Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 5.djvu/492

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [n s. v. MAY 25, 1912.

The first indication of the date is containec ^n the Explanatory Runes of the Solar Cycle, which begin thus :

Two plausible reasons can be suggested for this :

(1) That fr were the Sunday letters of

the year in which the calendar was made.

(2) That * were the Sunday letters of

the first year of the century in which the original was made, so that, by counting out The number formed by the two right-hand digits of the date of the year (making allow- ance for the fact that the first year of the century must be taken as the '00 year) along this row of runes, the symbol indicated is the Sunday letter. It would be more rational to take the '01 year as the first one, but it is impossible that this has been done here, for the double rune requires a leap year, which a '01 year can never be. These two suggestions seem to be of almost

equal probability. It so happens that p

were the Sunday letters for the year 1700, which makes the second suggestion a tenable one. If the first suggestion is correct, the date would be one of a series represented by the mathematical expression

1700 28n,

where n is any 'integer within reasonable .limits. E. CHAPPELL.

( To be continued.)

CHARLES DICKENS. FEBRUARY 7TH, 1812 JUNE 9TH, 1870.

(See ante, pp. 81, 101, 121, 141, 161, 182, 203, 223, 243, 262, 284, 301, 323, 344, 362, 383.)

HAD Dickens's health not given way, it was his earnest desire to visit Australia. As far back as 1856 he had had some idea of settling in that country, and the tidings of his sons' progress there revived that old wish. He might well hope to find in Australia a new subject for a book, while without doubt, a series of readings there would have produced a very large sum. I learn from a source entirely trustworthy

that Messrs. Spiers & Pond, who at that time were partners and not a limited company, had proposed to Dickens that he should pay a visit of some months to Australia for the purpose of giving readings, and that they had offered him a sum, which is believed to have been 20,000?., for such a visit. At that time Messrs. Spiers & Pond were not so much caterers of food, &c., as enter- prising people who as will be remembered arranged for and carried out the first visit of English cricketers to Australia.

The negotiations were ended by a letter, now in the possession of my correspondent, which conveyed Dickens's final decision in the following terms :

Gad's Hill Place,

Higham by Rochester, Kent. Saturday night nineteenth July, 1862. DEAR SIR, I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your obliging letter of the Seventeenth with thanks.

Without questioning the liberality of the pro- posal you make to me in that letter, I must at once and without any reservation decline it.

In bringing our business correspondence to an end, let me again assure you that it has inspired me with a great respect for the open and plain dealing of your House. Dear Sir,

Your faithful Servant,

(signed) CHARLES DICKENS. . Felix Spiers, Esquire, Jun, r.

The twelve readings to which, as I mentioned at the end of my last article, his medical advisers had consented were offered by way of compensation to Messrs. Chappell for the breakdown of the enterprise on which they had staked so much. They were, however, delayed until the opening months of 1870.

Early in May, 1869, Mr. and Mrs. Fields of Boston and Mr. and Mrs. Childs of Philadelphia were to arrive in London ; and n order to be there to meet them, Dickens nimself at the St. James's Hotel, Piccadilly. Before taking his guests to Gad's he ex- jlored London with them, showing Fields Johnson's Bolt Court and Goldsmith's Temple chambers, and at Fields's special request mounting a staircase he had not ascended for more than thirty years, to the hamber in Furnival's Inn where the first 3age of ' Pickwick ' was written. At night le piloted him through notorious thieves' quarters the last place visited was the original of the scene in the opening chapter of ' Edwin Drood,' the opium den, where,
 * ook rooms for Mamie, Miss Hogarth, and

' in a miserable court at night," says Mr. Fields, ' we found a haggard old woman blowing at a kind