least important members had most of
his genius in them. The younger of the brothers, the scapegrace son, and
"Fanny dear," are perfectly real people in what makes them unattractive;
but what is meant for attractiveness in the heroine becomes often
tiresome by want of reality.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

The first number appeared in December 1855, and on the 2nd there was
an exultant note. "_Little Dorrit_ has beaten even _Bleak House_ out of
the field. It is a most tremendous start, and I am overjoyed at it;" to
which he added, writing from Paris on the 6th of the month following,
"You know that they had sold 35,000 of number two on new year's day." He
was still in Paris on the day of the appearance of that portion of the
tale by which it will always be most vividly remembered, and thus wrote
on the 30th of January 1856: "I have a grim pleasure upon me to-night in
thinking that the Circumlocution Office sees the light, and in wondering
what effect it will make. But my head really stings with the visions of
the book, and I am going, as we French say, to disembarrass it by
plunging out into some of the strange places I glide into of nights in
these latitudes." The Circumlocution heroes led to the Society scenes,
the Hampton-court dowager-sketches, and Mr. Gowan; all parts of one
satire levelled against prevailing political and social vices. Aim had
been taken, in the course of it, at some living originals, disguised
sufficiently from recognition to enable him to make his thrust more
sure; but there was one exception self-revealed. "I had the general
idea," he wrote while engaged on the sixth number, "of the Society
business before the Sadleir affair, but I shaped Mr. Merdle himself out
of that precious rascality. Society, the Circumlocution Office, and Mr.
Gowan, are of course three parts of one idea and design. Mr. Merdle's
complaint, which you will find in the end to be fraud and forgery, came
into my mind as the last drop in the silver cream-jug on
Hampstead-heath. I shall beg, when you have read the present number, to
enquire whether you consider 'Bar' an instance, in reference to K F, of
a suggested likeness in not many touches!" The likeness no one could
mistake; and, though that particular Bar has since been moved into a
higher and happier sphere, Westminster-hall is in no danger of losing
"the insinuating Jury-droop, and persuasive double-eyeglass," by which
this keen observer could express a type of chara