CHARLES DICKENS. 195 



others. Dickens' editorial work was conscientiously done. The 

 papers sent in, after some preliminary testing by the assistant 

 editor, both ms. and proofs, received his careful attention. 



During 1853 he felt conscious that he was overdoing it. 

 Busy with Bleak House, the conduct of his new periodical, and 

 the writing of his C/iild's History of England, he escaped from 

 London to Boulogne on 13th June. 'If I had substituted,' he 

 said, ' anybody's knowledge of myself for my own, and lingered 

 in London, I never could have got through.' The completion 

 of Bleak House was the signal for a trip to Italy, in company 

 with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg. On his 

 return to England, he began his career of public readings by 

 giving his 'Christmas Carol ' and 'The Cricket on the Hearth,' 

 in the Birmingham Town Hall, in the middle of December. 

 His success here strengthened his desire to become a public 

 reader. Between four and five hundred pounds were added to 

 the funds of the Institute through his exertions, and a prettily- 

 worked flower basket in silver was at the time presented to Mrs. 

 Dickens. The title of his next tale was Hard Times, which, 

 out of a list of fourteen proposed titles, was the one to which 

 he and Forster both agreed. It was the first tale which he 

 contributed to his own magazine, Household Words. 'The 

 difficulty,' he wrote, ' of the space, after a few weeks' trial, is 

 crushing. Nobody can have any idea of it who has not had an 

 experience of patient fiction - writing with some elbow-room 

 always, and open places in perspective. In this form, with 

 any kind of regard to the current number, there is absolutely 

 no such thing.' John Ruskin characterized it as one of the 

 most valuable of his novels. The name is said to have been 

 originally derived from a tall, solitary brick house at Broad- 

 stairs ; this watering-place for many years was Dickens' favourite 



