‘That Curious Life-giving Power of His’

Abstract

(I) The first occasion of my meeting Mr. Dickens was at the house of Charles Leslie, a painter for whom my father had a great sympathy and affection…. [There] my sister and I first realised Mr. Dickens himself, though only as a sort of brilliance in the room, mysteriously dominant and formless. I remember how everybody lighted up when he entered. [She also recalls an expedition, which started from the Leslies’ house, to visit a ship commanded by Dickens’s American friend Captain Morgan.¹] Mr. Dickens seemed to take command of the party…. He was talking, arranging everything, in spirits gaily delightful — as I have said, mysteriously dominant. All comes back to my mind as I think of it, and I remember (after forgetting a great deal) that we travelled back in a railway carriage in Mr. Dickens’s company late at night, dead tired, enchanted, sleepy, yet somehow carried along by his kindly brilliance. It was soon after this that we went to some eventful children’s parties in Devonshire Place, and also later to Tavistock House….