price or nonchalance of the purchasing public, its sales
being far lower than those of any of its monthly predecessors.

At the close of 1843, to pay outstanding debts of his now lavish
housekeeping, he wrote that pioneer of Christmas numbers, that national
benefit as Thackeray called it, _A Christmas Carol_. It failed to
realize his pecuniary anticipations, and Dickens resolved upon a drastic
policy of retrenchment and reform. He would save expense by living
abroad and would punish his publishers by withdrawing his custom from
them, at least for a time. Like everything else upon which he ever
determined, this resolution was carried out with the greatest possible
precision and despatch. In June 1844 he set out for Marseilles with his
now rapidly increasing family (the journey cost him L200). In a villa on
the outskirts of Genoa he wrote _The Chimes_, which, during a brief
excursion to London before Christmas, he read to a select circle of
friends (the germ of his subsequent lecture-audiences), including
Forster, Carlyle, Stanfield, Dyce, Maclise and Jerrold. He was again in
London in 1845, enjoying his favourite diversion of private theatricals;
and in January 1846 he experimented briefly as the editor of a London
morning paper--the _Daily News_. By early spring he was back at
Lausanne, writing his customary vivid letters to his friends, craving as
usual for London streets, commencing _Dombey and Son_, and walking his
fourteen miles daily. The success of _Dombey and Son_ completely
rehabilitated the master's finances, enabled him to return to England,
send his son to Eton and to begin to save money. Artistically it is less
satisfactory; it contains some of Dickens's prime curios, such as
Cuttle, Bunsby, Toots, Blimber, Pipchin, Mrs MacStinger and young Biler;
it contains also that masterpiece of sentimentality which trembles upon
the borderland of the sublime and the ridiculous, the death of Paul
Dombey ("that sweet Paul," as Jeffrey, the "critic laureate," called
him), and some grievous and unquestionable blemishes. As a narrative,
moreover, it tails off into a highly complicated and exacting plot. It
was followed by a long rest at Broadstairs before Dickens returned to
the native home of his genius, and early in 1849 "began to prepare for
_David Copperfield_."

"Of all my books," Dickens wrote, "I like this the best; like many fond
parents I have my favourite child, and his name is David Copperfield."
In some respect