y? Of my own will I would not send him to King's-college at all,
but to Bruce-castle instead. I suppose, however, Miss Coutts is best. We
will talk over all this when I come to London." The offer to take charge
of his eldest son's education had been pressed upon Dickens by this true
friend, to whose delicate and noble consideration for him it would
hardly become me to make other allusion here. Munificent as the kindness
was, however, it was yet only the smallest part of the obligation which
Dickens felt that he owed this lady; to whose generous schemes for the
neglected and uncared-for classes of the population, in all which he
deeply sympathised, he did the very utmost to render, through many
years, unstinted service of his time and his labour, with sacrifice
unselfish as her own. His proposed early visit to London, named in this
letter, was to see the rehearsal of his Christmas story, dramatised by
Mr. Albert Smith for Mr. and Mrs. Keeley at the Lyceum; and my own
proposed visit to Paris was to be in the middle of January. "It will
then be the height of the season, and a good time for testing the
unaccountable French vanity which really does suppose there are no fogs
here, but that they are all in London."[131]

The opening of his next letter, which bore date the 6th of December, and
its amusing sequel, will sufficiently speak for themselves. "Cold
intense. The water in the bedroom-jugs freezes into solid masses from
top to bottom, bursts the jugs with reports like small cannon, and rolls
out on the tables and wash-stands, hard as granite. I stick to the
shower-bath, but have been most hopelessly out of sorts--writing sorts;
that's all. Couldn't begin, in the strange place; took a violent dislike
to my study, and came down into the drawing-room; couldn't find a corner
that would answer my purpose; fell into a black contemplation of the
waning month; sat six hours at a stretch, and wrote as many lines, &c.
&c. &c. . . . Then, you know what arrangements are necessary with the
chairs and tables; and then what correspondence had to be cleared off;
and then how I tried to settle to my desk, and went about and about it,
and dodged at it, like a bird at a lump of sugar. In short I have just
begun; five printed pages finished, I should say; and hope I shall be
blessed with a better condition this next week, or I shall be
behind-hand. I shall try to go at it--hard. I can't do more. . . . There is
rather a good man lives in this