d three Dansons (from the Surrey
Zoological Gardens), all painting at once!! Meanwhile, Telbin, in a
secluded bower in Brewer-street, Golden-square, plies _his_ part of the
little undertaking." How worthily it turned out in the end, the
excellence of the performances and the delight of the audiences, became
known to all London; and the pressure for admittance at last took the
form of a tragi-comedy, composed of ludicrous makeshifts and gloomy
disappointments, with which even Dickens's resources could not deal. "My
audience is now 93," he wrote one day in despair, "and at least 10 will
neither hear nor see." There was nothing for it but to increase the
number of nights; and it was not until the 20th of January he described
"the workmen smashing the last atoms of the theatre."

His book was finished soon after at Gadshill Place, to be presently
described, which he had purchased the previous year, and taken
possession of in February; subscribing himself, in the letter announcing
the fact, as "the Kentish Freeholder on his native heath, his name
Protection."[209] The new abode occupied him in various ways in the
early part of the summer; and Hans Andersen the Dane had just arrived
upon a visit to him there, when Douglas Jerrold's unexpected death
befell. It was a shock to every one, and an especial grief to Dickens.
Jerrold's wit, and the bright shrewd intellect that had so many
triumphs, need no celebration from me; but the keenest of satirists was
one of the kindliest of men, and Dickens had a fondness for Jerrold as
genuine as his admiration for him. "I chance to know a good deal about
the poor fellow's illness, for I was with him on the last day he was
out. It was ten days ago, when we dined at a dinner given by Russell at
Greenwich. He was complaining much when we met, said he had been sick
three days, and attributed it to the inhaling of white paint from his
study window. I did not think much of it at the moment, as we were very
social; but while we walked through Leicester-square he suddenly fell
into a white, hot, sick perspiration, and had to lean against the
railings. Then, at my urgent request, he was to let me put him in a cab
and send him home; but he rallied a little after that, and, on our
meeting Russell, determined to come with us. We three went down by
steamboat that we might see the great ship, and then got an open fly and
rode about Blackheath: poor Jerrold mightily enjoying the air, and
constantly sayin