| By Author | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Title | [ A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z | Other Symbols ] |
| By Language |
|
Download this book: [ ASCII | HTML | PDF ] Look for this book on Amazon Tweet |
Title: The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete
Author: Forster, John, 1812-1876
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.
*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete" ***
Transcriber's Note:
For the reader: Italic text is surrounded by _underscores_, bold text is
surrounded by =equal signs= and underlined text is surrounded by
~tildes~. Two breves above the letter e are indicated by [)e] in the
text.
THE LIFE
OF
[Illustration: Signature: Charles Dickens]
[Illustration]
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
THREE VOLUMES IN TWO.
VOL. I.
* * * * *
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1875.
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
VOL. I.
1812-1842.
TO THE
DAUGHTERS OF CHARLES DICKENS,
MY GOD-DAUGHTER MARY
AND
HER SISTER KATE,
=This Book is Dedicated=
BY THEIR FRIEND,
AND THEIR FATHER'S FRIEND AND EXECUTOR,
JOHN FORSTER
NOTE TO THE PRESENT EDITION.
SUCH has been the rapidity of the demand for successive impressions of
this book, that I have found it impossible, until now, to correct at
pages 31, 87, and 97 three errors of statement made in the former
editions; and some few other mistakes, not in themselves important, at
pages 96, 101, and 102. I take the opportunity of adding that the
mention at p. 83 is not an allusion to the well-known "Penny" and
"Saturday" Magazines, but to weekly periodicals of some years' earlier
date resembling them in form. One of them, I have since found from a
later mention by Dickens himself, was presumably of a less wholesome and
instructive character. "I used," he says, "when I was at school, to take
in the _Terrific Register_, making myself unspeakably miserable, and
frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small charge of a penny
weekly; which, considering that there was an illustration to every
number in which there was always a pool of blood, and at least one body,
was cheap." An obliging correspondent writes to me upon my reference to
the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62: "Will you permit me to say that the
house, shut up and almost ruinous, is still to be found at the bottom of
a curious and most precipitous court, the entrance of which is just past
Salisbury Street. . . . It was once, I think, the approach to the halfpenny
boats. The house is now shut out from the water-side by the Embankment."
PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON,
_23d December, 1871_.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I. 1812-1822.
Pages 21-46.
CHILDHOOD. ÆT. 1-10.
PAGE
Birth at Landport in Portsea 21
Family of John Dickens 22
Powers of observation in children 23
Two years old 23
In London, æt. 2-3 23
In Chatham, æt. 4-9 23
Vision of boyhood 24
The queer small child 25
Mother's teaching 26
Day-school in Rome Lane 27
Retrospects of childhood 27
David Copperfield and Charles Dickens 28
Access to small but good library 29
Tragedy-writing 30
Comic-song singing 31
Cousin James Lamert 31
First taken to theatre 32
At Mr. Giles's school 32
Encored in the recitations 33
Boyish recollections 33
Birthplace of his fancy 35
Last night in Chatham 35
In London 36
First impressions 36
Bayham Street, Camden-town 36
Faculty of early observation 37
His description of his father 38
Small theatre made for him 38
Sister Fanny at Royal Academy of Music 39
Walks about London 39
Biography and autobiography 40
At his godfather's and his uncle's 41
First efforts at description 42
"Res Angusta Domi" 42
Mother exerting herself 43
Father in the Marshalsea 43
Visit to the prison 44
Captain Porter 44
Old friends disposed of 45
At the pawnbroker's 46
CHAPTER II. 1822-1824.
Pages 47-70.
HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD. ÆT. 10-12.
Mr. Dilke's half-crown 48
Story of boyhood told 48
D. C. and C. D. 48
Enterprise of the cousins Lamert 49
First employment in life 51
Blacking-warehouse 51
A poor little drudge 52
Bob Fagin and Poll Green 52
"Facilis Descensus" 52
Crushed hopes 53
The home in Gower Street 53
Regaling alamode 54
Home broken up 54
At Mrs. Roylance's in Camden-town 55
Sundays in prison 55
Pudding-shops and coffee-shops 56
What was and might have been 57
Thomas and Harry 58
A lodging in Lant Street 59
Meals in the Marshalsea 59
C. D. and the Marchioness 60
Originals of Garland family 60
Adventure with Bob Fagin 61
Saturday-night shows 61
Appraised officially 62
Publican and wife at Cannon Row 63
Marshalsea incident in _Copperfield_ 64
Incident as it occurred 65
Materials for _Pickwick_ 66
Sister Fanny's musical prize 66
From Hungerford Stairs to Chandos Street 67
Father's quarrel with James Lamert 68
Quits the warehouse 68
Bitter associations of servitude 69
What became of the blacking business 70
CHAPTER III. 1824-1830.
Pages 71-95.
SCHOOL-DAYS AND START IN LIFE. ÆT. 12-18.
Outcome of boyish trials 71
Disadvantage in later years 72
Advantages 73
Next move in life 74
Wellington House Academy 74
Revisited and described 75
Letter from a schoolfellow 76
C. D.'s recollections of school 77
Schoolfellow's recollections of C. D. 77
Fac-simile of schoolboy letter 79
Daniel Tobin 81
Another schoolfellow's recollections 82
Writing tales and getting up plays 83
Master Beverley scene-painter 84
Street-acting 84
The schoolfellows after forty years 85
Smallness of the world 86
In attorneys' offices 87
At minor theatres 88
The father on the son's education 89
Studying short-hand 90
In British Museum reading-room 90
Preparing for the gallery 91
D. C. for C. D. 91
A real Dora in 1829 92
The same Dora in 1855 93
Dora changed into Flora 94
Ashes of youth and hope 95
CHAPTER IV. 1831-1835.
Pages 96-106.
REPORTERS' GALLERY AND NEWSPAPER LITERATURE.
ÆT. 19-23.
Reporting for _True Sun_ 96
First seen by me 97
Reporting for _Mirror_ and _Chronicle_ 97
First published piece 97
Discipline and experiences of reporting 98
Life as a reporter 99
John Black 100
Mr. Thomas Beard 101
A letter to his editor 102
Incident of reporting days 102
The same more correctly told 103
Origin of "Boz" 104
Captain Holland 104
Mr. George Hogarth 105
Sketches in _Evening Chronicle_ 105
C. D.'s first hearty appreciator 106
CHAPTER V. 1836.
Pages 107-115.
FIRST BOOK, AND ORIGIN OF PICKWICK. ÆT. 24.
_Sketches by Boz_ 107
Fancy-piece by N. P. Willis: a poor English author 107
Start of _Pickwick_ 108
Marriage to Miss Hogarth 108
First connection with Chapman & Hall 109
Mr. Seymour's part in _Pickwick_ 109
Letters relating thereto 110
C. D.'s own account 110
False claims refuted 111
Pickwick's original, his figure and his name 112
First sprightly runnings of genius 113
The _Sketches_ characterized 114
Mr. Seymour's death 115
New illustrator chosen 115
Mr. Hablot K. Browne 115
C. D. leaves the gallery 116
_Strange Gentleman_ and _Village Coquettes_ 116
CHAPTER VI. 1837.
Pages 117-140.
WRITING THE PICKWICK PAPERS. ÆT. 25.
First letter from him 117
As he was thirty-five years ago 118
Mrs. Carlyle and Leigh Hunt 119
Birth of eldest son 119
From Furnival's Inn to Doughty Street 119
A long-remembered sorrow 120
I visit him 120
Hasty compacts with publishers 121
Self-sold into quasi-bondage 121
Agreements for editorship and writing 121
Mr. Macrone's scheme to reissue _Sketches_ 122
Attempts to prevent it 123
Exorbitant demand 123
Impatience of suspense 123
Purchase advised 124
_Oliver Twist_ 125
Characters real to himself 125
Sense of responsibility for his writings 126
Criticism that satisfied him 126
Help given with his proofs 126
Writing _Pickwick_, Nos. 14 and 15 127
Scenes in a debtors' prison 128
A recollection of Smollett 128
Reception of _Pickwick_ 129
A popular rage 129
Mr. Carlyle's "dreadful" story 130
Secrets of success 130
_Pickwick_ inferior to later books 131
Exception for Sam Weller and Mr. Pickwick 131
Personal habits of C. D. 132
Reliefs after writing 133
Natural discontents 134
The early agreements 134
Tale to follow _Oliver Twist_ 135
Compromise with Mr. Bentley 135
Trip to Flanders 135
First visit to Broadstairs 136
Piracies of _Pickwick_ 137
A sufferer from agreements 138
First visit to Brighton 138
What he is doing with _Oliver Twist_ 139
Reading De Foe 139
"No Thoroughfare" 139
Proposed help to Macready 140
CHAPTER VII. 1837-1838.
Pages 141-151.
BETWEEN PICKWICK AND NICKLEBY. ÆT. 25-26.
Edits _Life of Grimaldi_ 141
His own opinion of it 142
An objection answered 142
His recollections of 1823 142
Completion of _Pickwick_ 143
A purpose long entertained 144
Relations with Chapman & Hall 144
Payments made for _Pickwick_ 145
Agreement for _Nicholas Nickleby_ 145
_Oliver Twist_ characterized 146
Reasons for acceptance with every class 146
Nightmare of an agreement 147
Letter to Mr. Bentley 147
Proposal as to _Barnaby Rudge_ 148
Result of it 148
Birth of eldest daughter 149
_Young Gentlemen_ and _Young Couples_ 149
First number of _Nicholas Nickleby_ 150
2d of April, 1838 150
CHAPTER VIII. 1838.
Pages 152-164.
OLIVER TWIST. ÆT. 26.
Interest in characters at close of _Oliver_ 152
Writing of the last chapter 153
Cruikshank illustrations 154
Etchings for last volume 154
How executed 154
Slander respecting them exposed 155
Falsehood ascribed to the artist 155
Reputation of the new tale 156
Its workmanship 157
Social evils passed away 157
Living only in what destroyed them 157
Chief design of the story 158
Its principal figures 158
Comedy and tragedy of crime 159
Reply to attacks 160
Le Sage, Gay, and Fielding 160
Likeness to them 161
Again the shadow of _Barnaby_ 161
Appeal to Mr. Bentley for delay 161
A very old story 162
"Sic vos non vobis" 162
_Barnaby_ given up by Mr. Bentley 163
Resignation of _Miscellany_ 163
Parent parting from child 164
CHAPTER IX. 1838-1839.
Pages 165-179.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. ÆT. 26-27.
Doubts of success dispelled 165
Realities of English life 166
Characters self-revealed 167
Miss Bates and Mrs. Nickleby 167
Smike and Dotheboys 167
A favorite type of humanity 168
Sydney Smith and Newman Noggs 168
Kindliness and breadth of humor 169
Goldsmith and Smollett 169
Early and later books 170
Biographical not critical 171
Characteristics 171
Materials for the book 171
Birthday letter 172
A difficulty at starting 172
Never in advance with _Nickleby_ 173
Always with later books 173
Enjoying a play 174
At the Adelphi 174
Writing Mrs. Nickleby's love-scene 175
Sydney Smith vanquished 175
Winding up the story 176
Parting from creatures of his fancy 177
The Nickleby dinner 178
Persons present 178
The Maclise portrait 178
CHAPTER X. 1838-1839.
Pages 180-190.
DURING AND AFTER NICKLEBY. ÆT. 26-27.
The Cottage at Twickenham 180
Daniel Maclise 180
Ainsworth and other friends 181
Mr. Stanley of Alderley 182
Petersham cottage 182
Childish enjoyments 182
Writes a farce for Covent Garden 183
Entered at the Middle Temple 183
We see Wainewright in Newgate 184
_Oliver Twist_ and the _Quarterly_ 184
Hood's _Up the Rhine_ 185
Shakspeare Society 185
Birth of second daughter 186
House-hunting 186
_Barnaby_ at his tenth page 186
Letter from Exeter 187
A landlady and her friends 187
A home for his father and mother 188
Autobiographical 189
Visit to an upholsterer 189
Visit from the same 190
CHAPTER XI. 1839.
Pages 191-199.
NEW LITERARY PROJECT. ÆT. 27-28.
Thoughts for the future 191
Doubts of old serial form 192
Suggestion for his publishers 192
My mediation with them 193
Proposed weekly publication 193
Design of it 193
Old favorites to be revived 194
Subjects to be dealt with 194
Chapters on Chambers 194
Gog and Magog Relaxations 194
Savage Chronicles 195
Others as well as himself to write 195
Travels to Ireland and America in view 195
Stipulation as to property and payments 196
Great hopes of success 197
Assent of his publishers 197
No planned story 197
Terms of agreement 197
Notion for his hero 198
A name hit upon 199
Sanguine of the issue 199
CHAPTER XII. 1840-1841.
Pages 200-216.
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. ÆT. 28-29.
Visit to Walter Landor 200
First thought of Little Nell 200
Hopeful of Master Humphrey 201
A title for the child-story 202
First sale of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ 202
Its original plan abandoned 203
Reasons for this 203
To be limited to one story 203
Disadvantages of weekly publication 204
A favorite description 204
In Bevis Marks for Sampson Brass 205
At Lawn House, Broadstairs 205
Dedication of his first volume to Rogers 205
Chapters 43-45 206
Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness 207
Masterpiece of kindly fun 207
Closing of the tale 208
Effect upon the writer 208
Making-believe very much 209
The end approaching 209
The realities of fiction 209
Death of Little Nell 210
My share in the close 211
A suggestion adopted by him 211
Success of the story 211
Useful lessons 212
Its mode of construction 213
Character and characteristics 213
The art of it 213
A recent tribute 214
Harte's "Dickens in Camp" 215
CHAPTER XIII. 1840.
Pages 217-231.
DEVONSHIRE TERRACE AND BROADSTAIRS. ÆT. 28.
A good saying 217
Landor mystified 218
The mirthful side of Dickens 218
Extravagant flights 218
Humorous despair 219
Riding exercise 220
First of the ravens 220
The groom Topping 220
The smoky chimneys 221
Juryman at an inquest 222
Practical humanity 222
Publication of _Clock's_ first number 222
Transfer of _Barnaby_ settled 223
A true prediction 224
Revisiting old scenes 224
C. D. to Chapman & Hall 224
Terms of sale of _Barnaby_ 225
A gift to a friend 226
Final escape from bondage 226
Published libels about him 227
Said to be demented 227
To be insane and turned Catholic 228
Begging letter-writers 228
A donkey asked for 228
Mr. Kindheart 229
Friendly meetings 229
Social talk 229
Reconciling friends 230
Hint for judging men 230
CHAPTER XIV. 1841.
Pages 232-248.
BARNABY RUDGE. ÆT. 29.
Advantage in beginning _Barnaby_ 232
Birth of fourth child and second son 233
The Raven 233
A loss in the family 234
Grip's death 235
C. D. describes his illness 235
Family mourners 236
Apotheosis by Maclise 237
Grip the second 239
The inn at Chigwell 239
A _Clock_ Dinner 240
Lord Jeffrey in London 240
The _Lamplighter_ 240
The _Pic Nic Papers_ 241
Character of Lord George Gordon 241
A doubtful fancy 242
Interest in new labor 243
Constraints of weekly publication 243
The prison-riots 244
A serious illness 244
Close of _Barnaby_ 244
Character of the tale 245
Defects in the plot 245
The No-Popery riots 245
Descriptive power displayed 246
Leading persons in story 247
Mr. Dennis the hangman 248
CHAPTER XV. 1841.
Pages 249-262.
PUBLIC DINNER IN EDINBURGH. ÆT. 29.
His son Walter Landor 249
Dies in Calcutta (1863) 250
C. D. and the new poor-law 250
Moore and Rogers 251
Jeffrey's praise of Little Nell 251
Resolve to visit Scotland 251
Edinburgh dinner proposed 252
Sir David Wilkie's death 252
Peter Robertson 253
Professor Wilson 253
A fancy of Scott 254
Lionization made tolerable 254
Thoughts of home 255
The dinner and speeches 255
His reception 256
Wilson's eulogy 256
Home yearnings 257
Freedom of city voted to him 257
Speakers at the dinner 257
Politics and party influences 258
Whig jealousies 259
At the theatre 260
Hospitalities 260
Moral of it all 260
Proposed visit to the Highlands 261
Maclise and Macready 261
Guide to the Highlands 262
Mr. Angus Fletcher (Kindheart) 262
CHAPTER XVI. 1841.
Pages 263-276.
ADVENTURES IN THE HIGHLANDS. ÆT. 29.
A fright 264
Fletcher's eccentricities 264
The Trossachs 264
The traveler's guide 265
A comical picture 265
Highland accommodation 265
Grand scenery 266
Changes in route 267
A waterfall 267
Entrance to Glencoe 267
The pass of Glencoe 268
Loch Leven 269
A July evening 269
Postal service at Loch Earn Head 269
The maid of the inn 270
Impressions of Glencoe 270
An adventure 271
Torrents swollen with rain 271
Dangerous traveling 272
Incidents and accidents 272
Broken-down bridge 273
A fortunate resolve 273
Post-boy in danger 274
The rescue 274
Narrow escape 274
A Highland inn and inmates 275
English comfort at Dalmally 275
Dinner at Glasgow proposed 276
Eagerness for home 276
CHAPTER XVII. 1841.
Pages 277-283.
AGAIN AT BROADSTAIRS. ÆT. 29.
Peel and his party 277
Getting very radical 278
Thoughts of colonizing 278
Political squib by C. D. 278
Fine old English Tory times 279
Mesmerism 280
Metropolitan prisons 280
Book by a workman 280
An August day by the sea 281
Another story in prospect 281
_Clock_ discontents 281
New adventure 282
Agreement for it signed 282
The book that proved to be _Chuzzlewit_ 283
Peel and Lord Ashley 283
Visions of America 283
CHAPTER XVIII. 1841.
Pages 284-291.
EVE OF THE VISIT TO AMERICA. ÆT. 29.
Greetings from America 284
Reply to Washington Irving 284
Difficulties in the way 285
Resolve to go 286
Wish to revisit scenes of boyhood 286
Proposed book of travel 286
Arrangements for the journey 287
Impatience of suspense 287
Resolve to leave the children 288
Mrs. Dickens reconciled 288
A grave illness 288
Domestic griefs 289
The old sorrow 289
At Windsor 290
Son Walter's christening 290
At Liverpool with the travelers 291
CHAPTER XIX. 1842.
Pages 292-309.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. ÆT. 30.
Rough passage 293
A steamer in a storm 293
Resigned to the worst 293
Of himself and fellow-travelers 294
The Atlantic from deck 294
The ladies' cabin 294
Its occupants 295
Card-playing on the Atlantic 295
Ship-news 296
A wager 297
Halifax harbor 297
Ship aground 297
Captain Hewitt 298
Speaker of House of Assembly 299
Ovation to C. D. 299
Arrival at Boston 300
Incursion of editors 300
At Tremont House 300
The welcome 301
Deputations 301
Dr. Channing to C. D. 302
Public appearances 302
A secretary engaged 303
Bostonians 303
General characteristics 304
Personal notices 304
Perils of steamers 305
A home-thought 305
American institutions 306
How first impressed 306
Reasons for the greeting 306
What was welcomed in C. D. 307
Old World and New World 308
Daniel Webster as to C. D. 308
Channing as to C. D. 308
Subsequent disappointments 309
New York invitation to dinner}
Fac-similes of signatures }
Additional fac-similes } Facing page 309.
New York invitation to ball }
Fac-similes of signatures }
Additional fac-similes }
CHAPTER XX. 1842.
Pages 310-334.
SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA. ÆT. 30.
Second letter 310
International copyright 311
Third letter 311
The dinner at Boston 312
Worcester, Springfield, and Hartford 313
Queer traveling 313
Levees at Hartford and New Haven 313
At Wallingford 314
Serenades 314
Cornelius C. Felton 315
Payment of personal expenses declined 315
At New York 315
Irving and Colden 315
Description of the ball 316
Newspaper accounts 317
A phase of character 317
Opinion in America 318
International copyright 318
American authors in regard to it 319
Outcry against the nation's guest 319
Declines to be silent on copyright 319
Speech at dinner 320
Irving in the chair 320
Chairman's break-down 321
An incident afterwards in London 321
Results of copyright speeches 322
A bookseller's demand for help 322
Suggestion for copyright memorial 323
Henry Clay's opinion 323
Life in New York 324
Distresses of popularity 324
Intentions for future 325
Refusal of invitations 325
Going south and west 325
As to return 326
Dangers incident to steamers 326
Slavery 327
Ladies of America 327
Party conflicts 328
Non-arrival of Cunard steamer 328
Copyright petition for Congress 328
No hope of the Caledonia 329
A substitute for her 330
Anxiety as to letters 330
Of distinguished Americans 330
Hotel bills 331
Thoughts of the children 331
Acadia takes Caledonia's place 332
Letter to C. D. from Carlyle 332
Carlyle on copyright 332
Argument against stealing 333
Rob Roy's plan worth bettering 334
C. D. as to Carlyle 334
CHAPTER XXI. 1842.
Pages 335-357.
PHILADELPHIA, WASHINGTON, AND THE SOUTH. ÆT. 30.
At Philadelphia 335
Rule in printing letters 335
Promise as to railroads 336
Experience of them 337
Railway-cars 337
Charcoal stoves 337
Ladies' cars 338
Spittoons 338
Massachusetts and New York 339
Police-cells and prisons 339
House of detention and inmates 340
Women and boy prisoners 341
Capital punishment 342
A house of correction 342
Four hundred single cells 343
Comparison with English prisons 344
Inns and landlords 344
At Washington 344
Hotel extortion 345
Philadelphia penitentiary 345
The solitary system 345
Solitary prisoners 346
Talk with inspectors 346
Bookseller Carey 347
Changes of temperature 347
Henry Clay 348
Proposed journeyings 348
Letters from England 349
Congress and Senate 349
Leading American statesmen 349
The people of America 350
Englishmen "located" there 350
"Surgit amari aliquid" 351
The copyright petition 351
At Richmond 351
Irving appointed to Spain 352
Experience of a slave city 353
Incidents of slave-life 353
Discussion with a slaveholder 353
Feeling of South to England 354
Levees at Richmond 354
One more banquet accepted 355
My gift of _Shakspeare_ 355
Home letters and fancies 356
Self-reproach of a noble nature 356
Washington Irving's leave-taking 357
CHAPTER XXII. 1842.
Pages 358-380.
CANAL-BOAT JOURNEYS: BOUND FAR WEST. ÆT. 30.
Character in the letters 358
The _Notes_ less satisfactory 359
Personal narrative in letters 359
The copyright differences 360
Social dissatisfactions 360
A fact to be remembered 361
Literary merits of the letters 361
Personal character portrayed 362
On board for Pittsburgh 362
Choicest passages of _Notes_ 362
Queer stage-coach 363
Something revealed on the top 364
At Harrisburg 364
Treaties with Indians 365
Local legislatures 365
A levee 365
Morning and night in canal-boat 366
At and after breakfast 366
Making the best of it 367
Hardy habits 368
By rail across mountain 368
Mountain scenery 369
New settlements 369
Original of Eden in _Chuzzlewit_ 369
A useful word 370
Party in America 371
Home news 371
Meets an early acquaintance 372
"Smallness of the world" 372
Queer customers at levees 372
Our anniversary 373
The Cincinnati steamer 374
Frugality in water and linen 374
Magnetic experiments 375
Life-preservers 376
Bores 376
Habits of neatness 377
Wearying for home 377
Another solitary prison 378
New terror to loneliness 378
Arrival at Cincinnati 378
Two judges in attendance 379
The city described 379
On the pavement 380
CHAPTER XXIII. 1842.
Pages 381-406.
THE FAR WEST: TO NIAGARA FALLS. ÆT. 30.
Descriptions in letters and in _Notes_ 381
Outline of westward travel 382
An Arabian-Night city 383
A temperance festival 383
A party at Judge Walker's 383
The party from another view 384
Young lady's description of C. D. 384
Mournful results of boredom 385
Down the Mississippi 386
Listening and watching 386
A levee at St. Louis 386
Compliments 387
Lord Ashburton's arrival 387
Talk with a judge on slavery 388
A negro burnt alive 388
Feeling of slaves themselves 389
American testimony 389
Pretty little scene 390
A mother and her husband 390
The baby 391
St. Louis in sight 392
Meeting of wife and husband 392
Trip to a prairie 393
On the prairie at sunset 393
General character of scenery 394
The prairie described 394
Disappointment and enjoyment 394
Soirée at Planter's House Inn 395
Good fare 395
No gray heads in St. Louis 396
Dueling 396
Mrs. Dickens as a traveler 397
From Cincinnati to Columbus 397
What a levee is like 398
From Columbus to Sandusky 398
The travelers alone 399
A log house inn 400
Making tidy 400
A monetary crisis 400
Americans not a humorous people 401
The only recreations 401
From Sandusky to Buffalo 402
On Lake Erie 402
Reception and consolation of a mayor 403
From Buffalo to Niagara 403
Nearing the Falls 404
The Horse-shoe 404
Effect upon him of Niagara 405
The old recollection 405
Looking forward 406
CHAPTER XXIV. 1842.
Pages 407-418.
NIAGARA AND MONTREAL. ÆT. 30.
Last two letters 407
Dickens vanquished 407
Obstacles to copyright 408
Two described 408
Value of literary popularity 409
Substitute for literature 410
The secretary described 410
His paintings 411
The lion and ---- 411
Toryism of Toronto 412
Canadian attentions 412
Proposed theatricals 413
Last letter 413
The private play 414
Stage manager's report 414
Bill of the performance 415
The lady performers 417
A touch of Crummles 417
HOME 418
PAGE
Autograph of C. D. (1837) _Fly-leaf_
C. D. æt. 27. From Maclise's Painting, by Graves, A.R.A. _Title-page_
Fac-simile of Letter written in Boyhood 79
Outline of the Maclise Painting of 1839. Engraved by Jeens 178
Apotheosis of Grip the Raven, by Maclise, R.A. 237
Fac-simile of C. D.'s autograph signature Boz (1841) 276
Fac-simile of Invitation to the Public Dinner in New York, with
the signatures 309
Fac-simile of Invitation to the Public Ball in New York, with
the signatures 309
Fac-simile of the Bill of the Private Play in Canada 415
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER I.
CHILDHOOD
1812-1822.
Birth at Landport in Portsea--Family of John
Dickens--Powers of Observation in Children--Two
Years Old--In London, æt. 2-3--In Chatham, æt.
4-9--Vision of Boyhood--The Queer Small
Child--Mother's Teaching--Day-School in Rome
Lane--Retrospects of Childhood--David
Copperfield and Charles Dickens--Access to
Small but Good
Library--Tragedy-Writing--Comic-Song
Singing--Cousin James Lamert--First taken to
Theatre--At Mr. Giles's School--Encored in the
Recitations--Boyish Recollections--Birthplace
of his Fancy--Last Night in Chatham--In
London--First Impressions--Bayham Street,
Camden-town--Faculty of Early Observation--His
Description of his Father--Small Theatre made
for him--Sister Fanny at Royal Academy of
Music--Walks about London--Biography and
Autobiography--At his Godfather's and his
Uncle's--First Efforts at Description--"Res
Angusta Domi"--Mother exerting Herself--Father
in the Marshalsea--Visit to the Prison--Captain
Porter--Old Friends disposed of--At the
Pawnbroker's.
CHARLES DICKENS, the most popular novelist of the century, and one of
the greatest humorists that England has produced, was born at Landport
in Portsea on Friday, the 7th of February, 1812.
His father, John Dickens, a clerk in the Navy-pay office, was at this
time stationed in the Portsmouth dockyard. He had made acquaintance with
the lady, Elizabeth Barrow, who became afterwards his wife, through her
elder brother, Thomas Barrow, also engaged on the establishment at
Somerset House; and she bore him in all a family of eight children, of
whom two died in infancy. The eldest, Fanny (born 1810), was followed by
Charles (entered in the baptismal register of Portsea as Charles John
Huffham, though on the very rare occasions when he subscribed that name
he wrote Huffam); by another son, named Alfred, who died in childhood;
by Letitia (born 1816); by another daughter, Harriet, who died also in
childhood; by Frederick (born 1820); by Alfred Lamert (born 1822); and
by Augustus (born 1827); of all of whom only the second daughter now
survives.
Walter Scott tells us, in his fragment of autobiography, speaking of the
strange remedies applied to his lameness, that he remembered lying on
the floor in the parlor of his grandfather's farm-house, swathed up in a
sheepskin warm from the body of the sheep, being then not three years
old. David Copperfield's memory goes beyond this. He represents himself
seeing so far back into the blank of his infancy as to discern therein
his mother and her servant, dwarfed to his sight by stooping down or
kneeling on the floor, and himself going unsteadily from the one to the
other. He admits this may be fancy, though he believes the power of
observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for
its closeness and accuracy, and thinks that the recollection of most of
us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose. But
what he adds is certainly not fancy. "If it should appear from anything
I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close
observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I
undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics." Applicable as
it might be to David Copperfield, this was simply and unaffectedly true
of Charles Dickens.
He has often told me that he remembered the small front garden to the
house at Portsea, from which he was taken away when he was two years
old, and where, watched by a nurse through a low kitchen-window almost
level with the gravel walk, he trotted about with something to eat, and
his little elder sister with him. He was carried from the garden one day
to see the soldiers exercise; and I perfectly recollect that, on our
being at Portsmouth together while he was writing _Nickleby_, he
recognized the exact shape of the military parade seen by him as a very
infant, on the same spot, a quarter of a century before.
When his father was again brought up by his duties to London from
Portsmouth, they went into lodgings in Norfolk Street, Middlesex
Hospital; and it lived also in the child's memory that they had come
away from Portsea in the snow. Their home, shortly after, was again
changed, on the elder Dickens being placed upon duty in Chatham
dockyard; and the house where he lived in Chatham, which had a
plain-looking whitewashed plaster front and a small garden before and
behind, was in St. Mary's Place, otherwise called the Brook, and next
door to a Baptist meeting-house called Providence Chapel, of which a Mr.
Giles, to be presently mentioned, was minister. Charles at this time
was between four and five years old;[1] and here he stayed till he was
nine. Here the most durable of his early impressions were received; and
the associations that were around him when he died were those which at
the outset of his life had affected him most strongly.
The house called Gadshill Place stands on the strip of highest ground in
the main road between Rochester and Gravesend. Often had we traveled
past it together, years and years before it became his home, and never
without some allusion to what he told me when first I saw it in his
company, that amid the recollections connected with his childhood it
held always a prominent place, for, upon first seeing it as he came from
Chatham with his father, and looking up at it with much admiration, he
had been promised that he might himself live in it, or in some such
house, when he came to be a man, if he would only work hard enough.
Which for a long time was his ambition. The story is a pleasant one, and
receives authentic confirmation at the opening of one of his essays on
traveling abroad, when as he passes along the road to Canterbury there
crosses it a vision of his former self:
"So smooth was the old high-road, and so fresh were the horses, and so
fast went I, that it was midway between Gravesend and Rochester, and the
widening river was bearing the ships, white-sailed or black-smoked, out
to sea, when I noticed by the wayside a very queer small boy.
"'Holloa!' said I to the very queer small boy, 'where do you live?'
"'At Chatham,' says he.
"'What do you do there?' says I.
"'I go to school,' says he.
"I took him up in a moment, and we went on. Presently, the very queer
small boy says, 'This is Gadshill we are coming to, where Falstaff went
out to rob those travelers, and ran away.'
"'You know something about Falstaff, eh?' said I.
"'All about him,' said the very queer small boy. 'I am old (I am nine),
and I read all sorts of books. But _do_ let us stop at the top of the
hill, and look at the house there, if you please!'
"'You admire that house?' said I.
"'Bless you, sir,' said the very queer small boy, 'when I was not more
than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to
look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever
since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often
said to me, _If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard,
you might some day come to live in it_. Though that's impossible!' said
the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the
house out of window with all his might.
"I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy; for
that house happens to be _my_ house, and I have reason to believe that
what he said was true."
The queer small boy was indeed his very self. He was a very little and a
very sickly boy. He was subject to attacks of violent spasm which
disabled him for any active exertion. He was never a good little
cricket-player. He was never a first-rate hand at marbles, or peg-top,
or prisoner's base. But he had great pleasure in watching the other
boys, officers' sons for the most part, at these games, reading while
they played; and he had always the belief that this early sickness had
brought to himself one inestimable advantage, in the circumstance of his
weak health having strongly inclined him to reading. It will not appear,
as my narrative moves on, that he owed much to his parents, or was other
than in his first letter to Washington Irving he described himself to
have been, a "very small and not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy;"
but he has frequently been heard to say that his first desire for
knowledge, and his earliest passion for reading, were awakened by his
mother, who taught him the first rudiments not only of English, but
also, a little later, of Latin. She taught him regularly every day for a
long time, and taught him, he was convinced, thoroughly well. I once put
to him a question in connection with this to which he replied in almost
exactly the words he placed five years later in the mouth of David
Copperfield: "I faintly remember her teaching me the alphabet; and when
I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of
their shapes, and the easy good nature of O and S, always seem to
present themselves before me as they used to do."
Then followed the preparatory day-school, a school for girls and boys to
which he went with his sister Fanny, and which was in a place called
Rome (pronounced Room) Lane. Revisiting Chatham in his manhood, and
looking for the place, he found it had been pulled down to make a new
street, "ages" before; but out of the distance of the ages arose
nevertheless a not dim impression that it had been over a dyer's shop;
that he went up steps to it; that he had frequently grazed his knees in
doing so; and that in trying to scrape the mud off a very unsteady
little shoe, he generally got his leg over the scraper.[2] Other similar
memories of childhood have dropped from him occasionally in his lesser
writings; whose readers may remember how vividly portions of his boyhood
are reproduced in his fancy of the Christmas-tree, and will hardly have
forgotten what he says, in his thoughtful little paper on Nurses'
stories, of the doubtful places and people to which children may be
introduced before they are six years old, and forced, night after night,
to go back to against their wills, by servants to whom they are
intrusted. That childhood exaggerates what it sees, too, has he not
tenderly told? How he thought the Rochester High Street must be at least
as wide as Regent Street, which he afterwards discovered to be little
better than a lane; how the public clock in it, supposed to be the
finest clock in the world, turned out to be as moon-faced and weak a
clock as a man's eyes ever saw; and how in its town-hall, which had
appeared to him once so glorious a structure that he had set it up in
his mind as the model on which the genie of the lamp built the palace
for Aladdin, he had painfully to recognize a mere mean little heap of
bricks, like a chapel gone demented. Yet not so painfully, either, when
second thoughts wisely came. "Ah! who was I that I should quarrel with
the town for being changed to me, when I myself had come back, so
changed, to it? All my early readings and early imaginations dated from
this place, and I took them away so full of innocent construction and
guileless belief, and I brought them back so worn and torn, so much the
wiser and so much the worse!"
And here I may at once expressly mention, what already has been hinted,
that even as Fielding described himself and his belongings in Captain
Booth and Amelia, and protested always that he had writ in his books
nothing more than he had seen in life, so it may be said of Dickens in
more especial relation to David Copperfield. Many guesses have been made
since his death, connecting David's autobiography with his own;
accounting, by means of such actual experiences, for the so frequent
recurrence in his writings of the prison-life, its humor and pathos,
described in them with such wonderful reality; and discovering in what
David tells Steerforth at school of the stories he had read in his
childhood, what it was that had given the bent to his own genius. There
is not only truth in all this, but it will very shortly be seen that the
identity went deeper than any had supposed, and covered experiences not
less startling in the reality than they appear to be in the fiction.
Of the "readings" and "imaginations" which he describes as brought away
from Chatham, this authority can tell us. It is one of the many passages
in _Copperfield_ which are literally true, and its proper place is here.
"My father had left a small collection of books in a little room
up-stairs to which I had access (for it adjoined my own), and which
nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room,
_Roderick Random_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tom Jones_,
the _Vicar of Wakefield_, _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, and _Robinson
Crusoe_ came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive
my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,--they,
and the _Arabian Nights_ and the _Tales of the Genii_,--and did me no
harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; _I_
knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now how I found time, in the
midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those
books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled
myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by
impersonating my favorite characters in them. . . . I have been Tom Jones
(a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have
sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I
verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of voyages and
travels--I forget what, now--that were on those shelves; and for days
and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed
with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees: the perfect
realization of Captain Somebody, of the royal British Navy, in danger of
being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great
price. . . . When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a
summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my
bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighborhood, every stone
in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of
its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some
locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the
church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back,
stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I _know_ that
Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlor of our
little village ale-house." Every word of this personal recollection had
been written down as fact, some years before it found its way into
_David Copperfield_; the only change in the fiction being his omission
of the name of a cheap series of novelists then in course of
publication, by which his father had become happily the owner of so
large a lump of literary treasure in his small collection of books.
The usual result followed. The child took to writing, himself, and
became famous in his childish circle for having written a tragedy called
_Misnar_, the Sultan of India, founded (and very literally founded, no
doubt) on one of the _Tales of the Genii_. Nor was this his only
distinction. He told a story offhand so well, and sang small comic songs
so especially well, that he used to be elevated on chairs and tables,
both at home and abroad, for more effective display of these talents;
and when he first told me of this, at one of the Twelfth-night parties
on his eldest son's birthday, he said he never recalled it that his own
shrill little voice of childhood did not again tingle in his ears, and
he blushed to think what a horrible little nuisance he must have been to
many unoffending grown-up people who were called upon to admire him.
His chief ally and encourager in these displays was a youth of some
ability, much older than himself, named James Lamert, stepson to his
mother's sister, and therefore a sort of cousin, who was his great
patron and friend in his childish days. Mary, the eldest daughter of
Charles Barrow, himself a lieutenant in the navy, had for her first
husband a commander in the navy called Allen; on whose death by drowning
at Rio Janeiro she had joined her sister, the navy-pay clerk's wife, at
Chatham; in which place she subsequently took for her second husband Dr.
Lamert, an army-surgeon, whose son James, even after he had been sent to
Sandhurst for his education, continued still to visit Chatham from time
to time. He had a turn for private theatricals; and as his father's
quarters were in the ordnance hospital there, a great rambling place
otherwise at that time almost uninhabited, he had plenty of room in
which to get up his entertainments. The staff-doctor himself played his
part, and his portrait will be found in _Pickwick_.
By Lamert, I have often heard him say, he was first taken to the
theatre at the very tenderest age. He could hardly, however, have been
younger than Charles Lamb, whose first experience was of having seen
_Artaxerxes_ when six years old; and certainly not younger than Walter
Scott, who was only four when he saw _As You Like It_ on the Bath stage,
and remembered having screamed out, _Ain't they brothers?_ when
scandalized by Orlando and Oliver beginning to fight.[3] But he was at
any rate old enough to recollect how his young heart leaped with terror
as the wicked king Richard, struggling for life against the virtuous
Richmond, backed up and bumped against the box in which he was; and
subsequent visits to the same sanctuary, as he tells us, revealed to him
many wondrous secrets, "of which not the least terrific were, that the
witches in _Macbeth_ bore an awful resemblance to the thanes and other
proper inhabitants of Scotland; and that the good king Duncan couldn't
rest in his grave, but was constantly coming out of it and calling
himself somebody else."
During the last two years of Charles's residence at Chatham, he was sent
to a school kept in Clover Lane by the young Baptist minister already
named, Mr. William Giles. I have the picture of him here, very strongly
in my mind, as a sensitive, thoughtful, feeble-bodied little boy, with
an unusual sort of knowledge and fancy for such a child, and with a
dangerous kind of wandering intelligence that a teacher might turn to
good or evil, happiness or misery, as he directed it. Nor does the
influence of Mr. Giles, such as it was, seem to have been other than
favorable. Charles had himself a not ungrateful sense in after-years
that this first of his masters, in his little-cared-for childhood, had
pronounced him to be a boy of capacity; and when, about half-way through
the publication of _Pickwick_, his old teacher sent a silver snuff-box
with admiring inscription to the "inimitable Boz," it reminded him of
praise far more precious obtained by him at his first year's examination
in the Clover Lane academy, when his recitation of a piece out of the
_Humorist's Miscellany_ about Doctor Bolus had received, unless his
youthful vanity bewildered him, a double encore. A habit, the only bad
one taught him by Mr. Giles, of taking for a time, in very moderate
quantities, the snuff called Irish blackguard, was the result of this
gift from his old master; but he abandoned it after some few years, and
it was never resumed.
It was in the boys' playing-ground near Clover Lane in which the school
stood, that, according to one of his youthful memories, he had been, in
the hay-making time, delivered from the dungeons of Seringapatam, an
immense pile "(of haycock)," by his countrymen the victorious British
"(boy next door and his two cousins)," and had been recognized with
ecstasy by his affianced one "(Miss Green)," who had come all the way
from England "(second house in the terrace)" to ransom and marry him. It
was in this playing-field, too, as he has himself recorded, he first
heard in confidence from one whose father was greatly connected, "being
under government," of the existence of a terrible banditti called _the
radicals_, whose principles were that the prince-regent wore stays, that
nobody had a right to any salary, and that the army and navy ought to be
put down; horrors at which he trembled in his bed, after supplicating
that the radicals might be speedily taken and hanged. Nor was it the
least of the disappointments of his visit in after-life to the scenes of
his boyhood that he found this play-field had been swallowed up by a
railway station. It was gone, with its two beautiful trees of hawthorn;
and where the hedge, the turf, and all the buttercups and daisies had
been, there was nothing but the stoniest of jolting roads.
He was not much over nine years old when his father was recalled from
Chatham to Somerset House, and he had to leave this good master, and the
old place endeared to him by recollections that clung to him afterwards
all his life long. It was here he had made the acquaintance not only of
the famous books that David Copperfield specially names, of _Roderick
Random_, _Peregrine Pickle_, _Humphrey Clinker_, _Tom Jones_, the _Vicar
of Wakefield_, _Don Quixote_, _Gil Blas_, _Robinson Crusoe_, the
_Arabian Nights_, and the _Tales of the Genii_, but also of the
_Spectator_, the _Tatler_, the _Idler_, the _Citizen of the World_, and
Mrs. Inchbald's _Collection of Farces_. These latter had been, as well,
in the little library to which access was open to him; and of all of
them his earliest remembrance was the having read them over and over at
Chatham, not for the first, the second, or the third time. They were a
host of friends when he had no single friend; and in leaving the place,
I have often heard him say, he seemed to be leaving them too, and
everything that had given his ailing little life its picturesqueness or
sunshine. It was the birthplace of his fancy; and he hardly knew what
store he had set by its busy varieties of change and scene, until he saw
the falling cloud that was to hide its pictures from him forever. The
gay bright regiments always going and coming, the continual paradings
and firings, the successions of sham sieges and sham defenses, the plays
got up by his cousin in the hospital, the navy-pay yacht in which he had
sailed to Sheerness with his father, and the ships floating out in the
Medway with their far visions of sea,--he was to lose them all. He was
never to watch the boys at their games any more, or see them sham over
again the sham sieges and sham defenses. He was to be taken to London
inside the stage-coach Commodore; and Kentish woods and fields, Cobham
park and hall, Rochester cathedral and castle, and all the wonderful
romance together, including the red-cheeked baby he had been wildly in
love with, were to vanish like a dream. "On the night before we came
away," he told me, "my good master came flitting in among the
packing-cases to give me Goldsmith's _Bee_ as a keepsake. Which I kept
for his sake, and its own, a long time afterwards." A longer time
afterwards he recollected the stage-coach journey, and said in one of
his published papers that never had he forgotten, through all the
intervening years, the smell of the damp straw in which he was packed
and forwarded like game, carriage-paid. "There was no other inside
passenger, and I consumed my sandwiches in solitude and dreariness, and
it rained hard all the way, and I thought life sloppier than I expected
to find it."
The earliest impressions received and retained by him in London were of
his father's money involvements; and now first he heard mentioned "the
deed," representing that crisis of his father's affairs in fact which is
ascribed in fiction to Mr. Micawber's. He knew it in later days to have
been a composition with creditors; though at this earlier date he was
conscious of having confounded it with parchments of a much more
demoniacal description. One result from the awful document soon showed
itself in enforced retrenchment. The family had to take up its abode in
a house in Bayham Street, Camden-town.
Bayham Street was about the poorest part of the London suburbs then, and
the house was a mean small tenement, with a wretched little back-garden
abutting on a squalid court. Here was no place for new acquaintances to
him: no boys were near with whom he might hope to become in any way
familiar. A washerwoman lived next door, and a Bow-Street officer lived
over the way. Many, many times has he spoken to me of this, and how he
seemed at once to fall into a solitary condition apart from all other
boys of his own age, and to sink into a neglected state at home which
had been always quite unaccountable to him. "As I thought," he said on
one occasion very bitterly, "in the little back-garret in Bayham Street,
of all I had lost in losing Chatham, what would I have given, if I had
had anything to give, to have been sent back to any other school, to
have been taught something anywhere!" He was at another school already,
not knowing it. The self-education forced upon him was teaching him, all
unconsciously as yet, what, for the future that awaited him, it most
behooved him to know.
That he took, from the very beginning of this Bayham-Street life, his
first impression of that struggling poverty which is nowhere more
vividly shown than in the commoner streets of the ordinary London
suburb, and which enriched his earliest writings with a freshness of
original humor and quite unstudied pathos that gave them much of their
sudden popularity, there cannot be a doubt. "I certainly understood it,"
he has often said to me, "quite as well then as I do now." But he was
not conscious yet that he did so understand it, or of the influence it
was exerting on his life even then. It seems almost too much to assert
of a child, say at nine or ten years old, that his observation of
everything was as close and good, or that he had as much intuitive
understanding of the character and weaknesses of the grown-up people
around him, as when the same keen and wonderful faculty had made him
famous among men. But my experience of him led me to put implicit faith
in the assertion he unvaryingly himself made, that he had never seen any
cause to correct or change what in his boyhood was his own secret
impression of anybody whom he had had, as a grown man, the opportunity
of testing in later years.
How it came that, being what he was, he should now have fallen into the
misery and neglect of the time about to be described, was a subject on
which thoughts were frequently interchanged between us; and on one
occasion he gave me a sketch of the character of his father, which, as I
can here repeat it in the exact words employed by him, will be the best
preface I can make to what I feel that I have no alternative but to
tell. "I know my father to be as kind-hearted and generous a man as
ever lived in the world. Everything that I can remember of his conduct
to his wife, or children, or friends, in sickness or affliction, is
beyond all praise. By me, as a sick child, he has watched night and day,
unweariedly and patiently, many nights and days. He never undertook any
business, charge, or trust, that he did not zealously, conscientiously,
punctually, honorably discharge. His industry has always been untiring.
He was proud of me, in his way, and had a great admiration of the comic
singing. But, in the ease of his temper, and the straitness of his
means, he appeared to have utterly lost at this time the idea of
educating me at all, and to have utterly put from him the notion that I
had any claim upon him, in that regard, whatever. So I degenerated into
cleaning his boots of a morning, and my own; and making myself useful in
the work of the little house; and looking after my younger brothers and
sisters (we were now six in all); and going on such poor errands as
arose out of our poor way of living."
The cousin by marriage of whom I have spoken, James Lamert, who had
lately completed his education at Sandhurst and was waiting in hopes of
a commission, lived now with the family in Bayham Street, and had not
lost his taste for the stage, or his ingenuities in connection with it.
Taking pity on the solitary lad, he made and painted a little theatre
for him. It was the only fanciful reality of his present life; but it
could not supply what he missed most sorely, the companionship of boys
of his own age, with whom he might share in the advantages of school and
contend for its prizes. His sister Fanny was at about this time elected
as a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music; and he has told me what a
stab to his heart it was, thinking of his own disregarded condition, to
see her go away to begin her education, amid the tearful good wishes of
everybody in the house.
Nevertheless, as time went on, his own education still unconsciously
went on as well, under the sternest and most potent of teachers; and,
neglected and miserable as he was, he managed gradually to transfer to
London all the dreaminess and all the romance with which he had invested
Chatham. There were then at the top of Bayham Street some almshouses,
and were still when he revisited it with me nearly twenty-seven years
ago; and to go to this spot, he told me, and look from it over the
dust-heaps and dock-leaves and fields (no longer there when we saw it
together) at the cupola of St. Paul's looming through the smoke, was a
treat that served him for hours of vague reflection afterwards. To be
taken out for a walk into the real town, especially if it were anywhere
about Covent Garden or the Strand, perfectly entranced him with
pleasure. But most of all he had a profound attraction of repulsion to
St. Giles's. If he could only induce whomsoever took him out to take him
through Seven-Dials, he was supremely happy. "Good Heaven!" he would
exclaim, "what wild visions of prodigies of wickedness, want, and
beggary arose in my mind out of that place!" He was all this time, the
reader will remember, still subject to continual attacks of illness,
and, by reason of them, a very small boy even for his age.
That part of his boyhood is now very near of which, when the days of
fame and prosperity came to him, he felt the weight upon his memory as
a painful burden until he could lighten it by sharing it with a friend;
and an accident I will presently mention led him first to reveal it.
There is, however, an interval of some months still to be described, of
which, from conversations or letters that passed between us, after or
because of this confidence, and that already have yielded fruit to these
pages, I can supply some vague and desultory notices. The use thus made
of them, it is due to myself to remark, was contemplated then; for
though, long before his death, I had ceased to believe it likely that I
should survive to write about him, he had never withdrawn the wish at
this early time strongly expressed, or the confidences, not only then
but to the very eve of his death reposed in me, that were to enable me
to fulfill it.[4] The fulfillment indeed he had himself rendered more
easy by partially uplifting the veil in _David Copperfield_.
The visits made from Bayham Street were chiefly to two connections of
the family, his mother's elder brother and his godfather. The latter,
who was a rigger, and mast-, oar-, and block-maker, lived at Limehouse
in a substantial handsome sort of way, and was kind to his godchild. It
was always a great treat to him to go to Mr. Huffham's; and the London
night-sights as he returned were a perpetual joy and marvel. Here, too,
the comic-singing accomplishment was brought into play so greatly to the
admiration of one of the godfather's guests, an honest boat-builder,
that he pronounced the little lad to be a "progidy." The visits to the
uncle who was at this time fellow-clerk with his father, in Somerset
House, were nearer home. Mr. Thomas Barrow, the eldest of his mother's
family, had broken his leg in a fall; and, while laid up with this
illness, his lodging was in Gerrard Street, Soho, in the upper part of
the house of a worthy gentleman then recently deceased, a bookseller
named Manson, father to the partner in the celebrated firm of Christie &
Manson, whose widow at this time carried on the business. Attracted by
the look of the lad as he went up-stairs, these good people lent him
books to amuse him; among them Miss Porter's _Scottish Chiefs_,
Holbein's _Dance of Death_, and George Colman's _Broad Grins_. The
latter seized his fancy very much; and he was so impressed by its
description of Covent Garden, in the piece called "The Elder Brother,"
that he stole down to the market by himself to compare it with the book.
He remembered, as he said in telling me this, snuffing up the flavor of
the faded cabbage-leaves as if it were the very breath of comic fiction.
Nor was he far wrong, as comic fiction then and for some time after was.
It was reserved for himself to give sweeter and fresher breath to it.
Many years were to pass first, but he was beginning already to make the
trial.
His uncle was shaved by a very odd old barber out of Dean Street, Soho,
who was never tired of reviewing the events of the last war, and
especially of detecting Napoleon's mistakes, and rearranging his whole
life for him on a plan of his own. The boy wrote a description of this
old barber, but never had courage to show it. At about the same time,
taking for his model the description of the canon's housekeeper in _Gil
Blas_, he sketched a deaf old woman who waited on them in Bayham Street,
and who made delicate hashes with walnut-ketchup. As little did he dare
to show this, either; though he thought it, himself, extremely clever.
In Bayham Street, meanwhile, affairs were going on badly; the poor boy's
visits to his uncle, while the latter was still kept a prisoner by his
accident, were interrupted by another attack of fever; and on his
recovery the mysterious "deed" had again come uppermost. His father's
resources were so low, and all his expedients so thoroughly exhausted,
that trial was to be made whether his mother might not come to the
rescue. The time was arrived for her to exert herself, she said; and she
"must do something." The godfather down at Limehouse was reported to
have an Indian connection. People in the East Indies always sent their
children home to be educated. She would set up a school. They would all
grow rich by it. And then, thought the sick boy, "perhaps even I might
go to school myself."
A house was soon found at number four, Gower Street north; a large brass
plate on the door announced MRS. DICKENS'S ESTABLISHMENT; and the result
I can give in the exact words of the then small actor in the comedy,
whose hopes it had raised so high: "I left, at a great many other doors,
a great many circulars calling attention to the merits of the
establishment. Yet nobody ever came to school, nor do I recollect that
anybody ever proposed to come, or that the least preparation was made to
receive anybody. But I know that we got on very badly with the butcher
and baker; that very often we had not too much for dinner; and that at
last my father was arrested." The interval between the sponging-house
and the prison was passed by the sorrowful lad in running errands and
carrying messages for the prisoner, delivered with swollen eyes and
through shining tears; and the last words said to him by his father
before he was finally carried to the Marshalsea were to the effect that
the sun was set upon him forever. "I really believed at the time," said
Dickens to me, "that they had broken my heart." He took afterwards ample
revenge for this false alarm by making all the world laugh at them in
_David Copperfield_.
The readers of Mr. Micawber's history who remember David's first visit
to the Marshalsea prison, and how upon seeing the turnkey he recalled
the turnkey in the blanket in _Roderick Random_, will read with curious
interest what follows, written as a personal experience of fact two or
three years before the fiction had even entered into his thoughts:
"My father was waiting for me in the lodge, and we went up to his room
(on the top story but one), and cried very much. And he told me, I
remember, to take warning by the Marshalsea, and to observe that if a
man had twenty pounds a year and spent nineteen pounds nineteen
shillings and sixpence, he would be happy; but that a shilling spent the
other way would make him wretched. I see the fire we sat before, now;
with two bricks inside the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent
its burning too many coals. Some other debtor shared the room with him,
who came in by-and-by; and, as the dinner was a joint-stock repast, I
was sent up to 'Captain Porter' in the room overhead, with Mr. Dickens's
compliments, and I was his son, and could he, Captain P., lend me a
knife and fork?
"Captain Porter lent the knife and fork, with his compliments in return.
There was a very dirty lady in his little room; and two wan girls, his
daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought I should not have liked
to borrow Captain Porter's comb. The captain himself was in the last
extremity of shabbiness; and if I could draw at all, I would draw an
accurate portrait of the old, old, brown great-coat he wore, with no
other coat below it. His whiskers were large. I saw his bed rolled up in
a corner; and what plates, and dishes, and pots he had, on a shelf; and
I knew (God knows how) that the two girls with the shock heads were
Captain Porter's natural children, and that the dirty lady was not
married to Captain P. My timid, wondering station on his threshold was
not occupied more than a couple of minutes, I dare say; but I came down
again to the room below with all this as surely in my knowledge as the
knife and fork were in my hand."
How there was something agreeable and gipsy-like in the dinner after
all, and how he took back the captain's knife and fork early in the
afternoon, and how he went home to comfort his mother with an account of
his visit, David Copperfield has also accurately told. Then, at home,
came many miserable daily struggles that seemed to last an immense time,
yet did not perhaps cover many weeks. Almost everything by degrees was
sold or pawned, little Charles being the principal agent in those
sorrowful transactions. Such of the books as had been brought from
Chatham--_Peregrine Pickle_, _Roderick Random_, _Tom Jones_, _Humphrey
Clinker_, and all the rest--went first. They were carried off from the
little chiffonier, which his father called the library, to a bookseller
in the Hampstead Road, the same that David Copperfield describes as in
the City Road; and the account of the sales, as they actually occurred
and were told to me long before David was born, was reproduced word for
word in his imaginary narrative: "The keeper of this bookstall, who
lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to
be violently scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I
went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a
cut in his forehead or a black eye bearing witness to his excesses
overnight (I am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink); and he, with a
shaking hand, endeavoring to find the needful shillings in one or other
of the pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife,
with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off
rating him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to
call again; but his wife had always got some (had taken his, I dare say,
while he was drunk), and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs,
as we went down together."
The same pawnbroker's shop, too, which was so well known to David,
became not less familiar to Charles; and a good deal of notice was here
taken of him by the pawnbroker, or by his principal clerk who officiated
behind the counter, and who, while making out the duplicate, liked of
all things to hear the lad conjugate a Latin verb and translate or
decline his _musa_ and _dominus_. Everything to this accompaniment went
gradually; until, at last, even of the furniture of Gower Street number
four there was nothing left except a few chairs, a kitchen table, and
some beds. Then they encamped, as it were, in the two parlors of the
emptied house, and lived there night and day.
All which is but the prelude to what remains to be described.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "I shall cut this letter short, for they are playing Masaniello in
the drawing-room, and I feel much as I used to do when I was a small
child a few miles off, and Somebody (who, I wonder, and which way did
_She_ go, when she died) hummed the evening hymn to me, and I cried on
the pillow,--either with the remorseful consciousness of having kicked
Somebody else, or because still Somebody else had hurt my feelings in
the course of the day." From Gadshill, 24 Sept. 1857. "Being here again,
or as much here as anywhere in particular."
[2] "The mistress of the establishment holds no place in our memory;
but, rampant on one eternal door-mat, in an eternal entry long and
narrow, is a puffy pug-dog, with a personal animosity towards us, who
triumphs over Time. The bark of that baleful Pug, a certain radiating
way he had of snapping at our undefended legs, the ghastly grinning of
his moist black muzzle and white teeth, and the insolence of his crisp
tail curled like a pastoral crook, all live and flourish. From an
otherwise unaccountable association of him with a fiddle, we conclude
that he was of French extraction, and his name _Fidèle_. He belonged to
some female, chiefly inhabiting a back parlor, whose life appears to us
to have been consumed in sniffing, and in wearing a brown beaver
bonnet."--_Reprinted Pieces_, 287. (In such quotations as are made from
his writings, the _Charles Dickens Edition_ will be used.)
[3] "A few weeks' residence at home convinced me, who had till then been
an only child in the house of my grandfather, that a quarrel between
brothers was a very natural event."--Lockhart's _Life_, i. 30.
[4] The reader will forgive my quoting from a letter of the date of the
22d April, 1848. "I desire no better for my fame, when my personal
dustiness shall be past the control of my love of order, than such a
biographer and such a critic." "You know me better," he wrote, resuming
the same subject on the 6th of July, 1862, "than any other man does, or
ever will." In an entry of my diary during the interval between these
years, I find a few words that not only mark the time when I first saw
in its connected shape the autobiographical fragment which will form the
substance of the second chapter of this biography, but also express his
own feeling respecting it when written: "20 January, 1849. The
description may make none of the impression on others that the reality
made on him. . . . Highly probable that it may never see the light. No
wish. Left to J. F. or others." The first number of _David Copperfield_
appeared five months after this date; but though I knew, even before he
adapted his fragment of autobiography to the eleventh number, that he
had now abandoned the notion of completing it under his own name, the
"_no wish_," or the discretion left me, was never in any way
subsequently modified. What follows, from the same entry, refers to the
manuscript of the fragment: "No blotting, as when writing fiction; but
straight on, as when writing ordinary letter."
CHAPTER II.
HARD EXPERIENCES IN BOYHOOD.
1822-1824.
Mr. Dilke's Half-crown--Story of Boyhood
told--D. C. and C. D.--Enterprise of the
Cousins Lamert--First Employment in
Life--Blacking-Warehouse--A Poor Little
Drudge--Bob Fagin and Poll Green--"Facilis
Descensus"--Crushed Hopes--The Home in Gower
Street--Regaling Alamode--Home broken up--At
Mrs. Roylance's in Camden-town--Sundays in
Prison--Pudding-Shops and Coffee-Shops--What
was and might have been--Thomas and Harry--A
Lodging in Lant Street--Meals in the
Marshalsea--C. D. and the
Marchioness--Originals of Garland
Family--Adventure with Bob
Fagin--Saturday-Night Shows--Appraised
officially--Publican and Wife at Cannon
Row--Marshalsea Incident in
_Copperfield_--Incident as it
occurred--Materials for _Pickwick_--Sister
Fanny's Musical Prize--From Hungerford Stairs
to Chandos Street--Father's Quarrel with James
Lamert--Quits the Warehouse--Bitter
Associations of Servitude--What became of the
Blacking-Business.
THE incidents to be told now would probably never have been known to me,
or indeed any of the occurrences of his childhood and youth, but for the
accident of a question which I put to him one day in the March or April
of 1847.
I asked if he remembered ever having seen in his boyhood our friend the
elder Mr. Dilke, his father's acquaintance and contemporary, who had
been a clerk in the same office in Somerset House to which Mr. John
Dickens belonged. Yes, he said, he recollected seeing him at a house in
Gerrard Street, where his uncle Barrow lodged during an illness, and Mr.
Dilke had visited him. Never at any other time. Upon which I told him
that some one else had been intended in the mention made to me, for that
the reference implied not merely his being met accidentally, but his
having had some juvenile employment in a warehouse near the Strand; at
which place Mr. Dilke, being with the elder Dickens one day, had noticed
him, and received, in return for the gift of a half-crown, a very low
bow. He was silent for several minutes; I felt that I had
unintentionally touched a painful place in his memory; and to Mr. Dilke
I never spoke of the subject again. It was not, however, then, but some
weeks later, that Dickens made further allusion to my thus having struck
unconsciously upon a time of which he never could lose the remembrance
while he remembered anything, and the recollection of which, at
intervals, haunted him and made him miserable, even to that hour.
Very shortly afterwards I learnt in all their detail the incidents that
had been so painful to him, and what then was said to me or written
respecting them revealed the story of his boyhood. The idea of _David
Copperfield_, which was to take all the world into his confidence, had
not at this time occurred to him; but what it had so startled me to
know, his readers were afterwards told with only such change or addition
as for the time might sufficiently disguise himself under cover of his
hero. For the poor little lad, with good ability and a most sensitive
nature, turned at the age of ten into a "laboring hind" in the service
of "Murdstone and Grinby," and conscious already of what made it seem
very strange to him that he could so easily have been thrown away at
such an age, was indeed himself. His was the secret agony of soul at
finding himself "companion to Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes," and his
the tears that mingled with the water in which he and they rinsed and
washed out bottles. It had all been written, as fact, before he thought
of any other use for it; and it was not until several months later, when
the fancy of _David Copperfield_, itself suggested by what he had so
written of his early troubles, began to take shape in his mind, that he
abandoned his first intention of writing his own life. Those warehouse
experiences fell then so aptly into the subject he had chosen, that he
could not resist the temptation of immediately using them; and the
manuscript recording them, which was but the first portion of what he
had designed to write, was embodied in the substance of the eleventh and
earlier chapters of his novel. What already had been sent to me,
however, and proof-sheets of the novel interlined at the time, enable me
now to separate the fact from the fiction, and to supply to the story of
the author's childhood those passages, omitted from the book, which,
apart from their illustration of the growth of his character, present to
us a picture of tragical suffering, and of tender as well as humorous
fancy, unsurpassed in even the wonders of his published writings.
The person indirectly responsible for the scenes to be described was the
young relative James Lamert, the cousin by his aunt's marriage of whom I
have made frequent mention, who got up the plays at Chatham, and after
passing at Sandhurst had been living with the family in Bayham Street in
the hope of obtaining a commission in the army. This did not come until
long afterwards, when, in consideration of his father's services, he
received it, and relinquished it then in favor of a younger brother; but
he had meanwhile, before the family removed from Camden-town, ceased to
live with them. The husband of a sister of his (of the same name as
himself, being indeed his cousin, George Lamert), a man of some
property, had recently embarked in an odd sort of commercial
speculation, and had taken him into his office and his house, to assist
in it. I give now the fragment of the autobiography of Dickens:
"This speculation was a rivalry of 'Warren's Blacking, 30, Strand,'--at
that time very famous. One Jonathan Warren (the famous one was Robert),
living at 30, Hungerford Stairs, or Market, Strand (for I forget which
it was called then), claimed to have been the original inventor or
proprietor of the blacking-recipe, and to have been deposed and ill used
by his renowned relation. At last he put himself in the way of selling
his recipe, and his name, and his 30, Hungerford Stairs, Strand (30,
Strand, very large, and the intermediate direction very small), for an
annuity; and he set forth by his agents that a little capital would make
a great business of it. The man of some property was found in George
Lamert, the cousin and brother-in-law of James. He bought this right and
title, and went into the blacking-business and the blacking-premises.
"--In an evil hour for me, as I often bitterly thought. Its chief
manager, James Lamert, the relative who had lived with us in Bayham
Street, seeing how I was employed from day to day, and knowing what our
domestic circumstances then were, proposed that I should go into the
blacking-warehouse, to be as useful as I could, at a salary, I think, of
six shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am
inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six
at first, and seven afterwards. At any rate, the offer was accepted very
willingly by my father and mother, and on a Monday morning I went down
to the blacking-warehouse to begin my business life.
"It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such
an age. It is wonderful to me that, even after my descent into the poor
little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion
enough on me--a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and
soon hurt, bodily or mentally--to suggest that something might have been
spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common
school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. My
father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more
so if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school,
and going to Cambridge.
"The blacking-warehouse was the last house on the left-hand side of the
way, at old Hungerford Stairs. It was a crazy, tumble-down old house,
abutting of course on the river, and literally overrun with rats. Its
wainscoted rooms, and its rotten floors and staircase, and the old gray
rats swarming down in the cellars, and the sound of their squeaking and
scuffling coming up the stairs at all times, and the dirt and decay of
the place, rise up visibly before me, as if I were there again. The
counting-house was on the first floor, looking over the coal-barges and
the river. There was a recess in it, in which I was to sit and work. My
work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking; first with a piece of
oil-paper, and then with a piece of blue paper; to tie them round with a
string; and then to clip the paper close and neat, all round, until it
looked as smart as a pot of ointment from an apothecary's shop. When a
certain number of grosses of pots had attained this pitch of perfection,
I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more
pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on
similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap,
on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string
and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of
using his name, long afterwards, in _Oliver Twist_.
"Our relative had kindly arranged to teach me something in the
dinner-hour; from twelve to one, I think it was; every day. But an
arrangement so incompatible with counting-house business soon died away,
from no fault of his or mine; and, for the same reason, my small
work-table, and my grosses of pots, my papers, string, scissors,
paste-pot, and labels, by little and little, vanished out of the recess
in the counting-house, and kept company with the other small
work-tables, grosses of pots, papers, string, scissors, and paste-pots,
down-stairs. It was not long before Bob Fagin and I, and another boy
whose name was Paul Green, but who was currently believed to have been
christened Poll (a belief which I transferred, long afterwards again,
to Mr. Sweedlepipe, in _Martin Chuzzlewit_), worked generally, side by
side. Bob Fagin was an orphan, and lived with his brother-in-law, a
waterman. Poll Green's father had the additional distinction of being a
fireman, and was employed at Drury Lane theatre; where another relation
of Poll's, I think his little sister, did imps in the pantomimes.
"No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this
companionship; compared these every-day associates with those of my
happier childhood; and felt my early hopes of growing up to be a learned
and distinguished man, crushed in my breast. The deep remembrance of the
sense I had of being utterly neglected and hopeless; of the shame I felt
in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that,
day by day, what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and
raised my fancy and my emulation up by, was passing away from me, never
to be brought back any more; cannot be written. My whole nature was so
penetrated with the grief and humiliation of such considerations, that
even now, famous and caressed and happy, I often forget in my dreams
that I have a dear wife and children; even that I am a man; and wander
desolately back to that time of my life.
"My mother and my brothers and sisters (excepting Fanny in the Royal
Academy of Music) were still encamped, with a young servant-girl from
Chatham workhouse, in the two parlors in the emptied house in Gower
Street north. It was a long way to go and return within the dinner-hour,
and usually I either carried my dinner with me, or went and bought it at
some neighboring shop. In the latter case, it was commonly a saveloy
and a penny loaf; sometimes, a fourpenny plate of beef from a cook's
shop; sometimes, a plate of bread and cheese, and a glass of beer, from
a miserable old public-house over the way: the Swan, if I remember
right, or the Swan and something else that I have forgotten. Once, I
remember tucking my own bread (which I had brought from home in the
morning) under my arm, wrapped up in a piece of paper like a book, and
going into the best dining-room in Johnson's alamode beef-house in Clare
Court, Drury Lane, and magnificently ordering a small plate of alamode
beef to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little
apparition, coming in all alone, I don't know; but I can see him now,
staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to
look. I gave him a halfpenny, and I wish, now, that he hadn't taken it."
I lose here for a little while the fragment of direct narrative, but I
perfectly recollect that he used to describe Saturday night as his great
treat. It was a grand thing to walk home with six shillings in his
pocket, and to look in at the shop-windows and think what it would buy.
Hunt's roasted corn, as a British and patriotic substitute for coffee,
was in great vogue just then; and the little fellow used to buy it, and
roast it on the Sunday. There was a cheap periodical of selected pieces
called the _Portfolio_, which he had also a great fancy for taking home
with him. The new proposed "deed," meanwhile, had failed to propitiate
his father's creditors; all hope of arrangement passed away; and the end
was that his mother and her encampment in Gower Street north broke up
and went to live in the Marshalsea. I am able at this point to resume
his own account:
"The key of the house was sent back to the landlord, who was very glad
to get it; and I (small Cain that I was, except that I had never done
harm to any one) was handed over as a lodger to a reduced old lady, long
known to our family, in Little College Street, Camden-town, who took
children in to board, and had once done so at Brighton; and who, with a
few alterations and embellishments, unconsciously began to sit for Mrs.
Pipchin in _Dombey_ when she took in me.
"She had a little brother and sister under her care then; somebody's
natural children, who were very irregularly paid for; and a widow's
little son. The two boys and I slept in the same room. My own exclusive
breakfast, of a penny cottage loaf and a penny-worth of milk, I provided
for myself. I kept another small loaf, and a quarter of a pound of
cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard; to make my
supper on when I came back at night. They made a hole in the six or
seven shillings, I know well; and I was out at the blacking-warehouse
all day, and had to support myself upon that money all the week. I
suppose my lodging was paid for, by my father. I certainly did not pay
it myself; and I certainly had no other assistance whatever (the making
of my clothes, I think, excepted), from Monday morning until Saturday
night. No advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no
support, from any one that I can call to mind, so help me God.
"Sundays, Fanny and I passed in the prison. I was at the academy in
Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, at nine o'clock in the morning, to
fetch her; and we walked back there together, at night.
"I was so young and childish, and so little qualified--how could I be
otherwise?--to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that, in
going to Hungerford Stairs of a morning, I could not resist the stale
pastry put out at half-price on trays at the confectioners' doors in
Tottenham Court Road; and I often spent in that the money I should have
kept for my dinner. Then I went without my dinner, or bought a roll, or
a slice of pudding. There were two pudding-shops between which I was
divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to St.
Martin's Church (at the back of the church) which is now removed
altogether. The pudding at that shop was made with currants, and was
rather a special pudding, but was dear: two penn'orth not being larger
than a penn'orth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter
was in the Strand, somewhere near where the Lowther Arcade is now. It
was a stout, hale pudding, heavy and flabby; with great raisins in it,
stuck in whole, at great distances apart. It came up hot, at about noon
every day; and many and many a day did I dine off it.
"We had half an hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used
to go to a coffee-shop, and have half a pint of coffee, and a slice of
bread-and-butter. When I had no money, I took a turn in Covent Garden
market, and stared at the pineapples. The coffee-shops to which I most
resorted were, one in Maiden Lane; one in a court (non-existent now)
close to Hungerford market; and one in St. Martin's Lane, of which I
only recollect that it stood near the church, and that in the door
there was an oval glass plate, with COFFEE-ROOM painted on it, addressed
towards the street. If I ever find myself in a very different kind of
coffee-room now, but where there is such an inscription on glass, and
read it backward on the wrong side MOOR-EEFFOC (as I often used to do
then, in a dismal reverie,) a shock goes through my blood.
"I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the
scantiness of my resources and the difficulties of my life. I know that
if a shilling or so were given me by any one, I spent it in a dinner or
a tea. I know that I worked, from morning to night, with common men and
boys, a shabby child. I know that I tried, but ineffectually, not to
anticipate my money, and to make it last the week through; by putting it
away in a drawer I had in the counting-house, wrapped into six little
parcels, each parcel containing the same amount and labeled with a
different day. I know that I have lounged about the streets,
insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy
of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a
little robber or a little vagabond.
"But I held some station at the blacking-warehouse too. Besides that my
relative at the counting-house did what a man so occupied, and dealing
with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different
footing from the rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I
came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was
there. That I suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no
one ever knew but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already,
utterly beyond my power to tell. No man's imagination can overstep the
reality. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. I knew from the
first that, if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I
could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon became at least
as expeditious and as skillful with my hands as either of the other
boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manners were
different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They, and the
men, always spoke of me as 'the young gentleman.' A certain man (a
soldier once) named Thomas, who was the foreman, and another named
Harry, who was the carman and wore a red jacket, used to call me
'Charles' sometimes, in speaking to me; but I think it was mostly when
we were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain
them over our work with the results of some of the old readings, which
were fast perishing out of my mind. Poll Green uprose once, and rebelled
against the 'young gentleman' usage; but Bob Fagin settled him speedily.
"My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and
abandoned as such, altogether; though I am solemnly convinced that I
never, for one hour, was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than
miserably unhappy. I felt keenly, however, the being so cut off from my
parents, my brothers and sisters, and, when my day's work was done,
going home to such a miserable blank; and _that_, I thought, might be
corrected. One Sunday night I remonstrated with my father on this head,
so pathetically, and with so many tears, that his kind nature gave way.
He began to think that it was not quite right. I do believe he had
never thought so before, or thought about it. It was the first
remonstrance I had ever made about my lot, and perhaps it opened up a
little more than I intended. A back-attic was found for me at the house
of an insolvent-court agent, who lived in Lant Street in the borough,
where Bob Sawyer lodged many years afterwards. A bed and bedding were
sent over for me, and made up on the floor. The little window had a
pleasant prospect of a timber-yard; and when I took possession of my new
abode I thought it was a Paradise."
There is here another blank, which it is, however, not difficult to
supply from letters and recollections of my own. What was to him of
course the great pleasure of his paradise of a lodging was its bringing
him again, though after a fashion sorry enough, within the circle of
home. From this time he used to breakfast "at home,"--in other words, in
the Marshalsea; going to it as early as the gates were open, and for the
most part much earlier. They had no want of bodily comforts there. His
father's income, still going on, was amply sufficient for that; and in
every respect indeed but elbow-room, I have heard him say, the family
lived more comfortably in prison than they had done for a long time out
of it. They were waited on still by the maid-of-all-work from Bayham
Street, the orphan girl of the Chatham workhouse, from whose sharp
little worldly and also kindly ways he took his first impression of the
Marchioness in the _Old Curiosity Shop_. She also had a lodging in the
neighborhood, that she might be early on the scene of her duties; and
when Charles met her, as he would do occasionally, in his lounging-place
by London Bridge, he would occupy the time before the gates opened by
telling her quite astonishing fictions about the wharves and the tower.
"But I hope I believed them myself," he would say. Besides breakfast, he
had supper also in the prison, and got to his lodging generally at nine
o'clock. The gates closed always at ten.
I must not omit what he told me of the landlord of this little lodging.
He was a fat, good-natured, kind old gentleman. He was lame, and had a
quiet old wife; and he had a very innocent grown-up son, who was lame
too. They were all very kind to the boy. He was taken with one of his
old attacks of spasm one night, and the whole three of them were about
his bed until morning. They were all dead when he told me this; but in
another form they still live very pleasantly as the Garland family in
the _Old Curiosity Shop_.
He had a similar illness one day in the warehouse, which I can describe
in his own words: "Bob Fagin was very good to me on the occasion of a
bad attack of my old disorder. I suffered such excruciating pain that
time, that they made a temporary bed of straw in my old recess in the
counting-house, and I rolled about on the floor, and Bob filled empty
blacking-bottles with hot water, and applied relays of them to my side,
half the day. I got better, and quite easy towards evening; but Bob (who
was much bigger and older than I) did not like the idea of my going home
alone, and took me under his protection. I was too proud to let him know
about the prison, and, after making several efforts to get rid of him,
to all of which Bob Fagin in his goodness was deaf, shook hands with him
on the steps of a house near Southwark Bridge on the Surrey side,
making believe that I lived there. As a finishing piece of reality in
case of his looking back, I knocked at the door, I recollect, and asked,
when the woman opened it, if that was Mr. Robert Fagin's house."
The Saturday nights continued, as before, to be precious to him. "My
usual way home was over Blackfriars Bridge, and down that turning in the
Blackfriars Road which has Rowland Hill's chapel on one side, and the
likeness of a golden dog licking a golden pot over a shop-door on the
other. There are a good many little low-browed old shops in that street,
of a wretched kind; and some are unchanged now. I looked into one a few
weeks ago, where I used to buy boot-laces on Saturday nights, and saw
the corner where I once sat down on a stool to have a pair of ready-made
half-boots fitted on. I have been seduced more than once, in that street
on a Saturday night, by a show-van at a corner; and have gone in, with a
very motley assemblage, to see the Fat-pig, the Wild-indian, and the
Little-lady. There were two or three hat-manufactories there then (I
think they are there still); and among the things which, encountered
anywhere or under any circumstances, will instantly recall that time, is
the smell of hat-making."
His father's attempts to avoid going through the court having failed,
all needful ceremonies had to be undertaken to obtain the benefit of the
insolvent debtors' act; and in one of these little Charles had his part
to play. One condition of the statute was that the wearing-apparel and
personal matters retained were not to exceed twenty pounds sterling in
value. "It was necessary, as a matter of form, that the clothes I wore
should be seen by the official appraiser. I had a half-holiday to
enable me to call upon him, at his own time, at a house somewhere beyond
the Obelisk. I recollect his coming out to look at me with his mouth
full, and a strong smell of beer upon him, and saying good-naturedly
that 'that would do,' and 'it was all right.' Certainly the hardest
creditor would not have been disposed (even if he had been legally
entitled) to avail himself of my poor white hat, little jacket, or
corduroy trowsers. But I had a fat old silver watch in my pocket, which
had been given me by my grandmother before the blacking-days, and I had
entertained my doubts as I went along whether that valuable possession
might not bring me over the twenty pounds. So I was greatly relieved,
and made him a bow of acknowledgment as I went out."
Still, the want felt most by him was the companionship of boys of his
own age. He had no such acquaintance. Sometimes he remembered to have
played on the coal-barges at dinner-time, with Poll Green and Bob Fagin;
but those were rare occasions. He generally strolled alone, about the
back streets of the Adelphi, or explored the Adelphi arches. One of his
favorite localities was a little public-house by the water-side, called
the Fox-under-the-hill, approached by an underground passage which we
once missed in looking for it together; and he had a vision which he has
mentioned in _Copperfield_ of sitting eating something on a bench
outside, one fine evening, and looking at some coal-heavers dancing
before the house. "I wonder what they thought of me," says David. He had
himself already said the same in his fragment of autobiography.
Another characteristic little incident he made afterwards one of
David's experiences, but I am able to give it here without the disguises
that adapt it to the fiction: "I was such a little fellow, with my poor
white hat, little jacket, and corduroy trowsers, that frequently, when I
went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter
to wash down the saveloy and the loaf I had eaten in the street, they
didn't like to give it me. I remember, one evening (I had been somewhere
for my father, and was going back to the borough over Westminster
Bridge), that I went into a public-house in Parliament Street,--which is
still there, though altered,--at the corner of the short street leading
into Cannon Row, and said to the landlord behind the bar, 'What is your
very best--the VERY _best_--ale, a glass?' For the occasion was a
festive one, for some reason: I forget why. It may have been my
birthday, or somebody else's. 'Two-pence,' says he. 'Then,' says I,
'just draw me a glass of that, if you please, with a good head to it.'
The landlord looked at me, in return, over the bar, from head to foot,
with a strange smile on his face, and, instead of drawing the beer,
looked round the screen and said something to his wife, who came out
from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying
me. Here we stand, all three, before me now, in my study in Devonshire
Terrace. The landlord, in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar
window-frame; his wife, looking over the little half-door; and I, in
some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. They
asked me a good many questions, as what my name was, how old I was,
where I lived, how I was employed, etc. etc. To all of which, that I
might commit nobody, I invented appropriate answers. They served me with
the ale, though I suspect it was not the strongest on the premises; and
the landlord's wife, opening the little half-door and bending down, gave
me a kiss that was half admiring and half compassionate, but all womanly
and good, I am sure."
A later, and not less characteristic, incident of the true story of this
time found also a place, three or four years after it was written, in
his now famous fiction. It preceded but by a short time the discharge,
from the Marshalsea, of the elder Dickens; to whom a rather considerable
legacy from a relative had accrued not long before ("some hundreds," I
understood), and had been paid into court during his imprisonment. The
scene to be described arose on the occasion of a petition drawn up by
him before he left, praying, not for the abolition of imprisonment for
debt, as David Copperfield relates, but for the less dignified but more
accessible boon of a bounty to the prisoners to drink his majesty's
health on his majesty's forthcoming birthday.
"I mention the circumstance because it illustrates, to me, my early
interest in observing people. When I went to the Marshalsea of a night,
I was always delighted to hear from my mother what she knew about the
histories of the different debtors in the prison; and when I heard of
this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them all come in, one
after another (though I knew the greater part of them already, to speak
to, and they me), that I got leave of absence on purpose, and
established myself in a corner, near the petition. It was stretched
out, I recollect, on a great ironing-board, under the window, which in
another part of the room made a bedstead at night. The internal
regulations of the place, for cleanliness and order, and for the
government of a common room in the ale-house, where hot water and some
means of cooking, and a good fire, were provided for all who paid a very
small subscription, were excellently administered by a governing
committee of debtors, of which my father was chairman for the time
being. As many of the principal officers of this body as could be got
into the small room without filling it up, supported him, in front of
the petition; and my old friend Captain Porter (who had washed himself,
to do honor to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close to it, to
read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The door was
then thrown open, and they began to come in, in a long file; several
waiting on the landing outside, while one entered, affixed his
signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Porter
said, 'Would you like to hear it read?' If he weakly showed the least
disposition to hear it, Captain Porter, in a loud sonorous voice, gave
him every word of it. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to such
words as 'Majesty--gracious Majesty--your gracious Majesty's unfortunate
subjects--your Majesty's well-known munificence,'--as if the words were
something real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; my poor father
meanwhile listening with a little of an author's vanity, and
contemplating (not severely) the spikes on the opposite wall. Whatever
was comical in this scene, and whatever was pathetic, I sincerely
believe I perceived in my corner, whether I demonstrated or not, quite
as well as I should perceive it now. I made out my own little character
and story for every man who put his name to the sheet of paper. I might
be able to do that now, more truly: not more earnestly, or with a closer
interest. Their different peculiarities of dress, of face, of gait, of
manner, were written indelibly upon my memory. I would rather have seen
it than the best play ever played; and I thought about it afterwards,
over the pots of paste-blacking, often and often. When I looked, with my
mind's eye, into the Fleet prison during Mr. Pickwick's incarceration, I
wonder whether half a dozen men were wanting from the Marshalsea crowd
that came filing in again, to the sound of Captain Porter's voice!"
When the family left the Marshalsea they all went to lodge with the lady
in Little College Street, a Mrs. Roylance, who has obtained unexpected
immortality as Mrs. Pipchin; and they afterwards occupied a small house
in Somers-town. But, before this time, Charles was present with some of
them in Tenterden Street to see his sister. Fanny received one of the
prizes given to the pupils of the Royal Academy of Music. "I could not
bear to think of myself--beyond the reach of all such honorable
emulation and success. The tears ran down my face. I felt as if my heart
were rent. I prayed, when I went to bed that night, to be lifted out of
the humiliation and neglect in which I was. I never had suffered so much
before. There was no envy in this." There was little need that he should
say so. Extreme enjoyment in witnessing the exercise of her talents, the
utmost pride in every success obtained by them, he manifested always to
a degree otherwise quite unusual with him; and on the day of her
funeral, which we passed together, I had most affecting proof of his
tender and grateful memory of her in these childish days. A few more
sentences, certainly not less touching than any that have gone before,
will bring the story of them to its close. They stand here exactly as
written by him:
"I am not sure that it was before this time, or after it, that the
blacking-warehouse was removed to Chandos Street, Covent Garden. It is
no matter. Next to the shop at the corner of Bedford Street in Chandos
Street are two rather old-fashioned houses and shops adjoining one
another. They were one then, or thrown into one, for the
blacking-business; and had been a butter-shop. Opposite to them was, and
is, a public-house, where I got my ale, under these new circumstances.
The stones in the street may be smoothed by my small feet going across
to it at dinner-time, and back again. The establishment was larger now,
and we had one or two new boys. Bob Fagin and I had attained to great
dexterity in tying up the pots. I forget how many we could do in five
minutes. We worked, for the light's sake, near the second window as you
come from Bedford Street; and we were so brisk at it that the people
used to stop and look in. Sometimes there would be quite a little crowd
there. I saw my father coming in at the door one day when we were very
busy, and I wondered how he could bear it.
"Now, I generally had my dinner in the warehouse. Sometimes I brought it
from home, so I was better off. I see myself coming across Russell
Square from Somers-town, one morning, with some cold hotch-potch in a
small basin tied up in a handkerchief. I had the same wanderings about
the streets as I used to have, and was just as solitary and
self-dependent as before; but I had not the same difficulty in merely
living. I never, however, heard a word of being taken away, or of being
otherwise than quite provided for.
"At last, one day, my father, and the relative so often mentioned,
quarreled; quarreled by letter, for I took the letter from my father to
him which caused the explosion, but quarreled very fiercely. It was
about me. It may have had some backward reference, in part, for anything
I know, to my employment at the window. All I am certain of is, that,
soon after I had given him the letter, my cousin (he was a sort of
cousin, by marriage) told me he was very much insulted about me, and
that it was impossible to keep me after that. I cried very much, partly
because it was so sudden, and partly because in his anger he was violent
about my father, though gentle to me. Thomas, the old soldier, comforted
me, and said he was sure it was for the best. With a relief so strange
that it was like oppression, I went home.
"My mother set herself to accommodate the quarrel, and did so next day.
She brought home a request for me to return next morning, and a high
character of me, which I am very sure I deserved. My father said I
should go back no more, and should go to school. I do not write
resentfully or angrily; for I know how all these things have worked
together to make me what I am; but I never afterwards forgot, I never
shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being
sent back.
"From that hour until this at which I write, no word of that part of my
childhood which I have now gladly brought to a close has passed my lips
to any human being. I have no idea how long it lasted; whether for a
year, or much more, or less. From that hour until this my father and my
mother have been stricken dumb upon it. I have never heard the least
allusion to it, however far off and remote, from either of them. I have
never, until I now impart it to this paper, in any burst of confidence
with any one, my own wife not excepted, raised the curtain I then
dropped, thank God.
"Until old Hungerford market was pulled down, until old Hungerford
Stairs were destroyed, and the very nature of the ground changed, I
never had the courage to go back to the place where my servitude began.
I never saw it. I could not endure to go near it. For many years, when I
came near to Robert Warren's in the Strand, I crossed over to the
opposite side of the way, to avoid a certain smell of the cement they
put upon the blacking-corks, which reminded me of what I was once. It
was a very long time before I liked to go up Chandos Street. My old way
home by the borough made me cry, after my eldest child could speak.
"In my walks at night I have walked there often, since then, and by
degrees I have come to write this. It does not seem a tithe of what I
might have written, or of what I meant to write."
The substance of some after-talk explanatory of points in the narrative,
of which a note was made at the time, may be briefly added. He could
hardly have been more than twelve years old when he left the place, and
was still unusually small for his age; much smaller, though two years
older, than his own eldest son was at the time of these confidences. His
mother had been in the blacking-warehouse many times; his father not
more than once or twice. The rivalry of Robert Warren by Jonathan's
representatives, the cousins George and James, was carried to wonderful
extremes in the way of advertisement; and they were all very proud, he
told me, of the cat scratching the boot, which was _their_ house's
device. The poets in the house's regular employ he remembered, too, and
made his first study from one of them for the poet of Mrs. Jarley's
wax-work. The whole enterprise, however, had the usual end of such
things. The younger cousin tired of the concern; and a Mr. Wood, the
proprietor who took James's share and became George's partner, sold it
ultimately to Robert Warren. It continued to be his at the time Dickens
and myself last spoke of it together, and he had made an excellent
bargain of it.
CHAPTER III.
SCHOOL-DAYS AND START IN LIFE.
1824-1830.
Outcome of Boyish Trials--Disadvantage in Later
Years--Advantages--Next Move in
Life--Wellington House Academy--Revisited and
Described--Letter from a Schoolfellow--C. D.'s
Recollections of School--Schoolfellow's
Recollections of C. D.--Fac-simile of Schoolboy
Letter--Daniel Tobin--Another Schoolfellow's
Recollections--Writing Tales and getting up
Plays--Master Beverley
Scene-Painter--Street-acting--The Schoolfellows
after Forty Years--Smallness of the World--In
Attorneys' Offices--At Minor Theatres--The
Father on the Son's Education--Studying
Short-hand--In British Museum Reading
Room--Preparing for the Gallery--D. C. for C.
D.--A Real Dora in 1829--The same Dora in
1855--Dora changed into Flora--Ashes of Youth
and Hope.
IN what way these strange experiences of his boyhood affected him
afterwards, this narrative of his life must show; but there were
influences that made themselves felt even on his way to manhood.
What at once he brought out of the humiliation that had impressed him so
deeply, though scarcely as yet quite consciously, was a natural dread of
the hardships that might still be in store for him, sharpened by what he
had gone through; and this, though in its effect for the present
imperfectly understood, became by degrees a passionate resolve, even
while he was yielding to circumstances, _not to be_ what circumstances
were conspiring to make him. All that was involved in what he had
suffered and sunk into, could not have been known to him at the time;
but it was plain enough later, as we see; and in conversation with me
after the revelation was made, he used to find, at extreme points in his
life, the explanation of himself in those early trials. He had derived
great good from them, but not without alloy. The fixed and eager
determination, the restless and resistless energy, which opened to him
opportunities of escape from many mean environments, not by turning off
from any path of duty, but by resolutely rising to such excellence or
distinction as might be attainable in it, brought with it some
disadvantage among many noble advantages. Of this he was himself aware,
but not to the full extent. What it was that in society made him often
uneasy, shrinking, and over-sensitive, he knew; but all the danger he
ran in bearing down and overmastering the feeling, he did not know. A
too great confidence in himself, a sense that everything was possible to
the will that would make it so, laid occasionally upon him self-imposed
burdens greater than might be borne by any one with safety. In that
direction there was in him, at such times, something even hard and
aggressive; in his determinations a something that had almost the tone
of fierceness; something in his nature that made his resolves
insuperable, however hasty the opinions on which they had been formed.
So rare were these manifestations, however, and so little did they
prejudice a character as entirely open and generous as it was at all
times ardent and impetuous, that only very infrequently, towards the
close of the middle term of a friendship which lasted without the
interruption of a day for more than three-and-thirty years, were they
ever unfavorably presented to me. But there they were; and when I have
seen strangely present, at such chance intervals, a stern and even cold
isolation of self-reliance side by side with a susceptivity almost
feminine and the most eager craving for sympathy, it has seemed to me as
though his habitual impulses for everything kind and gentle had sunk,
for the time, under a sudden hard and inexorable sense of what fate had
dealt to him in those early years. On more than one occasion, indeed, I
had confirmation of this. "I must entreat you," he wrote to me in June,
1862, "to pause for an instant, and go back to what you know of my
childish days, and to ask yourself whether it is natural that something
of the character formed in me then, and lost under happier
circumstances, should have reappeared in the last five years. The
never-to-be-forgotten misery of that old time bred a certain shrinking
sensitiveness in a certain ill-clad ill-fed child, that I have found
come back in the never-to-be-forgotten misery of this later time."
One good there was, however, altogether without drawback, and which
claims simply to be mentioned before my narrative is resumed. The story
of his childish misery has itself sufficiently shown that he never
throughout it lost his precious gift of animal spirits, or his native
capacity for humorous enjoyment; and there were positive gains to him
from what he underwent, which were also rich and lasting. To what in the
outset of his difficulties and trials gave the decisive bent to his
genius, I have already made special reference; and we are to observe,
of what followed, that with the very poor and unprosperous, out of whose
sufferings and strugglings, and the virtues as well as vices born of
them, his not least splendid successes were wrought, his childish
experiences had made him actually one. They were not his clients whose
cause he pleaded with such pathos and humor, and on whose side he got
the laughter and tears of all the world, but in some sort his very self.
Nor was it a small part of this manifest advantage that he should have
obtained his experience as a child and not as a man; that only the good
part, the flower and fruit of it, was plucked by him; and that nothing
of the evil part, none of the earth in which the seed was planted,
remained to soil him.
His next move in life can also be given in his own language: "There was
a school in the Hampstead Road kept by Mr. Jones, a Welshman, to which
my father dispatched me to ask for a card of terms. The boys were at
dinner, and Mr. Jones was carving for them with a pair of holland
sleeves on, when I acquitted myself of this commission. He came out, and
gave me what I wanted; and hoped I should become a pupil. I did. At
seven o'clock one morning, very soon afterwards, I went as day-scholar
to Mr. Jones's establishment, which was in Mornington Place, and had its
school-room sliced away by the Birmingham Railway, when that change came
about. The school-room, however, was not threatened by directors or
civil engineers then, and there was a board over the door, graced with
the words WELLINGTON HOUSE ACADEMY."
At Wellington House Academy he remained nearly two years, being a little
over fourteen years of age when he quitted it. In his minor writings as
well as in _Copperfield_ will be found general allusions to it, and
there is a paper among his pieces reprinted from _Household Words_ which
purports specifically to describe it. To the account therein given of
himself when he went to the school, as advanced enough, so safely had
his memory retained its poor fragments of early schooling, to be put
into _Virgil_, as getting sundry prizes, and as attaining to the eminent
position of its first boy, one of his two schoolfellows with whom I have
had communication makes objection; but both admit that the general
features of the place are reproduced with wonderful accuracy, and more
especially in those points for which the school appears to have been
much more notable than for anything connected with the scholarship of
its pupils.
In the reprinted piece Dickens describes it as remarkable for white
mice. He says that red-polls, linnets, and even canaries were kept by
the boys in desks, drawers, hat-boxes, and other strange refuges for
birds; but that white mice were the favorite stock, and that the boys
trained the mice much better than the master trained the boys. He
recalled in particular one white mouse who lived in the cover of a Latin
dictionary, ran up ladders, drew Roman chariots, shouldered muskets,
turned wheels, and even made a very creditable appearance on the stage
as the dog of Montàrgis, who might have achieved greater things but for
having had the misfortune to mistake his way in a triumphal procession
to the Capitol, when he fell into a deep inkstand and was dyed black and
drowned.
Nevertheless he mentions the school as one also of some celebrity in
its neighborhood, though nobody could have said why; and adds that among
the boys the master was supposed to know nothing, and one of the ushers
was supposed to know everything. "We are still inclined to think the
first-named supposition perfectly correct. We went to look at the place
only this last midsummer, and found that the railway had cut it up, root
and branch. A great trunk line had swallowed the playground, sliced away
the school-room, and pared off the corner of the house. Which, thus
curtailed of its proportions, presented itself in a green stage of
stucco, profile-wise towards the road, like a forlorn flat-iron without
a handle, standing on end."
One who knew him in those early days, Mr. Owen P. Thomas, thus writes to
me (February, 1871): "I had the honor of being Mr. Dickens's
schoolfellow for about two years (1824-1826), both being day-scholars,
at Mr. Jones's 'Classical and Commercial Academy,' as then inscribed in
front of the house, and which was situated at the corner of Granby
Street and the Hampstead Road. The house stands now in its original
state, but the school and large playground behind disappeared on the
formation of the London and Northwestern Railway, which at this point
runs in a slanting direction from Euston Square underneath the Hampstead
Road. We were all companions and playmates when out of school, as well
as fellow-students therein." (Mr. Thomas includes in this remark the
names of Henry Danson, now a physician in practice in London; of Daniel
Tobin, whom I remember to have been frequently assisted by his old
schoolfellow in later years; and of Richard Bray.) "You will find a
graphic sketch of the school by Mr. Dickens himself in _Household
Words_ of 11th October, 1851. The article is entitled Our School. The
names of course are feigned; but, allowing for slight coloring, the
persons and incidents described are all true to life, and easily
recognizable by any one who attended the school at the time. The Latin
master was Mr. Manville, or Mandeville, who for many years was well
known at the library of the British Museum. The academy, after the
railroad overthrew it, was removed to another house in the neighborhood,
but Mr. Jones and two at least of his assistant masters have long ago
departed this life."
One of the latter was the usher believed to know everything, who was
writing-master, mathematical master, English master, divided the little
boys with the Latin master, made out the bills, mended the pens, and
always called at parents' houses to inquire after sick boys, because he
had gentlemanly manners. This picture my correspondent recognized; as
well as those of the fat little dancing-master who taught them
hornpipes, of the Latin master who stuffed his ears with onions for his
deafness, of the gruff serving-man who nursed the boys in scarlet fever,
and of the principal himself, who was always ruling ciphering-books with
a bloated mahogany ruler, smiting the palms of offenders with the same
diabolical instrument, or viciously drawing a pair of pantaloons tight
with one of his large hands and caning the wearer with the other.
"My recollection of Dickens whilst at school," Mr. Thomas continues, "is
that of a healthy-looking boy, small but well built, with a more than
usual flow of spirits, inducing to harmless fun, seldom or never I
think to mischief, to which so many lads at that age are prone. I cannot
recall anything that then indicated he would hereafter become a literary
celebrity; but perhaps he was too young then. He usually held his head
more erect than lads ordinarily do, and there was a general smartness
about him. His weekday dress of jacket and trowsers, I can clearly
remember, was what is called pepper-and-salt; and, instead of the frill
that most boys of his age wore then, he had a turn-down collar, so that
he looked less youthful in consequence. He invented what we termed a
'lingo,' produced by the addition of a few letters of the same sound to
every word; and it was our ambition, walking and talking thus along the
street, to be considered foreigners. As an alternate amusement the
present writer well remembers extemporizing tales of some sort, and
reciting them offhand, with Dickens and Danson or Tobin walking on
either side of him. I inclose you a copy of a note I received from him
when he was between thirteen and fourteen years of age, perhaps one of
the earliest productions of his pen. The Leg referred to was the Legend
of something, a pamphlet romance I had lent him; the Clavis was of
course the Latin school-book so named."
There is some underlying whim or fun in the "Leg" allusions which Mr.
Thomas appears to have overlooked, and certainly fails to explain; but
the note, which is here given in fac-simile, may be left to speak for
itself; and in the signature the reader will be amused to see the first
faint beginning of a flourish afterwards famous.
"After a lapse of years," Mr. Thomas continues, "I recognized the
celebrated writer as the individual I had known so well as a boy, from
having preserved this note; and upon Mr. Dickens visiting Reading in
December, 1854, to give one of his earliest readings for the benefit of
the literary institute, of which he had become president on Mr. Justice
Talfourd's death, I took the opportunity of showing it to him, when he
was much diverted therewith. On the same occasion we conversed about
mutual schoolfellows, and among others Daniel Tobin was referred to,
whom I remembered to have been Dickens's _most_ intimate companion in
the school-days (1824 to 1826). His reply was that Tobin either was
then, or had previously been, assisting him in the capacity of
amanuensis; but there is a subsequent mystery about Tobin, in connection
with his friend and patron, which I have never been able to comprehend;
for I understood shortly afterwards that there was entire separation
between them, and it must have been an offense of some gravity to have
sundered an acquaintance formed in early youth, and which had endured,
greatly to Tobin's advantage, so long. He resided in our school-days in
one of the now old and grimy-looking stone-fronted houses in George
Street, Euston Road, a few doors from the Orange-tree tavern. It is the
opinion of the other schoolfellow with whom we were intimate, Doctor
Danson, that upon leaving school Mr. Dickens and Tobin entered the same
solicitor's office, and this he thinks was either in or near Lincoln's
Inn Fields."
[Illustration: Handwritten note: Punctuation and capitalization,
retained:
Tim/
I am quite ashamed I have not returned your Leg
but you shall have it by Harry to-morrow If you
would like to purchase my Clavis you shall have
it at a very ~reduced price~ Cheaper in
comparison than a Leg.
Yours &c
~C Dickens.~
PS. I suppose all this time you have had ~a
wooden~ leg. I have weighed yours every saturday
Night
(No date, but was written in latter part of 1825.)]
The offense of Tobin went no deeper than the having at last worn out
even Dickens's patience and kindness. His applications for relief were
so incessantly repeated, that to cut him and them adrift altogether was
the only way of escape from what had become an intolerable nuisance. To
Mr. Thomas's letter the reader will thank me for adding one not less
interesting with which Dr. Henry Danson has favored me. We have here,
with the same fun and animal spirits, a little of the proneness to
mischief which his other schoolfellow says he was free from; but the
mischief is all of the harmless kind, and might perhaps have been better
described as but part of an irrepressible vivacity:
"My impression is that I was a schoolfellow of Dickens for nearly two
years: he left before me, I think at about fifteen years of age. Mr.
Jones's school, called the Wellington Academy, was in the Hampstead
Road, at the northeast corner of Granby Street. The school-house was
afterwards removed for the London and Northwestern Railway. It was
considered at the time a very superior sort of school,--one of the best,
indeed, in that part of London; but it was most shamefully mismanaged,
and the boys made but very little progress. The proprietor, Mr. Jones,
was a Welshman; a most ignorant fellow, and a mere tyrant; whose chief
employment was to scourge the boys. Dickens has given a very lively
account of this place in his paper entitled Our School, but it is very
mythical in many respects, and more especially in the compliment he pays
in it to himself. I do not remember that Dickens distinguished himself
in any way, or carried off any prizes. My belief is that he did not
learn Greek or Latin there; and you will remember there is no allusion
to the classics in any of his writings. He was a handsome, curly-headed
lad, full of animation and animal spirits, and probably was connected
with every mischievous prank in the school. I do not think he came in
for any of Mr. Jones's scourging propensity: in fact, together with
myself, he was only a day-pupil, and with these there was a wholesome
fear of tales being carried home to the parents. His personal appearance
at that time is vividly brought home to me in the portrait of him taken
a few years later by Mr. Lawrence. He resided with his friends in a very
small house in a street leading out of Seymour Street, north of Mr.
Judkin's chapel.
"Depend on it, he was quite a self-made man, and his wonderful knowledge
and command of the English language must have been acquired by long and
patient study after leaving his last school.
"I have no recollection of the boy you name. His chief associates were,
I think, Tobin, Mr. Thomas, Bray, and myself. The first-named was his
chief ally, and his acquaintance with him appears to have continued many
years afterwards. At about that time Penny and Saturday Magazines were
published weekly, and were greedily read by us. We kept bees, white
mice, and other living things clandestinely in our desks; and the
mechanical arts were a good deal cultivated, in the shape of
coach-building, and making pumps and boats, the motive power of which
was the white mice.
"I think at that time Dickens took to writing small tales, and we had a
sort of club for lending and circulating them. Dickens was also very
strong in using a sort of lingo, which made us quite unintelligible to
bystanders. We were very strong, too, in theatricals. We mounted small
theatres, and got up very gorgeous scenery to illustrate the _Miller and
his Men_ and _Cherry and Fair Star_. I remember the present Mr.
Beverley, the scene-painter, assisted us in this. Dickens was always a
leader at these plays, which were occasionally presented with much
solemnity before an audience of boys and in the presence of the ushers.
My brother, assisted by Dickens, got up the _Miller and his Men_, in a
very gorgeous form. Master Beverley constructed the mill for us in such
a way that it could tumble to pieces with the assistance of crackers. At
one representation the fireworks in the last scene, ending with the
destruction of the mill, were so very real that the police interfered
and knocked violently at the doors. Dickens's after-taste for
theatricals might have had its origin in these small affairs.
"I quite remember Dickens on one occasion heading us in Drummond Street
in pretending to be poor boys, and asking the passers-by for
charity,--especially old ladies, one of whom told us she 'had no money
for beggar-boys.' On these adventures, when the old ladies were quite
staggered by the impudence of the demand, Dickens would explode with
laughter and take to his heels.
"I met him one Sunday morning shortly after he left the school, and we
very piously attended the morning service at Seymour Street Chapel. I am
sorry to say Master Dickens did not attend in the slightest degree to
the service, but incited me to laughter by declaring his dinner was
ready and the potatoes would be spoiled, and in fact behaved in such a
manner that it was lucky for us we were not ejected from the chapel.
"I heard of him some time after from Tobin, whom I met carrying a
foaming pot of London particular in Lincoln's Inn Fields, and I then
understood that Dickens was in the same or some neighboring office.
"Many years elapsed after this before I became aware, from accidentally
reading Our School, that the brilliant and now famous Dickens was my old
schoolfellow. I didn't like to intrude myself upon him; and it was not
until three or four years ago, when he presided at the University
College dinner at Willis's rooms, and made a most brilliant and
effective speech, that I sent him a congratulatory note reminding him of
our former fellowship. To this he sent me a kind note in reply, and
which I value very much. I send you copies of these."[5]
From Dickens himself I never heard much allusion to the school thus
described; but I knew that, besides being the subject dealt with in
_Household Words_, it had supplied some of the lighter traits of Salem
House for _Copperfield_; and that to the fact of one of its tutors being
afterwards engaged to teach a boy of Macready's, our common friend,
Dickens used to point for one of the illustrations of his favorite
theory as to the smallness of the world, and how things and persons
apparently the most unlikely to meet were continually knocking up
against each other. The employment as his amanuensis of his schoolfellow
Tobin dates as early as his Doctors'-Commons days, but both my
correspondents are mistaken in the impression they appear to have
received that Tobin had been previously his fellow-clerk in the same
attorney's office. I had thought him more likely to have been
accompanied there by another of his boyish acquaintances who became
afterwards a solicitor, Mr. Mitton, not recollected by either of my
correspondents in connection with the school, but whom I frequently met
with him in later years, and for whom he had the regard arising out of
such early associations. In this, however, I have since discovered my
own mistake: the truth being that it was this gentleman's connection,
not with the Wellington Academy, but with a school kept by Mr. Dawson in
Hunter Street, Brunswick Square, where the brothers of Dickens were
subsequently placed, which led to their early knowledge of each other. I
fancy that they were together also, for a short time, at Mr. Molloy's in
New Square, Lincoln's Inn; but, whether or not this was so, Dickens
certainly had not quitted school many months before his father had made
sufficient interest with an attorney of Gray's Inn, Mr. Edward
Blackmore, to obtain him regular employment in his office. In this
capacity of clerk, our only trustworthy glimpse of him we owe to the
last-named gentleman, who has described briefly, and I do not doubt
authentically, the services so rendered by him to the law. It cannot be
said that they were noteworthy, though it might be difficult to find a
more distinguished person who has borne the title, unless we make
exception for the very father of literature himself, whom Chaucer, with
amusing illustration of the way in which words change their meanings,
calls "that conceited clerke Homère."
"I was well acquainted," writes Mr. Edward Blackmore of Alresford, "with
his parents, and, being then in practice in Gray's Inn, they asked me if
I could find employment for him. He was a bright, clever-looking youth,
and I took him as a clerk. He came to me in May, 1827, and left in
November, 1828; and I have now an account-book which he used to keep of
petty disbursements in the office, in which he charged himself with the
modest salary first of thirteen shillings and sixpence, and afterwards
of fifteen shillings, a week. Several incidents took place in the office
of which he must have been a keen observer, as I recognized some of them
in his _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_; and I am much mistaken if some of his
characters had not their originals in persons I well remember. His taste
for theatricals was much promoted by a fellow-clerk named Potter, since
dead, with whom he chiefly associated. They took every opportunity, then
unknown to me, of going together to a minor theatre, where (I afterwards
heard) they not unfrequently engaged in parts. After he left me I saw
him at times in the lord chancellor's court, taking notes of cases as a
reporter. I then lost sight of him until his _Pickwick_ made its
appearance." This letter indicates the position he held at Mr.
Blackmore's; and we have but to turn to the passage in _Pickwick_ which
describes the several grades of attorney's clerk, to understand it more
clearly. He was very far below the articled clerk, who has paid a
premium and is attorney in perspective. He was not so high as the
salaried clerk, with nearly the whole of his weekly thirty shillings
spent on his personal pleasures. He was not even on the level with his
middle-aged copying-clerk, always needy and uniformly shabby. He was
simply among, however his own nature may have lifted him above, the
"office-lads in their first surtouts, who feel a befitting contempt for
boys at day-schools, club as they go home at night for saveloys and
porter, and think there's nothing like life." Thus far, not more or
less, had he now reached. He was one of the office-lads, and probably in
his first surtout.
But, even thus, the process of education went on, defying what seemed to
interrupt it; and in the amount of his present equipment for his needs
of life, what he brought from the Wellington House Academy can have
borne but the smallest proportion to his acquirement at Mr. Blackmore's.
Yet to seek to identify, without help from himself, any passages in his
books with those boyish law-experiences, would be idle and hopeless
enough. In the earliest of his writings, and down to the very latest, he
worked exhaustively the field which is opened by an attorney's office to
a student of life and manners; but we have not now to deal with his
numerous varieties of the _genus_ clerk drawn thus for the amusement of
others, but with the acquisitions which at present he was storing up for
himself from the opportunities such offices opened to him. Nor would it
be possible to have better illustrative comment on all these years than
is furnished by his father's reply to a friend it was now hoped to
interest on his behalf, which more than once I have heard him
whimsically, but good-humoredly, imitate. "Pray, Mr. Dickens, where was
your son educated?" "Why, indeed, sir--ha! ha!--he may be said to have
educated himself!" Of the two kinds of education which Gibbon says that
all men who rise above the common level receive,--the first, that of his
teachers, and the second, more personal and more important, _his
own_,--he had the advantage only of the last. It nevertheless sufficed
for him.
Very nearly another eighteen months were now to be spent mainly in
practical preparation for what he was, at this time, led finally to
choose as an employment from which a fair income was certain with such
talents as he possessed; his father already having taken to it, in these
latter years, in aid of the family resources. In his father's house,
which was at Hampstead through the first portion of the Mornington
Street school time, then in the house out of Seymour Street mentioned by
Dr. Danson, and afterwards, upon the elder Dickens going into the
gallery, in Bentinck Street, Manchester Square, Charles had continued to
live; and, influenced doubtless by the example before him, he took
sudden determination to qualify himself thoroughly for what his father
was lately become, a newspaper parliamentary reporter. He set
resolutely, therefore, to the study of short-hand; and, for the
additional help of such general information about books as a
fairly-educated youth might be expected to have, as well as to satisfy
some higher personal cravings, he became an assiduous attendant in the
British Museum reading-room. He would frequently refer to these days as
decidedly the usefulest to himself he had ever passed; and, judging from
the results, they must have been so. No man who knew him in later years,
and talked to him familiarly of books and things, would have suspected
his education in boyhood, almost entirely self-acquired as it was, to
have been so rambling or hap-hazard as I have here described it. The
secret consisted in this, that, whatever for the time he had to do, he
lifted himself, there and then, to the level of, and at no time
disregarded the rules that guided the hero of his novel. "Whatever I
have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well.
What I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely.
Never to put one hand to anything on which I could throw my whole self,
and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was, I find now
to have been my golden rules."
Of the difficulties that beset his short-hand studies, as well as of
what first turned his mind to them, he has told also something in
_Copperfield_. He had heard that many men distinguished in various
pursuits had begun life by reporting the debates in parliament, and he
was not deterred by a friend's warning that the mere mechanical
accomplishment for excellence in it might take a few years to master
thoroughly; "a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand
writing and reading being about equal in difficulty to the mastery of
six languages." Undaunted, he plunged into it, self-teaching in this as
in graver things, and, having bought Mr. Gurney's half-guinea book,
worked steadily his way through its distractions. "The changes that were
rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such
another position something else entirely different; the wonderful
vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences
that resulted from marks like flies' legs; the tremendous effects of a
curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but
reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly,
through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, there then
appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the
most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance,
that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb meant expectation, and that
a pen-and-ink sky-rocket stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed
these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else
out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking
them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system: in short, it was
almost heart-breaking."
What it was that made it not quite heart-breaking to the hero of the
fiction, its readers know; and something of the same kind was now to
enter into the actual experience of its writer. First let me say,
however, that after subduing to his wants in marvelously quick time this
unruly and unaccommodating servant of stenography, what he most desired
was still not open to him. "There never _was_ such a short-hand writer,"
has been often said to me by Mr. Beard, the friend he first made in that
line when he entered the gallery, and with whom to the close of his life
he maintained the friendliest intercourse. But there was no opening for
him in the gallery yet. He had to pass nearly two years as a reporter
for one of the offices in Doctors' Commons, practicing in this and the
other law courts, before he became a sharer in parliamentary toils and
triumphs; and what sustained his young hero through something of the
same sort of trial was also his own support. He too had his Dora, at
apparently the same hopeless elevation; striven for as the one only
thing to be attained, and even more unattainable, for neither did he
succeed nor happily did she die; but the one idol, like the other,
supplying a motive to exertion for the time, and otherwise opening out
to the idolater, both in fact and fiction, a highly unsubstantial,
happy, foolish time. I used to laugh and tell him I had no belief in any
but the book Dora, until the incident of a sudden reappearance of the
real one in his life, nearly six years after _Copperfield_ was written,
convinced me there had been a more actual foundation for those chapters
of his book than I was ready to suppose. Still, I would hardly admit it,
and, that the matter could possibly affect him then, persisted in a
stout refusal to believe. His reply (1855) throws a little light on this
juvenile part of his career, and I therefore venture to preserve it:
"I don't quite apprehend what you mean by my overrating the strength of
the feeling of five-and-twenty years ago. If you mean of my own feeling,
and will only think what the desperate intensity of my nature is, and
that this began when I was Charley's age; that it excluded every other
idea from my mind for four years, at a time of life when four years are
equal to four times four; and that I went at it with a determination to
overcome all the difficulties, which fairly lifted me up into that
newspaper life, and floated me away over a hundred men's heads; then you
are wrong, because nothing can exaggerate that. I have positively stood
amazed at myself ever since!--And so I suffered, and so worked, and so
beat and hammered away at the maddest romances that ever got into any
boy's head and stayed there, that to see the mere cause of it all, now,
loosens my hold upon myself. Without for a moment sincerely believing
that it would have been better if we had never got separated, I cannot
see the occasion of so much emotion as I should see any one else. No
one can imagine in the most distant degree what pain the recollection
gave me in _Copperfield_. And, just as I can never open that book as I
open any other book, I cannot see the face (even at four-and-forty), or
hear the voice, without going wandering away over the ashes of all that
youth and hope in the wildest manner." More and more plainly seen,
however, in the light of four-and-forty, the romance glided visibly
away, its work being fairly done; and at the close of the month
following that in which this letter was written, during which he had
very quietly made a formal call with his wife at his youthful Dora's
house, and contemplated with a calm equanimity, in the hall, her stuffed
favorite Jip, he began the fiction in which there was a Flora to set
against its predecessor's Dora, both derived from the same original. The
fancy had a comic humor in it he found it impossible to resist, but it
was kindly and pleasant to the last;[6] and if the later picture showed
him plenty to laugh at in this retrospect of his youth, there was
nothing he thought of more tenderly than the earlier, as long as he was
conscious of anything.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The reader will probably think them worth subjoining. Dr. Danson
wrote: "_April, 1864._ DEAR SIR, On the recent occasion of the U. C. H.
dinner, you would probably have been amused and somewhat surprised to
learn that one of those whom you addressed had often accompanied you
over that 'field of forty footsteps' to which you so aptly and amusingly
alluded. It is now some years since I was accidentally reading a paper
written by yourself in the _Household Words_, when I was first impressed
with the idea that the writer described scenes and persons with which I
was once familiar, and that he must necessarily be the veritable Charles
Dickens of 'our school,'--the school of Jones! I did not then, however,
like to intrude myself upon you, for I could hardly hope that you would
retain any recollection of myself; indeed, it was only barely possible
you should do so, however vividly _I_ might recall you in many scenes of
fun and frolic of my school-days. I happened to be present at the dinner
of Tuesday last (being interested as an old student in the school of the
hospital), and was seated very near you; I was tempted during the
evening to introduce myself to you, but feared lest an explanation such
as this in a public room might attract attention and be disagreeable to
yourself. A man who has attained a position and celebrity such as yours
will probably have many early associates and acquaintances claiming his
notice. I beg of you to believe that such is not my object, but that
having so recently met you I feel myself unable to repress the desire to
assure you that no one in the room could appreciate the fame and rank
you have so fairly won, or could wish you more sincerely long life and
happiness to enjoy them, than, Dear Sir, your old schoolfellow, HENRY
DANSON." To this Dickens replied: "GADSHILL PLACE, _Thursday, 5th May,
1864_. DEAR SIR, I should have assured you before now that the receipt
of your letter gave me great pleasure, had I not been too much occupied
to have leisure for correspondence. I perfectly recollect your name as
that of an old schoolfellow, and distinctly remember your appearance and
dress as a boy, and believe you had a brother who was unfortunately
drowned in the Serpentine. If you had made yourself personally known to
me at the dinner, I should have been well pleased; though in that case I
should have lost your modest and manly letter. Faithfully yours, CHARLES
DICKENS."
[6] I take other fanciful allusions to the lady from two of his
occasional writings. The first from his visit to the city churches
(written during the Dombey time, when he had to select a church for the
marriage of Florence): "Its drowsy cadence soon lulls the three old
women asleep, and the unmarried tradesman sits looking out at window,
and the married tradesman sits looking at his wife's bonnet, and the
lovers sit looking at one another, so superlatively happy, that I mind
when I, turned of eighteen, went with my Angelica to a city church on
account of a shower (by this special coincidence that it was in Huggin
Lane), and when I said to my Angelica, 'Let the blessed event, Angelica,
occur at no altar but this!' and when my Angelica consented that it
should occur at no other--which it certainly never did, for it never
occurred anywhere. And O, Angelica, what has become of you, this present
Sunday morning when I can't attend to the sermon? and, more difficult
question than that, what has become of Me as I was when I sat by your
side?" The second, from his pleasant paper on birthdays: "I gave a party
on the occasion. She was there. It is unnecessary to name Her, more
particularly; She was older than I, and had pervaded every chink and
crevice of my mind for three or four years. I had held volumes of
Imaginary Conversations with her mother on the subject of our union, and
I had written letters more in number than Horace Walpole's, to that
discreet woman, soliciting her daughter's hand in marriage. I had never
had the remotest intention of sending any of those letters; but to write
them, and after a few days tear them up, had been a sublime occupation."
CHAPTER IV.
REPORTERS' GALLERY AND NEWSPAPER LITERATURE.
1831-1835.
Reporting for _True Sun_--First seen by
me--Reporting for _Mirror_ and
_Chronicle_--First Published Piece--Discipline
and Experiences of Reporting--Life as a
Reporter--John Black--Mr. Thomas Beard--A
Letter to his Editor--Incident of Reporting
Days--The same more correctly told--Origin of
"Boz"--Captain Holland--Mr. George
Hogarth--Sketches in _Evening Chronicle_--C.
D.'s First Hearty Appreciator.
DICKENS was nineteen years old when at last he entered the gallery. His
father, with whom he still lived in Bentinck Street, had already, as we
have seen, joined the gallery as a reporter for one of the morning
papers, and was now in the more comfortable circumstances derived from
the addition to his official pension which this praiseworthy labor
insured; but his own engagement on the _Chronicle_ dates somewhat later.
His first parliamentary service was given to the _True Sun_, a journal
which had then on its editorial staff some dear friends of mine, through
whom I became myself a contributor to it, and afterwards, in common with
all concerned, whether in its writing, reporting, printing, or
publishing, a sharer in its difficulties. The most formidable of these
arrived one day in a general strike of the reporters; and I well
remember noticing at this dread time, on the staircase of the
magnificent mansion we were lodged in, a young man of my own age, whose
keen animation of look would have arrested attention anywhere, and whose
name, upon inquiry, I then for the first time heard. It was coupled with
the fact, which gave it interest even then, that "young Dickens" had
been spokesman for the recalcitrant reporters, and conducted their case
triumphantly. He was afterwards during two sessions engaged for the
_Mirror of Parliament_, which one of his uncles by the mother's side
originated and conducted; and finally, in his twenty-third year, he
became a reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_.
A step far more momentous to him (though then he did not know it) he had
taken shortly before. In the December number for 1833 of what then was
called the _Old Monthly Magazine_, his first published piece of writing
had seen the light. He has described himself dropping this paper (Mr.
Minns and his Cousin, as he afterwards entitled it, but which appeared
in the magazine as A Dinner at Poplar Walk) stealthily one evening at
twilight, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter-box in a dark
office up a dark court in Fleet Street; and he has told his agitation
when it appeared in all the glory of print: "On which occasion I walked
down to Westminster Hall, and turned into it for half an hour, because
my eyes were so dimmed with joy and pride that they could not bear the
street, and were not fit to be seen there." He had purchased the
magazine at a shop in the Strand; and exactly two years afterwards, in
the younger member of a publishing firm who had called, at the chambers
in Furnival's Inn to which he had moved soon after entering the
gallery, with the proposal that originated _Pickwick_, he recognized the
person he had bought that magazine from, and whom before or since he had
never seen.
This interval of two years more than comprised what remained of his
career in the gallery and the engagements connected with it; but that
this occupation was of the utmost importance in its influence on his
life, in the discipline of his powers as well as of his character, there
can be no doubt whatever. "To the wholesome training of severe newspaper
work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my first
successes," he said to the New York editors when he last took leave of
them. It opened to him a wide and varied range of experience, which his
wonderful observation, exact as it was humorous, made entirely his own.
He saw the last of the old coaching-days, and of the old inns that were
a part of them; but it will be long before the readers of his living
page see the last of the life of either. "There never was," he once
wrote to me (in 1845), "anybody connected with newspapers who, in the
same space of time, had so much express and post-chaise experience as I.
And what gentlemen they were to serve, in such things, at the old
_Morning Chronicle_! Great or small it did not matter. I have had to
charge for half a dozen break-downs in half a dozen times as many miles.
I have had to charge for the damage of a great-coat from the drippings
of a blazing wax candle, in writing through the smallest hours of the
night in a swift-flying carriage-and-pair. I have had to charge for all
sorts of breakages fifty times in a journey without question, such being
the ordinary results of the pace which we went at. I have charged for
broken hats, broken luggage, broken chaises, broken harness--everything
but a broken head, which is the only thing they would have grumbled to
pay for."
Something to the same effect he said publicly twenty years later, on the
occasion of his presiding, in May, 1865, at the second annual dinner of
the Newspaper Press Fund, when he condensed within the compass of his
speech a summary of the whole of his reporting life. "I am not here," he
said, "advocating the case of a mere ordinary client of whom I have
little or no knowledge. I hold a brief to-night for my brothers. I went
into the gallery of the House of Commons as a parliamentary reporter
when I was a boy, and I left it--I can hardly believe the inexorable
truth--nigh thirty years ago. I have pursued the calling of a reporter
under circumstances of which many of my brethren here can form no
adequate conception. I have often transcribed for the printer, from my
short-hand notes, important public speeches in which the strictest
accuracy was required, and a mistake in which would have been to a young
man severely compromising, writing on the palm of my hand, by the light
of a dark-lantern, in a post-chaise and four, galloping through a wild
country, and through the dead of the night, at the then surprising rate
of fifteen miles an hour. The very last time I was at Exeter, I strolled
into the castle-yard there, to identify, for the amusement of a friend,
the spot on which I once 'took,' as we used to call it, an
election-speech of Lord John Russell at the Devon contest, in the midst
of a lively fight maintained by all the vagabonds in that division of
the county, and under such a pelting rain that I remember two
good-natured colleagues, who chanced to be at leisure, held a
pocket-handkerchief over my note-book, after the manner of a state
canopy in an ecclesiastical procession. I have worn my knees by writing
on them on the old back row of the old gallery of the old House of
Commons; and I have worn my feet by standing to write in a preposterous
pen in the old House of Lords, where we used to be huddled together like
so many sheep,--kept in waiting, say, until the woolsack might want
restuffing. Returning home from exciting political meetings in the
country to the waiting press in London, I do verily believe I have been
upset in almost every description of vehicle known in this country. I
have been, in my time, belated on miry by-roads, towards the small
hours, forty or fifty miles from London, in a wheelless carriage, with
exhausted horses and drunken post-boys, and have got back in time for
publication, to be received with never-forgotten compliments by the late
Mr. Black, coming in the broadest of Scotch from the broadest of hearts
I ever knew. These trivial things I mention as an assurance to you that
I never have forgotten the fascination of that old pursuit. The pleasure
that I used to feel in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has
never faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of hand or head I
took to it, or acquired in it, I have so retained as that I fully
believe I could resume it to-morrow, very little the worse from long
disuse. To this present year of my life, when I sit in this hall, or
where not, hearing a dull speech (the phenomenon does occur), I
sometimes beguile the tedium of the moment by mentally following the
speaker in the old, old way; and sometimes, if you can believe me, I
even find my hand going on the table-cloth, taking an imaginary note of
it all." The latter I have known him do frequently. It was indeed a
quite ordinary habit with him.
Mr. James Grant, a writer who was himself in the gallery with Dickens,
and who states that among its eighty or ninety reporters he occupied the
very highest rank, not merely for accuracy in reporting but for
marvelous quickness in transcribing, has lately also told us that while
there he was exceedingly reserved in his manners, and that, though
showing the usual courtesies to all he was concerned with in his duties,
the only personal intimacy he formed was with Mr. Thomas Beard, then too
reporting for the _Morning Chronicle_. I have already mentioned the
friendly and familiar relations maintained with this gentleman to the
close of his life; and in confirmation of Mr. Grant's statement I can
further say that the only other associate of these early reporting days
to whom I ever heard him refer with special regard was the late Mr.
Vincent Dowling, many years editor of _Bell's Life_, with whom he did
not continue much personal intercourse, but of whose character as well
as talents he had formed a very high opinion. Nor is there anything to
add to the notice of these days which the reader's fancy may not easily
supply. A letter has been kept as written by him while engaged on one of
his "expresses;" but it is less for its saying anything new, than for
its confirming with a pleasant vividness what has been said already,
that its contents will justify mention here.
He writes, on a "Tuesday morning" in May, 1835, from the Bush Inn,
Bristol; the occasion that has taken him to the west, connected with a
reporting party, being Lord John Russell's Devonshire contest above
named, and his associate-chief being Mr. Beard, intrusted with command
for the _Chronicle_ in this particular express. He expects to forward
"the conclusion of Russell's dinner" by Cooper's company's coach leaving
the Bush at half-past six next morning; and by the first Ball's coach on
Thursday morning he will forward the report of the Bath dinner,
indorsing the parcel for immediate delivery, with extra rewards for the
porter. Beard is to go over to Bath next morning. He is himself to come
back by the mail from Marlborough; he has no doubt, if Lord John makes a
speech of any ordinary dimensions, it can be done by the time
Marlborough is reached; "and taking into consideration the immense
importance of having the addition of saddle-horses from thence, it is,
beyond all doubt, worth an effort. . . . I need not say," he continues,
"that it will be sharp work and will require two of us; for we shall
both be up the whole of the previous night, and shall have to sit up all
night again to get it off in time." He adds that as soon as they have
had a little sleep they will return to town as quickly as they can; but
they have, if the express succeeds, to stop at sundry places along the
road to pay money and notify satisfaction. And so, for himself and
Beard, he is his editor's very sincerely.
Another anecdote of these reporting days, with its sequel, may be added
from his own alleged relation, in which, however, mistakes occur that it
seems strange he should have made. The story, as told, is that the late
Lord Derby, when Mr. Stanley, had on some important occasion made a
speech which all the reporters found it necessary greatly to abridge;
that its essential points had nevertheless been so well given in the
_Chronicle_ that Mr. Stanley, having need of it for himself in greater
detail, had sent a request to the reporter to meet him in Carlton House
Terrace and take down the entire speech; that Dickens attended and did
the work accordingly, much to Mr. Stanley's satisfaction; and that, on
his dining with Mr. Gladstone in recent years, and finding the aspect of
the dining-room strangely familiar, he discovered afterwards on inquiry
that it was there he had taken the speech. The story, as it actually
occurred, is connected with the brief life of the _Mirror of
Parliament_. It was not at any special desire of Mr. Stanley's, but for
that new record of the debates, which had been started by one of the
uncles of Dickens and professed to excel _Hansard_ in giving verbatim
reports, that the famous speech against O'Connell was taken as
described. The young reporter went to the room in Carlton Terrace
because the work of his uncle Barrow's publication required to be done
there; and if, in later years, the great author was in the same room as
the guest of the prime minister, it must have been but a month or two
before he died, when for the first time he visited and breakfasted with
Mr. Gladstone.
The mention of his career in the gallery may close with the incident. I
will only add that his observation while there had not led him to form
any high opinion of the House of Commons or its heroes, and that of the
Pickwickian sense which so often takes the place of common sense in our
legislature he omitted no opportunity of declaring his contempt at
every part of his life.
The other occupation had meanwhile not been lost sight of, and for this
we are to go back a little. Since the first sketch appeared in the
_Monthly Magazine_, nine others have enlivened the pages of later
numbers of the same magazine, the last in February, 1835, and that which
appeared in the preceding August having first had the signature of Boz.
This was the nickname of a pet child, his youngest brother Augustus,
whom in honor of the _Vicar of Wakefield_ he had dubbed Moses, which
being facetiously pronounced through the nose became Boses, and being
shortened became Boz. "Boz was a very familiar household word to me,
long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it." Thus had he
fully invented his Sketches by Boz before they were even so called, or
any one was ready to give much attention to them; and the next invention
needful to himself was some kind of payment in return for them. The
magazine was owned as well as conducted at this time by a Mr. Holland,
who had come back from Bolivar's South American campaigns with the rank
of captain, and had hoped to make it a popular mouthpiece for his ardent
liberalism. But this hope, as well as his own health, quite failed; and
he had sorrowfully to decline receiving any more of the sketches when
they had to cease as voluntary offerings. I do not think that either he
or the magazine lived many weeks after an evening I passed with him in
Doughty Street in 1837, when he spoke in a very touching way of the
failure of this and other enterprises of his life, and of the help that
Dickens had been to him.
Nothing thus being forthcoming from the _Monthly_, it was of course but
natural the sketches too should cease to be forthcoming; and, even
before the above-named February number appeared, a new opening had been
found for them. An evening offshoot to the _Morning Chronicle_ had been
lately in hand; and to a countryman of Black's engaged in the
preparations for it, Mr. George Hogarth, Dickens was communicating from
his rooms in Furnival's Inn, on the evening of Tuesday, the 20th of
January, 1835, certain hopes and fancies he had formed. This was the
beginning of his knowledge of an accomplished and kindly man, with whose
family his relations were soon to become so intimate as to have an
influence on all his future career. Mr. Hogarth had asked him, as a
favor to himself, to write an original sketch for the first number of
the enterprise, and in writing back to say with what readiness he should
comply, and how anxiously he should desire to do his best for the person
who had made the request, he mentioned what had arisen in his mind. It
had occurred to him that he might not be unreasonably or improperly
trespassing farther on Mr. Hogarth if, trusting to his kindness to refer
the application to the proper quarter, he begged to ask whether it was
probable, if he commenced a regular series of articles under some
attractive title for the _Evening Chronicle_, its conductors would think
he had any claim to _some_ additional remuneration (of course, of no
great amount) for doing so. In short, he wished to put it to the
proprietors--first, whether a continuation of some chapters of light
papers in the style of his street-sketches would be considered of use to
the new journal; and secondly, if so, whether they would not think it
fair and reasonable that, taking his share of the ordinary reporting
business of the _Chronicle_ besides, he should receive something for the
papers beyond his ordinary salary as a reporter. The request was thought
fair, he began the sketches, and his salary was raised from five to
seven guineas a week.
They went on, with undiminished spirit and freshness, throughout the
year; and, much as they were talked of outside as well as in the world
of newspapers, nothing in connection with them delighted the writer half
so much as the hearty praise of his own editor. Mr. Black is one of the
men who has passed without recognition out of a world his labors largely
benefited, but with those who knew him no man was so popular, as well
for his broad kindly humor as for his honest great-hearted enjoyment of
whatever was excellent in others. Dickens to the last remembered that it
was most of all the cordial help of this good old mirth-loving man which
had started him joyfully on his career of letters. "It was John Black
that flung the slipper after me," he would often say. "Dear old Black!
my first hearty out-and-out appreciator," is an expression in one of his
letters written to me in the year he died.
CHAPTER V.
FIRST BOOK, AND ORIGIN OF PICKWICK.
1836.
_Sketches by Boz_--Fancy-piece by N. P. Willis:
a Poor English Author--Start of
_Pickwick_--Marriage to Miss Hogarth--First
Connection with Chapman & Hall--Mr. Seymour's
Part in _Pickwick_--Letters relating
thereto--C. D.'s own Account--False Claims
refuted--Pickwick's Original, his Figure and
his Name--First Sprightly Runnings of
Genius--The _Sketches_ characterized--Mr.
Seymour's Death--New Illustrator chosen--Mr.
Hablot K. Browne--C. D. leaves the
Gallery--_Strange Gentleman_ and _Village
Coquettes_.
THE opening of 1836 found him collecting into two volumes the first
series of _Sketches by Boz_, of which he had sold the copyright for a
conditional payment of (I think) a hundred and fifty pounds to a young
publisher named Macrone, whose acquaintance he had made through Mr.
Ainsworth a few weeks before.[7] At this time also, we are told in a
letter before quoted, the editorship of the _Monthly Magazine_ having
come into Mr. James Grant's hands, this gentleman, applying to him
through its previous editor to know if he would again contribute to it,
learned two things: the first, that he was going to be married; and the
second, that, having entered into an arrangement to write a monthly
serial, his duties in future would leave him small spare time. Both
pieces of news were soon confirmed. The _Times_ of the 26th of March,
1836, gave notice that on the 31st would be published the first shilling
number of the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, edited by Boz_;
and the same journal of a few days later announced that on the 2d of
April Mr. Charles Dickens had married Catherine, the eldest daughter of
Mr. George Hogarth, whom already we have met as his fellow-worker on the
_Chronicle_. The honeymoon was passed in the neighborhood to which at
all times of interest in his life he turned with a strange recurring
fondness; and while the young couple are at the quiet little village of
Chalk, on the road between Gravesend and Rochester, I will relate
exactly the origin of the ever-memorable Mr. Pickwick.
A young publishing-house had started recently, among other enterprises
ingenious rather than important, a Library of Fiction; among the authors
they wished to enlist in it was the writer of the sketches in the
_Monthly_; and, to the extent of one paper during the past year, they
had effected this through their editor, Mr. Charles Whitehead, a very
ingenious and very unfortunate man. "I was not aware," wrote the elder
member of the firm to Dickens, thirteen years later, in a letter to
which reference was made[8] in the preface to _Pickwick_ in one of his
later editions, "that you were writing in the _Chronicle_, or what your
name was; but Whitehead, who was an old _Monthly_ man, recollected it,
and got you to write The Tuggs's at Ramsgate."
And now comes another person on the scene. "In November, 1835,"
continues Mr. Chapman, "we published a little book called the _Squib
Annual_, with plates by Seymour; and it was during my visit to him to
see after them that he said he should like to do a series of
cockney-sporting plates of a superior sort to those he had already
published. I said I thought they might do, if accompanied by
letter-press and published in monthly parts; and, this being agreed to,
we wrote to the author of _Three Courses and a Dessert_, and proposed
it; but, receiving no answer, the scheme dropped for some months, till
Seymour said he wished us to decide, as another job had offered which
would fully occupy his time; and it was on this we decided to ask you to
do it. Having opened already a connection with you for our Library of
Fiction, we naturally applied to you to do the _Pickwick_; but I do not
think we even mentioned our intention to Mr. Seymour, and I am quite
sure that from the beginning to the end nobody but yourself had anything
whatever to do with it. Our prospectus was out at the end of February,
and it had all been arranged before that date."
The member of the firm who carried the application to him in Furnival's
Inn was not the writer of this letter, but Mr. Hall, who had sold him
two years before, not knowing that he was the purchaser, the magazine in
which his first effusion was printed; and he has himself described what
passed at the interview: "The idea propounded to me was that the monthly
something should be a vehicle for certain plates to be executed by Mr.
Seymour; and there was a notion, either on the part of that admirable
humorous artist, or of my visitor, that a NIMROD CLUB, the members of
which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting
themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be
the best means of introducing these. I objected, on consideration that,
although born and partly bred in the country, I was no great sportsman,
except in regard to all kinds of locomotion; that the idea was not
novel, and had already been much used; that it would be infinitely
better for the plates to arise naturally out of the text; and that I
would like to take my own way, with a freer range of English scenes and
people, and was afraid I should ultimately do so in any case, whatever
course I might prescribe to myself at starting. My views being deferred
to, I thought of Mr. Pickwick, and wrote the first number; from the
proof-sheets of which Mr. Seymour made his drawing of the club and his
happy portrait of its founder. I connected Mr. Pickwick with a club,
because of the original suggestion; and I put in Mr. Winkle expressly
for the use of Mr. Seymour."
Mr. Hall was dead when this statement was first made, in the preface to
the cheap edition in 1847; but Mr. Chapman clearly recollected his
partner's account of the interview, and confirmed every part of it, in
his letter of 1849,[9] with one exception. In giving Mr. Seymour credit
for the figure by which all the habitable globe knows Mr. Pickwick, and
which certainly at the outset helped to make him a reality, it had given
the artist too much. The reader will hardly be so startled as I was on
coming to the closing line of Mr. Chapman's confirmatory letter: "As
this letter is to be historical, I may as well claim what little belongs
to me in the matter, and that is the figure of Pickwick. Seymour's first
sketch was of a long, thin man. The present immortal one he made from my
description of a friend of mine at Richmond, a fat old beau, who would
wear, in spite of the ladies' protests, drab tights and black gaiters.
His name was John Foster."
On the coincidences, resemblances, and surprises of life, Dickens liked
especially to dwell, and few things moved his fancy so pleasantly. The
world, he would say, was so much smaller than we thought it; we were all
so connected by fate without knowing it; people supposed to be far apart
were so constantly elbowing each other; and to-morrow bore so close a
resemblance to nothing half so much as to yesterday. Here were the only
two leading incidents of his own life before I knew him, his marriage
and the first appearance of his Pickwick; and it turned out after all
that I had some shadowy association with both. He was married on the
anniversary of my birthday, and the original of the figure of Mr.
Pickwick bore my name.[10]
The first number had not yet appeared when his _Sketches by Boz,
Illustrative of Every-Day Life and Every-Day People_, came forth in two
duodecimos with some capital cuts by Cruikshank, and with a preface in
which he spoke of the nervousness he should have had in venturing alone
before the public, and of his delight in getting the help of Cruikshank,
who had frequently contributed to the success, though his well-earned
reputation rendered it impossible for him ever to have shared the
hazard, of similar undertakings. It very soon became apparent that there
was no hazard here. The _Sketches_ were much more talked about than the
first two or three numbers of _Pickwick_, and I remember still with what
hearty praise the book was first named to me by my dear friend Albany
Fonblanque, as keen and clear a judge as ever lived either of books or
men. Richly did it merit all the praise it had, and more, I will add,
than he was ever disposed to give to it himself. He decidedly underrated
it. He gave, in subsequent writings, so much more perfect form and
fullness to everything it contained, that he did not care to credit
himself with the marvel of having yet so early anticipated so much. But
the first sprightly runnings of his genius are undoubtedly here. Mr.
Bumble is in the parish sketches, and Mr. Dawkins the dodger in the Old
Bailey scenes. There is laughter and fun to excess, never misapplied;
there are the minute points and shades of character, with all the
discrimination and nicety of detail, afterwards so famous; there is
everywhere the most perfect ease and skill of handling. The observation
shown throughout is nothing short of wonderful. Things are painted
literally as they are, and, whatever the picture, whether of every-day
vulgar, shabby-genteel, or downright low, with neither the condescending
air which is affectation, nor the too familiar one which is slang. The
book altogether is a perfectly unaffected, unpretentious, honest
performance. Under its manly, sensible, straightforward vein of talk
there is running at the same time a natural flow of sentiment never
sentimental, of humor always easy and unforced, and of pathos for the
most part dramatic or picturesque, under which lay the germ of what his
mature genius took afterwards most delight in. Of course there are
inequalities in it, and some things that would have been better away;
but it is a book that might have stood its ground, even if it had stood
alone, as containing unusually truthful observation of a sort of life
between the middle class and the low, which, having few attractions for
bookish observers, was quite unhackneyed ground. It had otherwise also
the very special merit of being in no respect bookish or commonplace in
its descriptions of the old city with which its writer was so familiar.
It was a picture of every-day London at its best and worst, in its
humors and enjoyments as well as its sufferings and sins, pervaded
everywhere not only with the absolute reality of the things depicted,
but also with that subtle sense and mastery of feeling which gives to
the reader's sympathies invariably right direction, and awakens
consideration, tenderness, and kindness precisely for those who most
need such help.
Between the first and the second numbers of _Pickwick_, the artist, Mr.
Seymour, died by his own hand; and the number came out with three
instead of four illustrations. Dickens had seen the unhappy man only
once, forty-eight hours before his death; when he went to Furnival's Inn
with an etching for the "stroller's tale" in that number, which, altered
at Dickens's suggestion, he brought away again for the few further
touches that occupied him to a late hour of the night before he
destroyed himself. A notice attached to the number informed the public
of this latter fact. There was at first a little difficulty in replacing
him, and for a single number Mr. Buss was interposed. But before the
fourth number a choice had been made, which as time went on was so
thoroughly justified, that through the greater part of the wonderful
career which was then beginning the connection was kept up, and Mr.
Hablot Browne's name is not unworthily associated with the masterpieces
of Dickens's genius. An incident which I heard related by Mr. Thackeray
at one of the Royal Academy dinners belongs to this time: "I can
remember when Mr. Dickens was a very young man, and had commenced
delighting the world with some charming humorous works in covers which
were colored light green and came out once a month, that this young man
wanted an artist to illustrate his writings; and I recollect walking up
to his chambers in Furnival's Inn, with two or three drawings in my
hand, which, strange to say, he did not find suitable." Dickens has
himself described another change now made in the publication: "We
started with a number of twenty-four pages and four illustrations. Mr.
Seymour's sudden and lamented death before the second number was
published, brought about a quick decision upon a point already in
agitation: the number became one of thirty-two pages with only two
illustrations, and remained so to the end."
The Session of 1836 terminated his connection with the gallery, and some
fruits of his increased leisure showed themselves before the close of
the year. His eldest sister's musical attainments and connections had
introduced him to many cultivators and professors of that art; he was
led to take much interest in Mr. Braham's enterprise at the St. James's
theatre; and in aid of it he wrote a farce for Mr. Harley, founded upon
one of his sketches, and the story and songs for an opera composed by
his friend Mr. Hullah. Both the _Strange Gentleman_, acted in September,
and the _Village Coquettes_, produced in December, 1836, had a good
success; and the last is memorable to me for having brought me first
into personal communication with Dickens.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] To this date belongs a visit paid him at Furnival's Inn in Mr.
Macrone's company by the notorious Mr. N. P. Willis, who calls him "a
young paragraphist for the _Morning Chronicle_," and thus sketches his
residence and himself: "In the most crowded part of Holborn, within a
door or two of the Bull-and-Mouth Inn, we pulled up at the entrance of a
large building used for lawyers' chambers. I followed by a long flight
of stairs to an upper story, and was ushered into an uncarpeted and
bleak-looking room, with a deal table, two or three chairs and a few
books, a small boy and Mr. Dickens, for the contents. I was only struck
at first with one thing (and I made a memorandum of it that evening as
the strongest instance I had seen of English obsequiousness to
employers), the degree to which the poor author was overpowered with the
honor of his publisher's visit! I remember saying to myself, as I sat
down on a rickety chair, 'My good fellow, if you were in America with
that fine face and your ready quill, you would have no need to be
condescended to by a publisher.' Dickens was dressed very much as he has
since described Dick Swiveller, _minus_ the swell look. His hair was
cropped close to his head, his clothes scant, though jauntily cut, and,
after changing a ragged office-coat for a shabby blue, he stood by the
door, collarless and buttoned up, the very personification, I thought,
of a close sailer to the wind." I remember, while my friend lived, our
laughing heartily at this description, hardly a word of which is true;
and I give it now as no unfair specimen of the kind of garbage that
since his death also has been served up only too plentifully by some of
his own as well as by others of Mr. Willis's countrymen.
[8] Not quoted in detail, on that or any other occasion; though referred
to. It was, however, placed in my hands, for use if occasion should
arise, when Dickens went to America in 1867. The letter bears date the
7th July, 1849, and was Mr. Chapman's answer to the question Dickens had
asked him, whether the account of the origin of _Pickwick_ which he had
given in the preface to the cheap edition in 1847 was not strictly
correct. "It is so correctly described," was Mr. Chapman's opening
remark, "that I can throw but little additional light on it." The name
of his hero, I may add, Dickens took from that of a celebrated
coach-proprietor of Bath.
[9] The appeal was then made to him because of recent foolish statements
by members of Mr. Seymour's family, which Dickens thus contradicted: "It
is with great unwillingness that I notice some intangible and incoherent
assertions which have been made, professedly on behalf of Mr. Seymour,
to the effect that he had some share in the invention of this book, or
of anything in it, not faithfully described in the foregoing paragraph.
With the moderation that is due equally to my respect for the memory of
a brother-artist, and to my self-respect, I confine myself to placing on
record here the facts--That Mr. Seymour never originated or suggested an
incident, a phrase, or a word, to be found in this book. That Mr.
Seymour died when only twenty-four pages of this book were published,
and when assuredly not forty-eight were written. That I believe I never
saw Mr. Seymour's handwriting in my life. That I never saw Mr. Seymour
but once in my life, and that was on the night but one before his death,
when he certainly offered no suggestion whatsoever. That I saw him then
in the presence of two persons, both living, perfectly acquainted with
all these facts, and whose written testimony to them I possess. Lastly,
that Mr. Edward Chapman (the survivor of the original firm of Chapman &
Hall) has set down in writing, for similar preservation, his personal
knowledge of the origin and progress of this book, of the monstrosity of
the baseless assertions in question, and (tested by details) even of the
self-evident impossibility of there being any truth in them." The
"written testimony" alluded to is also in my possession, having been
inclosed to me by Dickens, in 1867, with Mr. Chapman's letter here
referred to.
[10] Whether Mr. Chapman spelt the name correctly, or has unconsciously
deprived his fat beau of the letter "r," I cannot say; but experience
tells me that the latter is probable. I have been trying all my life to
get my own name spelt correctly, and have only very imperfectly
succeeded.
CHAPTER VI.
WRITING THE PICKWICK PAPERS.
1837.
First Letter from him--As he was Thirty-five
Years ago--Mrs. Carlyle and Leigh Hunt--Birth
of Eldest Son--From Furnival's Inn to Doughty
Street--A Long-Remembered Sorrow--I visit
him--Hasty Compacts with Publishers--Self-sold
into Quasi-Bondage--Agreements for Editorship
and Writing--Mr. Macrone's Scheme to reissue
_Sketches_--Attempts to prevent it--Exorbitant
Demand--Impatience of Suspense--Purchase
advised--_Oliver Twist_--Characters real to
himself--Sense of Responsibility for his
Writings--Criticism that satisfied him--Help
given with his Proofs--Writing _Pickwick_, Nos.
14 and 15--Scenes in a Debtors' Prison--A
Recollection of Smollett--Reception of
_Pickwick_--A Popular Rage--Mr. Carlyle's
"Dreadful" Story--Secrets of
Success--_Pickwick_ inferior to Later
Books--Exception for Sam Weller and Mr.
Pickwick--Personal Habits of C. D.--Reliefs
after Writing--Natural Discontents--The Early
Agreements--Tale to follow _Oliver
Twist_--Compromise with Mr. Bentley--Trip to
Flanders--First Visit to Broadstairs--Piracies
of _Pickwick_--A Sufferer from
Agreements--First Visit to Brighton--What he is
doing with _Oliver Twist_--Reading De Foe--"No
Thoroughfare"--Proposed Help to Macready.
THE first letter I had from him was at the close of 1836, from
Furnival's Inn, when he sent me the book of his opera of the _Village
Coquettes_, which had been published by Mr. Bentley; and this was
followed, two months later, by his collected _Sketches_, both first and
second series; which he desired me to receive "as a very small testimony
of the donor's regard and obligations, as well as of his desire to
cultivate and avail himself of a friendship which has been so pleasantly
thrown in his way. . . . In short, if you will receive them for my sake and
not for their own, you will very greatly oblige me." I had met him in
the interval at the house of our common friend Mr. Ainsworth, and I
remember vividly the impression then made upon me.
Very different was his face in those days from that which photography
has made familiar to the present generation. A look of youthfulness
first attracted you, and then a candor and openness of expression which
made you sure of the qualities within. The features were very good. He
had a capital forehead, a firm nose with full wide nostril, eyes
wonderfully beaming with intellect and running over with humor and
cheerfulness, and a rather prominent mouth strongly marked with
sensibility. The head was altogether well formed and symmetrical, and
the air and carriage of it were extremely spirited. The hair so scant
and grizzled in later days was then of a rich brown and most luxuriant
abundance, and the bearded face of his last two decades had hardly a
vestige of hair or whisker; but there was that in the face as I first
recollect it which no time could change, and which remained implanted on
it unalterably to the last. This was the quickness, keenness, and
practical power, the eager, restless, energetic outlook on each several
feature, that seemed to tell so little of a student or writer of books,
and so much of a man of action and business in the world. Light and
motion flashed from every part of it. _It was as if made of steel_, was
said of it, four or five years after the time to which I am referring,
by a most original and delicate observer, the late Mrs. Carlyle. "What
a face is his to meet in a drawing-room!" wrote Leigh Hunt to me, the
morning after I made them known to each other. "It has the life and soul
in it of fifty human beings." In such sayings are expressed not alone
the restless and resistless vivacity and force of which I have spoken,
but that also which lay beneath them of steadiness and hard endurance.
Several unsuccessful efforts were made by each to get the other to his
house before the door of either was opened at last. A son had been born
to him on Twelfth-day (the 6th January, 1837), and before the close of
the following month he and his wife were in the lodgings at Chalk they
had occupied after their marriage. Early in March there is a letter from
him accounting for the failure of a promise to call on me because of "a
crew of house-agents and attorneys" through whom he had nearly missed
his conveyance to Chalk, and been made "more than half wild besides."
This was his last letter from Furnival's Inn. In that same month he went
to 48, Doughty Street; and in his first letter to me from that address,
dated at the close of the month, there is this passage: "We only called
upon you a second time in the hope of getting you to dine with us, and
were much disappointed not to find you. I have delayed writing a reply
to your note, meaning to call upon you. I have been so much engaged,
however, in the pleasant occupation of 'moving' that I have not had
time; and I am obliged at last to write and say that I have been long
engaged to the _Pickwick_ publishers to a dinner in honor of that hero
which comes off to-morrow. I am consequently unable to accept your kind
invite, which I frankly own I should have liked much better."
That Saturday's celebration of his twelfth number, the anniversary of
the birth of _Pickwick_, preceded by but a few weeks a personal sorrow
which profoundly moved him. His wife's next younger sister, Mary, who
lived with them, and by sweetness of nature even more than by graces of
person had made herself the ideal of his life, died with a terrible
suddenness that for the time completely bore him down.[11] His grief and
suffering were intense, and affected him, as will be seen, through many
after-years. The publication of _Pickwick_ was interrupted for two
months, the effort of writing it not being possible to him. He moved for
change of scene to Hampstead, and here, at the close of May, I visited
him, and became first his guest. More than ordinarily susceptible at the
moment to all kindliest impressions, his heart opened itself to mine. I
left him as much his friend, and as entirely in his confidence, as if I
had known him for years. Nor had many weeks passed before he addressed
to me from Doughty Street words which it is my sorrowful pride to
remember have had literal fulfillment: "I look back with unmingled
pleasure to every link which each ensuing week has added to the chain of
our attachment. It shall go hard, I hope, ere anything but Death impairs
the toughness of a bond now so firmly riveted." It remained unweakened
till death came.
There were circumstances that drew us at once into frequent and close
communication. What the sudden popularity of his writings implied, was
known to others some time before it was known to himself; and he was
only now becoming gradually conscious of all the disadvantage this had
placed him at. He would have laughed if, at this outset of his wonderful
fortune in literature, his genius acknowledged by all without misgiving,
young, popular, and prosperous, any one had compared him to the luckless
men of letters of former days, whose common fate was to be sold into a
slavery which their later lives were passed in vain endeavors to escape
from. Not so was his fate to be, yet something of it he was doomed to
experience. He had unwittingly sold himself into a quasi-bondage, and
had to purchase his liberty at a heavy cost, after considerable
suffering.
It was not until the fourth or fifth number of _Pickwick_ (in the latter
Sam Weller made his first appearance) that its importance began to be
understood by "the trade," and on the eve of the issue of its sixth
number, the 22d August, 1836, he had signed an agreement with Mr.
Bentley to undertake the editorship of a monthly magazine to be started
the following January, to which he was to supply a serial story; and
soon afterwards he had agreed with the same publisher to write two other
tales, the first at a specified early date; the expressed remuneration
in each case being certainly quite inadequate to the claims of a writer
of any marked popularity. Under these Bentley agreements he was now
writing, month by month, the first half of _Oliver Twist_, and, under
his Chapman & Hall agreement, the last half of _Pickwick_, not even by a
week in advance of the printer with either; when a circumstance became
known to him of which he thus wrote to me:
"I heard half an hour ago, on authority which leaves me in no doubt
about the matter (from the binder of _Pickwick_, in fact), that Macrone
intends publishing a new issue of my _Sketches_ in monthly parts of
nearly the same size and in just the same form as the _Pickwick Papers_.
I need not tell you that this is calculated to injure me most seriously,
or that I have a very natural and most decided objection to being
supposed to presume upon the success of the _Pickwick_, and thus foist
this old work upon the public in its new dress for the mere purpose of
putting money in my own pocket. Neither need I say that the fact of my
name being before the town, attached to three publications at the same
time, must prove seriously prejudicial to my reputation. As you are
acquainted with the circumstances under which these copyrights were
disposed of, and as I know I may rely on your kind help, may I beg you
to see Macrone, and to state in the strongest and most emphatic manner
my feeling on this point? I wish him to be reminded of the sums he paid
for those books; of the sale he has had for them; of the extent to which
he has already pushed them; and of the very great profits he must
necessarily have acquired from them. I wish him also to be reminded that
no intention of publishing them in this form was in the remotest manner
hinted to me, by him or on his behalf, when he obtained possession of
the copyright. I then wish you to put it to his feelings of common
honesty and fair dealing whether after this communication he will
persevere in his intention." What else the letter contained need not be
quoted, but it strongly moved me to do my best.
I found Mr. Macrone inaccessible to all arguments of persuasion,
however. That he had bought the book for a small sum at a time when the
smallest was not unimportant to the writer, shortly before his marriage,
and that he had since made very considerable profits by it, in no way
disturbed his position that he had a right to make as much as he could
of what was his, without regard to how it had become so. There was
nothing for it but to change front, and, admitting it might be a less
evil to the unlucky author to repurchase than to let the monthly issue
proceed, to ask what further gain was looked for; but so wide a mouth
was opened at this that I would have no part in the costly process of
filling it. I told Dickens so, and strongly counseled him to keep quiet
for a time.
But the worry and vexation were too great with all the work he had in
hand, and I was hardly surprised next day to receive the letter sent me;
which yet should be prefaced with the remark that suspense of any kind
was at all times intolerable to the writer. The interval between the
accomplishment of anything, and "its first motion," Dickens never could
endure, and he was too ready to make any sacrifice to abridge or end it.
This did not belong to the strong side of his character, and advantage
was frequently taken of the fact. "I sent down just now to know whether
you were at home (two o'clock), as Chapman & Hall were with me, and, the
case being urgent, I wished to have the further benefit of your kind
advice and assistance. Macrone and H---- (arcades ambo) waited on them
this morning, and after a long discussion peremptorily refused to take
one farthing less than the two thousand pounds. H---- repeated the
statement of figures which he made to you yesterday, and put it to Hall
whether he could say from his knowledge of such matters that the
estimate of probable profit was exorbitant. Hall, whose judgment may be
relied on in such matters, could not dispute the justice of the
calculation. And so the matter stood. In this dilemma it occurred to
them (my _Pickwick_ men), whether, if the _Sketches_ _must_ appear in
monthly numbers, it would not be better for them to appear for their
benefit and mine conjointly than for Macrone's sole use and behoof;
whether they, having all the _Pickwick_ machinery in full operation,
could not obtain for them a much larger sale than Macrone could ever
get; and whether, even at this large price of two thousand pounds, we
might not, besides retaining the copyright, reasonably hope for a good
profit on the outlay. These suggestions having presented themselves,
they came straight to me (having obtained a few hours' respite) and
proposed that we should purchase the copyrights between us for the two
thousand pounds, and publish them in monthly parts. I need not say that
no other form of publication would repay the expenditure; and they wish
me to explain by an address that _they_, who may be fairly put forward
as the parties, have been driven into that mode of publication, or the
copyrights would have been lost. I considered the matter in every
possible way. I sent for you, but you were out. I thought of"--what need
not be repeated, now that all is past and gone--"and consented. Was I
right? I think you will say yes." I could not say no, though I was glad
to have been no party to a price so exorbitant; which yet profited
extremely little the person who received it. He died in hardly more than
two years; and if Dickens had enjoyed the most liberal treatment at his
hands, he could not have exerted himself more generously for the widow
and children.
His new story was now beginning largely to share attention with his
_Pickwick Papers_, and it was delightful to see how real all its people
became to him. What I had most, indeed, to notice in him, at the very
outset of his career, was his indifference to any praise of his
performances on the merely literary side, compared with the higher
recognition of them as bits of actual life, with the meaning and purpose
on their part, and the responsibility on his, of realities rather than
creatures of fancy. The exception that might be drawn from _Pickwick_ is
rather in seeming than substance. A first book has its immunities, and
the distinction of this from the rest of the writings appears in what
has been said of its origin. The plan of it was simply to amuse. It was
to string together whimsical sketches of the pencil by entertaining
sketches of the pen; and, at its beginning, where or how it was to end
was as little known to himself as to any of its readers. But genius is a
master as well as a servant, and when the laughter and fun were at their
highest something graver made its appearance. He had to defend himself
for this; and he said that, though the mere oddity of a new acquaintance
was apt to impress one at first, the more serious qualities were
discovered when we became friends with the man. In other words he might
have said that the change was become necessary for his own
satisfaction. The book itself, in teaching him what his power was, had
made him more conscious of what would be expected from its use; and this
never afterwards quitted him. In what he was to do hereafter, as in all
he was doing now, with _Pickwick_ still to finish and _Oliver_ only
beginning, it constantly attended him. Nor could it well be otherwise,
with all those fanciful creations so real, to a nature in itself so
practical and earnest; and in this spirit I had well understood the
letter accompanying what had been published of _Oliver_ since its
commencement the preceding February, which reached me the day after I
visited him. Something to the effect of what has just been said, I had
remarked publicly of the portion of the story sent to me; and his
instant warm-hearted acknowledgment, of which I permit myself to quote a
line or two, showed me in what perfect agreement we were: "How can I
thank you? Can I do better than by saying that the sense of poor
Oliver's reality, which I know you have had from the first, has been the
highest of all praise to me? None that has been lavished upon me have I
felt half so much as that appreciation of my intent and meaning. You
know I have ever done so, for it was your feeling for me and mine for
you that first brought us together, and I hope will keep us so till
death do us part. Your notices make me grateful, but very proud: so have
a care of them."
There was nothing written by him after this date which I did not see
before the world did, either in manuscript or proofs; and in connection
with the latter I shortly began to give him the help which he publicly
mentioned twenty years later in dedicating his collected writings to me.
One of his letters reminds me when these corrections began, and they
were continued very nearly to the last. They lightened for him a labor
of which he had more than enough imposed upon him at this time by
others, and they were never anything but an enjoyment to me. "I have,"
he wrote, "so many sheets of the _Miscellany_ to correct before I can
begin _Oliver_, that I fear I shall not be able to leave home this
morning. I therefore send your revise of the _Pickwick_ by Fred, who is
on his way with it to the printers. You will see that my alterations are
very slight, but I think for the better." This was the fourteenth number
of the _Pickwick Papers_. Fred was his next younger brother, who lived
with him at the time.
The number following this was the famous one in which the hero finds
himself in the Fleet; and another of his letters will show what
enjoyment the writing of it had given to himself. I had sent to ask him
where we were to meet for a proposed ride that day. "HERE," was his
reply. "I am slippered and jacketed, and, like that same starling who is
so very seldom quoted, can't get out. I am getting on, thank Heaven,
like 'a house o' fire,' and think the next _Pickwick_ will bang all the
others. I shall expect you at one, and we will walk to the stable
together. If you know anybody at Saint Paul's, I wish you'd send round
and ask them not to ring the bell so. I can hardly hear my own ideas as
they come into my head, and say what they mean."
The exulting tone of confidence in what he had thus been writing was
indeed well justified. He had as yet done nothing so remarkable, in
blending humor with tragedy, as his picture of what the poor side of a
debtors' prison was in the days of which we have seen that he had
himself had bitter experience; and we have but to recall, as it rises
sharply to the memory, what is contained in this portion of a work that
was not only among his earliest but his least considered as to plan, to
understand what it was that not alone had given him his fame so early,
but that in itself held the germ of the future that awaited him. Every
point was a telling one, and the truthfulness of the whole unerring. The
dreadful restlessness of the place, undefined yet unceasing,
unsatisfying and terrible, was pictured throughout with De Foe's minute
reality; while points of character were handled in that greater style
which connects with the richest oddities of humor an insight into
principles of character universal as nature itself. When he resolved
that Sam Weller should be occupant of the prison with Mr. Pickwick, he
was perhaps thinking of his favorite Smollett, and how, when Peregrine
Pickle was inmate of the Fleet, Hatchway and Pipes refused to leave him;
but Fielding himself might have envied his way of setting about it. Nor
is any portion of his picture less admirable than this. The comedy
gradually deepening into tragedy; the shabby vagabonds who are the
growth of debtors' prisons, contrasting with the poor simple creatures
who are their sacrifices and victims; Mr. Mivins and Mr. Smangle side by
side with the cobbler ruined by his legacy, who sleeps under the table
to remind himself of his old four-poster; Mr. Pickwick's first night in
the marshal's room, Sam Weller entertaining Stiggins in the snuggery,
Jingle in decline, and the chancery prisoner dying; in all these scenes
there was writing of the first order, a deep feeling of character, that
delicate form of humor which has a quaintly pathetic turn in it as well,
comedy of the richest and broadest kind, and the easy handling
throughout of a master in his art. We place the picture by the side of
those of the great writers of this style, of fiction in our language,
and it does not fall by the comparison.
Of what the reception of the book had been up to this time, and of the
popularity Dickens had won as its author, this also will be the proper
place to speak. For its kind, its extent, and the absence of everything
unreal or factitious in the causes that contributed to it, it is
unexampled in literature. Here was a series of sketches, without the
pretense to such interest as attends a well-constructed story; put forth
in a form apparently ephemeral as its purpose; having none that seemed
higher than to exhibit some studies of cockney manners with help from a
comic artist; and after four or five parts had appeared, without
newspaper notice or puffing, and itself not subserving in the public
anything false or unworthy, it sprang into a popularity that each part
carried higher and higher, until people at this time talked of nothing
else, tradesmen recommended their goods by using its name, and its sale,
outstripping at a bound that of all the most famous books of the
century, had reached to an almost fabulous number. Of part one, the
binder prepared four hundred; and of part fifteen, his order was for
more than forty thousand. Every class, the high equally with the low,
was attracted to it. The charm of its gayety and good humor, its
inexhaustible fun, its riotous overflow of animal spirits, its
brightness and keenness of observation, and, above all, the incomparable
ease of its many varieties of enjoyment, fascinated everybody. Judges on
the bench and boys in the street, gravity and folly, the young and the
old, those who were entering life and those who were quitting it, alike
found it to be irresistible. "An archdeacon," wrote Mr. Carlyle
afterwards to me, "with his own venerable lips, repeated to me, the
other night, a strange profane story: of a solemn clergyman who had been
administering ghostly consolation to a sick person; having finished,
satisfactorily as he thought, and got out of the room, he heard the sick
person ejaculate, 'Well, thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days
any way!'--This is dreadful."
Let me add that there was something more in it all than the
gratification of mere fun and laughter, more even than the rarer
pleasure that underlies the outbreak of all forms of genuine humor.
Another chord had been struck. Over and above the lively painting of
manners which at first had been so attractive, there was something that
left deeper mark. Genial and irrepressible enjoyment, affectionate
heartiness of tone, unrestrained exuberance of mirth, these are not more
delightful than they are fleeting and perishable qualities; but the
attention eagerly excited by the charm of them in _Pickwick_ found
itself retained by something more permanent. We had all become suddenly
conscious, in the very thick of the extravaganza of adventure and fun
set before us, that here were real people. It was not somebody talking
humorously about them, but they were there themselves. That a number of
persons belonging to the middle and lower ranks of life (Wardles,
Winkles, Wellers, Tupmans, Bardells, Snubbinses, Perkers, Bob Sawyers,
Dodsons, and Foggs) had been somehow added to his intimate and familiar
acquaintance, the ordinary reader knew before half a dozen numbers were
out; and it took not many more to make clear to the intelligent reader
that a new and original genius in the walk of Smollett and Fielding had
arisen in England.
I do not, for reasons to be hereafter stated, think the _Pickwick
Papers_ comparable to the later books; but, apart from the new vein of
humor it opened, its wonderful freshness and its unflagging animal
spirits, it has two characters that will probably continue to attract to
it an unfading popularity. Its pre-eminent achievement is of course Sam
Weller,--one of those people that take their place among the supreme
successes of fiction, as one that nobody ever saw but everybody
recognizes, at once perfectly natural and intensely original. Who is
there that has ever thought him tedious? Who is so familiar with him as
not still to be finding something new in him? Who is so amazed by his
inexhaustible resources, or so amused by his inextinguishable laughter,
as to doubt of his being as ordinary and perfect a reality,
nevertheless, as anything in the London streets? When indeed the relish
has been dulled that makes such humor natural and appreciable, and not
his native fun only, his ready and rich illustration, his imperturbable
self-possession, but his devotion to his master, his chivalry and his
gallantry, are no longer discovered, or believed no longer to exist, in
the ranks of life to which he belongs, it will be worse for all of us
than for the fame of his creator. Nor, when faith is lost in that
possible combination of eccentricities and benevolences, shrewdness and
simplicity, good sense and folly, all that suggests the ludicrous and
nothing that suggests contempt for it, which form the delightful oddity
of Pickwick, will the mistake committed be one merely of critical
misjudgment. But of this there is small fear. Sam Weller and Mr.
Pickwick are the Sancho and the Quixote of Londoners, and as little
likely to pass away as the old city itself.
Dickens was very fond of riding in these early years, and there was no
recreation he so much indulged, or with such profit to himself, in the
intervals of his hardest work. I was his companion oftener than I could
well afford the time for, the distances being great and nothing else to
be done for the day; but when a note would unexpectedly arrive while I
knew him to be hunted hard by one of his printers, telling me he had
been sticking to work so closely that he must have rest, and, by way of
getting it, proposing we should start together that morning at eleven
o'clock for "a fifteen-mile ride out, ditto in, and a lunch on the road"
with a wind-up of six o'clock dinner in Doughty Street, I could not
resist the good fellowship. His notion of finding rest from mental
exertion in as much bodily exertion of equal severity, continued with
him to the last; taking in the later years what I always thought the too
great strain of as many miles in walking as he now took in the saddle,
and too often indulging it at night; for, though he was always
passionately fond of walking, he observed as yet a moderation in it,
even accepting as sufficient my seven or eight miles' companionship.
"What a brilliant morning for a country walk!" he would write, with not
another word in his dispatch. Or, "Is it possible that you can't,
oughtn't, shouldn't, mustn't, _won't_ be tempted, this gorgeous day?"
Or, "I start precisely--precisely, mind--at half-past one. Come, come,
_come_, and walk in the green lanes. You will work the better for it all
the week. Come! I shall expect you." Or, "You don't feel disposed, do
you, to muffle yourself up and start off with me for a good brisk walk
over Hampstead Heath? I knows a good 'ous there where we can have a
red-hot chop for dinner, and a glass of good wine:" which led to our
first experience of Jack Straw's Castle, memorable for many happy
meetings in coming years. But the rides were most popular and frequent.
"I think," he would write, "Richmond and Twickenham, thro' the park, out
at Knightsbridge, and over Barnes Common, would make a beautiful ride."
Or, "Do you know, I shouldn't object to an early chop at some village
inn?" Or, "Not knowing whether my head was off or on, it became so
addled with work, I have gone riding the old road, and should be truly
delighted to meet or be overtaken by you." Or, "Where shall it be--_oh,
where_--Hampstead, Greenwich, Windsor? WHERE?????? while the day is
bright, not when it has dwindled away to nothing! For who can be of any
use whatsomdever such a day as this, excepting out of doors?" Or it
might be interrogatory summons to "A hard trot of three hours?" or
intimation as laconic "To be heard of at Eel-pie House, Twickenham!"
When first I knew him, I may add, his carriage for his wife's use was a
small chaise with a smaller pair of ponies, which, having a habit of
making sudden rushes up by-streets in the day and peremptory standstills
in ditches by night, were changed in the following year for a more
suitable equipage.
To this mention of his habits while at work when our friendship began, I
have to add what will complete the relation already given, in connection
with his _Sketches_, of the uneasy sense accompanying his labor that it
was yielding insufficient for himself while it enriched others, which is
a needful part of his story at this time. At midsummer, 1837, replying
to some inquiries, and sending his agreement with Mr. Bentley for the
_Miscellany_ under which he was writing _Oliver_, he went on: "It is a
very extraordinary fact (I forgot it on Sunday) that I have NEVER HAD
from him a copy of the agreement respecting the novel, which I never saw
before or since I signed it at his house one morning long ago. Shall I
ask him for a copy or no? I have looked at some memoranda I made at the
time, and I _fear_ he has my second novel on the same terms, under the
same agreement. This is a bad lookout, but we must try and mend it. You
will tell me you are very much surprised at my doing business in this
way. So am I, for in most matters of labor and application I am
punctuality itself. The truth is (though you do not need I should
explain the matter to you, my dear fellow), that if I had allowed myself
to be worried by these things, I could never have done as much as I
have. But I much fear, in my desire to avoid present vexations, I have
laid up a bitter store for the future." The second novel, which he had
promised in a complete form for a very early date, and had already
selected subject and title for, was published four years later as
_Barnaby Rudge_; but of the third he at present knew nothing but that he
was expected to begin it, if not in the magazine, somewhere or other
independently within a specified time.
The first appeal made, in taking action upon his letter, had reference
to the immediate pressure of the _Barnaby_ novel; but it also opened up
the question of the great change of circumstances since these various
agreements had been precipitately signed by him, the very different
situation brought about by the extraordinary increase in the popularity
of his writings, and the advantage it would be to both Mr. Bentley and
himself to make more equitable adjustment of their relations. Some
misunderstandings followed, but were closed by a compromise in
September, 1837; by which the third novel was abandoned[12] on certain
conditions, and _Barnaby_ was undertaken to be finished by November,
1838. This involved a completion of the new story during the progress of
_Oliver_, whatever might be required to follow on the close of
_Pickwick_; and I doubted its wisdom. But it was accepted for the time.
He had meanwhile taken his wife abroad for a ten days' summer holiday,
accompanied by the shrewd observant young artist, Mr. Hablot Browne,
whose admirable illustrations to _Pickwick_ had more than supplied Mr.
Seymour's loss; and I had a letter from him on their landing at Calais
on the 2d of July:
"We have arranged for a post-coach to take us to Ghent, Brussels,
Antwerp, and a hundred other places, that I cannot recollect now and
couldn't spell if I did. We went this afternoon in a barouche to some
gardens where the people dance, and where they were footing it most
heartily,--especially the women, who in their short petticoats and light
caps look uncommonly agreeable. A gentleman in a blue surtout and silken
berlins accompanied us from the hotel, and acted as curator. He even
waltzed with a very smart lady (just to show us, condescendingly, how it
ought to be done), and waltzed elegantly, too. We rang for slippers
after we came back, and it turned out that this gentleman was the
Boots."
His later sea-side holiday was passed at Broadstairs, as were those of
many subsequent years, and the little watering-place has been made
memorable by his pleasant sketch of it. From his letters to myself a few
lines may be given of his first doings and impressions there.
Writing on the 3d of September, he reports himself just risen from an
attack of illness. "I am much better, and hope to begin _Pickwick No.
18_ to-morrow. You will imagine how queer I must have been when I tell
you that I have been compelled for four-and-twenty mortal hours to
abstain from porter or other malt liquor!!! I have done it
though--really. . . . I have discovered that the landlord of the Albion has
delicious hollands (but what is that to _you_? for you cannot sympathize
with my feelings), and that a cobbler who lives opposite to my bedroom
window is a Roman Catholic, and gives an hour and a half to his
devotions every morning behind his counter. I have walked upon the
sands at low-water from this place to Ramsgate, and sat upon the same at
high-ditto till I have been flayed with the cold. I have seen ladies and
gentlemen walking upon the earth in slippers of buff, and pickling
themselves in the sea in complete suits of the same. I have seen stout
gentlemen looking at nothing through powerful telescopes for hours, and,
when at last they saw a cloud of smoke, fancying a steamer behind it,
and going home comfortable and happy. I have found out that our next
neighbor has a wife and something else under the same roof with the rest
of his furniture,--the wife deaf and blind, and the something else given
to drinking. And if you ever get to the end of this letter _you_ will
find out that I subscribe myself on paper, as on everything else (some
atonement perhaps for its length and absurdity)," etc. etc.
In his next letter (from 12, High Street, Broadstairs, on the 7th) there
is allusion to one of the many piracies of _Pickwick_, which had
distinguished itself beyond the rest by a preface abusive of the writer
plundered: "I recollect this 'member of the Dramatic Authors' Society'
bringing an action once against Chapman who rented the City theatre, in
which it was proved that he had undertaken to write under special
agreement seven melodramas for five pounds, to enable him to do which a
room had been hired in a gin-shop close by. The defendant's plea was
that the plaintiff was always drunk, and had not fulfilled his contract.
Well, if the _Pickwick_ has been the means of putting a few shillings in
the vermin-eaten pockets of so miserable a creature, and has saved him
from a workhouse or a jail, let him empty out his little pot of filth
and welcome. I am quite content to have been the means of relieving him.
Besides, he seems to have suffered by agreements!"
His own troubles in that way were compromised for the time, as already
hinted, at the close of this September month; and at the end of the
month following, after finishing _Pickwick_ and resuming _Oliver_, the
latter having been suspended by him during the recent disputes, he made
his first visit to Brighton. The opening of his letter of Friday the 3d
of November is full of regrets that I had been unable to join them
there: "It is a beautiful day, and we have been taking advantage of it,
but the wind until to-day has been so high and the weather so stormy
that Kate has been scarcely able to peep out of doors. On Wednesday it
blew a perfect hurricane, breaking windows, knocking down shutters,
carrying people off their legs, blowing the fires out, and causing
universal consternation. The air was for some hours darkened with a
shower of black hats (second-hand), which are supposed to have been
blown off the heads of unwary passengers in remote parts of the town,
and have been industriously picked up by the fishermen. Charles Kean was
advertised for _Othello_ 'for the benefit of Mrs. Sefton, having most
kindly postponed for this one day his departure for London.' I have not
heard whether he got to the theatre, but I am sure nobody else did. They
do _The Honeymoon_ to-night, on which occasion I mean to patronize the
drayma. We have a beautiful bay-windowed sitting-room here, fronting the
sea, but I have seen nothing of B.'s brother who was to have shown me
the lions, and my notions of the place are consequently somewhat
confined: being limited to the pavilion, the chain-pier, and the sea.
The last is quite enough for me, and, unless I am joined by some male
companion (_do you think I shall be?_), is most probably all I shall
make acquaintance with. I am glad you like _Oliver_ this month:
especially glad that you particularize the first chapter. I hope to do
great things with Nancy. If I can only work out the idea I have formed
of her, and of the female who is to contrast with her, I think I may
defy Mr. ---- and all his works.[13] I have had great difficulty in
keeping my hands off Fagin and the rest of them in the evenings; but, as
I came down for rest, I have resisted the temptation, and steadily
applied myself to the labor of being idle. Did you ever read (of course
you have, though) De Foe's _History of the Devil_? What a capital thing
it is! I bought it for a couple of shillings yesterday morning, and have
been quite absorbed in it ever since. We must have been jolter-headed
geniuses not to have anticipated M.'s reply. My best remembrances to
him. I see H. at this moment. I must be present at a rehearsal of that
opera. It will be better than any comedy that was ever played. Talking
of comedies, I still see NO THOROUGHFARE staring me in the face, every
time I look down that road. I have taken places for Tuesday next. We
shall be at home at six o'clock, and I shall hope at least to see you
that evening. I am afraid you will find this letter extremely dear at
eightpence, but if the warmest assurances of friendship and attachment,
and anxious lookings-forward to the pleasure of your society, be worth
anything, throw them into the balance, together with a hundred good
wishes and one hearty assurance that I am," etc. etc. "CHARLES DICKENS.
No room for the flourish--I'll finish it the next time I write to you."
The flourish that accompanied his signature is familiar to every one.
The allusion to the comedy expresses a fancy he at this time had of
being able to contribute some such achievement in aid of Macready's
gallant efforts at Covent Garden to bring back to the stage its higher
associations of good literature and intellectual enjoyment. It connects
curiously now that unrealized hope with the exact title of the only
story he ever helped himself to dramatize, and which Mr. Fechter played
at the Adelphi three years before his death.
FOOTNOTES:
[11] Her epitaph, written by him, remains upon a gravestone in the
cemetery at Kensal Green: "Young, beautiful, and good, God numbered her
among his angels at the early age of seventeen."
[12] I have a memorandum in Dickens's writing that five hundred pounds
was to have been given for it, and an additional two hundred and fifty
pounds on its sale reaching three thousand copies; but I feel certain it
was surrendered on more favorable terms.
[13] The allusion was to the supposed author of a paper in the
_Quarterly Review_ (Oct. 1837), in the course of which there was much
high praise, but where the writer said at the close, "Indications are
not wanting that the particular vein of humor which has hitherto yielded
so much attractive metal is worked out. . . . The fact is, Mr. Dickens
writes too often and too fast. . . . If he persists much longer in this
course, it requires no gift of prophecy to foretell his fate:--he has
risen like a rocket, and he will come down like the stick."
CHAPTER VII.
BETWEEN PICKWICK AND NICKLEBY.
1837-1838.
Edits _Life of Grimaldi_--His Own Opinion of
it--An Objection answered--His Recollections of
1823--Completion of _Pickwick_--A Purpose long
entertained--Relations with Chapman &
Hall--Payments made for _Pickwick_--Agreement
for _Nicholas Nickleby_--_Oliver Twist_
characterized--Reasons for Acceptance with
every Class--Nightmare of an Agreement--Letter
to Mr. Bentley--Proposal as to _Barnaby
Rudge_--Result of it--Birth of Eldest
Daughter--_Young Gentlemen and Young
Couples_--First Number of _Nicholas
Nickleby_--2d of April, 1838.
NOT remotely bearing on the stage, nevertheless, was the employment on
which I found him busy at his return from Brighton; one result of his
more satisfactory relations with Mr. Bentley having led to a promise to
edit for him a life of the celebrated clown Grimaldi. The manuscript had
been prepared from autobiographical notes by a Mr. Egerton Wilks, and
contained one or two stories told so badly, and so well worth better
telling, that the hope of enlivening their dullness at the cost of very
little labor constituted a sort of attraction for him. Except the
preface, he did not write a line of this biography, such modifications
or additions as he made having been dictated by him to his father; whom
I found often in the supreme enjoyment of the office of amanuensis. He
had also a most indifferent opinion of the mass of material which in
general composed it, describing it to me as "twaddle," and his own
modest estimate of the book, on its completion, may be guessed from the
number of notes of admiration (no less than thirty) which accompanied
his written mention to me of the sale with which it started in the first
week of its publication: "Seventeen hundred _Grimaldis_ have been
already sold, and the demand increases daily!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
It was not to have all its own way, however. A great many critical
faults were found; and one point in particular was urged against his
handling such a subject, that he could never himself even have seen
Grimaldi. To this last objection he was moved to reply, and had prepared
a letter for the _Miscellany_, "from editor to sub-editor," which it was
thought best to suppress, but of which the opening remark may now be not
unamusing: "I understand that a gentleman unknown is going about this
town privately informing all ladies and gentlemen of discontented
natures, that, on a comparison of dates and putting together of many
little circumstances which occur to his great sagacity, he has made the
profound discovery that I can never have seen Grimaldi whose life I have
edited, and that the book must therefore of necessity be bad. Now, sir,
although I was brought up from remote country parts in the dark ages of
1819 and 1820 to behold the splendor of Christmas pantomimes and the
humor of Joe, in whose honor I am informed I clapped my hands with great
precocity, and although I even saw him act in the remote times of 1823,
yet as I had not then aspired to the dignity of a tail-coat, though
forced by a relentless parent into my first pair of boots, I am
willing, with the view of saving this honest gentleman further time and
trouble, to concede that I had not arrived at man's estate when Grimaldi
left the stage, and that my recollections of his acting are, to my loss,
but shadowy and imperfect. Which confession I now make publickly, and
without mental qualification or reserve, to all whom it may concern. But
the deduction of this pleasant gentleman that therefore the Grimaldi
book must be bad, I must take leave to doubt. I don't think that to edit
a man's biography from his own notes it is essential you should have
known him, and I don't believe that Lord Braybrooke had more than the
very slightest acquaintance with Mr. Pepys, whose memoirs he edited two
centuries after he died."
Enormous meanwhile, and without objection audible on any side, had been
the success of the completed _Pickwick_, which we celebrated by a
dinner, with himself in the chair and Talfourd in the vice-chair,
everybody in hearty good humor with every other body; and a copy of
which I received from him on the 11th of December in the most luxurious
of Hayday's bindings, with a note worth preserving for its closing
allusion. The passage referred to in it was a comment, in delicately
chosen words, that Leigh Hunt had made on the inscription at the grave
in Kensal Green:[14] "Chapman & Hall have just sent me, with a copy of
our deed, three 'extra-super' bound copies of _Pickwick_, as per
specimen inclosed. The first I forward to you, the second I have
presented to our good friend Ainsworth, and the third Kate has retained
for herself. Accept your copy with one sincere and most comprehensive
expression of my warmest friendship and esteem; and a hearty renewal, if
there need be any renewal when there has been no interruption, of all
those assurances of affectionate regard which our close friendship and
communion for a long time back has every day implied. . . . That beautiful
passage you were so kind and considerate as to send me, has given me the
only feeling akin to pleasure (sorrowful pleasure it is) that I have yet
had, connected with the loss of my dear young friend and companion; for
whom my love and attachment will never diminish, and by whose side, if
it please God to leave me in possession of sense to signify my wishes,
my bones, whenever or wherever I die, will one day be laid. Tell Leigh
Hunt when you have an opportunity how much he has affected me, and how
deeply I thank him for what he has done. You cannot say it too
strongly."
The "deed" mentioned was one executed in the previous month to restore
to him a third ownership in the book which had thus far enriched all
concerned but himself. The original understanding respecting it Mr.
Edward Chapman thus describes for me: "There was no agreement about
_Pickwick_ except a verbal one. Each number was to consist of a sheet
and a half, for which we were to pay fifteen guineas; and we paid him
for the first two numbers at once, as he required the money to go and
get married with. We were also to pay more according to the sale, and I
think _Pickwick_ altogether cost us three thousand pounds." Adjustment
to the sale would have cost four times as much, and of the actual
payments I have myself no note; but, as far as my memory serves, they
are overstated by Mr. Chapman. My impression is that, above and beyond
the first sum due for each of the twenty numbers (making no allowance
for their extension after the first to thirty-two pages), successive
checks were given, as the work went steadily on to the enormous sale it
reached, which brought up the entire sum received to two thousand five
hundred pounds. I had, however, always pressed so strongly the
importance to him of some share in the copyright, that this at last was
conceded in the deed above mentioned, though five years were to elapse
before the right should accrue; and it was only yielded as part
consideration for a further agreement entered into at the same date (the
19th of November, 1837), whereby Dickens engaged to "write a new work,
the title whereof shall be determined by him, of a similar character and
of the same extent as the _Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club_," the
first number of which was to be delivered on the 15th of the following
March, and each of the numbers on the same day of each of the successive
nineteen months; which was also to be the date of the payment to him, by
Messrs. Chapman & Hall, of twenty several sums of one hundred and fifty
pounds each for five years' use of the copyright, the entire ownership
in which was then to revert to Dickens. The name of this new book, as
all the world knows, was _The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby_;
and between April, 1838, and October, 1839, it was begun and finished
accordingly.
All through the interval of these arrangements _Oliver Twist_ had been
steadily continued. Month by month, for many months, it had run its
opening course with the close of _Pickwick_, as we shall see it close
with the opening of _Nickleby_; and the expectations of those who had
built most confidently on the young novelist were more than confirmed.
Here was the interest of a story simply but well constructed; and
characters with the same impress of reality upon them, but more
carefully and skillfully drawn. Nothing could be meaner than the
subject, the progress of a parish or workhouse boy, nothing less so than
its treatment. As each number appeared, his readers generally became
more and more conscious of what already, as we have seen, had revealed
itself amid even the riotous fun of _Pickwick_, that the purpose was not
solely to amuse; and, far more decisively than its predecessor, the new
story further showed what were the not least potent elements in the
still increasing popularity that was gathering around the writer. His
qualities could be appreciated as well as felt in an almost equal degree
by all classes of his various readers. Thousands were attracted to him
because he placed them in the midst of scenes and characters with which
they were already themselves acquainted; and thousands were reading him
with no less avidity because he introduced them to passages of nature
and life of which they before knew nothing, but of the truth of which
their own habits and senses sufficed to assure them. Only to genius are
so revealed the affinities and sympathies of high and low, in regard to
the customs and usages of life; and only a writer of the first rank can
bear the application of such a test. For it is by the alliance of
common habits, quite as much as by the bonds of a common humanity, that
we are all of us linked together; and the result of being above the
necessity of depending on other people's opinions, and that of being
below it, are pretty much the same. It would equally startle both high
and low to be conscious of the whole that is implied in this close
approximation; but for the common enjoyment of which I speak such
consciousness is not required; and for the present Fagin may be left
undisturbed in his school of practical ethics with only the Dodger,
Charley Bates, and his other promising scholars.
With such work as this in hand, it will hardly seem surprising that as
the time for beginning _Nickleby_ came on, and as he thought of his
promise for November, he should have the sense of "something hanging
over him like a hideous nightmare." He felt that he could not complete
the _Barnaby Rudge_ novel by the November of that year, as promised, and
that the engagement he would have to break was unfitting him for
engagements he might otherwise fulfill. He had undertaken what, in
truth, was impossible. The labor of at once editing the _Miscellany_ and
supplying it with monthly portions of _Oliver_ more than occupied all
the time left him by other labors absolutely necessary. "I no sooner get
myself up," he wrote, "high and dry, to attack _Oliver_ manfully, than
up come the waves of each month's work, and drive me back again into a
sea of manuscript." There was nothing for it but that he should make
further appeal to Mr. Bentley. "I have recently," he wrote to him on the
11th of February, 1838, "been thinking a great deal about _Barnaby
Rudge_. _Grimaldi_ has occupied so much of the short interval I had
between the completion of the _Pickwick_ and the commencement of the new
work, that I see it will be wholly impossible for me to produce it by
the time I had hoped, with justice to myself or profit to you. What I
wish you to consider is this: would it not be far more to your interest,
as well as within the scope of my ability, if _Barnaby Rudge_ began in
the _Miscellany_ immediately on the conclusion of _Oliver Twist_, and
were continued there for the same time, and then published in three
volumes? Take these simple facts into consideration. If the _Miscellany_
is to keep its ground, it _must_ have some continuous tale from me when
_Oliver_ stops. If I sat down to _Barnaby Rudge_, writing a little of it
when I could (and with all my other engagements it would necessarily be
a very long time before I could hope to finish it that way), it would be
clearly impossible for me to begin a new series of papers in the
_Miscellany_. The conduct of three different stories at the same time,
and the production of a large portion of each, every month, would have
been beyond Scott himself. Whereas, having _Barnaby_ for the
_Miscellany_, we could at once supply the gap which the cessation of
_Oliver_ must create, and you would have all the advantage of that
prestige in favor of the work which is certain to enhance the value of
_Oliver Twist_ considerably. Just think of this at your leisure. I am
really anxious to do the best I can for you as well as for myself, and
in this case the pecuniary advantage must be all on your side." This
letter nevertheless, which had also requested an overdue account of the
sales of the _Miscellany_, led to differences which were only adjusted
after six months' wrangling; and I was party to the understanding then
arrived at, by which, among other things, _Barnaby_ was placed upon the
footing desired, and was to begin when _Oliver_ closed.
Of the progress of his _Oliver_, and his habits of writing at the time,
it may perhaps be worth giving some additional glimpses from his letters
of 1838. "I was thinking about _Oliver_ till dinner-time yesterday," he
wrote on the 9th of March,[15] "and, just as I had fallen upon him tooth
and nail, was called away to sit with Kate. I did eight slips, however,
and hope to make them fifteen this morning." Three days before, a little
daughter had been born to him, who became a little god-daughter to me;
on which occasion (having closed his announcement with a postscript of
"I can do nothing this morning. What time will you ride? The sooner the
better, for a good long spell"), we rode out fifteen miles on the great
north road, and, after dining at the Red Lion in Barnet on our way home,
distinguished the already memorable day by bringing in both hacks dead
lame.
On that day week, Monday, the 13th, after describing himself "sitting
patiently at home waiting for _Oliver Twist_ who has not yet arrived,"
which was his pleasant form of saying that his fancy had fallen into
sluggishness that morning, he made addition not less pleasant as to some
piece of painful news I had sent him, now forgotten: "I have not yet
seen the paper, and you throw me into a fever. The comfort is, that all
the strange and terrible things come uppermost, and that the good and
pleasant things are mixed up with every moment of our existence so
plentifully that we scarcely heed them." At the close of the month Mrs.
Dickens was well enough to accompany him to Richmond, for now the time
was come to start _Nickleby_; and, having been away from town when
_Pickwick's_ first number came out, he made it a superstition to be
absent at all future similar times. The magazine-day of that April
month, I remember, fell upon a Saturday, and the previous evening had
brought me a peremptory summons: "Meet me at the Shakspeare on Saturday
night at eight; order your horse at midnight, and ride back with me."
Which was done accordingly. The smallest hour was sounding from St.
Paul's into the night before we started, and the night was none of the
pleasantest; but we carried news that lightened every part of the road,
for the sale of _Nickleby_ had reached that day the astonishing number
of nearly fifty thousand! I left him working with unusual cheerfulness
at _Oliver Twist_ when I left the Star and Garter on the next day but
one, after celebrating with both friends on the previous evening an
anniversary[16] which concerned us all (their second and my
twenty-sixth), and which we kept always in future at the same place,
except when they were living out of England, for twenty successive
years. It was a part of his love of regularity and order, as well as of
his kindliness of nature, to place such friendly meetings as these under
rules of habit and continuance.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] See _ante_, p. 120.
[15] There is an earlier allusion I may quote, from a letter in January,
for its mention of a small piece written by him at this time, but not
included in his acknowledged writings: "I am as badly off as you. I have
not done the _Young Gentlemen_, nor written the preface to _Grimaldi_,
nor thought of _Oliver Twist_, or even supplied a subject for the
plate." The _Young Gentlemen_ was a small book of sketches which he
wrote anonymously as the companion to a similar half-crown volume of
_Young Ladies_ (not written by him), for Messrs. Chapman & Hall. He
added subsequently a like volume of _Young Couples_, also without his
name.
[16] See _ante_, p. 113.
CHAPTER VIII.
OLIVER TWIST.
1838.
Interest in Characters at Close of
_Oliver_--Writing of the Last
Chapter--Cruikshank Illustrations--Etchings for
Last Volume--How executed--Slander respecting
them exposed--Falsehood ascribed to the
Artist--Reputation of the New Tale--Its
Workmanship--Social Evils passed away--Living
only in what destroyed them--Chief Design of
the Story--Its Principal Figures--Comedy and
Tragedy of Crime--Reply to Attacks--Le Sage,
Gay, and Fielding--Likeness to them--Again the
Shadow of _Barnaby_--Appeal to Mr. Bentley for
Delay--A Very Old Story--"Sic Vos non
Vobis"--_Barnaby_ given up by Mr.
Bentley--Resignation of _Miscellany_--Parent
parting from Child.
THE whole of his time not occupied by _Nickleby_ was now given to
_Oliver_, and as the story shaped itself to its close it took
extraordinary hold of him. I never knew him work so frequently after
dinner, or to such late hours (a practice he afterwards abhorred), as
during the final months of this task; which it was now his hope to
complete before October, though its close in the magazine would not be
due until the following March. "I worked pretty well last night," he
writes, referring to it in May, "very well indeed; but, although I did
eleven close slips before half-past twelve, I have four to write to
complete the chapter; and, as I foolishly left them till this morning,
have the steam to get up afresh." A month later he writes, "I got to
the sixteenth slip last night, and shall try hard to get to the
thirtieth before I go to bed."[17] Then, on a "Tuesday night," at the
opening of August, he wrote, "Hard at work still. Nancy is no more. I
showed what I have done to Kate last night, who was in an unspeakable
'_state_:' from which and my own impression I augur well. When I have
sent Sikes to the devil, I must have yours." "No, no," he wrote, in the
following month: "don't, don't let us ride till to-morrow, not having
yet disposed of the Jew, who is such an out-and-outer that I don't know
what to make of him." No small difficulty to an inventor, where the
creatures of his invention are found to be as real as himself; but this
also was mastered; and then there remained but the closing quiet chapter
to tell the fortunes of those who had figured in the tale. To this he
summoned me in the first week of September, replying to a request of
mine that he'd give me a call that day: "Come and give _me_ a call, and
let us have 'a bit o' talk' before we have a bit o' som'at else. My
missis is going out to dinner, and I ought to go, but I have got a bad
cold. So do you come, and sit here, and read, or work, or do something,
while I write the LAST chapter of _Oliver_, which will be arter a lamb
chop." How well I remember that evening! and our talk of what should be
the fate of Charley Bates, on behalf of whom (as indeed for the Dodger
too) Talfourd had pleaded as earnestly in mitigation of judgment as
ever at the bar for any client he had most respected.
The publication had been announced for October, but the third-volume
illustrations intercepted it a little. This part of the story, as we
have seen, had been written in anticipation of the magazine, and the
designs for it, having to be executed "in a lump," were necessarily done
somewhat hastily. The matter supplied in advance of the monthly portions
in the magazine formed the bulk of the last volume as published in the
book; and for this the plates had to be prepared by Cruikshank also in
advance of the magazine, to furnish them in time for the separate
publication: Sikes and his dog, Fagin in the cell, and Rose Maylie and
Oliver, being the three last. None of these Dickens had seen until he
saw them in the book on the eve of its publication; when he so strongly
objected to one of them that it had to be canceled. "I returned suddenly
to town yesterday afternoon," he wrote to the artist at the end of
October, "to look at the latter pages of _Oliver Twist_ before it was
delivered to the booksellers, when I saw the majority of the plates in
the last volume for the first time. With reference to the last
one,--Rose Maylie and Oliver,--without entering into the question of
great haste, or any other cause, which may have led to its being what it
is, I am quite sure there can be little difference of opinion between us
with respect to the result. May I ask you whether you will object to
designing this plate afresh, and doing so _at once_, in order that as
few impressions as possible of the present one may go forth? I feel
confident you know me too well to feel hurt by this inquiry, and with
equal confidence in you I have lost no time in preferring it." This
letter, printed from a copy in Dickens's handwriting fortunately
committed to my keeping, entirely disposes of a wonderful story[18]
originally promulgated in America with a minute particularity of detail
that might have raised the reputation of Sir Benjamin Backbite himself.
Whether all Sir Benjamin's laurels, however, should fall to the person
by whom the tale is told,[19] or whether any part belongs to the
authority alleged for it, is unfortunately not quite clear. There would
hardly have been a doubt, if the fable had been confined to the other
side of the Atlantic; but it has been reproduced and widely circulated
on this side also; and the distinguished artist whom it calumniates by
attributing the invention to him has been left undefended from its
slander. Dickens's letter spares me the necessity of characterizing, by
the only word which would have been applicable to it, a tale of such
incredible and monstrous absurdity as that one of the masterpieces of
its author's genius had been merely an illustration of etchings by Mr.
Cruikshank!
The completed _Oliver Twist_ found a circle of admirers, not so wide in
its range as those of others of his books, but of a character and mark
that made their honest liking for it, and steady advocacy of it,
important to his fame; and the book has held its ground in the first
class of his writings. It deserves that place. The admitted
exaggerations in _Pickwick_ are incident to its club's extravaganza of
adventure, of which they are part, and are easily separable from the
reality of its wit and humor, and its incomparable freshness; but no
such allowances were needed here. Make what deduction the too scrupulous
reader of _Oliver_ might please for "lowness" in the subject, the
precision and the unexaggerated force of the delineation were not to be
disputed. The art of copying from nature as it really exists in the
common walks had not been carried by any one to greater perfection, or
to better results in the way of combination. Such was his handling of
the piece of solid, existing, every-day life, which he made here the
groundwork of his wit and tenderness, that the book which did much to
help out of the world the social evils it portrayed will probably
preserve longest the picture of them as they then were. Thus far,
indeed, he had written nothing to which in a greater or less degree this
felicity did not belong. At the time of which I am speaking, the
debtors' prisons described in _Pickwick_, the parochial management
denounced in _Oliver_, and the Yorkshire schools exposed in _Nickleby_,
were all actual existences,--which now have no vivider existence than in
the forms he thus gave to them. With wiser purposes, he superseded the
old petrifying process of the magician in the Arabian tale, and struck
the prisons and parish abuses of his country, and its schools of neglect
and crime, into palpable life forever. A portion of the truth of the
past, of the character and very history of the moral abuses of his time,
will thus remain always in his writings; and it will be remembered that
with only the light arms of humor and laughter, and the gentle ones of
pathos and sadness, he carried cleansing and reform into those Augean
stables.
Not that such intentions are in any degree ever intruded by this least
didactic of writers. It is the fact that teaches, and not any
sermonizing drawn from it. _Oliver Twist_ is the history of a child born
in a workhouse and brought up by parish overseers, and there is nothing
introduced that is out of keeping with the design. It is a series of
pictures from the tragi-comedy of lower life, worked out by perfectly
natural agencies, from the dying mother and the starved wretches of the
first volume, through the scenes and gradations of crime, careless or
deliberate, which have a frightful consummation in the last volume, but
are never without the reliefs and self-assertions of humanity even in
scenes and among characters so debased. It is indeed the primary purpose
of the tale to show its little hero, jostled as he is in the miserable
crowd, preserved everywhere from the vice of its pollution by an
exquisite delicacy of natural sentiment which clings to him under every
disadvantage. There is not a more masterly touch in fiction, and it is
by such that this delightful fancy is consistently worked out to the
last, than Oliver's agony of childish grief on being brought away from
the branch-workhouse, the wretched home associated only with suffering
and starvation, and with no kind word or look, but containing still his
little companions in misery.
