My sincere thanks are due to Mr. E. W. Badger, F.R.H.S., the friend of many years, for valuable help.
To my old friend and fellow-tramp, Mr. F. G. Kitton, with whose memory this delightful excursion will ever be pleasantly connected, my warmest thanks are due for reading proofs and for much kind help in many ways. "He wos werry good to me, he wos." As Pip wrote to another "Jo," "woT larX" we did have.
Last, but not least, my cordial thanks are due to Mr. Charles Dickens for much kind information and valuable criticism.
So long as readers continue to be, so long will our great English trilogy of cognate authors, Shakespeare, Scott, and Dickens, continue to be read. Indeed as regards Dickens, a writer in Blackwood, June, 1871 (and Blackwood was not always a sympathetic critic), said:—"We may apply to him, without doubt, the surest test to which the maker can be subject: were all his books swept by some intellectual catastrophe out of the world, there would still exist in the world some score at least of people, with all whose ways and sayings we are more intimately acquainted than with those of our brothers and sisters, who would owe to him their being. While we live Sam Weller and Dick Swiveller, Mr. Pecksniff and Mrs. Gamp, the Micawbers and the Squeerses, can never die. . . . They are more real than we are ourselves, and will outlive and outlast us, as they have outlived their creator. This is the one proof of genius which no critic, not the most carping or dissatisfied, can gainsay."
So long also, the author ventures to think, will pilgrimages continue to be made to the shrines of Stratford-on-Avon, Abbotsford, and Gad's Hill Place, and to their vicinities. The modest aim of this Volume is, that it may add a humble unit in helping to keep his memory green, and that it may be a useful and acceptable companion to pilgrims, not only of our own country, but also from that still "Greater Britain," where "All the Year Round" the name of Charles Dickens is almost a dearer "Household Word" than it is with us.
William R. Hughes.
Wood House, Handsworth Wood,
near Birmingham.
30th September, 1891.