" DICKENS IN GENOA" [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—I am sure all Dickensians are grateful to you and to Mr. F. Yeats-Brown for the publication of the letters which appear in your issue of the 22nd inst., as they are not only characteristic of the man, but they throw an interesting sidelight on his antipathy, in his young days at least, towards posing in anything like a public manner as a reader of his own works.
-.7 There are two points on which I should like to add a little to what Mr. Yeats-Brown has written. The first is that it is not correct to say that in 1845 Dickens had never given a reading to any friends outside his own house, as in December, 1844, Dickens made a special journey from Genoa to London for the purpose of reading his new Christmas book The Chimes to a circle of friends at John Forster's house in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and Carlyle, Fox, Douglas Jerrold, and Madise were among those present.
Mr. Yeats-Brown remarks that it seems curious that Dickens should. still be hard at work on- Martin- Chazdewit. after seventeen out of the nineteen numbers had already appeared, but I think this is rather characteristic of Dickens, that he wrote most of his stories piecemeal, with sometimes not even as much as two monthd -ahead of the printer.
I notice Mr. YeatiO3rown thinks he_possesses other Dickens letters, . which I sincerely trust he will be able to unearth and that you will see your way to publishi,I am, Sir, &c., DEXTER,- Hon. Editor,
The Dickens Fellowship.
The Dickens House, 48 Doughty Street, London, ir.C.1.
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