aggerated Rebuke of
Exaggeration--Manufacturing Town on
Strike--Dinner to Thackeray--Peter
Cunningham--Incident of a November Night.

_DAVID COPPERFIELD_ had been written, in Devonshire-terrace for the most
part, between the opening of 1849 and October 1850, its publication
covering that time; and its sale, which has since taken the lead of all
his books but _Pickwick_, never then exceeding twenty-five thousand. But
though it remained thus steady for the time, the popularity of the book
added largely to the sale of its successor. _Bleak House_ was begun in
his new abode of Tavistock House at the end of November 1851; was
carried on, amid the excitements of the Guild performances, through the
following year; was finished at Boulogne in the August of 1853; and was
dedicated to "his friends and companions in the Guild of Literature and
Art."

[Illustration: TAVISTOCK HOUSE.]

In March 1852 the first number appeared,[169] and its sale was
mentioned in the same letter from Tavistock House (7th of March)
which told of his troubles in the story at its outset, and of other
anxieties incident to the common lot and inseparable equally from its
joys and sorrows, through which his life was passing at the time. "My
Highgate journey yesterday was a sad one. Sad to think how all journeys
tend that way. I went up to the cemetery to look for a piece of ground.
In no hope of a Government bill,[170] and in a foolish dislike to leaving
the little child shut up in a vault there, I think of pitching a tent
under the sky. . . . Nothing has taken place here: but I believe, every
hour, that it must next hour. Wild ideas are upon me of going to
Paris--Rouen--Switzerland--somewhere--and writing the remaining two-thirds
of the next No. aloft in some queer inn room. I have been hanging over
it, and have got restless. Want a change I think. Stupid. We were at
30,000 when I last heard. . . . I am sorry to say that after all kinds
of evasions, I am obliged to dine at Lansdowne House to-morrow. But
maybe the affair will come off to-night and give me an excuse! I enclose
proofs of No. 2. Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him
singularly unlike the great original. Look it over, and say what occurs
to you. . . . Don't you think Mrs. Gaskell charming? With one
ill-considered thing that looks like a want of natural perception, I
think it masterly." His last allusion is to the story by a delightful
writer then appear