ctures
and engravings. Here stood a marble bust of Dickens, so like him, so
youthful and handsome; and over a bedroom door were inserted the
bas-reliefs of Night and Day, after Thorwaldsen. On the first floor was
a rich library, with a fireplace and a writing-table, looking out on the
garden; and here it was that in winter Dickens and his friends acted
plays to the satisfaction of all parties. The kitchen was underground,
and at the top of the house were the bedrooms."

It appears that Andersen was wrong about the plays being acted in the
"rich library," as I am informed by Mr. Charles Dickens that "the stage
was in the school-room at the back of the ground-floor, with a platform
built outside the window for scenic purposes."

With reference to the private theatricals (or "plays," as Andersen calls
them, including _The Frozen Deep_, by Wilkie Collins, in which Dickens,
the author, Mark Lemon, and others performed, and for which in the
matter of the scenery "the priceless help of Stanfield had again been
secured"), on a temporary difficulty arising as to the arrangements,
Dickens applied to Mr. Cooke of Astley's, "who drove up in an open
phaeton drawn by two white ponies with black spots all over them
(evidently stencilled), who came in at the gate with a little jolt and a
rattle exactly as they come into the ring when they draw anything, and
went round and round the centre bed (lilacs and evergreens) of the front
court, apparently looking for the clown. A multitude of boys, who felt
them to be no common ponies, rushed up in a breathless state--twined
themselves like ivy about the railings, and were only deterred from
storming the enclosure by the Inimitable's eye." Mr. Cooke was not,
however, able to render any assistance.

Mrs. Arthur Ryland of The Linthurst, near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire,
who was present at Tavistock House on the occasion of the performance of
_The Frozen Deep_, informs me that when Dickens returned to the
drawing-room after the play was over, the constrained expression of face
which he had assumed in presenting the character of Richard Wardour
remained for some time afterwards, so strongly did he seem to realize
the presentment. The other plays performed were _Tom Thumb_, 1854, and
_The Lighthouse_ and _Fortunus_, 1855.

The following copy of a play-bill--in my collection--of one of these
performances is certainly worth preserving in a permanent form, for the
double reason that it is extremely