The Solitary House (184 page)

The people even praise Me as the doctor’s wife. The people even like Me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite abashed. I owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for his sake, as I do everything I do in life for his sake.

A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling and my guardian and little Richard, who are coming tomorrow, I was sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable porch, when Allan came home. So he said, “My precious little woman, what are you doing here?” And I said, “The moon is shining so brightly, Allan, and the night is so delicious, that I have been sitting here, thinking.”

“What have you been thinking about, my dear?” said Allan then.

“How curious you are!” said I. “I am almost ashamed to tell you, but I will. I have been thinking about my old looks—such as they were.”

“And what have you been thinking about
them
, my busy bee?” said Allan.

“I have been thinking, that I thought it was impossible that you
could
have loved me any better, even if I had retained them.”

“ ‘Such as they were’?” said Allan, laughing.

“Such as they were, of course.”

“My dear Dame Durden,” said Allan, drawing my arm through his, “do you ever look in the glass?”

“You know I do; you see me do it.”

“And don’t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?”

I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome, and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face that ever was seen; and that they can very well do without much beauty in me—even supposing—.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Other Works by Charles Dickens

NOVELS

Oliver Twist
(1838)

Nicholas Nickleby
(1839)

The Old Curiosity Shop
(1841)

Barnaby Rudge
(1841)

Martin Chuzzlewit
(1844)

Dombey and Son
(1848)

David Copperfield
(1850)

Bleak House
(1853)

Hard Times
(1854)

Little Dorrit
(1857)

A Tale of Two Cities
(1859)

Great Expectations
(1861)

Our Mutual Friend
(1865)

The Mystery of Edwin Drood
(unfinished, 1870)

SHORT STORIES

A Christmas Carol
(1843)

The Chimes
(1844)

The Cricket on the Hearth
(1845)

The Battle of Life
(1846)

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain
(1848)

Christmas Stories
(1850–67)

“To Be Read at Dusk” (1852)

“Hunted Down” (1859)

“George Silverman’s Explanation” (1867)

“Holiday Romance” (1868)

ESSAYS AND TRAVEL BOOKS

Sketches by “Boz”
(1836)

Sketches of Young Gentlemen
(1838)

Sketches of Young Couples
(1840)

American Notes
(1842)

Pictures from Italy
(1846)

“The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices” (with Wilkie Collins, 1857)

Reprinted Pieces
(1858)

The Uncommercial Traveller
(1861)

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES

Butt, John, and Kathleen Tillotson.
Dickens at Work
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1957.

Cockshut, A.O.J.
The Imagination of Charles Dickens
. New York: New York University Press, 1962.

Ford, George.
Dickens and His Readers
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1955.

——, and Lauriat Lane, eds.
The Dickens Critics
. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1961.

Forster, John.
The Life of Charles Dickens
. 3 vols. London: Chapman and Hall, 1872–4.

Gissing, George.
Charles Dickens: A Critical Study
. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1898.

Hardy, Barbara.
The Moral Art of Dickens
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

House, Humphry.
The Dickens World
. London: Oxford University Press, 1941.

House, Madeleine, and others, eds.
The Letters of Charles Dickens
. Pilgrim Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965-.

Johnson, Edgar.
Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph
. 2 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952.

Leavis, F. R., and Q. D. Leavis.
Dickens the Novelist
. London: Chatto and Windus, 1970.

Mackenzie, Norman, and Jeanne Mackenzie.
Dickens: A Life
. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Marcus, Steven.
Dickens: From Pickwick to Dombey
. New
York: Basic Books, 1965.

Miller, J. Hillis.
Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels
. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958.

Orwell, George.
Dickens, Dali and Others: Studies in Popular Culture
. New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1946.

Wilson, Angus.
The World of Charles Dickens
. New York: Viking, 1970.

Wilson, Edmund.
The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature
. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941.

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