Note 7 — Chapter V

To this date belongs a visit paid him at Furnival's Inn in Mr. Macrone's company by the notorious Mr. N. P. Willis, who calls him "a young paragraphist for the Morning Chronicle," and thus sketches his residence and himself: "In the most crowded part of Holborn, within a door or two of the Bull-and-Mouth Inn, we pulled up at the entrance of a large building used for lawyers' chambers. I followed by a long flight of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs and a few books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens, for the contents. I was only struck at first with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that evening as the strongest instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to employers), the degree to which the poor author was overpowered with the honor of his publisher's visit! I remember saying to myself, as I sat down on a rickety chair, 'My good fellow, if you were in America with that fine face and your ready quill, you would have no need to be condescended to by a publisher.' Dickens was dressed very much as he has since described Dick Swiveller, minus the swell look. His hair was cropped close to his head, his clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and, after changing a ragged office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the door, collarless and buttoned up, the very personification, I thought, of a close sailer to the wind." I remember, while my friend lived, our laughing heartily at this description, hardly a word of which is true; and I give it now as no unfair specimen of the kind of garbage that since his death also has been served up only too plentifully by some of his own as well as by others of Mr. Willis's countrymen.