“I little thought what an important master of the ceremonies I was when I first gave your present wife an introduction to your mother.  Bear me in your mind then as the unconscious instrument of your having given your best affection to a worthy object, and I shall be the best paid master of the ceremonies since Nash drove his coach and six through the streets of Bath.

“Faithfully yours,

“CHARLES DICKENS.”

* * * * *

Among a heap of others I find a note of invitation written on the 9th of July, 1867, in which he says:  “My ‘readings’ secretary, whom I am despatching to America at the end of this week, will dine with me at Verey’s in Regent Street at six exact to be wished God-speed.  There will only be besides, Wills, Wilkie Collins, and Mr. Arthur Chappell.  Will you come?  No dress.  Evening left quite free.”

I went, and the God-speed party was a very pleasant one.  But I liked best to have him, as I frequently had, all to myself.  I suppose I am not, as Johnson said, a “clubbable” man.  At all events I highly appreciate what the Irishman called a tatur-tatur dinner, whether the gender in the case be masculine or feminine; and I incline to give my adherence to the philosophy of the axiom that declares “two to be company, and three none.”  But then I am very deaf, and that has doubtless much to do with it.

On the 10th of September, 1868, Dickens writes:—­

* * * * *

“The madness and general political bestiality of the General Elections will come off in the appropriate Guy Fawkes days.  It was proposed to me, under very flattering circumstances indeed, to come in as the third member for Birmingham; I replied in what is now my stereotyped phrase, ’that no consideration on earth would induce me to become a candidate for the representation of any place in the House of Commons.’  Indeed it is a dismal sight, is that arena altogether.  Its irrationality and dishonesty are quite shocking.” [What would he have said now!] “How disheartening it is, that in affairs spiritual or temporal mankind will not begin at the beginning, but will begin with assumptions.  Could one believe without actual experience of the fact, that it would be assumed by hundreds of thousands of pestilent boobies, pandered to by politicians, that the Established Church in Ireland has stood between the kingdom and Popery, when as a crying grievance it has been Popery’s trump-card!

“I have now growled out my growl, and feel better.

“With kind regards, my dear Trollope,

“Faithfully yours,

“CHARLES DICKENS.”

* * * * *

In the December of that year came another growl, as follows:—­

* * * * *

“KENNEDY’S HOTEL, EDINBURGH.

“MY DEAR TROLLOPE,—­I am reading here, and had your letter forwarded to me this morning.  The MS. accompanying it was stopped at All The Year Round office (in compliance with general instructions referring to any MS. from you) and was sent straight to the printer.