thwood Smith and William
Johnson Fox, Macready and Maclise, as well as myself and Dickens.

There followed another similar celebration, in which one of these
entertainers was the guest and which owed hardly less to Dickens's
exertions, when, at the Star-and-garter at Richmond in the autumn, we
wished Macready good-speed on his way to America. Dickens took the chair
at that dinner; and with Stanfield, Maclise, and myself, was in the
following week to have accompanied the great actor to Liverpool to say
good-bye to him on board the Cunard ship, and bring his wife back to
London after their leave-taking; when a word from our excellent friend
Captain Marryat, startling to all of us except Dickens himself, struck
him out of our party. Marryat thought that Macready might suffer in the
States by any public mention of his having been attended on his way by
the author of the _American Notes_ and _Martin Chuzzlewit_, and our
friend at once agreed with him. "Your main and foremost reason," he
wrote to me, "for doubting Marryat's judgment, I can at once destroy. It
has occurred to me many times; I have mentioned the thing to Kate more
than once; and I had intended _not_ to go on board, charging Radley to
let nothing be said of my being in his house. I have been prevented from
giving any expression to my fears by a misgiving that I should seem to
attach, if I did so, too much importance to my own doings. But now that
I have Marryat at my back, I have not the least hesitation in saying
that I am certain he is right. I have very great apprehensions that the
_Nickleby_ dedication will damage Macready. Marryat is wrong in
supposing it is not printed in the American editions, for I have myself
seen it in the shop windows of several cities. If I were to go on board
with him, I have not the least doubt that the fact would be placarded
all over New York, before he had shaved himself in Boston. And that
there are thousands of men in America who would pick a quarrel with him
on the mere statement of his being my friend, I have no more doubt than
I have of my existence. You have only doubted Marryat because it is
impossible for _any man_ to know what they are in their own country, who
has not seen them there."

This letter was written from Broadstairs, whither he had gone in August,
after such help as he only could give, and never took such delight as in
giving, to a work of practical humanity. Earlier in the year he had
presided at a dinner