Of the figures the book has made familiar to every one it is not my
purpose to speak. To name one or two will be enough. Bumble and his
wife; Charley Bates and the Artful Dodger; the cowardly charity-boy,
Noah Claypole, whose _Such agony, please, sir_, puts the whole of a
school-life into one phrase; the so-called merry old Jew, supple and
black-hearted Fagin; and Bill Sikes, the bolder-faced bulky-legged
ruffian, with his white hat and white shaggy dog,--who does not know
them all, even to the least points of dress, look, and walk, and all the
small peculiarities that express great points of character? I have
omitted poor wretched Nancy; yet it is to be said of her, with such
honest truthfulness her strength and weakness are shown, in the virtue
that lies neighbored in her nature so closely by vice, that the people
meant to be entirely virtuous show poorly beside her. But, though Rose
and her lover are trivial enough beside Bill and his mistress, being
indeed the weak part of the story, it is the book's pre-eminent merit
that vice is nowhere made attractive in it. Crime is not more intensely
odious, all through, than it is also most wretched and most unhappy. Not
merely when its exposure comes, when the latent recesses of guilt are
laid bare, and all the agonies of remorse are witnessed; not in the
great scenes only, but in those lighter passages where no such aim might
seem to have guided the apparently careless hand, this is emphatically
so. Whether it be the comedy or the tragedy of crime, terror and
retribution dog closely at its heels. They are as plainly visible when
Fagin is first shown in his den, boiling the coffee in the saucepan and
stopping every now and then to listen when there is the least noise
below,--the villainous confidence of habit never extinguishing in him
the anxious watchings and listenings of crime,--as when we see him at
the last in the condemned cell, like a poisoned human rat in a hole.
A word may be added upon the attacks directed against the subject of the
book, to which Dickens made reply in one of his later editions,
declaring his belief that he had tried to do a service to society, and
had certainly done no disservice, in depicting a knot of such associates
in crime in all their deformity and squalid wretchedness, skulking
uneasily through a miserable life to a painful and shameful death. It
is, indeed, never the subject that can be objectionable, if the
treatment is not so, as we may see by much popular writing since, where
subjects unimpeachably high are brought low by degrading sensualism.
When the object of a writer is to exhibit the vulgarity of vice, and not
its pretensions to heroism or cravings for sympathy, he may measure his
subject with the highest. We meet with a succession of swindlers and
thieves in _Gil Blas_; we shake hands with highwaymen and housebreakers
all round in the _Beggars' Opera_; we pack cards with La Ruse or pick
pockets with Jonathan in Fielding's _Mr. Wild the Great_; we follow
cruelty and vice from its least beginning to its grossest ends in the
prints of Hogarth; but our morals stand none the looser for any of them.
As the spirit of the Frenchman was pure enjoyment, the strength of the
Englishmen lay in wisdom and satire. The low was set forth to pull down
the false pretensions of the high. And though for the most part they
differ in manner and design from Dickens in this tale, desiring less to
discover the soul of goodness in things evil than to brand the stamp of
evil on things apt to pass for good, their objects and results are
substantially the same. Familiar with the lowest kind of abasement of
life, the knowledge is used, by both him and them, to teach what
constitutes its essential elevation; and by the very coarseness and
vulgarity of the materials employed we measure the gentlemanliness and
beauty of the work that is done. The quack in morality will always call
such writing immoral, and the impostors will continue to complain of its
treatment of imposture, but for the rest of the world it will still
teach the invaluable lesson of what men ought to be from what they are.
We cannot learn it more than enough. We cannot too often be told that as
the pride and grandeur of mere external circumstance is the falsest of
earthly things, so the truth of virtue in the heart is the most lovely
and lasting; and from the pages of _Oliver Twist_ this teaching is once
again to be taken by all who will look for it there.
And now, while _Oliver_ was running a great career of popularity and
success, the shadow of the tale of _Barnaby Rudge_, which he was to
write on similar terms, and to begin in the _Miscellany_ when the other
should have ended, began to darken everything around him. We had much
discussion respecting it, and I had no small difficulty in restraining
him from throwing up the agreement altogether; but the real hardship of
his position, and the considerate construction to be placed on every
effort made by him to escape from obligations incurred in ignorance of
the sacrifices implied by them, will be best understood from his own
frank and honest statement. On the 21st of January, 1839, inclosing me
the copy of a letter which he proposed to send to Mr. Bentley the
following morning, he thus wrote: "From what I have already said to you,
you will have been led to expect that I entertained some such
intention. I know you will not endeavor to dissuade me from sending it.
Go it MUST. It is no fiction to say that at present I _cannot_ write
this tale. The immense profits which _Oliver_ has realized to its
publisher and is still realizing; the paltry, wretched, miserable sum it
brought to me (not equal to what is every day paid for a novel that
sells fifteen hundred copies at most); the recollection of this, and the
consciousness that I have still the slavery and drudgery of another work
on the same journeyman-terms; the consciousness that my books are
enriching everybody connected with them but myself, and that I, with
such a popularity as I have acquired, am struggling in old toils, and
wasting my energies in the very height and freshness of my fame, and the
best part of my life, to fill the pockets of others, while for those who
are nearest and dearest to me I can realize little more than a genteel
subsistence: all this puts me out of heart and spirits. And I
cannot--cannot and will not--under such circumstances that keep me down
with an iron hand, distress myself by beginning this tale until I have
had time to breathe, and until the intervention of the summer, and some
cheerful days in the country, shall have restored me to a more genial
and composed state of feeling. There--for six months _Barnaby Rudge_
stands over. And but for you, it should stand over altogether. For I do
most solemnly declare that morally, before God and man, I hold myself
released from such hard bargains as these, after I have done so much for
those who drove them. This net that has been wound about me so chafes
me, so exasperates and irritates my mind, that to break it at whatever
cost--_that_ I should care nothing for--is my constant impulse. But I
have not yielded to it. I merely declare that I must have a postponement
very common in all literary agreements; and for the time I have
mentioned--six months from the conclusion of _Oliver_ in the
_Miscellany_--I wash my hands of any fresh accumulation of labor, and
resolve to proceed as cheerfully as I can with that which already
presses upon me."[20]
To describe what followed upon this is not necessary. It will suffice to
state the results. Upon the appearance in the _Miscellany_, in the early
months of 1839, of the last portion of _Oliver Twist_, its author,
having been relieved altogether from his engagement to the magazine,
handed over, in a familiar epistle from a parent to his child, the
editorship to Mr. Ainsworth; and the still subsisting agreement to write
_Barnaby Rudge_ was, upon the overture of Mr. Bentley himself in June of
the following year, 1840, also put an end to, on payment by Dickens, for
the copyright of _Oliver Twist_ and such printed stock as remained of
the edition then on hand, of two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds.
What was further incident to this transaction will be told hereafter;
and a few words may meanwhile be taken, not without significance in
regard to it, from the parent's familiar epistle. It describes the child
as aged two years and two months (so long had he watched over it); gives
sundry pieces of advice concerning its circulation, and the importance
thereto of light and pleasant articles of food; and concludes, after
some general moralizing on the shiftings and changes of this world
having taken so wonderful a turn that mail-coach guards were become no
longer judges of horse-flesh, "I reap no gain or profit by parting from
you, nor will any conveyance of your property be required, for in this
respect you have always been literally Bentley's Miscellany and never
mine."
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Here is another of the same month: "All day I have been at work on
_Oliver_, and hope to finish the chapter by bedtime. I wish you'd let me
know what Sir Francis Burdett has been saying about him at some
Birmingham meeting. B. has just sent me the _Courier_ containing some
reference to his speech; but the speech I haven't seen."
[18] Reproduced as below, in large type, and without a word of
contradiction or even doubt, in a biography of Mr. Dickens put forth by
Mr. Hotten: "Dr. Shelton McKenzie, in the American _Round Table_,
relates this anecdote of _Oliver Twist_: In London I was intimate with
the brothers Cruikshank, Robert and George, but more particularly with
the latter. Having called upon him one day at his house (it was then in
Myddelton Terrace, Pentonville), I had to wait while he was finishing an
etching, for which a printer's boy was waiting. To while away the time,
I gladly complied with his suggestion that I should look over a
portfolio crowded with etchings, proofs, and drawings, which lay upon
the sofa. Among these, carelessly tied together in a wrap of brown
paper, was a series of some twenty-five or thirty drawings, very
carefully finished, through most of which were carried the well-known
portraits of Fagin, Bill Sikes and his dog, Nancy, the Artful Dodger,
and Master Charles Bates--all well known to the readers of _Oliver
Twist_. There was no mistake about it; and when Cruikshank turned round,
his work finished, I said as much. He told me that it had long been in
his mind to show the life of a London thief by a series of drawings
engraved by himself, in which, without a single line of letter-press,
the story would be strikingly and clearly told. 'Dickens,' he continued,
'dropped in here one day, just as you have done, and, while waiting
until I could speak with him, took up that identical portfolio, and
ferreted out that bundle of drawings. When he came to that one which
represents Fagin in the condemned cell, he studied it for half an hour,
and told me that he was tempted to change the whole plot of his story;
not to carry Oliver Twist through adventures in the country, but to take
him up into the thieves' den in London, show what their life was, and
bring Oliver through it without sin or shame. I consented to let him
write up to as many of the designs as he thought would suit his purpose;
and that was the way in which Fagin, Sikes, and Nancy were created. My
drawings suggested them, rather than his strong individuality suggested
my drawings.'"
[19] This question has been partly solved, since my last edition, by Mr.
Cruikshank's announcement in the _Times_, that, though Dr. Mackenzie had
"confused some circumstances with respect to Mr. Dickens looking over
some drawings and sketches," the substance of his information as to who
it was that originated _Oliver Twist_, and all its characters, had been
derived from Mr. Cruikshank himself. The worst part of the foregoing
fable, therefore, has not Dr. Mackenzie for its author; and Mr.
Cruikshank is to be congratulated on the prudence of his rigid silence
respecting it as long as Mr. Dickens lived.
[20] Upon receiving this letter I gently reminded him that I had made
objection at the time to the arrangement on the failure of which he
empowered me to bring about the settlement it was now proposed to
supersede. I cannot give his reply, as it would be unbecoming to repeat
the warmth of its expression to myself, but I preserve its first few
lines to guard against any possible future misstatement: "If you suppose
that anything in my letter could by the utmost latitude of construction
imply the smallest dissatisfaction on my part, for God's sake dismiss
such a thought from your mind. I have never had a momentary approach to
doubt or discontent where you have been mediating for me. . . . I could say
more, but you would think me foolish and rhapsodical; and such feeling
as I have for you is better kept within one's own breast than vented in
imperfect and inexpressive words."
CHAPTER IX.
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.
1838-1839.
Doubts of Success dispelled--Realities of
English Life--Characters self-revealed--Miss
Bates and Mrs. Nickleby--Smike and Dotheboys--A
Favorite Type of Humanity--Sydney Smith and
Newman Noggs--Kindliness and Breadth of
Humor--Goldsmith and Smollett--Early and Later
Books--Biographical not
critical--Characteristics--Materials for the
Book--Birthday Letter--A Difficulty at
Starting--Never in Advance with
_Nickleby_--Always with Later Books--Enjoying a
Play--At the Adelphi--Writing Mrs. Nickleby's
Love-scene--Sydney Smith vanquished--Winding up
the Story--Parting from Creatures of his
Fancy--The Nickleby Dinner--Persons
present--The Maclise Portrait.
I WELL recollect the doubt there was, mixed with the eager expectation
which the announcement of his second serial story had awakened, whether
the event would justify all that interest, and if indeed it were
possible that the young writer could continue to walk steadily under the
burden of the popularity laid upon him. The first number dispersed this
cloud of a question in a burst of sunshine; and as much of the gayety of
nations as had been eclipsed by old Mr. Pickwick's voluntary exile to
Dulwich was restored by the cheerful confidence with which young Mr.
Nicholas Nickleby stepped into his shoes. Everything that had given
charm to the first book was here, with more attention to the important
requisite of a story, and more wealth as well as truth of character.
How this was poured forth in each successive number, it hardly needs
that I should tell. To recall it now, is to talk of what since has so
interwoven itself with common speech and thought as to have become
almost part of the daily life of us all. It was well said of him, soon
after his death, in mentioning how largely his compositions had
furnished one of the chief sources of intellectual enjoyment to this
generation, that his language had become part of the language of every
class and rank of his countrymen, and his characters were a portion of
our contemporaries. "It seems scarcely possible," continued this
otherwise not too indulgent commentator, "to believe that there never
were any such persons as Mr. Pickwick and Mrs. Nickleby and Mrs. Gamp.
They are to us not only types of English life, but types actually
existing. They at once revealed the existence of such people, and made
them thoroughly comprehensible. They were not studies of persons, but
persons. And yet they were idealized in the sense that the reader did
not think that they were drawn from the life. They were alive; they were
themselves." The writer might have added that this is proper to all true
masters of fiction who work in the higher regions of their calling.
Nothing certainly could express better what the new book was at this
time making manifest to its thousands of readers; not simply an
astonishing variety in the creations of character, but what it was that
made these creations so real; not merely the writer's wealth of genius,
but the secret and form of his art. There never was any one who had
less need to talk about his characters, because never were characters so
surely revealed by themselves; and it was thus their reality made itself
felt at once. They talked so well that everybody took to repeating what
they said, as the writer just quoted has pointed out; and the sayings
being the constituent elements of the characters, these also of
themselves became part of the public. This, which must always be a
novelist's highest achievement, was the art carried to exquisite
perfection on a more limited stage by Miss Austen; and, under widely
different conditions both of art and work, it was pre-eminently that of
Dickens. I told him, on reading the first dialogue of Mrs. Nickleby and
Miss Knag, that he had been lately reading Miss Bates in _Emma_, but I
found that he had not at this time made the acquaintance of that fine
writer.
Who that recollects the numbers of _Nickleby_ as they appeared can have
forgotten how each number added to the general enjoyment? All that had
given _Pickwick_ its vast popularity, the overflowing mirth, hearty
exuberance of humor, and genial kindliness of satire, had here the
advantage of a better-laid design, more connected incidents, and greater
precision of character. Everybody seemed immediately to know the
Nickleby family as well as his own. Dotheboys, with all that rendered
it, like a piece by Hogarth, both ludicrous and terrible, became a
household word. Successive groups of Mantalinis, Kenwigses, Crummleses,
introduced each its little world of reality, lighted up everywhere with
truth and life, with capital observation, the quaintest drollery, and
quite boundless mirth and fun. The brothers Cheeryble brought with them
all the charities. With Smike came the first of those pathetic pictures
that filled the world with pity for what cruelty, ignorance, or neglect
may inflict upon the young. And Newman Noggs ushered in that class of
the creatures of his fancy in which he took himself perhaps the most
delight, and which the oftener he dealt with the more he seemed to know
how to vary and render attractive: gentlemen by nature, however shocking
bad their hats or ungenteel their dialects; philosophers of modest
endurance, and needy but most respectable coats; a sort of humble angels
of sympathy and self-denial, though without a particle of splendor or
even good looks about them, except what an eye as fine as their own
feelings might discern. "My friends," wrote Sydney Smith, describing to
Dickens the anxiety of some ladies of his acquaintance to meet him at
dinner, "have not the smallest objection to be put into a number, but on
the contrary would be proud of the distinction; and Lady Charlotte, in
particular, you may marry to Newman Noggs." Lady Charlotte was not a
more real person to Sydney than Newman Noggs; and all the world that
Dickens attracted to his books could draw from them the same advantage
as the man of wit and genius. It has been lately objected that humanity
is not seen in them in its highest or noblest types, and the assertion
may hereafter be worth considering; but what is very certain is, that
they have inculcated humanity in familiar and engaging forms to
thousands and tens of thousands of their readers, who can hardly have
failed each to make his little world around him somewhat the better for
their teaching. From first to last they were never for a moment alien
to either the sympathies or the understandings of any class; and there
were crowds of people at this time that could not have told you what
imagination meant, who were adding month by month to their limited
stores the boundless gains of imagination.
One other kindliest product of humor in _Nickleby_, not to be passed
over in even thus briefly recalling a few first impressions of it, was
the good little miniature-painter Miss La Creevy, living by herself,
overflowing with affections she has nobody to bestow on, but always
cheerful by dint of industry and good-heartedness. When she is
disappointed in the character of a woman she has been to see, she eases
her mind by saying a very cutting thing at her expense _in a soliloquy_:
and thereby illustrates one of the advantages of having lived alone so
long, that she made always a confidante of herself; was as sarcastic as
she could be, by herself, on people who offended her; pleased herself,
and did no harm. Here was one of those touches, made afterwards familiar
to the readers of Dickens by innumerable similar fancies, which added
affection to their admiration for the writer, and enabled them to
anticipate the feeling with which posterity would regard him as indeed
the worthy companion of the Goldsmiths and Fieldings. There was a piece
of writing, too, within not many pages of it, of which Leigh Hunt
exclaimed on reading it that it surpassed the best things of the kind in
Smollett that he was able to call to mind. This was the letter of Miss
Squeers to Ralph Nickleby, giving him her version of the chastisement
inflicted by Nicholas on the schoolmaster: "My pa requests me to write
to you, the doctors considering it doubtful whether he will ever
recuvver the use of his legs which prevents his holding a pen. We are in
a state of mind beyond everything, and my pa is one mask of brooses both
blue and green likewise two forms are steepled in his Goar. . . . Me and my
brother were then the victims of his feury since which we have suffered
very much which leads us to the arrowing belief that we have received
some injury in our insides, especially as no marks of violence are
visible externally. I am screaming out loud all the time I write and so
is my brother which takes off my attention rather and I hope will excuse
mistakes". . . .
Thus rapidly may be indicated some elements that contributed to the
sudden and astonishingly wide popularity of these books. I purposely
reserve from my present notices of them, which are biographical rather
than critical, any statement of the reasons for which I think them
inferior in imagination and fancy to some of the later works; but there
was continued and steady growth in them on the side of humor,
observation, and character, while freshness and raciness of style
continued to be an important help. There are faults of occasional
exaggeration in the writing, but none that do not spring from animal
spirits and good humor, or a pardonable excess, here and there, on the
side of earnestness; and it has the rare virtue, whether gay or grave,
of being always thoroughly intelligible and for the most part thoroughly
natural, of suiting itself without effort to every change of mood, as
quick, warm, and comprehensive as the sympathies it is taxed to express.
The tone also is excellent. We are never repelled by egotism or
conceit, and misplaced ridicule never disgusts us. When good is going
on, we are sure to see all the beauty of it; and when there is evil, we
are in no danger of mistaking it for good. No one can paint more
picturesquely by an apposite epithet, or illustrate more happily by a
choice allusion. Whatever he knows or feels, too, is always at his
fingers' ends, and is present through whatever he is doing. What Rebecca
says to Ivanhoe of the black knight's mode of fighting would not be
wholly inapplicable to Dickens's manner of writing: "There is more than
mere strength, there seems as if the whole soul and spirit of the
champion were given to every blow he deals." This, when a man deals his
blows with a pen, is the sort of handling that freshens with new life
the oldest facts, and breathes into thoughts the most familiar an
emotion not felt before. There seemed to be not much to add to our
knowledge of London until his books came upon us, but each in this
respect outstripped the other in its marvels. In _Nickleby_ the old city
reappears under every aspect; and whether warmth and light are playing
over what is good and cheerful in it, or the veil is uplifted from its
darker scenes, it is at all times our privilege to see and feel it as it
absolutely is. Its interior hidden life becomes familiar as its
commonest outward forms, and we discover that we hardly knew anything of
the places we supposed that we knew the best.
Of such notices as his letters give of his progress with _Nickleby_,
which occupied him from February, 1838, to October, 1839, something may
now be said. Soon after the agreement for it was signed, before the
Christmas of 1837 was over, he went down into Yorkshire with Mr. Hablot
Browne to look up the Cheap Schools in that county to which public
attention had been painfully drawn by a law-case in the previous year;
which had before been notorious for cruelties committed in them, whereof
he had heard as early as in his childish days;[21] and which he was bent
upon destroying if he could. I soon heard the result of his journey; and
the substance of that letter, returned to him for the purpose, is in his
preface to the story written for the collected edition. He came back
confirmed in his design, and in February set to work upon his first
chapter. On his birthday he wrote to me, "I _have_ begun! I wrote four
slips last night, so you see the beginning is made. And what is more, I
can go on: so I hope the book is in training at last." "The first
chapter of _Nicholas_ is done," he wrote two days later. "It took time,
but I think answers the purpose as well as it could." Then, after a
dozen days more, "I wrote twenty slips of _Nicholas_ yesterday, left
only four to do this morning (up at 8 o'clock too!), and have ordered my
horse at one." I joined him as he expected, and we read together at
dinner that day the first number of _Nicholas Nickleby_.
In the following number there was a difficulty which it was marvelous
should not oftener have occurred to him in this form of publication. "I
could not write a line till three o'clock," he says, describing the
close of that number, "and have yet five slips to finish, and don't know
what to put in them, for I have reached the point I meant to leave off
with." He found easy remedy for such a miscalculation at his outset, and
it was nearly his last as well as first misadventure of the kind: his
difficulty in _Pickwick_, as he once told me, having always been, not
the running short, but the running over: not the whip, but the drag,
that was wanted. Sufflaminandus erat, as Ben Jonson said of Shakspeare.
And in future works, with such marvelous nicety could he do always what
he had planned, strictly within the space available, that only another
similar instance is remembered by me. The third number introduced the
school; and "I remain dissatisfied until you have seen and read number
three," was his way of announcing to me his own satisfaction with that
first handling of Dotheboys Hall. Nor had it the least part in my
admiration of his powers at this time that he never wrote without the
printer at his heels; that, always in his later works two or three
numbers in advance, he was never a single number in advance with this
story; that the more urgent the call upon him the more readily he rose
to it; and that his astonishing animal spirits never failed him. As late
in the November month of 1838 as the 20th, he thus wrote to me: "I have
just begun my second chapter; cannot go out to-night; must get on; think
there _will_ be a _Nickleby_ at the end of this month now (I doubted it
before); and want to make a start towards it if I possibly can." That
was on Tuesday; and on Friday morning in the same week, explaining to me
the failure of something that had been promised the previous day, he
tells me, "I was writing incessantly until it was time to dress; and
have not yet got the subject of my last chapter, which _must be_
finished to-night."
But this was not all. Between that Tuesday and Friday an indecent
assault had been committed on his book by a theatrical adapter named
Stirling, who seized upon it without leave while yet only a third of it
was written; hacked, cut, and garbled its dialogue to the shape of one
or two farcical actors; invented for it a plot and an ending of his own,
and produced it at the Adelphi; where the outraged author, hard pressed
as he was with an unfinished number, had seen it in the interval between
the two letters I have quoted. He would not have run such a risk in
later years, but he threw off lightly at present even such offenses to
his art; and though I was with him at a representation of his _Oliver
Twist_ the following month at the Surrey theatre, when in the middle of
the first scene he laid himself down upon the floor in a corner of the
box and never rose from it until the drop-scene fell, he had been able
to sit through _Nickleby_ and to see a kind of merit in some of the
actors. Mr. Yates had a sufficiently humorous meaning in his wildest
extravagance, and Mr. O. Smith could put into his queer angular oddities
enough of a hard dry pathos, to conjure up shadows at least of Mantalini
and Newman Noggs; of Ralph Nickleby there was indeed nothing visible
save a wig, a spencer, and a pair of boots; but there was a quaint actor
named Wilkinson who proved equal to the drollery though not to the
fierce brutality of Squeers; and even Dickens, in the letter that amazed
me by telling me of his visit to the theatre, was able to praise "the
skillful management and dressing of the boys, the capital manner and
speech of Fanny Squeers, the dramatic representation of her card-party
in Squeers's parlor, the careful making-up of all the people, and the
exceedingly good tableaux formed from Browne's sketches. . . . Mrs.
Keeley's first appearance beside the fire (see wollum), and all the rest
of Smike, was excellent; bating sundry choice sentiments and rubbish
regarding the little robins in the fields which have been put in the
boy's mouth by Mr. Stirling the adapter." His toleration could hardly be
extended to the robins, and their author he very properly punished by
introducing and denouncing him at Mr. Crummles's farewell supper.
The story was well in hand at the next letter to be quoted, for I limit
myself to those only with allusions that are characteristic or
illustrative. "I must be alone in my glory to-day," he wrote, "and see
what I can do. I perpetrated a great amount of work yesterday, and have
every day indeed since Monday, but I must buckle-to again and endeavor
to get the steam up. If this were to go on long, I should 'bust' the
boiler. I think Mrs. Nickleby's love-scene will come out rather unique."
The steam doubtless rose dangerously high when such happy inspiration
came. It was but a few numbers earlier than this, while that eccentric
lady was imparting her confidences to Miss Knag, that Sydney Smith
confessed himself vanquished by a humor against which his own had long
striven to hold out. "_Nickleby_ is _very good_," he wrote to Sir George
Phillips after the sixth number. "I stood out against Mr. Dickens as
long as I could, but he has conquered me."[22]
The close of the story was written at Broadstairs, from which (he had
taken a house "two doors from the Albion Hotel, where we had that merry
night two years ago") he wrote to me on the 9th September, 1839, "I am
hard at it, but these windings-up wind slowly, and I shall think I have
done great things if I have entirely finished by the 20th. Chapman &
Hall came down yesterday with Browne's sketches, and dined here. They
imparted their intentions as to a Nicklebeian fête which will make you
laugh heartily--so I reserve them till you come. It has been blowing
great guns for the last three days, and last night (I wish you could
have seen it!) there was such a sea! I staggered down to the pier, and,
creeping under the lee of a large boat which was high and dry, watched
it breaking for nearly an hour. Of course I came back wet through." On
the afternoon of Wednesday, the 18th, he wrote again: "I shall not
finish entirely before Friday, sending Hicks the last twenty pages of
manuscript by the night-coach. I have had pretty stiff work, as you may
suppose, and I have taken great pains. The discovery is made, Ralph is
dead, the loves have come all right, Tim Linkinwater has proposed, and I
have now only to break up Dotheboys and the book together. I am very
anxious that you should see this conclusion before it leaves my hands,
and I plainly see therefore that I must come to town myself on Saturday
if I would not endanger the appearance of the number. So I have written
to Hicks to send proofs to your chambers as soon as he can that evening;
and, if you don't object, I will dine with you any time after five, and
we will devote the night to a careful reading. I have not written to
Macready, for they have not yet sent me the title-page of dedication,
which is merely 'To W. C. Macready, Esq., the following pages are
inscribed, as a slight token of admiration and regard, by his friend the
Author.' Meanwhile will you let him know that I have fixed the Nickleby
dinner for Saturday, the 5th of October? Place, the Albion in Aldersgate
Street. Time, six for half-past exactly. . . . I shall be more glad than I
can tell you to see you again, and I look forward to Saturday, and the
evenings that are to follow it, with most joyful anticipation. I have
had a good notion for _Barnaby_, of which more anon."
The shadow from the old quarter, we see, the unwritten _Barnaby_ tale,
intrudes itself still; though hardly, as of old, making other pleasanter
anticipations less joyful. Such, indeed, at this time was his buoyancy
of spirit that it cost him little, compared with the suffering it gave
him at all subsequent similar times, to separate from the people who for
twenty months had been a part of himself. The increased success they had
achieved left no present room but for gladness and well-won pride; and
so, to welcome them into the immortal family of the English novel, and
open cheerily to their author "fresh woods and pastures new," we had the
dinner celebration. But there is small need now to speak of what has
left, to one of the few survivors, only the sadness of remembering that
all who made the happiness of it are passed away. There was Talfourd,
facile and fluent of kindliest speech, with whom we were in constant and
cordial intercourse, and to whom, grateful for his copyright exertions
in the House of Commons, he had dedicated _Pickwick_; there was Maclise,
dear and familiar friend to us both, whose lately-painted portrait of
Dickens hung in the room;[23] and there was the painter of the Rent-day,
who made a speech as good as his pictures, rich in color and quaint with
homely allusion, all about the reality of Dickens's genius, and how
there had been nothing like him issuing his novels part by part since
Richardson issued his novels volume by volume, and how in both cases
people talked about the characters as if they were next-door neighbors
or friends; and as many letters were written to the author of _Nickleby_
to implore him not to kill poor Smike, as had been sent by young ladies
to the author of _Clarissa_ to "save Lovelace's soul alive." These and
others are gone. Of those who survive, only three arise to my
memory,--Macready, who spoke his sense of the honor done him by the
dedication in English as good as his delivery of it, Mr. Edward Chapman,
and Mr. Thomas Beard.
FOOTNOTES:
[21] "I cannot call to mind now how I came to hear about Yorkshire
schools when I was a not very robust child, sitting in by-places near
Rochester castle, with a head full of Partridge, Strap, Tom Pipes, and
Sancho Panza; but I know that my first impressions of them were picked
up at that time."
[22] Moore, in his _Diary_ (April, 1837), describes Sydney crying down
Dickens at a dinner in the Row, "and evidently without having given him
a fair trial."
[23] This portrait was given to Dickens by his publishers, for whom it
was painted with a view to an engraving for _Nickleby_, which, however,
was poorly executed, and of a size too small to do the original any kind
of justice. To the courtesy of its present possessor, the Rev. Sir
Edward Repps Joddrell, and to the careful art of Mr. Robert Graves,
A.R.A., I owe the illustration at the opening of this volume, in which
the head is for the first time worthily expressed. In some sort to help
also the reader's fancy to a complete impression, Maclise having caught
as happily the figure as the face, a skillful outline of the painting
has been executed for the present page by Mr. Jeens. "As a likeness,"
said Mr. Thackeray of the work, and no higher praise could be given to
it, "it is perfectly amazing. A looking-glass could not render a better
fac-simile. We have here the real identical man Dickens, the inward as
well as the outward of him."
CHAPTER X.
DURING AND AFTER NICKLEBY.
1838-1839.
The Cottage at Twickenham--Daniel
Maclise--Ainsworth and other Friends--Mr.
Stanley of Alderley--Petersham
Cottage--Childish Enjoyments--Writes a Farce
for Covent Garden--Entered at the Middle
Temple--We see Wainewright in Newgate--_Oliver
Twist_ and the _Quarterly_--Hood's _Up the
Rhine_--Shakspeare Society--Birth of Second
Daughter--House-Hunting--_Barnaby_ at his Tenth
Page--Letter from Exeter--A Landlady and her
Friends--A Home for his Father and
Mother--Autobiographical--Visit to an
Upholsterer--Visit from the Same.
THE name of his old gallery-companion may carry me back from the days to
which the close of _Nickleby_ had led me to those when it was only
beginning. "This snow will take away the cold weather," he had written,
in that birthday letter of 1838 already quoted, "and then for
Twickenham." Here a cottage was taken, nearly all the summer was passed,
and a familiar face there was Mr. Beard's. There, with Talfourd and with
Thackeray and Jerrold, we had many friendly days, too; and the social
charm of Maclise was seldom wanting. Nor was there anything that
exercised a greater fascination over Dickens than the grand enjoyment of
idleness, the ready self-abandonment to the luxury of laziness, which we
both so laughed at in Maclise, under whose easy swing of indifference,
always the most amusing at the most aggravating events and times, we
knew that there was artist-work as eager, energy as unwearying, and
observation almost as penetrating as Dickens's own. A greater enjoyment
than the fellowship of Maclise at this period it would indeed be
difficult to imagine. Dickens hardly saw more than he did, while yet he
seemed to be seeing nothing; and the small esteem in which this rare
faculty was held by himself, a quaint oddity that gave to shrewdness
itself in him an air of Irish simplicity, his unquestionable turn for
literature, and a varied knowledge of it not always connected with such
intense love and such unwearied practice of one special and absorbing
art, combined to render him attractive far beyond the common. His fine
genius and his handsome person, of neither of which at any time he
seemed himself to be in the slightest degree conscious, completed the
charm. Edwin Landseer, all the world's favorite, and the excellent
Stanfield, came a few months later, in the Devonshire-Terrace days; but
another painter-friend was George Cattermole, who had then enough and to
spare of fun as well as fancy to supply ordinary artists and humorists
by the dozen, and wanted only a little more ballast and steadiness to
have had all that could give attraction to good-fellowship. A friend now
especially welcome, too, was the novelist Mr. Ainsworth, who shared with
us incessantly for the three following years in the companionship which
began at his house; with whom we visited, during two of those years,
friends of art and letters in his native Manchester, from among whom
Dickens brought away his Brothers Cheeryble, and to whose sympathy in
tastes and pursuits, accomplishments in literature, open-hearted
generous ways, and cordial hospitality, many of the pleasures of later
years were due. Frederick Dickens, to whom soon after this a treasury
clerkship was handsomely given, on Dickens's application, by Mr. Stanley
of Alderley, known in and before those Manchester days, was for the
present again living with his father, but passed much time in his
brother's home; and another familiar face was that of Mr. Thomas Mitton,
who had known him when himself a law-clerk in Lincoln's Inn, through
whom there was introduction of the relatives of a friend and partner,
Mr. Smithson, the gentleman connected with Yorkshire mentioned in his
preface to _Nickleby_, who became very intimate in his house. These, his
father and mother and their two younger sons, with members of his wife's
family, and his married sisters and their husbands, Mr. and Mrs. Burnett
and Mr. and Mrs. Austin, are figures that all associate themselves
prominently with the days of Doughty Street and the cottages of
Twickenham and Petersham as remembered by me in the summers of 1838 and
1839.
In the former of these years the sports were necessarily quieter[24]
than at Petersham, where extensive garden-grounds admitted of much
athletic competition, from the more difficult forms of which I in
general modestly retired, but where Dickens for the most part held his
own against even such accomplished athletes as Maclise and Mr. Beard.
Bar-leaping, bowling, and quoits were among the games carried on with
the greatest ardor; and in sustained energy, what is called keeping it
up, Dickens certainly distanced every competitor. Even the lighter
recreations of battledoor and bagatelle were pursued with relentless
activity; and at such amusements as the Petersham races, in those days
rather celebrated, and which he visited daily while they lasted, he
worked much harder himself than the running horses did.
What else his letters of these years enable me to recall, that could
possess any interest now, may be told in a dozen sentences. He wrote a
farce by way of helping the Covent Garden manager which the actors could
not agree about, and which he turned afterwards into a story called _The
Lamplighter_. He entered his name among the students at the inn of the
Middle Temple, though he did not eat dinners there until many years
later. We made together a circuit of nearly all the London prisons, and,
in coming to the prisoners under remand while going over Newgate,
accompanied by Macready and Mr. Hablot Browne,[25] were startled by a
sudden tragic cry of "My God! there's Wainewright!" In the
shabby-genteel creature, with sandy disordered hair and dirty moustache,
who had turned quickly round with a defiant stare at our entrance,
looking at once mean and fierce, and quite capable of the cowardly
murders he had committed, Macready had been horrified to recognize a man
familiarly known to him in former years, and at whose table he had
dined. Between the completion of _Oliver_ and its publication, Dickens
went to see something of North Wales; and, joining him at Liverpool, I
returned with him.[26] Soon after his arrival he had pleasant
communication with Lockhart, dining with him at Cruikshank's a little
later; and this was the prelude to a _Quarterly_ notice of _Oliver_ by
Mr. Ford, written at the instance of Lockhart, but without the raciness
he would have put into it, in which amende was made for previous less
favorable remarks in that review. Dickens had not, however, waited for
this to express publicly his hearty sympathy with Lockhart's handling of
some passages in his admirable _Life of Scott_ that had drawn down upon
him the wrath of the Ballantynes. This he did in the _Examiner_; where
also I find him noticing a book by Thomas Hood: "rather poor, but I have
not said so, because Hood is too, and ill besides." In the course of the
year he was taken into Devonshire to select a home for his father, on
the removal of the latter (who had long given up his reporting duties)
from his London residence; and this he found in a cottage at Alphington,
near Exeter, where he placed the elder Dickens with his wife and their
youngest son. The same year closed Macready's Covent Garden management,
and at the dinner to the retiring manager, when the Duke of Cambridge
took the chair, Dickens spoke with that wonderful instinct of knowing
what to abstain from saying, as well as what to say, which made his
after-dinner speeches quite unique. Nor should mention be omitted of the
Shakspeare Society, now diligently attended, of which Procter, Talfourd,
Macready, Thackeray, Henry Davison, Blanchard, Charles Knight, John
Bell, Douglas Jerrold, Maclise, Stanfield, George Cattermole, the good
Tom Landseer, Frank Stone, and other old friends were members, and
where, out of much enjoyment and many disputings,[27] there arose, from
Dickens and all of us, plenty of after-dinner oratory. The closing
months of this year of 1839 had special interest for him. At the end of
October another daughter was born to him, who bears the name of that
dear friend of his and mine, Macready, whom he asked to be her
godfather; and before the close of the year he had moved out of Doughty
Street into Devonshire Terrace, a handsome house with a garden of
considerable size, shut out from the New Road by a high brick wall
facing the York Gate into Regent's Park. These various matters, and his
attempts at the _Barnaby_ novel on the conclusion of _Nickleby_, are the
subject of his letters between October and December.
"Thank God, all goes famously. I have worked at _Barnaby_ all day, and
moreover seen a beautiful (and reasonable) house in Kent Terrace, where
Macready once lived, but larger than his." Again (this having gone off):
"_Barnaby_ has suffered so much from the house-hunting, that I mustn't
chop to-day." Then (for the matter of the Middle Temple), "I return the
form. It's the right temple, I take for granted. _Barnaby_ moves, not at
race-horse speed, but yet as fast (I think) as under these unsettled
circumstances could possibly be expected." Or again: "All well.
_Barnaby_ has reached his tenth page. I have just turned lazy, and have
passed into _Christabel_, and thence to _Wallenstein_." At last the
choice was made. "A house of great promise (and great premium),
'undeniable' situation, and excessive splendor, is in view. Mitton is
in treaty, and I am in ecstatic restlessness. Kate wants to know whether
you have any books to send her, so please to shoot here any literary
rubbish on hand." To these I will only add a couple of extracts from his
letters while in Exeter arranging his father's and mother's new home.
They are very humorous; and the vividness with which everything, once
seen, was photographed in his mind and memory, is pleasantly shown in
them.
"I took a little house for them this morning" (5th March, 1839: from
the New London Inn), "and if they are not pleased with it I shall be
grievously disappointed. Exactly a mile beyond the city on the Plymouth
road there are two white cottages: one is theirs and the other belongs
to their landlady. I almost forget the number of rooms, but there is
an excellent parlor with two other rooms on the ground floor, there is
really a beautiful little room over the parlor which I am furnishing
as a drawing-room, and there is a splendid garden. The paint and paper
throughout is new and fresh and cheerful-looking, the place is clean
beyond all description, and the neighborhood I suppose the most
beautiful in this most beautiful of English counties. Of the landlady,
a Devonshire widow with whom I had the honor of taking lunch
to-day, I must make most especial mention. She is a fat, infirm,
splendidly-fresh-faced country dame, rising sixty and recovering from an
attack 'on the nerves'--I thought they never went off the stones, but I
find they try country air with the best of us. In the event of my
mother's being ill at any time, I really think the vicinity of this
good dame, the very picture of respectability and good humor, will be
the greatest possible comfort. _Her_ furniture and domestic arrangements
are a capital picture, but that I reserve till I see you, when I
anticipate a hearty laugh. She bears the highest character with the
bankers and the clergyman (who formerly lived in _my_ cottage himself),
and is a kind-hearted worthy capital specimen of the sort of life, or I
have no eye for the real and no idea of finding it out.
"This 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 it 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 negotiate with
me; and if you could have seen me sitting in the kitchen with the two
old women, endeavoring 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 took before the sick man could be brought to sign
another (a duplicate) that we might have one apiece, was one of the
richest scraps of genuine drollery I ever saw in all my days. How, when
the business was over, we became conversational; how I was facetious,
and at the same time virtuous and domestic; how I drank toasts in the
beer, and stated on interrogatory that I was a married man and the
father of two blessed infants; how the ladies marveled thereat; how one
of the ladies, having been in London, inquired where I lived, and, being
told, remembered that Doughty Street and the Foundling Hospital were in
the Old Kent Road, which I didn't contradict,--all this and a great deal
more must make us laugh when I return, as it makes me laugh now to think
of. Of my subsequent visit to the upholsterer recommended by the
landlady; of the absence of the upholsterer's wife, and the timidity of
the upholsterer fearful of acting in her absence; of my sitting behind a
high desk in a little dark shop, calling over the articles in
requisition and checking off the prices as the upholsterer exhibited the
goods and called them out; of my coming over the upholsterer's daughter
with many virtuous endearments, to propitiate the establishment and
reduce the bill; of these matters I say nothing, either, for the same
reason as that just mentioned. The discovery of the cottage I seriously
regard as a blessing (not to speak it profanely) upon our efforts in
this cause. I had heard nothing from the bank, and walked straight
there, by some strange impulse, directly after breakfast. I am sure they
may be happy there; for if I were older, and my course of activity were
run, I am sure _I_ could, with God's blessing, for many and many a
year.". . .
"The theatre is open here, and Charles Kean is to-night playing for his
last night. If it had been the 'rig'lar' drama I should have gone, but I
was afraid Sir Giles Overreach might upset me, so I stayed away. My
quarters are excellent, and the head-waiter is _such_ a waiter! Knowles
(not Sheridan Knowles, but Knowles of the Cheetham Hill Road[28]) is an
ass to him. This sounds bold, but truth is stranger than fiction.
By-the-by, not the least comical thing that has occurred was the visit
of the upholsterer (with some further calculations) since I began this
letter. I think they took me here at the New London for the Wonderful
Being I am; they were amazingly sedulous; and no doubt they looked for
my being visited by the nobility and gentry of the neighborhood. My
first and only visitor came to-night: a ruddy-faced man in faded black,
with extracts from a feather-bed all over him; an extraordinary and
quite miraculously dirty face; a thick stick; and the personal
appearance altogether of an amiable bailiff in a green old age. I have
not seen the proper waiter since, and more than suspect I shall not
recover this blow. He was announced (by _the_ waiter) as 'a person.' I
expect my bill every minute. . . .
"The waiter is laughing outside the door with another waiter--this is
the latest intelligence of my condition."
FOOTNOTES:
[24] We had at Twickenham a balloon club for the children, of which I
appear to have been elected the president on condition of supplying all
the balloons, a condition which I seem so insufficiently to have
complied with as to bring down upon myself the subjoined resolution. The
Snodgering Blee and Popem Jee were the little brother and sister, for
whom, as for their successors, he was always inventing these surprising
descriptive epithets. "Gammon Lodge, Saturday evening, June 23d, 1838.
Sir, I am requested to inform you that at a numerous meeting of the
Gammon Aeronautical Association for the Encouragement of Science and the
Consumption of Spirits (of Wine)--Thomas Beard Esquire, Mrs. Charles
Dickens, Charles Dickens, Esquire, the Snodgering Blee, Popem Jee, and
other distinguished characters being present and assenting, the vote of
censure of which I inclose a copy was unanimously passed upon you for
gross negligence in the discharge of your duty, and most unjustifiable
disregard of the best interests of the Society. I am, Sir, your most
obedient servant, Charles Dickens, Honorary Secretary. To John Forster,
Esquire."
[25] Not Mr. Procter, as, by an oversight of his own, Dickens caused to
be said in an interesting paper on Wainewright which appeared in his
weekly periodical.
[26] I quote from a letter dated Llangollen, Friday morning, 3d Nov.
1838: "I wrote to you last night, but by mistake the letter has gone on
Heaven knows where in my portmanteau. I have only time to say, go
straight to Liverpool by the first Birmingham train on Monday morning,
and at the Adelphi Hotel in that town you will find me. I trust to you
to see my dear Kate and bring the latest intelligence of her and the
darlings. My best love to them."
[27] One of these disputes is referred to by Charles Knight in his
Autobiography; and I see in Dickens's letters the mention of another in
which I seem to have been turned by his kindly counsel from some folly I
was going to commit: "I need not, I am sure, impress upon you the
sincerity with which I make this representation. Our close and hearty
friendship happily spares me the necessity. But I will add this--that
feeling for you an attachment which no ties of blood or other
relationship could ever awaken, and hoping to be to the end of my life
your affectionate and chosen friend, I am convinced that I counsel you
now as you would counsel me if I were in the like case; and I hope and
trust that you will be led by an opinion which I am sure cannot be wrong
when it is influenced by such feelings as I bear towards you, and so
many warm and grateful considerations."
[28] This was the butler of Mr. Gilbert Winter, one of the kind
Manchester friends whose hospitality we had enjoyed with Mr. Ainsworth,
and whose shrewd, quaint, old-world ways come delightfully back to me as
I write his once well-known and widely-honored name.
CHAPTER XI.
NEW LITERARY PROJECT.
1839.
Thoughts for the Future--Doubts of old Serial
Form--Suggestion for his Publishers--My
Mediation with them--Proposed Weekly
Publication--Design of it--Old Favorites to be
revived--Subjects to be dealt with--Chapters on
Chambers--Gog and Magog Relaxations--Savage
Chronicles--Others as well as himself to
write--Travels to Ireland and America in
View--Stipulation as to Property and
Payments--Great Hopes of Success--Assent of his
Publishers--No Planned Story--Terms of
Agreement--Notion for his Hero--A Name hit
upon--Sanguine of the Issue.
THE time was now come for him seriously to busy himself with a successor
to _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_, which he had not, however, waited thus
long before turning over thoroughly in his mind. _Nickleby's_ success
had so far outgone even the expectation raised by _Pickwick's_, that,
without some handsome practical admission of this fact at the close, its
publishers could hardly hope to retain him. This had been frequently
discussed by us, and was well understood. But, apart from the question
of his resuming with them at all, he had persuaded himself it might be
unsafe to resume in the old way, believing the public likely to tire of
the same twenty numbers over again. There was also another and more
sufficient reason for change which naturally had great weight with him,
and this was the hope that, by invention of a new mode as well as kind
of serial publication, he might be able for a time to discontinue the
writing of a long story with all its strain on his fancy, in any case to
shorten and vary the length of the stories written by himself, and
perhaps ultimately to retain all the profits of a continuous publication
without necessarily himself contributing every line that was to be
written for it. These considerations had been discussed still more
anxiously; and for several months some such project had been taking form
in his thoughts.
While he was at Petersham (July, 1839) he thus wrote to me: "I have been
thinking that subject over. Indeed, I have been doing so to the great
stoppage of _Nickleby_ and the great worrying and fidgeting of myself. I
have been thinking that if Chapman & Hall were to admit you into their
confidence with respect to what they mean to do at the conclusion of
_Nickleby_, without admitting me, it would help us very much. You know
that I am well disposed towards them, and that if they do something
handsome, even handsomer perhaps than they dreamt of doing, they will
find it their interest, and will find me tractable. You know also that I
have had straightforward offers from responsible men to publish anything
for me at a percentage on the profits and take all the risk; but that I
am unwilling to leave them, and have declared to you that if they behave
with liberality to me I will not on any consideration, although to a
certain extent I certainly and surely must gain by it. Knowing all this,
I feel sure that if you were to put before them the glories of our new
project, and, reminding them that when _Barnaby_ is published I am clear
of all engagements, were to tell them that if they wish to secure me and
perpetuate our connection now is the time for them to step gallantly
forward and make such proposals as will produce that result,--I feel
quite sure that if this should be done by you, as you only can do it,
the result will be of the most vital importance to me and mine, and that
a very great deal may be effected, thus, to recompense your friend for
very small profits and very large work as yet. I shall see you, please
God, on Tuesday night; and if they wait upon you on Wednesday, I shall
remain in town until that evening."
They came; and the tenor of the interview was so favorable that I wished
him to put in writing what from time to time had been discussed in
connection with the new project. This led to the very interesting letter
I shall now quote, written also in the same month from Petersham. I did
not remember, until I lately read it, that the notion of a possible
visit to America had been in his thoughts so early.
"I should be willing to commence on the thirty-first of March, 1840, a
new publication, consisting entirely of original matter, of which one
number, price threepence, should be published every week, and of which a
certain amount of numbers should form a volume, to be published at
regular intervals. The best general idea of the plan of the work might
be given, perhaps, by reference to the _Spectator_, the _Tatler_, and
Goldsmith's _Bee_; but it would be far more popular both in the subjects
of which it treats and its mode of treating them.
"I should propose to start, as the _Spectator_ does, with some pleasant
fiction relative to the origin of the publication; to introduce a little
club or knot of characters and to carry their personal histories and
proceedings through the work; to introduce fresh characters constantly;
to reintroduce Mr. Pickwick and Sam Weller, the latter of whom might
furnish an occasional communication with great effect; to write amusing
essays on the various foibles of the day as they arise; to take
advantage of all passing events; and to vary the form of the papers by
throwing them into sketches, essays, tales, adventures, letters from
imaginary correspondents, and so forth, so as to diversify the contents
as much as possible.
"In addition to this general description of the contents, I may add that
under particular heads I should strive to establish certain features in
the work, which should be so many veins of interest and amusement
running through the whole. Thus the Chapters on Chambers, which I have
long thought and spoken of, might be very well incorporated with it; and
a series of papers has occurred to me containing stories and
descriptions of London as it was many years ago, as it is now, and as it
will be many years hence, to which I would give some such title as The
Relaxations of Gog and Magog, dividing them into portions like the
_Arabian Nights_, and supposing Gog and Magog to entertain each other
with such narrations in Guildhall all night long, and to break off every
morning at daylight. An almost inexhaustible field of fun, raillery, and
interest would be laid open by pursuing this idea.
"I would also commence, and continue from time to time, a series of
satirical papers purporting to be translated from some Savage
Chronicles, and to describe the administration of justice in some
country that never existed, and record the proceedings of its wise men.
The object of this series (which if I can compare it with anything would
be something between _Gulliver's Travels_ and the _Citizen of the
World_) would be to keep a special lookout upon the magistrates in town
and country, and never to leave those worthies alone.
"The quantity of each number that should be written by myself would be a
matter for discussion and arrangement. Of course I should pledge and
bind myself upon that head. Nobody but myself would ever pursue _these
ideas_, but I must have assistance of course, and there must be some
contents of a different kind. Their general nature might be agreed upon
beforehand, but I should stipulate that this assistance is chosen solely
by myself, and that the contents of every number are as much under my
own control, and subject to as little interference, as those of a number
of _Pickwick_ or _Nickleby_.
"In order to give fresh novelty and interest to this undertaking, I
should be ready to contract to go at any specified time (say in the
midsummer or autumn of the year, when a sufficient quantity of matter in
advance should have been prepared, or earlier if it were thought fit)
either to Ireland or to America, and to write from thence a series of
papers descriptive of the places and people I see, introducing local
tales, traditions, and legends, something after the plan of Washington
Irving's _Alhambra_. I should wish the republication of these papers in
a separate form, with others to render the subject complete (if we
should deem it advisable), to form part of the arrangement for the work;
and I should wish the same provision to be made for the republication of
the Gog and Magog series, or indeed any that I undertook.
"This is a very rough and slight outline of the project I have in view.
I am ready to talk the matter over, to give any further explanations, to
consider any suggestions, or to go into the details of the subject
immediately. I say nothing of the novelty of such a publication
nowadays, or its chances of success. Of course I think them very great,
very great indeed,--almost beyond calculation,--or I should not seek to
bind myself to anything so extensive.
"The heads of the terms upon which I should be prepared to go into this
undertaking would be--That I be made a proprietor in the work and a
sharer in the profits. That when I bind myself to write a certain
portion of every number, I am insured, _for_ that writing in every
number, a certain sum of money. That those who assist me, and contribute
the remainder of every number, shall be paid by the publishers
immediately after its appearance, according to a scale to be calculated
and agreed upon, on presenting my order for the amount to which they may
be respectively entitled. Or, if the publishers prefer it, that they
agree to pay me a certain sum for the _whole_ of every number, and leave
me to make such arrangements for that part which I may not write, as I
think best. Of course I should require that for these payments, or any
other outlay connected with the work, I am not held accountable in any
way; and that no portion of them is to be considered as received by me
on account of the profits. I need not add that some arrangement would
have to be made, if I undertake my Travels, relative to the expenses of
traveling.
"Now, I want our publishing friends to take these things into
consideration, and to give me the views and proposals they would be
disposed to entertain when they have maturely considered the matter."
The result of their consideration was, on the whole, satisfactory. An
additional fifteen hundred pounds was to be paid at the close of
_Nickleby_, the new adventure was to be undertaken, and Cattermole was
to be joined with Browne as its illustrator. Nor was its plan much
modified before starting, though it was felt by us all that, for the
opening numbers at least, Dickens would have to be sole contributor, and
that, whatever otherwise might be its attraction, or the success of the
detached papers proposed by him, some reinforcement of them from time to
time, by means of a story with his name continued at reasonable if not
regular intervals, would be found absolutely necessary. Without any such
planned story, however, the work did actually begin, its course
afterwards being determined by circumstances stronger than any project
he had formed. The agreement, drawn up in contemplation of a mere
miscellany of detached papers or essays, and in which no mention of any
story appeared, was signed at the end of March; and its terms were such
as to place him in his only proper and legitimate position in regard to
all such contracts, of being necessarily a gainer in any case, and, in
the event of success, the greatest gainer of all concerned in the
undertaking. All the risk of every kind was to be undergone by the
publishers; and, as part of the expenses to be defrayed by them of each
weekly number, he was to receive fifty pounds. Whatever the success or
failure, this was always to be paid. The numbers were then to be
accounted for separately, and half the realized profits paid to him, the
other half going to the publishers; each number being held strictly
responsible for itself, and the loss upon it, supposing any, not carried
to the general account. The work was to be continued for twelve months
certain, with leave to the publishers then to close it; but if they
elected to go on, he was himself bound to the enterprise for five years,
and the ultimate copyright as well as profit was to be equally divided.
Six weeks before signature of this agreement, while a title was still
undetermined, I had this letter from him: "I will dine with you. I
intended to spend the evening in strict meditation (as I did last
night); but perhaps I had better go out, lest all work and no play
should make me a dull boy. _I_ have a list of titles too, but the final
title I have determined on--or something very near it. I have a notion
of this old file in the queer house, opening the book by an account of
himself, and, among other peculiarities, of his affection for an old
quaint queer-cased clock; showing how that when they have sat alone
together in the long evenings, he has got accustomed to its voice, and
come to consider it as the voice of a friend; how its striking, in the
night, has seemed like an assurance to him that it was still, a cheerful
watcher at his chamber-door; and now its very face has seemed to have
something of welcome in its dusty features, and to relax from its
grimness when he has looked at it from his chimney-corner. Then I mean
to tell how that he has kept odd manuscripts in the old, deep, dark,
silent closet where the weights are; and taken them from thence to read
(mixing up his enjoyments with some notion of his clock); and how, when
the club came to be formed, they, by reason of their punctuality and his
regard for this dumb servant, took their name from it. And thus I shall
call the book either _Old Humphrey's Clock_, or _Master Humphrey's
Clock_; beginning with a woodcut of old Humphrey and his clock, and
explaining the why and wherefore. All Humphrey's own papers will be
dated then From my clock-side, and I have divers thoughts about the best
means of introducing the others. I thought about this all day yesterday
and all last night till I went to bed. I am sure I can make a good thing
of this opening, which I have thoroughly warmed up to in consequence."
A few days later: "I incline rather more to _Master Humphrey's Clock_
than _Old Humphrey's_--if so be that there is no danger of the pensive
confounding master with a boy." After two days more: "I was thinking all
yesterday, and have begun at _Master Humphrey_ to-day." Then, a week
later: "I have finished the first number, but have not been able to do
more in the space than lead up to the Giants, who are just on the
scene."
CHAPTER XII.
THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP.
1840-1841.
Visit to Walter Landor--First Thought of Little
Nell--Hopeful of Master Humphrey--A Title for
the Child-Story--First Sale of _Master
Humphrey's Clock_--Its Original Plan
abandoned--Reasons for this--To be limited to
One Story--Disadvantages of Weekly
Publication--A Favorite Description--In Bevis
Marks for Sampson Brass--At Lawn House,
Broadstairs--Dedication of his First Volume to
Rogers--Chapters 43-45--Dick Swiveller and the
Marchioness--Masterpiece of Kindly Fun--Closing
of the Tale--Effect upon the
Writer--Making-believe very much--The End
approaching--The Realities of Fiction--Death of
Little Nell--My Share in the Close--A
Suggestion adopted by him--Success of the
Story--Useful Lessons--Its Mode of
Construction--Character and
Characteristics--The Art of it--A Recent
Tribute--Harte's "Dickens in Camp."
A DAY or two after the date of the last letter quoted, Dickens and his
wife, with Maclise and myself, visited Landor in Bath, and it was during
three happy days we passed together there that the fancy which was
shortly to take the form of Little Nell first occurred to its
author,[29]--but as yet with the intention only of making out of it a
tale of a few chapters. On the 1st of March we returned from Bath; and
on the 4th I had this letter: "If you can manage to give me a call in
the course of the day or evening, I wish you would. I am laboriously
turning over in my mind how I can best effect the improvement we spoke
of last night, which I will certainly make by hook or by crook, and
which I would like you to see _before_ it goes finally to the printer's.
I have determined not to put that witch-story into number 3, for I am by
no means satisfied of the effect of its contrast with Humphrey. I think
of lengthening Humphrey, finishing the description of the society, and
closing with the little child-story, which is SURE to be effective,
especially after the old man's quiet way." Then there came hard upon
this: "What do you think of the following double title for the beginning
of that little tale? 'PERSONAL ADVENTURES OF MASTER HUMPHREY: _The Old
Curiosity Shop_.' I have thought of _Master Humphrey's Tale_, _Master
Humphrey's Narrative_, _A Passage in Master Humphrey's Life_--but I
don't think any does as well as this. I have also thought of _The Old
Curiosity Dealer and the Child_ instead of _The Old Curiosity Shop_.
Perpend. Topping waits."----And thus was taking gradual form, with less
direct consciousness of design on his own part than I can remember in
any other instance of all his career, a story which was to add largely
to his popularity, more than any other of his works to make the bond
between himself and his readers one of personal attachment, and very
widely to increase the sense entertained of his powers as a pathetic as
well as humorous writer.
He had not written more than two or three chapters, when the capability
of the subject for more extended treatment than he had at first proposed
to give to it pressed itself upon him, and he resolved to throw
everything else aside, devoting himself to the one story only. There
were other strong reasons for this. Of the first number of the _Clock_
nearly seventy thousand were sold; but with the discovery that there was
no continuous tale the orders at once diminished, and a change must have
been made even if the material and means for it had not been ready.
There had been an interval of three numbers between the first and second
chapters, which the society of Mr. Pickwick and the two Wellers made
pleasant enough; but after the introduction of Dick Swiveller there were
three consecutive chapters; and in the continued progress of the tale
to its close there were only two more breaks, one between the fourth and
fifth chapters and one between the eighth and ninth, pardonable and
enjoyable now for the sake of Sam and his father. The reintroduction of
these old favorites, it will have been seen, formed part of his original
plan; of his abandonment of which his own description may be added, from
his preface to the collected edition: "The first chapter of this tale
appeared in the fourth number of _Master Humphrey's Clock_, when I had
already been made uneasy by the desultory character of that work, and
when, I believe, my readers had thoroughly participated in the feeling.
The commencement of a story was a great satisfaction to me, and I had
reason to believe that my readers participated in this feeling too.
Hence, being pledged to some interruptions and some pursuit of the
original design, I set cheerfully about disentangling myself from those
impediments as fast as I could; and, this done, from that time until its
completion _The Old Curiosity Shop_ was written and published from week
to week, in weekly parts."
He had very early himself become greatly taken with it. "I am very glad
indeed," he wrote to me after the first half-dozen chapters, "that you
think so well of the _Curiosity Shop_, and especially that what may be
got out of Dick strikes you. I _mean_ to make much of him. I feel the
story extremely myself, which I take to be a good sign; and am already
warmly interested in it. I shall run it on now for four whole numbers
together, to give it a fair chance." Every step lightened the road as it
became more and more real with each character that appeared in it, and
I still recall the glee with which he told me what he intended to do not
only with Dick Swiveller, but with Septimus Brass, changed afterwards to
Sampson. Undoubtedly, however, Dick was his favorite. "Dick's behavior
in the matter of Miss Wackles will, I hope, give you satisfaction," is
the remark of another of his letters. "I cannot yet discover that his
aunt has any belief in him, or is in the least degree likely to send him
a remittance, so that he will probably continue to be the sport of
destiny." His difficulties were the quickly recurring times of
publication, the confined space in each number that yet had to
contribute its individual effect, and (from the suddenness with which he
had begun) the impossibility of getting in advance. "I was obliged to
cramp most dreadfully what I thought a pretty idea in the last chapter.
I hadn't room to turn:" to this or a similar effect his complaints are
frequent, and of the vexations named it was by far the worst. But he
steadily bore up against all, and made a triumph of the little story.
To help his work he went twice to Broadstairs, in June and in September.
From this he wrote to me (17th June), "It's now four o'clock, and I have
been at work since half-past eight. I have really dried myself up into a
condition which would almost justify me in pitching off the cliff, head
first--but I must get richer before I indulge in a crowning luxury.
Number 15, which I began to-day, I anticipate great things from. There
is a description of getting gradually out of town, and passing through
neighborhoods of distinct and various characters, with which, if I had
read it as anybody else's writing, I think I should have been very much
struck. The child and the old man are on their journey of course, and
the subject is a very pretty one." Between these two Broadstairs visits
he wrote to me, "I intended calling on you this morning on my way back
from Bevis Marks, whither I went to look at a house for Sampson Brass.
But I got mingled up in a kind of social paste with the Jews of
Houndsditch, and roamed about among them till I came out in Moorfields,
quite unexpectedly. So I got into a cab, and came home again, very
tired, by way of the City Road." At the opening of September he was
again at Broadstairs. The residence he most desired there, Fort House,
stood prominently at the top of a breezy hill on the road to Kingsgate,
with a corn-field between it and the sea, and this in many subsequent
years he always occupied; but he was fain to be content, as yet, with
Lawn House, a smaller villa between the hill and the corn-field, from
which he now wrote of his attentions to Mr. Sampson Brass's sister: "I
have been at work of course" (2d September), "and have just finished a
number. I have effected a reform by virtue of which we breakfast at a
quarter-before eight, so that I get to work at half-past, and am
commonly free by one o'clock or so, which is a great happiness. Dick is
now Sampson's clerk, and I have touched Miss Brass in Number 25,
lightly, but effectively I hope."
At this point it became necessary to close the first volume of the
_Clock_, which was issued accordingly with a dedication to Rogers, and a
preface to which allusion will be made hereafter. "I have opened the
second volume," he wrote to me on the 9th of September, "with Kit; and
I saw this morning looking out at the sea, as if a veil had been lifted
up, an affecting thing that I can do with him by-and-by. Nous verrons."
"I am glad you like that Kit number," he wrote twelve days later; "I
thought you would. I have altered that about the opera-going. Of course
I had no intention to delude the many-headed into a false belief
concerning opera-nights, but merely to specify a class of senators. I
needn't have done it, however, for God knows they're pretty well all
alike." This referred to an objection made by me to something he had
written of "opera-going senators on Wednesday nights;" and, of another
change made in compliance with some other objection of mine, he wrote on
the 4th of October, "You will receive the proof herewith. I have altered
it. You must let it stand now. I really think the dead mankind a million
fathoms deep, the best thing in the sentence. I have a notion of the
dreadful silence down there, and of the stars shining down upon their
drowned eyes,--the fruit, let me tell you, of a solitary walk by
starlight on the cliffs. As to the child-image, I have made a note of it
for alteration. In number thirty there will be some cutting needed, I
think. I have, however, something in my eye near the beginning which I
can easily take out. You will recognize a description of the road we
traveled between Birmingham and Wolverhampton; but I had conceived it so
well in my mind that the execution doesn't please me quite as well as I
expected. I shall be curious to know whether you think there's anything
in the notion of the man and his furnace-fire. It would have been a good
thing to have opened a new story with, I have been thinking since."
In the middle of October he returned to town, and by the end of the
month he had so far advanced that the close of the story began to be not
far distant. "Tell me what you think," he had written just before his
return, "of 36 and 37? The way is clear for Kit now, and for a great
effect at the last with the Marchioness." The last allusion I could not
in the least understand, until I found, in the numbers just sent me,
those exquisite chapters of the tale, the 57th and 58th, in which Dick
Swiveller realizes his threat to Miss Wackles, discovers the small
creature that his destiny is expressly saving up for him, dubs her
Marchioness, and teaches her the delights of hot purl and cribbage. This
is comedy of the purest kind; its great charm being the good-hearted
fellow's kindness to the poor desolate child hiding itself under cover
of what seems only mirth and fun. Altogether, and because of rather than
in spite of his weakness, Dick is a captivating person. His gayety and
good humor survive such accumulations of "staggerers," he makes such
discoveries of the "rosy" in the very smallest of drinks, and becomes
himself by his solacements of verse such a "perpetual grand Apollo,"
that his failings are all forgiven, and hearts resolutely shut against
victims of destiny in general open themselves freely to Dick Swiveller.
At the opening of November, there seems to have been a wish on Maclise's
part to try his hand at an illustration for the story; but I do not
remember that it bore other fruit than a very pleasant day at Jack
Straw's Castle, where Dickens read one of the later numbers to us.
"Maclise and myself (alone in the carriage)," he wrote, "will be with
you at two exactly. We propose driving out to Hampstead and walking
there, if it don't rain in buckets'-full. I sha'n't send Bradburys' the
MS. of next number till to-morrow, for it contains the shadow of the
number after that, and I want to read it to Mac, as, if he likes the
subject, it will furnish him with one, I think. You can't imagine
(gravely I write and speak) how exhausted I am to-day with yesterday's
labors. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All
night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am
unrefreshed and miserable. I don't know what to do with myself. . . . I
think the close of the story will be great." Connected with the same
design on Maclise's part there was another reading, this time at my
house, and of the number shadowed forth by what had been read at
Hampstead. "I will bring the MS.," he writes on the 12th of November,
"and, for Mac's information if needful, the number before it. I have
only this moment put the finishing touch to it. The difficulty has been
tremendous--the anguish unspeakable. I didn't say six. Therefore dine at
half-past five like a Christian. I shall bring Mac at that hour."
He had sent me, shortly before, the chapters in which the Marchioness
nurses Dick in his fever, and puts his favorite philosophy to the hard
test of asking him whether he has ever put pieces of orange-peel into
cold water and made believe it was wine. "If you make believe very much,
it's quite nice; but if you don't, you know, it hasn't much flavor:" so
it stood originally, and to the latter word in the little creature's
mouth I seem to have objected. Replying (on the 16th of December) he
writes, "'If you make believe very much, it's quite nice; but if you
don't, you know, it seems as if it would bear a little more seasoning,
certainly.' I think that's better. Flavor is a common word in cookery,
and among cooks, and so I used it. The part you cut out in the other
number, which was sent me this morning, I had put in with a view to
Quilp's last appearance on any stage, which is casting its shadow upon
my mind; but it will come well enough without such a preparation, so I
made no change. I mean to shirk Sir Robert Inglis, and work to-night. I
have been solemnly revolving the general story all this morning. The
forty-fifth number will certainly close. Perhaps this forty-first, which
I am now at work on, had better contain the announcement of _Barnaby_? I
am glad you like Dick and the Marchioness in that sixty-fourth chapter.
I thought you would."
Fast shortening as the life of little Nell was now, the dying year might
have seen it pass away; but I never knew him wind up any tale with such
a sorrowful reluctance as this. He caught at any excuse to hold his hand
from it, and stretched to the utmost limit the time left to complete it
in. Christmas interposed its delays too, so that Twelfth-night had come
and gone when I wrote to him in the belief that he was nearly done.
"Done!" he wrote back to me on Friday, the 7th; "Done!!! Why, bless you,
I shall not be done till Wednesday night. I only began yesterday, and
this part of the story is not to be galloped over, I can tell you. I
think it will come famously--but I am the wretchedest of the wretched.
It casts the most horrible shadow upon me, and it is as much as I can
do to keep moving at all. I tremble to approach the place a great deal
more than Kit; a great deal more than Mr. Garland; a great deal more
than the Single Gentleman. I sha'n't recover it for a long time. Nobody
will miss her like I shall. It is such a very painful thing to me, that
I really cannot express my sorrow. Old wounds bleed afresh when I only
think of the way of doing it: what the actual doing it will be, God
knows. I can't preach to myself the schoolmaster's consolation, though I
try. Dear Mary died yesterday, when I think of this sad story. I don't
know what to say about dining to-morrow--perhaps you'll send up
to-morrow morning for news? That'll be the best way. I have refused
several invitations for this week and next, determining to go nowhere
till I had done. I am afraid of disturbing the state I have been trying
to get into, and having to fetch it all back again." He had finished,
all but the last chapter, on the Wednesday named; that was the 12th of
January; and on the following night he read to me the two chapters of
Nell's death, the seventy-first and seventy-second, with the result
described in a letter to me of the following Monday, the 17th January,
1841:
"I can't help letting you know how much your yesterday's letter pleased
me. I felt sure you liked the chapters when we read them on Thursday
night, but it was a great delight to have my impression so strongly and
heartily confirmed. You know how little value I should set on what I had
done, if all the world cried out that it was good, and those whose good
opinion and approbation I value most were silent. The assurance that
this little closing of the scene touches and is felt by you so strongly,
is better to me than a thousand most sweet voices out of doors. When I
first began, _on your valued suggestion_, to keep my thoughts upon this
ending of the tale, I resolved to try and do something which might be
read by people about whom Death had been, with a softened feeling, and
with consolation. . . . After you left last night, I took my desk
up-stairs, and, writing until four o'clock this morning, finished the
old story. It makes me very melancholy to think that all these people
are lost to me forever, and I feel as if I never could become attached
to any new set of characters." The words printed in italics, as
underlined by himself, give me my share in the story which had gone so
closely to his heart. I was responsible for its tragic ending. He had
not thought of killing her, when, about half-way through, I asked him to
consider whether it did not necessarily belong even to his own
conception, after taking so mere a child through such a tragedy of
sorrow, to lift her also out of the commonplace of ordinary happy
endings so that the gentle pure little figure and form should never
change to the fancy. All that I meant he seized at once, and never
turned aside from it again.
The published book was an extraordinary success, and, in America more
especially, very greatly increased the writer's fame. The pathetic vein
it had opened was perhaps mainly the cause of this, but opinion at home
continued still to turn on the old characteristics,--the freshness of
humor of which the pathos was but another form and product, the grasp of
reality with which character had again been seized, the discernment of
good under its least attractive forms and of evil in its most
captivating disguises, the cordial wisdom and sound heart, the enjoyment
and fun, luxuriant yet under proper control. No falling-off was found in
these; and I doubt if any of his people have been more widely liked than
Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness. The characters generally, indeed,
work out their share in the purpose of the tale; the extravagances of
some of them help to intensify its meaning; and the sayings and doings
of the worst and the best alike have their point and applicability. Many
an oversuspicious person will find advantage in remembering what a too
liberal application of Foxey's principle of suspecting everybody brought
Mr. Sampson Brass to; and many an overhasty judgment of poor human
nature will unconsciously be checked, when it is remembered that Mr.
Christopher Nubbles _did_ come back to work out that shilling.
But the main idea and chief figure of the piece constitute its interest
for most people, and give it rank upon the whole with the most
attractive productions of English fiction. I am not acquainted with any
story in the language more adapted to strengthen in the heart what most
needs help and encouragement, to sustain kindly and innocent impulses,
and to awaken everywhere the sleeping germs of good. It includes
necessarily much pain, much uninterrupted sadness; and yet the
brightness and sunshine quite overtop the gloom. The humor is so
benevolent; the view of errors that have no depravity of heart in them
is so indulgent; the quiet courage under calamity, the purity that
nothing impure can soil, are so full of tender teaching. Its effect as a
mere piece of art, too, considering the circumstances in which I have
shown it to be written, I think very noteworthy. It began with a plan
for but a short half-dozen chapters; it grew into a full-proportioned
story under the warmth of the feeling it had inspired its writer with;
its very incidents created a necessity at first not seen; and it was
carried to a close only contemplated after a full half of it had been
written. Yet, from the opening of the tale to that undesigned
ending,--from the image of little Nell asleep amid the quaint grotesque
figures of the old curiosity warehouse to that other final sleep she
takes among the grim forms and carvings of the old church aisle,--the
main purpose seems to be always present. The characters and incidents
that at first appear most foreign to it are found to have had with it a
close relation. The hideous lumber and rottenness that surround the
child in her grandfather's home take shape again in Quilp and his filthy
gang. In the first still picture of Nell's innocence in the midst of
strange and alien forms, we have the forecast of her after-wanderings,
her patient miseries, her sad maturity of experience before its time.
Without the show-people and their blended fictions and realities, their
wax-works, dwarfs, giants, and performing dogs, the picture would have
wanted some part of its significance. Nor could the genius of Hogarth
himself have given it higher expression than in the scenes by the
cottage door, the furnace-fire, and the burial-place of the old church,
over whose tombs and gravestones hang the puppets of Mr. Punch's show
while the exhibitors are mending and repairing them. And when, at last,
Nell sits within the quiet old church where all her wanderings end, and
gazes on those silent monumental groups of warriors,--helmets, swords,
and gauntlets wasting away around them,--the associations among which
her life had opened seem to have come crowding on the scene again, to be
present at its close,--but stripped of their strangeness; deepened into
solemn shapes by the suffering she has undergone; gently fusing every
feeling of a life past into hopeful and familiar anticipation of a life
to come; and already imperceptibly lifting her, without grief or pain,
from the earth she loves, yet whose grosser paths her light steps only
touched to show the track through them to heaven. This is genuine art,
and such as all cannot fail to recognize who read the book in a right
sympathy with the conception that pervades it. Nor, great as the
discomfort was of reading it in brief weekly snatches, can I be wholly
certain that the discomfort of so writing it involved nothing but
disadvantage. With so much in every portion to do, and so little space
to do it in, the opportunities to a writer for mere self-indulgence were
necessarily rare.
Of the innumerable tributes the story has received, and to none other by
Dickens have more or more various been paid, there is one, the very
last, which has much affected me. Not many months before my friend's
death, he had sent me two _Overland Monthlies_ containing two sketches
by a young American writer far away in California, "The Luck of Roaring
Camp," and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," in which he had found such
subtle strokes of character as he had not anywhere else in late years
discovered; the manner resembling himself, but the matter fresh to a
degree that had surprised him; the painting in all respects masterly,
and the wild rude thing painted a quite wonderful reality. I have
rarely known him more honestly moved. A few months passed;
telegraph-wires flashed over the world that he had passed away on the
9th of June; and the young writer of whom he had then written to me, all
unconscious of that praise, put his tribute of gratefulness and sorrow
into the form of a poem called _Dickens in Camp_.[30] It embodies the
same kind of incident which had so affected the master himself, in the
papers to which I have referred; it shows the gentler influences which,
in even those Californian wilds, can restore outlawed "roaring camps" to
silence and humanity; and there is hardly any form of posthumous tribute
which I can imagine likely to have better satisfied his desire of fame
than one which should thus connect, with the special favorite among all
his heroines, the restraints and authority exerted by his genius over
the rudest and least civilized of competitors in that far fierce race
for wealth.
"Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow:
"The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;
"Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew;
"And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the fire-light fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of 'Little Nell:'
"Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader
Was youngest of them all,--
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;
"The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp with 'Nell' on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.
"And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken
As by some spell divine--
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.
"Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire;
And he who wrought that spell?--
Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!
"Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.
"And on that grave where English oak and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,--
This spray of Western pine!
"July, 1870."
FOOTNOTES:
[29] I have mentioned the fact in my _Life of Landor_; and to the
passage I here add the comment made by Dickens when he read it: "It was
at a celebration of his birthday in the first of his Bath lodgings, 35,
St. James's Square, that the fancy which took the form of Little Nell in
the _Curiosity Shop_ first dawned on the genius of its creator. No
character in prose fiction was a greater favorite with Landor. He
thought that, upon her, Juliet might for a moment have turned her eyes
from Romeo, and that Desdemona might have taken her hair-breadth escapes
to heart, so interesting and pathetic did she seem to him; and when,
some years later, the circumstance I have named was recalled to him, he
broke into one of those whimsical bursts of comical extravagance out of
which arose the fancy of Boythorn. With tremendous emphasis he confirmed
the fact, and added that he had never in his life regretted anything so
much as his having failed to carry out an intention he had formed
respecting it; for he meant to have purchased that house, 35, St.
James's Square, and then and there to have burnt it to the ground, to
the end that no meaner association should ever desecrate the birthplace
of Nell. Then he would pause a little, become conscious of our sense of
his absurdity, and break into a thundering peal of laughter." Dickens
had himself proposed to tell this story as a contribution to my
biography of our common friend, but his departure for America prevented
him. "I see," he wrote to me, as soon as the published book reached him,
"you have told, with what our friend would have called _won_-derful
accuracy, the little St. James's Square story, which a certain faithless
wretch was to have related."
[30] _Poems._ By Bret Harte (Boston: Osgood & Co., 1871), pp. 32-35.
CHAPTER XIII.
DEVONSHIRE TERRACE AND BROADSTAIRS.
1840.
A Good Saying--Landor mystified--The Mirthful
Side of Dickens--Extravagant Flights--Humorous
Despair--Riding Exercise--First of the
Ravens--The Groom Topping--The Smoky
Chimneys--Juryman at an Inquest--Practical
Humanity--Publication of _Clock's_ First
Number--Transfer of _Barnaby_ settled--A True
Prediction--Revisiting Old Scenes--C. D. to
Chapman & Hall--Terms of Sale of _Barnaby_--A
Gift to a Friend--Final Escape from
Bondage--Published Libels about him--Said to be
demented--To be insane and turned
Catholic--Begging Letter-Writers--A Donkey
asked for--Mr. Kindheart--Friendly
Meetings--Social Talk--Reconciling
Friends--Hint for judging Men.
IT was an excellent saying of the first Lord Shaftesbury, that, seeing
every man of any capacity holds within himself two men, the wise and the
foolish, each of them ought freely to be allowed his turn; and it was
one of the secrets of Dickens's social charm that he could, in strict
accordance with this saying, allow each part of him its turn; could
afford thoroughly to give rest and relief to what was serious in him,
and, when the time came to play his gambols, could surrender himself
wholly to the enjoyment of the time, and become the very genius and
embodiment of one of his own most whimsical fancies.
Turning back from the narrative of his last piece of writing to recall
a few occurrences of the year during which it had occupied him, I find
him at its opening in one of these humorous moods, and another friend,
with myself, enslaved by its influence. "What on earth does it all
mean?" wrote poor puzzled Mr. Landor to me, inclosing a letter from him
of the date of the 11th of February, the day after the royal nuptials of
that year. In this he had related to our old friend a wonderful
hallucination arising out of that event, which had then taken entire
possession of him. "Society is unhinged here," thus ran the letter, "by
her majesty's marriage, and I am sorry to add that I have fallen
hopelessly in love with the Queen, and wander up and down with vague and
dismal thoughts of running away to some uninhabited island with a maid
of honor, to be entrapped by conspiracy for that purpose. Can you
suggest any particular young person, serving in such a capacity, who
would suit me? It is too much perhaps to ask you to join the band of
noble youths (Forster is in it, and Maclise) who are to assist me in
this great enterprise, but a man of your energy would be invaluable. I
have my eye upon Lady . . . , principally because she is very beautiful
and has no strong brothers. Upon this, and other points of the scheme,
however, we will confer more at large when we meet; and meanwhile burn
this document, that no suspicion may arise or rumor get abroad."
The maid of honor and the uninhabited island were flights of fancy, but
the other daring delusion was for a time encouraged to such whimsical
lengths, not alone by him, but (under his influence) by the two friends
named, that it took the wildest forms of humorous extravagance; and of
the private confidences much interchanged, as well as of the style of
open speech in which our joke of despairing unfitness for any further
use or enjoyment of life was unflaggingly kept up, to the amazement of
bystanders knowing nothing of what it meant, and believing we had half
lost our senses, I permit myself to give from his letters one further
illustration. "I am utterly lost in misery," he writes to me on the 12th
of February, "and can do nothing. I have been reading _Oliver_,
_Pickwick_, and _Nickleby_ to get my thoughts together for the new
effort, but all in vain:
"My heart is at Windsor,
My heart isn't here;
My heart is at Windsor.
A following my dear.
I saw the Responsibilities this morning, and burst into tears. The
presence of my wife aggravates me. I loathe my parents. I detest my
house. I begin to have thoughts of the Serpentine, of the Regent's
Canal, of the razors up-stairs, of the chemist's down the street, of
poisoning myself at Mrs. ----'s table, of hanging myself upon the
pear-tree in the garden, of abstaining from food and starving myself to
death, of being bled for my cold and tearing off the bandage, of falling
under the feet of cab-horses in the New Road, of murdering Chapman &
Hall and becoming great in story (SHE must hear something of me
then--perhaps sign the warrant: or is that a fable?), of turning
Chartist, of heading some bloody assault upon the palace and saving Her
by my single hand--of being anything but what I have been, and doing
anything but what I have done. Your distracted friend, C. D." The wild
derangement of asterisks in every shape and form, with which this
incoherence closed, cannot here be given.
Some ailments which dated from an earlier period in his life made
themselves felt in the spring of the year, as I remember, and increased
horse-exercise was strongly recommended to him. "I find it will be
positively necessary to go, for five days in the week, at least," he
wrote to me in March, "on a perfect regimen of diet and exercise, and am
anxious therefore not to delay treating for a horse." We were now in
consequence, when he was not at the sea-side, much on horseback in
suburban lanes and roads; and the spacious garden of his new house was
also turned to healthful use at even his busiest times of work. I mark
this, too, as the time when the first of his ravens took up residence
there; and as the beginning of disputes with two of his neighbors about
the smoking of the stable-chimney, which his groom Topping, a highly
absurd little man with flaming red hair, so complicated by secret
devices of his own, meant to conciliate each complainant alternately and
having the effect of aggravating both, that law-proceedings were only
barely avoided. "I shall give you," he writes, "my latest report of the
chimney in the form of an address from Topping, made to me on our way
from little Hall's at Norwood the other night, where he and Chapman and
I had been walking all day, while Topping drove Kate, Mrs. Hall, and her
sisters, to Dulwich. Topping had been regaled upon the premises, and was
just drunk enough to be confidential. 'Beggin' your pardon, sir, but the
genelman next door sir, seems to be gettin' quite comfortable and
pleasant about the chimley.'--'I don't think he is, Topping.'--'Yes he
is sir I think. He comes out in the yard this morning and says,
_Coachman_ he says' (observe the vision of a great large fat man called
up by the word) _is that your raven_ he says, _Coachman? or is it Mr.
Dickens's raven?_ he says. My master's sir, I says. Well, he says, It's
a fine bird. _I think the chimley 'ill do now Coachman,--now the jint's
taken off the pipe_ he says. I hope it will sir, I says; my master's a
genelman as wouldn't annoy no genelman if he could help it, I'm sure;
and my missis is so afraid of havin' a bit o' fire that o' Sundays our
little bit o' weal or wot not, goes to the baker's a purpose.--_Damn the
chimley, Coachman_, he says, _it's a smokin' now_.--It ain't a smokin'
your way sir, I says; Well he says _no more it is, Coachman, and as long
as it smokes anybody else's way, it's all right and I'm agreeable_.' Of
course I shall now have the man from the other side upon me, and very
likely with an action of nuisance for smoking into his conservatory."
A graver incident, which occurred to him also among his earliest
experiences as tenant of Devonshire Terrace, illustrates too well the
always practical turn of his kindness and humanity not to deserve
relation here. He has himself described it in one of his minor writings,
in setting down what he remembered as the only good that ever came of a
beadle. Of that great parish functionary, he says, "having newly taken
the lease of a house in a certain distinguished metropolitan parish, a
house which then appeared to me to be a frightfully first-class family
mansion involving awful responsibilities, I became the prey." In other
words, he was summoned, and obliged to sit, as juryman at an inquest on
the body of a little child alleged to have been murdered by its mother;
of which the result was, that, by his persevering exertion, seconded by
the humane help of the coroner, Mr. Wakley, the verdict of himself and
his fellow-jurymen charged her only with concealment of the birth. "The
poor desolate creature dropped upon her knees before us with
protestations that we were right (protestations among the most affecting
that I have ever heard in my life), and was carried away insensible. I
caused some extra care to be taken of her in the prison, and counsel to
be retained for her defense when she was tried at the Old Bailey; and
her sentence was lenient, and her history and conduct proved that it was
right." How much he felt the little incident, at the actual time of its
occurrence, may be judged from the few lines written to me next morning:
"Whether it was the poor baby, or its poor mother, or the coffin, or my
fellow-jurymen, or what not, I can't say, but last night I had a most
violent attack of sickness and indigestion, which not only prevented me
from sleeping, but even from lying down. Accordingly Kate and I sat up
through the dreary watches."
The day of the first publication of _Master Humphrey_ (Saturday, 4th
April) had by this time come, and, according to the rule observed in his
two other great ventures, he left town with Mrs. Dickens on Friday, the
3d. With Maclise we had been together at Richmond the previous night;
and I joined him at Birmingham the day following with news of the sale
of the whole sixty thousand copies to which the first working had been
limited, and of orders already in hand for ten thousand more! The
excitement of the success somewhat lengthened our holiday; and, after
visiting Shakspeare's house at Stratford and Johnson's at Lichfield, we
found our resources so straitened in returning, that, employing as our
messenger of need his younger brother Alfred, who had joined us from
Tamworth, where he was a student-engineer, we had to pawn our gold
watches at Birmingham.
At the end of the following month he went to Broadstairs, and not many
days before (on the 20th of May) a note from Mr. Jordan on behalf of Mr.
Bentley opened the negotiations formerly referred to,[31] which
transferred to Messrs. Chapman & Hall the agreement for _Barnaby Rudge_.
I was myself absent when he left, and in a letter announcing his
departure he had written, "I don't know of a word of news in all London,
but there will be plenty next week, for I am going away, and I hope
you'll send me an account of it. I am doubtful whether it will be a
murder, a fire, a vast robbery, or the escape of Gould, but it will be
something remarkable no doubt. I almost blame myself for the death of
that poor girl who leaped off the monument upon my leaving town last
year. She would not have done it if I had remained, neither would the
two men have found the skeleton in the sewers." His prediction was quite
accurate, for I had to tell him, after not many days, of the potboy who
shot at the queen. "It's a great pity," he replied, very sensibly, "they
couldn't suffocate that boy, Master Oxford, and say no more about it.
To have put him quietly between two feather beds would have stopped his
heroic speeches, and dulled the sound of his glory very much. As it is,
she will have to run the gauntlet of many a fool and madman, some of
whom may perchance be better shots and use other than Brummagem
firearms." How much of this actually came to pass, the reader knows.
From the letters of his present Broadstairs visit, there is little
further to add to their account of his progress with his story; but a
couple more lines may be given for their characteristic expression of
his invariable habit upon entering any new abode, whether to stay in it
for days or for years. On a Monday night he arrived, and on the Tuesday
(2d of June) wrote to me, "_Before_ I tasted bit or drop yesterday, I
set out my writing-table with extreme taste and neatness, and improved
the disposition of the furniture generally." He stayed till the end of
June; when Maclise and myself joined him for the pleasure of posting
back home with him and Mrs. Dickens, by way of his favorite Chatham and
Rochester and Cobham, where we passed two agreeable days in revisiting
well-remembered scenes. I had meanwhile brought to a close the treaty
for repurchase of _Oliver_ and surrender of _Barnaby_, upon terms which
are succinctly stated in a letter written by him to Messrs. Chapman &
Hall on the 2d of July, the day after our return:
"The terms upon which you advance the money to-day for the purchase of
the copyright and stock[32] of _Oliver_ on my behalf are understood
between us to be these. That this 2250_l._ is to be deducted from the
purchase-money of a work by me entitled _Barnaby Rudge_, of which two
chapters are now in your hands, and of which the whole is to be written
within some convenient time to be agreed upon between us. But if it
should not be written (which God forbid!) within five years, you are to
have a lien to this amount on the property belonging to me that is now
in your hands, namely, my shares in the stock and copyright of _Sketches
by Boz_, _The Pickwick Papers_, _Nicholas Nickleby_, _Oliver Twist_, and
_Master Humphrey's Clock_; in which we do not include any share of the
current profits of the last-named work, which I shall remain at liberty
to draw at the times stated in our agreement. Your purchase of _Barnaby
Rudge_ is made upon the following terms. It is to consist of matter
sufficient for ten monthly numbers of the size of _Pickwick_ and
_Nickleby_, which you are, however, at liberty to divide and publish in
fifteen smaller numbers if you think fit. The terms for the purchase of
this edition in numbers, and for the copyright of the whole book for six
months after the publication of the last number, are 3000_l._ At the
expiration of the six months the whole copyright reverts to me." The
sequel was, as all the world knows, that Barnaby became successor to
Little Nell, the money being repaid by the profits of the _Clock_; but I
ought to mention also the more generous sequel that my own small
service had, on my receiving from him, after not many days, an antique
silver-mounted jug of great beauty of form and workmanship, but with a
wealth far beyond jeweler's chasing or artist's design in the written
words that accompanied it.[33] I accepted them to commemorate, not the
help they would have far overpaid, but the gladness of his own escape
from the last of the agreements that had hampered the opening of his
career, and the better future that was now before him.
At the opening of August he was with Mrs. Dickens for some days in
Devonshire, on a visit to his father, but he had to take his work with
him; and, as he wrote to me, they had only one real holiday, when
Dawlish, Teignmouth, Babbicombe, and Torquay were explored, returning to
Exeter at night. In the beginning of September he was again at
Broadstairs.
"I was just going to work," he wrote on the 9th, "when I got this
letter, and the story of the man who went to Chapman & Hall's knocked
me down flat. I wrote until now (a quarter to one) against the grain,
and have at last given it up for one day. Upon my word it is
intolerable. I have been grinding my teeth all the morning. I think I
could say in two lines something about the general report with
propriety. I'll add them to the proof" (the preface to the first volume
of the _Clock_ was at this time in preparation), "giving you full power
to cut them out if you should think differently from me, and from C. and
H., who in such a matter must be admitted judges." He refers here to a
report, rather extensively circulated at the time, and which through
various channels had reached his publishers, that he was suffering from
loss of reason and was under treatment in an asylum.[34] I would have
withheld from him the mention of it, as an absurdity that must quickly
pass away, but against my wish it had been communicated to him, and I
had difficulty in keeping within judicious bounds his extreme and very
natural wrath.
A few days later (the 15th) he wrote, "I have been rather surprised of
late to have applications from Roman Catholic clergymen, demanding
(rather pastorally, and with a kind of grave authority) assistance,
literary employment, and so forth. At length it struck me that, through
some channel or other, I must have been represented as belonging to that
religion. Would you believe that in a letter from Lamert, at Cork, to my
mother, which I saw last night, he says, 'What do the papers mean by
saying that Charles is demented, and, further, _that he has turned Roman
Catholic_?'--!" Of the begging-letter-writers, hinted at here, I ought
earlier to have said something. In one of his detached essays he has
described, without a particle of exaggeration, the extent to which he
was made a victim by this class of swindler, and the extravagance of the
devices practiced on him; but he has not confessed, as he might, that
for much of what he suffered he was himself responsible, by giving so
largely, as at first he did, to almost every one who applied to him.
What at last brought him to his senses in this respect, I think, was the
request made by the adventurer who had exhausted every other expedient,
and who desired finally, after describing himself reduced to the
condition of a traveling Cheap Jack in the smallest way of crockery,
that a donkey might be left out for him next day, which he would duly
call for. This I perfectly remember, and I much fear that the applicant
was the Daniel Tobin before mentioned.[35]
Many and delightful were other letters written from Broadstairs at this
date, filled with whimsical talk and humorous description relating
chiefly to an eccentric friend who stayed with him most of the time,
and is sketched in one of his published papers as Mr. Kindheart; but all
too private for reproduction now. He returned in the middle of October,
when we resumed our almost daily ridings, foregatherings with Maclise at
Hampstead and elsewhere, and social entertainments with Macready,
Talfourd, Procter, Stanfield, Fonblanque, Elliotson, Tennent, D'Orsay,
Quin, Harness, Wilkie, Edwin Landseer, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and Bulwer.
Of the genius of the author of _Pelham_ and _Eugene Aram_ he had, early
and late, the highest admiration, and he took occasion to express it
during the present year in a new preface which he published to _Oliver
Twist_. Other friends became familiar in later years; but, disinclined
as he was to the dinner-invitations that reached him from every quarter,
all such meetings with those whom I have named, and in an especial
manner the marked attentions shown him by Miss Coutts which began with
the very beginning of his career, were invariably welcome.
To speak here of the pleasure his society afforded, would anticipate the
fitter mention to be made hereafter. But what in this respect
distinguishes nearly all original men, he possessed eminently. His place
was not to be filled up by any other. To the most trivial talk he gave
the attraction of his own character. It might be a small
matter,--something he had read or observed during the day, some quaint
odd fancy from a book, a vivid little out-door picture, the laughing
exposure of some imposture, or a burst of sheer mirthful enjoyment,--but
of its kind it would be something unique, because genuinely part of
himself. This, and his unwearying animal spirits, made him the most
delightful of companions; no claim on good-fellowship ever found him
wanting; and no one so constantly recalled to his friends the
description Johnson gave of Garrick, as the cheerfulest man of his age.
Of what occupied him in the way of literary labor in the autumn and
winter months of the year, some description has been given; and, apart
from what has already thus been said of his work at the closing chapters
of _The Old Curiosity Shop_, nothing now calls for more special
allusion, except that in his town-walks in November, impelled thereto by
specimens recently discovered in his country-walks between Broadstairs
and Ramsgate, he thoroughly explored the ballad literature of
Seven-Dials, and took to singing himself, with an effect that justified
his reputation for comic singing in his childhood, not a few of these
wonderful productions. His last successful labor of the year was the
reconciliation of two friends; and his motive, as well as the principle
that guided him, as they are described by himself, I think worth
preserving. For the first: "In the midst of this child's death, I, over
whom something of the bitterness of death has passed, not lightly
perhaps, was reminded of many old kindnesses, and was sorry in my heart
that men who really liked each other should waste life at arm's length."
For the last: "I have laid it down as a rule in my judgment of men, to
observe narrowly whether some (of whom one is disposed to think badly)
don't carry all their faults upon the surface, and others (of whom one
is disposed to think well) don't carry many more beneath it. I have long
ago made sure that our friend is in the first class; and when I know
all the foibles a man has, with little trouble in the discovery, I begin
to think he is worth liking." His latest letter of the year, dated the
day following, closed with the hope that we might, he and I, enjoy
together "fifty more Christmases, at least, in this world, and eternal
summers in another." Alas!
FOOTNOTES:
[31] See _ante_, p. 163.
[32] By way of a novelty to help off the stock, he had suggested (17th
June), "Would it not be best to print new title-pages to the copies
sheets and publish them as a new edition, with an interesting Preface? I
am talking about all this as though the treaty were concluded, but I
hope and trust that in effect it is, for negotiation and delay are worse
to me than drawn daggers." See my remark _ante_, p. 123.
[33] "Accept from me" (July 8, 1840), "as a slight memorial of your
attached companion, the poor keepsake which accompanies this. My heart
is not an eloquent one on matters which touch it most, but suppose this
claret-jug the urn in which it lies, and believe that its warmest and
truest blood is yours. This was the object of my fruitless search, and
your curiosity, on Friday. At first I scarcely knew what trifle (you
will deem it valuable, I know, for the giver's sake) to send you; but I
thought it would be pleasant to connect it with our jovial moments, and
to let it add, to the wine we shall drink from it together, a flavor
which the choicest vintage could never impart. Take it from my
hand,--filled to the brim and running over with truth and earnestness. I
have just taken one parting look at it, and it seems the most elegant
thing in the world to me, for I lose sight of the vase in the crowd of
welcome associations that are clustering and wreathing themselves about
it."
[34] Already he had been the subject of similar reports on the occasion
of the family sorrow which compelled him to suspend the publication of
_Pickwick_ for two months (_ante_, p. 120), when, upon issuing a brief
address in resuming his work (30th June, 1837), he said, "By one set of
intimate acquaintances, especially well informed, he has been killed
outright; by another, driven mad; by a third, imprisoned for debt; by a
fourth, sent per steamer to the United States; by a fifth, rendered
incapable of mental exertion for evermore; by all, in short, represented
as doing anything but seeking in a few weeks' retirement the restoration
of that cheerfulness and peace of which a sad bereavement had
temporarily deprived him."
[35] See _ante_, p. 81.
CHAPTER XIV.
BARNABY RUDGE.
1841.
Advantage in beginning _Barnaby_--Birth of
Fourth Child and Second Son--The Raven--A Loss
in the Family--Grip's Death--C. D. describes
his Illness--Family Mourners--Apotheosis by
Maclise--Grip the Second--The Inn at
Chigwell--A _Clock_ Dinner--Lord Jeffrey in
London--The _Lamplighter_--The _Pic Nic
Papers_--Character of Lord George Gordon--A
Doubtful Fancy--Interest in New
Labor--Constraints of Weekly Publication--The
Prison-Riots--A Serious Illness--Close of
_Barnaby_--Character of the Tale--Defects in
the Plot--The No-Popery Riots--Descriptive
Power displayed--Leading Persons in Story--Mr.
Dennis the Hangman.
THE letters of 1841 yield similar fruit as to his doings and sayings,
and may in like manner first be consulted for the literary work he had
in hand.
He had the advantage of beginning _Barnaby Rudge_ with a fair amount of
story in advance, which he had only to make suitable, by occasional
readjustment of chapters, to publication in weekly portions; and on this
he was engaged before the end of January. "I am at present" (22d
January, 1841) "in what Leigh Hunt would call a kind of impossible
state,--thinking what on earth Master Humphrey can think of through four
mortal pages. I added, here and there, to the last chapter of the
_Curiosity Shop_ yesterday, and it leaves me only four pages to write."
(They were filled by a paper from Humphrey introductory of the new
tale, in which will be found a striking picture of London from midnight
to the break of day.) "I also made up, and wrote the needful insertions
for, the second number of _Barnaby_,--so that I came back to the mill a
little." Hardly yet; for after four days he writes, having meanwhile
done nothing, "I have been looking (three o'clock) with an appearance of
extraordinary interest and study at _one leaf_ of the _Curiosities of
Literature_ ever since half-past ten this morning--I haven't the heart
to turn over." Then on Friday the 29th better news came. "I didn't stir
out yesterday, but sat and _thought_ all day; not writing a line; not so
much as the cross of a t or dot of an i. I imaged forth a good deal of
_Barnaby_ by keeping my mind steadily upon him; and am happy to say I
have gone to work this morning in good twig, strong hope, and cheerful
spirits. Last night I was unutterably and impossible-to-form-an-idea-of-ably
miserable. . . . By-the-by, don't engage yourself otherwise than to me
for Sunday week, because it's my birthday. I have no doubt we shall have
got over our troubles here by that time, and I purpose having a snug
dinner in the study." We had the dinner, though the troubles were not
over; but the next day another son was born to him. "Thank God," he
wrote on the 9th, "quite well. I am thinking hard, and have just written
to Browne inquiring when he will come and confer about the raven." He
had by this time resolved to make that bird, whose accomplishments had
been daily ripening and enlarging for the last twelve months to the
increasing mirth and delight of all of us, a prominent figure in
_Barnaby_; and the invitation to the artist was for a conference how
best to introduce him graphically.
The next letter mentioning _Barnaby_ was from Brighton (25th February),
whither he had flown for a week's quiet labor: "I have (it's four
o'clock) done a very fair morning's work, at which I have sat very
close, and been blessed besides with a clear view of the end of the
volume. As the contents of one number usually require a day's thought at
the very least, and often more, this puts me in great spirits. I
think--that is, I hope--the story takes a great stride at this point,
and takes it WELL. Nous verrons. Grip will be strong, and I build
greatly on the Varden household."
Upon his return he had to lament a domestic calamity, which, for its
connection with that famous personage in _Barnaby_, must be mentioned
here. The raven had for some days been ailing, and Topping had reported
of him, as Shakspeare of Hamlet, that he had lost his mirth and foregone
all customary exercises; but Dickens paid no great heed, remembering his
recovery from an illness of the previous summer when he swallowed some
white paint; so that the graver report which led him to send for the
doctor came upon him unexpectedly, and nothing but his own language can
worthily describe the result. Unable from the state of his feelings to
write two letters, he sent the narrative to Maclise, under an enormous
black seal, for transmission to me; and thus it befell that this
fortunate bird receives a double passport to fame, so great a humorist
having celebrated his farewell to the present world, and so great a
painter his welcome to another.
"You will be greatly shocked" (the letter is dated Friday evening,
March 12, 1841) "and grieved to hear that the Raven is no more. He
expired to-day at a few minutes after twelve o'clock at noon. He had
been ailing for a few days, but we anticipated no serious result,
conjecturing that a portion of the white paint he swallowed last summer
might be lingering about his vitals without having any serious effect
upon his constitution. Yesterday afternoon he was taken so much worse
that I sent an express for the medical gentleman (Mr. Herring), who
promptly attended, and administered a powerful dose of castor oil. Under
the influence of this medicine, he recovered so far as to be able at
eight o'clock P.M. to bite Topping. His night was peaceful. This morning
at daybreak he appeared better; received (agreeably to the doctor's
directions) another dose of castor oil; and partook plentifully of some
warm gruel, the flavor of which he appeared to relish. Towards eleven
o'clock he was so much worse that it was found necessary to muffle the
stable-knocker. At half-past, or thereabouts, he was heard talking to
himself about the horse and Topping's family, and to add some incoherent
expressions which are supposed to have been either a foreboding of his
approaching dissolution, or some wishes relative to the disposal of his
little property: consisting chiefly of half-pence which he had buried in
different parts of the garden. On the clock striking twelve he appeared
slightly agitated, but he soon recovered, walked twice or thrice along
the coach-house, stopped to bark, staggered, exclaimed _Halloa old
girl!_ (his favorite expression), and died.
"He behaved throughout with a decent fortitude, equanimity, and
self-possession, which cannot be too much admired. I deeply regret that
being in ignorance of his danger I did not attend to receive his last
instructions. Something remarkable about his eyes occasioned Topping to
run for the doctor at twelve. When they returned together our friend was
gone. It was the medical gentleman who informed me of his decease. He
did it with great caution and delicacy, preparing me by the remark that
'a jolly queer start had taken place;' but the shock was very great
notwithstanding. I am not wholly free from suspicions of poison. A
malicious butcher has been heard to say that he would 'do' for him: his
plea was that he would not be molested in taking orders down the mews,
by any bird that wore a tail. Other persons have also been heard to
threaten: among others, Charles Knight, who has just started a weekly
publication price fourpence: _Barnaby_ being, as you know, threepence. I
have directed a post-mortem examination, and the body has been removed
to Mr. Herring's school of anatomy for that purpose.
"I could wish, if you can take the trouble, that you could inclose this
to Forster immediately after you have read it. I cannot discharge the
painful task of communication more than once. Were they ravens who took
manna to somebody in the wilderness? At times I hope they were, and at
others I fear they were not, or they would certainly have stolen it by
the way. In profound sorrow, I am ever your bereaved friend C. D. Kate
is as well as can be expected, but terribly low, as you may suppose. The
children seem rather glad of it. He bit their ankles. But that was
play."
[Illustration: [Sideways text: apotheosis] My dear Forster
Dickens desires me transmit to you the enclosed announcement of the
Raven's decease - which took place in Devonshire Terrace
March 1841
HIC DM]
Maclise's covering letter was an apotheosis, to be rendered only in
fac-simile.
In what way the loss was replaced, so that _Barnaby_ should have the
fruit of continued study of the habits of the family of birds which Grip
had so nobly represented, Dickens has told in the preface to the story;
and another, older, and larger Grip, obtained through Mr. Smithson, was
installed in the stable, almost before the stuffed remains of his
honored predecessor had been sent home in a glass case, by way of
ornament to his master's study.
I resume our correspondence on what he was writing: "I see there is yet
room for a few lines" (25th March), "and you are quite right in wishing
what I cut out to be restored. I did not want Joe to be so short about
Dolly, and really wrote his references to that young lady carefully,--as
natural things with a meaning in them. Chigwell, my dear fellow, is the
greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a delicious
old inn opposite the churchyard,--such a lovely ride,--such beautiful
forest scenery,--such an out-of-the-way, rural place,--such a sexton! I
say again, name your day." The day was named at once; and the whitest of
stones marks it, in now sorrowful memory. His promise was exceeded by
our enjoyment; and his delight in the double recognition, of himself and
of _Barnaby_, by the landlord of the nice old inn, far exceeded any
pride he would have taken in what the world thinks the highest sort of
honor.
"I have shut myself up" (26th March) "by myself to-day, and mean to try
and 'go it' at the _Clock_; Kate being out, and the house peacefully
dismal. I don't remember altering the exact part you object to, but if
there be anything here you object to, knock it out ruthlessly." "Don't
fail" (April the 5th) "to erase anything that seems to you too strong.
It is difficult for me to judge what tells too much, and what does not.
I am trying a very quiet number to set against this necessary one. I
hope it will be good, but I am in very sad condition for work. Glad you
think this powerful. What I have put in is more relief, from the raven."
Two days later: "I have done that number, and am now going to work on
another. I am bent (please Heaven) on finishing the first chapter by
Friday night. I hope to look in upon you to-night, when we'll dispose of
the toasts for Saturday. Still bilious--but a good number, I hope,
notwithstanding. Jeffrey has come to town, and was here yesterday." The
toasts to be disposed of were those to be given at the dinner on the
10th to celebrate the second volume of _Master Humphrey_: when Talfourd
presided, when there was much jollity, and, according to the memorandum
drawn up that Saturday night now lying before me, we all in the greatest
good humor glorified each other: Talfourd proposing the _Clock_,
Macready Mrs. Dickens, Dickens the publishers, and myself the artists;
Macready giving Talfourd, Talfourd Macready, Dickens myself, and myself
the comedian Mr. Harley, whose humorous songs had been the not least
considerable element in the mirth of the evening.
Five days later he writes, "I finished the number yesterday, and,
although I dined with Jeffrey, and was obliged to go to Lord Denman's
afterwards (which made me late), have done eight slips of the
_Lamplighter_ for Mrs. Macrone, this morning. When I have got that off
my mind, I shall try to go on steadily, fetching up the _Clock_
lee-way." The _Lamplighter_ was his old farce,[36] which he now turned
into a comic tale; and this, with other contributions given him by
friends and edited by him as _Pic Nic Papers_, enabled him to help the
widow of his old publisher in her straitened means by a gift of £300. He
had finished his work of charity before he next wrote of _Barnaby
Rudge_, but he was fetching up his lee-way lazily. "I am getting on"
(29th of April) "very slowly. I want to stick to the story; and the fear
of committing myself, because of the impossibility of trying back or
altering a syllable, makes it much harder than it looks. It was too bad
of me to give you the trouble of cutting the number, but I knew so well
you would do it in the right places. For what Harley would call the
'onward work' I really think I have some famous thoughts." There is an
interval of a month before the next allusion: "Solomon's expression" (3d
of June) "I meant to be one of those strong ones to which strong
circumstances give birth in the commonest minds. Deal with it as you
like. . . . Say what you please of Gordon" (I had objected to some points
in his view of this madman, stated much too favorably as I thought), "he
must have been at heart a kind man, and a lover of the despised and
rejected, after his own fashion. He lived upon a small income, and
always within it; was known to relieve the necessities of many people;
exposed in his place the corrupt attempt of a minister to buy him out
of Parliament; and did great charities in Newgate. He always spoke on
the people's side, and tried against his muddled brains to expose the
profligacy of both parties. He never got anything by his madness, and
never sought it. The wildest and most raging attacks of the time allow
him these merits: and not to let him have 'em in their full extent,
remembering in what a (politically) wicked time he lived, would lie upon
my conscience heavily. The libel he was imprisoned for when he died, was
on the Queen of France; and the French government interested themselves
warmly to procure his release,--which I think they might have done, but
for Lord Grenville." I was more successful in the counsel I gave against
a fancy he had at this part of the story, that he would introduce as
actors in the Gordon riots three splendid fellows who should order,
lead, control, and be obeyed as natural guides of the crowd in that
delirious time, and who should turn out, when all was over, to have
broken out from Bedlam; but, though he saw the unsoundness of this, he
could not so readily see, in Gordon's case, the danger of taxing
ingenuity to ascribe a reasonable motive to acts of sheer insanity. The
feeblest parts of the book are those in which Lord George and his
secretary appear.
He left for Scotland after the middle of June, but he took work with
him. "You may suppose," he wrote from Edinburgh on the 30th, "I have not
done much work; but by Friday night's post from here I hope to send the
first long chapter of a number and both the illustrations; from Loch
Earn on Tuesday night, the closing chapter of that number; from the same
place on Thursday night, the first long chapter of another, with both
the illustrations; and, from some place which no man ever spelt but
which sounds like Ballyhoolish, on Saturday, the closing chapter of that
number, which will leave us all safe till I return to town." Nine days
later he wrote from "Ballechelish," "I have done all I can or need do in
the way of _Barnaby_ until I come home, and the story is progressing (I
hope you will think) to good strong interest. I have left it, I think,
at an exciting point, with a good dawning of the riots. In the first of
the two numbers I have written since I have been away, I forget whether
the blind man, in speaking to Barnaby about riches, tells him they are
to be found in _crowds_. If I have not actually used that word, will you
introduce it? A perusal of the proof of the following number (70) will
show you how, and why." "Have you," he wrote shortly after his return
(29th July), "seen No. 71? I thought there was a good glimpse of a
crowd, from a window--eh?" He had now taken thoroughly to the interest
of his closing chapters, and felt more than ever the constraints of his
form of publication. "I am warming up very much" (on the 5th August from
Broadstairs) "about _Barnaby_. Oh! if I only had him, from this time to
the end, in monthly numbers. _N'importe!_ I hope the interest will be
pretty strong,--and, in every number, stronger." Six days later, from
the same place: "I was always sure I could make a good thing of
_Barnaby_, and I think you'll find that it comes out strong to the last
word. I have another number ready, all but two slips. Don't fear for
young Chester. The time hasn't come----there we go again, you see, with
the weekly delays. I am in great heart and spirits with the story, and
with the prospect of having time to think before I go on again." A
month's interval followed, and what occupied it will be described
shortly. On the 11th September he wrote, "I have just burnt into
Newgate, and am going in the next number to tear the prisoners out by
the hair of their heads. The number which gets into the jail you'll have
in proof by Tuesday." This was followed up a week later: "I have let all
the prisoners out of Newgate, burnt down Lord Mansfield's, and played
the very devil. Another number will finish the fires, and help us on
towards the end. I feel quite smoky when I am at work. I want elbow-room
terribly." To this trouble, graver supervened at his return, a serious
personal sickness not the least; but he bore up gallantly, and I had
never better occasion than now to observe his quiet endurance of pain,
how little he thought of himself where the sense of self is commonly
supreme, and the manful duty with which everything was done that, ailing
as he was, he felt it necessary to do. He was still in his sick-room
(22d October) when he wrote, "I hope I sha'n't leave off any more, now,
until I have finished _Barnaby_." Three days after that, he was busying
himself eagerly for others; and on the 2d of November the printers
received the close of _Barnaby Rudge_.
This tale was Dickens's first attempt out of the sphere of the life of
the day and its actual manners. Begun during the progress of _Oliver
Twist_, it had been for some time laid aside; the form it ultimately
took had been comprised only partially within its first design; and the
story in its finished shape presented strongly a special purpose, the
characteristic of all but his very earliest writings. Its scene is laid
at the time when the incessant execution of men and women, comparatively
innocent, disgraced every part of the country; demoralizing thousands,
whom it also prepared for the scaffold. In those days the theft of a few
rags from a bleaching-ground, or the abstraction of a roll of ribbons
from a counter, was visited with the penalty of blood; and such laws
brutalized both their ministers and victims. It was the time, too, when
a false religious outcry brought with it appalling guilt and misery.
These are vices that leave more behind them than the first forms
assumed, and they involve a lesson sufficiently required to justify a
writer in dealing with them. There were also others grafted on them. In
Barnaby himself it was desired to show what sources of comfort there
might be, for the patient and cheerful heart, in even the worst of all
human afflictions; and in the hunted life of his outcast father, whose
crime had entailed not that affliction only but other more fearful
wretchedness, we have as powerful a picture as any in his writings of
the inevitable and unfathomable consequences of sin. But, as the story
went on, it was incident to these designs that what had been
accomplished in its predecessor could hardly be attained here, in
singleness of purpose, unity of idea, or harmony of treatment; and other
defects supervened in the management of the plot. The interest with
which the tale begins has ceased to be its interest before the close;
and what has chiefly taken the reader's fancy at the outset almost
wholly disappears in the power and passion with which, in the later
chapters, the great riots are described. So admirable is this
description, however, that it would be hard to have to surrender it
even for a more perfect structure of fable.
There are few things more masterly in any of his books. From the first
low mutterings of the storm to its last terrible explosion, this frantic
outbreak of popular ignorance and rage is depicted with unabated power.
The aimlessness of idle mischief by which the ranks of the rioters are
swelled at the beginning; the recklessness induced by the monstrous
impunity allowed to the early excesses; the sudden spread of this
drunken guilt into every haunt of poverty, ignorance, or mischief in the
wicked old city, where the rich materials of crime lie festering; the
wild action of its poison on all, without scheme or plan of any kind,
who come within its reach; the horrors that are more bewildering for
this complete absence of purpose in them; and, when all is done, the
misery found to have been self-inflicted in every cranny and corner of
London, as if a plague had swept over the streets: these are features in
the picture of an actual occurrence, to which the manner of the
treatment gives extraordinary force and meaning. Nor, in the sequel, is
there anything displayed with more profitable vividness than the law's
indiscriminate cruelty at last, in contrast with its cowardly
indifference at first; while, among the casual touches lighting up the
scene with flashes of reality that illumine every part of it, may be
instanced the discovery, in the quarter from which screams for succor
are loudest when Newgate is supposed to be accidentally on fire, of four
men who were certain in any case to have perished on the drop next day.
The story, which has unusually careful writing in it, and much manly
upright thinking, has not so many people eagerly adopted as of kin by
everybody, as its predecessors are famous for; but it has yet a fair
proportion of such as take solid form within the mind and keep hold of
the memory. To these belong in an especial degree Gabriel Varden and his
household, on whom are lavished all the writer's fondness and not a
little of his keenest humor. The honest locksmith with his jovial jug,
and the tink-tink-tink of his pleasant nature making cheerful music out
of steel and iron; the buxom wife, with her plaguy tongue that makes
every one wretched whom her kindly disposition would desire to make
happy; the good-hearted plump little Dolly, coquettish minx of a
daughter, with all she suffers and inflicts by her fickle winning ways
and her small self-admiring vanities; and Miggs the vicious and
slippery, acid, amatory, and of uncomfortable figure, sower of family
discontents and discords, who swears all the while she wouldn't make or
meddle with 'em "not for a annual gold-mine and found in tea and sugar:"
there is not much social painting anywhere with a better domestic moral
than in all these; and a nice propriety of feeling and thought regulates
the use of such satire throughout. No one knows more exactly how far to
go with that formidable weapon, or understands better that what
satirizes everything, in effect satirizes nothing.
Another excellent group is that which the story opens with, in the
quaint old kitchen of the Maypole; John Willett and his friends,
genuinely comic creations all of them. Then we have Barnaby and his
raven: the light-hearted idiot, as unconscious of guilt as of
suffering, and happy with no sense but of the influences of nature; and
the grave sly bird, with sufficient sense to make himself as unhappy as
rascally habits will make the human animal. There is poor brutish Hugh,
too, loitering lazily outside the Maypole door, with a storm of passions
in him raging to be let loose; already the scaffold's withered fruit, as
he is doomed to be its ripe offering; and though with all the worst
instincts of the savage, yet not without also some of the best. Still
farther out of kindly nature's pitying reach lurks the worst villain of
the scene: with this sole claim to consideration, that it was by
constant contact with the filthiest instrument of law and state he had
become the mass of moral filth he is. Mr. Dennis the hangman is a
portrait that Hogarth would have painted with the same wholesome
severity of satire which is employed upon it in _Barnaby Rudge_.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] See _ante_, pp. 125 and 183.
CHAPTER XV.
PUBLIC DINNER IN EDINBURGH.
1841.
His Son Walter Landor--Dies in Calcutta
(1863)--C. D. and the New Poor-Law--Moore and
Rogers--Jeffrey's Praise of Little
Nell--Resolve to visit Scotland--Edinburgh
Dinner proposed--Sir David Wilkie's
Death--Peter Robertson--Professor Wilson--A
Fancy of Scott--Lionization made
tolerable--Thoughts of Home--The Dinner and
Speeches--His Reception--Wilson's Eulogy--Home
Yearnings--Freedom of City voted to
him--Speakers at the Dinner--Politics and Party
Influences--Whig Jealousies--At the
Theatre--Hospitalities--Moral of it
all--Proposed Visit to the Highlands--Maclise
and Macready--Guide to the Highlands--Mr. Angus
Fletcher (Kindheart).
AMONG the occurrences of the year, apart from the tale he was writing,
the birth of his fourth child and second son has been briefly mentioned.
"I mean to call the boy Edgar," he wrote, the day after he was born (9th
February), "a good honest Saxon name, I think." He changed his mind in a
few days, however, on resolving to ask Landor to be godfather. This
intention, as soon as formed, he announced to our excellent old friend,
telling him it would give the child something to boast of, to be called
Walter Landor, and that to call him so would do his own heart good. For,
as to himself, whatever realities had gone out of the ceremony of
christening, the meaning still remained in it of enabling him to form a
relationship with friends he most loved; and as to the boy, he held that
to give him a name to be proud of was to give him also another reason
for doing nothing unworthy or untrue when he came to be a man. Walter,
alas! only lived to manhood. He obtained a military cadetship through
the kindness of Miss Coutts, and died at Calcutta on the last day of
1863, in his twenty-third year.
The interest taken by this distinguished lady in him and in his had
begun, as I have said, at an earlier date than even this; and I
remember, while _Oliver Twist_ was going on, his pleasure because of her
father's mention of him in a speech at Birmingham, for his advocacy of
the cause of the poor. Whether to the new poor-law Sir Francis Burdett
objected as strongly as we have seen that Dickens did, as well as many
other excellent men, who forgot the atrocities of the system it
displaced in their indignation at the needless and cruel harshness with
which it was worked at the outset, I have not at hand the means of
knowing. But certainly this continued to be strongly the feeling of
Dickens, who exulted in nothing so much as at any misadventure to the
Whigs in connection with it. "How often used Black and I," he wrote to
me in April, "to quarrel about the effect of the poor-law bill! Walter
comes in upon the cry. See whether the Whigs go out upon it." It was the
strong desire he had to make himself heard upon it, even in Parliament,
that led him not immediately to turn aside from a proposal, now
privately made by some of the magnates of Reading, to bring him in for
that borough; but the notion was soon dismissed, as, on its revival
more than once in later times, it continued very wisely to be. His
opinions otherwise were extremely radical at present, as will be
apparent shortly; and he did not at all relish Peel's majority of one
when it came soon after, and unseated the Whigs. It was just now, I may
add, he greatly enjoyed a quiet setting-down of Moore by Rogers at Sir
Francis Burdett's table, for talking exaggerated toryism. So debased was
the House of Commons by reform, said Moore, that a Burke, if you could
find him, would not be listened to. "No such thing, Tommy," said Rogers;
"_find yourself_, and they'd listen even to you."
This was not many days before he hinted to me an intention soon to be
carried out in a rather memorable manner: "I have done nothing to-day"
(18th March: we had bought books together, the day before, at Tom Hill's
sale) "but cut the _Swift_, looking into it with a delicious laziness in
all manner of delightful places, and put poor Tom's books away. I had a
letter from Edinburgh this morning, announcing that Jeffrey's visit to
London will be the week after next; telling me that he drives about
Edinburgh declaring there has been 'nothing so good as Nell since
Cordelia,' which he writes also to all manner of people; and informing
me of a desire in that romantic town to give me greeting and welcome.
For this and other reasons I am disposed to make Scotland my destination
in June rather than Ireland. Think, _do_ think, meantime (here are ten
good weeks), whether you couldn't, by some effort worthy of the owner of
the gigantic helmet, go with us. Think of such a fortnight,--York,
Carlisle, Berwick, your own Borders, Edinburgh, Rob Roy's country,
railroads, cathedrals, country inns, Arthur's Seat, lochs, glens, and
home by sea. DO think of this, seriously, at leisure." It was very
tempting, but not to be.
Early in April Jeffrey came, many feasts and entertainments welcoming
him, of which he very sparingly partook; and before he left, the visit
to Scotland in June was all duly arranged, to be initiated by the
splendid welcome of a public dinner in Edinburgh, with Lord Jeffrey
himself in the chair. Allan the painter had come up meanwhile, with
increasing note of preparation; and it was while we were all regretting
Wilkie's absence abroad, and Dickens with warrantable pride was saying
how surely the great painter would have gone to this dinner, that the
shock of his sudden death[37] came, and there was left but the sorrowful
satisfaction of honoring his memory. There was one other change before
the day. "I heard from Edinburgh this morning," he wrote on the 15th of
June. "Jeffrey is not well enough to take the chair, so Wilson does. I
think under all circumstances of politics, acquaintance, and _Edinburgh
Review_, that it's much better as it is--Don't you?"
His first letter from Edinburgh, where he and Mrs. Dickens had taken up
quarters at the Royal Hotel on their arrival the previous night, is
dated the 23d of June: "I have been this morning to the Parliament
House, and am now introduced (I hope) to everybody in Edinburgh. The
hotel is perfectly besieged, and I have been forced to take refuge in a
sequestered apartment at the end of a long passage, wherein I write this
letter. They talk of 300 at the dinner. We are very well off in point of
rooms, having a handsome sitting-room, another next to it for _Clock_
purposes, a spacious bedroom, and large dressing-room adjoining. The
castle is in front of the windows, and the view noble. There was a
supper ready last night which would have been a dinner anywhere." This
was his first practical experience of the honors his fame had won for
him, and it found him as eager to receive as all were eager to give.
Very interesting still, too, are those who took leading part in the
celebration; and in his pleasant sketches of them there are some once
famous and familiar figures not so well known to the present generation.
Here, among the first, are Wilson and Robertson.
"The renowned Peter Robertson is a large, portly, full-faced man, with a
merry eye, and a queer way of looking under his spectacles which is
characteristic and pleasant. He seems a very warm-hearted earnest man
too, and I felt quite at home with him forthwith. Walking up and down
the hall of the courts of law (which was full of advocates, writers to
the signet, clerks, and idlers) was a tall, burly, handsome man of
eight-and-fifty, with a gait like O'Connell's, the bluest eye you can
imagine, and long hair--longer than mine--falling down in a wild way
under the broad brim of his hat. He had on a surtout coat, a blue
checked shirt; the collar standing up, and kept in its place with a wisp
of black neckerchief; no waistcoat; and a large pocket-handkerchief
thrust into his breast, which was all broad and open. At his heels
followed a wiry, sharp-eyed, shaggy devil of a terrier, dogging his
steps as he went slashing up and down, now with one man beside him, now
with another, and now quite alone, but always at a fast, rolling pace,
with his head in the air, and his eyes as wide open as he could get
them. I guessed it was Wilson, and it was. A bright, clear-complexioned,
mountain-looking fellow, he looks as though he had just come down from
the Highlands, and had never in his life taken pen in hand. But he has
had an attack of paralysis in his right arm, within this month. He
winced when I shook hands with him; and once or twice, when we were
walking up and down, slipped as if he had stumbled on a piece of
orange-peel. He is a great fellow to look at, and to talk to; and, if
you could divest your mind of the actual Scott, is just the figure you
would put in his place."
Nor have the most ordinary incidents of the visit any lack of interest
for us now, in so far as they help to complete the picture of himself:
"Allan has been squiring me about, all the morning. He and Fletcher have
gone to a meeting of the dinner-stewards, and I take the opportunity of
writing to you. They dine with us to-day, and we are going to-night to
the theatre. M'Ian is playing there. I mean to leave a card for him
before evening. We are engaged for every day of our stay, already; but
the people I have seen are so very hearty and warm in their manner that
much of the horrors of lionization gives way before it. I am glad to
find that they propose giving me for a toast on Friday the Memory of
Wilkie. I should have liked it better than anything, if I could have
made my choice. Communicate all particulars to Mac. I would to God you
were both here. Do dine together at the Gray's Inn on Friday, and think
of me. If I don't drink my first glass of wine to you, may my pistols
miss fire, and my mare slip her shoulder. All sorts of regard from Kate.
She has gone with Miss Allan to see the house she was born in, etc.
Write me soon, and long, etc."
His next letter was written the morning after the dinner, on Saturday,
the 26th June: "The great event is over; and, being gone, I am a man
again. It was the most brilliant affair you can conceive; the completest
success possible, from first to last. The room was crammed, and more
than seventy applicants for tickets were of necessity refused yesterday.
Wilson was ill, but plucked up like a lion, and spoke famously.[38] I
send you a paper herewith, but the report is dismal in the extreme. They
say there will be a better one--I don't know where or when. Should there
be, I will send it to you. I _think_ (ahem!) that I spoke rather well.
It was an excellent room, and both the subjects (Wilson and Scottish
Literature, and the Memory of Wilkie) were good to go upon. There were
nearly two hundred ladies present. The place is so contrived that the
cross table is raised enormously: much above the heads of people
sitting below: and the effect on first coming in (on me, I mean) was
rather tremendous. I was quite self-possessed, however, and,
notwithstanding the enthoosemoosy, which was very startling, as cool as
a cucumber. I wish to God you had been there, as it is impossible for
the 'distinguished guest' to describe the scene. It beat all natur.". . .
Here was the close of his letter: "I have been expecting every day to
hear from you, and not hearing mean to make this the briefest epistle
possible. We start next Sunday (that's to-morrow week). We are going out
to Jeffrey's to-day (he is very unwell), and return here to-morrow
evening. If I don't find a letter from you when I come back, expect no
Lights and Shadows of Scottish Life from your indignant correspondent.
Murray the manager made very excellent, tasteful, and gentlemanly
mention of Macready, about whom Wilson had been asking me divers
questions during dinner." "A hundred thanks for your letter," he writes
four days later. "I read it this morning with the greatest pleasure and
delight, and answer it with ditto, ditto. Where shall I begin--about my
darlings? I am delighted with Charley's precocity. He takes arter his
father, he does. God bless them, you can't imagine (_you!_ how can you?)
how much I long to see them. It makes me quite sorrowful to think of
them. . . . Yesterday, sir, the lord provost, council, and magistrates
voted me by acclamation the freedom of the city, in testimony (I quote
the letter just received from 'James Forrest, lord provost') 'of the
sense entertained by them of your distinguished abilities as an author.'
I acknowledged this morning in appropriate terms the honor they had
done me, and through me the pursuit to which I was devoted. It _is_
handsome, is it not?"
The parchment scroll of the city-freedom, recording the grounds on which
it was voted, hung framed in his study to the last, and was one of his
valued possessions. Answering some question of mine, he told me further
as to the speakers, and gave some amusing glimpses of the party-spirit
which still at that time ran high in the capital of the north.
"The men who spoke at the dinner were all the most rising men here, and
chiefly at the Bar. They were all, alternately, Whigs and Tories; with
some few Radicals, such as Gordon, who gave the memory of Burns. He is
Wilson's son-in-law and the lord-advocate's nephew--a very masterly
speaker indeed, who ought to become a distinguished man. Neaves, who
gave the other poets, a _little_ too lawyer-like for my taste, is a
great gun in the courts. Mr. Primrose is Lord Rosebery's son. Adam
Black, the publisher as you know. Dr. Alison, a very popular friend of
the poor. Robertson you know. Allan you know. Colquhoun is an advocate.
All these men were selected for the toasts as being crack speakers,
known men, and opposed to each other very strongly in politics. For this
reason, the professors and so forth who sat upon the platform about me
made no speeches and had none assigned them. I felt it was very
remarkable to see such a number of gray-headed men gathered about my
brown flowing locks; and it struck most of those who were present very
forcibly. The judges, solicitor-general, lord-advocate, and so forth,
were all here to call, the day after our arrival. The judges never go
to public dinners in Scotland. Lord Meadowbank alone broke through the
custom, and none of his successors have imitated him. It will give you a
good notion of _party_ to hear that the solicitor-general and
lord-advocate refused to go, though they had previously engaged,
_unless_ the croupier or the chairman were a Whig. Both (Wilson and
Robertson) were Tories, simply because, Jeffrey excepted, no Whig could
be found who was adapted to the office. The solicitor laid strict
injunctions on Napier not to go if a Whig were not in office. No Whig
was, and he stayed away. I think this is good?--bearing in mind that all
the old Whigs of Edinburgh were cracking their throats in the room. They
gave out that they were ill, and the lord-advocate did actually lie in
bed all the afternoon; but this is the real truth, and one of the judges
told it me with great glee. It seems they couldn't quite trust Wilson or
Robertson, as they thought; and feared some Tory demonstration. Nothing
of the kind took place; and ever since, these men have been the loudest
in their praises of the whole affair."
The close of his letter tells us all his engagements, and completes his
graceful picture of the hearty Scottish welcome given him. It has also
some personal touches that may be thought worth preserving. "A threat
reached me last night (they have been hammering at it in their papers,
it seems, for some time) of a dinner at Glasgow. But I hope, having
circulated false rumors of my movements, to get away before they send to
me; and only to stop there on my way home, to change horses and send to
the post-office. . . . You will like to know how we have been living.
Here's a list of engagements, past and present. Wednesday, we dined at
home, and went incog. to the theatre at night, to Murray's box; the
pieces admirably done, and M'Ian in the _Two Drovers_ quite wonderful
and most affecting. Thursday, to Lord Murray's; dinner and evening
party. Friday, _the_ dinner. Saturday, to Jeffrey's, a beautiful place
about three miles off" (Craigcrook, which at Lord Jeffrey's invitation I
afterwards visited with him), "stop there all night, dine on Sunday, and
home at eleven. Monday, dine at Dr. Alison's, four miles off. Tuesday,
dinner and evening party at Allan's. Wednesday, breakfast with Napier,
dine with Blackwood's seven miles off, evening party at the treasurer's
of the town-council, supper with all the artists (!!). Thursday, lunch
at the solicitor-general's, dine at Lord Gillies's, evening party at
Joseph Gordon's, one of Brougham's earliest supporters. Friday, dinner
and evening party at Robertson's. Saturday, dine again at Jeffrey's;
back to the theatre, at half-past nine to the moment, for public
appearance;[39] places all let, etc. etc. etc. Sunday, off at seven
o'clock in the morning to Stirling, and then to Callender, a stage
further. Next day, to Loch Earn, and pull up there for three days, to
rest and work. The moral of all this is, that there is no place like
home; and that I thank God most heartily for having given me a quiet
spirit, and a heart that won't hold many people. I sigh for Devonshire
Terrace and Broadstairs, for battledoor and shuttlecock; I want to dine
in a blouse with you and Mac; and I feel Topping's merits more acutely
than I have ever done in my life. On Sunday evening, the 17th of July, I
shall revisit my household gods, please Heaven. I wish the day were
here. For God's sake be in waiting. I wish you and Mac would dine in
Devonshire Terrace that day with Fred. He has the key of the cellar.
_Do._ We shall be at Inverary in the Highlands on Tuesday week, getting
to it through the Pass of Glencoe, of which you may have heard! On
Thursday following we shall be at Glasgow, where I shall hope to receive
your last letter before we meet. At Inverary, too, I shall make sure of
finding at least one, at the post-office. . . . Little Allan is trying hard
for the post of queen's limner for Scotland, vacant by poor Wilkie's
death. Every one is in his favor but ----, who is jobbing for some one
else. Appoint him, will you, and I'll give up the premiership.--How I
breakfasted to-day in the house where Scott lived seven-and-twenty
years; how I have made solemn pledges to write about missing children in
the _Edinburgh Review_, and will do my best to keep them; how I have
declined to be brought in, free gratis for nothing and qualified to
boot, for a Scotch county that's going a-begging, lest I should be
thought to have dined on Friday under false pretenses; these, with other
marvels, shall be yours anon. . . . I must leave off sharp, to get dressed
and off upon the seven miles' dinner-trip. Kate's affectionate regards.
My hearty loves to Mac and Grim." Grim was another great artist having
the same beginning to his name, whose tragic studies had suggested an
epithet quite inapplicable to any of his personal qualities.
The narrative of the trip to the Highlands must have a chapter to itself
and its incidents of adventure and comedy. The latter chiefly were due
to the guide who accompanied him, a quasi-Highlander himself, named a
few pages back as Mr. Kindheart, whose real name was Mr. Angus Fletcher,
and to whom it hardly needs that I should give other mention than will
be supplied by such future notices of him as my friend's letters may
contain. He had a wayward kind of talent, which he could never
concentrate on a settled pursuit; and though at the time we knew him
first he had taken up the profession of a sculptor, he abandoned it soon
afterwards. His mother, a woman distinguished by many remarkable
qualities, lived now in the English lake-country; and it was no fault of
hers that this home was no longer her son's. But what mainly had closed
it to him was undoubtedly not less the secret of such liking for him as
Dickens had. Fletcher's eccentricities and absurdities, often divided by
the thinnest partition from the most foolish extravagance, but
occasionally clever, and always the genuine though whimsical outgrowth
of the life he led, had a curious sort of charm for Dickens. He enjoyed
the oddity and humor; tolerated all the rest; and to none more freely
than to Kindheart during the next few years, both in Italy and in
England, opened his house and hospitality. The close of the poor
fellow's life, alas! was in only too sad agreement with all the previous
course of it; but this will have mention hereafter. He is waiting now to
introduce Dickens to the Highlands.
FOOTNOTES:
[37] Dickens refused to believe it at first. "My heart assures me Wilkie
liveth," he wrote. "He is the sort of man who will be VERY old when he
dies"--and certainly one would have said so.
[38] The speeches generally were good, but the descriptions in the text
by himself will here be thought sufficient. One or two sentences ought,
however, to be given to show the tone of Wilson's praise, and I will
only preface them by the remark that Dickens's acknowledgments, as well
as his tribute to Wilkie, were expressed with great felicity, and that
Peter Robertson seems to have thrown the company into convulsions of
laughter by his imitation of Dominie Sampson's PRO-DI-GI-OUS, in a
supposed interview between that worthy schoolmaster and Mr. Squeers of
Dotheboys. I now quote from Professor Wilson's speech:
"Our friend has mingled in the common walks of life; he has made himself
familiar with the lower orders of society. He has not been deterred by
the aspect of vice and wickedness, and misery and guilt, from seeking a
spirit of good in things evil, but has endeavored by the might of genius
to transmute what was base into what is precious as the beaten gold. . . .
But I shall be betrayed, if I go on much longer,--which it would be
improper for me to do,--into something like a critical delineation of
the genius of our illustrious guest. I shall not attempt that; but I
cannot but express, in a few ineffectual words, the delight which every
human bosom feels in the benign spirit which pervades all his creations.
How kind and good a man he is, I need not say; nor what strength of
genius he has acquired by that profound sympathy with his
fellow-creatures, whether in prosperity and happiness, or overwhelmed
with unfortunate circumstances, but who yet do not sink under their
miseries, but trust to their own strength of endurance, to that
principle of truth and honor and integrity which is no stranger to the
uncultivated bosom, and which is found in the lowest abodes in as great
strength as in the halls of nobles and the palaces of kings. Mr. Dickens
is also a satirist. He satirizes human life, but he does not satirize it
to degrade it. He does not wish to pull down what is high into the
neighborhood of what is low. He does not seek to represent all virtue as
a hollow thing, in which no confidence can be placed. He satirizes only
the selfish, and the hard-hearted, and the cruel. Our distinguished
guest may not have given us, as yet, a full and complete delineation of
the female character. But this he has done: he has not endeavored to
represent women as charming merely by the aid of accomplishments,
however elegant and graceful. He has not depicted those accomplishments
as their essentials, but has spoken of them rather as always inspired by
a love of domesticity, by fidelity, by purity, by innocence, by charity,
and by hope, which makes them discharge, under the most difficult
circumstances, their duties, and which brings over their path in this
world some glimpses of the light of heaven. Mr. Dickens may be assured
that there is felt for him all over Scotland a sentiment of kindness,
affection, admiration, and love; and I know for certain that the
knowledge of these sentiments must make him happy."
[39] On this occasion, as he told me afterwards, the orchestra did a
double stroke of business, much to the amazement of himself and his
friends, by improvising at his entrance _Charley is my Darling_, amid
tumultuous shouts of delight.
CHAPTER XVI.
ADVENTURES IN THE HIGHLANDS.
1841.
A Fright--Fletcher's Eccentricities--The
Trossachs--The Travelers' Guide--A Comical
Picture--Highland Accommodation--Grand
Scenery--Changes in Route--A
Waterfall--Entrance to Glencoe--The Pass of
Glencoe--Loch Leven--A July Evening--Postal
Service at Loch Earn Head--The Maid of the
Inn--Impressions of Glencoe--An
Adventure--Torrents swollen with
Rain--Dangerous Traveling--Incidents and
Accidents--Broken-down Bridge--A Fortunate
Resolve--Post-boy in Danger--The Rescue--Narrow
Escape--A Highland Inn and Inmates--English
Comfort at Dalmally--Dinner at Glasgow
proposed--Eagerness for Home.
FROM Loch Earn Head Dickens wrote on Monday, the 5th of July, having
reached it, "wet through," at four that afternoon: "Having had a great
deal to do in a crowded house on Saturday night at the theatre, we left
Edinburgh yesterday morning at half-past seven, and traveled, with
Fletcher for our guide, to a place called Stewart's Hotel, nine miles
further than Callender. We had neglected to order rooms, and were
obliged to make a sitting-room of our own bed-chamber; in which my
genius for stowing furniture away was of the very greatest service.
Fletcher slept in a kennel with three panes of glass in it, which formed
part and parcel of a window; the other three panes whereof belonged to a
man who slept on the other side of the partition. He told me this
morning that he had had a nightmare all night, and had screamed
horribly, he knew. The stranger, as you may suppose, hired a gig and
went off at full gallop with the first glimpse of daylight.[40] Being
very tired (for we had not had more than three hours' sleep on the
previous night) we lay till ten this morning, and at half-past eleven
went through the Trossachs to Loch Katrine, where I walked from the
hotel after tea last night. It is impossible to say what a glorious
scene it was. It rained as it never does rain anywhere but here. We
conveyed Kate up a rocky pass to go and see the island of the Lady of
the Lake, but she gave in after the first five minutes, and we left
her, very picturesque and uncomfortable, with Tom" (the servant they had
brought with them from Devonshire Terrace) "holding an umbrella over her
head, while we climbed on. When we came back, she had gone into the
carriage. We were wet through to the skin, and came on in that state
four-and-twenty miles. Fletcher is very good-natured, and of
extraordinary use in these outlandish parts. His habit of going into
kitchens and bars, disconcerting at Broadstairs, is here of great
service. Not expecting us till six, they hadn't lighted our fires when
we arrived here; and if you had seen him (with whom the responsibility
of the omission rested) running in and out of the sitting-room and the
two bedrooms with a great pair of bellows, with which he distractedly
blew each of the fires out in turn, you would have died of laughing. He
had on his head a great Highland cap, on his back a white coat, and cut
such a figure as even the inimitable can't depicter. . . .
"The inns, inside and out, are the queerest places imaginable. From the
road, this one," at Loch Earn Head, "looks like a white wall, with
windows in it by mistake. We have a good sitting-room, though, on the
first floor: as large (but not as lofty) as my study. The bedrooms are
of that size which renders it impossible for you to move, after you have
taken your boots off, without chipping pieces out of your legs. There
isn't a basin in the Highlands which will hold my face; not a drawer
which will open, after you have put your clothes in it; not a
water-bottle capacious enough to wet your toothbrush. The huts are
wretched and miserable beyond all description. The food (for those who
can pay for it) 'not bad,' as M. would say: oat-cake, mutton,
hotch-potch, trout from the loch, small beer bottled, marmalade, and
whiskey. Of the last-named article I have taken about a pint to-day. The
weather is what they call 'soft'--which means that the sky is a vast
water-spout that never leaves off emptying itself; and the liquor has no
more effect than water. . . . I am going to work to-morrow, and hope before
leaving here to write you again. The elections have been sad work
indeed. That they should return Sibthorp and reject Bulwer, is, by
Heaven, a national disgrace. . . . I don't wonder the devil flew over
Lincoln. The people were far too addle-headed, even for him. . . . I don't
bore you with accounts of Ben this and that, and Lochs of all sorts of
names, but this is a wonderful region. The way the mists were stalking
about to-day, and the clouds lying down upon the hills; the deep glens,
the high rocks, the rushing waterfalls, and the roaring rivers down in
deep gulfs below; were all stupendous. This house is wedged round by
great heights that are lost in the clouds; and the loch, twelve miles
long, stretches out its dreary length before the windows. In my next I
shall soar to the sublime, perhaps; in this here present writing I
confine myself to the ridiculous. But I am always," etc. etc.
His next letter bore the date of "Ballechelish, Friday evening, ninth
July, 1841, half-past nine, P.M.," and described what we had often
longed to see together, the Pass of Glencoe. . . . "I can't go to bed
without writing to you from here, though the post will not leave this
place until we have left it and arrived at another. On looking over the
route which Lord Murray made out for me, I found he had put down
Thursday next for Abbotsford and Dryburgh Abbey, and a journey of
seventy miles besides! Therefore, and as I was happily able to steal a
march upon myself at Loch Earn Head, and to finish in two days what I
thought would take me three, we shall leave here to-morrow morning; and,
by being a day earlier than we intended at all the places between this
and Melrose (which we propose to reach by Wednesday night), we shall
have a whole day for Scott's house and tomb, and still be at York on
Saturday evening, and home, God willing, on Sunday. . . . We left Loch Earn
Head last night, and went to a place called Killin, eight miles from it,
where we slept. I walked some six miles with Fletcher after we got
there, to see a waterfall; and truly it was a magnificent sight, foaming
and crashing down three great steeps of riven rock; leaping over the
first as far off as you could carry your eye, and rumbling and foaming
down into a dizzy pool below you, with a deafening roar. To-day we have
had a journey of between 50 and 60 miles, through the bleakest and most
desolate part of Scotland, where the hill-tops are still covered with
great patches of snow, and the road winds over steep mountain-passes,
and on the brink of deep brooks and precipices. The cold all day has
been _intense_, and the rain sometimes most violent. It has been
impossible to keep warm, by any means; even whiskey failed; the wind was
too piercing even for that. One stage of ten miles, over a place called
the Black Mount, took us two hours and a half to do; and when we came to
a lone public called the King's House, at the entrance to Glencoe,--this
was about three o'clock,--we were wellnigh frozen. We got a fire
directly, and in twenty minutes they served us up some famous kippered
salmon, broiled; a broiled fowl; hot mutton ham and poached eggs;
pancakes; oat-cake; wheaten bread; butter; bottled porter; hot water,
lump sugar, and whiskey; of which we made a very hearty meal. All the
way, the road had been among moors and mountains, with huge masses of
rock, which fell down God knows where, sprinkling the ground in every
direction, and giving it the aspect of the burial-place of a race of
giants. Now and then we passed a hut or two, with neither window nor
chimney, and the smoke of the peat fire rolling out at the door. But
there were not six of these dwellings in a dozen miles; and anything so
bleak and wild, and mighty in its loneliness, as the whole country, it
is impossible to conceive. Glencoe itself is perfectly _terrible_. The
pass is an awful place. It is shut in on each side by enormous rocks
from which great torrents come rushing down in all directions. In
amongst these rocks on one side of the pass (the left as we came) there
are scores of glens, high up, which form such haunts as you might
imagine yourself wandering in, in the very height and madness of a
fever. They will live in my dreams for years--I was going to say as long
as I live, and I seriously think so. The very recollection of them makes
me shudder. . . . Well, I will not bore you with my impressions of these
tremendous wilds, but they really are fearful in their grandeur and
amazing solitude. Wales is a mere toy compared with them."
The further mention of his guide's whimsical ways may stand, for it
cannot now be the possible occasion of pain or annoyance, or of
anything but very innocent laughter:
"We are now in a bare white house on the banks of Loch Leven, but in a
comfortably-furnished room on the top of the house,--that is, on the
first floor,--with the rain pattering against the window as though it
were December, the wind howling dismally, a cold damp mist on everything
without, a blazing fire within half way up the chimney, and a most
infernal Piper practicing under the window for a competition of pipers
which is to come off shortly. . . . The store of anecdotes of Fletcher with
which we shall return will last a long time. It seems that the F.'s are
an extensive clan, and that his father was a Highlander. Accordingly,
wherever he goes, he finds out some cotter or small farmer who is his
cousin. I wish you could see him walking into his cousins' curds and
cream, and into their dairies generally! Yesterday morning, between
eight and nine, I was sitting writing at the open window, when the
postman came to the inn (which at Loch Earn Head is the post-office) for
the letters. He is going away, when Fletcher, who has been writing
somewhere below-stairs, rushes out, and cries, 'Halloa there! Is that
the Post?' 'Yes!' somebody answers. 'Call him back!' says Fletcher:
'Just sit down till I've done, _and don't go away till I tell
you_.'--Fancy! The General Post, with the letters of forty villages in a
leathern bag! . . . To-morrow at Oban. Sunday at Inverary. Monday at
Tarbet. Tuesday at Glasgow (and that night at Hamilton). Wednesday at
Melrose. Thursday at ditto. Friday I don't know where. Saturday at York.
Sunday--how glad I shall be to shake hands with you! My love to Mac. I
thought he'd have written once. Ditto to Macready. I had a very nice and
welcome letter from him, and a most hearty one from Elliotson. . . . P.S.
Half asleep. So excuse drowsiness of matter and composition. I shall be
full of joy to meet another letter from you! . . . P.P.S. They speak Gaelic
here, of course, and many of the common people understand very little
English. Since I wrote this letter, I rang the girl up-stairs, and gave
elaborate directions (you know my way) for a pint of sherry to be made
into boiling negus; mentioning all the ingredients one by one, and
particularly nutmeg. When I had quite finished, seeing her obviously
bewildered, I said, with great gravity, 'Now you know what you're going
to order?' 'Oh, yes. Sure.' 'What?'--a pause--'Just'--another
pause--'Just plenty of _nutbergs_!'"
The impression made upon him by the Pass of Glencoe was not overstated
in this letter. It continued with him as he there expressed it; and as
we shall see hereafter, even where he expected to find Nature in her
most desolate grandeur on the dreary waste of an American prairie, his
imagination went back with a higher satisfaction to Glencoe. But his
experience of it is not yet completely told. The sequel was in a letter
of two days' later date, from "Dalmally, Sunday, July the eleventh,
1841:"
"As there was no place of this name in our route, you will be surprised
to see it at the head of this present writing. But our being here is a
part of such moving accidents by flood and field as will astonish you.
If you should happen to have your hat on, take it off, that your hair
may stand on end without any interruption. To get from Ballyhoolish (as
I am obliged to spell it when Fletcher is not in the way; and he is out
at this moment) to Oban, it is necessary to cross two ferries, one of
which is an arm of the sea, eight or ten miles broad. Into this
ferry-boat, passengers, carriages, horses, and all, get bodily, and are
got across by hook or by crook if the weather be reasonably fine.
Yesterday morning, however, it blew such a strong gale that the landlord
of the inn, where we had paid for horses all the way to Oban (thirty
miles), honestly came up-stairs just as we were starting, with the money
in his hand, and told us it would be impossible to cross. There was
nothing to be done but to come back five-and-thirty miles, through
Glencoe and Inverouran, to a place called Tyndrum, whence a road twelve
miles long crosses to Dalmally, which is sixteen miles from Inverary.
Accordingly we turned back, and in a great storm of wind and rain began
to retrace the dreary road we had come the day before. . . . I was not at
all ill pleased to have to come again through that awful Glencoe. If it
had been tremendous on the previous day, yesterday it was perfectly
horrific. It had rained all night, and was raining then, as it only does
in these parts. Through the whole glen, which is ten miles long,
torrents were boiling and foaming, and sending up in every direction
spray like the smoke of great fires. They were rushing down every hill
and mountain side, and tearing like devils across the path, and down
into the depths of the rocks. Some of the hills looked as if they were
full of silver, and had cracked in a hundred places. Others as if they
were frightened, and had broken out into a deadly sweat. In others there
was no compromise or division of streams, but one great torrent came
roaring down with a deafening noise, and a rushing of water that was
quite appalling. Such a _spaet_, in short (that's the country word), has
not been known for many years, and the sights and sounds were beyond
description. The post-boy was not at all at his ease, and the horses
were very much frightened (as well they might be) by the perpetual
raging and roaring; one of them started as we came down a steep place,
and we were within that much (----) of tumbling over a precipice; just
then, too, the drag broke, and we were obliged to go on as we best
could, without it: getting out every now and then, and hanging on at the
back of the carriage to prevent its rolling down too fast, and going
Heaven knows where. Well, in this pleasant state of things we came to
King's House again, having been four hours doing the sixteen miles. The
rumble where Tom sat was by this time so full of water that he was
obliged to borrow a gimlet and bore holes in the bottom to let it run
out. The horses that were to take us on were out upon the hills,
somewhere within ten miles round; and three or four bare-legged fellows
went out to look for 'em, while we sat by the fire and tried to dry
ourselves. At last we got off again (without the drag and with a broken
spring, no smith living within ten miles), and went limping on to
Inverouran. In the first three miles we were in a ditch and out again,
and lost a horse's shoe. All this time it never once left off raining;
and was very windy, very cold, very misty, and most intensely dismal. So
we crossed the Black Mount, and came to a place we had passed the day
before, where a rapid river runs over a bed of broken rock. Now, this
river, sir, had a bridge last winter, but the bridge broke down when the
thaw came, and has never since been mended; so travelers cross upon a
little platform, made of rough deal planks stretching from rock to rock;
and carriages and horses ford the water, at a certain point. As the
platform is the reverse of steady (we had proved this the day before),
is very slippery, and affords anything but a pleasant footing, having
only a trembling little rail on one side, and on the other nothing
between it and the foaming stream, Kate decided to remain in the
carriage, and trust herself to the wheels rather than to her feet.
Fletcher and I had got out, and it was going away, when I advised her,
as I had done several times before, to come with us; for I saw that the
water was very high, the current being greatly swollen by the rain, and
that the post-boy had been eyeing it in a very disconcerted manner for
the last half-hour. This decided her to come out; and Fletcher, she,
Tom, and I, began to cross, while the carriage went about a quarter of a
mile down the bank, in search of a shallow place. The platform shook so
much that we could only come across two at a time, and then it felt as
if it were hung on springs. As to the wind and rain! . . . well, put into
one gust all the wind and rain you ever saw and heard, and you'll have
some faint notion of it! When we got safely to the opposite bank, there
came riding up a wild Highlander, in a great plaid, whom we recognized
as the landlord of the inn, and who, without taking the least notice of
us, went dashing on,--with the plaid he was wrapped in, streaming in the
wind,--screeching in Gaelic to the post-boy on the opposite bank, and
making the most frantic gestures you ever saw, in which he was joined by
some other wild man on foot, who had come across by a short cut,
knee-deep in mire and water. As we began to see what this meant, we
(that is, Fletcher and I) scrambled on after them, while the boy,
horses, and carriage were plunging in the water, which left only the
horses' heads and the boy's body visible. By the time we got up to them,
the man on horseback and the men on foot were perfectly mad with
pantomime; for as to any of their shouts being heard by the boy, the
water made such a great noise that they might as well have been dumb. It
made me quite sick to think how I should have felt if Kate had been
inside. The carriage went round and round like a great stone, the boy
was as pale as death, the horses were struggling and plashing and
snorting like sea-animals, and we were all roaring to the driver to
throw himself off and let them and the coach go to the devil, when
suddenly it came all right (having got into shallow water), and, all
tumbling and dripping and jogging from side to side, climbed up to the
dry land. I assure you we looked rather queer, as we wiped our faces and
stared at each other in a little cluster round about it. It seemed that
the man on horseback had been looking at us through a telescope as we
came to the track, and knowing that the place was very dangerous, and
seeing that we meant to bring the carriage, had come on at a great
gallop to show the driver the only place where he could cross. By the
time he came up, the man had taken the water at a wrong place, and in a
word was as nearly drowned (with carriage, horses, luggage, and all) as
ever man was. Was _this_ a good adventure?
"We all went on to the inn,--the wild man galloping on first, to get a
fire lighted,--and there we dined on eggs and bacon, oat-cake, and
whiskey; and changed and dried ourselves. The place was a mere knot of
little outhouses, and in one of these there were fifty Highlanders _all
drunk_. . . . Some were drovers, some pipers, and some workmen engaged to
build a hunting-lodge for Lord Breadalbane hard by, who had been driven
in by stress of weather. One was a paper-hanger. He had come out three
days before to paper the inn's best room, a chamber almost large enough
to keep a Newfoundland dog in, and, from the first half-hour after his
arrival to that moment, had been hopelessly and irreclaimably drunk.
They were lying about in all directions: on forms, on the ground, about
a loft overhead, round the turf-fire wrapped in plaids, on the tables,
and under them. We paid our bill, thanked our host very heartily, gave
some money to his children, and after an hour's rest came on again. At
ten o'clock at night we reached this place, and were overjoyed to find
quite an English inn, with good beds (those we have slept on, yet, have
always been of straw), and every possible comfort. We breakfasted this
morning at half-past ten, and at three go on to Inverary to dinner. I
believe the very rough part of the journey is over, and I am really glad
of it. Kate sends all kind of regards. I shall hope to find a letter
from you at Inverary when the post reaches there, to-morrow. I wrote to
Oban yesterday, desiring the post-office keeper to send any he might
have for us, over to that place. Love to Mac."
One more letter, brief, but overflowing at every word with his generous
nature, must close the delightful series written from Scotland. It was
dated from Inverary the day following his exciting adventure; promised
me another from Melrose (which has unfortunately not been kept with the
rest); and inclosed the invitation to a public dinner at Glasgow. "I
have returned for answer that I am on my way home, on pressing business
connected with my weekly publication, and can't stop. But I have offered
to come down any day in September or October, and accept the honor then.
Now, I shall come and return per mail; and, if this suits them, enter
into a solemn league and covenant to come with me. _Do._ You must. I am
sure you will. . . . Till my next, and always afterwards, God bless you. I
got your welcome letter this morning, and have read it a hundred times.
What a pleasure it is! Kate's best regards. I am dying for Sunday, and
wouldn't stop now for twenty dinners of twenty thousand each.
[Illustration: 'Always your affectionate friend
'Doz.]
"Will Lord John meet the Parliament, or resign first?" I agreed to
accompany him to Glasgow; but illness intercepted that celebration.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] Poor good Mr. Fletcher had, among his other peculiarities, a habit
of venting any particular emotion in a wildness of cry that went beyond
even the descriptive power of his friend, who referred to it frequently
in his Broadstairs letters. Here is an instance (20th Sept, 1840): "Mrs.
M. being in the next machine the other day heard him howl like a wolf
(as he does) when he first touched the cold water. I am glad to have my
former story in that respect confirmed. There is no sound on earth like
it. In the infernal regions there may be, but elsewhere there is no
compound addition of wild beasts that could produce its like for their
total. The description of the wolves in _Robinson Crusoe_ is the nearest
thing; but it's feeble--very feeble--in comparison." Of the generally
amiable side to all his eccentricities I am tempted to give an
illustration from the same letter: "An alarming report being brought to
me the other day that he was preaching, I betook myself to the spot, and
found he was reading Wordsworth to a family on the terrace, outside the
house, in the open air and public way. The whole town were out. When he
had given them a taste of Wordsworth, he sent home for Mrs. Norton's
book, and entertained them with selections from that. He concluded with
an imitation of Mrs. Hemans reading her own poetry, which he performed
with a pocket-handkerchief over his head to imitate her veil--all this
in public, before everybody."
CHAPTER XVII.
AGAIN AT BROADSTAIRS.
1841.
Peel and his Party--Getting very
Radical--Thoughts of colonizing--Political
Squib by C. D.--Fine Old English Tory
Times--Mesmerism--Metropolitan Prisons--Book by
a Workman--An August Day by the Sea--Another
Story in Prospect--_Clock_ Discontents--New
Adventure--Agreement for it signed--The Book
that proved to be _Chuzzlewit_--Peel and Lord
Ashley--Visions of America.
SOON after his return, at the opening of August, he went to Broadstairs;
and the direction in which that last question shows his thoughts to have
been busy was that to which he turned his first holiday leisure. He sent
me some rhymed squibs as his anonymous contribution to the fight the
Liberals were then making against what was believed to be intended by
the return to office of the Tories; ignorant as we were how much wiser
than his party the statesman then at the head of it was, or how greatly
what we all most desired would be advanced by the very success that had
been most disheartening. There will be no harm now in giving one of
these pieces, which will sufficiently show the tone of all of them, and
with what a hearty relish they were written. I doubt indeed if he ever
enjoyed anything more than the power of thus taking part occasionally,
unknown to outsiders, in the sharp conflict the press was waging at the
time. "By Jove, how radical I am getting!" he wrote to me (13th August).
"I wax stronger and stronger in the true principles every day. I don't
know whether it's the sea, or no, but so it is." He would at times even
talk, in moments of sudden indignation at the political outlook, of
carrying off himself and his household gods, like Coriolanus, to a world
elsewhere! "Thank God there is a Van Diemen's Land. That's my comfort.
Now, I wonder if I should make a good settler! I wonder, if I went to a
new colony with my head, hands, legs, and health, I should force myself
to the top of the social milk-pot and live upon the cream! What do you
think? Upon my word, I believe I should."
His political squibs during the Tory interregnum comprised some capital
subjects for pictures after the manner of Peter Pindar; but that which I
select has no touch of personal satire in it, and he would himself, for
that reason, have least objected to its revival. Thus ran his new
version of "The Fine Old English Gentleman, to be said or sung at all
conservative dinners:"
I'll sing you a new ballad, and I'll warrant it first-rate,
Of the days of that old gentleman who had that old estate;
When they spent the public money at a bountiful old rate
On ev'ry mistress, pimp, and scamp, at ev'ry noble gate.
In the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
The good old laws were garnished well with gibbets, whips, and chains,
With fine old English penalties, and fine old English pains,
With rebel heads and seas of blood once hot in rebel veins;
For all these things were requisite to guard the rich old gains
Of the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
This brave old code, like Argus, had a hundred watchful eyes,
And ev'ry English peasant had his good old English spies,
To tempt his starving discontent with fine old English lies,
Then call the good old Yeomanry to stop his peevish cries,
In the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again!
The good old times for cutting throats that cried out in their need,
The good old times for hunting men who held their fathers' creed,
The good old times when William Pitt, as all good men agreed,
Came down direct from Paradise at more than railroad speed. . . .
Oh, the fine old English Tory times;
When will they come again?
In those rare days, the press was seldom known to snarl or bark,
But sweetly sang of men in pow'r, like any tuneful lark;
Grave judges, too, to all their evil deeds were in the dark;
And not a man in twenty score knew how to make his mark.
Oh, the fine old English Tory times;
Soon may they come again! . . .
But tolerance, though slow in flight, is strong-wing'd in the main;
That night must come on these fine days, in course of time was plain;
The pure old spirit struggled, but its struggles were in vain;
A nation's grip was on it, and it died in choking pain,
With the fine old English Tory days,
All of the olden time.
The bright old day now dawns again; the cry runs through the land,
In England there shall be--dear bread! in Ireland--sword and brand!
And poverty, and ignorance, shall swell the rich and grand,
So, rally round the rulers with the gentle iron hand
Of the fine old English Tory days;
Hail to the coming time!
Of matters in which he had been specially interested before he quitted
London, one or two may properly be named. He had always sympathized,
almost as strongly as Archbishop Whately did, with Dr. Elliotson's
mesmeric investigations; and, reinforced as these were in the present
year by the displays of a Belgian youth whom another friend, Mr. Chauncy
Hare Townshend, brought over to England, the subject, which to the last
had an attraction for him, was for the time rather ardently followed up.
The improvement during the last few years in the London prisons was
another matter of eager and pleased inquiry with him; and he took
frequent means of stating what in this respect had been done, since even
the date when his _Sketches_ were written, by two most efficient public
officers at Clerkenwell and Tothill Fields, Mr. Chesterton and
Lieutenant Tracey, whom the course of these inquiries turned into
private friends. His last letter to me before he quitted town
sufficiently explains itself. "Slow rises worth by poverty deprest" was
the thought in his mind at every part of his career, and he never for a
moment was unmindful of the duty it imposed upon him: "I subscribed for
a couple of copies" (31st July) "of this little book. I knew nothing of
the man, but he wrote me a very modest letter of two lines, some weeks
ago. I have been much affected by the little biography at the beginning,
and I thought you would like to share the emotion it had raised in me. I
wish we were all in Eden again--for the sake of these toiling
creatures."
In the middle of August (Monday, 16th) I had announcement that he was
coming up for special purposes: "I sit down to write to you without an
atom of news to communicate. Yes, I have,--something that will surprise
you, who are pent up in dark and dismal Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is the
brightest day you ever saw. The sun is sparkling on the water so that I
can hardly bear to look at it. The tide is in, and the fishing-boats
are dancing like mad. Upon the green-topped cliffs the corn is cut and
piled in shocks; and thousands of butterflies are fluttering about,
taking the bright little red flags at the mast-heads for flowers, and
panting with delight accordingly. [Here the Inimitable, unable to resist
the brilliancy out of doors, breaketh off, rusheth to the machines, and
plungeth into the sea. Returning, he proceedeth:] Jeffrey is just as he
was when he wrote the letter I sent you. No better, and no worse. I had
a letter from Napier on Saturday, urging the children's-labor subject
upon me. But, as I hear from Southwood Smith that the report cannot be
printed until the new Parliament has sat at the least six weeks, it will
be impossible to produce it before the January number. I shall be in
town on Saturday morning and go straight to you. A letter has come from
little Hall begging that when I _do_ come to town I will dine there, as
they wish to talk about the new story. I have written to say that I will
do so on Saturday, and we will go together; but I shall be by no means
good company. . . . I have more than half a mind to start a bookseller of
my own. I could; with good capital too, as you know; and ready to spend
it. _G. Varden beware!_"
Small causes of displeasure had been growing out of the _Clock_, and
were almost unavoidably incident to the position in which he found
himself respecting it. Its discontinuance had become necessary, the
strain upon himself being too great without the help from others which
experience had shown to be impracticable; but I thought he had not met
the difficulty wisely by undertaking, which already he had done, to
begin a new story so early as the following March. On his arrival,
therefore, we decided on another plan, with which we went armed that
Saturday afternoon to his publishers, and of which the result will be
best told by himself. He had returned to Broadstairs the following
morning, and next day (Monday, the 23d of August) he wrote to me in very
enthusiastic terms of the share I had taken in what he calls "the
development on Saturday afternoon; when I thought Chapman very manly and
sensible, Hall morally and physically feeble though perfectly well
intentioned, and both the statement and reception of the project quite
triumphant. Didn't you think so too?" A fortnight later, Tuesday, the
7th of September, the agreement was signed in my chambers, and its terms
were to the effect following. The _Clock_ was to cease with the close of
_Barnaby Rudge_, the respective ownerships continuing as provided; and
the new work in twenty numbers, similar to those of _Pickwick_ and
_Nickleby_, was not to begin until after an interval of twelve months,
in November, 1842. During its publication he was to receive two hundred
pounds monthly, to be accounted as part of the expenses; for all which,
and all risks incident, the publishers made themselves responsible,
under conditions the same as in the _Clock_ agreement; except that out
of the profits of each number they were to have only a fourth,
three-fourths going to him, and this arrangement was to hold good until
the termination of six months from the completed book, when, upon
payment to him of a fourth of the value of all existing stock, they were
to have half the future interest. During the twelve months' interval
before the book began, he was to be paid one hundred and fifty pounds
each month; but this was to be drawn from his three-fourths of the
profits, and in no way to interfere with the monthly payments of two
hundred pounds while the publication was going on.[41] Such was the
"project," excepting only a provision to be mentioned hereafter against
the improbable event of the profits being inadequate to the repayment;
and my only drawback from the satisfaction of my own share in it arose
from my fear of the use he was likely to make of the leisure it afforded
him.
That this fear was not ill founded appeared at the close of the next
note I had from him: "There's no news" (13th September) "since my last.
We are going to dine with Rogers to-day, and with Lady Essex, who is
also here. Rogers is much pleased with Lord Ashley, who was offered by
Peel a post in the government, but resolutely refused to take office
unless Peel pledged himself to factory-improvement. Peel 'hadn't made up
his mind,' and Lord Ashley was deaf to all other inducements, though
they must have been very tempting. Much do I honor him for it. I am in
an exquisitely lazy state, bathing, walking, reading, lying in the sun,
doing everything but working. This frame of mind is superinduced by the
prospect of rest, and the promising arrangements which I owe to you. I
am still haunted by visions of America night and day. To miss this
opportunity would be a sad thing. Kate cries dismally if I mention the
subject. But, God willing, I think it _must_ be managed somehow!"
FOOTNOTES:
[41] "M. was quite aghast last night (9th of September) at the
brilliancy of the C. & H. arrangement: which is worth noting perhaps."
CHAPTER XVIII.
EVE OF THE VISIT TO AMERICA.
1841.
Greetings from America--Reply to Washington
Irving--Difficulties in the Way--Resolve to
go--Wish to revisit Scenes of Boyhood--Proposed
Book of Travel--Arrangements for the
Journey--Impatience of Suspense--Resolve to
leave the Children--Mrs. Dickens reconciled--A
Grave Illness--Domestic Griefs--The Old
Sorrow--At Windsor--Son Walter's
Christening--At Liverpool with the Travelers.
THE notion of America was in his mind, as we have seen, when he first
projected the _Clock_; and a very hearty letter from Washington Irving
about Little Nell and the _Curiosity Shop_, expressing the delight with
his writings and the yearnings to himself which had indeed been pouring
in upon him for some time from every part of the States, had very
strongly revived it. He answered Irving with more than his own warmth:
unable to thank him enough for his cordial and generous praise, or to
tell him what lasting gratification it had given. "I wish I could find
in your welcome letter," he added, "some hint of an intention to visit
England. I should love to go with you, as I have gone, God knows how
often, into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbor Court, and
Westminster Abbey. . . . It would gladden my heart to compare notes with
you about all those delightful places and people that I used to walk
about and dream of in the daytime, when a very small and
not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy." After interchange of these
letters the subject was frequently revived; upon his return from
Scotland it began to take shape as a thing that somehow or other, at no
very distant date, _must be_; and at last, near the end of a letter
filled with many unimportant things, the announcement, doubly
underlined, came to me.
The decision once taken, he was in his usual fever until its
difficulties were disposed of. The objections to separation from the
children led at first to the notion of taking them, but this was as
quickly abandoned; and what remained to be overcome yielded readily to
the kind offices of Macready, the offer of whose home to the little ones
during the time of absence, though not accepted to the full extent, gave
yet the assurance needed to quiet natural apprehensions. All this,
including an arrangement for publication of such notes as might occur to
him on the journey, took but a few days; and I was reading in my
chambers a letter he had written the previous day from Broadstairs, when
a note from him reached me, written that morning in London, to tell me
he was on his way to take share of my breakfast. He had come overland by
Canterbury after posting his first letter, had seen Macready the
previous night, and had completed some part of the arrangements. This
mode of rapid procedure was characteristic of him at all similar times,
and will appear in the few following extracts from his letters:
"Now" (19th September) "to astonish you. After balancing, considering,
and weighing the matter in every point of view, I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND
(WITH GOD'S LEAVE) TO GO TO AMERICA--AND TO START AS SOON AFTER
CHRISTMAS AS IT WILL BE SAFE TO GO." Further information was promised
immediately; and a request followed, characteristic as any he could have
added to his design of traveling so far away, that we should visit once
more together the scenes of his boyhood. "On the ninth of October we
leave here. It's a Saturday. If it should be fine dry weather, or
anything like it, will you meet us at Rochester, and stop there two or
three days to see all the lions in the surrounding country? Think of
this. . . . If you'll arrange to come, I'll have the carriage down, and
Topping; and, supposing news from Glasgow don't interfere with us, which
I fervently hope it will not, I will insure that we have much
enjoyment."
Three days later than that which announced his resolve, the subject was
resumed: "I wrote to Chapman & Hall asking them what they thought of it,
and saying I meant to keep a note-book, and publish it for half a guinea
or thereabouts, on my return. They instantly sent the warmest possible
reply, and said they had taken it for granted I would go, and had been
speaking of it only the day before. I have begged them to make every
inquiry about the fares, cabins, berths, and times of sailing; and I
shall make a great effort to take Kate _and_ the children. In that case
I shall try to let the house furnished, for six months (for I shall
remain that time in America); and if I succeed, the rent will nearly pay
the expenses out, and home. I have heard of family cabins at £100; and I
think one of these is large enough to hold us all. A single fare, I
think, is forty guineas. I fear I could not be happy if we had the
Atlantic between us; but leaving them in New York while I ran off a
thousand miles or so, would be quite another thing. If I can arrange all
my plans before publishing the _Clock_ address, I shall state therein
that I am going: which will be no unimportant consideration, as
affording the best possible reason for a long delay. How I am to get on
without you for seven or eight months, I cannot, upon my soul, conceive.
I dread to think of breaking up all our old happy habits for so long a
time. The advantages of going, however, appear by steady looking-at so
great, that I have come to persuade myself it is a matter of imperative
necessity. Kate weeps whenever it is spoken of. Washington Irving has
got a nasty low fever. I heard from him a day or two ago."
His next letter was the unexpected arrival which came by hand from
Devonshire Terrace, when I thought him still by the sea: "This is to
give you notice that I am coming to breakfast with you this morning on
my way to Broadstairs. I repeat it, sir,--on my way _to_ Broadstairs.
For, directly I got Macready's note yesterday I went to Canterbury, and
came on by day-coach for the express purpose of talking with him; which
I did between 11 and 12 last night in Clarence Terrace. The American
preliminaries are necessarily startling, and, to a gentleman of my
temperament, destroy rest, sleep, appetite, and work, unless definitely
arranged.[42] Macready has quite decided me in respect of time and so
forth. The instant I have wrung a reluctant consent from Kate, I shall
take our joint passage in the mail-packet for next January. I never
loved my friends so well as now." We had all discountenanced his first
thought of taking the children; and, upon this and other points, the
experience of our friend who had himself traveled over the States was
very valuable. His next letter, two days later from Broadstairs,
informed me of the result of the Macready conference: "Only a word. Kate
is quite reconciled. 'Anne' (her maid) goes, and is amazingly cheerful
and light of heart upon it. And I think, at present, that it's a greater
trial to me than anybody. The 4th of January is the day. Macready's note
to Kate was received and acted upon with a perfect response. She talks
about it quite gayly, and is satisfied to have nobody in the house but
Fred, of whom, as you know, they are all fond. He has got his promotion,
and they give him the increased salary from the day on which the minute
was made by Baring, I feel so amiable, so meek, so fond of people, so
full of gratitudes and reliances, that I am like a sick man. And I am
already counting the days between this and coming home again."
He was soon, alas! to be what he compared himself to. I met him at
Rochester at the end of September, as arranged; we passed a day and
night there; a day and night in Cobham and its neighborhood, sleeping at
the Leather Bottle; and a day and night at Gravesend. But we were hardly
returned when some slight symptoms of bodily trouble took suddenly
graver form, and an illness followed involving the necessity of surgical
attendance. This, which with mention of the helpful courage displayed by
him has before been alluded to,[43] put off necessarily the Glasgow
dinner; and he had scarcely left his bedroom when a trouble arose near
home which touched him to the depths of the greatest sorrow of his life,
and, in the need of exerting himself for others, what remained of his
own illness seemed to pass away.
His wife's younger brother had died with the same unexpected suddenness
that attended her younger sister's death; and the event had followed
close upon the decease of Mrs. Hogarth's mother while on a visit to her
daughter and Mr. Hogarth. "As no steps had been taken towards the
funeral," he wrote (25th October) in reply to my offer of such service
as I could render, "I thought it best at once to bestir myself; and not
even you could have saved my going to the cemetery. It is a great trial
to me to give up Mary's grave; greater than I can possibly express. I
thought of moving her to the catacombs and saying nothing about it; but
then I remembered that the poor old lady is buried next her at her own
desire, and could not find it in my heart, directly she is laid in the
earth, to take her grandchild away. The desire to be buried next her is
as strong upon me now as it was five years ago; and I _know_ (for I
don't think there ever was love like that I bear her) that it will never
diminish. I fear I can do nothing. Do you think I can? They would move
her on Wednesday, if I resolved to have it done. I cannot bear the
thought of being excluded from her dust; and yet I feel that her
brothers and sisters, and her mother, have a better right than I to be
placed beside her. It is but an idea. I neither think nor hope (God
forbid) that our spirits would ever mingle _there_. I ought to get the
better of it, but it is very hard. I never contemplated this--and coming
so suddenly, and after being ill, it disturbs me more than it ought. It
seems like losing her a second time. . . ." "No," he wrote the morning
after, "I tried that. No, there is no ground on either side to be had. I
must give it up. I shall drive over there, please God, on Thursday
morning, before they get there; and look at her coffin."
He suffered more than he let any one perceive, and was obliged again to
keep his room for some days. On the 2d of November he reported himself
as progressing and ordered to Richmond, which, after a week or so, he
changed to the White Hart at Windsor, where I passed some days with him,
Mrs. Dickens, and her younger sister Georgina; but it was not till near
the close of that month he could describe himself as thoroughly on his
legs again, in the ordinary state on which he was wont to pride himself,
bolt upright, staunch at the knees, a deep sleeper, a hearty eater, a
good laugher, and nowhere a bit the worse, "bating a little weakness now
and then, and a slight nervousness at times."
We had some days of much enjoyment at the end of the year, when Landor
came up from Bath for the christening of his godson; and the
"Britannia," which was to take the travelers from us in January, brought
over to them in December all sorts of cordialities, anticipations, and
stretchings-forth of palms, in token of the welcome awaiting them. On
New Year's Eve they dined with me, and I with them on New Year's Day;
when (his house having been taken for the period of his absence by
General Sir John Wilson) we sealed up his wine-cellar, after opening
therein some sparkling Moselle in honor of the ceremony, and drinking it
then and there to his happy return. Next morning (it was a Sunday) I
accompanied them to Liverpool, Maclise having been suddenly stayed by
his mother's death; the intervening day and its occupations have been
humorously sketched in his American book; and on the 4th they sailed. I
never saw the Britannia after I stepped from her deck back to the small
steamer that had taken us to her. "How little I thought" (were the last
lines of his first American letter), "the first time you mounted the
shapeless coat, that I should have such a sad association with its back
as when I saw it by the paddle-box of that small steamer!"
FOOTNOTES:
[42] See _ante_, p. 123.
[43] See _ante_, p. 244.
CHAPTER XIX.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
1842.
Rough Passage--A Steamer in a Storm--Resigned
to the Worst--Of Himself and
Fellow-travelers--The Atlantic from Deck--The
Ladies' Cabin--Its Occupants--Card-playing on
the Atlantic--Ship-news--A Wager--Halifax
Harbor--Ship aground--Captain Hewitt--Speaker
of House of Assembly--Ovation to C. D.--Arrival
at Boston--Incursion of Editors--At Tremont
House--The Welcome--Deputations--Dr. Channing
to C. D.--Public Appearances--A Secretary
engaged--Bostonians--General
Characteristics--Personal Notices--Perils of
Steamers--A Home-thought--American
Institutions--How first impressed--Reasons for
the Greeting--What was welcomed in C. D.--Old
World and New World--Daniel Webster as to C.
D.--Channing as to C. D.--Subsequent
Disappointments--New York Invitation to
Dinner--Fac-similes of Signatures--Additional
Fac-similes--New York Invitation to
Ball--Fac-similes of Signatures--Additional
Fac-similes.
THE first lines of that letter were written as soon as he got sight of
earth again, from the banks of Newfoundland, on Monday, the 17th of
January, the fourteenth day from their departure: even then so far from
Halifax that they could not expect to make it before Wednesday night, or
to reach Boston until Saturday or Sunday. They had not been fortunate in
the passage. During the whole voyage the weather had been
unprecedentedly bad, the wind for the most part dead against them, the
wet intolerable, the sea horribly disturbed, the days dark, and the
nights fearful. On the previous Monday night it had blown a hurricane,
beginning at five in the afternoon and raging all night. His description
of the storm is published, and the peculiarities of a steamer's behavior
in such circumstances are hit off as if he had been all his life a
sailor. Any but so extraordinary an observer would have described a
steamer in a storm as he would have described a sailing-ship in a storm.
But any description of the latter would be as inapplicable to my
friend's account of the other as the ways of a jackass to those of a mad
bull. In the letter from which it was taken, however, there were some
things addressed to myself alone: "For two or three hours we gave it up
as a lost thing; and with many thoughts of you, and the children, and
those others who are dearest to us, waited quietly for the worst. I
never expected to see the day again, and resigned myself to God as well
as I could. It was a great comfort to think of the earnest and devoted
friends we had left behind, and to know that the darlings would not
want."
This was not the exaggerated apprehension of a landsman merely. The head
engineer, who had been in one or other of the Cunard vessels since they
began running, had never seen such stress of weather; and I heard
Captain Hewitt himself say afterwards that nothing but a steamer, and
one of that strength, could have kept her course and stood it out. A
sailing-vessel must have beaten off and driven where she could; while
through all the fury of that gale they actually made fifty-four miles
headlong through the tempest, straight on end, not varying their track
in the least.
He stood out against sickness only for the day following that on which
they sailed. For the three following days he kept his bed, miserable
enough, and had not, until the eighth day of the voyage, six days before
the date of his letter, been able to get to work at the dinner-table.
What he then observed of his fellow-travelers, and had to tell of their
life on board, has been set forth in his _Notes_ with delightful humor;
but in its first freshness I received it in this letter, and some
whimsical passages, then suppressed, there will be no harm in printing
now:
"We have 86 passengers; and such a strange collection of beasts never
was got together upon the sea, since the days of the Ark. I have never
been in the saloon since the first day; the noise, the smell, and the
closeness being quite intolerable. I have only been on deck _once_!--and
then I was surprised and disappointed at the smallness of the panorama.
The sea, running as it does and has done, is very stupendous, and viewed
from the air or some great height would be grand no doubt. But seen from
the wet and rolling decks, in this weather and these circumstances, it
only impresses one giddily and painfully. I was very glad to turn away,
and come below again.
"I have established myself, from the first, in the ladies' cabin--you
remember it? I'll describe its other occupants, and our way of passing
the time, to you.
"First, for the occupants. Kate and I, and Anne--when she is out of bed,
which is not often. A queer little Scotch body, a Mrs. P--,[44] whose
husband is a silversmith in New York. He married her at Glasgow three
years ago, and bolted the day after the wedding; being (which he had not
told her) heavily in debt. Since then she has been living with her
mother; and she is now going out under the protection of a male cousin,
to give him a year's trial. If she is not comfortable at the expiration
of that time, she means to go back to Scotland again. A Mrs. B--, about
20 years old, whose husband is on board with her. He is a young
Englishman domiciled in New York, and by trade (as well as I can make
out) a woolen-draper. They have been married a fortnight. A Mr. and Mrs.
C--, marvelously fond of each other, complete the catalogue. Mrs. C--, I
have settled, is a publican's daughter, and Mr. C-- is running away with
her, the till, the time-piece off the bar mantel-shelf, the mother's
gold watch from the pocket at the head of the bed; and other
miscellaneous property. The women are all pretty; unusually pretty. I
never saw such good faces together, anywhere."
Their "way of passing the time" will be found in the _Notes_ much as it
was written to me; except that there was one point connected with the
card-playing which he feared might overtax the credulity of his readers,
but which he protested had occurred more than once: "Apropos of rolling,
I have forgotten to mention that in playing whist we are obliged to put
the tricks in our pockets, to keep them from disappearing altogether;
and that five or six times in the course of every rubber we are all
flung from our seats, roll out at different doors, and keep on rolling
until we are picked up by stewards. This has become such a matter of
course, that we go through it with perfect gravity, and, when we are
bolstered up on our sofas again, resume our conversation or our game at
the point where it was interrupted." The news that excited them from day
to day, too, of which little more than a hint appears in the _Notes_, is
worth giving as originally written:
"As for news, we have more of that than you would think for. One man
lost fourteen pounds at vingt-un in the saloon yesterday, or another got
drunk before dinner was over, or another was blinded with lobster-sauce
spilt over him by the steward, or another had a fall on deck and
fainted. The ship's cook was drunk yesterday morning (having got at some
salt-water-damaged whiskey), and the captain ordered the boatswain to
play upon him with the hose of the fire-engine until he roared for
mercy--which he didn't get: for he was sentenced to look out, for four
hours at a stretch for four nights running, without a great-coat, and to
have his grog stopped. Four dozen plates were broken at dinner. One
steward fell down the cabin stairs with a round of beef, and injured his
foot severely. Another steward fell down after him and cut his eye open.
The baker's taken ill; so is the pastry-cook. A new man, sick to death,
has been required to fill the place of the latter officer, and has been
dragged out of bed and propped up in a little house upon deck, between
two casks, and ordered (the captain standing over him) to make and roll
out pie-crust; which he protests, with tears in his eyes, it is death to
him in his bilious state to look at. Twelve dozen of bottled porter has
got loose upon deck, and the bottles are rolling about distractedly,
overhead. Lord Mulgrave (a handsome fellow, by-the-by, to look at, and
nothing but a good 'un to go) laid a wager with twenty-five other men
last night, whose berths, like his, are in the fore-cabin, which can
only be got at by crossing the deck, that he would reach his cabin
first. Watches were set by the captain's, and they sallied forth,
wrapped up in coats and storm caps. The sea broke over the ship so
violently, that they were _five-and-twenty minutes_ holding on by the
handrail at the starboard paddle-box, drenched to the skin by every
wave, and not daring to go on or come back, lest they should be washed
overboard. News! A dozen murders in town wouldn't interest us half as
much."
Nevertheless their excitements were not over. At the very end of the
voyage came an incident very lightly touched in the _Notes_, but more
freely told to me under date of the 21st January: "We were running into
Halifax harbor on Wednesday night, with little wind and a bright moon;
had made the light at its outer entrance, and given the ship in charge
to the pilot; were playing our rubber, all in good spirits (for it had
been comparatively smooth for some days, with tolerably dry decks and
other unusual comforts), when suddenly the ship STRUCK! A rush upon deck
followed, of course. The men (I mean the crew! think of this) were
kicking off their shoes and throwing off their jackets preparatory to
swimming ashore; the pilot was beside himself; the passengers dismayed;
and everything in the most intolerable confusion and hurry. Breakers
were roaring ahead; the land within a couple of hundred yards; and the
vessel driving upon the surf, although her paddles were worked
backwards, and everything done to stay her course. It is not the custom
of steamers, it seems, to have an anchor ready. An accident occurred in
getting ours over the side; and for half an hour we were throwing up
rockets, burning blue-lights, and firing signals of distress, all of
which remained unanswered, though we were so close to the shore that we
could see the waving branches of the trees. All this time, as we veered
about, a man was heaving the lead every two minutes; the depths of water
constantly decreasing; and nobody self-possessed but Hewitt. They let go
the anchor at last, got out a boat, and sent her ashore with the fourth
officer, the pilot, and four men aboard, to try and find out where we
were. The pilot had no idea; but Hewitt put his little finger upon a
certain part of the chart, and was as confident of the exact spot
(though he had never been there in his life) as if he had lived there
from infancy. The boat's return about an hour afterwards proved him to
be quite right. We had got into a place called the Eastern Passage, in a
sudden fog and through the pilot's folly. We had struck upon a mud-bank,
and driven into a perfect little pond, surrounded by banks and rocks and
shoals of all kinds: the only safe speck in the place. Eased by this
report, and the assurance that the tide was past the ebb, we turned in
at three o'clock in the morning, to lie there all night."
The next day's landing at Halifax, and delivery of the mails, are
sketched in the _Notes_; but not his personal part in what followed:
"Then, sir, comes a breathless man who has been already into the ship
and out again, shouting my name as he tears along. I stop, arm in arm
with the little doctor whom I have taken ashore for oysters. The
breathless man introduces himself as The Speaker of the House of
Assembly; _will_ drag me away to his house; and _will_ have a carriage
and his wife sent down for Kate, who is laid up with a hideously swoln
face. Then he drags me up to the Governor's house (Lord Falkland is the
governor), and then Heaven knows where; concluding with both houses of
parliament, which happen to meet for the session that very day, and are
opened by a mock speech from the throne delivered by the governor, with
one of Lord Grey's sons for his aide-de-camp, and a great host of
officers about him. I wish you could have seen the crowds cheering the
inimitable[45] in the streets. I wish you could have seen judges,
law-officers, bishops, and law-makers welcoming the inimitable. I wish
you could have seen the inimitable shown to a great elbow-chair by the
Speaker's throne, and sitting alone in the middle of the floor of the
House of Commons, the observed of all observers, listening with
exemplary gravity to the queerest speaking possible, and breaking in
spite of himself into a smile as he thought of this commencement to the
Thousand and One stories in reserve for home and Lincoln's Inn Fields
and Jack Straw's Castle.--Ah, Forster! when I _do_ come back again!----"
He resumed his letter at Tremont House on Saturday, the 28th of January,
having reached Boston that day week at five in the afternoon; and, as
his first American experience is very lightly glanced at in the _Notes_,
a fuller picture will perhaps be welcome. "As the Cunard boats have a
wharf of their own at the custom-house, and that a narrow one, we were a
long time (an hour at least) working in. I was standing in full fig on
the paddle-box beside the captain, staring about me, when suddenly, long
before we were moored to the wharf, a dozen men came leaping on board at
the peril of their lives, with great bundles of newspapers under their
arms; worsted comforters (very much the worse for wear) round their
necks; and so forth. 'Aha!' says I, 'this is like our London Bridge;'
believing of course that these visitors were news-boys. But what do you
think of their being EDITORS? And what do you think of their tearing
violently up to me and beginning to shake hands like madmen? Oh! if you
could have seen how I wrung their wrists! And if you could but know how
I hated one man in very dirty gaiters, and with very protruding upper
teeth, who said to all comers after him, 'So you've been introduced to
our friend Dickens--eh?' There was one among them, though, who really
was of use; a Doctor S., editor of the ----. He ran off here (two miles
at least), and ordered rooms and dinner. And in course of time Kate, and
I, and Lord Mulgrave (who was going back to his regiment at Montreal on
Monday, and had agreed to live with us in the mean while) sat down in a
spacious and handsome room to a very handsome dinner, bating
peculiarities of putting on table, and had forgotten the ship entirely.
A Mr. Alexander, to whom I had written from England promising to sit for
a portrait, was on board directly we touched the land, and brought us
here in his carriage. Then, after sending a present of most beautiful
flowers, he left us to ourselves, and we thanked him for it."
What further he had to say of that week's experience finds its first
public utterance here. "How can I tell you," he continues, "what has
happened since that first day? How can I give you the faintest notion of
my reception here; of the crowds that pour in and out the whole day; of
the people that line the streets when I go out; of the cheering when I
went to the theatre; of the copies of verses, letters of congratulation,
welcomes of all kinds, balls, dinners, assemblies without end? There is
to be a public dinner to me here in Boston, next Tuesday, and great
dissatisfaction has been given to the many by the high price (three
pounds sterling each) of the tickets. There is to be a ball next Monday
week at New York, and 150 names appear on the list of the committee.
There is to be a dinner in the same place, in the same week, to which I
have had an invitation with every known name in America appended to it.
But what can I tell you about any of these things which will give you
the slightest notion of the enthusiastic greeting they give me, or the
cry that runs through the whole country? I have had deputations from the
Far West, who have come from more than two thousand miles' distance:
from the lakes, the rivers, the back-woods, the log houses, the cities,
factories, villages, and towns. Authorities from nearly all the States
have written to me. I have heard from the universities, Congress,
Senate, and bodies, public and private, of every sort and kind. 'It is
no-nonsense, and no common feeling,' wrote Dr. Channing to me yesterday.
'It is all heart. There never was, and never will be, such a triumph.'
And it is a good thing, is it not, . . . to find those fancies it has
given me and you the greatest satisfaction to think of, at the core of
it all? It makes my heart quieter, and me a more retiring, sober,
tranquil man, to watch the effect of those thoughts in all this noise
and hurry, even than if I sat, pen in hand, to put them down for the
first time. I feel, in the best aspects of this welcome, something of
the presence and influence of that spirit which directs my life, and
through a heavy sorrow has pointed upwards with unchanging finger for
more than four years past. And if I know my heart, not twenty times this
praise would move me to an act of folly.". . .
There were but two days more before the post left for England, and the
close of this part of his letter sketched the engagements that awaited
him on leaving Boston: "We leave here next Saturday. We go to a place
called Worcester, about 75 miles off, to the house of the governor of
this place; and stay with him all Sunday. On Monday we go on by railroad
about 50 miles further to a town called Springfield, where I am met by a
'reception committee' from Hartford 20 miles further, and carried on by
the multitude: I am sure I don't know how, but I shouldn't wonder if
they appear with a triumphal car. On Wednesday I have a public dinner
there. On Friday I shall be obliged to present myself in public again,
at a place called New Haven, about 30 miles further. On Saturday
evening I hope to be at New York; and there I shall stay ten days or a
fortnight. You will suppose that I have enough to do. I am sitting for a
portrait and for a bust. I have the correspondence of a secretary of
state, and the engagements of a fashionable physician. I have a
secretary whom I take on with me. He is a young man of the name of Q.;
was strongly recommended to me; is most modest, obliging, silent, and
willing; and does his work _well_. He boards and lodges at my expense
when we travel; and his salary is ten dollars per month--about two
pounds five of our English money. There will be dinners and balls at
Washington, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and I believe everywhere. In
Canada, I have promised to _play_ at the theatre with the officers, for
the benefit of a charity. We are already weary, at times, past all
expression; and I finish this by means of a pious fraud. We were engaged
to a party, and have written to say we are both desperately ill. . . .
'Well,' I can fancy you saying, 'but about his impressions of Boston and
the Americans?'--Of the latter, I will not say a word until I have seen
more of them, and have gone into the interior. I will only say, now,
that we have never yet been required to dine at a table-d'hôte; that,
thus far, our rooms are as much our own here as they would be at the
Clarendon; that but for an odd phrase now and then--such as _Snap of
cold weather_; a _tongue-y man_ for a talkative fellow; _Possible?_ as a
solitary interrogation; and _Yes?_ for indeed--I should have marked, so
far, no difference whatever between the parties here and those I have
left behind. The women are very beautiful, but they soon fade; the
general breeding is neither stiff nor forward; the good nature,
universal. If you ask the way to a place--of some common water-side man,
who don't know you from Adam--he turns and goes with you. Universal
deference is paid to ladies; and they walk about at all seasons, wholly
unprotected. . . . This hotel is a trifle smaller than Finsbury Square; and
is made so infernally hot (I use the expression advisedly) by means of a
furnace with pipes running through the passages, that we can hardly bear
it. There are no curtains to the beds, or to the bedroom windows. I am
told there never are, hardly, all through America. The bedrooms are
indeed very bare of furniture. Ours is nearly as large as your great
room, and has a wardrobe in it of painted wood not larger (I appeal to
K.) than an English watch-box. I slept in this room for two nights,
quite satisfied with the belief that it was a shower-bath."
The last addition made to this letter, from which many vividest pages of
the _Notes_ (among them the bright quaint picture of Boston streets)
were taken with small alteration, bore date the 29th of January: "I
hardly know what to add to all this long and unconnected history. Dana,
the author of that _Two Years before the Mast_" (a book which I had
praised much to him, thinking it like De Foe), "is a very nice fellow
indeed; and in appearance not at all the man you would expect. He is
short, mild-looking, and has a care-worn face. His father is exactly
like George Cruikshank after a night's jollity--only shorter. The
professors at the Cambridge university, Longfellow, Felton, Jared
Sparks, are noble fellows. So is Kenyon's friend, Ticknor. Bancroft is
a famous man; a straightforward, manly, earnest heart; and talks much of
you, which is a great comfort. Doctor Channing I will tell you more of,
after I have breakfasted alone with him next Wednesday. . . . Sumner is of
great service to me. . . . The president of the Senate here presides at my
dinner on Tuesday. Lord Mulgrave lingered with us till last Tuesday (we
had our little captain to dinner on the Monday), and then went on to
Canada. Kate is quite well, and so is Anne, whose smartness surpasses
belief. They yearn for home, and so do I.
"Of course you will not see in the papers any true account of our
voyage, for they keep the dangers of the passage, when there are any,
very quiet. I observed so many perils peculiar to steamers that I am
still undecided whether we shall not return by one of the New York
liners. On the night of the storm, I was wondering within myself where
we should be, if the chimney were blown overboard; in which case, it
needs no great observation to discover that the vessel must be instantly
on fire from stem to stern. When I went on deck next day, I saw that it
was held up by a perfect forest of chains and ropes, which had been
rigged in the night. Hewitt told me (when we were on shore, not before)
that they had men lashed, hoisted up, and swinging there, all through
the gale, getting these stays about it. This is not agreeable--is it?
"I wonder whether you will remember that next Tuesday is my birthday!
This letter will leave here that morning.
"On looking back through these sheets, I am astonished to find how
little I have told you, and how much I have, even now, in store which
shall be yours by word of mouth. The American poor, the American
factories, the institutions of all kinds--I have a book, already. There
is no man in this town, or in this State of New England, who has not a
blazing fire and a meat dinner every day of his life. A flaming sword in
the air would not attract so much attention as a beggar in the streets.
There are no charity uniforms, no wearisome repetition of the same dull
ugly dress, in that blind school.[46] All are attired after their own
tastes, and every boy and girl has his or her individuality as distinct
and unimpaired as you would find it in their own homes. At the theatres,
all the ladies sit in the fronts of the boxes. The gallery are as quiet
as the dress circle at dear Drury Lane. A man with seven heads would be
no sight at all, compared with one who couldn't read and write.
"I won't speak (I say 'speak'! I wish I could) about the dear precious
children, because I know how much we shall hear about them when we
receive those letters from home for which we long so ardently."
* * * * *
Unmistakably to be seen, in this earliest of his letters, is the quite
fresh and unalloyed impression first received by him at this memorable
visit; and it is due, as well to himself as to the great country which
welcomed him, that this should be considered independently of any
modification it afterwards underwent. Of the fervency and universality
of the welcome there could indeed be no doubt, and as little that it
sprang from feelings honorable both to giver and receiver. The sources
of Dickens's popularity in England were in truth multiplied many-fold in
America. The hearty, cordial, and humane side of his genius had
fascinated them quite as much; but there was also something beyond this.
The cheerful temper that had given new beauty to the commonest forms of
life, the abounding humor which had added largely to all innocent
enjoyment, the honorable and in those days rare distinction of America
which left no home in the Union inaccessible to such advantages, had
made Dickens the object everywhere of grateful admiration, for the most
part of personal affection. But even this was not all. I do not say it
either to lessen or to increase the value of the tribute, but to express
simply what it was; and there cannot be a question that the young
English author, whom by his language they claimed equally for their own,
was almost universally regarded by the Americans as a kind of embodied
protest against what they believed to be worst in the institutions of
England, depressing and overshadowing in a social sense, and adverse to
purely intellectual influences. In all the papers of every grade in the
Union, of which many were sent to me at the time, the feeling of triumph
over the mother-country in this particular is everywhere predominant.
You worship titles, they said, and military heroes, and millionaires,
and we of the New World want to show you, by extending the kind of
homage that the Old World reserves for kings and conquerors, to a young
man with nothing to distinguish him but his heart and his genius, what
it is we think in these parts worthier of honor, than birth, or wealth,
a title, or a sword. Well, there was something in this too, apart from a
mere crowing over the mother-country. The Americans had honestly more
than a common share in the triumphs of a genius which in more than one
sense had made the deserts and wildernesses of life to blossom like the
rose. They were entitled to select for a welcome, as emphatic as they
might please to render it, the writer who pre-eminently in his
generation had busied himself to "detect and save," in human creatures,
such sparks of virtue as misery or vice had not availed to extinguish;
to discover what is beautiful and comely under what commonly passes for
the ungainly and the deformed; to draw happiness and hopefulness from
despair itself; and, above all, so to have made known to his own
countrymen the wants and sufferings of the poor, the ignorant, and the
neglected, that they could be left in absolute neglect no more. "A
triumph has been prepared for him," wrote Mr. Ticknor to our dear friend
Kenyon, "in which the whole country will join. He will have a progress
through the States unequaled since Lafayette's." Daniel Webster told the
Americans that Dickens had done more already to ameliorate the condition
of the English poor than all the statesmen Great Britain had sent into
Parliament. His sympathies are such, exclaimed Dr. Channing, as to
recommend him in an especial manner to us. He seeks out that class, in
order to benefit them, with whom American institutions and laws
sympathize most strongly; and it is in the passions, sufferings, and
virtues of the mass that he has found his subjects of most thrilling
interest. "He shows that life in its rudest form may wear a tragic
grandeur; that amidst follies and excesses, provoking laughter or scorn,
the moral feelings do not wholly die; and that the haunts of the
blackest crime are sometimes lighted up by the presence and influence of
the noblest souls. His pictures have a tendency to awaken sympathy with
our race, and to change the unfeeling indifference which has prevailed
towards the depressed multitude, into a sorrowful and indignant
sensibility to their wrongs and woes."
Whatever may be the turn which we are to see the welcome take, by
dissatisfaction that arose on both sides, it is well that we should thus
understand what in its first manifestations was honorable to both.
Dickens had his disappointments, and the Americans had theirs; but what
was really genuine in the first enthusiasm remained without grave alloy
from either; and the letters, as I proceed to give them, will so
naturally explain and illustrate the misunderstanding as to require
little further comment. I am happy to be able here to place on record
fac-similes of the invitations to the public entertainments in New York
which reached him before he quitted Boston. The mere signatures suffice
to show how universal the welcome was from that great city of the
Union.
FOOTNOTES:
[44] The initials used here are in no case those of the real names,
being employed in every case for the express purpose of disguising the
names. Generally the remark is applicable to all initials used in the
letters printed in the course of this work.
[45] This word, applied to him by his old master; Mr. Giles (_ante_, p.
33), was for a long time the epithet we called him by.
[46] His descriptions of this school, and of the case of Laura
Bridgeman, will be found in the _Notes_, and have therefore been, of
course, omitted here.
CHAPTER XX.
SECOND IMPRESSIONS OF AMERICA.
1842.
Second Letter--International Copyright--Third
Letter--The Dinner at Boston--Worcester,
Springfield, and Hartford--Queer
Traveling--Levees at Hartford and New Haven--At
Wallingford--Serenades--Cornelius C.
