waren om in beslag te nemen (nulla bona) of dat de aan te houden persoon onvindbaar was (non
inventus est).
Charles wist goed hoe hij practisch en juridisch moest optreden. Hij was bekwaam in de omgang met
het recht. Zijn eventueel tekort aan juridische vaardigheden ving hij handig op door twee bevriende
juristen, Forster en Mitton te raadplegen. Anders dan zijn vader had hij zichzelf en zijn juridische
mogelijkheden in de hand. Begin maart 1839 schreef Charles aan Forster:
In een post scriptum voegde hij er o.a. aan toe "This promptitude is necessary and worth a thousand
prospective resolutions."
Hij slaagde erin een goed huis voor zijn ouders te vinden en betaalde de huur voor het eerste
kwartaal. Daarbij betoonde hij grote zorgvuldigheid:
Aldus in een brief aan zijn vrouw dd.5 maart 1839.
Dezelfde dag schreef hij een brief aan Forster, waarin zijn literaire begaafheid zich liet gelden:
My dear Forster
Since I saw you this morning, I have reflected seriously and constantly on the matter in hand. The result is, that I have
taken my place to Exeter for next Monday Morning in order that they may join me - or at least leave town for that
purpose - on the following Saturday when their notice expires.
I have mentioned this to my mother who is with me tomorrow morning at half past 10.1 have also given her the option of
joining me at Exeter if she wishes, a day or two before the Saturday, that she may get things in better order than I could
do. I have done this verbally - not by letter.
Hie money for the coach-fares and road expenses will be paid by you and Mitton to whom I will forward a cheque by
jst from Exeter. I fear it is too much to hope that you can accompany me in this toilsome journey. If you could, you
know how much you would lighten its weariness and inconvenience.
The rent Mitton arranges tomorrow morning. To tradespeople let them say nothing. The only hope I have of making any
composition short of paying in full, is founded upon their being previously non est inventus
This hasty preparation leaves me but one day of hurry. Will you dine here at 5? Say yes or no, before 12.
The old landlady, the finest old countrywoman conceivable - lives next door, and her brother and his wife in the next
cottage to that. They have been known there for half a century and have the highest possible character at the Bank and
from the clergyman who formerly lived himself, in the cottage I have takenThe rent (including taxes) is ?20 a year.
Hie old lady has "a lined" (she dwelt a good deal upon that) a "lined" pew in the best part of the church, and in it are two
sittings for nothing....
I took a cottage for them this morning. If they are not pleased with it -1 shall be grievously disappointed; that's all. It is a
place called Alphington, exactly one mile beyond Exeter on the Dawlish, I think, but I know on the Plymouth Road.
There are two white cottages together built of brick with thatched roofs: One is theirs and the other belongs to their
landlady one Mrs.Pannell.... She is a fat, infirm, splendidly-fresh-faced country dame, rising sixty and recovering from an
attack "on the Nerves"The good lady's brother and his wife live in the next nearest cottage, and the brother transacts
the good lady's business, the nerves not admitting of her transacting herself, although they leave her in her debilitated
state something sharper than the finest lancet. Now the brother, having coughed all night till he coughed himself into such
a perspiration that you might have "wringed his hair," according to the asseveration of eye-witnesses, his wife was sent
for to negociate with me, and if you could have seen me sitting in the kitchen with the two old women, endeavouring to
make them comprehend that I had no evil intentions or covert designs and that I had come down all that way to take some
cottage and had happened to walk down that road and see that particular one, you would never have forgotten it. Then to
see the servant girl run backwards and forwards to the sick man, and when the sick man had signed one agreement which
I drew up and the old woman instantly put away in a disused tea-caddy, to see the trouble and the number of messages it
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