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Miscellaneous Papers by Charles Dickens
page 63 of 81 (77%)
we insensibly invented the rest. For myself, my mother was not a
more real personage to me, than Miss Berwick the governess became.

This went on until December, 1854, when the Christmas number,
entitled The Seven Poor Travellers, was sent to press. Happening to
be going to dine that day with an old and dear friend, distinguished
in literature as Barry Cornwall, I took with me an early proof of
that number, and remarked, as I laid it on the drawing-room table,
that it contained a very pretty poem, written by a certain Miss
Berwick. Next day brought me the disclosure that I had so spoken of
the poem to the mother of its writer, in its writer's presence; that
I had no such correspondent in existence as Miss Berwick; and that
the name had been assumed by Barry Cornwall's eldest daughter, Miss
Adelaide Anne Procter.

The anecdote I have here noted down, besides serving to explain why
the parents of the late Miss Procter have looked to me for these
poor words of remembrance of their lamented child, strikingly
illustrates the honesty, independence, and quiet dignity, of the
lady's character. I had known her when she was very young; I had
been honoured with her father's friendship when I was myself a young
aspirant; and she had said at home, "If I send him, in my own name,
verses that he does not honestly like, either it will be very
painful to him to return them, or he will print them for papa's
sake, and not for their own. So I have made up my mind to take my
chance fairly with the unknown volunteers."

Perhaps it requires an editor's experience of the profoundly
unreasonable grounds on which he is often urged to accept unsuitable
articles--such as having been to school with the writer's husband's
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