Felton--Payment of Personal Expenses
declined--At New York--Irving and
Colden--Description of the Ball--Newspaper
Accounts--A Phase of Character--Opinion in
America--International Copyright--American
Authors in regard to it--Outcry against the
Nation's Guest--Declines to be silent on
Copyright--Speech at Dinner--Irving in the
Chair--Chairman's Breakdown--An Incident
afterwards in London--Results of Copyright
Speeches--A Bookseller's Demand for
Help--Suggestion for Copyright Memorial--Henry
Clay's Opinion--Life in New York--Distresses of
Popularity--Intentions for Future--Refusal of
Invitations--Going South and West--As to
Return--Dangers incident to
Steamers--Slavery--Ladies of America--Party
Conflicts--Non-arrival of Cunard
Steamer--Copyright Petition for Congress--No
Hope of the Caledonia--Substitute for
her--Anxiety as to Letters--Of Distinguished
Americans--Hotel Bills--Thoughts of the
Children--Acadia takes Caledonia's
Place--Letter to C. D. from Carlyle--Carlyle on
Copyright--Argument against Stealing--Rob Roy's
Plan worth bettering--C. D. as to Carlyle.
HIS second letter, radiant with the same kindly warmth that gave always
pre-eminent charm to his genius, was dated from the Carlton Hotel, New
York, on the 14th February, but its only allusion of any public interest
was to the beginning of his agitation of the question of international
copyright. He went to America with no express intention of starting
this question in any way, and certainly with no belief that such remark
upon it as a person in his position could alone be expected to make
would be resented strongly by any sections of the American people. But
he was not long left in doubt on this head. He had spoken upon it twice
publicly, "to the great indignation of some of the editors here, who are
attacking me for so doing, right and left." On the other hand, all the
best men had assured him that, if only at once followed up in England,
the blow struck might bring about a change in the law; and, yielding to
the pleasant hope that the best men could be a match for the worst, he
urged me to enlist on his side what force I could, and in particular, as
he had made Scott's claim his war-cry, to bring Lockhart into the field.
I could not do much, but I did what I could.
Three days later he began another letter; and, as this will be entirely
new to the reader, I shall print it as it reached me, with only such
omission of matter concerning myself as I think it my duty, however
reluctantly, to make throughout these extracts. There was nothing in its
personal details, or in those relating to international copyright,
available for his _Notes_; from which they were excluded by the two
rules he observed in that book,--the first to be altogether silent as to
the copyright discussion, and the second to abstain from all mention of
individuals. But there can be no harm here in violating either rule,
for, as Sydney Smith said with his humorous sadness, "We are all dead
now."
"Carlton House, New York: Thursday, February Seventeenth, 1842. . . . As
there is a sailing-packet from here to England to-morrow which is
warranted (by the owners) to be a marvelous fast sailer, and as it
appears most probable that she will reach home (I write the word with a
pang) before the Cunard steamer of next month, I indite this letter. And
lest this letter should reach you before another letter which I
dispatched from here last Monday, let me say in the first place that I
_did_ dispatch a brief epistle to you on that day, together with a
newspaper, and a pamphlet touching the Boz ball; and that I put in the
post-office at Boston another newspaper for you containing an account of
the dinner, which was just about to come off, you remember, when I wrote
to you from that city.
"It was a most superb affair; and the speaking _admirable_. Indeed, the
general talent for public speaking here is one of the most striking of
the things that force themselves upon an Englishman's notice. As every
man looks on to being a member of Congress, every man prepares himself
for it; and the result is quite surprising. You will observe one odd
custom,--the drinking of sentiments. It is quite extinct with us, but
here everybody is expected to be prepared with an epigram as a matter of
course.
"We left Boston on the fifth, and went away with the governor of the
city to stay till Monday at his house at Worcester. He married a sister
of Bancroft's, and another sister of Bancroft's went down with us. The
village of Worcester is one of the prettiest in New England. . . . On
Monday morning at nine o'clock we started again by railroad and went on
to Springfield, where a deputation of two were waiting, and everything
was in readiness that the utmost attention could suggest. Owing to the
mildness of the weather, the Connecticut river was 'open,' videlicet not
frozen, and they had a steamboat ready to carry us on to Hartford; thus
saving a land-journey of only twenty-five miles, but on such roads at
this time of year that it takes nearly twelve hours to accomplish! The
boat was very small, the river full of floating blocks of ice, and the
depth where we went (to avoid the ice and the current) not more than a
few inches. After two hours and a half of this queer traveling, we got
to Hartford. There, there was quite an English inn; except in respect of
the bedrooms, which are always uncomfortable; and the best committee of
management that has yet presented itself. They kept us more quiet, and
were more considerate and thoughtful, even to their own exclusion, than
any I have yet had to deal with. Kate's face being horribly bad, I
determined to give her a rest here; and accordingly wrote to get rid of
my engagement at New Haven, on that plea. We remained in this town until
the eleventh: holding a formal levee every day for two hours, and
receiving on each from two hundred to three hundred people. At five
o'clock on the afternoon of the eleventh, we set off (still by railroad)
for New Haven, which we reached about eight o'clock. The moment we had
had tea, we were forced to open another levee for the students and
professors of the college (the largest in the States), and the
townspeople. I suppose we shook hands, before going to bed, with
considerably more than five hundred people; and I stood, as a matter of
course, the whole time. . . .
"Now, the deputation of two had come on with us from Hartford; and at
New Haven there was another committee; and the immense fatigue and
worry of all this, no words can exaggerate. We had been in the morning
over jails and deaf and dumb asylums; had stopped on the journey at a
place called Wallingford, where a whole town had turned out to see me,
and to gratify whose curiosity the train stopped expressly; had had a
day of great excitement and exertion on the Thursday (this being
Friday); and were inexpressibly worn out. And when at last we got to bed
and were 'going' to fall asleep, the choristers of the college turned
out in a body, under the window, and serenaded us! We had had,
by-the-by, another serenade at Hartford, from a Mr. Adams (a nephew of
John Quincy Adams) and a German friend. _They_ were most beautiful
singers: and when they began, in the dead of the night, in a long,
musical, echoing passage outside our chamber door; singing, in low
voices to guitars, about home and absent friends and other topics that
they knew would interest us; we were more moved than I can tell you. In
the midst of my sentimentality, though, a thought occurred to me which
made me laugh so immoderately that I was obliged to cover my face with
the bedclothes. 'Good Heavens!' I said to Kate, 'what a monstrously
ridiculous and commonplace appearance my boots must have, outside the
door!' I never _was_ so impressed with a sense of the absurdity of
boots, in all my life.
"The New Haven serenade was not so good; though there were a great many
voices, and a 'reg'lar' band. It hadn't the heart of the other. Before
it was six hours old, we were dressing with might and main, and making
ready for our departure; it being a drive of twenty minutes to the
steamboat, and the hour of sailing nine o'clock. After a hasty breakfast
we started off; and after another levee on the deck (actually on the
deck), and 'three times three for Dickens,' moved towards New York.
"I was delighted to find on board a Mr. Felton whom I had known at
Boston. He is the Greek professor at Cambridge, and was going on to the
ball and dinner. Like most men of his class whom I have seen, he is a
most delightful fellow,--unaffected, hearty, genial, jolly; quite an
Englishman of the best sort. We drank all the porter on board, ate all
the cold pork and cheese, and were very merry indeed. I should have told
you, in its proper place, that both at Hartford and New Haven a regular
bank was subscribed, by these committees, for _all_ my expenses. No bill
was to be got at the bar, and everything was paid for. But as I would on
no account suffer this to be done, I stoutly and positively refused to
budge an inch until Mr. Q. should have received the bills from the
landlord's own hands, and paid them to the last farthing. Finding it
impossible to move me, they suffered me, most unwillingly, to carry the
point.
"About half-past 2 we arrived here. In half an hour more, we reached
this hotel, where a very splendid suite of rooms was prepared for us;
and where everything is very comfortable, and no doubt (as at Boston)
_enormously_ dear. Just as we sat down to dinner, David Colden made his
appearance; and when he had gone, and we were taking our wine,
Washington Irving came in alone, with open arms. And here he stopped,
until ten o'clock at night." (Through Lord Jeffrey, with whom he was
connected by marriage, and Macready, of whom he was the cordial friend,
we already knew Mr. Colden; and his subsequent visits to Europe led to
many years' intimate intercourse, greatly enjoyed by us both.) "Having
got so far, I shall divide my discourse into four points. First, the
ball. Secondly, some slight specimens of a certain phase of character in
the Americans. Thirdly, international copyright. Fourthly, my life here,
and projects to be carried out while I remain.
"Firstly, the ball. It came off last Monday (vide pamphlet.) 'At a
quarter-past 9, exactly' (I quote the printed order of proceeding), we
were waited upon by 'David Colden, Esquire, and General George Morris;'
habited, the former in full ball costume, the latter in the full dress
uniform of Heaven knows what regiment of militia. The general took Kate,
Colden gave his arm to me, and we proceeded downstairs to a carriage at
the door, which took us to the stage-door of the theatre, greatly to the
disappointment of an enormous crowd who were besetting the main door and
making a most tremendous hullaballoo. The scene on our entrance was very
striking. There were three thousand people present in full dress; from
the roof to the floor, the theatre was decorated magnificently; and the
light, glitter, glare, show, noise, and cheering, baffle my descriptive
powers. We were walked in through the centre of the centre dress-box,
the front whereof was taken out for the occasion; so to the back of the
stage, where the mayor and other dignitaries received us; and we were
then paraded all round the enormous ball-room, twice, for the
gratification of the many-headed. That done, we began to dance--Heaven
knows how we did it, for there was no room. And we continued dancing
until, being no longer able even to stand, we slipped away quietly, and
came back to the hotel. All the documents connected with this
extraordinary festival (quite unparalleled here) we have preserved; so
you may suppose that on this head alone we shall have enough to show you
when we come home. The bill of fare for supper is, in its amount and
extent, quite a curiosity.
"Now, the phase of character in the Americans which amuses me most was
put before me in its most amusing shape by the circumstances attending
this affair. I had noticed it before, and have since; but I cannot
better illustrate it than by reference to this theme. Of course I can do
nothing but in some shape or other it gets into the newspapers. All
manner of lies get there, and occasionally a truth so twisted and
distorted that it has as much resemblance to the real fact as Quilp's
leg to Taglioni's. But with this ball to come off, the newspapers were
if possible unusually loquacious; and in their accounts of me, and my
seeings, sayings, and doings on the Saturday night and Sunday before,
they describe my manner, mode of speaking, dressing, and so forth. In
doing this, they report that I am a very charming fellow (of course),
and have a very free and easy way with me; 'which,' say they, 'at first
amused a few fashionables;' but soon pleased them exceedingly. Another
paper, coming after the ball, dwells upon its splendor and brilliancy;
hugs itself and its readers upon all that Dickens saw, and winds up by
gravely expressing its conviction that Dickens was never in such
society in England as he has seen in New York, and that its high and
striking tone cannot fail to make an indelible impression on his mind!
For the same reason I am always represented, whenever I appear in
public, as being 'very pale;' 'apparently thunderstruck;' and utterly
confounded by all I see. . . . You recognize the queer vanity which is at
the root of all this? I have plenty of stories in connection with it to
amuse you with when I return."
"_Twenty-fourth February._
"It is unnecessary to say . . . that this letter _didn't_ come by the
sailing packet, and _will_ come by the Cunard boat. After the ball I was
laid up with a very bad sore throat, which confined me to the house four
whole days; and as I was unable to write, or indeed to do anything but
doze and drink lemonade, I missed the ship. . . . I have still a
horrible cold, and so has Kate, but in other respects we are all right.
I proceed to my third head: the international copyright question.
"I believe there is no country on the face of the earth where there is
less freedom of opinion on any subject in reference to which there is a
broad difference of opinion, than in this.--There!--I write the words
with reluctance, disappointment, and sorrow; but I believe it from the
bottom of my soul. I spoke, as you know, of international copyright, at
Boston; and I spoke of it again at Hartford. My friends were paralyzed
with wonder at such audacious daring. The notion that I, a man alone by
himself, in America, should venture to suggest to the Americans that
there was one point on which they were neither just to their own
countrymen nor to us, actually struck the boldest dumb! Washington
Irving, Prescott, Hoffman, Bryant, Halleck, Dana, Washington
Allston--every man who writes in this country is devoted to the
question, and not one of them _dares_ to raise his voice and complain of
the atrocious state of the law. It is nothing that of all men living I
am the greatest loser by it. It is nothing that I have a claim to speak
and be heard. The wonder is that a breathing man can be found with
temerity enough to suggest to the Americans the possibility of their
having done wrong. I wish you could have seen the faces that I saw, down
both sides of the table at Hartford, when I began to talk about Scott. I
wish you could have heard how I gave it out. My blood so boiled as I
thought of the monstrous injustice that I felt as if I were twelve feet
high when I thrust it down their throats.
"I had no sooner made that second speech than such an outcry began (for
the purpose of deterring me from doing the like in this city) as an
Englishman can form no notion of. Anonymous letters, verbal dissuasions;
newspaper attacks making Colt (a murderer who is attracting great
attention here) an angel by comparison with me; assertions that I was no
gentleman, but a mere mercenary scoundrel; coupled with the most
monstrous misrepresentations relative to my design and purpose in
visiting the United States; came pouring in upon me every day. The
dinner committee here (composed of the first gentlemen in America,
remember that) were so dismayed, that they besought me not to pursue the
subject, _although they every one agreed with me_. I answered that I
would. That nothing should deter me. . . . That the shame was theirs,
not mine; and that as I would not spare them when I got home, I would
not be silenced here. Accordingly, when the night came, I asserted my
right, with all the means I could command to give it dignity, in face,
manner, or words; and I believe that if you could have seen and heard
me, you would have loved me better for it than ever you did in your
life.
"The _New York Herald_, which you will receive with this, is the
_Satirist_ of America; but having a great circulation (on account of its
commercial intelligence and early news) it can afford to secure the best
reporters. . . . My speech is done, upon the whole, with remarkable
accuracy. There are a great many typographical errors in it; and by the
omission of one or two words, or the substitution of one word for
another, it is often materially weakened. Thus, I did not say that I
'claimed' my right, but that I 'asserted' it; and I did not say that I
had 'some claim,' but that I had 'a most righteous claim,' to speak. But
altogether it is very correct."
* * * * *
Washington Irving was chairman of this dinner, and, having from the
first a dread that he should break down in his speech, the catastrophe
came accordingly. Near him sat the Cambridge professor who had come with
Dickens by boat from New Haven, with whom already a warm friendship had
been formed that lasted for life, and who has pleasantly sketched what
happened. Mr. Felton saw Irving constantly in the interval of
preparation, and could not but despond at his daily iterated foreboding
of _I shall certainly break down_; though besides the real dread there
was a sly humor which heightened its whimsical horror with an
irresistible drollery. But the professor plucked up hope a little when
the night came and he saw that Irving had laid under his plate the
manuscript of his speech. During dinner, nevertheless, his old
foreboding cry was still heard, and "at last the moment arrived; Mr.
Irving rose; and the deafening and long-continued applause by no means
lessened his apprehension. He began in his pleasant voice; got through
two or three sentences pretty easily, but in the next hesitated; and,
after one or two attempts to go on, gave it up, with a graceful allusion
to the tournament and the troop of knights all armed and eager for the
fray; and ended with the toast CHARLES DICKENS, THE GUEST OF THE NATION.
_There!_ said he, as he resumed his seat amid applause as great as had
greeted his rising, _There! I told you I should break down, and I've
done it!_" He was in London a few months later, on his way to Spain; and
I heard Thomas Moore describe[47] at Rogers's table the difficulty there
had been to overcome his reluctance, because of this break-down, to go
to the dinner of the Literary Fund on the occasion of Prince Albert's
presiding. "However," said Moore, "I told him only to attempt a few
words, and I suggested what they should be, and he said he'd never
thought of anything so easy, and he went, and did famously." I knew very
well, as I listened, that this had _not_ been the result; but as the
distinguished American had found himself, on this second occasion, not
among orators as in New York, but among men as unable as himself to
speak in public, and equally able to do better things,[48] he was
doubtless more reconciled to his own failure. I have been led to this
digression by Dickens's silence on his friend's break-down. He had so
great a love for Irving that it was painful to speak of him as at any
disadvantage, and of the New York dinner he wrote only in its connection
with his own copyright speeches.
* * * * *
"The effect of all this copyright agitation at least has been to awaken
a great sensation on both sides of the subject; the respectable
newspapers and reviews taking up the cudgels as strongly in my favor, as
the others have done against me. Some of the vagabonds take great credit
to themselves (grant us patience!) for having made me popular by
publishing my books in newspapers: as if there were no England, no
Scotland, no Germany, no place but America in the whole world. A
splendid satire upon this kind of trash has just occurred. A man came
here yesterday, and demanded, not besought but demanded, pecuniary
assistance; and fairly bullied Mr. Q. for money. When I came home, I
dictated a letter to this effect,--that such applications reached me in
vast numbers every day; that if I were a man of fortune, I could not
render assistance to all who sought it; and that, depending on my own
exertion for all the help I could give, I regretted to say I could
afford him none. Upon this, my gentleman sits down and writes me that he
is an itinerant bookseller; that he is the first man who sold my books
in New York; that he is distressed in the city where I am reveling in
luxury; that he thinks it rather strange that the man who wrote
_Nickleby_ should be utterly destitute of feeling; and that he would
have me 'take care I don't repent it.' What do you think of _that_?--as
Mac would say. I thought it such a good commentary, that I dispatched
the letter to the editor of the only English newspaper here, and told
him he might print it if he liked.
"I will tell you what _I_ should like, my dear friend, always supposing
that your judgment concurs with mine, and that you would take the
trouble to get such a document. I should like to have a short letter
addressed to me by the principal English authors who signed the
international copyright petition, expressive of their sense that I have
done my duty to the cause. I am sure I deserve it, but I don't wish it
on that ground. It is because its publication in the best journals here
would unquestionably do great good. As the gauntlet is down, let us go
on. Clay has already sent a gentleman to me express from Washington
(where I shall be on the 6th or 7th of next month) to declare his strong
interest in the matter, his cordial approval of the 'manly' course I
have held in reference to it, and his desire to stir in it if possible.
I have lighted up such a blaze that a meeting of the foremost people on
the other side (very respectfully and properly conducted in reference to
me, personally, I am bound to say) was held in this town t'other night.
And it would be a thousand pities if we did not strike as hard as we
can, now that the iron is so hot.
"I have come at last, and it is time I did, to my life here, and
intentions for the future. I can do nothing that I want to do, go
nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. If I
turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude. If I stay at home,
the house becomes, with callers, like a fair. If I visit a public
institution, with only one friend, the directors come down
incontinently, waylay me in the yard, and address me in a long speech. I
go to a party in the evening, and am so inclosed and hemmed about by
people, stand where I will, that I am exhausted for want of air. I dine
out, and have to talk about everything, to everybody. I go to church for
quiet, and there is a violent rush to the neighborhood of the pew I sit
in, and the clergyman preaches _at_ me. I take my seat in a
railroad-car, and the very conductor won't leave me alone. I get out at
a station, and can't drink a glass of water, without having a hundred
people looking down my throat when I open my mouth to swallow. Conceive
what all this is! Then by every post, letters on letters arrive, all
about nothing, and all demanding an immediate answer. This man is
offended because I won't live in his house; and that man is thoroughly
disgusted because I won't go out more than four times in one evening. I
have no rest or peace, and am in a perpetual worry.
"Under these febrile circumstances, which this climate especially
favors, I have come to the resolution that I will not (so far as my will
has anything to do with the matter) accept any more public
entertainments or public recognitions of any kind, during my stay in the
United States; and in pursuance of this determination I have refused
invitations from Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Virginia, Albany,
and Providence. Heaven knows whether this will be effectual, but I shall
soon see, for on Monday morning, the 28th, we leave for Philadelphia.
There I shall only stay three days. Thence we go to Baltimore, and
_there_ I shall only stay three days. Thence to Washington, where we may
stay perhaps ten days; perhaps not so long. Thence to Virginia, where we
may halt for one day; and thence to Charleston, where we may pass a week
perhaps, and where we shall very likely remain until your March letters
reach us, through David Colden. I had a design of going from Charleston
to Columbia in South Carolina, and there engaging a carriage, a
baggage-tender and negro boy to guard the same, and a saddle-horse for
myself,--with which caravan I intended going 'right away,' as they say
here, into the West, through the wilds of Kentucky and Tennessee, across
the Alleghany Mountains, and so on until we should strike the lakes and
could get to Canada. But it has been represented to me that this is a
track only known to traveling merchants; that the roads are bad, the
country a tremendous waste, the inns log houses, and the journey one
that would play the very devil with Kate. I am staggered, but not
deterred. If I find it possible to be done in the time, I mean to do it;
being quite satisfied that without some such dash I can never be a free
agent, or see anything worth the telling.
"We mean to return home in a packet-ship,--not a steamer. Her name is
the George Washington, and she will sail from here, for Liverpool, on
the seventh of June. At that season of the year they are seldom more
than three weeks making the voyage; and I never will trust myself upon
the wide ocean, if it please Heaven, in a steamer again. When I tell you
all that I observed on board that Britannia, I shall astonish you.
Meanwhile, consider two of their dangers. First, that if the funnel were
blown overboard the vessel must instantly be on fire, from stem to
stern; to comprehend which consequence, you have only to understand that
the funnel is more than 40 feet high, and that at night you see the
solid fire two or three feet above its top. Imagine this swept down by a
strong wind, and picture to yourself the amount of flame on deck; and
that a strong wind is likely to sweep it down you soon learn, from the
precautions taken to keep it up in a storm, when it is the first thing
thought of. Secondly, each of these boats consumes between London and
Halifax 700 tons of coals; and it is pretty clear, from this enormous
difference of weight in a ship of only 1200 tons burden in all, that she
must either be too heavy when she comes out of port, or too light when
she goes in. The daily difference in her rolling, as she burns the coals
out, is something absolutely fearful. Add to all this, that by day and
night she is full of fire and people, that she has no boats, and that
the struggling of that enormous machinery in a heavy sea seems as though
it would rend her into fragments--and you may have a pretty con-sid-erable
damned good sort of a feeble notion that it don't fit nohow; and that it
a'n't calculated to make you smart, overmuch; and that you don't feel
'special bright; and by no means first-rate; and not at all tonguey (or
disposed for conversation); and that however rowdy you may be by natur',
it does use you up com-plete, and that's a fact; and makes you quake
considerable, and disposed toe damn the [)e]ngin[)e]!--All of which
phrases, I beg to add, are pure Americanisms of the first water.
"When we reach Baltimore, we are in the regions of slavery. It exists
there, in its least shocking and most mitigated form; but there it is.
They whisper, here (they dare only whisper, you know, and that below
their breaths), that on that place, and all through the South, there is
a dull gloomy cloud on which the very word seems written. I shall be
able to say, one of these days, that I accepted no public mark of
respect in any place where slavery was;--and that's something.
"The ladies of America are decidedly and unquestionably beautiful. Their
complexions are not so good as those of Englishwomen; their beauty does
not last so long; and their figures are very inferior. But they are most
beautiful. I still reserve my opinion of the national character,--just
whispering that I tremble for a radical coming here, unless he is a
radical on principle, by reason and reflection, and from the sense of
right. I fear that if he were anything else, he would return home a
Tory. . . . I say no more on that head for two months from this time,
save that I do fear that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty will be
dealt by this country, in the failure of its example to the earth. The
scenes that are passing in Congress now, all tending to the separation
of the States, fill one with such a deep disgust that I dislike the very
name of Washington (meaning the place, not the man), and am repelled by
the mere thought of approaching it."
"_Twenty-seventh February. Sunday._
"There begins to be great consternation here, in reference to the Cunard
packet which (we suppose) left Liverpool on the fourth. She has not yet
arrived. We scarcely know what to do with ourselves in our extreme
anxiety to get letters from home. I have really had serious thoughts of
going back to Boston, alone, to be nearer news. We have determined to
remain here until Tuesday afternoon, if she should not arrive before,
and to send Mr. Q. and the luggage on to Philadelphia to-morrow morning.
God grant she may not have gone down! but every ship that comes in
brings intelligence of a terrible gale (which indeed was felt ashore
here) on the night of the fourteenth; and the sea-captains swear (not
without some prejudice, of course) that no steamer could have lived
through it, supposing her to have been in its full fury. As there is no
steam-packet to go to England, supposing the Caledonia not to arrive, we
are obliged to send our letters by the Garrick ship, which sails early
to-morrow morning. Consequently I must huddle this up, and dispatch it
to the post-office with all speed. I have so much to say that I could
fill quires of paper, which renders this sudden pull-up the more
provoking.
"I have in my portmanteau a petition for an international copyright law,
signed by all the best American writers, with Washington Irving at
their head. They have requested me to hand it to Clay for presentation,
and to back it with any remarks I may think proper to offer. So
'Hoo-roar for the principle, as the money-lender said ven he vouldn't
renoo the bill.'
"God bless you. . . . You know what I would say about home and the
darlings. A hundred times God bless you. . . . Fears are entertained for
Lord Ashburton also. Nothing has been heard of him."
A brief letter, sent me next day by the minister's bag, was in effect a
postscript to the foregoing, and expressed still more strongly the
doubts and apprehensions his voyage out had impressed him with, and
which, though he afterwards saw reason greatly to modify his misgivings,
were not so strange at that time as they appear to us now:
"Carlton House, New York, February twenty-eighth, 1842. . . . The
Caledonia, I grieve and regret to say, has not arrived. If she left
England to her time, she has been four-and-twenty days at sea. There is
no news of her; and on the nights of the fourteenth and eighteenth it
blew a terrible gale, which almost justifies the worst suspicions. For
myself, I have hardly any hope of her; having seen enough, in our
passage out, to convince me that steaming across the ocean in heavy
weather is as yet an experiment of the utmost hazard.
"As it was supposed that there would be no steamer whatever for England
this month (since in ordinary course the Caledonia would have returned
with the mails on the 2d of March), I hastily got the letters ready
yesterday and sent them by the Garrick; which may perhaps be three
weeks out, but is not very likely to be longer. But belonging to the
Cunard company is a boat called the Unicorn, which in the summertime
plies up the St. Lawrence, and brings passengers from Canada to join the
British and North American steamers at Halifax. In the winter she lies
at the last-mentioned place; from which news has come this morning that
they have sent her on to Boston for the mails, and, rather than
interrupt the communication, mean to dispatch her to England in lieu of
the poor Caledonia. This in itself, by the way, is a daring deed; for
she was originally built to run between Liverpool and Glasgow, and is no
more designed for the Atlantic than a Calais packet-boat; though she
once crossed it, in the summer season.
"You may judge, therefore, what the owners think of the probability of
the Caledonia's arrival. How slight an alteration in our plans would
have made us passengers on board of her!
"It would be difficult to tell you, my dear fellow, what an impression
this has made upon our minds, or with what intense anxiety and suspense
we have been waiting for your letters from home. We were to have gone
South to-day, but linger here until to-morrow afternoon (having sent the
secretary and luggage forward) for one more chance of news. Love to dear
Macready, and to dear Mac, and every one we care for. It's useless to
speak of the dear children. It seems now as though we should never hear
of them. . . .
"P.S. Washington Irving is a _great_ fellow. We have laughed most
heartily together. He is just the man he ought to be. So is Doctor
Channing, with whom I have had an interesting correspondence since I
saw him last at Boston. Halleck is a merry little man. Bryant a sad one,
and very reserved. Washington Allston the painter (who wrote _Monaldi_)
is a fine specimen of a glorious old genius. Longfellow, whose volume of
poems I have got for you, is a frank accomplished man as well as a fine
writer, and will be in town 'next fall.' Tell Macready that I suspect
prices here must have rather altered since his time. I paid our
fortnight's bill here, last night. We have dined out every day (except
when I was laid up with a sore throat), and only had in all four bottles
of wine. The bill was 70_l._ English!!!
"You will see, by my other letter, how we have been fêted and feasted;
and how there is war to the knife about the international copyright; and
how I _will_ speak about it, and decline to be put down. . . .
"Oh for news from home! I think of your letters so full of heart and
friendship, with perhaps a little scrawl of Charley's or Mamey's, lying
at the bottom of the deep sea; and am as full of sorrow as if they had
once been living creatures.--Well! they _may_ come, yet."
* * * * *
They did reach him, but not by the Caledonia. His fears as to that
vessel were but too well founded. On the very day when she was due in
Boston (the 18th of February) it was learned in London that she had
undergone misadventure; that, her decks having been swept and her rudder
torn away, though happily no lives were lost, she had returned disabled
to Cork; and that the Acadia, having received her passengers and mails,
was to sail with them from Liverpool next day.
Of the main subject of that letter written on the day preceding,--of the
quite unpremeditated impulse, out of which sprang his advocacy of claims
which he felt to be represented in his person,--of the injustice done by
his entertainers to their guest in ascribing such advocacy to
selfishness,--and of the graver wrong done by them to their own highest
interests, nay, even to their commonest and most vulgar interests, in
continuing to reject those claims, I will add nothing now to what all
those years ago I labored very hard to lay before many readers. It will
be enough if I here print, from the authors' letters I sent out to him
by the next following mail, in compliance with his wish, this which
follows from a very dear friend of his and mine. I fortunately had it
transcribed before I posted it to him; Mr. Carlyle having in some haste
written from "Templand, 26 March, 1842," and taken no copy.
"We learn by the newspapers that you everywhere in America stir up the
question of international copyright, and thereby awaken huge dissonance
where all else were triumphant unison for you. I am asked my opinion of
the matter, and requested to write it down in words.
"Several years ago, if memory err not, I was one of many English writers
who, under the auspices of Miss Martineau, did already sign a petition
to congress praying for an international copyright between the two
Nations,--which properly are not two Nations, but one; _indivisible_ by
parliament, congress, or any kind of human law or diplomacy, being
already _united_ by Heaven's Act of Parliament, and the everlasting law
of Nature and Fact. To that opinion I still adhere, and am like to
continue adhering.
"In discussion of the matter before any congress or parliament, manifold
considerations and argumentations will necessarily arise; which to me
are not interesting, nor essential for helping me to a decision. They
respect the time and manner in which the thing should be; not at all
whether the thing should be or not. In an ancient book, reverenced I
should hope on both sides of the Ocean, it was thousands of years ago
written down in the most decisive and explicit manner, 'Thou _shalt not_
steal.' That thou belongest to a different 'Nation,' and canst steal
without being certainly hanged for it, gives thee no permission to
steal! Thou shalt _not_ in anywise steal at all! So it is written down,
for Nations and for Men, in the Law-Book of the Maker of this Universe.
Nay, poor Jeremy Bentham and others step in here, and will demonstrate
that it is actually our true convenience and expediency not to steal;
which I for my share, on the great scale and on the small, and in all
conceivable scales and shapes, do also firmly believe it to be. For
example, if Nations abstained from stealing, what need were there of
fighting,--with its butcherings and burnings, decidedly the most
expensive thing in this world? How much more two Nations, which, as I
said, are but one Nation; knit in a thousand ways by Nature and
Practical Intercourse; indivisible brother elements of the same great
SAXONDOM, to which in all honorable ways be long life!
"When Mr. Robert Roy M'Gregor lived in the district of Menteith on the
Highland border two centuries ago, he for his part found it more
convenient to supply himself with beef by stealing it alive from the
adjacent glens, than by buying it killed in the Stirling butchers'
market. It was Mr. Roy's plan of supplying himself with beef in those
days, this of stealing it. In many a little 'Congress' in the district
of Menteith, there was debating, doubt it not, and much specious
argumentation this way and that, before they could ascertain that,
really and truly, buying was the best way to get your beef; which,
however, in the long run they did with one assent find it indisputably
to be: and accordingly they hold by it to this day."
This brave letter was an important service rendered at a critical time,
and Dickens was very grateful for it. But, as time went on, he had other
and higher causes for gratitude to its writer. Admiration of Carlyle
increased in him with his years; and there was no one whom in later life
he honored so much, or had a more profound regard for.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] On the 22d of May, 1842.
[48] The dinner was on the 10th of May, and early the following morning
I had a letter about it from Mr. Blanchard, containing these words:
"Washington Irving couldn't utter a word for trembling, and Moore was as
little as usual. But, poor Tom Campbell--great Heavens! what a
spectacle! Amid roars of laughter he began a sentence three times about
something that Dugald Stewart or Lord Bacon had said, and never could
get beyond those words. The Prince was capital, though deucedly
frightened. He seems unaffected and amiable, as well as very clever."
CHAPTER XXI.
PHILADELPHIA, WASHINGTON, AND THE SOUTH.
1842.
At Philadelphia--Rule in Printing
Letters--Promise as to Railroads--Experience of
them--Railway-cars--Charcoal Stoves--Ladies'
Cars--Spittoons--Massachusetts and New
York--Police-cells and Prisons--House of
Detention and Inmates--Women and Boy
Prisoners--Capital Punishment--A House of
Correction--Four Hundred Single
Cells--Comparison with English Prisons--Inns
and Landlords--At Washington--Hotel
Extortion--Philadelphia Penitentiary--The
Solitary System--Solitary Prisoners--Talk with
Inspectors--Bookseller Carey--Changes of
Temperature--Henry Clay--Proposed
Journeyings--Letters from England--Congress and
Senate--Leading American Statesmen--The People
of America--Englishmen "located" there--"Surgit
amari aliquid"--The Copyright Petition--At
Richmond--Irving appointed to Spain--Experience
of a Slave City--Incidents of Slave
Life--Discussion with a Slaveholder--Feeling of
South to England--Levees at Richmond--One more
Banquet accepted--My Gift of _Shakspeare_--Home
Letters and Fancies--Self-reproach of a Noble
Nature--Washington Irving's Leave-taking.
DICKENS'S next letter was begun in the "United States Hotel,
Philadelphia," and bore date "Sunday, sixth March, 1842." It treated of
much dealt with afterwards at greater length in the _Notes_, but the
freshness and vivacity of the first impressions in it have surprised me.
I do not, however, print any passage here which has not its own interest
independently of anything contained in that book. The rule will be
continued, as in the portions of letters already given, of not
transcribing anything before printed, or anything having even but a near
resemblance to descriptions that appear in the _Notes_.
". . . . . . As this is likely to be the only quiet day I shall have for a
long time, I devote it to writing to you. We have heard nothing from
you[49] yet, and only have for our consolation the reflection that the
Columbia[50] is now on her way out. No news had been heard of the
Caledonia yesterday afternoon, when we left New York. We _were_ to have
quitted that place last Tuesday, but have been detained there all the
week by Kate having so bad a sore throat that she was obliged to keep
her bed. We left yesterday afternoon at five o'clock, and arrived here
at eleven last night. Let me say, by the way, that this is a very trying
climate.
"I have often asked Americans in London which were the better
railroads,--ours or theirs? They have taken time for reflection, and
generally replied on mature consideration that they rather thought we
excelled; in respect of the punctuality with which we arrived at our
stations, and the smoothness of our traveling. I wish you could see what
an American railroad is, in some parts where I now have seen them. I
won't say I wish you could feel what it is, because that would be an
unchristian and savage aspiration. It is never inclosed, or warded off.
You walk down the main street of a large town; and, slap-dash,
headlong, pell-mell, down the middle of the street, with pigs burrowing,
and boys flying kites and playing marbles, and men smoking, and women
talking, and children crawling, close to the very rails, there comes
tearing along a mad locomotive with its train of cars, scattering a
red-hot shower of sparks (from its _wood_ fire) in all directions;
screeching, hissing, yelling, and panting; and nobody one atom more
concerned than if it were a hundred miles away. You cross a
turnpike-road; and there is no gate, no policeman, no signal--nothing to
keep the wayfarer or quiet traveler out of the way, but a wooden arch on
which is written, in great letters, 'Look out for the locomotive.' And
if any man, woman, or child don't look out, why, it's his or her fault,
and there's an end of it.
"The cars are like very shabby omnibuses,--only larger; holding sixty or
seventy people. The seats, instead of being placed long ways, are put
cross-wise, back to front. Each holds two. There is a long row of these
on each side of the caravan, and a narrow passage up the centre. The
windows are usually all closed, and there is very often, in addition, a
hot, close, most intolerable charcoal stove in a red-hot glow. The heat
and closeness are quite insupportable. But this is the characteristic of
all American houses, of all the public institutions, chapels, theatres,
and prisons. From the constant use of the hard anthracite coal in these
beastly furnaces, a perfectly new class of diseases is springing up in
the country. Their effect upon an Englishman is briefly told. He is
always very sick and very faint; and has an intolerable headache,
morning, noon, and night.
"In the ladies' car, there is no smoking of tobacco allowed. All
gentlemen who have ladies with them sit in this car; and it is usually
very full. Before it, is the gentlemen's car; which is something
narrower. As I had a window close to me yesterday which commanded this
gentlemen's car, I looked at it pretty often, perforce. The flashes of
saliva flew so perpetually and incessantly out of the windows all the
way, that it looked as though they were ripping open feather-beds
inside, and letting the wind dispose of the feathers.[51] But this
spitting is universal. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon
on the bench, the counsel have theirs, the witness has his, the prisoner
his, and the crier his. The jury are accommodated at the rate of three
men to a spittoon (or spit-box as they call it here); and the spectators
in the gallery are provided for, as so many men who in the course of
nature expectorate without cessation. There are spit-boxes in every
steamboat, bar-room, public dining-room, house of office, and place of
general resort, no matter what it be. In the hospitals, the students are
requested, by placard, to use the boxes provided for them, and not to
spit upon the stairs. I have twice seen gentlemen, at evening parties in
New York, turn aside when they were not engaged in conversation, and
spit upon the drawing-room carpet. And in every bar-room and hotel
passage the stone floor looks as if it were paved with open
oysters--from the quantity of this kind of deposit which tessellates it
all over. . . .
"The institutions at Boston, and at Hartford, are most admirable. It
would be very difficult indeed to improve upon them. But this is not so
at New York; where there is an ill-managed lunatic asylum, a bad jail, a
dismal workhouse, and a perfectly intolerable place of police-imprisonment.
A man is found drunk in the streets, and is thrown into a cell below the
surface of the earth; profoundly dark; so full of noisome vapors that
when you enter it with a candle you see a ring about the light, like
that which surrounds the moon in wet and cloudy weather; and so
offensive and disgusting in its filthy odors that you _cannot bear_ its
stench. He is shut up within an iron door, in a series of vaulted
passages where no one stays; has no drop of water, or ray of light, or
visitor, or help of any kind; and there he remains until the
magistrate's arrival. If he die (as one man did not long ago), he is
half eaten by the rats in an hour's time (as this man was). I expressed,
on seeing these places the other night, the disgust I felt, and which it
would be impossible to repress. 'Well, I don't know,' said the night
constable--that's a national answer, by-the-by,--'well, I don't know.
I've had six-and-twenty young women locked up here together, and
beautiful ones too, and that's a fact.' The cell was certainly no larger
than the wine-cellar in Devonshire Terrace; at least three feet lower;
and stunk like a common sewer. There was one woman in it then. The
magistrate begins his examinations at five o'clock in the morning; the
watch is set at seven at night; if the prisoners have been given in
charge by an officer, they are not taken out before nine or ten; and in
the interval they remain in these places, where they could no more be
heard to cry for help, in case of a fit or swoon among them, than a
man's voice could be heard after he was coffined up in his grave.
"There is a prison in this same city, and indeed in the same building,
where prisoners for grave offenses await their trial, and to which they
are sent back when under remand. It sometimes happens that a man or
woman will remain here for twelve months, waiting the result of motions
for new trial, and in arrest of judgment, and what not. I went into it
the other day: without any notice or preparation, otherwise I find it
difficult to catch them in their work-a-day aspect. I stood in a long,
high, narrow building, consisting of four galleries one above the other,
with a bridge across each, on which sat a turnkey, sleeping or reading
as the case might be. From the roof, a couple of wind-sails dangled and
drooped, limp and useless; the sky-light being fast closed, and they
only designed for summer use. In the centre of the building was the
eternal stove; and along both sides of every gallery was a long row of
iron doors--looking like furnace-doors, being very small, but black and
cold as if the fires within had gone out.
"A man with keys appears, to show us round. A good-looking fellow, and,
in his way, civil and obliging." (I omit a dialogue of which the
substance has been printed,[52] and give only that which appears for the
first time here.)
"'Suppose a man's here for twelve months. Do you mean to say he never
comes out at that little iron door?'
"'He _may_ walk some, perhaps--not much.'
"'Will you show me a few of them?'
"'Ah! All, if you like.'
"He threw open a door, and I looked in. An old man was sitting on his
bed, reading. The light came in through a small chink, very high up in
the wall. Across the room ran a thick iron pipe to carry off filth; this
was bored for the reception of something like a big funnel in shape; and
over the funnel was a watercock. This was his washing apparatus and
water-closet. It was not savory, but not very offensive. He looked up at
me; gave himself an odd, dogged kind of shake; and fixed his eyes on his
book again. I came out, and the door was shut and locked. He had been
there a month, and would have to wait another month for his trial. 'Has
he ever walked out now, for instance?' 'No.'. . .
"'In England, if a man is under sentence of death even, he has a yard to
walk in at certain times.'
"'Possible?'
". . . Making me this answer with a coolness which is perfectly
untranslatable and inexpressible, and which is quite peculiar to the
soil, he took me to the women's side, telling me, upon the way, all
about this man, who, it seems, murdered his wife, and will certainly be
hanged. The women's doors have a small square aperture in them; I looked
through one, and saw a pretty boy about ten or twelve years old, who
seemed lonely and miserable enough--as well he might. 'What's _he_ been
doing?' says I. 'Nothing,' says my friend. 'Nothing!' says I. 'No,' says
he. 'He's here for safe keeping. He saw his father kill his mother, and
is detained to give evidence against him--that was his father you saw
just now.' 'But that's rather hard treatment for a witness, isn't it?'
'Well, I don't know. It a'n't a very rowdy life, and _that's_ a fact.'
So my friend, who was an excellent fellow in his way, and very obliging,
and a handsome young man to boot, took me off to show me some more
curiosities; and I was very much obliged to him, for the place was so
hot, and I so giddy, that I could scarcely stand. . . .
"When a man is hanged in New York, he is walked out of one of these
cells, without any condemned sermon or other religious formalities,
straight into the narrow jail-yard, which may be about the width of
Cranbourn Alley. There, a gibbet is erected, which is of curious
construction; for the culprit stands on the earth with the rope about
his neck, which passes through a pulley in the top of the 'Tree' (see
_Newgate Calendar_ passim), and is attached to a weight something
heavier than the man. This weight, being suddenly let go, drags the rope
down with it, and sends the criminal flying up fourteen feet into the
air; while the judge, and jury, and five-and-twenty citizens (whose
presence is required by the law), stand by, that they may afterwards
certify to the fact. This yard is a very dismal place; and when I looked
at it, I thought the practice infinitely superior to ours: much more
solemn, and far less degrading and indecent.
[Illustration]
"There is another prison near New York which is a house of correction.
The convicts labor in stone-quarries near at hand, but the jail has no
covered yards or shops, so that when the weather is wet (as it was when
I was there) each man is shut up in his own little cell, all the
live-long day. These cells, in all the correction-houses I have seen,
are on one uniform plan,--thus: A, B, C, and D, are the walls of the
building with windows in them, high up in the wall. The shaded place in
the centre represents four tiers of cells, one above the other, with
doors of grated iron, and a light grated gallery to each tier. Four
tiers front to B, and four to D, so that by this means you may be said,
in walking round, to see eight tiers in all. The intermediate blank
space you walk in, looking up at these galleries; so that, coming in at
the door E, and going either to the right or left till you come back to
the door again, you see all the cells under one roof and in one high
room. Imagine them in number 400, and in every one a man locked up; this
one with his hands through the bars of his grate, this one in bed (in
the middle of the day, remember), and this one flung down in a heap upon
the ground with his head against the bars like a wild beast. Make the
rain pour down in torrents outside. Put the everlasting stove in the
midst; hot, suffocating, and vaporous, as a witch's cauldron. Add a
smell like that of a thousand old mildewed umbrellas wet through, and a
thousand dirty-clothes-bags musty, moist, and fusty, and you will have
some idea--a very feeble one, my dear friend, on my word--of this place
yesterday week. You know of course that we adopted our improvements in
prison-discipline from the American pattern; but I am confident that the
writers who have the most lustily lauded the American prisons have never
seen Chesterton's domain or Tracey's.[53] There is no more comparison
between these two prisons of ours, and any I have seen here YET, than
there is between the keepers here, and those two gentlemen. Putting out
of sight the difficulty we have in England of finding _useful_ labor for
the prisoners (which of course arises from our being an older country
and having vast numbers of artisans unemployed), our system is more
complete, more impressive, and more satisfactory in every respect. It is
very possible that I have not come to the best, not having yet seen
Mount Auburn. I will tell you when I have. And also when I have come to
those inns, mentioned--vaguely rather--by Miss Martineau, where they
undercharge literary people for the love the landlords bear them. My
experience, so far, has been of establishments where (perhaps for the
same reason) they very monstrously and violently overcharge a man whose
position forbids remonstrance.
"WASHINGTON, Sunday, March the Thirteenth, 1842.
"In allusion to the last sentence, my dear friend, I must tell you a
slight experience I had in Philadelphia. My rooms had been ordered for a
week, but, in consequence of Kate's illness, only Mr. Q. and the luggage
had gone on. Mr. Q. always lives at the table-d'hôte, so that while we
were in New York our rooms were empty. The landlord not only charged me
half the full rent for the time during which the rooms were reserved for
us (which was quite right), but charged me also _for board for myself
and Kate and Anne, at the rate of nine dollars per day_ for the same
period, when we were actually living, at the same expense, in New
York!!! I _did_ remonstrate upon this head, but was coolly told it was
the custom (which I have since been assured is a lie), and had nothing
for it but to pay the amount. What else could I do? I was going away by
the steamboat at five o'clock in the morning; and the landlord knew
perfectly well that my disputing an item of his bill would draw down
upon me the sacred wrath of the newspapers, which would one and all
demand in capitals if THIS was the gratitude of the man whom America had
received as she had never received any other man but La Fayette?
"I went last Tuesday to the Eastern Penitentiary near Philadelphia,
which is the only prison in the States, or I believe in the world, on
the principle of hopeless, strict, and unrelaxed solitary confinement,
during the whole term of the sentence. It is wonderfully kept, but a
most dreadful, fearful place. The inspectors, immediately on my arrival
in Philadelphia, invited me to pass the day in the jail, and to dine
with them when I had finished my inspection, that they might hear my
opinion of the system. Accordingly I passed the whole day in going from
cell to cell, and conversing with the prisoners. Every facility was
given me, and no constraint whatever imposed upon any man's free speech.
If I were to write you a letter of twenty sheets, I could not tell you
this one day's work; so I will reserve it until that happy time when we
shall sit round the table a Jack Straw's--you, and I, and Mac--and go
over my diary. I never shall be able to dismiss from my mind the
impressions of that day. Making notes of them, as I have done, is an
absurdity, for they are written, beyond all power of erasure, in my
brain. I saw men who had been there, five years, six years, eleven
years, two years, two months, two days; some whose term was nearly over,
and some whose term had only just begun. Women too, under the same
variety of circumstances. Every prisoner who comes into the jail comes
at night; is put into a bath, and dressed in the prison-garb; and then a
black hood is drawn over his face and head, and he is led to the cell
from which he never stirs again until his whole period of confinement
has expired. I looked at some of them with the same awe as I should have
looked at men who had been buried alive and dug up again.
"We dined in the jail: and I told them after dinner how much the sight
had affected me, and what an awful punishment it was. I dwelt upon this;
for, although the inspectors are extremely kind and benevolent men, I
question whether they are sufficiently acquainted with the human mind to
know what it is they are doing. Indeed, I am sure they do not know. I
bore testimony, as every one who sees it must, to the admirable
government of the institution (Stanfield is the keeper: grown a little
younger, that's all); but added that nothing could justify such a
punishment but its working a reformation in the prisoners. That for
short terms--say two years for the maximum--I conceived, especially
after what they had told me of its good effects in certain cases, it
might perhaps be highly beneficial; but that, carried to so great an
extent, I thought it cruel and unjustifiable; and, further, that their
sentences for small offenses were very rigorous, not to say savage. All
this they took like men who were really anxious to have one's free
opinion and to do right. And we were very much pleased with each other,
and parted in the friendliest way.
"They sent me back to Philadelphia in a carriage they had sent for me in
the morning; and then I had to dress in a hurry, and follow Kate to
Carey's the bookseller's, where there was a party. He married a sister
of Leslie's. There are three Miss Leslies here, very accomplished; and
one of them has copied all her brother's principal pictures. These
copies hang about the room. We got away from this as soon as we could;
and next morning had to turn out at five. In the morning I had received
and shaken hands with five hundred people, so you may suppose that I was
pretty well tired. Indeed, I am obliged to be very careful of myself; to
avoid smoking and drinking; to get to bed soon; and to be particular in
respect of what I eat. . . . You cannot think how bilious and trying the
climate is. One day it is hot summer, without a breath of air; the next,
twenty degrees below freezing, with a wind blowing that cuts your skin
like steel. These changes have occurred here several times since last
Wednesday night.
"I have altered my route, and don't mean to go to Charleston. The
country, all the way from here, is nothing but a dismal swamp; there is
a bad night of sea-coasting in the journey; the equinoctial gales are
blowing hard; and Clay (a most _charming_ fellow, by-the-by), whom I
have consulted, strongly dissuades me. The weather is intensely hot
there; the spring fever is coming on; and there is very little to see,
after all. We therefore go next Wednesday night to Richmond, which we
shall reach on Thursday. There we shall stop three days; my object being
to see some tobacco-plantations. Then we shall go by James River back to
Baltimore, which we have already passed through, and where we shall stay
two days. Then we shall go West at once, straight through the most
gigantic part of this continent: across the Alleghany Mountains, and
over a prairie.
"STILL AT WASHINGTON, Fifteenth March, 1842. . . . It is impossible, my
dear friend, to tell you what we felt when Mr. Q. (who is a fearfully
sentimental genius, but heartily interested in all that concerns us)
came to where we were dining last Sunday, and sent in a note to the
effect that the Caledonia[54] had arrived! Being really assured of her
safety, we felt as if the distance between us and home were diminished
by at least one-half. There was great joy everywhere here, for she had
been quite despaired of, but our joy was beyond all telling. This news
came on by express. Last night your letters reached us. I was dining
with a club (for I can't avoid a dinner of that sort, now and then), and
Kate sent me a note about nine o'clock to say they were here. But she
didn't open them--which I consider heroic--until I came home. That was
about half-past ten; and we read them until nearly two in the morning.
"I won't say a word about your letters; except that Kate and I have come
to a conclusion which makes me tremble in my shoes, for we decide that
humorous narrative is your forte, and not statesmen of the commonwealth.
I won't say a word about your news; for how could I in that case, while
you want to hear what we are doing, resist the temptation of expending
pages on those darling children? . . .
"I have the privilege of appearing on the floor of both Houses here, and
go to them every day. They are very handsome and commodious. There is a
great deal of bad speaking, but there are a great many very remarkable
men, in the legislature: such as John Quincy Adams, Clay, Preston,
Calhoun, and others: with whom I need scarcely add I have been placed in
the friendliest relations. Adams is a fine old fellow--seventy-six years
old, but with most surprising vigor, memory, readiness, and pluck. Clay
is perfectly enchanting; an irresistible man. There are some very
notable specimens, too, out of the West. Splendid men to look at, hard
to deceive, prompt to act, lions in energy, Crichtons in varied
accomplishments, Indians in quickness of eye and gesture, Americans in
affectionate and generous impulse. It would be difficult to exaggerate
the nobility of some of these glorious fellows.
"When Clay retires, as he does this month, Preston will become the
leader of the Whig party. He so solemnly assures me that the
international copyright shall and will be passed, that I almost begin to
hope; and I shall be entitled to say, if it be, that I have brought it
about. You have no idea how universal the discussion of its merits and
demerits has become, or how eager for the change I have made a portion
of the people.
"You remember what ---- was, in England. If you _could_ but see him
here! If you could only have seen him when he called on us the other
day,--feigning abstraction in the dreadful pressure of affairs of state;
rubbing his forehead as one who was aweary of the world; and exhibiting
a sublime caricature of Lord Burleigh. He is the only thoroughly unreal
man I have seen on this side the ocean. Heaven help the President! All
parties are against him, and he appears truly wretched. We go to a levee
at his house to-night. He has invited me to dinner on Friday, but I am
obliged to decline; for we leave, per steamboat, to-morrow night.
"I said I wouldn't write anything more concerning the American people,
for two months. Second thoughts are best. I shall not change, and may as
well speak out--to _you_. They are friendly, earnest, hospitable, kind,
frank, very often accomplished, far less prejudiced than you would
suppose, warm-hearted, fervent, and enthusiastic. They are chivalrous in
their universal politeness to women, courteous, obliging, disinterested;
and, when they conceive a perfect affection for a man (as I may venture
to say of myself), entirely devoted to him. I have received thousands of
people of all ranks and grades, and have never once been asked an
offensive or unpolite question,--except by Englishmen, who, when they
have been 'located' here for some years, are worse than the devil in
his blackest painting. The State is a parent to its people; has a
parental care and watch over all poor children, women laboring of child,
sick persons, and captives. The common men render you assistance in the
streets, and would revolt from the offer of a piece of money. The desire
to oblige is universal; and I have never once traveled in a public
conveyance without making some generous acquaintance whom I have been
sorry to part from, and who has in many cases come on miles, to see us
again. But I don't like the country. I would not live here, on any
consideration. It goes against the grain with me. It would with you. I
think it impossible, utterly impossible, for any Englishman to live here
and be happy. I have a confidence that I must be right, because I have
everything, God knows, to lead me to the opposite conclusion; and yet I
cannot resist coming to this one. As to the causes, they are too many to
enter upon here. . . .
"One of two petitions for an international copyright which I brought
here from American authors, with Irving at their head, has been
presented to the House of Representatives. Clay retains the other for
presentation to the Senate after I have left Washington. The presented
one has been referred to a committee; the Speaker has nominated as its
chairman Mr. Kennedy, member for Baltimore, who is himself an author and
notoriously favorable to such a law; and I am going to assist him in his
report.
"RICHMOND, IN VIRGINIA. Thursday Night, March 17.
"Irving was with me at Washington yesterday, and _wept heartily_ at
parting. He is a fine fellow, when you know him well; and you would
relish him, my dear friend, of all things. We have laughed together at
some absurdities we have encountered in company, quite in my vociferous
Devonshire-Terrace style. The 'Merrikin' government has treated him, he
says, most liberally and handsomely in every respect. He thinks of
sailing for Liverpool on the 7th of April, passing a short time in
London, and then going to Paris. Perhaps you may meet him. If you do, he
will know that you are my dearest friend, and will open his whole heart
to you at once. His secretary of legation, Mr. Coggleswell, is a man of
very remarkable information, a great traveler, a good talker, and a
scholar.
"I am going to sketch you our trip here from Washington, as it involves
nine miles of a 'Virginny Road.' That done, I must be brief, good
brother.". . .
The reader of the _American Notes_ will remember the admirable and most
humorous description of the night steamer on the Potomac, and of the
black driver over the Virginia road. Both were in this letter; which,
after three days, he resumed "At Washington again, Monday, March the
twenty-first:
"We had intended to go to Baltimore from Richmond, by a place called
Norfolk; but, one of the boats being under repair, I found we should
probably be detained at this Norfolk two days. Therefore we came back
here yesterday, by the road we had traveled before; lay here last night;
and go on to Baltimore this afternoon, at four o'clock. It is a journey
of only two hours and a half. Richmond is a prettily situated town, but,
like other towns in slave districts (as the planters themselves admit),
has an aspect of decay and gloom which to an unaccustomed eye is _most_
distressing. In the black car (for they don't let them sit with the
whites), on the railroad as we went there, were a mother and family,
whom the steamer was conveying away, to sell; retaining the man (the
husband and father, I mean) on his plantation. The children cried the
whole way. Yesterday, on board the boat, a slave-owner and two
constables were our fellow-passengers. They were coming here in search
of two negroes who had run away on the previous day. On the bridge at
Richmond there is a notice against fast driving over it, as it is rotten
and crazy: penalty--for whites, five dollars; for slaves, fifteen
stripes. My heart is lightened as if a great load had been taken from
it, when I think that we are turning our backs on this accursed and
detested system. I really don't think I could have borne it any longer.
It is all very well to say 'be silent on the subject.' They won't let
you be silent. They _will_ ask you what you think of it; and _will_
expatiate on slavery as if it were one of the greatest blessings of
mankind. 'It's not,' said a hard, bad-looking fellow to me the other
day, 'it's not the interest of a man to use his slaves ill. It's damned
nonsense that you hear in England.'--I told him quietly that it was not
a man's interest to get drunk, or to steal, or to game, or to indulge in
any other vice, but he _did_ indulge in it for all that; that cruelty,
and the abuse of irresponsible power, were two of the bad passions of
human nature, with the gratification of which, considerations of
interest or of ruin, had nothing whatever to do; and that, while every
candid man must admit that even a slave might be happy enough with a
good master, all human beings knew that bad masters, cruel masters, and
masters who disgraced the form they bore, were matters of experience and
history, whose existence was as undisputed as that of slaves themselves.
He was a little taken aback by this, and asked me if I believed in the
Bible. Yes, I said, but if any man could prove to me that it sanctioned
slavery, I would place no further credence in it. 'Well then,' he said,
'by God, sir, the niggers must be kept down, and the whites have put
down the colored people wherever they have found them.' 'That's the
whole question,' said I. 'Yes, and by God,' says he, 'the British had
better not stand out on that point when Lord Ashburton comes over, for I
never felt so warlike as I do now,--and that's a fact.' I was obliged to
accept a public supper in this Richmond, and I saw plainly enough there
that the hatred which these Southern States bear to us as a nation has
been fanned up and revived again by this Creole business, and can
scarcely be exaggerated.
. . . . "We were desperately tired at Richmond, as we went to a great many
places and received a very great number of visitors. We appoint usually
two hours in every day for this latter purpose, and have our room so
full at that period that it is difficult to move or breathe. Before we
left Richmond, a gentleman told me, when I really was so exhausted that
I could hardly stand, that 'three people of great fashion' were much
offended by having been told, when they called last evening, that I was
tired and not visible, then, but would be 'at home' from twelve to two
next day! Another gentleman (no doubt of great fashion also) sent a
letter to me two hours after I had gone to bed, preparatory to rising at
four next morning, with instructions to the slave who brought it to
knock me up and wait for an answer!
"I am going to break my resolution of accepting no more public
entertainments, in favor of the originators of the printed document
overleaf. They live upon the confines of the Indian territory, some two
thousand miles or more west of New York! Think of my dining there! And
yet, please God, the festival will come off--I should say about the 12th
or 15th of next month.". . .
The printed document was a series of resolutions, moved at a public
meeting attended by all the principal citizens, judges, professors, and
doctors of St. Louis, urgently inviting to that city of the Far West the
distinguished writer then the guest of America, eulogizing his genius,
and tendering to him their warmest hospitalities. He was at Baltimore
when he closed his letter.
"BALTIMORE, _Tuesday, March 22d._
"I have a great diffidence in running counter to any impression formed
by a man of Maclise's genius, on a subject he has fully considered."
(Referring, apparently, to some remark by myself on the picture of the
Play-scene in _Hamlet_, exhibited this year.) "But I quite agree with
you about the King in _Hamlet_. Talking of Hamlet, I constantly carry in
my great-coat pocket the _Shakspeare_ you bought for me in Liverpool.
What an unspeakable source of delight that book is to me!
"Your Ontario letter I found here to-night: sent on by the vigilant and
faithful Colden, who makes every thing having reference to us or our
affairs a labor of the heartiest love. We devoured its contents,
greedily. Good Heaven, my dear fellow, how I miss you! and how I count
the time 'twixt this and coming home again! Shall I ever forget the day
of our parting at Liverpool! when even ---- became jolly and radiant in
his sympathy with our separation! Never, never shall I forget that time.
Ah! how seriously I thought then, and how seriously I have thought many,
many times since, of the terrible folly of ever quarreling with a true
friend, on good-for-nothing trifles! Every little hasty word that has
ever passed between us rose up before me like a reproachful ghost. At
this great distance, I seem to look back upon any miserable small
interruption of our affectionate intercourse, though only for the
instant it has never outlived, with a sort of pity for myself as if I
were another creature.
"I have bought another accordion. The steward lent me one, on the
passage out, and I regaled the ladies' cabin with my performances. You
can't think with what feeling I play _Home Sweet Home_ every night, or
how pleasantly sad it makes us. . . . And so God bless you. . . . I leave
space for a short postscript before sealing this, but it will probably
contain nothing. The dear, dear children! what a happiness it is to know
that they are in such hands!
* * * * *
"P.S. Twenty-third March, 1842. Nothing new. And all well. I have not
heard that the Columbia is in, but she is hourly expected. Washington
Irving has come on for another leave-taking,[55] and dines with me
to-day. We start for the West, at half-after eight to-morrow morning. I
send you a newspaper, the most respectable in the States, with a very
just copyright article."
FOOTNOTES:
[49] At the top of the sheet, above the address and date, are the words
"Read on. We _have_ your precious letters, but you'll think at first we
have not. C. D."
[50] The ship next in rotation to the Caledonia from Liverpool.
[51] This comparison is employed in another descriptive passage to be
found in the _Notes_ (p. 57).
[52] _Notes_, p. 49.
[53] See _ante_, p. 280.
[54] This was the Acadia with the Caledonia mails.
[55] At his second visit to America, when in Washington in February,
1868, Dickens, replying to a letter in which Irving was named, thus
describes the last meeting and leave-taking to which he alludes above:
"Your reference to my dear friend Washington Irving renews the vivid
impressions reawakened in my mind at Baltimore but the other day. I saw
his fine face for the last time in that city. He came there from New
York to pass a day or two with me before I went westward; and they were
made among the most memorable of my life by his delightful fancy and
genial humor. Some unknown admirer of his books and mine sent to the
hotel a most enormous mint-julep, wreathed with flowers. We sat, one on
either side of it, with great solemnity (it filled a respectably-sized
round table), but the solemnity was of very short duration. It was quite
an enchanted julep, and carried us among innumerable people and places
that we both knew. The julep held out far into the night, and my memory
never saw him afterwards otherwise than as bending over it, with his
straw, with an attempted air of gravity (after some anecdote involving
some wonderfully droll and delicate observation of character), and then,
as his eye caught mine, melting into that captivating laugh of his,
which was the brightest and best I have ever heard."
CHAPTER XXII.
CANAL-BOAT JOURNEYS: BOUND FAR WEST.
1842.
Character in the Letters--The _Notes_ less
satisfactory--Personal Narrative in Letters--The
Copyright Differences--Social
Dissatisfactions--A Fact to be
remembered--Literary Merits of the
Letters--Personal Character portrayed--On Board
for Pittsburgh--Choicest Passages of
_Notes_--Queer Stage-coach--Something revealed
on the Top--At Harrisburg--Treaties with
Indians--Local Legislatures--A Levee--Morning
and Night in Canal-boat--At and after
Breakfast--Making the best of it--Hardy
Habits--By Rail across Mountain--Mountain
Scenery--New Settlements--Original of Eden in
_Chuzzlewit_--A Useful Word--Party in
America--Home News--Meets an Early
Acquaintance--"Smallness of the World"--Queer
Customers at Levees--Our Anniversary--The
Cincinnati Steamer--Frugality in Water and
Linen--Magnetic
Experiments--Life-preservers--Bores--Habits of
Neatness--Wearying for Home--Another Solitary
Prison--New Terror to Loneliness--Arrival at
Cincinnati--Two Judges in Attendance--The City
described--On the Pavement.
It would not be possible that a more vivid or exact impression than that
which is derivable from these letters could be given of either the
genius or the character of the writer. The whole man is here in the
supreme hour of his life, and in all the enjoyment of its highest
sensations. Inexpressibly sad to me has been the task of going over
them, but the surprise has equaled the sadness. I had forgotten what was
in them. That they contained, in their first vividness, all the most
prominent descriptions of his published book, I knew. But the
reproduction of any part of these was not permissible here; and,
believing that the substance of them had been thus almost wholly
embodied in the _American Notes_, when they were lent to assist in its
composition, I turned to them with very small expectation of finding
anything available for present use. Yet the difficulty has been, not to
find, but to reject; and the rejection when most unavoidable has not
been most easy. Even where the subjects recur that are in the printed
volume, there is a freshness of first impressions in the letters that
renders it no small trial to act strictly on the rule adhered to in
these extracts from them. In the _Notes_ there is of course very much,
masterly in observation and description, of which there is elsewhere no
trace; but the passages amplified from the letters have not been
improved, and the manly force and directness of some of their views and
reflections, conveyed by touches of a picturesque completeness that no
elaboration could give, have here and there not been strengthened by
rhetorical additions in the printed work. There is also a charm in the
letters which the plan adopted in the book necessarily excluded from it.
It will always, of course, have value as a deliberate expression of the
results gathered from the American experiences, but the _personal
narrative_ of this famous visit to America is in the letters alone. In
what way his experiences arose, the desire at the outset to see nothing
that was not favorable, the slowness with which adverse impressions were
formed, and the eager recognition of every truthful and noble quality
that arose and remained above the fault-finding, are discoverable only
in the letters.
Already it is manifest from them that the before-mentioned
disappointments, as well of the guest in his entertainers as of the
entertainers in their guest, had their beginning in the copyright
differences; but it is not less plain that the social dissatisfactions
on his side were of even earlier date, and with the country itself had
certainly nothing to do. It was objected to him, I well remember, that
in making such unfavorable remarks as his published book did on many
points, he was assailing the democratic institutions that had formed the
character of the nation; but the answer is obvious, that, democratic
institutions being universal in America, they were as fairly entitled to
share in the good as in the bad; and in what he praised, of which there
is here abundant testimony, he must be held to have exalted those
institutions as much, as in what he blamed he could be held to
depreciate them. He never sets himself up in judgment on the entire
people. As we see, from the way the letters show us that the opinions he
afterwards published were formed, he does not draw conclusions while his
observation is only half concluded; and he refrains throughout from the
example too strongly set him, even in the very terms of his welcome by
the writers of America,[56] of flinging one nation in the other's face.
He leaves each upon its own ground. His great business in his
publication, as in the first impressions recorded here, is to exhibit
social influences at work as he saw them himself; and it would surely
have been of all bad compliments the worst, when resolving, in the tone
and with the purpose of a friend, to make public what he had observed in
America, if he had supposed that such a country would take truth amiss.
There is, however, one thing to be especially remembered, as well in
reading the letters as in judging of the book which was founded on them.
It is a point to which I believe Mr. Emerson directed the attention of
his countrymen. Everything of an objectionable kind, whether the author
would have it so or not, stands out more prominently and distinctly than
matter of the opposite description. The social sin is a more tangible
thing than the social virtue. Pertinaciously to insist upon the
charities and graces of life, is to outrage their quiet and unobtrusive
character; but we incur the danger of extending the vulgarities and
indecencies if we seem to countenance by omitting to expose them. And if
this is only kept in view in reading what is here given, the proportion
of censure will be found not to overbalance the just admiration and
unexaggerated praise.
Apart from such considerations, it is to be also said, the letters, from
which I am now printing exactly as they were written, have claims, as
mere literature, of an unusual kind. Unrivaled quickness of observation,
the rare faculty of seizing out of a multitude of things the thing only
that is essential, the irresistible play of humor, such pathos as only
humorists of this high order possess, and the unwearied unforced
vivacity of ever fresh, buoyant, bounding animal spirits, never found
more natural, variously easy, or picturesque expression. Written amid
such distraction, fatigue, and weariness as they describe, amid the
jarring noises of hotels and streets, aboard steamers, on canal-boats,
and in log huts, there is not an erasure in them. Not external objects
only, but feelings, reflections, and thoughts, are photographed into
visible forms with the same unexampled ease. They borrow no help from
the matters of which they treat. They would have given, to the subjects
described, old acquaintance and engrossing interest if they had been
about a people in the moon. Of the personal character at the same time
self-portrayed, others, whose emotions it less vividly awakens, will
judge more calmly and clearly than myself. Yet to myself only can it be
known how small were the services of friendship that sufficed to rouse
all the sensibilities of this beautiful and noble nature. Throughout our
life-long intercourse it was the same. His keenness of discrimination
failed him never excepting here, when it was lost in the limitless
extent of his appreciation of all kindly things; and never did he
receive what was meant for a benefit that he was not eager to return it
a hundredfold. No man more truly generous ever lived.
His next letter was begun from "on board the canal-boat. Going to
Pittsburgh. Monday, March twenty-eighth, 1842;" and the difficulties of
rejection, to which reference has just been made, have been nowhere felt
by me so much. Several of the descriptive masterpieces of the book are
in it, with such touches of original freshness as might fairly have
justified a reproduction of them in their first form. Among these are
the Harrisburg coach on its way through the Susquehanna valley; the
railroad across the mountain; the brown-forester of the Mississippi, the
interrogative man in pepper-and-salt, and the affecting scene of the
emigrants put ashore as the steamer passes up the Ohio. But all that I
may here give, bearing any resemblance to what is given in the _Notes_,
are the opening sketch of the small creature on the top of the queer
stage-coach, to which the printed version fails to do adequate justice,
and an experience to which the interest belongs of having suggested the
settlement of Eden in _Martin Chuzzlewit_. . . . "We left Baltimore last
Thursday, the twenty-fourth, at half-past eight in the morning, by
railroad; and got to a place called York, about twelve. There we dined,
and took a stage-coach for Harrisburg; twenty-five miles further. This
stage-coach was like nothing so much as the body of one of the swings
you see at a fair set upon four wheels and roofed and covered at the
sides with painted canvas. There were twelve _inside_! I, thank my
stars, was on the box. The luggage was on the roof; among it, a
good-sized dining-table, and a big rocking-chair. We also took up an
intoxicated gentleman, who sat for ten miles between me and the
coachman; and another intoxicated gentleman who got up behind, but in
the course of a mile or two fell off without hurting himself, and was
seen in the distant perspective reeling back to the grog-shop where we
had found him. There were four horses to this land-ark, of course; but
we did not perform the journey until after half-past six o'clock that
night. . . . The first half of the journey was tame enough, but the second
lay through the valley of the Susquehanah (I think I spell it right, but
I haven't that American Geography at hand), which is very beautiful. . . .
"I think I formerly made a casual remark to you touching the precocity
of the youth of this country. When we changed horses on this journey I
got down to stretch my legs, refresh myself with a glass of
whiskey-and-water, and shake the wet off my great-coat,--for it was
raining very heavily, and continued to do so, all night. Mounting to my
seat again, I observed something lying on the roof of the coach, which I
took to be a rather large fiddle in a brown bag. In the course of ten
miles or so, however, I discovered that it had a pair of dirty shoes at
one end, and a glazed cap at the other; and further observation
demonstrated it to be a small boy, in a snuff-colored coat, with his
arms quite pinioned to his sides by deep forcing into his pockets. He
was, I presume, a relative or friend of the coachman's, as he lay atop
of the luggage, with his face towards the rain; and, except when a
change of position brought his shoes in contact with my hat, he appeared
to be asleep. Sir, when we stopped to water the horses, about two miles
from Harrisburg, this thing slowly upreared itself to the height of
three foot eight, and, fixing its eyes on me with a mingled expression
of complacency, patronage, national independence, and sympathy for all
outer barbarians and foreigners, said, in shrill piping accents, 'Well
now, stranger, I guess you find this a'most like an English
a'ternoon,--hey?' It is unnecessary to add that I thirsted for his
blood. . . .
"We had all next morning in Harrisburg, as the canal-boat was not to
start until three o'clock in the afternoon. The officials called upon
me before I had finished breakfast; and, as the town is the seat of the
Pennsylvanian legislature, I went up to the Capitol. I was very much
interested in looking over a number of treaties made with the poor
Indians, their signatures being rough drawings of the creatures or
weapons they are called after; and the extraordinary drawing of these
emblems, showing the queer, unused, shaky manner in which each man has
held the pen, struck me very much.
"You know my small respect for our House of Commons. These local
legislatures are too insufferably apish of mighty legislation, to be
seen without bile; for which reason, and because a great crowd of
senators and ladies had assembled in both houses to behold the
inimitable, and had already begun to pour in upon him even in the
secretary's private room, I went back to the hotel, with all speed. The
members of both branches of the legislature followed me there, however,
so we had to hold the usual levee before our half-past one o'clock
dinner. We received a great number of them. Pretty nearly every man spat
upon the carpet, as usual; and one blew his nose with his fingers,--also
on the carpet, which was a very neat one, the room given up to us being
the private parlor of the landlord's wife. This has become so common
since, however, that it scarcely seems worth mentioning. Please to
observe that the gentleman in question was a member of the senate, which
answers (as they very often tell me) to our House of Lords.
"The innkeeper was the most attentive, civil, and obliging person I ever
saw in my life. On being asked for his bill, he said there was no bill:
the honor and pleasure, etc. being more than sufficient.[57] I did not
permit this, of course, and begged Mr. Q. to explain to him that,
traveling four strong, I could not hear of it on any account.
"And now I come to the Canal-Boat. Bless your heart and soul, my dear
fellow,--if you could only see us on board the canal-boat! Let me think,
for a moment, at what time of the day or night I should best like you to
see us. In the morning? Between five and six in the morning, shall I
say? Well! you _would_ like to see me, standing on the deck, fishing the
dirty water out of the canal with a tin ladle chained to the boat by a
long chain; pouring the same into a tin basin (also chained up in like
manner); and scrubbing my face with the jack towel. At night, shall I
say? I don't know that you _would_ like to look into the cabin at night,
only to see me lying on a temporary shelf exactly the width of this
sheet of paper when it's open (_I measured it this morning_),[58] with
one man above me, and another below; and, in all, eight-and-twenty in a
low cabin, which you can't stand upright in with your hat on. I don't
think you would like to look in at breakfast-time either, for then these
shelves have only just been taken down and put away, and the atmosphere
of the place is, as you may suppose, by no means fresh; though there
_are_ upon the table tea and coffee, and bread and butter, and salmon,
and shad, and liver, and steak, and potatoes, and pickles, and ham, and
pudding, and sausages; and three-and-thirty people sitting round it,
eating and drinking; and savory bottles of gin, and whiskey, and brandy,
and rum, in the bar hard by; and seven-and-twenty out of the
eight-and-twenty men, in foul linen, with yellow streams from
half-chewed tobacco trickling down their chins. Perhaps the best time
for you to take a peep would be the present: eleven o'clock in the
forenoon: when the barber is at his shaving, and the gentlemen are
lounging about the stove waiting for their turns, and not more than
seventeen are spitting in concert, and two or three are walking overhead
(lying down on the luggage every time the man at the helm calls
'Bridge!'), and I am writing this in the ladies' cabin, which is a part
of the gentlemen's, and only screened off by a red curtain. Indeed, it
exactly resembles the dwarf's private apartment in a caravan at a fair;
and the gentlemen, generally, represent the spectators at a penny a
head. The place is just as clean and just as large as that caravan you
and I were in at Greenwich Fair last past. Outside, it is exactly like
any canal-boat you have seen near the Regent's Park, or elsewhere.
"You never can conceive what the hawking and spitting is, the whole
night through. Last night was the worst. _Upon my honor and word_ I was
obliged, this morning, to lay my fur coat on the deck, and wipe the
half-dried flakes of spittle from it with my handkerchief; and the only
surprise seemed to be that I should consider it necessary to do so. When
I turned in last night, I put it on a stool beside me, and there it lay,
under a cross-fire from five men,--three opposite, one above, and one
below. I make no complaints, and show no disgust. I am looked upon as
highly facetious at night, for I crack jokes with everybody near me
until we fall asleep. I am considered very hardy in the morning, for I
run up, bare-necked, and plunge my head into the half-frozen water, by
half-past five o'clock. I am respected for my activity, inasmuch as I
jump from the boat to the towing-path, and walk five or six miles before
breakfast; keeping up with the horses all the time. In a word, they are
quite astonished to find a sedentary Englishman roughing it so well, and
taking so much exercise; and question me very much on that head. The
greater part of the men will sit and shiver round the stove all day,
rather than put one foot before the other. As to having a window open,
that's not to be thought of.
"We expect to reach Pittsburgh to-night, between eight and nine o'clock;
and there we ardently hope to find your March letters awaiting us. We
have had, with the exception of Friday afternoon, exquisite weather, but
cold. Clear starlight and moonlight nights. The canal has run, for the
most part, by the side of the Susquehanah and Iwanata rivers; and has
been carried through tremendous obstacles. Yesterday we crossed the
mountain. This is done _by railroad_. . . . You dine at an inn upon the
mountain; and, including the half-hour allowed for the meal, are rather
more than five hours performing this strange part of the journey. The
people north and 'down east' have terrible legends of its danger; but
they appear to be exceedingly careful, and don't go to work at all
wildly. There are some queer precipices close to the rails, certainly;
but every precaution is taken, I am inclined to think, that such
difficulties, and such a vast work, will admit of.
"The scenery, before you reach the mountains, and when you are on them,
and after you have left them, is very grand and fine; and the canal
winds its way through some deep, sullen gorges, which, seen by
moonlight, are very impressive: though immeasurably inferior to Glencoe,
to whose terrors I have not seen the smallest _approach_. We have
passed, both in the mountains and elsewhere, a great number of new
settlements and detached log houses. Their utterly forlorn and miserable
appearance baffles all description. I have not seen six cabins out of
six hundred, where the windows have been whole. Old hats, old clothes,
old boards, old fragments of blanket and paper, are stuffed into the
broken glass; and their air is misery and desolation. It pains the eye
to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat;
and never to lose the eternal swamp and dull morass, with hundreds of
rotten trunks, of elm and pine and sycamore and logwood, steeped in its
unwholesome water; where the frogs so croak at night that after dark
there is an incessant sound as if millions of phantom teams, with bells,
were traveling through the upper air, at an enormous distance off. It is
quite an oppressive circumstance, too, to _come_ upon great tracks,
where settlers have been burning down the trees; and where their wounded
bodies lie about, like those of murdered creatures; while here and there
some charred and blackened giant rears two bare arms aloft, and seems to
curse his enemies. The prettiest sight I have seen was yesterday, when
we--on the heights of the mountain, and in a keen wind--looked down into
a valley full of light and softness; catching glimpses of scattered
cabins; children running to the doors; dogs bursting out to bark; pigs
scampering home, like so many prodigal sons; families sitting out in
their gardens; cows gazing upward, with a stupid indifference; men in
their shirt-sleeves, looking on at their unfinished houses, and planning
work for to-morrow;--and the train riding on, high above them, like a
storm. But I know this is beautiful--very--very beautiful!
"I wonder whether you and Mac mean to go to Greenwich Fair! Perhaps you
dine at the Crown and Sceptre to-day, for it's Easter-Monday--who knows!
I wish you drank punch, dear Forster. It's a shabby thing, not to be
able to picture you with that cool green glass. . . .
"I told you of the many uses of the word 'fix.' I ask Mr. Q. on board a
steamboat if breakfast be nearly ready, and he tells me yes he should
think so, for when he was last below the steward was 'fixing the
tables'--in other words, laying the cloth. When we have been writing,
and I beg him (do you remember anything of my love of order, at this
distance of time?) to collect our papers, he answers that he'll 'fix 'em
presently.' So when a man's dressing he's 'fixing' himself, and when you
put yourself under a doctor he 'fixes' you in no time. T'other night,
before we came on board here, when I had ordered a bottle of mulled
claret and waited some time for it, it was put on table with an apology
from the landlord (a lieutenant-colonel) that 'he feared it wasn't fixed
properly.' And here, on Saturday morning, a Western man, handing the
potatoes to Mr. Q. at breakfast, inquired if he wouldn't take some of
'these fixings' with his meat. I remained as grave as a judge. I catch
them looking at me sometimes, and feel that they think I don't take any
notice. Politics are very high here; dreadfully strong; handbills,
denunciations, invectives, threats, and quarrels. The question is, who
shall be the next President. The election comes off in _three years and
a half_ from this time."
He resumed his letter, "on board the steamboat from Pittsburgh to
Cincinnati, April the 1st, 1842. A very tremulous steamboat, which makes
my hand shake. This morning, my dear friend, this very morning, which,
passing by without bringing news from England, would have seen us on our
way to St. Louis (viâ Cincinnati and Louisville) with sad hearts and
dejected countenances, and the prospect of remaining for at least three
weeks longer without any intelligence of those so inexpressibly dear to
us--this very morning, bright and lucky morning that it was, a great
packet was brought to our bedroom door, from HOME. How I have read and
re-read your affectionate, hearty, interesting, funny, serious,
delightful, and thoroughly Forsterian Columbia letter, I will not
attempt to tell you; or how glad I am that you liked my first; or how
afraid I am that my second was not written in such good spirits as it
should have been; or how glad I am again to think that my third _was_;
or how I hope you will find some amusement from my fourth: this present
missive. All this, and more affectionate and earnest words than the
post-office would convey at any price, though they have no sharp edges
to hurt the stamping-clerk--you will understand, I know, without
expression, or attempt at expression. So, having got over the first
agitation of so much pleasure; and having walked the deck; and being now
in the cabin, where one party are playing at chess, and another party
are asleep, and another are talking round the stove, and all are
spitting; and a persevering bore of a horrible New Englander with a
droning voice like a gigantic bee _will_ sit down beside me, though I am
writing, and talk incessantly, in my very ear, to Kate; here goes again.
"Let me see. I should tell you, first, that we got to Pittsburgh between
eight and nine o'clock of the evening of the day on which I left off at
the top of this sheet; and were there received by a little man (a very
little man) whom I knew years ago in London. He rejoiceth in the name of
D. G.; and, when I knew him, was in partnership with his father on the
Stock-Exchange, and lived handsomely at Dalston. They failed in business
soon afterwards, and then this little man began to turn to account what
had previously been his amusement and accomplishment, by painting little
subjects for the fancy shops. So I lost sight of him, nearly ten years
ago; and here he turned up t'other day, as a portrait-painter in
Pittsburgh! He had previously written me a letter which moved me a good
deal, by a kind of quiet independence and contentment it breathed, and
still a painful sense of being alone, so very far from home. I received
it in Philadelphia, and answered it. He dined with us every day of our
stay in Pittsburgh (they were only three), and was truly gratified and
delighted to find me unchanged,--more so than I can tell you. I am very
glad to-night to think how much happiness we have fortunately been able
to give him.
"Pittsburgh is like Birmingham--at least its townsfolks say so; and I
didn't contradict them. It is, in one respect. There is a great deal of
smoke in it. I quite offended a man at our yesterday's levee, who
supposed I was 'now quite at home,' by telling him that the notion of
London being so dark a place was a popular mistake. We had very queer
customers at our receptions, I do assure you. Not least among them, a
gentleman with his inexpressibles imperfectly buttoned and his waistband
resting on his thighs, who stood behind the half-opened door, and could
by no temptation or inducement be prevailed upon to come out. There was
also another gentleman, with one eye and one fixed gooseberry, who stood
in a corner, motionless like an eight-day clock, and glared upon me, as
I courteously received the Pittsburgians. There were also two red-headed
brothers--boys--young dragons rather--who hovered about Kate, and
wouldn't go. A great crowd they were, for three days; and a very queer
one."
"STILL IN THE SAME BOAT. _April the Second, 1842._
"Many, many happy returns of the day. It's only eight o'clock in the
morning now, but we mean to drink your health after dinner, in a bumper;
and scores of Richmond dinners to us! We have some wine (a present sent
on board by our Pittsburgh landlord) in our own cabin; and we shall tap
it to good purpose, I assure you; wishing you all manner and kinds of
happiness, and a long life to ourselves that we may be partakers of it.
We have wondered a hundred times already, whether you and Mac will dine
anywhere together, in honor of the day. I say yes, but Kate says no. She
predicts that you'll ask Mac, and he won't go. I have not yet heard from
him.
"We have a better cabin here than we had on board the Britannia; the
berths being much wider, and the den having two doors: one opening on
the ladies' cabin, and one upon a little gallery in the stern of the
boat. We expect to be at Cincinnati some time on Monday morning, and we
carry about fifty passengers. The cabin for meals goes right through the
boat, from the prow to the stern, and is very long; only a small portion
of it being divided off, by a partition of wood and ground glass, for
the ladies. We breakfast at half-after seven, dine at one, and sup at
six. Nobody will sit down to any one of these meals, though the dishes
are smoking on the board, until the ladies have appeared and taken their
chairs. It was the same in the canal-boat.
"The washing department is a little more civilized than it was on the
canal, but bad is the best. Indeed, the Americans when they are
traveling, as Miss Martineau seems disposed to admit, are exceedingly
negligent; not to say dirty. To the best of my making out, the ladies,
under most circumstances, are content with smearing their hands and
faces in a very small quantity of water. So are the men; who superadd to
that mode of ablution a hasty use of the common brush and comb. It is
quite a practice, too, to wear but one cotton shirt a week, and three or
four fine linen _fronts_. Anne reports that this is Mr. Q.'s course of
proceeding; and my portrait-painting friend told me that it was the
case with pretty nearly all his sitters; so that when he bought a piece
of cloth not long ago, and instructed the sempstress to make it _all_
into shirts, not fronts, she thought him deranged.
"My friend the New Englander, of whom I wrote last night, is perhaps the
most intolerable bore on this vast continent. He drones, and snuffles,
and writes poems, and talks small philosophy and metaphysics, and never
_will_ be quiet, under any circumstances. He is going to a great
temperance convention at Cincinnati; along with a doctor of whom I saw
something at Pittsburgh. The doctor, in addition to being everything
that the New Englander is, is a phrenologist besides. I dodge them about
the boat. Whenever I appear on deck, I see them bearing down upon
me--and fly. The New Englander was very anxious last night that he and I
should 'form a magnetic chain,' and magnetize the doctor, for the
benefit of all incredulous passengers; but I declined on the plea of
tremendous occupation in the way of letter-writing.
"And, speaking of magnetism, let me tell you that the other night at
Pittsburgh, there being present only Mr. Q. and the portrait-painter,
Kate sat down, laughing, for me to try my hand upon her. I had been
holding forth upon the subject rather luminously, and asserting that I
thought I could exercise the influence, but had never tried. In six
minutes, I magnetized her into hysterics, and then into the magnetic
sleep. I tried again next night, and she fell into the slumber in little
more than two minutes. . . . I can wake her with perfect ease; but I
confess (not being prepared for anything so sudden and complete) I was
on the first occasion rather alarmed. . . . The Western parts being
sometimes hazardous, I have fitted out the whole of my little company
with LIFE-PRESERVERS, which I inflate with great solemnity when we get
aboard any boat, and keep, as Mrs. Cluppins did her umbrella in the
court of common pleas, ready for use upon a moment's notice.". . .
He resumed his letter, on "Sunday, April the third," with allusion to a
general who had called upon him in Washington with two literary ladies,
and had written to him next day for an immediate interview, as "the two
LL's" were ambitious of the honor of a personal introduction. "Besides
the doctor and the dread New Englander, we have on board that valiant
general who wrote to me about the 'two LL's.' He is an old, old man with
a weazen face, and the remains of a pigeon-breast in his military
surtout. He is acutely gentlemanly and officer-like. The breast has so
subsided, and the face has become so strongly marked, that he seems,
like a pigeon-pie, to show only the feet of the bird outside, and to
keep the rest to himself. He is perhaps _the_ most horrible bore in this
country. And I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there
are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these
United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of
the word, without coming here. There are no particular characters on
board, with these three exceptions. Indeed, I seldom see the passengers
but at meal-times, as I read and write in our own little state-room. . . .
I have smuggled two chairs into our crib, and write this on a book upon
my knee. Everything is in the neatest order, of course; and my
shaving-tackle, dressing-case, brushes, books, and papers, are arranged
with as much precision as if we were going to remain here a month. Thank
God we are not.
"The average width of the river rather exceeds that of the Thames at
Greenwich. In parts it is much broader; and then there is usually a
green island, covered with trees, dividing it into two streams.
Occasionally we stop for a few minutes at a small town, or village (I
ought to say city, everything is a city here); but the banks are for the
most part deep solitudes, overgrown with trees, which, in these western
latitudes, are already in leaf, and very green. . . .
"All this I see, as I write, from the little door into the stern-gallery
which I mentioned just now. It don't happen six times in a day that any
other passenger comes near it; and, as the weather is amply warm enough
to admit of our sitting with it open, here we remain from morning until
night: reading, writing, talking. What our theme of conversation is, I
need not tell you. No beauty or variety makes us weary less for home. We
count the days, and say, 'When May comes, and we can say--_next
month_--the time will seem almost gone.' We are never tired of imagining
what you are all about. I allow of no calculation for the difference of
clocks, but insist on a corresponding minute in London. It is much the
shortest way, and best. . . . Yesterday, we drank your health and many
happy returns--in wine, after dinner; in a small milk-pot jug of
gin-punch, at night. And when I made a temporary table, to hold the
little candlestick, of one of my dressing-case trays; cunningly inserted
under the mattress of my berth with a weight atop of it to keep it in
its place, so that it made a perfectly exquisite bracket; we agreed,
that, please God, this should be a joke at the Star and Garter on the
second of April eighteen hundred and forty-three. If your blank _can_ be
surpassed, . . . believe me ours transcends it. My heart gets, sometimes,
SORE for home.
"At Pittsburgh I saw another solitary confinement prison: Pittsburgh
being also in Pennsylvania. A horrible thought occurred to me when I was
recalling all I had seen, that night. _What if ghosts be one of the
terrors of these jails?_ I have pondered on it often, since then. The
utter solitude by day and night; the many hours of darkness; the silence
of death; the mind forever brooding on melancholy themes, and having no
relief; sometimes an evil conscience very busy; imagine a prisoner
covering up his head in the bedclothes and looking out from time to
time, with a ghastly dread of some inexplicable silent figure that
always sits upon his bed, or stands (if a thing can be said to stand,
that never walks as men do) in the same corner of his cell. The more I
think of it, the more certain I feel that not a few of these men (during
a portion of their imprisonment at least) are nightly visited by
spectres. I did ask one man in this last jail, if he dreamed much. He
gave me a most extraordinary look, and said--under his breath--in a
whisper, 'No.'"
"CINCINNATI. _Fourth April, 1842._
"We arrived here this morning: about three o'clock, I believe, but I was
fast asleep in my berth. I turned out soon after six, dressed, and
breakfasted on board. About half-after eight, we came ashore and drove
to the hotel, to which we had written on from Pittsburgh ordering
rooms; and which is within a stone's throw of the boat-wharf. Before I
had issued an official notification that we were 'not at home,' two
Judges called, on the part of the inhabitants, to know when we would
receive the townspeople. We appointed to-morrow morning, from half-past
eleven to one; arranged to go out, with these two gentlemen, to see the
town, _at_ one; and were fixed for an evening party to-morrow night at
the house of one of them. On Wednesday morning we go on by the mail-boat
to Louisville, a trip of fourteen hours; and from that place proceed in
the next good boat to St. Louis, which is a voyage of four days. Finding
from my judicial friends (well-informed and most agreeable gentlemen)
this morning that the prairie travel to Chicago is a very fatiguing one,
and that the lakes are stormy, sea-sicky, and not over safe at this
season, I wrote by our captain to St. Louis (for the boat that brought
us here goes on there) to the effect, that I should not take the lake
route, but should come back here; and should visit the prairies, which
are within thirty miles of St. Louis, immediately on my arrival
there. . . .
"I have walked to the window, since I turned this page, to see what
aspect the town wears. We are in a wide street: paved in the
carriage-way with small white stones, and in the footway with small red
tiles. The houses are for the most part one story high; some are of
wood; others of a clean white brick. Nearly all have green blinds
outside every window. The principal shops over the way are, according to
the inscriptions over them, a Large Bread Bakery; a Book Bindery; a Dry
Goods Store; and a Carriage Repository; the last-named establishment
looking very like an exceedingly small retail coal-shed. On the pavement
under our window, a black man is chopping wood; and another black man is
talking (confidentially) to a pig. The public table, at this hotel and
at the hotel opposite, has just now finished dinner. The diners are
collected on the pavement, on both sides of the way, picking their
teeth, and talking. The day being warm, some of them have brought chairs
into the street. Some are on three chairs; some on two; and some, in
defiance of all known laws of gravity, are sitting quite comfortably on
one: with three of the chair's legs, and their own two, high up in the
air. The loungers, underneath our window, are talking of a great
Temperance convention which comes off here to-morrow. Others, about me.
Others, about England. Sir Robert Peel is popular here, with
everybody. . . ."
FOOTNOTES:
[56] See _ante_, pp. 307, 308.
[57] Miss Martineau was perhaps partly right, then? _Ante_, p. 344.
[58] Sixteen inches exactly.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FAR WEST: TO NIAGARA FALLS.
1842.
Descriptions in Letters and in _Notes_--Outline
of Westward Travel--An Arabian Night City--A
Temperance Festival--A Party at Judge
Walker's--The Party from another View--Mournful
Results of Boredom--Young Lady's Description of
C. D.--Down the Mississippi--Listening and
Watching--A Levee at St.
Louis--Compliments--Lord Ashburton's
Arrival--Talk with a Judge on Slavery--A Negro
burnt alive--Feeling of Slaves
themselves--American Testimony--Pretty Little
Scene--A Mother and her Husband--The Baby--St.
Louis in Sight--Meeting of Wife and
Husband--Trip to a Prairie--On the Prairie at
Sunset--General Character of Scenery--The
Prairie described--Disappointment and
Enjoyment--Soirée at Planter's House Inn--Good
Fare--No Gray Heads in St. Louis--Dueling--Mrs.
Dickens as a Traveler--From Cincinnati to
Columbus--What a Levee is like--From Columbus
to Sandusky--The Travelers alone--A Log House
Inn--Making tidy--A Momentary Crisis--Americans
not a Humorous People--The Only
Recreations--From Sandusky to Buffalo--On Lake
Erie--Reception and Consolation of a
Mayor--From Buffalo to Niagara--Nearing the
Falls--The Horse-shoe--Effect upon him of
Niagara--The Old Recollection--Looking forward.
THE next letter described his experiences in the Far West, his stay in
St. Louis, his visit to a prairie, the return to Cincinnati, and, after
a stage-coach ride from that city to Columbus, the travel thence to
Sandusky, and so, by Lake Erie, to the Falls of Niagara. All these
subjects appear in the _Notes_, but nothing printed there is repeated
in the extracts now to be given. Of the closing passages of his journey,
when he turned from Columbus in the direction of home, the story, here
for the first time told, is in his most characteristic vein; the account
that will be found of the prairie will probably be preferred to what is
given in the _Notes_; the Cincinnati sketches are very pleasant; and
even such a description as that of the Niagara Falls, of which so much
is made in the book, has here an independent novelty and freshness. The
first vividness is in his letter. The naturalness of associating no
image or sense but of repose, with a grandeur so mighty and resistless,
is best presented suddenly; and, in a few words, we have the material as
well as moral beauty of a scene unrivaled in its kind upon the earth.
The instant impression we find to be worth more than the eloquent
recollection.
The captain of the boat that had dropped them at Cincinnati and gone to
St. Louis had stayed in the latter place until they were able to join
and return with him; this letter bears date accordingly, "On board the
Messenger again. Going from St. Louis back to Cincinnati. Friday,
fifteenth April, 1842;" and its first paragraph is an outline of the
movements which it afterwards describes in detail. "We remained in
Cincinnati one whole day after the date of my last, and left on
Wednesday morning, the 6th. We reached Louisville soon after midnight on
the same night; and slept there. Next day at one o'clock we put
ourselves on board another steamer, and traveled on until Sunday
evening, the tenth; when we reached St. Louis at about nine o'clock. The
next day we devoted to seeing the city. Next day, Tuesday, the twelfth,
I started off with a party of men (we were fourteen in all) to see a
prairie; returned to St. Louis about noon on the thirteenth; attended a
soirée and ball--not a dinner--given in my honor that night; and
yesterday afternoon at four o'clock we turned our faces homewards. Thank
Heaven!
"Cincinnati is only fifty years old, but is a very beautiful city; I
think the prettiest place I have seen here, except Boston. It has risen
out of the forest like an Arabian-Night city; is well laid out;
ornamented in the suburbs with pretty villas; and above all, for this is
a very rare feature in America, has smooth turf-plots and well-kept
gardens. There happened to be a great temperance festival; and the
procession mustered under, and passed, our windows early in the morning.
I suppose they were twenty thousand strong, at least. Some of the
banners were quaint and odd enough. The ship-carpenters, for instance,
displayed on one side of their flag the good Ship Temperance in full
sail; on the other, the Steamer Alcohol blowing up sky-high. The
Irishmen had a portrait of Father Mathew, you may be sure. And
Washington's broad lower jaw (by-the-by, Washington had not a pleasant
face) figured in all parts of the ranks. In a kind of square at one
outskirt of the city they divided into bodies, and were addressed by
different speakers. Drier speaking I never heard. I own that I felt
quite uncomfortable to think they could take the taste of it out of
their mouths with nothing better than water.
"In the evening we went to a party at Judge Walker's, and were
introduced to at least one hundred and fifty first-rate bores,
separately and singly. I was required to sit down by the greater part of
them, and talk![59] In the night we were serenaded (as we usually are
in every place we come to), and very well serenaded, I assure you. But
we were very much knocked up. I really think my face has acquired a
fixed expression of sadness from the constant and unmitigated boring I
endure. The LL's have carried away all my cheerfulness. There is a line
in my chin (on the right side of the under lip), indelibly fixed there
by the New Englander I told you of in my last. I have the print of a
crow's foot on the outside of my left eye, which I attribute to the
literary characters of small towns. A dimple has vanished from my cheek,
which I felt myself robbed of at the time by a wise legislator. But on
the other hand I am really indebted for a good broad grin to P. . E. . ,
literary critic of Philadelphia, and sole proprietor of the English
language in its grammatical and idiomatical purity; to P. . E. . , with the
shiny straight hair and turned-down shirt-collar, who taketh all of us
English men of letters to task in print, roundly and uncompromisingly,
but told me, at the same time, that I had 'awakened a new era' in his
mind. . . .
"The last 200 miles of the voyage from Cincinnati to St. Louis are upon
the Mississippi, for you come down the Ohio to its mouth. It is well for
society that this Mississippi, the renowned father of waters, had no
children who take after him. It is the beastliest river in the
world.". . . (His description is in the _Notes_.)
"Conceive the pleasure of rushing down this stream by night (as we did
last night) at the rate of fifteen miles an hour; striking against
floating blocks of timber every instant; and dreading some infernal blow
at every bump. The helmsman in these boats is in a little glass house
upon the roof. In the Mississippi, another man stands in the very head
of the vessel, listening and watching intently; listening, because they
can tell in dark nights by the noise when any great obstruction is at
hand. This man holds the rope of a large bell which hangs close to the
wheel-house, and whenever he pulls it the engine is to stop directly,
and not to stir until he rings again. Last night, this bell rang at
least once in every five minutes; and at each alarm there was a
concussion which nearly flung one out of bed. . . . While I have been
writing this account, we have shot out of that hideous river, thanks be
to God; never to see it again, I hope, but in a nightmare. We are now on
the smooth Ohio, and the change is like the transition from pain to
perfect ease.
"We had a very crowded levee in St. Louis. Of course the paper had an
account of it. If I were to drop a letter in the street, it would be in
the newspaper next day, and nobody would think its publication an
outrage. The editor objected to my hair, as not curling sufficiently. He
admitted an eye; but objected again to dress, as being somewhat foppish,
'and indeed perhaps rather flash.' 'But such,' he benevolently adds,
'are the differences between American and English taste--rendered more
apparent, perhaps, by all the other gentlemen present being dressed in
black.' Oh that you could have seen the other gentlemen! . . .
"A St. Louis lady complimented Kate upon her voice and manner of
speaking, assuring her that she should never have suspected her of being
Scotch, or even English. She was so obliging as to add that she would
have taken her for an American, anywhere: which she (Kate) was no doubt
aware was a very great compliment, as the Americans were admitted on all
hands to have greatly refined upon the English language! I need not tell
you that out of Boston and New York a nasal drawl is universal, but I
may as well hint that the prevailing grammar is also more than doubtful;
that the oddest vulgarisms are received idioms; that all the women who
have been bred in slave-States speak more or less like negroes, from
having been constantly in their childhood with black nurses; and that
the most fashionable and aristocratic (these are two words in great
use), instead of asking you in what place you were born, inquire where
you 'hail from.' ! !
"Lord Ashburton arrived at Annapolis t'other day, after a voyage of
forty odd days in heavy weather. Straightway the newspapers state, on
the authority of a correspondent who 'rowed round the ship' (I leave you
to fancy her condition), that America need fear no superiority from
England, in respect of her wooden walls. The same correspondent is
'quite pleased' with the frank manner of the English officers; and
patronizes them as being, for John Bulls, quite refined. My face, like
Haji Baba's, turns upside down, and my liver is changed to water, when I
come upon such things, and think who writes and who read them. . . .
"They won't let me alone about slavery. A certain judge in St. Louis
went so far yesterday that I fell upon him (to the indescribable horror
of the man who brought him) and told him a piece of my mind. I said that
I was very averse to speaking on the subject here, and always forbore,
if possible; but when he pitied our national ignorance of the truths of
slavery, I must remind him that we went upon indisputable records,
obtained after many years of careful investigation, and at all sorts of
self-sacrifice, and that I believed we were much more competent to judge
of its atrocity and horror than he who had been brought up in the midst
of it. I told him that I could sympathize with men who admitted it to be
a dreadful evil, but frankly confessed their inability to devise a means
of getting rid of it; but that men who spoke of it as a blessing, as a
matter of course, as a state of things to be desired, were out of the
pale of reason; and that for them to speak of ignorance or prejudice was
an absurdity too ridiculous to be combated. . . .
"It is not six years ago, since a slave in this very same St. Louis,
being arrested (I forget for what), and knowing he had no chance of a
fair trial, be his offense what it might, drew his bowie-knife and
ripped the constable across the body. A scuffle ensuing, the desperate
negro stabbed two others with the same weapon. The mob who gathered
round (among whom were men of mark, wealth, and influence in the place)
overpowered him by numbers; carried him away to a piece of open ground
beyond the city; _and burned him alive_. This, I say, was done within
six years, in broad day; in a city with its courts, lawyers, tipstaffs,
judges, jails, and hangman; and not a hair on the head of one of those
men has been hurt to this day. And it is, believe me, it is the
miserable, wretched independence in small things, the paltry
republicanism which recoils from honest service to an honest man, but
does not shrink from every trick, artifice, and knavery in business,
that makes these slaves necessary, and will render them so, until the
indignation of other countries sets them free.
"They say the slaves are fond of their masters. Look at this pretty
vignette[60] (part of the stock in trade of a newspaper), and judge how
you would feel, when men, looking in your face, told you such tales with
the newspaper lying on the table. In all the slave-districts,
advertisements for runaways are as much matters of course as the
announcement of the play for the evening with us. The poor creatures
themselves fairly worship English people: they would do anything for
them. They are perfectly acquainted with all that takes place in
reference to emancipation; and _of course_ their attachment to us grows
out of their deep devotion to their owners. I cut this illustration out
of a newspaper which had a leader in reference to _the abominable and
hellish doctrine of Abolition--repugnant alike to every law of God and
Nature_. 'I know something,' said a Dr. Bartlett (a very accomplished
man), late a fellow-passenger of ours,--'I know something of their
fondness for their masters. I live in Kentucky; and I can assert upon
my honor that, in my neighborhood, it is as common for a runaway slave,
retaken, to draw his bowie-knife and rip his owner's bowels open, as it
is for you to see a drunken fight in London.'
"SAME BOAT, _Saturday, Sixteenth April, 1842._
"Let me tell you, my dear Forster, before I forget it, a pretty little
scene we had on board the boat between Louisville and St. Louis, as we
were going to the latter place. It is not much to tell, but it was very
pleasant and interesting to witness."
What follows has been printed in the _Notes_, and ought not, by the rule
I have laid down, to be given here. But, beautiful as the printed
description is, it has not profited by the alteration of some touches
and the omission of others in the first fresh version of it, which, for
that reason, I here preserve,--one of the most charming soul-felt
pictures of character and emotion that ever warmed the heart in fact or
fiction. It was, I think, Jeffrey's favorite passage in all the writings
of Dickens; and certainly, if any one would learn the secret of their
popularity, it is to be read in the observation and description of this
little incident.
"There was a little woman on board, with a little baby; and both little
woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, bright-eyed, and
fair to see. The little woman had been passing a long time with a sick
mother in New York, and had left her home in St. Louis in that condition
in which ladies who truly love their lords desire to be. The baby had
been born in her mother's house, and she had not seen her husband (to
whom she was now returning) for twelve months: having left him a month
or two after their marriage. Well, to be sure, there never was a little
woman so full of hope, and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this
little woman was: and there she was, all the livelong day, wondering
whether 'he' would be at the wharf; and whether 'he' had got her letter;
and whether, if she sent the baby on shore by somebody else, _'he' would
know it, meeting it in the street_: which, seeing that he had never set
eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was
probable enough to the young mother. She was such an artless little
creature; and was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out
all this matter, clinging close about her heart, so freely; that all the
other lady passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she: and
the captain (who heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous sly, I
promise you: inquiring, every time we met at table, whether she expected
anybody to meet her at St. Louis, and supposing she wouldn't want to go
ashore the night we reached it, and cutting many other dry jokes which
convulsed all his hearers, but especially the ladies. There was one
little, weazen, dried-apple old woman among them, who took occasion to
doubt the constancy of husbands under such circumstances of bereavement;
and there was another lady (with a lap-dog), old enough to moralize on
the lightness of human affections, and yet not so old that she could
help nursing the baby now and then, or laughing with the rest when the
little woman called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner of
fantastic questions concerning him, in the joy of her heart. It was
something of a blow to the little woman that when we were within twenty
miles of our destination it became clearly necessary to put the baby to
bed; but she got over that with the same good humor, tied a little
handkerchief over her little head, and came out into the gallery with
the rest. Then, such an oracle as she became in reference to the
localities! and such facetiousness as was displayed by the married
ladies! and such sympathy as was shown by the single ones! and such
peals of laughter as the little woman herself (who would just as soon
have cried) greeted every jest with! At last, there were the lights of
St. Louis--and here was the wharf--and those were the steps--and the
little woman, covering her face with her hands, and laughing, or seeming
to laugh, more than ever, ran into her own cabin, and shut herself up
tight. I have no doubt that, in the charming inconsistency of such
excitement, she stopped her ears lest she should hear 'him' asking for
her; but I didn't see her do it. Then a great crowd of people rushed on
board, though the boat was not yet made fast, and was staggering about
among the other boats to find a landing-place; and everybody looked for
the husband, and nobody saw him; when all of a sudden, right in the
midst of them,--God knows how she ever got there,--there was the little
woman hugging with both arms round the neck of a fine, good-looking,
sturdy fellow! And in a moment afterwards, there she was again, dragging
him through the small door of her small cabin, to look at the baby as he
lay asleep!--What a good thing it is to know that so many of us would
have been quite down-hearted and sorry if that husband had failed to
come!"
He then resumes; but in what follows nothing is repeated that will be
found in his printed description of the jaunt to the looking-glass
prairie:
"But about the prairie--it is not, I must confess, so good in its way as
this; but I'll tell you all about that too, and leave you to judge for
yourself. Tuesday the 12th was the day fixed; and we were to start at
five in the morning--sharp. I turned out at four; shaved and dressed;
got some bread and milk; and, throwing up the window, looked down into
the street. Deuce a coach was there, nor did anybody seem to be stirring
in the house. I waited until half-past five; but no preparations being
visible even then, I left Mr. Q. to look out, and lay down upon the bed
again. There I slept until nearly seven, when I was called. . . . Exclusive
of Mr. Q. and myself, there were twelve of my committee in the party:
all lawyers except one. He was an intelligent, mild, well-informed
gentleman of my own age,--the Unitarian minister of the place. With him,
and two other companions, I got into the first coach. . . .
"We halted at so good an inn at Lebanon that we resolved to return there
at night, if possible. One would scarcely find a better village alehouse
of a homely kind in England. During our halt I walked into the village,
and met a _dwelling-house_ coming down-hill at a good round trot, drawn
by some twenty oxen! We resumed our journey as soon as possible, and got
upon the looking-glass prairie at sunset. We halted near a solitary log
house for the sake of its water; unpacked the baskets; formed an
encampment with the carriages; and dined.
"Now, a prairie is undoubtedly worth seeing--but more, that one may say
one has seen it, than for any sublimity it possesses in itself. Like
most things, great or small, in this country, you hear of it with
considerable exaggerations. Basil Hall was really quite right in
depreciating the general character of the scenery. The widely-famed Far
West is not to be compared with even the tamest portions of Scotland or
Wales. You stand upon the prairie, and see the unbroken horizon all
round you. You are on a great plain, which is like a sea without water.
I am exceedingly fond of wild and lonely scenery, and believe that I
have the faculty of being as much impressed by it as any man living. But
the prairie fell, by far, short of my preconceived idea. I felt no such
emotions as I do in crossing Salisbury Plain. The excessive flatness of
the scene makes it dreary, but tame. Grandeur is certainly not its
characteristic. I retired from the rest of the party, to understand my
own feelings the better; and looked all round, again and again. It was
fine. It was worth the ride. The sun was going down, very red and
bright; and the prospect looked like that ruddy sketch of Catlin's,
which attracted our attention (you remember?); except that there was not
so much ground as he represents, between the spectator and the horizon.
But to say (as the fashion is here) that the sight is a landmark in
one's existence, and awakens a new set of sensations, is sheer gammon. I
would say to every man who can't see a prairie--go to Salisbury Plain,
Marlborough Downs, or any of the broad, high, open lands near the sea.
Many of them are fully as impressive, and Salisbury Plain is _decidedly_
more so.
"We had brought roast fowls, buffalo's tongue, ham, bread, cheese,
butter, biscuits, sherry, champagne, lemons and sugar for punch, and
abundance of ice. It was a delicious meal; and, as they were most
anxious that I should be pleased, I warmed myself into a state of
surpassing jollity; proposed toasts from the coach-box (which was the
chair); ate and drank with the best; and made, I believe, an excellent
companion to a very friendly companionable party. In an hour or so we
packed up, and drove back to the inn at Lebanon. While supper was
preparing, I took a pleasant walk with my Unitarian friend; and when it
was over (we drank nothing with it but tea and coffee) we went to bed.
The clergyman and I had an exquisitely clean little chamber of our own;
and the rest of the party were quartered overhead. . . .
"We got back to St. Louis soon after twelve at noon; and I rested during
the remainder of the day. The soirée came off at night, in a very good
ball-room at our inn,--the Planter's House. The whole of the guests were
introduced to us, singly. We were glad enough, you may believe, to come
away at midnight; and were very tired. Yesterday, I wore a blouse.
To-day, a fur coat. Trying changes!
"IN THE SAME BOAT,
"_Sunday, Sixteenth April, 1842._
"The inns in these outlandish corners of the world would astonish you by
their goodness. The Planter's House is as large as the Middlesex
Hospital, and built very much on our hospital plan, with long wards
abundantly ventilated, and plain whitewashed walls. They had a famous
notion of sending up at breakfast-time large glasses of new milk with
blocks of ice in them as clear as crystal. Our table was abundantly
supplied indeed at every meal. One day when Kate and I were dining alone
together, in our own room, we counted sixteen dishes on the table at the
same time.
"The society is pretty rough, and intolerably conceited. All the
inhabitants are young. _I didn't see one gray head in St. Louis._ There
is an island close by, called Bloody Island. It is the dueling-ground of
St. Louis; and is so called from the last fatal duel which was fought
there. It was a pistol duel, breast to breast, and both parties fell
dead at the same time. One of our prairie party (a young man) had acted
as second there, in several encounters. The last occasion was a duel
with rifles, at forty paces; and coming home he told us how he had
bought his man a coat of green linen to fight in, woolen being usually
fatal to rifle-wounds. Prairie is variously called (on the refinement
principle, I suppose) Para_a_rer; par_e_arer; and paro_a_rer. I am
afraid, my dear fellow, you will have had great difficulty in reading
all the foregoing text. I have written it, very laboriously, on my knee;
and the engine throbs and starts as if the boat were possessed with a
devil.
"SANDUSKY,
"_Sunday, Twenty-fourth April, 1842._
"We went ashore at Louisville this night week, where I left off, two
lines above; and slept at the hotel, in which we had put up before. The
Messenger being abominably slow, we got our luggage out next morning,
and started on again at eleven o'clock in the Benjamin Franklin
mail-boat: a splendid vessel, with a cabin more than two hundred feet
long, and little state-rooms affording proportionate conveniences. She
got in at Cincinnati by one o'clock next morning, when we landed in the
dark and went back to our old hotel. As we made our way on foot over the
broken pavement, Anne measured her length upon the ground, but didn't
hurt herself. I say nothing of Kate's troubles--but you recollect her
propensity? She falls into, or out of, every coach or boat we enter;
scrapes the skin off her legs; brings great sores and swellings on her
feet; chips large fragments out of her ankle-bones; and makes herself
blue with bruises. She really has, however, since we got over the first
trial of being among circumstances so new and so fatiguing, made a _most
admirable_ traveler in every respect. She has never screamed or
expressed alarm under circumstances that would have fully justified her
in doing so, even in my eyes; has never given way to despondency or
fatigue, though we have now been traveling incessantly, through a very
rough country, for more than a month, and have been at times, as you may
readily suppose, most thoroughly tired; has always accommodated herself,
well and cheerfully, to everything; and has pleased me very much, and
proved herself perfectly game.
"We remained at Cincinnati all Tuesday the nineteenth, and all that
night. At eight o'clock on Wednesday morning the twentieth, we left in
the mail-stage for Columbus: Anne, Kate, and Mr. Q. inside; I on the
box. The distance is a hundred and twenty miles; the road macadamized;
and, for an American road, very good. We were three-and-twenty hours
performing the journey. We traveled all night; reached Columbus at seven
in the morning; breakfasted; and went to bed until dinner-time. At
night we held a levee for half an hour, and the people poured in as they
always do: each gentleman with a lady on each arm, exactly like the
Chorus to God Save the Queen. I wish you could see them, that you might
know what a splendid comparison this is. They wear their clothes
precisely as the chorus people do; and stand--supposing Kate and me to
be in the centre of the stage, with our backs to the footlights--just as
the company would, on the first night of the season. They shake hands
exactly after the manner of the guests at a ball at the Adelphi or the
Haymarket; receive any facetiousness on my part as if there were a stage
direction 'all laugh;' and have rather more difficulty in 'getting off'
than the last gentlemen, in white pantaloons, polished boots, and
berlins, usually display, under the most trying circumstances.
"Next morning, that is to say, on Friday, the 22d, at seven o'clock
exactly, we resumed our journey. The stage from Columbus to this place
only running thrice a week, and not on that day, I bargained for an
'exclusive extra' with four horses; for which I paid forty dollars, or
eight pounds English: the horses changing, as they would if it were the
regular stage. To insure our getting on properly, the proprietors sent
an agent on the box; and, with no other company but him and a hamper
full of eatables and drinkables, we went upon our way. It is impossible
to convey an adequate idea to you of the kind of road over which we
traveled. I can only say that it was, at the best, but a track through
the wild forest, and among the swamps, bogs, and morasses of the
withered bush. A great portion of it was what is called a 'corduroy
road:' which is made by throwing round logs or whole trees into a swamp,
and leaving them to settle there. Good Heaven! if you only felt one of
the least of the jolts with which the coach falls from log to log! It is
like nothing but going up a steep flight of stairs in an omnibus. Now
the coach flung us in a heap on its floor, and now crushed our heads
against its roof. Now one side of it was deep in the mire, and we were
holding on to the other. Now it was lying on the horses' tails, and now
again upon its back. But it never, never was in any position, attitude,
or kind of motion, to which we are accustomed in coaches; or made the
smallest approach to our experience of the proceedings of any sort of
vehicle that goes on wheels. Still, the day was beautiful, the air
delicious, and we were _alone_; with no tobacco-spittle, or eternal
prosy conversation about dollars and politics (the only two subjects
they ever converse about, or can converse upon), to bore us. We really
enjoyed it; made a joke of the being knocked about; and were quite
merry. At two o'clock we stopped in the wood to open our hamper and
dine; and we drank to our darlings and all friends at home. Then we
started again and went on until ten o'clock at night: when we reached a
place called Lower Sandusky, sixty-two miles from our starting-point.
The last three hours of the journey were not very pleasant; for it
lightened--awfully: every flash very vivid, very blue, and very long;
and, the wood being so dense that the branches on _either_ side of the
track rattled and broke _against_ the coach, it was rather a dangerous
neighborhood for a thunder-storm.
"The inn at which we halted was a rough log house. The people were all
abed, and we had to knock them up. We had the queerest sleeping-room,
with two doors, one opposite the other; both opening directly on the
wild black country, and neither having any lock or bolt. The effect of
these opposite doors was, that one was always blowing the other open: an
ingenuity in the art of building, which I don't remember to have met
with before. You should have seen me, in my shirt, blockading them with
portmanteaus, and desperately endeavoring to make the room tidy! But the
blockading was really needful, for in my dressing-case I have about
250_l._ in gold; and for the amount of the middle figure in that scarce
metal there are not a few men in the West who would murder their
fathers. Apropos of this golden store, consider at your leisure the
strange state of things in this country. It has _no money_; really no
money. The bank-paper won't pass; the newspapers are full of
advertisements from tradesmen who sell by barter; and American gold is
not to be had, or purchased. I bought sovereigns, English sovereigns, at
first; but as I could get none of them at Cincinnati, to this day, I
have had to purchase French gold; 20-franc pieces; with which I am
traveling as if I were in Paris!
"But let's go back to Lower Sandusky. Mr. Q. went to bed up in the roof
of the log house somewhere, but was so beset by bugs that he got up
after an hour and _lay in the coach_, . . . where he was obliged to wait
till breakfast-time. We breakfasted, driver and all, in the one common
room. It was papered with newspapers, and was as rough a place as need
be. At half-past seven we started again, and we reached Sandusky at six
o'clock yesterday afternoon. It is on Lake Erie, twenty-four hours'
journey by steamboat from Buffalo. We found no boat here, nor has there
been one, since. We are waiting, with every thing packed up, ready to
start on the shortest notice; and are anxiously looking out for smoke in
the distance.
"There was an old gentleman in the log inn at Lower Sandusky who treats
with the Indians on the part of the American government, and has just
concluded a treaty with the Wyandot Indians at that place to remove next
year to some land provided for them west of the Mississippi, a little
way beyond St. Louis. He described his negotiation to me, and their
reluctance to go, exceedingly well. They are a fine people, but degraded
and broken down. If you could see any of their men and women on a
race-course in England, you would not know them from gipsies.
"We are in a small house here, but a very comfortable one, and the
people are exceedingly obliging. Their demeanor in these country parts
is invariably morose, sullen, clownish, and repulsive. I should think
there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute
of humor, vivacity, or the capacity of enjoyment. It is most remarkable.
I am quite serious when I say that I have not heard a hearty laugh these
six weeks, except my own; nor have I seen a merry face on any shoulders
but a black man's. Lounging listlessly about; idling in bar-rooms;
smoking; spitting; and lolling on the pavement in rocking-chairs,
outside the shop-doors; are the only recreations. I don't think the
national shrewdness extends beyond the Yankees; that is, the Eastern
men. The rest are heavy, dull, and ignorant. Our landlord here is from
the East. He is a handsome, obliging, civil fellow. He comes into the
room with his hat on; spits in the fireplace as he talks; sits down on
the sofa with his hat on; pulls out his newspaper, and reads; but to all
this I am accustomed. He is anxious to please--and that is enough.
"We are wishing very much for a boat; for we hope to find our letters at
Buffalo. It is half-past one; and, as there is no boat in sight, we are
fain (sorely against our wills) to order an early dinner.
"_Tuesday, April Twenty-sixth, 1842._
"NIAGARA FALLS!!! (UPON THE ENGLISH[61] SIDE.)
"I don't know at what length I might have written you from Sandusky, my
beloved friend, if a steamer had not come in sight just as I finished
the last unintelligible sheet! (oh! the ink in these parts!): whereupon
I was obliged to pack up bag and baggage, to swallow a hasty apology for
a dinner, and to hurry my train on board with all the speed I might. She
was a fine steamship, four hundred tons burden, name the Constitution,
had very few passengers on board, and had bountiful and handsome
accommodation. It's all very fine talking about Lake Erie, but it won't
do for persons who are liable to sea-sickness. We were all sick. It's
almost as bad in that respect as the Atlantic. The waves are very short,
and horribly constant. We reached Buffalo at six this morning; went
ashore to breakfast; sent to the post-office forthwith; and
received--oh! who or what can say with how much pleasure and what
unspeakable delight!--our English letters!
"We lay all Sunday night at a town (and a beautiful town too) called
Cleveland; on Lake Erie. The people poured on board, in crowds, by six
on Monday morning, to see me; and a party of 'gentlemen' actually
planted themselves before our little cabin, and stared in at the door
and windows _while I was washing, and Kate lay in bed_. I was so
incensed at this, and at a certain newspaper published in that town
which I had accidentally seen in Sandusky (advocating war with England
to the death, saying that Britain must be 'whipped again,' and promising
all true Americans that within two years they should sing Yankee Doodle
in Hyde Park and Hail Columbia in the courts of Westminster), that when
the mayor came on board to present himself to me, according to custom, I
refused to see him, and bade Mr. Q. tell him why and wherefore. His
honor took it very coolly, and retired to the top of the wharf, with a
big stick and a whittling knife, with which he worked so lustily
(staring at the closed door of our cabin all the time) that long before
the boat left, the big stick was no bigger than a cribbage-peg!
"I never in my life was in such a state of excitement as coming from
Buffalo here, this morning. You come by railroad, and are nigh two hours
upon the way. I looked out for the spray, and listened for the roar, as
far beyond the bounds of possibility as though, landing in Liverpool, I
were to listen for the music of your pleasant voice in Lincoln's Inn
Fields. At last, when the train stopped, I saw two great white clouds
rising up from the depths of the earth,--nothing more. They rose up
slowly, gently, majestically, into the air. I dragged Kate down a deep
and slippery path leading to the ferry-boat; bullied Anne for not coming
fast enough; perspired at every pore; and felt, it is impossible to say
how, as the sound grew louder and louder in my ears, and yet nothing
could be seen for the mist.
"There were two English officers with us (ah! what _gentlemen_, what
noblemen of nature they seemed), and they hurried off with me; leaving
Kate and Anne on a crag of ice; and clambered after me over the rocks at
the foot of the small Fall, while the ferryman was getting the boat
ready. I was not disappointed--but I could make out nothing. In an
instant I was blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. I saw the water
tearing madly down from some immense height, but could get no idea of
shape, or situation, or anything but vague immensity. But when we were
seated in the boat, and crossing at the very foot of the cataract--then
I began to feel what it was. Directly I had changed my clothes at the
inn I went out again, taking Kate with me, and hurried to the Horse-shoe
Fall. I went down alone, into the very basin. It would be hard for a man
to stand nearer God than he does there. There was a bright rainbow at my
feet; and from that I looked up to--great Heaven! to _what_ a fall of
bright green water! The broad, deep, mighty stream seems to die in the
act of falling; and from its unfathomable grave arises that tremendous
ghost of spray and mist which is never laid, and has been haunting this
place with the same dread solemnity--perhaps from the creation of the
world.
"We purpose remaining here a week. In my next I will try to give you
some idea of my impressions, and to tell you how they change with every
day. At present it is impossible. I can only say that the first effect
of this tremendous spectacle on me was peace of mind--tranquillity--great
thoughts of eternal rest and happiness--nothing of terror. I can shudder
at the recollection of Glencoe (dear friend, with Heaven's leave we must
see Glencoe together), but whenever I think of Niagara I shall think of
its beauty.
"If you could hear the roar that is in my ears as I write this. Both
Falls are under our windows. From our sitting-room and bedroom we look
down straight upon them. There is not a soul in the house but ourselves.
What would I give if you and Mac were here to share the sensations of
this time! I was going to add, what would I give if the dear girl whose
ashes lie in Kensal Green had lived to come so far along with us--but
she has been here many times, I doubt not, since her sweet face faded
from my earthly sight.
* * * * *
"One word on the precious letters before I close. You are right, my dear
fellow, about the papers; and you are right (I grieve to say) about the
people. _Am I right?_ quoth the conjurer. _Yes!_ from gallery, pit, and
boxes. I _did_ let out those things, at first, against my will, but when
I come to tell you all--well; only wait--only wait--till the end of
July. I say no more.
"I do perceive a perplexingly divided and subdivided duty, in the matter
of the book of travels. Oh! the sublimated essence of comicality that I
_could_ distil, from the materials I have! . . . You are a part, and an
essential part, of our home, dear friend, and I exhaust my imagination
in picturing the circumstances under which I shall surprise you by
walking into 58, Lincoln's Inn Fields. We are truly grateful to God for
the health and happiness of our inexpressibly dear children and all our
friends. But one letter more--only one. . . . I don't seem to have been
half affectionate enough, but there _are_ thoughts, you know, that lie
too deep for words."
FOOTNOTES:
[59] A young lady's account of this party, written next morning, and
quoted in one of the American memoirs of Dickens, enables us to
contemplate his suffering from the point of view of those who inflicted
it: "I went last evening to a party at Judge Walker's, given to the hero
of the day. . . . When we reached the house, Mr. Dickens had left the
crowded rooms, and was in the hall with his wife, about taking his
departure when we entered the door. We were introduced to him in our
wrapping; and in the flurry and embarrassment of the meeting, one of the
party dropped a parcel, containing shoes, gloves, etc. Mr. Dickens,
stooping, gathered them up and restored them with a laughing remark, and
we bounded up-stairs to get our things off. Hastening down again, we
found him with Mrs. Dickens seated upon a sofa, surrounded by a group of
ladies; Judge Walker having requested him to delay his departure for a
few moments, for the gratification of some tardy friends who had just
arrived, ourselves among the number. Declining to re-enter the rooms
where he had already taken leave of the guests, he had seated himself in
the hall. He is young and handsome, has a mellow, beautiful eye, fine
brow, and abundant hair. His mouth is large, and his smile so bright it
seemed to shed light and happiness all about him. His manner is easy,
negligent, but not elegant. His dress was foppish; in fact, he was
overdressed, yet his garments were worn so easily they appeared to be a
necessary part of him. (!) He had a dark coat, with lighter pantaloons;
a black waistcoat, embroidered with colored flowers; and about his neck,
covering his white shirt-front, was a black neckcloth, also embroidered
in colors, in which were placed two large diamond pins connected by a
chain. A gold watch-chain, and a large red rose in his button-hole,
completed his toilet. He appeared a little weary, but answered the
remarks made to him--for he originated none--in an agreeable manner. Mr.
Beard's portrait of Fagin was so placed in the room that we could see it
from where we stood surrounding him. One of the ladies asked him if it
was his idea of the Jew. He replied, 'Very nearly.' Another, laughingly,
requested that he would give her the rose he wore, as a memento. He
shook his head and said, 'That will not do; he could not give it to one;
the others would be jealous.' A half-dozen then insisted on having it,
whereupon he proposed to divide the leaves among them. In taking the
rose from his coat, either by design or accident, the leaves loosened
and fell upon the floor, and amid considerable laughter the ladies
stooped and gathered them. He remained some twenty minutes, perhaps, in
the hall, and then took his leave. I must confess to considerable
disappointment in the personal of my idol. I felt that his throne was
shaken, although it never could be destroyed." This appalling picture
supplements and very sufficiently explains the mournful passage in the
text.
[60] "RUNAWAY NEGRO IN JAIL" was the heading of the advertisement
inclosed, which had a woodcut of master and slave in its corner, and
announced that Wilford Garner, sheriff and jailer of Chicot County,
Arkansas, requested owner to come and prove property--or----
[61] Ten dashes underneath the word.
CHAPTER XXIV.
NIAGARA AND MONTREAL.
1842.
Last Two Letters--Dickens vanquished--Obstacles
to Copyright--Two described--Value of Literary
Popularity--Substitute for Literature--The
Secretary described--His Paintings--The Lion
and ---- --Toryism of Toronto--Canadian
Attentions--Proposed Theatricals--Last
Letter--The Private Play--Stage Manager's
Report--The Lady Performers--Bill of the
Performance--A Touch of Crummles--HOME.
MY friend was better than his word, and two more letters reached me
before his return. The opening of the first was written from Niagara on
the 3d, and its close from Montreal on the 12th, of May; from which
latter city also, on the 26th of that month, the last of all was
written.
Much of the first of these letters had reference to the international
copyright agitation, and gave strong expression to the indignation
awakened in him (nor less in some of the best men of America) by the
adoption, at a public meeting in Boston itself, of a memorial against
any change of the law, in the course of which it was stated that, if
English authors were invested with any control over the republication of
their own books, it would be no longer possible for American editors to
alter and adapt them to the American taste. This deliberate declaration,
however, unsparing as Dickens's anger at it was, in effect vanquished
him. He saw the hopelessness of pursuing further any present effort to
bring about the change desired; and he took the determination not only
to drop any allusion to it in his proposed book, but to try what effect
might be produced, when he should again be in England, by a league of
English authors to suspend further intercourse with American publishers
while the law should remain as it is. On his return he made accordingly
a public appeal to this effect, stating his own intention for the future
to forego all profit derivable from the authorized transmission of early
proofs across the Atlantic; but his hopes in this particular also were
doomed to disappointment. I now leave the subject, quoting only from his
present letter the general remarks with which it is dismissed by
himself.
"NIAGARA FALLS,
"_Tuesday, Third May, 1842._
"I'll tell you what the two obstacles to the passing of an international
copyright law with England are: firstly, the national love of 'doing' a
man in any bargain or matter of business; secondly, the national vanity.
Both these characteristics prevail to an extent which no stranger can
possibly estimate.
"With regard to the first, I seriously believe that it is an essential
part of the pleasure derived from the perusal of a popular English book,
that the author gets nothing for it. It is so dar-nation 'cute--so
knowing in Jonathan to get his reading on those terms. He has the
Englishman so regularly on the hip that his eye twinkles with slyness,
cunning, and delight; and he chuckles over the humor of the page with an
appreciation of it quite inconsistent with, and apart from, its honest
purchase. The raven hasn't more joy in eating a stolen piece of meat,
than the American has in reading the English book which he gets for
nothing.
"With regard to the second, it reconciles that better and more elevated
class who are above this sort of satisfaction, with surprising ease. The
man's read in America! The Americans like him! They are glad to see him
when he comes here! They flock about him, and tell him that they are
grateful to him for spirits in sickness; for many hours of delight in
health; for a hundred fanciful associations which are constantly
interchanged between themselves and their wives and children at home! It
is nothing that all this takes place in countries where he is _paid_; it
is nothing that he has won fame for himself elsewhere, and profit too.
The Americans read him; the free, enlightened, independent Americans;
and what more _would_ he have? Here's reward enough for any man. The
national vanity swallows up all other countries on the face of the
earth, and leaves but this above the ocean. Now, mark what the real
value of this American reading is. Find me in the whole range of
literature one single solitary English book which becomes popular with
them before, by going through the ordeal at home and becoming popular
there, it has forced itself on their attention--and I am content that
the law should remain as it is, forever and a day. I must make one
exception. There _are_ some mawkish tales of fashionable life before
which crowds fall down as they were gilded calves, which have been
snugly enshrined in circulating libraries at home, from the date of
their publication.
"As to telling them they will have no literature of their own, the
universal answer (out of Boston) is, 'We don't want one. Why should we
pay for one when we can get it for nothing? Our people don't think of
poetry, sir. Dollars, banks, and cotton are _our_ books, sir.' And they
certainly are in one sense; for a lower average of general information
than exists in this country on all other topics, it would be very hard
to find. So much, at present, for international copyright."
The same letter kept the promise made in its predecessor that one or two
more sketches of character should be sent: "One of the most amusing
phrases in use all through the country, for its constant repetition, and
adaptation to every emergency, is 'Yes, Sir.' Let me give you a
specimen." (The specimen was the dialogue, in the _Notes_, of straw-hat
and brown-hat, during the stage-coach ride to Sandusky.) "I am not
joking, upon my word. This is exactly the dialogue. Nothing else
occurring to me at this moment, let me give you the secretary's
portrait. Shall I?
"He is of a sentimental turn--strongly sentimental; and tells Anne as
June approaches that he hopes 'we shall sometimes think of him' in our
own country. He wears a cloak, like Hamlet; and a very tall, big, limp,
dusty black hat, which he exchanges on long journeys for a cap like
Harlequin's. . . . He sings; and in some of our quarters, when his bedroom
has been near ours, we have heard him grunting bass notes through the
keyhole of his door, to attract our attention. His desire that I should
formally ask him to sing, and his devices to make me do so, are
irresistibly absurd. There was a piano in our room at Hartford (you
recollect our being there, early in February?)--and he asked me one
night, when we were alone, if 'Mrs. D.' played. 'Yes, Mr. Q.' 'Oh,
indeed, Sir! _I_ sing: so whenever you want _a little soothing_--' You
may imagine how hastily I left the room, on some false pretense, without
hearing more.
"He paints. . . . An enormous box of oil-colors is the main part of his
luggage: and with these he blazes away, in his own room, for hours
together. Anne got hold of some big-headed, pot-bellied sketches he made
of the passengers on board the canal-boat (including me in my fur coat),
the recollection of which brings the tears into my eyes at this minute.
He painted the Falls, at Niagara, superbly; and is supposed now to be
engaged on a full-length representation of me: waiters having reported
that chamber-maids have said that there is a picture in his room which
has a great deal of hair. One girl opined that it was 'the beginning of
the King's Arms;' but I am pretty sure that the Lion is myself. . . .
"Sometimes, but not often, he commences a conversation. That usually
occurs when we are walking the deck after dark; or when we are alone
together in a coach. It is his practice at such times to relate the most
notorious and patriarchal Joe Miller, as something that occurred in his
own family. When traveling by coach, he is particularly fond of
imitating cows and pigs; and nearly challenged a fellow-passenger the
other day, who had been moved by the display of this accomplishment
into telling him that he was 'a Perfect Calf.' He thinks it an
indispensable act of politeness and attention to inquire constantly
whether we're not sleepy, or, to use his own words, whether we don't
'suffer for sleep.' If we have taken a long nap of fourteen hours or so,
after a long journey, he is sure to meet me at the bedroom door when I
turn out in the morning, with this inquiry. But, apart from the
amusement he gives us, I could not by possibility have lighted on any
one who would have suited my purpose so well. I have raised his ten
dollars per month to twenty; and mean to make it up for six months."
The conclusion of this letter was dated from "Montreal, Thursday,
twelfth May," and was little more than an eager yearning for home: "This
will be a very short and stupid letter, my dear friend; for the post
leaves here much earlier than I expected, and all my grand designs for
being unusually brilliant fall to the ground. I will write you _one
line_ by the next Cunard boat,--reserving all else until our happy and
long long looked-for meeting.
"We have been to Toronto and Kingston; experiencing attentions at each
which I should have difficulty in describing. The wild and rabid toryism
of Toronto is, I speak seriously, _appalling_. English kindness is very
different from American. People send their horses and carriages for your
use, but they don't exact as payment the right of being always under
your nose. We had no less than _five_ carriages at Kingston waiting our
pleasure at one time; not to mention the commodore's barge and crew, and
a beautiful government steamer. We dined with Sir Charles Bagot last
Sunday. Lord Mulgrave was to have met us yesterday at Lachine; but, as
he was wind-bound in his yacht and couldn't get in, Sir Richard Jackson
sent his drag four-in-hand, with two other young fellows who are also
his aides, and in we came in grand style.
"The Theatricals (I think I told you[62] I had been invited to play with
the officers of the Coldstream Guards here) are _A Roland for an
Oliver_; _Two o'Clock in the Morning_; and either the _Young Widow_, or
_Deaf as a Post_. Ladies (unprofessional) are going to play, for the
first time. I wrote to Mitchell at New York for a wig for Mr.
Snobbington, which has arrived, and is brilliant. If they had done
_Love, Law, and Physick_, as at first proposed, I was already 'up' in
Flexible, having played it of old, before my authorship days; but if it
should be Splash in the _Young Widow_, you will have to do me the favor
to imagine me in a smart livery-coat, shiny black hat and cockade, white
knee-cords, white top-boots, blue stock, small whip, red cheeks, and
dark eyebrows. Conceive Topping's state of mind if I bring this dress
home and put it on unexpectedly! . . . God bless you, dear friend. I can
say nothing about the seventh, the day on which we sail. It is
impossible. Words cannot express what we feel, now that the time is so
near. . . ."
His last letter, dated from "Peasco's Hotel, Montreal, Canada,
twenty-sixth of May," described the private theatricals, and inclosed me
a bill of the play.
"This, like my last, will be a stupid letter, because both Kate and I
are thrown into such a state of excitement by the near approach of the
seventh of June that we can do nothing, and think of nothing.
"The play came off last night. The audience, between five and six
hundred strong, were invited as to a party; a regular table with
refreshments being spread in the lobby and saloon. We had the band of
the twenty-third (one of the finest in the service) in the orchestra,
the theatre was lighted with gas, the scenery was excellent, and the
properties were all brought from private houses. Sir Charles Bagot, Sir
Richard Jackson, and their staffs were present; and as the military
portion of the audience were all in full uniform, it was really a
splendid scene.
"We 'went' also splendidly; though with nothing very remarkable in the
acting way. We had for Sir Mark Chase a genuine odd fish, with plenty of
humor; but our Tristram Sappy was not up to the marvelous reputation he
has somehow or other acquired here. I am not however, let me tell you,
placarded as stage-manager for nothing. Everybody was told they would
have to submit to the most iron despotism; and didn't I come Macready
over them? Oh, no. By no means. Certainly not. The pains I have taken
with them, and the perspiration I have expended, during the last ten
days, exceed in amount anything you can imagine. I had regular plots of
the scenery made out, and lists of the properties wanted; and had them
nailed up by the prompter's chair. Every letter that was to be
delivered, was written; every piece of money that had to be given,
provided; and not a single thing lost sight of. I prompted, myself, when
I was not on; when I was, I made the regular prompter of the theatre my
deputy; and I never saw anything so perfectly touch and go, as the
first two pieces. The bedroom scene in the interlude was as well
furnished as Vestris had it; with a 'practicable' fireplace blazing away
like mad, and everything in a concatenation accordingly. I really do
believe that I was very funny: at least I know that I laughed heartily
at myself, and made the part a character, such as you and I know very
well: a mixture of T----, Harley, Yates, Keeley, and Jerry Sneak. It
went with a roar, all through; and, as I am closing this, they have told
me I was so well made up that Sir Charles Bagot, who sat in the
stage-box, had no idea who played Mr. Snobbington, until the piece was
over.
[Illustration: Private Theatricals.]
* * * * *
=COMMITTEE.=
* * * * *
Mrs. TORRENS.
W. C. ERMATINGER, Esq.
Mrs. PERRY.
Captain TORRENS.
THE EARL OF MULGRAVE.
* * * * *
STAGE MANAGER--MR. CHARLES DICKENS.
* * * * *
QUEEN'S THEATRE, MONTREAL
* * * * *
ON WEDNESDAY EVENING, MAY 25TH, 1842,
WILL BE PERFORMED,
=ROLAND FOR AN OLIVER.=
* * * * *
MRS. SELBORNE. [Handwritten: Mrs. Torrens]
MARIA DARLINGTON. [Handwritten: Miss Griffin]
MRS. FIXTURE. [Handwritten: Miss Ermatinger.]
MR. SELBORNE. [Handwritten: Lord Mulgrave.]
ALFRED HIGHFLYER. [Handwritten: Mr. Charles Dickens]
SIR MARK CHASE. [Handwritten: Honourable Mr. Methuen]
FIXTURE. [Handwritten: Captain Willoughby.]
GAMEKEEPER. [Handwritten: Captain Granville]
* * * * *
AFTER WHICH, AN INTERLUDE IN ONE SCENE, (FROM THE FRENCH,) CALLED
=Past Two o'Clock in the Morning.=
* * * * *
THE STRANGER. [Handwritten: Captain Granville]
MR. SNOBBINGTON. [Handwritten: Mr. Charles Dickens]
* * * * *
TO CONCLUDE WITH THE FARCE, IN ONE ACT, ENTITLED
=DEAF AS A POST.=
* * * * *
MRS. PLUMPLEY. [Handwritten: Mrs. Torrens]
AMY TEMPLETON. [Handwritten: Mrs. Charles Dickens!!!!!!!!]
SOPHY WALTON. [Handwritten: Mrs. Perry.]
SALLY MAGGS. [Handwritten: Miss Griffin]
CAPTAIN TEMPLETON. [Handwritten: Captain Torrens]
MR. WALTON. [Handwritten: Captain Willoughby.]
TRISTRAM SAPPY. [Handwritten: Doctor Griffin]
CRUPPER. [Handwritten: Lord Mulgrave]
GALLOP. [Handwritten: Mr. Charles Dickens.]
MONTREAL, May 24, 1842. GAZETTE OFFICE.
"But only think of Kate playing! and playing devilish well, I assure
you! All the ladies were capital, and we had no wait or hitch for an
instant. You may suppose this, when I tell you that we began at eight,
and had the curtain down at eleven. It is their custom here, to prevent
heart-burnings in a very heart-burning town, whenever they have played
in private, to repeat the performances in public. So, on Saturday
(substituting, of course, real actresses for the ladies), we repeat the
two first pieces to a paying audience, for the manager's benefit. . . .
"I send you a bill, to which I have appended a key.
"I have not told you half enough. But I promise you I shall make you
shake your sides about this play. Wasn't it worthy of Crummles that when
Lord Mulgrave and I went out to the door to receive the
Governor-general, the regular prompter followed us in agony with four
tall candlesticks with wax candles in them, and besought us with a
bleeding heart to carry two apiece, in accordance with all the
precedents? . . .
* * * * *
"I have hardly spoken of our letters, which reached us yesterday,
shortly before the play began. A hundred thousand thanks for your
delightful mainsail of that gallant little packet. I read it again and
again; and had it all over again at breakfast-time this morning. I heard
also, by the same ship, from Talfourd, Miss Coutts, Brougham, Rogers,
and others. A delicious letter from Mac too, as good as his painting, I
swear. Give my hearty love to him. . . . God bless you, my dear friend.
As the time draws nearer, we get FEVERED with anxiety for home. . . .
Kiss our darlings for us. We shall soon meet, please God, and be happier
and merrier than ever we were, in all our lives. . . . Oh,
home--home--home--home--home--home--HOME!!!!!!!!!!!"
=END OF VOL. I.=
FOOTNOTES:
[62] See _ante_, p. 303.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Page viii, "recoltions" changed to "recollections" (Another
schoolfellow's recollections)
Page ix, extraneous page number removed Original text read:
Writing _Pickwick_, Nos. 14 127
and 15 127
Page 59, "t" changed to "it" (it as early as)
Page 117, "reisssue" changed to "reissue" (Scheme to reissue)
Page 224, "s" changed to "is" (there is little further)
Page 224, "hab" changed to "habit" (his invariable habit)
Page 242, "axing" changed to "taxing" (taxing ingenuity to)
Page 242, "f" chagned to "of" (of sheer insanity)
Page 286, word "I" inserted into text. (I have heard of)
To retain the integrity of the original text, varied hyphenations,
capitalizations, and, at times, spellings were retained.
For example:
Varied hyphenation and capitalization of Devonshire Terrace was
retained. Also fac-simile and facsimile. Varied spelling of
A'Beckett/A'Becket was retained.
*****
Transcriber's Note:
For the reader: Italic text is surrounded by _underscores_, bold text is
surrounded by =equal signs= and underlined text is surrounded by
~tildes~. Two breves above the letter e are indicated by [)e] in the
text.
THE LIFE
OF
[Illustration: Signature: Charles Dickens]
[Illustration]
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
VOL. II.
1842-1852.
CORRECTIONS MADE IN THE LATER EDITIONS OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
* * * * *
A NOTICE written under date of the 23rd December, 1871, appeared with
the Tenth Edition. "Such has been the rapidity of the demand for
successive impressions of this book, that I have found it impossible,
until now, to correct at pages 31, 87, and 97 three errors of statement
made in the former editions; and some few other mistakes, not in
themselves important, at pages 96, 101, and 102. I take the opportunity
of adding, that the mention at p. 83 is not an allusion to the
well-known 'Penny' and 'Saturday' magazines, but to weekly periodicals
of some years' earlier date resembling them in form. One of them, I have
since found from a later mention by Dickens himself, was presumably of a
less wholesome and instructive character. 'I used,' he says, 'when I was
at school, to take in the _Terrific Register_, making myself unspeakably
miserable, and frightening my very wits out of my head, for the small
charge of a penny weekly; which, considering that there was an
illustration to every number in which there was always a pool of blood,
and at least one body, was cheap.' An obliging correspondent writes to
me upon my reference to the Fox-under-the-hill, at p. 62: 'Will you
permit me to say, that the house, shut up and almost ruinous, is still
to be found at the bottom of a curious and most precipitous court, the
entrance of which is just past Salisbury-street. . . . It was once, I
think, the approach to the halfpenny boats. The house is now shut out
from the water-side by the Embankment.'" I proceed to state in detail
what the changes thus referred to were.
The passage about James Lamert, beginning at the thirteenth line of p.
31, now stands: "His chief ally and encourager in these displays was a
youth of some ability, much older than himself, named James Lamert,
stepson to his mother's sister and therefore a sort of cousin, who was
his great patron and friend in his childish days. Mary, the eldest
daughter of Charles Barrow, himself a lieutenant in the navy, had for
her first husband a commander in the navy called Allen; on whose death
by drowning at Rio Janeiro she had joined her sister, the navy-pay
clerk's wife, at Chatham; in which place she subsequently took for her
second husband Doctor Lamert, an army surgeon, whose son James, even
after he had been sent to Sandhurst for his education, continued still
to visit Chatham from time to time. He had a turn for private
theatricals; and as his father's quarters were in the ordnance-hospital
there, a great rambling place otherwise at that time almost uninhabited,
he had plenty of room in which to get up his entertainments." Two other
corrections were consequent on this change. At the 21st line of page 38,
for "the elder cousin" read "the cousin by marriage;" and at the 31st
line of p. 49, "cousin by his mother's side" should be "cousin by his
aunt's marriage."
At the 15th line of the 41st page, "his bachelor-uncle, fellow-clerk,"
&c. should be "the uncle who was at this time fellow-clerk," &c. At the
11th line of page 54, "Charles-court" should be "Clare-court." The
allusion to one of his favourite localities at the 23d line of page 62
should stand thus: "a little public-house by the water-side called the
Fox-under-the-hill, approached by an underground passage which we once
missed in looking for it together."
The passage at p. 87, having reference to an early friend who had been
with him, as I supposed, at his first school, should run thus: "In this
however I have since discovered my own mistake: the truth being that it
was this gentleman's connection, not with the Wellington-academy, but
with a school kept by Mr. Dawson in Hunter-street, Brunswick-square,
where the brothers of Dickens were subsequently placed, which led to
their early knowledge of each other. I fancy that they were together
also, for a short time, at Mr. Molloy's in New-square, Lincoln's-inn;
but, whether or not this was so, Dickens certainly had not quitted
school many months before his father had made sufficient interest with
an attorney of Gray's-inn, Mr. Edward Blackmore, to obtain him regular
employment in his office." There is subsequent allusion to the same
gentleman (at p. 182) as his "school-companion at Mr. Dawson's in
Henrietta-street," which ought to stand as "having known him when
himself a law-clerk in Lincoln's-inn."
At p. 96 I had stated that Mr. John Dickens reported for the _Morning
Chronicle_; and at p. 101 that Mr. Thomas Beard reported for the
_Morning Herald_; whereas Mr. Dickens, though in the gallery for other
papers, did not report for the _Chronicle_, and Mr. Beard did report for
that journal; and where (at p. 102) Dickens was spoken of as associated
with Mr. Beard in a reporting party which represented respectively the
_Chronicle_ and _Herald_, the passage ought simply to have described him
as "connected with a reporting party, being Lord John Russell's
Devonshire contest above-named, and his associate chief being Mr. Beard,
entrusted with command for the _Chronicle_ in this particular express."
At p. 97 I had made a mistake about his "first published piece of
writing," in too hastily assuming that he had himself forgotten what the
particular piece was. It struck an intelligent and kind correspondent as
very unlikely that Dickens should have fallen into error on such a
point; and, making personal search for himself (as I ought to have
done), discovered that what I supposed to be another piece was merely
the same under another title. The description of his first printed
sketch should therefore be "(Mr. Minns and his Cousin, as he afterwards
entitled it, but which appeared in the magazine as A Dinner at Poplar
Walk)." There is another mistake at p. 159, of "bandy-legged" instead of
"bulky-legged" and, at p. 177, of "fresh fields" for "fresh woods."
Those several corrections were made in the Tenth Edition. To the
Eleventh these words were prefixed (under date of the 23rd of January,
1872): "Since the above mentioned edition went to press, a published
letter has rendered necessary a brief additional note to the remarks
made at pp. 155-6." The remark occurs in my notice of the silly story
of Mr. Cruikshank having originated _Oliver Twist_, and, with the note
referred to, now stands in the form subjoined. "Whether all Sir
Benjamin's laurels however should fall to the person by whom the tale is
told,* or whether any part belongs to the authority alleged for it, is
unfortunately not quite clear. There would hardly have been a doubt, if
the fable had been confined to the other side of the Atlantic; but it
has been reproduced and widely circulated on this side also; and the
distinguished artist whom it calumniates by attributing the invention to
him has been left undefended from its slander. Dickens's letter spares
me the necessity of characterizing, by the only word which would have
been applicable to it, a tale of such incredible and monstrous absurdity
as that one of the masterpieces of its author's genius had been merely
an illustration of etchings by Mr. Cruikshank!" Note to the words
"person by whom the tale is told:" "*This question has been partly
solved, since my last edition, by Mr. Cruikshank's announcement in the
_Times_, that, though Dr. Mackenzie had 'confused some circumstances
with respect to Mr. Dickens looking over some drawings and sketches,'
the substance of his information as to who it was that originated
_Oliver Twist_, and all its characters, had been derived from Mr.
Cruikshank himself. The worst part of the foregoing fable, therefore,
has not Dr. Mackenzie for its author; and Mr. Cruikshank is to be
congratulated on the prudence of his rigid silence respecting it as long
as Mr. Dickens lived."
In the Twelfth Edition I mentioned, in the note at p. 149, a little work
of which all notice had been previously omitted; and the close of that
note now runs: "He had before written for them, without his name,
_Sunday under Three Heads_; and he added subsequently a volume of _Young
Couples_." At p. 157, "parish abuses" is corrected in the same edition
to "parish practices;" and at p. 173, "in his later works" to "in his
latest works."
I have received letters from several obliging correspondents, among them
three or four who were scholars at the Wellington-house Academy before
or after Dickens's time, and one who attended the school with him; but
such remark as they suggest will more properly accompany my third and
closing volume.
PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON,
_29th of October, 1872._
ILLUSTRATIONS.
* * * * *
PAGE
Autograph of Charles Dickens _Fly leaf_
Charles Dickens, æt. 47. From the portrait painted for the
author in 1859 by W. P. Frith, R.A. Engraved by Robert
Graves, A.R.A. _Frontispiece_
Charles Dickens, his Wife, and her Sister. Drawn by Daniel
Maclise R.A. in 1842. Engraved by C. H. Jeens 48
Sketch of the Villa Bagnerello (Albaro), by Angus Fletcher 121
Drawing of the Palazzo Peschiere (Genoa), by Mr. Batson 141
At 58, Lincoln's-inn-fields, Monday the 2nd of December, 1844.
From a drawing by Daniel Maclise, R.A. Engraved by C.
H. Jeens 174
Rosemont, Lausanne. From a drawing by the Hon. Mrs. Watson 229
M. Barthelémy's card 325
Seventeen "fancies" for Mr. Dombey. Designed by H. K.
Browne 345
Twelve more similar fancies. From the design of the same artist 346
Charles Dickens to George Cruikshank. Facsimile of a letter
written in 1838, concerning the later illustrations to _Oliver
Twist_ 349-50
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I. 1842.
Pages 21-39.
AMERICAN NOTES. ÆT. 30.
PAGE
Return from America 21
Longfellow in England 22
At Broadstairs 23
Preparing _Notes_ 23
Fancy for opening of _Chuzzlewit_ 24
Attractions at Margate 25
Being, not always Believing 26
Burlesque of classic tragedy 26
A smart man and forged letter 26
A proposed dedication 27
Authorship and sea bathing 28
Easy-living rich and patient poor 28
Coming to the end 29
Rejected motto for _Notes_ 30
Home of the _Every Day Book_ 31
Scene at a funeral 32
An introductory chapter suppressed 33
Chapter first printed 33-37
Jeffrey's opinion of the _Notes_ 38
Later page anticipated 38
Experience of America in 1868 38
CHAPTER II. 1843.
Pages 40-62.
FIRST YEAR OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. ÆT. 31.
A sunset at Land's-end 40
A holiday described by C. D. 41
The same described by Maclise 42
A landscape and a portrait 43
Names first given to _Chuzzlewit_ 44
Origin of the novel 45
Prologue to a play 45
On a tragedy by Browning 46
George Eliot's first book 47
Accompaniments of work 47
Miss Georgina Hogarth 48
Three portraits 49
A public benefactor 50
Controversy on _Notes_ 50
Original of Mrs. Gamp 51
What he will do with her 51
John Black 53
Macready and America 53
Apprehended disservice 54
Exertions for Elton family 55
Seaside life in ordinary 55
Public speeches 56
Ragged schools and results 57
Unitarianism 59
Return to Church of England 59
Language of his Will 59
_Christmas Carol_ 60
Birth of third son 61
Amusing letter 61
CHAPTER III. 1843-1844.
Pages 63-92.
CHUZZLEWIT DISAPPOINTMENTS AND CHRISTMAS CAROL. ÆT. 31-32.
Falling-off in _Chuzzlewit_ sale 63
Publishers and authors 64
Premature fears 65
Resolve to change his publishers 66
Proposal to his printers 66
Desire to travel again 67
Ways and means 68
Objections to the scheme 69
Confidence in himself 70
Want of confidence in others 70
Bent on his plan 71
Turning point of his career 72
Grounds for course taken 73
On _Martin Chuzzlewit_ 74
American portions 75
The book's special superiority 76
News from America 76
American consolations 77
Why no Pecksniffs in France 78
Why Tartuffes in England 78
A favourite scene of Thackeray's 79
Process of creation in a novel 80
Intended motto for story 81
Leading characters 82
A superb masterpiece 83
Triumph of humorous art 84
Publication of _Christmas Carol_ 84
Unrealized hopes 85
Results of _Carol_ sale 86
Renewed negotiations with printers 87
Agreement with Bradbury and Evans 88
Letters about the _Carol_ 89
Spirit of the book 90
Something better than literature 91
CHAPTER IV. 1844.
Pages 93-110.
YEAR OF DEPARTURE FOR ITALY. ÆT. 32.
Gore-house friends 93
Sensitive for his calling 94
A troublesome cheque 95
Education speeches 95
Sufferings from stage-adaptations 96
Wrongs from piracy 96
Proceedings in Chancery 97
A pirate's plea 97
Result of Chancery experience 99
Piracy preferred 99
Reliefs to work 100
The tempted and tempter 101
Favourite bit of humour 102
Criticized without humour 102
Taine on Dickens 102
Macready in New Orleans 103
Society in England 104
Writing in the _Chronicle_ 104
Conference with its new editor 104
Preparations for departure 105
In temporary quarters 106
Begging-letter case 106
The farewell dinner-party 107
"Evenings of a Working-man" 108
Greenwich dinner 109
J. M. W. Turner and Carlyle 110
CHAPTER V. 1844.
Pages 111-138.
IDLENESS AT ALBARO: VILLA BAGNERELLO. ÆT. 32.
The travel to Italy 111
A bit of character 112
French thrown away 112
The Albaro villa 113
First experiences 114
Cloudy weather 115
Sunsets and scenery 116
Address to Maclise 116
The Mediterranean 117
Colours of sky and sea 117
Warning to Maclise 118
Perishing frescoes 118
French Consul at Genoa 119
Rooms in villa described 120
Surrounding scenery 121
Church-ruin on the rocks 121
Angus Fletcher's sketch 121
Work in abeyance 122
Learning Italian 122
Domestic news 123
His English servants 123
English residents 124
Genoa the superb 125
Church splendours and tinsel 126
Theatres 126
Italian plays 127
Dumas' _Kean_ 127
Religious houses 128
Sunday promenade 128
Winter residence chosen 129
A lucky arrival 129
Dinner at French Consul's 130
Verses in C. D.'s honour 130
Others in Prince Joinville's 131
Rumours of war with England 131
A Marquis's reception 132
Flight and tumble 133
Quiet enjoyments 134
English visitors and news 135
Talk with Lord Robertson 135
A suggestion for Jerrold 136
Visit of Frederick Dickens 136
An inn on the Alps 136
Dangers of sea-bathing 137
A change beginning 138
CHAPTER VI. 1844.
Pages 139-162.
WORK IN GENOA: PALAZZO PESCHIERE. ÆT. 32.
Palace of the Fish-ponds 139
Rooms and frescoes 140
View over the city 141
Dancing and praying 142
Peschiere garden 142
Trying to write 143
A difficulty settled 143
Craving for streets 144
Design for his book 144
Governor's levee 144
Absence of the poet 145
Subject he is working at 145
C. D.'s politics 146
Choice of a hero 147
Master-passion 147
Religious sentiment 147
A dream 148
Dialogue in a vision 149
"What is the True religion?" 149
Fragments of reality in a vision 149
Trying regions of thought 150
Reverence for Doctor Arnold 150
First part of book finished 151
Anticipation of its close 151
Differences from published tale 152
First outline of the _Chimes_ 152-156
Liking for the subject 156
What the writing cost him 156
Realities of fictitious sorrow 157
Wild mountain weather 157
Banquet at the Whistle 158
Startling news 158
Coming to London 159
Secret of the visit 160
Eager to try effect of story 160
Plans a reading at my rooms 160
The tale finished 161
Proposed travel 161
Party for the Reading 162
CHAPTER VII. 1844.
Pages 163-178.
ITALIAN TRAVEL. ÆT. 32.
Cities and people 163
Venice 164
Rapture of enjoyment 165
Aboard the city 165
What he saw and felt 165
Solitary thoughts 166
At Lodi 166
About paintings and engravings 167
Titian and Tintoretto 168
Conventionalities 169
Monks and painters 169
The inns 170
Compensation for discomfort 170
Brave C of his _Pictures_ 171
Louis Roche of Avignon 171
Dinner at the Peschiere 172
Custom-house officers 173
At Milan and Strasburg 173
Passing the Simplon 174
In London 174
A Reading in Lincoln's-inn-fields 174
Persons present 175
Success of the visit 175
In Paris with Macready 176
Origin of our private play 176
A recognition at Marseilles 177
Friendly Americans 177
On board for Genoa 177
Information for travellers 178
CHAPTER VIII. 1845.
Pages 179-200.
LAST MONTHS IN ITALY. ÆT. 33.
Birthday gift for eldest son 179
Suspicious "Characters" 180
Jesuit interferences 180
Birth of 1845 180
Travel southward 181
Carrara and Pisa 181
A wild journey 182
Birds of prey 183
A beggar and his staff 183
"My lord" loses temper 184
And has the worst of it 184
At Rome 184
The Campagna 185
Bay of Naples 185
Filth of Naples and Fondi 186
The Lazzaroni 186
False picturesque 187
Sad English news 187
True friends in calamity 188
At Florence 188
Wayside memorials and Landor's villa 189
Death of Bobus Smith 190
At Lord Holland's 190
Lord Palmerston's brother 190
Again at the Peschiere 190
To publish or not? 191
Thoughts of home 192
American friends 192
Deaths among English residents 193
Scarlet breeches out of place 193
Angus Fletcher 193
Complaint of a meek footman 194
Recalling Lady Holland 194
A touch of Portsmouth 195
Plans for meeting 196
Last letter from Genoa 196
Closing excitements and troubles 196
Italians hard at work 197
Returning by Switzerland 197
Passage of the St. Gothard 198
Splendours of Swiss scenery 198
Dangers of it 199
What is left behind the Alps 199
A week in Flanders 200
CHAPTER IX. 1845-1846.
Pages 201-221.
AGAIN IN ENGLAND. ÆT. 33-34.
Old hopes revived 201
Notions for a periodical 201
Proposed prospectus 202
Chances for and against it 203
Swept away by larger venture 203
Christmas book of 1845 204
D'Orsay and the courier 204
Another passage of Autobiography 204
More of the story of early years 205
Wish to try the stage 205
Applies to manager of Covent Garden 205
Sister Fanny in the secret 206
Stage studies and rehearsings 206
Strange news for Macready 207
Requisites of author and actor 208
Play chosen for private performance 209
Fanny Kelly and her theatre 209
Every Man in his Humour 209
The company of actors 210
Enjoying a character 210
Troubles of management 210
First and second performances 211
Of the acting 211
C. D. as performer 212
C. D. as manager 212
Two human mysteries 213
The mysteries explained 213
Training for the stage 213
At Broadstairs 214
Ramsgate entertainments 214
Birth of fourth son 215
Second raven's death 215
Intended daily paper 215
Disturbing engagements 216
Old ways interrupted 216
My appeal against the enterprise 217
Reply and issue 217
Interruption and renewal 218
The beginning and the end 218
Forming new resolve 219
Back to old scenes 219
Editorship ceased 219
Going to Switzerland 220
A happy saying 221
Leaves England 221
CHAPTER X. 1846.
Pages 222-243.
A HOME IN SWITZERLAND. ÆT. 34.
On the Rhine 222
German readers of Dickens 223
Travelling Englishmen 223
A hoaxing-match 224
House-hunting 224
Tempted by a mansion 225
Chooses a cottage 225
Earliest impressions 226
Lausanne described 227
Views from his farm 228
Under his windows 228
A sketch of Rosemont 229
Design as to work 230
The English colony 231
Unaccommodating carriage 232
A death in the lake 232
Boatman's narrative 233
The Theatre 233
The Prison 234
The Blind Institution 235
Interesting cases 235-240
Beginning work 240
First slip of New Novel 241
Sortes Shandyanæ 242
The Christmas tale 242
CHAPTER XI. 1846.
Pages 244-260.
SWISS PEOPLE AND SCENERY. ÆT. 34.
The mountains and lake 244
The people and their manners 245
A country fête 246
Family sketch 246
Rifle-shooting 247
A marriage on the farm 248
Gunpowder festivities 248
Bride and mother 248
First number of _Dombey_ 249
Christmas book 249
General idea for new story 250
Hints for illustration of it 250
Haldimands and Cerjats 251
Visit of Henry Hallam 251
Local news 252
Sight-seers from England 252
Trip to Chamounix 253
Mule-travelling 253
Mont Blanc range 254
Mer de Glace 255
Tête Noire pass 255
Help in an accident 256
English, French, and Prussian 256
Second number of _Dombey_ 257
Castle of Chillon described 257
Honour to New Constitution 258
Political celebration 258
Malcontents 259
Good conduct of the people 259
Protestant and Catholic cantons 260
A timely word on Ireland 260
CHAPTER XII. 1846.
Pages 261-276.
SKETCHES CHIEFLY PERSONAL. ÆT. 34.
Home politics 261
The Whigs and Peel 261
Belief in emigration schemes 262
Mark Lemon 263
An incident of character 263
Hood's _Tylney Hall_ 264
Trait of the Duke of Wellington 264
Mr. Watson of Rockingham 264
A recollection of reporting days 265
Returns to _Dombey_ 265
Two English travellers 266
Party among the hills 267
A Smollett and Fielding hero 268
Milksop youths 268
Ogre and Lambs 268
Sir Joseph and his family 269
Lord Vernon 270
Passion for rifle-shooting 270
A wonderful carriage 270
The Ladies Taylor 271
Proposed Reading of first _Dombey_ 272
A sketch from life 272
Two sisters and their books 272
Trip to Great St. Bernard 273
Ascent of the mountain 274
The Convent 274
Scene at the mountain top 274
Bodies found in the snow 275
The holy fathers 275
A tavern all but sign 276
The monk and _Pickwick_ 276
CHAPTER XIII. 1846.
Pages 277-294.
LITERARY LABOUR AT LAUSANNE. ÆT. 34.
A picture completed 277
Great present want 277
Daily life 278
Imaginative needs 278
Self-judgments 279
The Now and the Hereafter 279
Fancies for Christmas books 280
Second number of _Dombey_ 280
A personal revelation 281
Craving for streets 281
Food for fancy 282
Second _Dombey_ done 282
Curious wants of the mind 283
Success of the Reading 283
First thought of Public Readings 284
Two stories in hand 285
Unexpected difficulties 286
Work under sensitive conditions 286
Alarm for _Dombey_ 287
Doubts and misgivings 287
Change of scene to be tried 287
At Genoa 288
Disquietudes of authorship 288
Wanting counsel 289
At the worst 289
Report of Genoa 290
A new social experience 290
Feminine eccentricities 291
A ladies' dinner 291
Elephant-quellers 292
"Like a Manchester cotton mill" 292
Again at Rosemont 293
Visit of the Talfourds 293
Lodging his friends 294
Intentions and hope 294
CHAPTER XIV. 1846.
Pages 295-315.
REVOLUTION AT GENEVA. CHRISTMAS BOOK AND LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND. ÆT.
34.
An arrival of manuscript 295
A title 295
Large sale of _Dombey_ 296
Again at Geneva 296
Rising against the Jesuits 297
Back to Lausanne 297
The fight in Geneva 298
Rifle against cannon 299
True objection to Roman-Catholicism 299
Genevese "aristocracy" 299
A lesson 300
Traces left by revolution 300
Abettors of revolution 301
Where the shoe pinches 301
_Daily News'_ changes 302
My surrender of editorship 302
Thoughts for the future 303
Letters about _Battle of Life_ 303
Jeffrey's opinion 303
Sketch of story 304
A difficulty in plot 305
Old characteristics 305
His own comments 306
Reply to criticism 307
Stanfield illustrations 307
Doubts of third part 308
Strengthening the close 308
Objections invited 309
Tendency to blank verse 309
Grave mistake by Leech 310
How dealt with by C. D. 310
First impulse 311
Kindly afterthought 311
Lord Gobden and free trade 312
Needs while at work 312
Pleasures of autumn 313
Striking tents 314
Sadness of leave-taking 314
Travelling to Paris 314
At Paris 315
CHAPTER XV. 1846-1847.
Pages 316-333.
THREE MONTHS IN PARIS. ÆT. 34-35.
A greeting from Lord Brougham 316
French Sunday 317
A house taken 317
Absurdity of the abode 318
Its former tenant 319
Sister Fanny's illness 319
Opinion of Elliotson 320
The king of the barricades 320
Unhealthy symptoms 321
Incident in the streets 321
The Parisian population 322
Americans and French 322
Unsettlement of plans 323
Eldest son's education 323
A true friend 323
Christmas tale on the stage 323
An alarming neighbour 325
Startling blue-devils 326
Approach to cannibalism 326
In London 326
Cheap edition of works 326
Suppressed dedication 326
Return to Paris 326
Begging-letter writers 327
Friendly services 327
Imaginary dialogue 328
A Boulogne reception 328
Cautions to a traveller 329
Citizen Dickens 330
Sight-seeing 330
At theatres 330
Visits to famous Frenchmen 331
Evening with Victor Hugo 331
Adventure with a coachman 332
Bibliothèque Royale 333
Premonitory symptoms 333
In London 334
A party at Gore-house 334
Illness of eldest son 335
Snuff-shop readings 336
Old charwoman's compliment 336
CHAPTER XVI. 1846-1848.
Pages 337-367.
DOMBEY AND SON. ÆT. 34-36.
Drift of the tale 337
Why undervalued 338
Mistakes of critics 338
Adherence to first design 338
Plan for Paul and his sister 339
For Dombey and his daughter 339
Proposed course of the story 340
"The stock of the soup" 340
Walter Gay and his fate 341
Decided favourably 341
Six pages too much 342
Omissions objected to 342
New chapter written 343
Portions sacrificed 343
Anxiety for the face of his hero 344
A suggested type of city-gentleman 344
Artist-fancies for Mr. Dombey 345-6
Dickens and his illustrators 347
A silly story repeated 347
Why noticed again 348
Facsimile of letter to Cruikshank 349-50
Dickens's words at the time 349
Cruikshank's thirty-four years after 350
A masterpiece of Dickens's writing 351
Picture of him at work 352
An experience of Ben Jonson's 352
How objections are taken 352
Shall Paul's life be prolonged? 353
A Reading of the second number 353
A number to be added to Paul's life 354
Failure of an illustration 354
What it should have been 355
The Mrs. Pipchin of his childhood 355
First thought of his Autobiography 356
Opening his fourth number 356
At Doctor Blimber's 357
Paul's school life 357
Paul and Florence 357
Jeffrey's forecast of the tale 358
Beginning his fifth number 359
What he will do with it 359
A damper to the spirits 359
Close of Paul's life 360
Jeffrey on Paul's death 361
Thoughts for Edith 362
Florence and Little Nell 362
Judgments and comparisons 363
Edith's first destiny 363
Doubts suggested 364
An important change 364
Diogenes remembered 365
Other characters 365
Blimber establishment 366
Supposed originals 366
Surmises entirely wrong 367
CHAPTER XVII. 1847-1852.
Pages 368-402.
SPLENDID STROLLING. ÆT. 35-40.
Birth of fifth son 368
Death of Lieut. Sydney Dickens 368
Proposed benefit for Leigh Hunt 369
The plays and actors 370
The manager 370
Troubles at rehearsals 371
Pains rewarded 371
Leigh Hunt's account 372
Receipts and expenses 373
Lord Lytton's prologue 373
Appearance of Mrs. Gamp 374
Fancy for a jeu d'esprit 374
Mrs. Gamp at the play 375
Failure of artists 375
An unfinished fancy 375
Mrs. Gamp with the strollers 376
Alarm of Mrs. Harris 376
Leigh Hunt and Poole 377
Ticklish society 378
Mrs. Gamp's cabman 378
George Cruikshank 379
Mr. Wilson the barber 379
Wig experiences 380
Fatigues of a powder ball 380
Manager's moustache and whiskers 381
Leech, Lemon, and Jerrold 381-2
Mrs. Gamp's dislike of "Dougladge" 382
Costello, Stone, and Egg 383
"Only the engine" 384
Cruikshank's _Bottle_ 384
Profits of _Dombey_ 385
Time come for savings 385
Proposed edition of old novels 385
Another dropped design 386
The Praslin tragedy 386
Penalty for seeing before others 387
Street-music 387
Margate theatre and manager 387
As to Christmas book 388
Delay found necessary 389
A literary Kitely 389
Meetings at Leeds and Glasgow 390
Book-friends 391
Sheriff Alison 391
Hospitable welcome 391
Scott-monument 392
Purchase of Shakespeare's house 392
Scheme to benefit Knowles 393
Plays rehearsed 394
_Merry Wives_ chosen 394
Performances and result 394
At Knebworth-park 395
Guild of Literature and Art 396
Unfortunate omission 396
The farce that was to be written 396
The farce that was substituted 397
_Not so Bad as we Seem_ 397
Travelling theatre and scenes 398
Success of the comedy 398
An incident at Sunderland 399
Troubles of a manager 399
Acting under difficulties 400
Scenery overturned 401
Effects of fright 401
Mr. Wilkie Collins 402
CHAPTER XVIII. 1848-1851.
Pages 403-441.
SEASIDE HOLIDAYS. ÆT. 36-39.
Louis Philippe dethroned 403
French missive from C. D. 404
Aspirations of Citizen Dickens 404
At Broadstairs 405
By rail to China 405
The Junk 406
Mariners on deck and in cabin 406
Perplexing questions 406
A toy-shop on the seas 407
Type of finality 407
A contrast 408
Home questions 408
Temperance agitations 409
The temptations to gin-shop 409
Necessity of dealing with _them_ 409
Stages anterior to drunkenness 410
Cruikshank's satire 410
Realities of his pencil 411
Its one-sidedness 411
Dickens on Hogarth 412
Cause as well as effect 412
Exit of Gin-lane 412
Wisdom of the great painter 413
Late, but never too late 413
Dickens on designs by Leech 414
Originality of Leech 414
Superiority of his method 415
The requisites for it 415
Excuses for the rising generation 416
Intellectual juvenility 416
A dangerous youth 417
What Leech will be remembered for 417
Odd adventures 418
Pony-chaise accident 418
Parallel to Squeers 419
Strenuous idleness 419
French philosophy 420
Hint for Mr. Taine 420
The better for idleness 421
A favourite spot 421
At Brighton 421
With mad folks and doctors 422
A name for his new book 422
At Broadstairs 422
Troubles in his writing 423
A letter in character 423
At Bonchurch 425
The Rev. James White 425
Mirth and melancholy 425
Mrs. James White 426
First impressions of Undercliff 426
Talfourd made a judge 427
Dickens's affection for him 427
Church-school examination 428
Dinners and pic-nics 428
The comedian Regnier 429
When acting is genuine 429
Doubts as to health 429
Arrivals and departures 430
A startling revelation 431
Effects of Bonchurch climate 431
Utter prostration 431
Difficulties of existing there 432
Distrust of doctors 433
Other side of picture 433
What I observed at the time 434
From the _Copperfield_ MS. 434
Mr. Browne's sketch of Micawber 435
Accident to John Leech 435
Its consequences 435
Depressing influences 436
At Broadstairs 436
Railway travellers 437
The exhibition year 438
A _Copperfield_ banquet 438
C. D. on money values 439
His leisure reading 439
A correction for Carlyle 440
Good criticism 441
Thoughts of a new book 441
The old restlessness 441
Beginning on a Friday 441
CHAPTER XIX. 1848-1850.
Pages 442-456.
HAUNTED MAN AND HOUSEHOLD WORDS. ÆT. 36-40.
Maturing book for Christmas 442
Friendly plea for Mr. Macrone 442
Completion of Christmas story 443
Dropped motto 443
The "ghost" and the "bargain" 444
The Tetterby family 445
Teachings of the little tale 445
His own statement of its intention 446
Forgive that you may forget 446
_Copperfield_ sales 447
A letter from Russia 448
Translation into Russian 448
Sympathy of Siberia 448
The Periodical taking form 449
A design for it described 449
Original and selected matter 449
A Shadow for everywhere 450
Hopes of success 450
Doubts respecting it 451
Incompatibility of design 451
New design chosen 452
Assistant editor appointed 453
Titles proposed 453
Appearance of first number 454
Earliest contributors 454
Opinion of Mr. Sala 454
Child's dream of a star 455
A fancy derived from childhood 456
CHAPTER XX. 1848-1851.
Pages 457-494.
LAST YEARS IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE. ÆT. 36-39.
Sentiment about places 457
Confidences 458
Personal revelations 458
Early memories 459
At his sister's sick-bed 459
Last thoughts 460
Sister's death 460
Book to be written in first person 461
Riding over Salisbury Plain 461
Visiting scene of a tragedy 462
First sees Yarmouth 462
Birth of sixth son 462
Notion for a character 463
Choosing a title 463
"Mag's Diversions" 464
"Copperfield" chosen 464
Varieties of it proposed 465
Title finally determined 466
Difficulties of opening 466
Rogers and Benedict 466
Wit of Fonblanque 467
Procter and Macready 467
The Sheridans 468
Lord Byron's Ada 469
Dinner to Halévy and Scribe 469
Brougham and "the _Punch_ people" 469
The Duke at Vauxhall 470
Carlyle and Thackeray 470
Judicious change of a "tag" 471
A fact for a biographer 471
Marryat's delight with children 472
Bulwer Lytton and Monckton Milnes 472
Lords Nugent and Dudley Stuart 472-3
Kemble, Harness, and Dyce 473
Mrs. Siddons and John Kemble 473
Comparison and good distinction 474
Mazzini and Edinburgh friends 474
Artist-acquaintance 475
Visitors at his house 475
Friends from America 476
M. Van de Weyer 476
Ambition to see into heaven 477
Literature and art in the city 477
Doubtful compliment 478
A hint for London citizens 478
Letter against public executions 479
American observer in England 479
Marvels of English manners 480
A letter from Rockingham 481
Private theatricals 481
Major Bentley and General Boxall 481-2
A family scene 482
Doing too much 483
Death of Francis Jeffrey 483
Progress of work 484
The child-wife 484
A run to Paris 484
Banker or proctor 485
Doubts as to Dora settled 486
Of Rogers and Landor 486
A third daughter born 487
At Great Malvern 487
Macready's farewell 488
Experience of a brother author 488
The Home at Shepherd's-bush 488
Father's illness 489
Death of John Dickens 489
Tribute by his son 490
Theatrical-fund dinner 490
Plea for small actors 491
Remembering the forgotten 491
Death of his little daughter 492
Difficult tasks in life 492
Dora's grave 493
Advocating sanitary reform 493
Lord Shaftesbury 494
Realities of his books to Dickens 494
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER I.
AMERICAN NOTES.
1842.
Return from America--Longfellow in
England--Thirty Years Ago--At
Broadstairs--Preparing _Notes_--Fancy for the
Opening of _Chuzzlewit_--Reading
Tennyson--Theatricals at Margate--A New
Protégé--Proposed Dedication--Sea-bathing and
Authorship--Emigrants in Canada--Coming to the
End--Rejected Motto for _Notes_--Return to
London--Cheerless Visit--The Mingled
Yarn--Scene at a Funeral--The Suppressed
Introductory Chapter to the _Notes_, now first
printed--Jeffrey's Opinion of the
_Notes_--Dickens's Experience of America in
1868.
THE reality did not fall short of the anticipation of home. His return
was the occasion of unbounded enjoyment; and what he had planned before
sailing as the way we should meet, received literal fulfilment. By the
sound of his cheery voice I first knew that he was come; and from my
house we went together to Maclise, also "without a moment's warning." A
Greenwich dinner in which several friends (Talfourd, Milnes, Procter,
Maclise, Stanfield, Marryat, Barham, Hood, and Cruikshank among them)
took part, and other immediate greetings, followed; but the most special
celebration was reserved for autumn, when, by way of challenge to what
he had seen while abroad, a home-journey was arranged with Stanfield,
Maclise, and myself for his companions, into such of the most striking
scenes of a picturesque English county as the majority of us might not
before have visited: Cornwall being ultimately chosen.
Before our departure he was occupied by his preparation of the _American
Notes_; and to the same interval belongs the arrival in London of Mr.
Longfellow, who became his guest, and (for both of us I am privileged to
add) our attached friend. Longfellow's name was not then the pleasant
and familiar word it has since been in England; but he had already
written several of his most felicitous pieces, and he possessed all the
qualities of delightful companionship, the culture and the charm, which
have no higher type or example than the accomplished and genial
American. He reminded me, when lately again in England, of two
experiences out of many we had enjoyed together this quarter of a
century before. One of them was a day at Rochester, when, met by one of
those prohibitions which are the wonder of visitors and the shame of
Englishmen, we overleapt gates and barriers, and, setting at defiance
repeated threats of all the terrors of law coarsely expressed to us by
the custodian of the place, explored minutely the castle ruins. The
other was a night among those portions of the population which outrage
law and defy its terrors all the days of their lives, the tramps and
thieves of London; when, under guidance and protection of the most
trusted officers of the two great metropolitan prisons afforded to us by
Mr. Chesterton and Lieut. Tracey, we went over the worst haunts of the
most dangerous classes. Nor will it be unworthy of remark, in proof that
attention is not drawn vainly to such scenes, that, upon Dickens going
over them a dozen years later when he wrote a paper about them for his
_Household Words_, he found important changes effected whereby these
human dens, if not less dangerous, were become certainly more decent. On
the night of our earlier visit, Maclise, who accompanied us, was struck
with such sickness on entering the first of the Mint lodging-houses in
the borough, that he had to remain, for the time we were in them, under
guardianship of the police outside. Longfellow returned home by the
Great Western from Bristol on the 21st of October, enjoying as he passed
through Bath the hospitality of Landor; and at the end of the following
week we started on our Cornish travel.
But what before this had occupied Dickens in the writing way must now be
told. Not long after his reappearance amongst us, his house being still
in the occupation of Sir John Wilson, he went to Broadstairs, taking
with him the letters from which I have quoted so largely to help him in
preparing his _American Notes_; and one of his first announcements to me
(18th of July) shows not only this labour in progress, but the story he
was under engagement to begin in November working in his mind. "The
subjects at the beginning of the book are of that kind that I can't
_dash_ at them, and now and then they fret me in consequence. When I
come to Washington, I am all right. The solitary prison at Philadelphia
is a good subject, though; I forgot that for the moment. Have you seen
the Boston chapter yet? . . . I have never been in Cornwall either. A mine
certainly; and a letter for that purpose shall be got from Southwood
Smith. I have some notion of opening the new book in the lantern of a
lighthouse!" A letter a couple of months later (16th of Sept.) recurs to
that proposed opening of his story which after all he laid aside; and
shows how rapidly he was getting his _American Notes_ into shape. "At
the Isle of Thanet races yesterday I saw--oh! who shall say what an
immense amount of character in the way of inconceivable villainy and
blackguardism! I even got some new wrinkles in the way of showmen,
conjurors, pea-and-thimblers, and trampers generally. I think of opening
my new book on the coast of Cornwall, in some terribly dreary iron-bound
spot. I hope to have finished the American book before the end of next
month; and we will then together fly down into that desolate region."
Our friends having Academy engagements to detain them, we had to delay a
little; and I meanwhile turn back to his letters to observe his progress
with his _Notes_, and other employments or enjoyments of the interval.
They require no illustration that they will not themselves supply: but I
may remark that the then collected _Poems_ of Tennyson had become very
favourite reading with him; and that while in America Mr. Mitchell the
comedian had given him a small white shaggy terrier, who bore at first
the imposing name of Timber Doodle, and became a great domestic pet and
companion.
"I have been reading" (7th of August) "Tennyson all this morning on the
seashore. Among other trifling effects, the waters have dried up as they
did of old, and shown me all the mermen and mermaids, at the bottom of
the ocean; together with millions of queer creatures, half-fish and
half-fungus, looking down into all manner of coral caves and seaweed
conservatories; and staring in with their great dull eyes at every open
nook and loop-hole. Who else, too, could conjure up such a close to the
extraordinary and as Landor would say 'most wonderful' series of
pictures in the 'dream of fair women,' as--
"'Squadrons and squares of men in brazen plates,
Scaffolds, still sheets of water, divers woes,
Ranges of glimmering vaults with iron grates,
And hushed seraglios!'
"I am getting on pretty well, but it was so glittering and sunshiny
yesterday that I was forced to make holiday." Four days later: "I have
not written a word this blessed day. I got to New York yesterday, and
think it goes as it should . . . Little doggy improves rapidly, and now
jumps over my stick at the word of command. I have changed his name to
Snittle Timbery, as more sonorous and expressive. He unites with the
rest of the family in cordial regards and loves. _Nota Bene_. The
Margate theatre is open every evening, and the Four Patagonians (see
Goldsmith's _Essays_) are performing thrice a week at Ranelagh . . ."
A visit from me was at this time due, to which these were held out as
inducements; and there followed what it was supposed I could not resist,
a transformation into the broadest farce of a deep tragedy by a dear
friend of ours. "Now you really must come. Seeing only is believing,
very often isn't that, and even Being the thing falls a long way short
of believing it. Mrs. Nickleby herself once asked me, as you know, if I
really believed there ever was such a woman; but there'll be no more
belief, either in me or my descriptions, after what I have to tell of
our excellent friend's tragedy, if you don't come and have it played
again for yourself 'by particular desire.' We saw it last night, and oh!
if you had but been with us! Young Betty, doing what the mind of man
without my help never _can_ conceive, with his legs like padded
boot-trees wrapped up in faded yellow drawers, was the hero. The comic
man of the company enveloped in a white sheet, with his head tied with
red tape like a brief and greeted with yells of laughter whenever he
appeared, was the venerable priest. A poor toothless old idiot at whom
the very gallery roared with contempt when he was called a tyrant, was
the remorseless and aged Creon. And Ismene being arrayed in spangled
muslin trowsers very loose in the legs and very tight in the ankles,
such as Fatima would wear in _Blue Beard_, was at her appearance
immediately called upon for a song. After this, can you longer. . . ?"
With the opening of September I had renewed report of his book, and of
other matters. "The Philadelphia chapter I think very good, but I am
sorry to say it has not made as much in print as I hoped . . . In America
they have forged a letter with my signature, which they coolly declare
appeared in the _Chronicle_ with the copyright circular; and in which I
express myself in such terms as you may imagine, in reference to the
dinners and so forth. It has been widely distributed all over the
States; and the felon who invented it is a 'smart man' of course. You
are to understand that it is not done as a joke, and is scurrilously
reviewed. Mr. Park Benjamin begins a lucubration upon it with these
capitals, DICKENS IS A FOOL, AND A LIAR. . . . I have a new protégé, in the
person of a wretched deaf and dumb boy whom I found upon the sands the
other day, half dead, and have got (for the present) into the union
infirmary at Minster. A most deplorable case."
On the 14th he told me: "I have pleased myself very much to-day in the
matter of Niagara. I have made the description very brief (as it should
be), but I fancy it is good. I am beginning to think over the
introductory chapter, and it has meanwhile occurred to me that I should
like, at the beginning of the volumes, to put what follows on a blank
page. _I dedicate this Book to those friends of mine in America, who,
loving their country, can bear the truth, when it is written good
humouredly and in a kind spirit._ What do you think? Do you see any
objection?"
My reply is to be inferred from what he sent back on the 20th. "I don't
quite see my way towards an expression in the dedication of any feeling
in reference to the American reception. Of course I have always intended
to glance at it, gratefully, in the end of the book; and it will have
its place in the introductory chapter, if we decide for that. Would it
do to put in, after 'friends in America,' _who giving me a welcome I
must ever gratefully and proudly remember, left my judgment free, and_
who, loving, &c. If so, so be it."
Before the end of the month he wrote: "For the last two or three days I
have been rather slack in point of work; not being in the vein. To-day I
had not written twenty lines before I rushed out (the weather being
gorgeous) to bathe. And when I have done that, it is all up with me in
the way of authorship until to-morrow. The little dog is in the highest
spirits; and jumps, as Mr. Kenwigs would say, perpetivally. I have had
letters by the Britannia from Felton, Prescott, Mr. Q, and others, all
very earnest and kind. I think you will like what I have written on the
poor emigrants and their ways as I literally and truly saw them on the
boat from Quebec to Montreal."
This was a passage, which, besides being in itself as attractive as any
in his writings, gives such perfect expression to a feeling that
underlies them all, that I subjoin it in a note.[63] On board this
Canadian steamboat he encountered crowds of poor emigrants and their
children; and such was their patient kindness and cheerful endurance, in
circumstances where the easy-living rich could hardly fail to be
monsters of impatience and selfishness, that it suggested to him a
reflection than which it was not possible to have written anything more
worthy of observation, or more absolutely true. Jeremy Taylor has the
same philosophy in his lesson on opportunities, but here it was
beautified by the example with all its fine touches. It made us read
Rich and Poor by new translation.
The printers were now hard at work, and in the last week of September he
wrote: "I send you proofs as far as Niagara . . . I am rather
holiday-making this week . . . taking principal part in a regatta here
yesterday, very pretty and gay indeed. We think of coming up in time for
Macready's opening, when perhaps you will give us a chop; and of course
you and Mac will dine with _us_ the next day? I shall leave nothing of
the book to do after coming home, please God, but the two chapters on
slavery and the people which I could manage easily in a week, if need
were . . . The policeman who supposed the Duke of Brunswick to be one of
the swell mob, ought instantly to be made an inspector. The suspicion
reflects the highest credit (I seriously think) on his penetration and
judgment." Three days later: "For the last two days we have had gales
blowing from the north-east, and seas rolling on us that drown the pier.
To-day it is tremendous. Such a sea was never known here at this season,
and it is running in at this moment in waves of twelve feet high. You
would hardly know the place. But we shall be punctual to your dinner
hour on Saturday. If the wind should hold in the same quarter, we may be
obliged to come up by land; and in that case I should start the caravan
at six in the morning. . . . What do you think of this for my
title--_American Notes for General Circulation_; and of this motto?
"In reply to a question from the Bench, the
Solicitor for the Bank observed, that this kind
of notes circulated the most extensively, in
those parts of the world where they were stolen
and forged. _Old Bailey Report._"
The motto was omitted, objection being made to it; and on the last day
of the month I had the last of his letters during this Broadstairs
visit. "Strange as it may appear to you" (25th of September), "the sea
is running so high that we have no choice but to return by land. No
steamer can come out of Ramsgate, and the Margate boat lay out all night
on Wednesday with all her passengers on board. You may be sure of us
therefore on Saturday at 5, for I have determined to leave here
to-morrow, as we could not otherwise manage it in time; and have engaged
an omnibus to bring the whole caravan by the overland route. . . . We
cannot open a window, or a door; legs are of no use on the terrace; and
the Margate boats can only take people aboard at Herne Bay!" He brought
with him all that remained to be done of his second volume except the
last two chapters, including that to which he has referred as
"introductory;" and on the following Wednesday (5th of October) he told
me that the first of these was done. "I want you very much to come and
dine to-day that we may repair to Drury-lane together; and let us say
half-past four, or there is no time to be comfortable. I am going out to
Tottenham this morning, on a cheerless mission I would willingly have
avoided. Hone, of the _Every Day Book_, is dying; and sent Cruikshank
yesterday to beg me to go and see him, as, having read no books but mine
of late, he wanted to see and shake hands with me before (as George
said) 'he went.' There is no help for it, of course; so to Tottenham I
repair, this morning. I worked all day, and till midnight; and finished
the slavery chapter yesterday."
The cheerless visit had its mournful sequel before the next month
closed, when he went with the same companion to poor Hone's funeral; and
one of his letters written at the time to Mr. Felton has so vividly
recalled to me the tragi-comedy of an incident of that day, as for long
after he used to describe it, and as I have heard the other principal
actor in it good-naturedly admit to be perfectly true, that two or three
sentences may be given here. The wonderful neighbourhood in this life of
ours, of serious and humorous things, constitutes in itself very much of
the genius of Dickens's writing; the laughter close to the pathos, but
never touching it with ridicule; and this small occurrence may be taken
in farther evidence of its reality.
"We went into a little parlour where the funeral party was, and God
knows it was miserable enough, for the widow and children were crying
bitterly in one corner, and the other mourners (mere people of ceremony,
who cared no more for the dead man than the hearse did) were talking
quite coolly and carelessly together in another; and the contrast was as
painful and distressing as anything I ever saw. There was an independent
clergyman present, with his bands on and a bible under his arm, who, as
soon as we were seated, addressed C thus, in a loud emphatic voice. 'Mr.
C, have you seen a paragraph respecting our departed friend, which has
gone the round of the morning papers?' 'Yes, sir,' says C, 'I have:'
looking very hard at me the while, for he had told me with some pride
coming down that it was his composition. 'Oh!' said the clergyman. 'Then
you will agree with me, Mr. C, that it is not only an insult to me, who
am the servant of the Almighty, but an insult to the Almighty, whose
servant I am.' 'How is that, sir?' says C. 'It is stated, Mr. C, in that
paragraph,' says the minister, 'that when Mr. Hone failed in business
as a bookseller, he was persuaded by _me_ to try the pulpit; which is
false, incorrect, unchristian, in a manner blasphemous, and in all
respects contemptible. Let us pray.' With which, and in the same breath,
I give you my word, he knelt down, as we all did, and began a very
miserable jumble of an extemporary prayer. I was really penetrated with
sorrow for the family" (he exerted himself zealously for them
afterwards, as the kind-hearted C also did), "but when C, upon his knees
and sobbing for the loss of an old friend, whispered me 'that if that
wasn't a clergyman, and it wasn't a funeral, he'd have punched his
head,' I felt as if nothing but convulsions could possibly relieve me."
On the 10th of October I heard from him that the chapter intended to be
introductory to the _Notes_ was written, and waiting our conference
whether or not it should be printed. We decided against it; on his part
so reluctantly, that I had to undertake for its publication when a more
fitting time should come. This in my judgment has arrived, and the
chapter first sees the light on this page. There is no danger at
present, as there would have been when it was written, that its proper
self-assertion should be mistaken for an apprehension of hostile
judgments which he was anxious to deprecate or avoid. He is out of reach
of all that now; and reveals to us here, as one whom fear or censure can
touch no more, his honest purpose in the use of satire even where his
humorous temptations were strongest. What he says will on other grounds
also be read with unusual interest, for it will be found to connect
itself impressively not with his first experiences only, but with his
second visit to America at the close of his life. He held always the
same high opinion of what was best in that country, and always the same
contempt for what was worst in it.
"INTRODUCTORY. AND NECESSARY TO BE READ.
"I have placed the foregoing title at the head
of this page, because I challenge and deny the
right of any person to pass judgment on this
book, or to arrive at any reasonable conclusion
in reference to it, without first being at the
trouble of becoming acquainted with its design
and purpose.
"It is not statistical. Figures of arithmetic
have already been heaped upon America's devoted
head, almost as lavishly as figures of speech
have been piled above Shakespeare's grave.
"It comprehends no small talk concerning
individuals, and no violation of the social
confidences of private life. The very prevalent
practice of kidnapping live ladies and
gentlemen, forcing them into cabinets, and
labelling and ticketing them whether they will
or no, for the gratification of the idle and
the curious, is not to my taste. Therefore I
have avoided it.
"It has not a grain of any political ingredient
in its whole composition.
"Neither does it contain, nor have I intended
that it should contain, any lengthened and
minute account of my personal reception in the
United States: not because I am, or ever was,
insensible to that spontaneous effusion of
affection and generosity of heart, in a most
affectionate and generous-hearted people; but
because I conceive that it would ill become me
to flourish matter necessarily involving so
much of my own praises, in the eyes of my
unhappy readers.
"This book is simply what it claims to be--a
record of the impressions I received from day
to day, during my hasty travels in America, and
sometimes (but not always) of the conclusions
to which they, and after-reflection on them,
have led me; a description of the country I
passed through; of the institutions I visited;
of the kind of people among whom I journeyed;
and of the manners and customs that came within
my observation. Very many works having just the
same scope and range, have been already
published, but I think that these two volumes
stand in need of no apology on that account.
The interest of such productions, if they have
any, lies in the varying impressions made by
the same novel things on different minds; and
not in new discoveries or extraordinary
adventures.
"I can scarcely be supposed to be ignorant of
the hazard I run in writing of America at all.
I know perfectly well that there is, in that
country, a numerous class of well-intentioned
persons prone to be dissatisfied with all
accounts of the Republic whose citizens they
are, which are not couched in terms of exalted
and extravagant praise. I know perfectly well
that there is in America, as in most other
places laid down in maps of the great world, a
numerous class of persons so tenderly and
delicately constituted, that they cannot bear
the truth in any form. And I do not need the
gift of prophecy to discern afar off, that they
who will be aptest to detect malice, ill will,
and all uncharitableness in these pages, and to
show, beyond any doubt, that they are
perfectly inconsistent with that grateful and
enduring recollection which I profess to
entertain of the welcome I found awaiting me
beyond the Atlantic--will be certain native
journalists, veracious and gentlemanly, who
were at great pains to prove to me, on all
occasions during my stay there, that the
aforesaid welcome was utterly worthless.
"But, venturing to dissent even from these high
authorities, I formed my own opinion of its
value in the outset, and retain it to this
hour; and in asserting (as I invariably did on
all public occasions) my liberty and freedom of
speech while I was among the Americans, and in
maintaining it at home, I believe that I best
show my sense of the high worth of that
welcome, and of the honourable singleness of
purpose with which it was extended to me. From
first to last I saw, in the friends who crowded
round me in America, old readers, over-grateful
and over-partial perhaps, to whom I had happily
been the means of furnishing pleasure and
entertainment; not a vulgar herd who would
flatter and cajole a stranger into turning with
closed eyes from all the blemishes of the
nation, and into chaunting its praises with the
discrimination of a street ballad-singer. From
first to last I saw, in those hospitable hands,
a home-made wreath of laurel; and not an iron
muzzle disguised beneath a flower or two.
"Therefore I take--and hold myself not only
justified in taking, but bound to take--the
plain course of saying what I think, and noting
what I saw; and as it is not my custom to exalt
what in my judgment are foibles and abuses at
home, so I have no intention of softening down,
or glozing over, those that I have observed
abroad.
"If this book should fall into the hands of any
sensitive American who cannot bear to be told
that the working of the institutions of his
country is far from perfect; that in spite of
the advantage she has over all other nations in
the elastic freshness and vigour of her youth,
she is far from being a model for the earth to
copy; and that even in those pictures of the
national manners with which he quarrels most,
there is still (after the lapse of several
years, each of which may be fairly supposed to
have had its stride in improvement) much that
is just and true at this hour; let him lay it
down, now, for I shall not please him. Of the
intelligent, reflecting, and educated among his
countrymen, I have no fear; for I have ample
reason to believe, after many delightful
conversations not easily to be forgotten, that
there are very few topics (if any) on which
their sentiments differ materially from mine.
"I may be asked--'If you have been in any
respect disappointed in America, and are
assured beforehand that the expression of your
disappointment will give offence to any class,
why do you write at all?' My answer is, that I
went there expecting greater things than I
found, and resolved as far as in me lay to do
justice to the country, at the expense of any
(in my view) mistaken or prejudiced statements
that might have been made to its disparagement.
Coming home with a corrected and sobered
judgment, I consider myself no less bound to do
justice to what, according to my best means of
judgment, I found to be the truth."
Of the book for whose opening page this matter introductory was written,
it will be enough merely to add that it appeared on the 18th of October;
that before the close of the year four large editions had been sold;
and that in my opinion it thoroughly deserved the estimate formed of it
by one connected with America by the strongest social affections, and
otherwise in all respects an honourable, high-minded, upright judge.
"You have been very tender," wrote Lord Jeffrey, "to our sensitive
friends beyond sea, and my whole heart goes along with every word you
have written. I think that you have perfectly accomplished all that you
profess or undertake to do, and that the world has never yet seen a more
faithful, graphic, amusing, kind-hearted narrative."
* * * * *
I permit myself so far to anticipate a later page as to print here a
brief extract from one of the letters of the last American visit.
Without impairing the interest with which the narrative of that time
will be read in its proper place, I shall thus indicate the extent to
which present impressions were modified by the experience of twenty-six
years later. He is writing from Philadelphia on the fourteenth of
January, 1868.
"I see _great changes_ for the better, socially. Politically, no.
England governed by the Marylebone vestry and the penny papers, and
England as she would be after years of such governing; is what I make of
_that_. Socially, the change in manners is remarkable. There is much
greater politeness and forbearance in all ways. . . . On the other hand
there are still provincial oddities wonderfully quizzical; and the
newspapers are constantly expressing the popular amazement at 'Mr.
Dickens's extraordinary composure.' They seem to take it ill that I
don't stagger on to the platform overpowered by the spectacle before me,
and the national greatness. They are all so accustomed to do public
things with a flourish of trumpets, that the notion of my coming in to
read without somebody first flying up and delivering an 'Oration' about
me, and flying down again and leading me in, is so very unaccountable to
them, that sometimes they have no idea until I open my lips that it can
possibly be Charles Dickens."
