ncy was now flowing and overflowing),
with intimation for the artist: "The best subject for Browne will be at
Mrs. Pipchin's; and if he liked to do a quiet odd thing, Paul, Mrs.
Pipchin, and the Cat, by the fire, would be very good for the story. I
earnestly hope he will think it worth a little extra care. The second
subject, in case he shouldn't take a second from that same chapter, I
will shortly describe as soon as I have it clearly (to-morrow or next
day), and send it to _you_ by post." The result was not satisfactory;
but as the artist more than redeemed it in the later course of the tale,
and the present disappointment was mainly the incentive to that better
success, the mention of the failure here will be excused for what it
illustrates of Dickens himself. "I am really _distressed_ by the
illustration of Mrs. Pipchin and Paul. It is so frightfully and wildly
wide of the mark. Good Heaven! in the commonest and most literal
construction of the text, it is all wrong. She is described as an old
lady, and Paul's 'miniature arm-chair' is mentioned more than once. He
ought to be sitting in a little arm-chair down in the corner of the
fireplace, staring up at her. I can't say what pain and vexation it is
to be so utterly misrepresented. I would cheerfully have given a hundred
pounds to have kept this illustration out of the book. He never could
have got that idea of Mrs. Pipchin if he had attended to the text.
Indeed I think he does better without the text; for then the notion is
made easy to him in short description, and he can't help taking it in."

He felt the disappointment more keenly, because the conception of the
grim old boarding-house keeper had taken back his thoughts to the
miseries of his own child-life, and made her, as her prototype in verity
was, a part of the terrible reality.[138] I had forgotten, until I again
read this letter of the 4th of November 1846, that he thus early
proposed to tell me that story of his boyish sufferings which a question
from myself, of some months later date, so fully elicited. He was now
hastening on with the close of his third number, to be ready for
departure to Paris.

". . . I hope to finish the number by next Tuesday or Wednesday. It is
hard writing under these bird-of-passage circumstances, but I have no
reason to complain, God knows, having come to no knot yet. . . . I hope you
will like Mrs. Pipchin's establishment. It is from the life, and I was
there--I don't suppos