ife of
hard work; but with even a stronger infusion than before of private
theatricals--private theatricals on a grandiose scale, that were
applauded by the Queen herself, and took him and his troupe starring
about during the next three or four years, hither and thither, and
here and there, in London and the provinces. "Splendid strolling"
Forster calls it; and a period of unmixed jollity and enjoyment it
seems to have been. Of course Dickens was the life and soul of it all.
Mrs. Cowden Clarke, one of the few survivors, looking back to that
happy time, says enthusiastically, "Charles Dickens, beaming in look,
alert in manner, radiant with good humour, genial-voiced, gay, the
very soul of enjoyment, fun, good taste, and good spirits, admirable
in organizing details and suggesting novelty of entertainment, was of
all beings the very man for a holiday season."[21] The proceeds of the
performances were devoted to various objects, but chiefly to an
impossible "Guild of Literature and Art," which, in the sanguine
confidence of its projectors, and especially of Dickens, was to
inaugurate a golden age for the author and the artist. But of all
this, and of Dickens' speeches at the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, and
Glasgow Athenaeum, in the December of 1847, I don't know that I need
say very much. The interest of a great writer's life is, after all,
mainly in what he writes; and when I have said that "Dombey" proved to
be a pecuniary success, the first six numbers realizing as much as
L2,820, I think I may fairly pass on to Dickens' next book, the
"Haunted Man."

This was his Christmas story for 1848; the last, and not the worst of
his Christmas stories. Both conception and treatment are thoroughly
characteristic. Mr. Redlaw, a chemist, brooding over an ancient wrong,
comes to the conclusion that it would be better for himself, better
for all, if, in each of us, every memory of the past could be
cancelled. A ghostly visitant, born of his own resentment and gloom,
gives him the boon he seeks, and enables him to go about the world
freezing all recollection in those he meets. And lo the boon turns out
to be a curse. His presence blights those on whom it falls. For with
the memory of past wrongs, goes the memory of past benefits, of all
the mutual kindlinesses of life, and each unit of humanity becomes
self-centred and selfish. Two beings alone resist his influence--one,
a creature too selfishly nurtured for any of mankind's better
r