Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/179

 us.v.FEB.24,1912.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

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unattractive form in which they were pro- duced has something to do with it. There was much merrymaking at White's Leech being among the guests ; plenty of rollicking, and great games at rounders every afternoon, with all Bonchurch looking on. Mention is also made of "a golden-haired lad of the Swinburnes' " with whom the Dickens boys used to play. Unfortunately, Leech met with an accident while bathing ; he was knocked over by a great wave striking him on the forehead. Dickens reports him as " in bed with twenty of his namesakes on his temples." One night, after having been a second time bled, he was in such an alarming state of restlessness that Dickens proposed to try magnetism.

" Accordingly [Dickens relates], in the middle of the night I fell to ; and, after a very fatiguing bout of it, put him to sleep for an hour and thirty minutes. A change came on in the sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded little Mrs. Leech across him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of hay.... What do you [Forster] think of my setting up in the magnetic line with a large brass plate ? Terms, twenty-four guineas per nap."

In the summer of 1851 his friend Talfourd gave a banquet at " The Star and Garter " at Richmond to celebrate the success of ' David Copperfield.' Tennyson and Thacke- ray were among the guests, and Forster says that he " had rarely seen Dickens happier than he was amid the sunshine of that day." Of all Dickens's works ' David Copper- field ' has always been my first favourite, as it appears to have been that of its author. The Daily Tehgraph of the 8th inst., in its cable report of the Celebration dinner at New York on the previous night, when nearly 400 guests met at Delmonico's, tells us that Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin related how, when a child of 10, in the autumn of 1867, she had taken the train one day from Port- land to Charleston, and in the same carriage taught sight of Dickens

" eating a sponge cake next to a boy who sold magazines and popcorn. ' I never knew how it happened,' said the speaker, ' but invisible chains drew me out of my seat beside the popcorn boy

and

iny

plumped me down beside him. " God bless soul ! " he exclaimed, on looking around a moment later. " Where did you come from ? " I told him, also adding my age and the fact that I had read all his books. " Have you come to call on me ? " he asked. "You don't mean to say you have read all my books ? " " Yes," I said, I've read some of them many times."  Well. I can't believe it. Those long, thick books, and a little slip of a thing like you." Then I said conscientiously I had skipped some of the long, dull parts. He immediately asked me to indicate to him what I considered the long, dull parts,

and he took out a note-book and pencil while I went through the catalogue of passages, thinking' all the time I was paying him a great compliment.'

" Mr. Dickens then asked his small companion which books she enjoyed most. ' " David Copper- field " ' was the unhesitating answer. ' Good t good ! so do I,' he exclaimed. It was not long before the little girl's hand lay in one of the novelist's, and his arm was around her waist P while the poor embarrassed mother of the child, looking on from the end of the car, could not think of a suitable method of relieving the dis- tinguished stranger from her daughter's company.

'* ' Finally he took me back to mother, where he- introduced himself to our party, and then gave me a good-bye kiss. That was the last I saw of him, as he disappeared down the platform, but his image has never left my heart from that day to this.' "

I cannot close this week's note without giving expression to the deep regret I, in common with all our readers, felt on hearing of the death on the 14th inst., at the age of 72, of Sir Frank Marzials, who among his manyliterary labours wrote the life of Dickens for the series of " Great Writers " published by Walter Scott, from which I have already quoted. He entered the War Office as far back as the Crimean War, and The Daily Telegraph in its obituary notice on the 17th (which, by the way, contains a speaking likeness of him) states that, although a member of the Royal Patriotic Fund, he willingly assisted The Daily Telegraph to carry to a successful issue its Boer War Widows and Orphans' Fund, for which was raised a sum of over 250,000/.

JOHN COLLINS FRANCIS.

(To be continued.)

STATUES AND MEMORIALS IN THE BRITISH ISLES.

(See 10 S. xi. 441 ; xii. 51, 114, 181, 401 ; 11 S. i. 282; ii. 42, 242, 381; iii. 22, 222, 421 ; iv. 181, 361 ; v. 62.)

MEN OF LETTERS (concluded).

Edinburgh. In East Piince's Street Gar- dens stands Sir John Steell's bronze statue of Prof. Wilson " Christopher North " of Blackwood. It was placed in position on 21 March, 1865, and is inscribed :

John Wilson

Born 18th May 1785

Died 1st April 1854.

Edinburgh. In West Prince's Street Gar- dens a statue was erected in 1865 to the memory of the poet Allan Ramsay, by the Judge, Lord Murray, one of his descendants. The sculptor was Sir John Steell. The pedestal, designed by David Bryce, contains