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Driving one day to Hook, they met Charles Dickens, then best known as 'Boz, in one of his long tramps, with Harrison Ainsworth as his companion. When Dickens's next work, Master Humphrey's Clock, appeared, the Howitts were amused to see that their stout and wilful Peg had not escaped the novelist's keen eye, but had been pressed into service for Mr. Garland's chaise.
How much longer The Constitutional struggled on, I know not. That was the first time I ever saw or heard of William Makepeace Thackeray. The Howitts were somewhat consoled for their journalistic losses by the triumphant success of Rural Life in England.
The family experiences were diversified thenceforward by frequent change of scene, for William was always ready and willing to start off at a moment's notice to the mountains, the seaside, or the Continent. But whether the Howitts were at home or abroad, they continued their making of many books, so that it becomes difficult for the biographer to keep pace with their literary output.
Howitt next set to work upon another topographical volume, his Visits to Remarkable Places, in which he turned to good account the materials collected in his pedestrian rambles about the country. In 1840 the question of education for the elder children became urgent, and the Howitts, who had heard much of the advantages of a residence in Germany from their friends, Mrs. Hemans, Mrs.
Hertslet of the Foreign Office, his wife and his daughter, were neighbours, and proved kind friends; in 1867 the Howitts came to Claygate and sought the society of "the two bright, clever young people"; and in a house close by Mr. Frederick Ricketts came to live with his family. Mr.
'Who are these three brothers and sisters, the Howitts, sir? asks the Shepherd of Christopher North, in the course of a discussion of the Christmas gift-books, 'whose names I see in the adverteesements? North. I don't know, James. It runs in my head that they are Quakers. Richard and William seem amiable and ingenious men, and Sister Mary writes beautifully. Shepherd.
Soon poor Andersen, perceiving himself neglected, complained of headache, and insisted on going indoors, whither Mary Gillies and I, both anxious to efface any disagreeable impression, accompanied him; but he remained irritable and out of sorts. It was in 1845 or 1846 that the Howitts made the acquaintance of Tennyson, whose poetry they had long admired.
Her husband, in great perplexity, came to ask advice of the Howitts, who insisted that the invalid should be removed to their house, where she remained for ten days before she was able to continue her journey. Wordsworth himself was only able to stay one night, but in that short time he made a very favourable impression upon his host and hostess.
If I wrote a book I could say no more than I mean to suggest to you in these few lines. All that I leave unsaid, I leave to your generous understanding. The Howitts were keenly interested in the gradual awakening of the long-dormant, artistic instincts of the nation, the first signs of which became faintly visible about the end of the forties.
Thou hast as much poetry in thee as would set up half-a-dozen writers. The one dissentient voice among admiring contemporaries is that of Miss Mitford, who writes in 1852: 'I am for my sins so fidgety respecting style that I have the bad habit of expecting a book that pretends to be written in our language to be English; therefore I cannot read Miss Strickland, or the Howitts, or Carlyle, or Emerson, or the serious parts of Dickens. It must be owned that the Howitts are condemned in fairly good company.
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