t, and
I still recall the glee with which he told me what he intended to do not
only with Dick Swiveller, but with Septimus Brass, changed afterwards to
Sampson. Undoubtedly, however, Dick was his favorite. "Dick's behavior
in the matter of Miss Wackles will, I hope, give you satisfaction," is
the remark of another of his letters. "I cannot yet discover that his
aunt has any belief in him, or is in the least degree likely to send him
a remittance, so that he will probably continue to be the sport of
destiny." His difficulties were the quickly recurring times of
publication, the confined space in each number that yet had to
contribute its individual effect, and (from the suddenness with which he
had begun) the impossibility of getting in advance. "I was obliged to
cramp most dreadfully what I thought a pretty idea in the last chapter.
I hadn't room to turn:" to this or a similar effect his complaints are
frequent, and of the vexations named it was by far the worst. But he
steadily bore up against all, and made a triumph of the little story.

To help his work he went twice to Broadstairs, in June and in September.
From this he wrote to me (17th June), "It's now four o'clock, and I have
been at work since half-past eight. I have really dried myself up into a
condition which would almost justify me in pitching off the cliff, head
first--but I must get richer before I indulge in a crowning luxury.
Number 15, which I began to-day, I anticipate great things from. There
is a description of getting gradually out of town, and passing through
neighborhoods of distinct and various characters, with which, if I had
read it as anybody else's writing, I think I should have been very much
struck. The child and the old man are on their journey of course, and
the subject is a very pretty one." Between these two Broadstairs visits
he wrote to me, "I intended calling on you this morning on my way back
from Bevis Marks, whither I went to look at a house for Sampson Brass.
But I got mingled up in a kind of social paste with the Jews of
Houndsditch, and roamed about among them till I came out in Moorfields,
quite unexpectedly. So I got into a cab, and came home again, very
tired, by way of the City Road." At the opening of September he was
again at Broadstairs. The residence he most desired there, Fort House,
stood prominently at the top of a breezy hill on the road to Kingsgate,
with a corn-field between it and the sea, and this in many subseq