Page:The Story of the Cheeryble Grants.djvu/27

Rh contention is that Dickens, in the sentence referred to, used “Cheeryble Brothers,” designedly, with a double meaning, and that when he said he had never interchanged any communication with them he referred to the ideal “Cheerybles” of the novel, while his readers would understand the words as applicable to the actual “Cheerybles” — William and Daniel Grant. The readers would thus be adroitly misled by the novelist, while, “If he had said he never met William and Daniel Grant, he would have lied.”

But that is substantially what Dickens did say—

“The originals of the ‘Cheeryble Brothers,’ with whom I never interchanged any communication in my life.” It was, therefore, not the ideal “Cheerybles,” but “the originals” — the actual William and Daniel Grant — with whom, Charles Dickens explicitly tells us, he never inter-changed any communication.

And had the Grants spent the genial evening referred to, at Mr. Gilbert Winter’s, with Dickens, the novelist could not, one thinks, have written the words we have just quoted.

Moreover, sixty long years have come and gone since that festive dinner-party, of which our