FOOTNOTES:
[63] "Cant as we may, and as we shall to the end of all things, it is
very much harder for the poor to be virtuous than it is for the rich;
and the good that is in them, shines the brighter for it. In many a
noble mansion lives a man, the best of husbands and of fathers, whose
private worth in both capacities is justly lauded to the skies. But
bring him here, upon this crowded deck. Strip from his fair young wife
her silken dress and jewels, unbind her braided hair, stamp early
wrinkles on her brow, pinch her pale cheek with care and much privation,
array her faded form in coarsely patched attire, let there be nothing
but his love to set her forth or deck her out, and you shall put it to
the proof indeed. So change his station in the world that he shall see,
in those young things who climb about his knee, not records of his
wealth and name, but little wrestlers with him for his daily bread; so
many poachers on his scanty meal; so many units to divide his every sum
of comfort, and farther to reduce its small amount. In lieu of the
endearments of childhood in its sweetest aspect, heap upon him all its
pains and wants, its sicknesses and ills, its fretfulness, caprice, and
querulous endurance: let its prattle be, not of engaging infant fancies,
but of cold, and thirst, and hunger: and if his fatherly affection
outlive all this, and he be patient, watchful, tender; careful of his
children's lives, and mindful always of their joys and sorrows; then
send him back to parliament, and pulpit, and to quarter sessions, and
when he hears fine talk of the depravity of those who live from hand to
mouth, and labour hard to do it, let him speak up, as one who knows, and
tell those holders-forth that they, by parallel with such a class,
should be high angels in their daily lives, and lay but humble siege to
heaven at last. . . . Which of us shall say what he would be, if such
realities, with small relief or change all through his days, were his!
Looking round upon these people: far from home, houseless, indigent,
wandering, weary with travel and hard living: and seeing how patiently
they nursed and tended their young children: how they consulted ever
their wants first, then half supplied their own; what gentle ministers
of hope and faith the women were; how the men profited by their example;
and how very, very seldom even a moment's petulance or harsh complaint
broke out among them: I felt a stronger love and honour of my kind come
glowing on my heart, and wished to God there had been many atheists in
the better part of human nature there, to read this simple lesson in the
book of life."
CHAPTER II.
FIRST YEAR OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT.
1843.
A Sunset at Land's-end--Description of the
Cornish Tour--Letter from Maclise--Maclise to
J. F.--Names first given to _Chuzzlewit_--First
Number of _Chuzzlewit_--Prologue to a Play--A
Tragedy by Browning--Accompaniments of
Work--Miss Georgina Hogarth--American
Controversy--Cottage at Finchley--Origin of
Mrs. Gamp--Change of Editorship at
_Chronicle_--Macready bound for America--Works
of Charity and Mercy--Visit to
Broadstairs--Sea-side Life in Ordinary--Speech
at Opening of the Manchester
Athenæum--Dickens's Interest in Ragged
Schools--His Sympathy with the Church of
England--Origin of his _Christmas Carol_--Third
Son born.
THE Cornish trip had come off, meanwhile, with such unexpected and
continued attraction for us that we were well into the third week of
absence before we turned our faces homeward. Railways helped us then not
much; but where the roads were inaccessible to post-horses, we walked.
Tintagel was visited, and no part of mountain or sea consecrated by the
legends of Arthur was left unexplored. We ascended to the cradle of the
highest tower of Mount St. Michael, and descended into several mines.
Land and sea yielded each its marvels to us; but of all the impressions
brought away, of which some afterwards took forms as lasting as they
could receive from the most delightful art, I doubt if any were the
source of such deep emotion to us all as a sunset we saw at Land's-end.
Stanfield knew the wonders of the Continent, the glories of Ireland
were native to Maclise, I was familiar from boyhood with border and
Scottish scenery, and Dickens was fresh from Niagara; but there was
something in the sinking of the sun behind the Atlantic that autumn
afternoon, as we viewed it together from the top of the rock projecting
farthest into the sea, which each in his turn declared to have no
parallel in memory.
But with the varied and overflowing gladness of those three memorable
weeks it would be unworthy now to associate only the saddened
recollection of the sole survivor. "Blessed star of morning!" wrote
Dickens to Felton while yet the glow of its enjoyment was upon him.
"Such a trip as we had into Cornwall just after Longfellow went away! . . .
Sometimes we travelled all night, sometimes all day, sometimes both. . . .
Heavens! If you could have seen the necks of bottles, distracting in
their immense varieties of shape, peering out of the carriage pockets!
If you could have witnessed the deep devotion of the post-boys, the wild
attachment of the hostlers, the maniac glee of the waiters! If you could
have followed us into the earthy old churches we visited, and into the
strange caverns on the gloomy sea-shore, and down into the depths of
mines, and up to the tops of giddy heights where the unspeakable green
water was roaring, I don't know how many hundred feet below! If you
could have seen but one gleam of the bright fires by which we sat in the
big rooms of ancient inns at night, until long after the small hours had
come and gone. . . . I never laughed in my life as I did on this journey.
It would have done you good to hear me. I was choking and gasping and
bursting the buckle off the back of my stock, all the way. And Stanfield
got into such apoplectic entanglements that we were often obliged to
beat him on the back with portmanteaus before we could recover him.
Seriously, I do believe there never was such a trip. And they made such
sketches, those two men, in the most romantic of our halting-places,
that you would have sworn we had the Spirit of Beauty with us, as well
as the Spirit of Fun."[64]
The Logan Stone, by Stanfield, was one of them; and it laughingly
sketched both the charm of what was seen and the mirth of what was done,
for it perched me on the top of the stone. It is historical, however,
the ascent having been made; and of this and other examples of
steadiness at heights which deterred the rest, as well as of a subject
suggested for a painting of which Dickens became the unknown purchaser,
Maclise reminded me in some pleasant allusions many years later, which,
notwithstanding their tribute to my athletic achievements, the
good-natured reader must forgive my printing. They complete the little
picture of our trip. Something I had written to him of recent travel
among the mountain scenery of the wilder coasts of Donegal had touched
the chord of these old remembrances. "As to your clambering," he
replied, "don't I know what happened of old? Don't I still see the Logan
Stone, and you perched on the giddy top, while we, rocking it on its
pivot, shrank from all that lay concealed below! Should I ever have
blundered on the waterfall of St. Wighton, if you had not piloted the
way? And when we got to Land's-end, with the green sea far under us
lapping into solitary rocky nooks where the mermaids live, who but you
only had the courage to stretch over, to see those diamond jets of
brightness that I swore then, and believe still, were the flappings of
their tails! And don't I recall you again, sitting on the tip-top stone
of the cradle-turret over the highest battlement of the castle of St.
Michael's Mount, with not a ledge or coigne of vantage 'twixt you and
the fathomless ocean under you, distant three thousand feet? Last, do I
forget you clambering up the goat-path to King Arthur's castle of
Tintagel, when, in my vain wish to follow, I grovelled and clung to the
soil like a Caliban, and you, in the manner of a tricksy spirit and
stout Ariel, actually danced up and down before me!"
The waterfall I led him to was among the records of the famous holiday,
celebrated also by Thackeray in one of his pen-and-ink pleasantries,
which were sent by both painters to the next year's Academy; and so
eager was Dickens to possess this landscape by Maclise which included
the likeness of a member of his family, yet so anxious that our friend
should be spared the sacrifice which he knew would follow an avowal of
his wish, that he bought it under a feigned name before the Academy
opened, and steadily refused to take back the money which on discovery
of the artifice Maclise pressed upon him.[65] Our friend, who already
had munificently given him a charming drawing of his four eldest
children to accompany him and his wife to America, had his generous way
nevertheless; and as a voluntary offering four years later, painted Mrs.
Dickens on a canvas of the same size as the picture of her husband in
1839.
"Behold finally the title of the new book," was the first note I had
from Dickens (12th of November) after our return; "don't lose it, for I
have no copy." Title and even story had been undetermined while we
travelled, from the lingering wish he still had to begin it among those
Cornish scenes; but this intention had now been finally abandoned, and
the reader lost nothing by his substitution for the lighthouse or mine
in Cornwall, of the Wiltshire-village forge on the windy autumn evening
which opens the tale of _Martin Chuzzlewit_. Into that name he finally
settled, but only after much deliberation, as a mention of his changes
will show. Martin was the prefix to all, but the surname varied from its
first form of Sweezleden, Sweezleback, and Sweezlewag, to those of
Chuzzletoe, Chuzzleboy, Chubblewig, and Chuzzlewig; nor was Chuzzlewit
chosen at last until after more hesitation and discussion. What he had
sent me in his letter as finally adopted, ran thus: "The Life and
Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewig, his family, friends, and enemies.
Comprising all his wills and his ways. With an historical record of what
he did and what he didn't. The whole forming a complete key to the house
of Chuzzlewig." All which latter portion of the title was of course
dropped as the work became modified, in its progress, by changes at
first not contemplated; but as early as the third number he sent me the
plan of "old Martin's plot to degrade and punish Pecksniff," and the
difficulties he encountered in departing from other portions of his
scheme were such as to render him, in his subsequent stories, more bent
upon constructive care at the outset, and adherence as far as might be
to any design he had formed.
The first number, which appeared in January 1843, had not been quite
finished when he wrote to me on the 8th of December: "The Chuzzlewit
copy makes so much more than I supposed, that the number is nearly done.
Thank God!" Beginning so hurriedly as at last he did, altering his
course at the opening and seeing little as yet of the main track of his
design, perhaps no story was ever begun by him with stronger heart or
confidence. Illness kept me to my rooms for some days, and he was so
eager to try the effect of Pecksniff and Pinch that he came down with
the ink hardly dry on the last slip to read the manuscript to me. Well
did Sydney Smith, in writing to say how very much the number had pleased
him, foresee the promise there was in those characters. "Pecksniff and
his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable--quite first-rate painting, such
as no one but yourself can execute!" And let me here at once remark that
the notion of taking Pecksniff for a type of character was really the
origin of the book; the design being to show, more or less by every
person introduced, the number and variety of humours and vices that have
their root in selfishness.
Another piece of his writing that claims mention at the close of 1842
was a prologue contributed to the _Patrician's Daughter_, Mr. Westland
Marston's first dramatic effort, which had attracted him by the beauty
of its composition less than by the courage with which its subject had
been chosen from the actual life of the time.
"Not light its import, and not poor its mien;
Yourselves the actors, and your homes the scene."
This was the date, too, of Mr. Browning's tragedy of the _Blot on the
'Scutcheon_, which I took upon myself, after reading it in the
manuscript, privately to impart to Dickens; and I was not mistaken in
the belief that it would profoundly touch him. "Browning's play," he
wrote (25th of November), "has thrown me into a perfect passion of
sorrow. To say that there is anything in its subject save what is
lovely, true, deeply affecting, full of the best emotion, the most
earnest feeling, and the most true and tender source of interest, is to
say that there is no light in the sun, and no heat in blood. It is full
of genius, natural and great thoughts, profound and yet simple and
beautiful in its vigour. I know nothing that is so affecting, nothing in
any book I have ever read, as Mildred's recurrence to that 'I was so
young--I had no mother.' I know no love like it, no passion like it, no
moulding of a splendid thing after its conception, like it. And I swear
it is a tragedy that MUST be played; and must be played, moreover, by
Macready. There are some things I would have changed if I could (they
are very slight, mostly broken lines); and I assuredly would have the
old servant _begin his tale upon the scene_; and be taken by the throat,
or drawn upon, by his master, in its commencement. But the tragedy I
never shall forget, or less vividly remember than I do now. And if you
tell Browning that I have seen it, tell him that I believe from my soul
there is no man living (and not many dead) who could produce such a
work.--Macready likes the altered prologue very much.". . . There will
come a more convenient time to speak of his general literary likings, or
special regard for contemporary books; but I will say now that nothing
interested him more than successes won honestly in his own field, and
that in his large and open nature there was no hiding-place for little
jealousies. An instance occurs to me which may be named at once, when,
many years after the present date, he called my attention very earnestly
to two tales then in course of publication in _Blackwood's Magazine_,
and afterwards collected under the title of _Scenes of Clerical Life_.
"Do read them," he wrote. "They are the best things I have seen since I
began my course."
Eighteen hundred and forty-three[66] opened with the most vigorous
prosecution of his _Chuzzlewit_ labour. "I hope the number will be very
good," he wrote to me of number two (8th of January). "I have been
hammering away, and at home all day. Ditto yesterday; except for two
hours in the afternoon, when I ploughed through snow half a foot deep,
round about the wilds of Willesden." For the present, however, I shall
glance only briefly from time to time at his progress with the earlier
portions of the story on which he was thus engaged until the midsummer
of 1844. Disappointments arose in connection with it, unexpected and
strange, which had important influence upon him: but, I reserve the
mention of these for awhile, that I may speak of the leading incidents
of 1843.
"I am in a difficulty," he wrote (12th of February), "and am coming down
to you some time to-day or to-night. I couldn't write a line yesterday;
not a word, though I really tried hard. In a kind of despair I started
off at half-past two with my pair of petticoats to Richmond; and dined
there!! Oh what a lovely day it was in those parts." His pair of
petticoats were Mrs. Dickens and her sister Georgina: the latter, since
his return from America, having become part of his household, of which
she remained a member until his death; and he had just reason to be
proud of the steadiness, depth, and devotion of her friendship. In a
note-book begun by him in January 1855, where, for the first time in his
life, he jotted down hints and fancies proposed to be made available in
future writings, I find a character sketched of which, if the whole was
not suggested by his sister-in-law, the most part was applicable to her.
"She--sacrificed to children, and sufficiently rewarded. From a child
herself, always 'the children' (of somebody else) to engross her. And so
it comes to pass that she is never married; never herself has a child;
is always devoted 'to the children' (of somebody else); and they love
her; and she has always youth dependent on her till her death--and dies
quite happily." Not many days after that holiday at Richmond, a slight
unstudied outline in pencil was made by Maclise of the three who formed
the party there, as we all sat together; and never did a touch so light
carry with it more truth of observation. The likenesses of all are
excellent; and I here preserve the drawing because nothing ever done of
Dickens himself has conveyed more vividly his look and bearing at this
yet youthful time. He is in his most pleasing aspect; flattered, if you
will; but nothing that is known to me gives a general impression so
life-like and true of the then frank, eager, handsome face.
It was a year of much illness with me, which had ever-helpful and active
sympathy from him. "Send me word how you are," he wrote, two days later.
"But not so much for that I now write, as to tell you, peremptorily,
that I insist on your wrapping yourself up and coming here in a
hackney-coach, with a big portmanteau, to-morrow. It surely is better to
be unwell with a Quick and Cheerful (and Co) in the neighbourhood, than
in the dreary vastness of Lincoln's-inn-fields. Here is the snuggest
tent-bedstead in the world, and there you are with the drawing-room for
your workshop, the Q and C for your pal, and 'every-think in a
concatenation accordingly.' I begin to have hopes of the regeneration of
mankind after the reception of Gregory last night, though I have none of
the _Chronicle_ for not denouncing the villain. Have you seen the note
touching my _Notes_ in the blue and yellow?"
The first of these closing allusions was to the editor of the infamous
_Satirist_ having been hissed from the Drury-lane stage, on which he had
presented himself in the character of Hamlet; and I remember with what
infinite pleasure I afterwards heard Chief Justice Tindal in court,
charging the jury in an action brought by this malefactor against a
publican of St. Giles's for having paid men to take part in the hissing
of him, avow the pride he felt in "living in the same parish with a man
of that humble station of life of the defendant's," who was capable of
paying money out of his own pocket to punish what he believed to be an
outrage to decency. The second allusion was to a statement of the
reviewer of the _American Notes_ in the _Edinburgh_ to the effect, that,
if he had been rightly informed, Dickens had gone to America as a kind
of missionary in the cause of international copyright; to which a prompt
contradiction had been given in the _Times_. "I deny it," wrote Dickens,
"wholly. He is wrongly informed; and reports, without enquiry, a piece
of information which I could only characterize by using one of the
shortest and strongest words in the language."
The disputes that had arisen out of the American book, I may add,
stretched over great part of the year. It will quite suffice, however,
to say here that the ground taken by him in his letters written on the
spot, and printed in my former volume, which in all the more material
statements his book invited public judgment upon and which he was moved
to reopen in _Chuzzlewit_, was so kept by him against all comers, that
none of the counter-statements or arguments dislodged him from a square
inch of it. But the controversy is dead now; and he took occasion, on
his later visit to America, to write its epitaph.
Though I did not, to revert to his February letter, obey its cordial
bidding by immediately taking up quarters with him, I soon after joined
him at a cottage he rented in Finchley; and here, walking and talking in
the green lanes as the midsummer months were coming on, his introduction
of Mrs. Gamp, and the uses to which he should apply that remarkable
personage, first occurred to him. In his preface to the book he speaks
of her as a fair representation, at the time it was published, of the
hired attendant on the poor in sickness: but he might have added that
the rich were no better off, for Mrs. Gamp's original was in reality a
person hired by a most distinguished friend of his own, a lady, to take
charge of an invalid very dear to her; and the common habit of this
nurse in the sick room, among other Gampish peculiarities, was to rub
her nose along the top of the tall fender. Whether or not, on that first
mention of her, I had any doubts whether such a character could be made
a central figure in his story, I do not now remember; but if there were
any at the time, they did not outlive the contents of the packet which
introduced her to me in the flesh a few weeks after our return. "Tell
me," he wrote from Yorkshire, where he had been meanwhile passing
pleasant holiday with a friend, "what you think of Mrs. Gamp? You'll not
find it easy to get through the hundreds of misprints in her
conversation, but I want your opinion at once. I think you know already
something of mine. I mean to make a mark with her." The same letter
enclosed me a clever and pointed little parable in verse which he had
written for an annual edited by Lady Blessington.[67]
Another allusion in the February letter reminds me of the interest which
his old work for the _Chronicle_ gave him in everything affecting its
credit, and that this was the year when Mr. John Black ceased to be its
editor, in circumstances reviving strongly all Dickens's sympathies. "I
am deeply grieved" (3rd of May, 1843) "about Black. Sorry from my
heart's core. If I could find him out, I would go and comfort him this
moment." He did find him out; and he and a certain number of us did also
comfort this excellent man after a fashion extremely English, by giving
him a Greenwich dinner on the 20th of May; when Dickens had arranged and
ordered all to perfection, and the dinner succeeded in its purpose, as
in other ways, quite wonderfully. Among the entertainers were Sheil and
Thackeray, Fonblanque and Charles Buller, Southwood Smith and William
Johnson Fox, Macready and Maclise, as well as myself and Dickens.
There followed another similar celebration, in which one of these
entertainers was the guest and which owed hardly less to Dickens's
exertions, when, at the Star-and-garter at Richmond in the autumn, we
wished Macready good-speed on his way to America. Dickens took the chair
at that dinner; and with Stanfield, Maclise, and myself, was in the
following week to have accompanied the great actor to Liverpool to say
good-bye to him on board the Cunard ship, and bring his wife back to
London after their leave-taking; when a word from our excellent friend
Captain Marryat, startling to all of us except Dickens himself, struck
him out of our party. Marryat thought that Macready might suffer in the
States by any public mention of his having been attended on his way by
the author of the _American Notes_ and _Martin Chuzzlewit_, and our
friend at once agreed with him. "Your main and foremost reason," he
wrote to me, "for doubting Marryat's judgment, I can at once destroy. It
has occurred to me many times; I have mentioned the thing to Kate more
than once; and I had intended _not_ to go on board, charging Radley to
let nothing be said of my being in his house. I have been prevented from
giving any expression to my fears by a misgiving that I should seem to
attach, if I did so, too much importance to my own doings. But now that
I have Marryat at my back, I have not the least hesitation in saying
that I am certain he is right. I have very great apprehensions that the
_Nickleby_ dedication will damage Macready. Marryat is wrong in
supposing it is not printed in the American editions, for I have myself
seen it in the shop windows of several cities. If I were to go on board
with him, I have not the least doubt that the fact would be placarded
all over New York, before he had shaved himself in Boston. And that
there are thousands of men in America who would pick a quarrel with him
on the mere statement of his being my friend, I have no more doubt than
I have of my existence. You have only doubted Marryat because it is
impossible for _any man_ to know what they are in their own country, who
has not seen them there."
This letter was written from Broadstairs, whither he had gone in August,
after such help as he only could give, and never took such delight as in
giving, to a work of practical humanity. Earlier in the year he had
presided at a dinner for the Printers' Pension-fund, which Thomas Hood,
Douglas Jerrold, and myself attended with him; and upon the terrible
summer-evening accident at sea by which Mr. Elton the actor lost his
life, it was mainly by Dickens's unremitting exertions, seconded
admirably by Mr. Serle and warmly taken up by Mr. Elton's own profession
(the most generous in the world), that ample provision was made for the
many children. At the close of August I had news of him from his
favourite watering-place, too characteristic to be omitted. The day
before had been a day of "terrific heat," yet this had not deterred him
from doing what he was too often suddenly prone to do in the midst of
his hardest work. "I performed an insane match against time of eighteen
miles by the milestones in four hours and a half, under a burning sun
the whole way. I could get" (he is writing next morning) "no sleep at
night, and really began to be afraid I was going to have a fever. You
may judge in what kind of authorship-training I am to-day. I could as
soon eat the cliff as write about anything." A few days later, however,
all was well again; and another sketch from himself, to his American
friend, will show his sea-side life in ordinary. "In a bay-window in a
one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to one, a gentleman with rather long
hair and no neckcloth, who writes and grins as if he thought he were
very funny indeed. At one he disappears, presently emerges from a
bathing-machine, and may be seen, a kind of salmon-coloured porpoise,
splashing about in the ocean. After that he may be viewed in another
bay-window on the ground floor, eating a strong lunch; and after that,
walking a dozen miles or so, or lying on his back in the sand reading a
book. Nobody bothers him unless they know he is disposed to be talked
to; and I am told he is very comfortable indeed. He's as brown as a
berry, and they _do_ say is a small fortune to the innkeeper who sells
beer and cold punch. But this is mere rumour. Sometimes he goes up to
London (eighty miles or so away), and then I'm told there is a sound in
Lincoln's-inn-fields at night, as of men laughing, together with a
clinking of knives and forks and wine-glasses."[68]
He returned to town "for good" on Monday the 2nd of October, and from
the Wednesday to the Friday of that week was at Manchester, presiding at
the opening of its great Athenæum, when Mr. Cobden and Mr. Disraeli also
"assisted." Here he spoke mainly on a matter always nearest his heart,
the education of the very poor. He protested against the danger of
calling a little learning dangerous; declared his preference for the
very least of the little over none at all; proposed to substitute for
the old a new doggerel,
Though house and lands be never got,
Learning can give what they can _not_;
told his listeners of the real and paramount danger we had lately taken
Longfellow to see in the nightly refuges of London, "thousands of
immortal creatures condemned without alternative or choice to tread, not
what our great poet calls the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire,
but one of jagged flints and stones laid down by brutal ignorance;" and
contrasted this with the unspeakable consolation and blessings that a
little knowledge had shed on men of the lowest estate and most hopeless
means, "watching the stars with Ferguson the shepherd's boy, walking the
streets with Crabbe, a poor barber here in Lancashire with Arkwright, a
tallow-chandler's son with Franklin, shoemaking with Bloomfield in his
garret, following the plough with Burns, and, high above the noise of
loom and hammer, whispering courage in the ears of workers I could this
day name in Sheffield and in Manchester."
The same spirit impelled him to give eager welcome to the remarkable
institution of Ragged schools, which, begun by a shoemaker of
Southampton and a chimney-sweep of Windsor and carried on by a peer of
the realm, has had results of incalculable importance to society. The
year of which I am writing was its first, as this in which I write is
its last; and in the interval, out of three hundred thousand children to
whom it has given some sort of education, it is computed also to have
given to a third of that number the means of honest employment.[69] "I
sent Miss Coutts," he had written (24th of September), "a sledge hammer
account of the Ragged schools; and as I saw her name for two hundred
pounds in the clergy education subscription-list, took pains to show her
that religious mysteries and difficult creeds wouldn't do for such
pupils. I told her, too, that it was of immense importance they should
be _washed_. She writes back to know what the rent of some large airy
premises would be, and what the expense of erecting a regular bathing or
purifying place; touching which points I am in correspondence with the
authorities. I have no doubt she will do whatever I ask her in the
matter. She is a most excellent creature, I protest to God, and I have a
most perfect affection and respect for her."
One of the last things he did at the close of the year, in the like
spirit, was to offer to describe the Ragged schools for the _Edinburgh
Review_. "I have told Napier," he wrote to me, "I will give a
description of them in a paper on education, if the _Review_ is not
afraid to take ground against the church catechism and other mere
formularies and subtleties, in reference to the education of the young
and ignorant. I fear it is extremely improbable it will consent to
commit itself so far." His fears were well-founded; but the statements
then made by him give me opportunity to add that it was his impatience
of differences on this point with clergymen of the Established Church
that had led him, for the past year or two, to take sittings in the
Little Portland-street Unitarian chapel; for whose officiating minister,
Mr. Edward Tagart, he had a friendly regard which continued long after
he had ceased to be a member of his congregation. That he did so quit
it, after two or three years, I can distinctly state; and of the
frequent agitation of his mind and thoughts in connection with this
all-important theme, there will be other occasions to speak. But upon
essential points he had never any sympathy so strong as with the leading
doctrine and discipline of the Church of England; to these, as time went
on, he found himself able to accommodate all minor differences; and the
unswerving faith in Christianity itself, apart from sects and schisms,
which had never failed him at any period of his life, found expression
at its close in the language of his will. Twelve months before his
death, these words were written. "I direct that my name be inscribed in
plain English letters on my tomb . . . I conjure my friends on no account
to make me the subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial
whatever. I rest my claim to the remembrance of my country on my
published works, and to the remembrance of my friends upon their
experience of me in addition thereto. I commit my soul to the mercy of
God, through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; and I exhort my dear
children humbly to try to guide themselves by the teaching of the New
Testament in its broad spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow
construction of its letter here or there."
Active as he had been in the now ending year, and great as were its
varieties of employment; his genius in its highest mood, his energy
unwearied in good work, and his capacity for enjoyment without limit; he
was able to signalize its closing months by an achievement supremely
fortunate, which but for disappointments the year had also brought might
never have been thought of. He had not begun until a week after his
return from Manchester, where the fancy first occurred to him, and
before the end of November he had finished, his memorable _Christmas
Carol_. It was the work of such odd moments of leisure as were left him
out of the time taken up by two numbers of his _Chuzzlewit_; and though
begun with but the special design of adding something to the
_Chuzzlewit_ balance, I can testify to the accuracy of his own account
of what befell him in its composition, with what a strange mastery it
seized him for itself, how he wept over it, and laughed, and wept again,
and excited himself to an extraordinary degree, and how he walked
thinking of it fifteen and twenty miles about the black streets of
London, many and many a night after all sober folks had gone to bed. And
when it was done, as he told our friend Mr. Felton in America, he let
himself loose like a madman. "Forster is out again," he added, by way of
illustrating our practical comments on his celebration of the jovial
old season, "and if he don't go in again after the manner in which we
have been keeping Christmas, he must be very strong indeed. Such
dinings, such dancings, such conjurings, such blind-man's-buffings, such
theatre-goings, such kissings-out of old years and kissings-in of new
ones, never took place in these parts before."
Yet had it been to him, this closing year, a time also of much anxiety
and strange disappointments of which I am now to speak; and before, with
that view, we go back for a while to its earlier months, one step into
the new year may be taken for what marked it with interest and
importance to him. Eighteen hundred and forty-four was but fifteen days
old when a third son (his fifth child, which received the name of its
godfather Francis Jeffrey) was born; and here is an answer sent by him,
two days later, to an invitation from Maclise, Stanfield, and myself to
dine with us at Richmond. "DEVONSHIRE LODGE, _Seventeenth of January_,
1844. FELLOW COUNTRYMEN! The appeal with which you have honoured me,
awakens within my breast emotions that are more easily to be imagined
than described. Heaven bless you. I shall indeed be proud, my friends,
to respond to such a requisition. I had withdrawn from Public Life--I
fondly thought forever--to pass the evening of my days in hydropathical
pursuits, and the contemplation of virtue. For which latter purpose, I
had bought a looking-glass.--But, my friends, private feeling must ever
yield to a stern sense of public duty. The Man is lost in the Invited
Guest, and I comply. Nurses, wet and dry; apothecaries; mothers-in-law;
babbies; with all the sweet (and chaste) delights of private life;
these, my countrymen, are hard to leave. But you have called me forth,
and I will come. Fellow countrymen, your friend and faithful servant,
CHARLES DICKENS."
FOOTNOTES:
[64] Printed in the _Atlantic Monthly_ shortly after his death, and
since collected, by Mr. James T. Fields of Boston, with several of later
date addressed to himself, and much correspondence having reference to
other writers, into a pleasing volume entitled _Yesterdays with
Authors_.
[65] This is mentioned in Mr. O. Driscoll's agreeable little Memoir, but
supposed to refer to Maclise's portrait of Dickens.
[66] In one of the letters to his American friend Mr. Felton there is a
glimpse of Christmas sports which had escaped my memory, and for which a
corner may be found here, inasmuch as these gambols were characteristic
of him at the pleasant old season, and were frequently renewed in future
years. "The best of it is" (31 Dec. 1842) "that Forster and I have
purchased between us the entire stock-in-trade of a conjuror, the
practice and display whereof is entrusted to me. . . . In those tricks
which require a confederate I am assisted (by reason of his
imperturbable good humour) by Stanfield, who always does his part
exactly the wrong way, to the unspeakable delight of all beholders. We
come out on a small scale to-night, at Forster's, where we see the old
year out and the new one in." _Atlantic Monthly_, July 1871.
[67] "I have heard, as you have, from Lady Blessington, for whose behoof
I have this morning penned the lines I send you herewith. But I have
only done so to excuse myself, for I have not the least idea of their
suiting her; and I hope she will send them back to you for the _Ex._" C.
D. to J. F. July 1843. The lines are quite worth preserving.
A WORD IN SEASON.
They have a superstition in the East,
That Allah, written on a piece of paper,
Is better unction than can come of priest,
Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper:
Holding, that any scrap which bears that name
In any characters its front impress'd on,
Shall help the finder thro' the purging flame,
And give his toasted feet a place to rest on.
Accordingly, they make a mighty fuss
With every wretched tract and fierce oration,
And hoard the leaves--for they are not, like us
A highly civilized and thinking nation:
And, always stooping in the miry ways
To look for matter of this earthly leaven,
They seldom, in their dust-exploring days,
Have any leisure to look up to Heaven.
So have I known a country on the earth
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth
Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters:
And yet, where they who should have oped the door
Of charity and light, for all men's finding
Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,
And rent The Book, in struggles for the binding.
The gentlest man among those pious Turks
God's living image ruthlessly defaces;
Their best High-Churchman, with no faith in works,
Bowstrings the Virtues in the market-places.
The Christian Pariah, whom both sects curse
(They curse all other men, and curse each other),
Walks thro' the world, not very much the worse,
Does all the good he can, and loves his brother.
[68] C. D. to Professor Felton (1st Sept. 1843), in _Atlantic Monthly_
for July 1871.
[69] "After a period of 27 years, from a single school of five small
infants, the work has grown into a cluster of some 300 schools, an
aggregate of nearly 30,000 children, and a body of 3000 voluntary
teachers, most of them the sons and daughters of toil. . . . Of more than
300,000 children which, on the most moderate calculation, we have a
right to conclude have passed through these schools since their
commencement, I venture to affirm that more than 100,000 of both sexes
have been placed out in various ways, in emigration, in the marine, in
trades, and in domestic service. For many consecutive years I have
contributed prizes to thousands of the scholars; and let no one omit to
call to mind what these children were, whence they came, and whither
they were going without this merciful intervention. They would have been
added to the perilous swarm of the wild, the lawless, the wretched, and
the ignorant, instead of being, as by God's blessing they are, decent
and comfortable, earning an honest livelihood, and adorning the
community to which they belong." _Letter of Lord Shaftesbury in the
Times of the 13th of November, 1871._
CHAPTER III.
CHUZZLEWIT DISAPPOINTMENTS AND CHRISTMAS CAROL.
1843-1844.
Sale of _Chuzzlewit_--Publishers and
Authors--Unlucky Clause in _Chuzzlewit_
Agreement--Resolve to have other Publishers--A
Plan for seeing Foreign Cities--Confidence in
Himself--Preparation of _Carol_--Turning-point
of his Career--Work and its
Interruptions--Superiority of _Martin
Chuzzlewit_ to former Books--News from
America--A Favourite Scene of
Thackeray's--Grand Purpose of the Satire of
_Chuzzlewit_--Publication of _Christmas
Carol_--Unrealized Hopes--Agreement with
Bradbury and Evans.
CHUZZLEWIT had fallen short of all the expectations formed of it in
regard to sale. By much the most masterly of his writings hitherto, the
public had rallied to it in far less numbers than to any of its
predecessors. The primary cause of this, there is little doubt, had been
the change to weekly issues in the form of publication of his last two
stories; for into everything in this world mere habit enters more
largely than we are apt to suppose. Nor had the temporary withdrawal to
America been favourable to an immediate resumption by his readers of
their old and intimate relations. This also is to be added, that the
excitement by which a popular reputation is kept up to the highest
selling mark, will always be subject to lulls too capricious for
explanation. But whatever the causes, here was the undeniable fact of a
grave depreciation of sale in his writings, unaccompanied by any falling
off either in themselves or in the writer's reputation. It was very
temporary; but it was present, and to be dealt with accordingly. The
forty and fifty thousand purchasers of _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_, the
sixty and seventy thousand of the early numbers of the enterprize in
which the _Old Curiosity Shop_ and _Barnaby Rudge_ appeared, had fallen
to little over twenty thousand. They rose somewhat on Martin's ominous
announcement, at the end of the fourth number, that he'd _go to
America_; but though it was believed that this resolve, which Dickens
adopted as suddenly as his hero, might increase the number of his
readers, that reason influenced him less than the challenge to make good
his _Notes_ which every mail had been bringing him from unsparing
assailants beyond the Atlantic. The substantial effect of the American
episode upon the sale was yet by no means great. A couple of thousand
additional purchasers were added, but the highest number at any time
reached before the story closed was twenty-three thousand. Its sale,
since, has ranked next after _Pickwick_ and _Copperfield_.
We were now, however, to have a truth brought home to us which few that
have had real or varied experience in such matters can have failed to be
impressed by--that publishers are bitter bad judges of an author, and
are seldom safe persons to consult in regard to the fate or fortunes
that may probably await him. Describing the agreement for this book in
September 1841, I spoke of a provision against the improbable event of
its profits proving inadequate to certain necessary repayments. In this
unlikely case, which was to be ascertained by the proceeds of the first
five numbers, the publishers were to have power to appropriate fifty
pounds a month out of the two hundred pounds payable for authorship in
the expenses of each number; but though this had been introduced with my
knowledge, I knew also too much of the antecedent relations of the
parties to regard it as other than a mere form to satisfy the attorneys
in the case. The fifth number, which landed Martin and Mark in America,
and the sixth, which described their first experiences, were published;
and on the eve of the seventh, in which Mrs. Gamp was to make her first
appearance, I heard with infinite pain that from Mr. Hall, the younger
partner of the firm which had enriched itself by _Pickwick_ and
_Nickleby_, and a very kind well-disposed man, there had dropped an
inconsiderate hint to the writer of those books that it might be
desirable to put the clause in force. It had escaped him without his
thinking of all that it involved; certainly the senior partner, whatever
amount of as thoughtless sanction he had at the moment given to it,
always much regretted it, and made endeavours to exhibit his regret; but
the mischief was done, and for the time was irreparable.
"I am so irritated," Dickens wrote to me on the 28th of June, "so rubbed
in the tenderest part of my eyelids with bay-salt, by what I told you
yesterday, that a wrong kind of fire is burning in my head, and I don't
think I _can_ write. Nevertheless, I am trying. In case I should
succeed, and should not come down to you this morning, shall you be at
the club or elsewhere after dinner? I am bent on paying the money. And
before going into the matter with anybody I should like you to propound
from me the one preliminary question to Bradbury and Evans. It is more
than a year and a half since Clowes wrote to urge me to give him a
hearing, in case I should ever think of altering my plans. A printer is
better than a bookseller, and it is quite as much the interest of one
(if not more) to join me. But whoever it is, or whatever, I am bent upon
paying Chapman and Hall _down_. And when I have done that, Mr. Hall
shall have a piece of my mind."
What he meant by the proposed repayment will be understood by what
formerly was said of his arrangements with these gentlemen on the
repurchase of his early copyrights. Feeling no surprise at this
announcement, I yet prevailed with him to suspend proceedings until his
return from Broadstairs in October; and what then I had to say led to
memorable resolves. The communication he had desired me to make to his
printers had taken them too much by surprise to enable them to form a
clear judgment respecting it; and they replied by suggestions which were
in effect a confession of that want of confidence in themselves. They
enlarged upon the great results that would follow a reissue of his
writings in a cheap form; they strongly urged such an undertaking; and
they offered to invest to any desired amount in the establishment of a
magazine or other periodical to be edited by him. The possible dangers,
in short, incident to their assuming the position of publishers as well
as printers of new works from his pen, seemed at first to be so much
greater than on closer examination they were found to be, that at the
outset they shrank from encountering them. And hence the remarkable
letter I shall now quote (1st of November, 1843).
"Don't be startled by the novelty and extent of my project. Both
startled _me_ at first; but I am well assured of its wisdom and
necessity. I am afraid of a magazine--just now. I don't think the time a
good one, or the chances favourable. I am afraid of putting myself
before the town as writing tooth and nail for bread, headlong, after the
close of a book taking so much out of one as _Chuzzlewit_. I am afraid I
could not do it, with justice to myself. I know that whatever we may say
at first, a new magazine, or a new anything, would require so much
propping, that I should be _forced_ (as in the _Clock_) to put myself
into it, in my old shape. I am afraid of Bradbury and Evans's desire to
force on the cheap issue of my books, or any of them, prematurely. I am
sure if it took place yet awhile, it would damage me and damage the
property, _enormously_. It is very natural in them to want it; but,
since they do want it, I have no faith in their regarding me in any
other respect than they would regard any other man in a speculation. I
see that this is really your opinion as well; and I don't see what I
gain, in such a case, by leaving Chapman and Hall. If I had made money,
I should unquestionably fade away from the public eye for a year, and
enlarge my stock of description and observation by seeing countries new
to me; which it is most necessary to me that I should see, and which
with an increasing family I can scarcely hope to see at all, unless I
see them now. Already for some time I have had this hope and intention
before me; and though not having made money yet, I find or fancy that I
can put myself in the position to accomplish it. And this is the course
I have before me. At the close of _Chuzzlewit_ (by which time the debt
will have been materially reduced) I purpose drawing from Chapman and
Hall my share of the subscription--bills, or money, will do equally
well. I design to tell them that it is not likely I shall do anything
for a year; that, in the meantime, I make no arrangement whatever with
any one; and our business matters rest _in statu quo_. The same to
Bradbury and Evans. I shall let the house if I can; if not, leave it to
be let. I shall take all the family, and two servants--three at most--to
some place which I know beforehand to be CHEAP and in a delightful
climate, in Normandy or Brittany, to which I shall go over, first, and
where I shall rent some house for six or eight months. During that time,
I shall walk through Switzerland, cross the Alps, travel through France
and Italy; take Kate perhaps to Rome and Venice, but not elsewhere; and
in short see everything that is to be seen. I shall write my
descriptions to you from time to time, exactly as I did in America; and
you will be able to judge whether or not a new and attractive book may
not be made on such ground. At the same time I shall be able to turn
over the story I have in my mind, and which I have a strong notion might
be published with great advantage, _first in Paris_--but that's another
matter to be talked over. And of course I have not yet settled, either,
whether any book about the travel, or this, should be the first. 'All
very well,' you say, 'if you had money enough.' Well, but if I can see
my way to what would be necessary without binding myself in any form to
anything; without paying interest, or giving any security but one of my
Eagle five thousand pounds; you would give up that objection. And I
stand committed to no bookseller, printer, money-lender, banker, or
patron whatever; and decidedly strengthen my position with my readers,
instead of weakening it, drop by drop, as I otherwise must. Is it not
so? and is not the way before me, plainly this? I infer that in reality
you do yourself think, that what I first thought of is _not_ the way? I
have told you my scheme very badly, as I said I would. I see its great
points, against many prepossessions the other way--as, leaving England,
home, friends, everything I am fond of--but it seems to me, at a
critical time, _the_ step to set me right. A blessing on Mr. Mariotti my
Italian master, and his pupil!--If you have any breath left, tell
Topping how you are."
I had certainly not much after reading this letter, written amid all the
distractions of his work, with both the _Carol_ and _Chuzzlewit_ in
hand; but such insufficient breath as was left to me I spent against the
project, and in favour of far more consideration than he had given to
it, before anything should be settled. "I expected you," he wrote next
day (the 2nd of November), "to be startled. If I was startled myself,
when I first got this project of foreign travel into my head, MONTHS
AGO, how much more must you be, on whom it comes fresh: numbering only
hours! Still, I am very resolute upon it--very. I am convinced that my
expenses abroad would not be more than half of my expenses here; the
influence of change and nature upon me, enormous. You know, as well as
I, that I think _Chuzzlewit_ in a hundred points immeasurably the best
of my stories. That I feel my power now, more than I ever did. That I
have a greater confidence in myself than I ever had. That I _know_, if I
have health, I could sustain my place in the minds of thinking men,
though fifty writers started up to-morrow. But how many readers do _not_
think! How many take it upon trust from knaves and idiots, that one
writes too fast, or runs a thing to death! How coldly did this very book
go on for months, until it forced itself up in people's opinion, without
forcing itself up in sale! If I wrote for forty thousand Forsters, or
for forty thousand people who know I write because I can't help it, I
should have no need to leave the scene. But this very book warns me that
if I _can_ leave it for a time, I had better do so, and must do so.
Apart from that again, I feel that longer rest after this story would do
me good. You say two or three months, because you have been used to see
me for eight years never leaving off. But it is not rest enough. It is
impossible to go on working the brain to that extent for ever. The very
spirit of the thing, in doing it, leaves a horrible despondency behind,
when it is done; which must be prejudicial to the mind, so soon renewed,
and so seldom let alone. What would poor Scott have given to have gone
abroad, of his own free will, a young man, instead of creeping there, a
driveller, in his miserable decay! I said myself in my note to
you--anticipating what you put to me--that it was a question _what_ I
should come out with, first. The travel-book, if to be done at all,
would cost me very little trouble; and surely would go very far to pay
charges, whenever published. We have spoken of the baby, and of leaving
it here with Catherine's mother. Moving the children into France could
not, in any ordinary course of things, do them anything but good. And
the question is, what it would do to that by which they live: not what
it would do to them.--I had forgotten that point in the B. and E.
negociation; but they certainly suggested instant publication of the
reprints, or at all events of some of them; by which of course I know,
and as you point out, I could provide of myself what is wanted. I take
that as putting the thing distinctly as a matter of trade, and feeling
it so. And, as a matter of trade with them or anybody else, as a matter
of trade between me and the public, should I not be better off a year
hence, with the reputation of having seen so much in the meantime? The
reason which induces you to look upon this scheme with dislike--separation
for so long a time--surely has equal weight with me. I see very little
pleasure in it, beyond the natural desire to have been in those great
scenes; I anticipate no enjoyment at the time. I have come to look upon
it as a matter of policy and duty. I have a thousand other reasons, but
shall very soon myself be with you."
There were difficulties, still to be strongly urged, against taking any
present step to a final resolve; and he gave way a little. But the
pressure was soon renewed. "I have been," he wrote (10th of November),
"all day in _Chuzzlewit_ agonies--conceiving only. I hope to bring forth
to-morrow. Will you come here at six? I want to say a word or two about
the cover of the _Carol_ and the advertising, and to consult you on a
nice point in the tale. It will come wonderfully I think. Mac will call
here soon after, and we can then all three go to Bulwer's together. And
do, my dear fellow, do for God's sake turn over about Chapman and Hall,
and look upon my project as a _settled thing_. If you object to see
them, I must write to them." My reluctance as to the question affecting
his old publishers was connected with the little story, which, amid all
his perturbations and troubles and "_Chuzzlewit_ agonies," he was
steadily carrying to its close; and which remains a splendid proof of
how thoroughly he was borne out in the assertion just before made, of
the sense of his power felt by him, and his confidence that it had never
been greater than when his readers were thus falling off from him. He
had entrusted the _Carol_ for publication on his own account, under the
usual terms of commission, to the firm he had been so long associated
with; and at such a moment to tell them, short of absolute necessity,
his intention to quit them altogether, I thought a needless putting in
peril of the little book's chances. He yielded to this argument; but the
issue, as will be found, was less fortunate than I hoped.
Let disappointments or annoyances, however, beset him as they might,
once heartily in his work and all was forgotten. His temperament of
course coloured everything, cheerful or sad, and his present outlook was
disturbed by imaginary fears; but it was very certain that his labours
and successes thus far had enriched others more than himself, and while
he knew that his mode of living had been scrupulously governed by what
he believed to be his means, the first suspicion that these might be
inadequate made a change necessary to so upright a nature. It was the
turning-point of his career; and the issue, though not immediately,
ultimately justified him. Much of his present restlessness I was too
ready myself to ascribe to that love of change in him which was always
arising from his passionate desire to vary and extend his observation;
but even as to this the result showed him right in believing that he
should obtain decided intellectual advantage from the mere effects of
such farther travel. Here indeed he spoke from experience, for already
he had returned from America with wider views than when he started, and
with a larger maturity of mind. The money difficulties on which he dwelt
were also, it is now to be admitted, unquestionable. Beyond his own
domestic expenses necessarily increasing, there were many,
never-satisfied, constantly-recurring claims from family quarters, not
the more easily avoidable because unreasonable and unjust; and it was
after describing to me one such with great bitterness, a few days
following the letter last quoted, that he thus replied on the following
day (19th of November) to the comment I had made upon it. "I was most
horribly put out for a little while; for I had got up early to go at it,
and was full of interest in what I had to do. But having eased my mind
by that note to you, and taken a turn or two up and down the room, I
went at it again, and soon got so interested that I blazed away till 9
last night; only stopping ten minutes for dinner! I suppose I wrote
eight printed pages of _Chuzzlewit_ yesterday. The consequence is that I
_could_ finish to-day, but am taking it easy, and making myself laugh
very much." The very next day, unhappily, there came to himself a
repetition of precisely similar trouble in exaggerated form, and to me a
fresh reminder of what was gradually settling into a fixed resolve. "I
am quite serious and sober when I say, that I have very grave thoughts
of keeping my whole menagerie in Italy, three years."
* * * * *
Of the book which awoke such varied feelings and was the occasion of
such vicissitudes of fortune, some notice is now due; and this,
following still as yet my former rule, will be not so much critical as
biographical. He had left for Italy before the completed tale was
published, and its reception for a time was exactly what his just-quoted
letter prefigures. It had forced itself up in public opinion without
forcing itself up in sale. It was felt generally to be an advance upon
his previous stories, and his own opinion is not to be questioned that
it was in a hundred points immeasurably the best of them thus far; less
upon the surface, and going deeper into springs of character. Nor would
it be difficult to say, in a single word, where the excellence lay that
gave it this superiority. It had brought his highest faculty into play:
over and above other qualities it had given scope to his imagination;
and it first expressed the distinction in this respect between his
earlier and his later books. Apart wholly from this, too, his letters
will have confirmed a remark already made upon the degree to which his
mental power had been altogether deepened and enlarged by the effect of
his visit to America.
In construction and conduct of story _Martin Chuzzlewit_ is defective,
character and description constituting the chief part of its strength.
But what it lost as a story by the American episode it gained in the
other direction; young Martin, by happy use of a bitter experience,
casting off his slough of selfishness in the poisonous swamp of Eden.
Dickens often confessed, however, the difficulty it had been to him to
have to deal with this gap in the main course of his narrative; and I
will give an instance from a letter he wrote to me when engaged upon the
number in which Jonas brings his wife to her miserable home. "I write in
haste" (28th of July 1843), "for I have been at work all day; and, it
being against the grain with me to go back to America when my interest
is strong in the other parts of the tale, have got on but slowly. I have
a great notion to work out with Sydney's favourite,[70] and long to be
at him again." But obstructions of this kind with Dickens measured only
and always the degree of readiness and resource with which he rose to
meet them, and never had his handling of character been so masterly as
in _Chuzzlewit_. The persons delineated in former books had been more
agreeable, but never so interpenetrated with meanings brought out with a
grasp so large, easy, and firm. As well in this as in the passionate
vividness of its descriptions, the imaginative power makes itself felt.
The windy autumn night, with the mad desperation of the hunted leaves
and the roaring mirth of the blazing village forge; the market-day at
Salisbury; the winter walk, and the coach journey to London by night;
the ship voyage over the Atlantic; the stormy midnight travel before the
murder, the stealthy enterprise and cowardly return of the murderer;
these are all instances of first-rate description, original in the
design, imaginative in all the detail, and very complete in the
execution. But the higher power to which I direct attention is even
better discerned in the persons and dialogue. With nothing absent or
abated in its sharp impressions of reality, there are more of the subtle
requisites which satisfy reflection and thought. We have in this book
for the most part, not only observation but the outcome of it, the
knowledge as well as the fact. While we witness as vividly the life
immediately passing, we are more conscious of the permanent life above
and beyond it. Nothing nearly so effective therefore had yet been
achieved by him. He had scrutinised as truly and satirised as keenly;
but had never shown the imaginative insight with which he now sent his
humour and his art into the core of the vices of the time.
Sending me the second chapter of his eighth number on the 15th of
August, he gave me the latest tidings from America. "I gather from a
letter I have had this morning that Martin has made them all stark
staring raving mad across the water. I wish you would consider this.
Don't you think the time has come when I ought to state that such public
entertainments as I received in the States were either accepted before I
went out, or in the first week after my arrival there; and that as soon
as I began to have any acquaintance with the country, I set my face
against any public recognition whatever but that which was forced upon
me to the destruction of my peace and comfort--and made no secret of my
real sentiments." We did not agree as to this, and the notion was
abandoned; though his correspondent had not overstated the violence of
the outbreak in the States when those chapters exploded upon them. But
though an angry they are a good humoured and a very placable people;
and, as time moved on a little, the laughter on that side of the
Atlantic became quite as great as our amusement on this side, at the
astonishing fun and comicality of these scenes. With a little reflection
the Americans had doubtless begun to find out that the advantage was not
all with us, nor the laughter wholly against them.
They had no Pecksniff at any rate. Bred in a more poisonous swamp than
their Eden, of greatly older standing and much harder to be drained,
Pecksniff was all our own. The confession is not encouraging to national
pride, but this character is so far English, that though our countrymen
as a rule are by no means Pecksniffs, the ruling weakness is to
countenance and encourage the race. When people call the character
exaggerated, and protest that the lines are too broad to deceive any
one, they only refuse, naturally enough, to sanction in a book what half
their lives is passed in tolerating if not in worshipping. Dickens,
illustrating his never-failing experience of being obliged to subdue in
his books what he knew to be real for fear it should be deemed
impossible, had already made the remark in his preface to _Nickleby_,
that the world, which is so very credulous in what professes to be true,
is most incredulous in what professes to be imaginary. They agree to be
deceived in a reality, and reward themselves by refusing to be deceived
in a fiction. That a great many people who might have sat for Pecksniff,
should condemn him for a grotesque impossibility, as Dickens averred to
be the case, was no more than might be expected. A greater danger he has
exposed more usefully in showing the greater numbers, who, desiring
secretly to be thought better than they are, support eagerly pretensions
that keep their own in countenance, and, without being Pecksniffs,
render Pecksniffs possible. All impostures would have something too
suspicious or forbidding in their look if we were not prepared to meet
them half way.
There is one thing favourable to us however, even in this view, which a
French critic has lately suggested. Informing us that there are no
Pecksniffs to be found in France, Mr. Taine explains this by the fact
that his countrymen have ceased to affect virtue, and pretend only to
vice; that a charlatan setting up morality would have no sort of
following; that religion and the domestic virtues have gone so utterly
to rags as not to be worth putting on for a deceitful garment; and that,
no principles being left to parade, the only chance for the French
modern Tartuffe is to confess and exaggerate weaknesses. We seem to have
something of an advantage here. We require at least that the respectable
homage of vice to virtue should not be omitted. "Charity, my dear," says
our English Tartuffe, upon being bluntly called what he really is, "when
I take my chamber-candlestick to-night, remind me to be more than
usually particular in praying for Mr. Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done
me an injustice." No amount of self-indulgence weakens or lowers his
pious and reflective tone. "Those are her daughters," he remarks, making
maudlin overtures to Mrs. Todgers in memory of his deceased wife. "Mercy
and Charity, Charity and Mercy, not unholy names I hope. She was
beautiful. She had a small property." When his condition has fallen into
something so much worse than maudlin that his friends have to put him to
bed, they have not had time to descend the staircase when he is seen to
be "fluttering" on the top landing, desiring to collect their sentiments
on the nature of human life. "Let us be moral. Let us contemplate
existence." He turns his old pupil out of doors in the attitude of
blessing him, and when he has discharged that social duty retires to
shed his personal tribute of a few tears in the back garden. No
conceivable position, action, or utterance finds him without the vice in
which his being is entirely steeped and saturated. Of such consummate
consistency is its practice with him, that in his own house with his
daughters he continues it to keep his hand in; and from the mere habit
of keeping up appearances, even to himself, falls into the trap of
Jonas. Thackeray used to say that there was nothing finer in rascaldom
than this ruin of Pecksniff by his son-in-law at the very moment when
the oily hypocrite believes himself to be achieving his masterpiece of
dissembling over the more vulgar avowed ruffian. "'Jonas!' cried Mr.
Pecksniff much affected, 'I am not a diplomatical character; my heart is
in my hand. By far the greater part of the inconsiderable savings I have
accumulated in the course of--I hope--a not dishonourable or useless
career, is already given, devised, or bequeathed (correct me, my dear
Jonas, if I am technically wrong), with expressions of confidence which
I will not repeat; and in securities which it is unnecessary to mention;
to a person whom I cannot, whom I will not, whom I need not, name.' Here
he gave the hand of his son-in-law a fervent squeeze, as if he would
have added, 'God bless you: be very careful of it when you get it!'"
Certainly Dickens thus far had done nothing of which, as in this novel,
the details were filled in with such minute and incomparable skill;
where the wealth of comic circumstance was lavished in such overflowing
abundance on single types of character; or where generally, as
throughout the story, the intensity of his observation of individual
humours and vices had taken so many varieties of imaginative form.
Everything in _Chuzzlewit_ indeed had grown under treatment, as will be
commonly the case in the handling of a man of genius, who never knows
where any given conception may lead him, out of the wealth of resource
in development and incident which it has itself created. "As to the
way," he wrote to me of its two most prominent figures, as soon as all
their capabilities were revealed to him, "As to the way in which these
characters have opened out, that is, to me, one of the most surprising
processes of the mind in this sort of invention. Given what one knows,
what one does not know springs up; and I am as absolutely certain of its
being true, as I am of the law of gravitation--if such a thing be
possible, more so." The remark displays exactly what in all his
important characters was the very process of creation with him.
Nor was it in the treatment only of his present fiction, but also in
its subject or design, that he had gone higher than in preceding
efforts. Broadly what he aimed at, he would have expressed on the
title-page if I had not dissuaded him, by printing there as its motto a
verse altered from that prologue of his own composition to which I have
formerly referred: "Your homes the scene. Yourselves, the actors, here!"
Debtors' prisons, parish Bumbledoms, Yorkshire schools, were vile
enough, but something much more pestiferous was now the aim of his
satire; and he had not before so decisively shown vigour, daring, or
discernment of what lay within reach of his art, as in taking such a
person as Pecksniff for the central figure in a tale of existing life.
Setting him up as the glass through which to view the groups around him,
we are not the less moved to a hearty detestation of the social vices
they exhibit, and pre-eminently of selfishness in all its forms, because
we see more plainly than ever that there is but one vice which is quite
irremediable. The elder Chuzzlewits are bad enough, but they bring their
self-inflicted punishments; the Jonases and Tigg Montagues are
execrable, but the law has its halter and its penal servitude; the
Moulds and Gamps have plague-bearing breaths, from which sanitary wisdom
may clear us; but from the sleek, smiling, crawling abomination of a
Pecksniff, there is no help but self-help. Every man's hand should be
against him, for his is against every man; and, as Mr. Taine very wisely
warns us, the virtues have most need to be careful that they do not make
themselves panders to his vice. It is an amiable weakness to put the
best face on the worst things, but there is none more dangerous. There
is nothing so common as the mistake of Tom Pinch, and nothing so rare
as his excuses.
The art with which that delightful character is placed at Mr.
Pecksniff's elbow at the beginning of the story, and the help he gives
to set fairly afloat the falsehood he innocently believes, contribute to
an excellent management of this part of the design; and the same
prodigal wealth of invention and circumstance which gives its higher
imaginative stamp to the book, appears as vividly in its lesser as in
its leading figures. There are wonderful touches of this suggestive kind
in the household of Mould the undertaker; and in the vivid picture
presented to us by one of Mrs. Gamp's recollections, we are transported
to the youthful games of his children. "The sweet creeturs! playing at
berryins down in the shop, and follerin' the order-book to its long home
in the iron safe!" The American scenes themselves are not more full of
life and fun and freshness, and do not contribute more to the general
hilarity, than the cockney group at Todgers's; which is itself a little
world of the qualities and humours that make up the interest of human
life, whether it be high or low, vulgar or fine, filled in with a
master's hand. Here, in a mere byestroke as it were, are the very finest
things of the earlier books superadded to the new and higher achievement
that distinguished the later productions. No part indeed of the
execution of this remarkable novel is inferior. Young Bailey and
Sweedlepipes are in the front rank of his humorous creations; and poor
Mrs. Todgers, worn but not depraved by the cares of gravy and
solicitudes of her establishment, with calculation shining out of one
eye but affection and goodheartedness still beaming in the other, is in
her way quite as perfect a picture as even the portentous Mrs. Gamp with
her grim grotesqueness, her filthy habits and foul enjoyments, her thick
and damp but most amazing utterances, her moist clammy functions, her
pattens, her bonnet, her bundle, and her umbrella. But such prodigious
claims must have a special mention.
This world-famous personage has passed into and become one with the
language, which her own parts of speech have certainly not exalted or
refined. To none even of Dickens's characters has there been such a run
of popularity; and she will remain among the everlasting triumphs of
fiction, a superb masterpiece of English humour. What Mr. Mould says of
her in his enthusiasm, that she's the sort of woman one would bury for
nothing, and do it neatly too, every one feels to be an appropriate
tribute; and this, by a most happy inspiration, is exactly what the
genius to whom she owes her existence did, when he called her into life,
to the foul original she was taken from. That which enduringly stamped
upon his page its most mirth-moving figure, had stamped out of English
life for ever one of its disgraces. The mortal Mrs. Gamp was handsomely
put into her grave, and only the immortal Mrs. Gamp survived. Age will
not wither this one, nor custom stale her variety. In the latter point
she has an advantage over even Mr. Pecksniff. She has a friend, an alter
ego, whose kind of service to her is expressed by her first utterance in
the story; and with this, which introduces her, we may leave her most
fitly. "'Mrs. Harris,' I says, at the very last case as ever I acted in,
which it was but a young person, 'Mrs. Harris,' I says, 'leave the
bottle on the chimley-piece, and don't ask me to take none, but let me
put my lips to it when I am so dispoged.' 'Mrs. Gamp,' she says in
answer, 'if ever there was a sober creetur to be got at eighteen pence a
day for working people, and three and six for gentlefolks--night
watching,' said Mrs. Gamp with emphasis, 'being a extra charge--you are
that inwallable person.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'don't name the
charge, for if I could afford to lay all my fellow-creeturs out for
nothink, I would gladly do it, sich is the love I bears 'em.'" To this
there is nothing to be added, except that in the person of that
astonishing friend every phase of fun and comedy in the character is
repeated, under fresh conditions of increased appreciation and
enjoyment. By the exuberance of comic invention which gives his
distinction to Mr. Pecksniff, Mrs. Gamp profits quite as much; the same
wealth of laughable incident which surrounds that worthy man is upon her
heaped to overflowing; but over and above this, by the additional
invention of Mrs. Harris, it is all reproduced, acted over with renewed
spirit, and doubled and quadrupled in her favour. This on the whole is
the happiest stroke of humorous art in all the writings of Dickens.
* * * * *
But this is a chapter of disappointments, and I have now to state, that
as _Martin Chuzzlewit's_ success was to seem to him at first only
distant and problematical, so even the prodigious immediate success of
the _Christmas Carol_ itself was not to be an unmitigated pleasure.
Never had a little book an outset so full of brilliancy of promise.
Published but a few days before Christmas, it was hailed on every side
with enthusiastic greeting. The first edition of six thousand copies was
sold the first day, and on the third of January 1844 he wrote to me that
"two thousand of the three printed for second and third editions are
already taken by the trade." But a very few weeks were to pass before
the darker side of the picture came. "Such a night as I have passed!" he
wrote to me on Saturday morning the 10th of February. "I really believed
I should never get up again, until I had passed through all the horrors
of a fever. I found the _Carol_ accounts awaiting me, and they were the
cause of it. The first six thousand copies show a profit of £230! And
the last four will yield as much more. I had set my heart and soul upon
a Thousand, clear. What a wonderful thing it is, that such a great
success should occasion me such intolerable anxiety and disappointment!
My year's bills, unpaid, are so terrific, that all the energy and
determination I can possibly exert will be required to clear me before I
go abroad; which, if next June come and find me alive, I shall do. Good
Heaven, if I had only taken heart a year ago! Do come soon, as I am very
anxious to talk with you. We can send round to Mac after you arrive, and
tell him to join us at Hampstead or elsewhere. I was so utterly knocked
down last night, that I came up to the contemplation of all these things
quite bold this morning. If I can let the house for this season, I will
be off to some seaside place as soon as a tenant offers. I am not
afraid, if I reduce my expenses; but if I do not, I shall be ruined past
all mortal hope of redemption."
The ultimate result was that his publishers were changed, and the
immediate result that his departure for Italy became a settled thing;
but a word may be said on these Carol accounts before mention is made of
his new publishing arrangements.[71] Want of judgment had been shown in
not adjusting the expenses of production with a more equable regard to
the selling price, but even as it was, before the close of the year, he
had received £726 from a sale of fifteen thousand copies; and the
difference between this and the amount realised by the same proportion
of the sale of the successor to the _Carol_, undoubtedly justified him
in the discontent now expressed. Of that second tale, as well as of the
third and fourth, more than double the numbers of the _Carol_ were at
once sold, and of course there was no complaint of any want of success:
but the truth really was, as to all the Christmas stories issued in this
form, that the price charged, while too large for the public addressed
by them, was too little to remunerate their outlay; and when in later
years he put forth similar fancies for Christmas, charging for them
fewer pence than the shillings required for these, he counted his
purchasers, with fairly corresponding gains to himself, not by tens but
by hundreds of thousands.[72]
It was necessary now that negotiations should be resumed with his
printers, but before any step was taken Messrs. Chapman and Hall were
informed of his intention not to open fresh publishing relations with
them after _Chuzzlewit_ should have closed. Then followed deliberations
and discussions, many and grave, which settled themselves at last into
the form of an agreement with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans executed on the
first of June 1844; by which, upon advance made to him of £2800, he
assigned to them a fourth share in whatever he might write during the
next ensuing eight years, to which the agreement was to be strictly
limited. There were the usual protecting clauses, but no interest was to
be paid, and no obligations were imposed as to what works should be
written, if any, or the form of them; the only farther stipulation
having reference to the event of a periodical being undertaken whereof
Dickens might be only partially editor or author, in which case his
proprietorship of copyright and profits was to be two thirds instead of
three fourths. There was an understanding, at the time this agreement
was signed, that a successor to the _Carol_ would be ready for the
Christmas of 1844; but no other promise was asked or made in regard to
any other book, nor had he himself decided what form to give to his
experiences of Italy, if he should even finally determine to publish
them at all.
Between this agreement and his journey six weeks elapsed, and there were
one or two characteristic incidents before his departure: but mention
must first be interposed of the success quite without alloy that also
attended the little book, and carried off in excitement and delight
every trace of doubt or misgiving.
"Blessings on your kind heart!" wrote Jeffrey to the author of the
_Carol_. "You should be happy yourself, for you may be sure you have
done more good by this little publication, fostered more kindly
feelings, and prompted more positive acts of beneficence, than can be
traced to all the pulpits and confessionals in Christendom since
Christmas 1842." "Who can listen," exclaimed Thackeray, "to objections
regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national benefit, and to
every man or woman who reads it a personal kindness." Such praise
expressed what men of genius felt and said; but the small volume had
other tributes, less usual and not less genuine. There poured upon its
author daily, all through that Christmas time, letters from complete
strangers to him which I remember reading with a wonder of pleasure; not
literary at all, but of the simplest domestic kind; of which the general
burden was to tell him, amid many confidences about their homes, how the
_Carol_ had come to be read aloud there, and was to be kept upon a
little shelf by itself, and was to do them all no end of good. Anything
more to be said of it will not add much to this.
There was indeed nobody that had not some interest in the message of the
_Christmas Carol_. It told the selfish man to rid himself of
selfishness; the just man to make himself generous; and the good-natured
man to enlarge the sphere of his good nature. Its cheery voice of faith
and hope, ringing from one end of the island to the other, carried
pleasant warning alike to all, that if the duties of Christmas were
wanting no good could come of its outward observances; that it must
shine upon the cold hearth and warm it, and into the sorrowful heart and
comfort it; that it must be kindness, benevolence, charity, mercy, and
forbearance, or its plum pudding would turn to bile, and its roast beef
be indigestible.[73] Nor could any man have said it with the same
appropriateness as Dickens. What was marked in him to the last was
manifest now. He had identified himself with Christmas fancies. Its life
and spirits, its humour in riotous abundance, of right belonged to him.
Its imaginations as well as kindly thoughts were his; and its privilege
to light up with some sort of comfort the squalidest places, he had made
his own. Christmas Day was not more social or welcome: New Year's Day
not more new: Twelfth Night not more full of characters. The duty of
diffusing enjoyment had never been taught by a more abundant, mirthful,
thoughtful, ever-seasonable writer.
Something also is to be said of the spirit of the book, and of the
others that followed it, which will not anticipate special allusions to
be made hereafter. No one was more intensely fond than Dickens of old
nursery tales, and he had a secret delight in feeling that he was here
only giving them a higher form. The social and manly virtues he desired
to teach, were to him not less the charm of the ghost, the goblin, and
the fairy fancies of his childhood; however rudely set forth in those
earlier days. What now were to be conquered were the more formidable
dragons and giants which had their places at our own hearths, and the
weapons to be used were of a finer than the "ice-brook's temper." With
brave and strong restraints, what is evil in ourselves was to be
subdued; with warm and gentle sympathies, what is bad or unreclaimed in
others was to be redeemed; the Beauty was to embrace the Beast, as in
the divinest of all those fables; the star was to rise out of the ashes,
as in our much-loved Cinderella; and we were to play the Valentine with
our wilder brothers, and bring them back with brotherly care to
civilization and happiness. Nor is it to be doubted, I think, that, in
that largest sense of benefit, great public and private service was
done; positive, earnest, practical good; by the extraordinary
popularity, and nearly universal acceptance, which attended these little
holiday volumes. They carried to countless firesides, with new enjoyment
of the season, better apprehension of its claims and obligations; they
mingled grave with glad thoughts, much to the advantage of both; what
seemed almost too remote to meddle with they brought within reach of the
charities, and what was near they touched with a dearer tenderness; they
comforted the generous, rebuked the sordid, cured folly by kindly
ridicule and comic humour, and, saying to their readers _Thus you have
done, but it were better Thus_, may for some have realised the
philosopher's famous experience, and by a single fortunate thought
revised the whole manner of a life. Criticism here is a second-rate
thing, and the reader may be spared such discoveries as it might have
made in regard to the _Christmas Carol_.
FOOTNOTES:
[70] Chuffey. Sydney Smith had written to Dickens on the appearance of
his fourth number (early in April): "Chuffey is admirable. . . . I never
read a finer piece of writing: it is deeply pathetic and affecting."
[71] It may interest the reader, and be something of a curiosity of
literature, if I give the expenses of the first edition of 6000, and of
the 7000 more which constituted the five following editions, with the
profit of the remaining 2000 which completed the sale of fifteen
thousand:
CHRISTMAS CAROL.
1st Edition, 6000 No.
1843. £ _s._ _d._
Dec. Printing 74 2 9
Paper 89 2 0
Drawings and Engravings 49 18 0
Two Steel Plates 1 4 0
Printing Plates 15 17 6
Paper for do 7 12 0
Colouring Plates 120 0 0
Binding 180 0 0
Incidents and Advertising 168 7 8
Commission 99 4 6
--------------
£805 8 5
==============
* * * * *
2nd to the 7th Edition, making 7000 Copies.
1844. £ _s._ _d._
Jan. Printing 58 18 0
Paper 103 19 0
Printing Plates 17 10 0
Paper 8 17 4
Colouring Plates 140 0 0
Binding 199 18 2
Incidents and Advertising 83 5 8
Commission 107 18 10
-------------
£720 7 0
=============
* * * * *
Two thousand more, represented by the last item in the subjoined
balance, were sold before the close of the year, leaving a remainder of
70 copies.
1843. £ _s._ _d._
Dec. Balance of a/c to Mr. Dickens's credit 186 16 7
1844.
Jan. to April. Do. Do. 349 12 0
May to Dec. Do. Do. 189 11 5
-------------
Amount of Profit on the Work £726 0 0
=============
[72] In November 1865 he wrote to me that the sale of his Christmas
fancy for that year (_Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions_) had gone up, in the
first week, to 250,000.
[73] A characteristic letter of this date, which will explain itself,
has been kindly sent to me by the gentleman it was written to, Mr. James
Verry Staples, of Bristol:--"Third of April, 1844. I have been very much
gratified by the receipt of your interesting letter, and I assure you
that it would have given me heartfelt satisfaction to have been in your
place when you read my little _Carol_ to the Poor in your neighbourhood.
I have great faith in the poor; to the best of my ability I always
endeavour to present them in a favourable light to the rich; and I shall
never cease, I hope, until I die, to advocate their being made as happy
and as wise as the circumstances of their condition, in its utmost
improvement, will admit of their becoming. I mention this to assure you
of two things. Firstly, that I try to deserve their attention; and
secondly, that any such marks of their approval and confidence as you
relate to me are most acceptable to my feelings, and go at once to my
heart."
CHAPTER IV.
YEAR OF DEPARTURE FOR ITALY.
1844.
Gore-house--Liverpool and Birmingham
Institutes--A Troublesome Cheque--Wrongs from
Piracy--Proceedings in Chancery--Result of
Chancery Experience--Reliefs to Work--M. Henri
Taine on Dickens--Writing in the
_Chronicle_--Preparations for Departure--In
Temporary Quarters--The Farewell
Dinner-party--"The Evenings of a
Working-man"--Greenwich Dinner.
AND now, before accompanying Dickens on his Italian travel, one or two
parting incidents will receive illustration from his letters. A
thoughtful little poem written during the past summer for Lady
Blessington has been quoted on a previous page: and it may remind me to
say here what warmth of regard he had for her, and for all the inmates
of Gore-house; how uninterruptedly joyous and pleasurable were his
associations with them; and what valued help they now gave in his
preparations for Italy. The poem, as we have seen, was written during a
visit made in Yorkshire to the house of Mr. Smithson, already named as
the partner of his early companion, Mr. Mitton; and this visit he
repeated in sadder circumstances during the present year, when (April
1844) he attended Mr. Smithson's funeral. With members or connections of
the family of this friend, his intercourse long continued.
In the previous February, on the 26th and 28th respectively, he had
taken the chair at two great meetings, in Liverpool of the Mechanics'
Institution, and in Birmingham of the Polytechnic Institution, to which
reference is made by him in a letter of the 21st. I quote the allusion
because it shows thus early the sensitive regard to his position as a
man of letters, and his scrupulous consideration for the feelings as
well as interest of the class, which he manifested in many various and
often greatly self-sacrificing ways all through his life. "Advise me on
the following point. And as I must write to-night, having already lost a
post, advise me by bearer. This Liverpool Institution, which is wealthy
and has a high grammar-school the masters of which receive in salaries
upwards of £2000 a year (indeed its extent horrifies me; I am struggling
through its papers this morning), writes me yesterday by its secretary a
business letter about the order of the proceedings on Monday; and it
begins thus. 'I beg to send you prefixed, with the best respects of our
committee, a bank order for twenty pounds in payment of the expenses
contingent on your visit to Liverpool.'--And there, sure enough, it is.
Now my impulse was, _and is_, decidedly to return it. Twenty pounds is
not of moment to me; and any sacrifice of independence is worth it
twenty times' twenty times told. But haggling in my mind is a doubt
whether that would be proper, and not boastful (in an inexplicable way);
and whether as an author, I have a right to put myself on a basis which
the professors of literature in other forms _connected with the
Institution_ cannot afford to occupy. Don't you see? But of course you
do. The case stands thus. The Manchester Institution, being in debt,
appeals to me as it were _in formâ pauperis_, and makes no such
provision as I have named. The Birmingham Institution, just struggling
into life with great difficulty, applies to me on the same grounds. But
the Leeds people (thriving) write to me, making the expenses a distinct
matter of business; and the Liverpool, as a point of delicacy, say
nothing about it to the last minute, and then send the money. Now, what
in the name of goodness ought I to do?--I am as much puzzled with the
cheque as Colonel Jack was with his gold. If it would have settled the
matter to put it in the fire yesterday, I should certainly have done it.
Your opinion is requested. I think I shall have grounds for a very good
speech at Brummagem; but I am not sure about Liverpool: having
misgivings of over-gentility." My opinion was clearly for sending the
money back, which accordingly was done.
Both speeches, duly delivered to enthusiastic listeners at the places
named, were good, and both, with suitable variations, had the same
theme: telling his popular audience in Birmingham that the principle of
their institute, education comprehensive and unsectarian, was the only
safe one, for that without danger no society could go on punishing men
for preferring vice to virtue without giving them the means of knowing
what virtue was; and reminding his genteeler audience in Liverpool, that
if happily they had been themselves well taught, so much the more should
they seek to extend the benefit to all, since, whatever the precedence
due to rank, wealth, or intellect, there was yet a nobility beyond them,
expressed unaffectedly by the poet's verse and in the power of education
to confer.
Howe'er it be, it seems to me,
'Tis only noble to be good:
True hearts are more than coronets,
And simple faith than Norman blood.
He underwent some suffering, which he might have spared himself, at his
return. "I saw the _Carol_ last night," he wrote to me of a dramatic
performance of the little story at the Adelphi. "Better than usual, and
Wright seems to enjoy Bob Cratchit, but _heart-breaking_ to me. Oh
Heaven! if any forecast of _this_ was ever in my mind! Yet O. Smith was
drearily better than I expected. It is a great comfort to have that kind
of meat under done; and his face is quite perfect." Of what he suffered
from these adaptations of his books, multiplied remorselessly at every
theatre, I have forborne to speak, but it was the subject of complaint
with him incessantly; and more or less satisfied as he was with
individual performances, such as Mr. Yates's Quilp or Mantalini and Mrs.
Keeley's Smike or Dot, there was only one, that of Barnaby Rudge by the
Miss Fortescue who became afterwards Lady Gardner, on which I ever heard
him dwell with a thorough liking. It is true that to the dramatizations
of his next and other following Christmas stories he gave help himself;
but, even then, all such efforts to assist special representations were
mere attempts to render more tolerable what he had no power to prevent,
and, with a few rare exceptions, they were never very successful.
Another and graver wrong was the piracy of his writings, every one of
which had been reproduced with merely such colourable changes of title,
incidents, and names of characters, as were believed to be sufficient to
evade the law and adapt them to "penny" purchasers. So shamelessly had
this been going on ever since the days of _Pickwick_, in so many
outrageous ways[74] and with all but impunity, that a course repeatedly
urged by Talfourd and myself was at last taken in the present year with
the _Christmas Carol_ and the _Chuzzlewit_ pirates. Upon a case of such
peculiar flagrancy, however, that the vice-chancellor would not even
hear Dickens's counsel; and what it cost our dear friend Talfourd to
suppress his speech exceeded by very much the labour and pains with
which he had prepared it. "The pirates," wrote Dickens to me, after
leaving the court on the 18th of January, "are beaten flat. They are
bruised, bloody, battered, smashed, squelched, and utterly undone.
Knight Bruce would not hear Talfourd, but instantly gave judgment. He
had interrupted Anderdon constantly by asking him to produce a passage
which was not an expanded or contracted idea from my book. And at every
successive passage he cried out, 'That is Mr. Dickens's case. Find
another!' He said that there was not a shadow of doubt upon the matter.
That there was no authority which would bear a construction in their
favour; the piracy going beyond all previous instances. They might
mention it again in a week, he said, if they liked, and might have an
issue if they pleased; but they would probably consider it unnecessary
after that strong expression of his opinion. Of course I will stand by
what we have agreed as to the only terms of compromise with the
printers. I am determined that I will have an apology for their
affidavits. The other men may pay their costs and get out of it, but I
will stick to my friend the author." Two days later he wrote: "The
farther affidavits put in by way of extenuation by the printing rascals
_are_ rather strong, and give one a pretty correct idea of what the men
must be who hold on by the heels of literature. Oh! the agony of
Talfourd at Knight Bruce's not hearing him! He had sat up till three in
the morning, he says, preparing his speech; and would have done all
kinds of things with the affidavits. It certainly was a splendid
subject. We have heard nothing from the vagabonds yet. I once thought of
printing the affidavits without a word of comment, and sewing them up
with _Chuzzlewit_. Talfourd is strongly disinclined to compromise with
the printers on any terms. In which case it would be referred to the
master to ascertain what profits had been made by the piracy, and to
order the same to be paid to me. But wear and tear of law is my
consideration." The undertaking to which he had at last to submit was,
that upon ample public apology, and payment of all costs, the offenders
should be let go; but the real result was that, after infinite vexation
and trouble, he had himself to pay all the costs incurred on his own
behalf; and, a couple of years later, upon repetition of the wrong he
had suffered in so gross a form that proceedings were again advised by
Talfourd and others, he wrote to me from Switzerland the condition of
mind to which his experience had brought him. "My feeling about the ----
is the feeling common, I suppose, to three fourths of the reflecting
part of the community in our happiest of all possible countries; and
that is, that it is better to suffer a great wrong than to have recourse
to the much greater wrong of the law. I shall not easily forget the
expense, and anxiety, and horrible injustice of the _Carol_ case,
wherein, in asserting the plainest right on earth, I was really treated
as if I were the robber instead of the robbed. Upon the whole, I
certainly would much rather NOT proceed. What do you think of sending in
a grave protest against what has been done in this case, on account of
the immense amount of piracy to which I am daily exposed, and because I
have been already met in the court of chancery with the legal doctrine
that silence under such wrongs barred my remedy: to which Talfourd's
written opinion might be appended as proof that we stopped under no
discouragement. It is useless to affect that I don't know I have a
morbid susceptibility of exasperation, to which the meanness and badness
of the law in such a matter would be stinging in the last degree. And I
know of nothing that _could_ come, even of a successful action, which
would be worth the mental trouble and disturbance it would cost."[75]
A few notes of besetting temptations during his busiest days at
_Chuzzlewit_, one taken from each of the first four months of the year
when he was working at its masterly closing scenes, will amusingly
exhibit, side by side, his powers of resistance and capacities of
enjoyment. "I had written you a line" (16th of January), "pleading Jonas
and Mrs. Gamp, but this frosty day tempts me sorely. I am distractingly
late; but I look at the sky, think of Hampstead, and feel hideously
tempted. Don't come with Mae, and fetch me. I couldn't resist if you
did." In the next (18th of February), he is not the tempted, but the
tempter. "Stanfield and Mac have come in, and we are going to Hampstead
to dinner. I leave Betsey Prig as you know, so don't you make a scruple
about leaving Mrs. Harris. We shall stroll leisurely up, to give you
time to join us, and dinner will be on the table at Jack Straw's at
four. . . . In the very improbable (surely impossible?) case of your not
coming, we will call on you at a quarter before eight, to go to the
ragged school." The next (5th of March) shows him in yielding mood, and
pitying himself for his infirmity of compliance. "Sir, I
will--he--he--he--he--he--he--I will NOT eat with you, either at your
own house or the club. But the morning looks bright, and a walk to
Hampstead would suit me marvellously. If you should present yourself at
my gate (bringing the R. A.'s along with you) I shall not be sapparized.
So no more at this writing from Poor MR. DICKENS." But again the tables
are turned, and he is tempter in the last; written on that Shakespeare
day (23rd of April) which we kept always as a festival, and signed in
character expressive of his then present unfitness for any of the
practical affairs of life, including the very pressing business which at
the moment ought to have occupied him, namely, attention to the long
deferred nuptials of Miss Charity Pecksniff. "November blasts! Why it's
the warmest, most genial, most intensely bland, delicious, growing,
springy, songster-of-the-grovy, bursting-forth-of-the-buddy, day as
ever was. At half-past four I shall expect you. Ever, MODDLE."
Moddle, the sentimental noodle hooked by Miss Pecksniff who flies on his
proposed wedding-day from the frightful prospect before him, the reader
of course knows; and has perhaps admired for his last supreme outbreak
of common sense. It was a rather favourite bit of humour with Dickens;
and I find it pleasant to think that he never saw the description given
of it by a trained and skilful French critic, who has been able to pass
under his review the whole of English literature without any apparent
sense or understanding of one of its most important as well as richest
elements. A man without the perception of humour taking English prose
literature in hand, can of course set about it only in one way.
Accordingly, in Mr. Taine's decisive judgments of our last great
humourist, which proceed upon a principle of psychological analysis
which it is only fair to say he applies impartially to everybody,
_Pickwick_, _Oliver Twist_, and _The Old Curiosity Shop_ are not in any
manner even named or alluded to; Mrs. Gamp is only once mentioned as
always talking of Mrs. Harris; and Mr. Micawber also only once as using
always the same emphatic phrases; the largest extracts are taken from
the two books in all the Dickens series that are weakest on the humorous
side, _Hard Times_ and the _Chimes_; _Nickleby_, with its many
laughter-moving figures, is dismissed in a line and a half; Mr. Toots,
Captain Cuttle, Susan Nipper, Toodles, and the rest have no place in
what is said of _Dombey_; and, to close with what has caused and must
excuse my digression, Mr. Augustus Moddle is introduced as a gloomy
maniac who makes us laugh and makes us shudder, and as drawn so truly
for a madman that though at first sight agreeable, he is in reality
horrible![76]
A month before the letter subscribed by Dickens in the character, so
happily unknown to himself, of this gloomy maniac, he had written to me
from amidst his famous chapter in which the tables are turned on
Pecksniff; but here I quote the letter chiefly for noticeable words at
its close. "I heard from Macready by the Hibernia. I have been slaving
away regularly, but the weather is against rapid progress. I altered the
verbal error, and substituted for the action you didn't like some words
expressive of the hurry of the scene. Macready sums up slavery in New
Orleans in the way of a gentle doubting on the subject, by a 'but' and a
dash. I believe it is in New Orleans that the man is lying under
sentence of death, who, not having the fear of God before his eyes, did
not deliver up a captive slave to the torture? The largest gun in that
country has not burst yet--_but it will_. Heaven help us, too, from
explosions nearer home! I declare I never go into what is called
'society' that I am not aweary of it, despise it, hate it, and reject
it. The more I see of its extraordinary conceit, and its stupendous
ignorance of what is passing out of doors, the more certain I am that it
is approaching the period when, being incapable of reforming itself, it
will have to submit to be reformed by others off the face of the earth."
Thus we see that the old radical leanings were again rather strong in
him at present, and I may add that he had found occasional recent vent
for them by writing in the _Morning Chronicle_.
Some articles thus contributed by him having set people talking, the
proprietors of the paper rather eagerly mooted the question what payment
he would ask for contributing regularly; and ten guineas an article was
named. Very sensibly, however, the editor who had succeeded his old
friend Black pointed out to him, that though even that sum would not be
refused in the heat of the successful articles just contributed, yet (I
quote his own account in a letter of the 7th of March 1844) so much
would hardly be paid continuously; and thereupon an understanding, was
come to, that he would write as a volunteer and leave his payment to be
adjusted to the results. "Then said the editor--and this I particularly
want you to turn over in your mind, at leisure--supposing me to go
abroad, could I contemplate such a thing as the writing of a letter a
week under any signature I chose, with such scraps of descriptions and
impressions as suggested themselves to my mind? If so, would I do it
for the _Chronicle_? And if so again, what would I do it for? He thought
for such contributions Easthope would pay anything. I told him that the
idea had never occurred to me; but that I was afraid he did not know
what the value of such contributions would be. He repeated what he had
said before; and I promised to consider whether I could reconcile it to
myself to write such letters at all. The pros and cons need to be very
carefully weighed. I will not tell you to which side I incline, but if
we should disagree, or waver on the same points, we will call Bradbury
and Evans to the council. I think it more than probable that we shall be
of exactly the same mind, but I want you to be in possession of the
facts and therefore send you this rigmarole." The rigmarole is not
unimportant; because, though we did not differ on the wisdom of saying
No to the _Chronicle_, the "council" spoken of was nevertheless held,
and in it lay the germ of another newspaper enterprise he permitted
himself to engage in twelve months later, to which he would have done
more wisely to have also answered No.
The preparation for departure was now actively going forward, and
especially his enquiries for two important adjuncts thereto, a courier
and a carriage. As to the latter it occurred to him that he might
perhaps get for little money "some good old shabby devil of a coach--one
of those vast phantoms that hide themselves in a corner of the
Pantechnicon;" and exactly such a one he found there; sitting himself
inside it, a perfect Sentimental Traveller, while the managing man told
him its history. "As for comfort--let me see--it is about the size of
your library; with night-lamps and day-lamps and pockets and imperials
and leathern cellars, and the most extraordinary contrivances. Joking
apart, it is a wonderful machine. And when you see it (if you _do_ see
it) you will roar at it first, and will then proclaim it to be
'perfectly brilliant, my dear fellow.'" It was marked sixty pounds; he
got it for five-and-forty; and my own emotions respecting it he had
described by anticipation quite correctly. In finding a courier he was
even more fortunate; and these successes were followed by a third
apparently very promising, but in the result less satisfactory. His
house was let to not very careful people.
The tenant having offered herself for Devonshire-terrace unexpectedly,
during the last week or two of his stay in England he went into
temporary quarters in Osnaburgh-terrace; and here a domestic difficulty
befell of which the mention may be amusing, when I have disposed of an
incident that preceded it too characteristic for omission. The Mendicity
Society's officers had caught a notorious begging-letter writer, had
identified him as an old offender against Dickens of which proofs were
found on his person, and had put matters in train for his proper
punishment; when the wretched creature's wife made such appeal before
the case was heard at the police-court, that Dickens broke down in his
character of prosecutor, and at the last moment, finding what was said
of the man's distress at the time to be true, relented. "When the
Mendicity officers themselves told me the man was in distress, I desired
them to suppress what they knew about him, and slipped out of the bundle
(in the police office) his first letter, which was the greatest lie of
all. For he looked wretched, and his wife had been waiting about the
street to see me, all the morning. It was an exceedingly bad case
however, and the imposition, all through, very great indeed. Insomuch
that I could not _say_ anything in his favour, even when I saw him. Yet
I was not sorry that the creature found the loophole for escape. The
officers had taken him illegally without any warrant; and really they
messed it all through, quite facetiously."
He will himself also best relate the small domestic difficulty into
which he fell in his temporary dwelling, upon his unexpectedly
discovering it to be unequal to the strain of a dinner party for which
invitations had gone out just before the sudden "let" of
Devonshire-terrace. The letter is characteristic in other ways, or I
should hardly have gone so far into domesticities here; and it enables
me to add that with the last on its list of guests, Mr. Chapman the
chairman of Lloyd's, he held much friendly intercourse, and that few
things more absurd or unfounded have been invented, even of Dickens,
than that he found any part of the original of Mr. Dombey in the nature,
the appearance, or the manners of this estimable gentleman. "Advise,
advise," he wrote (9 Osnaburgh-terrace, 28th of May 1844), "advise with
a distracted man. Investigation below stairs renders it, as my father
would say, 'manifest to any person of ordinary intelligence, if the term
may be considered allowable,' that the Saturday's dinner cannot come off
here with safety. It would be a toss-up, and might come down heads, but
it would put us into an agony with that kind of people. . . . Now, I feel a
difficulty in dropping it altogether, and really fear that this might
have an indefinably suspicious and odd appearance. Then said I at
breakfast this morning, I'll send down to the Clarendon. Then says Kate,
have it at Richmond. Then I say, that might be inconvenient to the
people. Then she says, how could it be if we dine late enough? Then I am
very much offended without exactly knowing why; and come up here, in a
state of hopeless mystification. . . . What do you think? Ellis would be
quite as dear as anybody else; and unless the weather changes, the place
is objectionable. I must make up my mind to do one thing or other, for
we shall meet Lord Denman at dinner to-day. Could it be dropped
decently? That, I think very doubtful. Could it be done for a couple of
guineas apiece at the Clarendon? . . . In a matter of more importance I
could make up my mind. But in a matter of this kind I bother and
bewilder myself, and come to no conclusion whatever. Advise! Advise! . . .
List of the Invited. There's Lord Normanby. And there's Lord Denman.
There's Easthope, wife, and sister. There's Sydney Smith. There's you
and Mac. There's Babbage. There's a Lady Osborne and her daughter.
There's Southwood Smith. And there's Quin. And there are Thomas Chapman
and his wife. So many of these people have never dined with us, that the
fix is particularly tight. Advise! Advise!" My advice was for throwing
over the party altogether, but additional help was obtained and the
dinner went off very pleasantly. It was the last time we saw Sydney
Smith.
Of one other characteristic occurrence he wrote before he left; and the
very legible epigraph round the seal of his letter, "It is particularly
requested that if Sir James Graham should open this, he will not
trouble himself to seal it again," expresses both its date and its
writer's opinion of a notorious transaction of the time. "I wish" (28th
of June) "you would read this, and give it me again when we meet at
Stanfield's to-day. Newby has written to me to say that he hopes to be
able to give Overs more money than was agreed on." The enclosure was the
proof-sheet of a preface written by him to a small collection of stories
by a poor carpenter dying of consumption, who hoped by their
publication, under protection of such a name, to leave behind him some
small provision for his ailing wife and little children.[77] The book
was dedicated to the kind physician, Doctor Elliotson, whose name was
for nearly thirty years a synonym with us all for unwearied,
self-sacrificing, beneficent service to every one in need.
The last incident before Dickens's departure was a farewell dinner to
him at Greenwich, which took also the form of a celebration for the
completion of _Chuzzlewit_, or, as the Ballantynes used to call it in
Scott's case, a christening dinner; when Lord Normanby took the chair,
and I remember sitting next the great painter Turner, who had come with
Stanfield, and had enveloped his throat, that sultry summer day, in a
huge red belcher-handkerchief which nothing would induce him to remove.
He was not otherwise demonstrative, but enjoyed himself in a quiet
silent way, less perhaps at the speeches than at the changing lights on
the river. Carlyle did not come; telling me in his reply to the
invitation that he truly loved Dickens, having discerned in the inner
man of him a real music of the genuine kind, but that he'd rather
testify to this in some other form than that of dining out in the
dogdays.
FOOTNOTES:
[74] In a letter on the subject of copyright published by Thomas Hood
after Dickens's return from America, he described what had passed
between himself and one of these pirates who had issued a Master
Humphrey's Clock edited by Bos. "Sir," said the man to Hood, "if you had
observed the name, it was _Bos_, not _Boz_; s, sir, not z; and, besides,
it would have been no piracy, sir, even with the z, because _Master
Humphrey's Clock_, you see, sir, was not published as by Boz, but by
Charles Dickens!"
[75] The reader may be amused if I add in a note what he said of the
pirates in those earlier days when grave matters touched him less
gravely. On the eve of the first number of _Nickleby_ he had issued a
proclamation. "Whereas we are the only true and lawful Boz. And whereas
it hath been reported to us, who are commencing a new work, that some
dishonest dullards resident in the by-streets and cellars of this town
impose upon the unwary and credulous, by producing cheap and wretched
imitations of our delectable works. And whereas we derive but small
comfort under this injury from the knowledge that the dishonest dullards
aforesaid cannot, by reason of their mental smallness, follow near our
heels, but are constrained to creep along by dirty and little-frequented
ways, at a most respectful and humble distance behind. And whereas, in
like manner, as some other vermin are not worth the killing for the sake
of their carcases, so these kennel pirates are not worth the powder and
shot of the law, inasmuch as whatever damages they may commit they are
in no condition to pay any. This is to give notice, that we have at
length devised a mode of execution for them, so summary and terrible,
that if any gang or gangs thereof presume to hoist but one shred of the
colours of the good ship _Nickleby_, we will hang them on gibbets so
lofty and enduring that their remains shall be a monument of our just
vengeance to all succeeding ages; and it shall not lie in the power of
any lord high admiral, on earth, to cause them to be taken down again."
The last paragraph of the proclamation informed the potentates of
Paternoster-row, that from the then ensuing day of the thirtieth of
March, until farther notice, "we shall hold our Levees, as heretofore,
on the last evening but one of every month, between the hours of seven
and nine, at our Board of Trade, number one hundred and eighty-six in
the Strand, London; where we again request the attendance (in vast
crowds) of their accredited agents and ambassadors. Gentlemen to wear
knots upon their shoulders; and patent cabs to draw up with their doors
towards the grand entrance, for the convenience of loading."
[76] This might seem not very credible if I did not give the passage
literally, and I therefore quote it from the careful translation of
_Taine's History of English Literature_ by Mr. Van Laun, one of the
masters of the Edinburgh Academy, where I will venture to hope that
other authorities on English Literature are at the same time admitted.
"Jonas" (also in _Chuzzlewit_) "is on the verge of madness. There are
other characters quite mad. Dickens has drawn three or four portraits of
madmen, very agreeable at first sight, but so true that they are in
reality horrible. It needed an imagination like his, irregular,
excessive, capable of fixed ideas, to exhibit the derangements of
reason. Two especially there are, which make us laugh, and which make us
shudder. Augustus, the gloomy maniac, who is on the point of marrying
Miss Pecksniff; and poor Mr. Dick, half an idiot, half a monomaniac, who
lives with Miss Trotwood. . . . The play of these shattered reasons is like
the creaking of a dislocated door; it makes one sick to hear it." (Vol.
ii. p. 346.) The original was published before Dickens's death, but he
certainly never saw it.
[77] He wrote from Marseilles (17th Dec. 1844). "When poor Overs was
dying he suddenly asked for a pen and ink and some paper, and made up a
little parcel for me which it was his last conscious act to direct. She
(his wife) told me this and gave it me. I opened it last night. It was a
copy of his little book in which he had written my name, 'With his
devotion.' I thought it simple and affecting of the poor fellow." From a
later letter a few lines may be added. "Mrs. Overs tells me" (Monte
Vacchi, 30th March, 1845) "that Miss Coutts has sent her, at different
times, sixteen pounds, has sent a doctor to her children, and has got
one of the girls into the Orphan School. When I wrote her a word in the
poor woman's behalf, she wrote me back to the effect that it was a
kindness to herself to have done so, 'for what is the use of my means
but to try and do some good with them?'"
CHAPTER V.
IDLENESS AT ALBARO: VILLA BAGNERELLO.
1844.
Arrival at Marseilles--A Character--Villa at
Genoa--Sirocco--Sunsets and Scenery--Address to
Maclise--French and Italian Skies--The
Mediterranean--The Cicala--French Consul of
Genoa--Learning Italian--Trades-people--Genoa
the Superb--Theatres--Italian Plays--Religious
Houses--Sunday Promenade--Winter Residence
chosen--Dinner at French Consul's--Reception at
M. di Negri's--A Tumble--English Visitors and
News--Visit of his Brother--Sea-bathing.
THE travelling party arrived at Marseilles on the evening of Sunday the
14th of July. Not being able to get vetturino horses in Paris, they had
come on, post; paying for nine horses but bringing only four, and
thereby saving a shilling a mile out of what the four would have cost in
England. So great thus far, however, had been the cost of travel, that
"what with distance, caravan, sight-seeing, and everything," two hundred
pounds would be nearly swallowed up before they were at their
destination. The success otherwise had been complete. The children had
not cried in their worst troubles, the carriage had gone lightly over
abominable roads, and the courier had proved himself a perfect gem.
"Surrounded by strange and perfectly novel circumstances," Dickens wrote
to me from Marseilles, "I feel as if I had a new head on side by side
with my old one."
To what shrewd and kindly observation the old one had helped him at
every stage of his journey, his published book of travel tells, and of
all that there will be nothing here; but a couple of experiences at his
outset, of which he told me afterwards, have enough character in them to
be worth mention.
Shortly before there had been some public interest about the captain of
a Boulogne steamer apprehended on a suspicion of having stolen specie,
but reinstated by his owners after a public apology to him on their
behalf; and Dickens had hardly set foot on the boat that was to carry
them across, when he was attracted by the look of its captain, and
discovered him after a few minutes' talk to be that very man. "Such an
honest, simple, good fellow, I never saw," said Dickens, as he imitated
for me the homely speech in which his confidences were related. The
Boulogne people, he said, had given him a piece of plate, "but Lord
bless us! it took a deal more than that to get him round again in his
own mind; and for weeks and weeks he was uncommon low to be sure.
Newgate, you see! What a place for a sea-faring man as had held up his
head afore the best on 'em, and had more friends, I mean to say, and I
do tell you the daylight truth, than any man on this station--ah! or any
other, I don't care where!"
His first experience in a foreign tongue he made immediately on landing,
when he had gone to the bank for money, and after delivering with most
laborious distinctness a rather long address in French to the clerk
behind the counter, was disconcerted by that functionary's cool enquiry
in the native-born Lombard-street manner, "How would you like to take
it, sir?" He took it, as everybody must, in five-franc pieces, and a
most inconvenient coinage he found it; for he required so much that he
had to carry it in a couple of small sacks, and was always "turning hot
about suddenly" taking it into his head that he had lost them.
The evening of Tuesday the 16th of July saw him in a villa at Albaro,
the suburb of Genoa in which, upon the advice of our Gore-house friends,
he had resolved to pass the summer months before taking up his quarters
in the city. His wish was to have had Lord Byron's house there, but it
had fallen into neglect and become the refuge of a third-rate wine-shop.
The matter had then been left to Angus Fletcher who just now lived near
Genoa, and he had taken at a rent absurdly above its value[78] an
unpicturesque and uninteresting dwelling, which at once impressed its
new tenant with its likeness to a pink jail. "It is," he said to me,
"the most perfectly lonely, rusty, stagnant old staggerer of a domain
that you can possibly imagine. What would I give if you could only look
round the courtyard! _I_ look down into it, whenever I am near that side
of the house, for the stable is so full of 'vermin and swarmers' (pardon
the quotation from my inimitable friend) that I always expect to see the
carriage going out bodily, with legions of industrious fleas harnessed
to and drawing it off, on their own account. We have a couple of Italian
work-people in our establishment; and to hear one or other of them
talking away to our servants with the utmost violence and volubility in
Genoese, and our servants answering with great fluency in English (very
loud: as if the others were only deaf, not Italian), is one of the most
ridiculous things possible. The effect is greatly enhanced by the
Genoese manner, which is exceedingly animated and pantomimic; so that
two friends of the lower class conversing pleasantly in the street,
always seem on the eve of stabbing each other forthwith. And a stranger
is immensely astonished at their not doing it."
The heat tried him less than he expected, excepting always the sirocco,
which, near the sea as they were, and right in the course of the wind as
it blew against the house, made everything hotter than if there had been
no wind. "One feels it most, on first getting up. Then, it is really so
oppressive that a strong determination is necessary to enable one to go
on dressing; one's tendency being to tumble down anywhere and lie
there." It seemed to hit him, he said, behind the knee, and made his
legs so shake that he could not walk or stand. He had unfortunately a
whole week of this without intermission, soon after his arrival; but
then came a storm, with wind from the mountains; and he could bear the
ordinary heat very well. What at first had been a home-discomfort, the
bare walls, lofty ceilings, icy floors, and lattice blinds, soon became
agreeable; there were regular afternoon breezes from the sea; in his
courtyard was a well of very pure and very cold water; there were new
milk and eggs by the bucketful, and, to protect from the summer insects
these and other dainties, there were fresh vine-leaves by the thousand;
and he satisfied himself, by the experience of a day or two in the city,
that he had done well to come first to its suburb by the sea. What
startled and disappointed him most were the frequent cloudy days.[79] He
opened his third letter (3rd of August) by telling me there was a thick
November fog, that rain was pouring incessantly, and that he did not
remember to have seen in his life, at that time of year, such cloudy
weather as he had seen beneath Italian skies.
"The story goes that it is in autumn and winter, when other countries
are dark and foggy, that the beauty and clearness of this are most
observable. I hope it may prove so; for I have postponed going round
the hills which encircle the city, or seeing any of the sights, until
the weather is more favourable.[80] I have never yet seen it so clear,
for any longer time of the day together, as on a bright, lark-singing,
coast-of-France-discerning day at Broadstairs; nor have I ever seen so
fine a sunset, _throughout_, as is very common there. But the scenery is
exquisite, and at certain periods of the evening and the morning the
blue of the Mediterranean surpasses all conception or description. It is
the most intense and wonderful colour, I do believe, in all nature."
In his second letter from Albaro there was more of this subject; and an
outbreak of whimsical enthusiasm in it, meant especially for Maclise, is
followed by some capital description. "I address you, my friend," he
wrote, "with something of the lofty spirit of an exile, a banished
commoner, a sort of Anglo-Pole. I don't exactly know what I have done
for my country in coming away from it, but I feel it is something;
something great; something virtuous and heroic. Lofty emotions rise
within me, when I see the sun set on the blue Mediterranean. I am the
limpet on the rock. My father's name is Turner, and my boots are
green. . . . Apropos of blue. In a certain picture called the Serenade for
which Browning wrote that verse[81] in Lincoln's-inn-fields, you, O Mac,
painted a sky. If you ever have occasion to paint the Mediterranean, let
it be exactly of that colour. It lies before me now, as deeply and
intensely blue. But no such colour is above me. Nothing like it. In the
south of France, at Avignon, at Aix, at Marseilles, I saw deep blue
skies; and also in America. But the sky above me is familiar to my
sight. Is it heresy to say that I have seen its twin brother shining
through the window of Jack Straw's--that down in Devonshire-terrace I
have seen a better sky? I dare say it is; but like a great many other
heresies, it is true. . . . But such green, green, green, as flutters in
the vineyard down below the windows, _that_ I never saw; nor yet such
lilac and such purple as float between me and the distant hills; nor yet
in anything, picture, book, or vestal boredom, such awful, solemn,
impenetrable blue, as in that same sea. It has such an absorbing,
silent, deep, profound effect, that I can't help thinking it suggested
the idea of Styx. It looks as if a draught of it, only so much as you
could scoop up on the beach in the hollow of your hand, would wash out
everything else, and make a great blue blank of your intellect. . . . When
the sun sets clearly, then, by Heaven, it is majestic. From any one of
eleven windows here, or from a terrace overgrown with grapes, you may
behold the broad sea, villas, houses, mountains, forts, strewn with rose
leaves. Strewn with them? Steeped in them! Dyed, through and through and
through. For a moment. No more. The sun is impatient and fierce (like
everything else in these parts), and goes down headlong. Run to fetch
your hat--and it's night. Wink at the right time of black night--and
it's morning. Everything is in extremes. There is an insect here that
chirps all day. There is one outside the window now. The chirp is very
loud: something like a Brobdingnagian grasshopper. The creature is born
to chirp; to progress in chirping; to chirp louder, louder, louder; till
it gives one tremendous chirp and bursts itself. That is its life and
death. Everything is 'in a concatenation accordingly.' The day gets
brighter, brighter, brighter, till it's night. The summer gets hotter,
hotter, hotter, till it explodes. The fruit gets riper, riper, riper,
till it tumbles down and rots. . . . Ask me a question or two about fresco:
will you be so good? All the houses are painted in fresco, hereabout
(the outside walls I mean, the fronts, backs, and sides), and all the
colour has run into damp and green seediness; and the very design has
straggled away into the component atoms of the plaster. Beware of
fresco! Sometimes (but not often) I can make out a Virgin with a
mildewed glory round her head, holding nothing in an undiscernible lap
with invisible arms; and occasionally the leg or arm of a cherub. But
it is very melancholy and dim. There are two old fresco-painted vases
outside my own gate, one on either hand, which are so faint that I never
saw them till last night; and only then, because I was looking over the
wall after a lizard who had come upon me while I was smoking a cigar
above, and crawled over one of these embellishments in his retreat. . . ."
That letter sketched for me the story of his travel through France, and
I may at once say that I thus received, from week to week, the "first
sprightly runnings" of every description in his _Pictures from Italy_.
But my rule as to the American letters must be here observed yet more
strictly; and nothing resembling his printed book, however distantly,
can be admitted into these pages. Even so my difficulty of rejection
will not be less; for as he had not actually decided, until the very
last, to publish his present experiences at all, a larger number of the
letters were left unrifled by him. He had no settled plan from the
first, as in the other case.
[Illustration]
His most valued acquaintance at Albaro was the French consul-general, a
student of our literature who had written on his books in one of the
French reviews, and who with his English wife lived in the very next
villa, though so oddly shut away by its vineyard that to get from the
one adjoining house to the other was a mile's journey.[82] Describing,
in that August letter, his first call from this new friend thus
pleasantly self-recommended, he makes the visit his excuse for breaking
off from a facetious description of French inns to introduce to me a
sketch, from a pencil outline by Fletcher, of what bore the imposing
name of the Villa di Bella vista, but which he called by the homelier
one of its proprietor, Bagnerello. "This, my friend, is quite accurate.
Allow me to explain it. You are standing, sir, in our vineyard, among
the grapes and figs. The Mediterranean is at your back as you look at
the house: of which two sides, out of four, are here depicted. The lower
story (nearly concealed by the vines) consists of the hall, a
wine-cellar, and some store-rooms. The three windows on the left of the
first floor belong to the sala, lofty and whitewashed, which has two
more windows round the corner. The fourth window _did_ belong to the
dining-room, but I have changed one of the nurseries for better air; and
it now appertains to that branch of the establishment. The fifth and
sixth, or two right-hand windows, sir, admit the light to the
inimitable's (and uxor's) chamber; to which the first window round the
right-hand corner, which you perceive in shadow, also belongs. The next
window in shadow, young sir, is the bower of Miss H. The next, a nursery
window; the same having two more round the corner again. The
bowery-looking place stretching out upon the left of the house is the
terrace, which opens out from a French window in the drawing-room on the
same floor, of which you see nothing: and forms one side of the
court-yard. The upper windows belong to some of those uncounted chambers
upstairs; the fourth one, longer than the rest, being in F.'s bedroom.
There is a kitchen or two up there besides, and my dressing-room; which
you can't see from this point of view. The kitchens and other offices
in use are down below, under that part of the house where the roof is
longest. On your left, beyond the bay of Genoa, about two miles off, the
Alps stretch off into the far horizon; on your right, at three or four
miles distance, are mountains crowned with forts. The intervening space
on both sides is dotted with villas, some green, some red, some yellow,
some blue, some (and ours among the number) pink. At your back, as I
have said, sir, is the ocean; with the slim Italian tower of the ruined
church of St. John the Baptist rising up before it, on the top of a pile
of savage rocks. You go through the court-yard, and out at the gate, and
down a narrow lane to the sea. Note. The sala goes sheer up to the top
of the house; the ceiling being conical, and the little bedrooms built
round the spring of its arch. You will observe that we make no
pretension to architectural magnificence, but that we have abundance of
room. And here I am, beholding only vines and the sea for days
together. . . . Good Heavens! How I wish you'd come for a week or two, and
taste the white wine at a penny farthing the pint. It is excellent.". . .
Then, after seven days: "I have got my paper and inkstand and figures
now (the box from Osnaburgh-terrace only came last Thursday), and can
think--I have begun to do so every morning--with a business-like air, of
the Christmas book. My paper is arranged, and my pens are spread out in
the usual form. I think you know the form--Don't you? My books have not
passed the custom-house yet, and I tremble for some volumes of
Voltaire. . . . I write in the best bedroom. The sun is off the corner
window at the side of the house by a very little after twelve; and I can
then throw the blinds open, and look up from my paper, at the sea, the
mountains, the washed-out villas, the vineyards, at the blistering white
hot fort with a sentry on the drawbridge standing in a bit of shadow no
broader than his own musket, and at the sky, as often as I like. It is a
very peaceful view, and yet a very cheerful one. Quiet as quiet can be."
Not yet however had the time for writing come. A sharp attack of illness
befell his youngest little daughter, Kate, and troubled him much. Then,
after beginning the Italian grammar himself, he had to call in the help
of a master; and this learning of the language took up time. But he had
an aptitude for it, and after a month's application told me (24th of
August) that he could ask in Italian for whatever he wanted in any shop
or coffee-house, and could read it pretty well. "I wish you could see
me" (16th of September), "without my knowing it, walking about alone
here. I am now as bold as a lion in the streets. The audacity with which
one begins to speak when there is no help for it, is quite astonishing."
The blank impossibility at the outset, however, of getting native
meanings conveyed to his English servants, he very humorously described
to me; and said the spell was first broken by the cook, "being really a
clever woman, and not entrenching herself in that astonishing pride of
ignorance which induces the rest to oppose themselves to the receipt of
any information through any channel, and which made A. careless of
looking out of window, in America, even to see the Falls of Niagara." So
that he soon had to report the gain, to all of them, from the fact of
this enterprising woman having so primed herself with "the names of all
sorts of vegetables, meats, soups, fruits, and kitchen necessaries,"
that she was able to order whatever was needful of the peasantry that
were trotting in and out all day, basketed and barefooted. Her example
became at once contagious;[83] and before the end of the second week of
September news reached me that "the servants are beginning to pick up
scraps of Italian; some of them go to a weekly conversazione of servants
at the Governor's every Sunday night, having got over their
consternation at the frequent introduction of quadrilles on these
occasions; and I think they begin to like their foreigneering life."
In the tradespeople they dealt with at Albaro he found amusing points of
character. Sharp as they were after money, their idleness quenched even
that propensity. Order for immediate delivery two or three pounds of
tea, and the tea-dealer would be wretched. "Won't it do to-morrow?" "I
want it now," you would reply; and he would say, "No, no, there can be
no hurry!" He remonstrated against the cruelty. But everywhere there was
deference, courtesy, more than civility. "In a café a little tumbler of
ice costs something less than threepence, and if you give the waiter in
addition what you would not offer to an English beggar, say, the third
of a halfpenny, he is profoundly grateful." The attentions received from
English residents were unremitting.[84] In moments of need at the
outset, they bestirred themselves ("large merchants and grave men") as
if they were the family's salaried purveyors; and there was in especial
one gentleman named Curry whose untiring kindness was long remembered.
The light, eager, active figure soon made itself familiar in the streets
of Genoa, and he never went into them without bringing some oddity away.
I soon heard of the strada Nuova and strada Balbi; of the broadest of
the two as narrower than Albany-street, and of the other as less wide
than Drury-lane or Wych-street; but both filled with palaces of noble
architecture and of such vast dimensions that as many windows as there
are days in the year might be counted in one of them, and this not
covering by any means the largest plot of ground. I heard too of the
other streets, none with footways, and all varying in degrees of
narrowness, but for the most part like Field-lane in Holborn, with
little breathing-places like St. Martin's-court; and the widest only in
parts wide enough to enable a carriage and pair to turn. "Imagine
yourself looking down a street of Reform Clubs cramped after this odd
fashion, the lofty roofs almost seeming to meet in the perspective." In
the churches nothing struck him so much as the profusion of trash and
tinsel in them that contrasted with their real splendours of
embellishment. One only, that of the Cappucini friars, blazed every inch
of it with gold, precious stones, and paintings of priceless art; the
principal contrast to its radiance being the dirt of its masters, whose
bare legs, corded waists, and coarse brown serge never changed by night
or day, proclaimed amid their corporate wealth their personal vows of
poverty. He found them less pleasant to meet and look at than the
country people of their suburb on festa-days, with the Indulgences that
gave them the right to make merry stuck in their hats like
turnpike-tickets. He did not think the peasant girls in general
good-looking, though they carried themselves daintily and walked
remarkably well: but the ugliness of the old women, begotten of hard
work and a burning sun, with porters' knots of coarse grey hair grubbed
up over wrinkled and cadaverous faces, he thought quite stupendous. He
was never in a street a hundred yards long without getting up perfectly
the witch part of _Macbeth_.
With the theatres of course he soon became acquainted, and of that of
the puppets he wrote to me again and again with humorous rapture. "There
are other things," he added, after giving me the account which is
published in his book, "too solemnly surprising to dwell upon. They must
be seen. They must be seen. The enchanter carrying off the bride is not
greater than his men brandishing fiery torches and dropping their
lighted spirits of wine at every shake. Also the enchanter himself,
when, hunted down and overcome, he leaps into the rolling sea, and finds
a watery grave. Also the second comic man, aged about 55 and like
George the Third in the face, when he gives out the play for the next
night. They must all be seen. They can't be told about. Quite
impossible." The living performers he did not think so good, a disbelief
in Italian actors having been always a heresy with him, and the
deplorable length of dialogue to the small amount of action in their
plays making them sadly tiresome. The first that he saw at the principal
theatre was a version of Balzac's _Père Goriot_. "The domestic Lear I
thought at first was going to be very clever. But he was too
pitiful--perhaps the Italian reality would be. He was immensely
applauded, though." He afterwards saw a version of Dumas' preposterous
play of _Kean_, in which most of the representatives of English actors
wore red hats with steeple crowns, and very loose blouses with broad
belts and buckles round their waists. "There was a mysterious person
called the Prince of Var-lees" (Wales), "the youngest and slimmest man
in the company, whose badinage in Kean's dressing-room was irresistible;
and the dresser wore top-boots, a Greek skull-cap, a black velvet
jacket, and leather breeches. One or two of the actors looked very hard
at me to see how I was touched by these English peculiarities--especially
when Kean kissed his male friends on both cheeks." The arrangements of
the house, which he described as larger than Drury-lane, he thought
excellent. Instead of a ticket for the private box he had taken on the
first tier, he received the usual key for admission which let him in as
if he lived there; and for the whole set-out, "quite as comfortable and
private as a box at our opera," paid only eight and fourpence English.
The opera itself had not its regular performers until after Christmas,
but in the summer there was a good comic company, and he saw the
_Scaramuccia_ and the _Barber of Seville_ brightly and pleasantly done.
There was also a day theatre, beginning at half past four in the
afternoon; but beyond the novelty of looking on at the covered stage as
he sat in the fresh pleasant air, he did not find much amusement in the
Goldoni comedy put before him. There came later a Russian circus, which
the unusual rains of that summer prematurely extinguished.
The Religious Houses he made early and many enquiries about, and there
was one that had stirred and baffled his curiosity much before he
discovered what it really was. All that was visible from the street was
a great high wall, apparently quite alone, no thicker than a party wall,
with grated windows, to which iron screens gave farther protection. At
first he supposed there had been a fire; but by degrees came to know
that on the other side were galleries, one above another, one above
another, and nuns always pacing them to and fro. Like the wall of a
racket-ground outside, it was inside a very large nunnery; and let the
poor sisters walk never so much, neither they nor the passers-by could
see anything of each other. It was close upon the Acqua Sola, too; a
little park with still young but very pretty trees, and fresh and
cheerful fountains, which the Genoese made their Sunday promenade; and
underneath which was an archway with great public tanks, where, at all
ordinary times, washerwomen were washing away, thirty or forty together.
At Albaro they were worse off in this matter: the clothes there being
washed in a pond, beaten with gourds, and whitened with a preparation of
lime: "so that," he wrote to me (24th of August), "what between the
beating and the burning they fall into holes unexpectedly, and my white
trowsers, after six weeks' washing, would make very good fishing-nets.
It is such a serious damage that when we get into the Peschiere we mean
to wash at home."
Exactly a fortnight before this date, he had hired rooms in the
Peschiere from the first of the following October; and so ended the
house-hunting for his winter residence, that had taken him so often to
the city. The Peschiere was the largest palace in Genoa let on hire, and
had the advantage of standing on a height aloof from the town,
surrounded by its own gardens. The rooms taken had been occupied by an
English colonel, the remainder of whose term was let to Dickens for 500
francs a month (£20); and a few days after (20th of August) he described
to me a fellow tenant: "A Spanish duke has taken the room under me in
the Peschiere. The duchess was his mistress many years, and bore him (I
think) six daughters. He always promised her that if she gave birth to a
son, he would marry her; and when at last the boy arrived, he went into
her bedroom, saying--'Duchess, I am charmed to "salute you!"' And he
married her in good earnest, and legitimatized (as by the Spanish law he
could) all the other children." The beauty of the new abode will justify
a little description when he takes up his quarters there. One or two
incidents may be related, meanwhile, of the closing weeks of his
residence at Albaro.
In the middle of August he dined with the French consul-general, and
there will now be no impropriety in printing his agreeable sketch of the
dinner. "There was present, among other Genoese, the Marquis di Negri: a
very fat and much older Jerdan, with the same thickness of speech and
size of tongue. He was Byron's friend, keeps open house here, writes
poetry, improvises, and is a very good old Blunderbore; just the sort of
instrument to make an artesian well with, anywhere. Well, sir, after
dinner, the consul proposed my health, with a little French conceit to
the effect that I had come to Italy to have personal experience of its
lovely climate, and that there was this similarity between the Italian
sun and its visitor, that the sun shone into the darkest places and made
them bright and happy with its benignant influence, and that my books
had done the like with the breasts of men, and so forth. Upon which
Blunderbore gives his bright-buttoned blue coat a great rap on the
breast, turns up his fishy eye, stretches out his arm like the living
statue defying the lightning at Astley's, and delivers four impromptu
verses in my honour, at which everybody is enchanted, and I more than
anybody--perhaps with the best reason, for I didn't understand a word of
them. The consul then takes from his breast a roll of paper, and says,
'I shall read them!' Blunderbore then says, 'Don't!' But the consul
does, and Blunderbore beats time to the music of the verse with his
knuckles on the table; and perpetually ducks forward to look round the
cap of a lady sitting between himself and me, to see what I think of
them. I exhibit lively emotion. The verses are in French--short line--on
the taking of Tangiers by the Prince de Joinville; and are received
with great applause; especially by a nobleman present who is reported to
be unable to read and write. They end in my mind (rapidly translating
them into prose) thus,--
'The cannon of France Rendering thanks
Shake the foundation To Heaven.
Of the wondering sea, The King
The artillery on the shore And all the Royal Family
Is put to silence. Are bathed
Honour to Joinville In tears.
And the Brave! They call upon the name
The Great Intelligence Of Joinville!
Is borne France also
Upon the wings of Fame Weeps, and echoes it.
To Paris. Joinville is crowned
Her national citizens With Immortality;
Exchange caresses And Peace and Joinville,
In the streets! And the Glory of France,
The temples are crowded Diffuse themselves
With religious patriots Conjointly.'
If you can figure to yourself the choice absurdity of receiving anything
into one's mind in this way, you can imagine the labour I underwent in
my attempts to keep the lower part of my face square, and to lift up one
eye gently, as with admiring attention. But I am bound to add that this
is really pretty literal; for I read them afterwards."
This, too, was the year of other uncomfortable glories of France in the
last three years of her Orleans dynasty; among them the Tahiti business,
as politicians may remember; and so hot became rumours of war with
England at the opening of September that Dickens had serious thoughts of
at once striking his tent. One of his letters was filled with the
conflicting doubts in which they lived for nigh a fortnight, every day's
arrival contradicting the arrival of the day before: so that, as he told
me, you met a man in the street to-day, who told you there would
certainly be war in a week; and you met the same man in the street
to-morrow, and he swore he always knew there would be nothing but peace;
and you met him again the day after, and he said it all depended _now_
on something perfectly new and unheard of before, which somebody else
said had just come to the knowledge of some consul in some dispatch
which said something about some telegraph which had been at work
somewhere, signalizing some prodigious intelligence. However, it all
passed harmlessly away, leaving him undisturbed opportunity to avail
himself of a pleasure that arose out of the consul-general's dinner
party, and to be present at a great reception given shortly after by the
good "old Blunderbore" just mentioned, on the occasion of his daughter's
birthday.
The Marquis had a splendid house, but Dickens found the grounds so
carved into grottoes and fanciful walks as to remind him of nothing so
much as our old White-conduit-house, except that he would have been well
pleased, on the present occasion, to have discovered a waiter crying,
"Give your orders, gents!" it being not easy to him at any time to keep
up, the whole night through, on ices and variegated lamps merely. But
the scene for awhile was amusing enough, and not rendered less so by the
delight of the Marquis himself, "who was constantly diving out into dark
corners and then among the lattice-work and flower pots, rubbing his
hands and going round and round with explosive chuckles in his huge
satisfaction with the entertainment." With horror it occurred to
Dickens, however, that four more hours of this kind of entertainment
would be too much; that the Genoa gates closed at twelve; and that as
the carriage had not been ordered till the dancing was expected to be
over and the gates to reopen, he must make a sudden bolt if he would
himself get back to Albaro. "I had barely time," he told me, "to reach
the gate before midnight; and was running as hard as I could go,
down-hill, over uneven ground, along a new street called the strada
Sevra, when I came to a pole fastened straight across the street, nearly
breast high, without any light or watchman--quite in the Italian style.
I went over it, headlong, with such force that I rolled myself
completely white in the dust; but although I tore my clothes to shreds,
I hardly scratched myself except in one place on the knee. I had no time
to think of it then, for I was up directly and off again to save the
gate: but when I got outside the wall, and saw the state I was in, I
wondered I had not broken my neck. I 'took it easy' after this, and
walked home, by lonely ways enough, without meeting a single soul. But
there is nothing to be feared, I believe, from midnight walks in this
part of Italy. In other places you incur the danger of being stabbed by
mistake; whereas the people here are quiet and good tempered, and very
rarely commit any outrage."
Such adventures, nevertheless, are seldom without consequences, and
there followed in this case a short but sharp attack of illness. It came
on with the old "unspeakable and agonizing pain in the side," for which
Bob Fagin had prepared and applied the hot bottles in the old warehouse
time; and it yielded quickly to powerful remedies. But for a few days he
had to content himself with the minor sights of Albaro. He sat daily in
the shade of the ruined chapel on the seashore. He looked in at the
festa in the small country church, consisting mainly of a tenor singer,
a seraphine, and four priests sitting gaping in a row on one side of the
altar "in flowered satin dresses and little cloth caps, looking exactly
like the band at a wild-beast-caravan." He was interested in the
wine-making, and in seeing the country tenants preparing their annual
presents for their landlords, of baskets of grapes and other fruit
prettily dressed with flowers. The season of the grapes, too, brought
out after dusk strong parties of rats to eat them as they ripened, and
so many shooting parties of peasants to get rid of these despoilers,
that as he first listened to the uproar of the firing and the echoes he
half fancied it a siege of Albaro. The flies mustered strong, too, and
the mosquitos;[85] so that at night he had to lie covered up with gauze,
like cold meat in a safe.
Of course all news from England, and especially visits paid him by
English friends who might be travelling in Italy, were a great delight.
This was the year when O'Connell was released from prison by the
judgment of the Lords on appeal. "I have no faith in O'Connell taking
the great position he might upon this: being beleaguered by vanity
always. Denman delights me. I am glad to think I have always liked him
so well. I am sure that whenever he makes a mistake, it _is_ a mistake;
and that no man lives who has a grander and nobler scorn of every mean
and dastard action. I would to Heaven it were decorous to pay him some
public tribute of respect . . . O'Connell's speeches are the old thing:
fretty, boastful, frothy, waspish at the voices in the crowd, and all
that: but with no true greatness. . . . What a relief to turn to that noble
letter of Carlyle's" (in which a timely testimony had been borne to the
truthfulness and honour of Mazzini), "which I think above all praise. My
love to him." Among his English visitors were Mr. Tagart's family, on
their way from a scientific congress at Milan; and Peter (now become
Lord) Robertson from Rome, of whose talk he wrote very pleasantly. The
sons of Burns had been entertained during the summer in Edinburgh at
what was called a Burns Festival, of which, through Jerrold who was
present, I had sent him no very favourable account; and this was now
confirmed by Robertson, whose letters had given him an "awful" narrative
of Wilson's speech, and of the whole business. "There was one man who
spoke a quarter of an hour or so, to the toast of the navy; and could
say nothing more than 'the--British--navy--always appreciates--' which
remarkable sentiment he repeated over and over again for that space of
time; and then sat down. Robertson told me also that Wilson's allusion
to, or I should rather say expatiation upon, the 'vices' of Burns,
excited but one sentiment of indignation and disgust: and added, very
sensibly, 'By God!--I want to know _what Burns did_! I never heard of
his doing anything that need be strange or unaccountable to the
Professor's mind. I think he must have mistaken the name, and fancied it
a dinner to the sons of _Burke_'--meaning of course the murderer. In
short he fully confirmed Jerrold in all respects." The same letter told
me, too, something of his reading. Jerrold's _Story of a Feather_ he had
derived much enjoyment from. "Gauntwolf's sickness and the career of
that snuffbox, masterly.[86] I have been deep in Voyages and Travels,
and in De Foe. Tennyson I have also been reading, again and again. What
a great creature he is! . . . What about the _Goldsmith_? Apropos, I am all
eagerness to write a story about the length of that most delightful of
all stories, the _Vicar of Wakefield_."
In the second week of September he went to meet his brother Frederick at
Marseilles, and bring him back over the Cornice road to pass a
fortnight's holiday at Genoa; and his description of the first inn upon
the Alps they slept in is too good to be lost. "We lay last night," he
wrote (9th of September) "at the first halting-place on this journey,
in an inn which is not entitled, as it ought to be, The house of call
for fleas and vermin in general, but is entitled the grand hotel of the
Post! I hardly know what to compare it to. It seemed something like a
house in Somers-town originally built for a wine-vaults and never
finished, but grown very old. There was nothing to eat in it and nothing
to drink. They had lost the teapot; and when they found it, they
couldn't make out what had become of the lid, which, turning up at last
and being fixed on to the teapot, couldn't be got off again for the
pouring in of more water. Fleas of elephantine dimensions were
gambolling boldly in the dirty beds; and the mosquitoes!--But let me
here draw a curtain (as I would have done if there had been any). We had
scarcely any sleep, and rose up with hands and arms hardly human."
In four days they were at Albaro, and the morning after their arrival
Dickens underwent the terrible shock of seeing his brother very nearly
drowned in the bay. He swam out into too strong a current,[87] and was
only narrowly saved by the accident of a fishing-boat preparing to leave
the harbour at the time. "It was a world of horror and anguish," Dickens
wrote to me, "crowded into four or five minutes of dreadful agitation;
and, to complete the terror of it, Georgy, Charlotte" (the nurse), "and
the children were on a rock in full view of it all, crying, as you may
suppose, like mad creatures." His own bathing was from the rock, and, as
he had already told me, of the most primitive kind. He went in whenever
he pleased, broke his head against sharp stones if he went in with that
end foremost, floundered about till he was all over bruises, and then
climbed and staggered out again. "Everybody wears a dress. Mine
extremely theatrical: Masaniello to the life: shall be preserved for
your inspection in Devonshire-terrace." I will add another personal
touch, also Masaniello-like, which marks the beginning of a change
which, though confined for the present to his foreign residence and
removed when he came to England, was resumed somewhat later, and in a
few more years wholly altered the aspect of his face. "The moustaches
are glorious, glorious. I have cut them shorter, and trimmed them a
little at the ends to improve the shape. They are charming, charming.
Without them, life would be a blank."
FOOTNOTES:
[78] He regretted one chance missed by his eccentric friend, which he
described to me just before he left Italy. "I saw last night an old
palazzo of the Doria, six miles from here, upon the sea, which De la Rue
urged Fletcher to take for us, when he was bent on that detestable villa
Bagnerello; which villa the Genoese have hired, time out of mind, for
one-fourth of what I paid, as they told him again and again before he
made the agreement. This is one of the strangest old palaces in Italy,
surrounded by beautiful _woods_ of great trees (an immense rarity here)
some miles in extent: and has upon the terrace a high tower, formerly a
prison for offenders against the family, and a defence against the
pirates. The present Doria lets it as it stands for £40 English--for the
year. . . . And the grounds are no expense; being proudly maintained by the
Doria, who spends this rent, when he gets it, in repairing the roof and
windows. It is a wonderful house; full of the most unaccountable
pictures and most incredible furniture: every room in it like the most
quaint and fanciful of Cattermole's pictures; and how many rooms I am
afraid to say." 2nd of June, 1845.
[79] "We have had a London sky until to-day," he wrote on the 20th of
July, "gray and cloudy as you please: but I am most disappointed, I
think, in the evenings, which are as commonplace as need be; for there
is no twilight, and as to the stars giving more light here than
elsewhere, that is humbug." The summer of 1844 seems to have been,
however, an unusually stormy and wet season. He wrote to me on the 21st
of October that they had had, so far, only four really clear days since
they came to Italy.
[80] "My faith on that-point is decidedly shaken, which reminds me to
ask you whether you ever read Simond's Tour in Italy. It is a most
charming book, and eminently remarkable for its excellent sense, and
determination not to give in to conventional lies." In a later letter he
says: "None of the books are unaffected and true but Simond's, which
charms me more and more by its boldness, and its frank exhibition of
that rare and admirable quality which enables a man to form opinions for
himself without a miserable and slavish reference to the pretended
opinions of other people. His notices of the leading pictures enchant
me. They are so perfectly just and faithful, and so whimsically shrewd."
Rome, 9th of March, 1845.
[81] I send my heart up to thee, all my heart
In this my singing!
For the stars help me, and the sea bears part;
The very night is clinging
Closer to Venice' streets to leave one space
Above me, whence thy face
May light my joyous heart to thee its dwelling-place.
Written to express Maclise's subject in the Academy catalogue.
[82] "Their house is next to ours on the right, with vineyard between;
but the place is so oddly contrived that one has to go a full mile round
to get to their door."
[83] Not however, happily for them, in another important particular, for
on the eve of their return to England she declared her intention of
staying behind and marrying an Italian. "She will have to go to
Florence, I find" (12th of May 1845), "to be married in Lord Holland's
house: and even then is only married according to the English law:
having no legal rights from such a marriage, either in France or Italy.
The man hasn't a penny. If there were an opening for a nice clean
restaurant in Genoa--which I don't believe there is, for the Genoese
have a natural enjoyment of dirt, garlic, and oil--it would still be a
very hazardous venture; as the priests will certainly damage the man, if
they can, for marrying a Protestant woman. However, the utmost I can do
is to take care, if such a crisis should arrive, that she shall not want
the means of getting home to England. As my father would observe, she
has sown and must reap."
[84] He had carried with him, I may here mention, letters of
introduction to residents in all parts of Italy, of which I believe he
delivered hardly one. Writing to me a couple of months before he left
the country he congratulated himself on this fact. "We are living very
quietly; and I am now more than ever glad that I have kept myself aloof
from the 'receiving' natives always, and delivered scarcely any of my
letters of introduction. If I had, I should have seen nothing and known
less. I have observed that the English women who have married foreigners
are invariably the most audacious in the license they assume. Think of
one lady married to a royal chamberlain (not here) who said at dinner to
the master of the house at a place where I was dining--that she had
brought back his _Satirist_, but didn't think there was quite so much
'fun' in it as there used to be. I looked at the paper afterwards, and
found it crammed with such vile obscenity as positively made one's hair
stand on end."
[85] What his poor little dog suffered should not be omitted from the
troubles of the master who was so fond of him. "Timber has had every
hair upon his body cut off because of the fleas, and he looks like the
ghost of a drowned dog come out of a pond after a week or so. It is very
awful to see him slide into a room. He knows the change upon him, and is
always turning round and round to look for himself. I think he'll die of
grief." Three weeks later: "Timber's hair is growing again, so that you
can dimly perceive him to be a dog. The fleas only keep three of his
legs off the ground now, and he sometimes moves of his own accord
towards some place where they don't want to go." His improvement was
slow, but after this continuous.
[86] A characteristic message for Jerrold came in a later letter (12th
of May, 1845): "I wish you would suggest to Jerrold for me as a Caudle
subject (if he pursue that idea). 'Mr. Caudle has incidentally remarked
that the house-maid is good-looking.'"
[87] Of the dangers of the bay he had before written to me (10th of
August). "A monk was drowned here on Saturday evening. He was bathing
with two other monks, who bolted when he cried out that he was
sinking--in consequence, I suppose, of his certainty of going to
Heaven."
CHAPTER VI.
WORK IN GENOA: PALAZZO PESCHIERE.
1844.
Palace of the Fish-ponds--Mural
Paintings--Peschiere Garden--A Peal of
Chimes--Governor's Levee--_Chimes_ a Plea for
the Poor--Dickens's Choice of a Hero--Religious
Sentiment--Dialogue in a Vision--Hard at
Work--First Outline of the _Chimes_--What the
Writing of it cost Him--Wild Weather--Coming to
London--Secret of the Visit--The Tale
finished--Proposed Travel.
IN the last week of September they moved from Albaro into Genoa, amid a
violent storm of wind and wet, "great guns blowing," the lightning
incessant, and the rain driving down in a dense thick cloud. But the
worst of the storm was over when they reached the Peschiere. As they
passed into it along the stately old terraces, flanked on either side
with antique sculptured figures, all the seven fountains were playing in
its gardens, and the sun was shining brightly on its groves of camellias
and orange-trees.
It was a wonderful place, and I soon became familiar with the several
rooms that were to form their home for the rest of their stay in Italy.
In the centre was the grand sala, fifty feet high, of an area larger
than "the dining-room of the Academy," and painted, walls and ceiling,
with frescoes three hundred years old, "as fresh as if the colours had
been laid on yesterday." On the same floor as this great hall were a
drawing-room, and a dining-room,[88] both covered also with frescoes
still bright enough to make them thoroughly cheerful, and both so nicely
proportioned as to give to their bigness all the effect of snugness.[89]
Out of these opened three other chambers that were turned into
sleeping-rooms and nurseries. Adjoining the sala, right and left, were
the two best bedrooms; "in size and shape like those at Windsor-castle
but greatly higher;" both having altars, a range of three windows with
stone balconies, floors tesselated in patterns of black and white stone,
and walls painted every inch: on the left, nymphs pursued by satyrs "as
large as life and as wicked;" on the right, "Phaeton larger than life,
with horses bigger than Meux and Co.'s, tumbling headlong down into the
best bed." The right-hand one he occupied with his wife, and of the left
took possession as a study; writing behind a big screen he had lugged
into it, and placed by one of the windows, from which he could see over
the city, as he wrote, as far as the lighthouse in its harbour. Distant
little over a mile as the crow flew, flashing five times in four
minutes, and on dark nights, as if by magic, illuminating brightly the
whole palace-front every time it shone, this lighthouse was one of the
wonders of Genoa.
[Illustration]
When it had all become more familiar to him, he was fond of dilating on
its beauties; and even the dreary sound of the chaunting from
neighbouring mass-performances, as it floated in at all the open
windows, which at first was a sad trouble, came to have its charm for
him. I remember a vivid account he gave me of a great festa on the hill
behind the house, when the people alternately danced under tents in the
open air and rushed to say a prayer or two in an adjoining church bright
with red and gold and blue and silver; so many minutes of dancing, and
of praying, in regular turns of each. But the view over into Genoa, on
clear bright days, was a never failing enjoyment. The whole city then,
without an atom of smoke, and with every possible variety of tower and
steeple pointing up into the sky, lay stretched out below his windows.
To the right and left were lofty hills, with every indentation in their
rugged sides sharply discernible; and on one side of the harbour
stretched away into the dim bright distance the whole of the Cornice,
its first highest range of mountains hoary with snow. Sitting down one
Spring day to write to me, he thus spoke of the sea and of the garden.
"Beyond the town is the wide expanse of the Mediterranean, as blue, at
this moment, as the most pure and vivid prussian blue on Mac's palette
when it is newly set; and on the horizon there is a red flush, seen
nowhere as it is here. Immediately below the windows are the gardens of
the house, with gold fish swimming and diving in the fountains; and
below them, at the foot of a steep slope, the public garden and drive,
where the walks are marked out by hedges of pink roses, which blush and
shine through the green trees and vines, close up to the balconies of
these windows. No custom can impair, and no description enhance, the
beauty of the scene."
All these and other glories and beauties, however, did not come to him
at once. They counted for little indeed when he first set himself
seriously to write. "Never did I stagger so upon a threshold before. I
seem as if I had plucked myself out of my proper soil when I left
Devonshire-terrace; and could take root no more until I return to it. . . .
Did I tell you how many fountains we have here? No matter. If they
played nectar, they wouldn't please me half so well as the West
Middlesex water-works at Devonshire-terrace." The subject for his new
Christmas story he had chosen, but he had not found a title for it, or
the machinery to work it with; when, at the moment of what seemed to be
his greatest trouble, both reliefs came. Sitting down one morning
resolute for work, though against the grain, his hand being out and
everything inviting to idleness, such a peal of chimes arose from the
city as he found to be "maddening." All Genoa lay beneath him, and up
from it, with some sudden set of the wind, came in one fell sound the
clang and clash of all its steeples, pouring into his ears, again and
again, in a tuneless, grating, discordant, jerking, hideous vibration
that made his ideas "spin round and round till they lost themselves in a
whirl of vexation and giddiness, and dropped down dead." He had never
before so suffered, nor did he again; but this was his description to me
next day, and his excuse for having failed in a promise to send me his
title. Only two days later, however, came a letter in which not a
syllable was written but "We have heard THE CHIMES at midnight, Master
Shallow!" and I knew he had discovered what he wanted.
Other difficulties were still to be got over. He craved for the London
streets. He so missed his long night-walks before beginning anything
that he seemed, as he said, dumbfounded without them. "I can't help
thinking of the boy in the school-class whose button was cut off by
Walter Scott and his friends. Put me down on Waterloo-bridge at eight
o'clock in the evening, with leave to roam about as long as I like, and
I would come home, as you know, panting to go on. I am sadly strange as
it is, and can't settle. You will have lots of hasty notes from me while
I am at work; but you know your man; and whatever strikes me, I shall
let off upon you as if I were in Devonshire-terrace. It's a great thing
to have my title, and see my way how to work the bells. Let them clash
upon me now from all the churches and convents in Genoa, I see nothing
but the old London belfry I have set them in. In my mind's eye, Horatio.
I like more and more my notion of making, in this little book, a great
blow for the poor. Something powerful, I think I can do, but I want to
be tender too, and cheerful; as like the _Carol_ in that respect as may
be, and as unlike it as such a thing can be. The duration of the action
will resemble it a little, but I trust to the novelty of the machinery
to carry that off; and if my design be anything at all, it has a grip
upon the very throat of the time." (8th of October.)
Thus bent upon his work, for which he never had been in more earnest
mood, he was disturbed by hearing that he must attend the levee of the
Governor who had unexpectedly arrived in the city, and who would take it
as an affront, his eccentric friend Fletcher told him, if that courtesy
were not immediately paid. "It was the morning on which I was going to
begin, so I wrote round to our consul,"--praying, of course, that excuse
should be made for him. Don't bother yourself, replied that sensible
functionary, for all the consuls and governors alive; but shut yourself
up by all means. "So," continues Dickens, telling me the tale, "he went
next morning in great state and full costume, to present two English
gentlemen. 'Where's the great poet?' said the Governor. 'I want to see
the great poet.' 'The great poet, your excellency,' said the consul, 'is
at work, writing a book, and begged me to make his excuses.' 'Excuses!'
said the Governor, 'I wouldn't interfere with such an occupation for all
the world. Pray tell him that my house is open to the honour of his
presence when it is perfectly convenient for him; but not otherwise.
And let no gentleman,' said the Governor, a surweyin' of his suite
with a majestic eye, 'call upon Signor Dickens till he is understood
to be disengaged.' And he sent somebody with his own cards next day.
Now I _do_ seriously call this, real politeness and pleasant
consideration--not positively American, but still gentlemanly and
polished. The same spirit pervades the inferior departments; and I have
not been required to observe the usual police regulations, or to put
myself to the slightest trouble about anything." (18th of October.)
The picture I am now to give of him at work should be prefaced by a word
or two that may throw light on the design he was working at. It was a
large theme for so small an instrument; and the disproportion was not
more characteristic of the man, than the throes of suffering and passion
to be presently undergone by him for results that many men would smile
at. He was bent, as he says, on striking a blow for the poor. They had
always been his clients, they had never been forgotten in any of his
books, but here nothing else was to be remembered. He had become, in
short, terribly earnest in the matter. Several months before he left
England, I had noticed in him the habit of more gravely regarding many
things before passed lightly enough; the hopelessness of any true
solution of either political or social problems by the ordinary
Downing-street methods had been startlingly impressed on him in
Carlyle's writings; and in the parliamentary talk of that day he had
come to have as little faith for the putting down of any serious evil,
as in a then notorious city Alderman's gabble for the putting down of
suicide. The latter had stirred his indignation to its depths just
before he came to Italy, and his increased opportunities of solitary
reflection since had strengthened and extended it. When he came
therefore to think of his new story for Christmas time, he resolved to
make it a plea for the poor. He did not want it to resemble his _Carol_,
but the same kind of moral was in his mind. He was to try and convert
Society, as he had converted Scrooge, by showing that its happiness
rested on the same foundations as those of the individual, which are
mercy and charity not less than justice. Whether right or wrong in these
assumptions, need not be questioned here, where facts are merely stated
to render intelligible what will follow; he had not made politics at any
time a study, and they were always an instinct with him rather than a
science; but the instinct was wholesome and sound, and to set class
against class never ceased to be as odious to him as he thought it
righteous at all times to help each to a kindlier knowledge of the
other. And so, here in Italy, amid the grand surroundings of this
Palazzo Peschiere, the hero of his imagination was to be a sorry old
drudge of a London ticket-porter, who in his anxiety not to distrust or
think hardly of the rich, has fallen into the opposite extreme of
distrusting the poor. From such distrust it is the object of the story
to reclaim him; and, to the writer of it, the tale became itself of less
moment than what he thus intended it to enforce. Far beyond mere vanity
in authorship went the passionate zeal with which he began, and the
exultation with which he finished, this task. When we met at its close,
he was fresh from Venice, which had impressed him as "the wonder" and
"the new sensation" of the world: but well do I remember how high above
it all arose the hope that filled his mind. "Ah!" he said to me, "when I
saw those places, how I thought that to leave one's hand upon the time,
lastingly upon the time, with one tender touch for the mass of toiling
people that nothing could obliterate, would be to lift oneself above the
dust of all the Doges in their graves, and stand upon a giant's
staircase that Sampson couldn't overthrow!" In varying forms this
ambition was in all his life.
Another incident of these days will exhibit aspirations of a more solemn
import that were not less part of his nature. It was depth of sentiment
rather than clearness of faith which kept safe the belief on which they
rested against all doubt or question of its sacredness, but every year
seemed to strengthen it in him. This was told me in his second letter
after reaching the Peschiere; the first having sent me some such
commissions in regard to his wife's family as his kindly care for all
connected with him frequently led to. "Let me tell you," he wrote (30th
of September), "of a curious dream I had, last Monday night; and of the
fragments of reality I can collect; which helped to make it up. I have
had a return of rheumatism in my back, and knotted round my waist like a
girdle of pain; and had laid awake nearly all that night under the
infliction, when I fell asleep and dreamed this dream. Observe that
throughout I was as real, animated, and full of passion as Macready (God
bless him!) in the last scene of _Macbeth_. In an indistinct place,
which was quite sublime in its indistinctness, I was visited by a
Spirit. I could not make out the face, nor do I recollect that I desired
to do so. It wore a blue drapery, as the Madonna might in a picture by
Raphael; and bore no resemblance to any one I have known except in
stature. I think (but I am not sure) that I recognized the voice.
Anyway, I knew it was poor Mary's spirit. I was not at all afraid, but
in a great delight, so that I wept very much, and stretching out my arms
to it called it 'Dear.' At this, I thought it recoiled; and I felt
immediately, that not being of my gross nature, I ought not to have
addressed it so familiarly. 'Forgive me!' I said. 'We poor living
creatures are only able to express ourselves by looks and words. I have
used the word most natural to _our_ affections; and you know my heart.'
It was so full of compassion and sorrow for me--which I knew
spiritually, for, as I have said, I didn't perceive its emotions by its
face--that it cut me to the heart; and I said, sobbing, 'Oh! give me
some token that you have really visited me!' 'Form a wish,' it said. I
thought, reasoning with myself: 'If I form a selfish wish, it will
vanish.' So I hastily discarded such hopes and anxieties of my own as
came into my mind, and said, 'Mrs. Hogarth is surrounded with great
distresses'--observe, I never thought of saying 'your mother' as to a
mortal creature--'will you extricate her?' 'Yes.' 'And her extrication
is to be a certainty to me, that this has really happened?' 'Yes.' 'But
answer me one other question!' I said, in an agony of entreaty lest it
should leave me. 'What is the True religion?' As it paused a moment
without replying, I said--Good God in such an agony of haste, lest it
should go away!--'You think, as I do, that the Form of religion does not
so greatly matter, if we try to do good? or,' I said, observing that it
still hesitated, and was moved with the greatest compassion for me,
'perhaps the Roman Catholic is the best? perhaps it makes one think of
God oftener, and believe in him more steadily?' 'For _you_,' said the
Spirit, full of such heavenly tenderness for me, that I felt as if my
heart would break; 'for _you_, it is the best!' Then I awoke, with the
tears running down my face, and myself in exactly the condition of the
dream. It was just dawn. I called up Kate, and repeated it three or four
times over, that I might not unconsciously make it plainer or stronger
afterwards. It was exactly this. Free from all hurry, nonsense, or
confusion, whatever. Now, the strings I can gather up, leading to this,
were three. The first you know, from the main subject of my last letter.
The second was, that there is a great altar in our bed-room, at which
some family who once inhabited this palace had mass performed in old
time: and I had observed within myself, before going to bed, that there
was a mark in the wall, above the sanctuary, where a religious picture
used to be; and I had wondered within myself what the subject might have
been, _and what the face was like_. Thirdly, I had been listening to the
convent bells (which ring at intervals in the night), and so had
thought, no doubt, of Roman Catholic services. And yet, for all this,
put the case of that wish being fulfilled by any agency in which I had
no hand; and I wonder whether I should regard it as a dream, or an
actual Vision!" It was perhaps natural that he should omit, from his own
considerations awakened by the dream, the very first that would have
risen in any mind to which his was intimately known--that it strengthens
other evidences, of which there are many in his life, of his not having
escaped those trying regions of reflection which most men of thought and
all men of genius have at some time to pass through. In such disturbing
fancies during the next year or two, I may add that the book which
helped him most was the _Life of Arnold_. "I respect and reverence his
memory," he wrote to me in the middle of October, in reply to my mention
of what had most attracted myself in it, "beyond all expression. I must
have that book. Every sentence that you quote from it is the text-book
of my faith."
He kept his promise that I should hear from him while writing, and I had
frequent letters when he was fairly in his work. "With my steam very
much up, I find it a great trial to be so far off from you, and
consequently to have no one (always excepting Kate and Georgy) to whom
to expatiate on my day's work. And I want a crowded street to plunge
into at night. And I want to be 'on the spot' as it were. But apart from
such things, the life I lead is favourable to work." In his next letter:
"I am in regular, ferocious excitement with the _Chimes_; get up at
seven; have a cold bath before breakfast; and blaze away, wrathful and
red-hot, until three o'clock or so; when I usually knock off (unless it
rains) for the day . . . I am fierce to finish in a spirit bearing some
affinity to those of truth and mercy, and to shame the cruel and the
canting. I have not forgotten my catechism. 'Yes verily, and with God's
help, so I will!'"
Within a week he had completed his first part, or quarter. "I send you
to-day" (18th of October), "by mail, the first and longest of the four
divisions. This is great for the first week, which is usually up-hill. I
have kept a copy in shorthand in case of accidents. I hope to send you a
parcel every Monday until the whole is done. I do not wish to influence
you, but it has a great hold upon me, and has affected me, in the doing,
in divers strong ways, deeply, forcibly. To give you better means of
judgment I will sketch for you the general idea, but pray don't read it
until you have read this first part of the MS." I print it here. It is a
good illustration of his method in all his writing. His idea is in it so
thoroughly, that, by comparison with the tale as printed, we see the
strength of its mastery over his first design. Thus always, whether his
tale was to be written in one or in twenty numbers, his fancies
controlled him. He never, in any of his books, accomplished what he had
wholly preconceived, often as he attempted it. Few men of genius ever
did. Once at the sacred heat that opens regions beyond ordinary vision,
imagination has its own laws; and where characters are so real as to be
treated as existences, their creator himself cannot help them having
their own wills and ways. Fern the farm-labourer is not here, nor yet
his niece the little Lilian (at first called Jessie) who is to give to
the tale its most tragical scene; and there are intimations of poetic
fancy at the close of my sketch which the published story fell short of.
Altogether the comparison is worth observing.
"The general notion is this. That what happens to poor Trotty in the
first part, and what will happen to him in the second (when he takes the
letter to a punctual and a great man of business, who is balancing his
books and making up his accounts, and complacently expatiating on the
necessity of clearing off every liability and obligation, and turning
over a new leaf and starting fresh with the new year), so dispirits him,
who can't do this, that he comes to the conclusion that his class and
order have no business with a new year, and really are 'intruding.' And
though he will pluck up for an hour or so, at the christening (I think)
of a neighbour's child, that evening: still, when he goes home, Mr.
Filer's precepts will come into his mind, and he will say to himself,
'we are a long way past the proper average of children, and it has no
business to be born:' and will be wretched again. And going home, and
sitting there alone, he will take that newspaper out of his pocket, and
reading of the crimes and offences of the poor, especially of those whom
Alderman Cute is going to put down, will be quite confirmed in his
misgiving that they are bad; irredeemably bad. In this state of mind, he
will fancy that the Chimes are calling, to him; and saying to himself
'God help me. Let me go up to 'em. I feel as if I were going to die in
despair--of a broken heart; let me die among the bells that have been a
comfort to me!'--will grope his way up into the tower; and fall down in
a kind of swoon among them. Then the third quarter, or in other words
the beginning of the second half of the book, will open with the Goblin
part of the thing: the bells ringing, and innumerable spirits (the sound
or vibration of them) flitting and tearing in and out of the
church-steeple, and bearing all sorts of missions and commissions and
reminders and reproaches, and comfortable recollections and what not, to
all sorts of people and places. Some bearing scourges; and others
flowers, and birds, and music; and others pleasant faces in mirrors, and
others ugly ones: the bells haunting people in the night (especially the
last of the old year) according to their deeds. And the bells
themselves, who have a goblin likeness to humanity in the midst of their
proper shapes, and who shine in a light of their own, will say (the
Great Bell being the chief spokesman) Who is he that being of the poor
doubts the right of poor men to the inheritance which Time reserves for
them, and echoes an unmeaning cry against his fellows? Toby, all aghast,
will tell him it is he, and why it is. Then the spirits of the bells
will bear him through the air to various scenes, charged with this
trust: That they show him how the poor and wretched, at the worst--yes,
even in the crimes that aldermen put down, and he has thought so
horrible--have some deformed and hunchbacked goodness clinging to them;
and how they have their right and share in Time. Following out the
history of Meg the Bells will show her, that marriage broken off and all
friends dead, with an infant child; reduced so low, and made so
miserable, as to be brought at last to wander out at night. And in
Toby's sight, her father's, she will resolve to drown herself and the
child together. But before she goes down to the water, Toby will see how
she covers it with a part of her own wretched dress, and adjusts its
rags so as to make it pretty in its sleep, and hangs over it, and
smooths its little limbs, and loves it with the dearest love that God
ever gave to mortal creatures; and when she runs down to the water, Toby
will cry 'Oh spare her! Chimes, have mercy on her! Stop her!'--and the
bells will say, 'Why stop her? She is bad at heart--let the bad die.'
And Toby on his knees will beg and pray for mercy: and in the end the
bells will stop her, by their voices, just in time. Toby will see, too,
what great things the punctual man has left undone on the close of the
old year, and what accounts he has left unsettled: punctual as he is.
And he will see a great many things about Richard, once so near being
his son-in-law, and about a great many people. And the moral of it all
will be, that he has his portion in the new year no less than any other
man, and that the poor require a deal of beating out of shape before
their human shape is gone; that even in their frantic wickedness there
may be good in their hearts triumphantly asserting itself, though all
the aldermen alive say 'No,' as he has learnt from the agony of his own
child; and that the truth is Trustfulness in them, not doubt, nor
putting down, nor filing them away. And when at last a great sea rises,
and this sea of Time comes sweeping down, bearing the alderman and such
mudworms of the earth away to nothing, dashing them to fragments in its
fury--Toby will climb a rock and hear the bells (now faded from his
sight) pealing out upon the waters. And as he hears them, and looks
round for help, he will wake up and find himself with the newspaper
lying at his foot; and Meg sitting opposite to him at the table, making
up the ribbons for her wedding to-morrow; and the window open, that the
sound of the bells ringing the old year out and the new year in may
enter. They will just have broken out, joyfully; and Richard will dash
in to kiss Meg before Toby, and have the first kiss of the new year
(he'll get it too); and the neighbours will crowd round with good
wishes; and a band will strike up gaily (Toby knows a Drum in private);
and the altered circumstances, and the ringing of the bells, and the
jolly musick, will so transport the old fellow that he will lead off a
country dance forthwith in an entirely new step, consisting of his old
familiar trot. Then quoth the inimitable--Was it a dream of Toby's after
all? Or is Toby but a dream? and Meg a dream? and all a dream! In
reference to which, and the realities of which dreams are born, the
inimitable will be wiser than he can be now, writing for dear life, with
the post just going, and the brave C booted. . . . Ah how I hate myself, my
dear fellow, for this lame and halting outline of the Vision I have in
my mind. But it must go to you. . . . You will say what is best for the
frontispiece". . . .
With the second part or quarter, after a week's interval, came
announcement of the enlargement of his plan, by which he hoped better to
carry out the scheme of the story, and to get, for its following part,
an effect for his heroine that would increase the tragic interest. "I am
still in stout heart with the tale. I think it well-timed and a good
thought; and as you know I wouldn't say so to anybody else, I don't mind
saying freely thus much. It has great possession of me every moment in
the day; and drags me where it will. . . . If you only could have read it
all at once!--But you never would have done that, anyway, for I never
should have been able to keep it to myself; so that's nonsense. I hope
you'll like it. I would give a hundred pounds (and think it cheap) to
see you read it. . . . Never mind."
That was the first hint of an intention of which I was soon to hear
more; but meanwhile, after eight more days, the third part came, with
the scene from which he expected so much, and with a mention of what the
writing of it had cost him. "This book (whether in the Hajji Baba sense
or not I can't say, but certainly in the literal one) has made my face
white in a foreign land. My cheeks, which were beginning to fill out,
have sunk again; my eyes have grown immensely large; my hair is very
lank; and the head inside the hair is hot and giddy. Read the scene at
the end of the third part, twice. I wouldn't write it twice, for
something. . . . You will see that I have substituted the name of Lilian
for Jessie. It is prettier in sound, and suits my music better. I
mention this, lest you should wonder who and what I mean by that name.
To-morrow I shall begin afresh (starting the next part with a broad
grin, and ending it with the very soul of jollity and happiness); and I
hope to finish by next Monday at latest. Perhaps on Saturday. I hope you
will like the little book. Since I conceived, at the beginning of the
second part, what must happen in the third, I have undergone as much
sorrow and agitation as if the thing were real; and have wakened up with
it at night. I was obliged to lock myself in when I finished it
yesterday, for my face was swollen for the time to twice its proper
size, and was hugely ridiculous.". . . His letter ended abruptly. "I am
going for a long walk, to clear my head. I feel that I am very shakey
from work, and throw down my pen for the day. There! (That's where it
fell.)" A huge blot represented it, and, as Hamlet says, the rest was
silence.
Two days later, answering a letter from me that had reached in the
interval, he gave sprightlier account of himself, and described a happy
change in the weather. Up to this time, he protested, they had not had
more than four or five clear days. All the time he had been writing they
had been wild and stormy. "Wind, hail, rain, thunder and lightning.
To-day," just before he sent me his last manuscript, "has been November
slack-baked, the sirocco having come back; and to-night it blows great
guns with a raging storm." "Weather worse," he wrote after three
Mondays, "than any November English weather I have ever beheld, or any
weather I have had experience of anywhere. So horrible to-day that all
power has been rained and gloomed out of me. Yesterday, in pure
determination to get the better of it, I walked twelve miles in
mountain rain. You never saw it rain. Scotland and America are nothing
to it." But now all this was over. "The weather changed on Saturday
night, and has been glorious ever since. I am afraid to say more in its
favour, lest it should change again." It did not. I think there were no
more complainings. I heard now of autumn days with the mountain wind
lovely, enjoyable, exquisite past expression. I heard of mountain walks
behind the Peschiere, most beautiful and fresh, among which, and along
the beds of dry rivers and torrents, he could "pelt away," in any dress,
without encountering a soul but the contadini. I heard of his starting
off one day after finishing work, "fifteen miles to dinner--oh my stars!
at such an inn!!!" On another day, of a party to dinner at their
pleasant little banker's at Quinto six miles off, to which, while the
ladies drove, he was able "to walk in the sun of the middle of the day
and to walk home again at night." On another, of an expedition up the
mountain on mules. And on another of a memorable tavern-dinner with
their merchant friend Mr. Curry, in which there were such successions of
surprising dishes of genuine native cookery that they took two hours in
the serving, but of the component parts of not one of which was he able
to form the remotest conception: the site of the tavern being on the
city wall, its name in Italian sounding very romantic and meaning "the
Whistle," and its bill of fare kept for an experiment to which, before
another month should be over, he dared and challenged my cookery in
Lincoln's-inn.
A visit from him to London was to be expected almost immediately! That
all remonstrance would be idle, under the restless excitement his work
had awakened, I well knew. It was not merely the wish he had, natural
enough, to see the last proofs and the woodcuts before the day of
publication, which he could not otherwise do; but it was the stronger
and more eager wish, before that final launch, to have a vivider sense
than letters could give him of the effect of what he had been doing. "If
I come, I shall put up at Cuttris's" (then the Piazza-hotel in
Covent-garden) "that I may be close to you. Don't say to anybody, except
our immediate friends, that I am coming. Then I shall not be bothered.
If I should preserve my present fierce writing humour, in any pass I may
run to Venice, Bologna, and Florence, before I turn my face towards
Lincoln's-inn-fields; and come to England by Milan and Turin. But this
of course depends in a great measure on your reply." My reply, dwelling
on the fatigue and cost, had the reception I foresaw. "Notwithstanding
what you say, I am still in the same mind about coming to London. Not
because the proofs concern me at all (I should be an ass as well as a
thankless vagabond if they did), but because of that unspeakable
restless something which would render it almost as impossible for me to
remain here and not see the thing complete, as it would be for a full
balloon, left to itself, not to go up. I do not intend coming from
_here_, but by way of Milan and Turin (previously going to Venice), and
so, across the wildest pass of the Alps that may be open, to
Strasburg. . . . As you dislike the Young England gentleman I shall knock
him out, and replace him by a man (I can dash him in at your rooms in an
hour) who recognizes no virtue in anything but the good old times, and
talks of them, parrot-like, whatever the matter is. A real good old city
tory, in a blue coat and bright buttons and a white cravat, and with a
tendency of blood to the head. File away at Filer, as you please; but
bear in mind that the _Westminster Review_ considered Scrooge's
presentation of the turkey to Bob Cratchit as grossly incompatible with
political economy. I don't care at all for the skittle-playing." These
were among things I had objected to.
But the close of his letter revealed more than its opening of the
reason, not at once so frankly confessed, for the long winter-journey he
was about to make; and if it be thought that, in printing the passage, I
take a liberty with my friend, it will be found that equal liberty is
taken with myself, whom it goodnaturedly caricatures; so that the reader
can enjoy his laugh at either or both. "Shall I confess to you, I
particularly want Carlyle above all to see it before the rest of the
world, when it is done; and I should like to inflict the little story on
him and on dear old gallant Macready with my own lips, and to have
Stanny and the other Mac sitting by. Now, if you was a real gent, you'd
get up a little circle for me, one wet evening, when I come to town: and
would say, 'My boy (SIR, will you have the goodness to leave those books
alone and to go downstairs--WHAT the Devil are you doing! And mind, sir,
I can see nobody--do you hear? Nobody. I am particularly engaged with a
gentleman from Asia)--My boy, would you give us that little Christmas
book (a little Christmas book of Dickens's, Macready, which I'm anxious
you should hear); and don't slur it, now, or be too fast, Dickens,
please!'--I say, if you was a real gent, something to this effect might
happen. I shall be under sailing orders the moment I have finished. And
I shall produce myself (please God) in London on the very day you name.
For one week: to the hour."
The wish was complied with, of course; and that night in
Lincoln's-inn-fields led to rather memorable issues. His next letter
told me the little tale was done. "Third of November, 1844. Half-past
two, afternoon. Thank God! I have finished the _Chimes_. This moment. I
take up my pen again to-day; to say only that much; and to add that I
have had what women call 'a real good cry!'" Very genuine all this, it
is hardly necessary to say. The little book thus completed was not one
of his greater successes, and it raised him up some objectors; but there
was that in it which more than repaid the suffering its writing cost
him, and the enmity its opinions provoked; and in his own heart it had a
cherished corner to the last. The intensity of it seemed always best to
represent to himself what he hoped to be longest remembered for; and
exactly what he felt as to this, his friend Jeffrey warmly expressed.
"All the tribe of selfishness, and cowardice and cant, will hate you in
their hearts, and cavil when they can; will accuse you of wicked
exaggeration, and excitement to discontent, and what they pleasantly
call disaffection! But never mind. The good and the brave are with you,
and the truth also."
He resumed his letter on the fourth of November. "Here is the brave
courier measuring bits of maps with a carving-fork, and going up
mountains on a teaspoon. He and I start on Wednesday for Parma, Modena,
Bologna, Venice, Verona, Brescia, and Milan. Milan being within a
reasonable journey from here, Kate and Georgy will come to meet me when
I arrive there on my way towards England; and will bring me all letters
from you. I shall be there on the 18th. . . . Now, you know my
punctiwality. Frost, ice, flooded rivers, steamers, horses, passports,
and custom-houses may damage it. But my design is, to walk into
Cuttris's coffee-room on Sunday the 1st of December, in good time for
dinner. I shall look for you at the farther table by the fire--where we
generally go. . . . But the party for the night following? I know you have
consented to the party. Let me see. Don't have any one, this particular
night, to dinner, but let it be a summons for the special purpose at
half-past 6. Carlyle, indispensable, and I should like his wife of all
things: _her_ judgment would be invaluable. You will ask Mac, and why
not his sister? Stanny and Jerrold I should particularly wish; Edwin
Landseer; Blanchard; perhaps Harness; and what say you to Fonblanque and
Fox? I leave it to you. You know the effect I want to try . . . Think the
_Chimes_ a letter, my dear fellow, and forgive this. I will not fail to
write to you on my travels. Most probably from Venice. And when I meet
you (in sound health I hope) oh Heaven! what a week we will have."
FOOTNOTES:
[88] "Into which we might put your large room--I wish we could!--away in
one corner, and dine without knowing it."
[89] "Very vast you will say, and very dreary; but it is not so really.
The paintings are so fresh, and the proportions so agreeable to the eye,
that the effect is not only cheerful but snug. . . . We are a little
incommoded by applications from strangers to go over the interior. The
paintings were designed by Michael Angelo, and have a great
reputation. . . . Certain of these frescoes were reported officially to the
Fine Art Commissioners by Wilson as the best in Italy . . . I allowed a
party of priests to be shown the great hall yesterday . . . It is in
perfect repair, and the doors almost shut--which is quite a miraculous
circumstance. I wish you could see it, my dear F. Gracious Heavens! if
you could only _come back_ with me, wouldn't I soon flash on your
astonished sight." (6th of October.)
CHAPTER VII.
ITALIAN TRAVEL.
1844.
Cities and People--Venice--Proposed Travel--At
Lodi--Paintings--The Inns--Dinner at the
Peschiere--Custom-house Officers--At Milan--At
Strasburg--Return to London--A Macready
Rehearsal--Friendly Americans.
SO it all fell out accordingly. He parted from his disconsolate wife, as
he told me in his first letter from Ferrara, on Wednesday the 6th of
November: left her shut up in her palace like a baron's lady in the time
of the crusades; and had his first real experience of the wonders of
Italy. He saw Parma, Modena, Bologna, Ferrara, Venice, Verona, and
Mantua. As to all which the impressions conveyed to me in his letters
have been more or less given in his published _Pictures_. They are
charmingly expressed. There is a sketch of a cicerone at Bologna which
will remain in his books among their many delightful examples of his
unerring and loving perception for every gentle, heavenly, and tender
soul, under whatever conventional disguise it wanders here on earth,
whether as poorhouse orphan or lawyer's clerk, architect's pupil at
Salisbury or cheerful little guide to graves at Bologna; and there is
another memorable description in his Rembrandt sketch, in form of a
dream, of the silent, unearthly, watery wonders of Venice. This last,
though not written until after his London visit, had been prefigured so
vividly in what he wrote at once from the spot, that those passages from
his letter[90] may be read still with a quite undiminished interest. "I
must not," he said, "anticipate myself. But, my dear fellow, nothing in
the world that ever you have heard of Venice, is equal to the
magnificent and stupendous reality. The wildest visions of the Arabian
Nights are nothing to the piazza of Saint Mark, and the first impression
of the inside of the church. The gorgeous and wonderful reality of
Venice is beyond the fancy of the wildest dreamer. Opium couldn't build
such a place, and enchantment couldn't shadow it forth in a vision. All
that I have heard of it, read of it in truth or fiction, fancied of it,
is left thousands of miles behind. You know that I am liable to
disappointment in such things from over-expectation, but Venice is
above, beyond, out of all reach of coming near, the imagination of a
man. It has never been rated high enough. It is a thing you would shed
tears to see. When I came _on board_ here last night (after a five
miles' row in a gondola; which somehow or other, I wasn't at all
prepared for); when, from seeing the city lying, one light, upon the
distant water, like a ship, I came plashing through the silent and
deserted streets; I felt as if the houses were reality--the water,
fever-madness. But when, in the bright, cold, bracing day, I stood upon
the piazza, this morning, by Heaven the glory of the place was
insupportable! And diving down from that into its wickedness and
gloom--its awful prisons, deep below the water; its judgment chambers,
secret doors, deadly nooks, where the torches you carry with you blink
as if they couldn't bear the air in which the frightful scenes were
acted; and coming out again into the radiant, unsubstantial Magic of the
town; and diving in again, into vast churches, and old tombs--a new
sensation, a new memory, a new mind came upon me. Venice is a bit of my
brain from this time. My dear Forster, if you could share my transports
(as you would if you were here) what would I not give! I feel cruel not
to have brought Kate and Georgy; positively cruel and base. Canaletti
and Stanny, miraculous in their truth. Turner, very noble. But the
reality itself, beyond all pen or pencil. I never saw the thing before
that I should be afraid to describe. But to tell what Venice is, I feel
to be an impossibility. And here I sit alone, writing it: with nothing
to urge me on, or goad me to that estimate, which, speaking of it to
anyone I loved, and being spoken to in return, would lead me to form. In
the sober solitude of a famous inn; with the great bell of Saint Mark
ringing twelve at my elbow; with three arched windows in my room (two
stories high) looking down upon the grand canal and away, beyond, to
where the sun went down to-night in a blaze; and thinking over again
those silent speaking faces of Titian and Tintoretto; I swear (uncooled
by any humbug I have seen) that Venice is _the_ wonder and the new
sensation of the world! If you could be set down in it, never having
heard of it, it would still be so. With your foot upon its stones, its
pictures before you, and its history in your mind, it is something past
all writing of or speaking of--almost past all thinking of. You couldn't
talk to me in this room, nor I to you, without shaking hands and saying
'Good God my dear fellow, have we lived to see this!'"
Five days later, Sunday the 17th, he was at Lodi, from which he wrote to
me that he had been, like Leigh Hunt's pig, up "all manner of streets"
since he left his palazzo; that with one exception he had not on any
night given up more than five hours to rest; that all the days except
two had been bad ("the last two foggy as Blackfriars-bridge on Lord
Mayor's day"); and that the cold had been dismal. But what cheerful,
keen, observant eyes he carried everywhere; and, in the midst of new and
unaccustomed scenes, and of objects and remains of art for which no
previous study had prepared him, with what a delicate play of
imagination and fancy the minuteness and accuracy of his ordinary
vision was exalted and refined; I think strikingly shown by the few
unstudied passages I am preserving from these friendly letters. He saw
everything for himself; and from mistakes in judging for himself which
not all the learning and study in the world will save ordinary men, the
intuition of genius almost always saved him. Hence there is hardly
anything uttered by him, of this much-trodden and wearisomely-visited,
but eternally beautiful and interesting country, that will not be found
worth listening to.
"I am already brim-full of cant about pictures, and shall be happy to
enlighten you on the subject of the different schools, at any length you
please. It seems to me that the preposterous exaggeration in which our
countrymen delight in reference to this Italy, hardly extends to the
really good things.[91] Perhaps it is in its nature, that there it
should fall short. I have never seen any praise of Titian's great
picture of the Transfiguration of the Virgin at Venice, which soared
half as high as the beautiful and amazing reality. It is perfection.
Tintoretto's picture too, of the Assembly of the Blest, at Venice also,
with all the lines in it (it is of immense size and the figures are
countless) tending majestically and dutifully to Almighty God in the
centre, is grand and noble in the extreme. There are some wonderful
portraits there, besides; and some confused, and hurried, and
slaughterous battle pieces, in which the surprising art that presents
the generals to your eye, so that it is almost impossible you can miss
them in a crowd though they are in the thick of it, is very pleasant to
dwell upon. I have seen some delightful pictures; and some (at Verona
and Mantua) really too absurd and ridiculous even to laugh at.
Hampton-court is a fool to 'em--and oh there are some rum 'uns there, my
friend. Some werry rum 'uns. . . . Two things are clear to me already. One
is, that the rules of art are much too slavishly followed; making it a
pain to you, when you go into galleries day after day, to be so very
precisely sure where this figure will be turning round, and that figure
will be lying down, and that other will have a great lot of drapery
twined about him, and so forth. This becomes a perfect nightmare. The
second is, that these great men, who were of necessity very much in the
hands of the monks and priests, painted monks and priests a vast deal
too often. I constantly see, in pictures of tremendous power, heads
quite below the story and the painter; and I invariably observe that
those heads are of the convent stamp, and have their counterparts,
exactly, in the convent inmates of this hour. I see the portraits of
monks I know at Genoa, in all the lame parts of strong paintings: so I
have settled with myself that in such cases the lameness was not with
the painter, but with the vanity and ignorance of his employers, who
_would_ be apostles on canvas at all events."[92]
In the same letter he described the Inns. "It is a great thing--quite a
matter of course--with English travellers, to decry the Italian inns. Of
course you have no comforts that you are used to in England; and
travelling alone, you dine in your bedroom always. Which is opposed to
our habits. But they are immeasurably better than you would suppose. The
attendants are very quick; very punctual; and so obliging, if you speak
to them politely, that you would be a beast not to look cheerful, and
take everything pleasantly. I am writing this in a room like a room on
the two-pair front of an unfinished house in Eaton-square: the very
walls make me feel as if I were a bricklayer distinguished by Mr. Cubitt
with the favour of having it to take care of. The windows won't open,
and the doors won't shut; and these latter (a cat could get in, between
them and the floor) have a windy command of a colonnade which is open to
the night, so that my slippers positively blow off my feet, and make
little circuits in the room--like leaves. There is a very ashy
wood-fire, burning on an immense hearth which has no fender (there is no
such thing in Italy); and it only knows two extremes--an agony of heat
when wood is put on, and an agony of cold when it has been on two
minutes. There is also an uncomfortable stain in the wall, where the
fifth door (not being strictly indispensable) was walled up a year or
two ago, and never painted over. But the bed is clean; and I have had an
excellent dinner; and without being obsequious or servile, which is not
at all the characteristic of the people in the North of Italy, the
waiters are so amiably disposed to invent little attentions which they
suppose to be English, and are so lighthearted and goodnatured, that it
is a pleasure to have to do with them. But so it is with all the people.
Vetturino-travelling involves a stoppage of two hours in the middle of
the day, to bait the horses. At that time I always walk on. If there are
many turns in the road, I necessarily have to ask my way, very often:
and the men are such gentlemen, and the women such ladies, that it is
quite an interchange of courtesies."
Of the help his courier continued to be to him I had whimsical instances
in almost every letter, but he appears too often in the published book
to require such celebration here. He is however an essential figure to
two little scenes sketched for me at Lodi, and I may preface them by
saying that Louis Roche, a native of Avignon, justified to the close his
master's high opinion. He was again engaged for nearly a year in
Switzerland, and soon after, poor fellow, though with a jovial
robustness of look and breadth of chest that promised unusual length of
days, was killed by heart-disease. "The brave C continues to be a
prodigy. He puts out my clothes at every inn as if I were going to stay
there twelve months; calls me to the instant every morning; lights the
fire before I get up; gets hold of roast fowls and produces them in
coaches at a distance from all other help, in hungry moments; and is
invaluable to me. He is such a good fellow, too, that little rewards
don't spoil him. I always give him, after I have dined, a tumbler of
Sauterne or Hermitage or whatever I may have; sometimes (as yesterday)
when we have come to a public-house at about eleven o'clock, very cold,
having started before day-break and had nothing, I make him take his
breakfast with me; and this renders him only more anxious than ever, by
redoubling attentions, to show me that he thinks he has got a good
master . . . I didn't tell you that the day before I left Genoa, we had a
dinner-party--our English consul and his wife; the banker; Sir George
Crawford and his wife; the De la Rues; Mr. Curry; and some others,
fourteen in all. At about nine in the morning, two men in immense paper
caps enquired at the door for the brave C, who presently introduced them
in triumph as the Governor's cooks, his private friends, who had come to
dress the dinner! Jane wouldn't stand this, however; so we were obliged
to decline. Then there came, at half-hourly intervals, six gentlemen
having the appearance of English clergymen; other private friends who
had come to wait. . . . We accepted _their_ services; and you never saw
anything so nicely and quietly done. He had asked, as a special
distinction, to be allowed the supreme control of the dessert; and he
had ices made like fruit, had pieces of crockery turned upside down so
as to look like other pieces of crockery non-existent in this part of
Europe, and carried a case of tooth-picks in his pocket. Then his
delight was, to get behind Kate at one end of the table, to look at me
at the other, and to say to Georgy in a low voice whenever he handed her
anything, 'What does master think of datter 'rangement? Is he
content?'. . . If you could see what these fellows of couriers are when
their families are not upon the move, you would feel what a prize he is.
I can't make out whether he was ever a smuggler, but nothing will induce
him to give the custom-house-officers anything: in consequence of which
that portmanteau of mine has been unnecessarily opened twenty times.
Two of them will come to the coach-door, at the gate of a town. 'Is
there anything contraband in this carriage, signore?'--'No, no. There's
nothing here. I am an Englishman, and this is my servant.' 'A buono mano
signore?' 'Roche,'(in English) 'give him something, and get rid of him.'
He sits unmoved. 'A buono mano signore?' 'Go along with you!' says the
brave C. 'Signore, I am a custom-house-officer!' 'Well, then, more shame
for you!'--he always makes the same answer. And then he turns to me and
says in English: while the custom-house-officer's face is a portrait of
anguish framed in the coach-window, from his intense desire to know what
is being told to his disparagement: 'Datter chip,' shaking his fist at
him, 'is greatest tief--and you know it you rascal--as never did en-razh
me so, that I cannot bear myself!' I suppose chip to mean chap, but it
may include the custom-house-officer's father and have some reference to
the old block, for anything I distinctly know."
He closed his Lodi letter next day at Milan, whither his wife and her
sister had made an eighty miles journey from Genoa, to pass a couple of
days with him in Prospero's old Dukedom before he left for London. "We
shall go our several ways on Thursday morning, and I am still bent on
appearing at Cuttris's on Sunday the first, as if I had walked thither
from Devonshire-terrace. In the meantime I shall not write to you again
. . . to enhance the pleasure (if anything _can_ enhance the pleasure) of
our meeting . . . I am opening my arms so wide!" One more letter I had
nevertheless; written at Strasburg on Monday night the 25th; to tell me
I might look for him one day earlier, so rapid had been his progress. He
had been in bed only once, at Friburg for two or three hours, since he
left Milan; and he had sledged through the snow on the top of the
Simplon in the midst of prodigious cold. "I am sitting here _in_ a
wood-fire, and drinking brandy and water scalding hot, with a faint idea
of coming warm in time. My face is at present tingling with the frost
and wind, as I suppose the cymbals may, when that turbaned turk attached
to the life guards' band has been newly clashing at them in St.
James's-park. I am in hopes it may be the preliminary agony of returning
animation."
[Illustration: AT 58 LINCOLN'S-INN-FIELDS, MONDAY THE 2^{ND} OF DECEMBER
1844.]
There was certainly no want of animation when we met. I have but to
write the words to bring back the eager face and figure, as they flashed
upon me so suddenly this wintry Saturday night that almost before I
could be conscious of his presence I felt the grasp of his hand. It is
almost all I find it possible to remember of the brief, bright, meeting.
Hardly did he seem to have come when he was gone. But all that the visit
proposed he accomplished. He saw his little book in its final form for
publication; and, to a select few brought together on Monday the 2nd of
December at my house, had the opportunity of reading it aloud. An
occasion rather memorable, in which was the germ of those readings to
larger audiences by which, as much as by his books, the world knew him
in his later life; but of which no detail beyond the fact remains in my
memory, and all are now dead who were present at it excepting only Mr.
Carlyle and myself. Among those however who have thus passed away was
one, our excellent Maclise, who, anticipating the advice of Captain
Cuttle, had "made a note of" it in pencil, which I am able here to
reproduce. It will tell the reader all he can wish to know. He will see
of whom the party consisted; and may be assured (with allowance for a
touch of caricature to which I may claim to be considered myself as the
chief victim), that in the grave attention of Carlyle, the eager
interest of Stanfield and Maclise, the keen look of poor Laman
Blanchard, Fox's rapt solemnity, Jerrold's skyward gaze, and the tears
of Harness and Dyce, the characteristic points of the scene are
sufficiently rendered. All other recollection of it is passed and gone;
but that at least its principal actor was made glad and grateful,
sufficient farther testimony survives. Such was the report made of it,
that once more, on the pressing intercession of our friend Thomas
Ingoldsby (Mr. Barham), there was a second reading to which the presence
and enjoyment of Fonblanque gave new zest;[93] and when I expressed to
Dickens, after he left us, my grief that he had had so tempestuous a
journey for such brief enjoyment, he replied that the visit had been one
happiness and delight to him. "I would not recall an inch of the way to
or from you, if it had been twenty times as long and twenty thousand
times as wintry. It was worth any travel--anything! With the soil of the
road in the very grain of my cheeks, I swear I wouldn't have missed
that week, that first night of our meeting, that one evening of the
reading at your rooms, aye, and the second reading too, for any easily
stated or conceived consideration."
He wrote from Paris, at which he had stopped on his way back to see
Macready, whom an engagement to act there with Mr. Mitchell's English
company had prevented from joining us in Lincoln's-inn-fields. There had
been no such frost and snow since 1829, and he gave dismal report of the
city. With Macready he had gone two nights before to the Odéon to see
Alexandre Dumas' _Christine_ played by Madame St. George, "once
Napoleon's mistress; now of an immense size, from dropsy I suppose; and
with little weak legs which she can't stand upon. Her age, withal,
somewhere about 80 or 90. I never in my life beheld such a sight. Every
stage-conventionality she ever picked up (and she has them all) has got
the dropsy too, and is swollen and bloated hideously. The other actors
never looked at one another, but delivered all their dialogues to the
pit, in a manner so egregiously unnatural and preposterous that I
couldn't make up my mind whether to take it as a joke or an outrage."
And then came allusion to a project we had started on the night of the
reading, that a private play should be got up by us on his return from
Italy. "You and I, sir, will reform this altogether." He had but to wait
another night, however, when he saw it all reformed at the Italian opera
where Grisi was singing in _Il Pirato_, and "the passion and fire of a
scene between her, Mario, and Fornasari, was as good and great as it is
possible for anything operatic to be. They drew on one another, the two
men--not like stage-players, but like Macready himself: and she, rushing
in between them; now clinging to this one, now to that, now making a
sheath for their naked swords with her arms, now tearing her hair in
distraction as they broke away from her and plunged again at each other;
was prodigious." This was the theatre at which Macready was immediately
to act, and where Dickens saw him next day rehearse the scene before the
doge and council in _Othello_, "not as usual facing the float but
arranged on one side," with an effect that seemed to him to heighten the
reality of the scene.
He left Paris on the night of the 13th with the malle poste, which did
not reach Marseilles till fifteen hours behind its time, after three
days and three nights travelling over horrible roads. Then, in a
confusion between the two rival packets for Genoa, he unwillingly
detained one of them more than an hour from sailing; and only managed at
last to get to her just as she was moving out of harbour. As he went up
the side, he saw a strange sensation among the angry travellers whom he
had detained so long; heard a voice exclaim "I am blarmed if it ain't
DICKENS!" and stood in the centre of a group of _Five Americans_! But
the pleasantest part of the story is that they were, one and all, glad
to see him; that their chief man, or leader, who had met him in New
York, at once introduced them all round with the remark, "Personally our
countrymen, and you, can fix it friendly sir, I do expectuate;" and
that, through the stormy passage to Genoa which followed, they were
excellent friends. For the greater part of the time, it is true, Dickens
had to keep to his cabin; but he contrived to get enjoyment out of them
nevertheless. The member of the party who had the travelling dictionary
wouldn't part with it, though he was dead sick in the cabin next to my
friend's; and every now and then Dickens was conscious of his
fellow-travellers coming down to him, crying out in varied tones of
anxious bewilderment, "I say, what's French for a pillow?" "Is there any
Italian phrase for a lump of sugar? Just look, will you?" "What the
devil does echo mean? The garsong says echo to everything!" They were
excessively curious to know, too, the population of every little town on
the Cornice, and all its statistics; "perhaps the very last subjects
within the capacity of the human intellect," remarks Dickens, "that
would ever present themselves to an Italian steward's mind. He was a
very willing fellow, our steward; and, having some vague idea that they
would like a large number, said at hazard fifty thousand, ninety
thousand, four hundred thousand, when they asked about the population of
a place not larger than Lincoln's-inn-fields. And when they said _Non
Possible!_ (which was the leader's invariable reply), he doubled or
trebled the amount; to meet what he supposed to be their views, and make
it quite satisfactory."
FOOTNOTES:
[90] "I began this letter, my dear friend" (he wrote it from Venice on
Tuesday night the 12th of November), "with the intention of describing
my travels as I went on. But I have seen so much, and travelled so hard
(seldom dining, and being almost always up by candle light), that I must
reserve my crayons for the greater leisure of the Peschiere after we
have met, and I have again returned to it. As soon as I have fixed a
place in my mind, I bolt--at such strange seasons and at such unexpected
angles, that the brave C stares again. But in this way, and by insisting
on having everything shewn to me whether or no, and against all
precedents and orders of proceeding, I get on wonderfully." Two days
before he had written to me from Ferrara, after the very pretty
description of the vineyards between Piacenza and Parma which will be
found in the _Pictures from Italy_ (pp. 203-4): "If you want an antidote
to this, I may observe that I got up, this moment, to fasten the window;
and the street looked as like some byeway in Whitechapel--or--I look
again--like Wych Street, down by the little barber's shop on the same
side of the way as Holywell Street--or--I look again--as like Holywell
Street itself--as ever street was like to street, or ever will be, in
this world."
[91] Four months later, after he had seen the galleries at Rome and the
other great cities, he sent me a remark which has since had eloquent
reinforcement from critics of undeniable authority. "The most famous of
the oil paintings in the Vatican you know through the medium of the
finest line-engravings in the world; and as to some of them I much
doubt, if you had seen them with me, whether you might not think you had
lost little in having only known them hitherto in that translation.
Where the drawing is poor and meagre, or alloyed by time,--it is so, and
it must be, often; though no doubt it is a heresy to hint at such a
thing--the engraving presents the forms and the idea to you, in a simple
majesty which such defects impair. Where this is not the case, and all
is stately and harmonious, still it is somehow in the very grain and
nature of a delicate engraving to suggest to you (I think) the utmost
delicacy, finish, and refinement, as belonging to the original.
Therefore, though the Picture in this latter case will greatly charm and
interest you, it does not take you by surprise. You are quite prepared
beforehand for the fullest excellence of which it is capable." In the
same letter he wrote of what remained always a delight in his memory,
the charm of the more private collections. He found magnificent
portraits and paintings in the private palaces, where he thought them
seen to greater advantage than in galleries; because in numbers not so
large as to distract attention or confuse the eye. "There are portraits
innumerable by Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt and Vandyke; heads by Guido,
and Domenichino, and Carlo Dolci; subjects by Raphael, and Correggio,
and Murillo, and Paul Veronese, and Salvator; which it would be
difficult indeed to praise too highly, or to praise enough. It is a
happiness to me to think that they cannot be felt, as they should be
felt, by the profound connoisseurs who fall into fits upon the longest
notice and the most unreasonable terms. Such tenderness and grace, such
noble elevation, purity, and beauty, so shine upon me from some
well-remembered spots in the walls of these galleries, as to relieve my
tortured memory from legions of whining friars and waxy holy families. I
forgive, from the bottom of my soul, whole orchestras of earthy angels,
and whole groves of St. Sebastians stuck as full of arrows according to
pattern as a lying-in pincushion is stuck with pins. And I am in no
humour to quarrel even with that priestly infatuation, or priestly
doggedness of purpose, which persists in reducing every mystery of our
religion to some literal development in paint and canvas, equally
repugnant to the reason and the sentiment of any thinking man."
[92] The last two lines he has printed in the _Pictures_, p. 249,
"certain of" being inserted before "his employers."
[93] I find the evening mentioned in the diary which Mr. Barham's son
quotes in his Memoir. "December 5, 1844. Dined at Forster's with Charles
Dickens, Stanfield, Maclise, and Albany Fonblanque. Dickens read with
remarkable effect his Christmas story, the _Chimes_, from the
proofs. . . ." (ii. 191.)
CHAPTER VIII.
LAST MONTHS IN ITALY.
1845.
Jesuit Interferences--Travel Southward--Carrara
and Pisa--A Wild Journey--At Radicofani--A
Beggar and his Staff--At Rome--Terracina--Bay
of Naples--Lazzaroni--Sad English News--At
Florence--Visit to Landor's Villa--At Lord
Holland's--Return to Genoa--Italy's Best
Season--A Funeral--Nautical Incident--Fireflies
at Night--Returning by Switzerland--At
Lucerne--Passage of the St. Gothard--Splendour
of Swiss Scenery--Swiss Villages.
ON the 22nd of December he had resumed his ordinary Genoa life; and of a
letter from Jeffrey, to whom he had dedicated his little book, he wrote
as "most energetic and enthusiastic. Filer sticks in his throat rather,
but all the rest is quivering in his heart. He is very much struck by
the management of Lilian's story, and cannot help speaking of that;
writing of it all indeed with the freshness and ardour of youth, and not
like a man whose blue and yellow has turned grey." Some of its words
have been already given. "Miss Coutts has sent Charley, with the best of
letters to me, a Twelfth Cake weighing ninety pounds, magnificently
decorated; and only think of the characters, Fairburn's Twelfth Night
characters, being detained at the custom-house for Jesuitical
surveillance! But these fellows are---- Well! never mind. Perhaps you
have seen the history of the Dutch minister at Turin, and of the
spiriting away of his daughter by the Jesuits? It is all true; though,
like the history of our friend's servant,[94] almost incredible. But
their devilry is such that I am assured by our consul that if, while we
are in the south, we were to let our children go out with servants on
whom we could not implicitly rely, these holy men would trot even their
small feet into churches with a view to their ultimate conversion! It is
tremendous even to see them in the streets, or slinking about this
garden." Of his purpose to start for the south of Italy in the middle of
January, taking his wife with him, his letter the following week told
me; dwelling on all he had missed, in that first Italian Christmas, of
our old enjoyments of the season in England; and closing its pleasant
talk with a postscript at midnight. "First of January, 1845. Many many
many happy returns of the day! A life of happy years! The Baby is
dressed in thunder, lightning, rain, and wind. His birth is most
portentous here."
It was of ill-omen to me, one of its earliest incidents being my only
brother's death; but Dickens had a friend's true helpfulness in sorrow,
and a portion of what he then wrote to me I permit myself to preserve
in a note[95] for what it relates of his own sad experiences and solemn
beliefs and hopes. The journey southward began on the 20th January, and
five days later I had a letter written from La Scala, at a little inn,
"supported on low brick arches like a British haystack," the bed in
their room "like a mangle," the ceiling without lath or plaster, nothing
to speak of available for comfort or decency, and nothing particular to
eat or drink. "But for all this I have become attached to the country
and I don't care who knows it." They had left Pisa that morning and
Carrara the day before: at the latter place an ovation awaiting him, the
result of the zeal of our eccentric friend Fletcher, who happened to be
staying there with an English marble-merchant.[96] "There is a beautiful
little theatre there, built of marble; and they had it illuminated that
night, in my honour. There was really a very fair opera: but it is
curious that the chorus has been always, time out of mind, made up of
labourers in the quarries, who don't know a note of music, and sing
entirely by ear. It was crammed to excess, and I had a great reception;
a deputation waiting upon us in the box, and the orchestra turning out
in a body afterwards and serenading us at Mr. Walton's." Between this
and Rome they had a somewhat wild journey;[97] and before Radicofani was
reached, there were disturbing rumours of bandits and even uncomfortable
whispers as to their night's lodging-place. "I really began to think we
might have an adventure; and as I had brought (like an ass) a bag of
Napoleons with me from Genoa, I called up all the theatrical ways of
letting off pistols that I could call to mind, and was the more disposed
to fire them from not having any." It ended in no worse adventure,
however, than a somewhat exciting dialogue with an old professional
beggar at Radicofani itself, in which he was obliged to confess that he
came off second-best. It transpired at a little town hanging on a hill
side, of which the inhabitants, being all of them beggars, had the habit
of swooping down, like so many birds of prey, upon any carriage that
approached it.
"Can you imagine" (he named a first-rate bore, for whose name I shall
substitute) "M. F. G. in a very frowsy brown cloak concealing his whole
figure, and with very white hair and a very white beard, darting out of
this place with a long staff in his hand, and begging? There he was,
whether you can or not; out of breath with the rapidity of his dive, and
staying with his staff all the Radicofani boys, that he might fight it
out with me alone. It was very wet, and so was I: for I had kept,
according to custom, my box-seat. It was blowing so hard that I could
scarcely stand; and there was a custom-house on the spot, besides. Over
and above all this, I had no small money; and the brave C never has,
when I want it for a beggar. When I had excused myself several times, he
suddenly drew himself up and said, with a wizard look (fancy the
aggravation of M. F. G. as a wizard!) 'Do you know what you are doing,
my lord? Do you mean to go on, to-day?' 'Yes,' I said, 'I do.' 'My
lord,' he said, 'do you know that your vetturino is unacquainted with
this part of the country; that there is a wind raging on the mountain,
which will sweep you away; that the courier, the coach, and all the
passengers, were blown from the road last year; and that the danger is
great and almost certain?' 'No,' I said, 'I don't.' 'My lord, you don't
understand me, I think?' 'Yes I do, d---- you!' nettled by this (you
feel it? I confess it). 'Speak to my servant. It's his business. Not
mine'--for he really was too like M. F. G. to be borne. If you could
have seen him!--'Santa Maria, these English lords! It's not their
business, if they're killed! They leave it to their servants!' He drew
off the boys; whispered them to keep away from the heretic; and ran up
the hill again, almost as fast as he had come down. He stopped at a
little distance as we moved on; and pointing to Roche with his long
staff cried loudly after me, 'It's _his_ business if you're killed, is
it, my lord? Ha! ha! ha! whose business is it, when the English lords
are born! Ha! ha! ha!' The boys taking it up in a shrill yell, I left
the joke and them at this point. But I must confess that I thought he
had the best of it. And he had so far reason for what he urged, that
when we got on the mountain pass the wind became terrific, so that we
were obliged to take Kate out of the carriage lest she should be blown
over, carriage and all, and had ourselves to hang on to it, on the windy
side, to prevent its going Heaven knows where!"
The first impression of Rome was disappointing. It was the evening of
the 30th of January, and the cloudy sky, dull cold rain, and muddy
footways, he was prepared for; but he was not prepared for the long
streets of commonplace shops and houses like Paris or any other capital,
the busy people, the equipages, the ordinary walkers up and down. "It
was no more my Rome, degraded and fallen and lying asleep in the sun
among a heap of ruins, than Lincoln's-inn-fields is. So I really went to
bed in a very indifferent humour." That all this yielded to later and
worthier impressions I need hardly say; and he had never in his life, he
told me afterwards, been so moved or overcome by any sight as by that of
the Coliseum, "except perhaps by the first contemplation of the Falls of
Niagara." He went to Naples for the interval before the holy week; and
his first letter from it was to say that he had found the wonderful
aspects of Rome before he left, and that for loneliness and grandeur of
ruin nothing could transcend the southern side of the Campagna. But
farther and farther south the weather had become worse; and for a week
before his letter (the 11th of February), the only bright sky he had
seen was just as the sun was coming up across the sea at Terracina. "Of
which place, a beautiful one, you can get a very good idea by imagining
something as totally unlike the scenery in _Fra Diavolo_ as possible."
He thought the bay less striking at Naples than at Genoa, the shape of
the latter being more perfect in its beauty, and the smaller size
enabling you to see it all at once, and feel it more like an exquisite
picture. The city he conceived the greatest dislike to.[98] "The
condition of the common people here is abject and shocking. I am afraid
the conventional idea of the picturesque is associated with such misery
and degradation that a new picturesque will have to be established as
the world goes onward. Except Fondi, there is nothing on earth that I
have seen so dirty as Naples. I don't know what to liken the streets to
where the mass of the lazzaroni live. You recollect that favourite
pigstye of mine near Broadstairs? They are more like streets of such
apartments heaped up story on story, and tumbled house on house, than
anything else I can think of, at this moment." In a later letter he was
even less tolerant. "What would I give that you should see the lazzaroni
as they really are--mere squalid, abject, miserable animals for vermin
to batten on; slouching, slinking, ugly, shabby, scavenging scarecrows!
And oh the raffish counts and more than doubtful countesses, the noodles
and the blacklegs, the good society! And oh the miles of miserable
streets and wretched occupants,[99] to which Saffron-hill or the
Borough-mint is a kind of small gentility, which are found to be so
picturesque by English lords and ladies; to whom the wretchedness left
behind at home is lowest of the low, and vilest of the vile, and
commonest of all common things. Well! well! I have often thought that
one of the best chances of immortality for a writer is in the Death of
his language, when he immediately becomes good company; and I often
think here,--What _would_ you say to these people, milady and milord, if
they spoke out of the homely dictionary of your own 'lower orders.'" He
was again at Rome on Sunday the second of March.
Sad news from me as to a common and very dear friend awaited him there;
but it is a subject on which I may not dwell farther than to say that
there arose from it much to redeem even such a sorrow, and that this I
could not indicate better than by these wise and tender words from
Dickens. "No philosophy will bear these dreadful things, or make a
moment's head against them, but the practical one of doing all the good
we can, in thought and deed. While we can, God help us! ourselves stray
from ourselves so easily; and there are all around us such frightful
calamities besetting the world in which we live; nothing else will carry
us through it. . . . What a comfort to reflect on what you tell me. Bulwer
Lytton's conduct is that of a generous and noble-minded man, as I have
ever thought him. Our dear good Procter too! And Thackeray--how earnest
they have all been! I am very glad to find you making special mention of
Charles Lever. I am glad over every name you write. It says something
for our pursuit, in the midst of all its miserable disputes and
jealousies, that the common impulse of its followers, in such an
instance as this, is surely and certainly of the noblest."
After the ceremonies of the holy week, of which the descriptions sent to
me were reproduced in his book, he went to Florence,[100] which lived
always afterwards in his memory with Venice, and with Genoa. He thought
these the three great Italian cities. "There are some places
here,[101]--oh Heaven how fine! I wish you could see the tower of the
palazzo Vecchio as it lies before me at this moment, on the opposite
bank of the Arno! But I will tell you more about it, and about all
Florence, from my shady arm-chair up among the Peschiere oranges. I
shall not be sorry to sit down in it again. . . . Poor Hood, poor Hood! I
still look for his death, and he still lingers on. And Sydney Smith's
brother gone after poor dear Sydney himself! Maltby will wither when he
reads it; and poor old Rogers will contradict some young man at dinner,
every day for three weeks."
Before he left Florence (on the 4th of April) I heard of a "very
pleasant and very merry day" at Lord Holland's; and I ought to have
mentioned how much he was gratified, at Naples, by the attentions of the
English Minister there, Mr. Temple, Lord Palmerston's brother, whom he
described as a man supremely agreeable, with everything about him in
perfect taste, and with that truest gentleman-manner which has its root
in kindness and generosity of nature. He was back at home in the
Peschiere on Wednesday the ninth of April. Here he continued to write to
me every week, for as long as he remained, of whatever he had seen: with
no definite purpose as yet, but the pleasure of interchanging with
myself the impressions and emotions undergone by him. "Seriously," he
wrote to me on the 13th of April, "it is a great pleasure to me to find
that you are really pleased with these shadows in the water, and think
them worth the looking at. Writing at such odd places, and in such odd
seasons, I have been half savage with myself, very often, for not doing
better. But d'Orsay, from whom I had a charming letter three days since,
seems to think as you do of what he has read in those shown to him, and
says they remind him vividly of the real aspect of these scenes. . . .
Well, if we should determine, after we have sat in council, that the
experiences they relate are to be used, we will call B. and E. to their
share and voice in the matter." Shortly before he left, the subject was
again referred to (7th of June). "I am in as great doubt as you about
the letters I have written you with these Italian experiences. I cannot
for the life of me devise any plan of using them to my own satisfaction,
and yet think entirely with you that in some form I ought to use them."
Circumstances not in his contemplation at this time settled the form
they ultimately took.
Two more months were to finish his Italian holiday, and I do not think
he enjoyed any part of it so much as its close. He had formed a real
friendship for Genoa, was greatly attached to the social circle he had
drawn round him there, and liked rest after his travel all the more for
the little excitement of living its activities over again, week by week,
in these letters to me. And so, from his "shady arm-chair up among the
Peschiere oranges," I had at regular intervals what he called his
rambling talk; went over with him again all the roads he had taken; and
of the more important scenes and cities, such as Venice, Rome, and
Naples, received such rich filling-in to the first outlines sent, as
fairly justified the title of _Pictures_ finally chosen for them. The
weather all the time too had been without a flaw. "Since our return," he
wrote on the 27th April, "we have had charming spring days. The garden
is one grove of roses; we have left off fires; and we breakfast and dine
again in the great hall, with the windows open. To-day we have rain,
but rain was rather wanted I believe, so it gives offence to nobody. As
far as I have had an opportunity of judging yet, the spring is the most
delightful time in this country. But for all that I am looking with
eagerness to the tenth of June, impatient to renew our happy old walks
and old talks in dear old home."
Of incidents during these remaining weeks there were few, but such as he
mentioned had in them points of humour or character still worth
remembering.[102] Two men were hanged in the city; and two ladies of
quality, he told me, agreed to keep up for a time a prayer for the souls
of these two miserable creatures so incessant that Heaven should never
for a moment be left alone; to which end "they relieved each other"
after such wise, that, for the whole of the stated time, one of them was
always on her knees in the cathedral church of San Lorenzo. From which
he inferred that "a morbid sympathy for criminals is not wholly peculiar
to England, though it affects more people in that country perhaps than
in any other."
