“In every town where we stay, though it be only for a day, we hold a regular levée or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an average with five or six hundred people. . . Think of two hours of this
every day, and the people coming by hundreds, all fresh, and piping hot, and full of questions, when we are literally exhausted and can hardly stand.”
One of the few entirely satisfactory occurrences was the gift of a dog called Boz, who was re-named Mr Snittle Timbery after a character in Nicholas Nickleby. He lived to be very old and went everywhere with his master (i., p. 70, note).
At Niagara he got some peace, which was much needed because of “the incessant persecutions of the people, by land and water, on stage-coach, railway car, and steamer, which exceeds anything you can picture to yourself by the utmost stretch of your imagination” (i., p. 71).
And on the copyright scandal he writes in the same letter: “Is it not a horrible thing that scoundrel book-sellers should grow rich here from publishing books, the authors of which do not reap one farthing from their issue by scores of thousands; and that every vile blackguard, and detestable newspaper, so filthy and bestial that no honest man would admit one into his house for a scullery door-mat, should be able to publish these same writings, side by side, cheek by jowl, with the coarsest and most obscene companions?” Not that he had much hope of reform, but he could not help crying, “Stop, thief!”
On his return he wrote to Longman: “I have fought the fight across the Atlantic with the utmost energy I could command; have never been turned aside by any consideration for an instant; am fresher for the fray than ever; will battle it to death, and
die game to the last.” He was soon entangled in dinners; of his trials at a hospital dinner he wrote of listening to speeches and sentiments such “as any moderately intelligent dustman” would have blushed to have thought of. “Sleek, slobbering, bow-paunched, over-fed, apoplectic, snorting cattle, and the auditory leaping up in their delight.”
In November 1843, he speaks of an opera he did in “damnable good nature for Hullah,” who wrote “some very pretty music to it.” He also did a farce “as a sort of practical joke.” “It was funny—adapted from one of the published sketches called the ‘Great Winglebury Duel,’ and was published by Chapman and Hall.” He devoutly wished these productions forgotten.
In a letter to Macready of 3rd January 1844, he speaks of sending him a little book which had been published 17th December 1843, and describes it as the greatest success, “I think, I have ever achieved.” It seems to be the Christmas Carol, as on 4th January 1844 he wrote to Leman Blanchard in regard to a review of the Carol. “I must thank you because you have filled my heart up to the brim, and it is running over.” In the summer of 1844 he started for a holiday abroad, but in November he travelled back to London to see The Chimes through the press, of which he wrote, 5th November 1844:—
“I believe I have . . . knocked the Carol out of the field. It will make a great uproar, I have no doubt.” He adds (i., p. 145): “If you had seen Macready, last night, undisguisedly sobbing and crying on the sofa as I read The Chimes, you would