Charles Dickens 'rhetorical exuberance': Harold Skimpole in "Bleak House" is based on James Henry Leigh Hunt: his wife's dwarfish chiropodist recognised herself in Miss Mowcher in "David Copperfield". Perhaps Dickens's impressions on his meeting with Hans Christian Andersen informed the delineation of Uriah Heep. Virginia Woolf maintained that "we remodel our psychological geography when we read Dickens" as he produces "characters who exist not in detail, not accurately or exactly, but abundantly in a cluster of wild yet extraordinarily revealing remarks". One "character" vividly drawn throughout his novels is London itself. From the coaching inns on the outskirts of the city to
Charles Dickens Museum a registered charity. Perhaps the best-known exhibit is the portrait of Dickens known as "Dickens's Dream" by R. W. Buss, an original illustrator of "The Pickwick Papers". This unfinished portrait shows Dickens in his study at Gads Hill Place surrounded by many of the characters he had created. The painting was begun in 1870 after Dickens's death. Other notable artefacts in the museum include numerous first editions and original manuscripts as well as original letters by Dickens, and many personal items owned by Dickens and his family. The only known item of clothing worn by Dickens still in existence is