MANAGER OF THE HOUSE 131while Dickens struggled to write Dombey and Son. By this time there were
six Dickens children; Catherine and her younger sister Georgina, who had
joined the household in 1842, had a great deal to organize at each move.
Except for a two-year break between the birth of the fourth child, Walter
Landor, in February 1841 and a new pregnancy, with Francis Jeffrey, in
March 1843, Catherine had become pregnant again six to twelve months
after the birth of each child; the pattern was to continue until the tenth,
Edward Bulwer Lytton (called Plorn), was born in March 1852. (Cathe-
rine’s mother, Georgina Thomson Hogarth, had borne ten children herself;
Catherine may well have felt it normal to follow in this tradition.) Sydney
Haldiman, the seventh Dickens child, was born in April 1847 in a house on
Chester Place that Dickens took when the family returned to London before
the Devonshire Terrace rental contract was up at the end of June. Whatever
household charms Dickens may have lavished on his young wife and small
children, providing a continuity of residence for pregnancy, childbirth, and
infancy was not among them.
Wherever the family was at home, there was the problem of managing a
large household that also served as a writer’s workplace. “When at work my
father was almost always alone,” Mamie Dickens recalls, “so that, with rare
exceptions, save as we could see the effect of the adventures of his characters
upon him in his daily moods, we knew but little of his manner of work.
Absolute quiet under these circumstances was essential, the slightest sound
making an interruption fatal to the success of his labours.” She does not elab-
orate on what was required to keep a brood of children quiet for five hours
a day, mentioning only that the study at Devonshire Terrace was “a pretty
room, with steps leading directly into the garden from it, and with an extra
baize door to keep out all sounds and noise.” The children’s conversation at
the lunch table “did not seem to disturb him, though any sudden sound, as
the dropping of a spoon, or the clinking of a glass, would send a spasm of
pain across his face” (M. Dickens 46, 49, 65). Mamie’s lifelong adoration of
Dickens pervades her reminiscences; she remembers lovingly his extreme
tidiness and punctuality, as well as his praise for her childish housekeeping
duties: “A prettily decorated table was his special pleasure, and from my earli-
est girlhood the care of this devolved upon me” (M. Dickens 37). The reader
is left to wonder about the inner life of a child so attentive to the faces and
moods of her father.
When he wrote Dombey and Son, Dickens seems to have been wondering
about it too, in his own transformative way. When he is ensconced in his
own suite of ground-floor rooms, Mr. Dombey’s absent presence dominates
his household. Dombey, who represents what Dickens consciously abhors,