chapter I am writing now. But in
Florence's marriage, and in her subsequent return to her father, I see a
brilliant opportunity. . . . Note from Jeffrey this morning, who won't
believe (positively refuses) that Edith is Carker's mistress. What do
you think of a kind of inverted Maid's Tragedy, and a tremendous scene
of her undeceiving Carker, and giving him to know that she never meant
that?" So it was done; and when he sent me the chapter in which Edith
says adieu to Florence, I had nothing but praise and pleasure to
express. "I need not say," he wrote in reply, "I can't, how delighted
and overjoyed I am by what you say and feel of it. I propose to show
Dombey _twice_ more; and in the end, leave him exactly as you describe."
The end came; and, at the last moment when correction was possible, this
note arrived. "I suddenly remember that I have forgotten Diogenes. Will
you put him in the last little chapter? After the word 'favourite' in
reference to Miss Tox, you can add, 'except with Diogenes, who is
growing old and wilful.' Or, on the last page of all, after 'and with
them two children: boy and girl' (I quote from memory), you might say
'and an old dog is generally in their company,' or to that effect. Just
what you think best."

That was on Saturday the 25th of March, 1848, and may be my last
reference to _Dombey_ until the book, in its place with the rest, finds
critical allusion when I close. But as the confidences revealed in this
chapter have dealt wholly with the leading currents of interest, there
is yet room for a word on incidental persons in the story, of whom I
have seen other so-called confidences alleged which it will be only
right to state have really no authority. And first let me say what
unquestionable evidence these characters give of the unimpaired
freshness, richness, variety, and fitness of Dickens's invention at this
time. Glorious Captain Cuttle, laying his head to the wind and fighting
through everything; his friend Jack Bunsby,[141] with a head too
ponderous to lay-to, and so falling victim to the inveterate MacStinger;
good-hearted, modest, considerate Toots, whose brains rapidly go as his
whiskers come, but who yet gets back from contact with the world, in his
shambling way, some fragments of the sense pumped out of him by the
forcing Blimbers; breathless Susan Nipper, beaming Polly Toodle, the
plaintive Wickham, and the awful Pipchin, each with her duty in the
starched Dombey household so n