d that
it would have been hard work for anybody to have got on with her. It is
strange to see a bloody reflection of our friends Eugene Sue and Dumas
in the whole melodrama. Don't you think so . . . remembering what we often
said of the canker at the root of all that Paris life? I dreamed of you,
in a wild manner, all last night. . . . A sea fog here, which prevents
one's seeing the low-water mark. A circus on the cliff to the right, and
of course I have a box to-night! Deep slowness in the inimitable's
brain. A shipwreck on the Goodwin sands last Sunday, which WALLY, with
a hawk's eye, SAW GO DOWN: for which assertion, subsequently confirmed
and proved, he was horribly maltreated at the time."

Devonshire-terrace meanwhile had been left by his tenant; and coming up
joyfully himself to take possession, he brought for completion in his
old home an important chapter of _Dombey_. On the way he lost his
portmanteau, but "Thank God! the MS. of the chapter wasn't in it.
Whenever I travel, and have anything of that valuable article, I always
carry it in my pocket."[145] He had begun at this time to find
difficulties in writing at Broadstairs, of which he told me on his
return. "Vagrant music is getting to that height here, and is so
impossible to be escaped from, that I fear Broadstairs and I must part
company in time to come. Unless it pours of rain, I cannot write
half-an-hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells, or
glee-singers. There is a violin of the most torturing kind under the
window now (time, ten in the morning) and an Italian box of music on the
steps--both in full blast." He closed with a mention of improvements in
the Margate theatre since his memorable last visit. In the past two
years it had been managed by a son of the great comedian, Dowton, with
whose name it is pleasant to connect this note. "We went to the
manager's benefit on Wednesday" (10th of September): "_As You Like It_
really very well done, and a most excellent house. Mr. Dowton delivered
a sensible and modest kind of speech on the occasion, setting forth his
conviction that a means of instruction and entertainment possessing such
a literature as the stage in England, could not pass away; and, that
what inspired great minds, and delighted great men, two thousand years
ago, and did the same in Shakespeare's day, must have within itself a
principle of life superior to the whim and fashion of the hour. And with
that, and with cheers,