF LADY DE LANCEY’S NARRATIVE
Reminiscences, by Samuel Rogers, under the heading: "Duke of Wellington," p. 210.