From his rise to fame with The Pickwick Papers, Dickens was plagued by begging-letter writers. Forster comments (Book 2, Ch. 8) that there is not 'a particle of exaggeration' in Dickens's description of his victimisation here, but adds, 'for much of what he suffered he was himself responsible, by giving so largely, as at first he did, to almost everyone who applied to him'. Among the most persistent of these corresponding beggars was an old school-friend Daniel Tobin, who became 'an intolerable nuisance' (Forster, Book 1, Ch. 3), and he it was who finally made the bizarre request for a donkey, described here by Dickens. In the paragraph immediately following this Dickens describes another case, that of John Walker, whom Dickens had given money to several times in 1844, sending his brother Fred to check that he really was in distress.
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