MANAGER OF THE HOUSE 143of household disorder—like washing in cheese-plates and breakfasting from
laundry baskets—would take a prominent place.
Henry Austin, an architect and secretary to the Board of Health, was on
demand to assess potential houses for their structural and sanitary soundness.
But things did not go smoothly or rapidly. Dickens made two offers that
were not accepted, and looked at several other houses before considering
Tavistock House in Tavistock Square, the residence of his artist friend Frank
Stone. The eighteen-room house was in dirty, dilapidated condition and
would require extensive repair, but it was prudently inexpensive for its size
and location. The decision to take the house was long in coming. Dickens
was preoccupied in the early months of 1851 with the amateur players’ per-
formance before the queen at the duke of Devonshire’s estate, which required
the rigorous drilling of his not-always-disciplined troops as well as the con-
struction of an elaborate movable stage set. The infant Dora was seriously
ill in January and February. In the midst of Dickens’s theatrical frenzy, his
father had his sudden bladder operation and died on 31 March. Catherine,
suffering from a nervous illness Dickens could not quite name, was sent for
a hydropathic cure to Malvern. Dickens stayed there with her much of the
time between mid-March and mid-April, while the children, including the
apparently recovered seven-month-old Dora, stayed at Devonshire Terrace.
On 14 April Dora died as Dickens was presiding over the annual meeting
of the General Theatrical Fund. The performance before the queen at Dev-
onshire House had to be delayed until mid-May, while the family recovered
from the successive shocks of bereavement. Dickens took Catherine to see
Tavistock House days after Dora’s death: “I am anxious to direct Kate’s atten-
tion to our removal, and to keep it engaged,” he wrote to Stone (6.357). But
Catherine was ill, and it was no time for decisions. Dickens let Devonshire
Terrace until September and engaged a favorite vacation house at Broadstairs
from mid-May through October. He set up a “gipsy tent,” as he called it, in
the back rooms of the Household Words office in Wellington Street, where he
stayed when he came into London on business (6.393). It was not as yet clear
where the family would be when they returned.
It was not until 14 July that Dickens asked Henry Austin to look at Tavis-
tock House for him; the decision to make a definite offer came six days later.
Austin now moved into position as Dickens’s London agent for remodeling
and repair, serving as a crucial mediator between Dickens’s careful plan-
ning and Dickens’s uncontrollable impatience to have the work completed.
Frank Stone, on Dickens’s suggestion, moved his household temporarily into
One Devonshire Terrace when the tenant departed, leaving Tavistock House
free for repairs beginning early in September. By 7 September Dickens was