144 KNOWING DICKENS
already writing to Austin from Broadstairs: “NO WORKMEN ON THE PREMISES
along of my not hearing from you!! I have torn all my hair off, and constantly
beat my unoffending family.” The letter, often quoted as evidence of his fran-
tic state, goes on in this half-comedic vein; then it modulates into Dickens’s
other house voice, which coolly describes a change in his plan of renovation.
The next day the cool voice is in charge: Dickens has heard from Austin, who
has suggested a builder and arranged for a meeting at the house (6.478–79).
On 11 September the meeting takes place, and Dickens writes happily to
Catherine about how well the house looks once the dirty blinds are down.
He wants her to come to London with him and decide on the allocation of
bedrooms and the wallpapers. Catherine is still treated as a partner in the
household business, and he counts on her to sympathize with his account of
the Stones’ hapless housekeeping: “Think of all the broken birdcages in the
world, sticking in all the broken chairs, with their legs uppermost—and you
will have a faint idea of their ‘moving’—not including the dust” (6.482).
Frank Stone’s son Marcus, who became a Dickens protégé and illustrated
Our Mutual Friend, remembered the contrast he observed while staying at
Devonshire Terrace: “The presiding influence of the master was visible all
over the house, his love of order and fitness, his aversion to any neglect of
attention, even in details which are frequently not considered at all. There
was a place for everything and everything in its place, deterioration was
not permitted.” Nor did Dickens allow dust, or even a “lumber room or
glory hole” to hold the leftover or abandoned things that most households
put away out of sight. “If he was something of a martinet he certainly
spared himself less than anybody,” Marcus Stone observed. “A Napoleonic
commander-in-chief, he found able and active allies in his sister in law and
eldest daughter who were geniuses in carrying out his ideas” (Collins 1981,
184–85). Although Stone may have been recalling the years at Gad’s Hill
after the marriage ended, his exclusion of Catherine is notable.
Henry Austin offered the builder a month for the Tavistock repairs, and
promised Dickens that the repairs would be complete “within a week of that
time” (6.481), but of course they dragged on, and the family did not move in
until mid-November. Dickens and Austin seem to have come to the strategic
agreement that Dickens was to come into town only at long intervals to view
the progress on the house, and Dickens tried his best: “Calm in my great
confidence in you—sedate—even cheerful—I shall remain here, until sum-
moned to behold the Works” (6.489). Letters to Austin during that period
continue to alternate between detailed practical planning and comic remind-
ers of the writer’s impatience: “Phantom lime attends me all day long. I
dream that I am a carpenter, and can’t partition off the hall” (6.485); “I dream