What I am describing slumbered and half awoke and slept again in
the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it to
me; I knew of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I
bore the weight of all our little cares and all my projects.

"There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind
and purpose." These words I remembered. I had endeavored to adapt
Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to
adapt myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be
happy; to bear on my own shoulders what I must, and be still
happy.

Thus wrote Dickens in his fictitious character, and of his
fictitious wife. Let us see how he wrote and how he acted in his
own person, and of his real wife.

As early as 1856, he showed a curious and restless activity, as of
one who was trying to rid himself of unpleasant thoughts. Mr.
Forster says that he began to feel a strain upon his invention, a
certain disquietude, and a necessity for jotting down memoranda in
note-books, so as to assist his memory and his imagination. He
began to long for solitude. He would take long, aimless rambles
into the country, returning at no particular time or season. He
once wrote to Forster:

I have had dreadful thoughts of getting away somewhere altogether
by myself. If I could have managed it, I think I might have gone
to the Pyrenees for six months. I have visions of living for half
a year or so in all sorts of inaccessible places, and of opening a