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DICKENS

AND THE "MORNING CHRONICLE."-Various and conflicting accounts of Dickens's earliest "Sketches" have been given, and of the circumstances under which he first contributed to the evening edition of the Morning Chronicle; but the following extract, which we have been permitted to make from a long unpublished letter, will set the question at rest. The letter was addressed to the late Mr. George Hogarth, then connected with the Morning Chronicle, and was the beginning of a friendship between the two which ended in Mr. Dickens marrying Mr. Hogarth's daughter :

... As you begged me to write an original sketch for the first number of the new evening paper, and as I trust to your kindness to refer my application to the proper quarter, should I be unreasonably or improperly trespassing upon you, I beg to ask whether it is probable that if I commenced a series of articles, under some attractive title, for the Evening Chronicle, its conductors would think I had any claim to some additional remuneration-of course, of no great amount for doing so.

"Let me beg you not to misunderstand my meaning. Whatever the reply may be, I promised you an article, and shall supply it with the utmost readiness, and with an anxious desire to do my best; which I honestly assure you would be the feeling with which I should always receive any request coming personally from yourself. .. I merely wish to put it to the

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proprietors-first, whether a continuation of light papers, in the style of my Street Sketches,' would be considered of use to the new paper; and secondly, if so, whether they do not think it fair and reasonable that taking my share of the ordinary reporting business of the Chronicle besides I should receive something for the papers beyond my ordinary salary as a reporter ?" *

The offer was accepted, the then sub-editor informs us, and Mr. Dickens received an increase in his salary of from five guineas per week to seven guineas.

PORTRAITS OF DICKENS.-Besides those enumerated in the body of this book, there are others which should be mentioned. A very remarkable one was etched about 1837, with the name "Phiz" at the foot. It represents Dickens seated on a chair, and holding a portfolio. In the background a Punchand-Judy performance is going on. The face has none of that delicacy and softness about it which are observable in the Maclise portrait. It looks, however, more like the real young face of the older man, as revealed in the photograph now publishing. This portrait is very rare, and it is understood that it was withdrawn from publication soon after it appeared. Mr. Hablot K. Browne-the genuine "Phiz" -denies all knowledge of it.

* Dated "13, Furnival's Inn, Tuesday Evening, Jan. 20, [1835.]"

There exists a portrait by S. Lawrence, which was lithographed by W. Taylor.

In 1856, Ary Scheffer's portrait of the great novelist was exhibited in the Royal Academy. It was hard and cold, and gave general dissatisfaction.

Mr. Frith painted a portrait of his friend, representing him writing his celebrated compositions at his plain, but workmanlike, desk. This portrait is now the property of the great novelist's friend and executor, Mr. John Forster; and, in due time, will be hung on the walls of the National Portrait Gallery. In the Exhibition of the Royal Academy for 1857, Mr. Frith exhibited a picture (No. 125), "Kate Nickleby at Madame Mantalini's." Kate is holding a mantle, while Miss Knagg (reflected in the cheval glass) is trying on another.

THE NAMES OF DICKENS'S CHARACTERS.—It is well known that the quaint surnames of his characters, concerning which essays have been written, were the result of much painstaking. Dickens, with a genius which might have justified his trusting it implicitly and solely, placed his chief reliance on his own hard labour. It is said that when he saw a strange or odd name on a shopboard, or in walking through a village or country town, he entered it in his pocket-book, and added it to his reserve list. Then, runs the story, when he wanted a striking surname for a new character, he

had but to take the first half of one real name, and to add it to the second half of another, to produce the exact effect upon the eye and ear of the reader he desired.*

In Notes and Queries for August 28, 1858 (this periodical takes its motto from one of Mr. Dickens's characters), it was suggested that the name of "Carker" was framed from the Greek, as so much is said of Mr. Carker's teeth. Mr. Dickens, however, replied to this, that the coincidence was undesigned. It has been further suggested that the name was made up from "canker" and "carking (as in "carking care"), which are very expressive of the blighting influence possessed by Carker.

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It has been stated that the Pickwickian names of Wardle, Lowten, and Dowler occur in the Annual Register's account of the Duke of York's trial, 1809.

Some inquiry is made as to the names of Mr. Dickens's characters in an article on the novelist, in Blackwood's Magazine, April, 1855.

DESCRIPTION OF "BOZ" IN 1844.-Mr. R. H. Horne, in his "New Spirit of the Age," gives this graphic description of him as he appeared when a young man :-" Mr. Dickens is, in private, very much what might be expected from his works-by no means an invariable coincidence. He talks much or

Daily News, June 11, 1870.

little according to his sympathies. His conversation is genial. He hates argument; in fact, he is unable to argue a common case with impulsive characters who see the whole, and feel it crowding and struggling at once for immediate utterance. He never talks for effect, but for the truth or for the fun of the thing. He tells a story admirably, and generally with humorous exaggerations. His sympathies are of the broadest, and his literary tastes appreciate all excellence. He is a great admirer of the poetry of Tennyson. Mr. Dickens has singular personal activity, and is fond of games of practical skill. He is also a great walker,* and very much given to dancing Sir Roger de Coverley. In private, the general impression of him is that of a first-rate practical intellect, with 'no nonsense' about him. Seldom, if ever, has any man been more beloved by contemporary authors, and by the public of his time."

DESCRIPTION OF DICKENS IN 1852.Miss Clarke, an American lady, who visited England in 1852 with Miss Cushman and a friend, in her

* "So much of my travelling is done on foot, that if I cherished betting propensities, I should probably be found registered in sporting newspapers under some such title as the Elastic Novice, challenging all eleven-stone mankind to competition in walking. My last special feat was turning out of bed at two, after a hard day, pedestrian and otherwise, and walking thirty miles into the country to breakfast."-(" Sly Neighbourhoods," Uncommercial Traveller.)

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