Of Italian usages to the dead some notices from his letters have been
given, and he had an example before he left of the way in which they
affected English residents. A gentleman of his friend Fletcher's
acquaintance living four miles from Genoa had the misfortune to lose his
wife; and no attendance on the dead beyond the city gate, nor even any
decent conveyance, being practicable, the mourner, to whom Fletcher had
promised nevertheless the sad satisfaction of an English funeral, which
he had meanwhile taken enormous secret pains to arrange with a small
Genoese upholsterer, was waited upon, on the appointed morning, by a
very bright yellow hackney-coach-and-pair driven by a coachman in yet
brighter scarlet knee-breeches and waistcoat, who wanted to put the
husband and the body inside together. "They were obliged to leave one of
the coach-doors open for the accommodation even of the coffin; the
widower walked beside the carriage to the Protestant cemetery; and
Fletcher followed on a big grey horse."[103]
Scarlet breeches reappear, not less characteristically, in what his next
letter told of a couple of English travellers who took possession at
this time (24th of May) of a portion of the ground floor of the
Peschiere. They had with them a meek English footman who immediately
confided to Dickens's servants, among other personal grievances, the
fact that he was made to do everything, even cooking, in crimson
breeches; which in a hot climate, he protested, was "a grinding of him
down." "He is a poor soft country fellow; and his master locks him up at
night, in a basement room with iron bars to the window. Between which
our servants poke wine in, at midnight. His master and mistress buy old
boxes at the curiosity shops, and pass their lives in lining 'em with
bits of parti-coloured velvet. A droll existence, is it not? We are
lucky to have had the palace to ourselves until now, but it is so large
that we never see or hear these people; and I should not have known
even, if they had not called upon us, that another portion of the ground
floor had been taken by some friends of old Lady Holland--whom I seem to
see again, crying about dear Sydney Smith, behind that green screen as
we last saw her together."[104]
Then came a little incident also characteristic. An English ship of war,
the Phantom, appeared in the harbour; and from her commander, Sir Henry
Nicholson, Dickens received, among attentions very pleasant to him, an
invitation to lunch on board and bring his wife, for whom, at a time
appointed, a boat was to be sent to the Ponte Reale (the royal bridge).
But no boat being there at the time, Dickens sent off his servant in
another boat to the ship to say he feared some mistake. "While we were
walking up and down a neighbouring piazza in his absence, a brilliant
fellow in a dark blue shirt with a white hem to it all round the collar,
regular corkscrew curls, and a face as brown as a berry, comes up to me
and says 'Beg your pardon sir--Mr. Dickens?' 'Yes.' 'Beg your pardon
sir, but I'm one of the ship's company of the Phantom sir, cox'en of the
cap'en's gig sir, she's a lying off the pint sir--been there half an
hour.' 'Well but my good fellow,' I said, 'you're at the wrong place!'
'Beg your pardon sir, I was afeerd it was the wrong place sir, but I've
asked them Genoese here sir, twenty times, if it was Port Real; and they
knows no more than a dead jackass!'--Isn't it a good thing to have made
a regular Portsmouth name of it?"
That was in his letter of the 1st June, which began by telling me it had
been twice begun and twice flung into the basket, so great was his
indisposition to write as the time for departure came; and which ended
thus. "The fire-flies at night now, are miraculously splendid; making
another firmament among the rocks on the seashore, and the vines inland.
They get into the bedrooms, and fly about, all night, like beautiful
little lamps.[105]. . . I have surrendered much I had fixed my heart
upon, as you know, admitting you have had reason for not coming to us
here: but I stand by the hope that you and Mac will come and meet us at
Brussels; it being so very easy. A day or two there, and at Antwerp,
would be very happy for us; and we could still dine in Lincoln's-inn-fields
on the day of arrival." I had been unable to join him in Genoa, urgently
as he had wished it: but what is said here was done, and Jerrold was
added to the party.
His last letter from Genoa was written on the 7th of June, not from the
Peschiere, but from a neighbouring palace, "Brignole Rosso," into which
he had fled from the miseries of moving. "They are all at sixes and
sevens up at the Peschiere, as you may suppose; and Roche is in a
condition of tremendous excitement, engaged in settling the inventory
with the house-agent, who has just told me he is the devil himself. I
had been appealed to, and had contented myself with this expression of
opinion. 'Signor Noli, you are an old impostor!' 'Illustrissimo,' said
Signor Noli in reply, 'your servant is the devil himself: sent on earth
to torture me.' I look occasionally towards the Peschiere (it is visible
from this room), expecting to see one of them flying out of a window.
Another great cause of commotion is, that they have been paving the lane
by which the house is approached, ever since we returned from Rome. We
have not been able to get the carriage up since that time, in
consequence; and unless they finish to-night, it can't be packed in the
garden, but the things will have to be brought down in baskets,
piecemeal, and packed in the street. To avoid this inconvenient
necessity, the Brave made proposals of bribery to the paviours last
night, and induced them to pledge themselves that the carriage should
come up at seven this evening. The manner of doing that sort of paving
work here, is to take a pick or two with an axe, and then lie down to
sleep for an hour. When I came out, the Brave had issued forth to
examine the ground; and was standing alone in the sun among a heap of
prostrate figures: with a Great Despair depicted in his face, which it
would be hard to surpass. It was like a picture--'After the
Battle'--Napoleon by the Brave: Bodies by the Paviours."
He came home by the Great St. Gothard, and was quite carried away by
what he saw of Switzerland. The country was so divine that he should
have wondered indeed if its sons and daughters had ever been other than
a patriotic people. Yet, infinitely above the country he had left as he
ranked it in its natural splendours, there was something more enchanting
than these that he lost in leaving Italy; and he expressed this
delightfully in the letter from Lucerne (14th of June) which closes the
narrative of his Italian life.
"We came over the St. Gothard, which has been open only eight days. The
road is cut through the snow, and the carriage winds along a narrow path
between two massive snow walls, twenty feet high or more. Vast plains of
snow range up the mountain-sides above the road, itself seven thousand
feet above the sea; and tremendous waterfalls, hewing out arches for
themselves in the vast drifts, go thundering down from precipices into
deep chasms, here and there and everywhere: the blue water tearing
through the white snow with an awful beauty that is most sublime. The
pass itself, the mere pass over the top, is not so fine, I think, as the
Simplon; and there is no plain upon the summit, for the moment it is
reached the descent begins. So that the loneliness and wildness of the
Simplon are not equalled _there_. But being much higher, the ascent and
the descent range over a much greater space of country; and on both
sides there are places of terrible grandeur, unsurpassable, I should
imagine, in the world. The Devil's Bridge, terrific! The whole descent
between Andermatt (where we slept on Friday night) and Altdorf, William
Tell's town, which we passed through yesterday afternoon, is the highest
sublimation of all you can imagine in the way of Swiss scenery. Oh God!
what a beautiful country it is! How poor and shrunken, beside it, is
Italy in its brightest aspect!
"I look upon the coming down from the Great St. Gothard with a carriage
and four horses and only one postilion, as the most dangerous thing that
a carriage and horses can do. We had two great wooden logs for drags,
and snapped them both like matches. The road is like a geometrical
staircase, with horrible depths beneath it; and at every turn it is a
toss-up, or seems to be, whether the leaders shall go round or over. The
lives of the whole party may depend upon a strap in the harness; and if
we broke our rotten harness once yesterday, we broke it at least a dozen
times. The difficulty of keeping the horses together in the continual
and steep circle, is immense. They slip and slide, and get their legs
over the traces, and are dragged up against the rocks; carriage, horses,
harness, all a confused heap. The Brave, and I, and the postilion, were
constantly at work, in extricating the whole concern from a tangle, like
a skein of thread. We broke two thick iron chains, and crushed the box
of a wheel, as it was; and the carriage is now undergoing repair, under
the window, on the margin of the lake: where a woman in short
petticoats, a stomacher, and two immensely long tails of black hair
hanging down her back very nearly to her heels, is looking
on--apparently dressed for a melodrama, but in reality a waitress at
this establishment.
"If the Swiss villages look beautiful to me in winter, their summer
aspect is most charming: most fascinating: most delicious. Shut in by
high mountains capped with perpetual snow; and dotting a rich carpet of
the softest turf, overshadowed by great trees; they seem so many little
havens of refuge from the troubles and miseries of great towns. The
cleanliness of the little baby-houses of inns is wonderful to those who
come from Italy. But the beautiful Italian manners, the sweet language,
the quick recognition of a pleasant look or cheerful word; the
captivating expression of a desire to oblige in everything; are left
behind the Alps. Remembering them, I sigh for the dirt again: the brick
floors, bare walls, unplaistered ceilings, and broken windows."
We met at Brussels; Maclise, Jerrold, myself, and the travellers; passed
a delightful week in Flanders together; and were in England at the close
of June.
FOOTNOTES:
[94] In a previous letter he had told me that history. "Apropos of
servants, I must tell you of a child-bearing handmaiden of some friends
of ours, a thorough out and outer, who, by way of expiating her sins,
caused herself, the other day, to be received into the bosom of the
infallible church. She had two marchionesses for her sponsors; and she
is heralded in the Genoa newspapers as Miss B--, an English lady, who
has repented of her errors and saved her soul alive."
[95] "I feel the distance between us now, indeed. I would to Heaven, my
dearest friend, that I could remind you in a manner more lively and
affectionate than this dull sheet of paper can put on, that you have a
Brother left. One bound to you by ties as strong as ever Nature forged.
By ties never to be broken, weakened, changed in any way--but to be
knotted tighter up, if that be possible, until the same end comes to
them as has come to these. That end but the bright beginning of a
happier union, I believe; and have never more strongly and religiously
believed (and oh! Forster, with what a sore heart I have thanked God for
it) than when that shadow has fallen on my own hearth, and made it cold
and dark as suddenly as in the home of that poor girl you tell me of. . . .
When you write to me again, the pain of this will have passed. No
consolation can be so certain and so lasting to you as that softened and
manly sorrow which springs up from the memory of the Dead. I read your
heart as easily as if I held it in my hand, this moment. And I know--I
_know_, my dear friend--that before the ground is green above him, you
will be content that what was capable of death in him, should lie
there. . . . I am glad to think it was so easy, and full of peace. What can
we hope for more, when our own time comes!--The day when he visited us
in our old house is as fresh to me as if it had been yesterday. I
remember him as well as I remember you. . . . I have many things to say,
but cannot say them now. Your attached and loving friend for life, and
far, I hope, beyond it. C. D." (8th of January, 1845.)
[96] "A Yorkshireman, who talks Yorkshire Italian with the drollest and
pleasantest effect; a jolly, hospitable excellent fellow; as odd yet
kindly a mixture of shrewdness and simplicity as I have ever seen. He is
the only Englishman in these parts who has been able to erect an English
household out of Italian servants, but he has done it to admiration. It
would be a capital country-house at home; and for staying in
'first-rate.' (I find myself inadvertently quoting _Tom Thumb_.) Mr.
Walton is a man of an extraordinarily kind heart, and has a
compassionate regard for Fletcher to whom his house is open as a home,
which is half affecting and half ludicrous. He paid the other day a
hundred pounds for him, which he knows he will never see a penny of
again." C. D. to J. F. (25th of January, 1845.)
[97] "Do you think," he wrote from Ronciglione on the 29th January, "in
your state room, when the fog makes your white blinds yellow, and the
wind howls in the brick and mortar gulf behind that square perspective,
with a middle distance of two ladder-tops and a background of Drury-lane
sky--when the wind howls, I say, as if its eldest brother, born in
Lincoln's-inn-fields, had gone to sea and was making a fortune on the
Atlantic--at such times do you ever think of houseless Dick?"
[98] He makes no mention in his book of the pauper burial-place at
Naples, to which the reference made in his letters is striking enough
for preservation. "In Naples, the burying place of the poor people is a
great paved yard with three hundred and sixty-five pits in it: every one
covered by a square stone which is fastened down. One of these pits is
opened every night in the year; the bodies of the pauper dead are
collected in the city; brought out in a cart (like that I told you of at
Rome); and flung in, uncoffined. Some lime is then cast down into the
pit; and it is sealed up until a year is past, and its turn again comes
round. Every night there is a pit opened; and every night that same pit
is sealed up again, for a twelvemonth. The cart has a red lamp attached,
and at about ten o'clock at night you see it glaring through the streets
of Naples: stopping at the doors of hospitals and prisons, and such
places, to increase its freight: and then rattling off again. Attached
to the new cemetery (a very pretty one, and well kept: immeasurably
better in all respects than Père-la-Chaise) there is another similar
yard, but not so large.". . . In connection with the same subject he adds:
"About Naples, the dead are borne along the street, uncovered, on an
open bier; which is sometimes hoisted on a sort of palanquin, covered
with a cloth of scarlet and gold. This exposure of the deceased is not
peculiar to that part of Italy; for about midway between Rome and Genoa
we encountered a funeral procession attendant on the body of a woman,
which was presented in its usual dress, to my eyes (looking from my
elevated seat on the box of a travelling carriage) as if she were alive,
and resting on her bed. An attendant priest was chanting lustily--and as
badly as the priests invariably do. Their noise is horrible. . . ."
[99] "Thackeray praises the people of Italy for being kind to brutes.
There is probably no country in the world where they are treated with
such frightful cruelty. It is universal." (Naples, 2nd. Feb. 1845.)
Emphatic confirmation of this remark has been lately given by the Naples
correspondent of the _Times_, writing under date of February 1872.
[100] The reader will perhaps think with me that what he noticed, on the
roads in Tuscany more than in any others, of wayside crosses and
religious memorials, may be worth preserving. . . . "You know that in the
streets and corners of roads, there are all sorts of crosses and similar
memorials to be seen in Italy. The most curious are, I think, in
Tuscany. There is very seldom a figure on the cross, though there is
sometimes a face; but they are remarkable for being garnished with
little models in wood of every possible object that can be connected
with the Saviour's death. The cock that crowed when Peter had denied his
master thrice, is generally perched on the tip-top; and an
ornithological phenomenon he always is. Under him is the inscription.
Then, hung on to the cross-beam, are the spear, the reed with the sponge
of vinegar and water at the end, the coat without seam for which the
soldiers cast lots, the dice-box with which they threw for it, the
hammer that drove in the nails, the pincers that pulled them out, the
ladder which was set against the cross, the crown of thorns, the
instrument of flagellation, the lantern with which Mary went to the
tomb--I suppose; I can think of no other--and the sword with which Peter
smote the high priest's servant. A perfect toyshop of little objects;
repeated at every four or five miles all along the highway."
[101] Of his visit to Fiesole I have spoken in my LIFE OF LANDOR. "Ten
years after Landor had lost this home, an Englishman travelling in
Italy, his friend and mine, visited the neighbourhood for his sake,
drove out from Florence to Fiesole, and asked his coachman which was the
villa in which the Landor family lived. 'He was a dull dog, and pointed
to Boccaccio's. I didn't believe him. He was so deuced ready that I knew
he lied. I went up to the convent, which is on a height, and was leaning
over a dwarf wall basking in the noble view over a vast range of hill
and valley, when a little peasant girl came up and began to point out
the localities. _Ecco la villa Landora!_ was one of the first half-dozen
sentences she spoke. My heart swelled as Landor's would have done when I
looked down upon it, nestling among its olive-trees and vines, and with
its upper windows (there are five above the door) open to the setting
sun. Over the centre of these there is another story, set upon the
housetop like a tower; and all Italy, except its sea, is melted down
into the glowing landscape it commands. I plucked a leaf of ivy from the
convent-garden as I looked; and here it is. 'For Landor. With my love.'
So wrote Mr. Dickens to me from Florence on the and of April 1845; and
when I turned over Landor's papers in the same month after an interval
of exactly twenty years, the ivy-leaf was found carefully enclosed, with
the letter in which I had sent it." Dickens had asked him before leaving
what he would most wish to have in remembrance of Italy. "An ivy-leaf
from Fiesole," said Landor.
[102] One message sent me, though all to whom it refers have now passed
away, I please myself by thinking may still, where he might most have
desired it, be the occasion of pleasure. ". . . Give my love to Colden,
and tell him if he leaves London before I return I will ever more
address him and speak of him as _Colonel_ Colden. Kate sends _her_ love
to him also, and we both entreat him to say all the affectionate things
he can spare for third parties--using so many himself--when he writes to
Mrs. Colden: whom you ought to know, for she, as I have often told you,
is BRILLIANT. I would go five hundred miles to see her for five minutes.
I am deeply grieved by poor Felton's loss. His letter is manly, and of a
most rare kind in the dignified composure and silence of his sorrow."
(See Vol. I. p. 315).
[103] "It matters little now," says Dickens, after describing this
incident in one of his minor writings, "for coaches of all colours are
alike to poor Kindheart, and he rests far north of the little cemetery
with the cypress trees, by the city walls where the Mediterranean is so
beautiful." What was said on a former page (_ante_, 182) may here be
completed by a couple of stories told to Dickens by Mr. Walton,
suggestive strongly of the comment that it required indeed a kind heart
and many attractive qualities (which undoubtedly Fletcher possessed) to
render tolerable such eccentricities. Dickens made one of these stories
wonderfully amusing. It related the introduction by Fletcher of an
unknown Englishman to the marble-merchant's house; the stay there of the
Englishman, unasked, for ten days; and finally the walking off of the
Englishman in a shirt, pair of stockings, neckcloth, pocket-handkerchief,
and other etceteras belonging to Mr. Walton, which never reappeared
after that hour. On another occasion, Fletcher confessed to Mr. Walton
his having given a bill to a man in Carrara for £30; and the
marble-merchant having asked, "And pray, Fletcher, have you arranged to
meet it when it falls due?" Fletcher at once replied, "Yes," and to the
marble-merchant's farther enquiry "how?" added, in his politest manner,
"I have arranged to blow my brains out the day before!" The poor fellow
did afterwards almost as much self-violence without intending it, dying
of fever caught in night-wanderings through Liverpool half-clothed amid
storms of rain.
[104] Sydney died on the 22nd of February ('45), in his 77th year.
[105] A remark on this, made in my reply, elicited what follows in a
letter during his travel home: "Odd enough that remark of yours. I had
been wondering at Rome that Juvenal (which I have been always lugging
out of a bag, on all occasions) never used the fire-flies for an
illustration. But even now, they are only partially seen; and no where I
believe in such enormous numbers as on the Mediterranean coast-road,
between Genoa and Spezzia. I will ascertain for curiosity's sake,
whether there are any at this time in Rome, or between it and the
country-house of Mæcenas--on the ground of Horace's journey. I know
there is a place on the French side of Genoa, where they begin at a
particular boundary-line, and are never seen beyond it. . . . All wild to
see you at Brussels! What a meeting we will have, please God!"
CHAPTER IX.
AGAIN IN ENGLAND. 1845-1846.
Proposed Weekly Paper--Christmas Book of
1845--Stage Studies--Private
Theatricals--Dickens as Performer and as
Manager--Second Raven's Death--Busy with the
_Cricket_--Disturbing Engagements--Prospectus
written by him--New Book to be written in
Switzerland--Leaves England.
HIS first letter after again taking possession of Devonshire-terrace
revived a subject on which opinions had been from time to time
interchanged during his absence, and to which there was allusion in the
agreement executed before his departure. The desire was still as strong
with him as when he started _Master Humphrey's Clock_ to establish a
periodical, that, while relieving his own pen by enabling him to receive
frequent help from other writers, might yet retain always the popularity
of his name. "I really think I have an idea, and not a bad one, for the
periodical. I have turned it over, the last two days, very much in my
mind: and think it positively good. I incline still to weekly; price
three halfpence, if possible; partly original, partly select; notices of
books, notices of theatres, notices of all good things, notices of all
bad ones; _Carol_ philosophy, cheerful views, sharp anatomization of
humbug, jolly good temper; papers always in season, pat to the time of
year; and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful, beaming
reference in everything to Home, and Fireside. And I would call it,
sir,--
--------------------------------------------------------
| |
| THE CRICKET. |
| |
| A cheerful creature that chirrups on the Hearth. |
| |
| _Natural History._ |
| |
--------------------------------------------------------
"Now, don't decide hastily till you've heard what I would do. I would
come out, sir, with a prospectus on the subject of the Cricket that
should put everybody in a good temper, and make such a dash at people's
fenders and arm-chairs as hasn't been made for many a long day. I could
approach them in a different mode under this name, and in a more winning
and immediate way, than under any other. I would at once sit down upon
their very hobs; and take a personal and confidential position with them
which should separate me, instantly, from all other periodicals
periodically published, and supply a distinct and sufficient reason for
my coming into existence. And I would chirp, chirp, chirp away in every
number until I chirped it up to----well, you shall say how many hundred
thousand! . . . Seriously, I feel a capacity in this name and notion which
appears to give us a tangible starting-point, and a real, defined,
strong, genial drift and purpose. I seem to feel that it is an aim and
name which people would readily and pleasantly connect with _me_; and
that, for a good course and a clear one, instead of making circles
pigeon-like at starting, here we should be safe. I think the general
recognition would be likely to leap at it; and of the helpful
associations that could be clustered round the idea at starting, and the
pleasant tone of which the working of it is susceptible, I have not the
smallest doubt. . . . But you shall determine. What do you think? And what
do you say? The chances are, that it will either strike you instantly,
or not strike you at all. Which is it, my dear fellow? You know I am not
bigoted to the first suggestions of my own fancy; but you know also
exactly how I should use such a lever, and how much power I should find
in it. Which is it? What do you say?--I have not myself said half
enough. Indeed I have said next to nothing; but like the parrot in the
negro-story, I 'think a dam deal.'"
My objection, incident more or less to every such scheme, was the risk
of losing its general advantage by making it too specially dependent on
individual characteristics; but there was much in favour of the present
notion, and its plan had been modified so far, in the discussions that
followed, as to involve less absolute personal identification with
Dickens,--when discussion, project, everything was swept away by a
larger scheme, in its extent and its danger more suitable to the wild
and hazardous enterprises of that prodigious year (1845) of excitement
and disaster. In this more tremendous adventure, already hinted at on a
previous page, we all became involved; and the chirp of the Cricket,
delayed in consequence until Christmas, was heard then in circumstances
quite other than those that were first intended. The change he thus
announced to me about half way through the summer, in the same letter
which told me the success of d'Orsay's kind exertion to procure a fresh
engagement for his courier Roche.[106] "What do you think of a notion
that has occurred to me in connection with our abandoned little weekly?
It would be a delicate and beautiful fancy for a Christmas book, making
the Cricket a little household god--silent in the wrong and sorrow of
the tale, and loud again when all went well and happy." The reader will
not need to be told that thus originated the story of the _Cricket on
the Hearth_, a Fairy Tale of Home, which had a great popularity in the
Christmas days of 1845. Its sale at the outset doubled that of both its
predecessors.
But as yet the larger adventure has not made itself known, and the
interval was occupied with the private play of which the notion had been
started between us at his visit in December, and which cannot now be
better introduced than by a passage of autobiography. This belongs to
his early life, but I overlooked it when engaged on that portion of the
memoir; and the accident gives it now a more appropriate place. For,
though the facts related belong to the interval described in the chapter
on his school-days and start in life, when he had to pass nearly two
years as a reporter for one of the offices in Doctors' Commons, the
influences and character it illustrates had their strongest expression
at this later time. I had asked him, after his return to Genoa, whether
he continued to think that we should have the play; and this was his
reply. It will startle and interest the reader, and I must confess that
it took myself by surprise; for I did not thus early know the story of
his boyish years, and I thought it strange that he could have concealed
from me so much.
"ARE we to have that play??? Have I spoken of it, ever since I came home
from London, as a settled thing! I do not know if I have ever told you
seriously, but I have often thought, that I should certainly have been
as successful on the boards as I have been between them. I assure you,
when I was on the stage at Montreal (not having played for years) I was
as much astonished at the reality and ease, to myself, of what I did as
if I had been another man. See how oddly things come about! When I was
about twenty, and knew three or four successive years of Mathews's At
Homes from sitting in the pit to hear them, I wrote to Bartley who was
stage manager at Covent-garden, and told him how young I was, and
exactly what I thought I could do; and that I believed I had a strong
perception of character and oddity, and a natural power of reproducing
in my own person what I observed in others. There must have been
something in the letter that struck the authorities, for Bartley wrote
to me, almost immediately, to say that they were busy getting up the
_Hunchback_ (so they were!) but that they would communicate with me
again, in a fortnight. Punctual to the time, another letter came: with
an appointment to do anything of Mathews's I pleased, before him and
Charles Kemble, on a certain day at the theatre. My sister Fanny was in
the secret, and was to go with me to play the songs. I was laid up, when
the day came, with a terrible bad cold and an inflammation of the face;
the beginning, by the bye, of that annoyance in one ear to which I am
subject at this day. I wrote to say so, and added that I would resume my
application next season. I made a great splash in the gallery soon
afterwards; the _Chronicle_ opened to me; I had a distinction in the
little world of the newspaper, which made me like it; began to write;
didn't want money; had never thought of the stage, but as a means of
getting it; gradually left off turning my thoughts that way; and never
resumed the idea. I never told you this, did I? See how near I may have
been, to another sort of life.
"This was at the time when I was at Doctors' Commons as a shorthand
writer for the proctors. And I recollect I wrote the letter from a
little office I had there, where the answer came also. It wasn't a very
good living (though not a _very_ bad one), and was wearily uncertain;
which made me think of the Theatre in quite a business-like way. I went
to some theatre every night, with a very few exceptions, for at least
three years: really studying the bills first, and going to where there
was the best acting: and always to see Mathews whenever he played. I
practised immensely (even such things as walking in and out, and sitting
down in a chair): often four, five, six hours a day: shut up in my own
room, or walking about in the fields. I prescribed to myself, too, a
sort of Hamiltonian system for learning parts; and learnt a great
number. I haven't even lost the habit now, for I knew my Canadian parts
immediately, though they were new to me. I must have done a good deal:
for, just as Macready found me out, they used to challenge me at
Braham's: and Yates, who was knowing enough in those things, wasn't to
be parried at all. It was just the same, that day at Keeley's, when they
were getting up the _Chuzzlewit_ last June.
"If you think Macready would be interested in this Strange news from the
South, tell it him. Fancy Bartley or Charles Kemble _now_! And how
little they suspect me!" In the later letter from Lucerne written as he
was travelling home, he adds: "_Did_ I ever tell you the details of my
theatrical idea, before? Strange, that I should have quite forgotten it.
I had an odd fancy, when I was reading the unfortunate little farce at
Covent-garden, that Bartley looked as if some struggling recollection
and connection were stirring up within him--but it may only have been
his doubts of that humorous composition." The last allusion is to the
farce of the _Lamplighter_ which he read in the Covent-garden
green-room, and to which former allusion was made in speaking of his
wish to give help to Macready's managerial enterprise.
_What Might have Been_ is a history of too little profit to be worth
anybody's writing, and here there is no call even to regret how great
an actor was in Dickens lost. He took to a higher calling, but it
included the lower. There was no character created by him into which
life and reality were not thrown with such vividness, that the thing
written did not seem to his readers the thing actually done, whether the
form of disguise put on by the enchanter was Mrs. Gamp, Tom Pinch, Mr.
Squeers, or Fagin the Jew. He had the power of projecting himself into
shapes and suggestions of his fancy which is one of the marvels of
creative imagination, and what he desired to express he became. The
assumptions of the theatre have the same method at a lower pitch,
depending greatly on personal accident; but the accident as much as the
genius favoured Dickens, and another man's conception underwent in his
acting the process which in writing he applied to his own. Into both he
flung himself with the passionate fullness of his nature; and though the
theatre had limits for him that may be named hereafter, and he was
always greater in quickness of assumption than in steadiness of
delineation, there was no limit to his delight and enjoyment in the
adventures of our theatrical holiday.
In less than three weeks after his return we had selected our play, cast
our parts, and all but engaged our theatre; as I find by a note from my
friend of the 22nd of July, in which the good natured laugh can give now
no offence, since all who might have objected to it have long gone from
us. Fanny Kelly, the friend of Charles Lamb, and a genuine successor to
the old school of actresses in which the Mrs. Orgers and Miss Popes were
bred, was not more delightful on the stage than impracticable when off,
and the little theatre in Dean-street which the Duke of Devonshire's
munificence had enabled her to build, and which with any ordinary good
sense might handsomely have realized both its uses, as a private school
for young actresses and a place of public amusement, was made useless
for both by her mere whims and fancies. "Heavens! Such a scene as I have
had with Miss Kelly here, this morning! She wanted us put off until the
theatre should be cleaned and brushed up a bit, and she would and she
would not, for she is eager to have us and alarmed when she thinks of
us. By the foot of Pharaoh, it was a great scene! Especially when she
choked, and had the glass of water brought. She exaggerates the
importance of our occupation, dreads the least prejudice against the
establishment in the minds of any of our company, says the place already
has quite ruined her, and with tears in her eyes protests that any jokes
at her additional expense in print would drive her mad. By the body of
Cæsar, the scene was incredible! It's like a preposterous dream."
Something of our play is disclosed by the oaths à la Bobadil, and of our
actors by "the jokes" poor Miss Kelly was afraid of. We had chosen EVERY
MAN IN HIS HUMOUR, with special regard to the singleness and
individuality of the "humours" portrayed in it; and our company included
the leaders of a journal then in its earliest years, but already not
more renowned as the most successful joker of jokes yet known in
England, than famous for that exclusive use of its laughter and satire
for objects the highest or most harmless which makes it still so
enjoyable a companion to mirth-loving right-minded men. Maclise took
earnest part with us, and was to have acted, but fell away on the eve of
the rehearsals; and Stanfield, who went so far as to rehearse Downright
twice, then took fright and also ran away:[107] but Jerrold, who played
Master Stephen, brought with him Lemon, who took Brainworm; Leech, to
whom Master Matthew was given; A'Beckett, who had condescended to the
small part of William; and Mr. Leigh, who had Oliver Cob. I played
Kitely, and Bobadil fell to Dickens, who took upon him the redoubtable
Captain long before he stood in his dress at the footlights; humouring
the completeness of his assumption by talking and writing Bobadil, till
the dullest of our party were touched and stirred to something of his
own heartiness of enjoyment. One or two hints of these have been given,
and I will only add to them his refusal of my wish that he should go and
see some special performance of the Gamester. "Man of the House.
_Gamester!_ By the foot of Pharaoh, I will _not_ see the _Gamester_. Man
shall not force, nor horses drag, this poor gentleman-like carcass into
the presence of the _Gamester_. I have said it. . . . The player Mac hath
bidden me to eat and likewise drink with him, thyself, and short-necked
Fox to-night--An' I go not, I am a hog, and not a soldier. But an' thou
goest not--Beware citizen! Look to it. . . . Thine as thou meritest.
BOBADIL (Captain). Unto Master Kitely. These."
The play was played on the 21st of September with a success that out-ran
the wildest expectation; and turned our little enterprise into one of
the small sensations of the day. The applause of the theatre found so
loud an echo in the press, that for the time nothing else was talked
about in private circles; and after a week or two we had to yield (we
did not find it difficult) to a pressure of demand for more public
performance in a larger theatre, by which a useful charity received
important help, and its committee showed their gratitude by an
entertainment to us at the Clarendon, a month or two later, when Lord
Lansdowne took the chair. There was also another performance by us at
the same theatre, before the close of the year, of a play by Beaumont
and Fletcher. I may not farther indicate the enjoyments that attended
the success, and gave always to the first of our series of performances
a pre-eminently pleasant place in memory.
Of the thing itself, however, it is necessary to be said that a modicum
of merit goes a long way in all such matters, and it would not be safe
now to assume that ours was much above the average of amateur attempts
in general. Lemon certainly had most of the stuff, conventional as well
as otherwise, of a regular actor in him, but this was not of a high
kind; and though Dickens had the title to be called a born comedian, the
turn for it being in his very nature, his strength was rather in the
vividness and variety of his assumptions, than in the completeness,
finish, or ideality he could give to any part of them. It is expressed
exactly by what he says of his youthful preference for the
representations of the elder Mathews. At the same time this was in
itself so thoroughly genuine and enjoyable, and had in it such quickness
and keenness of insight, that of its kind it was unrivalled; and it
enabled him to present in Bobadil, after a richly coloured picture of
bombastical extravagance and comic exaltation in the earlier scenes, a
contrast in the later of tragical humility and abasement, that had a
wonderful effect. But greatly as his acting contributed to the success
of the night, this was nothing to the service he had rendered as
manager. It would be difficult to describe it. He was the life and soul
of the entire affair. I never seemed till then to have known his
business capabilities. He took everything on himself, and did the whole
of it without an effort. He was stage-director, very often
stage-carpenter, scene-arranger, property-man, prompter, and
band-master. Without offending any one he kept every one in order. For
all he had useful suggestions, and the dullest of clays under his
potter's hand were transformed into little bits of porcelain. He
adjusted scenes, assisted carpenters, invented costumes, devised
playbills, wrote out calls, and enforced as well as exhibited in his
proper person everything of which he urged the necessity on others. Such
a chaos of dirt, confusion, and noise, as the little theatre was the day
we entered it, and such a cosmos as he made it of cleanliness, order,
and silence, before the rehearsals were over! There were only two
things left as we found them, bits of humanity both, understood from
the first as among the fixtures of the place: a Man in a Straw Hat,
tall, and very fitful in his exits and entrances, of whom we never could
pierce the mystery, whether he was on guard or in possession, or what he
was; and a solitary little girl, who flitted about so silently among our
actors and actresses that she might have been deaf and dumb but for
sudden small shrieks and starts elicited by the wonders going on, which
obtained for her the name of Fireworks. There is such humorous allusion
to both in a letter of Dickens's of a year's later date, on the occasion
of the straw-hatted mystery revealing itself as a gentleman in training
for the tragic stage, that it may pleasantly close for the present our
private theatricals.
"OUR STRAW-HATTED FRIEND from Miss Kelly's! Oh my stars! To think of
him, all that time--Macbeth in disguise; Richard the Third grown
straight; Hamlet as he appeared on his seavoyage to England. What an
artful villain he must be, never to have made any sign of the melodrama
that was in him! What a wicked-minded and remorseless Iago to have seen
you doing Kitely night after night! raging to murder you and seize the
part! Oh fancy Miss Kelly 'getting him up' in Macbeth. Good Heaven! what
a mass of absurdity must be shut up sometimes within the walls of that
small theatre in Dean-street! FIREWORKS will come out shortly, depend
upon it, in the dumb line; and will relate her history in profoundly
unintelligible motions that will be translated into long and complicated
descriptions by a grey-headed father, and a red-wigged countryman, his
son. You remember the dumb dodge of relating an escape from captivity?
Clasping the left wrist with the right hand, and the right wrist with
the left hand--alternately (to express chains)--and then going round and
round the stage very fast, and coming hand over hand down an imaginary
cord; at the end of which there is one stroke on the drum, and a
kneeling to the chandelier? If Fireworks can't do that--and won't
somewhere--I'm a Dutchman."
Graver things now claim a notice which need not be proportioned to their
gravity, because, though they had an immediate effect on Dickens's
fortunes, they do not otherwise form part of his story. But first let me
say, he was at Broadstairs for three weeks in the autumn;[108] we had
the private play on his return; and a month later, on the 28th of
October, a sixth child and fourth son, named Alfred Tennyson after his
godfathers d'Orsay and Tennyson, was born in Devonshire-terrace. A death
in the family followed, the older and more gifted of his ravens having
indulged the same illicit taste for putty and paint which had been fatal
to his predecessor. Voracity killed him, as it killed Scott's. He died
unexpectedly before the kitchen-fire. "He kept his eye to the last upon
the meat as it roasted, and suddenly turned over on his back with a
sepulchral cry of _Cuckoo_!" The letter which told me this (31st of
October) announced to me also that he was at a dead lock in his
Christmas story: "Sick, bothered and depressed. Visions of Brighton come
upon me; and I have a great mind to go there to finish my second part,
or to Hampstead. I have a desperate thought of Jack Straw's. I never was
in such bad writing cue as I am this week, in all my life." The reason
was not far to seek. In the preparation for the proposed new Daily Paper
to which reference has been made, he was now actively assisting, and had
all but consented to the publication of his name.
I entertained at this time, for more than one powerful reason, the
greatest misgiving of his intended share in the adventure. It was not
fully revealed until later on what difficult terms, physical as well as
mental, Dickens held the tenure of his imaginative life; but already I
knew enough to doubt the wisdom of what he was at present undertaking.
In all intellectual labour, his will prevailed so strongly when he fixed
it on any object of desire, that what else its attainment might exact
was never duly measured; and this led to frequent strain and unconscious
waste of what no man could less afford to spare. To the world gladdened
by his work, its production might always have seemed quite as easy as
its enjoyment; but it may be doubted if ever any man's mental effort
cost him more. His habits were robust, but not his health; that secret
had been disclosed to me before he went to America; and to the last he
refused steadily to admit the enormous price he had paid for his
triumphs and successes. The morning after his last note I heard again.
"I have been so very unwell this morning, with giddiness, and headache,
and botheration of one sort or other, that I didn't get up till noon:
and, shunning Fleet-street" (the office of the proposed new paper), "am
now going for a country walk, in the course of which you will find me,
if you feel disposed to come away in the carriage that goes to you with
this. It is to call for a pull of the first part of the _Cricket_, and
will bring you, if you like, by way of Hampstead to me, and subsequently
to dinner. There is much I should like to discuss, if you can manage it.
It's the loss of my walks, I suppose; but I am as giddy as if I were
drunk, and can hardly see." I gave far from sufficient importance at the
time to the frequency of complaints of this kind, or to the recurrence,
at almost regular periods after the year following the present, of
those spasms in the side of which he has recorded an instance in the
recollections of his childhood, and of which he had an attack in Genoa;
but though not conscious of it to its full extent, this consideration
was among those that influenced me in a determination to endeavour to
turn him from what could not but be regarded as full of peril. His
health, however, had no real prominence in my letter; and it is strange
now to observe that it appears as an argument in his reply. I had simply
put before him, in the strongest form, all the considerations drawn from
his genius and fame that should deter him from the labour and
responsibility of a daily paper, not less than from the party and
political involvements incident to it; and here was the material part of
the answer made. "Many thanks for your affectionate letter, which is
full of generous truth. These considerations weigh with me, _heavily_:
but I think I descry in these times, greater stimulants to such an
effort; greater chance of some fair recognition of it; greater means of
persevering in it, or retiring from it unscratched by any weapon one
should care for; than at any other period. And most of all I have,
sometimes, that possibility of failing health or fading popularity
before me, which beckons me to such a venture when it comes within my
reach. At the worst, I have written to little purpose, if I cannot
_write myself right_ in people's minds, in such a case as this."
And so it went on: but it does not fall within my plan to describe more
than the issue, which was to be accounted so far at least fortunate that
it established a journal which has advocated steadily improvements in
the condition of all classes, rich as well as poor, and has been able,
during late momentous occurrences, to give wider scope to its influence
by its enterprise and liberality. To that result, the great writer whose
name gave its earliest attraction to the _Daily News_ was not enabled to
contribute much; but from him it certainly received the first impress of
the opinions it has since consistently maintained. Its prospectus is
before me in his handwriting, but it bears upon itself sufficiently the
character of his hand and mind. The paper would be kept free, it said,
from personal influence or party bias; and would be devoted to the
advocacy of all rational and honest means by which wrong might be
redressed, just rights maintained, and the happiness and welfare of
society promoted.
The day for the appearance of its first number was that which was to
follow Peel's speech for the repeal of the corn laws; but, brief as my
allusions to the subject are, the remark should be made that even before
this day came there were interruptions to the work of preparation, at
one time very grave, which threw such "changes of vexation" on Dickens's
personal relations to the venture as went far to destroy both his faith
and his pleasure in it. No opinion need be offered as to where most of
the blame lay, and it would be useless now to apportion the share that
might possibly have belonged to himself; but, owing to this cause, his
editorial work began with such diminished ardour that its brief
continuance could not but be looked for. A little note written "before
going home" at six o'clock in the morning of Wednesday the 21st of
January 1846, to tell me they had "been at press three quarters of an
hour, and were out before the _Times_," marks the beginning; and a note
written in the night of Monday the 9th of February, "tired to death and
quite worn out," to say that he had just resigned his editorial
functions, describes the end. I had not been unprepared. A week before
(Friday 30th of January) he had written: "I want a long talk with you. I
was obliged to come down here in a hurry to give out a travelling letter
I meant to have given out last night, and could not call upon you. Will
you dine with us to-morrow at six sharp? I have been revolving plans in
my mind this morning for quitting the paper and going abroad again to
write a new book in shilling numbers. Shall we go to Rochester to-morrow
week (my birthday) if the weather be, as it surely must be, better?" To
Rochester accordingly we had gone, he and Mrs. Dickens and her sister,
with Maclise and Jerrold and myself; going over the old Castle, Watts's
Charity, and Chatham fortifications on the Saturday, passing Sunday in
Cobham church and Cobham park; having our quarters both days at the Bull
inn made famous in _Pickwick_; and thus, by indulgence of the desire
which was always strangely urgent in him, associating his new resolve in
life with those earliest scenes of his youthful time. On one point our
feeling had been in thorough agreement. If long continuance with the
paper was not likely, the earliest possible departure from it was
desirable. But as the letters descriptive of his Italian travel (turned
afterwards into _Pictures from Italy_) had begun with its first number,
his name could not at once be withdrawn; and for the time during which
they were still to appear, he consented to contribute other occasional
letters on important social questions. Public executions and Ragged
schools were among the subjects chosen by him, and all were handled with
conspicuous ability. But the interval they covered was a short one.
To the supreme control which he had quitted, I succeeded, retaining it
very reluctantly for the greater part of that weary, anxious, laborious
year; but in little more than four months from the day the paper
started, the whole of Dickens's connection with the _Daily News_, even
that of contributing letters with his signature, had ceased. As he said
in the preface to the republished _Pictures_, it was a mistake to have
disturbed the old relations between himself and his readers, in so
departing from his old pursuits. It had however been "a brief mistake;"
the departure had been only "for a moment;" and now those pursuits were
"joyfully" to be resumed in Switzerland. Upon the latter point we had
much discussion; but he was bent on again removing himself from London,
and his glimpse of the Swiss mountains on his coming from Italy had
given him a passion to visit them again. "I don't think," he wrote to
me, "I _could_ shut out the paper sufficiently, here, to write well. No
. . . I will write my book in Lausanne and in Genoa, and forget everything
else if I can; and by living in Switzerland for the summer, and in Italy
or France for the winter, I shall be saving money while I write." So
therefore it was finally determined.
There is not much that calls for mention before he left. The first
conceiving of a new book was always a restless time, and other subjects
beside the characters that were growing in his mind would persistently
intrude themselves into his night-wanderings. With some surprise I heard
from him afterwards, for example, of a communication opened with a
leading member of the Government to ascertain what chances there might
be for his appointment, upon due qualification, to the paid magistracy
of London: the reply not giving him encouragement to entertain the
notion farther. It was of course but an outbreak of momentary
discontent; and if the answer had been as hopeful as for others' sake
rather than his own one could have wished it to be, the result would
have been the same. Just upon the eve of his departure, I may add, he
took much interest in the establishment of the General Theatrical Fund,
of which he remained a trustee until his death. It had originated in the
fact that the Funds of the two large theatres, themselves then disused
for theatrical performances, were no longer available for the ordinary
members of the profession; and on the occasion of his presiding at its
first dinner in April he said, very happily, that now the statue of
Shakespeare outside the door of Drury-lane, as emphatically as his bust
inside the church of Stratford-on-Avon, _pointed out his grave_. I am
tempted also to mention as felicitous a word which I heard fall from him
at one of the many private dinners that were got up in those days of
parting to give him friendliest farewell. "Nothing is ever so good as it
is thought," said Lord Melbourne. "And nothing so bad," interposed
Dickens.
The last incidents were that he again obtained Roche for his travelling
servant, and that he let his Devonshire-terrace house to Sir James Duke
for twelve months, the entire proposed term of his absence. On the 30th
of May they all dined with me, and on the following day left England.
FOOTNOTES:
[106] Count d'Orsay's note about Roche, replying to Dickens's
recommendation of him at his return, has touches of the pleasantry, wit,
and kindliness that gave such a wonderful fascination to its writer.
"Gore House, 6 July, 1845. MON CHER DICKENS, Nous sommes enchantés de
votre retour. Voici, thank God, Devonshire Place ressuscité. Venez
luncheoner demain à 1 heure, et amenez notre brave ami Forster.
J'attends la perle fine des couriers. Vous l'immortalisez par ce
certificat--la difficulté sera de trouver un maître digne de lui.
J'essayerai de tout mon coeur. La Reine devroit le prendre pour aller
en Saxe Gotha, car je suis convaincu qu'il est assez intelligent pour
pouvoir découvrir ce Royaume. Gore House vous envoye un cargo d'amitiés
des plus sincères. Donnez de ma part 100,000 kind regards à Madame
Dickens. Toujours votre affectionné, Ce D'ORSAY. J'ai vu le courier,
c'est le tableau de l'honnêteté, et de la bonne humeur. Don't forget to
be here at one to-morrow, with Forster."
[107] "Look here! Enclosed are two packets--a large one and a small one.
The small one, read first. It contains Stanny's renunciation as an
actor!!! After receiving it, at dinner time to-day" (22nd of August), "I
gave my brains a shake, and thought of George Cruikshank. After much
shaking, I made up the big packet, wherein I have put the case in the
artfullest manner. R-r-r-r-ead it! as a certain Captain whom you know
observes." The great artist was not for that time procurable, having
engagements away from London, and Mr. Dudley Costello was substituted;
Stanfield taking off the edge of his desertion as an actor by doing
valuable work in management and scenery.
[108] Characteristic glimpse of this Broadstairs holiday is afforded by
a letter of the 19th of August 1845. "Perhaps it is a fair specimen of
the odd adventures which befall the inimitable, that the cab in which
the children and the luggage were (I and my womankind being in the
other) got its shafts broken in the city, last Friday morning, through
the horse stumbling on the greasy pavement; _and was drawn to the wharf
(about a mile) by a stout man_, amid such frightful howlings and
derisive yellings on the part of an infuriated populace, as I never
heard before. Conceive the man in the broken shafts with his back
towards the cab; all the children looking out of the windows; and the
muddy portmanteaus and so forth (which were all tumbled down when the
horse fell) tottering and nodding on the box! The best of it was, that
_our_ cabman, being an intimate friend of the damaged cabman, insisted
on keeping him company; and proceeded at a solemn walk, in front of the
procession; thereby securing to me a liberal share of the popular
curiosity and congratulation. . . . Everything here at Broadstairs is the
same as of old. I have walked 20 miles a day since I came down, and I
went to a circus at Ramsgate on Saturday night, where _Mazeppa_ was
played in three long acts without an H in it: as if for a wager. Evven,
and edds, and errors, and ands, were as plentiful as blackberries; but
the letter H was neither whispered in Evven, nor muttered in Ell, nor
permitted to dwell in any form on the confines of the sawdust." With
this I will couple another theatrical experience of this holiday, when
he saw a Giant played by a village comedian with a quite Gargantuesque
felicity, and singled out for my admiration his fine manner of sitting
down to a hot supper (of children), with the self-lauding exalting
remark, by way of grace, "How pleasant is a quiet conscience and an
approving mind!"
CHAPTER X.
A HOME IN SWITZERLAND.
1846.
On the Rhine--Travelling Englishmen--At
Lausanne--House-hunting--A Cottage
chosen--First Impressions of
Switzerland--Lausanne described--His Villa
described--Design as to Work--English
Neighbours--Swiss Prison System--Blind
Institution--Interesting Case--Idiot
Girl--Habits in Idiot Life and Savage--Begins
Dombey--The Christmas Tale.
HALTING only at Ostend, Verviers, Coblentz, and Mannheim, they reached
Strasburg on the seventh of June: the beauty of the weather[109] showing
them the Rhine at its best. At Mayence there had come aboard their boat
a German, who soon after accosted Mrs. Dickens on deck in excellent
English: "Your countryman Mr. Dickens is travelling this way just now,
our papers say. Do you know him, or have you passed him anywhere?"
Explanations ensuing, it turned out, by one of the odd chances my friend
thought himself always singled out for, that he had with him a letter of
introduction to the brother of this gentleman; who then spoke to him of
the popularity of his books in Germany, and of the many persons he had
seen reading them in the steamboats as he came along. Dickens remarking
at this how great his own vexation was not to be able himself to speak a
word of German, "Oh dear! that needn't trouble you," rejoined the other;
"for even in so small a town as ours, where we are mostly primitive
people and have few travellers, I could make a party of at least forty
people who understand and speak English as well as I do, and of at least
as many more who could manage to read you in the original." His town was
Worms, which Dickens afterwards saw, ". . . a fine old place, though
greatly shrunken and decayed in respect of its population; with a
picturesque old cathedral standing on the brink of the Rhine, and some
brave old churches shut up, and so hemmed in and overgrown with
vineyards that they look as if they were turning into leaves and
grapes."
He had no other adventure on the Rhine. But, on the same steamer, a not
unfamiliar bit of character greeted him in the well-known lineaments,
moral and physical, of two travelling Englishmen who had got an immense
barouche on board with them, and had no plan whatever of going anywhere
in it. One of them wanted to have this barouche wheeled ashore at every
little town and village they came to. The other was bent upon "seeing it
out," as he said--meaning, Dickens supposed, the river; though neither
of them seemed to have the slightest interest in it. "The locomotive one
would have gone ashore without the carriage, and would have been
delighted to get rid of it; but they had a joint courier, and neither of
them would part with _him_ for a moment; so they went growling and
grumbling on together, and seemed to have no satisfaction but in asking
for impossible viands on board the boat, and having a grim delight in
the steward's excuses."
From Strasburg they went by rail on the 8th to Bâle, from which they
started for Lausanne next day, in three coaches, two horses to each,
taking three days for the journey: its only enlivening incident being an
uproar between the landlord of an inn on the road, and one of the
voituriers who had libelled Boniface's establishment by complaining of
the food. "After various defiances on both sides, the landlord said
'Scélérat! Mécréant! Je vous boaxerai!' to which the voiturier replied,
'Aha! Comment dites-vous? Voulez-vous boaxer? Eh? Voulez-vous? Ah!
Boaxez-moi donc! Boaxez-moi!'--at the same time accompanying these
retorts with gestures of violent significance, which explained that this
new verb-active was founded on the well-known English verb to boax, or
box. If they used it once, they used it at least a hundred times, and
goaded each other to madness with it always." The travellers reached the
hotel Gibbon at Lausanne on the evening of Thursday the 11th of June;
having been tempted as they came along to rest somewhat short of it, by
a delightful glimpse of Neuchâtel. "On consideration however I thought
it best to come on here, in case I should find, when I begin to write,
that I want streets sometimes. In which case, Geneva (which I hope would
answer the purpose) is only four and twenty miles away."
He at once began house-hunting, and had two days' hard work of it. He
found the greater part of those let to the English like small villas in
the Regent's-park, with verandahs, glass-doors opening on lawns, and
alcoves overlooking the lake and mountains. One he was tempted by,
higher up the hill, "poised above the town like a ship on a high wave;"
but the possible fury of its winter winds deterred him. Greater still
was the temptation to him of "L'Elysée," more a mansion than a villa;
with splendid grounds overlooking the lake, and in its corridors and
staircases as well as furniture like an old fashioned country house in
England; which he could have got for twelve months for £160. "But when I
came to consider its vastness, I was rather dismayed at the prospect of
windy nights in the autumn, with nobody staying in the house to make it
gay." And so he again fell back upon the very first place he had seen,
Rosemont, quite a doll's house; with two pretty little salons, a
dining-room, hall, and kitchen, on the ground floor; and with just
enough bedrooms upstairs to leave the family one to spare. "It is
beautifully situated on the hill that rises from the lake, within ten
minutes' walk of this hotel, and furnished, though scantily as all here
are, better than others except Elysée, on account of its having being
built and fitted up (the little salons in the Parisian way) by the
landlady and her husband for themselves. They lived now in a smaller
house like a porter's lodge, just within the gate. A portion of the
grounds is farmed by a farmer, and _he_ lives close by; so that, while
it is secluded, it is not at all lonely." The rent was to be ten pounds
a month for half a year, with reduction to eight for the second half, if
he should stay so long; and the rooms and furniture were to be described
to me, so that according to custom I should be quite at home there, as
soon as, also according to a custom well-known, his own ingenious
re-arrangements and improvements in the chairs and tables should be
completed. "I shall merely observe at present therefore, that my little
study is upstairs, and looks out, from two French windows opening into a
balcony, on the lake and mountains; and that there are roses enough to
smother the whole establishment of the _Daily News_ in. Likewise, there
is a pavilion in the garden, which has but two rooms in it; in one of
which, I think you shall do your work when you come. As to bowers for
reading and smoking, there are as many scattered about the grounds, as
there are in Chalk-farm tea-gardens. But the Rosemont bowers are really
beautiful. Will you come to the bowers. . . ?"
Very pleasant were the earliest impressions of Switzerland with which
this first letter closed. "The country is delightful in the extreme--as
leafy, green, and shady, as England; full of deep glens, and branchy
places (rather a Leigh Huntish expression), and bright with all sorts of
flowers in profusion.[110] It abounds in singing birds besides--very
pleasant after Italy; and the moonlight on the lake is noble. Prodigious
mountains rise up from its opposite shore (it is eight or nine miles
across, at this point), and the Simplon, the St. Gothard, Mont Blanc,
and all the Alpine wonders are piled there, in tremendous grandeur. The
cultivation is uncommonly rich and profuse. There are all manner of
walks, vineyards, green lanes, cornfields, and pastures full of hay. The
general neatness is as remarkable as in England. There are no priests or
monks in the streets, and the people appear to be industrious and
thriving. French (and very intelligible and pleasant French) seems to be
the universal language. I never saw so many booksellers' shops crammed
within the same space, as in the steep up-and-down streets of Lausanne."
Of the little town he spoke in his next letter as having its natural
dulness increased by that fact of its streets going up and down hill
abruptly and steeply, like the streets in a dream; and the consequent
difficulty of getting about it. "There are some suppressed churches in
it, now used as packers' warehouses: with cranes and pulleys growing out
of steeple-towers; little doors for lowering goods through, fitted into
blocked-up oriel windows; and cart-horses stabled in crypts. These also
help to give it a deserted and disused appearance. On the other hand, as
it is a perfectly free place subject to no prohibitions or restrictions
of any kind, there are all sorts of new French books and publications in
it, and all sorts of fresh intelligence from the world beyond the Jura
mountains. It contains only one Roman Catholic church, which is mainly
for the use of the Savoyards and Piedmontese who come trading over the
Alps. As for the country, it cannot be praised too highly, or reported
too beautiful. There are no great waterfalls, or walks through
mountain-gorges, _close_ at hand, as in some other parts of Switzerland;
but there is a charming variety of enchanting scenery. There is the
shore of the lake, where you may dip your feet, as you walk, in the
deep blue water, if you choose. There are the hills to climb up, leading
to the great heights above the town; or to stagger down, leading to the
lake. There is every possible variety of deep green lanes, vineyard,
cornfield, pasture-land, and wood. There are excellent country roads
that might be in Kent or Devonshire: and, closing up every view and
vista, is an eternally changing range of prodigious mountains--sometimes
red, sometimes grey, sometimes purple, sometimes black; sometimes white
with snow; sometimes close at hand; and sometimes very ghosts in the
clouds and mist."
In the heart of these things he was now to live and work for at least
six months; and, as the love of nature was as much a passion with him in
his intervals of leisure, as the craving for crowds and streets when he
was busy with the creatures of his fancy, no man was better qualified to
enjoy what was thus open to him from his little farm.
The view from each side of it was different in character, and from one
there was visible the liveliest aspect of Lausanne itself, close at
hand, and seeming, as he said, to be always coming down the hill with
its steeples and towers, not able to stop itself. "From a fine long
broad balcony on which the windows of my little study on the first floor
(where I am now writing) open, the lake is seen to wonderful
advantage,--losing itself by degrees in the solemn gorge of mountains
leading to the Simplon pass. Under the balcony is a stone colonnade, on
which the six French windows of the drawing-room open; and quantities of
plants are clustered about the pillars and seats, very prettily. One of
these drawing-rooms is furnished (like a French hotel) with red velvet,
and the other with green; in both, plenty of mirrors and nice white
muslin curtains; and for the larger one in cold weather there is a
carpet, the floors being bare now, but inlaid in squares with
different-coloured woods." His description did not close until, in every
nook and corner inhabited by the several members of the family, I was
made to feel myself at home; but only the final sentence need be added.
"Walking out into the balcony as I write, I am suddenly reminded, by the
sight of the Castle of Chillon glittering in the sunlight on the lake,
that I omitted to mention that object in my catalogue of the Rosemont
beauties. Please to put it in, like George Robins, in a line by itself."
[Illustration]
Regular evening walks of nine or ten miles were named in the same letter
(22nd of June) as having been begun;[111] and thoughts of his books were
already stirring in him. "An odd shadowy undefined idea is at work
within me, that I could connect a great battle-field somehow with my
little Christmas story. Shapeless visions of the repose and peace
pervading it in after-time; with the corn and grass growing over the
slain, and people singing at the plough; are so perpetually floating
before me, that I cannot but think there may turn out to be something
good in them when I see them more plainly. . . . I want to get Four Numbers
of the monthly book done here, and the Christmas book. If all goes well,
and nothing changes, and I can accomplish this by the end of November, I
shall run over to you in England for a few days with a light heart, and
leave Roche to move the caravan to Paris in the meanwhile. It will be
just the very point in the story when the life and crowd of that
extraordinary place will come vividly to my assistance in writing." Such
was his design; and, though difficulties not now seen started up which
he had a hard fight to get through, he managed to accomplish it. His
letter ended with a promise to tell me, when next he wrote, of the small
colony of English who seemed ready to give him even more than the usual
welcome. Two visits had thus early been paid him by Mr. Haldimand,
formerly a member of the English parliament, an accomplished man, who,
with his sister Mrs. Marcet (the well-known authoress), had long made
Lausanne his home. He had a very fine seat just below Rosemont, and his
character and station had made him quite the little sovereign of the
place. "He has founded and endowed all sorts of hospitals and
institutions here, and he gives a dinner to-morrow to introduce our
neighbours, whoever they are."
He found them to be happily the kind of people who rendered entirely
pleasant those frank and cordial hospitalities which the charm of his
personal intercourse made every one so eager to offer him. The dinner at
Mr. Haldimand's was followed by dinners from the guests he met there;
from an English lady[112] married to a Swiss, Mr. and Mrs. Cerjat,
clever and agreeable both, far beyond the common; from her sister wedded
to an Englishman, Mr. and Mrs. Goff; and from Mr. and Mrs. Watson of
Rockingham-castle in Northamptonshire, who had taken the Elysée on
Dickens giving it up, and with whom, as with Mr. Haldimand, his
relations continued to be very intimate long after he left Lausanne. In
his drive to Mr. Cerjat's dinner a whimsical difficulty presented
itself. He had set up, for use of his wife and children, an odd little
one-horse-carriage; made to hold three persons sideways, so that they
should avoid the wind always blowing up or down the valley; and he found
it attended with one of the drollest consequences conceivable. "It can't
be easily turned; and as you face to the side, all sorts of evolutions
are necessary to bring you 'broad-side to' before the door of the house
where you are going. The country houses here are very like those upon
the Thames between Richmond and Kingston (this, particularly), with
grounds all round. At Mr. Cerjat's we were obliged to be carried, like
the child's riddle, round the house and round the house, without
touching the house; and we were presented in the most alarming manner,
three of a row, first to all the people in the kitchen, then to the
governess who was dressing in her bedroom, then to the drawing-room
where the company were waiting for us, then to the dining-room where
they were spreading the table, and finally to the hall where we were got
out--scraping the windows of each apartment as we glared slowly into
it."
A dinner party of his own followed of course; and a sad occurrence, of
which he and his guests were unconscious, signalised the evening (15th
of July). "While we were sitting at dinner, one of the prettiest girls
in Lausanne was drowned in the lake--in the most peaceful water,
reflecting the steep mountains, and crimson with the setting sun. She
was bathing in one of the nooks set apart for women, and seems somehow
to have entangled her feet in the skirts of her dress. She was an
accomplished swimmer, as many of the girls are here, and drifted,
suddenly, out of only five feet water. Three or four friends who were
with her, _ran away_, screaming. Our children's governess was on the
lake in a boat with M. Verdeil (my prison-doctor) and his family. They
ran inshore immediately; the body was quickly got out; and M. Verdeil,
with three or four other doctors, laboured for some hours to restore
animation; but she only sighed once. After all that time, she was
obliged to be borne, stiff and stark, to her father's house. She was his
only child, and but 17 years old. He has been nearly dead since, and all
Lausanne has been full of the story. I was down by the lake, near the
place, last night; and a boatman _acted_ to me the whole scene:
depositing himself finally on a heap of stones, to represent the body."
With M. Verdeil, physician to the prison and vice-president of the
council of health, introduced by Mr. Haldimand, there had already been
much communication; and I could give nothing more characteristic of
Dickens than his reference to this, and other similar matters in which
his interest was strongly moved during his first weeks at Lausanne.[113]
"Some years ago, when they set about reforming the prison at Lausanne,
they turned their attention, in a correspondence of republican feeling,
to America; and taking the Philadelphian system for granted, adopted it.
Terrible fits, new phases of mental affection, and horrible madness,
among the prisoners, were very soon the result; and attained to such an
alarming height, that M. Verdeil, in his public capacity, began to
report against the system, and went on reporting and working against it
until he formed a party who were determined not to have it, and caused
it to be abolished--except in cases where the imprisonment does not
exceed ten months in the whole. It is remarkable that in his notes of
the different cases, there is _every effect_ I mentioned as having
observed myself at Philadelphia; even down to those contained in the
description of the man who had been there thirteen years, and who
_picked his hands_ so much as he talked. He has only recently, he says,
read the _American Notes_; but he is so much struck by the perfect
coincidence that he intends to republish some extracts from his own
notes, side by side with these passages of mine translated into French.
I went with him over the prison the other day. It is wonderfully well
arranged for a continental jail, and in perfect order. The sentences
however, or some of them, are very terrible. I saw one man sent there
for murder under circumstances of mitigation--for 30 years. Upon the
silent social system all the time! They weave, and plait straw, and make
shoes, small articles of turnery and carpentry, and little common wooden
clocks. But the sentences are too long for that monotonous and hopeless
life; and, though they are well-fed and cared for, they generally break
down utterly after two or three years. One delusion seems to become
common to three-fourths of them after a certain time of imprisonment.
Under the impression that there is something destructive put into their
food 'pour les guérir de crime' (says M. Verdeil), they refuse to eat!"
It was at the Blind Institution, however, of which Mr. Haldimand was the
president and great benefactor, that Dickens's attention was most deeply
arrested; and there were two cases in especial of which the detail may
be read with as much interest now as when my friend's letters were
written, and as to which his own suggestions open up still rather
startling trains of thought. The first, which in its attraction for him
he found equal even to Laura Bridgman's, was that of a young man of 18:
"born deaf and dumb, and stricken blind by an accident when he was about
five years old. The Director of the institution is a young German, of
great ability, and most uncommonly prepossessing appearance. He
propounded to the scientific bodies of Geneva, a year ago (when this
young man was under education in the asylum), the possibility of
teaching him to speak--in other words, to play with his tongue upon his
teeth and palate as if on an instrument, and connect particular
performances with particular words conveyed to him in the
finger-language. They unanimously agreed that it was quite impossible.
The German set to work, and the young man now speaks very plainly and
distinctly: without the least modulation, of course, but with
comparatively little hesitation; expressing the words aloud as they are
struck, so to speak, upon his hands; and showing the most intense and
wonderful delight in doing it. This is commonly acquired, as you know,
by the deaf and dumb who learn by sight; but it has never before been
achieved in the case of a deaf, dumb, and blind subject. He is an
extremely lively, intelligent, good-humoured fellow; an excellent
carpenter; a first-rate turner; and runs about the building with a
certainty and confidence which none of the merely blind pupils acquire.
He has a great many ideas, and an instinctive dread of death. He knows
of God, as of Thought enthroned somewhere; and once told, on nature's
prompting (the devil's of course), a lie. He was sitting at dinner, and
the Director asked him whether he had had anything to drink; to which he
instantly replied 'No,' in order that he might get some more, though he
had been served in his turn. It was explained to him that this was a
wrong thing, and wouldn't do, and that he was to be locked up in a room
for it: which was done. Soon after this, he had a dream of being bitten
in the shoulder by some strange animal. As it left a great impression on
his mind, he told M. the Director that he had told another lie in the
night. In proof of it he related his dream, and added, 'It must be a lie
you know, because there is no strange animal here, and I never was
bitten.' Being informed that this sort of lie was a harmless one, and
was called a dream, he asked whether dead people ever dreamed[114] while
they were lying in the ground. He is one of the most curious and
interesting studies possible."
The second case had come in on the very day that Dickens visited the
place. "When I was there" (8th of July) "there had come in, that
morning, a girl of ten years old, born deaf and dumb and blind, and so
perfectly untaught that she has not learnt to have the least control
even over the performance of the common natural functions. . . . And yet
she _laughs sometimes_ (good God! conceive what at!)--and is dreadfully
sensitive from head to foot, and very much alarmed, for some hours
before the coming on of a thunder storm. Mr. Haldimand has been long
trying to induce her parents to send her to the asylum. At last they
have consented; and when I saw her, some of the little blind girls were
trying to make friends with her, and to lead her gently about. She was
dressed in just a loose robe from the necessity of changing her
frequently, but had been in a bath, and had had her nails cut (which
were previously very long and dirty), and was not at all
ill-looking--quite the reverse; with a remarkably good and pretty little
mouth, but a low and undeveloped head of course. It was pointed out to
me, as very singular, that the moment she is left alone, or freed from
anybody's touch (which is the same thing to her), she instantly
crouches down with her hands up to her ears, in exactly the position of
a child before its birth; and so remains. I thought this such a strange
coincidence with the utter want of advancement in her moral being, that
it made a great impression on me; and conning it over and over, I began
to think that this is surely the invariable action of savages too, and
that I have seen it over and over again described in books of voyages
and travels. Not having any of these with me, I turned to _Robinson
Crusoe_; and I find De Foe says, describing the savages who came on the
island after Will Atkins began to change for the better and commanded
under the grave Spaniard for the common defence, 'their posture was
generally sitting upon the ground, with their knees up towards their
mouth, and the head put between the two hands, leaning down upon the
knees'--exactly the same attitude!" In his next week's letter he
reported further: "I have not been to the Blind asylum again yet, but
they tell me that the deaf and dumb and blind child's _face_ is
improving obviously, and that she takes great delight in the first
effort made by the Director to connect himself with an occupation of her
time. He gives her, every day, two smooth round pebbles to roll over and
over between her two hands. She appears to have an idea that it is to
lead to something; distinctly recognizes the hand that gives them to
her, as a friendly and protecting one; and sits for hours quite busy."
To one part of his very thoughtful suggestion I objected, and would have
attributed to a mere desire for warmth, in her as in the savage, what he
supposed to be part of an undeveloped or embryo state explaining also
the absence of sentient and moral being. To this he replied (25th of
July): "I do not think that there is reason for supposing that the
savage attitude originates in the desire of warmth, because all naked
savages inhabit hot climates; and their instinctive attitude, if it had
reference to heat or cold, would probably be the coolest possible; like
their delight in water, and swimming. I do not think there is any race
of savage men, however low in grade, inhabiting cold climates, who do
not kill beasts and wear their skins. The girl decidedly improves in
face, and, if one can yet use the word as applied to her, in manner too.
No communication by the speech of touch has yet been established with
her, but the time has not been long enough." In a later letter he tells
me (24th of August): "The deaf, dumb, and blind girl is decidedly
improved, and very much improved, in this short time. No communication
is yet established with her, but that is not to be expected. They have
got her out of that strange, crouching position; dressed her neatly; and
accustomed her to have a pleasure in society. She laughs frequently, and
also claps her hands and jumps; having, God knows how, some inward
satisfaction. I never saw a more tremendous thing in its way, in my
life, than when they stood her, t'other day, in the centre of a group of
blind children who sang a chorus to the piano; and brought her hand, and
kept it, in contact with the instrument. A shudder pervaded her whole
being, her breath quickened, her colour deepened,--and I can compare it
to nothing but returning animation in a person nearly dead. It was
really awful to see how the sensation of the music fluttered and stirred
the locked-up soul within her." The same letter spoke again of the
youth: "The male subject is well and jolly as possible. He is very fond
of smoking. I have arranged to supply him with cigars during our stay
here; so he and I are in amazing sympathy. I don't know whether he
thinks I grow them, or make them, or produce them by winking, or what.
But it gives him a notion that the world in general belongs to me.". . .
Before his kind friend left Lausanne the poor fellow had been taught to
say, "Monsieur Dickens m'a donné les cigares," and at their leave-taking
his gratitude was expressed by incessant repetition of these words for a
full half-hour.
Certainly by no man was gratitude more persistently earned, than by
Dickens, from all to whom nature or the world had been churlish or
unfair. Not to those only made desolate by poverty or the temptations
incident to it, but to those whom natural defects or infirmities had
placed at a disadvantage with their kind, he gave his first
consideration; helping them personally where he could, sympathising and
sorrowing with them always, but above all applying himself to the
investigation of such alleviation or cure as philosophy or science might
be able to apply to their condition. This was a desire so eager as
properly to be called one of the passions of his life, visible in him to
the last hour of it.
Only a couple of weeks, themselves not idle ones, had passed over him at
Rosemont when he made a dash at the beginning of his real work; from
which indeed he had only been detained so long by the non-arrival of a
box dispatched from London before his own departure, containing not his
proper writing materials only, but certain quaint little bronze figures
that thus early stood upon his desk, and were as much needed for the
easy flow of his writing as blue ink or quill pens. "I have not been
idle" (28th of June) "since I have been here, though at first I was
'kept out' of the big box as you know. I had a good deal to write for
Lord John about the Ragged schools. I set to work and did that. A good
deal for Miss Coutts, in reference to her charitable projects. I set to
work and did _that_. Half of the children's New Testament[115] to write,
or pretty nearly. I set to work and did _that_. Next I cleared off the
greater part of such correspondence as I had rashly pledged myself to;
and then. . . .
BEGAN DOMBEY!
I performed this feat yesterday--only wrote the first slip--but there it
is, and it is a plunge straight over head and ears into the story. . . .
Besides all this, I have really gone with great vigour at the French,
where I find myself greatly assisted by the Italian; and am subject to
two descriptions of mental fits in reference to the Christmas book: one,
of the suddenest and wildest enthusiasm; one, of solitary and anxious
consideration. . . . By the way, as I was unpacking the big box I took
hold of a book, and said to 'Them,'--'Now, whatever passage my thumb
rests on, I shall take as having reference to my work.' It was TRISTRAM
SHANDY, and opened at these words, 'What a work it is likely to turn
out! Let us begin it!'"
The same letter told me that he still inclined strongly to "the field of
battle notion" for his Christmas volume, but was not as yet advanced in
it; being curious first to see whether its capacity seemed to strike me
at all. My only objection was to his adventure of opening two stories at
once, of which he did not yet see the full danger; but for the moment
the Christmas fancy was laid aside, and not resumed, except in passing
allusions, until after the close of August, when the first two numbers
of _Dombey_ were done. The interval supplied fresh illustration of his
life in his new home, not without much interest; and as I have shown
what a pleasant social circle, "wonderfully friendly and
hospitable"[116] to the last, already had grouped itself round him in
Lausanne, and how full of "matter to be heard and learn'd" he found such
institutions as its prison and blind school, the picture will receive
attractive touches if I borrow from his letters written during this
outset of _Dombey_, some farther notices as well of the general
progress of his work, as of what was specially interesting or amusing to
him at the time, and of how the country and the people impressed him. In
all of these his character will be found strongly marked.
FOOTNOTES:
[109] "We have hardly seen a cloud in the sky since you and I parted at
Ramsgate, and the heat has been extraordinary."
[110] "The green woods and green shades about here," he says in another
letter, "are more like Cobham in Kent, than anything we dream of at the
foot of the Alpine passes."
[111] To these the heat interposed occasional difficulties. "Setting off
last night" (5th of July) "at six o'clock, in accordance with my usual
custom, for a long walk, I was really quite floored when I got to the
top of a long steep hill leading out of the town--the same by which we
entered it. I believe the great heats, however, seldom last more than a
week at a time; there are always very long twilights, and very delicious
evenings; and now that there is moonlight, the nights are wonderful. The
peacefulness and grandeur of the Mountains and the Lake are
indescribable. There comes a rush of sweet smells with the morning air
too, which is quite peculiar to the country."
[112] "One of her brothers by the bye, now dead, had large property in
Ireland--all Nenagh, and the country about; and Cerjat told me, as we
were talking about one thing and another, that when he went over there
for some months to arrange the widow's affairs, he procured a copy of
the curse which had been read at the altar by the parish priest of
Nenagh, against any of the flock who didn't subscribe to the O'Connell
tribute."
[113] In a note may be preserved another passage from the same letter.
"I have been queer and had trembling legs for the last week. But it has
been almost impossible to sleep at night. There is a breeze to-day (25th
of July) and I hope another storm is coming up. . . . There is a theatre
here; and whenever a troop of players pass through the town, they halt
for a night and act. On the day of our tremendous dinner party of eight,
there was an infant phenomenon; whom I should otherwise have seen. Last
night there was a Vaudeville company; and Charley, Roche, and Anne went.
The Brave reports the performances to have resembled Greenwich Fair. . . .
There are some Promenade Concerts in the open air in progress now: but
as they are just above one part of our garden we don't go: merely
sitting outside the door instead, and hearing it all where we are. . . .
Mont Blanc has been very plain lately. One heap of snow. A Frenchman got
to the top, the other day."
[114] ". . . Ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil. . . ."
[115] This was an abstract, in plain language for the use of his
children, of the narrative in the Four Gospels. Allusion was made,
shortly after his death, to the existence of such a manuscript, with
expression of a wish that it might be published; but nothing would have
shocked himself so much as any suggestion of that kind. The little piece
was of a peculiarly private character, written for his children, and
exclusively and strictly for their use only.
[116] So he described it. "I do not think," he adds, "we could have
fallen on better society. It is a small circle certainly, but quite
large enough. The Watsons improve very much on acquaintance. Everybody
is very well informed; and we are all as social and friendly as people
can be, and very merry. We play whist with great dignity and gravity
sometimes, interrupted only by the occasional facetiousness of the
inimitable."
CHAPTER XI.
SWISS PEOPLE AND SCENERY.
1846.
The Mountains and Lake--Manners of the
People--A Country Fête--Rifle-shooting--A
Marriage--Gunpowder Festivities--Progress in
Work--Hints to Artist for Illustrating
Dombey--Henry Hallam--Sight-seers from
England--Trip to Chamounix--Mule
Travelling--Mer de Glace--Tête Noire Pass--An
Accident--Castle of Chillon
described--Political Celebration--Good Conduct
of the People--Protestant and Catholic Cantons.
WHAT at once had struck him as the wonderful feature in the mountain
scenery was its everchanging and yet unchanging aspect. It was never
twice like the same thing to him. Shifting and altering, advancing and
retreating, fifty times a day, it was unalterable only in its grandeur.
The lake itself too had every kind of varying beauty for him. By
moonlight it was indescribably solemn; and before the coming on of a
storm had a strange property in it of being disturbed, while yet the sky
remained clear and the evening bright, which he found to be mysterious
and impressive in an especial degree. Such a storm had come among his
earliest and most grateful experiences; a degree of heat worse even than
in Italy[117] having disabled him at the outset for all exertion until
the lightning, thunder, and rain arrived. The letter telling me this
(5th July) described the fruit as so abundant in the little farm, that
the trees of the orchard in front of his house were bending beneath it;
spoke of a field of wheat sloping down to the side window of his
dining-room as already cut and carried; and said that the roses, which
the hurricane of rain had swept away, were come back lovelier and in
greater numbers than ever.
Of the ordinary Swiss people he formed from the first a high opinion
which everything during his stay among them confirmed. He thought it the
greatest injustice to call them "the Americans of the Continent." In his
first letters he said of the peasantry all about Lausanne that they were
as pleasant a people as need be. He never passed, on any of the roads,
man, woman, or child, without a salutation; and anything churlish or
disagreeable he never noticed in them. "They have not," he continued,
"the sweetness and grace of the Italians, or the agreeable manners of
the better specimens of French peasantry, but they are admirably
educated (the schools of this canton are extraordinarily good, in every
little village), and always prepared to give a civil and pleasant
answer. There is no greater mistake. I was talking to my landlord[118]
about it the other day, and he said he could not conceive how it had
ever arisen, but that when he returned from his eighteen years' service
in the English navy he shunned the people, and had no interest in them
until they gradually forced their real character upon his observation.
We have a cook and a coachman here, taken at hazard from the people of
the town; and I never saw more obliging servants, or people who did
their work so truly _with a will_. And in point of cleanliness, order,
and punctuality to the moment, they are unrivalled. . . ."
The first great gathering of the Swiss peasantry which he saw was in the
third week after his arrival, when a country fête was held at a place
called The Signal; a deep green wood, on the sides and summit of a very
high hill overlooking the town and all the country round; and he gave me
very pleasant account of it. "There were various booths for eating and
drinking, and the selling of trinkets and sweetmeats; and in one place
there was a great circle cleared, in which the common people waltzed and
polka'd, without cessation, to the music of a band. There was a great
roundabout for children (oh my stars what a family were proprietors of
it! A sunburnt father and mother, a humpbacked boy, a great poodle-dog
possessed of all sorts of accomplishments, and a young murderer of
seventeen who turned the machinery); and there were some games of chance
and skill established under trees. It was very pretty. In some of the
drinking booths there were parties of German peasants, twenty together
perhaps, singing national drinking-songs, and making a most exhilarating
and musical chorus by rattling their cups and glasses on the table and
drinking them against each other, to a regular tune. You know it as a
stage dodge, but the real thing is splendid. Farther down the hill,
other peasants were rifle-shooting for prizes, at targets set on the
other side of a deep ravine, from two to three hundred yards off. It was
quite fearful to see the astonishing accuracy of their aim, and how,
every time a rifle awakened the ten thousand echoes of the green glen,
some men crouching behind a little wall immediately in front of the
targets, sprung up with large numbers in their hands denoting where the
ball had struck the bull's eye--and then in a moment disappeared again.
Standing in a ring near these shooters was another party of Germans
singing hunting-songs, in parts, most melodiously. And down in the
distance was Lausanne, with all sorts of haunted-looking old towers
rising up before the smooth water of the lake, and an evening sky all
red, and gold, and bright green. When it closed in quite dark, all the
booths were lighted up; and the twinkling of the lamps among the forest
of trees was beautiful. . . ." To this pretty picture, a letter of a little
later date, describing a marriage on the farm, added farther comical
illustration of the rifle-firing propensities of the Swiss, and had
otherwise also whimsical touches of character. "One of the farmer's
people--a sister, I think--was married from here the other day. It is
wonderful to see how naturally the smallest girls are interested in
marriages. Katey and Mamey were as excited as if they were eighteen. The
fondness of the Swiss for gunpowder on interesting occasions, is one of
the drollest things. For three days before, the farmer himself, in the
midst of his various agricultural duties, plunged out of a little door
near my windows, about once in every hour, and fired off a rifle. I
thought he was shooting rats who were spoiling the vines; but he was
merely relieving his mind, it seemed, on the subject of the approaching
nuptials. All night afterwards, he and a small circle of friends kept
perpetually letting off guns under the casement of the bridal chamber. A
Bride is always drest here, in black silk; but this bride wore merino of
that colour, observing to her mother when she bought it (the old lady is
82, and works on the farm), 'You know, mother, I am sure to want
mourning for you, soon; and the same gown will do.'"[119]
Meanwhile, day by day, he was steadily moving on with his first number;
feeling sometimes the want of streets in an "extraordinary nervousness
it would be hardly possible to describe," that would come upon him after
he had been writing all day; but at all other times finding the repose
of the place very favourable to industry. "I am writing slowly at first,
of course" (5th of July), "but I hope I shall have finished the first
number in the course of a fortnight at farthest. I have done the first
chapter, and begun another. I say nothing of the merits thus far, or of
the idea beyond what is known to you; because I prefer that you should
come as fresh as may be upon them. I shall certainly have a great
surprise for people at the end of the fourth number;[120] and I think
there is a new and peculiar sort of interest, involving the necessity of
a little bit of delicate treatment whereof I will expound my idea to you
by and by. When I have done this number, I may take a run to Chamounix
perhaps. . . . My thoughts have necessarily been called away from the
Christmas book. The first _Dombey_ done, I think I should fly off to
that, whenever the idea presented itself vividly before me. I still
cherish the Battle fancy, though it is nothing but a fancy as yet." A
week later he told me that he hoped to finish the first number by that
day week or thereabouts, when he should then run and look for his
Christmas book in the glaciers at Chamounix. His progress to this point
had been pleasing him. "I think _Dombey_ very strong--with great
capacity in its leading idea; plenty of character that is likely to
tell; and some rollicking facetiousness, to say nothing of pathos. I
hope you will soon judge of it for yourself, however; and I know you
will say what you think. I have been very constantly at work." Six days
later I heard that he had still eight slips to write, and for a week had
put off Chamounix.
But though the fourth chapter yet was incomplete, he could repress no
longer the desire to write to me of what he was doing (18th of July). "I
think the general idea of _Dombey_ is interesting and new, and has great
material in it. But I don't like to discuss it with you till you have
read number one, for fear I should spoil its effect. When done--about
Wednesday or Thursday, please God--I will send it in two days' posts,
seven letters each day. If you have it set at once (I am afraid you
couldn't read it, otherwise than in print) I know you will impress on B.
& E. the necessity of the closest secrecy. The very name getting out,
would be ruinous. The points for illustration, and the enormous care
required, make me excessively anxious. The man for Dombey, if Browne
could see him, the class man to a T, is Sir A---- E----, of D----'s.
Great pains will be necessary with Miss Tox. The Toodle family should
not be too much caricatured, because of Polly. I should like Browne to
think of Susan Nipper, who will not be wanted in the first number. After
the second number, they will all be nine or ten years older, but this
will not involve much change in the characters, except in the children
and Miss Nipper. What a brilliant thing to be telling you all these
names so familiarly, when you know nothing about 'em! I quite enjoy it.
By the bye, I hope you may like the introduction of Solomon Gills.[121]
I think he lives in a good sort of house. . . . One word more. What do you
think, as a name for the Christmas book, of THE BATTLE OF LIFE? It is
not a name I have conned at all, but has just occurred to me in
connection with that foggy idea. If I can see my way, I think I will
take it next, and clear it off. If you knew how it hangs about me, I am
sure you would say so too. It would be an immense relief to have it
done, and nothing standing in the way of _Dombey_."
Within the time left for it the opening number was done, but two little
incidents preceded still the trip to Chamounix. The first was a visit
from Hallam to Mr. Haldimand. "Heavens! how Hallam did talk yesterday! I
don't think I ever saw him so tremendous. Very good-natured and
pleasant, in his way, but Good Heavens! how he did talk. That famous day
you and I remember was nothing to it. His son was with him, and his
daughter (who has an impediment in her speech, as if nature were
determined to balance that faculty in the family), and his niece, a
pretty woman, the wife of a clergyman and a friend of Thackeray's. It
strikes me that she must be 'the little woman' he proposed to take us to
drink tea with, once, in Golden-square. Don't you remember? His great
favourite? She is quite a charming person anyhow." I hope to be pardoned
for preserving an opinion which more familiar later acquaintance
confirmed, and which can hardly now give anything but pleasure to the
lady of whom it is expressed. To the second incident he alludes more
briefly. "As Haldimand and Mrs. Marcet and the Cerjats had devised a
small mountain expedition for us for to-morrow, I didn't like to allow
Chamounix to stand in the way. So we go with them first, and start on
our own account on Tuesday. We are extremely pleasant with these
people." The close of the same letter (25th of July), mentioning two
pieces of local news, gives intimation of the dangers incident to all
Swiss travelling, and of such special precautions as were necessary for
the holiday among the mountains he was now about to take. "My first news
is that a crocodile is said to have escaped from the Zoological gardens
at Geneva, and to be now 'zigzag-zigging' about the lake. But I can't
make out whether this is a great fact, or whether it is a pious fraud to
prevent too much bathing and liability to accidents. The other piece of
news is more serious. An English family whose name I don't know,
consisting of a father, mother, and daughter, arrived at the hotel
Gibbon here last Monday, and started off on some mountain expedition in
one of the carriages of the country. It was a mere track, the road, and
ought to have been travelled only by mules, but the Englishman persisted
(as Englishmen do) in going on in the carriage; and in answer to all the
representations of the driver that no carriage had ever gone up there,
said he needn't be afraid he wasn't going to be paid for it, and so
forth. Accordingly, the coachman got down and walked by the horses'
heads. It was fiery hot; and, after much tugging and rearing, the horses
began to back, and went down bodily, carriage and all, into a deep
ravine. The mother was killed on the spot; and the father and daughter
are lying at some house hard by, not expected to recover."
His next letter (written on the second of August) described his own
first real experience of mountain-travel. "I begin my letter to-night,
but only begin, for we returned from Chamounix in time for dinner just
now, and are pretty considerably done up. We went by a mountain pass not
often crossed by ladies, called the Col de Balme, where your imagination
may picture Kate and Georgy on mules _for ten hours at a stretch_,
riding up and down the most frightful precipices. We returned by the
pass of the Tête Noire, which Talfourd knows, and which is of a
different character, but astonishingly fine too. Mont Blanc, and the
Valley of Chamounix, and the Mer de Glace, and all the wonders of that
most wonderful place, are above and beyond one's wildest expectations. I
cannot imagine anything in nature more stupendous or sublime. If I were
to write about it now, I should quite rave--such prodigious impressions
are rampant within me. . . . You may suppose that the mule-travelling is
pretty primitive. Each person takes a carpet-bag strapped on the mule
behind himself or herself: and that is all the baggage that can be
carried. A guide, a thorough-bred mountaineer, walks all the way,
leading the lady's mule; I say the lady's par excellence, in compliment
to Kate; and all the rest struggle on as they please. The cavalcade
stops at a lone hut for an hour and a half in the middle of the day, and
lunches brilliantly on whatever it can get. Going by that Col de Balme
pass, you climb up and up and up for five hours and more, and
look--from a mere unguarded ledge of path on the side of the
precipice--into such awful valleys, that at last you are firm in the
belief that you have got above everything in the world, and that there
can be nothing earthly overhead. Just as you arrive at this conclusion,
a different (and oh Heaven! what a free and wonderful) air comes blowing
on your face; you cross a ridge of snow; and lying before you (wholly
unseen till then), towering up into the distant sky, is the vast range
of Mont Blanc, with attendant mountains diminished by its majestic side
into mere dwarfs tapering up into innumerable rude Gothic pinnacles;
deserts of ice and snow; forests of firs on mountain sides, of no
account at all in the enormous scene; villages down in the hollow, that
you can shut out with a finger; waterfalls, avalanches, pyramids and
towers of ice, torrents, bridges; mountain upon mountain until the very
sky is blocked away, and you must look up, overhead, to see it. Good
God, what a country Switzerland is, and what a concentration of it is to
be beheld from that one spot! And (think of this in Whitefriars and in
Lincoln's-inn!) at noon on the second day from here, the first day being
but half a one by the bye and full of uncommon beauty, you lie down on
that ridge and see it all! . . . I think I must go back again (whether you
come or not!) and see it again before the bad weather arrives. We have
had sunlight, moonlight, a perfectly transparent atmosphere with not a
cloud, and the grand plateau on the very summit of Mont Blanc so clear
by day and night that it was difficult to believe in intervening chasms
and precipices, and almost impossible to resist the idea that one might
sally forth and climb up easily. I went into all sorts of places; armed
with a great pole with a spike at the end of it, like a leaping-pole,
and with pointed irons buckled on to my shoes; and am all but knocked
up. I was very anxious to make the expedition to what is called 'The
Garden:' a green spot covered with wild flowers, lying across the Mer de
Glace, and among the most awful mountains: but I could find no
Englishman at the hotels who was similarly disposed, and the Brave
_wouldn't go_. No sir! He gave in point blank (having been horribly
blown in a climbing excursion the day before), and couldn't stand it. He
is too heavy for such work, unquestionably.[122] In all other respects,
I think he has exceeded himself on this journey; and if you could have
seen him riding a very small mule, up a road exactly like the broken
stairs of Rochester-castle; with a brandy bottle slung over his
shoulder, a small pie in his hat, a roast fowl looking out of his
pocket, and a mountain staff of six feet long carried cross-wise on the
saddle before him; you'd have said so. He was (next to me) the
admiration of Chamounix, but he utterly quenched me on the road."
On the road as they returned there had been a small adventure, the day
before this letter was written. Dickens was jingling slowly up the Tête
Noire pass (his mule having thirty-seven bells on its head), riding at
the moment quite alone, when--"an Englishman came bolting out of a
little châlet in a most inaccessible and extraordinary place, and said
with great glee 'There has been an accident here sir!' I had been
thinking of anything else you please; and, having no reason to suppose
him an Englishman except his language, which went for nothing in the
confusion, stammered out a reply in French and stared at him, in a very
damp shirt and trowsers, as he stared at me in a similar costume. On his
repeating the announcement, I began to have a glimmering of common
sense; and so arrived at a knowledge of the fact that a German lady had
been thrown from her mule and had broken her leg, at a short distance
off, and had found her way in great pain to that cottage, where the
Englishman, a Prussian, and a Frenchman, had presently come up; and the
Frenchman, by extraordinary good fortune, was a surgeon! They were all
from Chamounix, and the three latter were walking in company. It was
quite charming to see how attentive they were. The lady was from
Lausanne; where she had come from Frankfort to make excursions with her
two boys, who are at the college here, during the vacation. She had no
other attendants, and the boys were crying and very frightened. The
Englishman was in the full glee of having just cut up one white dress,
two chemises, and three pocket handkerchiefs, for bandages; the
Frenchman had set the leg skilfully; the Prussian had scoured a
neighboring wood for some men to carry her forward; and they were all at
it, behind the hut, making a sort of handbarrow on which to bear her.
When it was constructed, she was strapped upon it; had her poor head
covered over with a handkerchief, and was carried away; and we all went
on in company: Kate and Georgy consoling and tending the sufferer, who
was very cheerful, but had lost her husband only a year." With the same
delightful observation, and missing no touch of kindly character that
might give each actor his place in the little scene, the sequel is
described; but it does not need to add more. It was hoped that by means
of relays of men at Martigny the poor lady might have been carried on
some twenty miles, in the cooler evening, to the head of the lake, and
so have been got into the steamer; but she was too exhausted to be borne
beyond the inn, and there she had to remain until joined by relatives
from Frankfort.
A few days' rest after his return were interposed, before he began his
second number; and until the latter has been completed, and the
Christmas story taken in hand, I do not admit the reader to his full
confidences about his writing. But there were other subjects that amused
and engaged him up to that date, as well when he was idle as when again
he was at work, to which expression so full of character is given in his
letters that they properly find mention here.
Between the second and the ninth of August he went down one evening to
the lake, five minutes after sunset, when the sky was covered with
sullen black clouds reflected in the deep water, and saw the Castle of
Chillon. He thought it the best deserving and least exaggerated in
repute, of all the places he had seen. "The insupportable solitude and
dreariness of the white walls and towers, the sluggish moat and
drawbridge, and the lonely ramparts, I never saw the like of. But there
is a court-yard inside; surrounded by prisons, oubliettes, and old
chambers of torture; so terrifically sad, that death itself is not more
sorrowful. And oh! a wicked old Grand Duke's bedchamber upstairs in the
tower, with a secret staircase down into the chapel, where the bats were
wheeling about; and Bonnivard's dungeon; and a horrible trap whence
prisoners were cast out into the lake; and a stake all burnt and
crackled up, that still stands in the torture-ante-chamber to the saloon
of justice (!)--what tremendous places! Good God, the greatest mystery
in all the earth, to me, is how or why the world was tolerated by its
Creator through the good old times, and wasn't dashed to fragments."
On the ninth of August he wrote to me that there was to be a prodigious
fête that day in Lausanne, in honour of the first anniversary of the
proclamation of the New Constitution:[123] "beginning at sunrise with
the firing of great guns, and twice two thousand rounds of rifles by two
thousand men; proceeding at eleven o'clock with a great service, and
some speechifying, in the church; and ending to-night with a great ball
in the public promenade, and a general illumination of the town." The
authorities had invited him to a place of honour in the ceremony; and
though he did not go ("having been up till three o'clock in the morning,
and being fast asleep at the appointed time"), the reply that sent his
thanks expressed also his sympathy. He was the readier with this from
having discovered, in the "old" or "gentlemanly" party of the place
("including of course the sprinkling of English who are always tory,
hang 'em!"), so wonderfully sore a feeling about the revolution thus
celebrated, that to avoid its fête the majority had gone off by steamer
the day before, and those who remained were prophesying assaults on the
unilluminated houses, and other excesses. Dickens had no faith in such
predictions. "The people are as perfectly good tempered and quiet
always, as people can be. I don't know what the last Government may have
been, but they seem to me to do very well with this, and to be
rationally and cheaply provided for. If you believed what the
discontented assert, you wouldn't believe in one solitary man or woman
with a grain of goodness or civility. I find nothing _but_ civility; and
I walk about in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, where they live
rough lives enough, in solitary cottages." The issue was told in two
postscripts to his letter, and showed him to be so far right. "P.S. 6
o'clock afternoon. The fête going on, in great force. Not one of 'the
old party' to be seen. I went down with one to the ground before dinner,
and nothing would induce him to go within the barrier with me. Yet what
they call a revolution was nothing but a change of government.
Thirty-six thousand people, in this small canton, petitioned against the
Jesuits--God knows with good reason. The Government chose to call them
'a mob.' So, to prove that they were not, they turned the Government
out. I honour them for it. They are a genuine people, these Swiss. There
is better metal in them than in all the stars and stripes of all the
fustian banners of the so-called, and falsely called, U-nited States.
They are a thorn in the sides of European despots, and a good wholesome
people to live near Jesuit-ridden Kings on the brighter side of the
mountains." "P.P.S. August 10th. . . . The fête went off as quietly as I
supposed it would; and they danced all night."
These views had forcible illustration in a subsequent letter, where he
describes a similar revolution that occurred at Geneva before he left
the country; and nothing could better show his practical good sense in a
matter of this kind. The description will be given shortly; and
meanwhile I subjoin a comment made by him, not less worthy of attention,
upon my reply to his account of the anti-Jesuit celebration at Lausanne.
"I don't know whether I have mentioned before, that in the valley of the
Simplon hard by here, where (at the bridge of St. Maurice, over the
Rhone) this Protestant canton ends and a Catholic canton begins, you
might separate two perfectly distinct and different conditions of
humanity by drawing a line with your stick in the dust on the ground. On
the Protestant side, neatness; cheerfulness; industry; education;
continual aspiration, at least, after better things. On the Catholic
side, dirt, disease, ignorance, squalor, and misery. I have so
constantly observed the like of this, since I first came abroad, that I
have a sad misgiving that the religion of Ireland lies as deep at the
root of all its sorrows, even as English misgovernment and Tory
villainy." Almost the counterpart of this remark is to be found in one
of the later writings of Macaulay.
FOOTNOTES:
[117] "When it is very hot, it is hotter than in Italy. The over-hanging
roofs of the houses, and the quantity of wood employed in their
construction (where they use tile and brick in Italy), render them
perfect forcing-houses. The walls and floors, hot to the hand all the
night through, interfere with sleep; and thunder is almost always
booming and rumbling among the mountains." Besides this, though there
were no mosquitoes as in Genoa, there was at first a plague of flies,
more distressing even than at Albaro. "They cover everything eatable,
fall into everything drinkable, stagger into the wet ink of
newly-written words and make tracks on the writing paper, clog their
legs in the lather on your chin while you are shaving in the morning,
and drive you frantic at any time when there is daylight if you fall
asleep."
[118] His preceding letter had sketched his landlord for me. . . . "There
was an annual child's fête at the Signal the other night: given by the
town. It was beautiful to see perhaps a hundred couple of children
dancing in an immense ring in a green wood. Our three eldest were among
them, presided over by my landlord, who was 18 years in the English
navy, and is the Sous Prefet of the town--a very good fellow indeed;
quite an Englishman. Our landlady, nearly twice his age, used to keep
the Inn (a famous one) at Zurich: and having made £50,000 bestowed it on
a young husband. She might have done worse."
[119] The close of this letter sent family remembrances in
characteristic form. "Kate, Georgy, Mamey, Katey, Charley, Walley,
Chickenstalker, and Sampson Brass, commend themselves unto your Honour's
loving remembrance." The last but one, who continued long to bear the
name, was Frank; the last, who very soon will be found to have another,
was Alfred.
[120] The life of Paul was nevertheless prolonged to the fifth number.
[121] The mathematical-instrument-maker, who Mr. Taine describes as a
marine store dealer.
[122] Poor fellow! he had latent disease of the heart, which developed
itself rapidly on Dickens's return to England.
[123] Out of the excitements consequent on the public festivities arose
some domestic inconveniences. I will give one of them. "Fanchette the
cook, distracted by the forthcoming fête, madly refused to buy a duck
yesterday as ordered by the Brave, and a battle of life ensued between
those two powers. The Brave is of opinion that 'datter woman have went
mad.' But she seems calm to-day; and I suppose won't poison the
family. . . ."
CHAPTER XII.
SKETCHES CHIEFLY PERSONAL.
1846.
Home Politics--Malthus Philosophy--Mark
Lemon--An Incident of Character--Hood's _Tylney
Hall_--Duke of Wellington--Lord Grey--A
Recollection of his Reporting Days--Returns to
_Dombey_--Two English Travellers--Party among
the Hills--Lord Vernon--A Wonderful
Carriage--Reading of First _Dombey_--A Sketch
from Life--Trip to Great St. Bernard--Ascent of
the Mountain--The Convent--Scene at the
Mountain Top--Bodies found in the Snow--The
Holy Fathers--A Holy Brother and _Pickwick_.
SOME sketches from the life in his pleasantest vein now claim to be
taken from the same series of letters; and I will prefix one or two less
important notices, for the most part personal also, that have
characteristic mention of his opinions in them.
Home-politics he criticized in what he wrote on the 24th of August, much
in the spirit of his last excellent remark on the Protestant and
Catholic cantons; having no sympathy with the course taken by the whigs
in regard to Ireland after they had defeated Peel on his coercion bill,
and resumed the government. "I am perfectly appalled by the hesitation
and cowardice of the whigs. To bring in that arms bill, bear the brunt
of the attack upon it, take out the obnoxious clauses, still retain the
bill, and finally withdraw it, seems to me the meanest and most halting
way of going to work that ever was taken. I cannot believe in them.
Lord John must be helpless among them. They seem somehow or other never
to know what cards they hold in their hands, and to play them out
blindfold. The contrast with Peel (as he was last) is, I agree with you,
certainly not favourable. I don't believe now they ever would have
carried the repeal of the corn law, if they could." Referring in the
same letter[124] to the reluctance of public men of all parties to give
the needful help to schemes of emigration, he ascribed it to a secret
belief "in the gentle politico-economical principle that a surplus
population must and ought to starve;" in which for himself he never
could see anything but disaster for all who trusted to it. "I am
convinced that its philosophers would sink any government, any cause,
any doctrine, even the most righteous. There is a sense and humanity in
the mass, in the long run, that will not bear them; and they will wreck
their friends always, as they wrecked them in the working of the
Poor-law-bill. Not all the figures that Babbage's calculating machine
could turn up in twenty generations, would stand in the long run against
the general heart."
Of other topics in his letters, one or two have the additional
attractiveness derivable from touches of personal interest when these
may with propriety be printed. Hardly within the class might have fallen
a mention of Mark Lemon, of whom our recent play, and his dramatic
adaptation of the _Chimes_, had given him pleasant experiences, if I
felt less strongly not only that its publication would have been gladly
sanctioned by the subject of it, but that it will not now displease
another to whom also it refers, herself the member of a family in
various ways distinguished on the stage, and to whom, since her
husband's death, well-merited sympathy and respect have been paid.
"After turning Mrs. Lemon's portrait over, in my mind, I am convinced
that there is not a grain of bad taste in the matter, and that there is
a manly composure and courage in the proceeding deserving of the utmost
respect. If Lemon were one of your braggart honest men, he would set a
taint of bad taste upon that action as upon everything else he might say
or do; but being what he is, I admire him for it greatly, and hold it to
be a proof of an exalted nature and a true heart. Your idea of him, is
mine. I am sure he is an excellent fellow. We talk about not liking such
and such a man because he doesn't look one in the face,--but how much we
should esteem a man who looks the world in the face, composedly, and
neither shirks it nor bullies it. Between ourselves, I say with shame
and self-reproach that I am quite sure if Kate had been a Columbine her
portrait would not be hanging, 'in character,' in Devonshire-terrace."
He speaks thus of a novel by Hood. "I have been reading poor Hood's
_Tylney Hall_; the most extraordinary jumble of impossible extravagance,
and especial cleverness, I ever saw. The man drawn to the life from the
pirate-bookseller, is wonderfully good; and his recommendation to a
reduced gentleman from the university, to rise from nothing as he, the
pirate, did, and go round to the churches and see whether there's an
opening, and begin by being a beadle, is one of the finest things I ever
read, in its way." The same letter has a gentle little trait of the
great duke, touching in its simplicity, and worth preserving. "I had a
letter from Tagart the day before yesterday, with a curious little
anecdote of the Duke of Wellington in it. They have had a small cottage
at Walmer; and one day--the other day only--the old man met their little
daughter Lucy, a child about Mamey's age, near the garden; and having
kissed her, and asked her what was her name, and who and what her
parents were, tied a small silver medal round her neck with a bit of
pink ribbon, and asked the child to keep it in remembrance of him. There
is something good, and aged, and odd in it. Is there not?"
Another of his personal references was to Lord Grey, to whose style of
speaking and general character of mind he had always a strongly-expressed
dislike, drawn not impartially or quite justly from the days of reaction
that followed the reform debates, when the whig leader's least
attractive traits were presented to the young reporter. "He is a very
intelligent agreeable fellow, the said Watson by the bye" (he is
speaking of the member of the Lausanne circle with whom he established
friendliest after-intercourse); "he sat for Northamptonshire in the
reform bill time, and is high sheriff of his county and all the rest of
it; but has not the least nonsense about him, and is a thorough good
liberal. He has a charming wife, who draws well, and is making a sketch
of Rosemont for us that shall be yours in Paris." (It is already, by
permission of its present possessor, the reader's, and all the world's
who may take interest in the little doll's house of Lausanne which
lodged so illustrious a tenant.) "He was giving me some good
recollections of Lord Grey the other evening when we were playing at
battledore (old Lord Grey I mean), and of the constitutional
impossibility he and Lord Lansdowne and the rest laboured under, of ever
personally attaching a single young man, in all the excitement of that
exciting time, to the leaders of the party. It was quite a delight to
me, as I listened, to recall my own dislike of his style of speaking,
his fishy coldness, his uncongenial and unsympathetic politeness, and
his insufferable though most gentlemanly artificiality. The shape of his
head (I see it now) was misery to me, and weighed down my youth. . . ."
It was now the opening of the second week in August; and before he
finally addressed himself to the second number of _Dombey_, he had again
turned a lingering look in the direction of his Christmas book. "It
would be such a great relief to me to get that small story out of the
way." Wisely, however, again he refrained, and went on with _Dombey_; at
which he had been working for a little time when he described to me
(24th of August) a visit from two English travellers, of one of whom
with the slightest possible touch he gives a speaking likeness.[125]
"Not having your letter as usual, I sat down to write to you on
speculation yesterday, but lapsed in my uncertainty into _Dombey_, and
worked at it all day. It was, as it has been since last Tuesday morning,
incessantly raining regular mountain rain. After dinner, at a little
after seven o'clock, I was walking up and down under the little
colonnade in the garden, racking my brain about _Dombeys_ and _Battles
of Lives_, when two travel-stained-looking men approached, of whom one,
in a very limp and melancholy straw hat, ducked, perpetually to me as he
came up the walk. I couldn't make them out at all; and it wasn't till I
got close up to them that I recognised A. and (in the straw hat) N. They
had come from Geneva by the steamer, and taken a scrambling dinner on
board. I gave them some fine Rhine wine, and cigars innumerable. A.
enjoyed himself and was quite at home. N. (an odd companion for a man of
genius) was snobbish, but pleased and good-natured. A. had a five pound
note in his pocket which he had worn down, by careless carrying about,
to some two-thirds of its original size, and which was so ragged in its
remains that when he took it out bits of it flew about the table. 'Oh
Lor you know--now really--like Goldsmith you know--or any of those great
men!' said N. with the very 'snatches in his voice and burst of
speaking' that reminded Leigh Hunt of Cloten. . . . The clouds were lying,
as they do in such weather here, on the earth, and our friends saw no
more of Lake Leman than of Battersea. Nor had they, it might appear,
seen more of the Mer de Glace, on their way here; their talk about it
bearing much resemblance to that of the man who had been to Niagara and
said it was nothing but water."
His next letter described a day's party of the Cerjats, Watsons, and
Haldimands, among the neighbouring hills, which, contrary to his custom
while at work, he had been unable to resist the temptation of joining.
They went to a mountain-lake twelve miles off, had dinner at the
public-house on the lake, and returned home by Vevay at which they
rested for tea; and where pleasant talk with Mr. Cerjat led to anecdotes
of an excellent friend of ours, formerly resident at Lausanne, with
which the letter closed. Our friend was a distinguished writer, and a
man of many sterling fine qualities, but with a habit of occasional free
indulgence in coarseness of speech, which, though his earlier life had
made it as easy to acquire as difficult to drop, did always less than
justice to a very manly, honest, and really gentle nature. He had as
much genuinely admirable stuff in him as any favourite hero of Smollett
or Fielding, and I never knew anyone who reminded me of those characters
so much. "It would seem, Mr. Cerjat tells me, that he was, when here,
infinitely worse in his general style of conversation, than
now--sermuchser, as Toodles says, that Cerjat describes himself as
having always been in unspeakable agony when he was at his table, lest
he should forget himself (or remember himself, as I suggested) and break
out before the ladies. There happened to be living here at that time a
stately English baronet and his wife, who had two milksop sons,
concerning whom they cherished the idea of accomplishing their education
into manhood coexistently with such perfect purity and innocence, that
they were hardly to know their own sex. Accordingly, they were sent to
no school or college, but had masters of all sorts at home, and thus
reached eighteen years or so, in what Falstaff calls a kind of male
green-sickness. At this crisis of their innocent existence, our ogre
friend encountered these lambs at dinner, with their father, at Cerjat's
house; and, as if possessed by a devil, launched out into such frightful
and appalling impropriety--ranging over every kind of forbidden topic
and every species of forbidden word and every sort of scandalous
anecdote--that years of education in Newgate would have been as nothing
compared with their experience of that one afternoon. After turning
paler and paler, and more and more stoney, the baronet, with a
half-suppressed cry, rose and fled. But the sons--intent on the
ogre--remained behind instead of following him; and are supposed to have
been ruined from that hour. Isn't that a good story? I can SEE our
friend and his pupils now. . . . Poor fellow! He seems to have a hard time
of it with his wife. She had no interest whatever in her children; and
was such a fury, that, being dressed to go out to dinner, she would
sometimes, on no other provocation than a pin out of its place or some
such thing, fall upon a little maid she had, beat her till she couldn't
stand, then tumble into hysterics, and be carried to bed. He suffered
martyrdom with her; and seems to have been himself, in all good-natured
easy-going ways, just what we know him now."
There were at this time some fresh arrivals of travelling English at
Lausanne, outside their own little circle, and among them another
baronet and his family made amusing appearance. "We have another English
family here, one Sir Joseph and his lady, and ten children. Sir Joseph,
a large baronet something in the Graham style, with a little,
loquacious, flat-faced, damaged-featured, _old young_ wife. They are
fond of society, and couldn't well have less. They delight in a view,
and live in a close street at Ouchy, down among the drunken boatmen and
the drays and omnibuses, where nothing whatever is to be seen but the
locked wheels of carts scraping down the uneven, steep, stone pavement.
The baronet plays double-dummy all day long, with an unhappy Swiss whom
he has entrapped for that purpose; the baronet's lady pays visits; and
the baronet's daughters play a Lausanne piano, which must be heard to be
appreciated. . . ."
Another sketch in the same letter touches little more than the
eccentricities (but all in good taste and good humour) of the subject of
it, who is still gratefully remembered by English residents in Italy for
his scholarly munificence, and for very valuable service conferred by it
on Italian literature. "Another curious man is backwards and forwards
here--a Lord Vernon,[126] who is well-informed, a great Italian scholar
deep in Dante, and a very good-humoured gentleman, but who has fallen
into the strange infatuation of attending every rifle-match that takes
place in Switzerland, accompanied by two men who load rifles for him,
one after another, which he has been frequently known to fire off, two a
minute, for fourteen hours at a stretch, without once changing his
position or leaving the ground. He wins all kinds of prizes; gold
watches, flags, teaspoons, tea-boards, and so forth; and is constantly
travelling about with them, from place to place, in an extraordinary
carriage, where you touch a spring and a chair flies out, touch another
spring and a bed appears, touch another spring and a closet of pickles
opens, touch another spring and disclose a pantry. While Lady Vernon
(said to be handsome and accomplished) is continually cutting across
this or that Alpine pass in the night, to meet him on the road, for a
minute or two, on one of his excursions; these being the only times at
which she can catch him. The last time he saw her, was five or six
months ago, when they met and supped together on the St. Gothard! It is
a monomania with him, of course. He is a man of some note; seconded one
of Lord Melbourne's addresses; and had forty thousand a year, now
reduced to ten, but nursing and improving every day. He was with us last
Monday, and comes back from some out-of-the-way place to join another
small picnic next Friday. As I have said, he is the very soul of good
nature and cheerfulness, but one can't help being melancholy to see a
man wasting his life in such a singular delusion. Isn't it odd? He knows
my books very well, and seems interested in everything concerning them;
being indeed accomplished in books generally, and attached to many
elegant tastes."
But the most agreeable addition to their own special circle was referred
to in his first September letter, just when he was coming to the close
of his second number of _Dombey_. "There are two nice girls here, the
Ladies Taylor, daughters of Lord Headfort. Their mother was daughter (I
think) of Sir John Stevenson, and Moore dedicated one part of the Irish
Melodies to her. They inherit the musical taste, and sing very well. A
proposal is on foot for our all bundling off on Tuesday (16 strong) to
the top of the Great St. Bernard. But the weather seems to have broken,
and the autumn rains to have set in; which I devoutly hope will break up
the party. It would be a most serious hindrance to me, just now; but I
have rashly promised. Do you know young Romilly? He is coming over from
Geneva when 'the reading' comes off, and is a fine fellow I am told.
There is not a bad little theatre here; and by way of an artificial
crowd, I should certainly have got it open with an amateur company, if
we were not so few that the only thing we want is the audience.". . . The
"reading" named by him was that of his first number, which was to "come
off" as soon as I could get the proofs out to him; but which the changes
needful to be made, and to be mentioned hereafter, still delayed. The
St. Bernard holiday, which within sight of his Christmas-book labour he
would fain have thrown over, came off as proposed very fortunately for
the reader, who might otherwise have lost one of his pleasantest
descriptions. But before giving it, one more little sketch of character
may be interposed as delicately done as anything in his writings.
Steele's observation is in the outline, and Charles Lamb's humour in its
touch of colouring.
". . . There are two old ladies (English) living here who may serve me for
a few lines of gossip--as I have intended they should, over and over
again, but I have always forgotten it. There were originally four old
ladies, sisters, but two of them have faded away in the course of
eighteen years, and withered by the side of John Kemble in the cemetery.
They are very little, and very skinny; and each of them wears a row of
false curls, like little rolling-pins, so low upon her brow, that there
is no forehead; nothing above the eyebrows but a deep horizontal
wrinkle, and then the curls. They live upon some small annuity. For
thirteen years they have wanted very much to move to Italy, as the
eldest old lady says the climate of this part of Switzerland doesn't
agree with her, and preys upon her spirits; but they have never been
able to go, because of the difficulty of moving 'the books.' This
tremendous library belonged once upon a time to the father of these old
ladies, and comprises about fifty volumes. I have never been able to
see what they are, because one of the old ladies always sits before
them; but they look, outside, like very old backgammon-boards. The two
deceased sisters died in the firm persuasion that this precious property
could never be got over the Simplon without some gigantic effort to
which the united family was unequal. The two remaining sisters live, and
will die also, in the same belief. I met the eldest (evidently drooping)
yesterday, and recommended her to try Genoa. She looked shrewdly at the
snow that closes up the mountain prospect just now, and said that when
the spring was quite set in, and the avalanches were down, and the
passes well open, she would certainly try that place, if they could
devise any plan, in the course of the winter, for moving 'the books.'
The whole library will be sold by auction here, when they are both dead,
for about a napoleon; and some young woman will carry it home in two
journeys with a basket."
The last letter sent me before he fell upon his self-appointed task for
Christmas, contained a delightful account of the trip to the Great St.
Bernard. It was dated on the sixth of September.
"The weather obstinately clearing, we started off last Tuesday for the
Great St. Bernard, returning here on Friday afternoon. The party
consisted of eleven people and two servants--Haldimand, Mr. and Mrs.
Cerjat and one daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Watson, two Ladies Taylor, Kate,
Georgy, and I. We were wonderfully unanimous and cheerful; went away
from here by the steamer; found at its destination a whole omnibus
provided by the Brave (who went on in advance everywhere); rode therein
to Bex; found two large carriages ready to take us to Martigny; slept
there; and proceeded up the mountain on mules next day. Although the St.
Bernard convent is, as I dare say you know, the highest inhabited spot
but one in the world, the ascent is extremely gradual and uncommonly
easy: really presenting no difficulties at all, until within the last
league, when the ascent, lying through a place called the valley of
desolation, is very awful and tremendous, and the road is rendered
toilsome by scattered rocks and melting snow. The convent is a most
extraordinary place, full of great vaulted passages, divided from each
other with iron gratings; and presenting a series of the most
astonishing little dormitories, where the windows are so small (on
account of the cold and snow), that it is as much as one can do to get
one's head out of them. Here we slept: supping, thirty strong, in a
rambling room with a great wood-fire in it set apart for that purpose;
with a grim monk, in a high black sugar-loaf hat with a great knob at
the top of it, carving the dishes. At five o'clock in the morning the
chapel bell rang in the dismallest way for matins: and I, lying in bed
close to the chapel, and being awakened by the solemn organ and the
chaunting, thought for a moment I had died in the night and passed into
the unknown world.
"I wish to God you could see that place. A great hollow on the top of a
range of dreadful mountains, fenced in by riven rocks of every shape and
colour: and in the midst, a black lake, with phantom clouds perpetually
stalking over it. Peaks, and points, and plains of eternal ice and snow,
bounding the view, and shutting out the world on every side: the lake
reflecting nothing: and no human figure in the scene. The air so fine,
that it is difficult to breathe without feeling out of breath; and the
cold so exquisitely thin and sharp that it is not to be described.
Nothing of life or living interest in the picture, but the grey dull
walls of the convent. No vegetation of any sort or kind. Nothing
growing, nothing stirring. Everything iron-bound, and frozen up. Beside
the convent, in a little outhouse with a grated iron door which you may
unbolt for yourself, are the bodies of people found in the snow who have
never been claimed and are withering away--not laid down, or stretched
out, but standing up, in corners and against walls; some erect and
horribly human, with distinct expressions on the faces; some sunk down
on their knees; some dropping over on one side; some tumbled down
altogether, and presenting a heap of skulls and fibrous dust. There is
no other decay in that atmosphere; and there they remain during the
short days and the long nights, the only human company out of doors,
withering away by grains, and holding ghastly possession of the mountain
where they died.
"It is the most distinct and individual place I have seen, even in this
transcendent country. But, for the Saint Bernard holy fathers and
convent in themselves, I am sorry to say that they are a piece of as
sheer humbug as we ever learnt to believe in, in our young days. Trashy
French sentiment and the dogs (of which, by the bye, there are only
three remaining) have done it all. They are a lazy set of fellows; not
over fond of going out themselves; employing servants to clear the road
(which has not been important or much used as a pass these hundred
years); rich; and driving a good trade in Innkeeping: the convent being
a common tavern in everything but the sign. No charge is made for their
hospitality, to be sure; but you are shown to a box in the chapel, where
everybody puts in more than could, with any show of face, be charged for
the entertainment; and from this the establishment derives a right good
income. As to the self-sacrifice of living up there, they are obliged to
go there young, it is true, to be inured to the climate: but it is an
infinitely more exciting and various life than any other convent can
offer; with constant change and company through the whole summer; with a
hospital for invalids down in the valley, which affords another change;
and with an annual begging-journey to Geneva and this place and all the
places round for one brother or other, which affords farther change. The
brother who carved at our supper could speak some English, and had just
had _Pickwick_ given him!--what a humbug he will think me when he tries
to understand it! If I had had any other book of mine with me, I would
have given it him, that I might have had some chance of being
intelligible. . . ."
FOOTNOTES:
[124] Where he makes remark also on a class of offences which are still
most inadequately punished: "I hope you will follow up your idea about
the defective state of the law in reference to women, by some remarks on
the inadequate punishment of that ruffian flippantly called by the
liners the Wholesale Matrimonial Speculator. My opinion is, that in any
well-ordered state of society, and advanced spirit of social
jurisprudence, he would have been flogged more than once (privately),
and certainly sentenced to transportation for no less a term than the
rest of his life. Surely the man who threw the woman out of window was
no worse, if so bad."
[125] Ten days before there had been a visit from Mr. Ainsworth and his
daughters on their way to Geneva. "I breakfasted with him at the hotel
Gibbon next morning and they dined here afterwards, and we walked about
all day, talking of our old days at Kensal-lodge." The same letter told
me: "We had a regatta at Ouchy the other day, mainly supported by the
contributions of the English handfull. It concluded with a rowing-match
by women, which was very funny. I wish you could have seen Roche appear
on the Lake, rowing, in an immense boat, Cook, Anne, two nurses, Katey,
Mamey, Walley, Chickenstalker, and Baby; no boatmen or other degrading
assistance; and all sorts of Swiss tubs splashing about them . . . Senior
is coming here to-morrow, I believe, with his wife; and they talk of
Brunel and his wife as on their way. We dine at Haldimand's to meet
Senior--which solitary and most interesting piece of intelligence is all
the news I know of . . . Take care you don't back out of your Paris
engagement; but that we really do have (please God) some happy hours
there. Kate, Georgy, Mamey, Katey, Charley, Walley, Chickenstalker, and
Baby, send loves. . . . I am all anxiety and fever to know what we start
_Dombey_ with!"
[126] This was the fourth Baron Vernon, who succeeded to the title in
1829, and died seven years after the date of Dickens's description, in
his 74th year.
CHAPTER XIII.
LITERARY LABOUR AT LAUSANNE.
1846.
A Picture completed--Self-judgments--Christmas
Fancies--Second Number of _Dombey_--A Personal
Revelation--First Thought of Public
Readings--Two Tales in Hand--Christmas Book
given up--Goes to Geneva--Disquietudes of
Authorship--Shadows from _Dombey_--A New Social
Experience--Eccentricities--Feminine Smoking
Party--Visit of the Talfourds--Christmas Book
resumed--Lodging his Friends.
SOMETHING of the other side of the medal has now to be presented. His
letters enable us to see him amid his troubles and difficulties of
writing, as faithfully as in his leisure and enjoyments; and when, to
the picture thus given of Dickens's home life in Switzerland, some
account has been added of the vicissitudes of literary labour undergone
in the interval, as complete a representation of the man will be
afforded as could be taken from any period of his career. Of the larger
life whereof it is part, the Lausanne life is indeed a perfect
microcosm, wanting only the London streets. This was his chief present
want, as will shortly be perceived: but as yet the reader does not feel
it, and he sees otherwise in all respects at his best the great observer
and humourist; interested in everything that commended itself to a
thoroughly earnest and eagerly enquiring nature; popular beyond measure
with all having intercourse with him; the centre, and very soul, of
social enjoyment; letting nothing escape a vision that was not more keen
than kindly; and even when apparently most idle, never idle in the sense
of his art, but adding day by day to experiences that widened its range,
and gave freer and healthier play to an imagination always busily at
work, alert and active in a singular degree, and that seemed to be quite
untiring. At his heart there was a genuine love of nature at all times;
and strange as it may seem to connect this with such forms of humorous
delineation as are most identified with his genius, it is yet the
literal truth that the impressions of this noble Swiss scenery were with
him during the work of many subsequent years: a present and actual,
though it might be seldom a directly conscious, influence. When he said
afterwards, that, while writing the book on which he is now engaged, he
had not seen less clearly each step of the wooden midshipman's
staircase, each pew of the church in which Florence was married, or each
bed in the dormitory of Doctor Blimber's establishment, because he was
himself at the time by the lake of Geneva, he might as truly have said
that he saw them all the more clearly even because of that circumstance.
He worked his humour to its greatest results by the freedom and force of
his imagination; and while the smallest or commonest objects around him
were food for the one, the other might have pined or perished without
additional higher aliment. Dickens had little love for Wordsworth, but
he was himself an example of the truth the great poet never tired of
enforcing, that Nature has subtle helps for all who are admitted to
become free of her wonders and mysteries.
Another noticeable thing in him is impressed upon these letters, as upon
many also heretofore quoted, for indeed all of them are marvellously
exact in the reproduction of his nature. He did not think lightly of his
work; and the work that occupied him at the time was for the time
paramount with him. But the sense he entertained, whether right or
wrong, of the importance of what he had to do, of the degree to which it
concerned others that the power he held should be exercised
successfully, and of the estimate he was justified in forming as the
fair measure of its worth or greatness, does not carry with it of
necessity presumption or self-conceit. Few men have had less of either.
It was part of the intense individuality by which he effected so much,
to set the high value which in general he did upon what he was striving
to accomplish; he could not otherwise have mastered one half the work he
designed; and we are able to form an opinion, more just now for
ourselves than it might have seemed to us then from others, of the
weight and truth of such self-judgment. The fussy pretension of small
men in great places, and the resolute self-assertion of great men in
small places, are things essentially different. _Respice finem_. The
exact relative importance of all our pursuits is to be arrived at by
nicer adjustments of the Now and the Hereafter than are possible to
contemporary judgments; and there have been some indications since his
death confirmatory of the belief, that the estimate which he thought
himself entitled to form of the labours to which his life was devoted,
will be strengthened, not lessened, by time.
Dickens proposed to himself, it will be remembered, to write at Lausanne
not only the first four numbers of his larger book, but the Christmas
book suggested to him by his fancy of a battle field; and reserving what
is to be said of _Dombey_ to a later chapter, this and its successor
will deal only with what he finished as well as began in Switzerland,
and will show at what cost even so much was achieved amid his other and
larger engagements.
He had restless fancies and misgivings before he settled to his first
notion. "I have been thinking this last day or two," he wrote on the
25th of July, "that good Christmas characters might be grown out of the
idea of a man imprisoned for ten or fifteen years; his imprisonment
being the gap between the people and circumstances of the first part and
the altered people and circumstances of the second, and his own changed
mind. Though I shall probably proceed with the Battle idea, I should
like to know what you think of this one?" It was afterwards used in a
modified shape for the _Tale of Two Cities_. "I shall begin the little
story straightway," he wrote a few weeks later; "but I have been dimly
conceiving a very ghostly and wild idea, which I suppose I must now
reserve for the _next_ Christmas book. _Nous verrons._ It will mature in
the streets of Paris by night, as well as in London." This took
ultimately the form of the _Haunted Man_, which was not written until
the winter of 1848. At last I knew that his first slip was done, and
that even his eager busy fancy would not turn him back again.
But other unsatisfied wants and cravings had meanwhile broken out in
him, of which I heard near the close of the second number of _Dombey_.
The first he had finished at the end of July; and the second, which he
began on the 8th of August, he was still at work upon in the first week
of September, when this remarkable announcement came to me. It was his
first detailed confession of what he felt so continuously, and if that
were possible even more strongly, as the years went on, that there is no
single passage in any of his letters which throws such a flood of
illuminative light into the portions of his life which always awaken the
greatest interest. Very much that is to follow must be read by it. "You
can hardly imagine," he wrote on the 30th of August, "what infinite
pains I take, or what extraordinary difficulty I find in getting on
FAST. Invention, thank God, seems the easiest thing in the world; and I
seem to have such a preposterous sense of the ridiculous, after this
long rest" (it was now over two years since the close of _Chuzzlewit_),
"as to be constantly requiring to restrain myself from launching into
extravagances in the height of my enjoyment. But the difficulty of going
at what I call a rapid pace, is prodigious; it is almost an
impossibility. I suppose this is partly the effect of two years' ease,
and partly of the absence of streets and numbers of figures. I can't
express how much I want these. It seems as if they supplied something to
my brain, which it cannot bear, when busy, to lose. For a week or a
fortnight I can write prodigiously in a retired place (as at
Broadstairs), and a day in London sets me up again and starts me. But
the toil and labour of writing, day after day, without that magic
lantern, is IMMENSE!! I don't say this at all in low spirits, for we
are perfectly comfortable here, and I like the place very much indeed,
and the people are even more friendly and fond of me than they were in
Genoa. I only mention it as a curious fact, which I have never had an
opportunity of finding out before. _My_ figures seem disposed to
stagnate without crowds about them. I wrote very little in Genoa (only
the _Chimes_), and fancied myself conscious of some such influence
there--but Lord! I had two miles of streets at least, lighted at night,
to walk about in; and a great theatre to repair to, every night." At the
close of the letter he told me that he had pretty well matured the
general idea of the Christmas book, and was burning to get to work on
it. He thought it would be all the better, for a change, to have no
fairies or spirits in it, but to make it a simple domestic tale.[127]
In less than a week from this date his second number was finished, his
first slip of the little book done, and his confidence greater. They had
had wonderful weather,[128] so clear that he could see from the
Neuchâtel road the whole of Mont Blanc, six miles distant, as plainly
as if he were standing close under it in the courtyard of the little inn
at Chamounix; and, though again it was raining when he wrote, his
"nailed shoes" were by him and his "great waterproof cloak" in
preparation for a "fourteen-mile walk" before dinner. Then, after three
days more, came something of a sequel to the confession before made,
which will be read with equal interest. "The absence of any accessible
streets continues to worry me, now that I have so much to do, in a most
singular manner. It is quite a little mental phenomenon. I should not
walk in them in the day time, if they were here, I dare say: but at
night I want them beyond description. I don't seem able to get rid of my
spectres unless I can lose them in crowds. However, as you say, there
are streets in Paris, and good suggestive streets too: and trips to
London will be nothing then. WHEN I have finished the Christmas book, I
shall fly to Geneva for a day or two, before taking up with _Dombey_
again. I like this place better and better; and never saw, I think, more
agreeable people than our little circle is made up of. It is so little,
that one is not 'bothered' in the least; and their interest in the
inimitable seems to strengthen daily. I read them the first number last
night 'was a' week, with unrelateable success; and old Mrs. Marcet, who
is devilish 'cute, guessed directly (but I didn't tell her she was
right) that little Paul would die. They were all so apprehensive that it
was a great pleasure to read it; and I shall leave here, if all goes
well, in a brilliant shower of sparks struck out of them by the promised
reading of the Christmas book." Little did either of us then imagine to
what these readings were to lead, but even thus early they were taking
in his mind the shape of a sort of jest that the smallest opportunity of
favour might have turned into earnest. In his very next letter he wrote
to me: "I was thinking the other day that in these days of lecturings
and readings, a great deal of money might possibly be made (if it were
not infra dig) by one's having Readings of one's own books. It would be
an _odd_ thing. I think it would take immensely. What do you say? Will
you step to Dean-street, and see how Miss Kelly's engagement-book (it
must be an immense volume!) stands? Or shall I take the St. James's?" My
answer is to be inferred from his rejoinder: but even at this time,
while heightening and carrying forward his jest, I suspected him of
graver desires than he cared to avow; and the time was to come, after a
dozen years, when with earnestness equal to his own I continued to
oppose, for reasons to be stated in their place, that which he had set
his heart upon too strongly to abandon, and which I still can only wish
he had preferred to surrender with all that seemed to be its enormous
gains! "I don't think you have exercised your usual judgment in taking
Covent-garden for me. I doubt it is too large for my purpose. However, I
shall stand by whatever you propose to the proprietors."
Soon came the changes of trouble and vexation I had too surely seen.
"You remember," he wrote, "your objection about the two stories. I made
over light of it. I ought to have considered that I have never before
really tried the opening of two together--having always had one pretty
far ahead when I have been driving a pair of them. I know it all now.
The apparent impossibility of getting each into its place, coupled with
that craving for streets, so thoroughly put me off the track, that, up
to Wednesday or Thursday last, I really contemplated, at times, the
total abandonment of the Christmas book this year, and the limitation of
my labours to _Dombey and Son_! I cancelled the beginning of a first
scene--which I have never done before--and, with a notion in my head,
ran wildly about and about it, and could not get the idea into any
natural socket. At length, thank Heaven, I nailed it all at once; and
after going on comfortably up to yesterday, and working yesterday from
half-past nine to six, I was last night in such a state of enthusiasm
about it that I think I was an inch or two taller. I am a little cooler
to-day, with a headache to boot; but I really begin to hope you will
think it a pretty story, with some delicate notions in it agreeably
presented, and with a good human Christmas groundwork. I fancy I see a
great domestic effect in the last part."
That was written on the 20th of September; but six days later changed
the picture and surprised me not a little. I might grudge the space thus
given to one of the least important of his books but that the
illustration goes farther than the little tale it refers to, and is a
picture of him in his moods of writing, with their weakness as well as
strength upon him, of a perfect truth and applicability to every period
of his life. Movement and change while he was working were not mere
restlessness, as we have seen; it was no impatience of labour, or desire
of pleasure, that led at such times to his eager craving for the fresh
crowds and faces in which he might lose or find the creatures of his
fancy; and recollecting this, much hereafter will be understood that
might else be very far from clear, in regard to the sensitive conditions
under which otherwise he carried on these exertions of his brain. "I am
going to write you" (26th of September) "a most startling piece of
intelligence. I fear there may be NO CHRISTMAS BOOK! I would give the
world to be on the spot to tell you this. Indeed I once thought of
starting for London to-night. I have written nearly a third of it. It
promises to be pretty; quite a new idea in the story, I hope; but to
manage it without the supernatural agency now impossible of
introduction, and yet to move it naturally within the required space, or
with any shorter limit than a _Vicar of Wakefield_, I find to be a
difficulty so perplexing--the past _Dombey_ work taken into
account--that I am fearful of wearing myself out if I go on, and not
being able to come back to the greater undertaking with the necessary
freshness and spirit. If I had nothing but the Christmas book to do, I
WOULD do it; but I get horrified and distressed beyond conception at the
prospect of being jaded when I come back to the other, and making it a
mere race against time. I have written the first part; I know the end
and upshot of the second; and the whole of the third (there are only
three in all). I know the purport of each character, and the plain idea
that each is to work out; and I have the principal effects sketched on
paper. It cannot end _quite_ happily, but will end cheerfully and
pleasantly. But my soul sinks before the commencement of the second
part--the longest--and the introduction of the under-idea. (The main one
already developed, with interest.) I don't know how it is. I suppose it
is the having been almost constantly at work in this quiet place; and
the dread for the _Dombey_; and the not being able to get rid of it, in
noise and bustle. The beginning two books together is also, no doubt, a
fruitful source of the difficulty; for I am now sure I could not have
invented the _Carol_ at the commencement of the _Chuzzlewit_, or gone to
a new book from the _Chimes_. But this is certain. I am sick, giddy, and
capriciously despondent. I have bad nights; am full of disquietude and
anxiety; and am constantly haunted by the idea that I am wasting the
marrow of the larger book, and ought to be at rest. One letter that I
wrote you before this, I have torn up. In that the Christmas book was
wholly given up for this year: but I now resolve to make one effort
more. I will go to Geneva to-morrow, and try on Monday and Tuesday
whether I can get on at all bravely, in the changed scene. If I cannot,
I am convinced that I had best hold my hand at once; and not fritter my
spirits and hope away, with that long book before me. You may suppose
that the matter is very grave when I can so nearly abandon anything in
which I am deeply interested, and fourteen or fifteen close MS. pages of
which, that have made me laugh and cry, are lying in my desk. Writing
this letter at all, I have a great misgiving that the letter I shall
write you on Tuesday night will not make it better. Take it, for
Heaven's sake, as an extremely serious thing, and not a fancy of the
moment. Last Saturday after a very long day's work, and last Wednesday
after finishing the first part, I was full of eagerness and pleasure. At
all other times since I began, I have been brooding and brooding over
the idea that it was a wild thing to dream of, ever: and that I ought to
be at rest for the _Dombey_."
The letter came, written on Wednesday not Tuesday night, and it left the
question still unsettled. "When I came here" (Geneva, 30th of September)
"I had a bloodshot eye; and my head was so bad, with a pain across the
brow, that I thought I must have got cupped. I have become a great deal
better, however, and feel quite myself again to-day. . . . I still have not
made up my mind as to what I CAN do with the Christmas book. I would
give any money that it were possible to consult with you. I have begun
the second part this morning, and have done a very fair morning's work
at it, but I do not feel it _in hand_ within the necessary space and
divisions: and I have a great uneasiness in the prospect of falling
behind hand with the other labour, which is so transcendantly important.
I feel quite sure that unless I (being in reasonably good state and
spirits) like the Christmas book myself, I had better not go on with it;
but had best keep my strength for _Dombey_, and keep my number in
advance. On the other hand I am dreadfully averse to abandoning it, and
am so torn between the two things that I know not what to do. It is
impossible to express the wish I have that I could take counsel with
you. Having begun the second part I will go on here, to-morrow and
Friday (Saturday, the Talfourds come to us at Lausanne, leaving on
Monday morning), unless I see new reason to give it up in the meanwhile.
Let it stand thus--that my next Monday's letter shall finally decide the
question. But if you have not already told Bradbury and Evans of my last
letter I think it will now be best to do so. . . . This non-publication of
a Christmas book, if it must be, I try to think light of with the
greater story just begun, and with this _Battle of Life_ story (of which
I really think the leading idea is very pretty) lying by me, for future
use. But I would like you to consider, in the event of my not going on,
how best, by timely announcement, in November's or December's _Dombey_,
I may seem to hold the ground prospectively. . . . Heaven send me a good
deliverance! If I don't do it, it will be the first time I ever
abandoned anything I had once taken in hand; and I shall not have
abandoned it until after a most desperate fight. I could do it, but for
the _Dombey_, as easily as I did last year or the year before. But I
cannot help falling back on that continually: and this, combined with
the peculiar difficulties of the story for a Christmas book, and my
being out of sorts, discourages me sadly. . . . Kate is here, and sends her
love.". . . A postscript was added on the following day. "Georgy has come
over from Lausanne, and joins with Kate, &c. &c. My head remains greatly
better. My eye is recovering its old hue of beautiful white, tinged with
celestial blue. If I hadn't come here, I think I should have had some
bad low fever. The sight of the rushing Rhone seemed to stir my blood
again. I don't think I shall want to be cupped, this bout; but it
looked, at one time, worse than I have confessed to you. If I have any
return, I will have it done immediately."
He stayed two days longer at Geneva, which he found to be a very good
place; pleasantly reporting himself as quite dismayed at first by the
sight of gas in it, and as trembling at the noise in its streets, which
he pronounced to be fully equal to the uproar of Richmond in Surrey; but
deriving from it some sort of benefit both in health and in writing. So
far his trip had been successful, though he had to leave the place
hurriedly to welcome his English visitors to Rosemont.
One social and very novel experience he had in his hotel, however, the
night before he left, which may be told before he hastens back to
Lausanne; for it could hardly now offend any one even if the names were
given. "And now sir I will describe, modestly, tamely, literally, the
visit to the small select circle which I promised should make your hair
stand on end. In our hotel were Lady A, and Lady B, mother and daughter,
who came to the Peschiere shortly before we left it, and who have a deep
admiration for your humble servant the inimitable B. They are both very
clever. Lady B, extremely well-informed in languages, living and dead;
books, and gossip; very pretty; with two little children, and not yet
five and twenty. Lady A, plump, fresh, and rosy; matronly, but full of
spirits and good looks. Nothing would serve them but we _must_ dine with
them; and accordingly, on Friday at six, we went down to their room. I
knew them to be rather odd. For instance, I have known Lady A, _full
dressed_, walk alone through the streets of Genoa, the squalid Italian
bye streets, to the Governor's soirée; and announce herself at the
palace of state, by knocking at the door. I have also met Lady B, full
dressed, without any cap or bonnet, walking a mile to the opera, with
all sorts of jingling jewels about her, beside a sedan chair in which
sat enthroned her mama. Consequently, I was not surprised at such little
sparkles in the conversation (from the young lady) as 'Oh God what a
sermon we had here, last Sunday!' 'And did you ever read such infernal
trash as Mrs. Gore's?'--and the like. Still, but for Kate and Georgy
(who were decidedly in the way, as we agreed afterwards), I should have
thought it all very funny; and, as it was, I threw the ball back again,
was mighty free and easy, made some rather broad jokes, and was highly
applauded. 'You smoke, don't you?' said the young lady, in a pause of
this kind of conversation. 'Yes,' I said, 'I generally take a cigar
after dinner when I am alone.' 'I'll give you a good 'un,' said she,
'when we go up-stairs.' Well sir, in due course we went up stairs, and
there we were joined by an American lady residing in the same hotel, who
looked like what we call in old England 'a reg'lar Bunter'--fluffy face
(rouged); considerable development of figure; one groggy eye; blue satin
dress made low with short sleeves, and shoes of the same. Also a
daughter; face likewise fluffy; figure likewise developed; dress
likewise low, with short sleeves, and shoes of the same; and one eye not
yet actually groggy, but going to be. American lady married at sixteen;
daughter sixteen now, often mistaken for sisters, &c. &c. &c. When that
was over, Lady B brought out a cigar box, and gave me a cigar, made of
negrohead she said, which would quell an elephant in six whiffs. The box
was full of cigarettes--good large ones, made of pretty strong tobacco;
I always smoke them here, and used to smoke them at Genoa, and I knew
them well. When I lighted my cigar, Lady B lighted hers, at mine; leaned
against the mantelpiece, in conversation with me; put out her stomach,
folded her arms, and with her pretty face cocked up sideways and her
cigarette smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill, laughed, and
talked, and smoked, in the most gentlemanly manner I ever beheld. Lady A
immediately lighted her cigar; American lady immediately lighted hers;
and in five minutes the room was a cloud of smoke, with us four in the
centre pulling away bravely, while American lady related stories of her
'Hookah' up stairs, and described different kinds of pipes. But even
this was not all. For presently two Frenchmen came in, with whom, and
the American lady, Lady B sat down to whist. The Frenchmen smoked of
course (they were really modest gentlemen, and seemed dismayed), and
Lady B played for the next hour or two with a cigar continually in her
mouth--never out of it. She certainly smoked six or eight. Lady A gave
in soon--I think she only did it out of vanity. American lady had been
smoking all the morning. I took no more; and Lady B and the Frenchmen
had it all to themselves.
"Conceive this in a great hotel, with not only their own servants, but
half a dozen waiters coming constantly in and out! I showed no atom of
surprise; but I never _was_ so surprised, so ridiculously taken aback,
in my life; for in all my experience of 'ladies' of one kind and
another, I never saw a woman--not a basket woman or a gypsy--smoke,
before!" He lived to have larger and wider experience, but there was
enough to startle as well as amuse him in the scene described.
But now Saturday is come; he has hurried back for the friends who are on
their way to his cottage; and on his arrival, even before they have
appeared, he writes to tell me his better news of himself and his work.
"In the breathless interval" (Rosemont: 3rd of October) "between our
return from Geneva and the arrival of the Talfourds (expected in an hour
or two), I cannot do better than write to you. For I think you will be
well pleased if I anticipate my promise, and Monday, at the same time. I
have been greatly better at Geneva, though I still am made uneasy by
occasional giddiness and headache: attributable, I have not the least
doubt, to the absence of streets. There is an idea here, too, that
people are occasionally made despondent and sluggish in their spirits by
this great mass of still water, lake Leman. At any rate I have been very
uncomfortable: at any rate I am, I hope, greatly better: and (lastly) at
any rate I hope and trust, _now_, the Christmas book will come in due
course!! I have had three very good days' work at Geneva, and trust I
may finish the second part (the third is the shortest) by this day week.
Whenever I finish it, I will send you the first two together. I do not
think they can begin to illustrate it, until the third arrives; for it
is a single minded story, as it were, and an artist should know the
end: which I don't think very likely, unless he reads it." Then, after
relating a superhuman effort he was making to lodge his visitors in his
doll's house ("I didn't like the idea of turning them out at night. It
is so dark in these lanes, and groves, when the moon's not bright"), he
sketched for me what he possibly might, and really did, accomplish. He
would by great effort finish the small book on the 20th; would fly to
Geneva for a week to work a little at _Dombey_, if he felt "pretty
sound;" in any case would finish his number three by the 10th of
November; and on that day would start for Paris: "so that, instead of
resting unprofitably here, I shall be using my interval of idleness to
make the journey and get into a new house, and shall hope so to put a
pinch of salt on the tail of the sliding number in advance. . . . I am
horrified at the idea of getting the blues (and bloodshots) again."
Though I did not then know how gravely ill he had been, I was fain to
remind him that it was bad economy to make business out of rest itself;
but I received prompt confirmation that all was falling out as he
wished. The Talfourds stayed two days: "and I think they were very
happy. He was in his best aspect; the manner so well known to us, not
the less loveable for being laughable; and if you could have seen him
going round and round the coach that brought them, as a preliminary to
paying the voiturier to whom he couldn't speak, in a currency he didn't
understand, you never would have forgotten it." His friends left
Lausanne on the 5th; and five days later he sent me two-thirds of the
manuscript of his Christmas book.
FOOTNOTES:
[127] Writing on Sunday he had said: "I hope to finish the second number
to-morrow, and to send it off bodily by Tuesday's post. On Wednesday I
purpose, please God, beginning the _Battle of Life_. I shall peg away at
that, without turning aside to _Dombey_ again; and _if_ I can only do it
within the month!" I had to warn him, on receiving these intimations,
that he was trying too much.
[128] The storm of rain formerly mentioned by him had not been repeated,
but the weather had become unsettled, and he thus referred to the
rainfall which made that summer so disastrous in England. "What a storm
that must have been in London! I wish we could get something like it,
here. . . . It is thundering while I write, but I fear it don't look black
enough for a clearance. The echoes in the mountains are of such a
stupendous sort, that a peal of thunder five or ten minutes long, is
here the commonest of circumstances. . . ." That was early in August, and
at the close of the month he wrote: "I forgot to tell you that yesterday
week, at half-past 7 in the morning, we had a smart shock of an
earthquake, lasting, perhaps, a quarter of a minute. It awoke me in bed.
The sensation was so curious and unlike any other, that I called out at
the top of my voice I was sure it was an earthquake."
CHAPTER XIV.
REVOLUTION AT GENEVA, CHRISTMAS BOOK, AND LAST DAYS IN SWITZERLAND.
1846.
At Lausanne--Large Sale of _Dombey_--Christmas
Book done--At Geneva--Back to _Dombey_--Rising
against the Jesuits--The Fight in Geneva--Rifle
against Cannon--Genevese "Aristocracy"--Swiss
"Rabble"--Traces left by the
Revolution--Smaller Revolution in
Whitefriars--_Daily News_ changes--Letters
about his _Battle of Life_--Sketch of
Story--Difficulty in Plot--His own
Comments--Date of Story--Reply to
Criticism--Stanfield's Offer of
Illustrations--Doubts of Third Part--Tendency
to Blank Verse--Stanfield's Designs--Grave
Mistake by Leech--Last Days in
Switzerland--Mountain Winds--A Ravine in the
Hills--Sadness of Leave-taking--Travelling to
Paris.
"I SEND you in twelve letters, counting this as one, the first two parts
(thirty-five slips) of the Christmas book. I have two present anxieties
respecting it. One to know that you have received it safely; and the
second to know how it strikes you. Be sure you read the first and second
parts together. . . . There seems to me to be interest in it, and a pretty
idea; and it is unlike the others. . . . There will be some minor points
for consideration: as, the necessity for some slight alterations in one
or two of the Doctor's speeches in the first part; and whether it should
be called 'The Battle of Life. A Love Story'--to express both a love
story in the common acceptation of the phrase, and also a story of love;
with one or two other things of that sort. We can moot these by and by.
I made a tremendous day's work of it yesterday and was horribly
excited--so I am going to rush out, as fast as I can: being a little
used up, and sick. . . . But never say die! I have been to the glass to
look at my eye. Pretty bright!"
I made it brighter next day by telling him that the first number of
_Dombey_ had outstripped in sale the first of _Chuzzlewit_ by more than
twelve thousand copies; and his next letter, sending the close of his
little tale, showed his need of the comfort my pleasant news had given
him. "I really do not know what this story is worth. I am so floored:
wanting sleep, and never having had my head free from it for this month
past. I think there are some places in this last part which I may bring
better together in the proof, and where a touch or two may be of
service; particularly in the scene between Craggs and Michael Warden,
where, as it stands, the interest seems anticipated. But I shall have
the benefit of your suggestions, and my own then cooler head, I hope;
and I will be very careful with the proofs, and keep them by me as long
as I can. . . . Mr. Britain must have another Christian name, then? 'Aunt
Martha' is the Sally of whom the Doctor speaks in the first part. Martha
is a better name. What do you think of the concluding paragraph? Would
you leave it for happiness' sake? It is merely experimental. . . . I am
flying to Geneva to-morrow morning." (That was on the 18th of October;
and on the 20th he wrote from Geneva.) "We came here yesterday, and we
shall probably remain until Katey's birthday, which is next Thursday
week. I shall fall to work on number three of _Dombey_ as soon as I can.
At present I am the worse for wear, but nothing like as much so as I
expected to be on Sunday last. I had not been able to sleep for some
time, and had been hammering away, morning, noon, and night. A bottle of
hock on Monday, when Elliotson dined with us (he went away homeward
yesterday morning), did me a world of good; the change comes in the very
nick of time; and I feel in Dombeian spirits already. . . . But I have
still rather a damaged head, aching a good deal occasionally, as it is
doing now, though I have not been cupped--yet. . . . I dreamed all last
week that the _Battle of Life_ was a series of chambers impossible to be
got to rights or got out of, through which I wandered drearily all
night. On Saturday night I don't think I slept an hour. I was
perpetually roaming through the story, and endeavouring to dove-tail the
revolution here into the plot. The mental distress, quite horrible."
Of the "revolution" he had written to me a week before, from Lausanne;
where the news had just reached them, that, upon the Federal Diet
decreeing the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Roman Catholic cantons had
risen against the decree, the result being that the Protestants had
deposed the grand council and established a provisional government,
dissolving the Catholic league. His interest in this, and prompt seizure
of what really was brought into issue by the conflict, is every way
characteristic of Dickens. "You will know," he wrote from Lausanne on
the 11th of October, "long before you get this, all about the
revolution at Geneva. There were stories of plots against the
Government when I was there, but I didn't believe them; for all sorts of
lies are always afloat against the radicals, and wherever there is a
consul from a Catholic Power the most monstrous fictions are in
perpetual circulation against them: as in this very place, where the
Sardinian consul was gravely whispering the other day that a society
called the Homicides had been formed, whereof the president of the
council of state, the O'Connell of Switzerland and a clever fellow, was
a member; who were sworn on skulls and cross-bones to exterminate men of
property, and so forth. There was a great stir here, on the day of the
fight in Geneva. We heard the guns (they shook this house) all day; and
seven hundred men marched out of this town of Lausanne to go and help
the radical party--arriving at Geneva just after it was all over. There
is no doubt they had received secret help from here; for a powder
barrel, found by some of the Genevese populace with 'Canton de Vaud'
painted on it, was carried on a pole about the streets as a standard, to
show that they were sympathized with by friends outside. It was a poor
mean fight enough, I am told by Lord Vernon, who was present and who was
with us last night. The Government was afraid; having no confidence
whatever, I dare say, in its own soldiers; and the cannon were fired
everywhere except at the opposite party, who (I mean the revolutionists)
had barricaded a bridge with an omnibus only, and certainly in the
beginning might have been turned with ease. The precision of the common
men with the rifle was especially shown by a small party of _five_, who
waited on the ramparts near one of the gates of the town, to turn a
body of soldiery who were coming in to the Government assistance. They
picked out every officer and struck him down instantly, the moment the
party appeared; there were three or four of them; upon which the
soldiers gravely turned round and walked off. I dare say there are not
fifty men in this place who wouldn't click your card off a target a
hundred and fifty yards away, at least. I have seen them, time after
time, fire across a great ravine as wide as the ornamental ground in St.
James's-park, and never miss the bull's-eye.
"It is a horribly ungentlemanly thing to say here, though I _do_ say it
without the least reserve--but my sympathy is all with the radicals. I
don't know any subject on which this indomitable people have so good a
right to a strong feeling as Catholicity--if not as a religion, clearly
as a means of social degradation. They know what it is. They live close
to it. They have Italy beyond their mountains. They can compare the
effect of the two systems at any time in their own valleys; and their
dread of it, and their horror of the introduction of Catholic priests
and emissaries into their towns, seems to me the most rational feeling
in the world. Apart from this, you have no conception of the
preposterous, insolent little aristocracy of Geneva: the most ridiculous
caricature the fancy can suggest of what we know in England. I was
talking to two famous gentlemen (very intelligent men) of that place,
not long ago, who came over to invite me to a sort of reception
there--which I declined. Really their talk about 'the people' and 'the
masses,' and the necessity they would shortly be under of shooting a few
of them as an example for the rest, was a kind of monstrosity one might
have heard at Genoa. The audacious insolence and contempt of the people
by their newspapers, too, is quite absurd. It is difficult to believe
that men of sense can be such donkeys politically. It was precisely such
a state of things that brought about the change here. There was a most
respectful petition presented on the Jesuit question, signed by its tens
of thousands of small farmers; the regular peasants of the canton, all
splendidly taught in public schools, and intellectually as well as
physically a most remarkable body of labouring men. This document is
treated by the gentlemanly party with the most sublime contempt, and the
signatures are said to be the signatures of 'the rabble.' Upon which,
each man of the rabble shoulders his rifle, and walks in upon a given
day agreed upon among them to Lausanne; and the gentlemanly party walk
out without striking a blow."
Such traces of the "revolution" as he found upon his present visit to
Geneva he described in writing to me from the hotel de l'Ecu on the 20th
of October. "You never would suppose from the look of this town that
there had been anything revolutionary going on. Over the window of my
old bedroom there is a great hole made by a cannon-ball in the
house-front; and two of the bridges are under repair. But these are
small tokens which anything else might have brought about as well. The
people are all at work. The little streets are rife with every sight and
sound of industry; the place is as quiet by ten o'clock as
Lincoln's-inn-fields; and the only outward and visible sign of public
interest in political events is a little group at every street corner,
reading a public announcement from the new Government of the forthcoming
election of state-officers, in which the people are reminded of their
importance as a republican institution, and desired to bear in mind
their dignity in all their proceedings. Nothing very violent or bad
could go on with a community so well educated as this. It is the best
antidote to American experiences, conceivable. As to the nonsense 'the
gentlemanly interest' talk about, their opposition to property and so
forth, there never was such mortal absurdity. One of the principal
leaders in the late movement has a stock of watches and jewellery here
of immense value--and had, during the disturbance--perfectly
unprotected. James Fahzey has a rich house and a valuable collection of
pictures; and, I will be bound to say, twice as much to lose as half the
conservative declaimers put together. This house, the liberal one, is
one of the most richly furnished and luxurious hotels on the continent.
And if I were a Swiss with a hundred thousand pounds, I would be as
steady against the Catholic cantons and the propagation of Jesuitism as
any radical among 'em: believing the dissemination of Catholicity to be
the most horrible means of political and social degradation left in the
world. Which these people, thoroughly well educated, know perfectly. . . .
The boys of Geneva were very useful in bringing materials for the
construction of the barricades on the bridges; and the enclosed song may
amuse you. They sing it to a tune that dates from the great French
Revolution--a very good one."
But revolutions may be small as well as their heroes, and while he thus
was sending me his Gamin de Genève I was sending him news of a sudden
change in Whitefriars which had quite as vivid interest for him. Not
much could be told him at first, but his curiosity instantly arose to
fever pitch. "In reference to that _Daily News_ revolution," he wrote
from Geneva on the 26th, "I have been walking and wondering all day
through a perfect Miss Burney's Vauxhall of conjectural dark walks.
Heaven send you enlighten me fully on Wednesday, or number three will
suffer!" Two days later he resumed, as he was beginning his journey back
to Lausanne. "I am in a great state of excitement on account of your
intelligence, and desperately anxious to know all about it. I shall be
put out to an unspeakable extent if I don't find your letter awaiting
me. God knows there has been small comfort for either of us in the _D.
N._'s nine months." There was not much to tell then, and there is less
now; but at last the discomfort was over for us both, as I had been
unable to reconcile myself to a longer continuance of the service I had
given in Whitefriars since he quitted it. The subject may be left with
the remark made upon it in his first letter after returning to Rosemont.
"I certainly am very glad of the result of the _Daily News_ business,
though my gladness is dashed with melancholy to think that you should
have toiled there so long, to so little purpose. I escaped more easily.
However, it is all past now. . . . As to the undoubted necessity of the
course you took, I have not a grain of question in my mind. That, being
what you are, you had only one course to take and have taken it, I no
more doubt than that the Old Bailey is not Westminster Abbey. In the
utmost sum at which you value yourself, you were bound to leave; and
now you _have_ left, you will come to Paris, and there, and at home
again, we'll have, please God, the old kind of evenings and the old life
again, as it used to be before those daily nooses caught us by the legs
and sometimes tripped us up. Make a vow (as I have done) never to go
down that court with the little news-shop at the corner, any more, and
let us swear by Jack Straw as in the ancient times. . . . I am beginning to
get over my sorrow for your nights up aloft in Whitefriars, and to feel
nothing but happiness in the contemplation of your enfranchisement. God
bless you!"
The time was now shortening for him at Lausanne; but before my sketches
of his pleasant days there close, the little story of his Christmas book
may be made complete by a few extracts from the letters that followed
immediately upon the departure of the Talfourds. Without comment they
will explain its closing touches, his own consciousness of the
difficulties in working out the tale within limits too confined not to
render its proper development imperfect, and his ready tact in dealing
with objection and suggestion from without. His condition while writing
it did not warrant me in pressing what I might otherwise have thought
necessary; but as the little story finally left his hands, it had points
not unworthy of him; and a sketch of its design will render the
fragments from his letters more intelligible. I read it lately with a
sense that its general tone of quiet beauty deserved well the praise
which Jeffrey in those days had given it. "I like and admire the
_Battle_ extremely," he said in a letter on its publication, sent me by
Dickens and not included in Lord Cockburn's Memoir. "It is better than
any other man alive could have written, and has passages as fine as
anything that ever came from the man himself. The dance of the sisters
in that autumn orchard is of itself worth a dozen inferior tales, and
their reunion at the close, and indeed all the serious parts, are
beautiful, some traits of Clemency charming."
Yet it was probably here the fact, as with the _Chimes_, that the
serious parts were too much interwoven with the tale to render the
subject altogether suitable to the old mirth-bringing season; but this
had also some advantages. The story is all about two sisters, the
younger of whom, Marion, sacrifices her own affection to give happiness
to the elder, Grace. But Grace had already made the same sacrifice for
this younger sister; life's first and hardest battle had been won by her
before the incidents begin; and when she is first seen, she is busying
herself to bring about her sister's marriage with Alfred Heathfield,
whom she has herself loved, and whom she has kept wholly unconscious, by
a quiet change in her bearing to him, of what his own still disengaged
heart would certainly not have rejected. Marion, however, had earlier
discovered this, though it is not until her victory over herself that
Alfred knows it; and meanwhile he is become her betrothed. The sisters
thus shown at the opening, one believing her love undiscovered and the
other bent for the sake of that love on surrendering her own, each
practising concealment and both unselfishly true, form a pretty and
tender picture. The second part is intended to give to Marion's flight
the character of an elopement; and so to manage this as to show her all
the time unchanged to the man she is pledged to, yet flying from, was
the author's difficulty. One Michael Warden is the _deus ex machinâ_ by
whom it is solved, hardly with the usual skill; but there is much art in
rendering his pretensions to the hand of Marion, whose husband he
becomes after an interval of years, the means of closing against him all
hope of success, in the very hour when her own act might seem to be
opening it to him. During the same interval Grace, believing Marion to
be gone with Warden, becomes Alfred's wife; and not until reunion after
six years' absence is the truth entirely known to her. The struggle, to
all of them, has been filled and chastened with sorrow; but joy revisits
them at its close. Hearts are not broken by the duties laid upon them;
nor is life shown to be such a perishable holiday, that amidst noble
sorrow and generous self-denial it must lose its capacity for happiness.
The tale thus justifies its place in the Christmas series. What Jeffrey
says of Clemency, too, may suggest another word. The story would not be
Dickens's if we could not discover in it the power peculiar to him of
presenting the commonest objects with freshness and beauty, of detecting
in the homeliest forms of life much of its rarest loveliness, and of
springing easily upward from everyday realities into regions of
imaginative thought. To this happiest direction of his art, Clemency and
her husband render new tribute; and in her more especially, once again,
we recognize one of those true souls who fill so large a space in his
writings, for whom the lowest seats at life's feasts are commonly kept,
but whom he moves and welcomes to a more fitting place among the prized
and honoured at the upper tables.
"I wonder whether you foresaw the end of the Christmas book! There are
two or three places in which I can make it prettier, I think, by slight
alterations. . . . I trust to Heaven you may like it. What an affecting
story I could have made of it in one octavo volume. Oh to think of the
printers transforming my kindly cynical old father into Doctor Taddler!"
(28th of October.)
* * * * *
"Do you think it worth while, in the illustrations, to throw the period
back at all for the sake of anything good in the costume? The story may
have happened at any time within a hundred years. Is it worth having
coats and gowns of dear old Goldsmith's day? or thereabouts? I really
don't know what to say. The probability is, if it has not occurred to
you or to the artists, that it is hardly worth considering; but I ease
myself of it by throwing it out to you. It may be already too late, or
you may see reason to think it best to 'stick to the _last_' (I feel it
necessary to italicize the joke), and abide by the ladies' and
gentlemen's spring and winter fashions of this time. Whatever you think
best, in this as in all other things, is best, I am sure. . . . I would go,
in the illustrations, for 'beauty' as much as possible; and I should
like each part to have a general illustration to it at the beginning,
shadowing out its drift and bearing: much as Browne goes at that kind of
thing on _Dombey_ covers. I don't think I should fetter your discretion
in the matter farther. The better it is illustrated, the better I shall
be pleased of course." (29th of October.)
". . . I only write to say that it is of no use my writing at length,
until I have heard from you; and that I will wait until I shall have
read your promised communication (as my father would call it) to-morrow.
I have glanced over the proofs of the last part and really don't wonder,
some of the most extravagant mistakes occurring in Clemency's account to
Warden, that the marriage of Grace and Alfred should seem rather
unsatisfactory to you. Whatever is done about that must be done with the
lightest hand, for the reader MUST take something for granted; but I
think it next to impossible, without dreadful injury to the effect, to
introduce a scene between Marion and Michael. The introduction must be
in the scene between the sisters, and must be put, mainly, into the
mouth of Grace. Rely upon it there is no other way, in keeping with the
spirit of the tale. With this amendment, and a touch here and there in
the last part (I know exactly where they will come best), I think it may
be pretty and affecting, and comfortable too. . . ." (31st of October.)
* * * * *
". . . I shall hope to touch upon the Christmas book as soon as I get your
opinion. I wouldn't do it without. I am delighted to hear of noble old
Stanny. Give my love to him, and tell him I think of turning Catholic.
It strikes me (it may have struck you perhaps) that another good place
for introducing a few lines of dialogue, is at the beginning of the
scene between Grace and her husband, where he speaks about the messenger
at the gate." (4th of November.)
"Before I reply to your questions I wish to remark generally of the
third part that all the passion that can be got into it, through my
interpretation at all events, is there. I know that, by what it cost me;
and I take it to be, as a question of art and interest, in the very
nature of the story that it _should_ move at a swift pace after the
sisters are in each other's arms again. Anything after that would drag
like lead, and must. . . . Now for your questions. I don't think any little
scene with Marion and anybody can prepare the way for the last paragraph
of the tale: I don't think anything but a printer's line _can_ go
between it and Warden's speech. A less period than ten years? Yes. I see
no objection to six. I have no doubt you are right. Any word from Alfred
in his misery? Impossible: you might as well try to speak to somebody in
an express train. The preparation for his change is in the first part,
and he kneels down beside her in that return scene. He is left alone
with her, as it were, in the world. I am quite confident it is wholly
impossible for me to alter that. . . . BUT (keep your eye on me) when
Marion went away, she left a letter for Grace in which she charged her
to encourage the love that Alfred would conceive for her, and FOREWARNED
her that years would pass before they met again, &c. &c. This coming out
in the scene between the sisters, and something like it being expressed
in the opening of the little scene between Grace and her husband before
the messenger at the gate, will make (I hope) a prodigious difference;
and I will try to put in something with Aunt Martha and the Doctor which
shall carry the tale back more distinctly and unmistakeably to the
battle-ground. I hope to make these alterations next week, and to send
the third part back to you before I leave here. If you think it can
still be improved after that, say so to me in Paris and I will go at it
again. I wouldn't have it limp, if it can fly. I say nothing to you of a
great deal of this being already expressed in the sentiment of the
beginning, because your delicate perception knows all that already.
Observe for the artists. Grace will now only have _one child_--little
Marion.". . . (At night, on same day.). . . "You recollect that I asked you
to read it all together, for I knew that I was working for that? But I
have no doubt of _your_ doubts, and will do what I have said. . . . I had
thought of marking the time in the little story, and will do so. . . .
Think, once more, of the period between the second and third parts. I
will do the same." (7th of November.)
* * * * *
"I hope you will think the third part (when you read it in type with
these amendments) very much improved. I think it so. If there should
still be anything wanting, in your opinion, pray suggest it to me in
Paris. I am bent on having it right, if I can. . . . If in going over the
proofs you find the tendency to blank verse (I _cannot_ help it, when I
am very much in earnest) too strong, knock out a word's brains here and
there." (13th of November. Sending the proofs back.)
* * * * *
". . . Your Christmas book illustration-news makes me jump for joy. I will
write you at length to-morrow. I should like this dedication: This
Christmas Book is cordially inscribed To my English Friends in
Switzerland. Just those two lines, and nothing more. When I get the
proofs again I think I may manage another word or two about the
battle-field, with advantage. I am glad you like the alterations. I feel
that they make it complete, and that it would have been incomplete
without your suggestions." (21st of November. From Paris.)
I had managed, as a glad surprise for him, to enlist both Stanfield and
Maclise in the illustration of the story, in addition to the
distinguished artists whom the publishers had engaged for it, Leech and
Richard Doyle; and among the subjects contributed by Stanfield are three
morsels of English landscape which had a singular charm for Dickens at
the time, and seem to me still of their kind quite faultless. I may add
a curious fact, never mentioned until now. In the illustration which
closes the second part of the story, where the festivities to welcome
the bridegroom at the top of the page contrast with the flight of the
bride represented below, Leech made the mistake of supposing that
Michael Warden had taken part in the elopement, and has introduced his
figure with that of Marion. We did not discover this until too late for
remedy, the publication having then been delayed, for these drawings, to
the utmost limit; and it is highly characteristic of Dickens, and of the
true regard he had for this fine artist, that, knowing the pain he must
give in such circumstances by objection or complaint, he preferred to
pass it silently. Nobody made remark upon it, and there the illustration
still stands; but any one who reads the tale carefully will at once
perceive what havoc it makes of one of the most delicate turns in it.
"When I first saw it, it was with a horror and agony not to be
expressed. Of course I need not tell _you_, my dear fellow, Warden has
no business in the elopement scene. _He_ was never there! In the first
hot sweat of this surprise and novelty, I was going to implore the
printing of that sheet to be stopped, and the figure taken out of the
block. But when I thought of the pain this might give to our
kind-hearted Leech; and that what is such a monstrous enormity to me, as
never having entered my brain, may not so present itself to others, I
became more composed: though the fact is wonderful to me. No doubt a
great number of copies will be printed by the time this reaches you, and
therefore I shall take it for granted that it stands as it is. Leech
otherwise is very good, and the illustrations altogether are by far the
best that have been done for any of the Christmas books. You know how I
build up temples in my mind that are not made with hands (or expressed
with pen and ink, I am afraid), and how liable I am to be disappointed
in these things. But I really am _not_ disappointed in this case.
Quietness and beauty are preserved throughout. Say everything to Mac and
Stanny, more than everything! It is a delight to look at these little
landscapes of the dear old boy. How gentle and elegant, and yet how
manly and vigorous, they are! I have a perfect joy in them."
Of the few days that remained of his Lausanne life, before he journeyed
to Paris, there is not much requiring to be said. His work had continued
during the whole of the month before departure to occupy him so entirely
as to leave room for little else, and even occasional letters to very
dear friends at home were intermitted. Here is one example of many. "I
will write to Landor as soon as I can possibly make time, but I really
am so much at my desk perforce, and so full of work, whether I am there
or elsewhere, between the Christmas book and _Dombey_, that it is the
most difficult thing in the world for me to make up my mind to write a
letter to any one but you. I ought to have written to Macready. I wish
you would tell him, with my love, how I am situated in respect of pen,
ink, and paper. One of the Lausanne papers, treating of free trade, has
been very copious lately in its mention of LORD GOBDEN. Fact; and I
think it a good name." Then, as the inevitable time approached, he cast
about him for such comfort as the coming change might bring, to set
against the sorrow of it; and began to think of Paris, "'in a less
romantic and more homely contemplation of the picture,' as not wholly
undesirable. I have no doubt that constant change, too, is indispensable
to me when I am at work: and at times something more than a doubt will
force itself upon me whether there is not something in a Swiss valley
that disagrees with me. Certainly, whenever I live in Switzerland again,
it shall be on the hill-top. Something of the _goître_ and _cretin_
influence seems to settle on my spirits sometimes, on the lower
ground.[129] How sorry, ah yes! how sorry I shall be to leave the
little society nevertheless. We have been thoroughly good-humoured and
agreeable together, and I'll always give a hurrah for the Swiss and
Switzerland."
One or two English travelling by Lausanne had meanwhile greeted him as
they were passing home, and a few days given him by Elliotson had been
an enjoyment without a drawback. It was now the later autumn, very high
winds were coursing through the valley, and his last letter but one
described the change which these approaches of winter were making in the
scene. "We have had some tremendous hurricanes at Lausanne. It is an
extraordinary place now for wind, being peculiarly situated among
mountains--between the Jura, and the Simplon, St. Gothard, St. Bernard,
and Mont Blanc ranges; and at night you would swear (lying in bed) you
were at sea. You cannot imagine wind blowing so, over earth. It is very
fine to hear. The weather generally, however, has been excellent. There
is snow on the tops of nearly all the hills, but none has fallen in the
valley. On a bright day, it is quite hot between eleven and half past
two. The nights and mornings are cold. For the last two or three days,
it has been thick weather; and I can see no more of Mont Blanc from
where I am writing now than if I were in Devonshire terrace, though last
week it bounded all the Lausanne walks. I would give a great deal that
you could take a walk with me about Lausanne on a clear cold day. It is
impossible to imagine anything more noble and beautiful than the scene;
and the autumn colours in the foliage are more brilliant and vivid now
than any description could convey to you. I took Elliotson, when he was
with us, up to a ravine I had found out in the hills eight hundred or a
thousand feet deep! Its steep sides dyed bright yellow, and deep red, by
the changing leaves; a sounding torrent rolling down below; the lake of
Geneva lying at its foot; one enormous mass and chaos of trees at its
upper end; and mountain piled on mountain in the distance, up into the
sky! He really was struck silent by its majesty and splendour."
He had begun his third number of _Dombey_ on the 26th of October, on the
4th of the following month he was half through it, on the 7th he was in
the "agonies" of its last chapter, and on the 9th, one day before that
proposed for its completion, all was done. This was marvellously rapid
work, after what else he had undergone; but within a week, Monday the
16th being the day for departure, they were to strike their tents, and
troubled and sad were the few days thus left him for preparation and
farewell. He included in his leave-taking his deaf, dumb, and blind
friends; and, to use his own homely phrase, was yet more terribly "down
in the mouth" at taking leave of his hearing, speaking, and seeing
friends. "I shall see you soon, please God, and that sets all to rights.
But I don't believe there are many dots on the map of the world where we
shall have left such affectionate remembrances behind us, as in
Lausanne. It was quite miserable this last night, when we left them at
Haldimand's."
He shall himself describe how they travelled post to Paris, occupying
five days. "We got through the journey charmingly, though not quite so
quickly as we hoped. The children as good as usual, and even Skittles
jolly to the last. (That name has long superseded Sampson Brass, by the
bye. I call him so, from something skittle-playing and public-housey in
his countenance.) We have been up at five every morning, and on the road
before seven. We were three carriages: a sort of wagon, with a cabriolet
attached, for the luggage; a ramshackle villainous old swing upon wheels
(hired at Geneva), for the children; and for ourselves, that travelling
chariot which I was so kind as to bring here for sale. It was very cold
indeed crossing the Jura--nothing but fog and frost; but when we were
out of Switzerland and across the French frontier, it became warmer, and
continued so. We stopped at between six and seven each evening; had two
rather queer inns, wild French country inns; but the rest good. They
were three hours and a half examining the luggage at the frontier
custom-house--atop of a mountain, in a hard and biting frost; where Anne
and Roche had sharp work I assure you, and the latter insisted on
volunteering the most astonishing and unnecessary lies about my books,
for the mere pleasure of deceiving the officials. When we were out of
the mountain country, we came at a good pace, but were a day late in
getting to our hotel here."
They were in Paris when that was written; at the hotel Brighton; which
they had reached in the evening of Friday the 20th of November.
FOOTNOTES:
[129] "I may tell you," he wrote to me from Paris at the end of
November, "now it is all over. I don't know whether it was the hot
summer, or the anxiety of the two new books coupled with D. N.
remembrances and reminders, but I was in that state in Switzerland, when
my spirits sunk so, I felt myself in serious danger. Yet I had little
pain in my side; excepting that time at Genoa I have hardly had any
since poor Mary died, when it came on so badly; and I walked my fifteen
miles a day constantly, at a great pace."
CHAPTER XV.
THREE MONTHS IN PARIS.
1846-1847.
Lord Brougham--French Sunday--A House
taken--His French Abode--A Former
Tenant--Sister Fanny's Illness--The King of the
Barricades--The Morgue--Parisian
Population--Americans and French--Unsettlement
of Plans--A True Friend--Hard Frost--Alarming
Neighbour--A Fellow-littérateur--London
Visit--Return to
Paris--Begging-letter-writers--A Boulogne
Reception--French-English--Citizen
Dickens--Sight-seeing--Evening with Victor
Hugo--At the Bibliothèque Royale--Adventure
with a Coachman--Illness of Eldest Son--Visit
of his Father--The "Man that put together
Dombey."
NO man enjoyed brief residence in a hotel more than Dickens, but
"several tons of luggage, other tons of servants, and other tons of
children" are not desirable accompaniments to this kind of life; and his
first day in Paris did not close before he had offered for an "eligible
mansion." That same Saturday night he took a "colossal" walk about the
city, of which the brilliancy and brightness almost frightened him; and
among other things that attracted his notice was "rather a good book
announced in a bookseller's window as _Les Mystères de Londres par Sir
Trollopp_. Do you know him?" A countryman better known had given him
earlier greeting. "The first man who took hold of me in the street,
immediately outside this door, was Bruffum in his check trousers, and
without the proper number of buttons on his shirt, who was going away
this morning, he told me, but coming back in two months, when we would
go and dine--at some place known to him and fame."
Next day he took another long walk about the streets, and lost himself
fifty times. This was Sunday, and he hardly knew what to say of it, as
he saw it there and then. The bitter observance of that day he always
sharply resisted, believing a little rational enjoyment to be not
opposed to either rest or religion; but here was another matter. "The
dirty churches, and the clattering carts and waggons, and the open shops
(I don't think I passed fifty shut up, in all my strollings in and out),
and the work-a-day dresses and drudgeries, are not comfortable. Open
theatres and so forth I am well used to, of course, by this time; but so
much toil and sweat on what one would like to see, apart from religious
observances, a sensible holiday, is painful."
The date of his letter was the 22nd of November, and it had three
postscripts.[130] The first, "Monday afternoon," told me a house was
taken; that, unless the agreement should break off on any unforeseen
fight between Roche and the agent ("a French Mrs. Gamp"), I was to
address him at No. 48, Rue de Courcelles, Faubourg St. Honoré; and that
he would merely then advert to the premises as in his belief the "most
ridiculous, extraordinary, unparalleled, and preposterous" in the whole
world; being something between a baby-house, a "shades," a haunted
castle, and a mad kind of clock. "They belong to a Marquis Castellan,
and you will be ready to die of laughing when you go over them." The
second P.S. declared that his lips should be sealed till I beheld for
myself. "By Heaven it is not to be imagined by the mind of man!" The
third P.S. closed the letter. "One room is a tent. Another room is a
grove. Another room is a scene at the Victoria. The upstairs rooms are
like fanlights over street-doors. The nurseries--but no, no, no, no
more! . . ."
His following letter nevertheless sent more, even in the form of an
additional protestation that never till I saw it should the place be
described. "I will merely observe that it is fifty yards long, and
eighteen feet high, and that the bedrooms are exactly like opera-boxes.
It has its little courtyard and garden, and porter's house, and cordon
to open the door, and so forth; and is a Paris mansion in little. There
is a gleam of reason in the drawing-room. Being a gentleman's house, and
not one furnished to let, it has some very curious things in it; some of
the oddest things you ever beheld in your life; and an infinity of easy
chairs and sofas. . . . Bad weather. It is snowing hard. There is not a
door or window here--but that's nothing! there's not a door or window in
all Paris--that shuts; not a chink in all the billions of trillions of
chinks in the city that can he stopped to keep the wind out. And the
cold!--but you shall judge for yourself; and also of this preposterous
dining-room. The invention, sir, of Henry Bulwer, who when he had
executed it (he used to live here), got frightened at what he had done,
as well he might, and went away. . . . The Brave called me aside on
Saturday night, and showed me an improvement he had effected in the
decorative way. 'Which,' he said, 'will very much s'prize Mis'r Fors'er
when he come.' You are to be deluded into the belief that there is a
perspective of chambers twenty miles in length, opening from the
drawing-room. . . ."
My visit was not yet due, however, and what occupied or interested him
in the interval may first be told. He had not been two days in Paris
when a letter from his father made him very anxious for the health of
his eldest sister. "I was going to the play (a melodrama in eight acts,
five hours long), but hadn't the heart to leave home after my father's
letter," he is writing on the 30th of November, "and sent Georgy and
Kate by themselves. There seems to be no doubt whatever that Fanny is in
a consumption." She had broken down in an attempt to sing at a party in
Manchester; and subsequent examination by Sir Charles Bell's son, who
was present and took much interest in her, too sadly revealed the cause.
"He advised that neither she nor Burnett should be told the truth, and
my father has not disclosed it. In worldly circumstances they are very
comfortable, and they are very much respected. They seem to be happy
together, and Burnett has a great deal of teaching. You remember my
fears about her when she was in London the time of Alfred's marriage,
and that I said she looked to me as if she were in a decline? Kate took
her to Elliotson, who said that her lungs were certainly not affected
then. And she cried for joy. Don't you think it would be better for her
to be brought up, if possible, to see Elliotson again? I am deeply,
deeply grieved about it." This course was taken, and for a time there
seemed room for hope; but the result will be seen. In the same letter I
heard of poor Charles Sheridan, well known to us both, dying of the same
terrible disease; and his chief, Lord Normanby, whose many acts of
sympathy and kindness had inspired strong regard in Dickens, he had
already found "as informal and good-natured as ever, but not so gay as
usual, and having an anxious, haggard way with him, as if his
responsibilities were more than he had bargained for." Nor, to account
for this, had Dickens far to seek, when a little leisure enabled him to
see something of what was passing in Paris in that last year of Louis
Philippe's reign. What first impressed him most unfavourably was a
glimpse in the Champs Elysées, of the King himself coming in from the
country. "There were two carriages. His was surrounded by horseguards.
It went at a great pace, and he sat very far back in a corner of it, I
promise you. It was strange to an Englishman to see the Prefet of Police
riding on horseback some hundreds of yards in advance of the cortége,
turning his head incessantly from side to side, like a figure in a Dutch
clock, and scrutinizing everybody and everything, as if he suspected all
the twigs in all the trees in the long avenue."
But these and other political indications were only, as they generally
prove to be, the outward signs of maladies more deeply-seated. He saw
almost everywhere signs of canker eating into the heart of the people
themselves. "It is a wicked and detestable place, though wonderfully
attractive; and there can be no better summary of it, after all, than
Hogarth's unmentionable phrase." He sent me no letter that did not
contribute something of observation or character. He went at first
rather frequently to the Morgue, until shocked by something so repulsive
that he had not courage for a long time to go back; and on that same
occasion he had noticed the keeper smoking a short pipe at his little
window, "and giving a bit of fresh turf to a linnet in a cage." Of the
condition generally of the streets he reported badly; the quays on the
other side of the Seine were not safe after dark; and here was his own
night experience of one of the best quarters of the city. "I took Georgy
out, the night before last, to show her the Palais Royal lighted up; and
on the Boulevard, a street as bright as the brightest part of the Strand
or Regent-street, we saw a man fall upon another, close before us, and
try to tear the cloak off his back. It was in a little dark corner near
the Porte St. Denis, which stands out in the middle of the street. After
a short struggle, the thief fled (there were thousands of people walking
about), and was captured just on the other side of the road."
An incident of that kind might mean little or much: but what he
proceeded to remark of the ordinary Parisian workpeople and smaller
shopkeepers, had a more grave complexion; and may be thought perhaps
still to yield some illustration, not without value, to the story of
the quarter of a century that has passed since, and even to some of the
appalling events of its latest year or two. "It is extraordinary what
nonsense English people talk, write, and believe, about foreign
countries. The Swiss (so much decried) will do anything for you, if you
are frank and civil; they are attentive and punctual in all their
dealings; and may be relied upon as steadily as the English. The
Parisian workpeople and smaller shopkeepers are more like (and unlike)
Americans than I could have supposed possible. To the American
indifference and carelessness, they add a procrastination and want of
the least heed about keeping a promise or being exact, which is
certainly not surpassed in Naples. They have the American
semi-sentimental independence too, and none of the American vigour or
purpose. If they ever get free trade in France (as I suppose they will,
one day), these parts of the population must, for years and years, be
ruined. They couldn't get the means of existence, in competition with
the English workmen. Their inferior manual dexterity, their lazy habits,
perfect unreliability, and habitual insubordination, would ruin them in
any such contest, instantly. They are fit for nothing but
soldiering--and so far, I believe, the successors in the policy of your
friend Napoleon have reason on their side. Eh bien, mon ami, quand vous
venez à Paris, nous nous mettrons à quatre épingles, et nous verrons
toutes les merveilles de la cité, et vous en jugerez. God bless me, I
beg your pardon! It comes so natural."
On the 30th he wrote to me that he had got his papers into order and
hoped to begin that day. But the same letter told me of the
unsettlement thus early of his half-formed Paris plans. Three months
sooner than he designed he should be due in London for family reasons;
should have to keep within the limit of four months abroad; and as his
own house would not be free till July, would have to hire one from the
end of March. "In these circumstances I think I shall send Charley to
King's-college after Christmas. I am sorry he should lose so much
French, but don't you think to break another half-year's schooling would
be a pity? Of my own will I would not send him to King's-college at all,
but to Bruce-castle instead. I suppose, however, Miss Coutts is best. We
will talk over all this when I come to London." The offer to take charge
of his eldest son's education had been pressed upon Dickens by this true
friend, to whose delicate and noble consideration for him it would
hardly become me to make other allusion here. Munificent as the kindness
was, however, it was yet only the smallest part of the obligation which
Dickens felt that he owed this lady; to whose generous schemes for the
neglected and uncared-for classes of the population, in all which he
deeply sympathised, he did the very utmost to render, through many
years, unstinted service of his time and his labour, with sacrifice
unselfish as her own. His proposed early visit to London, named in this
letter, was to see the rehearsal of his Christmas story, dramatised by
Mr. Albert Smith for Mr. and Mrs. Keeley at the Lyceum; and my own
proposed visit to Paris was to be in the middle of January. "It will
then be the height of the season, and a good time for testing the
unaccountable French vanity which really does suppose there are no fogs
here, but that they are all in London."[131]
The opening of his next letter, which bore date the 6th of December, and
its amusing sequel, will sufficiently speak for themselves. "Cold
intense. The water in the bedroom-jugs freezes into solid masses from
top to bottom, bursts the jugs with reports like small cannon, and rolls
out on the tables and wash-stands, hard as granite. I stick to the
shower-bath, but have been most hopelessly out of sorts--writing sorts;
that's all. Couldn't begin, in the strange place; took a violent dislike
to my study, and came down into the drawing-room; couldn't find a corner
that would answer my purpose; fell into a black contemplation of the
waning month; sat six hours at a stretch, and wrote as many lines, &c.
&c. &c. . . . Then, you know what arrangements are necessary with the
chairs and tables; and then what correspondence had to be cleared off;
and then how I tried to settle to my desk, and went about and about it,
and dodged at it, like a bird at a lump of sugar. In short I have just
begun; five printed pages finished, I should say; and hope I shall be
blessed with a better condition this next week, or I shall be
behind-hand. I shall try to go at it--hard. I can't do more. . . . There is
rather a good man lives in this street, and I have had a correspondence
with him which is preserved for your inspection. His name is Barthélemy.
He wears a prodigious Spanish cloak, a slouched hat, an immense beard,
and long black hair. He called the other day and left his card. Allow me
to enclose his card, which has originality and merit.
[Illustration: =Rue de Courcelles=
_Barthélemy_
=49.=]
Roche said I wasn't at home. Yesterday, he wrote me to say that he too
was a 'Littérateur'--that he had called, in compliment to my
distinguished reputation--'qu'il n'avait pas été reçu--qu'il n'était pas
habitué à cette sorte de procédé--et qu'il pria Monsieur Dickens
d'oublier son nom, sa mémoire, sa carte, et sa visite, et de considérer
qu'elle n'avait pas été rendu!' Of course I wrote him a very polite
reply immediately, telling him good-humouredly that he was quite
mistaken, and that there were always two weeks in the beginning of every
month when M. Dickens ne pouvait rendre visite à personne. He wrote back
to say that he was more than satisfied; that it was his case too, at
the end of every month; and that when busy himself, he not only can't
receive or pay visits, but--'tombe, généralement, aussi, dans des
humeurs noires qui approchent de l'anthropophagie!!!' I think that's
pretty well."
He was in London eight days, from the 15th to the 23rd of December;[132]
and among the occupations of his visit, besides launching his little
story on the stage, was the settlement of form for a cheap edition of
his writings, which began in the following year. It was to be printed in
double-columns, and issued weekly in three-halfpenny numbers; there were
to be new prefaces, but no illustrations; and for each book something
less than a fourth of the original price was to be charged. Its success
was very good, but did not come even near to the mark of the later
issues of his writings. His own feeling as to this, however, though any
failure at the moment affected him on other grounds, was always that of
a quiet confidence; and he had expressed this in a proposed dedication
of this very edition, which for other reasons was ultimately laid aside.
It will be worth preserving here. "This cheap edition of my books is
dedicated to the English people, in whose approval, if the books be true
in spirit, they will live, and out of whose memory, if they be false,
they will very soon die."
Upon his return to Paris I had frequent report of his progress with his
famous fifth number, on the completion of which I was to join him. The
day at one time seemed doubtful. "It would be miserable to have to work
while you were here. Still, I make such sudden starts, and am so
possessed of what I am going to do, that the fear may prove to be quite
groundless, and if any alteration would trouble you, let the 13th stand
at all hazards." The cold he described as so intense, and the price of
fuel so enormous, that though the house was not half warmed ("as you'll
say, when you feel it") it cost him very near a pound a day.
Begging-letter writers had found out "Monsieur Dickens, le romancier
célèbre," and waylaid him at the door and in the street as numerously as
in London: their distinguishing peculiarity being that they were nearly
all of them "Chevaliers de la Garde Impériale de sa Majesté Napoléon le
Grand," and that their letters bore immense seals with coats of arms as
large as five-shilling pieces. His friends the Watsons passed new year's
day with him on their way to Rockingham from Lausanne, leaving that
country covered with snow and the Bise blowing cruelly over it, but
describing it as nothing to the cold of Paris. On the day that closed
the old year he had gone into the Morgue and seen an old man with grey
head lying there. "It seemed the strangest thing in the world that it
should have been necessary to take any trouble to stop such a feeble,
spent, exhausted morsel of life. It was just dusk when I went in; the
place was empty; and he lay there, all alone, like an impersonation of
the wintry eighteen hundred and forty-six. . . . I find I am getting
inimitable, so I'll stop."
The time for my visit having come, I had grateful proof of the minute
and thoughtful provision characteristic of him in everything. My dinner
had been ordered to the second at Boulogne, my place in the malle-poste
taken, and these and other services announced in a letter, which, by way
of doing its part also in the kindly work of preparation, broke out into
French. He never spoke that language very well, his accent being somehow
defective; but he practised himself into writing it with remarkable ease
and fluency. "I have written to the Hôtel des Bains at Boulogne to send
on to Calais and take your place in the malle-poste. . . . Of course you
know that you'll be assailed with frightful shouts all along the two
lines of ropes from all the touters in Boulogne, and of course you'll
pass on like the princess who went up the mountain after the talking
bird; but don't forget quietly to single out the Hôtel des Bains
commissionnaire. The following circumstances will then occur. My
experience is more recent than yours, and I will throw them into a
dramatic form. . . . You are filtered into the little office, where there
are some soldiers; and a gentleman with a black beard and a pen and ink
sitting behind a counter. _Barbe Noire_ (to the lord of L. I. F.).
Monsieur, votre passeport. _Monsieur._ Monsieur, le voici! _Barbe
Noire._ Où allez-vous, monsieur? _Monsieur._ Monsieur, je vais à Paris.
_Barbe Noire._ Quand allez-vous partir, monsieur? _Monsieur._ Monsieur,
je vais partir aujourd'hui. Avec la malle-poste. _Barbe Noire._ C'est
bien. (To Gendarme.) Laissez sortir monsieur! _Gendarme._ Par ici,
monsieur, s'il vous plait. Le gendarme ouvert une très petite porte.
Monsieur se trouve subitement entouré de tous les gamins, agents,
commissionnaires, porteurs, et polissons, en général, de Boulogne, qui
s'élancent sur lui, en poussant des cris épouvantables. Monsieur est,
pour le moment, tout-à-fait effrayé et bouleversé. Mais monsieur reprend
ses forces et dit, de haute voix: 'Le Commissionnaire de l'Hôtel des
Bains!' _Un petit homme_ (s'avançant rapidement, et en souriant
doucement). Me voici, monsieur. Monsieur Fors Tair, n'est-ce pas? . . .
Alors. . . . Alors monsieur se promène _à_ l'Hôtel des Bains, où monsieur
trouvera qu'un petit salon particulier, en haut, est déjà préparé pour
sa réception, et que son dîner est déjà commandé, aux soins du brave
Courier, _à midi et demi_. . . . Monsieur mangera son dîner près du feu,
avec beaucoup de plaisir, et il boirera de vin rouge à la santé de
Monsieur de Boze, et sa famille intéressante et aimable. La malle-poste
arrivera au bureau de la poste aux lettres à deux heures ou peut-être un
peu plus tard. Mais monsieur chargera le commissionnaire d'y
l'accompagner de bonne heure, car c'est beaucoup mieux de l'attendre que
de la perdre. La malle-poste arrivé, monsieur s'assiéra, aussi
confortablement qu'il le peut, et il y restera jusqu'à son arrivé au
bureau de la poste aux lettres à Paris. Parceque, le convoi (_train_)
n'est pas l'affaire de monsieur, qui continuera s'asseoir dans la
malle-poste, sur le chemin de fer, et après le chemin de fer, jusqu'il
se trouve à la basse-cour du bureau de la poste aux lettres à Paris, où
il trouvera une voiture qui a été dépêché de la Rue de Courcelles,
quarante-huit. Mais monsieur aura la bonté d'observer--Si le convoi
arriverait à Amiens après le départ du convoi à minuit, il faudra y
rester jusqu'à l'arrivé d'un autre convoi à trois heures moins un quart.
En attendant, monsieur peut rester au buffet (_refreshment room_), où
l'on peut toujours trouver un bon feu, et du café chaud, et des très
bonnes choses à boire et à manger, pendant toute la nuit.--Est-ce que
monsieur comprend parfaitement toutes ces règles pour sa guidance?--Vive
le Roi des Français! Roi de la nation la plus grande, et la plus noble,
et la plus extraordinairement merveilleuse, du monde! A bas des Anglais!
"CHARLES DICKENS,
"Français naturalisé, et Citoyen de Paris."
We passed a fortnight together, and crowded into it more than might seem
possible to such a narrow space. With a dreadful insatiability we passed
through every variety of sight-seeing, prisons, palaces, theatres,
hospitals, the Morgue and the Lazare, as well as the Louvre, Versailles,
St. Cloud, and all the spots made memorable by the first revolution. The
excellent comedian Regnier, known to us through Macready and endeared by
many kindnesses, incomparable for his knowledge of the city and
unwearying in friendly service, made us free of the green-room of the
Français, where, on the birthday of Molière, we saw his "Don Juan"
revived. At the Conservatoire we witnessed the masterly teaching of
Samson; at the Odéon saw a new play by Ponsard, done but indifferently;
at the Variétés "Gentil-Bernard," with four grisettes as if stepped out
of a picture by Watteau; at the Gymnase "Clarisse Harlowe," with a
death-scene of Rose Cheri which comes back to me, through the distance
of time, as the prettiest piece of pure and gentle stage-pathos in my
memory; at the Porte St. Martin "Lucretia Borgia" by Hugo; at the
Cirque, scenes of the great revolution, and all the battles of
Napoleon; at the Comic Opera, "Gibby"; and at the Palais Royal the usual
new-year's piece, in which Alexandre Dumas was shown in his study beside
a pile of quarto volumes five feet high, which proved to be the first
tableau of the first act of the first piece to be played on the first
night of his new theatre. That new theatre, the Historique, we also saw
verging to a very short-lived completeness; and we supped with Dumas
himself, and Eugène Sue, and met Théophile Gautier and Alphonse Karr. We
saw Lamartine also, and had much friendly intercourse with Scribe, and
with the kind good-natured Amedée Pichot. One day we visited in the Rue
du Bac the sick and ailing Chateaubriand, whom we thought like Basil
Montagu; found ourselves at the other extreme of opinion in the
sculpture-room of David d'Angers; and closed that day at the house of
Victor Hugo, by whom Dickens was received with infinite courtesy and
grace. The great writer then occupied a floor in a noble corner-house in
the Place Royale, the old quarter of Ninon l'Enclos and the people of
the Regency, of whom the gorgeous tapestries, the painted ceilings, the
wonderful carvings and old golden furniture, including a canopy of state
out of some palace of the middle age, quaintly and grandly reminded us.
He was himself, however, the best thing we saw; and I find it difficult
to associate the attitudes and aspect in which the world has lately
wondered at him, with the sober grace and self-possessed quiet gravity
of that night of twenty-five years ago. Just then Louis Philippe had
ennobled him, but the man's nature was written noble. Rather under the
middle size, of compact close-buttoned-up figure, with ample dark hair
falling loosely over his close-shaven face, I never saw upon any
features so keenly intellectual such a soft and sweet gentility, and
certainly never heard the French language spoken with the picturesque
distinctness given to it by Victor Hugo. He talked of his childhood in
Spain, and of his father having been Governor of the Tagus in Napoleon's
wars; spoke warmly of the English people and their literature; declared
his preference for melody and simplicity over the music then fashionable
at the Conservatoire; referred kindly to Ponsard, laughed at the actors
who had murdered his tragedy at the Odéon, and sympathized with the
dramatic venture of Dumas. To Dickens he addressed very charming
flattery, in the best taste; and my friend long remembered the enjoyment
of that evening.
There is little to add of our Paris holiday, if indeed too much has not
been said already. We had an adventure with a drunken coachman, of which
the sequel showed at least the vigour and decisiveness of the police in
regard to hired vehicles[133] in those last days of the Orleans
monarchy. At the Bibliothèque Royale we were much interested by seeing,
among many other priceless treasures, Gutenberg's types, Racine's notes
in his copy of Sophocles, Rousseau's music, and Voltaire's note upon
Frederick of Prussia's letter. Nor should I omit that in what Dickens
then told me, of even his small experience of the social aspects of
Paris, there seemed but the same disease which raged afterwards through
the second Empire. Not many days after I left, all Paris was crowding to
the sale of a lady of the demi-monde, Marie du Plessis, who had led the
most brilliant and abandoned of lives, and left behind her the most
exquisite furniture and the most voluptuous and sumptuous bijouterie.
Dickens wished at one time to have pointed the moral of this life and
death of which there was great talk in Paris while we were together. The
disease of satiety, which only less often than hunger passes for a
broken heart, had killed her. "What do you want?" asked the most famous
of the Paris physicians, at a loss for her exact complaint. At last she
answered: "To see my mother." She was sent for; and there came a simple
Breton peasant-woman clad in the quaint garb of her province, who prayed
by her bed until she died. Wonderful was the admiration and sympathy;
and it culminated when Eugène Sue bought her prayer-book at the sale.
Our last talk before I quitted Paris, after dinner at the Embassy, was
of the danger underlying all this, and of the signs also visible
everywhere of the Napoleon-worship which the Orleanists themselves had
most favoured. Accident brought Dickens to England a fortnight later,
when again we met together, at Gore-house, the self-contained reticent
man whose doubtful inheritance was thus rapidly preparing to fall to
him.[134]
The accident was the having underwritten his number of _Dombey_ by two
pages, which there was not time to supply otherwise than by coming to
London to write them.[135] This was done accordingly; but another
greater trouble followed. He had hardly returned to Paris when his
eldest son, whom I had brought to England with me and placed in the
house of Doctor Major, then head-master of King's-college-school, was
attacked by scarlet fever; and this closed prematurely Dickens's
residence in Paris. But though he and his wife at once came over, and
were followed after some days by the children and their aunt, the
isolation of the little invalid could not so soon be broken through. His
father at last saw him, nearly a month before the rest, in a lodging in
Albany-street, where his grandmother, Mrs. Hogarth, had devoted herself
to the charge of him; and an incident of the visit, which amused us all
very much, will not unfitly introduce the subject that waits me in my
next chapter.
An elderly charwoman employed about the place had shown so much sympathy
in the family trouble, that Mrs. Hogarth specially told her of the
approaching visit, and who it was that was coming to the sick-room.
"Lawk ma'am!" she said. "Is the young gentleman upstairs the son of the
man that put together _Dombey_?" Reassured upon this point, she
explained her question by declaring that she never thought there was a
man that _could_ have put together _Dombey_. Being pressed farther as to
what her notion was of this mystery of a _Dombey_ (for it was known she
could not read), it turned out that she lodged at a snuff-shop kept by a
person named Douglas, where there were several other lodgers; and that
on the first Monday of every month there was a Tea, and the landlord
read the month's number of _Dombey_, those only of the lodgers who
subscribed to the tea partaking of that luxury, but all having the
benefit of the reading; and the impression produced on the old charwoman
revealed itself in the remark with which she closed her account of it.
"Lawk ma'am! I thought that three or four men must have put together
_Dombey_!"
Dickens thought there was something of a compliment in this, and was not
ungrateful.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[130] It had also the mention of another floating fancy for the weekly
periodical which was still and always present to his mind, and which
settled down at last, as the reader knows, into _Household Words_. "As
to the Review, I strongly incline to the notion of a kind of _Spectator_
(Addison's)--very cheap, and pretty frequent. We must have it thoroughly
discussed. It would be a great thing to found something. If the mark
between a sort of _Spectator_, and a different sort of _Athenæum_, could
be well hit, my belief is that a deal might be done. But it should be
something with a marked and distinctive and obvious difference, in its
design, from any other existing periodical."
[131] Some smaller items of family news were in the same letter. "Mamey
and Katey have come out in Parisian dresses, and look very fine. They
are not proud, and send their loves. Skittles is cutting teeth, and gets
cross towards evening. Frankey is smaller than ever, and Walter very
large. Charley in statu quo. Everything is enormously dear. Fuel,
stupendously so. In airing the house, we burnt five pounds' worth of
firewood in one week!! We mix it with coal now, as we used to do in
Italy, and find the fires much warmer. To warm the house thoroughly,
this singular habitation requires fires on the ground floor. We burn
three. . . ."
[132] "I shall bring the Brave, though I have no use for him. He'd die
if I didn't."
[133] Dickens's first letter after my return described it to me. "Do you
remember my writing a letter to the prefet of police about that
coachman? I heard no more about it until this very day" (12th of
February), "when, at the moment of your letter arriving, Roche put his
head in at the door (I was busy writing in the Baronial drawing-room)
and said, 'Here is datter cocher!'--Sir, he had been in prison ever
since! and being released this morning, was sent by the police to pay
back the franc and a half, and to beg pardon, and to get a certificate
that he had done so, or he could not go on the stand again! Isn't this
admirable? But the culminating point of the story (it could happen with
nobody but me) is that he WAS DRUNK WHEN HE CAME!! Not very, but his eye
was fixed, and he swayed in his sabots, and smelt of wine, and told
Roche incoherently that he wouldn't have done it (committed the offence,
that is) if the people hadn't made him. He seemed to be troubled with a
phantasmagorial belief that all Paris had gathered round us that night
in the Rue St. Honoré, and urged him on with frantic shouts. . . . Snow,
frost, and cold. . . . The Duke of Bordeaux is very well, and dines at
the Tuileries to-morrow. . . . _When_ I have done, I will write you a
brilliant letter. . . . Loves from all. . . . Your blue and golden bed
looks desolate." The allusion to the Duc de Bordeaux was to remind me
pleasantly of a slip of his own during our talk with Chateaubriand,
when, at a loss to say something interesting to the old royalist, he
bethought him to enquire with sympathy when he had last seen the
representative of the elder branch of Bourbons, as if he were resident
in the city then and there!
[134] This was on Sunday, the 21st of February, when a party were
assembled of whom I think the French Emperor, his cousin the Prince
Napoleon, Doctor Quin, Dickens's eldest son, and myself, are now the
only survivors. Lady Blessington had received the day before from her
brother Major Power, who held a military appointment in Hobart Town, a
small oil-painting of a girl's face by the murderer Wainewright
(mentioned on a former page as having been seen by us together in
Newgate), who was among the convicts there under sentence of
transportation, and who had contrived somehow to put the expression of
his own wickedness into the portrait of a nice kind-hearted girl. Major
Power knew nothing of the man's previous history at this time, and had
employed him on the painting out of a sort of charity. As soon as the
truth went back, Wainewright was excluded from houses before open to
him, and shortly after died very miserably. What Reynolds said of
portrait painting, to explain its frequent want of refinement, that a
man could only put into a face what he had in himself, was forcibly
shown in this incident. The villain's story altogether moved Dickens to
the same interest as it had excited in another profound student of
humanity (Sir Edward Lytton), and, as will be seen, he also introduced
him into one of his later writings.
