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INTRODUCTION. xxix |
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to show how careful Charles Dickens was as to the illustrations to his books, and what elaborate " hints " he did give his artists :—
The drawing of Milly on the chair is charming. I cannot tell you how much the little composition and expression please me. Do that by all means. I fear she must have a little cap on. There is something coming in the last part, about her having had a dead child, which makes it yet more desirable than the existing text does that she should have that little matronly sign about her. Unless the artist is obdurate indeed, and then he'll do as he likes. I am delighted to hear that you have your eye on her in the students' room. You will really, pictorially, make the little woman whom I love.
And again :—
Sir, there is a subject I have written to-day for the third part, that I think and hope will just suit you. Scene, Tetterby's. Time, morning. The power of bringing back people's memories of sorrow, wrong, and trouble, has been given by the ghost to Milly, though she don't know it herself. As she comes along the street, Mr. and Mrs. Tetterby recover themselves, and are mutually affectionate again, and embrace, closing rather a good scene of quarrel and discontent. The moment they do so, Johnny (who has seen her in the distance and announced her before, from which moment they begin to recover) cries " Here she is !" and she comes in, surrounded by the little Tetterbys, the very spirit of morning, gladness, innocence, hope, love, domesticity, etc. etc. etc. etc. I would limit the illustration to her and the children, which will make a fitness between it and your other illustrations, and give them all a character of their own. . . . Note.— There are six boy Tetterbys present (young 'Dolphus is not there), including Johnny ; and in Johnny's arms is Moloch, the baby, who is a girl.
The success of the book, which started with a subscription of twenty thousand, was as great as that of any of its predecessors in the series, but, notwithstanding this, it had no successor, and was the last of the " Christmas Books" of Charles Dickens.
A burlesque on the Haunted Man, by Bret Harte, was published in New York, in 1870, with the following title: " The Haunted Man, by Ch—r—s D—ck—ns."
A very good play was made out of the Haunted Man by Mark Lemon, and it had a great success at the Adelphi, |
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