occurred an incident of great pathos.  Dickens had come up from Malvern on the 14th, to take the chair at the dinner on behalf of the Theatrical Fund, and looking in at Devonshire Terrace on his way, played with the children, as was his wont, and fondled the baby, and then went on to the London Tavern.[24] Shortly after he left the house, the child died, suddenly.  The news was communicated to Forster, who was also at the dinner, and he decided that it would be better not to tell the poor father till the speech of the evening had been made.  So Dickens made his speech, and a brilliant one it was—­it is brilliant even as one reads it now, in the coldness of print, without the glamour of the speaker’s voice, and presence, and yet brilliant with an undertone of sadness, which the recent death of the speaker’s father would fully explain.  And Forster, who knew of the yet later blow impending on his friend, had to sit by and listen as that dear friend, all unconscious of the dread application of the words, spoke of “the actor” having “sometimes to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering, ay, even of death itself, to play his part;” and then went on to tell how “all of us, in our spheres, have as often to do violence to our feelings, and to hide our hearts in fighting this great battle of life, and in discharging our duties and responsibilities.”

In this same year, 1851, Dickens left the house in Devonshire Terrace, now grown too small for his enlarging household, and, after a long sojourn at Broadstairs, moved into Tavistock House, in Tavistock Square.  Here “Bleak House” was begun at the end of November, the first number being published in the ensuing March.  It is a fine work of art unquestionably, a very fine work of art—­the canvas all crowded with living figures, and yet the main lines of the composition well-ordered and harmonious.  Two threads of interest run through the story, one following the career of Lady Dedlock, and the other tracing the influence of a great Chancery suit on the victims immeshed in its toils.  From the first these two threads are distinct, and yet happily interwoven.  Let us take Lady Dedlock’s thread first.  She is the wife of Sir Leicester Dedlock, whose “family is as old as the hills, and a great deal more respectable,” and she is still very beautiful, though no longer in the bloom of youth, and she is cold and haughty of manner, as a woman of highest fashion sometimes may be.  But in her past there is an ugly hidden secret; and a girl of sweetest disposition walks her kindly course through the story, who might call Lady Dedlock “mother.”  This secret, or perhaps rather the fact that there is a secret at all, she reveals in a moment of surprise to the family lawyer; and she lays herself still further open to his suspicions by going, disguised in her maid’s clothes, to the poor graveyard where her former lover lies buried.  The lawyer worms the whole story out, and, just as he is going to reveal it, is murdered