Speaking of publishers, he said, “They want all the fat, and they all lie about their sales.  Unless you have somebody in the press-room to watch, it is almost impossible to find out how many copies of a book they print.  Then there is a detestable fashion about publishers.  I had to fight a very hard battle to get the public to take a novel published by Truebner, simply because he was not known as a novel-publisher; but I was determined not to let Bentley or any of his kidney have all the fat any longer.”

Truebner, I may mention, published for him on commission, and under this arrangement he manufactured his own books and assumed all risks.

In the sense of humor and quick perception of the ludicrous he was somewhat deficient, and he was too passionately in earnest and too matter-of-fact about everything ever to attempt a joke, practical or otherwise.  Life to him was always a serious drama, calling for tireless vigilance; and he watched all the details of its gradual unfolding with constant anxiety and care, in so far as it concerned himself.

His love for the glamour of the stage led him often to the theatre; but whenever he saw anything “murdered” there, especially one of his own plays, it incensed him, and sometimes almost to fury.  He loved music,—­not, as he said, the bray of trumpets and the squeak of fiddles, but melody; and occasionally, seated at a piano, he sang, in a voice sweet and low and full of pathos, some tender English ditty.

Charles Reade had a real talent for hard work, not that occasional exclusive devotion to it during the throes of composition to which Balzac gave himself up night and day to an extent that utterly isolated him from the world for the time being, but steady, systematic, willing labor,—­a labor, I might say, of love, for he never begrudged it,—­which began every morning, when nothing special interfered with it, after a nine-o’clock breakfast and continued until late in the afternoon.  He was too practical and methodical to work by fits and starts.  Generally he laid down his pen soon after four P.M.; but often he continued writing till it was time to dress for dinner, which he took either at home or at the Garrick Club, as the spirit moved him, except when he dined out, which was not very often,—­for, although he was most genial and social in a quiet way among his intimates, he had no fondness for general society or large dinner-parties.  Yet his town residence, at No. 6 Bolton Row, was not only at the West End, but in Mayfair, the best part of it; and, although a bachelor to the end of his days, he kept house.  He afterwards resided at No. 6 Curzon Street, also in Mayfair, and then took a house at No. 2 Albert Terrace, Knightsbridge, but gave it up not long before his death, which occurred in Blomfield Terrace, Shepherd’s Bush, a London suburb.

“This capacity, this zest of yours for steady work,” I once remarked to him, “almost equals Sir Walter Scott’s.  With your encyclopaedic, classified, and indexed note-books and scrap-books, you are one of the wonders of literature.”