nion, which I am very anxious
to know. I have not been in writing cue all the week; but really the
weather has rendered it next to impossible to work." Four days later: "I
shall send you with this (on the chance of your being favourable to that
view of the subject) a small chapter to close the first number, in lieu
of the Solomon Gills one. I have been hideously idle all the week, and
have done nothing but this trifling interloper: but hope to begin again
on Monday--ding dong. . . . The inkstand is to be cleaned out to-night, and
refilled, preparatory to execution. I trust I may shed a good deal of
ink in the next fortnight." Then, the day following, on arrival of my
letter, he submitted to a hard necessity. "I received yours to-day. A
decided facer to me! I had been counting, alas! with a miser's greed,
upon the gained ten pages. . . . No matter. I have no doubt you are right,
and strength is everything. The addition of two lines to each page, or
something less,--coupled with the enclosed cuts, will bring it all to
bear smoothly. In case more cutting is wanted, I must ask you to try
your hand. I shall agree to whatever you propose." These cuttings,
absolutely necessary as they were, were not without much disadvantage;
and in the course of them he had to sacrifice a passage foreshadowing
his final intention as to Dombey. It would have shown, thus early,
something of the struggle with itself that such pride must always go
through; and I think it worth preserving in a note.[136]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

Several letters now expressed his anxiety and care about the
illustrations. A nervous dread of caricature in the face of his
merchant-hero, had led him to indicate by a living person the type of
city-gentleman he would have had the artist select; and this is all he
meant by his reiterated urgent request, "I do wish he could get a
glimpse of A, for he is the very Dombey." But as the glimpse of A was
not to be had, it was resolved to send for selection by himself glimpses
of other letters of the alphabet, actual heads as well as fanciful
ones; and the sheetful I sent out, which he returned when the choice was
made, I here reproduce in fac-simile. In itself amusing, it has now the
important use of showing, once for all, in regard to Dickens's
intercourse with his artists, that they certainly had not an easy time
with him; that, even beyond what is ordinary between author and
illustrator, his requirements were exact