sition to it being always that of a man assenting
against his will that it should rest in abeyance. But nothing farther
was resolved on yet. The readings mentioned came off as promised, in aid
of public objects;[176] and besides others two years later for the
family of a friend, he had given the like liberal help to institutes in
Folkestone, Chatham, and again in Birmingham, Peterborough, Sheffield,
Coventry, and Edinburgh, before the question settled itself finally in
the announcement for paid public readings issued by him in 1858.

Carrying memory back to his home in the first half of 1854, there are
few things that rise more pleasantly in connection with it than the
children's theatricals. These began with the first Twelfth Night at
Tavistock House, and were renewed until the principal actors ceased to
be children. The best of the performances were _Tom Thumb_ and
_Fortunio_, in '54 and '55; Dickens now joining first in the revel, and
Mr. Mark Lemon bringing into it his own clever children and a very
mountain of child-pleasing fun in himself. Dickens had become very
intimate with him, and his merry genial ways had given him unbounded
popularity with the "young 'uns," who had no such favourite as "Uncle
Mark." In Fielding's burlesque he was the giantess Glumdalca, and
Dickens was the ghost of Gaffer Thumb; the names by which they
respectively appeared being the Infant Phenomenon and the Modern
Garrick. But the younger actors carried off the palm. There was a Lord
Grizzle, at whose ballad of Miss Villikins, introduced by desire,
Thackeray rolled off his seat in a burst of laughter that became
absurdly contagious. Yet even this, with hardly less fun from the
Noodles, Doodles, and King Arthurs, was not so good as the pretty,
fantastic, comic grace of Dollalolla, Huncamunca, and Tom. The girls
wore steadily the grave airs irresistible when put on by little
children; and an actor not out of his fourth year, who went through the
comic songs and the tragic exploits without a wrong note or a victim
unslain, represented the small helmeted hero. He was in the bills as Mr.
H----, but bore in fact the name of the illustrious author whose
conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for
Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could
have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it
afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal
Hole."[177] The encores wer