bly drawn, and
without Dickens' usual tendency to caricature; we must laugh in
sympathy with Mark Tapley; we must follow them both through the
American scenes, which, intensely amusing as they are, must have
bitterly envenomed the wounds inflicted on the national vanity by
"American Notes," and, according to Dickens' own expression, "sent
them all stark staring raving mad across the water;" we must frequent
the boarding establishment for single gentlemen kept by lean Mrs.
Todgers, and sit with Sarah Gamp and Betsy Prig as they hideously
discuss their avocations, or quarrel over the shadowy Mrs. Harris; we
must follow Jonas Chuzzlewit on his errand of murder, and note how
even his felon nature is appalled by the blackness and horror of his
guilt, and how the ghastly terror of it haunts and cows him. A great
book, I say again, a very great book.

Yet not at the time a successful book. Why Fortune, the fickle jade,
should have taken it into her freakish head to frown, or half frown,
on Dickens at this particular juncture, who shall tell? He was wooing
her with his very best work, and she turned from him. The sale of
"Pickwick" and "Nicholas Nickleby" had been from forty to fifty
thousand copies of each part; the sale of _Master Humphrey's Clock_
had risen still higher; the sale of even the most popular parts of
"Martin Chuzzlewit" fell to twenty-three thousand. This was, as may be
supposed, a grievous disappointment. Dickens' personal expenditure had
not perhaps been lavish in view of what he thought he could calculate
on earning; but it had been freely based on that calculation. Demands,
too, were being made upon his purse by relations,--probably by his
father, and certainly by his brother Frederic, which were frequent,
embarrassing, and made in a way which one may call worse than
indelicate. Any permanent loss of popularity would have meant serious
money entanglements. With his father's career in full view, such a
prospect must have been anything but pleasant. He cast about what he
should do, and determined to leave England for a space, live more
economically on the Continent, and gather materials in Italy or
Switzerland for a new travel book. But before carrying out this
project, he would woo fortune once again, and in a different form.
During the months of October and November, 1843, in the intervals of
"Chuzzlewit," he wrote a short story that has taken its place, by
almost universal consent, among his masterpieces,