[135] ". . . I am horrified to find that the first chapter makes _at
least_ two pages less than I had supposed, and I have a terrible
apprehension that there will not be copy enough for the number! As it
could not possibly come out short, and as there would be no greater
possibility of sending to me, in this short month, to supply what may be
wanted, I decide--after the first burst of nervousness is gone--_to
follow this letter by Diligence to-morrow morning_. The malle poste is
full for days and days. I shall hope to be with you some time on
Friday." C. D. to J. F. Paris: Wednesday, 17th February, 1847.
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
THREE VOLUMES IN TWO.
VOL. II.
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD & COMPANY,
(LATE TICKNOR & FIELDS, AND FIELDS, OSGOOD, & CO.)
1875.
CHAPTER XVI.
DOMBEY AND SON.
1846-1848.
Drift of the Tale--Why undervalued--Mistakes of
Critics--Adherence to First Design--Design as
to Paul and Sister--As to Dombey and
Daughter--Real Character of Hero--Walter
Gay--Omissions proposed--Anxiety as to Face of
his Hero--Passage of Original MS.
omitted--Artist-fancies for Mr. Dombey--Dickens
and his Illustrators--Hints for Artist--Letter
to Cruikshank--An Experience of Ben
Jonson's--Sale of the First Number--A Reading
of the Second Number--Scene at Mrs.
Pipchin's--The Mrs. Pipchin of his
Childhood--First Thought of his
Autobiography--Paul's School-life--Jeffrey's
Forecast of the Tale--A Damper to the Spirit--A
Fancy for New Zealand--Close of Paul's
Life--Jeffrey on Paul's Death--Florence and
Little Nell--Jeffrey on the Edith
Scenes--Edith's First Destiny--Jack
Bunsby--Dombey Household--Blimber
Establishment--Supposed Originals.
THOUGH his proposed new "book in shilling numbers" had been mentioned to
me three months before he quitted England, he knew little himself at
that time or when he left excepting the fact, then also named, that it
was to do with Pride what its predecessor had done with Selfishness. But
this limit he soon overpassed; and the succession of independent groups
of character, surprising for the variety of their forms and handling,
with which he enlarged and enriched his plan, went far beyond the range
of the passion of Mr. Dombey and Mr. Dombey's second wife.
Obvious causes have led to grave under-estimates of this novel. Its
first five numbers forced up interest and expectation so high that the
rest of necessity fell short; but it is not therefore true of the
general conception that thus the wine of it had been drawn, and only the
lees left. In the treatment of acknowledged masterpieces in literature
it not seldom occurs that the genius and the art of the master have not
pulled together to the close; but if a work of imagination is to forfeit
its higher meed of praise because its pace at starting has not been
uniformly kept, hard measure would have to be dealt to books of
undeniable greatness. Among other critical severities it was said here,
that Paul died at the beginning not for any need of the story, but only
to interest its readers somewhat more; and that Mr. Dombey relented at
the end for just the same reason. What is now to be told will show how
little ground existed for either imputation. The so-called "violent
change" in the hero has more lately been revived in the notices of Mr.
Taine, who says of it that "_it spoils a fine novel_;" but it will be
seen that in the apparent change no unnaturalness of change was
involved, and certainly the adoption of it was not a sacrifice to
"public morality." While every other portion of the tale had to submit
to such varieties in development as the characters themselves entailed,
the design affecting Paul and his father had been planned from the
opening, and was carried without alteration to the close. And of the
perfect honesty with which Dickens himself repelled such charges as
those to which I have adverted, when he wrote the preface to his
collected edition, remarkable proof appears in the letter to myself
which accompanied the manuscript of his proposed first number. No other
line of the tale had at this time been placed on paper.
When the first chapter only was done, and again when all was finished
but eight slips, he had sent me letters formerly quoted. What follows
came with the manuscript of the first four chapters on the 25th of July.
"I will now go on to give you an outline of my immediate intentions in
reference to _Dombey_. I design to show Mr. D. with that one idea of the
Son taking firmer and firmer possession of him, and swelling and
bloating his pride to a prodigious extent. As the boy begins to grow up,
I shall show him quite impatient for his getting on, and urging his
masters to set him great tasks, and the like. But the natural affection
of the boy will turn towards the despised sister; and I purpose showing
her learning all sorts of things, of her own application and
determination, to assist him in his lessons; and helping him always.
When the boy is about ten years old (in the fourth number), he will be
taken ill, and will die; and when he is ill, and when he is dying, I
mean to make him turn always for refuge to the sister still, and keep
the stern affection of the father at a distance. So Mr. Dombey--for all
his greatness, and for all his devotion to the child--will find himself
at arms' length from him even then; and will see that his love and
confidence are all bestowed upon his sister, whom Mr. Dombey has
used--and so has the boy himself too, for that matter--as a mere
convenience and handle to him. The death of the boy is a death-blow, of
course, to all the father's schemes and cherished hopes; and 'Dombey and
Son,' as Miss Tox will say at the end of the number, 'is a Daughter
after all.'. . . From that time, I purpose changing his feeling of
indifference and uneasiness towards his daughter into a positive hatred.
For he will always remember how the boy had his arm round her neck when
he was dying, and whispered to her, and would take things only from her
hand, and never thought of him. . . . At the same time I shall change _her_
feeling towards _him_ for one of a greater desire to love him, and to be
loved by him; engendered in her compassion for his loss, and her love
for the dead boy whom, in his way, he loved so well too. So I mean to
carry the story on, through all the branches and offshoots and
meanderings that come up; and through the decay and downfall of the
house, and the bankruptcy of Dombey, and all the rest of it; when his
only staff and treasure, and his unknown Good Genius always, will be
this rejected daughter, who will come out better than any son at last,
and whose love for him, when discovered and understood, will be his
bitterest reproach. For the struggle with himself which goes on in all
such obstinate natures, will have ended then; and the sense of his
injustice, which you may be sure has never quitted him, will have at
last a gentler office than that of only making him more harshly
unjust. . . . I rely very much on Susan Nipper grown up, and acting partly
as Florence's maid, and partly as a kind of companion to her, for a
strong character throughout the book. I also rely on the Toodles, and on
Polly, who, like everybody else, will be found by Mr. Dombey to have
gone over to his daughter and become attached to her. This is what cooks
call 'the stock of the soup.' All kinds of things will be added to it,
of course." Admirable is the illustration thus afforded of his way of
working, and very interesting the evidence it gives of the genuine
feeling for his art with which this book was begun.
The close of the letter put an important question affecting gravely a
leading person in the tale. . . . "About the boy, who appears in the last
chapter of the first number, I think it would be a good thing to
disappoint all the expectations that chapter seems to raise of his happy
connection with the story and the heroine, and to show him gradually and
naturally trailing away, from that love of adventure and boyish
light-heartedness, into negligence, idleness, dissipation, dishonesty,
and ruin. To show, in short, that common, every-day, miserable
declension of which we know so much in our ordinary life; to exhibit
something of the philosophy of it, in great temptations and an easy
nature; and to show how the good turns into bad, by degrees. If I kept
some little notion of Florence always at the bottom of it, I think it
might be made very powerful and very useful. What do you think? Do you
think it may be done, without making people angry? I could bring out
Solomon Gills and Captain Cuttle well, through such a history; and I
descry, anyway, an opportunity for good scenes between Captain Cuttle
and Miss Tox. This question of the boy is very important. . . . Let me hear
all you think about it. Hear! I wish I could.". . .
For reasons that need not be dwelt upon here, but in which Dickens
ultimately acquiesced, Walter was reserved for a happier future; and the
idea thrown out took subsequent shape, amid circumstances better suited
to its excellent capabilities, in the striking character of Richard
Carstone in the tale of _Bleak House_. But another point had risen
meanwhile for settlement not admitting of delay. In the first enjoyment
of writing after his long rest, to which a former letter has referred,
he had over-written his number by nearly a fifth; and upon his proposal
to transfer the fourth chapter to his second number, replacing it by
another of fewer pages, I had to object that this might damage his
interest at starting. Thus he wrote on the 7th of August: ". . . I have
received your letter to-day with the greatest delight, and am overjoyed
to find that you think so well of the number. I thought well of it
myself, and that it was a great plunge into a story; but I did not know
how far I might be stimulated by my paternal affection. . . . What should
you say, for a notion of the illustrations, to 'Miss Tox introduces the
Party?' and 'Mr. Dombey and family?' meaning Polly Toodle, the baby, Mr.
Dombey, and little Florence: whom I think it would be well to have.
Walter, his uncle, and Captain Cuttle, might stand over. It is a great
question with me, now, whether I had not better take this last chapter
bodily out, and make it the last chapter of the second number; writing
some other new one to close the first number. I think it would be
impossible to take out six pages without great pangs. Do you think such
a proceeding as I suggest would weaken number one very much? I wish you
would tell me, as soon as you can after receiving this, what your
opinion is on the point. If you thought it would weaken the first
number, beyond the counterbalancing advantage of strengthening the
second, I would cut down somehow or other, and let it go. I shall be
anxious to hear your opinion. In the meanwhile I will go on with the
second, which I have just begun. I have not been quite myself since we
returned from Chamounix, owing to the great heat." Two days later: "I
have begun a little chapter to end the first number, and certainly think
it will be well to keep the ten pages of Wally and Co. entire for number
two. But this is still subject to your opinion, which I am very anxious
to know. I have not been in writing cue all the week; but really the
weather has rendered it next to impossible to work." Four days later: "I
shall send you with this (on the chance of your being favourable to that
view of the subject) a small chapter to close the first number, in lieu
of the Solomon Gills one. I have been hideously idle all the week, and
have done nothing but this trifling interloper: but hope to begin again
on Monday--ding dong. . . . The inkstand is to be cleaned out to-night, and
refilled, preparatory to execution. I trust I may shed a good deal of
ink in the next fortnight." Then, the day following, on arrival of my
letter, he submitted to a hard necessity. "I received yours to-day. A
decided facer to me! I had been counting, alas! with a miser's greed,
upon the gained ten pages. . . . No matter. I have no doubt you are right,
and strength is everything. The addition of two lines to each page, or
something less,--coupled with the enclosed cuts, will bring it all to
bear smoothly. In case more cutting is wanted, I must ask you to try
your hand. I shall agree to whatever you propose." These cuttings,
absolutely necessary as they were, were not without much disadvantage;
and in the course of them he had to sacrifice a passage foreshadowing
his final intention as to Dombey. It would have shown, thus early,
something of the struggle with itself that such pride must always go
through; and I think it worth preserving in a note.[136]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
Several letters now expressed his anxiety and care about the
illustrations. A nervous dread of caricature in the face of his
merchant-hero, had led him to indicate by a living person the type of
city-gentleman he would have had the artist select; and this is all he
meant by his reiterated urgent request, "I do wish he could get a
glimpse of A, for he is the very Dombey." But as the glimpse of A was
not to be had, it was resolved to send for selection by himself glimpses
of other letters of the alphabet, actual heads as well as fanciful
ones; and the sheetful I sent out, which he returned when the choice was
made, I here reproduce in fac-simile. In itself amusing, it has now the
important use of showing, once for all, in regard to Dickens's
intercourse with his artists, that they certainly had not an easy time
with him; that, even beyond what is ordinary between author and
illustrator, his requirements were exacting; that he was apt, as he has
said himself, to build up temples in his mind not always makeable with
hands; that in the results he had rarely anything but disappointment;
and that of all notions to connect with him the most preposterous would
be that which directly reversed these relations, and depicted him as
receiving from any artist the inspiration he was always vainly striving
to give. An assertion of this kind was contradicted in my first volume;
but it has since been repeated so explicitly, that to prevent any
possible misconstruction from a silence I would fain have persisted in,
the distasteful subject is again reluctantly introduced.
It originated with a literary friend of the excellent artist by whom
_Oliver Twist_ was illustrated from month to month, during the earlier
part of its monthly issue. This gentleman stated, in a paper written and
published in America, that Mr. Cruikshank, by executing the plates
before opportunity was afforded him of seeing the letter press, had
suggested to the writer the finest effects in his story; and to this,
opposing my clear recollection of all the time the tale was in progress,
it became my duty to say that within my own personal knowledge the
alleged fact was not true. "Dickens," the artist is reported an saying
to his admirer, "ferreted out that bundle of drawings, and when he came
to the one which represents Fagin in the cell, he silently studied it
for half an hour, and told me he was tempted to change the whole plot of
his story. . . . I consented to let him write up to my designs; and that
was the way in which Fagin, Sikes, and Nancy were created." Happily I
was able to add the complete refutation of this folly by producing a
letter of Dickens written at the time, which proved incontestably that
the closing illustrations, including the two specially named in support
of the preposterous charge, Sikes and his Dog, and Fagin in his Cell,
had not even been seen by Dickens until his finished book was on the eve
of appearance. As however the distinguished artist, notwithstanding the
refreshment of his memory by this letter, has permitted himself again to
endorse the statement of his friend, I can only again print, on the same
page which contains the strange language used by him, the words with
which Dickens himself repels its imputation on his memory. To some it
may be more satisfactory if I print the latter in fac-simile; and so
leave for ever a charge in itself so incredible that nothing would have
justified farther allusion to it but the knowledge of my friend's old
and true regard for Mr. Cruikshank, of which evidence will shortly
appear, and my own respect for an original genius well able to subsist
of itself without taking what belongs to others.
[Illustration: My dear Cruikshank,
I returned suddenly to town yesterday afternoon to look at the latter
["last" crossed out] pages of Oliver Twist before it was delivered to
the booksellers, when I saw the majority of the plates in the last
volume for the first time.
With reference to the last one, Rose Maylie and Oliver. Without entering
into the question of great haste or [word crossed out] any other cause
which may have led to its being what it is. I am quite sure there can be
little difference of opinion between us with [word crossed out] respect
to the result--may]
[Illustration: I ask you whether you will object
to designing [word crossed out] this plate
afresh and doing so ~at once~ in order that as
few impressions as possible of the present one
may go forth?
I feel confident [words crossed out] you know me
too well to feel hurt by this enquiry, and with
that confidence in you I have lost no time in
preparing it.][137]
Resuming the _Dombey_ letters I find him on the 30th of August in better
heart about his illustrator. "I shall gladly acquiesce in whatever more
changes or omissions you propose. Browne seems to be getting on well. . . .
He will have a good subject in Paul's christening. Mr. Chick is like
D, if you'll mention that when you think of it. The little chapter of
Miss Tox and the Major, which you alas! (but quite wisely) rejected from
the first number, I have altered for the last of the second. I have not
quite finished the middle chapter yet--having, I should say, three good
days' work to do at it; but I hope it will be all a worthy successor to
number one. I will send it as soon as finished." Then, a little later:
"Browne is certainly interesting himself, and taking pains. I think the
cover very good: perhaps with a little too much in it, but that is an
ungrateful objection." The second week of September brought me the
finished MS. of number two; and his letter of the 3rd of October,
noticing objections taken to it, gives additional touches to this
picture of him while at work. The matter that engages him is one of his
masterpieces. There is nothing in all his writings more perfect, for
what it shows of his best qualities, than the life and death of Paul
Dombey. The comedy is admirable; nothing strained, everything hearty and
wholesome in the laughter and fun; all who contribute to the mirth,
Doctor Blimber and his pupils, Mr. Toots, the Chicks and the Toodles,
Miss Tox and the Major, Paul and Mrs. Pipchin, up to his highest mark;
and the serious scenes never falling short of it, from the death of
Paul's mother in the first number, to that of Paul himself in the fifth,
which, as a writer of genius with hardly exaggeration said, threw a
whole nation into mourning. But see how eagerly this fine writer takes
every suggestion, how little of self-esteem and self-sufficiency there
is, with what a consciousness of the tendency of his humour to
exuberance he surrenders what is needful to restrain it, and of what
small account to him is any special piece of work in his care and his
considerateness for the general design. I think of Ben Jonson's
experience of the greatest of all writers. "He was indeed honest, and of
an open and free nature; had an excellent phantasy, brave notions and
gentle expressions; wherein he flowed with that facility, that sometimes
it was necessary he should be stopped." Who it was that stopped _him_,
and the ease of doing it, no one will doubt. Whether he, as well as the
writer of later time, might not with more advantage have been left
alone, will be the only question.
Thus ran the letter of the 3rd of October: "Miss Tox's colony I will
smash. Walter's allusion to Carker (would you take it _all_ out?) shall
be dele'd. Of course, you understand the man! I turned that speech over
in my mind; but I thought it natural that a boy should run on, with such
a subject, under the circumstances: having the matter so presented to
him. . . . I thought of the possibility of malice on christening points of
faith, and put the drag on as I wrote. Where would you make the
insertion, and to what effect? _That_ shall be done too. I want you to
think the number sufficiently good stoutly to back up the first. It
occurs to me--might not your doubt about the christening be a reason for
not making the ceremony the subject of an illustration? Just turn this
over. Again: if I could do it (I shall have leisure to consider the
possibility before I begin), do you think it would be advisable to make
number three a kind of half-way house between Paul's infancy, and his
being eight or nine years old?--In that case I should probably not kill
him until the fifth number. Do you think the people so likely to be
pleased with Florence, and Walter, as to relish another number of them
at their present age? Otherwise, Walter will be two or three and twenty,
straightway. I wish you would think of this. . . . I am sure you are right
about the christening. It shall be artfully and easily amended. . . . Eh?"
Meanwhile, two days before this letter, his first number had been
launched with a sale that transcended his hopes and brought back
_Nickleby_ days. The _Dombey_ success "is BRILLIANT!" he wrote to me on
the 11th. "I had put before me thirty thousand as the limit of the most
extreme success, saying that if we should reach that, I should be more
than satisfied and more than happy; you will judge how happy I am! I
read the second number here last night to the most prodigious and
uproarious delight of the circle. I never saw or heard people laugh so.
You will allow me to observe that my reading of the Major has merit."
What a valley of the shadow he had just been passing, in his journey
through his Christmas book, has before been told; but always, and with
only too much eagerness, he sprang up under pressure. "A week of perfect
idleness," he wrote to me on the 26th, "has brought me round
again--idleness so rusting and devouring, so complete and unbroken, that
I am quite glad to write the heading of the first chapter of number
three to-day. I shall be slow at first, I fear, in consequence of that
change of the plan. But I allow myself nearly three weeks for the
number; designing, at present, to start for Paris on the 16th of
November. Full particulars in future bills. Just going to bed. I think I
can make a good effect, on the after story, of the feeling created by
the additional number before Paul's death." . . . Five more days confirmed
him in this hope. "I am at work at _Dombey_ with good speed, thank God.
All well here. Country stupendously beautiful. Mountains covered with
snow. Rich, crisp weather." There was one drawback. The second number
had gone out to him, and the illustrations he found to be so "dreadfully
bad" that they made him "curl his legs up." They made him also more than
usually anxious in regard to a special illustration on which he set much
store, for the part he had in hand.
The first chapter of it was sent me only four days later (nearly half
the entire part, so freely his fancy was now flowing and overflowing),
with intimation for the artist: "The best subject for Browne will be at
Mrs. Pipchin's; and if he liked to do a quiet odd thing, Paul, Mrs.
Pipchin, and the Cat, by the fire, would be very good for the story. I
earnestly hope he will think it worth a little extra care. The second
subject, in case he shouldn't take a second from that same chapter, I
will shortly describe as soon as I have it clearly (to-morrow or next
day), and send it to _you_ by post." The result was not satisfactory;
but as the artist more than redeemed it in the later course of the tale,
and the present disappointment was mainly the incentive to that better
success, the mention of the failure here will be excused for what it
illustrates of Dickens himself. "I am really _distressed_ by the
illustration of Mrs. Pipchin and Paul. It is so frightfully and wildly
wide of the mark. Good Heaven! in the commonest and most literal
construction of the text, it is all wrong. She is described as an old
lady, and Paul's 'miniature arm-chair' is mentioned more than once. He
ought to be sitting in a little arm-chair down in the corner of the
fireplace, staring up at her. I can't say what pain and vexation it is
to be so utterly misrepresented. I would cheerfully have given a hundred
pounds to have kept this illustration out of the book. He never could
have got that idea of Mrs. Pipchin if he had attended to the text.
Indeed I think he does better without the text; for then the notion is
made easy to him in short description, and he can't help taking it in."
He felt the disappointment more keenly, because the conception of the
grim old boarding-house keeper had taken back his thoughts to the
miseries of his own child-life, and made her, as her prototype in verity
was, a part of the terrible reality.[138] I had forgotten, until I again
read this letter of the 4th of November 1846, that he thus early
proposed to tell me that story of his boyish sufferings which a question
from myself, of some months later date, so fully elicited. He was now
hastening on with the close of his third number, to be ready for
departure to Paris.
". . . I hope to finish the number by next Tuesday or Wednesday. It is
hard writing under these bird-of-passage circumstances, but I have no
reason to complain, God knows, having come to no knot yet. . . . I hope you
will like Mrs. Pipchin's establishment. It is from the life, and I was
there--I don't suppose I was eight years old; but I remember it all as
well, and certainly understood it as well, as I do now. We should be
devilish sharp in what we do to children. I thought of that passage in
my small life, at Geneva. _Shall I leave you my life in MS. when I die?
There are some things in it that would touch you very much, and that
might go on the same shelf with the first volume of Holcroft's._"
On the Monday week after that was written he left Lausanne for Paris,
and my first letter to him there was to say that he had overwritten his
number by three pages. "I have taken out about two pages and a half," he
wrote by return from the hotel Brighton, "and the rest I must ask you to
take out with the assurance that you will satisfy me in whatever you do.
The sale, prodigious indeed! I am very thankful." Next day he wrote as
to Walter. "I see it will be best as you advise, to give that idea up;
and indeed I don't feel it would be reasonable to carry it out now. I am
far from sure it could be wholesomely done, after the interest he has
acquired. But when I have disposed of Paul (poor boy!) I will consider
the subject farther." The subject was never resumed. He was at the
opening of his admirable fourth part, when, on the 6th of December, he
wrote from the Rue de Courcelles: "Here am I, writing letters, and
delivering opinions, politico-economical and otherwise, as if there were
no undone number, and no undone Dick! Well. Cosi va il mondo (God bless
me! Italian! I beg your pardon)--and one must keep one's spirits up, if
possible, even under _Dombey_ pressure. Paul, I shall slaughter at the
end of number five. His school ought to be pretty good, but I haven't
been able to dash at it freely, yet. However, I have avoided unnecessary
dialogue so far, to avoid overwriting; and all I _have_ written is
point."
And so, in "point," it went to the close; the rich humour of its picture
of Doctor Blimber and his pupils alternating with the quaint pathos of
its picture of little Paul; the first a good-natured exposure of the
forcing-system and its fruits, as useful as the sterner revelation in
_Nickleby_ of the atrocities of Mr. Squeers, and the last even less
attractive for the sweetness and sadness of its foreshadowing of a
child's death, than for those strange images of a vague, deep
thoughtfulness, of a shrewd unconscious intellect, of mysterious small
philosophies and questionings, by which the young old-fashioned little
creature has a glamour thrown over him as he is passing away. It was
wonderfully original, this treatment of the part that thus preceded the
close of Paul's little life; and of which the first conception, as I
have shown, was an afterthought. It quite took the death itself out of
the region of pathetic commonplaces, and gave to it the proper relation
to the sorrow of the little sister that survives it. It is a fairy
vision to a piece of actual suffering; a sorrow with heaven's hues upon
it, to a sorrow with all the bitterness of earth.
The number had been finished, he had made his visit to London, and was
again in the Rue de Courcelles, when on Christmas day he sent me its
hearty old wishes, and a letter of Jeffrey's on his new story of which
the first and second part had reached him. "Many merry Christmases, many
happy new years, unbroken friendship, great accumulation of cheerful
recollections, affection on earth, and Heaven at last! . . . Is it not a
strange example of the hazard of writing in parts, that a man like
Jeffrey should form his notion of Dombey and Miss Tox on three months'
knowledge? I have asked him the same question, and advised him to keep
his eye on both of them as time rolls on.[139] I do not at heart,
however, lay much real stress on his opinion, though one is naturally
proud of awakening such sincere interest in the breast of an old man who
has so long worn the blue and yellow. . . . He certainly did some service
in his old criticisms, especially to Crabbe. And though I don't think so
highly of Crabbe as I once did (feeling a dreary want of fancy in his
poems), I think he deserved the pains-taking and conscientious tracking
with which Jeffrey followed him". . . . Six days later he described himself
sitting down to the performance of one of his greatest achievements, his
number five, "most abominably dull and stupid. I have only written a
slip, but I hope to get to work in strong earnest to-morrow. It occurred
to me on special reflection, that the first chapter should be with Paul
and Florence, and that it should leave a pleasant impression of the
little fellow being happy, before the reader is called upon to see him
die. I mean to have a genteel breaking-up at Doctor Blimber's therefore,
for the Midsummer vacation; and to show him in a little quiet light (now
dawning through the chinks of my mind), which I hope will create an
agreeable impression." Then, two days later: ". . . I am working very
slowly. You will see in the first two or three lines of the enclosed
first subject, with what idea I am ploughing along. It is difficult; but
a new way of doing it, it strikes me, and likely to be pretty."
And then, after three days more, came something of a damper to his
spirits, as he thus toiled along. He saw public allusion made to a
review that had appeared in the _Times_ of his Christmas book, and it
momentarily touched what he too truly called his morbid susceptibility
to exasperation. "I see that the 'good old Times' are again at issue
with the inimitable B. Another touch of a blunt razor on B.'s nervous
system.--Friday morning. Inimitable very mouldy and dull. Hardly able to
work. Dreamed of _Timeses_ all night. Disposed to go to New Zealand and
start a magazine." But soon he sprang up, as usual, more erect for the
moment's pressure; and after not many days I heard that the number was
as good as done. His letter was very brief, and told me that he had
worked so hard the day before (Tuesday, the 12th of January), and so
incessantly, night as well as morning, that he had breakfasted and lain
in bed till midday. "I hope I have been very successful." There was but
one small chapter more to write, in which he and his little friend were
to part company for ever; and the greater part of the night of the day
on which it was written, Thursday the 14th, he was wandering desolate
and sad about the streets of Paris. I arrived there the following
morning on my visit; and as I alighted from the malle-poste, a little
before eight o'clock, found him waiting for me at the gate of the
post-office bureau.
I left him on the 2nd of February with his writing-table in readiness
for number six; but on the 4th, enclosing me subjects for illustration,
he told me he was "not under weigh yet. Can't begin." Then, on the 7th,
his birthday, he wrote to warn me he should be late. "Could not begin
before Thursday last, and find it very difficult indeed to fall into the
new vein of the story. I see no hope of finishing before the 16th at the
earliest, in which case the steam will have to be put on for this short
month. But it can't be helped. Perhaps I shall get a rush of
inspiration. . . . I will send the chapters as I write them, and you
must not wait, of course, for me to read the end in type. To transfer to
Florence, instantly, all the previous interest, is what I am aiming at.
For that, all sorts of other points must be thrown aside in this number.
. . . We are going to dine again at the Embassy to-day--with a very ill
will on my part. All well. I hope when I write next I shall report
myself in better cue. . . . I have had a tremendous outpouring from
Jeffrey about the last part, which he thinks the best thing past,
present, or to come."[140] Three more days and I had the MS. of the
completed chapter, nearly half the number (in which as printed it stands
second, the small middle chapter having been transposed to its place).
"I have taken the most prodigious pains with it; the difficulty,
immediately after Paul's death, being very great. May you like it! My
head aches over it now (I write at one o'clock in the morning), and I
am strange to it. . . . I think I shall manage Dombey's second wife
(introduced by the Major), and the beginning of that business in his
present state of mind, very naturally and well. . . . Paul's death has
amazed Paris. All sorts of people are open-mouthed with admiration. . . .
When I have done, I'll write you _such_ a letter! Don't cut me short
in your letters just now, because I'm working hard. . . . _I_'ll make
up. . . . Snow--snow--snow--a foot thick." The day after this, came the
brief chapter which was printed as the first; and then, on the 16th,
which he had fixed as his limit for completion, the close reached me;
but I had meanwhile sent him out so much of the proof as convinced him
that he had underwritten his number by at least two pages, and
determined him to come to London. The incident has been told which soon
after closed his residence abroad, and what remained of his story was
written in England.
I shall not farther dwell upon it in any detail. It extended over the
whole of the year; and the interest and passion of it, when to himself
both became centred in Florence and in Edith Dombey, took stronger hold
of him, and more powerfully affected him, than had been the case in any
of his previous writings, I think, excepting only the close of the _Old
Curiosity Shop_. Jeffrey compared Florence to little Nell, but the
differences from the outset are very marked, and it is rather in what
disunites or separates them that we seem to find the purpose aimed at.
If the one, amid much strange and grotesque violence surrounding her,
expresses the innocent, unconsciousness of childhood to such rough ways
of the world, passing unscathed as Una to her home beyond it, the other
is this character in action and resistance, a brave young resolute heart
that will _not_ be crushed, and neither sinks nor yields, but from
earth's roughest trials works out her own redemption even here. Of Edith
from the first Jeffrey judged more rightly; and, when the story was
nearly half done, expressed his opinion about her, and about the book
itself, in language that pleased Dickens for the special reason that at
the time this part of the book had seemed to many to have fallen greatly
short of the splendour of its opening. Jeffrey said however quite truly,
claiming to be heard with authority as his "Critic-laureate," that of
all his writings it was perhaps the most finished in diction, and that
it equalled the best in the delicacy and fineness of its touches, "while
it rises to higher and deeper passions, not resting, like most of the
former, in sweet thoughtfulness, and thrilling and attractive
tenderness, but boldly wielding all the lofty and terrible elements of
tragedy, and bringing before us the appalling struggles of a proud,
scornful, and repentant spirit." Not that she was exactly this. Edith's
worst qualities are but the perversion of what should have been her
best. A false education in her, and a tyrant passion in her husband,
make them other than Nature meant; and both show how life may run its
evil course against the higher dispensations.
As the catastrophe came in view, a nice point in the management of her
character and destiny arose. I quote from a letter of the 19th of
November, when he was busy with his fourteenth part. "Of course she
hates Carker in the most deadly degree. I have not elaborated that, now,
because (as I was explaining to Browne the other day) I have relied on
it very much for the effect of her death. But I have no question that
what you suggest will be an improvement. The strongest place to put it
in, would be the close of the chapter immediately before this last one.
I want to make the two first chapters as light as I can, but I will try
to do it, solemnly, in that place." Then came the effect of this
fourteenth number on Jeffrey; raising the question of whether the end
might not come by other means than her death, and bringing with it a
more bitter humiliation for her destroyer. While engaged on the
fifteenth (21st December) Dickens thus wrote to me: "I am thoroughly
delighted that you like what I sent. I enclose designs. Shadow-plate,
poor. But I think Mr. Dombey admirable. One of the prettiest things in
the book ought to be at the end of the chapter I am writing now. But in
Florence's marriage, and in her subsequent return to her father, I see a
brilliant opportunity. . . . Note from Jeffrey this morning, who won't
believe (positively refuses) that Edith is Carker's mistress. What do
you think of a kind of inverted Maid's Tragedy, and a tremendous scene
of her undeceiving Carker, and giving him to know that she never meant
that?" So it was done; and when he sent me the chapter in which Edith
says adieu to Florence, I had nothing but praise and pleasure to
express. "I need not say," he wrote in reply, "I can't, how delighted
and overjoyed I am by what you say and feel of it. I propose to show
Dombey _twice_ more; and in the end, leave him exactly as you describe."
The end came; and, at the last moment when correction was possible, this
note arrived. "I suddenly remember that I have forgotten Diogenes. Will
you put him in the last little chapter? After the word 'favourite' in
reference to Miss Tox, you can add, 'except with Diogenes, who is
growing old and wilful.' Or, on the last page of all, after 'and with
them two children: boy and girl' (I quote from memory), you might say
'and an old dog is generally in their company,' or to that effect. Just
what you think best."
That was on Saturday the 25th of March, 1848, and may be my last
reference to _Dombey_ until the book, in its place with the rest, finds
critical allusion when I close. But as the confidences revealed in this
chapter have dealt wholly with the leading currents of interest, there
is yet room for a word on incidental persons in the story, of whom I
have seen other so-called confidences alleged which it will be only
right to state have really no authority. And first let me say what
unquestionable evidence these characters give of the unimpaired
freshness, richness, variety, and fitness of Dickens's invention at this
time. Glorious Captain Cuttle, laying his head to the wind and fighting
through everything; his friend Jack Bunsby,[141] with a head too
ponderous to lay-to, and so falling victim to the inveterate MacStinger;
good-hearted, modest, considerate Toots, whose brains rapidly go as his
whiskers come, but who yet gets back from contact with the world, in his
shambling way, some fragments of the sense pumped out of him by the
forcing Blimbers; breathless Susan Nipper, beaming Polly Toodle, the
plaintive Wickham, and the awful Pipchin, each with her duty in the
starched Dombey household so nicely appointed as to seem born for only
that; simple thoughtful old Gills and his hearty young lad of a nephew;
Mr. Toodle and his children, with the charitable grinder's decline and
fall; Miss Tox, obsequious flatterer from nothing but good-nature;
spectacled and analytic, but not unkind Miss Blimber; and the good
droning dull benevolent Doctor himself, withering even the fruits of his
well-spread dinner-table with his _It is remarkable, Mr. Feeder, that
the Romans_--"at the mention of which terrible people, their implacable
enemies, every young gentleman fastened his gaze upon the Doctor, with
an assumption of the deepest interest." So vivid and life-like were all
these people, to the very youngest of the young gentlemen, that it
became natural eagerly to seek out for them actual prototypes; but I
think I can say with some confidence of them all, that, whatever single
traits may have been taken from persons known to him (a practice with
all writers, and very specially with Dickens), only two had living
originals. His own experience of Mrs. Pipchin has been related; I had
myself some knowledge of Miss Blimber; and the Little Wooden Midshipman
did actually (perhaps does still) occupy his post of observation in
Leadenhall-street. The names that have been connected, I doubt not in
perfect good faith, with Sol Gills, Perch the messenger, and Captain
Cuttle, have certainly not more foundation than the fancy a courteous
correspondent favours me with, that the redoubtable Captain must have
sat for his portrait to Charles Lamb's blustering, loud-talking,
hook-handed Mr. Mingay. As to the amiable and excellent city-merchant
whose name has been given to Mr. Dombey, he might with the same amount
of justice or probability be supposed to have originated _Coriolanus_ or
_Timon of Athens_.
FOOTNOTES:
[136] "He had already laid his hand upon the bell-rope to convey his
usual summons to Richards, when his eye fell upon a writing-desk,
belonging to his deceased wife, which had been taken, among other
things, from a cabinet in her chamber. It was not the first time that
his eye had lighted on it. He carried the key in his pocket; and he
brought it to his table and opened it now--having previously locked the
room door--with a well accustomed hand.
"From beneath a heap of torn and cancelled scraps of paper, he took one
letter that remained entire. Involuntarily holding his breath as he
opened this document, and 'bating in the stealthy action something of
his arrogant demeanour, he sat down, resting his head upon one hand, and
read it through.
"He read it slowly and attentively, and with a nice particularity to
every syllable. Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed
unnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed
no sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded
and refolded it slowly several times, and tore it carefully into
fragments. Checking his hand in the act of throwing these away, he put
them in his pocket, as if unwilling to trust them even to the chances of
being reunited and deciphered; and instead of ringing, as usual, for
little Paul, he sat solitary all the evening in his cheerless room."
From the original MS. of _Dombey and Son_.
[137] "I will now explain that 'Oliver Twist,' the ----, the ----, etc."
(naming books by another writer), "were produced in an entirely
different manner from what would be considered as the usual course; _for
I, the Artist, suggested to the Authors of those works the original
idea, or subject_, for them to write out--furnishing, at the same time,
the principal characters and the scenes. And then, as the tale had to be
produced in monthly parts, the _Writer_, or _Author_, and the Artist,
had every month to arrange and settle what scenes, or subjects, and
characters were to be introduced, and the Author had to _weave_ in such
scenes as I wished to represent."--_The Artist and the Author_, by
George Cruikshank, p. 15. (Bell & Daldy: 1872.) The italics are Mr.
Cruikshank's own.
[138] I take, from his paper of notes for the number, the various names,
beginning with that of her real prototype, out of which the name
selected came to him at last. "Mrs. Roylance . . . House at the seaside.
Mrs. Wrychin. Mrs. Tipchin. Mrs. Alchin. Mrs. Somching. Mrs. Pipchin."
See Vol. I. p. 55.
[139] Some passages may be subjoined from the letter, as it does not
appear among those printed by Lord Cockburn. "EDINBURGH, _14th
December_, '46. My dear, dear Dickens!--and dearer every day, as you
every day give me more pleasure and do me more good! You do not wonder
at this style? for you know that I have been _in love with you_, ever
since Nelly! and I do not care now who knows it. . . . The Dombeys, my dear
D! how can I thank you enough for them! The truth, and the delicacy, and
the softness and depth of the pathos in that opening death-scene, could
only come from one hand; and the exquisite taste which spares all
details, and breaks off just when the effect is at its height, is wholly
yours. But it is Florence on whom my hopes chiefly repose; and in her I
see the promise of another Nelly! though reserved, I hope, for a happier
fate, and destined to let us see what a _grown-up_ female angel is like.
I expect great things, too, from Walter, who begins charmingly, and will
be still better I fancy than young Nickleby, to whom as yet he bears
most resemblance. I have good hopes too of Susan Nipper, who I think has
great capabilities, and whom I trust you do not mean to drop. Dombey is
rather too hateful, and strikes me as a mitigated Jonas, without his
brutal coarseness and ruffian ferocity. I am quite in the dark as to
what you mean to make of Paul, but shall watch his development with
interest. About Miss Tox, and her Major, and the Chicks, perhaps I do
not care enough. But you know I always grudge the exquisite painting you
waste on such portraits. I love the Captain, tho', and his hook, as much
as you can wish; and look forward to the future appearances of Carker
Junior, with expectations which I know will not be disappointed. . . ."
[140] "EDINBURGH, _31st January_, 1847. Oh, my dear, dear Dickens! what
a No. 5 you have now given us! I have so cried and sobbed over it last
night, and again this morning; and felt my heart purified by those
tears, and blessed and loved you for making me shed them; and I never
can bless and love you enough. Since the divine Nelly was found dead on
her humble couch, beneath the snow and the ivy, there has been nothing
like the actual dying of that sweet Paul, in the summer sunshine of that
lofty room. And the long vista that leads us so gently and sadly, and
yet so gracefully and winningly, to the plain consummation! Every trait
so true, and so touching--and yet lightened by the fearless innocence
which goes _playfully_ to the brink of the grave, and that pure
affection which bears the unstained spirit, on its soft and lambent
flash, at once to its source in eternity.". . . In the same letter he told
him of his having been reading the _Battle of Life_ again, charmed with
its sweet writing and generous sentiments.
[141] "_Isn't Bunsby good_?" I heard Lord Denman call out, with
unmistakable glee and enjoyment, over Talfourd's table--I think to Sir
Edward Ryan; one of the few survivors of that pleasant dinner party of
May 1847.
CHAPTER XVII.
SPLENDID STROLLING.
1847-1852.
Birth of Fifth Son--Theatrical Benefit for
Leigh Hunt--Troubles at Rehearsals--Leigh
Hunt's Account--Receipts and Expenses--Anecdote
of Macready--At Broadstairs--Appearance of Mrs.
Gamp--Fancy for a Jeu-d'esprit--Mrs. Gamp at
the Play--Mrs. Gamp with the
Strollers--Confidences with Mrs. Harris--Leigh
Hunt and Poole--Ticklish Society--Mrs. Gamp's
Cabman--George Cruikshank--Mr. Wilson the
Hair-dresser--In the Sweedlepipes
Line--Fatigues of a Powder Ball--C. D.'s
Moustache and Whiskers--John Leech--Mark
Lemon--Douglas Jerrold--Dudley Costello--Frank
Stone--Augustus Egg--J. F.--Cruikshank's
_Bottle_--Profits of _Dombey_--Design for
Edition of Old Novelists--Street-music at
Broadstairs--Margate Theatre--Public
Meetings--Book Friends--Friendly Reception in
Glasgow--Scott-monument--Purchase of
Shakespeare's House--Amateur
Theatricals--Origin of Guild of Literature and
Art--Travelling Theatre and Scenes--Success of
Comedy and Farce--Troubles of a Manager--Acting
under Difficulties--Scenery overturned--Dinner
at Manchester.
DEVONSHIRE TERRACE remaining still in possession of Sir James Duke, a
house was taken in Chester-place, Regent's-park, where, on the 18th of
April, his fifth son, to whom he gave the name of Sydney Smith
Haldimand, was born.[142] Exactly a month before, we had attended
together the funeral, at Highgate, of his publisher Mr. William Hall,
his old regard for whom had survived the recent temporary cloud, and
with whom he had the association as well of his first success, as of
much kindly intercourse not forgotten at this sad time. Of the summer
months that followed, the greater part was passed by him at Brighton or
Broadstairs; and the chief employment of his leisure, in the intervals
of _Dombey_, was the management of an enterprise originating in the
success of our private play, of which the design was to benefit a great
man of letters.
The purpose and the name had hardly been announced, when, with the
statesmanlike attention to literature and its followers for which Lord
John Russell has been eccentric among English politicians, a civil-list
pension of two hundred a year was granted to Leigh Hunt; but though this
modified our plan so far as to strike out of it performances meant to be
given in London, so much was still thought necessary as might clear off
past liabilities, and enable one of the most genuine of writers better
to enjoy the easier future that had at last been opened to him.
Reserving therefore anything realized beyond a certain sum for a
dramatic author of merit, Mr. John Poole, to whom help had become also
important, it was proposed to give, on Leigh Hunt's behalf, two
representations of Ben Jonson's comedy, one at Manchester and the other
at Liverpool, to be varied by different farces in each place; and with a
prologue of Talfourd's which Dickens was to deliver in Manchester, while
a similar address by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton was to be spoken by me in
Liverpool. Among the artists and writers associated in the scheme were
Mr. Frank Stone, Mr. Augustus Egg, Mr. John Leech, and Mr. George
Cruikshank; Mr. Douglas Jerrold, Mr. Mark Lemon, Mr. Dudley Costello,
and Mr. George Henry Lewes; the general management and supreme control
being given to Dickens.
Leading men in both cities contributed largely to the design, and my
friend Mr. Alexander Ireland of Manchester has lately sent me some
letters not more characteristic of the energy of Dickens in regard to it
than of the eagerness of every one addressed to give what help they
could. Making personal mention of his fellow-sharers in the enterprise
he describes the troop, in one of those letters, as "the most easily
governable company of actors on earth;" and to this he had doubtless
brought them, but not very easily. One or two of his managerial troubles
at rehearsals remain on record in letters to myself, and may give
amusement still. Comedy and farces are referred to indiscriminately, but
the farces were the most recurring plague. "Good Heaven! I find that A.
hasn't twelve words, and I am in hourly expectation of rebellion!"--"You
were right about the green baize, that it would certainly muffle the
voices; and some of our actors, by Jove, haven't too much of that
commodity at the best."--"B. shocked me so much the other night by a
restless, stupid movement of his hands in his first scene with you, that
I took a turn of an hour with him yesterday morning, and I hope quieted
his nerves a little."--"I made a desperate effort to get C. to give up
his part. Yet in spite of all the trouble he gives me I am sorry for
him, he is so evidently hurt by his own sense of not doing well. He
clutched the part, however, tenaciously; and three weary times we
dragged through it last night."--"That infernal E. forgets
everything."--"I plainly see that F. when nervous, which he is sure to
be, loses his memory. Moreover his asides are inaudible, even at Miss
Kelly's; and as regularly as I stop him to say them again, he exclaims
(with a face of agony) that 'he'll speak loud on the night,' as if
anybody ever did without doing it always!"--"G. not born for it at all,
and too innately conceited, I much fear, to do anything well. I thought
him better last night, but I would as soon laugh at a kitchen
poker."--"Fancy H. ten days after the casting of that farce, wanting
F.'s part therein! Having himself an excellent old man in it already,
and a quite admirable part in the other farce." From which it will
appear that my friend's office was not a sinecure, and that he was not,
as few amateur-managers have ever been, without the experiences of Peter
Quince. Fewer still, I suspect, have fought through them with such
perfect success, for the company turned out at last would have done
credit to any enterprise. They deserved the term applied to them by
Maclise, who had invented it first for Macready, on his being driven to
"star" in the provinces when his managements in London closed. They were
"splendid strollers."[143]
On Monday the 26th July we played at Manchester, and on Wednesday the
28th at Liverpool; the comedy being followed on the first night by _A
Good Night's Rest_ and _Turning the Tables_, and on the second by
_Comfortable Lodgings, or Paris in 1750_; and the receipts being, on the
first night £440 12_s._, and on the second, £463 8_s._ 6_d._ But though
the married members of the company who took their wives defrayed that
part of the cost, and every one who acted paid three pounds ten to the
benefit-fund for his hotel charges, the expenses were necessarily so
great that the profit was reduced to four hundred guineas, and,
handsomely as this realised the design, expectations had been raised to
five hundred. There was just that shade of disappointment, therefore,
when, shortly after we came back and Dickens had returned to
Broadstairs, I was startled by a letter from him. On the 3rd of August
he had written: "All well. Children" (who had been going through
whooping cough) "immensely improved. Business arising out of the late
blaze of triumph, worse than ever." Then came what startled me, the very
next day. As if his business were not enough, it had occurred to him
that he might add the much longed-for hundred pounds to the benefit-fund
by a little jeu d'esprit in form of a history of the trip, to be
published with illustrations from the artists; and his notion was to
write it in the character of Mrs. Gamp. It was to be, in the phraseology
of that notorious woman, a new "Piljians Projiss;" and was to bear upon
the title page its description as an Account of a late Expedition into
the North, for an Amateur Theatrical Benefit, written by Mrs. Gamp (who
was an eye-witness), Inscribed to Mrs. Harris, Edited by Charles
Dickens, and published, with illustrations on wood by so and so, in aid
of the Benefit-fund. "What do you think of this idea for it? The
argument would be, that Mrs. Gamp, being on the eve of an excursion to
Margate as a relief from her professional fatigues, comes to the
knowledge of the intended excursion of our party; hears that several of
the ladies concerned are in an interesting situation; and decides to
accompany the party unbeknown, in a second-class carriage--'in case.'
There, she finds a gentleman from the Strand in a checked suit, who is
going down with the wigs"--the theatrical hair-dresser employed on these
occasions, Mr. Wilson, had eccentric points of character that were a
fund of infinite mirth to Dickens--"and to his politeness Mrs. Gamp is
indebted for much support and countenance during the excursion. She will
describe the whole thing in her own manner: sitting, in each place of
performance, in the orchestra, next the gentleman who plays the
kettle-drums. She gives her critical opinion of Ben Jonson as a literary
character, and refers to the different members of the party, in the
course of her description of the trip: having always an invincible
animosity towards Jerrold, for Caudle reasons. She addresses herself,
generally, to Mrs. Harris, to whom the book is dedicated,--but is
discursive. Amount of matter, half a sheet of _Dombey_: may be a page or
so more, but not less." Alas! it never arrived at even that small size,
but perished prematurely, as I feared it would, from failure of the
artists to furnish needful nourishment. Of course it could not live
alone. Without suitable illustration it must have lost its point and
pleasantry. "Mac will make a little garland of the ladies for the
title-page. Egg and Stone will themselves originate something fanciful,
and I will settle with Cruikshank and Leech. I have no doubt the little
thing will be droll and attractive." So it certainly would have been, if
the Thanes of art had not fallen from him; but on their desertion it had
to be abandoned after the first few pages were written. They were placed
at my disposal then; and, though the little jest has lost much of its
flavour now, I cannot find it in my heart to omit them here. There are
so many friends of Mrs. Gamp who will rejoice at this unexpected visit
from her!
"I. MRS. GAMP'S ACCOUNT OF HER CONNEXION WITH THIS AFFAIR.
"Which Mrs. Harris's own words to me, was these: 'Sairey Gamp,' she
says, 'why not go to Margate? Srimps,' says that dear creetur, 'is to
your liking, Sairey; why not go to Margate for a week, bring your
constitootion up with srimps, and come back to them loving arts as knows
and wallies of you, blooming? Sairey,' Mrs. Harris says, 'you are but
poorly. Don't denige it, Mrs. Gamp, for books is in your looks. You must
have rest. Your mind,' she says, 'is too strong for you; it gets you
down and treads upon you, Sairey. It is useless to disguige the
fact--the blade is a wearing out the sheets.' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to
her, 'I could not undertake to say, and I will not deceive you ma'am,
that I am the woman I could wish to be. The time of worrit as I had with
Mrs. Colliber, the baker's lady, which was so bad in her mind with her
first, that she would not so much as look at bottled stout, and kept to
gruel through the month, has agued me, Mrs. Harris. But ma'am,' I says
to her, 'talk not of Margate, for if I do go anywheres, it is elsewheres
and not there.' 'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, solemn, 'whence this
mystery? If I have ever deceived the hardest-working, soberest, and best
of women, which her name is well beknown is S. Gamp Midwife Kingsgate
Street High Holborn, mention it. If not,' says Mrs. Harris, with the
tears a standing in her eyes, 'reweal your intentions.' 'Yes, Mrs.
Harris,' I says, 'I will. Well I knows you Mrs. Harris; well you knows
me; well we both knows wot the characters of one another is. Mrs.
Harris then,' I says, 'I _have_ heerd as there _is_ a expedition going
down to Manjestir and Liverspool, a play-acting. If I goes anywheres for
change, it is along with that.' Mrs. Harris clasps her hands, and drops
into a chair, as if her time was come--which I know'd it couldn't be, by
rights, for six weeks odd. 'And have I lived to hear,' she says, 'of
Sairey Gamp, as always kept hersef respectable, in company with
play-actors!' 'Mrs. Harris,' I says to her, 'be not alarmed--not reg'lar
play-actors--hammertoors.' 'Thank Evans!' says Mrs. Harris, and bustiges
into a flood of tears.
"When the sweet creetur had compoged hersef (which a sip of brandy and
water warm, and sugared pleasant, with a little nutmeg did it), I
proceeds in these words. 'Mrs. Harris, I am told as these hammertoors
are litter'ry and artistickle.' 'Sairey,' says that best of wimmin, with
a shiver and a slight relasp, 'go on, it might be worse.' 'I likewise
hears,' I says to her, 'that they're agoin play-acting, for the benefit
of two litter'ry men; one as has had his wrongs a long time ago, and has
got his rights at last, and one as has made a many people merry in his
time, but is very dull and sick and lonely his own sef, indeed.'
'Sairey,' says Mrs. Harris, 'you're an Inglish woman, and that's no
business of you'rn.'
"'No, Mrs. Harris,' I says, 'that's very true; I hope I knows my dooty
and my country. But,' I says, 'I am informed as there is Ladies in this
party, and that half a dozen of 'em, if not more, is in various stages
of a interesting state. Mrs. Harris, you and me well knows what Ingeins
often does. If I accompanies this expedition, unbeknown and second
cladge, may I not combine my calling with change of air, and prove a
service to my feller creeturs?' 'Sairey,' was Mrs. Harris's reply, 'you
was born to be a blessing to your sex, and bring 'em through it. Good go
with you! But keep your distance till called in, Lord bless you Mrs.
Gamp; for people is known by the company they keeps, and litterary and
artistickle society might be the ruin of you before you was aware, with
your best customers, both sick and monthly, if they took a pride in
themselves.'
"II. MRS. GAMP IS DESCRIPTIVE.
"The number of the cab had a seven in it I think, and a ought I
know--and if this should meet his eye (which it was a black 'un, new
done, that he saw with; the other was tied up), I give him warning that
he'd better take that umbereller and patten to the Hackney-coach Office
before he repents it. He was a young man in a weskit with sleeves to it
and strings behind, and needn't flatter himsef with a suppogition of
escape, as I gave this description of him to the Police the moment I
found he had drove off with my property; and if he thinks there an't
laws enough he's much mistook--I tell him that:
"I do assure you, Mrs. Harris, when I stood in the railways office that
morning with my bundle on my arm and one patten in my hand, you might
have knocked me down with a feather, far less porkmangers which was a
lumping against me, continual and sewere all round. I was drove about
like a brute animal and almost worritted into fits, when a gentleman
with a large shirt-collar and a hook nose, and a eye like one of Mr.
Sweedlepipes's hawks, and long locks of hair, and wiskers that I
wouldn't have no lady as I was engaged to meet suddenly a turning round
a corner, for any sum of money you could offer me, says, laughing,
'Halloa, Mrs. Gamp, what are _you_ up to!' I didn't know him from a man
(except by his clothes); but I says faintly, 'If you're a Christian man,
show me where to get a second-cladge ticket for Manjester, and have me
put in a carriage, or I shall drop!' Which he kindly did, in a cheerful
kind of a way, skipping about in the strangest manner as ever I see,
making all kinds of actions, and looking and vinking at me from under
the brim of his hat (which was a good deal turned up), to that extent,
that I should have thought he meant something but for being so flurried
as not to have no thoughts at all until I was put in a carriage along
with a individgle--the politest as ever I see--in a shepherd's plaid
suit with a long gold watch-guard hanging round his neck, and his hand a
trembling through nervousness worse than a aspian leaf.
"'I'm wery appy, ma'am,' he says--the politest vice as ever I
heerd!--'to go down with a lady belonging to our party.'
"'Our party, sir!' I says.
"'Yes, m'am,' he says, 'I'm Mr. Wilson. I'm going down with the wigs.'
"Mrs. Harris, wen he said he was agoing down with the wigs, such was my
state of confugion and worrit that I thought he must be connected with
the Government in some ways or another, but directly moment he explains
himsef, for he says:
"'There's not a theatre in London worth mentioning that I don't attend
punctually. There's five-and-twenty wigs in these boxes, ma'am,' he
says, a pinting towards a heap of luggage, 'as was worn at the Queen's
Fancy Ball. There's a black wig, ma'am,' he says, 'as was worn by
Garrick; there's a red one, ma'am,' he says, 'as was worn by Kean;
there's a brown one, ma'am,' he says, 'as was worn by Kemble; there's a
yellow one, ma'am,' he says, 'as was made for Cooke; there's a grey one,
ma'am,' he says, 'as I measured Mr. Young for, mysef; and there's a
white one, ma'am, that Mr. Macready went mad in. There's a flaxen one as
was got up express for Jenny Lind the night she came out at the Italian
Opera. It was very much applauded was that wig, ma'am, through the
evening. It had a great reception. The audience broke out, the moment
they see it.'
"'Are you in Mr. Sweedlepipes's line, sir?' I says.
"'Which is that, ma'am?' he says--the softest and genteelest vice I ever
heerd, I do declare, Mrs. Harris!
"'Hair-dressing,' I says.
"'Yes, ma'am,' he replies, 'I have that honour. Do you see this, ma'am?'
he says, holding up his right hand.
"'I never see such a trembling,' I says to him. And I never did!
"'All along of Her Majesty's Costume Ball, ma'am,' he says. 'The
excitement did it. Two hundred and fifty-seven ladies of the first rank
and fashion had their heads got up on that occasion by this hand, and my
t'other one. I was at it eight-and-forty hours on my feet, ma'am,
without rest. It was a Powder ball, ma'am. We have a Powder piece at
Liverpool. Have I not the pleasure,' he says, looking at me curious,
'of addressing Mrs. Gamp?'
"'Gamp I am, sir,' I replies. 'Both by name and natur.'
"'Would you like to see your beeograffer's moustache and wiskers,
ma'am?' he says. 'I've got 'em in this box.'
"'Drat my beeograffer, sir,' I says, 'he has given me no region to wish
to know anythink about him.'
"'Oh, Missus Gamp, I ask your parden'--I never see such a polite man,
Mrs. Harris! 'P'raps,' he says, 'if you're not of the party, you don't
know who it was that assisted you into this carriage!'
"'No, Sir,' I says, 'I don't, indeed.'
"'Why, ma'am,' he says, a wisperin', 'that was George, ma'am.'
"'What George, sir? I don't know no George,' says I.
"'The great George, ma'am,' says he. 'The Crookshanks.'
"If you'll believe me, Mrs. Harris, I turns my head, and see the wery
man a making picturs of me on his thumb nail, at the winder! while
another of 'em--a tall, slim, melancolly gent, with dark hair and a bage
vice--looks over his shoulder, with his head o' one side as if he
understood the subject, and cooly says, '_I_'ve draw'd her several
times--in Punch,' he says too! The owdacious wretch!
"'Which I never touches, Mr. Wilson,' I remarks out loud--I couldn't
have helped it, Mrs. Harris, if you had took my life for it!--'which I
never touches, Mr. Wilson, on account of the lemon!'
"'Hush!' says Mr. Wilson. 'There he is!'
"I only see a fat gentleman with curly black hair and a merry face, a
standing on the platform rubbing his two hands over one another, as if
he was washing of 'em, and shaking his head and shoulders wery much; and
I was a wondering wot Mr. Wilson meant, wen he says, 'There's Dougladge,
Mrs. Gamp!' he says. 'There's him as wrote the life of Mrs. Caudle!'
"Mrs. Harris, wen I see that little willain bodily before me, it give me
such a turn that I was all in a tremble. If I hadn't lost my umbereller
in the cab, I must have done him a injury with it! Oh the bragian little
traitor! right among the ladies, Mrs. Harris; looking his wickedest and
deceitfullest of eyes while he was a talking to 'em; laughing at his own
jokes as loud as you please; holding his hat in one hand to cool
his-sef, and tossing back his iron-grey mop of a head of hair with the
other, as if it was so much shavings--there, Mrs. Harris, I see him,
getting encouragement from the pretty delooded creeturs, which never
know'd that sweet saint, Mrs. C, as I did, and being treated with as
much confidence as if he'd never wiolated none of the domestic ties, and
never showed up nothing! Oh the aggrawation of that Dougladge! Mrs.
Harris, if I hadn't apologiged to Mr. Wilson, and put a little bottle to
my lips which was in my pocket for the journey, and which it is very
rare indeed I have about me, I could not have abared the sight of
him--there, Mrs. Harris! I could not!--I must have tore him, or have
give way and fainted.
"While the bell was a ringing, and the luggage of the hammertoors in
great confugion--all a litter'ry indeed--was handled up, Mr. Wilson
demeens his-sef politer than ever. 'That,' he says, 'Mrs. Gamp,' a
pinting to a officer-looking gentleman, that a lady with a little basket
was a taking care on, 'is another of our party. He's a author
too--continivally going up the walley of the Muses, Mrs. Gamp. There,'
he says, alluding to a fine looking, portly gentleman, with a face like
a amiable full moon, and a short mild gent, with a pleasant smile, 'is
two more of our artists, Mrs G, well beknowed at the Royal Academy, as
sure as stones is stones, and eggs is eggs. This resolute gent,' he
says, 'a coming along here as is aperrently going to take the railways
by storm--him with the tight legs, and his weskit very much buttoned,
and his mouth very much shut, and his coat a flying open, and his heels
a giving it to the platform, is a cricket and beeograffer, and our
principal tragegian.' 'But who,' says I, when the bell had left off, and
the train had begun to move, 'who, Mr. Wilson, is the wild gent in the
prespiration, that's been a tearing up and down all this time with a
great box of papers under his arm, a talking to everybody wery
indistinct, and exciting of himself dreadful?' 'Why?' says Mr. Wilson,
with a smile. 'Because, sir,' I says, 'he's being left behind.' 'Good
God!' cries Mr. Wilson, turning pale and putting out his head, 'it's
_your_ beeograffer--the Manager--and he has got the money, Mrs. Gamp!'
Hous'ever, some one chucked him into the train and we went off. At the
first shreek of the whistle, Mrs. Harris, I turned white, for I had took
notice of some of them dear creeturs as was the cause of my being in
company, and I know'd the danger that--but Mr. Wilson, which is a
married man, puts his hand on mine, and says, 'Mrs. Gamp, calm yourself;
it's only the Ingein.'"
Of those of the party with whom these humorous liberties were taken
there are only two now living to complain of their friendly
caricaturist, and Mr. Cruikshank will perhaps join me in a frank
forgiveness not the less heartily for the kind words about himself that
reached me from Broadstairs not many days after Mrs. Gamp. "At
Canterbury yesterday" (2nd of September) "I bought George Cruikshank's
_Bottle_. I think it very powerful indeed: the two last plates most
admirable, except that the boy and girl in the very last are too young,
and the girl more like a circus-phenomenon than that no-phenomenon she
is intended to represent. I question, however, whether anybody else
living could have done it so well. There is a woman in the last plate
but one, garrulous about the murder, with a child in her arms, that is
as good as Hogarth. Also, the man who is stooping down, looking at the
body. The philosophy of the thing, as a great lesson, I think all wrong;
because to be striking, and original too, the drinking should have begun
in sorrow, or poverty, or ignorance--the three things in which, in its
awful aspect, it _does_ begin. The design would then have been a
double-handed sword--but too 'radical' for good old George, I suppose."
The same letter made mention of other matters of interest. His accounts
for the first half-year of _Dombey_ were so much in excess of what had
been expected from the new publishing arrangements, that from this date
all embarrassments connected with money were brought to a close. His
future profits varied of course with his varying sales, but there was
always enough, and savings were now to begin. "The profits of the
half-year are brilliant. Deducting the hundred pounds a month paid six
times, I have still to receive two thousand two hundred and twenty
pounds, which I think is tidy. Don't you? . . . Stone is still here, and I
lamed his foot by walking him seventeen miles the day before yesterday;
but otherwise he flourisheth. . . . Why don't you bring down a
carpet-bag-full of books, and take possession of the drawing-room all
the morning? My opinion is that Goldsmith would die more easy by the
seaside. Charley and Walley have been taken to school this morning in
high spirits, and at London Bridge will be folded in the arms of
Blimber. The Government is about to issue a Sanitary commission, and
Lord John, I am right well pleased to say, has appointed Henry Austin
secretary." Mr. Austin, who afterwards held the same office under the
Sanitary act, had married his youngest sister Letitia; and of his two
youngest brothers I may add that Alfred, also a civil-engineer, became
one of the sanitary inspectors, and that Augustus was now placed in a
city employment by Mr. Thomas Chapman, which after a little time he
surrendered, and then found his way to America.
The next Broadstairs letter (5th of September) resumed the subject of
Goldsmith, whose life I was then bringing nearly to completion.
"Supposing your _Goldsmith_ made a general sensation, what should you
think of doing a cheap edition of his works? I have an idea that we
might do some things of that sort with considerable effect. There is
really no edition of the great British novelists in a handy nice form,
and would it not be a likely move to do it with some attractive feature
that could not be given to it by the Teggs and such people? Supposing
one wrote an essay on Fielding for instance, and another on Smollett,
and another on Sterne, recalling how one read them as a child (no one
read them younger than I, I think;) and how one gradually grew up into a
different knowledge of them, and so forth--would it not be interesting
to many people? I should like to know if you descry anything in this. It
is one of the dim notions fluctuating within me.[144]. . . The profits,
brave indeed, are four hundred pounds more than the utmost I
expected. . . . The same yearnings have been mine, in reference to the
Praslin business. It is pretty clear to me, for one thing, that the
Duchess was one of the most uncomfortable women in the world, and that
it would have been hard work for anybody to have got on with her. It is
strange to see a bloody reflection of our friends Eugène Sue and Dumas
in the whole melodrama. Don't you think so . . . remembering what we often
said of the canker at the root of all that Paris life? I dreamed of you,
in a wild manner, all last night. . . . A sea fog here, which prevents
one's seeing the low-water mark. A circus on the cliff to the right, and
of course I have a box to-night! Deep slowness in the inimitable's
brain. A shipwreck on the Goodwin sands last Sunday, which WALLY, with
a hawk's eye, SAW GO DOWN: for which assertion, subsequently confirmed
and proved, he was horribly maltreated at the time."
Devonshire-terrace meanwhile had been left by his tenant; and coming up
joyfully himself to take possession, he brought for completion in his
old home an important chapter of _Dombey_. On the way he lost his
portmanteau, but "Thank God! the MS. of the chapter wasn't in it.
Whenever I travel, and have anything of that valuable article, I always
carry it in my pocket."[145] He had begun at this time to find
difficulties in writing at Broadstairs, of which he told me on his
return. "Vagrant music is getting to that height here, and is so
impossible to be escaped from, that I fear Broadstairs and I must part
company in time to come. Unless it pours of rain, I cannot write
half-an-hour without the most excruciating organs, fiddles, bells, or
glee-singers. There is a violin of the most torturing kind under the
window now (time, ten in the morning) and an Italian box of music on the
steps--both in full blast." He closed with a mention of improvements in
the Margate theatre since his memorable last visit. In the past two
years it had been managed by a son of the great comedian, Dowton, with
whose name it is pleasant to connect this note. "We went to the
manager's benefit on Wednesday" (10th of September): "_As You Like It_
really very well done, and a most excellent house. Mr. Dowton delivered
a sensible and modest kind of speech on the occasion, setting forth his
conviction that a means of instruction and entertainment possessing such
a literature as the stage in England, could not pass away; and, that
what inspired great minds, and delighted great men, two thousand years
ago, and did the same in Shakespeare's day, must have within itself a
principle of life superior to the whim and fashion of the hour. And with
that, and with cheers, he retired. He really seems a most respectable
man, and he has cleared out this dust-hole of a theatre into something
like decency."
He was to be in London at the end of the month: but I had from him
meanwhile his preface[146] for his first completed book in the popular
edition (_Pickwick_ being now issued in that form, with an illustration
by Leslie); and sending me shortly after (12th of Sept.) the first few
slips of the story of the _Haunted Man_ proposed for his next Christmas
book, he told me he must finish it in less than a month if it was to be
done at all, _Dombey_ having now become very importunate. This prepared
me for his letter of a week's later date. "Have been at work all day,
and am seedy in consequence. _Dombey_ takes so much time, and requires
to be so carefully done, that I really begin to have serious doubts
whether it is wise to go on with the Christmas book. Your kind help is
invoked. What do you think? Would there be any distinctly bad effect in
holding this idea over for another twelvemonth? saying nothing whatever
till November; and then announcing in the _Dombey_ that its occupation
of my entire time prevents the continuance of the Christmas series until
next year, when it is proposed to be renewed. There might not be
anything in that but a possibility of an extra lift for the little book
when it did come--eh? On the other hand, I am very loath to lose the
money. And still more so to leave any gap at Christmas firesides which I
ought to fill. In short I am (forgive the expression) BLOWED if I know
what to do. I am a literary Kitely--and you ought to sympathize and
help. If I had no _Dombey_, I could write and finish the story with the
bloom on--but there's the rub. . . . Which unfamiliar quotation reminds me
of a Shakspearian (put an e before the s; I like it much better)
speculation of mine. What do you say to 'take arms against a sea of
troubles' having been originally written 'make arms,' which is the
action of swimming. It would get rid of a horrible grievance in the
figure, and make it plain and apt. I think of setting up a claim to live
in The House at Stratford, rent-free, on the strength of this
suggestion. You are not to suppose that I am anything but disconcerted
to-day, in the agitation of my soul concerning Christmas; but I have
been brooding, like Dombey himself, over _Dombey_ these two days, until
I really can't afford to be depressed." To his Shakespearian suggestion
I replied that it would hardly give him the claim he thought of setting
up, for that swimming through your troubles would not be "opposing"
them. And upon the other point I had no doubt of the wisdom of delay.
The result was that the Christmas story was laid aside until the
following year.
The year's closing incidents were his chairmanship at a meeting of the
Leeds Mechanics' Society on the 1st of December, and his opening of the
Glasgow Athenæum on the 28th; where, to immense assemblages in
both,[147] he contrasted the obstinacy and cruelty of the Power of
ignorance with the docility and gentleness of the Power of knowledge;
pointed the use of popular institutes in supplementing what is learnt
first in life, by the later education for its employments and equipment
for its domesticities and virtues, which the grown person needs from day
to day as much as the child its reading and writing; and he closed at
Glasgow with allusion to a bazaar set on foot by the ladies of the city,
under patronage of the Queen, for adding books to its Athenæum library.
"We never tire of the friendships we form with books," he said, "and
here they will possess the added charm of association with their
donors. Some neighbouring Glasgow widow will be mistaken for that
remoter one whom Sir Roger de Coverley could not forget; Sophia's muff
will be seen and loved, by another than Tom Jones, going down the
High-street some winter day; and the grateful students of a library thus
filled will be apt, as to the fair ones who have helped to people it, to
couple them in their thoughts with Principles of the Population and
Additions to the History of Europe, by an author of older date than
Sheriff Alison." At which no one laughed so loudly as the Sheriff
himself, who had cordially received Dickens as his guest, and stood with
him on the platform.
On the last day but one of the old year he wrote to me from Edinburgh.
"We came over this afternoon, leaving Glasgow at one o'clock. Alison
lives in style in a handsome country house out of Glasgow, and is a
capital fellow, with an agreeable wife, nice little daughter, cheerful
niece, all things pleasant in his household. I went over the prison and
lunatic asylum with him yesterday;[148] at the Lord Provost's had
gorgeous state-lunch with the Town Council; and was entertained at a
great dinner-party at night. Unbounded hospitality and enthoozymoozy the
order of the day, and I have never been more heartily received anywhere,
or enjoyed myself more completely. The great chemist, Gregory, who spoke
at the meeting, returned with us to Edinburgh to-day, and gave me many
new lights on the road regarding the extraordinary pains Macaulay seems
for years to have taken to make himself disagreeable and disliked here.
No one else, on that side, would have had the remotest chance of being
unseated at the last election; and, though Gregory voted for him, I
thought he seemed quite as well pleased as anybody else that he didn't
come in. . . . I am sorry to report the Scott Monument a failure. It is
like the spire of a Gothic church taken off and stuck in the ground." On
the first day of 1848, still in Edinburgh, he wrote again: "Jeffrey, who
is obliged to hold a kind of morning court in his own study during the
holidays, came up yesterday in great consternation, to tell me that a
person had just been to make and sign a declaration of bankruptcy; and
that on looking at the signature he saw it was James Sheridan Knowles.
He immediately sent after, and spoke with him; and of what passed I am
eager to talk with you." The talk will bring back the main subject of
this chapter, from which another kind of strolling has led me away; for
its results were other amateur performances, of which the object was to
benefit Knowles.
This was the year when a committee had been formed for the purchase and
preservation of Shakespeare's house at Stratford, and the performances
in question took the form of contributions to the endowment of a
curatorship to be held by the author of _Virginius_ and the _Hunchback_.
The endowment was abandoned upon the town and council of Stratford
finally (and very properly) taking charge of the house; but the sum
realised was not withdrawn from the object really desired, and one of
the finest of dramatists profited yet more largely by it than Leigh Hunt
did by the former enterprise. It may be proper to remark also, that,
like Leigh Hunt, Knowles received soon after, through Lord John Russell,
the same liberal pension; and that smaller claims to which attention had
been similarly drawn were not forgotten, Mr. Poole, after much kind help
from the Bounty Fund, being in 1850 placed on the Civil List for half
the amount by the same minister and friend of letters.
Dickens threw himself into the new scheme with all his old energy;[149]
and prefatory mention may be made of our difficulty in selection of a
suitable play to alternate with our old Ben Jonson. The _Alchemist_ had
been such a favourite with some of us, that, before finally laying it
aside, we went through two or three rehearsals, in which I recollect
thinking Dickens's Sir Epicure Mammon as good as anything he had done;
and now the same trouble, with the same result, arising from a vain
desire to please everybody, was taken successively with Beaumont and
Fletcher's _Beggar's Bush_, and Goldsmith's _Good Natured Man_, with
Jerrold's characteristic drama of the _Rent Day_, and Bulwer's masterly
comedy of _Money_. Choice was at last made of Shakespeare's _Merry
Wives_, in which Lemon played Falstaff, I took again the jealous husband
as in Jonson's play, and Dickens was Justice Shallow; to which was added
a farce, _Love, Law, and Physick_, in which Dickens took the part he had
acted long ago, before his days of authorship; and, besides the
professional actresses engaged, we had for our Dame Quickly the lady to
whom the world owes incomparably the best _Concordance_ to Shakespeare
that has ever been published, Mrs. Cowden Clarke. The success was
undoubtedly very great. At Manchester, Liverpool, and Edinburgh there
were single representations; but Birmingham and Glasgow had each two
nights, and two were given at the Haymarket, on one of which the Queen
and Prince were present. The gross receipts from the nine performances,
before the necessary large deductions for London and local charges, were
two thousand five hundred and fifty-one pounds and eightpence.[150] The
first representation was in London on the 15th of April, the last in
Glasgow on the 20th of July, and everywhere Dickens was the leading
figure. In the enjoyment as in the labour he was first. His animal
spirits, unresting and supreme, were the attraction of rehearsal at
morning, and of the stage at night. At the quiet early dinner, and the
more jovial unrestrained supper, where all engaged were assembled daily,
his was the brightest face, the lightest step, the pleasantest word.
There seemed to be no rest needed for that wonderful vitality.
My allusion to the last of these splendid strollings in aid of what we
believed to be the interests of men of letters, shall be as brief as I
can make it. Two winters after the present, at the close of November
1850, in the great hall of Lord Lytton's old family mansion in
Knebworth-park, there were three private performances by the original
actors in Ben Jonson's _Every Man in His Humour_. All the circumstances
and surroundings were very brilliant; some of the gentlemen of the
county played both in the comedy and farces; our generous host was
profuse of all noble encouragement; and amid the general pleasure and
excitement hopes rose high. Recent experience had shown what the public
interest in this kind of amusement might place within reach of its
providers; and there came to be discussed the possibility of making
permanent such help as had been afforded to fellow writers, by means of
an endowment that should not be mere charity, but should combine indeed
something of both pension-list and college-lectureship, without the
drawbacks of either. It was not enough considered that schemes for
self-help, to be successful, require from those they are meant to
benefit, not only a general assent to their desirability, but zealous
and active co-operation. Without discussing now, however, what will have
to be stated hereafter, it suffices to say that the enterprise was set
on foot, and the "Guild of Literature and Art" originated at Knebworth.
A five-act comedy was to be written by Sir Edward Lytton, and, when a
certain sum of money had been obtained by public representations of it,
the details of the scheme were to be drawn up, and appeal made to those
whom it addressed more especially. In a very few months everything was
ready, except a farce which Dickens was to have written to follow the
comedy, and which unexpected cares of management and preparation were
held to absolve him from. There were other reasons. "I have written the
first scene," he told me (23rd March, 1851), "and it has droll points in
it, more farcical points than you commonly find in farces,[151] really
better. Yet I am constantly striving, for my reputation's sake, to get
into it a meaning that is impossible in a farce; constantly thinking of
it, therefore, against the grain; and constantly impressed with a
conviction that I could never act in it myself with that wild
abandonment which can alone carry a farce off. Wherefore I have
confessed to Bulwer Lytton and asked for absolution." There was
substituted a new farce of Lemon's, to which, however, Dickens soon
contributed so many jokes and so much Gampish and other fun of his own,
that it came to be in effect a joint piece of authorship; and Gabblewig,
which the manager took to himself, was one of those personation parts
requiring five or six changes of face, voice, and gait in the course of
it, from which, as we have seen, he derived all the early theatrical
ambition that the elder Mathews had awakened in him. "You have no idea,"
he continued, "of the immensity of the work as the time advances, for
the Duke even throws the whole of the audience on us, or he would get
(he says) into all manner of scrapes." The Duke of Devonshire had
offered his house in Piccadilly for the first representations, and in
his princely way discharged all the expenses attending them. A moveable
theatre was built and set up in the great drawing-room, and the library
was turned into a green-room.
_Not so Bad as We Seem_ was played for the first time at
Devonshire-house on the 27th of May, 1851, before the Queen and Prince
and as large an audience as places could be found for; _Mr.
Nightingale's Diary_ being the name given to the farce. The success
abundantly realised the expectations formed; and, after many
representations at the Hanover-square Rooms in London, strolling began
in the country, and was continued at intervals for considerable portions
of this and the following year. From much of it, illness and occupation
disabled me, and substitutes had to be found; but to this I owe the
opportunity now of closing with a characteristic picture of the course
of the play, and of Dickens amid the incidents and accidents to which
his theatrical career exposed him. The company carried with them, it
should be said, the theatre constructed for Devonshire-house, as well as
the admirable scenes which Stanfield, David Roberts, Thomas Grieve,
Telbin, Absolon, and Louis Haghe had painted as their generous
free-offerings to the comedy; of which the representations were thus
rendered irrespective of theatres or their managers, and took place in
the large halls or concert-rooms of the various towns and cities.
"The enclosure forgotten in my last" (Dickens writes from Sunderland on
the 29th of August 1852), "was a little printed announcement which I
have had distributed at the doors wherever we go, knocking _Two o' Clock
in the Morning_ bang out of the bills. Funny as it used to be, it is
become impossible to get anything out of it after the scream of _Mr.
Nightingale's Diary_. The comedy is so far improved by the reductions
which your absence and other causes have imposed on us, that it acts now
only two hours and twenty-five minutes, all waits included, and goes
'like wildfire,' as Mr. Tonson[152] says. We have had prodigious houses,
though smaller rooms (as to their actual size) than I had hoped for. The
Duke was at Derby, and no end of minor radiances. Into the room at
Newcastle (where Lord Carlisle was by the bye) they squeezed six
hundred people, at twelve and sixpence, into a space reasonably capable
of holding three hundred. Last night, in a hall built like a theatre,
with pit, boxes, and gallery, we had about twelve hundred--I dare say
more. They began with a round of applause when Coote's white waistcoat
appeared in the orchestra, and wound up the farce with three deafening
cheers. I never saw such good fellows. Stanny is their fellow-townsman;
was born here; and they applauded his scene as if it were himself. But
what I suffered from a dreadful anxiety that hung over me all the time,
I can never describe. When we got here at noon, it appeared that the
hall was a perfectly new one, and had only had the slates put upon the
roof by torchlight over night. Farther, that the proprietors of some
opposition rooms had declared the building to be unsafe, and that there
was a panic in the town about it; people having had their money back,
and being undecided whether to come or not, and all kinds of such
horrors. I didn't know what to do. The horrible responsibility of
risking an accident of that awful nature seemed to rest wholly upon me;
for I had only to say we wouldn't act, and there would be no chance of
danger. I was afraid to take Sloman into council lest the panic should
infect our men. I asked W. what he thought, and he consolingly observed
that his digestion was so bad that death had no terrors for him! I went
and looked at the place; at the rafters, walls, pillars, and so forth;
and fretted myself into a belief that they really were slight! To crown
all, there was an arched iron roof without any brackets or pillars, on a
new principle! The only comfort I had was in stumbling at length on the
builder, and finding him a plain practical north-countryman with a foot
rule in his pocket. I took him aside, and asked him should we, or could
we, prop up any weak part of the place: especially the dressing-rooms,
which were under our stage, the weight of which must be heavy on a new
floor, and dripping wet walls. He told me there wasn't a stronger
building in the world; and that, to allay the apprehension, they had
opened it, on Thursday night, to thousands of the working people, and
induced them to sing, and beat with their feet, and make every possible
trial of the vibration. Accordingly there was nothing for it but to go
on. I was in such dread, however, lest a false alarm should spring up
among the audience and occasion a rush, that I kept Catherine and
Georgina out of the front. When the curtain went up and I saw the great
sea of faces rolling up to the roof, I looked here and looked there, and
thought I saw the gallery out of the perpendicular, and fancied the
lights in the ceiling were not straight. Rounds of applause were perfect
agony to me, I was so afraid of their effect upon the building. I was
ready all night to rush on in case of an alarm--a false alarm was my
main dread--and implore the people for God's sake to sit still. I had
our great farce-bell rung to startle Sir Geoffrey instead of throwing
down a piece of wood, which might have raised a sudden-apprehension. I
had a palpitation of the heart, if any of our people stumbled up or down
a stair. I am sure I never acted better, but the anxiety of my mind was
so intense, and the relief at last so great, that I am half-dead to-day,
and have not yet been able to eat or drink anything or to stir out of
my room. I shall never forget it. As to the short time we had for
getting the theatre up; as to the upsetting, by a runaway pair of
horses, of one of the vans at the Newcastle railway station, _with all
the scenery in it, every atom of which was turned over_; as to the
fatigue of our carpenters, who have now been up four nights, and who
were lying dead asleep in the entrances last night; I say nothing, after
the other gigantic nightmare, except that Sloman's splendid knowledge of
his business, and the good temper and cheerfulness of all the workmen,
are capital. I mean to give them a supper at Liverpool, and address them
in a neat and appropriate speech. We dine at two to-day (it is now one)
and go to Sheffield at four, arriving there at about ten. I had been as
fresh as a daisy; walked from Nottingham to Derby, and from Newcastle
here; but seem to have had my nerves crumpled up last night, and have an
excruciating headache. That's all at present. I shall never be able to
bear the smell of new deal and fresh mortar again as long as I live."
Manchester and Liverpool closed the trip with enormous success at both
places; and Sir Edward Lytton was present at a public dinner which was
given in the former city, Dickens's brief word about it being written as
he was setting foot in the train that was to bring him to London.
"Bulwer spoke brilliantly at the Manchester dinner, and his earnestness
and determination about the Guild was most impressive. It carried
everything before it. They are now getting up annual subscriptions, and
will give us a revenue to begin with. I swear I believe that people to
be the greatest in the world. At Liverpool I had a Round Robin on the
stage after the play was over, a place being left for your signature,
and as I am going to have it framed, I'll tell Green to send it to
Lincoln's-inn-fields. You have no idea how good Tenniel, Topham, and
Collins have been in what they had to do."
These names, distinguished in art and letters, represent additions to
the company who had joined the enterprise; and the last of them, Mr.
Wilkie Collins, became, for all the rest of the life of Dickens, one of
his dearest and most valued friends.
FOOTNOTES:
[142] He entered the Royal Navy, and survived his father only a year and
eleven months. He was a Lieutenant, at the time of his death from a
sharp attack of bronchitis; being then on board the P. and O. steamer
"Malta," invalided from his ship the Topaze, and on his way home. He was
buried at sea on the 2nd of May, 1872. Poor fellow! He was the smallest
in size of all the children, in his manhood reaching only to a little
over five feet; and throughout his childhood was never called by any
other name than the "Ocean Spectre," from a strange little weird yet
most attractive look in his large wondering eyes, very happily caught in
a sketch in oils by the good Frank Stone, done at Bonchurch in September
1849 and remaining in his aunt's possession. "Stone has painted,"
Dickens then wrote to me, "the Ocean Spectre, and made a very pretty
little picture of him." It was a strange chance that led his father to
invent this playful name for one whom the ocean did indeed take to
itself at last.
[143] I think it right to place on record here Leigh Hunt's own allusion
to the incident (_Autobiography_, p. 432), though it will be thought to
have too favourable a tone, and I could have wished that other names had
also found mention in it. But I have already (p. 211) stated quite
unaffectedly my own opinion of the very modest pretensions of the whole
affair, and these kind words of Hunt may stand _valeant quantum_.
"Simultaneous with the latest movement about the pension was one on the
part of my admirable friend Dickens and other distinguished men,
Forsters and Jerrolds, who, combining kindly purpose with an amateur
inclination for the stage, had condescended to show to the public what
excellent actors they could have been, had they so pleased,--what
excellent actors, indeed, some of them were. . . . They proposed . . . a
benefit for myself, . . . and the piece performed on the occasion was Ben
Jonson's _Every Man in his Humour_. . . . If anything had been needed to
show how men of letters include actors, on the common principle of the
greater including the less, these gentlemen would have furnished it. Mr.
Dickens's Bobadil had a spirit in it of intellectual apprehension beyond
anything the existing stage has shown . . . and Mr. Forster delivered the
verses of Ben Jonson with a musical flow and a sense of their grace and
beauty unknown, I believe, to the recitation of actors at present. At
least I have never heard anything like it since Edmund Kean's.". . . To
this may be added some lines from Lord Lytton's prologue spoken at
Liverpool, of which I have not been able to find a copy, if indeed it
was printed at the time; but the verses come so suddenly and completely
back to me, as I am writing after twenty-five years, that in a small way
they recall a more interesting effort of memory told me once by
Macready. On a Christmas night at Drury Lane there came a necessity to
put up the _Gamester_, which he had not played since he was a youth in
his father's theatre thirty years before. He went to rehearsal shrinking
from the long and heavy study he should have to undergo, when, with the
utterance of the opening sentence, the entire words of the part came
back, including even a letter which Beverly has to read, and which it is
the property-man's business to supply. My lines come back as
unexpectedly; but with pleasanter music than any in Mr. Moore's dreary
tragedy, as a few will show.
"Mild amid foes, within a prison free,
He comes . . . our grey-hair'd bard of Rimini!
Comes with the pomp of memories in his train,
Pathos and wit, sweet pleasure and sweet pain!
Comes with familiar smile and cordial tone,
Our hearths' wise cheerer!--Let us cheer his own!
Song links her children with a golden thread,
To aid the living bard strides forth the dead.
Hark the frank music of the elder age--
Ben Jonson's giant tread sounds ringing up the stage!
Hail! the large shapes our fathers loved! again
Wellbred's light ease, and Kitely's jealous pain.
Cob shall have sense, and Stephen be polite,
Brainworm shall preach, and Bobadil shall fight--
Each, here, a merit not his own shall find,
And _Every Man_ the _Humour_ to be kind."
[144] Another, which for many reasons we may regret went also into the
limbo of unrealized designs, is sketched in the subjoined (7th of
January, 1848). "Mac and I think of going to Ireland for six weeks in
the spring, and seeing whether anything is to be done there, in the way
of a book? I fancy it might turn out well." The Mac of course is
Maclise.
[145] "Here we are" (23rd of August) "in the noble old premises; and
very nice they look, all things considered. . . . Trifles happen to me
which occur to nobody else. My portmanteau 'fell off' a cab last night
somewhere between London-bridge and here. It contained on a moderate
calculation £70 worth of clothes. I have no shirt to put on, and am
obliged to send out to a barber to come and shave me."
[146] "Do you see anything to object to in it? I have never had so much
difficulty, I think, in setting about any slight thing; for I really
didn't know that I had a word to say, and nothing seems to live 'twixt
what I _have_ said and silence. The advantage of it is, that the latter
part opens an idea for future prefaces all through the series, and may
serve perhaps to make a feature of them." (7th of September, 1847.)
[147] From his notes on these matters I may quote. "The Leeds appears to
be a very important institution, and I am glad to see that George
Stephenson will be there, besides the local lights, inclusive of all the
Baineses. They talk at Glasgow of 6,000 people." (26th of November.)
"You have got Southey's _Holly Tree_. I have not. Put it in your pocket
to-day. It occurs to me (up to the eyes in a mass of Glasgow Athenæum
papers) that I could quote it with good effect in the North." (24th of
December.) "A most brilliant demonstration last night, and I think I
never did better. Newspaper reports bad." (29th of December.)
[148] "Tremendous distress at Glasgow, and a truly damnable jail,
exhibiting the separate system in a most absurd and hideous form.
Governor practical and intelligent; very anxious for the associated
silent system; and much comforted by my fault-finding." (30th of
December.)
[149] It would amuse the reader, but occupy too much space, to add to my
former illustrations of his managerial troubles; but from an elaborate
paper of rules for rehearsals, which I have found in his handwriting, I
quote the opening and the close. "Remembering the very imperfect
condition of all our plays at present, the general expectation in
reference to them, the kind of audience before which they will be
presented, and the near approach of the nights of performance, I hope
everybody concerned will abide by the following regulations, and will
aid in strictly carrying them out." Elaborate are the regulations set
forth, but I take only the three last. "Silence, on the stage and in the
theatre, to be faithfully observed; the lobbies &c. being always
available for conversation. No book to be referred to on the stage; but
those who are imperfect to take their words from the prompter. Everyone
to act, as nearly as possible, as on the night of performance; everyone
to speak out, so as to be audible through the house. And every mistake
of exit, entrance, or situation, to be corrected _three times_
successively." He closes thus. "All who were concerned in the first
getting up of _Every Man in his Humour_, and remember how carefully the
stage was always kept then, and who have been engaged in the late
rehearsals of the _Merry Wives_, and have experienced the difficulty of
getting on, or off: of being heard, or of hearing anybody else: will, I
am sure, acknowledge the indispensable necessity of these regulations."
[150] I give the sums taken at the several theatres. Haymarket, £319
14_s._; Manchester, £266 12_s._ 6_d._; Liverpool, £467 6_s._ 6_d._;
Birmingham, £327 10_s._, and £262 18_s._ 6_d._; Edinburgh, £325 1_s._
6_d._; Glasgow, £471 7_s._ 8_d._, and (at half the prices of the first
night) £210 10_s._
[151] "Those Rabbits have more nature in them than you commonly find in
Rabbits"--the self-commendatory remark of an aspiring animal-painter
showing his piece to the most distinguished master in that line--was
here in my friend's mind.
[152] Mr. Tonson was a small part in the comedy entrusted with much
appropriateness to Mr. Charles Knight, whose _Autobiography_ has this
allusion to the first performance, which, as Mr. Pepys says, is "pretty
to observe." "The actors and the audience were so close together that as
Mr. Jacob Tonson sat in Wills's Coffee-house he could have touched with
his clouded cane the Duke of Wellington." (iii. 116.)
CHAPTER XVIII.
SEASIDE HOLIDAYS.
1848-1851.
Louis Philippe dethroned--French Missive from
C. D.--At Broadstairs--A Chinese Junk--What it
was like--Perplexing Questions--A Type of
Finality--A Contrast--Dickens's View of
Temperance Agitation--Cruikshank's _Bottle_:
and _Drunkard's Children_--Realities of
Cruikshank's Pencil--Dickens on Hogarth--Exit
of Gin-lane--Wisdom of the Great
Painter--Originality of Leech--Superiority of
his Method--Excuses for the Rising
Generation--What Leech will be remembered
for--Pony-chaise Accident--Fortunate
Escape--Strenuous Idleness--Hint for Mr.
Taine--At Brighton--A Name for his New Book--At
Broadstairs--Summoned as Special Juror--A Male
Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris--At Bonchurch--Rev.
James White--First Impressions of the
Undercliff--Talfourd made a Judge--Touching
Letter from Jeffrey--The Comedian
Regnier--Progress in Writing--A Startling
Revelation--Effects of Bonchurch Climate--Mr.
Browne's Sketch for Micawber--Accident to
Leech--Its Consequences--At Broadstairs--A
_Copperfield_ Banquet--Thoughts of a New Book.
THE portion of Dickens's life over which his adventures of strolling
extended was in other respects not without interest; and this chapter
will deal with some of his seaside holidays before I pass to the
publication in 1848 of the story of _The Haunted Man_, and to the
establishment in 1850 of the Periodical which had been in his thoughts
for half a dozen years before, and has had foreshadowings nearly as
frequent in my pages.
Among the incidents of 1848 before the holiday season came, were the
dethronement of Louis Philippe, and birth of the second French
republic: on which I ventured to predict that a Gore-house friend of
ours, and _his_ friend, would in three days be on the scene of action.
The three days passed, and I had this letter. "Mardi, Février 29, 1848.
MON CHER. Vous êtes homme de la plus grande pénétration! Ah, mon Dieu,
que vous êtes absolument magnifique! Vous prévoyez presque toutes les
choses qui vont arriver; et aux choses qui viennent d'arriver vous êtes
merveilleusement au-fait. Ah, cher enfant, quelle idée sublime vous vous
aviez à la tête quand vous prévîtes si clairement que M. le Comte Alfred
d'Orsay se rendrait au pays de sa naissance! Quel magicien! Mais--c'est
tout égal, mais--il n'est pas parti. Il reste à Gore-house, où,
avant-hier, il y avait un grand dîner à tout le monde. Mais quel homme,
quel ange, néanmoins! MON AMI, je trouve que j'aime tant la République,
qu'il me faut renoncer ma langue et écrire seulement le langage de la
République de France--langage des Dieux et des Anges--langage, en un
mot, des Français! Hier au soir je rencontrai à l'Athenæum Monsieur Mack
Leese, qui me dit que MM. les Commissionnaires des Beaux Arts lui
avaient écrit, par leur secrétaire, un billet de remerciements à propos
de son tableau dans la Chambre des Députés, et qu'ils lui avaient prié
de faire l'autre tableau en fresque, dont on y a besoin. Ce qu'il a
promis. Voici des nouvelles pour les champs de Lincoln's Inn! Vive la
gloire de France! Vive la République! Vive le Peuple! Plus de Royauté!
Plus des Bourbons! Plus de Guizot! Mort aux traîtres! Faisons couler le
sang pour la liberté, la justice, la cause populaire! Jusqu'à cinq
heures et demie, adieu, mon brave! Recevez l'assurance de ma
considération distinguée, et croyez-moi, CONCITOYEN! votre tout dévoué,
CITOYEN CHARLES DICKENS." I proved to be not quite so wrong,
nevertheless, as my friend supposed.
Somewhat earlier than usual this summer, on the close of the
Shakespeare-house performances, he tried Broadstairs once more, having
no important writing in hand: but in the brief interval before leaving
he saw a thing of celebrity in those days, the Chinese Junk; and I had
all the details in so good a description that I could not resist the
temptation of using some parts of it at the time. "Drive down to the
Blackwall railway," he wrote to me, "and for a matter of eighteen-pence
you are at the Chinese Empire in no time. In half a score of minutes,
the tiles and chimney-pots, backs of squalid houses, frowsy pieces of
waste ground, narrow courts and streets, swamps, ditches, masts of
ships, gardens of dockweed, and unwholesome little bowers of scarlet
beans, whirl away in a flying dream, and nothing is left but China. How
the flowery region ever came into this latitude and longitude is the
first thing one asks; and it is not certainly the least of the marvel.
As Aladdin's palace was transported hither and thither by the rubbing of
a lamp, so the crew of Chinamen aboard the Keying devoutly believed that
their good ship would turn up, quite safe, at the desired port, if they
only tied red rags enough upon the mast, rudder, and cable. Somehow they
did not succeed. Perhaps they ran short of rag; at any rate they hadn't
enough on board to keep them above water; and to the bottom they would
undoubtedly have gone but for the skill and coolness of a dozen English
sailors, who brought them over the ocean in safety. Well, if there be
any one thing in the world that this extraordinary craft is not at all
like, that thing is a ship of any kind. So narrow, so long, so
grotesque; so low in the middle, so high at each end, like a China
pen-tray; with no rigging, with nowhere to go to aloft; with mats for
sails, great warped cigars for masts, gaudy dragons and sea-monsters
disporting themselves from stem to stern, and _on_ the stern a gigantic
cock of impossible aspect, defying the world (as well he may) to produce
his equal,--it would look more at home at the top of a public building,
or at the top of a mountain, or in an avenue of trees, or down in a
mine, than afloat on the water. As for the Chinese lounging on the deck,
the most extravagant imagination would never dare to suppose them to be
mariners. Imagine a ship's crew, without a profile among them, in gauze
pinafores and plaited hair; wearing stiff clogs a quarter of a foot
thick in the sole; and lying at night in little scented boxes, like
backgammon men or chess-pieces, or mother-of-pearl counters! But by
Jove! even this is nothing to your surprise when you go down into the
cabin. There you get into a torture of perplexity. As, what became of
all those lanterns hanging to the roof when the Junk was out at sea?
Whether they dangled there, banging and beating against each other, like
so many jesters' baubles? Whether the idol Chin Tee, of the eighteen
arms, enshrined in a celestial Punch's Show, in the place of honour,
ever tumbled out in heavy weather? Whether the incense and the
joss-stick still burnt before her, with a faint perfume and a little
thread of smoke, while the mighty waves were roaring all around? Whether
that preposterous tissue-paper umbrella in the corner was always spread,
as being a convenient maritime instrument for walking about the decks
with in a storm? Whether all the cool and shiny little chairs and tables
were continually sliding about and bruising each other, and if not why
not? Whether anybody on the voyage ever read those two books printed in
characters like bird-cages and fly-traps? Whether the Mandarin
passenger, He Sing, who had never been ten miles from home in his life
before, lying sick on a bamboo couch in a private china closet of his
own (where he is now perpetually writing autographs for inquisitive
barbarians), ever began to doubt the potency of the Goddess of the Sea,
whose counterfeit presentment, like a flowery monthly nurse, occupies
the sailors' joss-house in the second gallery? Whether it is possible
that the said Mandarin, or the artist of the ship, Sam Sing, Esquire,
R.A. of Canton, _can_ ever go ashore without a walking-staff of
cinnamon, agreeably to the usage of their likenesses in British
tea-shops? Above all, whether the hoarse old ocean could ever have been
seriously in earnest with this floating toy-shop; or had merely played
with it in lightness of spirit--roughly, but meaning no harm--as the
bull did with another kind of china-shop on St. Patrick's day in the
morning."
The reply made on this brought back comment and sequel not less amusing.
"Yes, there can be no question that this is Finality in perfection; and
it is a great advantage to have the doctrine so beautifully worked out,
and shut up in a corner of a dock near a fashionable white-bait house
for the edification of man. Thousands of years have passed away since
the first junk was built on this model, and the last junk ever launched
was no better for that waste and desert of time. The mimic eye painted
on their prows to assist them in finding their way, has opened as wide
and seen as far as any actual organ of sight in all the interval through
the whole immense extent of that strange country. It has been set in the
flowery head to as little purpose for thousands of years. With all their
patient and ingenious but never advancing art, and with all their rich
and diligent agricultural cultivation, not a new twist or curve has been
given to a ball of ivory, and not a blade of experience has been grown.
There is a genuine finality in that; and when one comes from behind the
wooden screen that encloses the curious sight, to look again upon the
river and the mighty signs on its banks of life, enterprise, and
progress, the question that comes nearest is beyond doubt a home one.
Whether _we_ ever by any chance, in storms, trust to red flags; or burn
joss-sticks before idols; or grope our way by the help of conventional
eyes that have no sight in them; or sacrifice substantial facts for
absurd forms? The ignorant crew of the Keying refused to enter on the
ships' books, until 'a considerable amount of silvered-paper, tin-foil,
and joss-stick' had been laid in by the owners for the purposes of their
worship. And I wonder whether _our_ seamen, let alone our bishops and
deacons, ever stand out upon points of silvered-paper and tin-foil and
joss-sticks. To be sure Christianity is not Chin-Teeism, and that I
suppose is why we never lose sight of the end in contemptible and
insignificant quarrels about the means. There is enough matter for
reflection aboard the Keying at any rate to last one's voyage home to
England again."
Other letters of the summer from Broadstairs will complete what he wrote
from the same place last year on Mr. Cruikshank's efforts in the cause
of temperance, and will enable me to say, what I know he wished to be
remembered in his story, that there was no subject on which through his
whole life he felt more strongly than this. No man advocated temperance,
even as far as possible its legislative enforcement, with greater
earnestness; but he made important reservations. Not thinking
drunkenness to be a vice inborn, or incident to the poor more than to
other people, he never would agree that the existence of a gin-shop was
the alpha and omega of it. Believing it to be, _the_ "national horror,"
he also believed that many operative causes had to do with having made
it so; and his objection to the temperance agitation was that these were
left out of account altogether. He thought the gin-shop not fairly to be
rendered the exclusive object of attack, until, in connection with the
classes who mostly made it their resort, the temptations that led to it,
physical and moral, should have been more bravely dealt with. Among the
former he counted foul smells, disgusting habitations, bad workshops and
workshop-customs, scarcity of light, air, and water, in short the
absence of all easy means of decency and health; and among the latter,
the mental weariness and languor so induced, the desire of wholesome
relaxation, the craving for _some_ stimulus and excitement, not less
needful than the sun itself to lives so passed, and last, and inclusive
of all the rest, ignorance, and the want of rational mental training,
generally applied. This was consistently Dickens's "platform" throughout
the years he was known to me; and holding it to be within the reach as
well as the scope of legislation, which even our political magnates have
been discovering lately, he thought intemperance to be but the one
result that, out of all those arising from the absence of legislation,
was the most wretched. For him, drunkenness had a teeming and
reproachful history anterior to the drunken stage; and he thought it the
first duty of the moralist bent upon annihilating the gin-shop, to
"strike deep and spare not" at those previous remediable evils.
Certainly this was not the way of Mr. Cruikshank, any more than it is
that of the many excellent people who take part in temperance
agitations. His former tale of the _Bottle_, as told by his admirable
pencil, was that of a decent working man, father of a boy and a girl,
living in comfort and good esteem until near the middle age, when,
happening unluckily to have a goose for dinner one day in the bosom of
his thriving family, he jocularly sends out for a bottle of gin,
persuades his wife, until then a picture of neatness and good
housewifery, to take a little drop after the stuffing, and the whole
family from that moment drink themselves to destruction. The sequel, of
which Dickens now wrote to me, traced the lives of the boy and girl
after the wretched deaths of their drunken parents, through gin-shop,
beer-shop, and dancing-rooms, up to their trial for robbery, when the
boy is convicted, dying aboard the hulks; and the girl, desolate and
mad after her acquittal, flings herself from London-bridge into the
night-darkened river.
"I think," said Dickens, "the power of that closing scene quite
extraordinary. It haunts the remembrance like an awful reality. It is
full of passion and terror, and I doubt very much whether any hand but
his could so have rendered it. There are other fine things too. The
death-bed scene on board the hulks; the convict who is composing the
face, and the other who is drawing the screen round the bed's head; seem
to me masterpieces worthy of the greatest painter. The reality of the
place, and the fidelity with which every minute object illustrative of
it is presented, are surprising. I think myself no bad judge of this
feature, and it is remarkable throughout. In the trial scene at the Old
Bailey, the eye may wander round the Court, and observe everything that
is a part of the place. The very light and atmosphere are faithfully
reproduced. So, in the gin-shop and the beer-shop. An inferior hand
would indicate a fragment of the fact, and slur it over; but here every
shred is honestly made out. The man behind the bar in the gin-shop, is
as real as the convicts at the hulks, or the barristers round the table
in the Old Bailey. I found it quite curious, as I closed the book, to
recall the number of faces I had seen of individual identity, and to
think what a chance they have of living, as the Spanish friar said to
Wilkie, when the living have passed away. But it only makes more
exasperating to me the obstinate one-sidedness of the thing. When a man
shows so forcibly the side of the medal on which the people in their
faults and crimes are stamped, he is the more bound to help us to a
glance at that other side on which the faults and vices of the
governments placed over the people are not less gravely impressed."
This led to some remark on Hogarth's method in such matters, and I am
glad to be able to preserve this fine criticism of that great
Englishman, by a writer who closely resembled him in genius; as another
generation will be probably more apt than our own to discover. "Hogarth
avoided the Drunkard's Progress, I conceive, precisely because the
causes of drunkenness among the poor were so numerous and widely spread,
and lurked so sorrowfully deep and far down in all human misery,
neglect, and despair, that even _his_ pencil could not bring them fairly
and justly into the light. It was never his plan to be content with only
showing the effect. In the death of the miser-father, his shoe new-soled
with the binding of his bible, before the young Rake begins his career;
in the worldly father, listless daughter, impoverished young lord, and
crafty lawyer, of the first plate of Marriage-à-la mode; in the
detestable advances through the stages of Cruelty; and in the progress
downward of Thomas Idle; you see the effects indeed, but also the
causes. He was never disposed to spare the kind of drunkenness that was
of more 'respectable' engenderment, as one sees in his midnight modern
conversation, the election plates, and crowds of stupid aldermen and
other guzzlers. But after one immortal journey down Gin-lane, he turned
away in pity and sorrow--perhaps in hope of better things, one day, from
better laws and schools and poor men's homes--and went back no more. The
scene of Gin-lane, you know, is that just cleared away for the
extension of Oxford-street, which we were looking at the other day; and
I think it a remarkable trait of Hogarth's picture, that while it
exhibits drunkenness in the most appalling forms, it also forces on
attention a most neglected wretched neighbourhood, and an unwholesome,
indecent, abject condition of life that might be put as frontispiece to
our sanitary report of a hundred years later date. I have always myself
thought the purpose of this fine piece to be not adequately stated even
by CHARLES LAMB. 'The very houses seem absolutely reeling' it is true;
but beside that wonderful picture of what follows intoxication, we have
indication quite as powerful of what leads to it among the neglected
classes. There is no evidence that any of the actors in the dreary scene
have ever been much better than we see them there. The best are pawning
the commonest necessaries, and tools of their trades; and the worst are
homeless vagrants who give us no clue to their having been otherwise in
bygone days. All are living and dying miserably. Nobody is interfering
for prevention or for cure, in the generation going out before us, or
the generation coming in. The beadle is the only sober man in the
composition except the pawnbroker, and he is mightily indifferent to the
orphan-child crying beside its parent's coffin. The little charity-girls
are not so well taught or looked after, but that they can take to
dram-drinking already. The church indeed is very prominent and handsome;
but as, quite passive in the picture, it coldly surveys these things in
progress under shadow of its tower, I cannot but bethink me that it was
not until this year of grace 1848 that a Bishop of London first came out
respecting something wrong in poor men's social accommodations, and I
am confirmed in my suspicion that Hogarth had many meanings which have
not grown obsolete in a century."
Another art-criticism by Dickens should be added. Upon a separate
publication by Leech of some drawings on stone called the Rising
Generation, from designs done for Mr. Punch's gallery, he wrote at my
request a little essay of which a few sentences will find appropriate
place with his letter on the other great caricaturist of his time. I use
that word, as he did, only for want of a better. Dickens was of opinion
that, in this particular line of illustration, while he conceded all his
fame to the elder and stronger contemporary, Mr. Leech was the very
first Englishman who had made Beauty a part of his art; and he held,
that, by striking out this course, and setting the successful example of
introducing always into his most whimsical pieces some beautiful faces
or agreeable forms, he had done more than any other man of his
generation to refine a branch of art to which the facilities of
steam-printing and wood-engraving were giving almost unrivalled
diffusion and popularity. His opinion of Leech in a word was that he
turned caricature into character; and would leave behind him not a
little of the history of his time and its follies, sketched with
inimitable grace.
"If we turn back to a collection of the works of Rowlandson or Gilray,
we shall find, in spite of the great humour displayed in many of them,
that they are rendered wearisome and unpleasant by a vast amount of
personal ugliness. Now, besides that it is a poor device to represent
what is satirized as being necessarily ugly, which is but the resource
of an angry child or a jealous woman, it serves no purpose but to
produce a disagreeable result. There is no reason why the farmer's
daughter in the old caricature who is squalling at the harpsichord (to
the intense delight, by the bye, of her worthy father, whom it is her
duty to please) should be squab and hideous. The satire on the manner of
her education, if there be any in the thing at all, would be just as
good, if she were pretty. Mr. Leech would have made her so. The average
of farmers' daughters in England are not impossible lumps of fat. One is
quite as likely to find a pretty girl in a farm-house, as to find an
ugly one; and we think, with Mr. Leech, that the business of this Style
of art is with the pretty one. She is not only a pleasanter object, but
we have more interest in her. We care more about what does become her,
and does not become her. Mr. Leech represented the other day certain
delicate creatures with bewitching countenances encased in several
varieties of that amazing garment, the ladies' paletot. Formerly those
fair creatures would have been made as ugly and ungainly as possible,
and then the point would have been lost. The spectator, with a laugh at
the absurdity of the whole group, would not have cared how such uncouth
creatures disguised themselves, or how ridiculous they became. . . . But to
represent female beauty as Mr. Leech represents it, an artist must have,
a most delicate perception of it; and the gift of being able to realise
it to us with two or three slight, sure touches of his pencil. This
power Mr. Leech possesses, in an extraordinary degree. . . . For this
reason, we enter our protest against those of the Rising Generation who
are precociously in love being made the subject of merriment by a
pitiless and unsympathizing world. We never saw a boy more distinctly in
the right than the young gentleman kneeling on the chair to beg a lock
of hair from his pretty cousin, to take back to school. Madness is in
her apron, and Virgil dog's-eared and defaced is in her ringlets. Doubts
may suggest themselves of the perfect disinterestedness of the other
young gentleman contemplating the fair girl at the piano--doubts
engendered by his worldly allusion to 'tin'; though even that may have
arisen in his modest consciousness of his own inability to support an
establishment--but that he should be 'deucedly inclined to go and cut
that fellow out,' appears to us one of the most natural emotions of the
human breast. The young gentleman with the dishevelled hair and clasped
hands who loves the transcendant beauty with the bouquet, and can't be
happy without her, is to us a withering and desolate spectacle. Who
_could_ be happy without her? . . . The growing youths are not less happily
observed and agreeably depicted than the grown women. The languid little
creature who 'hasn't danced since he was quite a boy,' is perfect; and
the eagerness of the small dancer whom he declines to receive for a
partner at the hands of the glorious old lady of the house (the little
feet quite ready for the first position, the whole heart projected into
the quadrille, and the glance peeping timidly at the desired one out of
a flutter of hope and doubt) is quite delightful to look at. The
intellectual juvenile who awakens the tremendous wrath of a Norma of
private life by considering woman an inferior animal, is lecturing at
the present moment, we understand, on the Concrete in connexion with the
Will. The legs of the young philosopher who considers Shakespeare an
over-rated man, were seen by us dangling over the side of an omnibus
last Tuesday. We have no acquaintance with the scowling young gentleman
who is clear that 'if his Governor don't like the way he goes on in, why
he must have chambers and so much a week;' but if he is not by this time
in Van Diemen's land, he will certainly go to it through Newgate. We
should exceedingly dislike to have personal property in a strong box, to
live in the suburb of Camberwell, and to be in the relation of
bachelor-uncle to that youth. . . . In all his designs, whatever Mr. Leech
desires to do, he does. His drawing seems to us charming; and the
expression indicated, though by the simplest means, is exactly the
natural expression, and is recognised as such immediately. Some forms of
our existing life will never have a better chronicler. His wit is
good-natured, and always the wit of a gentleman. He has a becoming sense
of responsibility and self-restraint; he delights in agreeable things;
he imparts some pleasant air of his own to things not pleasant in
themselves; he is suggestive and full of matter; and he is always
improving. Into the tone as well as into the execution of what he does,
he has brought a certain elegance which is altogether new, without
involving any compromise of what is true. Popular art in England has not
had so rich an acquisition." Dickens's closing allusion was to a remark
made by Mr. Ford in a review of _Oliver Twist_ formerly referred to. "It
is eight or ten years since a writer in the _Quarterly Review_, making
mention of MR. GEORGE CRUIKSHANK, commented on the absurdity of
excluding such a man from the Royal Academy, because his works were not
produced in certain materials, and did not occupy a certain space in its
annual shows. Will no Associates be found upon its books one of these
days, the labours of whose oil and brushes will have sunk into the
profoundest obscurity, when many pencil-marks of MR. CRUIKSHANK and of
MR. LEECH will be still fresh in half the houses in the land?"
Of what otherwise occupied him at Broadstairs in 1848 there is not much
to mention until the close of his holiday. He used to say that he never
went for more than a couple of days from his own home without something
befalling him that never happened to anyone else, and his Broadstairs
adventure of the present summer verged closer on tragedy than comedy.
Returning there one day in August after bringing up his boys to school,
it had been arranged that his wife should meet him at Margate; but he
had walked impatiently far beyond the place for meeting when at last he
caught sight of her, not in the small chaise but in a large carriage and
pair followed by an excited crowd, and with the youth that should have
been driving the little pony bruised and bandaged on the box behind the
two prancing horses. "You may faintly imagine my amazement at
encountering this carriage, and the strange people, and Kate, and the
crowd, and the bandaged one, and all the rest of it." And then in a line
or two I had the story. "At the top of a steep hill on the road, with a
ditch on each side, the pony bolted, upon which what does John do but
jump out! He says he was thrown out, but it cannot be. The reins
immediately became entangled in the wheels, and away went the pony down
the hill madly, with Kate inside rending the Isle of Thanet with her
screams. The accident might have been a fearful one, if the pony had
not, thank Heaven, on getting to the bottom, pitched over the side;
breaking the shaft and cutting her hind legs, but in the most
extraordinary manner smashing her own way apart. She tumbled down, a
bundle of legs with her head tucked underneath, and left the chaise
standing on the bank! A Captain Devaynes and his wife were passing in
their carriage at the moment, saw the accident with no power of
preventing it, got Kate out, laid her on the grass, and behaved with
infinite kindness. All's well that ends well, and I think she's really
none the worse for the fright. John is in bed a good deal bruised, but
without any broken bone, and likely soon to come right; though for the
present plastered all over, and, like Squeers, a brown-paper parcel
chock-full of nothing but groans. The women generally have no sympathy
for him whatever; and the nurse says, with indignation, how could he go
and leave an unprotected female in the shay!"
Holiday incidents there were many, but none that need detain us. This
was really a summer idleness: for it was the interval between two of his
important undertakings, there was no periodical yet to make demands on
him, and only the task of finishing his _Haunted Man_ for Christmas lay
ahead. But he did even his nothings in a strenuous way, and on occasion
could make gallant fight against the elements themselves. He reported
himself, to my horror, thrice wet through on a single day, "dressed
four times," and finding all sorts of great things, brought out by the
rains, among the rocks on the sea-beach. He also sketched now and then
morsels of character for me, of which I will preserve one. "F is
philosophical, from sunrise to bedtime: chiefly in the French line,
about French women going mad, and in that state coming to their
husbands, and saying, 'Mon ami, je vous ai trompé. Voici les lettres de
mon amant!' Whereupon the husbands take the letters and think them waste
paper, and become extra-philosophical at finding that they really _were_
the lover's effusions: though what there is of philosophy in it all, or
anything but unwholesomeness, it is not easy to see." (A remark that it
might not be out of place to offer to Mr. Taine's notice.) "Likewise
about dark shades coming over our wedded Emmeline's face at parties; and
about F handing her to her carriage, and saying, 'May I come in, for a
lift homeward?' and she bending over him out of window, and saying in a
low voice, I DARE NOT! And then of the carriage driving away like
lightning, leaving F more philosophical than ever on the pavement." Not
till the close of September I heard of work intruding itself, in a
letter twitting me for a broken promise in not joining him: "We are
reasonably jolly, but rurally so; going to bed o' nights at ten, and
bathing o' mornings at half-past seven; and not drugging ourselves with
those dirty and spoiled waters of Lethe that flow round the base of the
great pyramid." Then, after mention of the friends who had left him,
Sheriff Gordon, the Leeches, Lemon, Egg and Stone: "reflection and
pensiveness are coming. I have NOT
'--seen Fancy write
With a pencil of light
On the blotter so solid, commanding the sea!'
but I shouldn't wonder if she were to do it, one of these days. Dim
visions of divers things are floating around me; and I must go to work,
head foremost, when I get home. I am glad, after all, that I have not
been at it here; for I am all the better for my idleness, no doubt. . . .
Roche was very ill last night, and looks like one with his face turned
to the other world, this morning. When _are_ you coming? Oh what days
and nights there have been here, this week past!" My consent to a
suggestion in his next letter, that I should meet him on his way back,
and join him in a walking-excursion home, got me full absolution for
broken promises; and the way we took will remind friends of his later
life, when he was lord of Gadshill, of an object of interest which he
delighted in taking them to see. "You will come down booked for
Maidstone (I will meet you at Paddock-wood), and we will go thither in
company over a most beautiful little line of railroad. The eight miles
walk from Maidstone to Rochester, and the visit to the Druidical altar
on the wayside, are charming. This could be accomplished on the Tuesday;
and Wednesday we might look about us at Chatham, coming home by Cobham
on Thursday. . . ."
His first seaside holiday in 1849 was at Brighton, where he passed some
weeks in February; and not, I am bound to add, without the usual
_un_usual adventure to signalize his visit. He had not been a week in
his lodgings, where Leech and his wife joined him, when both his
landlord and the daughter of his landlord went raving mad, and the
lodgers were driven away to the Bedford hotel. "If you could have heard
the cursing and crying of the two; could have seen the physician and
nurse quoited out into the passage by the madman at the hazard of their
lives; could have seen Leech and me flying to the doctor's rescue; could
have seen our wives pulling us back; could have seen the M.D. faint with
fear; could have seen three other M.D.'s come to his aid; with an
atmosphere of Mrs. Gamps, strait-waistcoats, struggling friends and
servants, surrounding the whole; you would have said it was quite worthy
of me, and quite in keeping with my usual proceedings." The letter ended
with a word on what then his thoughts were full of, but for which no
name had yet been found. "A sea-fog to-day, but yesterday inexpressibly
delicious. My mind running, like a high sea, on names--not satisfied
yet, though." When he next wrote from the seaside, in the beginning of
July, he had found the name; had started his book; and was "rushing to
Broadstairs" to write the fourth number of _David Copperfield_.
In this came the childish experiences which had left so deep an
impression upon him, and over which he had some difficulty in throwing
the needful disguises. "Fourteen miles to-day in the country," he had
written to me on the 21st of June, "revolving number four!" Still he did
not quite see his way. Three days later he wrote: "On leaving you last
night, I found myself summoned on a special jury in the Queen's Bench
to-day. I have taken no notice of the document,[153] and hourly expect
to be dragged forth to a dungeon for contempt of court. I think I should
rather like it. It might help me with a new notion or two in my
difficulties. Meanwhile I shall take a stroll to-night in the green
fields from 7 to 10, if you feel inclined to join." His troubles ended
when he got to Broadstairs, from which he wrote on the tenth of July to
tell me that agreeably to the plan we had discussed he had introduced a
great part of his MS. into the number. "I really think I have done it
ingeniously, and with a very complicated interweaving of truth and
fiction. Vous verrez. I am getting on like a house afire in point of
health, and ditto ditto in point of number."
In the middle of July the number was nearly done, and he was still
doubtful where to pass his longer summer holiday. Leech wished to join
him in it, and both desired a change from Broadstairs. At first he
thought of Folkestone,[154] but disappointment there led to a sudden
change. "I propose" (15th of July) "returning to town to-morrow by the
boat from Ramsgate, and going off to Weymouth or the Isle of Wight, or
both, early the next morning." A few days after, his choice was made.
He had taken a house at Bonchurch, attracted there by the friend who had
made it a place of interest for him during the last few years, the
Reverend James White, with whose name and its associations my mind
connects inseparably many of Dickens's happiest hours. To pay him
fitting tribute would not be easy, if here it were called for. In the
kindly shrewd Scotch face, a keen sensitiveness to pleasure and pain was
the first thing that struck any common observer. Cheerfulness and gloom
coursed over it so rapidly that no one could question the tale they
told. But the relish of his life had outlived its more than usual share
of sorrows; and quaint sly humour, love of jest and merriment, capital
knowledge of books, and sagacious quips at men, made his companionship
delightful. Like his life, his genius was made up of alternations of
mirth and melancholy. He would be immersed, at one time, in those
darkest Scottish annals from which he drew his tragedies; and
overflowing, at another, into Sir Frizzle Pumpkin's exuberant farce. The
tragic histories may probably perish with the actor's perishable art;
but three little abstracts of history written at a later time in prose,
with a sunny clearness of narration and a glow of picturesque interest
to my knowledge unequalled in books of such small pretension, will find,
I hope, a lasting place in literature. They are filled with felicities
of phrase, with breadth of understanding and judgment, with manful
honesty, quiet sagacity, and a constant cheerful piety, valuable for all
and priceless for the young. Another word I permit myself to add. With
Dickens, White was popular supremely for his eager good fellowship; and
few men brought him more of what he always liked to receive. But he
brought nothing so good as his wife. "He is excellent, but she is
better," is the pithy remark of his first Bonchurch letter; and the true
affection and respect that followed is happily still borne her by his
daughters.
Of course there is something strange to be recorded of the Bonchurch
holiday, but it does not come till nearer the ending; and, with more
attention to Mrs. Malaprop's advice to begin with a little aversion,
might probably not have come at all. He began with an excess of liking.
Of the Undercliff he was full of admiration. "From the top of the
highest downs," he wrote in his second letter (28th of July) "there are
views which are only to be equalled on the Genoese shore of the
Mediterranean; the variety of walks is extraordinary; things are cheap,
and everybody is civil. The waterfall acts wonderfully, and the sea
bathing is delicious. Best of all, the place is certainly cold rather
than hot, in the summer time. The evenings have been even chilly. White
very jovial, and emulous of the inimitable in respect of gin-punch. He
had made some for our arrival. Ha! ha! not bad for a beginner. . . . I
have been, and am, trying to work this morning; but I can't make
anything of it, and am going out to think. I am invited by a
distinguished friend to dine with you on the first of August, but I have
pleaded distance and the being resident in a cave on the sea shore; my
food, beans; my drink, the water from the rock. . . . I must pluck up heart
of grace to write to Jeffrey, of whom I had but poor accounts from
Gordon just before leaving. Talfourd delightful, and amuses me mightily.
I am really quite enraptured at his success, and think of his happiness
with uncommon pleasure." Our friend was now on the bench; which he
adorned with qualities that are justly the pride of that profession, and
with accomplishments that have become more rare in its highest places
than they were in former times. His elevation only made those virtues
better known. Talfourd assumed nothing with the ermine but the privilege
of more frequent intercourse with the tastes and friends he loved, and
he continued to be the most joyous and least affected of companions.
Such small oddities or foibles as he had made him secretly only dearer
to Dickens, who had no friend he was more attached to; and the many
happy nights made happier by the voice so affluent in generous words,
and the face so bright with ardent sensibility, come back to me
sorrowfully now. "Deaf the prais'd ear, and mute the tuneful tongue."
The poet's line has a double application and sadness.
He wrote again on the first of August. "I have just begun to get into
work. We are expecting the Queen to come by very soon, in grand array,
and are going to let off ever so many guns. I had a letter from Jeffrey
yesterday morning, just as I was going to write to him. He has evidently
been very ill, and I begin to have fears for his recovery. It is a very
pathetic letter, as to his state of mind; but only in a tranquil
contemplation of death, which I think very noble." His next letter, four
days later, described himself as continuing still at work; but also
taking part in dinners at Blackgang, and picnics of "tremendous success"
on Shanklin Down. "Two charity sermons for the school are preached
to-day, and I go to the afternoon one. The examination of said school
t'other day was very funny. All the boys made Buckstone's bow in the
_Rough Diamond_, and some in a very wonderful manner recited pieces of
poetry, about a clock, and may we be like the clock, which is always a
going and a doing of its duty, and always tells the truth (supposing it
to be a slap-up chronometer I presume, for the American clock in the
school was lying frightfully at that moment); and after being bothered
to death by the multiplication table, they were refreshed with a public
tea in Lady Jane Swinburne's garden." (There was a reference in one of
his letters, but I have lost it, to a golden-haired lad of the
Swinburnes whom his own boys used to play with, since become more widely
known.) "The rain came in with the first tea-pot, and has been active
ever since. On Friday we had a grand, and what is better, a very good
dinner at 'parson' Fielden's, with some choice port. On Tuesday we are
going on another picnic; with the materials for a fire, at my express
stipulation; and a great iron pot to boil potatoes in. These things, and
the eatables, go to the ground in a cart. Last night we had some very
good merriment at White's, where pleasant Julian Young and his wife
(who are staying about five miles off) showed some droll new games"--and
roused the ambition in my friend to give a "mighty conjuring performance
for all the children in Bonchurch," for which I sent him the materials
and which went off in a tumult of wild delight. To the familiar names in
this letter I will add one more, grieving freshly even now to connect it
with suffering. "A letter from Poole has reached me since I began this
letter, with tidings in it that you will be very sorry to hear. Poor
Regnier has lost his only child; the pretty daughter who dined with us
that nice day at your house, when we all pleased the poor mother by
admiring her so much. She died of a sudden attack of malignant typhus.
Poole was at the funeral, and writes that he never saw, or could have
imagined, such intensity of grief as Regnier's at the grave. How one
loves him for it. But is it not always true, in comedy and in tragedy,
that the more real the man the more genuine the actor?"
After a few more days I heard of progress with his writing in spite of
all festivities. "I have made it a rule that the inimitable is
invisible, until two every day. I shall have half the number done,
please God, to-morrow. I have not worked quickly here yet, but I don't
know what I _may_ do. Divers cogitations have occupied my mind at
intervals, respecting the dim design." The design was the weekly
periodical so often in his thoughts, of which more will appear in my
next chapter. His letter closed with intimations of discomfort in his
health; of an obstinate cough; and of a determination he had formed to
mount daily to the top of the downs. "It makes a great difference in
the climate to get a blow there and come down again." Then I heard of
the doctor "stethoscoping" him, of his hope that all was right in that
quarter, and of rubbings "à la St. John Long" being ordered for his
chest. But the mirth still went on. "There has been a Doctor Lankester
at Sandown, a very good merry fellow, who has made one at the picnics,
and whom I went over and dined with, along with Danby (I remember your
liking for Danby, and don't wonder at it), Leech, and White." A letter
towards the close of August resumed yet more of his ordinary tone. "We
had games and forfeits last night at White's. Davy Roberts's pretty
little daughter is there for a week, with her husband, Bicknell's son.
There was a dinner first to say good-bye to Danby, who goes to other
clergyman's-duty, and we were very merry. Mrs. White unchanging; White
comically various in his moods. Talfourd comes down next Tuesday, and we
think of going over to Ryde on Monday, visiting the play, sleeping there
(I don't mean at the play), and bringing the Judge back. Browne is
coming down when he has done his month's work. Should you like to go to
Alum Bay while you are here? It would involve a night out, but I think
would be very pleasant; and if you think so too, I will arrange it sub
rosâ, so that we may not be, like Bobadil, 'oppressed by numbers.' I
mean to take a fly over from Shanklin to meet you at Ryde; so that we
can walk back from Shanklin over the landslip, where the scenery is
wonderfully beautiful. Stone and Egg are coming next month, and we hope
to see Jerrold before we go." Such notices from his letters may be
thought hardly worth preserving; but a wonderful vitality in every
circumstance, as long as life under any conditions remained to the
writer, is the picture they contribute to; nor would it be complete
without the addition, that fond as he was, in the intervals of his work,
of this abundance and variety of enjoyments, to no man were so essential
also those quieter hours of thought, and talk, not obtainable when
"oppressed by numbers."
My visit was due at the opening of September, but a few days earlier
came the full revelation of which only a passing shadow had reached in
two or three previous letters. "Before I think of beginning my next
number, I perhaps cannot do better than give you an imperfect
description of the results of the climate of Bonchurch after a few
weeks' residence. The first salubrious effect of which the Patient
becomes conscious is an almost continual feeling of sickness,
accompanied with great prostration of strength, so that his legs tremble
under him, and his arms quiver when he wants to take hold of any object.
An extraordinary disposition to sleep (except at night, when his rest,
in the event of his having any, is broken by incessant dreams) is always
present at the same time; and, if he have anything to do requiring
thought and attention, this overpowers him to such a degree that he can
only do it in snatches: lying down on beds in the fitful intervals.
Extreme depression of mind, and a disposition to shed tears from morning
to night, developes itself at the same period. If the Patient happen to
have been a good walker, he finds ten miles an insupportable distance;
in the achievement of which his legs are so unsteady, that he goes from
side to side of the road, like a drunken man. If he happen to have ever
possessed any energy of any kind, he finds it quenched in a dull, stupid
languor. He has no purpose, power, or object in existence whatever. When
he brushes his hair in the morning, he is so weak that he is obliged to
sit upon a chair to do it. He is incapable of reading, at all times. And
his bilious system is so utterly overthrown, that a ball of boiling fat
appears to be always behind the top of the bridge of his nose, simmering
between his haggard eyes. If he should have caught a cold, he will find
it impossible to get rid of it, as his system is wholly incapable of
making any effort. His cough will be deep, monotonous, and constant.
'The faithful watch-dog's honest bark' will be nothing to it. He will
abandon all present idea of overcoming it, and will content himself with
keeping an eye upon his blood-vessels to preserve them whole and sound.
_Patient's name, Inimitable B._ . . . It's a mortal mistake!--That's the
plain fact. Of all the places I ever have been in, I have never been in
one so difficult to exist in, pleasantly. Naples is hot and dirty, New
York feverish, Washington bilious, Genoa exciting, Paris rainy--but
Bonchurch, smashing. I am quite convinced that I should die here, in a
year. It's not hot, it's not close, I don't know what it is, but the
prostration of it is _awful_. Nobody here has the least idea what I
think of it; but I find, from all sorts of hints from Kate, Georgina,
and the Leeches, that they are all affected more or less in the same
way, and find it very difficult to make head against. I make no sign,
and pretend not to know what is going on. But they are right. I believe
the Leeches will go soon, and small blame to 'em!--For me, when I leave
here at the end of this September, I must go down to some cold place; as
Ramsgate for example, for a week or two; or I seriously believe I shall
feel the effects of it for a long time. . . . What do you think of
_that_? . . . The longer I live, the more I doubt the doctors. I am
perfectly convinced, that, for people suffering under a wasting disease,
this Undercliff is madness altogether. The doctors, with the old
miserable folly of looking at one bit of a subject, take the patient's
lungs and the Undercliff's air, and settle solemnly that they are fit
for each other. But the whole influence of the place, never taken into
consideration, is to reduce and overpower vitality. I am quite confident
that I should go down under it, as if it were so much lead, slowly
crushing me. An American resident in Paris many years, who brought me a
letter from Olliffe, said, the day before yesterday, that he had always
had a passion for the sea never to be gratified enough, but that after
living here a month, he could not bear to look at it; he couldn't endure
the sound of it; he didn't know how it was, but it seemed associated
with the decay of his whole powers." These were grave imputations
against one of the prettiest places in England; but of the generally
depressing influence of that Undercliff on particular temperaments, I
had already enough experience to abate something of the surprise with
which I read the letter. What it too bluntly puts aside are the
sufferings other than his own, projected and sheltered by what only
aggravated his; but my visit gave me proof that he had really very
little overstated the effect upon himself. Making allowance, which
sometimes he failed to do, for special peculiarities, and for the
excitability never absent when he had in hand an undertaking such as
_Copperfield_, I observed a nervous tendency to misgivings and
apprehensions to the last degree unusual with him, which seemed to make
the commonest things difficult; and though he stayed out his time, and
brought away nothing that his happier associations with the place and
its residents did not long survive, he never returned to Bonchurch.
In the month that remained he completed his fifth number, and with the
proof there came the reply to some questions of which I hardly remember
more than that they referred to doubts of mine; one being as to the
propriety of the kind of delusion he had first given to poor Mr.
Dick,[155] which I thought a little too farcical for that really
touching delineation of character. "Your suggestion is perfectly wise
and sound," he wrote back (22nd of August). "I have acted on it. I have
also, instead of the bull and china-shop delusion, given Dick the idea,
that, when the head of king Charles the First was cut off, some of the
trouble was taken out of it, and put into his (Dick's)". When he next
wrote, there was news very welcome to me for the pleasure to himself it
involved. "Browne has sketched an uncommonly characteristic and capital
Mr. Micawber for the next number. I hope the present number is a good
one. I hear nothing but pleasant accounts of the general satisfaction."
The same letter told me of an intention to go to Broadstairs, put aside
by doubtful reports of its sanitary condition; but it will be seen
presently that there was another graver interruption. With his work well
off his hands, however, he had been getting on better where he was; and
they had all been very merry. "Yes," he said, writing after a couple of
days (23rd of September), "we have been sufficiently rollicking since I
finished the number; and have had great games at rounders every
afternoon, with all Bonchurch looking on; but I begin to long for a
little peace and solitude. And now for my less pleasing piece of news.
The sea has been running very high, and Leech, while bathing, was
knocked over by a bad blow from a great wave on the forehead. He is in
bed, and had twenty of his namesakes on his temples this morning. When I
heard of him just now, he was asleep--which he had not been all night."
He closed his letter hopefully, but next day (24th September) I had less
favourable report. "Leech has been very ill with congestion of the brain
ever since I wrote, and being still in excessive pain has had ice to his
head continuously, and been bled in the arm besides. Beard and I sat up
there, all night." On the 26th he wrote, "My plans are all unsettled by
Leech's illness; as of course I do not like to leave this place while I
can be of any service to him and his good little wife. But all visitors
are gone to-day, and Winterbourne once more left to the engaging family
of the inimitable B. Ever since I wrote to you Leech has been seriously
worse, and again very heavily bled. The night before last he was in such
an alarming state of restlessness, which nothing could relieve, that I
proposed to Mrs. Leech to try magnetism. Accordingly, in the middle of
the night I fell to; and after a very fatiguing bout of it, put him to
sleep for an hour and thirty-five minutes. A change came on in the
sleep, and he is decidedly better. I talked to the astounded little Mrs.
Leech across him, when he was asleep, as if he had been a truss of
hay. . . . What do you think of my setting up in the magnetic line with a
large brass plate? 'Terms, twenty-five guineas per nap.'" When he wrote
again on the 30th, he had completed his sixth number; and his friend was
so clearly on the way to recovery that he was next day to leave for
Broadstairs with his wife, her sister, and the two little girls. "I will
merely add that I entreat to be kindly remembered to Thackeray" (who had
a dangerous illness at this time); "that I think I have, without a
doubt, _got_ the Periodical notion; and that I am writing under the
depressing and discomforting influence of paying off the tribe of bills
that pour in upon an unfortunate family-young-man on the eve of a
residence like this. So no more at present from the disgusted, though
still inimitable, and always affectionate B."
He stayed at Broadstairs till he had finished his number seven, and what
else chiefly occupied him were thoughts about the Periodical of which
account will presently be given. "Such a night and day of rain," ran his
first letter, "I should think the oldest inhabitant never saw! and yet,
in the ould formiliar Broadstairs, I somehow or other don't mind it
much. The change has done Mamey a world of good, and I have begun to
sleep again. As for news, you might as well ask me for dolphins. Nobody
in Broadstairs--to speak of. Certainly nobody in Ballard's. We are in
the part, which is the house next door to the hotel itself, that we once
had for three years running, and just as quiet and snug now as it was
then. I don't think I shall return before the 20th or so, when the
number is done; but I _may_, in some inconstant freak, run up to you
before. Preliminary despatches and advices shall be forwarded in any
case to the fragrant neighbourhood of Clare-market and the
Portugal-street burying-ground." Such was his polite designation of my
whereabouts: for which nevertheless he had secret likings. "On the
Portsmouth railway, coming here, encountered Kenyon. On the ditto ditto
at Reigate, encountered young Dilke, and took him in tow to Canterbury.
On the ditto ditto at ditto (meaning Reigate), encountered Fox, M. P.
for Oldham, and his daughter. All within an hour. Young Dilke great
about the proposed Exposition under the direction of H. R. H. Prince
Albert, and evincing, very pleasantly to me, unbounded faith in our old
friend his father." There was one more letter, taking a rather gloomy
view of public affairs in connection with an inflated pastoral from
Doctor Wiseman "given out of the Flaminian Gate," and speaking dolefully
of some family matters; which was subscribed, each word forming a
separate line, "Yours Despondently, And Disgustedly, Wilkins Micawber."
His visit to the little watering-place in the following year was
signalised by his completion of the most famous of his novels, and his
letters otherwise were occupied by elaborate managerial preparation for
the private performances at Knebworth. But again the plague of itinerant
music flung him into such fevers of irritation, that he finally resolved
against any renewed attempt to carry on important work here; and the
summer of 1851, when he was only busy with miscellaneous writing, was
the last of his regular residences in the place. He then let his London
house for the brief remainder of its term; ran away at the end of May,
when some grave family sorrows had befallen him, from the crowds and
excitements of the Great Exhibition; and with intervals of absence,
chiefly at the Guild representations, stayed in his favourite Fort-house
by the sea until October, when he took possession of Tavistock-house.
From his letters may be added a few notices of this last holiday at
Broadstairs, which he had always afterwards a kindly word for; and to
which he said pleasant adieu in the sketch of "Our Watering-place,"
written shortly before he left.
"It is more delightful here" (1st of June) "than I can express. Corn
growing, larks singing, garden full of flowers, fresh air on the sea--O
it is wonderful! Why can't you come down next Saturday (bringing work)
and go back with me on Wednesday for the _Copperfield_ banquet?
Concerning which, of course, I say yes to Talfourd's kind proposal.
Lemon by all means. And--don't you think? Browne? Whosoever, besides,
pleases Talfourd will please me." Great was the success of that banquet.
The scene was the Star-and-Garter at Richmond; Thackeray and Alfred
Tennyson joined in the celebration; and the generous giver was in his
best vein. I have rarely seen Dickens happier than he was amid the
sunshine of that day. Jerrold and Thackeray returned to town with us;
and a little argument between them about money and its uses, led to an
avowal of Dickens about himself to which I may add the confirmation of
all our years of intercourse. "No man," he said, "attaches less
importance to the possession of money, or less disparagement to the want
of it, than I do."
Vague mention of a "next book" escaped in a letter at the end of July,
on which I counselled longer abstinence. "Good advice," he replied, "but
difficult: I wish you'd come to us and preach another kind of
abstinence. Fancy the Preventive men finding a lot of brandy in barrels
on the rocks here, the day before yesterday! Nobody knows anything about
the barrels, of course. They were intended to have been landed with the
next tide, and to have been just covered at low water. But the water
being unusually low, the tops of the barrels became revealed to
Preventive telescopes, and descent was made upon the brandy. They are
always at it, hereabouts, I have no doubt. And of course B would not
have had any of it. O dear no! certainly not."
His reading was considerable and very various at these intervals of
labour, and in this particular summer took in all the minor tales as
well as the plays of Voltaire, several of the novels (old favourites
with him) of Paul de Kock, Ruskin's _Lamps of Architecture_, and a
surprising number of books of African and other travel for which he had
insatiable relish: but the notices of all this in his letters were few.
"By the bye, I observe, reading that wonderful book the _French
Revolution_ again, for the 500th time, that Carlyle, who knows
everything, don't know what Mumbo Jumbo is. It is not an Idol. It is a
secret preserved among the men of certain African tribes, and never
revealed by any of them, for the punishment of their women. Mumbo Jumbo
comes in hideous form out of the forest, or the mud, or the river, or
where not, and flogs some woman who has been backbiting, or scolding, or
with some other domestic mischief disturbing the general peace. Carlyle
seems to confound him with the common Fetish; but he is quite another
thing. He is a disguised man; and all about him is a freemasons' secret
_among the men_."--"I finished the _Scarlet Letter_ yesterday. It falls
off sadly after that fine opening scene. The psychological part of the
story is very much over-done, and not truly done I think. Their
suddenness of meeting and agreeing to go away together, after all those
years, is very poor. Mr. Chillingworth ditto. The child out of nature
altogether. And Mr. Dimmisdale certainly never could have begotten her."
In Mr. Hawthorne's earlier books he had taken especial pleasure; his
_Mosses from an Old Manse_ having been the first book he placed in my
hands on his return from America, with reiterated injunctions to read
it. I will add a word or two of what he wrote of the clever story of
another popular writer, because it hits well the sort of ability that
has become so common, which escapes the highest point of cleverness, but
stops short only at the very verge of it. "The story extremely good
indeed; but all the strongest things of which it is capable, missed. It
shows just how far that kind of power can go. It is more like a note of
the idea than anything else. It seems to me as if it were written by
somebody who lived next door to the people, rather than inside of 'em."
I joined him for the August regatta and stayed a pleasant fortnight. His
paper on "Our Watering-place" appeared while I was there, and great was
the local excitement. His own restlessness with fancies for a new book
had now risen beyond bounds, and for the time he was eager to open it in
that prettiest quaintest bit of English landscape, Strood valley, which
reminded him always of a Swiss scene. I had not left him many days when
these lines followed me. "I very nearly packed up a portmanteau and went
away, the day before yesterday, into the mountains of Switzerland,
alone! Still the victim of an intolerable restlessness, I shouldn't be
at all surprised if I wrote to you one of these mornings from under Mont
Blanc. I sit down between whiles to think of a new story, and, as it
begins to grow, such a torment of a desire to be anywhere but where I
am; and to be going I don't know where, I don't know why; takes hold of
me, that it is like being _driven away_. If I had had a passport, I
sincerely believe I should have gone to Switzerland the night before
last. I should have remembered our engagement--say, at Paris, and have
come back for it; but should probably have left by the next express
train."
At the end of November, when he had settled himself in his new London
abode, the book was begun; and as generally happened with the more
important incidents of his life, but always accidentally, begun on a
Friday.
FOOTNOTES:
[153] My friend Mr. Shirley Brooks sends me a "characteristic" cutting
from an autograph catalogue in which these few lines are given from an
early letter in the Doughty-street days. "I always pay my taxes when
they won't call any longer, in order to get a bad name in the parish and
so escape all honours." It is a touch of character, certainly; but
though his motive in later life was the same, his method was not. He
attended to the tax-collector, but of any other parochial or political
application took no notice whatever.
[154] Even in the modest retirement of a note I fear that I shall offend
the dignity of history, and of biography, by printing the lines in which
this intention was announced to me. They were written "in character;"
and the character was that of the "waterman" at the Charing-cross
cabstand, first discovered by George Cattermole, whose imitations of him
were a delight to Dickens at this time, and adapted themselves in the
exuberance of his admiration to every conceivable variety of subject.
The painter of the Derby Day will have a fullness of satisfaction in
remembering this. "Sloppy" the hero in question, had a friend "Jack" in
whom he was supposed to typify his own early and hard experiences before
he became a convert to temperance; and Dickens used to point to "Jack"
as the justification of himself and Mrs. Gamp for their portentous
invention of Mrs. Harris. It is amazing nonsense to repeat; but to hear
Cattermole, in the gruff hoarse accents of what seemed to be the remains
of a deep bass voice wrapped up in wet straw, repeat the wild
proceedings of Jack, was not to be forgotten. "Yes sir, Jack went mad
sir, just afore he 'stablished hisself by Sir Robert Peel's-s-s, sir. He
was allis a callin' for a pint o' beer sir, and they brings him water
sir. Yes sir. And so sir, I sees him dodgin' about one day sir, yes sir,
and at last he gits a hopportunity sir and claps a pitch-plaster on the
mouth o' th' pump sir, and says he's done for his wust henemy sir. Yes
sir. And then they finds him a-sittin' on the top o' the corn-chest sir,
yes sir, a crammin' a old pistol with wisps o' hay and horse-beans sir,
and swearin' he's a goin' to blow hisself to hattoms, yes sir, but he
doesn't, no sir. For I sees him arterwards a lyin' on the straw a
manifacktrin' Bengal cheroots out o' corn-chaff sir and swearin' he'd
make 'em smoke sir, but they hulloxed him off round by the corner of
Drummins's-s-s-s-s-s sir, just afore I come here sir, yes sir. And so
you never see'd us together sir, no sir." This was the remarkable
dialect in which Dickens wrote from Broadstairs on the 13th of July.
"About Saturday sir?--Why sir, I'm a-going to _Folkestone_ a Saturday
sir!--not on accounts of the manifacktring of Bengal cheroots as there
is there but for the survayin' o' the coast sir. 'Cos you see sir, bein'
here sir, and not a finishin' my work sir till to-morrow sir, I couldn't
go afore! And if I wos to come home, and not go, and come back agin sir,
wy it would be nat'rally a hulloxing of myself sir. Yes sir. Wy sir, I
b'lieve that the gent as is a goin' to 'stablish hisself sir, in the
autumn, along with me round the corner sir (by Drummins's-s-s-s-s-s
bank) is a comin' down to Folkestone Saturday arternoon--Leech by name
sir--yes sir--another Jack sir--and if you wos to come down along with
him sir by the train as gits to Folkestone twenty minutes arter five,
you'd find me a smoking a Bengal cheroot (made of clover-chaff and
horse-beans sir) on the platform. You couldn't spend your arternoon
better sir. Dover, Sandgate, Herne Bay--they're all to be wisited sir,
most probable, till such times as a 'ouse is found sir. Yes sir. Then
decide to come sir, and say you will, and do it. I shall be here till
arter post time Saturday mornin' sir. Come on then!
"SLOPPY
"His x mark."
[155] It stood originally thus: "'Do you recollect the date,' said Mr.
Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down,
'when that bull got into the china warehouse and did so much mischief?'
I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but remembering a song about
such an occurrence that was once popular at Salem House, and thinking he
might want to quote it, replied that I believed it was on St. Patrick's
Day. 'Yes, I know,' said Mr. Dick--'in the morning; but what year?' I
could give no information on this point." Original MS. of _Copperfield_.
CHAPTER XIX.
HAUNTED MAN AND HOUSEHOLD WORDS.
1848-1850.
Friendly Plea for Mr. Macrone--Completion of
Christmas Tale--The "Ghost" Story and the
"Bargain"--The Tetterby Family--Moral of the
Story--_Copperfield_ Sales--Letter from
Russia--The Periodical taking Form--Hopes of
Success--Doubts respecting it--New Design
chosen--Names proposed--Appearance of First
Number--Earliest Contributors--His Opinion of
Mr. Sala--Child's Dream of a Star--A Fancy
derived from his Childhood.
IT has been seen that his fancy for his Christmas book of 1848 first
arose to him at Lausanne in the summer of 1846, and that, after writing
its opening pages in the autumn of the following year, he laid it aside
under the pressure of his _Dombey_. These lines were in the letter that
closed his 1848 Broadstairs holiday. "At last I am a mentally matooring
of the Christmas book--or, as poor Macrone[156] used to write, 'booke,'
'boke,' 'buke,' &c." It was the first labour to which he applied himself
at his return.
In London it soon came to maturity; was published duly as _The Haunted
Man, or the Ghost's Bargain_; sold largely, beginning with a
subscription of twenty thousand; and had a great success on the Adelphi
stage, to which it was rather cleverly adapted by Lemon. He had placed
on its title page originally four lines from Tennyson's "Departure,"
"And o'er the hills, and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro' all the world IT follow'd him;"
but they were less applicable to the close than to the opening of the
tale, and were dropped before publication. The hero is a great chemist,
a lecturer at an old foundation, a man of studious philosophic habits,
haunted with recollections of the past "o'er which his melancholy sits
on brood," thinking his knowledge of the present a worthier substitute,
and at last parting with that portion of himself which he thinks he can
safely cast away. The recollections are of a great wrong done him in
early life, and of all the sorrow consequent upon it; and the ghost he
holds nightly conference with, is the darker presentiment of himself
embodied in those bitter recollections. This part is finely managed. Out
of heaped-up images of gloomy and wintry fancies, the supernatural takes
a shape which is not forced or violent; and the dialogue which is no
dialogue, but a kind of dreary dreamy echo, is a piece of ghostly
imagination better than Mrs. Radcliffe. The boon desired is granted and
the bargain struck. He is not only to lose his own recollection of grief
and wrong, but to destroy the like memory in all whom he approaches. By
this means the effect is shown in humble as well as higher minds, in the
worst poverty as in competence or ease, always with the same result. The
over-thinking sage loses his own affections and sympathy, sees them
crushed in others, and is brought to the level of the only creature whom
he cannot change or influence, an outcast of the streets, a boy whom the
mere animal appetites have turned into a small fiend. Never having had
his mind awakened, evil is this creature's good; avarice, irreverence,
and vindictiveness, are his nature; sorrow has no place in his memory;
and from his brutish propensities the philosopher can take nothing away.
The juxtaposition of two people whom such opposite means have put in
the same moral position is a stroke of excellent art. There are plenty
of incredibilities and inconsistencies, just as in the pleasant _Cricket
on the Hearth_, which one does not care about, but enjoy rather than
otherwise; and, as in that charming little book, there were minor
characters as delightful as anything in Dickens. The Tetterby group, in
whose humble, homely, kindly, ungainly figures there is everything that
could suggest itself to a clear eye, a piercing wit, and a loving heart,
became enormous favourites. Tilly Slowboy and her little dot of a baby,
charging folks with it as if it were an offensive instrument, or handing
it about as if it were something to drink, were not more popular than
poor Johnny Tetterby staggering under his Moloch of an infant, the
Juggernaut that crushes all his enjoyments. The story itself consists of
nothing more than the effects of the Ghost's gift upon the various
groups of people introduced, and the way the end is arrived at is very
specially in Dickens's manner. What the highest exercise of the
intellect had missed is found in the simplest form of the affections.
The wife of the custodian of the college where the chemist is professor,
in whom are all the unselfish virtues that can beautify and endear the
humblest condition, is the instrument of the change. Such sorrow as she
had suffered had made her only zealous to relieve others' sufferings:
and the discontented wise man learns from her example that the world is,
after all, a much happier compromise than it seems to be, and life
easier than wisdom is apt to think it; that grief gives joy its relish,
purifying what it touches truly; and that "sweet are the uses of
adversity" when its clouds are not the shadow of dishonour. All this
can be shown but lightly within such space, it is true; and in the
machinery a good deal has to be taken for granted. But Dickens was quite
justified in turning aside from objections of that kind. "You must
suppose," he wrote to me (21st of November), "that the Ghost's saving
clause gives him those glimpses without which it would be impossible to
carry out the idea. Of course my point is that bad and good are
inextricably linked in remembrance, and that you could not choose the
enjoyment of recollecting only the good. To have all the best of it you
must remember the worst also. My intention in the other point you
mention is, that he should not know himself how he communicates the
gift, whether by look or touch; and that it should diffuse itself in its
own way in each case. I can make this clearer by a very few lines in the
second part. It is not only necessary to be so, for the variety of the
story, but I think it makes the thing wilder and stranger." Critical
niceties are indeed out of place, where wildness and strangeness in the
means matter less than that there should be clearness in the drift and
intention. Dickens leaves no doubt as to this. He thoroughly makes out
his fancy, that no man should so far question the mysterious
dispensations of evil in this world as to desire to lose the
recollection of such injustice or misery as he may suppose it to have
done to himself. There may have been sorrow, but there was the kindness
that assuaged it; there may have been wrong, but there was the charity
that forgave it; and with both are connected inseparably so many
thoughts that soften and exalt whatever else is in the sense of memory,
that what is good and pleasurable in life would cease to continue so if
these were forgotten. The old proverb does not tell you to forget that
you may forgive, but to forgive that you may forget. It is forgiveness
of wrong, for forgetfulness of the evil that was in it; such as poor old
Lear begged of Cordelia.
The design for his much-thought-of new Periodical was still "dim," as we
have seen, when the first cogitation of it at Bonchurch occupied him;
but the expediency of making it clearer came soon after with a visit
from Mr. Evans, who brought his half-year's accounts of sales, and some
small disappointment for him in those of _Copperfield_. "The accounts
are rather shy, after _Dombey_, and what you said comes true after all.
I am not sorry I cannot bring myself to care much for what opinions
people may form; and I have a strong belief, that, if any of my books
are read years hence, _Dombey_ will be remembered as among the best of
them: but passing influences are important for the time, and as
_Chuzzlewit_ with its small sale sent me up, _Dombey's_ large sale has
tumbled me down. Not very much, however, in real truth. These accounts
only include the first three numbers, have of course been burdened with
all the heavy expenses of number one, and ought not in reason to be
complained of. But it is clear to me that the Periodical must be set
agoing in the spring; and I have already been busy, at odd half-hours,
in shadowing forth a name and an idea. Evans says they have but one
opinion repeated to them of _Copperfield_, and they feel very confident
about it. A steady twenty-five thousand, which it is now on the verge
of, will do very well. The back numbers are always going off. Read the
enclosed."
It was a letter from a Russian man of letters, dated from St. Petersburg
and signed "Trinarch Ivansvitch Wredenskii," sending him a translation
of _Dombey_ into Russian; and informing him that his works, which before
had only been translated in the journals, and with certain omissions,
had now been translated in their entire form by his correspondent,
though even he had found an omission to be necessary in his version of
_Pickwick_. He adds, with an exquisite courtesy to our national tongue
which is yet not forgetful of the claims of his own nationality, that
his difficulties (in the Sam Weller direction and others) had arisen
from the "impossibility of portraying faithfully the beauties of the
original in the Russian language, which, though the richest in Europe in
its expressiveness, is far from being elaborate enough for literature
like other civilized languages." He had however, he assured Dickens,
been unremitting in his efforts to live with his thoughts; and the
exalted opinion he had formed of them was attended by only one wish,
that such a writer "could but have expanded under a Russian sky!" Still,
his fate was an enviable one. "For the last eleven years your name has
enjoyed a wide celebrity in Russia, and from the banks of the Neva to
the remotest parts of Siberia you are read with avidity. Your _Dombey_
continues to inspire with enthusiasm the whole of the literary Russia."
Much did we delight in the good Wredenskii; and for a long time, on
anything going "contrairy" in the public or private direction with him,
he would tell me he had ordered his portmanteau to be packed for the
more sympathizing and congenial climate of "the remotest parts of
Siberia."
The week before he left Bonchurch I again had news of the old and often
recurring fancy. "The old notion of the Periodical, which has been
agitating itself in my mind for so long, I really think is at last
gradually growing into form." That was on the 24th of September; and on
the 7th of October, from Broadstairs, I had something of the form it had
been taking. "I do great injustice to my floating ideas (pretty speedily
and comfortably settling down into orderly arrangement) by saying
anything about the Periodical now: but my notion is a weekly journal,
price either three-halfpence or two-pence, matter in part original and
in part selected, and always having, if possible, a little good
poetry. . . . Upon the selected matter, I have particular notions. One is,
that it should always be _a subject_. For example, a history of Piracy;
in connexion with which there is a vast deal of extraordinary, romantic,
and almost unknown matter. A history of Knight-errantry, and the wild
old notion of the Sangreal. A history of Savages, showing the singular
respects in which all savages are like each other; and those in which
civilised men, under circumstances of difficulty, soonest become like
savages. A history of remarkable characters, good and bad, _in_ history;
to assist the reader's judgment in his observation of men, and in his
estimates of the truth of many characters in fiction. All these things,
and fifty others that I have already thought of, would be compilations;
through the whole of which the general intellect and purpose of the
paper should run, and in which there would be scarcely less interest
than in the original matter. The original matter to be essays, reviews,
letters, theatrical criticisms, &c, &c, as amusing as possible, but all
distinctly and boldly going to what in one's own view ought to be the
spirit of the people and the time. . . . Now to bind all this together, and
to get a character established as it were which any of the writers may
maintain without difficulty, I want to suppose a certain SHADOW, which
may go into any place, by sunlight, moonlight, starlight, firelight,
candlelight, and be in all homes, and all nooks and corners, and be
supposed to be cognisant of everything, and go everywhere, without the
least difficulty. Which may be in the Theatre, the Palace, the House of
Commons, the Prisons, the Unions, the Churches, on the Railroad, on the
Sea, abroad and at home: a kind of semi-omniscient, omnipresent,
intangible creature. I don't think it would do to call the paper THE
SHADOW: but I want something tacked to that title, to express the notion
of its being a cheerful, useful, and always welcome Shadow. I want to
open the first number with this Shadow's account of himself and his
family. I want to have all the correspondence addressed to him. I want
him to issue his warnings from time to time, that he is going to fall on
such and such a subject; or to expose such and such a piece of humbug;
or that he may be expected shortly in such and such a place. I want the
compiled part of the paper to express the idea of this Shadow's having
been in libraries, and among the books referred to. I want him to loom
as a fanciful thing all over London; and to get up a general notion of
'What will the Shadow say about this, I wonder? What will the Shadow
say about that? Is the Shadow here?' and so forth. Do you understand? . . .
I have an enormous difficulty in expressing what I mean, in this stage
of the business; but I think the importance of the idea is, that once
stated on paper, there is no difficulty in keeping it up. That it
presents an odd, unsubstantial, whimsical, new thing: a sort of
previously unthought-of Power going about. That it will concentrate into
one focus all that is done in the paper. That it sets up a creature
which isn't the Spectator, and isn't Isaac Bickerstaff, and isn't
anything of that kind: but in which people will be perfectly willing to
believe, and which is just mysterious and quaint enough to have a sort
of charm for their imagination, while it will represent common-sense and
humanity. I want to express in the title, and in the grasp of the idea
to express also, that it is the Thing at everybody's elbow, and in
everybody's footsteps. At the window, by the fire, in the street, in the
house, from infancy to old age, everyone's inseparable companion. . . . Now
do you make anything out of this? which I let off as if I were a bladder
full of it, and you had punctured me. I have not breathed the idea to
any one; but I have a lively hope that it _is_ an idea, and that out of
it the whole scheme may be hammered."
Excellent the idea doubtless, and so described in his letter that hardly
anything more characteristic survives him. But I could not make anything
out of it that had a quite feasible look. The ordinary ground of
miscellaneous reading, selection, and compilation out of which it was to
spring, seemed to me no proper soil for the imaginative produce it was
meant to bear. As his fancies grew and gathered round it, they had given
it too much of the range and scope of his own exhaustless land of
invention and marvel; and the very means proposed for letting in the
help of others would only more heavily have weighted himself. Not to
trouble the reader now with objections given him in detail, my judgment
was clear against his plan; less for any doubt of the effect if its
parts could be brought to combine, than for my belief that it was not in
that view practicable; and though he did not immediately accept my
reasons, he acquiesced in them ultimately. "I do not lay much stress on
your grave doubts about Periodical, but more anon." The more anon
resolved itself into conversations out of which the shape given to the
project was that which it finally took.
It was to be a weekly miscellany of general literature; and its stated
objects were to be, to contribute to the entertainment and instruction
of all classes of readers, and to help in the discussion of the more
important social questions of the time. It was to comprise short stories
by others as well as himself; matters of passing interest in the
liveliest form that could be given to them; subjects suggested by books
that might most be attracting attention; and poetry in every number if
possible, but in any case something of romantic fancy. This was to be a
cardinal point. There was to be no mere utilitarian spirit; with all
familiar things, but especially those repellent on the surface,
something was to be connected that should be fanciful or kindly; and the
hardest workers were to be taught that their lot is not necessarily
excluded from the sympathies and graces of imagination. This was all
finally settled by the close of 1849, when a general announcement of the
intended adventure was made. There remained only a title and an
assistant editor; and I am happy now to remember that for the latter
important duty Mr. Wills was chosen at my suggestion. He discharged his
duties with admirable patience and ability for twenty years, and
Dickens's later life had no more intimate friend.
The title took some time and occupied many letters. One of the first
thought-of has now the curious interest of having foreshadowed, by the
motto proposed to accompany it, the title of the series of _All the Year
Round_ which he was led to substitute for the older series in 1859. "THE
ROBIN. With this motto from Goldsmith. '_The redbreast, celebrated for
its affection to mankind, continues with us, the year round._'" That
however was rejected. Then came: "MANKIND. This I think very good." It
followed the other nevertheless. After it came: "And here a strange
idea, but with decided advantages. 'CHARLES DICKENS. A weekly journal
designed for the instruction and entertainment of all classes of
readers. CONDUCTED BY HIMSELF.'" Still, there was something wanting in
that also. Next day arrived: "I really think if there _be_ anything
wanting in the other name, that this is very pretty, and just supplies
it. THE HOUSEHOLD VOICE. I have thought of many others, as--THE
HOUSEHOLD GUEST. THE HOUSEHOLD FACE. THE COMRADE. THE MICROSCOPE. THE
HIGHWAY OF LIFE. THE LEVER. THE ROLLING YEARS. THE HOLLY TREE (with two
lines from Southey for a motto). EVERYTHING, But I rather think the
VOICE is it." It was near indeed; but the following day came, "HOUSEHOLD
WORDS. This is a very pretty name:" and the choice was made.
The first number appeared on Saturday the 30th of March 1850, and
contained among other things the beginning of a story by a very original
writer, Mrs. Gaskell, for whose powers he had a high admiration, and
with whom he had friendly intercourse during many years. Other
opportunities will arise for mention of those with whom this new labour
brought him into personal communication, but I may at once say that of
all the writers, before unknown, whom his journal helped to make
familiar to a wide world of readers, he had the strongest personal
interest in Mr. Sala, and placed at once in the highest rank his
capabilities of help in such an enterprise.[157] An illustrative trait
of what I have named as its cardinal point to him will fitly close my
account of its establishment. Its first number, still unpublished, had
not seemed to him quite to fulfil his promise, "tenderly to cherish the
light of fancy inherent in all breasts;" and, as soon as he received
the proof of the second, I heard from him. "Looking over the suggested
contents of number two at breakfast this morning" (Brighton: 14th of
March 1850) "I felt an uneasy sense of there being a want of something
tender, which would apply to some universal household knowledge. Coming
down in the railroad the other night (always a wonderfully suggestive
place to me when I am alone) I was looking at the stars, and revolving a
little idea about them. Putting now these two things together, I wrote
the enclosed little paper, straightway; and should like you to read it
before you send it to the printers (it will not take you five minutes),
and let me have a proof by return." This was the child's "dream of a
star," which opened his second number; and, not appearing among his
reprinted pieces, may justify a word or two of description. It is of a
brother and sister, constant child-companions, who used to make friends
of a star, watching it together until they knew when and where it would
rise, and always bidding it good-night; so that when the sister dies the
lonely brother still connects her with the star, which he then sees
opening as a world of light, and its rays making a shining pathway from
earth to heaven; and he also sees angels waiting to receive travellers
up that sparkling road, his little sister among them; and he thinks ever
after that he belongs less to the earth than to the star where his
sister is; and he grows up to youth and through manhood and old age,
consoled still under the successive domestic bereavements that fall to
his earthly lot by renewal of that vision of his childhood; until at
last, lying on his own bed of death, he feels that he is moving as a
child to his child-sister, and he thanks his heavenly father that the
star had so often opened before to receive the dear ones who awaited
him.
His sister Fanny and himself, he told me long before this paper was
written, used to wander at night about a churchyard near their house,
looking up at the stars; and her early death, of which I am now to
speak, had vividly reawakened all the childish associations which made
her memory dear to him.
FOOTNOTES:
[156] The mention of this name may remind me to state that I have
received, in reference to the account in my first volume of Dickens's
repurchase of his _Sketches_ from Mr. Macrone, a letter from the
solicitor and friend of that gentleman so expressed that I could have
greatly wished to revise my narrative into nearer agreement with its
writer's wish. But farther enquiry, and an examination of the books of
Messrs. Chapman and Hall, have confirmed the statement given. Mr.
Hansard is in error in supposing that "unsold impressions" of the books
were included in the transaction (the necessary requirement being simply
that the small remainders on hand should be transferred with a view to
being "wasted"): I know myself that it could not have included any
supposed right of Mr. Macrone to have a novel written for him, because
upon that whole matter, and his continued unauthorised advertisements of
the tale, I decided myself the reference against him: and Mr. Hansard
may be assured that the £2000 was paid for the copyright alone. For the
same copyright, a year before, Dickens had received £250, both the first
and second series being included in the payment; and he had already had
about the same sum as his half share of the profits of sales. I quote
the close of Mr. Hansard's letter. "Macrone no doubt was an adventurer,
but he was sanguine to the highest degree. He was a dreamer of dreams,
putting no restraint on his exultant hopes by the reflection that he was
not dealing justly towards others. But reproach has fallen upon him from
wrong quarters. He died in poverty, and his creditors received nothing
from his estate. But that was because he had paid away all he had, and
all he had derived from trust and credit, _to authors_." This may have
been so, but Dickens was not among the authors so benefited. The
_Sketches_ repurchased for the high price I have named never afterwards
really justified such an outlay.
[157] Mr. Sala's first paper appeared in September 1851, and in the same
month of the following year I had an allusion in a letter from Dickens
which I shall hope to have Mr. Sala's forgiveness for printing. "That
was very good indeed of Sala's" (some essay he had written). "He was
twenty guineas in advance, by the bye, and I told Wills delicately to
make him a present of it. I find him a very conscientious fellow. When
he gets money ahead, he is not like the imbecile youth who so often do
the like in Wellington-street" (the office of _Household Words_) "and
walk off, but only works more industriously. I think he improves with
everything he does. He looks sharply at the alterations in his articles,
I observe; and takes the hint next time."
CHAPTER XX.
LAST YEARS IN DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.
1848-1851.
Sentiment about Places--Personal
Revelations--At his Sister's Sick-bed--Sister's
Death--Book to be written in First
Person--Visiting the Scene of a Tragedy--First
sees Yarmouth--Birth of Sixth Son--Title of
_Copperfield_ chosen--Difficulties of
Opening--Memorable Dinner--Rogers and
Benedict--Wit of Fonblanque--Procter and
Macready--The Sheridans--Dinner to Halévy and
Scribe--Expedition with Lord Mulgrave--The Duke
at Vauxhall--Carlyle and Thackeray--Marryat's
Delight with Children--Monckton Milnes and Lord
Lytton--Lords Dudley, Stuart, and
Nugent--Kemble, Harness, and Dyce--Mrs. Siddons
and John Kemble--Mazzini and Edinburgh
Friends--Artist Acquaintance--Friends from
America--M. Van de Weyer--Doubtful
Compliment--A Hint for London Citizens--Letter
against Public Executions--An American Observer
in England--Marvels of English Manners--Letter
from Rockingham--Private Theatricals--A Family
Scene--Death of Francis Jeffrey--Progress of
_Copperfield_--A Run to Paris--Third Daughter
born--At Great Malvern--Macready's
Farewell--The Home at Shepherd's-bush--Death of
John Dickens--Tribute by his
Son--Theatrical-fund Dinner--Plea for Small
Actors--Death of his Little
Daughter--Advocating Sanitary Reform--Lord
Shaftesbury--Realities of his Books to Dickens.
EXCEPTING always the haunts and associations of his childhood, Dickens
had no particular sentiment of locality, and any special regard for
houses he had lived in was not a thing noticeable in him. But he cared
most for Devonshire-terrace, perhaps for the bit of ground attached to
it; and it was with regret he suddenly discovered, at the close of
1847, that he should have to resign it "next lady-day three years. I had
thought the lease two years more." To that brief remaining time belong
some incidents of which I have still to give account; and I connect them
with the house in which he lived during the progress of what is
generally thought his greatest book, and of what I think were his
happiest years.
We had never had such intimate confidences as in the interval since his
return from Paris; but these have been used in my narrative of the
childhood and boyish experiences, and what remain are incidental only.
Of the fragment of autobiography there also given, the origin has been
told; but the intention of leaving such a record had been in his mind,
we now see, at an earlier date; and it was the very depth of our
interest in the opening of his fragment that led to the larger design in
which it became absorbed. "I hardly know why I write this," was his own
comment on one of his personal revelations, "but the more than
friendship which has grown between us seems to force it on me in my
present mood. We shall speak of it all, you and I, Heaven grant, wisely
and wonderingly many and many a time in after years. In the meanwhile I
am more at rest for having opened all my heart and mind to you. . . . This
day eleven years, poor dear Mary died."[158]
That was written on the seventh of May 1848, but another sadness
impending at the time was taking his thoughts still farther back; to
when he trotted about with his little elder sister in the small garden
to the house at Portsea. The faint hope for her which Elliotson had
given him in Paris had since completely broken down; and I was to hear,
in less than two months after the letter just quoted, how nearly the end
was come. "A change took place in poor Fanny," he wrote on the 5th of
July, "about the middle of the day yesterday, which took me out there
last night. Her cough suddenly ceased almost, and, strange to say, she
immediately became aware of her hopeless state; to which she resigned
herself, after an hour's unrest and struggle, with extraordinary
sweetness and constancy. The irritability passed, and all hope faded
away; though only two nights before, she had been planning for 'after
Christmas.' She is greatly changed. I had a long interview with her
to-day, alone; and when she had expressed some wishes about the funeral,
and her being buried in unconsecrated ground" (Mr. Burnett's family were
dissenters), "I asked her whether she had any care or anxiety in the
world. She said No, none. It was hard to die at such a time of life, but
she had no alarm whatever in the prospect of the change; felt sure we
should meet again in a better world; and although they had said she
might rally for a time, did not really wish it. She said she was quite
calm and happy, relied upon the mediation of Christ, and had no terror
at all. She had worked very hard, even when ill; but believed that was
in her nature, and neither regretted nor complained of it. Burnett had
been always very good to her; they had never quarrelled; she was sorry
to think of his going back to such a lonely home; and was distressed
about her children, but not painfully so. She showed me how thin and
worn she was; spoke about an invention she had heard of that she would
like to have tried, for the deformed child's back; called to my
remembrance all our sister Letitia's patience and steadiness; and,
though she shed tears sometimes, clearly impressed upon me that her mind
was made up, and at rest. I asked her very often, if she could ever
recall anything that she could leave to my doing, to put it down, or
mention it to somebody if I was not there; and she said she would, but
she firmly believed that there was nothing--nothing. Her husband being
young, she said, and her children infants, she could not help thinking
sometimes, that it would be very long in the course of nature before
they were reunited; but she knew that was a mere human fancy, and could
have no reality after she was dead. Such an affecting exhibition of
strength and tenderness, in all that early decay, is quite
indescribable. I need not tell you how it moved me. I cannot look round
upon the dear children here, without some misgiving that this sad
disease will not perish out of our blood with her; but I am sure I have
no selfishness in the thought, and God knows how small the world looks
to one who comes out of such a sick-room on a bright summer day. I don't
know why I write this before going to bed. I only know that in the very
pity and grief of my heart, I feel as if it were doing something." After
not many weeks she died, and the little child who was her last anxiety
did not long survive her.
In all the latter part of the year Dickens's thoughts were turning much
to the form his next book should assume. A suggestion that he should
write it in the first person, by way of change, had been thrown out by
me, which he took at once very gravely; and this, with other things,
though as yet not dreaming of any public use of his own personal and
private recollections, conspired to bring about that resolve. The
determination once taken, with what a singular truthfulness he contrived
to blend the fact with the fiction may be shown by a small occurrence of
this time. It has been inferred, from the vividness of the
boy-impressions of Yarmouth in David's earliest experiences, that the
place must have been familiar to his own boyhood: but the truth was that
at the close of 1848 he first saw that celebrated sea-port. One of its
earlier months had been signalised by an adventure in which Leech,
Lemon, and myself took part with him, when, obtaining horses from
Salisbury, we passed the whole of a March day in riding over every part
of the Plain; visiting Stonehenge, and exploring Hazlitt's "hut" at
Winterslow, birthplace of some of his finest essays; altogether with so
brilliant a success that now (13th of November) he proposed to "repeat
the Salisbury Plain idea in a new direction in mid-winter, to wit,
Blackgang Chine in the Isle of Wight, with dark winter cliffs and
roaring oceans." But mid-winter brought with it too much dreariness of
its own, to render these stormy accompaniments to it very palatable; and
on the last day of the year he bethought him "it would be better to make
an outburst to some old cathedral city we don't know, and what do you
say to Norwich and Stanfield-hall?" Thither accordingly the three
friends went, illness at the last disabling me; and of the result I
heard (12th of January, 1849) that Stanfield-hall, the scene of a recent
frightful tragedy, had nothing attractive unless the term might be
applied to "a murderous look that seemed to invite such a crime. We
arrived," continued Dickens, "between the Hall and Potass farm, as the
search was going on for the pistol in a manner so consummately stupid,
that there was nothing on earth to prevent any of Rush's labourers from
accepting five pounds from Rush junior to find the weapon and give it to
him. Norwich, a disappointment" (one pleasant face "transformeth a
city," but he was unable yet to connect it with our delightful friend
Elwin); "all save its place of execution, which we found fit for a
gigantic scoundrel's exit. But the success of the trip, for me, was to
come. Yarmouth, sir, where we went afterwards, is the strangest place in
the wide world: one hundred and forty-six miles of hill-less marsh
between it and London. More when we meet. I shall certainly try my hand
at it." He made it the home of his "little Em'ly."
Everything now was taking that direction with him; and soon, to give his
own account of it, his mind was upon names "running like a high sea."
Four days after the date of the last-quoted letter ("all over happily,
thank God, by four o'clock this morning") there came the birth of his
eighth child and sixth son; whom at first he meant to call by Oliver
Goldsmith's name, but settled afterwards into that of Henry Fielding;
and to whom that early friend Ainsworth who had first made us known to
each other, welcome and pleasant companion always, was asked to be
godfather. Telling me of the change in the name of the little fellow,
which he had made in a kind of homage to the style of work he was now so
bent on beginning, he added, "What should you think of this for a notion
of a character? 'Yes, that is very true: but now, _What's his motive?_'
I fancy I could make something like it into a kind of amusing and more
innocent Pecksniff. 'Well now, yes--no doubt that was a fine thing to
do! But now, stop a moment, let us see--_What's his motive?_'" Here
again was but one of the many outward signs of fancy and fertility that
accompanied the outset of all his more important books; though, as in
their cases also, other moods of the mind incident to such beginnings
were less favourable. "Deepest despondency, as usual, in commencing,
besets me;" is the opening of the letter in which he speaks of what of
course was always one of his first anxieties, the selection of a name.
In this particular instance he had been undergoing doubts and misgivings
to more than the usual degree. It was not until the 23rd of February he
got to anything like the shape of a feasible title. "I should like to
know how the enclosed (one of those I have been thinking of) strikes
you, on a first acquaintance with it. It is odd, I think, and new; but
it may have A's difficulty of being 'too comic, my boy.' I suppose I
should have to add, though, by way of motto, 'And in short it led to the
very Mag's Diversions. _Old Saying._' Or would it be better, there being
equal authority for either, 'And in short they all played Mag's
Diversions. _Old Saying?_'
_Mag's Diversions._
Being the personal history of
MR. THOMAS MAG THE YOUNGER,
Of Blunderstone House."
This was hardly satisfactory, I thought; and it soon became apparent
that he thought so too, although within the next three days I had it in
three other forms. "_Mag's Diversions_, being the Personal History,
Adventures, Experience and Observation of Mr. David Mag the Younger, of
Blunderstone House." The second omitted Adventures, and called his hero
Mr. David Mag the Younger, of Copperfield House. The third made nearer
approach to what the destinies were leading him to, and transformed Mr.
David Mag into Mr. David Copperfield the Younger and his great-aunt
Margaret; retaining still as his leading title, _Mag's Diversions_. It
is singular that it should never have occurred to him, while the name
was thus strangely as by accident bringing itself together, that the
initials were but his own reversed; but he was much startled when I
pointed this out, and protested it was just in keeping with the fates
and chances which were always befalling him. "Why else," he said,
"should I so obstinately have kept to that name when once it turned up?"
It was quite true that he did so, as I had curious proof following close
upon the heels of that third proposal. "I wish," he wrote on the 26th of
February, "you would look over carefully the titles now enclosed, and
tell me to which you most incline. You will see that they give up _Mag_
altogether, and refer exclusively to one name--that which I last sent
you. I doubt whether I could, on the whole, get a better name.
"1. _The Copperfield Disclosures._ Being the
personal history, experience, and observation,
of Mr. David Copperfield the Younger, of
Blunderstone House.
"2. _The Copperfield Records._ Being the
personal history, experience, and observation,
of Mr. David Copperfield the Younger, of
Copperfield Cottage.
"3. _The Last Living Speech and Confession of
David Copperfield Junior_, of Blunderstone
Lodge, who was never executed at the Old
Bailey. Being his personal history found among
his papers.
"4. _The Copperfield Survey of the World as it
Rolled._ Being the personal history,
experience, and observation, of David
Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone
Rookery.
"5. _The Last Will and Testament of Mr. David
Copperfield._ Being his personal history left
as a legacy.
"6. _Copperfield, Complete._ Being the whole
personal history and experience of Mr. David
Copperfield of Blunderstone House, which he
never meant to be published on any account.
Or, the opening words of No. 6 might be _Copperfield's Entire_; and _The
Copperfield Confessions_ might open Nos. 1 and 2. Now, WHAT SAY YOU?"
What I said is to be inferred from what he wrote back on the 28th. "The
_Survey_ has been my favourite from the first. Kate picked it out from
the rest, without my saying anything about it. Georgy too. You hit upon
it, on the first glance. Therefore I have no doubt that it is
indisputably the best title; and I will stick to it." There was a change
nevertheless. His completion of the second chapter defined to himself,
more clearly than before, the character of the book; and the propriety
of rejecting everything not strictly personal from the name given to it.
The words proposed, therefore, became ultimately these only: "The
Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David
Copperfield the Younger, of Blunderstone Rookery, which he never meant
to be published on any account." And the letter which told me that with
this name it was finally to be launched on the first of May, told me
also (19th April) the difficulties that still beset him at the opening.
"My hand is out in the matter of _Copperfield_. To-day and yesterday I
have done nothing. Though I know what I want to do, I am lumbering on
like a stage-waggon. I can't even dine at the Temple to-day, I feel it
so important to stick at it this evening, and make some head. I am quite
aground; quite a literary Benedict, as he appeared when his heels
wouldn't stay upon the carpet; and the long Copperfieldian perspective
looks snowy and thick, this fine morning."[159] The allusion was to a
dinner at his house the night before; when not only Rogers had to be
borne out, having fallen sick at the table, but, as we rose soon after
to quit the dining-room, Mr. Jules Benedict had quite suddenly followed
the poet's lead, and fallen prostrate on the carpet in the midst of us.
Amid the general consternation there seemed a want of proper attendance
on the sick: the distinguished musician faring in this respect hardly so
well as the famous bard, by whose protracted sufferings in the library,
whither he had been removed, the sanitary help available on the
establishment was still absorbed; and as Dickens had been eloquent
during dinner on the atrocities of a pauper-farming case at Tooting
which was then exciting a fury of indignation, Fonblanque now declared
him to be no better himself than a second Drouet, reducing his guests to
a lamentable state by the food he had given them, and aggravating their
sad condition by absence of all proper nursing. The joke was well kept
up by Quin and Edwin Landseer, Lord Strangford joining in with a tragic
sympathy for his friend the poet; and the banquet so dolefully
interrupted ended in uproarious mirth. For nothing really serious had
happened. Benedict went laughing away with his wife, and I helped Rogers
on with his overshoes for his usual night-walk home. "Do you know how
many waistcoats I wear?" asked the poet of me, as I was doing him this
service. I professed my inability to guess. "Five!" he said: "and here
they are!" Upon which he opened them, in the manner of the gravedigger
in _Hamlet_, and showed me every one.
That dinner was in the April of 1849, and among others present were Mrs.
Procter and Mrs. Macready, dear and familiar names always in his house.
No swifter or surer perception than Dickens's for what was solid and
beautiful in character; he rated it higher than intellectual effort; and
the same lofty place, first in his affection and respect, would have
been Macready's and Procter's, if the one had not been the greatest of
actors, and the other a poet as genuine as old Fletcher or Beaumont.
There were present at this dinner also the American minister and Mrs.
Bancroft (it was the year of that visit of Macready to America, which
ended in the disastrous Forrest riots); and it had among its guests Lady
Graham, the wife of Sir James Graham, than whom not even the wit and
beauty of her nieces, Mrs. Norton and Lady Dufferin, better represented
the brilliant family of the Sheridans; so many of whose members, and
these three above all, Dickens prized among his friends. The table that
day will be "full" if I add the celebrated singer Miss Catherine Hayes,
and her homely good-natured Irish mother, who startled us all very much
by complimenting Mrs. Dickens on her having had for her father so clever
a painter as Mr. Hogarth.
Others familiar to Devonshire-terrace in these years will be indicated
if I name an earlier dinner (3rd of January), for the "christening" of
the _Haunted Man_, when, besides Lemons, Evanses, Leeches, Bradburys,
and Stanfields, there were present Tenniel, Topham, Stone, Robert Bell,
and Thomas Beard. Next month (24th of March) I met at his table, Lord
and Lady Lovelace; Milner Gibson, Mowbray Morris, Horace Twiss, and
their wives; Lady Molesworth and her daughter (Mrs. Ford); John
Hardwick, Charles Babbage, and Dr. Locock. That distinguished physician
had attended the poor girl, Miss Abercrombie, whose death by strychnine
led to the exposure of Wainewright's murders; and the opinion he had
formed of her chances of recovery, the external indications of that
poison being then but imperfectly known, was first shaken, he told me,
by the gloomy and despairing cries of the old family nurse, that her
mother and her uncle had died exactly so! These, it was afterwards
proved, had been among the murderer's former victims. The Lovelaces
were frequent guests after the return from Italy, Sir George Crawford,
so friendly in Genoa, having married Lord Lovelace's sister; and few had
a greater warmth of admiration for Dickens than Lord Byron's "Ada," on
whom Paul Dombey's death laid a strange fascination. They were again at
a dinner got up in the following year for Scribe and the composer
Halévy, who had come over to bring out the _Tempest_ at Her
Majesty's-theatre, then managed by Mr. Lumley, who with M. Van de Weyer,
Mrs. Gore and her daughter, the Hogarths, and I think the fine French
comedian, Samson, were also among those present. Earlier that year there
were gathered at his dinner-table the John Delanes, Isambard Brunels,
Thomas Longmans (friends since the earliest Broadstairs days, and
special favourites always), Lord Mulgrave, and Lord Carlisle, with all
of whom his intercourse was intimate and frequent, and became especially
so with Delane in later years. Lord Carlisle amused us that night, I
remember, by repeating what the good old Brougham had said to him of
"those _Punch_ people," expressing what was really his fixed belief.
"They never get my face, and are obliged" (which, like Pope, he always
pronounced obleeged), "to put up with my plaid trousers!" Of Lord
Mulgrave, pleasantly associated with the first American experiences, let
me add that he now went with us to several outlying places of amusement
of which he wished to acquire some knowledge, and which Dickens knew
better than any man; small theatres, saloons, and gardens in city or
borough, to which the Eagle and Britannia were as palaces; and I think
he was of the party one famous night in the summer of 1849 (29th of
June), when with Talfourd, Edwin Landseer, and Stanfield, we went to the
_Battle of Waterloo_ at Vauxhall, and were astounded to see pass in
immediately before us, in a bright white overcoat, the great Duke
himself, Lady Douro on his arm, the little Ladies Ramsay by his side,
and everybody cheering and clearing the way before him. That the old
hero enjoyed it all, there could be no doubt, and he made no secret of
his delight in "Young Hernandez;" but the "Battle" was undeniably
tedious, and it was impossible not to sympathize with the repeatedly and
very audibly expressed wish of Talfourd, that "the Prussians would come
up!"
The preceding month was that of the start of _David Copperfield_, and to
one more dinner (on the 12th) I may especially refer for those who were
present at it. Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle came, Thackeray and Rogers, Mrs.
Gaskell and Kenyon, Jerrold and Hablot Browne, with Mr. and Mrs. Tagart;
and it was a delight to see the enjoyment of Dickens at Carlyle's
laughing reply to questions about his health, that he was, in the
language of Mr. Peggotty's housekeeper, a lorn lone creature and
everything went contrairy with him. Things were not likely to go better,
I thought, as I saw the great writer,--kindest as well as wisest of men,
but not very patient under sentimental philosophies,--seated next the
good Mr. Tagart, who soon was heard launching at him various
metaphysical questions in regard to heaven and such like; and the relief
was great when Thackeray introduced, with quaint whimsicality, a story
which he and I had heard Macready relate in talking to us about his
boyish days, of a country actor who had supported himself for six months
on his judicious treatment of the "tag" to the _Castle Spectre_. In the
original it stands that you are to do away with suspicion, banish vile
mistrust, and, almost in the words we had just heard from the minister
to the philosopher, "Believe there is a Heaven nor Doubt that Heaven is
just!" in place of which Macready's friend, observing that the drop fell
for the most part quite coldly, substituted one night the more telling
appeal, "And give us your Applause, for _that_ is ALWAYS JUST!" which
brought down the house with rapture.
This chapter would far outrun its limits if I spoke of other as pleasant
gatherings under Dickens's roof during the years which I am now more
particularly describing; when, besides the dinners, the musical
enjoyments and dancings, as his children became able to take part in
them, were incessant. "Remember that for my Biography!" he said to me
gravely on twelfth-day in 1849, after telling me what he had done the
night before; and as gravely I now redeem my laughing promise that I
would. Little Mary and her sister Kate had taken much pains to teach
their father the polka, that he might dance it with them at their
brother's birthday festivity (held this year on the 7th, as the 6th was
a Sunday); and in the middle of the previous night as he lay in bed, the
fear had fallen on him suddenly that the step was forgotten, and then
and there, in that wintry dark cold night, he got out of bed to practise
it. Anything _more_ characteristic could certainly not be told; unless I
could have shown him dancing it afterwards, and far excelling the
youngest performer in untiring vigour and vivacity. There was no one who
approached him on these occasions excepting only our attached friend
Captain Marryat, who had a frantic delight in dancing, especially with
children, of whom and whose enjoyments he was as fond as it became so
thoroughly good hearted a man to be. His name would have stood first
among those I have been recalling, as he was among the first in
Dickens's liking; but in the autumn of 1848 he had unexpectedly passed
away. Other names however still reproach me for omission as my memory
goes back. With Marryat's on the earliest page of this volume stands
that of Monckton Milnes, familiar with Dickens over all the time it
covers, and still more prominent in Tavistock-house days when with Lady
Houghton he brought fresh claims to my friend's admiration and regard.
Of Bulwer Lytton's frequent presence in all his houses, and of Dickens's
admiration for him as one of the supreme masters in his art, so
unswerving and so often publicly declared, it would be needless again to
speak. Nor shall I dwell upon his interchange of hospitalities with
distinguished men in the two great professions so closely allied to
literature and its followers; Denmans, Pollocks, Campbells, and Chittys;
Watsons, Southwood Smiths, Lococks, and Elliotsons. To Alfred Tennyson,
through all the friendly and familiar days I am describing, he gave full
allegiance and honoured welcome. Tom Taylor was often with him; and
there was a charm for him I should find it difficult to exaggerate in
Lord Dudley Stuart's gentle yet noble character, his refined
intelligence and generous public life, expressed so perfectly in his
chivalrous face. Incomplete indeed would be the list if I did not add to
it the frank and hearty Lord Nugent, who had so much of his grandfather,
Goldsmith's friend, in his lettered tastes and jovial enjoyments. Nor
should I forget occasional days with dear old Charles Kemble and one or
other of his daughters; with Alexander Dyce; and with Harness and his
sister, or his niece and her husband, Mr. and Mrs. Archdale; made
especially pleasant by talk about great days of the stage. It was
something to hear Kemble on his sister's Mrs. Beverley; or to see
Harness and Dyce exultant in recollecting her Volumnia. The enchantment
of the Mrs. Beverley, her brother would delightfully illustrate by
imitation of her manner of restraining Beverley's intemperance to their
only friend, "You are too busy, sir!" when she quietly came down the
stage from a table at which she had seemed to be occupying herself, laid
her hand softly on her husband's arm, and in a gentle half-whisper "No,
not too busy; mistaken perhaps; but----" not only stayed his temper but
reminded him of obligations forgotten in the heat of it. Up to where the
tragic terror began, our friend told us, there was nothing but this
composed domestic sweetness, expressed even in the simplicity and neat
arrangement of her dress, her cap with the strait band, and her hair
gathered up underneath; but all changing when the passion _did_ begin;
one single disordered lock escaping at the first outbreak, and, in the
final madness, all of it streaming dishevelled down her beautiful face.
Kemble made no secret of his belief that his sister had the higher
genius of the two; but he spoke with rapture of "John's" Macbeth and
parts of his Othello; comparing his "Farewell the tranquil mind" to the
running down of a clock, an image which he did not know that Hazlitt had
applied to the delivery of "To-morrow and to-morrow," in the other
tragedy. In all this Harness seemed to agree; and I thought a
distinction was not ill put by him, on the night of which I speak, in
his remark that the nature in Kemble's acting only supplemented his
magnificent art, whereas, though the artist was not less supreme in his
sister, it was on nature she most relied, bringing up the other power
only to the aid of it. "It was in another sense like your writing," said
Harness to Dickens, "the commonest natural feelings made great, even
when not rendered more refined, by art." Her Constance would have been
fishwify, he declared, if its wonderful truth had not overborne every
other feeling; and her Volumnia escaped being vulgar only by being so
excessively grand. But it was just what was so called "vulgarity" that
made its passionate appeal to the vulgar in a better meaning of the
word. When she first entered, Harness said, swaying and surging from
side to side with every movement of the Roman crowd itself, as it went
out and returned in confusion, she so absorbed her son into herself as
she looked at him, so swelled and amplified in her pride and glory for
him, that "the people in the pit blubbered all round," and he could no
more help it than the rest.
There are yet some other names that should have place in these rambling
recollections, though I by no means affect to remember all. One Sunday
evening Mazzini made memorable by taking us to see the school he had
established in Clerkenwell for the Italian organ-boys. This was after
dining with Dickens, who had been brought into personal intercourse with
the great Italian by having given money to a begging impostor who made
unauthorized use of his name. Edinburgh friends made him regular visits
in the spring time: not Jeffrey and his family alone, but sheriff Gordon
and his, with whom he was not less intimate, Lord Murray and his wife,
Sir William Allan and his niece, Lord Robertson with his wonderful
Scotch mimicries, and Peter Fraser with his enchanting Scotch songs; our
excellent friend Liston the surgeon, until his fatal illness came in
December 1848, being seldom absent from those assembled to bid such
visitors welcome. Allan's name may remind me of other artists often at
his house, Eastlakes, Leslies, Friths, and Wards, besides those who have
had frequent mention, and among whom I should have included Charles as
well as Edwin Landseer, and William Boxall. Nor should I drop from this
section of his friends, than whom none were more attractive to him, such
celebrated names in the sister arts as those of Miss Helen Faucit, an
actress worthily associated with the brightest days of our friend
Macready's managements, Mr. Sims Reeves, Mr. John Parry, Mr. Phelps, Mr.
Webster, Mr. Harley, Mr. and Mrs. Keeley, Mr. Whitworth, and Miss Dolby.
Mr. George Henry Lewes he had an old and great regard for; among other
men of letters should not be forgotten the cordial Thomas Ingoldsby, and
many-sided true-hearted Charles Knight; Mr. R. H. Horne and his wife
were frequent visitors both in London and at seaside holidays; and I
have met at his table Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall. There were the Duff
Gordons too, the Lyells, and, very old friends of us both, the Emerson
Tennents; there was the good George Raymond, Mr. Frank Beard and his
wife; the Porter Smiths, valued for Macready's sake as well as their
own; Mr. and Mrs. Charles Black, near connections by marriage of George
Cattermole, with whom there was intimate intercourse both before and
during the residence in Italy; Mr. Thompson, brother of Mrs. Smithson
formerly named, and his wife, whose sister Frederick Dickens married;
Mr. Mitton, his own early companion; and Mrs. Torrens, who had played
with the amateurs in Canada. These are all in my memory so connected
with Devonshire-terrace, as friends or familiar acquaintance, that they
claim this word before leaving it; and visitors from America, I may
remark, had always a grateful reception. Of the Bancrofts mention has
been made, and with them should be coupled the Abbot Lawrences,
Prescott, Hillard, George Curtis, and Felton's brother. Felton himself
did not visit England until the Tavistock-house time. In 1847 there was
a delightful day with the Coldens and the Wilkses, relatives by marriage
of Jeffrey; in the following year, I think at my rooms because of some
accident that closed Devonshire-terrace that day (25th of April),
Dickens, Carlyle, and myself foregathered with the admirable Emerson;
and M. Van de Weyer will probably remember a dinner where he took joyous
part with Dickens in running down a phrase which the learned in books,
Mr. Cogswell, on a mission here for the Astor library, had startled us
by denouncing as an uncouth Scotch barbarism--_open up_. You found it
constantly in Hume, he said, but hardly anywhere else; and he defied us
to find it more than once through the whole of the volumes of Gibbon.
Upon this, after brief wonder and doubt, we all thought it best to take
part in a general assault upon _open up_, by invention of phrases on the
same plan that should show it in exaggerated burlesque, and support Mr.
Cogswell's indictment. Then came a struggle who should carry the
absurdity farthest; and the victory remained with M. Van de Weyer until
Dickens surpassed even him, and "opened up" depths of almost frenzied
absurdity that would have delighted the heart of Leigh Hunt. It will
introduce the last and not least honoured name into my list of his
acquaintance and friends, if I mention his amusing little interruption
one day to Professor Owen's description of a telescope of huge
dimensions built by an enterprising clergyman who had taken to the study
of the stars; and who was eager, said Owen, to see farther into
heaven--he was going to say, than Lord Rosse; if Dickens had not drily
interposed, "than his professional studies had enabled him to
penetrate."
Some incidents that belong specially to the three years that closed his
residence in the home thus associated with not the least interesting
part of his career, will farther show what now were his occupations and
ways of life. In the summer of 1849 he came up from Broadstairs to
attend a Mansion-house dinner, which the lord mayor of that day had been
moved by a laudable ambition to give to "literature and art," which he
supposed would be adequately represented by the Royal Academy, the
contributors to _Punch_, Dickens, and one or two newspaper men. On the
whole the result was not cheering; the worthy chief magistrate, no
doubt quite undesignedly, expressing too much surprise at the
unaccustomed faces around him to be altogether complimentary. In general
(this was the tone) we are in the habit of having princes, dukes,
ministers, and what not for our guests, but what a delight, all the
greater for being unusual, to see gentlemen like you! In other words,
what could possibly be pleasanter than for people satiated with
greatness to get for a while by way of change into the butler's pantry?
This in substance was Dickens's account to me next day, and his reason
for having been very careful in his acknowledgment of the toast of "the
Novelists." He was nettled not a little therefore by a jesting allusion
to himself in the _Daily News_ in connection with the proceedings, and
asked me to forward a remonstrance. Having a strong dislike to all such
displays of sensitiveness, I suppressed the letter; but it is perhaps
worth printing now. Its date is Broadstairs, Wednesday 11th of July
1849. "I have no other interest in, or concern with, a most facetious
article on last Saturday's dinner at the Mansion-house, which appeared
in your paper of yesterday, and found its way here to-day, than that it
misrepresents me in what I said on the occasion. If you should not think
it at all damaging to the wit of that satire to state what I did say, I
shall be much obliged to you. It was this. . . . That I considered the
compliment of a recognition of Literature by the citizens of London the
more acceptable to us because it was unusual in that hall, and likely to
be an advantage and benefit to them in proportion as it became in future
less unusual. That, on behalf of the novelists, I accepted the tribute
as an appropriate one; inasmuch as we had sometimes reason to hope that
our imaginary worlds afforded an occasional refuge to men busily engaged
in the toils of life, from which they came forth none the worse to a
renewal of its strivings; and certainly that the chief magistrate of the
greatest city in the world might be fitly regarded as the representative
of that class of our readers."
Of an incident towards the close of the year, though it had important
practical results, brief mention will here suffice. We saw the Mannings
executed on the walls of Horsemonger-lane gaol; and with the letter
which Dickens wrote next day to the _Times_ descriptive of what we had
witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an active agitation
against public executions which never ceased until the salutary change
was effected which has worked so well. Shortly after this he visited
Rockingham-castle, the seat of Mr. and Mrs. Watson, his Lausanne
friends; and I must preface by a word or two the amusing letter in which
he told me of this visit. It was written in character, and the character
was that of an American visitor to England.
"I knew him, Horatio;" and a very kindly honest man he was, who had come
to England authorised to make enquiry into our general agricultural
condition, and who discharged his mission by publishing some reports
extremely creditable to his good sense and ability, expressed in a plain
nervous English that reminded one of the rural writings of Cobbett. But
in an evil hour he published also a series of private letters to friends
written from the various residences his introductions had opened to him;
and these were filled with revelations as to the internal economy of
English noblemen's country houses, of a highly startling description. As
for example, how, on arrival at a house your "name is announced, and
your portmanteau immediately taken into your chamber, which the servant
shows you, with every convenience." How "you are asked by the servant at
breakfast what you will have, or you get up and help yourself." How at
dinner you don't dash at the dishes, or contend for the "fixings," but
wait till "his portion is handed by servants to every one." How all the
wines, fruit, glasses, candlesticks, lamps, and plate are "taken care
of" by butlers, who have under-butlers for their "adjuncts;" how ladies
never wear "white satin shoes or white gloves more than once;" how
dinner napkins are "never left upon the table, but either thrown into
your chair or on the floor under the table;" how no end of pains are
taken to "empty slops;" and above all what a national propensity there
is to brush a man's clothes and polish his boots, whensoever and
wheresoever the clothes and boots can be seized without the man.[160]
This was what Dickens good-humouredly laughs at.
"Rockingham Castle: Friday, thirtieth of November, 1849. Picture to
yourself, my dear F, a large old castle, approached by an ancient keep,
portcullis, &c, &c, filled with company, waited on by six-and-twenty
servants; the slops (and wine-glasses) continually being emptied; and my
clothes (with myself in them) always being carried off to all sorts of
places; and you will have a faint idea of the mansion in which I am at
present staying. I should have written to you yesterday, but for having
had a very busy day. Among the guests is a Miss B, sister of the
Honourable Miss B (of Salem, Mass.), whom we once met at the house of
our distinguished literary countryman Colonel Landor. This lady is
renowned as an amateur actress, so last night we got up in the great
hall some scenes from the _School for Scandal_; the scene with the
lunatic on the wall, from the _Nicholas Nickleby_ of Major-General the
Hon. C. Dickens (Richmond, Va.); some conjuring; and then finished off
with country-dances; of which we had two admirably good ones, quite new
to me, though really old. Getting the words, and making the
preparations, occupied (as you may believe) the whole day; and it was
three o'clock before I got to bed. It was an excellent entertainment,
and we were all uncommonly merry. . . . I had a very polite letter from our
enterprising countryman Major Bentley[161] (of Lexington, Ky.), which I
shall show you when I come home. We leave here this afternoon, and I
shall expect you according to appointment, at a quarter past ten A.M.
to-morrow. Of all the country-houses and estates I have yet seen in
England, I think this is by far the best. Everything undertaken
eventuates in a most magnificent hospitality; and you will be pleased to
hear that our celebrated fellow citizen General Boxall (Pittsburg,
Penn.) is engaged in handing down to posterity the face of the owner of
the mansion and of his youthful son and daughter. At a future time it
will be my duty to report on the turnips, mangel-wurzel, ploughs, and
live stock; and for the present I will only say that I regard it as a
fortunate circumstance for the neighbouring community that this
patrimony should have fallen to my spirited and enlightened host. Every
one has profited by it, and the labouring people in especial are
thoroughly well cared-for and looked after. To see all the household,
headed by an enormously fat housekeeper, occupying the back benches last
night, laughing and applauding without any restraint; and to see a
blushing sleek-headed footman produce, for the watch-trick, a silver
watch of the most portentous dimensions, amidst the rapturous delight of
his brethren and sisterhood; was a very pleasant spectacle, even to a
conscientious republican like yourself or me, who cannot but contemplate
the parent country with feelings of pride in our own land, which (as was
well observed by the Honorable Elias Deeze, of Hertford, Conn.) is truly
the land of the free. Best remembrances from Columbia's daughters. Ever
thine, my dear F,--C.H." Dickens, during the too brief time this
excellent friend was spared to him, often repeated his visits to
Rockingham, always a surpassing enjoyment; and in the winter of 1851 he
accomplished there, with help of the country carpenter, "a very elegant
little theatre," of which he constituted himself manager, and had among
his actors a brother of the lady referred to in his letter, "a very good
comic actor, but loose in words;" poor Augustus Stafford "more than
passable;" and "a son of Vernon Smith's, really a capital low comedian."
It will be one more added to the many examples I have given of his
untiring energy both in work and play, if I mention the fact that this
theatre was opened at Rockingham for their first representation on
Wednesday the 15th of January; that after the performance there was a
country dance which lasted far into the morning; and that on the next
evening, after a railway journey of more than 120 miles, he dined in
London with the prime minister, Lord John Russell.
