Note 218 — Chapter VII

Here is the rough note: in which the reader will be interested to observe the limits originally placed to the proposal. The first Readings were to comprise only the Carol, and for others a new story was to be written. He had not yet the full confidence in his power or versatility as an actor which subsequent experience gave him. "I propose to announce in a short and plain advertisement (what is quite true) that I cannot so much as answer the numerous applications that are made to me to read, and that compliance with ever so few of them is, in any reason, impossible. That I have therefore resolved upon a course of readings of the Christmas Carol both in town and country, and that those in London will take place at St. Martin's Hall on certain evenings. Those evenings will be either four or six Thursdays, in May and the beginning of June. . . . I propose an Autumn Tour, for the country, extending through August, September, and October. It would comprise the Eastern Counties, the West, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Scotland. I should read from 35 to 40 times in this tour, at the least. At each place where there was a great success, I would myself announce that I should come back, on the turn of Christmas, to read a new Christmas story written for that purpose. This story I should first read a certain number of times in London. I have the strongest belief that by April in next year, a very large sum of money indeed would be gained by these means. Ireland would be still untouched, and I conceive America alone (if I could resolve to go there) to be worth Ten Thousand Pounds. In all these proceedings, the Business would be wholly detached from me, and I should never appear in it. I would have an office, belonging to the Readings and to nothing else, opened in London; I would have the advertisements emanating from it, and also signed by some one belonging to it; and they should always mention me as a third person—just as the Child's Hospital, for instance, in addressing the public, mentions me."