rtaking with the necessary
freshness and spirit. If I had nothing but the Christmas book to do, I
WOULD do it; but I get horrified and distressed beyond conception at the
prospect of being jaded when I come back to the other, and making it a
mere race against time. I have written the first part; I know the end
and upshot of the second; and the whole of the third (there are only
three in all). I know the purport of each character, and the plain idea
that each is to work out; and I have the principal effects sketched on
paper. It cannot end _quite_ happily, but will end cheerfully and
pleasantly. But my soul sinks before the commencement of the second
part--the longest--and the introduction of the under-idea. (The main one
already developed, with interest.) I don't know how it is. I suppose it
is the having been almost constantly at work in this quiet place; and
the dread for the _Dombey_; and the not being able to get rid of it, in
noise and bustle. The beginning two books together is also, no doubt, a
fruitful source of the difficulty; for I am now sure I could not have
invented the _Carol_ at the commencement of the _Chuzzlewit_, or gone to
a new book from the _Chimes_. But this is certain. I am sick, giddy, and
capriciously despondent. I have bad nights; am full of disquietude and
anxiety; and am constantly haunted by the idea that I am wasting the
marrow of the larger book, and ought to be at rest. One letter that I
wrote you before this, I have torn up. In that the Christmas book was
wholly given up for this year: but I now resolve to make one effort
more. I will go to Geneva to-morrow, and try on Monday and Tuesday
whether I can get on at all bravely, in the changed scene. If I cannot,
I am convinced that I had best hold my hand at once; and not fritter my
spirits and hope away, with that long book before me. You may suppose
that the matter is very grave when I can so nearly abandon anything in
which I am deeply interested, and fourteen or fifteen close MS. pages of
which, that have made me laugh and cry, are lying in my desk. Writing
this letter at all, I have a great misgiving that the letter I shall
write you on Tuesday night will not make it better. Take it, for
Heaven's sake, as an extremely serious thing, and not a fancy of the
moment. Last Saturday after a very long day's work, and last Wednesday
after finishing the first part, I was full of eagerness and pleasure. At
all other times since I began, I have been