A little earlier in that winter we had together taken his eldest son to
Eton, and a little later he had a great sorrow. "Poor dear Jeffrey!" he
wrote to me on the 29th January, 1850. "I bought a _Times_ at the
station yesterday morning, and was so stunned by the announcement, that
I felt it in that wounded part of me, almost directly; and the bad
symptoms (modified) returned within a few hours. I had a letter from him
in extraordinary good spirits within this week or two--he was better, he
said, than he had been for a long time--and I sent him proof-sheets of
the number only last Wednesday. I say nothing of his wonderful abilities
and great career, but he was a most affectionate and devoted friend to
me; and though no man could wish to live and die more happily, so old in
years and yet so young in faculties and sympathies, I am very very
deeply grieved for his loss." He was justly entitled to feel pride in
being able so to word his tribute of sorrowing affection. Jeffrey had
completed with consummate success, if ever man did, the work appointed
him in this world; and few, after a life of such activities, have left a
memory so unstained and pure. But other and sharper sorrows awaited
Dickens.
The chief occupation of the past and present year, _David Copperfield_,
will have a chapter to itself, and in this may be touched but lightly.
Once fairly in it, the story bore him irresistibly along; certainly with
less trouble to himself in the composition, beyond that ardent sympathy
with the creatures of the fancy which always made so absolutely real to
him their sufferings or sorrows; and he was probably never less harassed
by interruptions or breaks in his invention. His principal hesitation
occurred in connection with the child-wife Dora, who had become a great
favourite as he went on; and it was shortly after her fate had been
decided, in the early autumn of 1850,[162] but before she breathed her
last, that a third daughter was born to him, to whom he gave his dying
little heroine's name. On these and other points, without forestalling
what waits to be said of the composition of this fine story, a few
illustrative words from his letters will properly find a place here.
"_Copperfield_ half done," he wrote of the second number on the 6th of
June. "I feel, thank God, quite confident in the story. I have a move in
it ready for this month; another for next; and another for the next." "I
think it is necessary" (15th of November) "to decide against the special
pleader. Your reasons quite suffice. I am not sure but that the banking
house might do. I will consider it in a walk." "Banking business
impracticable" (17th of November) "on account of the confinement: which
would stop the story, I foresee. I have taken, for the present at all
events, the proctor. I am wonderfully in harness, and nothing galls or
frets." "_Copperfield_ done" (20th of November) "after two days' very
hard work indeed; and I think a smashing number. His first dissipation I
hope will be found worthy of attention, as a piece of grotesque truth."
"I feel a great hope" (23rd of January, 1850) "that I shall be
remembered by little Em'ly, a good many years to come." "I begin to have
my doubts of being able to join you" (20th of February), "for
_Copperfield_ runs high, and must be done to-morrow. But I'll do it if
possible, and strain every nerve. Some beautiful comic love, I hope, in
the number." "Still undecided about Dora" (7th of May), "but MUST decide
to-day."[163] "I have been" (Tuesday, 20th of August) "very hard at work
these three days, and have still Dora to kill. But with good luck, I may
do it to-morrow. Obliged to go to Shepherd's-bush to-day, and can
consequently do little this morning. Am eschewing all sorts of things
that present themselves to my fancy--coming in such crowds!" "Work in a
very decent state of advancement" (13th of August) "domesticity
notwithstanding. I hope I shall have a splendid number. I feel the story
to its minutest point." "Mrs. Micawber is still" (15th of August), "I
regret to say, in statu quo. Ever yours, WILKINS MICAWBER." The little
girl was born the next day, the 16th, and received the name of Dora
Annie. The most part of what remained of the year was passed away from
home.
The year following did not open with favourable omen, both the child and
its mother having severe illness. The former rallied however, and
"little Dora is getting on bravely, thank God!" was his bulletin of the
early part of February. Soon after, it was resolved to make trial of
Great Malvern for Mrs. Dickens; and lodgings were taken there in March,
Dickens and her sister accompanying her, and the children being left in
London. "It is a most beautiful place," he wrote to me (15th of March).
"O Heaven, to meet the Cold Waterers (as I did this morning when I went
out for a shower-bath) dashing down the hills, with severe expressions
on their countenances, like men doing matches and not exactly winning!
Then, a young lady in a grey polka going _up_ the hills, regardless of
legs; and meeting a young gentleman (a bad case, I should say) with a
light black silk cap on under his hat, and the pimples of I don't know
how many douches under that. Likewise an old man who ran over a
milk-child, rather than stop!--with no neckcloth, on principle; and with
his mouth wide open, to catch the morning air." This was the month, as
we have seen, when the performances for the Guild were in active
preparation, and it was also the date of the farewell dinner to our
friend Macready on his quitting the stage. Dickens and myself came up
for it from Malvern, to which he returned the next day; and from the
spirited speech in which he gave the health of the chairman at the
dinner, I will add a few words for the sake of the truth expressed in
them. "There is a popular prejudice, a kind of superstition, that
authors are not a particularly united body, and I am afraid that this
may contain half a grain or so of the veracious. But of our chairman I
have never in my life made public mention without adding what I can
never repress, that in the path we both tread I have uniformly found him
to be, from the first, the most generous of men; quick to encourage,
slow to disparage, and ever anxious to assert the order of which he is
so great an ornament. That we men of letters are, or have been,
invariably or inseparably attached to each other, it may not be possible
to say, formerly or now; but there cannot now be, and there cannot ever
have been, among the followers of literature, a man so entirely without
the grudging little jealousies that too often disparage its brightness,
as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton." That was as richly merited as it is
happily said.
Dickens had to return to London after the middle of March for business
connected with a charitable Home established at Shepherd's-bush by Miss
Coutts, in the benevolent hope of rescuing fallen women by testing their
fitness for emigration, of which future mention will be made, and which
largely and regularly occupied his time for several years. On this
occasion his stay was prolonged by the illness of his father. His
health had been failing latterly, and graver symptoms were now spoken
of. "I saw my poor father twice yesterday," he wrote to me on the 27th,
"the second time between ten and eleven at night. In the morning I
thought him not so well. At night, as well as any one in such a
situation could be." Next day he was so much better that his son went
back to Malvern, and even gave us grounds for hope that we might yet
have his presence in Hertfordshire to advise on some questions connected
with the comedy which Sir Edward Lytton had written for the Guild. But
the end came suddenly. I returned from Knebworth to London, supposing
that some accident had detained him at Malvern; and at my house this
letter waited me. "Devonshire-terrace, Monday, thirty-first of March
1851. . . . My poor father died this morning at five and twenty minutes to
six. They had sent for me to Malvern, but I passed John on the railway;
for I came up with the intention of hurrying down to Bulwer Lytton's
to-day before you should have left. I arrived at eleven last night, and
was in Keppel-street at a quarter past eleven. But he did not know me,
nor any one. He began to sink at about noon yesterday, and never rallied
afterwards. I remained there until he died--O so quietly. . . . I hardly
know what to do. I am going up to Highgate to get the ground. Perhaps
you may like to go, and I should like it if you do. I will not leave
here before two o'clock. I think I must go down to Malvern again, at
night, to know what is to be done about the children's mourning; and as
you are returning to Bulwer's I should like to have gone that way, if
_Bradshaw_ gave me any hope of doing it. I wish most particularly to
see you, I needn't say. I must not let myself be distracted by
anything--and God knows I have left a sad sight!--from the scheme on
which so much depends. Most part of the alterations proposed I think
good." Mr. John Dickens was laid in Highgate Cemetery on the 5th of
April; and the stone placed over him by the son who has made his name a
famous one in England, bore tribute to his "zealous, useful, cheerful
spirit." What more is to be said of him will be most becomingly said in
speaking of _David Copperfield_. While the book was in course of being
written, all that had been best in him came more and more vividly back
to its author's memory; as time wore on, nothing else was remembered;
and five years before his own death, after using in one of his letters
to me a phrase rather out of the common with him, this was added: "I
find this looks like my poor father, whom I regard as a better man the
longer I live."
He was at this time under promise to take the chair at the General
Theatrical Fund on the 14th of April. Great efforts were made to relieve
him from the promise; but such special importance was attached to his
being present, and the Fund so sorely then required help, that, no
change of day being found possible for the actors who desired to attend,
he yielded to the pressure put upon him; of which the result was to
throw upon me a sad responsibility. The reader will understand why, even
at this distance of time; my allusion to it is brief.
The train from Malvern brought him up only five minutes short of the
hour appointed for the dinner, and we first met that day at the London
Tavern. I never heard him to greater advantage than in the speech that
followed. His liking for this Fund was the fact of its not confining its
benefits to any special or exclusive body of actors, but opening them
generously to all; and he gave a description of the kind of actor, going
down to the infinitesimally small, not omitted from such kind help,
which had a half-pathetic humour in it that makes it charming still. "In
our Fund," he said, "the word exclusiveness is not known. We include
every actor, whether he be Hamlet or Benedict: the ghost, the bandit, or
the court physician; or, in his one person, the whole king's army. He
may do the light business, or the heavy, or the comic, or the eccentric.
He may be the captain who courts the young lady, whose uncle still
unaccountably persists in dressing himself in a costume one hundred
years older than his time. Or he may be the young lady's brother in the
white gloves and inexpressibles, whose duty in the family appears to be
to listen to the female members of it whenever they sing, and to shake
hands with everybody between all the verses. Or he may be the baron who
gives the fête, and who sits uneasily on the sofa under a canopy with
the baroness while the fête is going on. Or he may be the peasant at the
fête who comes on the stage to swell the drinking chorus, and who, it
may be observed, always turns his glass upside down before he begins to
drink out of it. Or he may be the clown who takes away the doorstep of
the house where the evening party is going on. Or he may be the
gentleman who issues out of the house on the false alarm, and is
precipitated into the area. Or, if an actress, she may be the fairy who
resides for ever in a revolving star with an occasional visit to a bower
or a palace. Or again, if an actor, he may be the armed head of the
witch's cauldron; or even that extraordinary witch, concerning whom I
have observed in country places, that he is much less like the notion
formed from the description of Hopkins than the Malcolm or Donalbain of
the previous scenes. This society, in short, says, 'Be you what you may,
be you actor or actress, be your path in your profession never so high
or never so low, never so haughty or never so humble, we offer you the
means of doing good to yourselves, and of doing good to your brethren.'"
Half an hour before he rose to speak I had been called out of the room.
It was the servant from Devonshire-terrace to tell me his child Dora was
suddenly dead. She had not been strong from her birth; but there was
just at this time no cause for special fear, when unexpected convulsions
came, and the frail little life passed away. My decision had to be
formed at once; and I satisfied myself that it would be best to permit
his part of the proceedings to close before the truth was told to him.
But as he went on, after the sentences I have quoted, to speak of actors
having to come from scenes of sickness, of suffering, aye, even of death
itself, to play their parts before us, my part was very difficult. "Yet
how often is it with all of us," he proceeded to say, and I remember to
this hour with what anguish I listened to words that had for myself
alone, in all the crowded room, their full significance: "how often is
it with all of us, that in our several spheres we have to do violence to
our feelings, and to hide our hearts in carrying on this fight of life,
if we would bravely discharge in it our duties and responsibilities." In
the disclosure that followed when he left the chair, Mr. Lemon, who was
present, assisted me; and I left this good friend with him next day,
when I went myself to Malvern and brought back Mrs. Dickens and her
sister. The little child lies in a grave at Highgate near that of Mr.
and Mrs. John Dickens; and on the stone which covers her is now written
also her father's name, and those of two of her brothers.
One more public discussion he took part in, before quitting London for
the rest of the summer; and what he said (it was a meeting, with Lord
Carlisle in the chair, in aid of Sanitary reform) very pregnantly
illustrates what was remarked by me on a former page. He declared his
belief that neither education nor religion could do anything really
useful in social improvement until the way had been paved for their
ministrations by cleanliness and decency. He spoke warmly of the
services of Lord Ashley in connection with ragged schools, but he put
the case of a miserable child tempted into one of those schools out of
the noisome places in which his life was passed, and he asked what a few
hours' teaching could effect against the ever-renewed lesson of a whole
existence. "But give him, and his, a glimpse of heaven through a little
of its light and air; give them water; help them to be clean; lighten
the heavy atmosphere in which their spirits flag, and which makes them
the callous things they are; take the body of the dead relative from the
room where the living live with it, and where such loathsome familiarity
deprives death itself of awe; and then, but not before, they will be
brought willingly to hear of Him whose thoughts were so much with the
wretched, and who had compassion for all human sorrow." He closed by
proposing Lord Ashley's health as having preferred the higher ambition
of labouring for the poor to that of pursuing the career open to him in
the service of the State; and as having also had "the courage on all
occasions to face the cant which is the worst and commonest of all, the
cant about the cant of philanthropy." Lord Shaftesbury first dined with
him in the following year at Tavistock-house.
Shortly after the Sanitary meeting came the first Guild performances;
and then Dickens left Devonshire-terrace, never to return to it. What
occupied him in the interval before he took possession of his new abode,
has before been told; but two letters were overlooked in describing his
progress in the labour of the previous year, and brief extracts from
them will naturally lead me to the subject of my next chapter. "I have
been" (15th of September) "tremendously at work these two days; eight
hours at a stretch yesterday, and six hours and a half to-day, with the
Ham and Steerforth chapter, which has completely knocked me
over--utterly defeated me!" "I am" (21st of October) "within three pages
of the shore; and am strangely divided, as usual in such cases, between
sorrow and joy. Oh, my dear Forster, if I were to say half of what
_Copperfield_ makes me feel to-night, how strangely, even to you, I
should be turned inside out! I seem to be sending some part of myself
into the Shadowy World."
=END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.=
FOOTNOTES:
[158] I take the opportunity of saying that there was an omission of
three words in the epitaph quoted on a former page (vol. i. p. 120). The
headstone at the grave in Kensal-green bears this inscription: "Young,
beautiful, and good, God in His mercy numbered her among His angels at
the early age of seventeen."
[159] From letters of nearly the same date here is another
characteristic word: "Pen and ink before me! Am I not at work on
_Copperfield_! Nothing else would have kept me here until half-past two
on such a day. . . . Indian news bad indeed. Sad things come of bloody war.
If it were not for Elihu, I should be a peace and arbitration man."
[160] Here is really an only average specimen of the letters as
published: "I forgot to say, if you leave your chamber twenty times a
day, after using your basin, you would find it clean, and the pitcher
replenished on your return, and that you cannot take your clothes off,
but they are taken away, brushed, folded, pressed, and placed in the
bureau; and at the dressing-hour, before dinner, you find your candles
lighted, your clothes laid out, your shoes cleaned, and everything
arranged for use; . . . the dress-clothes brushed and folded in the nicest
manner, and cold water, and hot water, and clean napkins in the greatest
abundance. . . . Imagine an elegant chamber, fresh water in basins, in
goblets, in tubs, and sheets of the finest linen!"
[161] From this time to his death there was always friendly intercourse
with his old publisher Mr. Bentley.
[162] It may be proper to record the fact that he had made a short run
to Paris, with Maclise, at the end of June, of which sufficient farther
note will have been taken if I print the subjoined passages from a
letter to me dated 24th June, 1850, Hôtel Windsor, Rue de Rivoli. "There
being no room in the Hôtel Brighton, we are lodged (in a very good
apartment) here. The heat is absolutely frightful. I never felt anything
like it in Italy. Sleep is next to impossible, except in the day, when
the room is dark, and the patient exhausted. We purpose leaving here on
Saturday morning and going to Rouen, whence we shall proceed either to
Havre or Dieppe, and so arrange our proceedings as to be home, please
God, on Tuesday evening. We are going to some of the little theatres
to-night, and on Wednesday to the Français, for Rachel's last
performance before she goes to London. There does not seem to be
anything remarkable in progress, in the theatrical way. Nor do I observe
that out of doors the place is much changed, except in respect of the
carriages which are certainly less numerous. I also think the Sunday is
even much more a day of business than it used to be. As we are going
into the country with Regnier to-morrow, I write this after letter-time
and before going out to dine at the Trois Frères, that it may come to
you by to-morrow's post. The twelve hours' journey here is
astounding--marvellously done, except in respect of the means of
refreshment, which are absolutely none. Mac is very well (extremely
loose as to his waistcoat, and otherwise careless in regard of buttons)
and sends his love. De Fresne proposes a dinner with all the
notabilities of Paris present, but I WON'T stand it! I really have
undergone so much fatigue from work, that I am resolved not even to see
him, but to please myself. I find, my child (as Horace Walpole would
say), that I have written you nothing here, but you will take the will
for the deed."
[163] The rest of the letter may be allowed to fill the corner of a
note. The allusions to Rogers and Landor are by way of reply to an
invitation I had sent him. "I am extremely sorry to hear about Fox.
Shall call to enquire, as I come by to the Temple. And will call on you
(taking the chance of finding you) on my way to that Seat of Boredom. I
wrote my paper for _H. W._ yesterday, and have begun _Copperfield_ this
morning. Still undecided about Dora, but MUST decide to-day. La
difficulté d'écrire l'Anglais m'est extrêmement ennuyeuse. Ah, mon Dieu!
si l'on pourrait toujours écrire cette belle langue de France! Monsieur
Rogere! Ah! qu'il est homme d'esprit, homme de génie, homme des lettres!
Monsieur Landore! Ah qu'il parle Français--pas parfaitement comme un
ange--un peu (peut-être) comme un diable! Mais il est bon
garçon--sérieusement, il est un de la vraie noblesse de la nature. Votre
tout dévoué, CHARLES. À Monsieur Monsieur Fos-tere."
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
Pages 47-48, word split over two pages was mistyped. Word "yester-
terday" changed to "yesterday" (Ditto yesterday; except)
Footnote 116, "inim table" changed to "inimitable" (facetiousness of the
inimitable)
Page 310, "Nove ber" changed to "November" (21st of November)
Page 311, "hem" changed to "them" (perfect joy in them)
Footnote 139, "Edi burgh" changed to "Edinburgh" (Lord Cockburn.
"EDINBURGH)
Footnote 143, "l ght" changed to "light" (Wellbred's light ease)
To retain the integrity of the original text, varied hyphenations,
capitalizations, and, at times, spellings were retained.
For example:
Varied hyphenation and capitalization of Devonshire Terrace was
retained. Also fac-simile and facsimile. Varied spelling of
A'Beckett/A'Becket was retained.
*****
Transcriber's Note:
For the reader: Italic text is surrounded by _underscores_, bold text is
surrounded by =equal signs= and underlined text is surrounded by
~tildes~. Two breves above the letter e are indicated by [)e] in the
text.
THE LIFE
OF
[Illustration: Signature: Charles Dickens]
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS
BY
JOHN FORSTER.
VOL. III.
1852-1870.
ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
Autograph of Charles Dickens _Fly-leaf_
Charles Dickens, æt. 56. From the last photograph
taken in America, in 1868. Engraved by J. C.
Armytage _Frontispiece_
Devonshire Terrace. From a drawing by Daniel
Maclise, R.A. 41
Tavistock House 53
Facsimile of plan prepared for first number of _David
Copperfield_ 157
Facsimile of plan prepared for first number of _Little
Dorrit_ 158
The Porch at Gadshill 204
The Châlet 213
House and conservatory, from the meadow 216
The study at Gadshill 222
Facsimile from the last page of _Edwin Drood_, written
on the 8th of June, 1870 468
Facsimile of a page of _Oliver Twist_, written in 1837 469
The Grave. From an original water-colour drawing,
executed for this Work, by S. L. Fildes. Engraved by
J. Saddler _to face_ p. 544
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. 1850-1853.
Pages 21-50.
DAVID COPPERFIELD AND BLEAK HOUSE. ÆT. 38-41.
PAGE
Interest of _Copperfield_ 21
Real people in novels 22
Scott, Smollett, and Fielding 22
Complaint and atonement 23
Earlier and later methods 24
Boythorn and Skimpole 26
Yielding to temptation 27
Changes made in Skimpole 28
Relatives put into books 29
Scott and his father 29
Dickens and his father 30
No harm done 32
Micawber and Skimpole 32
Dickens and David 33
Dangers of autobiography 34
Design of David's character 35
Why books continue 36
The storm and shipwreck 37
Goethe on the insane 38
The two heroines 39
Risks not worth running 40
Devonshire Terrace 41
_Bleak House_ 43
Defects of the novel 44
Set-offs and successes 45
Value of critical judgments 46
The contact of extremes 47
Dean Ramsay on Jo 48
Town graves 49
One last friend 49
Truth of Gridley's case 50
CHAPTER II. 1853-1855.
Pages 51-75.
HOME INCIDENTS AND HARD TIMES. ÆT. 41-43.
Titles proposed for _Bleak House_ 52
Restlessness 52
Tavistock House 53
Last child born 54
A young stage aspirant 54
Deaths of friends 55
At Boulogne 55
Publishing agreements 56
At Birmingham 56
Self-changes 57
Employments in Boulogne 59
First reading in public 60
Argument against paid readings 61
Children's theatricals 62
Mr. H. in _Tom Thumb_ 62
Dickens in Fortunio 63
Titles for a new story 65
Difficulties of weekly parts 66
Mr. Ruskin on _Hard Times_ 67
Truths enforced 68
Early experiences 69
Strike at Preston 69
Speaking at Drury Lane 70
Stanfield scenes 71
Tavistock House theatricals 71
Peter Cunningham 73
Incident of a November night 74
Degrees in misery 75
CHAPTER III. 1853.
Pages 76-95.
SWITZERLAND AND ITALY REVISITED. ÆT. 41.
Swiss people 76
Narrow escape 77
Lausanne and Genoa 78
The Peschiere and its owner 79
On the way to Naples 80
A night on board ship 81
A Greek potentate 82
Going out to dinner 83
The old idle Frenchman 84
Changes and old friends 85
A "scattering" party 86
The puppets at Rome 87
Malaria and desolation 88
Plague-smitten places 89
Again in Venice 90
A painter among paintings 91
Liking for the Sardinians 92
Neapolitans in exile 93
Travelling police arrangements 94
Dickens and the Austrian 95
CHAPTER IV. 1853, 1854, and 1856.
Pages 96-120.
THREE SUMMERS AT BOULOGNE. ÆT. 41, 42, 44.
Visits to France 96
First summer residence (1853) 97
Villa des Moulineaux 98
Doll's house and offices 99
Bon garçon of a landlord 100
Making the most of it 101
Among Putney market-gardeners 102
Shakespearian performance 103
Pictures at the pig-market 104
English friends 105
Change of villa (1854) 105
The Northern Camp 106
Visit of Prince Albert 107
Emperor, Prince, and Dickens 108
"Like boxing" 109
The Empress at a review 110
A French conjuror 110
Conjuring by Dickens 111
Making demons of cards 112
Conjuror's compliment and vision 114
Old residence resumed (1856) 115
Last of the Camp 116
A household war 117
State of siege 118
Death of Gilbert A'Becket 119
Leaving for England 119
CHAPTER V. 1855, 1856.
Pages 121-153.
RESIDENCE IN PARIS. ÆT. 43-44.
Actors and dramas 122
Frédéric Lemaitre 122
Last scene in _Gambler's Life_ 123
Apartment in Champs Elysées 124
French Translation of Dickens 125
Ary Scheffer and Daniel Manin 126
English friends 126
Acting at the Français 127
Dumas' _Orestes_ 129
_Paradise Lost_ at the Ambigu 130
Profane nonsense 131
French _As You Like It_ 132
Story of a French drama 133
A delightful "Tag" 134
Auber and Queen Victoria 134
Scribe and his wife 136
At Regnier's 137
Viardot in _Orphée_ 138
Meets Georges Sand 138
Banquet at Girardin's 139
Second banquet 141
Bourse and its victims 142
Entry of troops from Crimea 143
Zouaves and their dog 144
Streets on New Year's Day 145
English and French art 146
Emperor and Edwin Landseer 147
Sitting to Ary Scheffer 148
Scheffer as to the likeness 149
A duchess murdered 150
Truth is stranger than fiction 151
Singular scenes described 152
What became of the actors 153
CHAPTER VI. 1855-1857.
Pages 154-176.
LITTLE DORRIT, AND A LAZY TOUR. ÆT. 43-45.
Watts's Rochester charity 155
Tablet to Dickens in Cathedral 155
_Nobody's Fault_ 155
How the _Dorrit_ story grew 156
Number-Plan of _Copperfield_ 157
Number-Plan of _Dorrit_ 158
Circumlocution Office 159
Flora and Mr. F---- 160
Weak and strong points 161
A scene of boy-trials 162
Reception of the novel 163
Christmas theatricals 164
Theatre-making 165
Rush for places 166
Douglas Jerrold's death 168
Exertions and result 168
Seeing the serpents fed 169
Lazy Tour projected 170
Up Carrick Fell 170
Accident to Mr. Wilkie Collins 171
At Wigton and Allonby 172
The Yorkshire landlady 173
Doncaster in race week 174
A performance of _Money_ 175
CHAPTER VII. 1857-1858.
Pages 177-201.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THIS TIME. ÆT. 45-46.
Disappointments and distastes 177
What we seem and are 178
Compensations of Art 179
Misgivings 180
A defect and a merit 181
Reply to a remonstrance 182
Dangerous comfort 183
One happiness missed 184
Homily on life 185
Confidences 186
Rejoinder to a reply 187
What the world cannot give 189
An old project revived 189
Shakespeare on acting 191
Hospital for sick children 192
Charities of the very poor 192
Unsolved mysteries 194
Appeal for sick children 195
Reading for Child's Hospital 195
Proposal for Paid readings 196
Question of the Plunge 198
Mr. Arthur Smith 199
Separation from Mrs. Dickens 200
What alone concerned the public 201
CHAPTER VIII. 1856-1870.
Pages 202-222.
GADSHILL PLACE. ÆT. 44-58.
First description of it 202
The porch 204
Negotiations for purchase 204
Becomes his home 205
Gadshill a century ago 206
Past owners and tenants 207
Sinking a well 209
Gradual additions 210
Gift from Mr. Fechter 211
Dickens's writing-table 211
The châlet 213
Much coveted acquisition 214
Last improvement 215
Visits of friends 216
Dickens's Dogs 218
A Fenian mastiff 218
Linda and Mrs. Bouncer 219
Favourite walks 220
The study and chair 222
CHAPTER IX. 1858-1859.
Pages 223-238.
FIRST PAID READINGS. ÆT. 46-47.
Various managements 223
One day's work 224
Impressions of Dublin 225
Irish audiences 226
Young Ireland and Old England 227
Railway ride to Belfast 229
Brought near his Fame 229
A knowing audience 231
Greeting in Manchester 231
Joined by his daughters 232
Strange life 233
Scotch audiences 234
When most successful in reading 235
At public meetings 236
Miss Marie Wilton as _Pippo_ 237
Ed. Landseer on Frith's portrait 238
CHAPTER X. 1859-1861.
Pages 239-254.
ALL THE YEAR ROUND AND THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER. ÆT. 47-49.
_Household Words_ discontinued 240
Earliest and latest publishers 240
Dickens and Mr. Bentley 241
In search of a title 242
A title found 243
Success of new periodical 244
Difference from the old 245
At Knebworth 246
Commercial Travellers' Schools 247
A Traveller for human interests 248
Personal references in writing 249
Birds and low company 250
Bethnal-green fowls 251
An incident of Doughty Street 252
Offers from America 253
CHAPTER XI. 1861-1863.
Pages 255-274.
SECOND SERIES OF READINGS. ÆT. 49-51.
Daughter Kate's marriage 255
Charles Alston Collins 257
Sale of Tavistock House 257
Brother Alfred's death 258
Metropolitan readings 258
Provincial circuit 259
New subjects for readings 260
Death of Mr. Arthur Smith 261
Death of Mr. Henry Austin 262
Readings at Brighton 263
At Canterbury and Dover 264
Alarming scene 265
Impromptu reading-hall 266
Scenes in Scotland 267
At Torquay 268
Death of C. C. Felton 269
Offers for Australia 270
Writing or Reading? 271
Home arguments 272
Religious Richardson's Show 273
Exiled ex-potentate 274
CHAPTER XII. 1855-1865.
Pages 275-297.
HINTS FOR BOOKS WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN. ÆT. 43-53.
Book of MS. memoranda 275
Originals of characters 277
Fancies put into books 277
Notions for _Little Dorrit_ 278
Suggestions for other books 279
Hints for last completed book 280
Fancies never used 281
Ideas not worked out 282
A touching fancy 284
Domestic subjects 284
Characters of women 285
Other female groups 286
Uncle Sam 288
Sketches of selfishness 288
Striking thoughts 290
Subjects not accomplished 290
Characters laid aside 291
Available names 293
Titles for books 293
Names for girls and boys 295
An undistinguished crowd 296
Mr. Brobity's snuff-box 297
CHAPTER XIII. 1864-1867.
Pages 298-324.
THIRD SERIES OF READINGS. ÆT. 52-55.
Death of Thackeray 298
Mother's death 300
Death of second son 300
Interest in Mr. Fechter 301
Notes on theatres 302
Sorrowful new year 303
C. W. Dilke's death 303
Staplehurst accident 305
Illness and suffering 305
Enters on new readings 306
Last meeting with Mrs. Carlyle 308
Mrs. Carlyle's death 309
Offer for more readings 309
Grave warnings 311
In Scotland 312
Exertion and its result 313
Self-deception 314
An old malady 314
Scene at Tynemouth 316
In Dublin with the Fenians 317
Yielding to temptation 318
Pressure from America 319
At bay at last 320
Warning unheeded 321
Discussion useless 322
The case in a nutshell 323
Decision to go 324
CHAPTER XIV. 1836-1870.
Pages 325-386.
DICKENS AS A NOVELIST. ÆT. 24-58.
See before you oversee 326
M. Taine's criticism 326
What is overlooked in it 327
A popularity explained 328
National excuses for Dickens 330
Comparison with Balzac 330
Anticipatory reply to M. Taine 332
A critic in the _Fortnightly Review_ 333
Blame and praise to be reconciled 333
A plea for objectors 334
"Hallucinative" imagination 335
Vain critical warnings 336
The critic and the criticised 336
An opinion on the Micawbers 338
Hallucinative phenomena 338
Scott writing _Bride of Lammermoor_ 339
Claim to be fairly judged 340
Dickens's leading quality 341
Dangers of Humour 342
His earlier books 343
Mastery of dialogue 344
Character-drawing 345
Realities of fiction 346
Fielding and Dickens 347
Touching of extremes 347
Why the creations of fiction live 349
Enjoyment of his own humour 350
Unpublished note of Lord Lytton 350
Exaggerations of humour 351
Temptations of all great humourists 352
A word for fanciful descriptions 353
_Tale of Two Cities_ 355
Difficulties and success 355
Specialty of treatment 356
Reply to objections 357
Care with which Dickens worked 358
An American critic 359
_Great Expectations_ 360
Pip and Magwitch 361
Another boy-child for hero 362
Unlikeness in likeness 363
Vivid descriptive writing 364
Masterly drawing of character 365
A day on the Thames 366
Homely and shrewd satire 367
Incident changed for Lytton 368
As originally written 369
Christmas Sketches 370
_Our Mutual Friend_ 370
Writing numbers in advance 373
Working slowly 374
Death of John Leech 375
A fatal anniversary 376
Effects on himself and his novel 376
A tale by Edmond About 378
First and Last 378
_Doctor Marigold_ 379
Minor stories 380
"Something from Above" 381
Purity of Dickens's writings 382
Substitute for an alleged deficiency 382
True province of humour 383
Horace Greeley and Longfellow 384
Letters from an American 385
Companions for solitude 386
CHAPTER XV. 1867.
Pages 387-406.
AMERICA REVISITED. NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER, 1867. ÆT. 55.
Warmth of the greeting 388
Same cause as in 1842 388
Old and new friends 389
Changes since 1842 390
First Boston reading 391
Scene at New York sales 393
First New York reading 393
An action against Dickens 394
A fire at his hotel 395
Local and general politics 397
Railway arrangements 398
Police of New York 398
Mistletoe from England 399
As to newspapers 400
Nothing lasts long 401
Cities chosen for readings 401
Scene of a murder visited 402
A dinner at the murderer's 403
Illness and abstinence 404
Miseries of American travel 405
Startling prospect 406
CHAPTER XVI. 1868.
Pages 407-443.
AMERICA REVISITED. JANUARY TO APRIL, 1868. ÆT. 56.
Speculators and public 408
An Englishman's disadvantage 408
"Freedom and independence" 408
Mountain-sneezers and eye-openers 409
The work and the gain 410
A scene at Brooklyn 411
At Philadelphia 412
"Looking up the judge" 413
Improved social ways 414
Result of thirty-four readings 415
Shadow to the sunshine 416
Readings in a church 417
Change of plan 417
Baltimore women 418
Success in Philadelphia 419
Objections to coloured people 420
With Sumner at Washington 421
President Lincoln's dream 423
Interview with President Johnson 423
Washington audiences 424
A comical dog 425
Incident before a reading 426
The child and the doll 427
North-west tour 428
Political excitement 429
Struggle for tickets 430
American female beauty 432
Sherry to "slop round" with 432
Final impression of Niagara 433
Letter to Mr. Ouvry 434
"Getting along" through water 435
Again attacked by lameness 437
Illness and exertion 437
Seeing prevents believing 439
All but used up 439
Last Boston readings 440
New York farewells 441
The receipts throughout 441
Promise at public dinner 442
The Adieu 443
CHAPTER XVII. 1868-1870.
Pages 444-460.
LAST READINGS. ÆT. 56-58.
Health improved 444
What the readings did and undid 445
Expenses and gains in America 446
Noticeable changes in him 447
_Oliver Twist_ reading proposed 448
Objections to it 449
Death of Frederick Dickens 450
Macready at _Oliver Twist_ reading 451
Another attack of illness 452
A doctors' difference 454
At Emerson Tennent's funeral 454
The illness at Preston 455
Brought to London 456
Sir Thomas Watson consulted 456
His note of the case 457
Guarded sanction to other readings 458
Close of career as public reader 460
CHAPTER XVIII. 1869-1870.
Pages 461-477.
LAST BOOK. ÆT. 57-58.
The agreement for _Edwin Drood_ 461
First fancy for it 462
Story as planned in his mind 463
What to be its course and end 463
Merits of the fragment 464
Comparison of early and late MSS 466
Discovery of an unpublished scene 467
Last page of _Drood_ in fac-simile 468
Page of _Oliver Twist_ in fac-simile 469
Delightful specimen of Dickens 470
Unpublished scene for _Drood_ 470-476
CHAPTER XIX. 1836-1870.
Pages 478-526.
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS. ÆT. 24-58.
Dickens not a bookish man 479
Books and their critics 479
Design of present book stated 480
Dickens made to tell his own story 480
Charge of personal obtrusiveness 481
Lord Russell on Dickens's letters 481
Shallower judgments 481
Absence of self-conceit in Dickens 482
Letter to youngest son 483
As to religion and prayer 485
Letter to a clergyman in 1856 485
Letter to a layman in 1870 486
Objection to posthumous honours 487
As to patronage of literature 488
Vanity of human wishes 488
As to writers and publishers 489
Editorship of his weekly serials 490
Work for his contributors 491
Editorial troubles and pleasures 493
Letter to an author 493
Help to younger novelists 495
Adelaide Procter's poetry 495
Effect of periodical writing 496
Proposed satirical papers 497
Political opinions 498
Not the man for Finsbury 499
The Liverpool dinner in 1869 500
Reply to Lord Houghton 501
Tribute to Lord Russell 501
People governing and governed 502
Alleged offers from her Majesty 503
Silly Rigmarole 504
The Queen sees him act (1857) 505
Desires to hear him read (1858) 506
Interview at the Palace (1870) 507
What passed at the interview 507
Dickens's grateful impression 508
A hope at the close of life 509
Games in Gadshill meadow 510
Home enjoyments 512
Habits of life everywhere 513
Family dependence on him 514
Carlyle's opinion of Dickens 514
Street walks and London haunts 515
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 517
The first attack of lameness 518
Effect upon his dogs 518
Why right things to be done 519
Silent heroisms 519
At social meetings 520
Delight in "assumption" 520
Humouring a joke 522
Unlucky hits 522
Ghost stories 524
Predominant feeling of his life 525
Sermon of the Master of Balliol 525
CHAPTER XX. 1869-1870.
Pages 527-545.
THE END. ÆT. 57-58.
Last summer and autumn 527
Showing London to a visitor 528
His son Henry's scholarship 529
Twelve more readings 530
Medical attendance at them 531
Excitement incident to them 532
The Farewell 533
Last public appearances 535
At Royal Academy dinner 535
Eulogy of Daniel Maclise 536
Return of illness 537
Our last meeting 538
A noteworthy incident 538
Last letter received from him 539
Final days at Gadshill 539
Wednesday the 8th of June 540
Last piece of writing 540
The 8th and 9th of June 541
The general grief 542
The burial 544
Unbidden mourners 544
The grave 544
* * * * *
APPENDIX.
I. THE WRITINGS OF CHARLES DICKENS 547
II. THE WILL OF CHARLES DICKENS 561
III. CORRECTIONS MADE IN THE LATER EDITIONS OF
THE SECOND VOLUME OF THIS WORK 566
INDEX 571
THE LIFE
OF
CHARLES DICKENS.
CHAPTER I.
DAVID COPPERFIELD AND BLEAK HOUSE.
1850-1853.
Interest of _Copperfield_--Scott, Smollett, and
Fielding--Too close to the Real--Earlier and
Later Methods--Dickens at Hatton-garden
(1837)--Originals of Boythorn and
Skimpole--Last Glimpse of Leigh Hunt
(1859)--Changes made in
Skimpole--Self-defence--Scott and his
Father--Dickens and his Father--Sayings of John
Dickens--Skimpole and Micawber--Dickens and
David--Self-portraiture not attempted--The
Autobiographic Form--Consistent Drawing--Design
of David's Character--Tone of the Novel--The
Peggottys--Miss Dartle--Mrs. Steerforth--Betsey
Trotwood--A Country Undertaker--The Two
Heroines--Contrast of Esther and David--Plot of
the Story--Incidents and Persons
interwoven--Defects of _Bleak House_--Success
in Character--Value of Critical
Judgments--Pathetic Touches--Dean Ramsay on
_Bleak House_ and Jo--Originals of Chancery
Abuses.
DICKENS never stood so high in reputation as at the completion of
_Copperfield_. The popularity it obtained at the outset increased to a
degree not approached by any previous book excepting _Pickwick_. "You
gratify me more than I can tell you," he wrote to Bulwer Lytton (July
1850), "by what you say about _Copperfield_, because I hope myself that
some heretofore deficient qualities are there." If the power was not
greater than in _Chuzzlewit_, the subject had more attractiveness; there
was more variety of incident, with a freer play of character; and there
was withal a suspicion, which though general and vague had sharpened
interest not a little, that underneath the fiction lay something of the
author's life. How much, was not known by the world until he had passed
away.
To be acquainted with English literature is to know, that, into its most
famous prose fiction, autobiography has entered largely in disguise, and
that the characters most familiar to us in the English novel had
originals in actual life. Smollett never wrote a story that was not in
some degree a recollection of his own adventures; and Fielding, who put
something of his wife into all his heroines, had been as fortunate in
finding, not Trulliber only, but Parson Adams himself, among his living
experiences. To come later down, there was hardly any one ever known to
Scott of whom his memory had not treasured up something to give minuter
reality to the people of his fancy; and we know exactly whom to look for
in Dandie Dinmont and Jonathan Oldbuck, in the office of Alan Fairford
and the sick room of Crystal Croftangry. We are to observe also that it
is never anything complete that is thus taken from life by a genuine
writer, but only leading traits, or such as may give greater finish;
that the fine artist will embody in his portraiture of one person his
experiences of fifty; and that this would have been Fielding's answer to
Trulliber if he had objected to the pigstye, and to Adams if he had
sought to make a case of scandal out of the affair in Mrs. Slipslop's
bedroom. Such questioning befell Dickens repeatedly in the course of his
writings, where he freely followed, as we have seen, the method thus
common to the masters in his art; but there was an instance of alleged
wrong in the course of _Copperfield_ where he felt his vindication to be
hardly complete, and what he did thereupon was characteristic.
"I have had the queerest adventure this morning," he wrote (28th of
December 1849) on the eve of his tenth number, "the receipt of the
enclosed from Miss Moucher! It is serio-comic, but there is no doubt one
is wrong in being tempted to such a use of power." Thinking a grotesque
little oddity among his acquaintance to be safe from recognition, he had
done what Smollett did sometimes, but never Fielding, and given way, in
the first outburst of fun that had broken out around the fancy, to the
temptation of copying too closely peculiarities of figure and face
amounting in effect to deformity. He was shocked at discovering the pain
he had given, and a copy is before me of the assurances by way of reply
which he at once sent to the complainant. That he was grieved and
surprised beyond measure. That he had not intended her altogether. That
all his characters, being made up out of many people, were composite,
and never individual. That the chair (for table) and other matters were
undoubtedly from her, but that other traits were not hers at all; and
that in Miss Moucher's "Ain't I volatile" his friends had quite
correctly recognized the favourite utterance of a different person. That
he felt nevertheless he had done wrong, and would now do anything to
repair it. That he had intended to employ the character in an unpleasant
way, but he would, whatever the risk or inconvenience, change it all, so
that nothing but an agreeable impression should be left. The reader will
remember how this was managed, and that the thirty-second chapter went
far to undo what the twenty-second had done.
A much earlier instance is the only one known to me where a character in
one of his books intended to be odious was copied wholly from a living
original. The use of such material, never without danger, might have
been justifiable here if anywhere, and he had himself a satisfaction in
always admitting the identity of Mr. Fang in _Oliver Twist_ with Mr.
Laing of Hatton-garden. But the avowal of his purpose in that case, and
his mode of setting about it, mark strongly a difference of procedure
from that which, following great examples, he adopted in his later
books. An allusion to a common friend in one of his letters of the
present date--"A dreadful thought occurs to me! how brilliant in a
book!"--expresses both the continued strength of his temptations and the
dread he had brought himself to feel of immediately yielding to them;
but he had no such misgivings in the days of _Oliver Twist_. Wanting an
insolent and harsh police-magistrate, he bethought him of an original
ready to his hand in one of the London offices; and instead of pursuing
his later method of giving a personal appearance that should in some
sort render difficult the identification of mental peculiarities, he was
only eager to get in the whole man complete upon his page, figure and
face as well as manners and mind.
He wrote accordingly (from Doughty-street on the 3rd of June 1837) to
Mr. Haines,[164] a gentleman who then had general supervision over the
police reports for the daily papers. "In my next number of _Oliver
Twist_ I must have a magistrate; and, casting about for a magistrate
whose harshness and insolence would render him a fit subject to be
_shown up_, I have as a necessary consequence stumbled upon Mr. Laing of
Hatton-garden celebrity. I know the man's character perfectly well; but
as it would be necessary to describe his personal appearance also, I
ought to have seen him, which (fortunately or unfortunately as the case
may be) I have never done. In this dilemma it occurred to me that
perhaps I might under your auspices be smuggled into the Hatton-garden
office for a few moments some morning. If you can further my object I
shall be really very greatly obliged to you." The opportunity was found;
the magistrate was brought up before the novelist; and shortly after, on
some fresh outbreak of intolerable temper, the home-secretary found it
an easy and popular step to remove Mr. Laing from the bench.
This was a comfort to everybody, saving only the principal person; but
the instance was highly exceptional, and it rarely indeed happens that
to the individual objection natural in every such case some
consideration should not be paid. In the book that followed
_Copperfield_, two characters appeared having resemblances in manner and
speech to two distinguished writers too vivid to be mistaken by their
personal friends. To Lawrence Boythorn, under whom Landor figured, no
objection was made; but Harold Skimpole, recognizable for Leigh Hunt,
led to much remark; the difference being, that ludicrous traits were
employed in the first to enrich without impairing an attractive person
in the tale, whereas to the last was assigned a part in the plot which
no fascinating foibles or gaieties of speech could redeem from contempt.
Though a want of consideration was thus shown to the friend whom the
character would be likely to recall to many readers, it is nevertheless
very certain that the intention of Dickens was not at first, or at any
time, an unkind one. He erred from thoughtlessness only. What led him to
the subject at all, he has himself stated. Hunt's philosophy of moneyed
obligations, always, though loudly, half jocosely proclaimed, and his
ostentatious wilfulness in the humouring of that or any other theme on
which he cared for the time to expatiate,[165] had so often seemed to
Dickens to be whimsical and attractive that, wanting an "airy quality"
for the man he invented, this of Hunt occurred to him; and "partly for
that reason, and partly, he has since often grieved to think, for the
pleasure it afforded to find a delightful manner reproducing itself
under his hand, he yielded to the temptation of too often making the
character speak like his old friend." This apology was made[166] after
Hunt's death, and mentioned a revision of the first sketch, so as to
render it less like, at the suggestion of two other friends of Hunt. The
friends were Procter (Barry Cornwall) and myself; the feeling having
been mine from the first that the likeness was too like. Procter did not
immediately think so, but a little reflection brought him to that
opinion. "You will see from the enclosed," Dickens wrote (17th of March
1852), "that Procter is much of my mind. I will nevertheless go through
the character again in the course of the afternoon, and soften down
words here and there." But before the day closed Procter had again
written to him, and next morning this was the result. "I have again
gone over every part of it very carefully, and I think I have made it
much less like. I have also changed Leonard to Harold. I have no right
to give Hunt pain, and I am so bent upon not doing it that I wish you
would look at all the proof once more, and indicate any particular place
in which you feel it particularly like. Whereupon I will alter that
place."
Upon the whole the alterations were considerable, but the radical wrong
remained. The pleasant sparkling airy talk, which could not be mistaken,
identified with odious qualities a friend only known to the writer by
attractive ones; and for this there was no excuse. Perhaps the only
person acquainted with the original who failed to recognize the copy,
was the original himself (a common case); but good-natured friends in
time told Hunt everything, and painful explanations followed, where
nothing was possible to Dickens but what amounted to a friendly evasion
of the points really at issue. The time for redress had gone. I yet well
remember with what eager earnestness, on one of these occasions, he
strove to set Hunt up again in his own esteem. "Separate in your own
mind," he said to him, "what you see of yourself from what other people
tell you that they see. As it has given you so much pain, I take it at
its worst, and say I am deeply sorry, and that I feel I did wrong in
doing it. I should otherwise have taken it at its best, and ridden off
upon what I strongly feel to be the truth, that there is nothing in it
that _should_ have given you pain. Every one in writing must speak from
points of his experience, and so I of mine with you: but when I have
felt it was going too close I stopped myself, and the most blotted
parts of my MS. are those in which I have been striving hard to make the
impression I was writing from, _un_like you. The diary-writing I took
from Haydon, not from you. I now first learn from yourself that you ever
set anything to music, and I could not have copied _that_ from you. The
character is not you, for there are traits in it common to fifty
thousand people besides, and I did not fancy you would ever recognize
it. Under similar disguises my own father and mother are in my books,
and you might as well see your likeness in Micawber." The distinction is
that the foibles of Mr. Micawber and of Mrs. Nickleby, however
laughable, make neither of them in speech or character less loveable;
and that this is not to be said of Skimpole's. The kindly or unkindly
impression makes all the difference where liberties are taken with a
friend; and even this entirely favourable condition will not excuse the
practice to many, where near relatives are concerned.
For what formerly was said of the Micawber resemblances, Dickens has
been sharply criticized; and in like manner it was thought objectionable
in Scott that for the closing scenes of Crystal Croftangry he should
have found the original of his fretful patient at the death-bed of his
own father. Lockhart, who tells us this, adds with a sad significance
that he himself lived to see the curtain fall at Abbotsford upon even
such another scene. But to no purpose will such objections still be
made. All great novelists will continue to use their experiences of
nature and fact, whencesoever derivable; and a remark made to Lockhart
by Scott himself suggests their vindication. "If a man will paint from
nature, he will be most likely to interest and amuse those who are daily
looking at it."
The Micawber offence otherwise was not grave. We have seen in what way
Dickens was moved or inspired by the rough lessons of his boyhood, and
the groundwork of the character was then undoubtedly laid; but the
rhetorical exuberance impressed itself upon him later, and from this, as
it expanded and developed in a thousand amusing ways, the full-length
figure took its great charm. Better illustration of it could not perhaps
be given than by passages from letters of Dickens, written long before
Micawber was thought of, in which this peculiarity of his father found
frequent and always agreeable expression. Several such have been given
in this work from time to time, and one or two more may here be added.
It is proper to preface them by saying that no one could know the elder
Dickens without secretly liking him the better for these flourishes of
speech, which adapted themselves so readily to his gloom as well as to
his cheerfulness, that it was difficult not to fancy they had helped him
considerably in both, and had rendered more tolerable to him, if also
more possible, the shade and sunshine of his chequered life. "If you
should have an opportunity _pendente lite_, as my father would
observe--indeed did on some memorable ancient occasions when he informed
me that the ban-dogs would shortly have him at bay"--Dickens wrote in
December 1847. "I have a letter from my father" (May 1841) "lamenting
the fine weather, invoking congenial tempests, and informing me that it
will not be possible for him to stay more than another year in
Devonshire, as he must then proceed to Paris to consolidate Augustus's
French." "There has arrived," he writes from the Peschiere in September
1844, "a characteristic letter for Kate from my father. He dates it
Manchester, and says he has reason to believe that he will be in town
with the pheasants, on or about the first of October. He has been with
Fanny in the Isle of Man for nearly two months: finding there, as he
goes on to observe, troops of friends, and every description of
continental luxury at a cheap rate." Describing in the same year the
departure from Genoa of an English physician and acquaintance, he adds:
"We are very sorry to lose the benefit of his advice--or, as my father
would say, to be deprived, to a certain extent, of the concomitant
advantages, whatever they may be, resulting from his medical skill, such
as it is, and his professional attendance, in so far as it may be so
considered." Thus also it delighted Dickens to remember that it was of
one of his connections his father wrote a celebrated sentence; "And I
must express my tendency to believe that his longevity is (to say the
least of it) extremely problematical:" and that it was to another, who
had been insisting somewhat obtrusively on dissenting and nonconformist
superiorities, he addressed words which deserve to be no less
celebrated; "The Supreme Being must be an entirely different individual
from what I have every reason to believe him to be, if He would care in
the least for the society of your relations." There was a laugh in the
enjoyment of all this, no doubt, but with it much personal fondness; and
the feeling of the creator of Micawber as he thus humoured and
remembered the foibles of his original, found its counterpart in that
of his readers for the creation itself, as its part was played out in
the story. Nobody likes Micawber less for his follies; and Dickens liked
his father more, the more he recalled his whimsical qualities. "The
longer I live, the better man I think him," he exclaimed afterwards. The
fact and the fancy had united whatever was most grateful to him in both.
It is a tribute to the generally healthful and manly tone of the story
of _Copperfield_ that such should be the outcome of the eccentricities
of this leading personage in it; and the superiority in this respect of
Micawber over Skimpole is one of many indications of the inferiority of
_Bleak House_ to its predecessor. With leading resemblances that make it
difficult to say which character best represents the principle or no
principle of impecuniosity, there cannot be any doubt which has the
advantage in moral and intellectual development. It is genuine humour
against personal satire. Between the worldly circumstances of the two,
there is nothing to choose; but as to everything else it is the
difference between shabbiness and greatness. Skimpole's sunny talk might
be expected to please as much as Micawber's gorgeous speech, the design
of both being to take the edge off poverty. But in the one we have no
relief from attendant meanness or distress, and we drop down from the
airiest fancies into sordidness and pain; whereas in the other nothing
pitiful or merely selfish ever touches us. At its lowest depth of what
is worst, we never doubt that something better must turn up; and of a
man who sells his bedstead that he may entertain his friend, we
altogether refuse to think nothing but badly. This is throughout the
free and cheery style of _Copperfield_. The masterpieces of Dickens's
humour are not in it; but he has nowhere given such variety of play to
his invention, and the book is unapproached among his writings for its
completeness of effect and uniform pleasantness of tone.
What has to be said hereafter of those writings generally, will properly
restrict what is said here, as in previous instances, mainly to personal
illustration. The _Copperfield_ disclosures formerly made will for ever
connect the book with the author's individual story; but too much has
been assumed, from those revelations, of a full identity of Dickens with
his hero, and of a supposed intention that his own character as well as
parts of his career should be expressed in the narrative. It is right to
warn the reader as to this. He can judge for himself how far the
childish experiences are likely to have given the turn to Dickens's
genius; whether their bitterness had so burnt into his nature, as, in
the hatred of oppression, the revolt against abuse of power, and the war
with injustice under every form displayed in his earliest books, to have
reproduced itself only; and to what extent mere compassion for his own
childhood may account for the strange fascination always exerted over
him by child-suffering and sorrow. But, many as are the resemblances in
Copperfield's adventures to portions of those of Dickens, and often as
reflections occur to David which no one intimate with Dickens could fail
to recognize as but the reproduction of his, it would be the greatest
mistake to imagine anything like a complete identity of the fictitious
novelist with the real one, beyond the Hungerford scenes; or to suppose
that the youth, who then received his first harsh schooling in life,
came out of it as little harmed or hardened as David did. The language
of the fiction reflects only faintly the narrative of the actual fact;
and the man whose character it helped to form was expressed not less
faintly in the impulsive impressionable youth, incapable of resisting
the leading of others, and only disciplined into self-control by the
later griefs of his entrance into manhood. Here was but another proof
how thoroughly Dickens understood his calling, and that to weave fact
with fiction unskilfully would be only to make truth less true.
The character of the hero of the novel finds indeed his right place in
the story he is supposed to tell, rather by unlikeness than by likeness
to Dickens, even where intentional resemblance might seem to be
prominent. Take autobiography as a design to show that any man's life
may be as a mirror of existence to all men, and the individual career
becomes altogether secondary to the variety of experiences received and
rendered back in it. This particular form in imaginative literature has
too often led to the indulgence of mental analysis, metaphysics, and
sentiment, all in excess: but Dickens was carried safely over these
allurements by a healthy judgment and sleepless creative fancy; and even
the method of his narrative is more simple here than it generally is in
his books. His imaginative growths have less luxuriance of underwood,
and the crowds of external images always rising so vividly before him
are more within control.
Consider Copperfield thus in his proper place in the story, and sequence
as well as connection will be given to the varieties of its childish
adventure. The first warm nest of love in which his vain fond mother,
and her quaint kind servant, cherish him; the quick-following contrast
of hard dependence and servile treatment; the escape from that premature
and dwarfed maturity by natural relapse into a more perfect childhood;
the then leisurely growth of emotions and faculties into manhood; these
are component parts of a character consistently drawn. The sum of its
achievement is to be a successful cultivation of letters; and often as
such imaginary discipline has been the theme of fiction, there are not
many happier conceptions of it. The ideal and real parts of the boy's
nature receive development in the proportions which contribute best to
the end desired; the readiness for impulsive attachments that had put
him into the leading of others, has underneath it a base of truthfulness
on which at last he rests in safety; the practical man is the outcome of
the fanciful youth; and a more than equivalent for the graces of his
visionary days, is found in the active sympathies that life has opened
to him. Many experiences have come within its range, and his heart has
had room for all. Our interest in him cannot but be increased by knowing
how much he expresses of what the author had himself gone through; but
David includes far less than this, and infinitely more.
That the incidents arise easily, and to the very end connect themselves
naturally and unobtrusively with the characters of which they are a
part, is to be said perhaps more truly of this than of any other of
Dickens's novels. There is a profusion of distinct and distinguishable
people, and a prodigal wealth of detail; but unity of drift or purpose
is apparent always, and the tone is uniformly right. By the course of
the events we learn the value of self-denial and patience, quiet
endurance of unavoidable ills, strenuous effort against ills remediable;
and everything in the fortunes of the actors warns us, to strengthen our
generous emotions and to guard the purities of home. It is easy thus to
account for the supreme popularity of _Copperfield_, without the
addition that it can hardly have had a reader, man or lad, who did not
discover that he was something of a Copperfield himself. Childhood and
youth live again for all of us in its marvellous boy-experiences. Mr.
Micawber's presence must not prevent my saying that it does not take the
lead of the other novels in humorous creation; but in the use of humour
to bring out prominently the ludicrous in any object or incident without
excluding or weakening its most enchanting sentiment, it stands
decidedly first. It is the perfection of English mirth. We are apt to
resent the exhibition of too much goodness, but it is here so qualified
by oddity as to become not merely palatable but attractive; and even
pathos is heightened by what in other hands would only make it comical.
That there are also faults in the book is certain, but none that are
incompatible with the most masterly qualities; and a book becomes
everlasting by the fact, not that faults are not in it, but that genius
nevertheless is there.
Of its method, and its author's generally, in the delineation of
character, something will have to be said on a later page. The author's
own favourite people in it, I think, were the Peggotty group; and
perhaps he was not far wrong. It has been their fate, as with all the
leading figures of his invention, to pass their names into the
language, and become types; and he has nowhere given happier embodiment
to that purity of homely goodness, which, by the kindly and
all-reconciling influences of humour, may exalt into comeliness and even
grandeur the clumsiest forms of humanity. What has been indicated in the
style of the book as its greatest charm is here felt most strongly. The
ludicrous so helps the pathos, and the humour so uplifts and refines the
sentiment, that mere rude affection and simple manliness in these
Yarmouth boatmen, passed through the fires of unmerited suffering and
heroic endurance, take forms half-chivalrous half-sublime. It is one of
the cants of critical superiority to make supercilious mention of the
serious passages in this great writer; but the storm and shipwreck at
the close of _Copperfield_, when the body of the seducer is flung dead
upon the shore amid the ruins of the home he has wasted and by the side
of the man whose heart he has broken, the one as unconscious of what he
had failed to reach as the other of what he has perished to save, is a
description that may compare with the most impressive in the language.
There are other people drawn into this catastrophe who are among the
failures of natural delineation in the book. But though Miss Dartle is
curiously unpleasant, there are some natural traits in her (which
Dickens's least life-like people are never without); and it was from one
of his lady friends, very familiar to him indeed, he copied her
peculiarity of never saying anything outright, but hinting it merely,
and making more of it that way. Of Mrs. Steerforth it may also be worth
remembering that Thackeray had something of a fondness for her. "I knew
how it would be when I began," says a pleasant letter all about himself
written immediately after she appeared in the story. "My letters to my
mother are like this, but then she likes 'em--like Mrs. Steerforth:
don't you like Mrs. Steerforth?"
Turning to another group there is another elderly lady to be liked
without a shadow of misgiving; abrupt, angular, extravagant, but the
very soul of magnanimity and rectitude; a character thoroughly made out
in all its parts; a gnarled and knotted piece of female timber, sound to
the core; a woman Captain Shandy would have loved for her startling
oddities, and who is linked to the gentlest of her sex by perfect
womanhood. Dickens has done nothing better, for solidness and truth all
round, than Betsey Trotwood. It is one of her oddities to have a fool
for a companion; but this is one of them that has also most pertinence
and wisdom. By a line thrown out in _Wilhelm Meister_, that the true way
of treating the insane was, in all respects possible, to act to them as
if they were sane, Goethe anticipated what it took a century to apply to
the most terrible disorder of humanity; and what Mrs. Trotwood does for
Mr. Dick goes a step farther, by showing how often asylums might be
dispensed with, and how large might be the number of deficient
intellects manageable with patience in their own homes. Characters
hardly less distinguishable for truth as well as oddity are the kind old
nurse and her husband the carrier, whose vicissitudes alike of love and
of mortality are condensed into the three words since become part of
universal speech, _Barkis is willin'_. There is wholesome satire of much
utility in the conversion of the brutal schoolmaster of the earlier
scenes into the tender Middlesex magistrate at the close. Nor is the
humour anywhere more subtle than in the country undertaker, who makes up
in fullness of heart for scantness of breath, and has so little of the
vampire propensity of the town undertaker in _Chuzzlewit_, that he dares
not even inquire after friends who are ill for fear of unkindly
misconstruction. The test of a master in creative fiction, according to
Hazlitt, is less in contrasting characters that are unlike than in
distinguishing those that are like; and to many examples of the art in
Dickens, such as the Shepherd and Chadband, Creakle and Squeers, Charley
Bates and the Dodger, the Guppys and the Wemmicks, Mr. Jaggers and Mr.
Vholes, Sampson Brass and Conversation Kenge, Jack Bunsby, Captain
Cuttle, and Bill Barley, the Perkers and Pells, the Dodsons and Fogs,
Sarah Gamp and Betsy Prig, and a host of others, is to be added the
nicety of distinction between those eminent furnishers of funerals, Mr.
Mould and Messrs. Omer and Joram. All the mixed mirth and sadness of the
story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and,
amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for
baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer on the coffin is
heard.
Of the heroines who divide so equally between them the impulsive, easily
swayed, not disloyal but sorely distracted affections of the hero, the
spoilt foolishness and tenderness of the loving little child-wife, Dora,
is more attractive than the too unfailing wisdom and self-sacrificing
goodness of the angel-wife, Agnes. The scenes of the courtship and
housekeeping are matchless; and the glimpses of Doctors' Commons,
opening those views, by Mr. Spenlow, of man's vanity of expectation and
inconsistency of conduct in neglecting the sacred duty of making a will,
on which he largely moralizes the day before he dies intestate, form a
background highly appropriate to David's domesticities. This was among
the reproductions of personal experience in the book; but it was a
sadder knowledge that came with the conviction some years later, that
David's contrasts in his earliest married life between his happiness
enjoyed and his happiness once anticipated, the "vague unhappy loss or
want of something" of which he so frequently complains, reflected also a
personal experience which had not been supplied in fact so successfully
as in fiction. (A closing word may perhaps be allowed, to connect with
Devonshire-terrace the last book written there. On the page opposite is
engraved a drawing by Maclise of the house where so many of Dickens's
masterpieces were composed, done on the first anniversary of the day
when his daughter Kate was born.)
_Bleak House_ followed _Copperfield_, which in some respects it copied
in the autobiographical form by means of extracts from the personal
relation of its heroine. But the distinction between the narrative of
David and the diary of Esther, like that between Micawber and Skimpole,
marks the superiority of the first to its successor. To represent a
storyteller as giving the most surprising vividness to manners, motives,
and characters of which we are to believe her, all the time, as
artlessly unconscious, as she is also entirely ignorant of the good
qualities in herself she is naïvely revealing in the story, was a
difficult enterprise, full of hazard in any case, not worth success,
and certainly not successful. Ingenuity is more apparent than freshness,
the invention is neither easy nor unstrained, and though the old
marvellous power over the real is again abundantly manifest, there is
some alloy of the artificial. Nor can this be said of Esther's relation
without some general application to the book of which it forms so large
a part. The novel is nevertheless, in the very important particular of
construction, perhaps the best thing done by Dickens.
[Illustration: DEVONSHIRE TERRACE.]
In his later writings he had been assiduously cultivating this essential
of his art, and here he brought it very nearly to perfection. Of the
tendency of composing a story piecemeal to induce greater concern for
the part than for the whole, he had been always conscious; but I
remember a remark also made by him to the effect that to read a story in
parts had no less a tendency to prevent the reader's noticing how
thoroughly a work so presented might be calculated for perusal as a
whole. Look back from the last to the first page of the present novel,
and not even in the highest examples of this kind of elaborate care will
it be found, that event leads more closely to event, or that the
separate incidents have been planned with a more studied consideration
of the bearing they are severally to have on the general result. Nothing
is introduced at random, everything tends to the catastrophe, the
various lines of the plot converge and fit to its centre, and to the
larger interest all the rest is irresistibly drawn. The heart of the
story is a Chancery suit. On this the plot hinges, and on incidents
connected with it, trivial or important, the passion and suffering turn
exclusively. Chance words, or the deeds of chance people, to appearance
irrelevant, are found everywhere influencing the course taken by a train
of incidents of which the issue is life or death, happiness or misery,
to men and women perfectly unknown to them, and to whom they are
unknown. Attorneys of all possible grades, law clerks of every
conceivable kind, the copyist, the law stationer, the usurer, all sorts
of money lenders, suitors of every description, haunters of the Chancery
court and their victims, are for ever moving round about the lives of
the chief persons in the tale, and drawing them on insensibly, but very
certainly, to the issues that await them. Even the fits of the little
law-stationer's servant help directly in the chain of small things that
lead indirectly to Lady Dedlock's death. One strong chain of interest
holds together Chesney Wold and its inmates, Bleak House and the
Jarndyce group, Chancery with its sorry and sordid neighbourhood. The
characters multiply as the tale advances, but in each the drift is the
same. "There's no great odds betwixt my noble and learned brother and
myself," says the grotesque proprietor of the rag and bottle shop under
the wall of Lincoln's-inn, "they call me Lord Chancellor and my shop
Chancery, and we both of us grub on in a muddle." _Edax rerum_ the motto
of both, but with a difference. Out of the lumber of the shop emerge
slowly some fragments of evidence by which the chief actors in the story
are sensibly affected, and to which Chancery itself might have succumbed
if its devouring capacities had been less complete. But by the time
there is found among the lumber the will which puts all to rights in the
Jarndyce suit, it is found to be too late to put anything to rights. The
costs have swallowed up the estate, and there is an end of the matter.
What in one sense is a merit however may in others be a defect, and this
book has suffered by the very completeness with which its Chancery moral
is worked out. The didactic in Dickens's earlier novels derived its
strength from being merely incidental to interest of a higher and more
permanent kind, and not in a small degree from the playful sportiveness
and fancy that lighted up its graver illustrations. Here it is of
sterner stuff, too little relieved, and all-pervading. The fog so
marvellously painted in the opening chapter has hardly cleared away when
there arises, in _Jarndyce_ v. _Jarndyce_, as bad an atmosphere to
breathe in; and thenceforward to the end, clinging round the people of
the story as they come or go, in dreary mist or in heavy cloud, it is
rarely absent. Dickens has himself described his purpose to have been to
dwell on the romantic side of familiar things. But it is the romance of
discontent and misery, with a very restless dissatisfied moral, and is
too much brought about by agencies disagreeable and sordid. The Guppys,
Weevles, Snagsbys, Chadbands, Krooks, and Smallweeds, even the Kenges,
Vholeses, and Tulkinghorns, are much too real to be pleasant; and the
necessity becomes urgent for the reliefs and contrasts of a finer
humanity. These last are not wanting; yet it must be said that we hardly
escape, even with them, into the old freedom and freshness of the
author's imaginative worlds, and that the too conscious unconsciousness
of Esther flings something of a shade on the radiant goodness of John
Jarndyce himself. Nevertheless there are very fine delineations in the
story. The crazed little Chancery lunatic, Miss Flite; the loud-voiced
tender-souled Chancery victim, Gridley; the poor good-hearted youth
Richard, broken up in life and character by the suspense of the Chancery
suit on whose success he is to "begin the world," believing himself to
be saving money when he is stopped from squandering it, and thinking
that having saved it he is entitled to fling it away; trooper George,
with the Bagnets and their household, where the most ludicrous points
are more forcible for the pathetic touches underlying them; the Jellyby
interior, and its philanthropic strong-minded mistress, placid and
smiling amid a household muddle outmuddling Chancery itself; the model
of deportment, Turveydrop the elder, whose relations to the young
people, whom he so superbly patronizes by being dependent on them for
everything, touch delightfully some subtle points of truth; the
inscrutable Tulkinghorn, and the immortal Bucket; all these, and
especially the last, have been added by this book to the list of people
more intimately and permanently known to us than the scores of actual
familiar acquaintance whom we see around us living and dying.
But how do we know them? There are plenty to tell us that it is by
vividness of external observation rather than by depth of imaginative
insight, by tricks of manner and phrase rather than by truth of
character, by manifestation outwardly rather than by what lies behind.
Another opportunity will present itself for some remark on this kind of
criticism, which has always had a special pride in the subtlety of its
differences from what the world may have shown itself prone to admire.
"In my father's library," wrote Landor to Southey's daughter Edith,
"was the _Critical Review_ from its commencement; and it would have
taught me, if I could not even at a very early age teach myself better,
that Fielding, Sterne, and Goldsmith were really worth nothing." It is a
style that will never be without cultivators, and its frequent
application to Dickens will be shown hereafter. But in speaking of a
book in which some want of all the freshness of his genius first became
apparent, it would be wrong to omit to add that his method of handling a
character is as strongly impressed on the better portions of it as on
the best of his writings. It is difficult to say when a peculiarity
becomes too grotesque, or an extravagance too farcical, to be within the
limits of art, for it is the truth of these as of graver things that
they exist in the world in just the proportions and degree in which
genius can discover them. But no man had ever so surprising a faculty as
Dickens of becoming himself what he was representing; and of entering
into mental phases and processes so absolutely, in conditions of life
the most varied, as to reproduce them completely in dialogue without
need of an explanatory word. (He only departed from this method once,
with a result which will then be pointed out.) In speaking on a former
page of the impression of reality thus to a singular degree conveyed by
him, it was remarked that where characters so revealed themselves the
author's part in them was done; and in the book under notice there is
none, not excepting those least attractive which apparently present only
prominent or salient qualities, in which it will not be found that the
characteristic feature embodied, or the main idea personified, contains
as certainly also some human truth universally applicable. To expound
or discuss his creations, to lay them psychologically bare, to analyse
their organisms, to subject to minute demonstration their fibrous and
other tissues, was not at all Dickens's way. His genius was his fellow
feeling with his race; his mere personality was never the bound or limit
to his perceptions, however strongly sometimes it might colour them; he
never stopped to dissect or anatomize his own work; but no man could
better adjust the outward and visible oddities in a delineation to its
inner and unchangeable veracities. The rough estimates we form of
character, if we have any truth of perception, are on the whole correct:
but men touch and interfere with one another by the contact of their
extremes, and it may very often become necessarily the main business of
a novelist to display the salient points, the sharp angles, or the
prominences merely.
The pathetic parts of _Bleak House_ do not live largely in remembrance,
but the deaths of Richard and of Gridley, the wandering fancies of Miss
Flite, and the extremely touching way in which the gentleman-nature of
the pompous old baronet, Dedlock, asserts itself under suffering, belong
to a high order of writing. There is another most affecting example,
taking the lead of the rest, in the poor street-sweeper Jo; which has
made perhaps as deep an impression as anything in Dickens. "We have been
reading _Bleak House_ aloud," the good Dean Ramsay wrote to me very
shortly before his death. "Surely it is one of his most powerful and
successful! What a triumph is Jo! Uncultured nature is _there_ indeed;
the intimations of true heart-feeling, the glimmerings of higher
feeling, all are there; but everything still consistent and in harmony.
Wonderful is the genius that can show all this, yet keep it only and
really part of the character itself, low or common as it may be, and use
no morbid or fictitious colouring. To my mind, nothing in the field of
fiction is to be found in English literature surpassing the death of
Jo!" What occurs at and after the inquest is as worth remembering. Jo's
evidence is rejected because he cannot exactly say what will be done to
him after he is dead if he should tell a lie;[167] but he manages to say
afterwards very exactly what the deceased while he lived did to him.
That one cold winter night, when he was shivering in a doorway near his
crossing, a man turned to look at him, and came back, and, having
questioned him and found he had not a friend in the world, said,
"Neither have I. Not one!" and gave him the price of a supper and a
night's lodging. That the man had often spoken to him since, and asked
him if he slept of a night, and how he bore cold and hunger, or if he
ever wished to die; and would say in passing "I am as poor as you
to-day, Jo" when he had no money, but when he had any would always give
some. "He wos wery good to me," says the boy, wiping his eyes with his
wretched sleeve. "Wen I see him a-layin' so stritched out just now, I
wished he could have heerd me tell him so. He wos werry good to me, he
wos!" The inquest over, the body is flung into a pestiferous churchyard
in the next street, houses overlooking it on every side, and a reeking
little tunnel of a court giving access to its iron gate. "With the
night, comes a slouching figure through the tunnel-court, to the outside
of the iron gate. It holds the gate with its hands, and looks in within
the bars; stands looking in, for a little while. It then, with an old
broom it carries, softly sweeps the step, and makes the archway clean.
It does so, very busily, and trimly; looks in again, a little while; and
so departs." These are among the things in Dickens that cannot be
forgotten; and if _Bleak House_ had many more faults than have been
found in it, such salt and savour as this might freshen it for some
generations.
The first intention was to have made Jo more prominent in the story, and
its earliest title was taken from the tumbling tenements in Chancery,
"Tom-all-Alone's," where he finds his wretched habitation; but this was
abandoned. On the other hand, Dickens was encouraged and strengthened in
his design of assailing Chancery abuses and delays by receiving, a few
days after the appearance of his first number, a striking pamphlet on
the subject containing details so apposite that he took from them,
without change in any material point, the memorable case related in his
fifteenth chapter. Any one who examines the tract[168] will see how
exactly true is the reference to it made by Dickens in his preface. "The
case of Gridley is in no essential altered from one of actual
occurrence, made public by a disinterested person who was professionally
acquainted with the whole of the monstrous wrong from beginning to end."
The suit, of which all particulars are given, affected a single farm, in
value not more than £1200, but all that its owner possessed in the
world, against which a bill had been filed for a £300 legacy left in the
will bequeathing the farm. In reality there was only one defendant, but
in the bill, by the rule of the Court, there were seventeen; and, after
two years had been occupied over the seventeen answers, everything had
to begin over again because an eighteenth had been accidentally omitted.
"What a mockery of justice this is," says Mr. Challinor, "the facts
speak for themselves, and I can personally vouch for their accuracy. The
costs already incurred in reference to this £300 legacy are not less
than from £800 to £900, and the parties are no forwarder. Already near
five years have passed by, and the plaintiff would be glad to give up
his chance of the legacy if he could escape from his liability to costs,
while the defendants who own the little farm left by the testator, have
scarce any other prospect before them than ruin."
FOOTNOTES:
[164] This letter is now in the possession of S. R. Goodman Esq. of
Brighton.
[165] Here are two passages taken from Hunt's writing in the _Tatler_ (a
charming little paper which it was one of the first ventures of the
young firm of Chapman and Hall to attempt to establish for Hunt in
1830), to which accident had unluckily attracted Dickens's
notice:--"Supposing us to be in want of patronage, and in possession of
talent enough to make it an honour to notice us, we would much rather
have some great and comparatively private friend, rich enough to assist
us, and amiable enough to render obligation delightful, than become the
public property of any man, or of any government. . . . If a divinity had
given us our choice we should have said--make us La Fontaine, who goes
and lives twenty years with some rich friend, as innocent of any harm in
it as a child, and who writes what he thinks charming verses, sitting
all day under a tree." Such sayings will not bear to be deliberately
read and thought over, but any kind of extravagance or oddity came from
Hunt's lips with a curious fascination. There was surely never a man of
so sunny a nature, who could draw so much pleasure from common things,
or to whom books were a world so real, so exhaustless, so delightful. I
was only seventeen when I derived from him the tastes which have been
the solace of all subsequent years, and I well remember the last time I
saw him at Hammersmith, not long before his death in 1859, when, with
his delicate, worn, but keenly intellectual face, his large luminous
eyes, his thick shock of wiry grey hair, and a little cape of faded
black silk over his shoulders, he looked like an old French abbé. He was
buoyant and pleasant as ever; and was busy upon a vindication of Chaucer
and Spenser from Cardinal Wiseman, who had attacked them for alleged
sensuous and voluptuous qualities.
[166] In a paper in _All the Year Round_.
[167] "O! Here's the boy, gentlemen! Here he is, very muddy, very
hoarse, very ragged. Now, boy!--But stop a minute. Caution. This boy
must be put through a few preliminary paces. Name, Jo. Nothing else that
he knows on. Don't know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of
sich a think. Don't know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it
long enough for _him. He_ don't find no fault with it. Spell it? No.
_He_ can't spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to
school. What's home? Knows a broom's a broom, and knows it's wicked to
tell a lie. Don't recollect who told him about the broom, or about the
lie, but knows both. Can't exactly say what'll be done to him arter he's
dead if he tells a lie to the gentleman here, but believes it'll be
something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right--and so he'll tell
the truth. 'This won't do, gentlemen,' says the coroner, with a
melancholy shake of the head. . . . '_Can't exactly say_ won't do, you
know. . . . It's terrible depravity. Put the boy aside.' Boy put aside; to
the great edification of the audience;--especially of Little Swills, the
Comic Vocalist."
[168] By W. Challinor Esq. of Leek in Staffordshire, by whom it has been
obligingly sent to me, with a copy of Dickens's letter acknowledging the
receipt of it from the author on the 11th of March 1852. On the first of
that month the first number of _Bleak House_ had appeared, but two
numbers of it were then already written.
CHAPTER II.
HOME INCIDENTS AND HARD TIMES.
1853-1854-1855.
_Bleak House_ Sale--Proposed
Titles--Restless--Tavistock House--Last Child
born--Death of Friends--Liking for
Boulogne--Banquet at
Birmingham--Self-changes--Overdoing
it--Projected Trip to Italy--First Public
Readings--Argument against Paid
Readings--Children's Theatricals--Small
Actors--Henry Fielding Dickens--Dickens and the
Czar--Titles for a New Story--"Hard Times"
chosen--Difficulties of Weekly Publication--Mr.
Ruskin on _Hard Times_--Exaggerated Rebuke of
Exaggeration--Manufacturing Town on
Strike--Dinner to Thackeray--Peter
Cunningham--Incident of a November Night.
_DAVID COPPERFIELD_ had been written, in Devonshire-terrace for the most
part, between the opening of 1849 and October 1850, its publication
covering that time; and its sale, which has since taken the lead of all
his books but _Pickwick_, never then exceeding twenty-five thousand. But
though it remained thus steady for the time, the popularity of the book
added largely to the sale of its successor. _Bleak House_ was begun in
his new abode of Tavistock House at the end of November 1851; was
carried on, amid the excitements of the Guild performances, through the
following year; was finished at Boulogne in the August of 1853; and was
dedicated to "his friends and companions in the Guild of Literature and
Art."
[Illustration: TAVISTOCK HOUSE.]
In March 1852 the first number appeared,[169] and its sale was
mentioned in the same letter from Tavistock House (7th of March)
which told of his troubles in the story at its outset, and of other
anxieties incident to the common lot and inseparable equally from its
joys and sorrows, through which his life was passing at the time. "My
Highgate journey yesterday was a sad one. Sad to think how all journeys
tend that way. I went up to the cemetery to look for a piece of ground.
In no hope of a Government bill,[170] and in a foolish dislike to leaving
the little child shut up in a vault there, I think of pitching a tent
under the sky. . . . Nothing has taken place here: but I believe, every
hour, that it must next hour. Wild ideas are upon me of going to
Paris--Rouen--Switzerland--somewhere--and writing the remaining two-thirds
of the next No. aloft in some queer inn room. I have been hanging over
it, and have got restless. Want a change I think. Stupid. We were at
30,000 when I last heard. . . . I am sorry to say that after all kinds
of evasions, I am obliged to dine at Lansdowne House to-morrow. But
maybe the affair will come off to-night and give me an excuse! I enclose
proofs of No. 2. Browne has done Skimpole, and helped to make him
singularly unlike the great original. Look it over, and say what occurs
to you. . . . Don't you think Mrs. Gaskell charming? With one
ill-considered thing that looks like a want of natural perception, I
think it masterly." His last allusion is to the story by a delightful
writer then appearing in _Household Words_; and of the others it only
needs to say that the family affair which might have excused his absence
at the Lansdowne dinner did not come off until four days later. On the
13th of March his last child was born; and the boy, his seventh son,
bears his godfather's distinguished name, Edward Bulwer Lytton.
The inability to "grind sparks out of his dull blade," as he
characterized his present labour at _Bleak House_, still fretting him,
he struck out a scheme for Paris. "I could not get to Switzerland very
well at this time of year. The Jura would be covered with snow. And if I
went to Geneva I don't know where I might _not_ go to." It ended at last
in a flight to Dover; but he found time before he left, amid many
occupations and some anxieties, for a good-natured journey to Walworth
to see a youth rehearse who was supposed to have talents for the stage,
and he was able to gladden Mr. Toole's friends by thinking favourably of
his chances of success. "I remember what I once myself wanted in that
way," he said, "and I should like to serve him."
At one of the last dinners in Tavistock House before his departure, Mr.
Watson of Rockingham was present; and he was hardly settled in
Camden-crescent, Dover, when he had news of the death of that excellent
friend. "Poor dear Watson! It was this day two weeks when you rode with
us and he dined with us. We all remarked after he had gone how happy he
seemed to have got over his election troubles, and how cheerful he was.
He was full of Christmas plans for Rockingham, and was very anxious that
we should get up a little French piece I had been telling him the plot
of. He went abroad next day to join Mrs. Watson and the children at
Homburg, and then go to Lausanne, where they had taken a house for a
month. He was seized at Homburg with violent internal inflammation, and
died--without much pain--in four days. . . . I was so fond of him that I am
sorry you didn't know him better. I believe he was as thoroughly good
and true a man as ever lived; and I am sure I can have felt no greater
affection for him than he felt for me. When I think of that bright
house, and his fine simple honest heart, both so open to me, the blank
and loss are like a dream." Other deaths followed. "Poor d'Orsay!" he
wrote after only seven days (8th of August). "It is a tremendous
consideration that friends should fall around us in such awful numbers
as we attain middle life. What a field of battle it is!" Nor had another
month quite passed before he lost, in Mrs. Macready, a very dear family
friend. "Ah me! ah me!" he wrote. "This tremendous sickle certainly does
cut deep into the surrounding corn, when one's own small blade has
ripened. But _this_ is all a Dream, may be, and death will wake us."
Able at last to settle to his work, he stayed in Dover three months; and
early in October, sending home his family caravan, crossed to Boulogne
to try it as a resort for seaside holiday. "I never saw a better
instance of our countrymen than this place. Because it is accessible it
is genteel to say it is of no character, quite English, nothing
continental about it, and so forth. It is as quaint, picturesque, good a
place as I know; the boatmen and fishing-people quite a race apart, and
some of their villages as good as the fishing-villages on the
Mediterranean. The Haute Ville, with a walk all round it on the
ramparts, charming. The country walks, delightful. It is the best
mixture of town and country (with sea air into the bargain) I ever saw;
everything cheap, everything good; and please God I shall be writing on
those said ramparts next July!"
Before the year closed, the time to which his publishing arrangements
with Messrs. Bradbury and Evans were limited had expired, but at his
suggestion the fourth share in such books as he might write, which they
had now received for eight years, was continued to them on the
understanding that the publishers' percentage should no longer be
charged in the partnership accounts, and with a power reserved to
himself to withdraw when he pleased. In the new year his first adventure
was an ovation in Birmingham, where a silver-gilt salver and a diamond
ring were presented to him, as well for eloquent service specially
rendered to the Institution, as in general testimony of "varied literary
acquirements, genial philosophy, and high moral teaching." A great
banquet followed on Twelfth Night, made memorable by an offer[171] to
give a couple of readings from his books at the following Christmas, in
aid of the new Midland Institute. It might seem to have been drawn from
him as a grateful return for the enthusiastic greeting of his
entertainers, but it was in his mind before he left London. It was his
first formal undertaking to read in public.
His eldest son had now left Eton, and, the boy's wishes pointing at the
time to a mercantile career, he was sent to Leipzig for completion of
his education.[172] At this date it seemed to me that the overstrain of
attempting too much, brought upon him by the necessities of his weekly
periodical, became first apparent in Dickens. Not unfrequently a
complaint strange upon his lips fell from him. "Hypochondriacal
whisperings tell me that I am rather overworked. The spring does not
seem to fly back again directly, as it always did when I put my own work
aside, and had nothing else to do. Yet I have everything to keep me
going with a brave heart, Heaven knows!" Courage and hopefulness he
might well derive from the increasing sale of _Bleak House_, which had
risen to nearly forty thousand; but he could no longer bear easily what
he carried so lightly of old, and enjoyments with work were too much for
him. "What with _Bleak House_, and _Household Words_, and _Child's
History_" (he dictated from week to week the papers which formed that
little book, and cannot be said to have quite hit the mark with it),
"and Miss Coutts's Home, and the invitations to feasts and festivals, I
really feel as if my head would split like a fired shell if I remained
here." He tried Brighton first, but did not find it answer, and
returned.[173] A few days of unalloyed enjoyment were afterwards given
to the visit of his excellent American friend Felton; and on the 13th of
June he was again in Boulogne, thanking heaven for escape from a
breakdown. "If I had substituted anybody's knowledge of myself for my
own, and lingered in London, I never could have got through."
What befell him in Boulogne will be given, with the incidents of his
second and third summer visits to the place, on a later page. He
completed, by the third week of August, his novel of _Bleak House_; and
it was resolved to celebrate the event by a two months' trip to Italy,
in company with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr. Augustus Egg. The start was
to be made from Boulogne in the middle of October, when he would send
his family home; and he described the intervening weeks as a fearful
"reaction and prostration of laziness" only broken by the _Child's
History_. At the end of September he wrote: "I finished the little
_History_ yesterday, and am trying to think of something for the
Christmas number. After which I shall knock off; having had quite enough
to do, small as it would have seemed to me at any other time, since I
finished _Bleak House_." He added, a week before his departure: "I get
letters from Genoa and Lausanne as if I were going to stay in each place
at least a month. If I were to measure my deserts by people's
remembrance of me, I should be a prodigy of intolerability. Have
recovered my Italian, which I had all but forgotten, and am one entire
and perfect chrysolite of idleness."
From this trip, of which the incidents have an interest independent of
my ordinary narrative, Dickens was home again in the middle of December
1853, and kept his promise to his Birmingham friends by reading in their
Town Hall his _Christmas Carol_ on the 27th,[174] and his _Cricket on
the Hearth_ on the 29th. The enthusiasm was great, and he consented to
read his _Carol_ a second time, on Friday the 30th, if seats were
reserved for working men at prices within their means. The result was an
addition of between four and five hundred pounds to the funds for
establishment of the new Institute; and a prettily worked flower-basket
in silver, presented to Mrs. Dickens, commemorated these first public
readings "to nearly six thousand people," and the design they had
generously helped. Other applications then followed to such extent that
limits to compliance had to be put; and a letter of the 16th of May 1854
is one of many that express both the difficulty in which he found
himself, and his much desired expedient for solving it. "The objection
you suggest to paid public lecturing does not strike me at all. It is
worth consideration, but I do not think there is anything in it. On the
contrary, if the lecturing would have any motive power at all (like my
poor father this, in the sound!) I believe it would tend the other way.
In the Colchester matter I had already received a letter from a
Colchester magnate; to whom I had honestly replied that I stood pledged
to Christmas readings at Bradford[175] and at Reading, and could in no
kind of reason do more in the public way." The promise to the people of
Reading was for Talfourd's sake; the other was given after the
Birmingham nights, when an institute in Bradford asked similar help, and
offered a fee of fifty pounds. At first this was entertained; but was
abandoned, with some reluctance, upon the argument that to become
publicly a reader must alter without improving his position publicly as
a writer, and that it was a change to be justified only when the higher
calling should have failed of the old success. Thus yielding for the
time, he nevertheless soon found the question rising again with the same
importunity; his own position to it being always that of a man assenting
against his will that it should rest in abeyance. But nothing farther
was resolved on yet. The readings mentioned came off as promised, in aid
of public objects;[176] and besides others two years later for the
family of a friend, he had given the like liberal help to institutes in
Folkestone, Chatham, and again in Birmingham, Peterborough, Sheffield,
Coventry, and Edinburgh, before the question settled itself finally in
the announcement for paid public readings issued by him in 1858.
Carrying memory back to his home in the first half of 1854, there are
few things that rise more pleasantly in connection with it than the
children's theatricals. These began with the first Twelfth Night at
Tavistock House, and were renewed until the principal actors ceased to
be children. The best of the performances were _Tom Thumb_ and
_Fortunio_, in '54 and '55; Dickens now joining first in the revel, and
Mr. Mark Lemon bringing into it his own clever children and a very
mountain of child-pleasing fun in himself. Dickens had become very
intimate with him, and his merry genial ways had given him unbounded
popularity with the "young 'uns," who had no such favourite as "Uncle
Mark." In Fielding's burlesque he was the giantess Glumdalca, and
Dickens was the ghost of Gaffer Thumb; the names by which they
respectively appeared being the Infant Phenomenon and the Modern
Garrick. But the younger actors carried off the palm. There was a Lord
Grizzle, at whose ballad of Miss Villikins, introduced by desire,
Thackeray rolled off his seat in a burst of laughter that became
absurdly contagious. Yet even this, with hardly less fun from the
Noodles, Doodles, and King Arthurs, was not so good as the pretty,
fantastic, comic grace of Dollalolla, Huncamunca, and Tom. The girls
wore steadily the grave airs irresistible when put on by little
children; and an actor not out of his fourth year, who went through the
comic songs and the tragic exploits without a wrong note or a victim
unslain, represented the small helmeted hero. He was in the bills as Mr.
H----, but bore in fact the name of the illustrious author whose
conception he embodied; and who certainly would have hugged him for
Tom's opening song, delivered in the arms of Huncamunca, if he could
have forgiven the later master in his own craft for having composed it
afresh to the air of a ditty then wildly popular at the "Coal
Hole."[177] The encores were frequent, and for the most part the little
fellow responded to them; but the misplaced enthusiasm that took similar
form at the heroic intensity with which he stabbed Dollalolla, he
rebuked by going gravely on to the close. His Fortunio, the next Twelfth
Night, was not so great; yet when, as a prelude to getting the better of
the Dragon, he adulterated his drink (Mr. Lemon played the Dragon) with
sherry, the sly relish with which he watched the demoralization, by this
means, of his formidable adversary into a helpless imbecility, was
perfect. Here Dickens played the testy old Baron, and took advantage of
the excitement against the Czar raging in 1855 to denounce him (in a
song) as no other than own cousin to the very Bear that Fortunio had
gone forth to subdue. He depicted him, in his desolation of autocracy,
as the Robinson Crusoe of absolute state, who had at his court many a
show-day and many a high-day, but hadn't in all his dominions a
Friday.[178] The bill, which attributed these interpolations to "the
Dramatic Poet of the Establishment," deserves also mention for the fun
of the six large-lettered announcements which stood at the head of it,
and could not have been bettered by Mr. Crummles himself. "Re-engagement
of that irresistible comedian" (the performer of Lord Grizzle) "Mr.
Ainger!" "Reappearance of Mr. H. who created so powerful an impression
last year!" "Return of Mr. Charles Dickens Junior from his German
engagements!" "Engagement of Miss Kate, who declined the munificent
offers of the Management last season!" "Mr. Passé, Mr. Mudperiod, Mr.
Measly Servile, and Mr. Wilkini Collini!" "First appearance on any stage
of Mr. Plornishmaroontigoonter (who has been kept out of bed at a vast
expense)." The last performer mentioned[179] was yet at some distance
from the third year of his age. Dickens was Mr. Passé.
Gravities were mixed with these gaieties. "I wish you would look" (20th
of January 1854) "at the enclosed titles for the _H. W._ story, between
this and two o'clock or so, when I will call. It is my usual day, you
observe, on which I have jotted them down--Friday! It seems to me that
there are three very good ones among them. I should like to know whether
you hit upon the same." On the paper enclosed was written: 1. According
to Cocker. 2. Prove it. 3. Stubborn Things. 4. Mr. Gradgrind's Facts. 5.
The Grindstone. 6. Hard Times. 7. Two and Two are Four. 8. Something
Tangible. 9. Our Hard-headed Friend. 10. Rust and Dust. 11. Simple
Arithmetic. 12. A Matter of Calculation. 13. A Mere Question of Figures.
14. The Gradgrind Philosophy.[180] The three selected by me were 2, 6,
and 11; the three that were his own favourites were 6, 13, and 14; and
as 6 had been chosen by both, that title was taken.
It was the first story written by him for _Household Words_; and in the
course of it the old troubles of the _Clock_ came back, with the
difference that the greater brevity of the weekly portions made it
easier to write them up to time, but much more difficult to get
sufficient interest into each. "The difficulty of the space," he wrote
after a few weeks' trial, "is CRUSHING. Nobody can have an idea of it
who has not had an experience of patient fiction-writing with some
elbow-room always, and open places in perspective. In this form, with
any kind of regard to the current number, there is absolutely no such
thing." He went on, however; and, of the two designs he started with,
accomplished one very perfectly and the other at least partially. He
more than doubled the circulation of his journal; and he wrote a story
which, though not among his best, contains things as characteristic as
any he has written. I may not go as far as Mr. Ruskin in giving it a
high place; but to anything falling from that writer, however one may
differ from it, great respect is due, and every word here said of
Dickens's intention is in the most strict sense just.[181] "The
essential value and truth of Dickens's writings," he says, "have been
unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because he
presents his truth with some colour of caricature. Unwisely, because
Dickens's caricature, though often gross, is never mistaken. Allowing
for his manner of telling them, the things he tells us are always true.
I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration
to works written only for public amusement; and when he takes up a
subject of high national importance, such as that which he handled in
_Hard Times_, that he would use severer and more accurate analysis. The
usefulness of that work (to my mind, in several respects, the greatest
he has written) is with many persons seriously diminished, because Mr.
Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of
a worldly master; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection, instead
of a characteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose
the use of Dickens's wit and insight, because he chooses to speak in a
circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose
in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially _Hard
Times_, should be studied with close and earnest care by persons
interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial,
and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the
evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will
appear, after all their trouble, that his view was the finally right
one, grossly and sharply told."[182] The best points in it, out of the
circle of stage fire (an expression of wider application to this part
of Dickens's life than its inventor supposed it to be), were the
sketches of the riding-circus people and the Bounderby household; but it
is a wise hint of Mr. Ruskin's that there may be, in the drift of a
story, truths of sufficient importance to set against defects of
workmanship; and here they challenged wide attention. You cannot train
any one properly, unless you cultivate the fancy, and allow fair scope
to the affections. You cannot govern men on a principle of averages; and
to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market is not the _summum
bonum_ of life. You cannot treat the working man fairly unless, in
dealing with his wrongs and his delusions, you take equally into account
the simplicity and tenacity of his nature, arising partly from limited
knowledge, but more from honesty and singleness of intention. Fiction
cannot prove a case, but it can express forcibly a righteous sentiment;
and this is here done unsparingly upon matters of universal concern.
The book was finished at Boulogne in the middle of July,[183] and is
inscribed to Carlyle.
An American admirer accounted for the vivacity of the circus-scenes by
declaring that Dickens had "arranged with the master of Astley's Circus
to spend many hours behind the scenes with the riders and among the
horses;" a thing just as likely as that he went into training as a
stroller to qualify for Mr. Crummles in _Nickleby_. Such successes
belonged to the experiences of his youth; he had nothing to add to what
his marvellous observation had made familiar from almost childish days;
and the glimpses we get of them in the _Sketches by Boz_ are in these
points as perfect as anything his later experience could supply. There
was one thing nevertheless which the choice of his subject made him
anxious to verify while _Hard Times_ was in hand; and this was a strike
in a manufacturing town. He went to Preston to see one at the end of
January, and was somewhat disappointed. "I am afraid I shall not be able
to get much here. Except the crowds at the street-corners reading the
placards pro and con; and the cold absence of smoke from the
mill-chimneys; there is very little in the streets to make the town
remarkable. I am told that the people 'sit at home and mope.' The
delegates with the money from the neighbouring places come in to-day to
report the amounts they bring; and to-morrow the people are paid. When I
have seen both these ceremonies, I shall return. It is a nasty place (I
thought it was a model town); and I am in the Bull Hotel, before which
some time ago the people assembled supposing the masters to be here, and
on demanding to have them out were remonstrated with by the landlady in
person. I saw the account in an Italian paper, in which it was stated
that 'the populace then environed the Palazzo Bull, until the padrona of
the Palazzo heroically appeared at one of the upper windows and
addressed them!' One can hardly conceive anything less likely to be
represented to an Italian mind by this description, than the old,
grubby, smoky, mean, intensely formal red brick house with a narrow
gateway and a dingy yard, to which it applies. At the theatre last night
I saw _Hamlet_, and should have done better to 'sit at home and mope'
like the idle workmen. In the last scene, Laertes on being asked how it
was with him replied (verbatim) 'Why, like a woodcock--on account of my
treachery.'" (29th Jan.)
The home incidents of the summer and autumn of 1855 may be mentioned
briefly. It was a year of much unsettled discontent with him, and upon
return from a short trip to Paris with Mr. Wilkie Collins, he flung
himself rather hotly into agitation with the administrative
reformers,[184] and spoke at one of the great meetings in Drury-lane
Theatre. In the following month (April) he took occasion, even from the
chair of the General Theatrical Fund, to give renewed expression to
political dissatisfactions.[185] In the summer he threw open to many
friends his Tavistock House Theatre, having secured for its "lessee and
manager Mr. Crummles;" for its poet Mr. Wilkie Collins, in an "entirely
new and original domestic melodrama;" and for its scene-painter "Mr.
Stanfield, R.A."[186] _The Lighthouse_, by Mr. Wilkie Collins, was then
produced, its actors being Mr. Crummles the manager (Dickens in other
words), the Author of the play, Mr. Lemon and Mr. Egg, and the manager's
sister-in-law and eldest daughter. It was followed by the Guild farce of
_Mr. Nightingale's Diary_, in which besides the performers named, and
Dickens in his old personation part, the manager's youngest daughter and
Mr. Frank Stone assisted. The success was wonderful; and in the three
delighted audiences who crowded to what the bills described as "the
smallest theatre in the world," were not a few of the notabilities of
London. Mr. Carlyle compared Dickens's wild picturesqueness in the old
lighthouse keeper to the famous figure in Nicholas Poussin's
bacchanalian dance in the National Gallery; and at one of the joyous
suppers that followed on each night of the play, Lord Campbell told the
company that he had much rather have written _Pickwick_ than be Chief
Justice of England and a peer of parliament.[187]
Then came the beginning of _Nobody's Fault_, as _Little Dorrit_
continued to be called by him up to the eve of its publication; a flight
to Folkestone to help his sluggish fancy; and his return to London in
October to preside at a dinner to Thackeray on his going to lecture in
America. It was a muster of more than sixty admiring entertainers, and
Dickens's speech gave happy expression to the spirit that animated all,
telling Thackeray not alone how much his friendship was prized by those
present, and how proud they were of his genius, but offering him in the
name of the tens of thousands absent who had never touched his hand or
seen his face, life-long thanks for the treasures of mirth, wit, and
wisdom within the yellow-covered numbers of _Pendennis_ and _Vanity
Fair_. Peter Cunningham, one of the sons of Allan, was secretary to the
banquet; and for many pleasures given to the subject of this memoir, who
had a hearty regard for him, should have a few words to his memory.
His presence was always welcome to Dickens, and indeed to all who knew
him, for his relish of social life was great, and something of his keen
enjoyment could not but be shared by his company. His geniality would
have carried with it a pleasurable glow even if it had stood alone, and
it was invigorated by very considerable acquirements. He had some
knowledge of the works of eminent authors and artists; and he had an
eager interest in their lives and haunts, which he had made the subject
of minute and novel enquiry. This store of knowledge gave substance to
his talk, yet never interrupted his buoyancy and pleasantry, because
only introduced when called for, and not made matter of parade or
display. But the happy combination of qualities that rendered him a
favourite companion, and won him many friends, proved in the end
injurious to himself. He had done much while young in certain lines of
investigation which he had made almost his own, and there was every
promise that, in the department of biographical and literary research,
he would have produced much weightier works with advancing years. This
however was not to be. The fascinations of good fellowship encroached
more and more upon literary pursuits, until he nearly abandoned his
former favourite studies, and sacrificed all the deeper purposes of his
life to the present temptation of a festive hour. Then his health gave
way, and he became lost to friends as well as to literature. But the
impression of the bright and amiable intercourse of his better time
survived, and his old associates never ceased to think of Peter
Cunningham with regret and kindness.
Dickens went to Paris early in October, and at its close was brought
again to London by the sudden death of a friend, much deplored by
himself, and still more so by a distinguished lady who had his loyal
service at all times. An incident before his return to France is worth
brief relation. He had sallied out for one of his night walks, full of
thoughts of his story, one wintery rainy evening (the 8th of November),
and "pulled himself up," outside the door of Whitechapel Workhouse, at a
strange sight which arrested him there. Against the dreary enclosure of
the house were leaning, in the midst of the downpouring rain and storm,
what seemed to be seven heaps of rags: "dumb, wet, silent horrors" he
described them, "sphinxes set up against that dead wall, and no one
likely to be at the pains of solving them until the General Overthrow."
He sent in his card to the Master. Against him there was no ground of
complaint; he gave prompt personal attention; but the casual ward was
full, and there was no help. The rag-heaps were all girls, and Dickens
gave each a shilling. One girl, "twenty or so," had been without food a
day and night. "Look at me," she said, as she clutched the shilling, and
without thanks shuffled off. So with the rest. There was not a single
"thank you." A crowd meanwhile, only less poor than these objects of
misery, had gathered round the scene; but though they saw the seven
shillings given away they asked for no relief to themselves, they
recognized in their sad wild way the other greater wretchedness, and
made room in silence for Dickens to walk on.
Not more tolerant of the way in which laws meant to be most humane are
too often administered in England, he left in a day or two to resume his
_Little Dorrit_ in Paris. But before his life there is described, some
sketches from his holiday trip to Italy with Mr. Wilkie Collins and Mr.
Augustus Egg, and from his three summer visits to Boulogne, claim to
themselves two intervening chapters.
FOOTNOTES:
[169] I subjoin the dozen titles successively proposed for _Bleak
House_. 1. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined House;" 2. "Tom-all-Alone's. The
Solitary House that was always shut up;" 3. "Bleak House Academy;" 4.
"The East Wind;" 5. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined [House, Building,
Factory, Mill] that got into Chancery and never got out;" 6.
"Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House where the Grass grew;" 7.
"Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House that was always shut up and never
Lighted;" 8. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined Mill, that got into Chancery
and never got out;" 9. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Solitary House where the
Wind howled;" 10. "Tom-all-Alone's. The Ruined House that got into
Chancery and never got out;" 11. "Bleak House and the East Wind. How
they both got into Chancery and never got out;" 12. "Bleak House."
[170] He was greatly interested in the movement for closing town and
city graves (see the close of the 11th chapter of _Bleak House_), and
providing places of burial under State supervision.
[171] The promise was formally conveyed next morning in a letter to one
who took the lead then and since in all good work for Birmingham, Mr.
Arthur Ryland. The reading would, he said in this letter (7th of Jan.
1853), "take about two hours, with a pause of ten minutes half way
through. There would be some novelty in the thing, as I have never done
it in public, though I have in private, and (if I may say so) with a
great effect on the hearers."
[172] Baron Tauchnitz, describing to me his long and uninterrupted
friendly intercourse with Dickens, has this remark: "I give also a
passage from one of his letters written at the time when he sent his son
Charles, through my mediation, to Leipzig. He says in it what he desires
for his son. 'I want him to have all interest in, and to acquire a
knowledge of, the life around him, and to be treated like a gentleman
though pampered in nothing. By punctuality in all things, great or
small, I set great store.'"
[173] From one of his letters while there I take a passage of
observation full of character. "Great excitement here about a wretched
woman who has murdered her child. Apropos of which I observed a curious
thing last night. The newspaper offices (local journals) had placards
like this outside:
CHILD MURDER IN BRIGHTON.
INQUEST.
COMMITTAL OF THE MURDERESS.
I saw so many common people stand profoundly staring at these lines for
half-an-hour together--and even go back to stare again--that I feel
quite certain they had not the power of thinking about the thing at all
connectedly or continuously, without having something about it before
their sense of sight. Having got that, they were considering the case,
wondering how the devil they had come into that power. I saw one man in
a smock frock lose the said power the moment he turned away, and bring
his hob-nails back again."
[174] The reading occupied nearly three hours: double the time devoted
to it in the later years.
[175] "After correspondence with all parts of England, and every kind of
refusal and evasion on my part, I am now obliged to decide this
question--whether I shall read two nights at Bradford for a hundred
pounds. If I do, I may take as many hundred pounds as I choose." 27th of
Jan. 1854.
[176] On the 28th of Dec. 1854 he wrote from Bradford: "The hall is
enormous, and they expect to seat 3700 people to-night! Notwithstanding
which, it seems to me a tolerably easy place--except that the width of
the platform is so very great to the eye at first." From Folkestone, on
his way to Paris, he wrote in the autumn of 1855: "16th of Sept. I am
going to read for them here, on the 5th of next month, and have answered
in the last fortnight thirty applications to do the like all over
England, Ireland, and Scotland. Fancy my having to come from Paris in
December, to do this, at Peterborough, Birmingham, and Sheffield--old
promises." Again: 23rd of Sept. "I am going to read here, next Friday
week. There are (as there are everywhere) a Literary Institution and a
Working Men's Institution, which have not the slightest sympathy or
connexion. The stalls are five shillings, but I have made them fix the
working men's admission at threepence, and I hope it may bring them
together. The event comes off in a carpenter's shop, as the biggest
place that can be got." In 1857, at Paxton's request, he read his
_Carol_ at Coventry for the Institute.
[177] My name it is Tom Thumb,
Small my size,
Small my size,
My name it is Tom Thumb,
Small my size.
Yet though I am so small,
I have killed the giants tall;
And now I'm paid for all,
Small my size,
Small my size,
And now I'm paid for all,
Small my size.
[178] This finds mention, I observe, in a pleasant description of "Mr.
Dickens's Amateur Theatricals," which appeared in _Macmillan's Magazine_
two years ago, by one who had been a member of the Juvenile Company. I
quote a passage, recommending the whole paper as very agreeably written,
with some shrewd criticism. "Mr. Planché had in one portion of the
extravaganza put into the mouth of one of the characters for the moment
a few lines of burlesque upon Macbeth, and we remember Mr. Dickens's
unsuccessful attempts to teach the performer how to imitate Macready,
whom he (the performer) had never seen! And after the performance, when
we were restored to our evening-party costumes, and the school-room was
cleared for dancing, still a stray 'property' or two had escaped the
vigilant eye of the property-man, for Douglas Jerrold had picked up the
horse's head (Fortunio's faithful steed _Comrade_), and was holding it
up before the greatest living animal painter, who had been one of the
audience, with 'Looks as if it knew _you_, Edwin!'"
[179] He went with the rest to Boulogne in the summer, and an anecdote
transmitted in one of his father's letters will show that he maintained
the reputation as a comedian which his early debut had awakened.
"ORIGINAL ANECDOTE OF THE PLORNISHGHENTER. This distinguished wit, being
at Boulogne with his family, made a close acquaintance with his
landlord, whose name was M. Beaucourt--the only French word with which
he was at that time acquainted. It happened that one day he was left
unusually long in a bathing-machine when the tide was making,
accompanied by his two young brothers and little English nurse, without
being drawn to land. The little nurse, being frightened, cried 'M'soo!
M'soo!' The two young brothers being frightened, cried 'Ici! Ici!'. Our
wit, at once perceiving that his English was of no use to him under the
foreign circumstances, immediately fell to bawling 'Beau-court!' which
he continued to shout at the utmost pitch of his voice and with great
gravity, until rescued.--_New Boulogne Jest Book_, page 578."
[180] To show the pains he took in such matters I will give other titles
also thought of for this tale. 1. Fact; 2. Hard-headed Gradgrind; 3.
Hard Heads and Soft Hearts; 4. Heads and Tales; 5. Black and White.
[181] It is well to remember, too, what he wrote about the story to
Charles Knight. It had no design, he said, to damage the really useful
truths of Political Economy, but was wholly directed against "those who
see figures and averages, and nothing else; who would take the average
of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a
soldier in nankeen on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur;
and who would comfort the labourer in travelling twelve miles a day to
and from his work, by telling him that the average distance of one
inhabited place from another, on the whole area of England, is not more
than four miles."
[182] It is curious that with as strong a view in the opposite
direction, and with an equally mistaken exaltation, above the writer's
ordinary level, of a book which on the whole was undoubtedly below it,
Mr. Taine speaks of _Hard Times_ as that one of Dickens's romances which
is a summary of all the rest: exalting instinct above reason, and the
intuitions of the heart above practical knowledge; attacking all
education based on statistic figures and facts; heaping sorrow and
ridicule on the practical mercantile people; fighting against the pride,
hardness, and selfishness of the merchant and noble; cursing the
manufacturing towns for imprisoning bodies in smoke and mud, and souls
in falsehood and factitiousness;--while it contrasts, with that satire
of social oppression, lofty eulogy of the oppressed; and searches out
poor workmen, jugglers, foundlings, and circus people, for types of good
sense, sweetness of disposition, generosity, delicacy, and courage, to
perpetual confusion of the pretended knowledge, pretended happiness,
pretended virtue, of the rich and powerful who trample upon them! This
is a fair specimen of the exaggerations with which exaggeration is
rebuked, in Mr. Taine's and much similar criticism.
[183] Here is a note at the close. "Tavistock House. Look at that!
Boulogne, of course. Friday, 14th of July, 1854. I am three parts mad,
and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at _Hard Times_. I have
done what I hope is a good thing with Stephen, taking his story as a
whole; and hope to be over in town with the end of the book on Wednesday
night. . . . I have been looking forward through so many weeks and sides of
paper to this Stephen business, that now--as usual--it being over, I
feel as if nothing in the world, in the way of intense and violent
rushing hither and thither, could quite restore my balance."
[184] "I have hope of Mr. Morley--whom one cannot see without knowing to
be a straightforward, earnest man. Travers, too, I think a man of the
Anti-corn-law-league order. I also think Higgins will materially help
them. Generally I quite agree with you that they hardly know what to be
at; but it is an immensely difficult subject to start, and they must
have every allowance. At any rate, it is not by leaving them alone and
giving them no help, that they can be urged on to success." 29th of
March 1855.
[185] "The Government hit took immensely, but I'm afraid to look at the
report, these things are so ill done. It came into my head as I was
walking about at Hampstead yesterday. . . . On coming away I told B. we
must have a toastmaster in future less given to constant drinking while
the speeches are going on. B. replied 'Yes sir, you are quite right sir,
he has no head whatever sir, look at him now sir'--Toastmaster was
weakly contemplating the coats and hats--'do you not find it difficult
to keep your hands off him sir, he ought to have his head knocked
against the wall sir,--and he should sir, I assure you sir, if he was
not in too debased a condition to be aware of it sir.'" April 3rd 1855.
[186] For the scene of the Eddystone Lighthouse at this little play,
afterwards placed in a frame in the hall at Gadshill, a thousand guineas
was given at the Dickens sale. It occupied the great painter only one or
two mornings, and Dickens will tell how it originated. Walking on
Hampstead Heath to think over his Theatrical Fund speech, he met Mr.
Lemon, and they went together to Stanfield. "He has been very ill, and
he told us that large pictures are too much for him, and he must confine
himself to small ones. But I would not have this, I declared he must
paint bigger ones than ever, and what would he think of beginning upon
an act-drop for a proposed vast theatre at Tavistock House? He laughed
and caught at this, we cheered him up very much, and he said he was
quite a man again." April 1855.
[187] Sitting at Nisi Prius not long before, the Chief Justice, with the
same eccentric liking for literature, had committed what was called at
the time a breach of judicial decorum. (Such indecorums were less
uncommon in the great days of the Bench.) "The name," he said, "of the
illustrious Charles Dickens has been called on the jury, but he has not
answered. If his great Chancery suit had been still going on, I
certainly would have excused him, but, as that is over, he might have
done us the honour of attending here, that he might have seen how we
went on at common law."
CHAPTER III.
SWITZERLAND AND ITALY REVISITED.
1853.
Swiss People--Narrow
Escape--Berne--Lausanne--An Old
Friend--Genoa--Peschiere revisited--On the Way
to Naples--Scene on Board Steamship--A Jaunt to
Pisa--A Greek War-ship--At Naples--At
Rome--Time's Changes--At the Opera--A
"Scattering" Party--Performance of
Puppets--Malaria--Desolation--At Bolsena--At
Venice--Habits of Gondoliers--Uses of
Travel--Tintoretto--At Turin--Liking for the
Sardinians--Austrian Police--Police
Arrangements--Dickens and the Austrian--An Old
Dislike.
THE first news of the three travellers was from Chamounix, on the 20th
of October; and in it there was little made of the fatigue, and much of
the enjoyment, of their Swiss travel. Great attention and cleanliness at
the inns, very small windows and very bleak passages, doors opening to
wintery blasts, overhanging eaves and external galleries, plenty of
milk, honey, cows, and goats, much singing towards sunset on mountain
sides, mountains almost too solemn to look at--that was the picture of
it, with the country everywhere in one of its finest aspects, as winter
began to close in. They had started from Geneva the previous morning at
four, and in their day's travel Dickens had again noticed what he spoke
of formerly, the ill-favoured look of the people in the valleys owing
to their hard and stern climate. "All the women were like used-up men,
and all the men like a sort of fagged dogs. But the good, genuine,
grateful Swiss recognition of the commonest kind word--not too often
thrown to them by our countrymen--made them quite radiant. I walked the
greater part of the way, which was like going up the Monument." On the
day the letter was written they had been up to the Mer de Glace, finding
it not so beautiful in colour as in summer, but grander in its
desolation; the green ice, like the greater part of the ascent, being
covered with snow. "We were alarmingly near to a very dismal accident.
We were a train of four mules and two guides, going along an immense
height like a chimney-piece, with sheer precipice below, when there came
rolling from above, with fearful velocity, a block of stone about the
size of one of the fountains in Trafalgar-square, which Egg, the last of
the party, had preceded by not a yard, when it swept over the ledge,
breaking away a tree, and rolled and tumbled down into the valley. It
had been loosened by the heavy rains, or by some wood-cutters afterwards
reported to be above." The only place new to Dickens was Berne: "a
surprisingly picturesque old Swiss town, with a view of the Alps from
the outside of it singularly beautiful in the morning light." Everything
else was familiar to him: though at that winter season, when the inns
were shutting up, and all who could afford it were off to Geneva, most
things in the valley struck him with a new aspect. From such of his old
friends as he found at Lausanne, where a day or two's rest was taken, he
had the gladdest of greetings; "and the wonderful manner in which they
turned out in the wettest morning ever beheld for a Godspeed down the
Lake was really quite pathetic."
He had found time to see again the deaf, dumb, and blind youth at Mr.
Haldimand's Institution who had aroused so deep an interest in him seven
years before, but, in his brief present visit, the old associations
would not reawaken. "Tremendous efforts were made by Hertzel to impress
him with an idea of me, and the associations belonging to me; but it
seemed in my eyes quite a failure, and I much doubt if he had the least
perception of his old acquaintance. According to his custom, he went on
muttering strange eager sounds like Town and Down and Mown, but nothing
more. I left ten francs to be spent in cigars for my old friend. If I
had taken one with me, I think I could, more successfully than his
master, have established my identity." The child similarly afflicted,
the little girl whom he saw at the same old time, had been after some
trial discharged as an idiot.
Before October closed, the travellers had reached Genoa, having been
thirty-one consecutive hours on the road from Milan. They arrived in
somewhat damaged condition, and took up their lodging in the top rooms
of the Croce di Malta, "overlooking the port and sea pleasantly and
airily enough, but it was no joke to get so high, and the apartment is
rather vast and faded." The warmth of personal greeting that here
awaited Dickens was given no less to the friends who accompanied him,
and though the reader may not share in such private confidences as would
show the sensation created by his reappearance, and the jovial hours
that were passed among old associates, he will perhaps be interested to
know how far the intervening years had changed the aspect of things and
places made pleasantly familiar to us in his former letters. He wrote to
his sister-in-law that the old walks were pretty much the same as ever
except that there had been building behind the Peschiere up the San
Bartolomeo hill, and the whole town towards San Pietro d'Arena had been
quite changed. The Bisagno looked just the same, stony just then, having
very little water in it; the vicoli were fragrant with the same old
flavour of "very rotten cheese kept in very hot blankets;" and
everywhere he saw the mezzaro as of yore. The Jesuits' College in the
Strada Nuova was become, under the changed government, the Hôtel de
Ville, and a splendid caffè with a terrace-garden had arisen between it
and Palaviccini's old palace. "Pal himself has gone to the dogs."
Another new and handsome caffè had been built in the Piazza Carlo
Felice, between the old one of the Bei Arti and the Strada Carlo Felice;
and the Teatro Diurno had now stone galleries and seats, like an ancient
amphitheatre. "The beastly gate and guardhouse in the Albaro road are
still in their dear old beastly state; and the whole of that road is
just as it was. The man without legs is still in the Strada Nuova; but
the beggars in general are all cleared off, and our old one-arm'd
Belisario made a sudden evaporation a year or two ago. I am going to the
Peschiere to-day." To myself he described his former favourite abode as
converted into a girls' college; all the paintings of gods and goddesses
canvassed over, and the gardens gone to ruin; "but O! what a wonderful
place!" He observed an extraordinary increase everywhere else, since he
was last in the splendid city, of "life, growth, and enterprise;" and he
declared his old conviction to be confirmed that for picturesque beauty
and character there was nothing in Italy, Venice excepted, "near
brilliant old Genoa."
The voyage thence to Naples, written from the latter place, is too
capital a description to be lost. The steamer in which they embarked was
"the new express English ship," but they found her to be already more
than full of passengers from Marseilles (among them an old friend, Sir
Emerson Tennent, with his family), and everything in confusion. There
were no places at the captain's table, dinner had to be taken on deck,
no berth or sleeping accommodation was available, and heavy first-class
fares had to be paid. Thus they made their way to Leghorn, where worse
awaited them. The authorities proved to be not favourable to the "crack"
English-officered vessel (she had just been started for the India mail);
and her papers not being examined in time, it was too late to steam away
again that day, and she had to lie all night long off the lighthouse.
"The scene on board beggars description. Ladies on the tables; gentlemen
under the tables; bed-room appliances not usually beheld in public
airing themselves in positions where soup-tureens had been lately
developing themselves; and ladies and gentlemen lying indiscriminately
on the open deck, arranged like spoons on a sideboard. No mattresses, no
blankets, nothing. Towards midnight attempts were made, by means of
awning and flags, to make this latter scene remotely approach an
Australian encampment; and we three (Collins, Egg, and self) lay
together on the bare planks covered with our coats. We were all
gradually dozing off, when a perfectly tropical rain fell, and in a
moment drowned the whole ship. The rest of the night we passed upon the
stairs, with an immense jumble of men and women. When anybody came up
for any purpose we all fell down, and when anybody came down we all fell
up again. Still, the good-humour in the English part of the passengers
was quite extraordinary. . . . There were excellent officers aboard, and,
in the morning, the first mate lent me his cabin to wash in--which I
afterwards lent to Egg and Collins. Then we, the Emerson Tennents, the
captain, the doctor, and the second officer, went off on a jaunt
together to Pisa, as the ship was to lie all day at Leghorn. The captain
was a capital fellow, but I led him, facetiously, such a life the whole
day, that I got most things altered at night. Emerson Tennent's son,
with the greatest amiability, insisted on turning out of his state-room
for me, and I got a good bed there. The store-room down by the hold was
opened for Collins and Egg; and they slept with the moist sugar, the
cheese in cut, the spices, the cruets, the apples and pears, in a
perfect chandler's shop--in company with what a friend of ours would
call a hold gent, who had been so horribly wet through over night that
his condition frightened the authorities; a cat; and the steward, who
dozed in an arm-chair, and all-night-long fell head foremost, once every
five minutes, on Egg, who slept on the counter or dresser. Last night, I
had the steward's own cabin, opening on deck, all to myself. It had been
previously occupied by some desolate lady who went ashore at Civita
Vecchia. There was little or no sea, thank Heaven, all the trip; but
the rain was heavier than any I have ever seen, and the lightning very
constant and vivid. We were, with the crew, some 200 people--provided
with boats, at the utmost stretch, for one hundred perhaps. I could not
help thinking what would happen if we met with any accident: the crew
being chiefly Maltese, and evidently fellows who would cut off alone in
the largest boat, on the least alarm; the speed very high; and the
running, thro' all the narrow rocky channels. Thank God, however, here
we are."
A whimsical postscript closed the amusing narrative. "We towed from
Civita Vecchia the entire Greek navy, I believe; consisting of a little
brig of war with no guns, fitted as a steamer, but disabled by having
burnt the bottoms of her boilers out, in her first run. She was just big
enough to carry the captain and a crew of six or so: but the captain was
so covered with buttons and gold that there never would have been room
for him on board to put those valuables away, if he hadn't worn
them--which he consequently did, all night. Whenever anything was wanted
to be done, as slackening the tow-rope or anything of that sort, our
officers roared at this miserable potentate, in violent English, through
a speaking trumpet; of which he couldn't have understood a word in the
most favourable circumstances. So he did all the wrong things first, and
the right thing always last. The absence of any knowledge of anything
but English on the part of the officers and stewards was most
ridiculous. I met an Italian gentleman on the cabin steps yesterday
morning, vainly endeavouring to explain that he wanted a cup of tea for
his sick wife. And when we were coming out of the harbour at Genoa, and
it was necessary to order away that boat of music you remember, the
chief officer (called 'aft' for the purpose, as 'knowing something of
Italian') delivered himself in this explicit and clear Italian to the
principal performer--'Now Signora, if you don't sheer off you'll be run
down, so you had better trice up that guitar of yours and put about.'"
At Naples some days were passed very merrily; going up Vesuvius and into
the buried cities, with Layard who had joined them, and with the
Tennents. Here a small adventure befell Dickens specially, in itself
extremely unimportant; but told by him with delightful humour in a
letter to his sister-in-law. The old idle Frenchman, to whom all things
are possible, with his snuff-box and dusty umbrella, and all the
delicate and kindly observation, would have enchanted Leigh Hunt, and
made his way to the heart of Charles Lamb. After mentioning Mr. Lowther,
then English chargé d'affaires in Naples, as a very agreeable fellow who
had been at the Rockingham play, he alludes to a meeting at his house.
"We had an exceedingly pleasant dinner of eight, preparatory to which I
was near having the ridiculous adventure of not being able to find the
house and coming back dinnerless. I went in an open carriage from the
hotel in all state, and the coachman to my surprise pulled up at the end
of the Chiaja. 'Behold the house,' says he, 'of Il Signor Larthoor!'--at
the same time pointing with his whip into the seventh heaven where the
early stars were shining. 'But the Signor Larthorr,' says I, 'lives at
Pausilippo.' 'It is true,' says the coachman (still pointing to the
evening star), 'but he lives high up the Salita Sant' Antonio where no
carriage ever yet ascended, and that is the house' (evening star as
aforesaid), 'and one must go on foot. Behold the Salita Sant' Antonio!'
I went up it, a mile and a half I should think, I got into the strangest
places among the wildest Neapolitans; kitchens, washing-places,
archways, stables, vineyards; was baited by dogs, and answered, in
profoundly unintelligible language, from behind lonely locked doors in
cracked female voices, quaking with fear; but could hear of no such
Englishman, nor any Englishman. Bye and bye, I came upon a polenta-shop
in the clouds, where an old Frenchman with an umbrella like a faded
tropical leaf (it had not rained in Naples for six weeks) was staring at
nothing at all, with a snuff-box in his hand. To him I appealed,
concerning the Signor Larthoor. 'Sir,' said he, with the sweetest
politeness, 'can you speak French?' 'Sir,' said I, 'a little.' 'Sir,'
said he, 'I presume the Signer Loothere'--you will observe that he
changed the name according to the custom of his country--'is an
Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had
that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. _Has_ he a servant with
a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should
think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman,
'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.'
'Sir,' said I--you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own
absurdity, by this time--'that is true.' He then took an immense pinch
of snuff wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me to an arch commanding
a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and pointed deep into the earth
from which I had mounted. 'Below there, near the lamp, one finds an
Englishman with a servant with a wooden leg. It is always possible that
he is the Signor Loothore.' I had been asked at six o'clock, and it was
now getting on for seven. I went back in a state of perspiration and
misery not to be described, and without the faintest hope of finding the
spot. But as I was going farther down to the lamp, I saw the strangest
staircase up a dark corner, with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently
hired) standing on the top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found
it was the house, made the most of the whole story, and achieved much
popularity. The best of it was that as nobody ever did find the place,
Lowther had put a servant at the bottom of the Salita to wait 'for an
English gentleman;' but the servant (as he presently pleaded), deceived
by the moustache, had allowed the English gentleman to pass
unchallenged."
From Naples they went to Rome, where they found Lockhart, "fearfully
weak and broken, yet hopeful of himself too" (he died the following
year); smoked and drank punch with David Roberts, then painting everyday
with Louis Haghe in St. Peter's; and took the old walks. The Coliseum,
Appian Way, and Streets of Tombs, seemed desolate and grand as ever; but
generally, Dickens adds, "I discovered the Roman antiquities to be
_smaller_ than my imagination in nine years had made them. The Electric
Telegraph now goes like a sunbeam through the cruel old heart of the
Coliseum--a suggestive thing to think about, I fancied. The Pantheon I
thought even nobler than of yore." The amusements were of course an
attraction; and nothing at the Opera amused the party of three English
more, than another party of four Americans who sat behind them in the
pit. "All the seats are numbered arm-chairs, and you buy your number at
the pay-place, and go to it with the easiest direction on the ticket
itself. We were early, and the four places of the Americans were on the
next row behind us--all together. After looking about them for some
time, and seeing the greater part of the seats empty (because the
audience generally wait in a caffè which is part of the theatre), one of
them said 'Waal I dunno--I expect we aint no call to set so nigh to one
another neither--will you scatter Kernel, will you scatter sir?--' Upon
this the Kernel 'scattered' some twenty benches off; and they
distributed themselves (for no earthly reason apparently but to get rid
of one another) all over the pit. As soon as the overture began, in came
the audience in a mass. Then the people who had got the numbers into
which they had 'scattered,' had to get them out; and as they understood
nothing that was said to them, and could make no reply but 'A-mericani,'
you may imagine the number of cocked hats it took to dislodge them. At
last they were all got back into their right places, except one. About
an hour afterwards when Moses (_Moses in Egypt_ was the opera) was
invoking the darkness, and there was a dead silence all over the house,
unwonted sounds of disturbance broke out from a distant corner of the
pit, and here and there a beard got up to look. 'What is it neow sir?'
said one of the Americans to another;--'some person seems to be getting
along, again streeem.' 'Waal sir' he replied 'I dunno. But I xpect 'tis
the Kernel sir, a holdin on.' So it was. The Kernel was ignominiously
escorted back to his right place, not in the least disconcerted, and in
perfectly good spirits and temper." The opera was excellently done, and
the price of the stalls one and threepence English. At Milan, on the
other hand, the Scala was fallen from its old estate, dirty, gloomy,
dull, and the performance execrable.
Another theatre of the smallest pretension Dickens sought out with
avidity in Rome, and eagerly enjoyed. He had heard it said in his old
time in Genoa that the finest Marionetti were here; and now, after great
difficulty, he discovered the company in a sort of stable attached to a
decayed palace. "It was a wet night, and there was no audience but a
party of French officers and ourselves. We all sat together. I never saw
anything more amazing than the performance--altogether only an hour
long, but managed by as many as ten people, for we saw them all go
behind, at the ringing of a bell. The saving of a young lady by a good
fairy from the machinations of an enchanter, coupled with the comic
business of her servant Pulcinella (the Roman Punch) formed the plot of
the first piece. A scolding old peasant woman, who always leaned forward
to scold and put her hands in the pockets of her apron, was incredibly
natural. Pulcinella, so airy, so merry, so life-like, so graceful, he
was irresistible. To see him carrying an umbrella over his mistress's
head in a storm, talking to a prodigious giant whom he met in the
forest, and going to bed with a pony, were things never to be forgotten.
And so delicate are the hands of the people who move them, that every
puppet was an Italian, and did exactly what an Italian does. If he
pointed at any object, if he saluted anybody, if he laughed, if he
cried, he did it as never Englishman did it since Britain first at
Heaven's command arose--arose--arose, &c. There was a ballet afterwards,
on the same scale, and we really came away quite enchanted with the
delicate drollery of the thing. French officers more than ditto."
Of the great enemy to the health of the now capital of the kingdom of
Italy, Dickens remarked in the same letter. "I have been led into some
curious speculations by the existence and progress of the Malaria about
Rome. Isn't it very extraordinary to think of its encroaching and
encroaching on the Eternal City as if it were commissioned to swallow it
up. This year it has been extremely bad, and has long outstayed its
usual time. Rome has been very unhealthy, and is not free now. Few
people care to be out at the bad times of sunset and sunrise, and the
streets are like a desert at night. There is a church, a very little way
outside the walls, destroyed by fire some 16 or 18 years ago, and now
restored and re-created at an enormous expense. It stands in a
wilderness. For any human creature who goes near it, or can sleep near
it, after nightfall, it might as well be at the bottom of the uppermost
cataract of the Nile. Along the whole extent of the Pontine Marshes
(which we came across the other day), no creature in Adam's likeness
lives, except the sallow people at the lonely posting-stations. I walk
out from the Coliseum through the Street of Tombs to the ruins of the
old Appian Way--pass no human being, and see no human habitation but
ruined houses from which the people have fled, and where it is Death to
sleep: these houses being three miles outside a gate of Rome at its
farthest extent. Leaving Rome by the opposite side, we travel for many
many hours over the dreary Campagna, shunned and avoided by all but the
wretched shepherds. Thirteen hours' good posting brings us to Bolsena (I
slept there once before), on the margin of a stagnant lake whence the
workpeople fly as the sun goes down--where it is a risk to go; where
from a distance we saw a mist hang on the place; where, in the
inconceivably wretched inn, no window can be opened; where our dinner
was a pale ghost of a fish with an oily omelette, and we slept in great
mouldering rooms tainted with ruined arches and heaps of dung--and
coming from which we saw no colour in the cheek of man, woman, or child
for another twenty miles. Imagine this phantom knocking at the gates of
Rome; passing them; creeping along the streets; haunting the aisles and
pillars of the churches; year by year more encroaching, and more
impossible of avoidance."
From Rome they posted to Florence, reaching it in three days and a half,
on the morning of the 20th of November; having then been out six weeks,
with only three days' rain; and in another week they were at Venice.
"The fine weather has accompanied us here," Dickens wrote on the 28th of
November, "the place of all others where it is necessary, and the city
has been a blaze of sunlight and blue sky (with an extremely clear cold
air) ever since we have been in it. If you could see it at this moment
you would never forget it. We live in the same house that I lived in
nine years ago, and have the same sitting-room--close to the Bridge of
Sighs and the Palace of the Doges. The room is at the corner of the
house, and there is a narrow street of water running round the side: so
that we have the Grand Canal before the two front windows, and this wild
little street at the corner window: into which, too, our three bedrooms
look. We established a gondola as soon as we arrived, and we slide out
of the hall on to the water twenty times a day. The gondoliers have
queer old customs that belong to their class, and some are sufficiently
disconcerting. . . . It is a point of honour with them, while they are
engaged, to be always at your disposal. Hence it is no use telling them
they may go home for an hour or two--for they won't go. They roll
themselves in shaggy capuccins, great coats with hoods, and lie down on
the stone or marble pavement until they are wanted again. So that when I
come in or go out, on foot--which can be done from this house for some
miles, over little bridges and by narrow ways--I usually walk over the
principal of my vassals, whose custom it is to snore immediately across
the doorway. Conceive the oddity of the most familiar things in this
place, from one instance: Last night we go downstairs at half-past
eight, step into the gondola, slide away on the black water, ripple and
plash swiftly along for a mile or two, land at a broad flight of steps,
and instantly walk into the most brilliant and beautiful theatre
conceivable--all silver and blue, and precious little fringes made of
glittering prisms of glass. There we sit until half-past eleven, come
out again (gondolier asleep outside the box-door), and in a moment are
on the black silent water, floating away as if there were no dry
building in the world. It stops, and in a moment we are out again, upon
the broad solid Piazza of St. Mark, brilliantly lighted with gas, very
like the Palais Royal at Paris, only far more handsome, and shining with
no end of caffès. The two old pillars and the enormous bell-tower are as
gruff and solid against the exquisite starlight as if they were a
thousand miles from the sea or any undermining water: and the front of
the cathedral, overlaid with golden mosaics and beautiful colours, is
like a thousand rainbows even in the night."
His formerly expressed notions as to art and pictures in Italy received
confirmation at this visit. "I am more than ever confirmed in my
conviction that one of the great uses of travelling is to encourage a
man to think for himself, to be bold enough always to declare without
offence that he _does_ think for himself, and to overcome the villainous
meanness of professing what other people have professed when he knows
(if he has capacity to originate an opinion) that his profession is
untrue. The intolerable nonsense against which genteel taste and
subserviency are afraid to rise, in connection with art, is astounding.
Egg's honest amazement and consternation when he saw some of the most
trumpeted things was what the Americans call 'a caution.' In the very
same hour and minute there were scores of people falling into
conventional raptures with that very poor Apollo, and passing over the
most beautiful little figures and heads in the whole Vatican because
they were not expressly set up to be worshipped. So in this place. There
are pictures by Tintoretto in Venice, more delightful and masterly than
it is possible sufficiently to express. His Assembly of the Blest I do
believe to be, take it all in all, the most wonderful and charming
picture ever painted. Your guide-book writer, representing the general
swarming of humbugs, rather patronizes Tintoretto as a man of some sort
of merit; and (bound to follow Eustace, Forsyth, and all the rest of
them) directs you, on pain of being broke for want of gentility in
appreciation, to go into ecstacies with things that have neither
imagination, nature, proportion, possibility, nor anything else in them.
You immediately obey, and tell your son to obey. He tells his son, and
he tells his, and so the world gets at three-fourths of its frauds and
miseries."
The last place visited was Turin, where the travellers arrived on the
5th of December, finding it, with a brightly shining sun, intensely cold
and freezing hard. "There are double windows to all the rooms, but the
Alpine air comes down and numbs my feet as I write (in a cap and shawl)
within six feet of the fire." There was yet something better than this
to report of that bracing Alpine air. To Dickens's remarks on the
Sardinian race, and to what he says of the exile of the noblest
Italians, the momentous events of the few following years gave striking
comment; nor could better proof be afforded of the judgment he brought
to the observation of what passed before him. The letter had in all
respects much interest and attractiveness. "This is a remarkably
agreeable place. A beautiful town, prosperous, thriving, growing
prodigiously, as Genoa is; crowded with busy inhabitants; full of noble
streets and squares. The Alps, now covered deep with snow, are close
upon it, and here and there seem almost ready to tumble into the houses.
The contrast this part of Italy presents to the rest, is amazing.
Beautifully made railroads, admirably managed; cheerful, active people;
spirit, energy, life, progress. In Milan, in every street, the noble
palace of some exile is a barrack, and dirty soldiers are lolling out of
the magnificent windows--it seems as if the whole place were being
gradually absorbed into soldiers. In Naples, something like a hundred
thousand troops. 'I knew,' I said to a certain Neapolitan Marchese there
whom I had known before, and who came to see me the night after I
arrived, 'I knew a very remarkable gentleman when I was last here; who
had never been out of his own country, but was perfectly acquainted with
English literature, and had taught himself to speak English in that
wonderful manner that no one could have known him for a foreigner; I am
very anxious to see him again, but I forget his name.'--He named him,
and his face fell directly. 'Dead?' said I.--'In exile.'--'O dear me!'
said I, 'I had looked forward to seeing him again, more than any one I
was acquainted with in the country!'--'What would you have!' says the
Marchese in a low-voice. 'He was a remarkable man--full of knowledge,
full of spirit, full of generosity. Where should he be but in exile!
Where could he be!' We said not another word about it, but I shall
always remember the short dialogue."
On the other hand there were incidents of the Austrian occupation as to
which Dickens thought the ordinary style of comment unfair; and his
closing remark on their police is well worth preserving. "I am strongly
inclined to think that our countrymen are to blame in the matter of the
Austrian vexations to travellers that have been complained of. Their
manner is so very bad, they are so extraordinarily suspicious, so
determined to be done by everybody, and give so much offence. Now, the
Austrian police are very strict, but they really know how to do
business, and they do it. And if you treat them like gentlemen, they
will always respond. When we first crossed the Austrian frontier, and
were ushered into the police office, I took off my hat. The officer
immediately took off his, and was as polite--still doing his duty,
without any compromise--as it was possible to be. When we came to
Venice, the arrangements were very strict, but were so business-like
that the smallest possible amount of inconvenience consistent with
strictness ensued. Here is the scene. A soldier has come into the
railway carriage (a saloon on the American plan) some miles off, has
touched his hat, and asked for my passport. I have given it. Soldier has
touched his hat again, and retired as from the presence of superior
officer. Alighted from carriage, we pass into a place like a
banking-house, lighted up with gas. Nobody bullies us or drives us
there, but we must go, because the road ends there. Several soldierly
clerks. One very sharp chief. My passport is brought out of an inner
room, certified to be en règle. Very sharp chief takes it, looks at it
(it is rather longer, now, than _Hamlet_), calls out--'Signor Carlo
Dickens!' 'Here I am sir.' 'Do you intend remaining long in Venice sir?'
'Probably four days sir!' 'Italian is known to you sir. You have been
in Venice before?' 'Once before sir.' 'Perhaps you remained longer then
sir?' 'No indeed; I merely came to see, and went as I came.' 'Truly sir?
Do I infer that you are going by Trieste?' 'No. I am going to Parma, and
Turin, and by Paris home.' 'A cold journey sir, I hope it may be a
pleasant one.' 'Thank you.'--He gives me one very sharp look all over,
and wishes me a very happy night. I wish _him_ a very happy night and
it's done. The thing being done at all, could not be better done, or
more politely--though I dare say if I had been sucking a gentish cane
all the time, or talking in English to my compatriots, it might not
unnaturally have been different. At Turin and at Genoa there are no such
stoppages at all; but in any other part of Italy, give me an Austrian in
preference to a native functionary. At Naples it is done in a beggarly,
shambling, bungling, tardy, vulgar way; but I am strengthened in my old
impression that Naples is one of the most odious places on the face of
the earth. The general degradation oppresses me like foul air."
CHAPTER IV.
THREE SUMMERS AT BOULOGNE.
1853, 1854, and 1856.
Boulogne--Visits to France--His First
Residence--Fishermen's Quarter--Villa des
Moulineaux--M. Beaucourt--Tenant and
Landlord--French Prices--Beaucourt's Visit to
England--Preparations for the Fair--English
Friends--Northern Camp--Visit of Prince
Albert--Grand Review--Beaucourt's
Excitement--Emperor, Prince, and
Dickens--Jack-Tars--Legerdemain in
Perfection--Conjuring by Dickens--Making Demons
of Cards--Old Residence resumed--Last of the
Camp--A Household War--Feline Foes--State of
Siege--Preparing for Christmas--Gilbert
A'Becket.
DICKENS was in Boulogne, in 1853, from the middle of June to the end of
September, and for the next three months, as we have seen, was in
Switzerland and Italy. In the following year he went again to Boulogne
in June, and stayed, after finishing _Hard Times_, until far into
October. In February of 1855 he was for a fortnight in Paris with Mr.
Wilkie Collins; not taking up his more prolonged residence there until
the winter. From November 1855 to the end of April 1856 he made the
French capital his home, working at _Little Dorrit_ during all those
months. Then, after a month's interval in Dover and London, he took up
his third summer residence in Boulogne, whither his younger children had
gone direct from Paris; and stayed until September, finishing _Little
Dorrit_ in London in the spring of 1857.
Of the first of these visits, a few lively notes of humour and character
out of his letters will tell the story sufficiently. The second and
third had points of more attractiveness. Those were the years of the
French-English alliance, of the great exposition of English paintings,
of the return of the troops from the Crimea, and of the visit of the
Prince Consort to the Emperor; such interest as Dickens took in these
several matters appearing in his letters with the usual vividness, and
the story of his continental life coming out with amusing distinctness
in the successive pictures they paint with so much warmth and colour.
Another chapter will be given to Paris. This deals only with Boulogne.
For his first summer residence, in June 1853, he had taken a house on
the high ground near the Calais road; an odd French place with the
strangest little rooms and halls, but standing in the midst of a large
garden, with wood and waterfall, a conservatory opening on a great bank
of roses, and paths and gates on one side to the ramparts, on the other
to the sea. Above all there was a capital proprietor and landlord, by
whom the cost of keeping up gardens and wood (which he called a forest)
was defrayed, while he gave his tenant the whole range of both and all
the flowers for nothing, sold him the garden produce as it was wanted,
and kept a cow on the estate to supply the family milk. "If this were
but 300 miles farther off," wrote Dickens, "how the English would rave
about it! I do assure you that there are picturesque people, and town,
and country, about this place, that quite fill up the eye and fancy. As
to the fishing people (whose dress can have changed neither in colour
nor in form for many many years), and their quarter of the town
cobweb-hung with great brown nets across the narrow up-hill streets,
they are as good as Naples, every bit." His description both of house
and landlord, of which I tested the exactness when I visited him, was in
the old pleasant vein; requiring no connection with himself to give it
interest, but, by the charm and ease with which everything picturesque
or characteristic was disclosed, placed in the domain of art.
"O the rain here yesterday!" (26th of June.) "A great sea-fog rolling
in, a strong wind blowing, and the rain coming down in torrents all day
long. . . . This house is on a great hill-side, backed up by woods of young
trees. It faces the Haute Ville with the ramparts and the unfinished
cathedral--which capital object is exactly opposite the windows. On the
slope in front, going steep down to the right, all Boulogne is piled and
jumbled about in a very picturesque manner. The view is charming--closed
in at last by the tops of swelling hills; and the door is within ten
minutes of the post-office, and within quarter of an hour of the sea.
The garden is made in terraces up the hill-side, like an Italian garden;
the top walks being in the before-mentioned woods. The best part of it
begins at the level of the house, and goes up at the back, a couple of
hundred feet perhaps. There are at present thousands of roses all about
the house, and no end of other flowers. There are five great
summer-houses, and (I think) fifteen fountains--not one of which
(according to the invariable French custom) ever plays. The house is a
doll's house of many rooms. It is one story high, with eight and thirty
steps up and down--tribune wise--to the front door: the noblest French
demonstration I have ever seen I think. It is a double house; and as
there are only four windows and a pigeon-hole to be beheld in front, you
would suppose it to contain about four rooms. Being built on the
hill-side, the top story of the house at the back--there are two stories
there--opens on the level of another garden. On the ground floor there
is a very pretty hall, almost all glass; a little dining-room opening on
a beautiful conservatory, which is also looked into through a great
transparent glass in a mirror-frame over the chimney-piece, just as in
Paxton's room at Chatsworth; a spare bed-room, two little drawing-rooms
opening into one another, the family bed-rooms, a bath-room, a glass
corridor, an open yard, and a kind of kitchen with a machinery of stoves
and boilers. Above, there are eight tiny bed-rooms all opening on one
great room in the roof, originally intended for a billiard-room. In the
basement there is an admirable kitchen with every conceivable requisite
in it, a noble cellar, first-rate man's room and pantry; coach-house,
stable, coal-store and wood-store; and in the garden is a pavilion,
containing an excellent spare bed-room on the ground floor. The
getting-up of these places, the looking-glasses, clocks, little stoves,
all manner of fittings, must be seen to be appreciated. The conservatory
is full of choice flowers and perfectly beautiful."
Then came the charm of the letter, his description of his landlord,
lightly sketched by him in print as M. Loyal-Devasseur, but here filled
in with the most attractive touches his loving hand could give. "But the
landlord--M. Beaucourt--is wonderful. Everybody here has two surnames (I
cannot conceive why), and M. Beaucourt, as he is always called, is by
rights M. Beaucourt-Mutuel. He is a portly jolly fellow with a fine open
face; lives on the hill behind, just outside the top of the garden; and
was a linen draper in the town, where he still has a shop, but is
supposed to have mortgaged his business and to be in difficulties--all
along of this place, which he has planted with his own hands; which he
cultivates all day; and which he never on any consideration speaks of
but as 'the Property.' He is extraordinarily popular in Boulogne (the
people in the shops invariably brightening up at the mention of his
name, and congratulating us on being his tenants), and really seems to
deserve it. He is such a liberal fellow that I can't bear to ask him for
anything, since he instantly supplies it whatever it is. The things he
has done in respect of unreasonable bedsteads and washing-stands, I
blush to think of. I observed the other day in one of the side
gardens--there are gardens at each side of the house too--a place where
I thought the Comic Countryman" (a name he was giving just then to his
youngest boy) "must infallibly trip over, and make a little descent of a
dozen feet. So I said, 'M. Beaucourt'--who instantly pulled off his cap
and stood bareheaded--'there are some spare pieces of wood lying by the
cow-house, if you would have the kindness to have one laid across here I
think it would be safer.' 'Ah, mon dieu sir,' said M. Beaucourt, 'it
must be iron. This is not a portion of the property where you would like
to see wood.' 'But iron is so expensive,' said I, 'and it really is not
worth while----' 'Sir, pardon me a thousand times,' said M. Beaucourt,
'it shall be iron. Assuredly and perfectly it shall be iron.' 'Then M.
Beaucourt,' said I, 'I shall be glad to pay a moiety of the cost.'
'Sir,' said M. Beaucourt, 'Never!' Then to change the subject, he slided
from his firmness and gravity into a graceful conversational tone, and
said, 'In the moonlight last night, the flowers on the property
appeared, O Heaven, to be _bathing themselves in the sky_. You like the
property?' 'M. Beaucourt,' said I, 'I am enchanted with it; I am more
than satisfied with everything.' 'And I sir,' said M. Beaucourt, laying
his cap upon his breast, and kissing his hand--'I equally!' Yesterday
two blacksmiths came for a day's work, and put up a good solid handsome
bit of iron-railing, morticed into the stone parapet. . . . If the
extraordinary things in the house defy description, the amazing
phenomena in the gardens never could have been dreamed of by anybody but
a Frenchman bent upon one idea. Besides a portrait of the house in the
dining-room, there is a plan of the property in the hall. It looks about
the size of Ireland; and to every one of the extraordinary objects,
there is a reference with some portentous name. There are fifty-one such
references, including the Cottage of Tom Thumb, the Bridge of
Austerlitz, the Bridge of Jena, the Hermitage, the Bower of the Old
Guard, the Labyrinth (I have no idea which is which); and there is
guidance to every room in the house, as if it were a place on that
stupendous scale that without such a clue you must infallibly lose your
way, and perhaps perish of starvation between bedroom and bedroom."[188]
On the 3rd of July there came a fresh trait of the good fellow of a
landlord. "Fancy what Beaucourt told me last night. When he 'conceived
the inspiration' of planting the property ten years ago, he went over to
England to buy the trees, took a small cottage in the market-gardens at
Putney, lived there three months, held a symposium every night attended
by the principal gardeners of Fulham, Putney, Kew, and Hammersmith
(which he calls Hamsterdam), and wound up with a supper at which the
market-gardeners rose, clinked their glasses, and exclaimed with one
accord (I quote him exactly) VIVE BEAUCOURT! He was a captain in the
National Guard, and Cavaignac his general. Brave Capitaine Beaucourt!
said Cavaignac, you must receive a decoration. My General, said
Beaucourt, No! It is enough for me that I have done my duty. I go to lay
the first stone of a house upon a Property I have--that house shall be
my decoration. (Regard that house!)" Addition to the picture came in a
letter of the 24th of July: with a droll glimpse of Shakespeare at the
theatre, and of the Saturday's pig-market.
"I may mention that the great Beaucourt daily changes the orthography of
this place. He has now fixed it, by having painted up outside the garden
gate, 'Entrée particulière de la Villa des Moulineaux.' On another gate
a little higher up, he has had painted 'Entrée des Ecuries de la Villa
des Moulineaux.' On another gate a little lower down (applicable to one
of the innumerable buildings in the garden), 'Entrée du Tom Pouce.' On
the highest gate of the lot, leading to his own house, 'Entrée du
Château Napoléonienne.' All of which inscriptions you will behold in
black and white when you come. I see little of him now, as, all things
being 'bien arrangées,' he is delicate of appearing. His wife has been
making a trip in the country during the last three weeks, but (as he
mentioned to me with his hat in his hand) it was necessary that he
should remain here, to be continually at the disposition of the tenant
of the Property. (The better to do this, he has had roaring dinner
parties of fifteen daily; and the old woman who milks the cows has been
fainting up the hill under vast burdens of champagne.)
"We went to the theatre last night, to see the _Midsummer Night's
Dream_--of the Opera Comique. It is a beautiful little theatre now, with
a very good company; and the nonsense of the piece was done with a sense
quite confounding in that connexion. Willy Am Shay Kes Peer; Sirzhon
Foll Stayffe; Lor Lattimeer; and that celebrated Maid of Honour to Queen
Elizabeth, Meees Oleeveeir--were the principal characters.
"Outside the old town, an army of workmen are (and have been for a week
or so, already) employed upon an immense building which I supposed might
be a Fort, or a Monastery, or a Barrack, or other something designed to
last for ages. I find it is for the annual fair, which begins on the
fifth of August and lasts a fortnight. Almost every Sunday we have a
fête, where there is dancing in the open air, and where immense men with
prodigious beards revolve on little wooden horses like Italian irons, in
what we islanders call a roundabout, by the hour together. But really
the good humour and cheerfulness are very delightful. Among the other
sights of the place, there is a pig-market every Saturday, perfectly
insupportable in its absurdity. An excited French peasant, male or
female, with a determined young pig, is the most amazing spectacle. I
saw a little Drama enacted yesterday week, the drollery of which was
perfect. _Dram. Pers._ 1. A pretty young woman with short petticoats and
trim blue stockings, riding a donkey with two baskets and a pig in each.
2. An ancient farmer in a blouse, driving four pigs, his four in hand,
with an enormous whip--and being drawn against walls and into smoking
shops by any one of the four. 3. A cart, with an old pig (manacled)
looking out of it, and terrifying six hundred and fifty young pigs in
the market by his terrific grunts. 4. Collector of Octroi in an immense
cocked hat, with a stream of young pigs running, night and day, between
his military boots and rendering accounts impossible. 5. Inimitable,
confronted by a radiation of elderly pigs, fastened each by one leg to a
bunch of stakes in the ground. 6. John Edmund Reade, poet, expressing
eternal devotion to and admiration of Landor, unconscious of approaching
pig recently escaped from barrow. 7. Priests, peasants, soldiers, &c.
&c."
He had meanwhile gathered friendly faces round him. Frank Stone went
over with his family to a house taken for him on the St. Omer road by
Dickens, who was joined in the chateau by Mr. and Mrs. Leech and Mr.
Wilkie Collins. "Leech says that when he stepped from the boat after
their stormy passage, he was received by the congregated spectators with
a distinct round of applause as by far the most intensely and
unutterably miserable looking object that had yet appeared. The laughter
was tumultuous, and he wishes his friends to know that altogether he
made an immense hit." So passed the summer months: excursions with these
friends to Amiens and Beauvais relieving the work upon his novel, and
the trip to Italy, already described, following on its completion.
In June, 1854, M. Beaucourt had again received his famous tenant, but in
another cottage or chateau (to him convertible terms) on the much
cherished property, placed on the very summit of the hill with a private
road leading out to the Column, a really pretty place, rooms larger than
in the other house, a noble sea view, everywhere nice prospects, good
garden, and plenty of sloping turf.[189] It was called the Villa du
Camp de Droite, and here Dickens stayed, as I have intimated, until the
eve of his winter residence in Paris.
The formation of the Northern Camp at Boulogne began the week after he
had finished _Hard Times_, and he watched its progress, as it increased
and extended itself along the cliffs towards Calais, with the liveliest
amusement. At first he was startled by the suddenness with which
soldiers overran the roads, became billeted in every house, made the
bridges red with their trowsers, and "sprang upon the pier like
fantastic mustard and cress when boats were expected, many of them never
having seen the sea before." But the good behaviour of the men had a
reconciling effect, and their ingenuity delighted him. The quickness
with which they raised whole streets of mud-huts, less picturesque than
the tents,[190] but (like most unpicturesque things) more comfortable,
was like an Arabian Nights' tale. "Each little street holds 144 men, and
every corner-door has the number of the street upon it as soon as it is
put up; and the postmen can fall to work as easily as in the Rue de
Rivoli at Paris." His patience was again a little tried when he found
baggage-wagons ploughing up his favourite walks, and trumpeters in twos
and threes teaching newly-recruited trumpeters in all the sylvan places,
and making the echoes hideous. But this had its amusement too. "I met
to-day a weazen sun-burnt youth from the south with such an immense
regimental shako on, that he looked like a sort of lucifer match-box,
evidently blowing his life rapidly out, under the auspices of two
magnificent creatures all hair and lungs, of such breadth across the
shoulders that I couldn't see their breast-buttons when I stood in front
of them."
The interest culminated as the visit of the Prince Consort approached
with its attendant glories of illuminations and reviews. Beaucourt's
excitement became intense. The Villa du Camp de Droite was to be a blaze
of triumph on the night of the arrival; Dickens, who had carried over
with him the meteor flag of England and set it streaming over a haystack
in his field,[191] now hoisted the French colours over the British Jack
in honour of the national alliance; the Emperor was to subside to the
station of a general officer, so that all the rejoicings should be in
honour of the Prince; and there was to be a review in the open country
near Wimereux, when "at one stage of the maneuvres (I am too excited to
spell the word but you know what I mean)" the whole hundred thousand men
in the camp of the North were to be placed before the Prince's eyes, to
show him what a division of the French army might be. "I believe
everything I hear," said Dickens. It was the state of mind of Hood's
country gentleman after the fire at the Houses of Parliament.
"Beaucourt, as one of the town council, receives summonses to turn out
and debate about something, or receive somebody, every five minutes.
Whenever I look out of window, or go to the door, I see an immense black
object at Beaucourt's porch like a boat set up on end in the air with a
pair of white trowsers below it. This is the cocked hat of an official
Huissier, newly arrived with a summons, whose head is thrown back as he
is in the act of drinking Beaucourt's wine." The day came at last, and
all Boulogne turned out for its holiday; "but I" Dickens wrote, "had by
this cooled down a little, and, reserving myself for the illuminations,
I abandoned the great men and set off upon my usual country walk. See my
reward. Coming home by the Calais road, covered with dust, I suddenly
find myself face to face with Albert and Napoleon, jogging along in the
pleasantest way, a little in front, talking extremely loud about the
view, and attended by a brilliant staff of some sixty or seventy
horsemen, with a couple of our royal grooms with their red coats riding
oddly enough in the midst of the magnates. I took off my wide-awake
without stopping to stare, whereupon the Emperor pulled off his cocked
hat; and Albert (seeing, I suppose, that it was an Englishman) pulled
off his. Then we went our several ways. The Emperor is broader across
the chest than in the old times when we used to see him so often at
Gore-house, and stoops more in the shoulders. Indeed his carriage
thereabouts is like Fonblanque's."[192] The town he described as "one
great flag" for the rest of the visit; and to the success of the
illuminations he contributed largely himself by leading off splendidly
with a hundred and twenty wax candles blazing in his seventeen front
windows, and visible from that great height over all the place. "On the
first eruption Beaucourt _danced and screamed_ on the grass before the
door; and when he was more composed, set off with Madame Beaucourt to
look at the house from every possible quarter, and, he said, collect the
suffrages of his compatriots."
Their suffrages seem to have gone, however, mainly in another direction.
"It was wonderful," Dickens wrote, "to behold about the streets the
small French soldiers of the line seizing our Guards by the hand and
embracing them. It was wonderful, too, to behold the English sailors in
the town, shaking hands with everybody and generally patronizing
everything. When the people could not get hold of either a soldier or a
sailor, they rejoiced in the royal grooms, and embraced _them_. I don't
think the Boulogne people were surprised by anything so much, as by the
three cheers the crew of the yacht gave when the Emperor went aboard to
lunch. The prodigious volume of them, and the precision, and the
circumstance that no man was left straggling on his own account either
before or afterwards, seemed to strike the general mind with amazement.
Beaucourt said it was _like boxing_." That was written on the 10th of
September; but in a very few days Dickens was unwillingly convinced
that whatever the friendly disposition to England might be, the war with
Russia was decidedly unpopular. He was present when the false report of
the taking of Sebastopol reached the Emperor and Empress. "I was at the
Review" (8th of October) "yesterday week, very near the Emperor and
Empress, when the taking of Sebastopol was announced. It was a
magnificent show on a magnificent day; and if any circumstance could
make it special, the arrival of the telegraphic despatch would be the
culminating point one might suppose. It quite disturbed and mortified me
to find how faintly, feebly, miserably, the men responded to the call of
the officers to cheer, as each regiment passed by. Fifty excited
Englishmen would make a greater sign and sound than a thousand of these
men do. . . . The Empress was very pretty, and her slight figure sat
capitally on her grey horse. When the Emperor gave her the despatch to
read, she flushed and fired up in a very pleasant way, and kissed it
with as natural an impulse as one could desire to see."
On the night of that day Dickens went up to see a play acted at a café
at the camp, and found himself one of an audience composed wholly of
officers and men, with only four ladies among them, officers' wives. The
steady, working, sensible faces all about him told their own story; "and
as to kindness and consideration towards the poor actors, it was real
benevolence." Another attraction at the camp was a conjuror, who had
been called to exhibit twice before the imperial party, and whom Dickens
always afterwards referred to as the most consummate master of
legerdemain he had seen. Nor was he a mean authority as to this, being
himself, with his tools at hand, a capital conjuror;[193] but the
Frenchman scorned help, stood among the company without any sort of
apparatus, and, by the mere force of sleight of hand and an astonishing
memory, performed feats having no likeness to anything Dickens had ever
seen done, and totally inexplicable to his most vigilant reflection. "So
far as I know, a perfectly original genius, and that puts any sort of
knowledge of legerdemain, such as I supposed that I possessed, at utter
defiance." The account he gave dealt with two exploits only, the easiest
to describe, and, not being with cards, not the most remarkable; for he
would also say of this Frenchman that he transformed cards into very
demons. He never saw a human hand touch them in the same way, fling them
about so amazingly, or change them in his, one's own, or another's hand,
with a skill so impossible to follow.
"You are to observe that he was _with the company_, not in the least
removed from them; and that we occupied the front row. He brought in
some writing paper with him when he entered, and a black-lead pencil;
and he wrote some words on half-sheets of paper. One of these
half-sheets he folded into two, and gave to Catherine to hold. Madame,
he says aloud, will you think of any class of objects? I have done
so.--Of what class, Madame? Animals.--Will you think of a particular
animal, Madame? I have done so.--Of what animal? The Lion.--Will you
think of another class of objects, Madame? I have done so.--Of what
class? Flowers.--The particular flower? The Rose.--Will you open the
paper you hold in your hand? She opened it, and there was neatly and
plainly written in pencil--_The Lion._ _The Rose._ Nothing whatever had
led up to these words, and they were the most distant conceivable from
Catherine's thoughts when she entered the room. He had several common
school-slates about a foot square. He took one of these to a
field-officer from the camp, decoré and what not, who sat about six from
us, with a grave saturnine friend next him. My General, says he, will
you write a name on this slate, after your friend has done so? Don't
show it to me. The friend wrote a name, and the General wrote a name.
The conjuror took the slate rapidly from the officer, threw it violently
down on the ground with its written side to the floor, and asked the
officer to put his foot upon it and keep it there: which he did. The
conjuror considered for about a minute, looking devilish hard at the
General.--My General, says he, your friend wrote Dagobert, upon the
slate under your foot. The friend admits it.--And you, my General, wrote
Nicholas. General admits it, and everybody laughs and applauds.--My
General, will you excuse me, if I change that name into a name
expressive of the power of a great nation, which, in happy alliance
with the gallantry and spirit of France will shake that name to its
centre? Certainly I will excuse it.--My General, take up the slate and
read. General reads: DAGOBERT, VICTORIA. The first in his friend's
writing; the second in a new hand. I never saw anything in the least
like this; or at all approaching to the absolute certainty, the
familiarity, quickness, absence of all machinery, and actual
face-to-face, hand-to-hand fairness between the conjuror and the
audience, with which it was done. I have not the slightest idea of the
secret.--One more. He was blinded with several table napkins, and then a
great cloth was bodily thrown over them and his head too, so that his
voice sounded as if he were under a bed. Perhaps half a dozen dates were
written on a slate. He takes the slate in his hand, and throws it
violently down on the floor as before, remains silent a minute, seems to
become agitated, and bursts out thus: 'What is this I see? A great city,
but of narrow streets and old-fashioned houses, many of which are of
wood, resolving itself into ruins! How is it falling into ruins? Hark! I
hear the crackling of a great conflagration, and, looking up, I behold a
vast cloud of flame and smoke. The ground is covered with hot cinders
too, and people are flying into the fields and endeavouring to save
their goods. This great fire, this great wind, this roaring noise! This
is the great fire of London, and the first date upon the slate must be
one, six, six, six--the year in which it happened!' And so on with all
the other dates. There! Now, if you will take a cab and impart these
mysteries to Rogers, I shall be very glad to have his opinion of them."
Rogers had taxed our credulity with some wonderful clairvoyant
experiences of his own in Paris to which here was a parallel at last!
When leaving Paris for his third visit to Boulogne, at the beginning of
June 1856, he had not written a word of the ninth number of his new
book, and did not expect for another month to "see land from the running
sea of _Little Dorrit_." He had resumed the house he first occupied, the
cottage or villa "des Moulineaux," and after dawdling about his garden
for a few days with surprising industry in a French farmer garb of blue
blouse, leathern belt, and military cap, which he had mounted as "the
only one for complete comfort," he wrote to me that he was getting "Now
to work again--to work! The story lies before me, I hope, strong and
clear. Not to be easily told; but nothing of that sort IS to be easily
done that _I_ know of." At work it became his habit to sit late, and
then, putting off his usual walk until night, to lie down among the
roses reading until after tea ("middle-aged Love in a blouse and belt"),
when he went down to the pier. "The said pier at evening is a phase of
the place we never see, and which I hardly knew. But I never did behold
such specimens of the youth of my country, male and female, as pervade
that place. They are really, in their vulgarity and insolence, quite
disheartening. One is so fearfully ashamed of them, and they contrast so
very unfavourably with the natives." Mr. Wilkie Collins was again his
companion in the summer weeks, and the presence of Jerrold for the
greater part of the time added much to his enjoyment.
The last of the camp was now at hand. It had only a battalion of men in
it, and a few days would see them out. At first there was horrible
weather, "storms of wind, rushes of rain, heavy squalls, cold airs, sea
fogs, banging shutters, flapping doors, and beaten down rose-trees by
the hundred; but then came a delightful week among the corn fields and
bean fields, and afterwards the end. It looks very singular and very
miserable. The soil being sand, and the grass having been trodden away
these two years, the wind from the sea carries the sand into the chinks
and ledges of all the doors and windows, and chokes them;--just as if
they belonged to Arab huts in the desert. A number of the
non-commissioned officers made turf-couches outside their huts, and
there were turf orchestras for the bands to play in; all of which are
fast getting sanded over in a most Egyptian manner. The Fair is on,
under the walls of the haute ville over the way. At one popular show,
the Malakhoff is taken every half-hour between 4 and 11. Bouncing
explosions announce every triumph of the French arms (the English have
nothing to do with it); and in the intervals a man outside blows a
railway whistle--straight into the dining-room. Do you know that the
French soldiers call the English medal 'The Salvage Medal'--meaning that
they got it for saving the English army? I don't suppose there are a
thousand people in all France who believe that we did anything but get
rescued by the French. And I am confident that the no-result of our
precious Chelsea enquiry has wonderfully strengthened this conviction.
Nobody at home has yet any adequate idea, I am deplorably sure, of what
the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office have done for us. But
whenever we get into war again, the people will begin to find out."
His own household had got into a small war already, of which the
commander-in-chief was his man-servant "French," the bulk of the forces
engaged being his children, and the invaders two cats. Business brought
him to London on the hostilities breaking out, and on his return after a
few days the story of the war was told. "Dick," it should be said, was a
canary very dear both to Dickens and his eldest daughter, who had so
tamed to her loving hand its wild little heart that it was become the
most docile of companions.[194] "The only thing new in this garden is
that war is raging against two particularly tigerish and fearful cats
(from the mill, I suppose), which are always glaring in dark corners,
after our wonderful little Dick. Keeping the house open at all points,
it is impossible to shut them out, and they hide themselves in the most
terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and
tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings.
Hereupon, French borrows Beaucourt's gun, loads the same to the muzzle,
discharges it twice in vain and throws himself over with the recoil,
exactly like a clown. But at last (while I was in town) he aims at the
more amiable cat of the two, and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably
elated by this victory, he is now engaged from morning to night in
hiding behind bushes to get aim at the other. He does nothing else
whatever. All the boys encourage him and watch for the enemy--on whose
appearance they give an alarm which immediately serves as a warning to
the creature, who runs away. They are at this moment (ready dressed for
church) all lying on their stomachs in various parts of the garden.
Horrible whistles give notice to the gun what point it is to approach. I
am afraid to go out, lest I should be shot. Mr. Plornish says his
prayers at night in a whisper, lest the cat should overhear him and take
offence. The tradesmen cry out as they come up the avenue, 'Me voici!
C'est moi--boulanger--ne tirez pas, Monsieur Franche!' It is like living
in a state of siege; and the wonderful manner in which the cat preserves
the character of being the only person not much put out by the intensity
of this monomania, is most ridiculous." (6th of July.) . . . "About four
pounds of powder and half a ton of shot have been (13th of July) fired
off at the cat (and the public in general) during the week. The finest
thing is that immediately after I have heard the noble sportsman blazing
away at her in the garden in front, I look out of my room door into the
drawing-room, and am pretty sure to see her coming in after the birds,
in the calmest manner, by the back window. Intelligence has been brought
to me from a source on which I can rely, that French has newly conceived
the atrocious project of tempting her into the coach-house by meat and
kindness, and there, from an elevated portmanteau, blowing her head off.
This I mean sternly to interdict, and to do so to-day as a work of
piety."
Besides the graver work which Mr. Wilkie Collins and himself were busy
with, in these months, and by which _Household Words_ mainly was to
profit, some lighter matters occupied the leisure of both. There were
to be, at Christmas, theatricals again at Tavistock House; in which the
children, with the help of their father and other friends, were to
follow up the success of the _Lighthouse_ by again acquitting themselves
as grown-up actors; and Mr. Collins was busy preparing for them a new
drama to be called _The Frozen Deep_, while Dickens was sketching a
farce for Mr. Lemon to fill in. But this pleasant employment had sudden
and sad interruption.
An epidemic broke out in the town, affecting the children of several
families known to Dickens, among them that of his friend Mr. Gilbert
A'Becket; who, upon arriving from Paris, and finding a favourite little
son stricken dangerously, sank himself under an illness from which he
had been suffering, and died two days after the boy. "He had for three
days shown symptoms of rallying, and we had some hope of his recovery;
but he sank and died, and never even knew that the child had gone before
him. A sad, sad story." Dickens meanwhile had sent his own children home
with his wife, and the rest soon followed. Poor M. Beaucourt was
inconsolable. "The desolation of the place is wretched. When Mamey and
Katey went, Beaucourt came in and wept. He really is almost
broken-hearted about it. He had planted all manner of flowers for next
month, and has thrown down the spade and left off weeding the garden, so
that it looks something like a dreary bird-cage with all manner of
grasses and chickweeds sticking through the bars and lying in the sand.
'Such a loss too,' he says, 'for Monsieur Dickens!' Then he looks in at
the kitchen window (which seems to be his only relief), and sighs
himself up the hill home."[195]
The interval of residence in Paris between these two last visits to
Boulogne is now to be described.
FOOTNOTES:
[188] Prices are reported in one of the letters; and, considering what
they have been since, the touch of disappointment hinted at may raise a
smile. "Provisions are scarcely as cheap as I expected, though very
different from London: besides which, a pound weight here, is a pound
and a quarter English. So that meat at 7_d._ a pound, is actually a
fourth less. A capital dish of asparagus costs us about fivepence; a
fowl, one and threepence; a duck, a few halfpence more; a dish of fish,
about a shilling. The very best wine at tenpence that I ever drank--I
used to get it very good for the same money in Genoa, but not so good.
The common people very engaging and obliging."
[189] Besides the old friends before named, Thackeray and his family
were here in the early weeks, living "in a melancholy but very good
chateau on the Paris road, where their landlord (a Baron) has supplied
them, T. tells me, with one milk-jug as the entire crockery of the
establishment." Our friend soon tired of this, going off to Spa, and on
his return, after ascending the hill to smoke a farewell cigar with
Dickens, left for London and Scotland in October.
[190] Another of his letters questioned even the picturesqueness a
little, for he discovered that on a sunny day the white tents, seen from
a distance, looked exactly like an immense washing establishment with
all the linen put out to dry.
[191] "Whence it can be seen for miles and miles, to the glory of
England and the joy of Beaucourt."
[192] The picture had changed drearily in less than a year and a half,
when (17th of Feb. 1856) Dickens thus wrote from Paris. "I suppose
mortal man out of bed never looked so ill and worn as the Emperor does
just now. He passed close by me on horseback, as I was coming in at the
door on Friday, and I never saw so haggard a face. Some English saluted
him, and he lifted his hand to his hat as slowly, painfully, and
laboriously, as if his arm were made of lead. I think he _must_ be in
pain."
[193] I permit myself to quote from the bill of one of his
entertainments in the old merry days at Bonchurch (ii. 425-434), of
course drawn up by himself, whom it describes as "The Unparalleled
Necromancer RHIA RHAMA RHOOS, educated cabalistically in the Orange
Groves of Salamanca and the Ocean Caves of Alum Bay," some of whose
proposed wonders it thus prefigures:
THE LEAPING CARD WONDER.
Two Cards being drawn from the Pack by two of
the company, and placed, with the Pack, in the
Necromancer's box, will leap forth at the
command of any lady of not less than eight, or
more than eighty, years of age.
*** _This wonder is the result of nine years'
seclusion in the mines of Russia._
THE PYRAMID WONDER.
A shilling being lent to the Necromancer by any
gentleman of not less than twelve months, or
more than one hundred years, of age, and
carefully marked by the said gentleman, will
disappear from within a brazen box at the word
of command, and pass through the hearts of an
infinity of boxes, which will afterwards build
themselves into pyramids and sink into a small
mahogany box, at the Necromancer's bidding.
*** _Five thousand guineas were paid for the
acquisition of this wonder, to a Chinese
Mandarin, who died of grief immediately after
parting with the secret._
THE CONFLAGRATION WONDER.
A Card being drawn from the Pack by any lady,
not under a direct and positive promise of
marriage, will be immediately named by the
Necromancer, destroyed by fire, and reproduced
from its own ashes.
*** _An annuity of one thousand pounds has been
offered to the Necromancer by the Directors of
the Sun Fire Office for the secret of this
wonder--and refused!!!_
THE LOAF OF BREAD WONDER.
The watch of any truly prepossessing lady, of
any age, single or married, being locked by the
Necromancer in a strong box, will fly at the
word of command from within that box into the
heart of an ordinary half-quartern loaf, whence
it shall be cut out in the presence of the
whole company, whose cries of astonishment will
be audible at a distance of some miles.
*** _Ten years in the Plains of Tartary were
devoted to the study of this wonder._
THE TRAVELLING DOLL WONDER.
The travelling doll is composed of solid wood
throughout, but, by putting on a travelling
dress of the simplest construction, becomes
invisible, performs enormous journeys in half a
minute, and passes from visibility to
invisibility with an expedition so astonishing
that no eye can follow its transformations.
*** _The Necromancer's attendant usually faints
on beholding this wonder, and is only to be
revived by the administration of brandy and
water._
THE PUDDING WONDER.
The company having agreed among themselves to
offer to the Necromancer, by way of loan, the
hat of any gentleman whose head has arrived at
maturity of size, the Necromancer, without
removing that hat for an instant from before
the eyes of the delighted company, will light a
fire in it, make a plum pudding in his magic
saucepan, boil it over the said fire, produce
it in two minutes, thoroughly done, cut it, and
dispense it in portions to the whole company,
for their consumption then and there; returning
the hat at last, wholly uninjured by fire, to
its lawful owner.
*** _The extreme liberality of this wonder
awakening the jealousy of the beneficent
Austrian Government, when exhibited in Milan,
the Necromancer had the honour to be seized,
and confined for five years in the fortress of
that city._
[194] Dick died at Gadshill in 1866, in the sixteenth year of his age,
and was honoured with a small tomb and epitaph.
[195] I cannot take leave of M. Beaucourt without saying that I am
necessarily silent as to the most touching traits recorded of him by
Dickens, because they refer to the generosity shown by him to an English
family in occupation of another of his houses, in connection with whom
his losses must have been considerable, but for whom he had nothing but
help and sympathy. Replying to some questions about them, put by Dickens
one day, he had only enlarged on their sacrifices and self-denials. "Ah
that family, unfortunate! 'And you, Monsieur Beaucourt,' I said to him,
'you are unfortunate too, God knows!' Upon which he said in the
pleasantest way in the world, Ah, Monsieur Dickens, thank you, don't
speak of it!--And backed himself down the avenue with his cap in his
hand, as if he were going to back himself straight into the evening
star, without the ceremony of dying first. I never did see such a
gentle, kind heart."
CHAPTER V.
RESIDENCE IN PARIS.
1855-1856.
Actors and Dramas--Criticism of Frédéric
Lemaitre--Increase of Celebrity--French
Translation of Dickens--Conventionalities of
the Théâtre Français--_Paradise Lost_ at the
Ambigu--Profane Nonsense--French _As You Like
It_--Story of a French Drama--Auber and Queen
Victoria--Robinson Crusoe--A Compliment and its
Result--Madame Scribe--Ristori--Viardot in
Orphée--Madame Dudevant at the
Viardots--Banquet at Girardin's--National and
Personal Compliment--Second Banquet--The Bourse
and its Victims--Entry of Troops from
Crimea--Paris illuminated--Streets on New
Year's Day--Results of Imperial
Improvement--English and French Art--French and
English Nature--Sitting to Ary Scheffer--A
Reading in Scheffer's Studio--Scheffer's
Opinion of the Likeness--A Duchess murdered--A
Chance Encounter, and what came of it.
IN Paris Dickens's life was passed among artists, and in the exercise of
his own art. His associates were writers, painters, actors, or
musicians, and when he wanted relief from any strain of work he found it
at the theatre. The years since his last residence in the great city had
made him better known, and the increased attentions pleased him. He had
to help in preparing for a translation of his books into French; and
this, with continued labour at the story he had in hand, occupied him as
long as he remained. It will be all best told by extracts from his
letters; in which the people he met, the theatres he visited, and the
incidents, public or private, that seemed to him worthy of mention,
reappear with the old force and liveliness.
Nor is anything better worth preserving from them than choice bits of
description of an actor or a drama, for this perishable enjoyment has
only so much as may survive out of such recollections to witness for
itself to another generation; and an unusually high place may be
challenged for the subtlety and delicacy of what is said in these
letters of things theatrical, when the writer was especially attracted
by a performer or a play. Frédéric Lemaitre has never had a higher
tribute than Dickens paid to him during his few days' earlier stay at
Paris in the spring.
"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw, I saw last night at the
Ambigu. They have revived that old piece, once immensely popular in
London under the name of _Thirty Years of a Gambler's Life_. Old
Lemaitre plays his famous character,[196] and never did I see anything,
in art, so exaltedly horrible and awful. In the earlier acts he was so
well made up, and so light and active, that he really looked
sufficiently young. But in the last two, when he had grown old and
miserable, he did the finest things, I really believe, that are within
the power of acting. Two or three times, a great cry of horror went all
round the house. When he met, in the inn yard, the traveller whom he
murders, and first saw his money, the manner in which the crime came
into his head--and eyes--was as truthful as it was terrific. This
traveller, being a good fellow, gives him wine. You should see the dim
remembrance of his better days that comes over him as he takes the
glass, and in a strange dazed way makes as if he were going to touch the
other man's, or do some airy thing with it; and then stops and flings
the contents down his hot throat, as if he were pouring it into a
lime-kiln. But this was nothing to what follows after he has done the
murder, and comes home, with a basket of provisions, a ragged pocket
full of money, and a badly-washed bloody right hand--which his little
girl finds out. After the child asked him if he had hurt his hand, his
going aside, turning himself round, and looking over all his clothes for
spots, was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really scared one. He
called for wine, and the sickness that came upon him when he saw the
colour, was one of the things that brought out the curious cry I have
spoken of, from the audience. Then he fell into a sort of bloody mist,
and went on to the end groping about, with no mind for anything, except
making his fortune by staking this money, and a faint dull kind of love
for the child. It is quite impossible to satisfy one's-self by saying
enough of such a magnificent performance. I have never seen him come
near its finest points, in anything else. He said two things in a way
that alone would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his
wife, when he has exultingly shewn her the money and she has asked him
how he got it--'I found it'--and the other to his old companion and
tempter, when he charged him with having killed that traveller, and he
suddenly went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out,
'It wasn't I who murdered him--it was Misery!' And such a dress; such a
face; and, above all, such an extraordinary guilty wicked thing as he
made of a knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick, from the
moment when the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write
pages about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. He got
half-boastful of that walking-staff to himself, and half-afraid of it;
and didn't know whether to be grimly pleased that it had the jagged end,
or to hate it and be horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the
inn-yard, drinking with the traveller; and this horrible stick got
between them like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers the uses he
could put the money to."
That was at the close of February. In October, Dickens's longer
residence began. He betook himself with his family, after two
unsuccessful attempts in the new region of the Rue Balzac and Rue Lord
Byron, to an apartment in the Avenue des Champs Elysées. Over him was an
English bachelor with an establishment consisting of an English groom
and five English horses. "The concierge and his wife told us that his
name was _Six_, which drove me nearly mad until we discovered it to be
_Sykes_." The situation was a good one, very cheerful for himself and
with amusement for his children. It was a quarter of a mile above
Franconi's on the other side of the way, and within a door or two of the
Jardin d'Hiver. The Exposition was just below; the Barrière de l'Etoile
from a quarter to half a mile below; and all Paris, including Emperor
and Empress coming from and returning to St. Cloud, thronged past the
windows in open carriages or on horseback, all day long. Now it was he
found himself more of a celebrity than when he had wintered in the city
nine years before;[197] the feuilleton of the _Moniteur_ was filled
daily with a translation of _Chuzzlewit_; and he had soon to consider
the proposal I have named, to publish in French his collected novels and
tales.[198] Before he had been a week in his new abode, Ary Scheffer,
"a frank and noble fellow," had made his acquaintance; introduced him to
several distinguished Frenchmen; and expressed the wish to paint him. To
Scheffer was also due an advantage obtained for my friend's two little
daughters of which they may always keep the memory with pride. "Mamey
and Katey are learning Italian, and their master is Manin of Venetian
fame, the best and the noblest of those unhappy gentlemen. He came here
with a wife and a beloved daughter, and they are both dead. Scheffer
made him known to me, and has been, I understand, wonderfully generous
and good to him." Nor may I omit to state the enjoyment afforded him,
not only by the presence in Paris during the winter of Mr. Wilkie
Collins and of Mr. and Mrs. White of Bonchurch, but by the many friends
from England whom the Art Exposition brought over. Sir Alexander
Cockburn was one of these; Edwin Landseer, Charles Robert Leslie, and
William Boxall, were others. Macready left his retreat at Sherborne to
make him a visit of several days. Thackeray went to and fro all the
time between London and his mother's house, also in the Champs Elysées,
where his daughters were. And Paris for the time was the home of Robert
Lytton, who belonged to the Embassy, of the Sartorises, of the
Brownings, and of others whom Dickens liked and cared for.
At the first play he went to, the performance was stopped while the news
of the last Crimean engagement, just issued in a supplement to the
_Moniteur_, was read from the stage. "It made not the faintest effect
upon the audience; and even the hired claqueurs, who had been absurdly
loud during the piece, seemed to consider the war not at all within
their contract, and were as stagnant as ditch-water. The theatre was
full. It is quite impossible to see such apathy, and suppose the war to
be popular, whatever may be asserted to the contrary." The day before,
he had met the Emperor and the King of Sardinia in the streets, "and, as
usual, no man touching his hat, and very very few so much as looking
round."
The success of a most agreeable little piece by our old friend Regnier
took him next to the Français, where Plessy's acting enchanted him. "Of
course the interest of it turns upon a flawed piece of living china
(_that_ seems to be positively essential), but, as in most of these
cases, if you will accept the position in which you find the people, you
have nothing more to bother your morality about." The theatre in the Rue
Richelieu, however, was not generally his favourite resort. He used to
talk of it whimsically as a kind of tomb, where you went, as the Eastern
people did in the stories, to think of your unsuccessful loves and dead
relations. "There is a dreary classicality at that establishment
calculated to freeze the marrow. Between ourselves, even one's best
friends there are at times very aggravating. One tires of seeing a man,
through any number of acts, remembering everything by patting his
forehead with the flat of his hand, jerking out sentences by shaking
himself, and piling them up in pyramids over his head with his right
forefinger. And they have a generic small comedy-piece, where you see
two sofas and three little tables, to which a man enters with his hat
on, to talk to another man--and in respect of which you know exactly
when he will get up from one sofa to sit on the other, and take his hat
off one table to put it upon the other--which strikes one quite as
ludicrously as a good farce.[199]. . . There seems to be a good piece at
the Vaudeville, on the idea of the _Town and Country Mouse_. It is too
respectable and inoffensive for me to-night, but I hope to see it before
I leave . . . I have a horrible idea of making friends with Franconi, and
sauntering when I am at work into their sawdust green-room."
At a theatre of a yet heavier school than the Français he had a drearier
experience. "On Wednesday we went to the Odéon to see a new piece, in
four acts and in verse, called _Michel Cervantes_. I suppose such an
infernal dose of ditch water never was concocted. But there were certain
passages, describing the suppression of public opinion in Madrid, which
were received with a shout of savage application to France that made one
stare again! And once more, here again, at every pause, steady, compact,
regular as military drums, the Ça Ira!" On another night, even at the
Porte St. Martin, drawn there doubtless by the attraction of repulsion,
he supped full with the horrors of classicality at a performance of
_Orestes_ versified by Alexandre Dumas. "Nothing have I ever seen so
weighty and so ridiculous. If I had not already learnt to tremble at the
sight of classic drapery on the human form, I should have plumbed the
utmost depths of terrified boredom in this achievement. The chorus is
not preserved otherwise than that bits of it are taken out for
characters to speak. It is really so bad as to be almost good. Some of
the Frenchified classical anguish struck me as so unspeakably ridiculous
that it puts me on the broad grin as I write."
At the same theatre, in the early spring, he had a somewhat livelier
entertainment. "I was at the Porte St. Martin last night, where there is
a rather good melodrama called _Sang Melé_, in which one of the
characters is an English Lord--Lord William Falkland--who is called
throughout the piece Milor Williams Fack Lorn, and is a hundred times
described by others and described by himself as Williams. He is
admirably played; but two English travelling ladies are beyond
expression ridiculous, and there is something positively vicious in
their utter want of truth. One 'set,' where the action of a whole act is
supposed to take place in the great wooden verandah of a Swiss hotel
overhanging a mountain ravine, is the best piece of stage carpentering I
have seen in France. Next week we are to have at the Ambigu _Paradise
Lost_, with the murder of Abel, and the Deluge. The wildest rumours are
afloat as to the un-dressing of our first parents." Anticipation far
outdoes a reality of this kind; and at the fever-pitch to which rumours
raised it here, Dickens might vainly have attempted to get admission on
the first night, if Mr. Webster, the English manager and comedian, had
not obtained a ticket for him. He went with Mr. Wilkie Collins. "We were
rung in (out of the café below the Ambigu) at 8, and the play was over
at half-past 1; the waits between the acts being very much longer than
the acts themselves. The house was crammed to excess in every part, and
the galleries awful with Blouses, who again, during the whole of the
waits, beat with the regularity of military drums the revolutionary tune
of famous memory--Ça Ira! The play is a compound of _Paradise Lost_ and
Byron's _Cain_; and some of the controversies between the archangel and
the devil, when the celestial power argues with the infernal in
conversational French, as 'Eh bien! Satan, crois-tu donc que notre
Seigneur t'aurait exposé aux tourments que t'endures à présent, sans
avoir prévu,' &c. &c. are very ridiculous. All the supernatural
personages are alarmingly natural (as theatre nature goes), and walk
about in the stupidest way. Which has occasioned Collins and myself to
institute a perquisition whether the French ever have shown any kind of
idea of the supernatural; and to decide this rather in the negative. The
people are very well dressed, and Eve very modestly. All Paris and the
provinces had been ransacked for a woman who had brown hair that would
fall to the calves of her legs--and she was found at last at the Odéon.
There was nothing attractive until the 4th act, when there was a pretty
good scene of the children of Cain dancing in, and desecrating, a
temple, while Abel and his family were hammering hard at the Ark,
outside; in all the pauses of the revel. The Deluge in the fifth act was
up to about the mark of a drowning scene at the Adelphi; but it had one
new feature. When the rain ceased, and the ark drove in on the great
expanse of water, then lying waveless as the mists cleared and the sun
broke out, numbers of bodies drifted up and down. These were all real
men and boys, each separate, on a new kind of horizontal sloat. They
looked horrible and real. Altogether, a merely dull business; but I dare
say it will go for a long while."
A piece of honest farce is a relief from these profane absurdities. "An
uncommonly droll piece with an original comic idea in it has been in
course of representation here. It is called _Les Cheveux de ma Femme_. A
man who is dotingly fond of his wife, and who wishes to know whether she
loved anybody else before they were married, cuts off a lock of her hair
by stealth, and takes it to a great mesmeriser, who submits it to a
clairvoyante who never was wrong. It is discovered that the owner of
this hair has been up to the most frightful dissipations, insomuch that
the clairvoyante can't mention half of them. The distracted husband goes
home to reproach his wife, and she then reveals that she wears a wig,
and takes it off."
The last piece he went to see before leaving Paris was a French version
of _As You Like It_; but he found two acts of it to be more than enough.
"In _Comme il vous Plaira_ nobody had anything to do but to sit down as
often as possible on as many stones and trunks of trees as possible.
When I had seen Jacques seat himself on 17 roots of trees, and 25 grey
stones, which was at the end of the second act, I came away." Only one
more sketch taken in a theatre, and perhaps the best, I will give from
these letters. It simply tells us what is necessary to understand a
particular "tag" to a play, but it is related so prettily that the thing
it celebrates could not have a nicer effect than is produced by this
account of it. The play in question, _Mémoires du Diable_, and another
piece of enchanting interest, the _Médecin des Enfants_,[200] were his
favourites among all he saw at this time. "As I have no news, I may as
well tell you about the tag that I thought so pretty to the _Mémoires
du Diable_; in which piece by the way, there is a most admirable part,
most admirably played, in which a man says merely 'Yes' or 'No' all
through the piece, until the last scene. A certain M. Robin has got hold
of the papers of a deceased lawyer, concerning a certain estate which
has been swindled away from its rightful owner, a Baron's widow, into
other hands. They disclose so much roguery that he binds them up into a
volume lettered 'Mémoires du Diable.' The knowledge he derives from
these papers not only enables him to unmask the hypocrites all through
the piece (in an excellent manner), but induces him to propose to the
Baroness that if he restores to her her estate and good name--for even
her marriage to the deceased Baron is denied--she shall give him her
daughter in marriage. The daughter herself, on hearing the offer,
accepts it; and a part of the plot is, her going to a masked ball, to
which he goes as the Devil, to see how she likes him (when she finds, of
course, that she likes him very much). The country people about the
Château in dispute, suppose him to be really the Devil, because of his
strange knowledge, and his strange comings and goings; and he, being
with this girl in one of its old rooms, in the beginning of the 3rd act,
shews her a little coffer on the table with a bell in it. 'They
suppose,' he tells her, 'that whenever this bell is rung, I appear and
obey the summons. Very ignorant, isn't it? But, if you ever want me
particularly--very particularly--ring the little bell and try.' The plot
proceeds to its development. The wrong-doers are exposed; the missing
document, proving the marriage, is found; everything is finished; they
are all on the stage; and M. Robin hands the paper to the Baroness. 'You
are reinstated in your rights, Madame; you are happy; I will not hold
you to a compact made when you didn't know me; I release you and your
fair daughter; the pleasure of doing what I have done, is my sufficient
reward; I kiss your hand and take my leave. Farewell!' He backs himself
courteously out; the piece seems concluded, everybody wonders, the girl
(little Mdlle. Luther) stands amazed; when she suddenly remembers the
little bell. In the prettiest way possible, she runs to the coffer on
the table, takes out the little bell, rings it, and he comes rushing
back and folds her to his heart. I never saw a prettier thing in my
life. It made me laugh in that most delightful of ways, with the tears
in my eyes; so that I can never forget it, and must go and see it
again."
But great as was the pleasure thus derived from the theatre, he was, in
the matter of social intercourse, even more indebted to distinguished
men connected with it by authorship or acting. At Scribe's he was
entertained frequently; and "very handsome and pleasant" was his account
of the dinners, as of all the belongings, of the prolific dramatist--a
charming place in Paris, a fine estate in the country, capital carriage,
handsome pair of horses, "all made, as he says, by his pen." One of the
guests the first evening was Auber, "a stolid little elderly man, rather
petulant in manner," who told Dickens he had once lived "at Stock
Noonton" (Stoke Newington) to study English, but had forgotten it all.
"Louis Philippe had invited him to meet the Queen of England, and when
L. P. presented him, the Queen said, 'We are such old acquaintances
through M. Auber's works, that an introduction is quite unnecessary.'"
They met again a few nights later, with the author of the _History of
the Girondins_, at the hospitable table of M. Pichot, to whom Lamartine
had expressed a strong desire again to meet Dickens as "un des grands
amis de son imagination." "He continues to be precisely as we formerly
knew him, both in appearance and manner; highly prepossessing, and with
a sort of calm passion about him, very taking indeed. We talked of De
Foe[201] and Richardson, and of that wonderful genius for the minutest
details in a narrative, which has given them so much fame in France. I
found him frank and unaffected, and full of curious knowledge of the
French common people. He informed the company at dinner that he had
rarely met a foreigner who spoke French so easily as your inimitable
correspondent, whereat your correspondent blushed modestly, and almost
immediately afterwards so nearly choked himself with the bone of a fowl
(which is still in his throat), that he sat in torture for ten minutes
with a strong apprehension that he was going to make the good Pichot
famous by dying like the little Hunchback at his table. Scribe and his
wife were of the party, but had to go away at the ice-time because it
was the first representation at the Opéra Comique of a new opera by
Auber and himself, of which very great expectations have been formed. It
was very curious to see him--the author of 400 pieces--getting nervous
as the time approached, and pulling out his watch every minute. At last
he dashed out as if he were going into what a friend of mine calls a
plunge-bath. Whereat she rose and followed. She is the most
extraordinary woman I ever beheld; for her eldest son must be thirty,
and she has the figure of five-and-twenty, and is strikingly handsome.
So graceful too, that her manner of rising, curtseying, laughing, and
going out after him, was pleasanter than the pleasantest thing I have
ever seen done on the stage." The opera Dickens himself saw a week
later, and wrote of it as "most charming. Delightful music, an excellent
story, immense stage tact, capital scenic arrangements, and the most
delightful little prima donna ever seen or heard, in the person of Marie
Cabel. It is called _Manon Lescaut_--from the old romance--and is
charming throughout. She sings a laughing song in it which is received
with madness, and which is the only real laughing song that ever was
written. Auber told me that when it was first rehearsed, it made a
great effect upon the orchestra; and that he could not have had a better
compliment upon its freshness than the musical director paid him, in
coming and clapping him on the shoulder with 'Bravo, jeune homme! Cela
promet bien!'"
At dinner at Regnier's he met M. Legouvet, in whose tragedy Rachel,
after its acceptance, had refused to act Medea; a caprice which had led
not only to her condemnation in costs of so much a night until she did
act it, but to a quasi rivalry against her by Ristori, who was now on
her way to Paris to play it in Italian. To this performance Dickens and
Macready subsequently went together, and pronounced it to be hopelessly
bad. "In the day entertainments, and little melodrama theatres, of
Italy, I have seen the same thing fifty times, only not at once so
conventional and so exaggerated. The papers have all been in fits
respecting the sublimity of the performance, and the genuineness of the
applause--particularly of the bouquets; which were thrown on at the most
preposterous times in the midst of agonizing scenes, so that the
characters had to pick their way among them, and a certain stout
gentleman who played King Creon was obliged to keep a wary eye, all
night, on the proscenium boxes, and dodge them as they came down. Now
Scribe, who dined here next day (and who follows on the Ristori side,
being offended, as everybody has been, by the insolence of Rachel),
could not resist the temptation of telling us, that, going round at the
end of the first act to offer his congratulations, he met all the
bouquets coming back in men's arms to be thrown on again in the second
act. . . . By the bye, I see a fine actor lost in Scribe. In all his
pieces he has everything done in his own way; and on that same night he
was showing what Rachel did not do, and wouldn't do, in the last scene
of Adrienne Lecouvreur, with extraordinary force and intensity."
At the house of another great artist, Madame Viardot,[202] the sister of
Malibran, Dickens dined to meet Georges Sands, that lady having
appointed the day and hour for the interesting festival, which came off
duly on the 10th of January. "I suppose it to be impossible to imagine
anybody more unlike my preconceptions than the illustrious Sand. Just
the kind of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to be the Queen's
monthly nurse. Chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed. Nothing of the
blue-stocking about her, except a little final way of settling all your
opinions with hers, which I take to have been acquired in the country
where she lives, and in the domination of a small circle. A singularly
ordinary woman in appearance and manner. The dinner was very good and
remarkably unpretending. Ourselves, Madame and her son, the Scheffers,
the Sartorises, and some Lady somebody (from the Crimea last) who wore a
species of paletot, and smoked. The Viardots have a house away in the
new part of Paris, which looks exactly as if they had moved into it last
week and were going away next. Notwithstanding which, they have lived in
it eight years. The opera the very last thing on earth you would
associate with the family. Piano not even opened. Her husband is an
extremely good fellow, and she is as natural as it is possible to be."
Dickens was hardly the man to take fair measure of Madame Dudevant in
meeting her thus. He was not familiar with her writings, and had no very
special liking for such of them as he knew. But no disappointment,
nothing but amazement, awaited him at a dinner that followed soon after.
Emile de Girardin gave a banquet in his honour. His description of it,
which he declares to be strictly prosaic, sounds a little Oriental, but
not inappropriately so. "No man unacquainted with my determination never
to embellish or fancify such accounts, could believe in the description
I shall let off when we meet of dining at Emile Girardin's--of the three
gorgeous drawing rooms with ten thousand wax candles in golden sconces,
terminating in a dining-room of unprecedented magnificence with two
enormous transparent plate-glass doors in it, looking (across an
ante-chamber full of clean plates) straight into the kitchen, with the
cooks in their white paper caps dishing the dinner. From his seat in the
midst of the table, the host (like a Giant in a Fairy story) beholds the
kitchen, and the snow-white tables, and the profound order and silence
there prevailing. Forth from the plate-glass doors issues the
Banquet--the most wonderful feast ever tasted by mortal: at the present
price of Truffles, that article alone costing (for eight people) at
least five pounds. On the table are ground glass jugs of peculiar
construction, laden with the finest growth of Champagne and the coolest
ice. With the third course is issued Port Wine (previously unheard of in
a good state on this continent), which would fetch two guineas a bottle
at any sale. The dinner done, Oriental flowers in vases of golden cobweb
are placed upon the board. With the ice is issued Brandy, buried for 100
years. To that succeeds Coffee, brought by the brother of one of the
convives from the remotest East, in exchange for an equal quantity of
California gold dust. The company being returned to the
drawing-room--tables roll in by unseen agency, laden with Cigarettes
from the Hareem of the Sultan, and with cool drinks in which the flavour
of the Lemon arrived yesterday from Algeria, struggles voluptuously with
the delicate Orange arrived this morning from Lisbon. That period past,
and the guests reposing on Divans worked with many-coloured blossoms,
big table rolls in, heavy with massive furniture of silver, and
breathing incense in the form of a little present of Tea direct from
China--table and all, I believe; but cannot swear to it, and am resolved
to be prosaic. All this time the host perpetually repeats 'Ce petit
dîner-ci n'est que pour faire la connaissance de Monsieur Dickens; il ne
compte pas; ce n'est rien.' And even now I have forgotten to set down
half of it--in particular the item of a far larger plum pudding than
ever was seen in England at Christmas time, served with a celestial
sauce in colour like the orange blossom, and in substance like the
blossom powdered and bathed in dew, and called in the carte (carte in a
gold frame like a little fish-slice to be handed about) 'Hommage à
l'illustre écrivain d'Angleterre.' That illustrious man staggered out at
the last drawing-room door, speechless with wonder, finally; and even at
that moment his host, holding to his lips a chalice set with precious
stones and containing nectar distilled from the air that blew over the
fields of beans in bloom for fifteen summers, remarked 'Le dîner que
nous avons eu, mon cher, n'est rien--il ne compte pas--il a été
tout-à-fait en famille--il faut dîner (en vérité, dîner) bientôt. Au
plaisir! Au revoir! Au dîner!'"
The second dinner came, wonderful as the first; among the company were
Regnier, Jules Sandeau, and the new Director of the Français; and his
host again played Lucullus in the same style, with success even more
consummate. The only absolutely new incident however was that "After
dinner he asked me if I would come into another room and smoke a cigar?
and on my saying Yes, coolly opened a drawer, containing about 5000
inestimable cigars in prodigious bundles--just as the Captain of the
Robbers in _Ali Baba_ might have gone to a corner of the cave for bales
of brocade. A little man dined who was blacking shoes 8 years ago, and
is now enormously rich--the richest man in Paris--having ascended with
rapidity up the usual ladder of the Bourse. By merely observing that
perhaps he might come down again, I clouded so many faces as to render
it very clear to me that _everybody present_ was at the same game for
some stake or other!" He returned to that subject in a letter a few days
later. "If you were to see the steps of the Bourse at about 4 in the
afternoon, and the crowd of blouses and patches among the speculators
there assembled, all howling and haggard with speculation, you would
stand aghast at the consideration of what must be going on. Concierges
and people like that perpetually blow their brains out, or fly into the
Seine, 'à cause des pertes sur la Bourse.' I hardly ever take up a
French paper without lighting on such a paragraph. On the other hand,
thoroughbred horses without end, and red velvet carriages with white kid
harness on jet black horses, go by here all day long; and the
pedestrians who turn to look at them, laugh, and say 'C'est la Bourse!'
Such crashes must be staved off every week as have not been seen since
Law's time."
Another picture connects itself with this, and throws light on the
speculation thus raging. The French loans connected with the war, so
much puffed and praised in England at the time for the supposed spirit
in which they were taken up, had in fact only ministered to the
commonest and lowest gambling; and the war had never in the least been
popular. "Emile Girardin," wrote Dickens on the 23rd of March, "was here
yesterday, and he says that Peace is to be formally announced at Paris
to-morrow amid general apathy." But the French are never wholly
apathetic to their own exploits; and a display with a touch of
excitement in it had been witnessed a couple of months before on the
entry of the troops from the Crimea,[203] when the Zouaves, as they
marched past, pleased Dickens most. "A remarkable body of men," he
wrote, "wild, dangerous, and picturesque. Close-cropped head, red skull
cap, Greek jacket, full red petticoat trowsers trimmed with yellow, and
high white gaiters--the most sensible things for the purpose I know, and
coming into use in the line. A man with such things on his legs is
always free there, and ready for a muddy march; and might flounder
through roads two feet deep in mud, and, simply by changing his gaiters
(he has another pair in his haversack), be clean and comfortable and
wholesome again, directly. Plenty of beard and moustache, and the
musket carried reverse-wise with the stock over the shoulder, make up
the sunburnt Zouave. He strides like Bobadil, smoking as he goes; and
when he laughs (they were under my window for half-an-hour or so),
plunges backward in the wildest way, as if he were going to throw a
sommersault. They have a black dog belonging to the regiment, and, when
they now marched along with their medals, this dog marched after the one
non-commissioned officer he invariably follows with a profound
conviction that he was decorated. I couldn't see whether he had a medal,
his hair being long; but he was perfectly up to what had befallen his
regiment; and I never saw anything so capital as his way of regarding
the public. Whatever the regiment does, he is always in his place; and
it was impossible to mistake the air of modest triumph which was now
upon him. A small dog corporeally, but of a great mind."[204] On that
night there was an illumination in honour of the army, when the "whole
of Paris, bye streets and lanes and all sorts of out of the way places,
was most brilliantly illuminated. It looked in the dark like Venice and
Genoa rolled into one, and split up through the middle by the Corso at
Rome in the carnival time. The French people certainly do know how to
honour their own countrymen, in a most marvellous way." It was the
festival time of the New Year, and Dickens was fairly lost in a mystery
of amazement at where the money could come from that everybody was
spending on the étrennes they were giving to everybody else. All the
famous shops on the Boulevards had been blockaded for more than a week.
