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INTRODUCTION. |
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idea in its reference to " my little Christmas book, in which I have endeavoured to plant an indignant right-hander on the eye of certain wicked Cant that makes my blood boil, which I hope will not only cloud that eye with black and blue, but many a gentle one with crystal of the finest sort. God forgive me, but I think there are good things in the little story."
That the energetic and passionate prosecution of the idea which had so complete a hold upon him " took it out" of Charles Dickens, as the saying is, at a great rate, will be readily understood, and it will be enough to quote two of his own descriptions of his condition while the work was in progress. Writing to Mr. Forster, he said: " This book (whether in the Hajji Baba sense or not I can't say, but certainly in the literal one) has made my face white in a foreign land. My cheeks, which were beginning to fill out, have sunk again ; my eyes have grown immensely large ; my hair is very lank; and the head inside the hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at the end of the third part twice. I wouldn't write it twice for something. . . . Since I conceived, at the beginning of the second part, what must happen in the third, I have undergone as much sorrow and agitation as if the thing were real; and have wakened up with it at night. I was obliged to lock myself in when I finished it yesterday, for my face was swollen for the time to twice its natural size, and was hugely ridiculous." To Lady Blessington he wrote on the 20th of November : " I shut myself up for a month, close and tight, over my little Christmas book the Chimes. All my affections and passions got twined and knotted up in it, and I became as haggard as a murderer, long before I wrote 'The End.'"
It was on the 3d of November that the completion of the story was thus announced: "Third of November, 1844. Half-past two, afternoon. Thank God! I have finished the Chimes. This moment I take up my pen again to-day, to say that much; and to add that I have had what women call 'a real good cry.' " The final instalment having been despatched to England, its author followed it, after a brief interval spent in travelling about Italy, and arrived in London on the last day of the month. A reading of the story to some intimate friends had been arranged, on Charles Dickens's own sugges- |
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