for the Printers' Pension-fund, which Thomas Hood,
Douglas Jerrold, and myself attended with him; and upon the terrible
summer-evening accident at sea by which Mr. Elton the actor lost his
life, it was mainly by Dickens's unremitting exertions, seconded
admirably by Mr. Serle and warmly taken up by Mr. Elton's own profession
(the most generous in the world), that ample provision was made for the
many children. At the close of August I had news of him from his
favourite watering-place, too characteristic to be omitted. The day
before had been a day of "terrific heat," yet this had not deterred him
from doing what he was too often suddenly prone to do in the midst of
his hardest work. "I performed an insane match against time of eighteen
miles by the milestones in four hours and a half, under a burning sun
the whole way. I could get" (he is writing next morning) "no sleep at
night, and really began to be afraid I was going to have a fever. You
may judge in what kind of authorship-training I am to-day. I could as
soon eat the cliff as write about anything." A few days later, however,
all was well again; and another sketch from himself, to his American
friend, will show his sea-side life in ordinary. "In a bay-window in a
one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long
hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were
very funny indeed. At one he disappears, presently emerges from a
bathing-machine, and may be seen, a kind of salmon-coloured porpoise,
splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be viewed in another
bay-window on the ground floor, eating a strong lunch; and after that,
walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back in the sand reading a
book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is disposed to be talked
to; and I am told he is very comfortable indeed. He's as brown as a
berry, and they _do_ say is a small fortune to the innkeeper who sells
beer and cold punch. But this is mere rumour. Sometimes he goes up to
London (eighty miles or so away), and then I'm told there is a sound in
Lincoln's-inn-fields at night, as of men laughing, together with a
clinking of knives and forks and wine-glasses."[68]

He returned to town "for good" on Monday the 2nd of October, and from
the Wednesday to the Friday of that week was at Manchester, presiding at
the opening of its great Athenaeum, when Mr. Cobden and Mr. Disraeli also
"assisted." Here he spoke mainly on a matter always