cab was fetched," whilst the last important incident of the book was
enacted in another, the Adelphi Hotel off the Strand, when Mr. Pickwick
announced his determination to retire into private life at Dulwich.

In the ensuing pages, the Pickwickians are followed in the tours
they made in pursuit of adventure, and the inns and taverns they
stopped at are taken in the order of their going and coming. With
each is recalled the story, adventure, or scene associated with it,
and if it has any history of its own apart from that gained through
the book, record is made of the facts concerning it.

The Pickwick Papers was completed in 1837, and a dinner was given to
celebrate the event, at which Dickens himself presided and his friend,
Serjeant T. N. Talfourd, to whom the book was dedicated, acted as
vice-chairman. Ainsworth, Forster, Lover, Macready, Jerdan and other
close friends were invited, and the dinner took place at The Prince of
Wales Coffee House and Hotel in Leicester Place, Leicester Square.

It is very curious that no extended account of this historic event
exists. Forster, in his biography of the novelist, beyond saying that
"everybody in hearty good-humour with every other body," and that "our
friend Ainsworth was of the company," is otherwise silent over the
event. There is certainly a reference to the dinner in a letter from
Dickens to Macready, dated from "48 Doughty Street, Wednesday Evening,"
with no date to it, in which he says:

"There is a semi-business, semi-pleasure little dinner which I intend
to give at the 'Prince of Wales,' in Leicester Place, Leicester Square,
on Saturday, at five for half-past precisely, at which Talfourd,
Forster, Ainsworth, Jerdan, and the publishers will be present. It is