lf came up
for it from Malvern, to which he returned the next day; and from the
spirited speech in which he gave the health of the chairman at the
dinner, I will add a few words for the sake of the truth expressed in
them. "There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition, that
authors are not a particularly united body, and I am afraid that this
may contain half a grain or so of the veracious. But of our chairman I
have never in my life made public mention without adding what I can
never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly found him
to be, from the first, the most generous of men; quick to encourage,
slow to disparage, and ever anxious to assert the order of which he is
so great an ornament. That we men of letters are, or have been,
invariably or inseparably attached to each other, it may not be possible
to say, formerly or now; but there cannot now be, and there cannot ever
have been, among the followers of literature, a man so entirely without
the grudging little jealousies that too often disparage its brightness,
as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton." That was as richly merited as it is
happily said.

Dickens had to return to London after the middle of March for business
connected with a charitable Home established at Shepherd's-bush by Miss
Coutts, in the benevolent hope of rescuing fallen women by testing their
fitness for emigration, of which future mention will be made, and which
largely and regularly occupied his time for several years. On this
occasion his stay was prolonged by the illness of his father. His
health had been failing latterly, and graver symptoms were now spoken
of. "I saw my poor father twice yesterday," he wrote to me on the 27th,
"the second time between ten and eleven at night. In the morning I
thought him not so well. At night, as well as any one in such a
situation could be." Next day he was so much better that his son went
back to Malvern, and even gave us grounds for hope that we might yet
have his presence in Hertfordshire to advise on some questions connected
with the comedy which Sir Edward Lytton had written for the Guild. But
the end came suddenly. I returned from Knebworth to London, supposing
that some accident had detained him at Malvern; and at my house this
letter waited me. "Devonshire-terrace, Monday, thirty-first of March
1851. . . . My poor father died this morning at five and twenty minutes to
six. They had sent for me to Malvern, but I passed John on the r