conclusion of Nickleby, are the subjects of his letters LONDON: between October and December.

1839. House

I have worked at hunting.

"Thank God, all goes famously. 'Barnaby all day, and moreover seen a beautiful (and

reasonable) house in Kent-terrace, where Macready once 'lived, but larger than his.' Again (this having gone off): 'Barnaby has suffered so much from the house-hunting, 'that I mustn't chop to-day.' Then (for the matter of the Middle-temple) 'I return the form. It's the right 'temple, I take for granted. Barnaby moves, not at Working slowly. 'race-horse speed, but yet as fast (I think) as under these 'unsettled circumstances could possibly be expected.' Or again: 'All well. Barnaby has reached his tenth 'page. I have just turned lazy, and have passed into Christabel, and thence to Wallenstein.' At last the choice was made. A house of great promise (and great Devon'premium), "undeniable" situation, and excessive splen- race in 'dour, is in view. Mitton is in treaty, and I am in ecstatic prospect 'restlessness. Kate wants to know whether you have any 'books to send her, so please to shoot here any literary 'rubbish on hand.' To these I will only add a couple of extracts from his letters while in Exeter arranging his father's and mother's new home. They are very humorous; and the vividness with which everything, once seen, was photographed in his mind and memory, is pleasantly shown in them.

shire-ter

Exeter :

C. D.

'I took a little house for them this morning' (5th March, From 1839: from the New-London-inn), and if they are not 'pleased with it I shall be grievously disappointed. Exactly 'a mile beyond the city on the Plymouth road there are

to

J. F.

EXETER: 1839.

Home for his father and mother.

A landlady and her friends.

'two white cottages: one is theirs and the other belongs 'to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms, 'but there is an excellent parlour with two other rooms 'on the ground floor, there is really a beautiful little room 'over the parlour which I am furnishing as a drawing'room, and there is a splendid garden. The paint and 'paper throughout is new and fresh and cheerful-looking, 'the place is clean beyond all description, and the neigh'bourhood I suppose the most beautiful in this most beau'tiful of English counties. Of the landlady, a Devonshire 'widow with whom I had the honour of taking lunch 'today, I must make most especial mention. She is a fat, 'infirm, splendidly-fresh-faced country dame, rising sixty 'and recovering from an attack "on the nerves"-I 'thought they never went off the stones, but I find they 'trv country air with the best of us. In the event of my 'mother's being ill at any time, I really think the vicinity 'of this good dame, the very picture of respectability and 'good humour, will be the greatest possible comfort. Her 'furniture and domestic arrangements are a capital picture, 'but that I reserve till I see you, when I anticipate a 'hearty laugh. She bears the highest character with the 'bankers and the clergyman (who formerly lived in my 'cottage himself), and is a kind-hearted worthy capital 'specimen of the sort of life, or I have no eye for the real 'and no idea of finding it out.

'This good lady's brother and his wife live in the next nearest cottage, and the brother transacts the good lady's 'business, the nerves not admitting of her transacting it 'herself, although they leave her in her debilitated state

Now the EXETER:

1839.

amination.

agree

'something sharper than the finest lancet. 'brother, having coughed all night till he coughed himself 'into such a perspiration that you might have "wringed "his hair," according to the asseveration of eye witnesses, 'his wife was sent for to negociate with me; and if you 'could have seen me sitting in the kitchen with the two 'old women, endeavouring to make them comprehend that 'I had no evil intentions or covert designs, and that I had A cross-ex'come down all that way to take some cottage and had 'happened to walk down that road and see that particular 'one, you would never have forgotten it. Then, to see the 'servant girl run backwards and forwards to the sick man, 'and when the sick man had signed one agreement which Signing 'I drew up and the old woman instantly put away in a ments. 'disused tea-caddy, to see the trouble and the number of 'messages it took before the sick man could be brought 'to sign another (a duplicate) that we might have one 'apiece, was one of the richest scraps of genuine drollery 'I ever saw in all my days. How, when the business was 'over, we became conversational; how I was facetious, and 'at the same time virtuous and domestic; how I drank 'toasts in the beer, and stated on interrogatory that I was Autobiographical. 'a married man and the father of two blessed infants; 'how the ladies marvelled thereat; how one of the ladies, 'having been in London, enquired where I lived, and, 'being told, remembered that Doughty-street and the 'Foundling-hospital were in the Old-Kent-road, which I 'didn't contradict—all this and a great deal more must 'make us laugh when I return, as it makes me laugh now 'to think of. Of my subsequent visit to the upholsterer

1839.

Visit to an upholsterer.

EXETER: 'recommended by the landlady; of the absence of the 'upholsterer's wife, and the timidity of the upholsterer 'fearful of acting in her absence; of my sitting behind a 'high desk in a little dark shop, calling over the articles 'in requisition and checking off the prices as the 'upholsterer exhibited the goods and called them out; of 'my coming over the upholsterer's daughter with many 'virtuous endearments, to propitiate the establishment and 'reduce the bill; of these matters I say nothing, either, 'for the same reason as that just mentioned. The dis'covery of the cottage I seriously regard as a blessing (not 'to speak it profanely) upon our efforts in this cause. I 'had heard nothing from the bank, and walked straight 'there, by some strange impulse, directly after breakfast. 'I am sure they may be happy there; for if I were older, 'and my course of activity were run, I am sure I could, 'with God's blessing, for many and many a year.'

The theatre.

...

'The theatre is open here, and Charles Kean is to-night 'playing for his last night. If it had been the "rig'lar" 'drama I should have gone, but I was afraid Sir Giles 'Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My 'quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is such a 'waiter! Knowles (not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles 'of the Cheetham-hill-road *) is an ass to him. This 'sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction. By the 'bye, not the least comical thing that has occurred was

*This was the butler of Mr. Gilbert Winter, one of the kind Manchester friends whose hospitality we had enjoyed with Mr. Ainsworth, and whose shrewd, quaint, old-world ways come delightfully back to me as I write his once well-known and widely honoured name.

1839.

'the visit of the upholsterer (with some further calculations) EXETER: 'since I began this letter. I think they took me here at 'the New-London for the Wonderful Being I am; they 'were amazingly sedulous; and no doubt they looked for my 'being visited by the nobility and gentry of the neighbour'hood. My first and only visitor came to-night: A ruddy- Visit from 'faced man in faded black, with extracts from a feather- sterer. 'bed all over him; an extraordinary and quite miraculously 'dirty face; a thick stick; and the personal appearance 'altogether of an amiable bailiff in a green old age. I 'have not seen the proper waiter since, and more than 'suspect I shall not recover this blow. He was announced

an uphol

(by the waiter) as " a person." I expect my bill every Dignity in

'The waiter is laughing outside the door with another 'waiter-this is the latest intelligence of my condition."

danger.