2,800l. and have a fourth share of all his writings for the next eight years. Dickens’s irritation under these worries stimulated his characteristic restlessness. He had many claims to satisfy. His family was rapidly increasing; his fifth child was born at the beginning of 1844. Demands from more distant relations were also frequent, and though he received what, for an author, was a very large income, he thought that he had worked chiefly for the enrichment of others. He also felt the desire to obtain wider experience natural to one who had been drawing so freely upon his intellectual resources. He resolved therefore, to economise and refresh his mind in Italy.
Before starting he presided, in February 1844, at the meetings of the Mechanics’ Institution in Liverpool and the Polytechnic in Birmingham. He wrote some radical articles in the ‘Morning Chronicle.’ After the usual farewell dinner at Greenwich, where J. M. W. Turner attended and Lord Normanby took the chair, he started for Italy, reaching Marseilles 14 July 1844. On 16 July he settled in a villa at Albaro, a suburb of Genoa, and set to work learning Italian. He afterwards moved to the Peschiere Palace in Genoa. There, though missing his long night walks in London streets, he wrote the ‘Chimes,’ and came back to London to read it to his friends. He started 6 Nov., travelled through Northern Italy, and reached London at the end of the month. He read the ‘Chimes’ at Forster’s house to Carlyle, Stanfield, Maclise, Laman Blanchard, Douglas Jerrold, Fox, Harness, and Dyce. He then returned to Genoa. In the middle of January he started with his wife on a journey to Rome, Naples, and Florence. He returned to Genoa for two months, and then crossed to St. Gothard, and returned to England at the end of June 1845. On coming home he took up a scheme for a private theatrical performance, which had been started on the night of reading the ‘Chimes.’ He threw himself into this with his usual vigour. Jonson’s ‘Every Man in his Humour’ was performed on 21 Sept. at Fanny Kelly’s theatre in Dean Street. Dickens took the part of Bobadil, Forster appearing as Kitely, Jerrold as Master Stephen, and Leech as Master Matthew. The play succeeded to admiration, and a public performance was afterwards given for a charity. Dickens is said by Forster to have been a very vivid and versatile rather than a finished actor, but an inimitable manager. His contributions to the ‘Morning Chronicle’ seem to have suggested his next undertaking, the only one in which he can be said to have decidedly failed. He became first editor of the ‘Daily News,’ the first number of which appeared 21 Jan. 1846. He had not the necessary qualifications for the function of editor of a political organ. On 9 Feb. he resigned his post, to which Forster succeeded for a time. He continued to contribute for about three months longer, publishing a series of letters descriptive of his Italian journeys. His most remarkable contribution was a series of letters on capital punishment. (For the fullest account of his editorship see Ward, pp. 68, 74.) He then gave up the connection, resolving to pass the next twelve months in Switzerland, and there to write another book on the old model. He left England on 31 May, having previously made a rather singular overture to government for an appointment to the paid magistracy of London, and having also taken a share in starting the General Theatrical Fund. He reached Lausanne 11 June 1846, and took a house called Rosemont. Here he enjoyed the scenery and surrounded himself with a circle of friends, some of whom became his intimates through life. He specially liked the Swiss people. He now began ‘Dombey,’ and worked at it vigorously, though feeling occasionally his oddly characteristic craving for streets. The absence of streets ‘worried’ him ‘in a most singular manner,’ and he was harassed by having on hand both ‘Dombey’ and his next Christmas book, ‘The Battle of Life.’ For a partial remedy of the first evil he made a short stay at Geneva at the end of September. ‘The Battle of Life’ was at last completed, and he was cheered by the success of the first numbers of ‘Dombey.’ In November he started for Paris, where he stayed for three months. He made a visit to London in December, when he arranged for a cheap issue of his writings, which began in the following year. He was finally brought back to England by an illness of his eldest son, then at King’s College School. His house in Devonshire Terrace was still let to a tenant, and he did not return there until September 1847. ‘Dombey and Son’ had a brilliant success. The first five numbers, with the death, truly or falsely pathetic, of Paul Dombey, were among his most striking pieces of work, and the book has had great popularity, though it afterwards took him into the kind of social satire in which he was always least successful. For the first half-year he received nearly 3,000l., and henceforth his pecuniary affairs were prosperous and savings began. He found time during its completion for gratifying on a large scale his passion for theatrical performances. In 1847 a scheme was started for the benefit of Leigh Hunt. Dickens became manager of a company which performed Jonson’s comedy
