us. V.APRIL 6, 1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.
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anxious to begin the book, but delays
occurred, and he determined not to publish
until five numbers had been completed. In
the midst of his labours illness overtook
him, and while not " wanting hi industry."
he had been " wanting in imagination."
Then, on the 10th of June ; 1865, occurred the terrible railway accident at Staplehurst. Dickens was in the only carriage which did not fall into the stream, being caught as it turned over by some of the ruins of the bridge, and suspended and balanced in an almost impossible manner. For hours Dickens worked among the dying and the dead. Fortunately, as his daughter Mamie relates, his family were spared any anxiety, "as we did not hear of the accident until after we
were with him in London. With his usual care and thoughtfulness, he had telegraphed to his friend Mr. Wills to summon us to town to meet
him."
After rendering all the help he could, he remembered that he had left the MS. of a number of ' Our Mutual Friend ' in the carriage, and clambered back into it and secured it.
He never recovered entirely from the shock then sustained, and when he was on a railway or in any sort of conveyance there would come over him, for a few seconds. " a vague *ense of dread that I have no power to check. It comes and passes, but I cannot prevent its coming.
On the completion of ' Our Mutual Friend a review of it, written by Chorley, appeared in The Athenceum on the 28th of October, 1865. Though critical, it pronounced the work to be
one of Mr. Dickeus's richest and most care- fully-wrought books. If we demur to Wegg and to Miss Jenny Wren as to a pair of eccentrics approaching that boundary - line of caricature towards which their creator is, by fits, tempted, we cannot recall anything more real, more cheering, than the sketch of the Milveys clergyman and clergyman's wife, both so unconscious in their self- sacrificing virtue and goodness."
The reviewer cons der.s that " none of the series is so intricate in plot as this tale," and that
"the closest attention is required to hold certain of its connecting links. From the first number it was evident to us that the murdered John Harmon was not murdered, but had set himself down in the household of the wife allotted to him by a fantastic will, for the purpose of testing her real nature."
In the course of the notice referenca is made to the French story of ' Little Bebelle, : which appeared in ' Somebody's Luggage.' the Christmas number of All the Year
Round for 1862 : this the reviewer pro-
nounces to be " one of the most exquisite
pieces of pathos in fiction."
Among the friendships formed by Dickens, excepting only that with Forster, there was none closer, or more precious to both, than tli3 friendship between him and Chorley, and I have had a special purpose in quoting from Chorley's reviews of ' Bleak House * and of -' Our Mutual Friend ' desiring to show, on the one hand, Chorley's honesty of purpose, and, on the other, the generosity with which the severe criticism was received by the author. Chorley, though his friend- ships were of the firmest, never allowed them to prevent his finding fault with a. friend s productions, when he considered that to be necessary. Among the dearest of all his friends was Mrs. Browning well do I remember his grief when I broke to him the news of her death. Yet his review of her ' Poems before Congress,' which appeared in The Athenceum on the 1 7th of March, 1860, was very severe.
Chorley and Dickens first became intimate in 1854, as Hewlett tells us in his biography of Chorley, when, appropriately enough, " an office of charity, in which both were interested, brought them into frequent inter- course." In 1865, at the time of the review of ' Our Mutual Friend,' the following letter from Dickens will show upon what terms the friendship then stood :
" I have seen The AthencnunitanuL most earnestly thank you. Trust me, there is nothing I would have wished away, and all that I read there affects and delights me. I feel so generous an appreciation and sympathy so very strongly that if I were to try to write more, I should blur the words by seeing them dimly. Ever affec- tionately yours, C. D."
It would have been a precious addition to our Dickens letters if Chorley had preserved those he received, and one cannot but regret that he thought well to destroy the bulk of them. At the foot of this particular one he has made a note : "I must keep this letter, as referring to my review of ' Our Mutual Friend.' " In another, printed in Hewlett's biography, and written after hearing a lecture Chorley had given the first of a series on ' National Music,' on the 1st of March, 1862 Dickens, while complimenting him on " the knowledge, ingenuity, neatness, condensation, good sense, and good taste in delightful combination '" displayed, give& him the following kindly advice as to his delivery :
" If you could be a very little louder, and would never let a sentence go for the thousandth part of an instant, until the last word is out, you would
