e were Twelfth
Night parties and magic lanterns. "Never such magic lanterns as those
shown by him," she says. "Never such conjuring as his." There was
dancing, too, and the little ones taught him his steps, which he
practised with much assiduity, once even jumping out of bed in terror,
lest he had forgotten the polka, and indulging in a solitary midnight
rehearsal. Then, as the children grew older still, there were private
theatricals. "He never," she says again, "was too busy to interest
himself in his children's occupations, lessons, amusements, and
general welfare." Clearly not one of those brilliant men, a numerous
race, who when away from their homes, in general society, sparkle and
scintillate, flash out their wit, and irradiate all with their humour,
but who, when at home, are dull as rusted steel. Among the many
tributes to his greatness, that of his own child has a place at once
touching and beautiful.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Miss Dickens evidently bears proudly still her pet name of
"Mamie," and signs it to her book.

CHAPTER VII.

With the return from America began the old life of hard work and hard
play. There was much industrious writing of "American Notes," at
Broadstairs and elsewhere; and there were many dinners of welcome
home, and strolls, doubtless, with Forster and Maclise, and other
intimates, to old haunts, as Jack Straw's Castle on Hampstead Heath,
and similar houses of public entertainment. And then in the autumn
there was "such a trip ... into Cornwall," with Forster, and the
painters Stanfield and Maclise for travelling companions. How they
enjoyed themselves to be sure, and with what bubbling, bursting
merriment. "I never laughed in my life as I did on this journey,"
writes Dickens, "... I was choking and gasping ... all the way. And
Stanfield got into such apoplectic entanglements that we were often
obliged to beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could
recover him." Immediately on their return, refreshed and invigorated
by this wholesome hilarity and enjoyment, he threw himself into the
composition of his next book, and the first number of "Martin
Chuzzlewit" appeared in January, 1843.

"Martin Chuzzlewit" is unquestionably one of Dickens' great works. He
himself held it to be "in a hundred points" and "immeasurably"
superior to anything he had before written, and that verdict may, I
think, be accepted freely. The plot, as plot is usually understood,
can scarcely indee