The comic device of a distracted search for a frequently named but always elusive figure which Dickens uses in this entertaining diatribe against portentous gossips prefigures Twemlow's bewildered attempts to identify the Veneerings' 'oldest friend' in Our Mutual Friend.

The 'late auspicious occasion' mentioned was the birth of Queen Victoria's ninth and last child, the Princess Beatrice, on 14 April 1857. This was only the second time that chloroform had been used at a royal birth.

Literary allusions

• 'while memory holds her seat in these distracted globes': Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Sc. 5;
• 'a free-born Briton, who never, never will ... the Guardian Angels who sang that strain': from Thomson's 'Rule Britannia!', in Alfred, A Masque, Act 2, Scene the Last (1740);
• 'like Iago, and word spake never more': Shakespeare, Othello, Act 5, Sc. 2;
• 'O'Boodleom': no doubt an Irish supporter of Lord Boodle (see Bleak House, Ch. 40).

Author: Michael Slater; © J. M. Dent/Orion Publishing Group, Dickens' Journalism Volume III: 'Gone Astray' and Other Papers from Household Words, 1851-1859, 1998.

DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

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