Great Expectations a reference to a "knowing man", a possible sketch of Bentley Drummle. Another evokes a house full of "Toadies and Humbugs", foreshadowing the visitors to Satis House in chapter 11. Margaret Cardwell discovered the "premonition" of "Great Expectations" from a 25 September 1855 letter from Dickens to W. H. Wills, in which Dickens speaks of recycling an "odd idea" from the Christmas special "A House to Let" and "the pivot round which my next book shall revolve." The "odd idea" concerns an individual who "retires to an old lonely house…resolved to shut out the world and hold no communion with
Charles Dickens single day. His favourite actor was Charles Mathews, and Dickens learnt his "monopolylogues", (farces in which Mathews played every character), by heart. Then, having learned Gurney's system of shorthand in his spare time, he left to become a freelance reporter. A distant relative, Thomas Charlton, was a freelance reporter at Doctors' Commons, and Dickens was able to share his box there to report the legal proceedings for nearly four years. This education was to inform works such as "Nicholas Nickleby", "Dombey and Son", and especially "Bleak House"—whose vivid portrayal of the machinations and bureaucracy of the legal system did much