... the top of the proscenium happily fell beyond us, and we escaped with a severe fright. Years afterwards I was amused to read, in one of the published letters of Dickens to his sister-in-law, an account of this accident, in which the novelist told how his gasman had said afterwards: "The master stood it like a brick." But it was not upon the master, but upon me and the three ladies that that terrible ... — Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.