e have seen, he derived all the early theatrical
ambition that the elder Mathews had awakened in him. "You have no idea,"
he continued, "of the immensity of the work as the time advances, for
the Duke even throws the whole of the audience on us, or he would get
(he says) into all manner of scrapes." The Duke of Devonshire had
offered his house in Piccadilly for the first representations, and in
his princely way discharged all the expenses attending them. A moveable
theatre was built and set up in the great drawing-room, and the library
was turned into a green-room.

_Not so Bad as We Seem_ was played for the first time at
Devonshire-house on the 27th of May, 1851, before the Queen and Prince
and as large an audience as places could be found for; _Mr.
Nightingale's Diary_ being the name given to the farce. The success
abundantly realised the expectations formed; and, after many
representations at the Hanover-square Rooms in London, strolling began
in the country, and was continued at intervals for considerable portions
of this and the following year. From much of it, illness and occupation
disabled me, and substitutes had to be found; but to this I owe the
opportunity now of closing with a characteristic picture of the course
of the play, and of Dickens amid the incidents and accidents to which
his theatrical career exposed him. The company carried with them, it
should be said, the theatre constructed for Devonshire-house, as well as
the admirable scenes which Stanfield, David Roberts, Thomas Grieve,
Telbin, Absolon, and Louis Haghe had painted as their generous
free-offerings to the comedy; of which the representations were thus
rendered irrespective of theatres or their managers, and took place in
the large halls or concert-rooms of the various towns and cities.

"The enclosure forgotten in my last" (Dickens writes from Sunderland on
the 29th of August 1852), "was a little printed announcement which I
have had distributed at the doors wherever we go, knocking _Two o' Clock
in the Morning_ bang out of the bills. Funny as it used to be, it is
become impossible to get anything out of it after the scream of _Mr.
Nightingale's Diary_. The comedy is so far improved by the reductions
which your absence and other causes have imposed on us, that it acts now
only two hours and twenty-five minutes, all waits included, and goes
'like wildfire,' as Mr. Tonson[152] says. We have had prodigious houses,
though smaller rooms (as to th