ASPR Journal, V14 - Iapsop.com

Peculiar Experiences Connected with Noted Persons. 363
for many years) to the incident just cited, and see how loosely
it fits. What was there about three persons, one a stranger,
coming to Dickens after he had finished a reading from his own
works, to " excite " or 4 ' astonish " him, make his brain whirl
and bring about a hallucination of memory, an illusion of having
dreamed it all before? It was the most commonplace event to
him Besides, as in most such cases, he had the distinct recollection
of his thoughts about the dream on waking, thoughts
inextricably interwoven with the acts performed while dressing!
Again, a " pseudo-presentiment " should tally with the event
as a reflection does with the object, but in the dream Miss Napier
introduced herself, yet in reality was introduced by another.
XXIII. DICKENS EXPERIENCES A SINGULAR COINCIDEN!OE.
The story is told, with extraordinary accessories, elsewhere,
but at present I give only what is stated on known authority.
So much may be found in Forster's Life of Dickens (London,
1874), III, 483-4.
Dickens published a ghost-story in the 125th number of All the
Year Round, which before its publication both Mr. Layard and
myself saw at Gadshill, and identified as one related by Lord Lytton.
It was published in September, and in a day or two led to what
Dickens will relate. " The artist himself who is the hero of that
story (to Lord Lytton, 15th of September, 1861) has sent me in
black and white his own account of the whole experience, so very
original, so very extraordinary, so very far beyond the version I
have published, that all other like stories tum pale before it * *
* * but conceive this-the portrait-painter has been engaged to
write it elsewhere for a story for next Christmas, and not unnaturally
supposed, when he saw himself anticipated in All the Year •
Round, that there had been treachery at his printers. " In particular",
says he, "how else was it possible that the date, the 13th
of September,! could have been got at? For I never told the date,
until I wrote it." Now my story has NO DATE, but seeing, when
I looked over the proof, the great importance of having a date, I
(C.D.) wrote in, unconsciously, the exact date on the margin of the
proof.
Digitized by Goog I e