anc. I sit down between whiles to think of a new story, and, as it
begins to grow, such a torment of a desire to be anywhere but where I
am; and to be going I don't know where, I don't know why; takes hold of
me, that it is like being _driven away_. If I had had a passport, I
sincerely believe I should have gone to Switzerland the night before
last. I should have remembered our engagement--say, at Paris, and have
come back for it; but should probably have left by the next express
train."

At the end of November, when he had settled himself in his new London
abode, the book was begun; and as generally happened with the more
important incidents of his life, but always accidentally, begun on a
Friday.

FOOTNOTES:

[153] My friend Mr. Shirley Brooks sends me a "characteristic" cutting
from an autograph catalogue in which these few lines are given from an
early letter in the Doughty-street days. "I always pay my taxes when
they won't call any longer, in order to get a bad name in the parish and
so escape all honours." It is a touch of character, certainly; but
though his motive in later life was the same, his method was not. He
attended to the tax-collector, but of any other parochial or political
application took no notice whatever.

[154] Even in the modest retirement of a note I fear that I shall offend
the dignity of history, and of biography, by printing the lines in which
this intention was announced to me. They were written "in character;"
and the character was that of the "waterman" at the Charing-cross
cabstand, first discovered by George Cattermole, whose imitations of him
were a delight to Dickens at this time, and adapted themselves in the
exuberance of his admiration to every conceivable variety of subject.
The painter of the Derby Day will have a fullness of satisfaction in
remembering this. "Sloppy" the hero in question, had a friend "Jack" in
whom he was supposed to typify his own early and hard experiences before
he became a convert to temperance; and Dickens used to point to "Jack"
as the justification of himself and Mrs. Gamp for their portentous
invention of Mrs. Harris. It is amazing nonsense to repeat; but to hear
Cattermole, in the gruff hoarse accents of what seemed to be the remains
of a deep bass voice wrapped up in wet straw, repeat the wild
proceedings of Jack, was not to be forgotten. "Yes sir, Jack went mad
sir, just afore he 'stablished hisself by Sir Robert Peel's-s-s, sir. He
was allis a