CHAPTER X. DURING AND AFTER NICKLEBY. 1838 AND 1839. HAM: 1838. THE name of his old gallery-companion may TWICKENcarry me back from the days to which the close of Nickleby had led me, to those when it was only beginning. "This snow will take away the "cold weather," he had written, in that birth-day letter of 1838 already quoted, "and then for "Twickenham." Here a cottage was taken, nearly all the summer was passed, and a familiar face there was Mr. Beard's. There, with Talfourd and with Thackeray and Jerrold, we had many friendly days, too; and the social charm of Maclise was Daniel seldom wanting. Nor was there anything that exercised a greater fascination over Dickens than the grand enjoyment of idleness, the ready selfabandonment to the luxury of laziness, which we both so laughed at in Maclise, under whose easy swing of indifference, always the most amusing at the most aggravating events and times, we The Life of Charles Dickens. I. 15 Maclise. HAM; 1838. The charm of Maclise. TWICKEN- knew that there was artist-work as eager, energy as unwearying, and observation almost as penetrating as Dickens's own. A greater enjoyment than the fellowship of Maclise at this period it would indeed be difficult to imagine. Dickens hardly saw more than he did, while yet he seemed to be seeing nothing; and the small esteem in which this rare faculty was held by himself, a quaint oddity that gave to shrewdness itself in him an air of Irish simplicity, his unquestionable turn for literature, and a varied knowledge of it not always connected with such intense love and such unwearied practice of one special and absorbing art, combined to render him attractive far beyond the common. His fine genius and his handsome person, of neither of which at any time he seemed himself to be in the slightest Other artist degree conscious, completed the charm. Edwin Landseer, all the world's favourite, and the excellent Stanfield, came a few months later, in the Devonshire-terrace days; but another painter-friend was George Cattermole, who had then enough and to spare of fun as well as fancy to supply ordinary artists and humourists by the dozen, and wanted only a little more ballast and steadiness to have had all that could give attraction to good fellowship. A friend now especially welcome, friends. HAM: 1838. Mr. Harrison too, was the novelist Mr. Ainsworth, who shared TWICKENwith us incessantly for the three following years in the companionship which began at his house; Ainsworth. with whom we visited, during two of those years, friends of art and letters in his native Manchester, from among whom Dickens brought away his Brothers Cheeryble; and to whose sympathy in tastes and pursuits, accomplishments in literature, open-hearted generous ways, and cordial hospitality, many of the pleasures of later years were due. Frederick Dickens, to whom soon after this a treasury-clerkship was handsomely given, on Dickens's application, by Mr. Stanley of Alderley, known in and before those Manchester days, was for the present again living with his father, but passed much time in his brother's home; and another familiar face was that of Mr. Thomas Mitton, who had known him when himself a lawclerk in Lincoln's-inn, through whom there was introduction of the relatives of a friend and partner, Mr. Smithson, the gentleman connected with Yorkshire mentioned in his preface to Nickleby, who became very intimate in his house. These, his father and mother and their two younger sons, with members of his wife's family, and his married sisters and their husbands, Mr. and Mrs. Burnett and Mr. and Mrs. Austin, are HAM: TWICKEN figures that all associate themselves prominently with the days of Doughty-street and the cottages of Twickenham and Petersham as remembered by me in the summers of 1838 and 1839. PETERSHAM: 1839. In the former of these years the sports were necessarily quieter than at Petersham, where extensive garden-grounds admitted of much athletic competition, from the more difficult forms of which I in general modestly retired, but where Dickens Childish enjoyments * We had at Twickenham a balloon club for the children, of which I appear to have been elected the president on condition of supplying all the balloons, a condition which I seem so insufficiently to have complied with as to bring down upon myself the subjoined resolution. The Snodgering Blee and Popem Jee were the little brother and sister, for whom, as for their successors, he was always inventing these surprising descriptive epithets. "Gammon Lodge, Saturday evening, "June 23rd, 1838. Sir, I am requested to inform you that "at a numerous meeting of the Gammon Aeronautical As❝sociation for the Encouragement of Science and the Con"sumption of Spirits (of Wine)-Thomas Beard Esquire, "Mrs. Charles Dickens, Charles Dickens Esquire, the Snodger"ing Blee, Popem Jee, and other distinguished characters "being present and assenting, the vote of censure of which I "enclose a copy was unanimously passed upon you for gross "negligence in the discharge of your duty, and most un"justifiable disregard of the best interests of the Society. I "am, Sir, your most obedient Servant, Charles Dickens, "Honorary Secretary. To John Forster, Esquire." 1839. sports. for the most part held his own against even such PETERSHAM: accomplished athletes as Maclise and Mr. Beard. Athletic Bar-leaping, bowling, and quoits, were among the games carried on with the greatest ardour; and in sustained energy, what is called keeping it up, Dickens certainly distanced every competitor. Even the lighter recreations of battledore and bagatelle were pursued with relentless activity; and at such amusements as the Petersham races, in those days rather celebrated, and which he visited daily while they lasted, he worked much harder himself than the running horses did. farce for garden. What else his letters of these years enable me Writes a to recall that could possess any interest now, may Coventbe told in a dozen sentences. He wrote a farce by way of helping the Covent-garden manager which the actors could not agree about, and which he turned afterwards into a story called the Lamplighter. He entered his name among the students Entered at at the inn of the Middle-temple, though he did temple. not eat dinners there until many years later. We made together a circuit of nearly all the London prisons; and, in coming to the prisoners under remand while going over Newgate, accompanied by Macready and Mr. Hablot Browne,* were *Not Mr. Procter, as, by an oversight of his own, the Middle |