Tiddy hi, tiddy ho, tiddy hi hum,Mr. Forster invited us to dine at his chambers in the Inns of Court. Mr.Dickens and Mrs. Dickens were of the party, and also the painter Maclise, whose work was then highly spoken of. After dinner, while we were taking coffee in the sitting-room, I had occasion to speak to my husband, and addressed him as ‘darling.’ Thereupon Dickens slid down to the floor, and, lying on his back, held up one of his small feet, quivering with pretended emotion. ‘Did she call him “darling” ?’ he cried. I was sorry indeed when the time came for us to leave London, and the more as one of the pleasures there promised us had been that of a breakfast with Charles Buller. Mr. Buller was the only person who at that time spoke to me of
Thus was it when Barbara Popkins was young.
This text is part of:
[110]
intimate friend, John Forster, a lawyer of some note, later known as the author of a biography of Dickens.
When we arrived, Mr. Forster was amusing himself with a small spaniel which had been sent to Mr. Dickens by an admiring friend, who desired that the dog might bear the name of Boz. Somewhat impatient of such tributes, Mr. Dickens had named it Snittel Timbury.
Of the dinner, I only remember that it was of the best so far as concerns food, and that later in the evening we listened to some comic songs, of one of which I recall the refrain; it ran thus:—
Houghton and Mifflin Company, 1899.
Tufts University provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.