out the notion I have of the
way of rendering it. But whether the impression would not be so horrible
as to keep them away another time, is what I cannot satisfy myself upon.
What do you think? It is in three short parts: 1, Where Fagin sets Noah
Claypole on to watch Nancy. 2, The scene on London Bridge. 3, Where
Fagin rouses Claypole from his sleep, to tell his perverted story to
Sikes. And the Murder, and the Murderer's sense of being haunted. I have
adapted and cut about the text with great care, and it is very powerful.
I have to-day referred the book and the question to the Chappells as so
largely interested." I had a strong dislike to this proposal, less
perhaps on the ground which ought to have been taken of the physical
exertion it would involve, than because such a subject seemed to be
altogether out of the province of reading; and it was resolved, that,
before doing it, trial should be made to a limited private audience in
St. James's Hall. The note announcing this, from Liverpool on the 25th
of October, is for other reasons worth printing. "I give you earliest
notice that the Chappells suggest to me the 18th of November" (the 14th
was chosen) "for trial of the _Oliver Twist_ murder, when everything in
use for the previous day's reading can be made available. I hope this
may suit you? We have been doing well here; and how it was arranged,
nobody knows, but we had L410 at St. James's Hall last Tuesday, having
advanced from our previous L360. The expenses are such, however, on the
princely scale of the Chappells, that we never begin at a smaller, often
at a larger, cost than L180. . . . I have not been well, and have been
heavily tired. However, I have little to complain of--nothing, nothing;
though, like Mariana, I am aweary. But think of this. If all go well,
and (like Mr. Dennis) I 'work off' this series triumphantly, I shall
have made of these readings L28,000 in a year and a half." This did not
better reconcile me to what had been too clearly forced upon him by the
supposed necessity of some new excitement to ensure a triumphant result;
and even the private rehearsal only led to a painful correspondence
between us, of which a few words are all that need now be preserved. "We
might have agreed," he wrote, "to differ about it very well, because we
only wanted to find out the truth if we could, and because it was quite
understood that I wanted to leave behind me the recollection of
something very passionate and