"There is now a line of wooden stalls, three miles long, on each side of
that immense thoroughfare; and wherever a retiring house or two admits
of a double line, there it is. All sorts of objects from shoes and
sabots, through porcelain and crystal, up to live fowls and rabbits
which are played for at a sort of dwarf skittles (to their immense
disturbance, as the ball rolls under them and shakes them off their
shelves and perches whenever it is delivered by a vigorous hand), are on
sale in this great Fair. And what you may get in the way of ornament for
two-pence, is astounding." Unhappily there came dark and rainy weather,
and one of the improvements of the Empire ended, as so many others did,
in slush and misery.[205]
Some sketches connected with the Art Exposition in the winter of 1855,
and with the fulfilment of Ary Scheffer's design to paint the portrait
of Dickens, may close these Paris pictures. He did not think that
English art showed to advantage beside the French. It seemed to him
small, shrunken, insignificant, "niggling." He thought the general
absence of ideas horribly apparent; "and even when one comes to
Mulready, and sees two old men talking over a much-too-prominent
table-cloth, and reads the French explanation of their proceedings, 'La
discussion sur les principes de Docteur Whiston,' one is dissatisfied.
Somehow or other they don't tell. Even Leslie's Sancho wants go, and
Stanny is too much like a set-scene. It is of no use disguising the fact
that what we know to be wanting in the men is wanting in their
works--character, fire, purpose, and the power of using the vehicle and
the model as mere means to an end. There is a horrible respectability
about most of the best of them--a little, finite, systematic routine in
them, strangely expressive to me of the state of England itself. As a
mere fact, Frith, Ward, and Egg, come out the best in such pictures as
are here, and attract to the greatest extent. The first, in the picture
from the Good-natured Man; the second, in the Royal Family in the
Temple; the third, in the Peter the Great first seeing Catherine--which
I always thought a good picture, and in which foreigners evidently
descry a sudden dramatic touch that pleases them. There are no end of
bad pictures among the French, but, Lord! the goodness also!--the
fearlessness of them; the bold drawing; the dashing conception; the
passion and action in them![206] The Belgian department is full of
merit. It has the best landscape in it, the best portrait, and the best
scene of homely life, to be found in the building. Don't think it a part
of my despondency about public affairs, and my fear that our national
glory is on the decline, when I say that mere form and conventionalities
usurp, in English art, as in English government and social relations,
the place of living force and truth. I tried to resist the impression
yesterday, and went to the English gallery first, and praised and
admired with great diligence; but it was of no use. I could not make
anything better of it than what I tell you. Of course this is between
ourselves. Friendship is better than criticism, and I shall steadily
hold my tongue. Discussion is worse than useless when you cannot agree
about what you are going to discuss." French nature is all wrong, said
the English artists whom Dickens talked to; but surely not because it is
French, was his reply. The English point of view is not the only one to
take men and women from. The French pictures are "theatrical," was the
rejoinder. But the French themselves are a demonstrative and
gesticulating people, was Dickens's retort; and what thus is rendered by
their artists is the truth through an immense part of the world. "I
never saw anything so strange. They seem to me to have got a fixed idea
that there is no natural manner but the English manner (in itself so
exceptional that it is a thing apart, in all countries); and that unless
a Frenchman--represented as going to the guillotine for example--is as
calm as Clapham, or as respectable as Richmond-hill, he cannot be
right."
To the sittings at Ary Scheffer's some troubles as well as many
pleasures were incident, and both had mention in his letters. "You may
faintly imagine what I have suffered from sitting to Scheffer every day
since I came back. He is a most noble fellow, and I have the greatest
pleasure in his society, and have made all sorts of acquaintances at his
house; but I can scarcely express how uneasy and unsettled it makes me
to have to sit, sit, sit, with _Little Dorrit_ on my mind, and the
Christmas business too--though that is now happily dismissed. On Monday
afternoon, _and all day on Wednesday_, I am going to sit again. And the
crowning feature is, that I do not discern the slightest resemblance,
either in his portrait or his brother's! They both peg away at me at the
same time." The sittings were varied by a special entertainment, when
Scheffer received some sixty people in his "long atelier"--"including a
lot of French who _say_ (but I don't believe it) that they know
English"--to whom Dickens, by special entreaty, read his _Cricket on
the Hearth_.
That was at the close of November. January came, and the end of the
sittings was supposed to be at hand. "The nightmare portrait is nearly
done; and Scheffer promises that an interminable sitting next Saturday,
beginning at 10 o'clock in the morning, shall finish it. It is a fine
spirited head, painted at his very best, and with a very easy and
natural appearance in it. But it does not look to me at all like, nor
does it strike me that if I saw it in a gallery I should suppose myself
to be the original. It is always possible that I don't know my own face.
It is going to be engraved here, in two sizes and ways--the mere head
and the whole thing." A fortnight later, the interminable sitting came.
"Imagine me if you please with No. 5 on my head and hands, sitting to
Scheffer yesterday four hours! At this stage of a story, no one can
conceive how it distresses me." Still this was not the last. March had
come before the portrait was done. "Scheffer finished yesterday; and
Collins, who has a good eye for pictures, says that there is no man
living who could do the painting about the eyes. As a work of art I see
in it spirit combined with perfect ease, and yet I don't see myself. So
I come to the conclusion that I never _do_ see myself. I shall be very
curious to know the effect of it upon you." March had then begun; and at
its close Dickens, who had meanwhile been in England, thus wrote: "I
have not seen Scheffer since I came back, but he told Catherine a few
days ago that he was not satisfied with the likeness after all, and
thought he must do more to it. My own impression of it, you remember?"
In these few words he anticipated the impression made upon myself. I was
not satisfied with it. The picture had much merit, but not as a
portrait. From its very resemblance in the eyes and mouth one derived
the sense of a general unlikeness. But the work of the artist's brother,
Henri Scheffer, painted from the same sittings, was in all ways greatly
inferior.
Before Dickens left Paris in May he had sent over two descriptions that
the reader most anxious to follow him to a new scene would perhaps be
sorry to lose. A Duchess was murdered in the Champs Elysées. "The murder
over the way (the third or fourth event of that nature in the Champs
Elysées since we have been here) seems to disclose the strangest state
of things. The Duchess who is murdered lived alone in a great house
which was always shut up, and passed her time entirely in the dark. In a
little lodge outside lived a coachman (the murderer), and there had been
a long succession of coachmen who had been unable to stay there, and
upon whom, whenever they asked for their wages, she plunged out with an
immense knife, by way of an immediate settlement. The coachman never had
anything to do, for the coach hadn't been driven out for years; neither
would she ever allow the horses to be taken out for exercise. Between
the lodge and the house, is a miserable bit of garden, all overgrown
with long rank grass, weeds, and nettles; and in this, the horses used
to be taken out to swim--in a dead green vegetable sea, up to their
haunches. On the day of the murder, there was a great crowd, of course;
and in the midst of it up comes the Duke her husband (from whom she was
separated), and rings at the gate. The police open the grate. 'C'est
vrai donc,' says the Duke, 'que Madame la Duchesse n'est plus?'--'C'est
trop vrai, Monseigneur.'--'Tant mieux,' says the Duke, and walks off
deliberately, to the great satisfaction of the assemblage."
The second description relates an occurrence in England of only three
years previous date, belonging to that wildly improbable class of
realities which Dickens always held, with Fielding, to be (properly)
closed to fiction. Only, he would add, critics should not be so eager to
assume that what had never happened to themselves could not, by any
human possibility, ever be supposed to have happened to anybody else.
"B. was with me the other day, and, among other things that he told me,
described an extraordinary adventure in his life, at a place not a
thousand miles from my 'property' at Gadshill, three years ago. He lived
at the tavern and was sketching one day when an open carriage came by
with a gentleman and lady in it. He was sitting in the same place
working at the same sketch, next day, when it came by again. So, another
day, when the gentleman got out and introduced himself. Fond of art;
lived at the great house yonder, which perhaps he knew; was an Oxford
man and a Devonshire squire, but not resident on his estate, for
domestic reasons; would be glad to see him to dinner to-morrow. He went,
and found among other things a very fine library. 'At your disposition,'
said the Squire, to whom he had now described himself and his pursuits.
'Use it for your writing and drawing. Nobody else uses it.' He stayed in
the house _six months_. The lady was a mistress, aged five-and-twenty,
and very beautiful, drinking her life away. The Squire was drunken, and
utterly depraved and wicked; but an excellent scholar, an admirable
linguist, and a great theologian. Two other mad visitors stayed the six
months. One, a man well known in Paris here, who goes about the world
with a crimson silk stocking in his breast pocket, containing a
tooth-brush and an immense quantity of ready money. The other, a college
chum of the Squire's, now ruined; with an insatiate thirst for drink;
who constantly got up in the middle of the night, crept down to the
dining-room, and emptied all the decanters. . . . B. stayed on in the
place, under a sort of devilish fascination to discover what might come
of it. . . . Tea or coffee never seen in the house, and very seldom water.
Beer, champagne, and brandy, were the three drinkables. Breakfast: leg
of mutton, champagne, beer, and brandy. Lunch: shoulder of mutton,
champagne, beer, and brandy. Dinner: every conceivable dish (Squire's
income, £7,000 a-year), champagne, beer, and brandy. The Squire had
married a woman of the town from whom he was now separated, but by whom
he had a daughter. The mother, to spite the father, had bred the
daughter in every conceivable vice. Daughter, then 13, came from school
once a month. Intensely coarse in talk, and always drunk. As they drove
about the country in two open carriages, the drunken mistress would be
perpetually tumbling out of one, and the drunken daughter perpetually
tumbling out of the other. At last the drunken mistress drank her
stomach away, and began to die on the sofa. Got worse and worse, and was
always raving about Somebody's where she had once been a lodger, and
perpetually shrieking that she would cut somebody else's heart out. At
last she died on the sofa, and, after the funeral, the party broke up. A
few months ago, B. met the man with the crimson silk stocking at
Brighton, who told him that the Squire was dead 'of a broken heart';
that the chum was dead of delirium tremens; and that the daughter was
heiress to the fortune. He told me all this, which I fully believe to be
true, without any embellishment--just in the off-hand way in which I
have told it to you."
Dickens left Paris at the end of April, and, after the summer in
Boulogne which has been described, passed the winter in London, giving
to his theatrical enterprise nearly all the time that _Little Dorrit_
did not claim from him. His book was finished in the following spring;
was inscribed to Clarkson Stanfield; and now claims to have something
said about it.
FOOTNOTES:
[196] Twenty-one years before this date, in this same part, Lemaitre had
made a deep impression in London; and now, eighteen years later, he is
appearing in one of the revivals of Victor Hugo in Paris (1873.)
[197] "It is surprising what a change nine years have made in my
notoriety here. So many of the rising French generation now read English
(and _Chuzzlewit_ is now being translated daily in the _Moniteur_), that
I can't go into a shop and give my card without being acknowledged in
the pleasantest way possible. A curiosity-dealer brought home some
little knick-knacks I had bought, the other night, and knew all about my
books from beginning to end of 'em. There is much of the personal
friendliness in my readers, here, that is so delightful at home; and I
have been greatly surprised and pleased by the unexpected discovery." To
this I may add a line from one of his letters six years later. "I see my
books in French at every railway station great and small."--13th of Oct.
1862.
[198] "I forget whether" (6th of Jan. 1856) "I have already told you
that I have received a proposal from a responsible bookselling house
here, for a complete edition, authorized by myself, of a French
translation of all my books. The terms involve questions of space and
amount of matter; but I should say, at a rough calculation, that I shall
get about £300 by it--perhaps £50 more." "I have arranged" (30th of
Jan.) "with the French bookselling house to receive, by monthly payments
of £40, the sum of £440 for the right to translate all my books: that
is, what they call my Romances, and what I call my Stories. This does
not include the Christmas Books, _American Notes_, _Pictures from
Italy_, or the _Sketches_; but they are to have the right to translate
them for extra payments if they choose. In consideration of this venture
as to the unprotected property, I cede them the right of translating all
future Romances at a thousand francs (£40) each. Considering that I get
so much for what is otherwise worth nothing, and get my books before so
clever and important a people, I think this is not a bad move?" The
first friend with whom he advised about it, I should mention, was the
famous Leipzig publisher, M. Tauchnitz, in whose judgment, as well as in
his honour and good faith, he had implicit reliance, and who thought the
offer fair. On the 17th of April he wrote: "On Monday I am going to dine
with all my translators at Hachette's, the bookseller who has made the
bargain for the complete edition, and who began this week to pay his
monthly £40 for a year. I don't mean to go out any more. Please to
imagine me in the midst of my French dressers." He wrote an address for
the Edition in which he praised the liberality of his publishers and
expressed his pride in being so presented to the French people whom he
sincerely loved and honoured. Another word may be added. "It is rather
appropriate that the French translation edition will pay my rent for the
whole year, and travelling charges to boot."--24th of Feb. 1856.
[199] He wrote a short and very comical account of one of these stock
performances at the Français in which he brought out into strong relief
all their conventionalities and formal habits, their regular surprises
surprising nobody, and their mysterious disclosures of immense secrets
known to everybody beforehand, which he meant for _Household Words_; but
it occurred to him that it might give pain to Regnier, and he destroyed
it.
[200] Before he saw this he wrote: "That piece you spoke of (the
_Médecin des Enfants_) is one of the very best melodramas I have ever
read. Situations, admirable. I will send it to you by Landseer. I am
very curious indeed to go and see it; and it is an instance to me of the
powerful emotions from which art is shut out in England by the
conventionalities." After seeing it he writes: "The low cry of
excitement and expectation that goes round the house when any one of the
great situations is felt to be coming is very remarkable indeed. I
suppose there has not been so great a success of the genuine and worthy
kind (for the authors have really taken the French dramatic bull by the
horns, and put the adulterous wife in the right position), for many
years. When you come over and see it, you will say you never saw
anything so admirably done. There is one actor, Bignon (M. Delormel),
who has a good deal of Macready in him; sometimes looks very like him;
and who seems to me the perfection of manly good sense." 17th of April
1856.
[201] I subjoin from another of these French letters of later date a
remark on _Robinson Crusoe_. "You remember my saying to you some time
ago how curious I thought it that _Robinson Crusoe_ should be the only
instance of an universally popular book that could make no one laugh and
could make no one cry. I have been reading it again just now, in the
course of my numerous refreshings at those English wells, and I will
venture to say that there is not in literature a more surprising
instance of an utter want of tenderness and sentiment, than the death of
Friday. It is as heartless as _Gil Blas_, in a very different and far
more serious way. But the second part altogether will not bear enquiry.
In the second part of _Don Quixote_ are some of the finest things. But
the second part of _Robinson Crusoe_ is perfectly contemptible, in the
glaring defect that it exhibits the man who was 30 years on that desert
island with no visible effect made on his character by that experience.
De Foe's women too--Robinson Crusoe's wife for instance--are terrible
dull commonplace fellows without breeches; and I have no doubt he was a
precious dry and disagreeable article himself--I mean De Foe: not
Robinson. Poor dear Goldsmith (I remember as I write) derived the same
impression."
[202] When in Paris six years later Dickens saw this fine singer in an
opera by Gluck, and the reader will not be sorry to have his description
of it. "Last night I saw Madame Viardot do Gluck's Orphée. It is a most
extraordinary performance--pathetic in the highest degree, and full of
quite sublime acting. Though it is unapproachably fine from first to
last, the beginning of it, at the tomb of Eurydice, is a thing that I
cannot remember at this moment of writing, without emotion. It is the
finest presentation of grief that I can imagine. And when she has
received hope from the Gods, and encouragement to go into the other
world and seek Eurydice, Viardot's manner of taking the relinquished
lyre from the tomb and becoming radiant again, is most noble. Also she
recognizes Eurydice's touch, when at length the hand is put in hers from
behind, like a most transcendant genius. And when, yielding to
Eurydice's entreaties she has turned round and slain her with a look,
her despair over the body is grand in the extreme. It is worth a journey
to Paris to see, for there is no such Art to be otherwise looked upon.
Her husband stumbled over me by mere chance, and took me to her
dressing-room. Nothing could have happened better as a genuine homage to
the performance, for I was disfigured with crying."--30th of November
1862.
[203] Here is another picture of Regiments in the Streets of which the
date is the 30th of January. "It was cold this afternoon, as bright as
Italy, and these Elysian Fields crowded with carriages, riders, and foot
passengers. All the fountains were playing, all the Heavens shining.
Just as I went out at 4 o'clock, several regiments that had passed out
at the Barrière in the morning to exercise in the country, came marching
back, in the straggling French manner, which is far more picturesque and
real than anything you can imagine in that way. Alternately great storms
of drums played, and then the most delicious and skilful bands,
'Trovatore' music, 'Barber of Seville' music, all sorts of music with
well-marked melody and time. All bloused Paris (led by the Inimitable,
and a poor cripple who works himself up and down all day in a big
wheeled car) went at quick march down the avenue, in a sort of hilarious
dance. If the colours with the golden eagle on the top had only been
unfurled, we should have followed them anywhere, in any cause--much as
the children follow Punches in the better cause of Comedy. Napoleon on
the top of the Column seemed up to the whole thing, I thought."
[204] Apropos of this, I may mention that the little shaggy white
terrier who came with him from America, so long a favourite in his
household, had died of old age a few weeks before (5th of Oct. 1855) in
Boulogne.
[205] "We have wet weather here--and dark too for these latitudes--and
oceans of mud. Although numbers of men are perpetually scooping and
sweeping it away in this thoroughfare, it accumulates under the windows
so fast, and in such sludgy masses, that to get across the road is to
get half over one's shoes in the first outset of a walk." . . . "It is
difficult," he added (20th of Jan.) "to picture the change made in this
place by the removal of the paving stones (too ready for barricades),
and macadamization. It suits neither the climate nor the soil. We are
again in a sea of mud. One cannot cross the road of the Champs Elysées
here, without being half over one's boots." A few more days brought a
welcome change. "Three days ago the weather changed here in an hour, and
we have had bright weather and hard frost ever since. All the mud
disappeared with marvellous rapidity, and the sky became Italian. Taking
advantage of such a happy change, I started off yesterday morning (for
exercise and meditation) on a scheme I have taken into my head, to walk
round the walls of Paris. It is a very odd walk, and will make a good
description. Yesterday I turned to the right when I got outside the
Barrière de l'Etoile, walked round the wall till I came to the river,
and then entered Paris beyond the site of the Bastille. To-day I mean to
turn to the left when I get outside the Barrière, and see what comes of
that."
[206] This was much the tone of Edwin Landseer also, whose praise of
Horace Vernet was nothing short of rapture; and how well I remember the
humour of his description of the Emperor on the day when the prizes were
given, and, as his old friend the great painter came up, the comical
expression in his face that said plainly "What a devilish odd thing this
is altogether, isn't it?" composing itself to gravity as he took Edwin
by the hand, and said in cordial English "I am very glad to see you." He
stood, Landseer told us, in a recess so arranged as to produce a clear
echo of every word he said, and this had a startling effect. In the
evening of that day Dickens, Landseer, Boxall, Leslie "and three others"
dined together in the Palais Royal.
CHAPTER VI.
LITTLE DORRIT, AND A LAZY TOUR.
1855-1857.
Little Dorrit--A Proposed Opening--How the
Story grew--Sale of the Book--Circumlocution
Office--Flora and her Surroundings--Weak Points
in the Book--Remains of Marshalsea
visited--Reception of the Novel--Christmas
Theatricals--Theatre-making--At Gadshill--Last
Meeting of Jerrold and Dickens--Proposed
Memorial Tribute--At the Zoological
Gardens--Lazy Tour projected--Visit to
Cumberland--Accident to Wilkie Collins--At
Allonby--At Doncaster--Racing Prophecy--A
Performance of _Money_.
BETWEEN _Hard Times_ and _Little Dorrit_, Dickens's principal literary
work had been the contribution to _Household Words_ of two tales for
Christmas (1854 and 1855) which his readings afterwards made widely
popular, the Story of Richard Doubledick,[207] and Boots at the
Holly-Tree Inn. In the latter was related, with a charming naturalness
and spirit, the elopement, to get married at Gretna Green, of two little
children of the mature respective ages of eight and seven. At Christmas
1855 came out the first number of _Little Dorrit_, and in April 1857 the
last.
The book took its origin from the notion he had of a leading man for a
story who should bring about all the mischief in it, lay it all on
Providence, and say at every fresh calamity, "Well it's a mercy,
however, nobody was to blame you know!" The title first chosen, out of
many suggested, was _Nobody's Fault_; and four numbers had been written,
of which the first was on the eve of appearance, before this was
changed. When about to fall to work he excused himself from an
engagement he should have kept because "the story is breaking out all
round me, and I am going off down the railroad to humour it." The
humouring was a little difficult, however; and such indications of a
droop in his invention as presented themselves in portions of _Bleak
House_, were noticeable again. "As to the story I am in the second
number, and last night and this morning had half a mind to begin again,
and work in what I have done, afterwards." It had occurred to him, that,
by making the fellow-travellers at once known to each other, as the
opening of the story stands, he had missed an effect. "It struck me that
it would be a new thing to show people coming together, in a chance way,
as fellow-travellers, and being in the same place, ignorant of one
another, as happens in life; and to connect them afterwards, and to make
the waiting for that connection a part of the interest." The change was
not made; but the mention of it was one of several intimations to me of
the altered conditions under which he was writing, and that the old,
unstinted, irrepressible flow of fancy had received temporary check. In
this view I have found it very interesting to compare the original
notes, which as usual he prepared for each number of the tale, and which
with the rest are in my possession, with those of _Chuzzlewit_ or
_Copperfield_; observing in the former the labour and pains, and in the
latter the lightness and confidence of handling.[208] "I am just now
getting to work on number three: sometimes enthusiastic, more often dull
enough. There is an enormous outlay in the Father of the Marshalsea
chapter, in the way of getting a great lot of matter into a small space.
I am not quite resolved, but I have a great idea of overwhelming that
family with wealth. Their condition would be very curious. I can make
Dorrit very strong in the story, I hope." The Marshalsea part of the
tale undoubtedly was excellent, and there was masterly treatment of
character in the contrasts of the brothers Dorrit; but of the family
generally it may be said that its least important members had most of
his genius in them. The younger of the brothers, the scapegrace son, and
"Fanny dear," are perfectly real people in what makes them unattractive;
but what is meant for attractiveness in the heroine becomes often
tiresome by want of reality.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The first number appeared in December 1855, and on the 2nd there was
an exultant note. "_Little Dorrit_ has beaten even _Bleak House_ out of
the field. It is a most tremendous start, and I am overjoyed at it;" to
which he added, writing from Paris on the 6th of the month following,
"You know that they had sold 35,000 of number two on new year's day." He
was still in Paris on the day of the appearance of that portion of the
tale by which it will always be most vividly remembered, and thus wrote
on the 30th of January 1856: "I have a grim pleasure upon me to-night in
thinking that the Circumlocution Office sees the light, and in wondering
what effect it will make. But my head really stings with the visions of
the book, and I am going, as we French say, to disembarrass it by
plunging out into some of the strange places I glide into of nights in
these latitudes." The Circumlocution heroes led to the Society scenes,
the Hampton-court dowager-sketches, and Mr. Gowan; all parts of one
satire levelled against prevailing political and social vices. Aim had
been taken, in the course of it, at some living originals, disguised
sufficiently from recognition to enable him to make his thrust more
sure; but there was one exception self-revealed. "I had the general
idea," he wrote while engaged on the sixth number, "of the Society
business before the Sadleir affair, but I shaped Mr. Merdle himself out
of that precious rascality. Society, the Circumlocution Office, and Mr.
Gowan, are of course three parts of one idea and design. Mr. Merdle's
complaint, which you will find in the end to be fraud and forgery, came
into my mind as the last drop in the silver cream-jug on
Hampstead-heath. I shall beg, when you have read the present number, to
enquire whether you consider 'Bar' an instance, in reference to K F, of
a suggested likeness in not many touches!" The likeness no one could
mistake; and, though that particular Bar has since been moved into a
higher and happier sphere, Westminster-hall is in no danger of losing
"the insinuating Jury-droop, and persuasive double-eyeglass," by which
this keen observer could express a type of character in half a dozen
words.
Of the other portions of the book that had a strong personal interest
for him I have spoken on a former page, and I will now only add an
allusion of his own. "There are some things in Flora in number seven
that seem to me to be extraordinarily droll, with something serious at
the bottom of them after all. Ah, well! was there _not_ something very
serious in it once? I am glad to think of being in the country with the
long summer mornings as I approach number ten, where I have finally
resolved to make Dorrit rich. It should be a very fine point in the
story. . . . Nothing in Flora made me laugh so much as the confusion of
ideas between gout flying upwards, and its soaring with Mr. F---- to
another sphere." He had himself no inconsiderable enjoyment also of Mr.
F.'s aunt; and in the old rascal of a patriarch, the smooth-surfaced
Casby, and other surroundings of poor Flora, there was fun enough to
float an argosy of second-rates, assuming such to have formed the staple
of the tale. It would be far from fair to say they did. The defect in
the book was less the absence of excellent character or keen
observation, than the want of ease and coherence among the figures of
the story, and of a central interest in the plan of it. The agencies
that bring about its catastrophe, too, are less agreeable even than in
_Bleak House_; and, most unlike that well-constructed story, some of the
most deeply considered things that occur in it have really little to do
with the tale itself. The surface-painting of both Miss Wade and
Tattycoram, to take an instance, is anything but attractive, yet there
is under it a rare force of likeness in the unlikeness between the two
which has much subtlety of intention; and they must both have had, as
well as Mr. Gowan himself, a striking effect in the novel, if they had
been made to contribute in a more essential way to its interest or
development. The failure nevertheless had not been for want of care and
study, as well of his own design as of models by masters in his art. A
happier hint of apology, for example, could hardly be given for
Fielding's introduction of such an episode as the Man of the Hill
between the youth and manhood of Blifil and Tom Jones, than is suggested
by what Dickens wrote of the least interesting part of _Little Dorrit_.
In the mere form, Fielding of course was only following the lead of
Cervantes and Le Sage; but Dickens rightly judged his purpose also to
have been, to supply a kind of connection between the episode and the
story. "I don't see the practicability of making the History of a
Self-Tormentor, with which I took great pains, a written narrative. But
I do see the possibility" (he saw the other practicability before the
number was published) "of making it a chapter by itself, which might
enable me to dispense with the necessity of the turned commas. Do you
think that would be better? I have no doubt that a great part of
Fielding's reason for the introduced story, and Smollett's also, was,
that it is sometimes really impossible to present, in a full book, the
idea it contains (which yet it may be on all accounts desirable to
present), without supposing the reader to be possessed of almost as much
romantic allowance as would put him on a level with the writer. In Miss
Wade I had an idea, which I thought a new one, of making the introduced
story so fit into surroundings impossible of separation from the main
story, as to make the blood of the book circulate through both. But I
can only suppose, from what you say, that I have not exactly succeeded
in this."
Shortly after the date of his letter he was in London on business
connected with the purchase of Gadshill Place, and he went over to the
Borough to see what traces were left of the prison of which his first
impression was taken in his boyhood, which had played so important a
part in this latest novel, and every brick and stone of which he had
been able to rebuild in his book by the mere vividness of his marvellous
memory. "Went to the Borough yesterday morning before going to Gadshill,
to see if I could find any ruins of the Marshalsea. Found a great part
of the original building--now 'Marshalsea Place.' Found the rooms that
have been in my mind's eye in the story. Found, nursing a very big boy,
a very small boy, who, seeing me standing on the Marshalsea pavement,
looking about, told me how it all used to be. God knows how he learned
it (for he was a world too young to know anything about it), but he was
right enough. . . . There is a room there--still standing, to my
amazement--that I think of taking! It is the room through which the
ever-memorable signers of Captain Porter's petition filed off in my
boyhood. The spikes are gone, and the wall is lowered, and anybody can
go out now who likes to go, and is not bedridden; and I said to the boy
'Who lives there?' and he said, 'Jack Pithick.' 'Who is Jack Pithick?' I
asked him. And he said, 'Joe Pithick's uncle.'"
Mention was made of this visit in the preface that appeared with the
last number; and all it is necessary to add of the completed book will
be, that, though in the humour and satire of its finer parts not
unworthy of him, and though it had the clear design, worthy of him in an
especial degree, of contrasting, both in private and in public life, and
in poverty equally as in wealth, duty done and duty not done, it made no
material addition to his reputation. His public, however, showed no
falling-off in its enormous numbers; and what is said in one of his
letters, noticeable for this touch of character, illustrates his anxiety
to avoid any set-off from the disquiet that critical discourtesies might
give. "I was ludicrously foiled here the other night in a resolution I
have kept for twenty years not to know of any attack upon myself, by
stumbling, before I could pick myself up, on a short extract in the
_Globe_ from _Blackwood's Magazine_, informing me that _Little Dorrit_
is 'Twaddle.' I was sufficiently put out by it to be angry with myself
for being such a fool, and then pleased with myself for having so long
been constant to a good resolution." There was a scene that made itself
part of history not four months after his death, which, if he could have
lived to hear of it, might have more than consoled him. It was the
meeting of Bismarck and Jules Favre under the walls of Paris. The
Prussian was waiting to open fire on the city; the Frenchman was engaged
in the arduous task of showing the wisdom of not doing it; and "we
learn," say the papers of the day, "that while the two eminent statesmen
were trying to find a basis of negotiation, Von Moltke was seated in a
corner reading _Little Dorrit_." Who will doubt that the chapter on HOW
NOT TO DO IT was then absorbing the old soldier's attention?
* * * * *
Preparations for the private play had gone on incessantly up to
Christmas, and, in turning the school-room into a theatre, sawing and
hammering worthy of Babel continued for weeks. The priceless help of
Stanfield had again been secured, and I remember finding him one day at
Tavistock House in the act of upsetting some elaborate arrangements by
Dickens, with a proscenium before him made up of chairs, and the scenery
planned out with walking-sticks. But Dickens's art in a matter of this
kind was to know how to take advice; and no suggestion came to him that
he was not ready to act upon, if it presented the remotest likelihood.
In one of his great difficulties of obtaining more space, for audience
as well as actors, he was told that Mr. Cooke of Astley's was a man of
much resource in that way; and to Mr. Cooke he applied, with the
following result. "One of the finest things" (18th of October 1856) "I
have ever seen in my life of that kind was the arrival of my friend Mr.
Cooke one morning this week, in an open phaeton drawn by two white
ponies with black spots all over them (evidently stencilled), who came
in at the gate with a little jolt and a rattle, exactly as they come
into the Ring when they draw anything, and went round and round the
centre bed of the front court, apparently looking for the clown. A
multitude of boys who felt them to be no common ponies rushed up in a
breathless state--twined themselves like ivy about the railings--and
were only deterred from storming the enclosure by the glare of the
Inimitable's eye. Some of these boys had evidently followed from
Astley's. I grieve to add that my friend, being taken to the point of
difficulty, had no sort of suggestion in him; no gleam of an idea; and
might just as well have been the popular minister from the Tabernacle in
Tottenham Court Road. All he could say was--answering me, posed in the
garden, precisely as if I were the clown asking him a riddle at
night--that two of their stable tents would be home in November, and
that they were '20 foot square,' and I was heartily welcome to 'em.
Also, he said, 'You might have half a dozen of my trapezes, or my
middle-distance-tables, but they're all 6 foot and all too low sir.'
Since then, I have arranged to do it in my own way, and with my own
carpenter. You will be surprised by the look of the place. It is no more
like the school-room than it is like the sign of the Salutation Inn at
Ambleside in Westmoreland. The sounds in the house remind me, as to the
present time, of Chatham Dockyard--as to a remote epoch, of the building
of Noah's ark. Joiners are never out of the house, and the carpenter
appears to be unsettled (or settled) for life."
Of course time did not mend matters, and as Christmas approached the
house was in a state of siege. "All day long, a labourer heats size over
the fire in a great crucible. We eat it, drink it, breathe it, and smell
it. Seventy paint-pots (which came in a van) adorn the stage; and
thereon may be beheld, Stanny, and three Dansons (from the Surrey
Zoological Gardens), all painting at once!! Meanwhile, Telbin, in a
secluded bower in Brewer-street, Golden-square, plies _his_ part of the
little undertaking." How worthily it turned out in the end, the
excellence of the performances and the delight of the audiences, became
known to all London; and the pressure for admittance at last took the
form of a tragi-comedy, composed of ludicrous makeshifts and gloomy
disappointments, with which even Dickens's resources could not deal. "My
audience is now 93," he wrote one day in despair, "and at least 10 will
neither hear nor see." There was nothing for it but to increase the
number of nights; and it was not until the 20th of January he described
"the workmen smashing the last atoms of the theatre."
His book was finished soon after at Gadshill Place, to be presently
described, which he had purchased the previous year, and taken
possession of in February; subscribing himself, in the letter announcing
the fact, as "the Kentish Freeholder on his native heath, his name
Protection."[209] The new abode occupied him in various ways in the
early part of the summer; and Hans Andersen the Dane had just arrived
upon a visit to him there, when Douglas Jerrold's unexpected death
befell. It was a shock to every one, and an especial grief to Dickens.
Jerrold's wit, and the bright shrewd intellect that had so many
triumphs, need no celebration from me; but the keenest of satirists was
one of the kindliest of men, and Dickens had a fondness for Jerrold as
genuine as his admiration for him. "I chance to know a good deal about
the poor fellow's illness, for I was with him on the last day he was
out. It was ten days ago, when we dined at a dinner given by Russell at
Greenwich. He was complaining much when we met, said he had been sick
three days, and attributed it to the inhaling of white paint from his
study window. I did not think much of it at the moment, as we were very
social; but while we walked through Leicester-square he suddenly fell
into a white, hot, sick perspiration, and had to lean against the
railings. Then, at my urgent request, he was to let me put him in a cab
and send him home; but he rallied a little after that, and, on our
meeting Russell, determined to come with us. We three went down by
steamboat that we might see the great ship, and then got an open fly and
rode about Blackheath: poor Jerrold mightily enjoying the air, and
constantly saying that it set him up. He was rather quiet at dinner--sat
next Delane--but was very humorous and good, and in spirits, though he
took hardly anything. We parted with references to coming down here"
(Gadshill) "and I never saw him again. Next morning he was taken very
ill when he tried to get up. On the Wednesday and Thursday he was very
bad, but rallied on the Friday, and was quite confident of getting well.
On the Sunday he was very ill again, and on the Monday forenoon died;
'at peace with all the world' he said, and asking to be remembered to
friends. He had become indistinct and insensible, until for but a few
minutes at the end. I knew nothing about it, except that he had been ill
and was better, until, going up by railway yesterday morning, I heard a
man in the carriage, unfolding his newspaper, say to another 'Douglas
Jerrold is dead.' I immediately went up there, and then to Whitefriars
. . . I propose that there shall be a night at a theatre when the actors
(with old Cooke) shall play the _Rent Day_ and _Black-ey'd Susan_;
another night elsewhere, with a lecture from Thackeray; a day reading by
me; a night reading by me; a lecture by Russell; and a subscription
performance of the _Frozen Deep_, as at Tavistock House. I don't mean to
do it beggingly; but merely to announce the whole series, the day after
the funeral, 'In memory of the late Mr. Douglas Jerrold,' or some such
phrase. I have got hold of Arthur Smith as the best man of business I
know, and go to work with him to-morrow morning--inquiries being made in
the meantime as to the likeliest places to be had for these various
purposes. My confident hope is that we shall get close upon two thousand
pounds."
The friendly enterprise was carried to the close with a vigour,
promptitude, and success, that well corresponded with this opening. In
addition to the performances named, there were others in the country
also organized by Dickens, in which he took active personal part; and
the result did not fall short of his expectations. The sum was invested
ultimately for our friend's unmarried daughter, who still receives the
income from myself, the last surviving trustee.
So passed the greater part of the summer,[210] and when the country
performances were over at the end of August I had this intimation. "I
have arranged with Collins that he and I will start next Monday on a
ten or twelve days' expedition to out-of-the-way places, to do (in inns
and coast-corners) a little tour in search of an article and in
avoidance of railroads. I must get a good name for it, and I propose it
in five articles, one for the beginning of every number in the October
part." Next day: "Our decision is for a foray upon the fells of
Cumberland; I having discovered in the books some promising moors and
bleak places thereabout." Into the lake-country they went accordingly;
and The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices, contributed to _Household
Words_, was a narrative of the trip. But his letters had descriptive
touches, and some whimsical personal experiences, not in the published
account.
Looking over the _Beauties of England and Wales_ before he left London,
his ambition was fired by mention of Carrick Fell, "a gloomy old
mountain 1500 feet high," which he secretly resolved to go up. "We came
straight to it yesterday" (9th of September). "Nobody goes up. Guides
have forgotten it. Master of a little inn, excellent north-countryman,
volunteered. Went up, in a tremendous rain. C. D. beat Mr. Porter (name
of landlord) in half a mile. Mr. P. done up in no time. Three
nevertheless went on. Mr. P. again leading; C. D. and C." (Mr. Wilkie
Collins) "following. Rain terrific, black mists, darkness of night. Mr.
P. agitated. C. D. confident. C. (a long way down in perspective)
submissive. All wet through. No poles. Not so much as a walking-stick in
the party. Reach the summit, at about one in the day. Dead darkness as
of night. Mr. P. (excellent fellow to the last) uneasy. C. D. produces
compass from pocket. Mr. P. reassured. Farm-house where dog-cart was
left, N.N.W. Mr. P. complimentary. Descent commenced. C. D. with
compass triumphant, until compass, with the heat and wet of C. D.'s
pocket, breaks. Mr. P. (who never had a compass), inconsolable,
confesses he has not been on Carrick Fell for twenty years, and he don't
know the way down. Darker and darker. Nobody discernible, two yards off,
by the other two. Mr. P. makes suggestions, but no way. It becomes clear
to C. D. and to C. that Mr. P. is going round and round the mountain,
and never coming down. Mr. P. sits on angular granite, and says he is
'just fairly doon.' C. D. revives Mr. P. with laughter, the only
restorative in the company. Mr. P. again complimentary. Descent tried
once more. Mr. P. worse and worse. Council of war. Proposals from C. D.
to go 'slap down.' Seconded by C. Mr. P. objects, on account of
precipice called The Black Arches, and terror of the country-side. More
wandering. Mr. P. terror-stricken, but game. Watercourse, thundering and
roaring, reached. C. D. suggests that it must run to the river, and had
best be followed, subject to all gymnastic hazards. Mr. P. opposes, but
gives in. Watercourse followed accordingly. Leaps, splashes, and
tumbles, for two hours. C. lost. C. D. whoops. Cries for assistance from
behind. C. D. returns. C. with horribly sprained ankle, lying in
rivulet!"
All the danger was over when Dickens sent his description; but great had
been the trouble in binding up the sufferer's ankle and getting him
painfully on, shoving, shouldering, carrying alternately, till terra
firma was reached. "We got down at last in the wildest place,
preposterously out of the course; and, propping up C. against stones,
sent Mr. P. to the other side of Cumberland for dog-cart, so got back to
his inn, and changed. Shoe or stocking on the bad foot, out of the
question. Foot tumbled up in a flannel waistcoat. C. D. carrying C.
melo-dramatically (Wardour to the life!)[211] everywhere; into and out
of carriages; up and down stairs; to bed; every step. And so to Wigton,
got doctor, and here we are!! A pretty business, we flatter ourselves!"
Wigton, Dickens described as a place of little houses all in
half-mourning, yellow stone or white stone and black, with the wonderful
peculiarity that though it had no population, no business, and no
streets to speak of, it had five linendrapers within range of their
single window, one linendraper's next door, and five more linendrapers
round the corner. "I ordered a night light in my bed-room. A queer
little old woman brought me one of the common Child's night lights, and,
seeming to think that I looked at it with interest, said, 'It's joost a
vara keeyourious thing, sir, and joost new coom oop. It'll burn awt
hoors a' end, and no gootther, nor no waste, nor ony sike a thing, if
you can creedit what I say, seein' the airticle.'" In these primitive
quarters there befell a difficulty about letters, which Dickens solved
in a fashion especially his own. "The day after Carrick there was a mess
about our letters, through our not going to a place called Mayport. So,
while the landlord was planning how to get them (they were only twelve
miles off), I walked off, to his great astonishment, and brought them
over." The night after leaving Wigton they were at the Ship-hotel in
Allonby.
Allonby his letters presented as a small untidy outlandish place; rough
stone houses in half mourning, a few coarse yellow-stone lodging houses
with black roofs (bills in all the windows), five bathing-machines, five
girls in straw hats, five men in straw hats (wishing they had not come);
very much what Broadstairs would have been if it had been born Irish,
and had not inherited a cliff. "But this is a capital little homely inn,
looking out upon the sea; with the coast of Scotland, mountainous and
romantic, over against the windows; and though I can just stand upright
in my bedroom, we are really well lodged. It is a clean nice place in a
rough wild country, and we have a very obliging and comfortable
landlady." He had found indeed, in the latter, an acquaintance of old
date. "The landlady at the little inn at Allonby, lived at Greta-Bridge
in Yorkshire when I went down there before _Nickleby_; and was smuggled
into the room to see me, after I was secretly found out. She is an
immensely fat woman now. 'But I could tuck my arm round her waist then,
Mr. Dickens,' the landlord said when she told me the story as I was
going to bed the night before last. 'And can't you do it now?' I said.
'You insensible dog! Look at me! Here's a picture!' Accordingly I got
round as much of her as I could; and this gallant action was the most
successful I have ever performed, on the whole."
On their way home the friends were at Doncaster, and this was Dickens's
first experience of the St. Leger and its saturnalia. His companion had
by this time so far recovered as to be able, doubled-up, to walk with a
thick stick; in which condition, "being exactly like the gouty admiral
in a comedy I have given him that name." The impressions received from
the race-week were not favourable. It was noise and turmoil all day
long, and a gathering of vagabonds from all parts of the racing earth.
Every bad face that had ever caught wickedness from an innocent horse
had its representative in the streets; and as Dickens, like Gulliver
looking down upon his fellow-men after coming from the horse-country,
looked down into Doncaster High-street from his inn-window, he seemed to
see everywhere a then notorious personage who had just poisoned his
betting-companion. "Everywhere I see the late Mr. Palmer with his
betting-book in his hand. Mr. Palmer sits next me at the theatre; Mr.
Palmer goes before me down the street; Mr. Palmer follows me into the
chemist's shop where I go to buy rose water after breakfast, and says to
the chemist 'Give us soom sal volatile or soom damned thing o' that
soort, in wather--my head's bad!' And I look at the back of his bad head
repeated in long, long lines on the race course, and in the betting
stand and outside the betting rooms in the town, and I vow to God that I
can see nothing in it but cruelty, covetousness, calculation,
insensibility, and low wickedness."
Even a half-appalling kind of luck was not absent from my friend's
experiences at the race course, when, what he called a "wonderful,
paralysing, coincidence" befell him. He bought the card; facetiously
wrote down three names for the winners of the three chief races (never
in his life having heard or thought of any of the horses, except that
the winner of the Derby, who proved to be nowhere, had been mentioned to
him); "and, if you can believe it without your hair standing on end,
those three races were won, one after another, by those three horses!!!"
That was the St. Leger-day, of which he also thought it noticeable,
that, though the losses were enormous, nobody had won, for there was
nothing but grinding of teeth and blaspheming of ill-luck. Nor had
matters mended on the Cup-day, after which celebration "a groaning
phantom" lay in the doorway of his bed-room and howled all night. The
landlord came up in the morning to apologise, "and said it was a
gentleman who had lost £1500 or £2000; and he had drunk a deal
afterwards; and then they put him to bed, and then he--took the 'orrors,
and got up, and yelled till morning."[212] Dickens might well believe,
as he declared at the end of his letter, that if a boy with any good in
him, but with a dawning propensity to sporting and betting, were but
brought to the Doncaster races soon enough, it would cure him.
FOOTNOTES:
[207] The framework for this sketch was a graphic description, also done
by Dickens, of the celebrated Charity at Rochester founded in the
sixteenth century by Richard Watts, "for six poor travellers, who, not
being Rogues or Proctors, may receive gratis for one night, lodging,
entertainment, and fourpence each." A quaint monument to Watts is the
most prominent object on the wall of the south-west transept of the
cathedral, and underneath it is now placed a brass thus inscribed:
"CHARLES DICKENS. Born at Portsmouth, seventh of February 1812. Died at
Gadshill Place by Rochester, ninth of June 1870. Buried in Westminster
Abbey. To connect his memory with the scenes in which his earliest and
his latest years were passed, and with the associations of Rochester
Cathedral and its neighbourhood which extended over all his life, this
Tablet, with the sanction of the Dean and Chapter, is placed by his
Executors."
[208] So curious a contrast, taking _Copperfield_ for the purpose, I
have thought worth giving in fac-simile; and can assure the reader that
the examples taken express very fairly the general character of the
Notes to the two books respectively.
[209] In the same letter was an illustration of the ruling passion in
death, which, even in so undignified a subject, might have interested
Pope. "You remember little Wieland who did grotesque demons so well. Did
you ever hear how he died? He lay very still in bed with the life fading
out of him--suddenly sprung out of it, threw what is professionally
called a flip-flap, and fell dead on the floor."
[210] One of its incidents made such an impression on him that it will
be worth while to preserve his description of it. "I have been (by mere
accident) seeing the serpents fed to-day, with the live birds, rabbits,
and guinea pigs--a sight so very horrible that I cannot get rid of the
impression, and am, at this present, imagining serpents coming up the
legs of the table, with their infernal flat heads, and their tongues
like the Devil's tail (evidently taken from that model, in the magic
lanterns and other such popular representations), elongated for dinner.
I saw one small serpent, whose father was asleep, go up to a guinea pig
(white and yellow, and with a gentle eye--every hair upon him erect with
horror); corkscrew himself on the tip of his tail; open a mouth which
couldn't have swallowed the guinea pig's nose; dilate a throat which
wouldn't have made him a stocking; and show him what his father meant to
do with him when he came out of that ill-looking Hookah into which he
had resolved himself. The guinea pig backed against the side of the
cage--said 'I know it, I know it!'--and his eye glared and his coat
turned wiry, as he made the remark. Five small sparrows crouching
together in a little trench at the back of the cage, peeped over the
brim of it, all the time; and when they saw the guinea pig give it up,
and the young serpent go away looking at him over about two yards and a
quarter of shoulder, struggled which should get into the innermost angle
and be seized last. Everyone of them then hid his eyes in another's
breast, and then they all shook together like dry leaves--as I daresay
they may be doing now, for old Hookah was as dull as laudanum. . . . Please
to imagine two small serpents, one beginning on the tail of a white
mouse, and one on the head, and each pulling his own way, and the mouse
very much alive all the time, with the middle of him madly writhing."
[211] There was a situation in the _Frozen Deep_ where Richard Wardour,
played by Dickens, had thus to carry about Frank Aldersley in the person
of Wilkie Collins.
[212] The mention of a performance of Lord Lytton's _Money_ at the
theatre will supply the farce to this tragedy. "I have rarely seen
anything finer than Lord Glossmore, a chorus-singer in bluchers, drab
trowsers, and a brown sack; and Dudley Smooth, in somebody else's wig,
hindside before. Stout also, in anything he could lay hold of. The
waiter at the club had an immense moustache, white trowsers, and a
striped jacket; and he brought everybody who came in, a vinegar-cruet.
The man who read the will began thus: 'I so-and-so, being of unsound
mind but firm in body . . . ' In spite of all this, however, the real
character, humour, wit, and good writing of the comedy, made themselves
apparent; and the applause was loud and repeated, and really seemed
genuine. Its capital things were not lost altogether. It was succeeded
by a Jockey Dance by five ladies, who put their whips in their mouths
and worked imaginary winners up to the float--an immense success."
CHAPTER VII.
WHAT HAPPENED AT THIS TIME.
1857-1858.
Disappointments and Distastes--Compensations of
Art--Misgivings--Restlessness and
Impatience--Reply to a Remonstrance--Visions of
Places to write Books in--Fruitless
Aspirations--What lay behind--Sorrowful
Convictions--No Desire for Immunity from
Blame--Counteracting Influences weakened--Old
Project revived--Disadvantages of Public
Reading--Speech for Children's
Hospital--Unsolved Mysteries--Hospital
described--Appeal for Sick Children--Reasons
for and against Paid Readings--A Proposal from
Mr. Beale--Question of the Plunge--Mr. Arthur
Smith--Change in Home--Unwise Printed
Statement--A "Violated Letter."
AN unsettled feeling greatly in excess of what was usual with Dickens,
more or less observable since his first residence at Boulogne, became at
this time almost habitual, and the satisfactions which home should have
supplied, and which indeed were essential requirements of his nature, he
had failed to find in his home. He had not the alternative that under
this disappointment some can discover in what is called society. It did
not suit him, and he set no store by it. No man was better fitted to
adorn any circle he entered, but beyond that of friends and equals he
rarely passed. He would take as much pains to keep out of the houses of
the great as others take to get into them. Not always wisely, it may be
admitted. Mere contempt for toadyism and flunkeyism was not at all times
the prevailing motive with him which he supposed it to be. Beneath his
horror of those vices of Englishmen in his own rank of life, there was a
still stronger resentment at the social inequalities that engender them,
of which he was not so conscious and to which he owned less freely. Not
the less it served secretly to justify what he might otherwise have had
no mind to. To say he was not a gentleman would be as true as to say he
was not a writer; but if any one should assert his occasional preference
for what was even beneath his level over that which was above it, this
would be difficult of disproof. It was among those defects of
temperament for which his early trials and his early successes were
accountable in perhaps equal measure. He was sensitive in a passionate
degree to praise and blame, which yet he made it for the most part a
point of pride to assume indifference to; the inequalities of rank which
he secretly resented took more galling as well as glaring prominence
from the contrast of the necessities he had gone through with the fame
that had come to him; and when the forces he most affected to despise
assumed the form of barriers he could not easily overleap, he was led to
appear frequently intolerant (for he very seldom was really so) in
opinions and language. His early sufferings brought with them the
healing powers of energy, will, and persistence, and taught him the
inexpressible value of a determined resolve to live down difficulties;
but the habit, in small as in great things, of renunciation and
self-sacrifice, they did not teach; and, by his sudden leap into a
world-wide popularity and influence, he became master of everything that
might seem to be attainable in life, before he had mastered what a man
must undergo to be equal to its hardest trials.
Nothing of all this has yet presented itself to notice, except in
occasional forms of restlessness and desire of change of place, which
were themselves, when his books were in progress, so incident as well to
the active requirements of his fancy as to call, thus far, for no other
explanation. Up to the date of the completion of _Copperfield_ he had
felt himself to be in possession of an all-sufficient resource. Against
whatever might befall he had a set-off in his imaginative creations, a
compensation derived from his art that never failed him, because there
he was supreme. It was the world he could bend to his will, and make
subserve to all his desires. He had otherwise, underneath his exterior
of a singular precision, method, and strictly orderly arrangement in all
things, and notwithstanding a temperament to which home and home
interests were really a necessity, something in common with those eager,
impetuous, somewhat overbearing natures, that rush at existence without
heeding the cost of it, and are not more ready to accept and make the
most of its enjoyments than to be easily and quickly overthrown by its
burdens.[213] But the world he had called into being had thus far borne
him safely through these perils. He had his own creations always by his
side. They were living, speaking companions. With them only he was
everywhere thoroughly identified. He laughed and wept with them; was as
much elated by their fun as cast down by their grief; and brought to the
consideration of them a belief in their reality as well as in the
influences they were meant to exercise, which in every circumstance
sustained him.
It was during the composition of _Little Dorrit_ that I think he first
felt a certain strain upon his invention which brought with it other
misgivings. In a modified form this was present during the latter
portions of _Bleak House_, of which not a few of the defects might be
traced to the acting excitements amid which it was written; but the
succeeding book made it plainer to him; and it is remarkable that in the
interval between them he resorted for the first and only time in his
life to a practice, which he abandoned at the close of his next and last
story published in the twenty-number form, of putting down written
"Memoranda" of suggestions for characters or incidents by way of
resource to him in his writing. Never before had his teeming fancy
seemed to want such help; the need being less to contribute to its
fullness than to check its overflowing; but it is another proof that he
had been secretly bringing before himself, at least, the possibility
that what had ever been his great support might some day desert him. It
was strange that he should have had such doubt, and he would hardly have
confessed it openly; but apart from that wonderful world of his books,
the range of his thoughts was not always proportioned to the width and
largeness of his nature. His ordinary circle of activity, whether in
likings or thinkings, was full of such surprising animation, that one
was apt to believe it more comprehensive than it really was; and again
and again, when a wide horizon might seem to be ahead of him, he would
pull up suddenly and stop short, as though nothing lay beyond. For the
time, though each had its term and change, he was very much a man of one
idea, each having its turn of absolute predominance; and this was one of
the secrets of the thoroughness with which everything he took in hand
was done. As to the matter of his writings, the actual truth was that
his creative genius never really failed him. Not a few of his inventions
of character and humour, up to the very close of his life, his
Marigolds, Lirripers, Gargerys, Pips, Sapseas and many others, were as
fresh and fine as in his greatest day. He had however lost the free and
fertile method of the earlier time. He could no longer fill a
wide-spread canvas with the same facility and certainty as of old; and
he had frequently a quite unfounded apprehension of some possible
break-down, of which the end might be at any moment beginning. There
came accordingly, from time to time, intervals of unusual impatience and
restlessness, strange to me in connection with his home; his old
pursuits were too often laid aside for other excitements and
occupations; he joined a public political agitation, set on foot by
administrative reformers; he got up various quasi-public private
theatricals, in which he took the leading place; and though it was but
part of his always generous devotion in any friendly duty to organize
the series of performances on his friend Jerrold's death, yet the
eagerness with which he flung himself into them, so arranging them as to
assume an amount of labour in acting and travelling that might have
appalled an experienced comedian, and carrying them on week after week
unceasingly in London and the provinces, expressed but the craving which
still had possession of him to get by some means at some change that
should make existence easier. What was highest in his nature had ceased
for the time to be highest in his life, and he had put himself at the
mercy of lower accidents and conditions. The mere effect of the
strolling wandering ways into which this acting led him could not be
other than unfavourable. But remonstrance as yet was unavailing.
To one very earnestly made in the early autumn of 1857, in which
opportunity was taken to compare his recent rush up Carrick Fell to his
rush into other difficulties, here was the reply. "Too late to say, put
the curb on, and don't rush at hills--the wrong man to say it to. I have
now no relief but in action. I am become incapable of rest. I am quite
confident I should rust, break, and die, if I spared myself. Much better
to die, doing. What I am in that way, nature made me first, and my way
of life has of late, alas! confirmed. I must accept the drawback--since
it is one--with the powers I have; and I must hold upon the tenure
prescribed to me." Something of the same sad feeling, it is right to
say, had been expressed from time to time, in connection also with home
dissatisfactions and misgivings, through the three years preceding; but
I attributed it to other causes, and gave little attention to it. During
his absences abroad for the greater part of 1854, '55, and '56, while
the elder of his children were growing out of childhood, and his books
were less easy to him than in his earlier manhood, evidences presented
themselves in his letters of the old "unhappy loss or want of something"
to which he had given a pervading prominence in _Copperfield_. In the
first of those years he made express allusion to the kind of experience
which had been one of his descriptions in that favourite book, and,
mentioning the drawbacks of his present life, had first identified it
with his own: "the so happy and yet so unhappy existence which seeks its
realities in unrealities, and finds its dangerous comfort in a perpetual
escape from the disappointment of heart around it."
Later in the same year he thus wrote from Boulogne: "I have had dreadful
thoughts of getting away somewhere altogether by myself. If I could have
managed it, I think possibly I might have gone to the Pyreennees (you
know what I mean that word for, so I won't re-write it) for six months!
I have put the idea into the perspective of six months, but have not
abandoned it. I have visions of living for half a year or so, in all
sorts of inaccessible places, and opening a new book therein. A floating
idea of going up above the snow-line in Switzerland, and living in some
astonishing convent, hovers about me. If _Household Words_ could be got
into a good train, in short, I don't know in what strange place, or at
what remote elevation above the level of the sea, I might fall to work
next. _Restlessness_, you will say. Whatever it is, it is always driving
me, and I cannot help it. I have rested nine or ten weeks, and sometimes
feel as if it had been a year--though I had the strangest nervous
miseries before I stopped. If I couldn't walk fast and far, I should
just explode and perish." Again, four months later he wrote: "You will
hear of me in Paris, probably next Sunday, and I _may_ go on to
Bordeaux. Have general ideas of emigrating in the summer to the
mountain-ground between France and Spain. Am altogether in a dishevelled
state of mind--motes of new books in the dirty air, miseries of older
growth threatening to close upon me. Why is it, that as with poor David,
a sense comes always crushing on me now, when I fall into low spirits,
as of one happiness I have missed in life, and one friend and companion
I have never made?"
Early in 1856 (20th of January) the notion revisited him of writing a
book in solitude. "Again I am beset by my former notions of a book
whereof the whole story shall be on the top of the Great St. Bernard. As
I accept and reject ideas for _Little Dorrit_, it perpetually comes back
to me. Two or three years hence, perhaps you'll find me living with the
Monks and the Dogs a whole winter--among the blinding snows that fall
about that monastery. I have a serious idea that I shall do it, if I
live." He was at this date in Paris; and during the visit to him of
Macready in the following April, the self-revelations were resumed. The
great actor was then living in retirement at Sherborne, to which he had
gone on quitting the stage; and Dickens gave favourable report of his
enjoyment of the change to his little holiday at Paris. Then, after
recurring to his own old notion of having some slight idea of going to
settle in Australia, only he could not do it until he should have
finished _Little Dorrit_, he went on to say that perhaps Macready, if he
could get into harness again, would not be the worse for some such
troubles as were worrying himself. "It fills me with pity to think of
him away in that lonely Sherborne place. I have always felt of myself
that I must, please God, die in harness, but I have never felt it more
strongly than in looking at, and thinking of, him. However strange it is
to be never at rest, and never satisfied, and ever trying after
something that is never reached, and to be always laden with plot and
plan and care and worry, how clear it is that it must be, and that one
is driven by an irresistible might until the journey is worked out! It
is much better to go on and fret, than to stop and fret. As to
repose--for some men there's no such thing in this life. The foregoing
has the appearance of a small sermon; but it is so often in my head in
these days that it cannot help coming out. The old days--the old days!
Shall I ever, I wonder, get the frame of mind back as it used to be
then? Something of it perhaps--but never quite as it used to be. I find
that the skeleton in my domestic closet is becoming a pretty big one."
It would be unjust and uncandid not to admit that these and other
similar passages in the letters that extended over the years while he
lived abroad, had served in some degree as a preparation for what came
after his return to England in the following year. It came with a great
shock nevertheless; because it told plainly what before had never been
avowed, but only hinted at more or less obscurely. The opening reference
is to the reply which had been made to a previous expression of his wish
for some confidences as in the old time. I give only what is strictly
necessary to account for what followed, and even this with deep
reluctance. "Your letter of yesterday was so kind and hearty, and
sounded so gently the many chords we have touched together, that I
cannot leave it unanswered, though I have not much (to any purpose) to
say. My reference to 'confidences' was merely to the relief of saying a
word of what has long been pent up in my mind. Poor Catherine and I are
not made for each other, and there is no help for it. It is not only
that she makes me uneasy and unhappy, but that I make her so too--and
much more so. She is exactly what you know, in the way of being amiable
and complying; but we are strangely ill-assorted for the bond there is
between us. God knows she would have been a thousand times happier if
she had married another kind of man, and that her avoidance of this
destiny would have been at least equally good for us both. I am often
cut to the heart by thinking what a pity it is, for her own sake, that I
ever fell in her way; and if I were sick or disabled to-morrow, I know
how sorry she would be, and how deeply grieved myself, to think how we
had lost each other. But exactly the same incompatibility would arise,
the moment I was well again; and nothing on earth could make her
understand me, or suit us to each other. Her temperament will not go
with mine. It mattered not so much when we had only ourselves to
consider, but reasons have been growing since which make it all but
hopeless that we should even try to struggle on. What is now befalling
me I have seen steadily coming, ever since the days you remember when
Mary was born; and I know too well that you cannot, and no one can, help
me. Why I have even written I hardly know; but it is a miserable sort of
comfort that you should be clearly aware how matters stand. The mere
mention of the fact, without any complaint or blame of any sort, is a
relief to my present state of spirits--and I can get this only from you,
because I can speak of it to no one else." In the same tone was his
rejoinder to my reply. "To the most part of what you say--Amen! You are
not so tolerant as perhaps you might be of the wayward and unsettled
feeling which is part (I suppose) of the tenure on which one holds an
imaginative life, and which I have, as you ought to know well, often
only kept down by riding over it like a dragoon--but let that go by. I
make no maudlin complaint. I agree with you as to the very possible
incidents, even not less bearable than mine, that might and must often
occur to the married condition when it is entered into very young. I am
always deeply sensible of the wonderful exercise I have of life and its
highest sensations, and have said to myself for years, and have honestly
and truly felt, This is the drawback to such a career, and is not to be
complained of. I say it and feel it now as strongly as ever I did; and,
as I told you in my last, I do not with that view put all this forward.
But the years have not made it easier to bear for either of us; and, for
her sake as well as mine, the wish will force itself upon me that
something might be done. I know too well it is impossible. There is the
fact, and that is all one can say. Nor are you to suppose that I
disguise from myself what might be urged on the other side. I claim no
immunity from blame. There is plenty of fault on my side, I dare say, in
the way of a thousand uncertainties, caprices, and difficulties of
disposition; but only one thing will alter all that, and that is, the
end which alters everything."
It will not seem to most people that there was anything here which in
happier circumstances might not have been susceptible of considerate
adjustment; but all the circumstances were unfavourable, and the
moderate middle course which the admissions in that letter might wisely
have prompted and wholly justified, was unfortunately not taken. Compare
what before was said of his temperament, with what is there said by
himself of its defects, and the explanation will not be difficult. Every
counteracting influence against the one idea which now predominated over
him had been so weakened as to be almost powerless. His elder children
were no longer children; his books had lost for the time the importance
they formerly had over every other consideration in his life; and he had
not in himself the resource that such a man, judging him from the
surface, might be expected to have had. Not his genius only, but his
whole nature, was too exclusively made up of sympathy for, and with, the
real in its most intense form, to be sufficiently provided against
failure in the realities around him. There was for him no "city of the
mind" against outward ills, for inner consolation and shelter. It was in
and from the actual he still stretched forward to find the freedom and
satisfactions of an ideal, and by his very attempts to escape the world
he was driven back into the thick of it. But what he would have sought
there, it supplies to none; and to get the infinite out of anything so
finite, has broken many a stout heart.
At the close of that last letter from Gadshill (5th of September) was
this question--"What do you think of my paying for this place, by
reviving that old idea of some Readings from my books. I am very
strongly tempted. Think of it." The reasons against it had great force,
and took, in my judgment, greater from the time at which it was again
proposed. The old ground of opposition remained. It was a substitution
of lower for higher aims; a change to commonplace from more elevated
pursuits; and it had so much of the character of a public exhibition for
money as to raise, in the question of respect for his calling as a
writer, a question also of respect for himself as a gentleman. This
opinion, now strongly reiterated, was referred ultimately to two
distinguished ladies of his acquaintance, who decided against it.[214]
Yet not without such momentary misgiving in the direction of "the
stage," as pointed strongly to the danger, which, by those who took the
opposite view, was most of all thought incident to the particular time
of the proposal. It might be a wild exaggeration to fear that he was in
danger of being led to adopt the stage as a calling, but he was
certainly about to place himself within reach of not a few of its
drawbacks and disadvantages. To the full extent he perhaps did not
himself know, how much his eager present wish to become a public reader
was but the outcome of the restless domestic discontents of the last
four years; and that to indulge it, and the unsettled habits inseparable
from it, was to abandon every hope of resettling his disordered home.
There is nothing, in its application to so divine a genius as
Shakespeare, more affecting than his expressed dislike to a profession,
which, in the jealous self-watchfulness of his noble nature, he feared
might hurt his mind.[215] The long subsequent line of actors admirable
in private as in public life, and all the gentle and generous
associations of the histrionic art, have not weakened the testimony of
its greatest name against its less favourable influences; against the
laxity of habits it may encourage; and its public manners, bred of
public means, not always compatible with home felicities and duties.
But, freely open as Dickens was to counsel in regard of his books, he
was, for reasons formerly stated,[216] less accessible to it on points
of personal conduct; and when he had neither self-distrust nor
self-denial to hold him back, he would push persistently forward to
whatever object he had in view.
An occurrence of the time hastened the decision in this case. An
enterprise had been set on foot for establishment of a hospital for sick
children;[217] a large old-fashioned mansion in Great Ormond-street,
with spacious garden, had been fitted up with more than thirty beds;
during the four or five years of its existence, outdoor and indoor
relief had been afforded by it to nearly fifty thousand children, of
whom thirty thousand were under five years of age; but, want of funds
having threatened to arrest the merciful work, it was resolved to try a
public dinner by way of charitable appeal, and for president the happy
choice was made of one who had enchanted everybody with the joys and
sorrows of little children. Dickens threw himself into the service heart
and soul. There was a simple pathos in his address from the chair quite
startling in its effect at such a meeting; and he probably never moved
any audience so much as by the strong personal feeling with which he
referred to the sacrifices made for the Hospital by the very poor
themselves: from whom a subscription of fifty pounds, contributed in
single pennies, had come to the treasurer during almost every year it
had been open. The whole speech, indeed, is the best of the kind spoken
by him; and two little pictures from it, one of the misery he had
witnessed, the other of the remedy he had found, should not be absent
from the picture of his own life.
"Some years ago, being in Scotland, I went with one of the most humane
members of the most humane of professions, on a morning tour among some
of the worst lodged inhabitants of the old town of Edinburgh. In the
closes and wynds of that picturesque place (I am sorry to remind you
what fast friends picturesqueness and typhus often are), we saw more
poverty and sickness in an hour than many people would believe in, in a
life. Our way lay from one to another of the most wretched dwellings,
reeking with horrible odours; shut out from the sky and from the air,
mere pits and dens. In a room in one of these places, where there was an
empty porridge-pot on the cold hearth, a ragged woman and some ragged
children crouching on the bare ground near it,--and, I remember as I
speak, where the very light, refracted from a high damp-stained wall
outside, came in trembling, as if the fever which had shaken everything
else had shaken even it,--there lay, in an old egg-box which the mother
had begged from a shop, a little, feeble, wan, sick child. With his
little wasted face, and his little hot worn hands folded over his
breast, and his little bright attentive eyes, I can see him now, as I
have seen him for several years, looking steadily at us. There he lay in
his small frail box, which was not at all a bad emblem of the small body
from which he was slowly parting--there he lay, quite quiet, quite
patient, saying never a word. He seldom cried, the mother said; he
seldom complained; 'he lay there, seemin' to woonder what it was a'
aboot.' God knows, I thought, as I stood looking at him, he had his
reasons for wondering. . . . Many a poor child, sick and neglected, I have
seen since that time in London; many have I also seen most
affectionately tended, in unwholesome houses and hard circumstances
where recovery was impossible: but at all such times I have seen my
little drooping friend in his egg-box, and he has always addressed his
dumb wonder to me what it meant, and why, in the name of a gracious God,
such things should be! . . . But, ladies and gentlemen," Dickens added,
"such things need NOT be, and will not be, if this company, which is a
drop of the life-blood of the great compassionate public heart, will
only accept the means of rescue and prevention which it is mine to
offer. Within a quarter of a mile of this place where I speak, stands a
once courtly old house, where blooming children were born, and grew up
to be men and women, and married, and brought their own blooming
children back to patter up the old oak staircase which stood but the
other day, and to wonder at the old oak carvings on the chimney-pieces.
In the airy wards into which the old state drawing-rooms and family
bedchambers of that house are now converted, are lodged such small
patients that the attendant nurses look like reclaimed giantesses, and
the kind medical practitioner like an amiable Christian ogre. Grouped
about the little low tables in the centre of the rooms, are such tiny
convalescents that they seem to be playing at having been ill. On the
doll's beds are such diminutive creatures that each poor sufferer is
supplied with its tray of toys: and, looking round, you may see how the
little tired flushed cheek has toppled over half the brute creation on
its way into the ark; or how one little dimpled arm has mowed down (as
I saw myself) the whole tin soldiery of Europe. On the walls of these
rooms are graceful, pleasant, bright, childish pictures. At the beds'
heads, hang representations of the figure which is the universal
embodiment of all mercy and compassion, the figure of Him who was once a
child Himself, and a poor one. But alas! reckoning up the number of beds
that are there, the visitor to this Child's Hospital will find himself
perforce obliged to stop at very little over thirty; and will learn,
with sorrow and surprise, that even that small number, so forlornly, so
miserably diminutive compared with this vast London, cannot possibly be
maintained unless the Hospital be made better known. I limit myself to
saying better known, because I will not believe that in a Christian
community of fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, it can fail,
being better known, to be well and richly-endowed." It was a brave and
true prediction. The Child's Hospital has never since known want. That
night alone added greatly more than three thousand pounds to its funds,
and Dickens put the crown to his good work by reading on its behalf,
shortly afterwards, his _Christmas Carol_; when the sum realized, and
the urgent demand that followed for a repetition of the pleasure given
by the reading, bore down farther opposition to the project of his
engaging publicly in such readings for himself.
The Child's Hospital night was the 9th of February, its Reading was
appointed for the 15th of April, and, nearly a month before, renewed
efforts at remonstrance had been made. "Your view of the reading
matter," Dickens replied, "I still think is unconsciously taken from
your own particular point. You don't seem to me to get out of yourself
in considering it. A word more upon it. You are not to think I have made
up my mind. If I had, why should I not say so? I find very great
difficulty in doing so because of what you urge, because I know the
question to be a balance of doubts, and because I most honestly feel in
my innermost heart, in this matter (as in all others for years and
years), the honour of the calling by which I have always stood most
conscientiously. But do you quite consider that the public exhibition of
oneself takes place equally, whosoever may get the money? And have you
any idea that at this moment--this very time--half the public at least
supposes me to be paid? My dear F, out of the twenty or five-and-twenty
letters a week that I get about Readings, twenty will ask at what price,
or on what terms, it can be done. The only exceptions, in truth, are
when the correspondent is a clergyman, or a banker, or the member for
the place in question. Why, at this very time half Scotland believes
that I am paid for going to Edinburgh!--Here is Greenock writes to me,
and asks could it be done for a hundred pounds? There is Aberdeen
writes, and states the capacity of its hall, and says, though far less
profitable than the very large hall in Edinburgh, is it not enough to
come on for? W. answers such letters continually. (--At this place,
enter Beale. He called here yesterday morning, and then wrote to ask if
I would see him to-day. I replied 'Yes,' so here he came in. With long
preface called to know whether it was possible to arrange anything in
the way of Readings for this autumn--say, six months. Large capital at
command. Could produce partners, in such an enterprise, also with large
capital. Represented such. Returns would be enormous. Would I name a
sum? a minimum sum that I required to have, in any case? Would I look at
it as a Fortune, and in no other point of view? I shook my head, and
said, my tongue was tied on the subject for the present; I might be more
communicative at another time. Exit Beale in confusion and
disappointment.)--You will be happy to hear that at one on Friday, the
Lord Provost, Dean of Guild, Magistrates, and Council of the ancient
city of Edinburgh will wait (in procession) on their brother freeman, at
the Music Hall, to give him hospitable welcome. Their brother freeman
has been cursing their stars and his own, ever since the receipt of
solemn notification to this effect." But very grateful, when it came,
was the enthusiasm of the greeting, and welcome the gift of the silver
wassail-bowl which followed the reading of the _Carol_. "I had no
opportunity of asking any one's advice in Edinburgh," he wrote on his
return. "The crowd was too enormous, and the excitement in it much too
great. But my determination is all but taken. I must do _something_, or
I shall wear my heart away. I can see no better thing to do that is half
so hopeful in itself, or half so well suited to my restless state."
What is pointed at in those last words had been taken as a ground of
objection, and thus he turned it into an argument the other way. During
all these months many sorrowful misunderstandings had continued in his
home, and the relief sought from the misery had but the effect of making
desperate any hope of a better understanding. "It becomes necessary,"
he wrote at the end of March, "with a view to the arrangements that
would have to be begun next month if I decided on the Readings, to
consider and settle the question of the Plunge. Quite dismiss from your
mind any reference whatever to present circumstances at home. Nothing
can put _them_ right, until we are all dead and buried and risen. It is
not, with me, a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour,
or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer. It is
all despairingly over. Have no lingering hope of, or for, me in this
association. A dismal failure has to be borne, and there an end. Will
you then try to think of this reading project (as I do) apart from all
personal likings and dislikings, and solely with a view to its effect on
that peculiar relation (personally affectionate, and like no other
man's) which subsists between me and the public? I want your most
careful consideration. If you would like, when you have gone over it in
your mind, to discuss the matter with me and Arthur Smith (who would
manage the whole of the business, which I should never touch); we will
make an appointment. But I ought to add that Arthur Smith plainly says,
'Of the immense return in money, I have no doubt. Of the Dash into the
new position, however, I am not so good a judge.' I enclose you a rough
note[218] of my project, as it stands in my mind."
Mr. Arthur Smith, a man possessed of many qualities that justified the
confidence Dickens placed in him, might not have been a good judge of
the "Dash" into the new position, but no man knew better every
disadvantage incident to it, or was less likely to be disconcerted by
any. His exact fitness to manage the scheme successfully, made him an
unsafe counsellor respecting it. Within a week from this time the
reading for the Charity was to be given. "They have let," Dickens wrote
on the 9th of April, "five hundred stalls for the Hospital night; and
as people come every day for more, and it is out of the question to make
more, they cannot be restrained at St. Martin's Hall from taking down
names for other readings." This closed the attempt at further objection.
Exactly a fortnight after the reading for the children's hospital, on
Thursday the 29th April, came the first public reading for his own
benefit; and before the next month was over, this launch into a new life
had been followed by a change in his old home. Thenceforward he and his
wife lived apart. The eldest son went with his mother, Dickens at once
giving effect to her expressed wish in this respect; and the other
children remained with himself, their intercourse with Mrs. Dickens
being left entirely to themselves. It was thus far an arrangement of a
strictly private nature, and no decent person could have had excuse for
regarding it in any other light, if public attention had not been
unexpectedly invited to it by a printed statement in _Household Words_.
Dickens was stung into this by some miserable gossip at which in
ordinary circumstances no man would more determinedly have been silent;
but he had now publicly to show himself, at stated times, as a public
entertainer, and this, with his name even so aspersed, he found to be
impossible. All he would concede to my strenuous resistance against such
a publication, was an offer to suppress it, if, upon reference to the
opinion of a certain distinguished man (still living), that opinion
should prove to be in agreement with mine. Unhappily it fell in with his
own, and the publication went on. It was followed by another statement,
a letter subscribed with his name, which got into print without his
sanction; nothing publicly being known of it (I was not among those who
had read it privately) until it appeared in the _New York Tribune_. It
had been addressed and given to Mr. Arthur Smith as an authority for
correction of false rumours and scandals, and Mr. Smith had given a copy
of it, with like intention, to the _Tribune_ correspondent in London.
Its writer referred to it always afterwards as his "violated letter."
The course taken by the author of this book at the time of these
occurrences, will not be departed from here. Such illustration of grave
defects in Dickens's character as the passage in his life affords, I
have not shrunk from placing side by side with such excuses in regard to
it as he had unquestionable right to claim should be put forward also.
How far what remained of his story took tone or colour from it, and
especially from the altered career on which at the same time he entered,
will thus be sufficiently explained; and with anything else the public
have nothing to do.
FOOTNOTES:
[213] Anything more completely opposed to the Micawber type could hardly
be conceived, and yet there were moments (really and truly only moments)
when the fancy would arise that if the conditions of his life had been
reversed, something of a vagabond existence (using the word in
Goldsmith's meaning) might have supervened. It would have been an
unspeakable misery to him, but it might have come nevertheless. The
question of hereditary transmission had a curious attraction for him,
and considerations connected with it were frequently present to his
mind. Of a youth who had fallen into a father's weaknesses without the
possibility of having himself observed them for imitation, he thus wrote
on one occasion: "It suggests the strangest consideration as to which of
our own failings we are really responsible, and as to which of them we
cannot quite reasonably hold ourselves to be so. What A. evidently
derived from his father cannot in his case be derived from association
and observation, but must be in the very principles of his individuality
as a living creature."
[214] "You may as well know" (20th of March 1858) "that I went on" (I
designate the ladies by A and B respectively) "and propounded the matter
to A, without any preparation. Result.--'I am surprised, and I should
have been surprised if I had seen it in the newspaper without previous
confidence from you. But nothing more. N--no. Certainly not. Nothing
more. I don't see that there is anything derogatory in it, even now when
you ask me that question. I think upon the whole that most people would
be glad you should have the money, rather than other people. It might be
misunderstood here and there, at first; but I think the thing would very
soon express itself, and that your own power of making it express itself
would be very great.' As she wished me to ask B, who was in another
room, I did so. She was for a moment tremendously disconcerted, '_under
the impression that it was to lead to the stage_' (!!). Then, without
knowing anything of A's opinion, closely followed it. That absurd
association had never entered my head or yours; but it might enter some
other heads for all that. Take these two opinions for whatever they are
worth. A (being very much interested and very anxious to help to a right
conclusion) proposed to ask a few people of various degrees who know
what the Readings are, what _they_ think--not compromising me, but
suggesting the project afar-off, as an idea in somebody else's mind. I
thanked her, and said 'Yes,' of course."
[215 Oh! for my sake do you with Fortune chide
The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
That did not better for my life provide
Than public means which public manners breeds.
Thence comes it that my name receives a brand;
And almost thence my nature is subdu'd
To what it works in, like the dyer's hand. . .
Pity me, then, and wish I were renew'd. . .
Sonnet cxi.
And in the preceding Sonnet cx.
Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there,
And made myself a motley to the view,
Gor'd mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear. . .
[216] Vol. I. pp. 72-3. I repeat from that passage one or two sentences,
though it is hardly fair to give them without the modifications that
accompany them. "A too great confidence in himself, a sense that
everything was possible to the will that would make it so, laid
occasionally upon him self-imposed burdens greater than might be borne
by any one with safety. In that direction there was in him, at such
times, something even hard and aggressive; in his determinations a
something that had almost the tone of fierceness; something in his
nature that made his resolves insuperable, however hasty the opinions on
which they had been formed."
[217] The Board of Health returns, showing that out of every annual
thousand of deaths in London, the immense proportion of four hundred
were those of children under four years old, had established the
necessity for such a scheme. Of course the stress of this mortality fell
on the children of the poor, "dragged up rather than brought up," as
Charles Lamb expressed it, and perishing unhelped by the way.
[218] Here is the rough note: in which the reader will be interested to
observe the limits originally placed to the proposal. The first Readings
were to comprise only the _Carol_, and for others a new story was to be
written. He had not yet the full confidence in his power or versatility
as an actor which subsequent experience gave him. "I propose to announce
in a short and plain advertisement (what is quite true) that I cannot so
much as answer the numerous applications that are made to me to read,
and that compliance with ever so few of them is, in any reason,
impossible. That I have therefore resolved upon a course of readings of
the _Christmas Carol_ both in town and country, and that those in London
will take place at St. Martin's Hall on certain evenings. Those evenings
will be either four or six Thursdays, in May and the beginning of
June. . . . I propose an Autumn Tour, for the country, extending through
August, September, and October. It would comprise the Eastern Counties,
the West, Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Scotland. I should read from 35 to
40 times in this tour, at the least. At each place where there was a
great success, I would myself announce that I should come back, on the
turn of Christmas, to read a new Christmas story written for that
purpose. This story I should first read a certain number of times in
London. I have the strongest belief that by April in next year, a very
large sum of money indeed would be gained by these means. Ireland would
be still untouched, and I conceive America alone (if I could resolve to
go there) to be worth Ten Thousand Pounds. In all these proceedings, the
Business would be wholly detached from me, and I should never appear in
it. I would have an office, belonging to the Readings and to nothing
else, opened in London; I would have the advertisements emanating from
it, and also signed by some one belonging to it; and they should always
mention me as a third person--just as the Child's Hospital, for
instance, in addressing the public, mentions me."
CHAPTER VIII.
GADSHILL PLACE.
1856-1870.
First Description of Gadshill
Place--Negociations for Purchase--Becomes his
Home in 1859--Gadshill a Century
Ago--Antecedents of Dickens's House--Exterior
and Porch--Gradual Additions--Later
Changes--Swiss Châlet presented by Mr.
Fechter--Dickens's Writing-table--Making
Gadshill his Home--Planting Trees--New
Conservatory--Course of Daily Life--Dickens's
Dogs--A Dog with a Taste--Favourite
Walks--Cooling Churchyard.
"I WAS better pleased with Gadshill Place last Saturday," he wrote to me
from Paris on the 13th of February 1856, "on going down there, even than
I had prepared myself to be. The country, against every disadvantage of
season, is beautiful; and the house is so old fashioned, cheerful, and
comfortable, that it is really pleasant to look at. The good old Rector
now there, has lived in it six and twenty years, so I have not the heart
to turn him out. He is to remain till Lady-Day next year, when I shall
go in, please God; make my alterations; furnish the house; and keep it
for myself that summer." Returning to England through the Kentish
country with Mr. Wilkie Collins in July, other advantages occurred to
him. "A railroad opened from Rochester to Maidstone, which connects
Gadshill at once with the whole sea coast, is certainly an addition to
the place, and an enhancement of its value. Bye and bye we shall have
the London, Chatham and Dover, too; and that will bring it within an
hour of Canterbury and an hour and a half of Dover. I am glad to hear
of your having been in the neighbourhood. There is no healthier (marshes
avoided), and none in my eyes more beautiful. One of these days I shall
show you some places up the Medway with which you will be charmed."
[Illustration: THE PORCH AT GADSHILL.]
The association with his youthful fancy that first made the place
attractive to him has been told; and it was with wonder he had heard one
day, from his friend and fellow worker at _Household Words_, Mr. W. H.
Wills, that not only was the house for sale to which he had so often
looked wistfully, but that the lady chiefly interested as its owner had
been long known and much esteemed by himself. Such curious chances led
Dickens to his saying about the smallness of the world; but the close
relation often found thus existing between things and persons far apart,
suggests not so much the smallness of the world as the possible
importance of the least things done in it, and is better explained by
the grander teaching of Carlyle, that causes and effects, connecting
every man and thing with every other, extend through all space and time.
It was at the close of 1855 the negociation for its purchase began.
"They wouldn't," he wrote (25th of November), "take £1700 for the
Gadshill property, but 'finally' wanted £1800. I have finally offered
£1750. It will require an expenditure of about £300 more before yielding
£100 a year." The usual discovery of course awaited him that this first
estimate would have to be increased threefold. "The changes absolutely
necessary" (9th of February 1856) "will take a thousand pounds; which
sum I am always resolving to squeeze out of this, grind out of that, and
wring out of the other; this, that, and the other generally all three
declining to come up to the scratch for the purpose." "This day,"[219]
he wrote on the 14th of March, "I have paid the purchase money for
Gadshill Place. After drawing the cheque (£1790) I turned round to give
it to Wills, and said, 'Now isn't it an extraordinary thing--look at the
Day--Friday! I have been nearly drawing it half a dozen times when the
lawyers have not been ready, and here it comes round upon a Friday as a
matter of course.'" He had no thought at this time of reserving the
place wholly for himself, or of making it his own residence except at
intervals of summer. He looked upon it as an investment only. "You will
hardly know Gadshill again," he wrote in January 1858, "I am improving
it so much--yet I have no interest in the place." But continued
ownership brought increased liking; he took more and more interest in
his own improvements, which were just the kind of occasional occupation
and resource his life most wanted in its next seven or eight years; and
any farther idea of letting it he soon abandoned altogether. It only
once passed out of his possession thus, for four months in 1859; in the
following year, on the sale of Tavistock House, he transferred to it his
books and pictures and choicer furniture; and thenceforward, varied only
by houses taken from time to time for the London season, he made it his
permanent family abode. Now and then, even during those years, he would
talk of selling it; and on his last return from America, when he had
sent the last of his sons out into the world, he really might have sold
it if he could then have found a house in London suitable to him, and
such as he could purchase. But in this he failed; secretly to his own
satisfaction, as I believe; and thereupon, in that last autumn of his
life, he projected and carried out his most costly addition to Gadshill.
Already of course more money had been spent upon it than his first
intention in buying it would have justified. He had so enlarged the
accommodation, improved the grounds and offices, and added to the land,
that, taking also into account this final outlay, the reserved price
placed upon the whole after his death more than quadrupled what he had
given in 1856 for the house, shrubbery, and twenty years' lease of a
meadow field. It was then purchased, and is now inhabited, by his eldest
son.
Its position has been described, and one of the last-century-histories
of Rochester quaintly mentions the principal interest of the locality.
"Near the twenty-seventh stone from London is Gadshill, supposed to have
been the scene of the robbery mentioned by Shakespeare in his play of
Henry IV; there being reason to think also that it was Sir John
Falstaff, of truly comic memory, who under the name of Oldcastle
inhabited Cooling Castle of which the ruins are in the neighbourhood. A
small distance to the left appears on an eminence the Hermitage the seat
of the late Sir Francis Head, Bart;[220] and close to the road, on a
small ascent, is a neat building lately erected by Mr. Day. In
descending Strood-hill is a fine prospect of Strood, Rochester, and
Chatham, which three towns form a continued street extending above two
miles in length." It had been supposed[221] that "the neat building
lately erected by Mr. Day" was that which the great novelist made
famous; but Gadshill Place had no existence until eight years after the
date of the history. The good rector who so long lived in it told me, in
1859, that it had been built eighty years before by a then well-known
character in those parts, one Stevens, father-in-law of Henslow the
Cambridge professor of botany. Stevens, who could only with much
difficulty manage to write his name, had begun life as ostler at an inn;
had become husband to the landlord's widow; then a brewer; and finally,
as he subscribed himself on one occasion, "mare" of Rochester.
Afterwards the house was inhabited by Mr. Lynn (from some of the members
of whose family Dickens made his purchase); and, before the Rev. Mr.
Hindle became its tenant, it was inhabited by a Macaroni parson named
Townshend, whose horses the Prince Regent bought, throwing into the
bargain a box of much desired cigars. Altogether the place had notable
associations even apart from those which have connected it with the
masterpieces of English humour. "THIS HOUSE, GADSHILL PLACE, stands on
the summit of Shakespeare's Gadshill, ever memorable for its association
with Sir John Falstaff in his noble fancy. _But, my lads, my lads,
to-morrow morning, by four o'clock, early at Gadshill! there are
pilgrims going to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding to
London with fat purses: I have vizards for you all; you have horses for
yourselves._" Illuminated by Mr. Owen Jones, and placed in a frame on
the first-floor landing, these words were the greeting of the new tenant
to his visitors. It was his first act of ownership.
All his improvements, it should perhaps be remarked, were not
exclusively matters of choice; and to illustrate by his letters what
befell at the beginning of his changes, will show what attended them to
the close. His earliest difficulty was very grave. There was only one
spring of water for gentlefolk and villagers, and from some of the
houses or cottages it was two miles away. "We are still" (6th of July)
"boring for water here, at the rate of two pounds per day for wages. The
men seem to like it very much, and to be perfectly comfortable." Another
of his earliest experiences (5th of September) was thus expressed:
"Hop-picking is going on, and people sleep in the garden, and breathe in
at the keyhole of the house door. I have been amazed, before this year,
by the number of miserable lean wretches, hardly able to crawl, who go
hop-picking. I find it is a superstition that the dust of the newly
picked hop, falling freshly into the throat, is a cure for consumption.
So the poor creatures drag themselves along the roads, and sleep under
wet hedges, and get cured soon and finally." Towards the close of the
same month (24th of September) he wrote: "Here are six men perpetually
going up and down the well (I know that somebody will be killed), in the
course of fitting a pump; which is quite a railway terminus--it is so
iron, and so big. The process is much more like putting Oxford-street
endwise, and laying gas along it, than anything else. By the time it is
finished, the cost of this water will be something absolutely frightful.
But of course it proportionately increases the value of the property,
and that's my only comfort. . . . The horse has gone lame from a sprain,
the big dog has run a tenpenny nail into one of his hind feet, the bolts
have all flown out of the basket-carriage, and the gardener says all the
fruit trees want replacing with new ones." Another note came in three
days. "I have discovered that the seven miles between Maidstone and
Rochester is one of the most beautiful walks in England. Five men have
been looking attentively at the pump for a week, and (I should hope) may
begin to fit it in the course of October." . . .
With even such varying fortune he effected other changes.[222] The
exterior remained to the last much as it was when he used as a boy to
see it first; a plain, old-fashioned, two-story, brick-built country
house, with a bell-turret on the roof, and over the front door a quaint
neat wooden porch with pillars and seats. But, among his additions and
alterations, was a new drawing-room built out from the smaller existing
one, both being thrown together ultimately; two good bedrooms built on
a third floor at the back; and such rearrangement of the ground floor
as, besides its handsome drawing-room, and its dining-room which he hung
with pictures, transformed its bedroom into a study which he lined with
books and sometimes wrote in, and changed its breakfast-parlour into a
retreat fitted up for smokers into which he put a small billiard-table.
These several rooms opened from a hall having in it a series of Hogarth
prints, until, after the artist's death, Stanfield's noble scenes were
placed there, when the Hogarths were moved to his bedroom; and in this
hall, during his last absence in America, a parquet floor was laid down.
Nor did he omit such changes as might increase the comfort of his
servants. He built entirely new offices and stables, and replaced a very
old coach-house by a capital servants' hall, transforming the loft above
into a commodious school-room or study for his boys. He made at the same
time an excellent croquet-ground out of a waste piece of orchard.
Belonging to the house, but unfortunately placed on the other side of
the high road, was a shrubbery, well wooded though in desolate
condition, in which stood two magnificent cedars; and having obtained,
in 1859, the consent of the local authorities for the necessary
underground work, Dickens constructed a passage beneath the road[223]
from his front lawn; and in the shrubbery thus rendered accessible, and
which he then laid out very prettily, he placed afterwards a Swiss
châlet[224] presented to him by Mr. Fechter, which arrived from Paris in
ninety-four pieces fitting like the joints of a puzzle, but which proved
to be somewhat costly in setting on its legs by means of a foundation of
brickwork. Once up, however, it was a great resource in the summer
months, and much of Dickens's work was done there. "I have put five
mirrors in the châlet where I write,"[225] he told an American friend,
"and they reflect and refract, in all kinds of ways, the leaves that are
quivering at the windows, and the great fields of waving corn, and the
sail-dotted river. My room is up among the branches of the trees; and
the birds and the butterflies fly in and out, and the green branches
shoot in at the open windows, and the lights and shadows of the clouds
come and go with the rest of the company. The scent of the flowers, and
indeed of everything that is growing for miles and miles, is most
delicious." He used to make great boast, too, not only of his crowds of
singing birds all day, but of his nightingales at night.
[Illustration: THE CHÂLET.]
One or two more extracts from letters having reference to these changes
may show something of the interest to him with which Gadshill thus grew
under his hands. A sun-dial on his back-lawn had a bit of historic
interest about it. "One of the balustrades of the destroyed old
Rochester Bridge," he wrote to his daughter in June 1859, "has been
(very nicely) presented to me by the contractors for the works, and has
been duly stone-masoned and set up on the lawn behind the house. I have
ordered a sun-dial for the top of it, and it will be a very good object
indeed." "When you come down here next month," he wrote to me, "we have
an idea that we shall show you rather a neat house. What terrific
adventures have been in action; how many overladen vans were knocked up
at Gravesend, and had to be dragged out of Chalk-turnpike in the dead of
the night by the whole equine power of this establishment; shall be
revealed at another time." That was in the autumn of 1860, when, on the
sale of his London house, its contents were transferred to his country
home. "I shall have an alteration or two to show you at Gadshill that
greatly improve the little property; and when I get the workmen out this
time, I think I'll leave off." October 1861 had now come, when the new
bedrooms were built; but in the same month of 1863 he announced his
transformation of the old coach-house. "I shall have a small new
improvement to show you at Gads, which I think you will accept as the
crowning ingenuity of the inimitable." But of course it was not over
yet. "My small work and planting," he wrote in the spring of 1866,
"really, truly, and positively the last, are nearly at an end in these
regions, and the result will await summer inspection." No, nor even yet.
He afterwards obtained, by exchange of some land with the trustees of
Watts's Charity, the much coveted meadow at the back of the house of
which heretofore he had the lease only; and he was then able to plant a
number of young limes and chestnuts and other quick-growing trees. He
had already planted a row of limes in front. He had no idea, he would
say, of planting only for the benefit of posterity, but would put into
the ground what he might himself enjoy the sight and shade of. He put
them in two or three clumps in the meadow, and in a belt all round.
Still there were "more last words," for the limit was only to be set by
his last year of life. On abandoning his notion, after the American
Readings, of exchanging Gadshill for London, a new staircase was put up
from the hall; a parquet floor laid on the first landing; and a
conservatory built, opening into both drawing-room and dining-room,
"glass and iron," as he described it, "brilliant but expensive, with
foundations as of an ancient Roman work of horrible solidity." This last
addition had long been an object of desire with him; though he would
hardly even now have given himself the indulgence but for the golden
shower from America. He saw it first in a completed state on the Sunday
before his death, when his younger daughter was on a visit to him.
"Well, Katey," he said to her, "now you see POSITIVELY the last
improvement at Gadshill;" and every one laughed at the joke against
himself. The success of the new conservatory was unquestionable. It was
the remark of all around him that he was certainly, from this last of
his improvements, drawing more enjoyment than from any of its
predecessors, when the scene for ever closed.
[Illustration: HOUSE AND CONSERVATORY: FROM THE MEADOW.]
Of the course of his daily life in the country there is not much to be
said. Perhaps there was never a man who changed places so much and
habits so little. He was always methodical and regular; and passed his
life from day to day, divided for the most part between working and
walking, the same wherever he was. The only exception was when special
or infrequent visitors were with him. When such friends as Longfellow
and his daughters, or Charles Eliot Norton and his wife, came, or when
Mr. Fields brought his wife and Professor Lowell's daughter, or when he
received other Americans to whom he owed special courtesy, he would
compress into infinitely few days an enormous amount of sight seeing and
country enjoyment, castles, cathedrals, and fortified lines, lunches and
picnics among cherry orchards and hop-gardens, excursions to Canterbury
or Maidstone and their beautiful neighbourhoods, Druid-stone and Blue
Bell Hill. "All the neighbouring country that could be shown in so short
a time," he wrote of the Longfellow visit, "they saw. I turned out a
couple of postilions in the old red jackets of the old red royal Dover
road for our ride, and it was like a holiday ride in England fifty years
ago." For Lord Lytton he did the same, for the Emerson Tennents, for Mr.
Layard and Mr. Helps, for Lady Molesworth and the Higginses (Jacob
Omnium), and such other less frequent visitors.
Excepting on such particular occasions however, and not always even
then, his mornings were reserved wholly to himself; and he would
generally preface his morning work (such was his love of order in
everything around him) by seeing that all was in its place in the
several rooms, visiting also the dogs, stables, and kitchen garden, and
closing, unless the weather was very bad indeed, with a turn or two
round the meadow before settling to his desk. His dogs were a great
enjoyment to him;[226] and, with his high road traversed as frequently
as any in England by tramps and wayfarers of a singularly undesirable
description, they were also a necessity. There were always two, of the
mastiff kind, but latterly the number increased. His own favourite was
Turk, a noble animal, full of affection and intelligence, whose death by
a railway-accident, shortly after the Staplehurst catastrophe, caused
him great grief. Turk's sole companion up to that date was Linda, puppy
of a great St. Bernard brought over by Mr. Albert Smith, and grown into
a superbly beautiful creature. After Turk there was an interval of an
Irish dog, Sultan, given by Mr. Percy Fitzgerald; a cross between a St.
Bernard and a bloodhound, built and coloured like a lioness and of
splendid proportions, but of such indomitably aggressive propensities,
that, after breaking his kennel-chain and nearly devouring a luckless
little sister of one of the servants, he had to be killed. Dickens
always protested that Sultan was a Fenian, for that no dog, not a
secretly sworn member of that body, would ever have made such a point,
muzzled as he was, of rushing at and bearing down with fury anything in
scarlet with the remotest resemblance to a British uniform. Sultan's
successor was Don, presented by Mr. Frederic Lehmann, a grand
Newfoundland brought over very young, who with Linda became parent to a
couple of Newfoundlands, that were still gambolling about their master,
huge, though hardly out of puppydom, when they lost him. He had given to
one of them the name of Bumble, from having observed, as he described
it, "a peculiarly pompous and overbearing manner he had of appearing to
mount guard over the yard when he was an absolute infant." Bumble was
often in scrapes. Describing to Mr. Fields a drought in the summer of
1868, when their poor supply of ponds and surface wells had become
waterless, he wrote: "I do not let the great dogs swim in the canal,
because the people have to drink of it. But when they get into the
Medway, it is hard to get them out again. The other day Bumble (the son,
Newfoundland dog) got into difficulties among some floating timber, and
became frightened. Don (the father) was standing by me, shaking off the
wet and looking on carelessly, when all of a sudden he perceived
something amiss, and went in with a bound and brought Bumble out by the
ear. The scientific way in which he towed him along was charming." The
description of his own reception, on his reappearance after America, by
Bumble and his brother, by the big and beautiful Linda, and by his
daughter Mary's handsome little Pomeranian, may be added from his
letters to the same correspondent. "The two Newfoundland dogs coming to
meet me, with the usual carriage and the usual driver, and beholding me
coming in my usual dress out at the usual door, it struck me that their
recollection of my having been absent for any unusual time was at once
cancelled. They behaved (they are both young dogs) exactly in their
usual manner; coming behind the basket phaeton as we trotted along, and
lifting their heads to have their ears pulled, a special attention which
they receive from no one else. But when I drove into the stable-yard,
Linda (the St. Bernard) was greatly excited; weeping profusely, and
throwing herself on her back that she might caress my foot with her
great fore-paws. Mary's little dog too, Mrs. Bouncer, barked in the
greatest agitation on being called down and asked by Mary, 'Who is
this?' and tore round and round me like the dog in the Faust outlines."
The father and mother and their two sons, four formidable-looking
companions, were with him generally in his later walks.
Round Cobham, skirting the park and village and passing the Leather
Bottle famous in the page of _Pickwick_, was a favourite walk with
Dickens. By Rochester and the Medway, to the Chatham Lines, was another.
He would turn out of Rochester High-street through The Vines (where some
old buildings, from one of which called Restoration-house he took
Satis-house for _Great Expectations_, had a curious attraction for him),
would pass round by Fort Pitt, and coming back by Frindsbury would bring
himself by some cross fields again into the high road. Or, taking the
other side, he would walk through the marshes to Gravesend, return by
Chalk church, and stop always to have greeting with a comical old monk
who for some incomprehensible reason sits carved in stone, cross-legged
with a jovial pot, over the porch of that sacred edifice. To another
drearier churchyard, itself forming part of the marshes beyond the
Medway, he often took friends to show them the dozen small tombstones of
various sizes adapted to the respective ages of a dozen small children
of one family which he made part of his story of _Great Expectations_,
though, with the reserves always necessary in copying nature not to
overstep her modesty by copying too closely, he makes the number that
appalled little Pip not more than half the reality. About the whole of
this Cooling churchyard, indeed, and the neighbouring castle ruins,
there was a weird strangeness that made it one of his attractive walks
in the late year or winter, when from Higham he could get to it across
country over the stubble fields; and, for a shorter summer walk, he was
not less fond of going round the village of Shorne, and sitting on a hot
afternoon in its pretty shaded churchyard. But on the whole, though
Maidstone had also much that attracted him to its neighbourhood, the
Cobham neighbourhood was certainly that which he had greatest pleasure
in; and he would have taken oftener than he did the walk through Cobham
park and woods, which was the last he enjoyed before life suddenly
closed upon him, but that here he did not like his dogs to follow.
[Illustration: THE STUDY AT GADSHILL.]
Don now has his home there with Lord Darnley, and Linda lies under one
of the cedars at Gadshill.
FOOTNOTES:
[219] On New Year's Day he had written from Paris. "When in London
Coutts's advised me not to sell out the money for Gadshill Place (the
title of my estate sir, my place down in Kent) until the conveyance was
settled and ready."
[220] Two houses now stand on what was Sir Francis Head's estate, the
Great and Little Hermitage, occupied respectively by Mr. Malleson and
Mr. Hulkes, who became intimate with Dickens. Perry of the _Morning
Chronicle_, whose town house was in that court out of Tavistock-square
of which Tavistock House formed part, had occupied the Great Hermitage
previously.
[221] By the obliging correspondent who sent me this _History of
Rochester_, 8vo. (Rochester, 1772), p. 302.
[222] "As to the carpenters," he wrote to his daughter in September
1860, "they are absolutely maddening. They are always at work yet never
seem to do anything, L. was down on Friday, and said (with his eye fixed
on Maidstone and rubbing his hands to conciliate his moody employer)
that 'he didn't think there would be very much left to do after Saturday
the 29th.' I didn't throw him out of window."
[223] A passage in his paper on Tramps embodies very amusingly
experience recorded in his letters of this brick-work tunnel and the
sinking of the well; but I can only borrow one sentence. "The current of
my uncommercial pursuits caused me only last summer to want a little
body of workmen for a certain spell of work in a pleasant part of the
country; and I was at one time honoured with the attendance of as many
as seven-and-twenty, who were looking at six." Bits of wonderful
observation are in that paper.
[224] This was at the beginning of 1865. "The châlet," he wrote to me on
the 7th of January, "is going on excellently, though the ornamental part
is more slowly put together than the substantial. It will really be a
very pretty thing; and in the summer (supposing it not to be blown away
in the spring), the upper room will make a charming study. It is much
higher than we supposed."
[225] As surely, however, as he did any work there, so surely his
indispensable little accompaniments of work (ii. 226) were carried along
with him; and of these I will quote what was written shortly after his
death by his son-in-law, Mr. Charles Collins, to illustrate a very
touching sketch by Mr. Fildes of his writing-desk and vacant chair.
"Ranged in front of, and round about him, were always a variety of
objects for his eye to rest on in the intervals of actual writing, and
any one of which he would have instantly missed had it been removed.
There was a French bronze group representing a duel with swords, fought
by a couple of very fat toads, one of them (characterised by that
particular buoyancy which belongs to corpulence) in the act of making a
prodigious lunge forward, which the other receives in the very middle of
his digestive apparatus, and under the influence of which it seems
likely that he will satisfy the wounded honour of his opponent by
promptly expiring. There was another bronze figure which always stood
near the toads, also of French manufacture, and also full of comic
suggestion. It was a statuette of a dog-fancier, such a one as you used
to see on the bridges or quays of Paris, with a profusion of little dogs
stuck under his arms and into his pockets, and everywhere where little
dogs could possibly be insinuated, all for sale, and all, as even a
casual glance at the vendor's exterior would convince the most
unsuspicious person, with some screw loose in their physical
constitutions or moral natures, to be discovered immediately after
purchase. There was the long gilt leaf with the rabbit sitting erect
upon its haunches, the huge paper-knife often held in his hand during
his public readings, and the little fresh green cup ornamented with the
leaves and blossoms of the cowslip, in which a few fresh flowers were
always placed every morning--for Dickens invariably worked with flowers
on his writing-table. There was also the register of the day of the week
and of the month, which stood always before him; and when the room in
the châlet in which he wrote his last paragraph was opened, some time
after his death, the first thing to be noticed by those who entered was
this register, set at 'Wednesday, June 8'--the day of his seizure." It
remains to this day as it was found.
[226] Dickens's interest in dogs (as in the habits and ways of all
animals) was inexhaustible, and he welcomed with delight any new trait.
The subjoined, told him by a lady friend, was a great acquisition. "I
must close" (14th of May 1867) "with an odd story of a Newfoundland dog.
An immense black good-humoured Newfoundland dog. He came from Oxford and
had lived all his life at a brewery. Instructions were given with him
that if he were let out every morning alone, he would immediately find
out the river; regularly take a swim; and gravely come home again. This
he did with the greatest punctuality, but after a little while was
observed to smell of beer. She was so sure that he smelt of beer that
she resolved to watch him. Accordingly, he was seen to come back from
his swim, round the usual corner, and to go up a flight of steps into a
beer-shop. Being instantly followed, the beer-shop-keeper is seen to
take down a pot (pewter pot), and is heard to say: 'Well, old chap! Come
for your beer as usual, have you?' Upon which he draws a pint and puts
it down, and the dog drinks it. Being required to explain how this comes
to pass, the man says, 'Yes ma'am. I know he's your dog ma'am, but I
didn't when he first come. He looked in ma'am--as a Brickmaker
might--and then he come in--as a Brickmaker might--and he wagged his
tail at the pots, and he giv' a sniff round, and conveyed to me as he
was used to beer. So I draw'd him a drop, and he drunk it up. Next
morning he come agen by the clock and I drawed him a pint, and ever
since he has took his pint reglar.'"
CHAPTER IX.
FIRST PAID READINGS.
1858-1859.
First Series--Exeter Audience--Impressions of
Dublin--Irish Car-driver--Young Ireland and Old
England--Reception in Belfast--At Harrogate--At
York--At Manchester--Continued Successes--Scene
at Edinburgh--At Dundee--At Aberdeen and
Perth--At Glasgow--Glasgow Audience--Subjects
of First Readings--First Library Edition of his
Books--At Coventry--Frith's Portrait of
Dickens.
DICKENS gave his paid public Readings successively, with not long
intervals, at four several dates; in 1858-9, in 1861-63, in 1866-67, and
in 1868-70; the first series under Mr. Arthur Smith's management, the
second under Mr. Headland's, and the third and fourth, in America as
well as before and after it, under that of Mr. George Dolby, who,
excepting in America, acted for the Messrs. Chappell. The references in
the present chapter are to the first series only.
It began with sixteen nights at St. Martin's Hall, the first on the 29th
of April, the last on the 22nd of July, 1858; and there was afterwards a
provincial tour of 87 readings, beginning at Clifton on the 2nd of
August, ending at Brighton on the 13th of November, and taking in
Ireland and Scotland as well as the principal English cities: to which
were added, in London, three Christmas readings, three in January, with
two in the following month; and, in the provinces in the month of
October, fourteen, beginning at Ipswich and Norwich, taking in Cambridge
and Oxford, and closing with Birmingham and Cheltenham. The series had
comprised altogether 125 Readings when it ended on the 27th of October,
1859; and without the touches of character and interest afforded by his
letters written while thus employed, the picture of the man would not be
complete.
Here was one day's work at the opening which will show something of the
fatigue they involved even at their outset. "On Friday we came from
Shrewsbury to Chester; saw all right for the evening; and then went to
Liverpool. Came back from Liverpool and read at Chester. Left Chester at
11 at night, after the reading, and went to London. Got to Tavistock
House at 5 A.M. on Saturday, left it at a quarter past 10 that morning,
and came down here" (Gadshill: 15th of August 1858).
The "greatest personal affection and respect" had greeted him
everywhere. Nothing could have been "more strongly marked or warmly
expressed;" and the readings had "gone" quite wonderfully. What in this
respect had most impressed him, at the outset of his adventures, was
Exeter. "I think they were the finest audience I ever read to; I don't
think I ever read in some respects so well; and I never beheld anything
like the personal affection which they poured out upon me at the end. I
shall always look back upon it with pleasure." He often lost his voice
in these early days, having still to acquire the art of husbanding it;
and in the trial to recover it would again waste its power. "I think I
sang half the Irish melodies to myself as I walked about, to test it."
An audience of two thousand three hundred people (the largest he had
had) greeted him at Liverpool on his way to Dublin, and, besides the
tickets sold, more than two hundred pounds in money was taken at the
doors. This taxed his business staff a little. "They turned away
hundreds, sold all the books, rolled on the ground of my room knee-deep
in checks, and made a perfect pantomime of the whole thing." (20th of
August.) He had to repeat the reading thrice.[227]
It was the first time he had seen Ireland, and Dublin greatly surprised
him by appearing to be so much larger and more populous than he had
supposed. He found it to have altogether an unexpectedly thriving look,
being pretty nigh as big, he first thought, as Paris; of which some
places in it, such as the quays on the river, reminded him. Half the
first day he was there, he took to explore it; walking till tired, and
then taking a car. "Power, dressed for the character of Teddy the Tiler,
drove me: in a suit of patches, and with his hat unbrushed for twenty
years. Wonderfully pleasant, light, intelligent, and careless."[228] The
number of common people he saw in his drive, "also riding about in cars
as hard as they could split," brought to his recollection a more distant
scene, and but for the dresses he could have thought himself on the
Toledo at Naples.
In respect of the number of his audience, and their reception of him,
Dublin was one of his marked successes. He came to have some doubt of
their capacity of receiving the pathetic, but of their quickness as to
the humorous there could be no question, any more than of their
heartiness. He got on wonderfully well with the Dublin people.[229] The
Boots at Morrison's expressed the general feeling in a patriotic point
of view. "He was waiting for me at the hotel door last night. 'Whaat
sart of a hoose sur?' he asked me. 'Capital.' 'The Lard be praised fur
the 'onor 'o Dooblin!'" Within the hotel, on getting up next morning, he
had a dialogue with a smaller resident, landlord's son he supposed, a
little boy of the ripe age of six, which he presented, in his letter to
his sister-in-law, as a colloquy between Old England and Young Ireland
inadequately reported for want of the "imitation" it required for its
full effect. "I am sitting on the sofa, writing, and find him sitting
beside me.
"_Old England._ Halloa old chap.
"_Young Ireland._ Hal--loo!
"_Old England_ (in his delightful way). What a nice old fellow you are.
I am very fond of little boys.
"_Young Ireland._ Air yes? Ye'r right.
"_Old England._ What do you learn, old fellow?
"_Young Ireland_ (very intent on Old England, and always childish except
in his brogue). I lairn wureds of three sillibils--and wureds of two
sillibils--and wureds of one sillibil.
"_Old England_ (cheerfully). Get out, you humbug! You learn only words
of one syllable.
"_Young Ireland_ (laughs heartily). You may say that it is mostly wureds
of one sillibil.
"_Old England._ Can you write?
"_Young Ireland,_ Not yet. Things comes by deegrays.
"_Old England._ Can you cipher?
"_Young Ireland_ (very quickly). Whaat's that?
"_Old England._ Can you make figures?
"_Young Ireland._ I can make a nought, which is not asy, being roond.
"_Old England._ I say, old boy! Wasn't it you I saw on Sunday morning in
the Hall, in a soldier's cap? You know!--In a soldier's cap?
"_Young Ireland_ (cogitating deeply). Was it a very good cap?
"_Old England._ Yes.
"_Young Ireland._ Did it fit ankommon?
"_Old England._ Yes.
"_Young Ireland._ Dat was me!"
The last night in Dublin was an extraordinary scene. "You can hardly
imagine it. All the way from the hotel to the Rotunda (a mile), I had to
contend against the stream of people who were turned away. When I got
there, they had broken the glass in the pay-boxes, and were offering £5
freely for a stall. Half of my platform had to be taken down, and people
heaped in among the ruins. You never saw such a scene."[230] But he
would not return after his other Irish engagements. "I have positively
said No. The work is too hard. It is not like doing it in one easy room,
and always the same room. With a different place every night, and a
different audience with its own peculiarity every night, it is a
tremendous strain. . . . I seem to be always either in a railway carriage
or reading, or going to bed; and I get so knocked up whenever I have a
minute to remember it, that then I go to bed as a matter of course."
Belfast he liked quite as much as Dublin in another way. "A fine place
with a rough people; everything looking prosperous; the railway ride
from Dublin quite amazing in the order, neatness, and cleanness of all
you see; every cottage looking as if it had been whitewashed the day
before; and many with charming gardens, prettily kept with bright
flowers." The success, too, was quite as great. "Enormous audiences. We
turn away half the town.[231] I think them a better audience on the
whole than Dublin; and the personal affection is something overwhelming.
I wish you and the dear girls" (he is writing to his sister-in-law)
"could have seen the people look at me in the street; or heard them ask
me, as I hurried to the hotel after the reading last night, to 'do me
the honor to shake hands Misther Dickens and God bless you sir; not
ounly for the light you've been to me this night, but for the light
you've been in mee house sir (and God love your face!) this many a
year!'"[232] He had never seen men "go in to cry so undisguisedly," as
they did at the Belfast _Dombey_ reading; and as to the _Boots_ and
_Mrs. Gamp_ "it was just one roar with me and them. For they made me
laugh so, that sometimes I _could not_ compose my face to go on." His
greatest trial in this way however was a little later at
Harrogate--"the queerest place, with the strangest people in it, leading
the oddest lives of dancing, newspaper-reading, and tables
d'hôte"--where he noticed, at the same reading, embodiments respectively
of the tears and laughter to which he has moved his fellow creatures so
largely. "There was one gentleman at the _Little Dombey_ yesterday
morning" (he is still writing to his sister-in-law) "who exhibited--or
rather concealed--the profoundest grief. After crying a good deal
without hiding it, he covered his face with both his hands, and laid it
down on the back of the seat before him, and really shook with emotion.
He was not in mourning, but I supposed him to have lost some child in
old time. . . . There was a remarkably good fellow too, of thirty or so,
who found something so very ludicrous in Toots that he _could not_
compose himself at all, but laughed until he sat wiping his eyes with
his handkerchief; and whenever he felt Toots coming again, he began to
laugh and wipe his eyes afresh; and when Toots came once more, he gave a
kind of cry, as if it were too much for him. It was uncommonly droll,
and made me laugh heartily."
At Harrogate he read twice on one day (a Saturday), and had to engage a
special engine to take him back that night to York, which, having
reached at one o'clock in the morning, he had to leave, because of
Sunday restrictions on travel, the same morning at half-past four, to
enable him to fulfil a Monday's reading at Scarborough. Such fatigues
became matters of course; but their effect, not noted at the time, was
grave. "At York I had a most magnificent audience, and might have
filled the place for a week. . . . I think the audience possessed of a
better knowledge of character than any I have seen. But I recollect
Doctor Belcombe to have told me long ago that they first found out
Charles Mathews's father, and to the last understood him (he used to
say) better than any other people. . . . The let is enormous for next
Saturday at Manchester, stalls alone four hundred! I shall soon be able
to send you the list of places to the 15th of November, the end. I shall
be, O most heartily glad, when that time comes! But I must say that the
intelligence and warmth of the audiences are an immense sustainment, and
one that always sets me up. Sometimes before I go down to read
(especially when it is in the day), I am so oppressed by having to do it
that I feel perfectly unequal to the task. But the people lift me out of
this directly; and I find that I have quite forgotten everything but
them and the book, in a quarter of an hour."
The reception that awaited him at Manchester had very special warmth in
it, occasioned by an adverse tone taken in the comment of one of the
Manchester daily papers on the letter which by a breach of confidence
had been then recently printed. "My violated letter" Dickens always
called it. "When I came to Manchester on Saturday I found seven hundred
stalls taken! When I went into the room at night 2500 people had paid,
and more were being turned away from every door. The welcome they gave
me was astounding in its affectionate recognition of the late trouble,
and fairly for once unmanned me. I never saw such a sight or heard such
a sound. When they had thoroughly done it, they settled down to enjoy
themselves; and certainly did enjoy themselves most heartily to the last
minute." Nor, for the rest of his English tour, in any of the towns that
remained, had he reason to complain of any want of hearty greeting. At
Sheffield great crowds came in excess of the places. At Leeds the hall
overflowed in half an hour. At Hull the vast concourse had to be
addressed by Mr. Smith on the gallery stairs, and additional Readings
had to be given, day and night, "for the people out of town and for the
people in town."
The net profit to himself, thus far, had been upwards of three hundred
pounds a week;[233] but this was nothing to the success in Scotland,
where his profit in a week, with all expenses paid, was five hundred
pounds. The pleasure was enhanced, too, by the presence of his two
daughters, who had joined him over the Border. At first the look of
Edinburgh was not promising. "We began with, for us, a poor room. . . .
But the effect of that reading (it was the _Chimes_) was immense; and on
the next night, for _Little Dombey_, we had a full room. It is our
greatest triumph everywhere. Next night (_Poor Traveller_, _Boots_, and
_Gamp_) we turned away hundreds upon hundreds of people; and last night,
for the _Carol_, in spite of advertisements in the morning that the
tickets were gone, the people had to be got in through such a crowd as
rendered it a work of the utmost difficulty to keep an alley into the
room. They were seated about me on the platform, put into the doorway of
the waiting-room, squeezed into every conceivable place, and a multitude
turned away once more. I think I am better pleased with what was done in
Edinburgh than with what has been done anywhere, almost. It was so
completely taken by storm, and carried in spite of itself. Mary and
Katey have been infinitely pleased and interested with Edinburgh. We are
just going to sit down to dinner and therefore I cut my missive short.
Travelling, dinner, reading, and everything else, come crowding together
into this strange life."
Then came Dundee: "An odd place," he wrote, "like Wapping with high
rugged hills behind it. We had the strangest journey here--bits of sea,
and bits of railroad, alternately; which carried my mind back to
travelling in America. The room is an immense new one, belonging to Lord
Kinnaird, and Lord Panmure, and some others of that sort. It looks
something between the Crystal-palace and Westminster-hall (I can't
imagine who wants it in this place), and has never been tried yet for
speaking in. Quite disinterestedly of course, I hope it will succeed."
The people he thought, in respect of taste and intelligence, below any
other of his Scotch audiences; but they woke up surprisingly, and the
rest of his Caledonian tour was a succession of triumphs. "At Aberdeen
we were crammed to the street, twice in one day. At Perth (where I
thought when I arrived, there literally could be nobody to come) the
gentlefolk came posting in from thirty miles round, and the whole town
came besides, and filled an immense hall. They were as full of
perception, fire, and enthusiasm as any people I have seen. At Glasgow,
where I read three evenings and one morning, we took the prodigiously
large sum of six hundred pounds! And this at the Manchester prices,
which are lower than St. Martin's Hall. As to the effect--I wish you
could have seen them after Lilian died in the _Chimes_, or when Scrooge
woke in the _Carol_ and talked to the boy outside the window. And at the
end of _Dombey_ yesterday afternoon, in the cold light of day, they all
got up, after a short pause, gentle and simple, and thundered and waved
their hats with such astonishing heartiness and fondness that, for the
first time in all my public career, they took me completely off my legs,
and I saw the whole eighteen hundred of them reel to one side as if a
shock from without had shaken the hall. Notwithstanding which, I must
confess to you, I am very anxious to get to the end of my Readings, and
to be at home again, and able to sit down and think in my own study.
There has been only one thing quite without alloy. The dear girls have
enjoyed themselves immensely, and their trip with me has been a great
success."
The subjects of his readings during this first circuit were the _Carol_,
the _Chimes_, the _Trial in Pickwick_, the chapters containing _Paul
Dombey_, _Boots at the Holly Tree Inn_, the _Poor Traveller_ (Captain
Doubledick), and _Mrs. Gamp_: to which he continued to restrict himself
through the supplementary nights that closed in the autumn of 1859.[234]
Of these the most successful in their uniform effect upon his audiences
were undoubtedly the _Carol_, the _Pickwick_ scene, _Mrs. Gamp_, and the
_Dombey_--the quickness, variety, and completeness of his assumption of
character, having greatest scope in these. Here, I think, more than in
the pathos or graver level passages, his strength lay; but this is
entitled to no weight other than as an individual opinion, and his
audiences gave him many reasons for thinking differently.[235]
The incidents of the period covered by this chapter that had any general
interest in them, claim to be mentioned briefly. At the close of 1857 he
presided at the fourth anniversary of the Warehousemen and Clerks'
Schools, describing and discriminating, with keenest wit and kindliest
fun, the sort of schools he liked and he disliked. To the spring and
summer of 1858 belongs the first collection of his writings into a
succinct library form, each of the larger novels occupying two volumes.
In March he paid warm public tribute to Thackeray (who had been induced
to take the chair at the General Theatrical Fund) as one for whose
genius he entertained the warmest admiration, who did honour to
literature, and in whom literature was honoured. In May he presided at
the Artists' Benevolent Fund dinner, and made striking appeal for that
excellent charity. In July he took earnest part in the opening efforts
on behalf of the Royal Dramatic College, which he supplemented later by
a speech for the establishment of schools for actors' children; in which
he took occasion to declare his belief that there were no institutions
in England so socially liberal as its public schools, and that there was
nowhere in the country so complete an absence of servility to mere rank,
position, or riches. "A boy, there, is always what his abilities or his
personal qualities make him. We may differ about the curriculum and
other matters, but of the frank, free, manly, independent spirit
preserved in our public schools, I apprehend there can be no kind of
question." In December[236] he was entertained at a public dinner in
Coventry on the occasion of receiving, by way of thanks for help
rendered to their Institute, a gold repeater of special construction by
the watchmakers of the town; as to which he kept faithfully his pledge
to the givers, that it should be thenceforward the inseparable companion
of his workings and wanderings, and reckon off the future labours of his
days until he should have done with the measurement of time. Within a
day from this celebration, he presided at the Institutional Association
of Lancashire and Cheshire in Manchester Free Trade Hall; gave prizes to
candidates from a hundred and fourteen local mechanics' institutes
affiliated to the Association; described in his most attractive language
the gallant toiling fellows by whom the prizes had been won; and ended
with the monition he never failed to couple with his eulogies of
Knowledge, that it should follow the teaching of the Saviour, and not
satisfy the understanding merely. "Knowledge has a very limited power
when it informs the head only; but when it informs the heart as well,
it has a power over life and death, the body and the soul, and dominates
the universe."
This too was the year when Mr. Frith completed Dickens's portrait, and
it appeared upon the walls of the Academy in the following spring. "I
wish," said Edwin Landseer as he stood before it, "he looked less eager
and busy, and not so much out of himself, or beyond himself. I should
like to catch him asleep and quiet now and then." There is something in
the objection, and he also would be envious at times of what he too
surely knew could never be his lot. On the other hand who would
willingly have lost the fruits of an activity on the whole so healthy
and beneficent?
FOOTNOTES:
[227] This was the _Carol_ and _Pickwick_. "We are reduced sometimes,"
he adds, "to a ludicrous state of distress by the quantity of silver we
have to carry about. Arthur Smith is always accompanied by an immense
black leather-bag full." Mr. Smith had an illness a couple of days
later, and Dickens whimsically describes his rapid recovery on
discovering the state of their balances. "He is now sitting opposite to
me on a bag of £40 of silver. It must be dreadfully hard."
[228] A letter to his eldest daughter (23rd of Aug.) makes humorous
addition. "The man who drove our jaunting car yesterday hadn't a piece
in his coat as big as a penny roll, and had had his hat on (apparently
without brushing it) ever since he was grown-up. But he was remarkably
intelligent and agreeable, with something to say about everything. For
instance, when I asked him what a certain building was, he didn't say
'Courts of Law' and nothing else, but 'Av yer plase Sir, its the foor
Coorts o' looyers, where Misther O'Connell stood his trial wunst, as
ye'll remimbir sir, afore I till ye ov it.' When we got into the
Phoenix Park, he looked round him as if it were his own, and said
'THAT'S a Park sir, av ye plase!' I complimented it, and he said
'Gintlemen tills me as they iv bin, sir, over Europe and never see a
Park aqualling ov it. Yander's the Vice-regal Lodge, sir; in thim two
corners lives the two Sicretaries, wishing I was thim sir. There's air
here sir, av yer plase! There's scenery here sir! There's mountains thim
sir! Yer coonsider it a Park sir? It is that sir!'"
[229] The Irish girls outdid the American (i. 385) in one particular. He
wrote to his sister-in-law: "Every night, by the bye, since I have been
in Ireland, the ladies have beguiled John out of the bouquet from my
coat; and yesterday morning, as I had showered the leaves from my
geranium in reading _Little Dombey_, they mounted the platform after I
was gone, and picked them all up as a keepsake." A few days earlier he
had written to the same correspondent: "The papers are full of remarks
upon my white tie, and describe it as being of enormous size, which is a
wonderful delusion; because, as you very well know, it is a small tie.
Generally, I am happy to report, the Emerald press is in favour of my
appearance, and likes my eyes. But one gentleman comes out with a letter
at Cork, wherein he says that although only 46, I look like an old man."
[230] "They had offered frantic prices for stalls. Eleven bank-notes
were thrust into a paybox at one time for eleven stalls. Our men were
flattened against walls and squeezed against beams. Ladies stood all
night with their chins against my platform. Other ladies sat all night
upon my steps. We turned away people enough to make immense houses for a
week." Letter to his eldest daughter.
[231] "Shillings get into stalls, and half-crowns get into shillings,
and stalls get nowhere, and there is immense confusion." Letter to his
daughter.
[232] "I was brought very near to what I sometimes dream may be my
Fame," he says in a letter of later date to myself from York, "when a
lady whose face I had never seen stopped me yesterday in the street, and
said to me, _Mr. Dickens, will you let me touch the hand that has filled
my house with many friends_." October 1858.
[233] "That is no doubt immense, our expenses being necessarily large,
and the travelling party being always five." Another source of profit
was the sale of the copies of the several Readings prepared by himself.
"Our people alone sell eight, ten, and twelve dozen a night." A later
letter says: "The men with the reading books were sold out, for about
the twentieth time, at Manchester. Eleven dozen of the _Poor Traveller_,
_Boots_, and _Gamp_ being sold in about ten minutes, they had no more
left; and Manchester became green with the little tracts, in every
bookshop, outside every omnibus, and passing along every street. The
sale of them, apart from us, must be very great." "Did I tell you," he
writes in another letter, "that the agents for our tickets who are also
booksellers, say very generally that the readings decidedly increase the
sale of the books they are taken from? We were first told of this by a
Mr. Parke, a wealthy old gentleman in a very large way at Wolverhampton,
who did all the business for love, and would not take a farthing. Since
then, we have constantly come upon it; and M'Glashin and Gill at Dublin
were very strong about it indeed."
[234] The last of them were given immediately after his completion of
the _Tale of Two Cities_: "I am a little tired; but as little, I
suspect, as any man could be with the work of the last four days, and
perhaps the change of work was better than subsiding into rest and rust.
The Norwich people were a noble audience. There, and at Ipswich and
Bury, we had the demonstrativeness of the great working-towns, and a
much finer perception."--14th of October 1859.
[235] Two pleasing little volumes may here be named as devoted to
special descriptions of the several Readings; by his friend Mr. Charles
Kent in England (_Charles Dickens as a Reader_), and by Miss Kate Field
in America (_Pen Photographs_).
[236] Let me subjoin his own note of a less important incident of that
month which will show his quick and sure eye for any bit of acting out
of the common. The lady has since justified its closing prediction.
Describing an early dinner with Chauncy Townshend, he adds (17th of
December 1858): "I escaped at half-past seven, and went to the Strand
Theatre: having taken a stall beforehand, for it is always crammed. I
really wish you would go, between this and next Thursday, to see the
_Maid and the Magpie_ burlesque there. There is the strangest thing in
it that ever I have seen on the stage. The boy, Pippo, by Miss Wilton.
While it is astonishingly impudent (must be, or it couldn't be done at
all), it is so stupendously like a boy, and unlike a woman, that it is
perfectly free from offence. I never have seen such a thing. Priscilla
Horton, as a boy, not to be thought of beside it. She does an imitation
of the dancing of the Christy Minstrels--wonderfully clever--which, in
the audacity of its thorough-going, is surprising. A thing that you _can
not_ imagine a woman's doing at all; and yet the manner, the appearance,
the levity, impulse, and spirits of it, are so exactly like a boy that
you cannot think of anything like her sex in association with it. It
begins at 8, and is over by a quarter-past 9. I never have seen such a
curious thing, and the girl's talent is unchallengeable. I call her the
cleverest girl I have ever seen on the stage in my time, and the most
singularly original."
CHAPTER X.
ALL THE YEAR ROUND AND THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELLER.
1859-1861.
_All the Year Round_ started--_Household Words_
discontinued--Differences with Mr. Bentley--In
Search of a Name for New Periodical--Opening a
Story--Success of New Periodical--At Knebworth
with Bulwer Lytton--Sale of Christmas
Numbers--Commercial Travellers'
Schools--Personal References--Remedy for
Sleeplessness--"Tramp" Experiences--Reduced
Bantams--Bethnal-green Fowls--The Goldfinch and
his Friend--Offers from America--Visit of Mr.
Fields.
IN the interval before the close of the first circuit of readings,
painful personal disputes arising out of the occurrences of the previous
year were settled by the discontinuance of _Household Words_, and the
establishment in its place of _All the Year Round_. The disputes turned
upon matters of feeling exclusively, and involved no charge on either
side that would render any detailed reference here other than gravely
out of place. The question into which the difference ultimately resolved
itself was that of the respective rights of the parties as proprietors
of _Household Words_; and this, upon a bill filed in Chancery, was
settled by a winding-up order, under which the property was sold. It was
bought by Dickens, who, even before the sale, exactly fulfilling a
previous announcement of the proposed discontinuance of the existing
periodical and establishment of another in its place, precisely similar
but under a different title, had started _All the Year Round_. It was to
be regretted perhaps that he should have thought it necessary to move at
all, but he moved strictly within his rights.
To the publishers first associated with his great success in literature,
Messrs. Chapman and Hall, he now returned for the issue of the remainder
of his books; of which he always in future reserved the copyrights,
making each the subject of such arrangement as for the time might seem
to him desirable. In this he was met by no difficulty; and indeed it
will be only proper to add, that, in any points affecting his relations
with those concerned in the production of his books, though his
resentments were easily and quickly roused, they were never very
lasting. The only fair rule therefore was, in a memoir of his life, to
confine the mention of such things to what was strictly necessary to
explain its narrative. This accordingly has been done; and, in the
several disagreements it has been necessary to advert to, I cannot
charge myself with having in a single instance overstepped the rule.
Objection has been made to my revival of the early differences with Mr.
Bentley. But silence respecting them was incompatible with what
absolutely required to be said, if the picture of Dickens in his most
interesting time, at the outset of his career in letters, was not to be
omitted altogether; and, suppressing everything of mere temper that
gathered round the dispute, use was made of those letters only
containing the young writer's urgent appeal to be absolved, rightly or
wrongly, from engagements he had too precipitately entered into.
Wrongly, some might say, because the law was undoubtedly on Mr.
Bentley's side; but all subsequent reflection has confirmed the view I
was led strongly to take at the time, that in the facts there had come
to be involved what the law could not afford to overlook, and that the
sale of brain-work can never be adjusted by agreement with the same
exactness and certainty as that of ordinary goods and chattels. Quitting
the subject once for all with this remark, it is not less incumbent on
me to say that there was no stage of the dispute in which Mr. Bentley,
holding as strongly the other view, might not think it to have
sufficient justification; and certainly in later years there was no
absence of friendly feeling on the part of Dickens to his old publisher.
This already has been mentioned; and on the occasion of Hans Andersen's
recent visit to Gadshill, Mr. Bentley was invited to meet the celebrated
Dane. Nor should I omit to say, that, in the year to which this
narrative has now arrived, his prompt compliance with an intercession
made to him for a common friend pleased Dickens greatly.
At the opening of 1859, bent upon such a successor to _Household Words_
as should carry on the associations connected with its name, Dickens was
deep in search of a title to give expression to them. "My determination
to settle the title arises out of my knowledge that I shall never be
able to do anything for the work until it has a fixed name; also out of
my observation that the same odd feeling affects everybody else." He had
proposed to himself a title that, as in _Household Words_, might be
capable of illustration by a line from Shakespeare; and alighting upon
that wherein poor Henry the Sixth is fain to solace his captivity by the
fancy, that, like birds encaged he might soothe himself for loss of
liberty "at last by notes of household harmony," he for the time forgot
that this might hardly be accepted as a happy comment on the occurrences
out of which the supposed necessity had arisen of replacing the old by a
new household friend. "Don't you think," he wrote on the 24th of
January, "this is a good name and quotation? I have been quite delighted
to get hold of it for our title.
"HOUSEHOLD HARMONY.
"'At last by notes of Household Harmony.'--_Shakespeare._"
He was at first reluctant even to admit the objection when stated to
him. "I am afraid we must not be too particular about the possibility of
personal references and applications: otherwise it is manifest that I
never can write another book. I could not invent a story of any sort, it
is quite plain, incapable of being twisted into some such nonsensical
shape. It would be wholly impossible to turn one through half a dozen
chapters." Of course he yielded, nevertheless; and much consideration
followed over sundry other titles submitted. Reviving none of those
formerly rejected, here were a few of these now rejected in their turn.
THE HEARTH. THE FORGE. THE CRUCIBLE. THE ANVIL OF THE TIME. CHARLES
DICKENS'S OWN. SEASONABLE LEAVES. EVERGREEN LEAVES. HOME. HOME-MUSIC.
CHANGE. TIME AND TIDE. TWOPENCE. ENGLISH BELLS. WEEKLY BELLS. THE
ROCKET. GOOD HUMOUR. Still the great want was the line adaptable from
Shakespeare, which at last exultingly he sent on the 28th of January.
"I am dining early, before reading, and write literally with my mouth
full. But I have just hit upon a name that I think really an admirable
one--especially with the quotation _before_ it, in the place where our
present _H. W._ quotation stands.
"'The story of our lives, from year to year.'--_Shakespeare._"
"ALL THE YEAR ROUND.
"A weekly journal conducted by Charles Dickens."
With the same resolution and energy other things necessary to the
adventure were as promptly done. "I have taken the new office," he wrote
from Tavistock House on the 21st of February; "have got workmen in; have
ordered the paper; settled with the printer; and am getting an immense
system of advertising ready. Blow to be struck on the 12th of March. . . .
Meantime I cannot please myself with the opening of my story" (the _Tale
of Two Cities_, which _All the Year Round_ was to start with), "and
cannot in the least settle at it or take to it. . . . I wish you would come
and look at what I flatter myself is a rather ingenious account to which
I have turned the Stanfield scenery here." He had placed the
_Lighthouse_ scene in a single frame; had divided the scene of the
_Frozen Deep_ into two subjects, a British man-of-war and an Arctic sea,
which he had also framed; and the school-room that had been the theatre
was now hung with sea-pieces by a great painter of the sea. To believe
them to have been but the amusement of a few mornings was difficult
indeed. Seen from the due distance there was nothing wanting to the most
masterly and elaborate art.
The first number of _All the Year Round_ appeared on the 30th of April,
and the result of the first quarter's accounts of the sale will tell
everything that needs to be said of a success that went on without
intermission to the close. "A word before I go back to Gadshill," he
wrote from Tavistock House in July, "which I know you will be glad to
receive. So well has _All the Year Round_ gone that it was yesterday
able to repay me, with five per cent. interest, all the money I advanced
for its establishment (paper, print &c. all paid, down to the last
number), and yet to leave a good £500 balance at the banker's!" Beside
the opening of his _Tale of Two Cities_ its first number had contained
another piece of his writing, the "Poor Man and his Beer;" as to which
an interesting note has been sent me. The Rev. T. B. Lawes, of
Rothamsted, St. Alban's, had been associated upon a sanitary commission
with Mr. Henry Austin, Dickens's brother-in-law and counsellor in regard
to all such matters in his own houses, or in the houses of the poor; and
this connection led to Dickens's knowledge of a club that Mr. Lawes had
established at Rothamsted, which he became eager to recommend as an
example to other country neighbourhoods. The club had been set on
foot[237] to enable the agricultural labourers of the parish to have
their beer and pipes independent of the public-house; and the
description of it, says Mr. Lawes, "was the occupation of a drive
between this place (Rothamsted) and London, 25 miles, Mr. Dickens
refusing the offer of a bed, and saying that he could arrange his ideas
on the journey. In the course of our conversation I mentioned that the
labourers were very jealous of the small tradesmen, blacksmiths and
others, holding allotment-gardens; but that the latter did so indirectly
by paying higher rents to the labourers for a share. This circumstance
is not forgotten in the verses on the Blacksmith in the same number,
composed by Mr. Dickens and repeated to me while he was walking about,
and which close the mention of his gains with allusion to
"A share (concealed) in the poor man's field,
Which adds to the poor man's store."
The periodical thus established was in all respects, save one, so
exactly the counterpart of what it replaced, that a mention of this
point of difference is the only description of it called for. Besides
his own three-volume stories of _The Tale of Two Cities_ and _Great
Expectations_, Dickens admitted into it other stories of the same length
by writers of character and name, of which the authorship was avowed. It
published tales of varied merit and success by Mr. Edmund Yates, Mr.
Percy Fitzgerald, and Mr. Charles Lever. Mr. Wilkie Collins contributed
to it his _Woman in White_, _No Name_, and _Moonstone_, the first of
which had a pre-eminent success; Mr. Reade his _Hard Cash_; and Lord
Lytton his _Strange Story_. Conferring about the latter Dickens passed a
week at Knebworth, accompanied by his daughter and sister-in-law, in the
summer of 1861, as soon as he had closed _Great Expectations_; and there
met Mr. Arthur Helps, with whom and Lord Orford he visited the
so-called "Hermit" near Stevenage, whom he described as Mr. Mopes in
_Tom Tiddler's Ground_. With his great brother-artist he thoroughly
enjoyed himself, as he invariably did; and reported him as "in better
health and spirits than I have seen him in, in all these years,--a
little weird occasionally regarding magic and spirits, but always fair
and frank under opposition. He was brilliantly talkative, anecdotical,
and droll; looked young and well; laughed heartily; and enjoyed with
great zest some games we played. In his artist-character and talk, he
was full of interest and matter, saying the subtlest and finest
things--but that he never fails in. I enjoyed myself immensely, as we
all did."[238]
In _All the Year Round_, as in its predecessor, the tales for Christmas
were of course continued, but with a surprisingly increased popularity;
and Dickens never had such sale for any of his writings as for his
Christmas pieces in the later periodical. It had reached, before he
died, to nearly three hundred thousand. The first was called the
_Haunted House_, and had a small mention of a true occurrence in his
boyhood which is not included in the bitter record on a former page. "I
was taken home, and there was debt at home as well as death, and we had
a sale there. My own little bed was so superciliously looked upon by a
power unknown to me hazily called The Trade, that a brass coal-scuttle,
a roasting jack, and a bird cage were obliged to be put into it to make
a lot of it, and then it went for a song. So I heard mentioned, and I
wondered what song, and thought what a dismal song it must have been to
sing!" The other subjects will have mention in another chapter.
His tales were not his only important work in _All the Year Round_. The
detached papers written by him there had a character and completeness
derived from their plan, and from the personal tone, as well as frequent
individual confessions, by which their interest is enhanced, and which
will always make them specially attractive. Their title expressed a
personal liking. Of all the societies, charitable or self-assisting,
which his tact and eloquence in the "chair" so often helped, none had
interested him by the character of its service to its members, and the
perfection of its management, so much as that of the Commercial
Travellers. His, admiration of their schools introduced him to one who
then acted as their treasurer, and whom, of all the men he had known, I
think he rated highest for the union of business qualities in an
incomparable measure to a nature comprehensive enough to deal with
masses of men, however differing in creed or opinion, humanely and
justly. He never afterwards wanted support for any good work that he did
not think first of Mr. George Moore,[239] and appeal was never made to
him in vain. "Integrity, enterprise, public spirit, and benevolence," he
told the Commercial Travellers on one occasion, "had their synonym in
Mr. Moore's name;" and it was another form of the same liking when he
took to himself the character and title of a Traveller _Un_commercial.
"I am both a town traveller and a country traveller, and am always on
the road. Figuratively speaking, I travel for the great house of
Human-interest Brothers, and have rather a large connection in the fancy
goods way. Literally speaking, I am always wandering here and there from
my rooms in Covent-garden, London: now about the city streets; now about
the country by-roads: seeing many little things, and some great things,
which, because they interest me, I think may interest others." In a few
words that was the plan and drift of the papers which he began in 1860,
and continued to write from time to time until the last autumn of his
life.
Many of them, such as "Travelling Abroad," "City Churches,"
"Dullborough," "Nurses' Stories," and "Birthday Celebrations," have
supplied traits, chiefly of his younger days, to portions of this
memoir; and parts of his later life receive illustration from others,
such as "Tramps," "Night Walks," "Shy Neighbourhoods," "The Italian
Prisoner," and "Chatham Dockyard." Indeed hardly any is without its
personal interest or illustration. One may learn from them, among other
things, what kind of treatment he resorted to for the disorder of
sleeplessness from which he had often suffered amid his late anxieties.
Experimenting upon it in bed, he found to be too slow and doubtful a
process for him; but he very soon defeated his enemy by the brisker
treatment, of getting up directly after lying down, going out, and
coming home tired at sunrise. "My last special feat was turning out of
bed at two, after a hard day pedestrian and otherwise, and walking
thirty miles into the country to breakfast." One description he did not
give in his paper, but I recollect his saying that he had seldom seen
anything so striking as the way in which the wonders of an equinoctial
dawn (it was the 15th of October 1857) presented themselves during that
walk. He had never before happened to see night so completely at odds
with morning, "which was which." Another experience of his night
ramblings used to be given in vivid sketches of the restlessness of a
great city, and the manner in which _it_ also tumbles and tosses before
it can get to sleep. Nor should anyone curious about his habits and ways
omit to accompany him with his Tramps into Gadshill lanes; or to follow
him into his Shy Neighbourhoods of the Hackney-road, Waterloo-road,
Spitalfields, or Bethnal-green. For delightful observation both of
country and town, for the wit that finds analogies between remote and
familiar things, and for humorous personal sketches and experience,
these are perfect of their kind.
"I have my eye upon a piece of Kentish road, bordered on either side by
a wood, and having on one hand, between the road-dust and the trees, a
skirting patch of grass. Wild flowers grow in abundance on this spot,
and it lies high and airy, with a distant river stealing steadily away
to the ocean, like a man's life. To gain the mile-stone here, which the
moss, primroses, violets, blue-bells, and wild roses, would soon render
illegible but for peering travellers pushing them aside with their
sticks, you must come up a steep hill, come which way you may. So, all
the tramps with carts or caravans--the Gipsy-tramp, the Show-tramp, the
Cheap Jack--find it impossible to resist the temptations of the place;
and all turn the horse loose when they come to it, and boil the pot.
Bless the place, I love the ashes of the vagabond fires that have
scorched its grass!" It was there he found Dr. Marigold, and Chops the
Dwarf, and the White-haired Lady with the pink eyes eating meat-pie with
the Giant. So, too, in his Shy Neighbourhoods, when he relates his
experiences of the bad company that birds are fond of, and of the effect
upon domestic fowls of living in low districts, his method of handling
the subject has all the charm of a discovery. "That anything born of an
egg and invested with wings should have got to the pass that it hops
contentedly down a ladder into a cellar, and calls _that_ going home, is
a circumstance so amazing as to leave one nothing more in this
connexion to wonder at." One of his illustrations is a reduced Bantam
family in the Hackney-road deriving their sole enjoyment from crowding
together in a pawnbroker's side-entry; but seeming as if only newly come
down in the world, and always in a feeble flutter of fear that they may
be found out. He contrasts them with others. "I know a low fellow,
originally of a good family from Dorking, who takes his whole
establishment of wives, in single file, in at the door of the Jug
Department of a disorderly tavern near the Haymarket, manoeuvres them
among the company's legs, emerges with them at the Bottle Entrance, and
so passes his life: seldom, in the season, going to bed before two in
the morning. . . . But, the family I am best acquainted with, reside in the
densest part of Bethnal-green. Their abstraction from the objects among
which they live, or rather their conviction that those objects have all
come into existence in express subservience to fowls, has so enchanted
me, that I have made them the subject of many journeys at divers hours.
After careful observation of the two lords and the ten ladies of whom
this family consists, I have come to the conclusion that their opinions
are represented by the leading lord and leading lady: the latter, as I
judge, an aged personage, afflicted with a paucity of feather and
visibility of quill that gives her the appearance of a bundle of office
pens. When a railway goods-van that would crush an elephant comes round
the corner, tearing over these fowls, they emerge unharmed from under
the horses, perfectly satisfied that the whole rush was a passing
property in the air, which may have left something to eat behind it.
They look upon old shoes, wrecks of kettles and saucepans, and
fragments of bonnets, as a kind of meteoric discharge, for fowls to peck
at. . . . Gaslight comes quite as natural to them as any other light; and I
have more than a suspicion that, in the minds of the two lords, the
early public-house at the corner has superseded the sun. They always
begin to crow when the public-house shutters begin to be taken down, and
they salute the Potboy, the instant he appears to perform that duty, as
if he were Phoebes in person." For the truth of the personal adventure
in the same essay, which he tells in proof of a propensity to bad
company in more refined members of the feathered race, I am myself in a
position to vouch. Walking by a dirty court in Spitalfields one day, the
quick little busy intelligence of a goldfinch, drawing water for himself
in his cage, so attracted him that he bought the bird, which had other
accomplishments; but not one of them would the little creature show off
in his new abode in Doughty-street, and he drew no water but by stealth
or under the cloak of night. "After an interval of futile and at length
hopeless expectation, the merchant who had educated him was appealed to.
The merchant was a bow-legged character, with a flat and cushiony nose,
like the last new strawberry. He wore a fur cap, and shorts, and was of
the velveteen race, velveteeny. He sent word that he would 'look round.'
He looked round, appeared in the doorway of the room, and slightly
cocked up his evil eye at the goldfinch. Instantly a raging thirst beset
that bird; and when it was appeased, he still drew several unnecessary
buckets of water, leaping about his perch and sharpening his bill with
irrepressible satisfaction."
The Uncommercial Traveller papers, his two serial stories, and his
Christmas tales, were all the contributions of any importance made by
Dickens to _All the Year Round_; but he reprinted in it, on the
completion of his first story, a short tale called "Hunted Down,"
written for a newspaper in America called the _New York Ledger_. Its
subject had been taken from the life of a notorious criminal already
named, and its principal claim to notice was the price paid for it. For
a story not longer than half of one of the numbers of _Chuzzlewit_ or
_Copperfield_, he had received a thousand pounds.[240] It was one of the
indications of the eager desire which his entry on the career of a
public reader had aroused in America to induce him again to visit that
continent; and at the very time he had this magnificent offer from the
New York journal, Mr. Fields of Boston, who was then on a visit to
Europe, was pressing him so much to go that his resolution was almost
shaken. "I am now," he wrote to me from Gadshill on the 9th of July
1859, "getting the _Tale of Two Cities_ into that state that IF I should
decide to go to America late in September, I could turn to, at any time,
and write on with great vigour. Mr. Fields has been down here for a day,
and with the strongest intensity urges that there is no drawback, no
commercial excitement or crisis, no political agitation; and that so
favourable an opportunity, in all respects, might not occur again for
years and years. I should be one of the most unhappy of men if I were
to go, and yet I cannot help being much stirred and influenced by the
golden prospect held before me."
He yielded nevertheless to other persuasion, and for that time the visit
was not to be. In six months more the Civil War began, and America was
closed to any such enterprise for nearly five years.
FOOTNOTES:
[237] It is pleasant to have to state that it was still flourishing when
I received Mr. Lawes's letter, on the 18th of December 1871.
[238] From the same letter, dated 1st of July 1861, I take what follows.
"Poor Lord Campbell's seems to me as easy and good a death as one could
desire. There must be a sweep of these men very soon, and one feels as
if it must fall out like the breaking of an arch--one stone goes from a
prominent place, and then the rest begin to drop. So, one looks, not
without satisfaction (in our sadness) at lives so rounded and complete,
towards Brougham, and Lyndhurst, and Pollock" . . . Yet, of Dickens's own
death, Pollock lived to write to me as the death of "one of the most
distinguished and honoured men England has ever produced; in whose loss
every man among us feels that he has lost a friend and an instructor."
Temple-Hatton, 10th of June 1870.
[239] If space were available here, his letters would supply many proofs
of his interest in Mr. George Moore's admirable projects; but I can only
make exception for his characteristic allusion to an incident that
tickled his fancy very much at the time. "I hope" (20th of Aug. 1863)
"you have been as much amused as I am by the account of the Bishop of
Carlisle at (my very particular friend's) Mr. George Moore's schools? It
strikes me as the funniest piece of weakness I ever saw, his addressing
those unfortunate children concerning Colenso. I cannot get over the
ridiculous image I have erected in my mind, of the shovel-hat and apron
holding forth, at that safe distance, to that safe audience. There is
nothing so extravagant in Rabelais, or so satirically humorous in Swift
or Voltaire."
[240] Eight years later he wrote "Holiday Romance" for a Child's
Magazine published by Mr. Fields, and "George Silverman's
Explanation"--of the same length, and for the same price. There are no
other such instances, I suppose, in the history of literature.
CHAPTER XI.
SECOND SERIES OF READINGS.
1861-1863.
Daughter Kate's Marriage--Wedding Party--Sale
of Tavistock House--Brother Alfred's
Death--Metropolitan Readings--Proposed
Provincial Readings--Good of doing Nothing--New
Subjects for Readings--Mr. Arthur Smith's
Death--Eldest Son's Marriage--Audience at
Brighton--Audiences at Canterbury and
Dover--Alarming Scene at Newcastle--Impromptu
Reading Hall at Berwick-on-Tweed--In
Scotland--At Torquay--At
Liverpool--Metropolitan Success--Offer from
Australia--Writing or Reading not always
possible--Arguments for and against going to
Australia--Readings in Paris--A Religious
Richardson's Show--Exiled Ex-potentate.
AT the end of the first year of residence at Gadshill it was the remark
of Dickens that nothing had gratified him so much as the confidence with
which his poorer neighbours treated him. He had tested generally their
worth and good conduct, and they had been encouraged in illness or
trouble to resort to him for help. There was pleasant indication of the
feeling thus awakened, when, in the summer of 1860, his younger daughter
Kate was married to Charles Alston Collins, brother of the novelist, and
younger son of the painter and academician, who might have found, if
spared to witness that summer-morning scene, subjects not unworthy of
his delightful pencil in many a rustic group near Gadshill. All the
villagers had turned out in honour of Dickens, and the carriages could
hardly get to and from the little church for the succession of triumphal
arches they had to pass through. It was quite unexpected by him; and
when the feu de joie of the blacksmith in the lane, whose enthusiasm had
smuggled a couple of small cannon into his forge, exploded upon him at
the return, I doubt if the shyest of men was ever so taken aback at an
ovation.
To name the principal persons present that day will indicate the faces
that (with addition of Miss Mary Boyle, Miss Marguerite Power, Mr.
Fechter, Mr. Charles Kent, Mr. Edmund Yates, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, and
members of the family of Mr. Frank Stone, whose sudden death[241] in the
preceding year had been a great grief to Dickens) were most familiar at
Gadshill in these later years. Mr. Frederic Lehmann was there with his
wife, whose sister, Miss Chambers, was one of the bridesmaids; Mr. and
Mrs. Wills were there, and Dickens's old fast friend Mr. Thomas Beard;
the two nearest country neighbours with whom the family had become very
intimate, Mr. Hulkes and Mr. Malleson, with their wives, joined the
party; among the others were Henry Chorley, Chauncy Townshend, and
Wilkie Collins; and, for friend special to the occasion, the bridegroom
had brought his old fellow-student in art, Mr. Holman Hunt. Mr. Charles
Collins had himself been bred as a painter, for success in which line he
had some rare gifts; but inclination and capacity led him also to
literature, and, after much indecision between the two callings, he took
finally to letters. His contributions to _All the Year Round_ were among
the most charming of its detached papers, and two stories published
independently showed strength of wing for higher flights. But his health
broke down, and his taste was too fastidious for his failing power. It
is possible however that he may live by two small books of description,
the _New Sentimental Journey_ and the _Cruize on Wheels_, which have in
them unusual delicacy and refinement of humour; and if those volumes
should make any readers in another generation curious about the writer,
they will learn, if correct reply is given to their inquiries, that no
man disappointed so many reasonable hopes with so little fault or
failure of his own, that his difficulty always was to please himself,
and that an inferior mind would have been more successful in both the
arts he followed. He died in 1873 in his forty-fifth year; and until
then it was not known, even by those nearest to him, how great must have
been the suffering which he had borne, through many trying years, with
uncomplaining patience.
His daughter's marriage was the chief event that had crossed the even
tenor of Dickens's life since his first paid readings closed; and it was
followed by the sale of Tavistock House, with the resolve to make his
future home at Gadshill. In the brief interval (29th of July) he wrote
to me of his brother Alfred's death. "I was telegraphed for to
Manchester on Friday night. Arrived there at a quarter past ten, but he
had been dead three hours, poor fellow! He is to be buried at Highgate
on Wednesday. I brought the poor young widow back with me yesterday."
All that this death involved,[242] the troubles of his change of home,
and some difficulties in working out his story, gave him more than
sufficient occupation till the following spring; and as the time arrived
for the new Readings, the change was a not unwelcome one.
The first portion of this second series was planned by Mr. Arthur Smith,
but he only superintended the six readings in London which opened it.
These were the first at St. James's Hall (St. Martin's Hall having been
burnt since the last readings there) and were given in March and April
1861. "We are all well here and flourishing," he wrote to me from
Gadshill on the 28th of April. "On the 18th I finished the readings as I
purposed. We had between seventy and eighty pounds _in the stalls_,
which, at four shillings apiece, is something quite unprecedented in
these times. . . . The result of the six was, that, after paying a large
staff of men and all other charges, and Arthur Smith's ten per cent. on
the receipts, and replacing everything destroyed in the fire at St.
Martin's Hall (including all our tickets, country-baggage, cheque-boxes,
books, and a quantity of gas-fittings and what not), I got upwards of
£500. A very great result. We certainly might have gone on through the
season, but I am heartily glad to be concentrated on my story."
It had been part of his plan that the Provincial Readings should not
begin until a certain interval after the close of his story of _Great
Expectations_. They were delayed accordingly until the 28th of October,
from which date, when they opened at Norwich, they went on with the
Christmas intervals to be presently named to the 30th of January 1862,
when they closed at Chester. Kept within England and Scotland, they took
in the border town of Berwick, and, besides the Scotch cities, comprised
the contrasts and varieties of Norwich and Lancaster, Bury St. Edmunds
and Cheltenham, Carlisle and Hastings, Plymouth and Birmingham,
Canterbury and Torquay, Preston and Ipswich, Manchester and Brighton,
Colchester and Dover, Newcastle and Chester. They were followed by ten
readings at the St. James's Hall, between the 13th of March and the 27th
of June 1862; and by four at Paris in January 1863, given at the Embassy
in aid of the British Charitable Fund. The second series had thus in the
number of the readings nearly equalled the first, when it closed at
London in June 1863 with thirteen readings in the Hanover Square Rooms;
and it is exclusively the subject of such illustrations or references as
this chapter will supply.
On _Great Expectations_ closing in June 1861, Bulwer Lytton, at
Dickens's earnest wish, took his place in _All the Year Round_ with the
"Strange Story;" and he then indulged himself in idleness for a little
while. "The subsidence of those distressing pains in my face the moment
I had done my work, made me resolve to do nothing in that way for some
time if I could help it."[243] But his "doing nothing" was seldom more
than a figure of speech, and what it meant in this case was soon told.
"Every day for two or three hours, I practise my new readings, and
(except in my office work) do nothing else. With great pains I have made
a continuous narrative out of _Copperfield_, that I think will reward
the exertion it is likely to cost me. Unless I am much mistaken, it will
be very valuable in London. I have also done _Nicholas Nickleby_ at the
Yorkshire school, and hope I have got something droll out of Squeers,
John Browdie, & Co. Also, the Bastille prisoner from the _Tale of Two
Cities_. Also, the Dwarf from one of our Christmas numbers." Only the
first two were added to the list for the present circuit.
It was in the midst of these active preparations that painful news
reached him. An illness under which Mr. Arthur Smith had been some time
suffering took unexpectedly a dangerous turn, and there came to be but
small chance of his recovery. A distressing interview on the 28th of
September gave Dickens little hope. "And yet his wakings and wanderings
so perpetually turn on his arrangements for the Readings, and he is so
desperately unwilling to relinquish the idea of 'going on with the
business' to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow, that I had not the
heart to press him for the papers. He told me that he believed he had by
him '70 or 80 letters unanswered.' You may imagine how anxious it makes
me, and at what a deadstop I stand." Another week passed, and with it
the time fixed at the places where his work was to have opened; but he
could not bring himself to act as if all hope had gone. "With a sick man
who has been so zealous and faithful, I feel bound to be very tender and
patient. When I told him the other day about my having engaged
Headland--'to do all the personally bustling and fatiguing part of your
work,' I said--he nodded his heavy head with great satisfaction, and
faintly got out of himself the words, 'Of course I pay him, and not
you.'" The poor fellow died in October; and on the day after attending
the funeral,[244] Dickens heard of the death of his brother-in-law and
friend, Mr. Henry Austin, whose abilities and character he respected as
much as he liked the man. He lost much in losing the judicious and safe
counsel which had guided him on many public questions in which he took
lively interest, and it was with a heavy heart he set out at last upon
his second circuit. "With what difficulty I get myself back to the
readings after all this loss and trouble, or with what unwillingness I
work myself up to the mark of looking them in the face, I can hardly
say. As for poor Arthur Smith at this time, it is as if my right arm
were gone. It is only just now that I am able to open one of the books,
and screw the text out of myself in a flat dull way. Enclosed is the
list of what I have to do. You will see that I have left ten days in
November for the Christmas number, and also a good Christmas margin for
our meeting at Gadshill. I shall be very glad to have the money that I
expect to get; but it will be earned." That November interval was also
the date of the marriage of his eldest son to the daughter of Mr. Evans,
so long, in connection with Mr. Bradbury, his publisher and printer.
The start of the readings at Norwich was not good, so many changes of
vexation having been incident to the opening announcements as to leave
some doubt of their fulfilment. But the second night, when trial was
made of the _Nickleby_ scenes, "we had a splendid hall, and I think
_Nickleby_ will top all the readings. Somehow it seems to have got in
it, by accident, exactly the qualities best suited to the purpose; and
it went last night, not only with roars, but with a general hilarity and
pleasure that I have never seen surpassed."[245] From this night onward,
the success was uninterrupted, and here was his report to me from
Brighton on the 8th of November. "We turned away half Dover and half
Hastings and half Colchester; and, if you can believe such a thing, I
may tell you that in round numbers we find 1000 stalls already taken
here in Brighton! I left Colchester in a heavy snow-storm. To-day it is
so warm here that I can hardly bear the fire, and am writing with the
window open down to the ground. Last night I had a most charming
audience for _Copperfield_, with a delicacy of perception that really
made the work delightful. It is very pretty to see the girls and women
generally, in the matter of Dora; and everywhere I have found that
peculiar personal relation between my audience and myself on which I
counted most when I entered on this enterprise. _Nickleby_ continues to
go in the wildest manner."
A storm was at this time sweeping round the coast, and while at Dover he
had written of it to his sister-in-law (7th of November): "The bad
weather has not in the least touched us, and the storm was most
magnificent at Dover. All the great side of the Lord Warden next the
sea had to be emptied, the break of the waves was so prodigious, and the
noise so utterly confounding. The sea came in like a great sky of
immense clouds, for ever breaking suddenly into furious rain; all kinds
of wreck were washed in; among other things, a very pretty brass-bound
chest being thrown about like a feather. . . . The unhappy Ostend packet,
unable to get in or go back, beat about the Channel all Tuesday night,
and until noon yesterday; when I saw her come in, with five men at the
wheel, a picture of misery inconceivable. . . . The effect of the readings
at Hastings and Dover really seems to have outdone the best usual
impression; and at Dover they wouldn't go, but sat applauding like mad.
The most delicate audience I have seen in any provincial place, is
Canterbury" ("an intelligent and delightful response in them," he wrote
to his daughter, "like the touch of a beautiful instrument"); "but the
audience with the greatest sense of humour certainly is Dover. The
people in the stalls set the example of laughing, in the most curiously
unreserved way; and they laughed with such really cordial enjoyment,
when Squeers read the boys' letters, that the contagion extended to me.
For, one couldn't hear them without laughing too. . . . So, I am thankful
to say, all goes well, and the recompense for the trouble is in every
way Great."
From the opposite quarter of Berwick-on-Tweed he wrote again in the
midst of storm. But first his mention of Newcastle, which he had also
taken on his way to Edinburgh, reading two nights there, should be
given. "At Newcastle, against the very heavy expenses, I made more than
a hundred guineas profit. A finer audience there is not in England, and
I suppose them to be a specially earnest people; for, while they can
laugh till they shake the roof, they have a very unusual sympathy with
what is pathetic or passionate. An extraordinary thing occurred on the
second night. The room was tremendously crowded and my gas-apparatus
fell down. There was a terrible wave among the people for an instant,
and God knows what destruction of life a rush to the stairs would have
caused. Fortunately a lady in the front of the stalls ran out towards
me, exactly in a place where I knew that the whole hall could see her.
So I addressed her, laughing, and half-asked and half-ordered her to sit
down again; and, in a moment, it was all over. But the men in attendance
had such a fearful sense of what might have happened (besides the real
danger of Fire) that they positively shook the boards I stood on, with
their trembling, when they came up to put things right. I am proud to
record that the gas-man's sentiment, as delivered afterwards, was, 'The
more you want of the master, the more you'll find in him.' With which
complimentary homage, and with the wind blowing so that I can hardly
hear myself write, I conclude."[246]
It was still blowing, in shape of a gale from the sea, when, an hour
before the reading, he wrote from the King's Arms at Berwick-on-Tweed.
"As odd and out of the way a place to be at, it appears to me, as ever
was seen! And such a ridiculous room designed for me to read in! An
immense Corn Exchange, made of glass and iron, round, dome-topp'd,
lofty, utterly absurd for any such purpose, and full of thundering
echoes; with a little lofty crow's nest of a stone gallery, breast high,
deep in the wall, into which it was designed to put----_me_! I instantly
struck, of course; and said I would either read in a room attached to
this house (a very snug one, capable of holding 500 people), or not at
all. Terrified local agents glowered, but fell prostrate, and my men
took the primitive accommodation in hand. Ever since, I am alarmed to
add, the people (who besought the honour of the visit) have been coming
in numbers quite irreconcileable with the appearance of the place, and
what is to be the end I do not know. It was poor Arthur Smith's
principle that a town on the way paid the expenses of a long
through-journey, and therefore I came." The Reading paid more than
those expenses.
Enthusiastic greeting awaited him in Edinburgh. "We had in the hall
exactly double what we had on the first night last time. The success of
_Copperfield_ was perfectly unexampled. Four great rounds of applause
with a burst of cheering at the end, and every point taken in the finest
manner." But this was nothing to what befell on the second night, when,
by some mistake of the local agents, the tickets issued were out of
proportion to the space available. Writing from Glasgow next day (3rd of
December) he described the scene. "Such a pouring of hundreds into a
place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such a
rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humour on
the whole, I never saw the faintest approach to. While I addressed the
crowd in the room, G addressed the crowd in the street. Fifty frantic
men got up in all parts of the hall and addressed me all at once. Other
frantic men made speeches to the walls. The whole B family were borne in
on the top of a wave, and landed with their faces against the front of
the platform. I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them
to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau or gigantic
pic-nic--one pretty girl in full dress, lying on her side all night,
holding on to one of the legs of my table! It was the most extraordinary
sight. And yet, from the moment I began to the moment of my leaving off,
they never missed a point, and they ended with a burst of cheers. . . . The
expenditure of lungs and spirits was (as you may suppose) rather great;
and to sleep well was out of the question. I am therefore rather fagged
to-day; and as the hall in which I read to-night is a large one, I must
make my letter a short one. . . . My people were torn to ribbons last
night. They have not a hat among them--and scarcely a coat." He came
home for his Christmas rest by way of Manchester, and thus spoke of the
reading there on the 14th of December. "_Copperfield_ in the Free Trade
Hall last Saturday was really a grand scene."
He was in southern latitudes after Christmas, and on the 8th of January
wrote from Torquay: "We are now in the region of small rooms, and
therefore this trip will not be as profitable as the long one. I imagine
the room here to be very small. Exeter I know, and that is small too. I
am very much used up on the whole, for I cannot bear this moist warm
climate. It would kill me very soon. And I have now got to the point of
taking so much out of myself with _Copperfield_ that I might as well do
Richard Wardour. . . . This is a very pretty place--a compound of Hastings,
Tunbridge Wells, and little bits of the hills about Naples; but I met
four respirators as I came up from the station, and three pale curates
without them who seemed in a bad way." They had been not bad omens,
however. The success was good, at both Torquay and Exeter; and he closed
the month, and this series of the country readings, at the great towns
of Liverpool and Chester. "The beautiful St. George's Hall crowded to
excess last night" (28th of January 1862) "and numbers turned away.
Brilliant to see when lighted up, and for a reading simply perfect. You
remember that a Liverpool audience is usually dull; but they put me on
my mettle last night, for I never saw such an audience--no, not even in
Edinburgh! The agents (alone, and of course without any reference to
ready money at the doors) had taken for the two readings two hundred
pounds." But as the end approached the fatigues had told severely on
him. He described himself sleeping horribly, and with head dazed and
worn by gas and heat. Rest, before he could resume at the St. James's
Hall in March, was become an absolute necessity.
Two brief extracts from letters of the dates respectively of the 8th of
April[247] and the 28th of June will sufficiently describe the London
readings. "The money returns have been quite astounding. Think of £190 a
night! The effect of _Copperfield_ exceeds all the expectations which
its success in the country led me to form. It seems to take people
entirely by surprise. If this is not new to you, I have not a word of
news. The rain that raineth every day seems to have washed news away or
got it under water." That was in April. In June he wrote: "I finished my
readings on Friday night to an enormous hall--nearly £200. The success
has been throughout complete. It seems almost suicidal to leave off
with the town so full, but I don't like to depart from my public pledge.
A man from Australia is in London ready to pay £10,000 for eight months
there. If----" It was an If that troubled him for some time, and led to
agitating discussion. The civil war having closed America, an increase
made upon the just-named offer tempted him to Australia. He tried to
familiarize himself with the fancy that he should thus also get new
material for observation, and he went so far as to plan an Uncommercial
Traveller Upside Down.[248] It is however very doubtful if such a
scheme would have been entertained for a moment, but for the unwonted
difficulties of invention that were now found to beset a twenty-number
story. Such a story had lately been in his mind, and he had just chosen
the title for it (_Our Mutual Friend_); but still he halted and
hesitated sorely. "If it was not," (he wrote on the 5th of October 1862)
"for the hope of a gain that would make me more independent of the
worst, I could not look the travel and absence and exertion in the face.
I know perfectly well beforehand how unspeakably wretched I should be.
But these renewed and larger offers tempt me. I can force myself to go
aboard a ship, and I can force myself to do at that reading-desk what I
have done a hundred times; but whether, with all this unsettled
fluctuating distress in my mind, I could force an original book out of
it, is another question." On the 22nd, still striving hard to find
reasons to cope with the all but irresistible arguments against any such
adventure, which indeed, with everything that then surrounded him, would
have been little short of madness, he thus stated his experience of his
two circuits of public reading. "Remember that at home here the thing
has never missed fire, but invariably does more the second time than it
did the first; and also that I have got so used to it, and have worked
so hard at it, as to get out of it more than I ever thought was in it
for that purpose. I think all the probabilities for such a country as
Australia are immense." The terrible difficulty was that the home
argument struck both ways. "If I were to go it would be a penance and a
misery, and I dread the thought more than I can possibly express. The
domestic life of the Readings is all but intolerable to me when I am
away for a few weeks at a time merely, and what would it be----." On the
other hand it was also a thought of home, far beyond the mere personal
loss or gain of it, that made him willing still to risk even so much
misery and penance; and he had a fancy that it might be possible to take
his eldest daughter with him. "It is useless and needless for me to say
what the conflict in my own mind is. How painfully unwilling I am to go,
and yet how painfully sensible that perhaps I ought to go--with all the
hands upon my skirts that I cannot fail to feel and see there, whenever
I look round. It is a struggle of no common sort, as you will suppose,
you who know the circumstances of the struggler." It closed at once when
he clearly saw that to take any of his family with him, and make
satisfactory arrangement for the rest during such an absence, would be
impossible. By this time also he began to find his way to the new story,
and better hopes and spirits had returned.
In January 1863 he had taken his daughter and his sister-in-law to
Paris, and he read twice at the Embassy in behalf of the British
Charitable Fund, the success being such that he consented to read twice
again.[249] He passed his birthday of that year (the 7th of the
following month) at Arras. "You will remember me to-day, I know. Thanks
for it. An odd birthday, but I am as little out of heart as you would
have me be--floored now and then, but coming up again at the call of
Time. I wanted to see this town, birthplace of our amiable Sea Green"
(Robespierre); "and I find a Grande Place so very remarkable and
picturesque that it is astonishing how people miss it. Here too I found,
in a bye-country place just near, a Fair going on, with a Religious
Richardson's in it--THÉATRE RELIGIEUX--'donnant six fois par jour,
l'histoire de la Croix en tableaux vivants, depuis la naissance de notre
Seigneur jusqu'à son sepulture. Aussi l'immolation d'Isaac, par son père
Abraham.' It was just before nightfall when I came upon it; and one of
the three wise men was up to his eyes in lamp oil, hanging the
moderators. A woman in blue and fleshings (whether an angel or Joseph's
wife I don't know) was addressing the crowd through an enormous
speaking-trumpet; and a very small boy with a property lamb (I leave you
to judge who _he_ was) was standing on his head on a barrel-organ."
Returning to England by Boulogne in the same year, as he stepped into
the Folkestone boat he encountered a friend, Mr. Charles Manby (for, in
recording a trait of character so pleasing and honourable, it is not
necessary that I should suppress the name), also passing over to
England. "Taking leave of Manby was a shabby man of whom I had some
remembrance, but whom I could not get into his place in my mind.
Noticing when we stood out of the harbour that he was on the brink of
the pier, waving his hat in a desolate manner, I said to Manby, 'Surely
I know that man.'--'I should think you did,' said he: 'Hudson!' He is
living--just living--at Paris, and Manby had brought him on. He said to
Manby at parting, 'I shall not have a good dinner again, till you come
back.' I asked Manby why he stuck to him? He said, Because he (Hudson)
had so many people in his power, and had held his peace; and because he
(Manby) saw so many Notabilities grand with him now, who were always
grovelling for 'shares' in the days of his grandeur."
Upon Dickens's arrival in London the second series of his readings was
brought to a close; and opportunity may be taken, before describing the
third, to speak of the manuscript volume found among his papers,
containing Memoranda for use in his writings.
FOOTNOTES:
[241] "You will be grieved," he wrote (Saturday 19th of Nov. 1859) "to
hear of poor Stone. On Sunday he was not well. On Monday, went to Dr.
Todd, who told him he had aneurism of the heart. On Tuesday, went to Dr.
Walsh, who told him he hadn't. On Wednesday I met him in a cab in the
Square here, and he got out to talk to me. I walked about with him a
little while at a snail's pace, cheering him up; but when I came home, I
told them that I thought him much changed, and in danger. Yesterday at 2
o'clock he died of spasm of the heart. I am going up to Highgate to look
for a grave for him."
[242] He was now hard at work on his story; and a note written from
Gadshill after the funeral shows, what so frequently was incident to his
pursuits, the hard conditions under which sorrow, and its claim on his
exertion, often came to him. "To-morrow I have to work against time and
tide and everything else, to fill up a No. keeping open for me, and the
stereotype plates of which must go to America on Friday. But indeed the
enquiry into poor Alfred's affairs; the necessity of putting the widow
and children somewhere; the difficulty of knowing what to do for the
best; and the need I feel under of being as composed and deliberate as I
can be, and yet of not shirking or putting off the occasion that there
is for doing a duty; would have brought me back here to be quiet, under
any circumstances."
[243] The same letter adds: "The fourth edition of _Great Expectations_
is now going to press; the third being nearly out. Bulwer's story keeps
us up bravely. As well as we can make out, we have even risen fifteen
hundred."
[244] "There was a very touching thing in the Chapel" (at Brompton).
"When the body was to be taken up and carried to the grave, there
stepped out, instead of the undertaker's men with their hideous
paraphernalia, the men who had always been with the two brothers at the
Egyptian Hall; and they, in their plain, decent, own mourning clothes,
carried the poor fellow away. Also, standing about among the
gravestones, dressed in black, I noticed every kind of person who had
ever had to do with him--from our own gas man and doorkeepers and
billstickers, up to Johnson the printer and that class of man. The
father and Albert and he now lie together, and the grave, I suppose,
will be no more disturbed I wrote a little inscription for the stone,
and it is quite full."
[245] Of his former manager he writes in the same letter: "I miss him
dreadfully. The sense I used to have of compactness and comfort about me
while I was reading, is quite gone; and on my coming out for the ten
minutes, when I used to find him always ready for me with something
cheerful to say, it is forlorn. . . . Besides which, H. and all the rest of
them are always somewhere, and he was always everywhere."
[246] The more detailed account of the scene which he wrote to his
daughter is also well worth giving. "A most tremendous hall here last
night. Something almost terrible in the cram. A fearful thing might have
happened. Suddenly, when they were all very still over Smike, my Gas
Batten came down, and it looked as if the room were falling. There were
three great galleries crammed to the roof, and a high steep flight of
stairs; and a panic must have destroyed numbers of people. A lady in the
front row of stalls screamed, and ran out wildly towards me, and for one
instant there was a terrible wave in the crowd. I addressed that lady,
laughing (for I knew she was in sight of everybody there), and called
out as if it happened every night--'There's nothing the matter I assure
you; don't be alarmed; pray sit down----' and she sat down directly, and
there was a thunder of applause. It took some five minutes to mend, and
I looked on with my hands in my pockets; for I think if I had turned my
back for a moment, there might still have been a move. My people were
dreadfully alarmed--Boycott" (the gas-man) "in particular, who I suppose
had some notion that the whole place might have taken fire--'but there
stood the master,' he did me the honour to say afterwards, in addressing
the rest, 'as cool as ever I see him a lounging at a Railway Station.'"
[247] The letter referred also to the death of his American friend
Professor Felton. "Your mention of poor Felton's death is a shock of
surprise as well as grief to me, for I had not heard a word about it.
Mr. Fields told me when he was here that the effect of that hotel
disaster of bad drinking water had not passed away; so I suppose, as you
do, that he sank under it. Poor dear Felton! It is 20 years since I told
you of the delight my first knowledge of him gave me, and it is as
strongly upon me to this hour. I wish our ways had crossed a little
oftener, but that would not have made it better for us now. Alas! alas!
all ways have the same finger-post at the head of them, and at every
turning in them."
[248] I give the letter in which he put the scheme formally before me,
after the renewed and larger offers had been submitted. "If there were
reasonable hope and promise, I could make up my mind to go to Australia
and get money. I would not accept the Australian people's offer. I would
take no money from them; would bind myself to nothing with them; but
would merely make them my agents at such and such a per centage, and go
and read there. I would take some man of literary pretensions as a
secretary (Charles Collins? What think you?) and with his aid" (he
afterwards made the proposal to his old friend Mr. Thomas Beard) "would
do, for _All the Year Round_ while I was away, The Uncommercial
Traveller Upside Down. If the notion of these speculators be anything
like accurate, I should come back rich. I should have seen a great deal
of novelty to boot. I should have been very miserable too. . . . Of course
one cannot possibly count upon the money to be realized by a six months'
absence, but, £12,000 is supposed to be a low estimate. Mr. S. brought
me letters from members of the legislature, newspaper editors, and the
like, exhorting me to come, saying how much the people talk of me, and
dwelling on the kind of reception that would await me. No doubt this is
so, and of course a great deal of curious experience for after use would
be gained over and above the money. Being my own master too, I could
'work' myself more delicately than if I bound myself for money
beforehand. A few years hence, if all other circumstances were the same,
I might not be so well fitted for the excessive wear and tear. This is
about the whole case. But pray do not suppose that I am in my own mind
favourable to going, or that I have any fancy for going." That was late
in October. From Paris in November (1862), he wrote: "I mentioned the
question to Bulwer when he dined with us here last Sunday, and he was
all for going. He said that not only did he think the whole population
would go to the Readings, but that the country would strike me in some
quite new aspect for a Book; and that wonders might be done with such
book in the way of profit, over there as well as here."
[249] A person present thus described (1st of February 1863) the second
night to Miss Dickens. "No one can imagine the scene of last Friday
night at the Embassy . . . a two hours' storm of excitement and pleasure.
They actually murmured and applauded right away into their carriages and
down the street."
CHAPTER XII.
HINTS FOR BOOKS WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN.
1855-1865.
Book of MS. Memoranda--Home of the
Barnacles--Original of Mrs. Clennam--River and
Ferryman--Notions for _Little Dorrit_--Original
of _Hunted Down_--Titles for _Tale of Two
Cities_--Hints for _Mutual Friend_--Reprobate's
Notion of Duty--Proposed Opening for a
Story--England first seen by an
Englishman--Touching Fancy--Story from State
Trials--Sentimentalist and her Fate--Female
Groups--Children Farming--Subjects for
Description--Fancies not worked upon--Available
Names--Mr. Brobity's Snuff-box.
DICKENS began the Book of Memoranda for possible use in his work, to
which occasional reference has been made, in January 1855, six months
before the first page of _Little Dorrit_ was written; and I find no
allusion leading me to suppose, except in one very doubtful instance,
that he had made addition to its entries, or been in the habit of
resorting to them, after the date of _Our Mutual Friend_. It seems to
comprise that interval of ten years in his life.
In it were put down any hints or suggestions that occurred to him. A
mere piece of imagery or fancy, it might be at one time; at another the
outline of a subject or a character; then a bit of description or
dialogue; no order or sequence being observed in any. Titles for stories
were set down too, and groups of names for the actors in them; not the
least curious of the memoranda belonging to this class. More rarely,
entry is made of some oddity of speech; and he has thus preserved in it,
_verbatim et literatim_, what he declared to have been as startling a
message as he ever received. A confidential servant at Tavistock House,
having conferred on some proposed changes in his bed-room with the party
that was to do the work, delivered this ultimatum to her master. "The
gas-fitter says, sir, that he can't alter the fitting of your gas in
your bed-room without taking up almost the ole of your bed-room floor,
and pulling your room to pieces. He says, of course you can have it done
if you wish, and he'll do it for you and make a good job of it, but he
would have to destroy your room first, and go entirely under the
jistes."[250]
It is very interesting in this book, last legacy as it is of the
literary remains of such a writer, to compare the way in which fancies
were worked out with their beginnings entered in its pages. Those
therefore will first be taken that in some form or other appeared
afterwards in his writings, with such reference to the latter as may
enable the reader to make comparison for himself.
"Our House. Whatever it is, it is in a first-rate situation, and a
fashionable neighbourhood. (Auctioneer called it 'a gentlemanly
residence.') A series of little closets squeezed up into the corner of a
dark street--but a Duke's Mansion round the corner. The whole house
just large enough to hold a vile smell. The air breathed in it, at the
best of times, a kind of Distillation of Mews." He made it the home of
the Barnacles in _Little Dorrit_.
What originally he meant to express by Mrs. Clennam in the same story
has narrower limits, and a character less repellent, in the Memoranda
than it assumed in the book. "Bed-ridden (or room-ridden)
twenty--five-and-twenty--years; any length of time. As to most things,
kept at a standstill all the while. Thinking of altered streets as the
old streets--changed things as the unchanged things--the youth or girl I
quarrelled with all those years ago, as the same youth or girl now.
Brought out of doors by an unexpected exercise of my latent strength of
character, and then how strange!"
One of the people of the same story who becomes a prominent actor in it,
Henry Gowan, a creation on which he prided himself as forcible and new,
seems to have risen to his mind in this way. "I affect to believe that I
would do anything myself for a ten-pound note, and that anybody else
would. I affect to be always book-keeping in every man's case, and
posting up a little account of good and evil with every one. Thus the
greatest rascal becomes 'the dearest old fellow,' and there is much less
difference than you would be inclined to suppose between an honest man
and a scoundrel. While I affect to be finding good in most men, I am in
reality decrying it where it really is, and setting it up where it is
not. Might not a presentation of this far from uncommon class of
character, if I could put it strongly enough, be likely to lead some
men to reflect, and change a little? I think it has never been done."
In _Little Dorrit_ also will be found a picture which seems to live with
a more touching effect in his first pleasing fancy of it. "The ferryman
on a peaceful river, who has been there from youth, who lives, who grows
old, who does well, who does ill, who changes, who dies--the river runs
six hours up and six hours down, the current sets off that point, the
same allowance must be made for the drifting of the boat, the same tune
is always played by the rippling water against the prow."
Here was an entry made when the thought occurred to him of the close of
old Dorrit's life. "First sign of the father failing and breaking down.
Cancels long interval. Begins to talk about the turnkey who first called
him the Father of the Marshalsea--as if he were still living. 'Tell Bob
I want to speak to him. See if he is on the Lock, my dear.'" And here
was the first notion of Clennam's reverse of fortune. "His falling into
difficulty, and himself imprisoned in the Marshalsea. Then she, out of
all her wealth and changed station, comes back in her old dress, and
devotes herself in the old way."
He seems to have designed, for the sketches of society in the same tale,
a "Full-length portrait of his lordship, surrounded by worshippers;" of
which, beside that brief memorandum, only his first draft of the general
outline was worked at. "Sensible men enough, agreeable men enough,
independent men enough in a certain way;--but the moment they begin to
circle round my lord, and to shine with a borrowed light from his
lordship, heaven and earth how mean and subservient! What a competition
and outbidding of each other in servility."
The last of the Memoranda hints which were used in the story whose
difficulties at its opening seem first to have suggested them, ran thus:
"The unwieldy ship taken in tow by the snorting little steam tug"--by
which was prefigured the patriarch Casby and his agent Panks.
In a few lines are the germ of the tale called _Hunted Down_: "Devoted
to the Destruction of a man. Revenge built up on love. The secretary in
the Wainewright case, who had fallen in love (or supposed he had) with
the murdered girl."--The hint on which he worked in his description of
the villain of that story, is also in the Memoranda. "The man with his
hair parted straight up the front of his head, like an aggravating
gravel-walk. Always presenting it to you. 'Up here, if you please.
Neither to the right nor left. Take me exactly in this direction.
Straight up here. Come off the grass--'"
His first intention as to the _Tale of Two Cities_ was to write it upon
a plan proposed in this manuscript book. "How as to a story in two
periods--with a lapse of time between, like a French Drama? Titles for
such a notion. TIME! THE LEAVES OF THE FOREST. SCATTERED LEAVES. THE
GREAT WHEEL. ROUND AND ROUND. OLD LEAVES. LONG AGO. FAR APART. FALLEN
LEAVES. FIVE AND TWENTY YEARS. YEARS AND YEARS. ROLLING YEARS. DAY AFTER
DAY. FELLED TREES. MEMORY CARTON. ROLLING STONES. TWO GENERATIONS." That
special title of _Memory Carton_ shows that what led to the greatest
success of the book as written was always in his mind; and another of
the memoranda is this rough hint of the character itself. "The
drunken?--dissipated?--What?--LION--and his JACKALL and Primer, stealing
down to him at unwonted hours."
The studies of Silas Wegg and his patron as they exist in _Our Mutual
Friend_, are hardly such good comedy as in the form which the first
notion of them seems to have intended. "Gibbon's Decline and Fall. The
two characters. One reporting to the other as he reads. Both getting
confused as to whether it is not all going on now." In the same story
may be traced, more or less clearly, other fancies which had found their
first expression in the Memoranda. A touch for Bella Wilfer is here.
"Buying poor shabby--FATHER?--a new hat. So incongruous that it makes
him like African King Boy, or King George; who is usually full dressed
when he has nothing upon him but a cocked hat or a waistcoat." Here
undoubtedly is the voice of Podsnap. "I stand by my friends and
acquaintances;--not for their sakes, but because they are _my_ friends
and acquaintances. _I_ know them, _I_ have licensed them, they have
taken out _my_ certificate. Ergo, I champion them as myself." To the
same redoubtable person another trait clearly belongs. "And by denying a
thing, supposes that he altogether puts it out of existence." A third
very perfectly expresses the boy, ready for mischief, who does all the
work there is to be done in Eugene Wrayburn's place of business. "The
office boy for ever looking out of window, who never has anything to
do."
The poor wayward purposeless good-hearted master of the boy, Eugene
himself, is as evidently in this: "If they were great things, I, the
untrustworthy man in little things, would do them earnestly--But O No, I
wouldn't!" What follows has a more direct reference; being indeed almost
literally copied in the story. "As to the question whether I, Eugene,
lying ill and sick even unto death, may be consoled by the
representation that coming through this illness, I shall begin a new
life, and have energy and purpose and all I have yet wanted: 'I _hope_ I
should, but I _know_ I shouldn't. Let me die, my dear.'"
In connection with the same book, the last in that form which he lived
to complete, another fancy may be copied from which, though not
otherwise worked out in the tale, the relation of Lizzie Hexam to her
brother was taken. "A man, and his wife--or daughter--or niece. The man,
a reprobate and ruffian; the woman (or girl) with good in her, and with
compunctions. He believes nothing, and defies everything; yet has
suspicions always, that she is 'praying against' his evil schemes, and
making them go wrong. He is very much opposed to this, and is always
angrily harping on it. 'If she _must_ pray, why can't she pray in their
favour, instead of going against 'em? She's always ruining me--she
always is--and calls that, Duty! There's a religious person! Calls it
Duty to fly in my face! Calls it Duty to go sneaking against me!'"
Other fancies preserved in his Memoranda were left wholly unemployed,
receiving from him no more permanent form of any kind than that which
they have in this touching record; and what most people would probably
think the most attractive and original of all the thoughts he had thus
set down for future use, are those that were never used.
Here were his first rough notes for the opening of a story. "Beginning
with the breaking up of a large party of guests at a country house:
house left lonely with the shrunken family in it: guests spoken of, and
introduced to the reader that way.--OR, beginning with a house abandoned
by a family fallen into reduced circumstances. Their old furniture
there, and numberless tokens of their old comforts. Inscriptions under
the bells downstairs--'Mr. John's Room,' 'Miss Caroline's Room.' Great
gardens trimly kept to attract a tenant: but no one in them. A landscape
without figures. Billiard room: table covered up, like a body. Great
stables without horses, and great coach-houses without carriages. Grass
growing in the chinks of the stone-paving, this bright cold winter day.
_Downhills._" Another opening had also suggested itself to him. "Open a
story by bringing two strongly contrasted places and strongly contrasted
sets of people, into the connexion necessary for the story, by means of
an electric message. Describe the message--_be_ the message--flashing
along through space, over the earth, and under the sea."[251] Connected
with which in some way would seem to be this other notion, following it
in the Memoranda. "Representing London--or Paris, or any other great
place--in the new light of being actually unknown to all the people in
the story, and only taking the colour of their fears and fancies and
opinions. So getting a new aspect, and being unlike itself. An _odd_
unlikeness of itself."
The subjects for stories are various, and some are striking. There was
one he clung to much, and thought of frequently as in a special degree
available for a series of papers in his periodical; but when he came to
close quarters with it the difficulties were found to be too great.
"English landscape. The beautiful prospect, trim fields, clipped hedges,
everything so neat and orderly--gardens, houses, roads. Where are the
people who do all this? There must be a great many of them, to do it.
Where are they all? And are _they_, too, so well kept and so fair to
see? Suppose the foregoing to be wrought out by an Englishman: say, from
China: who knows nothing about his native country." To which may be
added a fancy that savours of the same mood of discontent, political and
social. "How do I know that I, a man, am to learn from insects--unless
it is to learn how little my littlenesses are? All that botheration in
the hive about the queen bee, may be, in little, me and the court
circular."
A domestic story he had met with in the State Trials struck him greatly
by its capabilities, and I may preface it by mentioning another subject,
not entered in the Memoranda, which for a long time impressed him as
capable of attractive treatment. It was after reading one of the
witch-trials that this occurred to him; and the heroine was to be a girl
who for a special purpose had taken a witch's disguise, and whose trick
was not discovered until she was actually at the stake. Here is the
State Trials story as told by Dickens. "There is a case in the State
Trials, where a certain officer made love to a (supposed) miser's
daughter, and ultimately induced her to give her father slow poison,
while nursing him in sickness. Her father discovered it, told her so,
forgave her, and said 'Be patient my dear--I shall not live long, even
if I recover: and then you shall have all my wealth.' Though penitent
then, she afterwards poisoned him again (under the same influence), and
successfully. Whereupon it appeared that the old man had no money at
all, and had lived on a small annuity which died with him, though always
feigning to be rich. He had loved this daughter with great affection."
A theme touching closely on ground that some might think dangerous, is
sketched in the following fancy. "The father (married young) who, in
perfect innocence, venerates his son's young wife, as the realization of
his ideal of woman. (He not happy in his own choice.) The son slights
her, and knows nothing of her worth. The father watches her, protects
her, labours for her, endures for her,--is for ever divided between his
strong natural affection for his son as his son, and his resentment
against him as this young creature's husband." Here is another, less
dangerous, which he took from an actual occurrence made known to him
when he was at Bonchurch. "The idea of my being brought up by my mother
(me the narrator), my father being dead; and growing up in this belief
until I find that my father is the gentleman I have sometimes seen, and
oftener heard of, who has the handsome young wife, and the dog I once
took notice of when I was a little child, and who lives in the great
house and drives about."
Very admirable is this. "The girl separating herself from the lover who
has shewn himself unworthy--loving him still--living single for his
sake--but never more renewing their old relations. Coming to him when
they are both grown old, and nursing him in his last illness." Nor is
the following less so. "Two girls _mis-marrying_ two men. The man who
has evil in him, dragging the superior woman down. The man who has good
in him, raising the inferior woman up." Dickens would have been at his
best in working out both fancies.
In some of the most amusing of his sketches of character, women also
take the lead. "The lady un peu passée, who is determined to be
interesting. No matter how much I love that person--nay, the more so for
that very reason--I MUST flatter, and bother, and be weak and
apprehensive and nervous, and what not. If I were well and strong,
agreeable and self-denying, my friend might forget me." Another not
remotely belonging to the same family is as neatly hit off. "The
sentimental woman feels that the comic, undesigning, unconscious man, is
'Her Fate.'--I her fate? God bless my soul, it puts me into a cold
perspiration to think of it. _I_ her fate? How can _I_ be her fate? I
don't mean to be. I don't want to have anything to do with
her--Sentimental woman perceives nevertheless that Destiny must be
accomplished."
Other portions of a female group are as humorously sketched and hardly
less entertaining. "The enthusiastically complimentary person, who
forgets you in her own flowery prosiness: as--'I have no need to say to
a person of your genius and feeling, and wide range of experience'--and
then, being shortsighted, puts up her glass to remember who you
are."--"Two sisters" (these were real people known to him). "One going
in for being generally beloved (which she is not by any means); and the
other for being generally hated (which she needn't be)."--"The
bequeathed maid-servant, or friend. Left as a legacy. And a devil of a
legacy too."--"The woman who is never on any account to hear of anything
shocking. For whom the world is to be of barley-sugar."--"The lady who
lives on her enthusiasm; and hasn't a jot."--"Bright-eyed creature
selling jewels. The stones and the eyes." Much significance is in the
last few words. One may see to what uses Dickens would have turned them.
A more troubled note is sounded in another of these female characters.
"I am a common woman--fallen. Is it devilry in me--is it a wicked
comfort--what is it--that induces me to be always tempting other women
down, while I hate myself!" This next, with as much truth in it, goes
deeper than the last. "The prostitute who will not let one certain youth
approach her. 'O let there be some one in the world, who having an
inclination towards me has not gratified it, and has not known me in my
degradation!' She almost loving him.--Suppose, too, this touch in her
could not be believed in by his mother or mistress: by some handsome and
proudly virtuous woman, always revolting from her." A more agreeable
sketch than either follows, though it would not please M. Taine so well.
"The little baby-like married woman--so strange in her new dignity, and
talking with tears in her eyes, of her sisters 'and all of them' at
home. Never from home before, and never going back again." Another from
the same manuscript volume not less attractive, which was sketched in
his own home, I gave upon a former page.
The female character in its relations with the opposite sex has lively
illustration in the Memoranda. "The man who is governed by his wife, and
is heartily despised in consequence by all other wives; who still want
to govern _their_ husbands, notwithstanding." An alarming family pair
follows that. "The playful--and scratching--family. Father and
daughter." And here is another. "The agreeable (and wicked) young-mature
man, and his devoted sister." What next was set down he had himself
partly seen; and, by enquiry at the hospital named, had ascertained the
truth of the rest. "The two people in the Incurable Hospital.--The poor
incurable girl lying on a water-bed, and the incurable man who has a
strange flirtation with her; comes and makes confidences to her; snips
and arranges her plants; and rehearses to her the comic songs(!) by
writing which he materially helps out his living."[252]
Two lighter figures are very pleasantly touched. "Set of circumstances
which suddenly bring an easy, airy fellow into near relations with
people he knows nothing about, and has never even seen. This, through
his being thrown in the way of the innocent young personage of the
story. 'Then there is Uncle Sam to be considered,' says she. 'Aye to be
sure,' says he, 'so there is! By Jupiter, I forgot Uncle Sam. He's a
rock ahead, is Uncle Sam. He must be considered, of course; he must be
smoothed down; he must be cleared out of the way. To be sure. I never
thought of Uncle Sam.--By the bye, who _is_ Uncle Sam?'"
There are several such sketches as that, to set against the groups of
women; and some have Dickens's favourite vein of satire in them. "The
man whose vista is always stopped up by the image of Himself. Looks down
a long walk, and can't see round himself, or over himself, or beyond
himself. Is always blocking up his own way. Would be such a good thing
for him, if he could knock himself down." Another picture of selfishness
is touched with greater delicacy. "'Too good' to be grateful to, or
dutiful to, or anything else that ought to be. 'I won't thank you: you
are too good.'--'Don't ask me to marry you: you are too good.'--In
short, I don't particularly mind ill-using you, and being selfish with
you: for you are _so_ good. Virtue its own reward!" A third, which seems
to reverse the dial, is but another face of it: frankly avowing faults,
which are virtues. "In effect--I admit I am generous, amiable, gentle,
magnanimous. Reproach me--I deserve it--I know my faults--I have striven
in vain to get the better of them." Dickens would have made much, too,
of the working out of the next. "The knowing man in distress, who
borrows a round sum of a generous friend. Comes, in depression and
tears, dines, gets the money, and gradually cheers up over his wine, as
he obviously entertains himself with the reflection that his friend is
an egregious fool to have lent it to him, and that _he_ would have known
better." And so of this other. "The man who invariably says apposite
things (in the way of reproof or sarcasm) THAT HE DON'T MEAN. Astonished
when they are explained to him."
Here is a fancy that I remember him to have been more than once bent
upon making use of: but the opportunity never came. "The two men to be
guarded against, as to their revenge. One, whom I openly hold in some
serious animosity, whom I am at the pains to wound and defy, and whom I
estimate as worth wounding and defying;--the other, whom I treat as a
sort of insect, and contemptuously and pleasantly flick aside with my
glove. But, it turns out to be the latter who is the really dangerous
man; and, when I expect the blow from the other, it comes from _him_."
We have the master hand in the following bit of dialogue, which takes
wider application than that for which it appears to have been intended.
"'There is some virtue in him too.'
"'Virtue! Yes. So there is in any grain of seed in a seedsman's
shop--but you must put it in the ground, before you can get any good out
of it.'
"'Do you mean that _he_ must be put in the ground before any good comes
of _him_?'
"'Indeed I do. You may call it burying him, or you may call it sowing
him, as you like. You must set him in the earth, before you get any good
of him.'"
One of the entries is a list of persons and places meant to have been
made subjects for special description, and it will awaken regret that
only as to one of them (the Mugby Refreshments) his intention was
fulfilled. "A Vestryman. A Briber. A Station Waiting-Room. Refreshments
at Mugby. A Physician's Waiting-Room. The Royal Academy. An Antiquary's
house. A Sale Room. A Picture Gallery (for sale). A Waste-paper Shop. A
Post-Office. A Theatre."
All will have been given that have particular interest or value, from
this remarkable volume, when the thoughts and fancies I proceed to
transcribe have been put before the reader.
* * * * *
"The man who is incapable of his own happiness. Or who is always in
pursuit of happiness. Result, Where is happiness to be found then?
Surely not Everywhere? Can that be so, after all? Is _this_ my
experience?"
* * * * *
"The people who persist in defining and analysing their (and everybody
else's) moral qualities, motives and what not, at once in the narrowest
spirit and the most lumbering manner;--as if one should put up an
enormous scaffolding for the building of a pigstye."
* * * * *
"The house-full of Toadies and Humbugs. They all know and despise one
another; but--partly to keep their hands in, and partly to make out
their own individual cases--pretend not to detect one another."
* * * * *
"People realising immense sums of money,
imaginatively--speculatively--counting their chickens before hatched.
Inflaming each other's imaginations about great gains of money, and
entering into a sort of intangible, impossible, competition as to who is
the richer."
* * * * *
"The advertising sage, philosopher, and friend: who educates 'for the
bar, the pulpit, or the stage.'"
* * * * *
"The character of the real refugee--not the conventional; the real."
* * * * *
"The mysterious character, or characters, interchanging confidences.
'Necessary to be very careful in that direction.'--'In what
direction?'--'B'--'You don't say so. What, do you mean that C----?'--'Is
aware of D. Exactly.'"
"The father and boy, as I dramatically see them. Opening with the wild
dance I have in my mind."
* * * * *
"The old child. That is to say, born of parents advanced in life, and
observing the parents of other children to be young. Taking an old tone
accordingly."
* * * * *
"A thoroughly sulky character--perverting everything. Making the good,
bad--and the bad, good."
* * * * *
"The people who lay all their sins negligences and ignorances, on
Providence."
* * * * *
"The man who marries his cook at last, after being so desperately
knowing about the sex."
* * * * *
"The swell establishment, frightfully mean and miserable in all but the
'reception rooms.' Those very showy."
* * * * *
"B. tells M. what my opinion is of his work, &c. Quoting the man you
have once spoken to as if he had talked a life's talk in two minutes."
* * * * *
"A misplaced and mis-married man; always, as it were, playing hide and
seek with the world; and never finding what Fortune seems to have hidden
when he was born."
"Certain women in Africa who have lost children, carry little wooden
images of children on their heads, and always put their food to the lips
of those images, before tasting it themselves. This is in a part of
Africa where the mortality among children (judging from the number of
these little memorials) is very great."
* * * * *
Two more entries are the last which he made. "AVAILABLE NAMES"
introduces a wonderful list in the exact following classes and order; as
to which the reader may be left to his own memory for selection of such
as found their way into the several stories from _Little Dorrit_ to the
end. The rest, not lifted into that higher notice by such favour of
their creator, must remain like any other undistinguished crowd. But
among them may perhaps be detected, by those who have special insight
for the physiognomy of a name, some few with so great promise in them of
fun and character as will make the "mute inglorious" fate which has
befallen them a subject for special regret; and much ingenious
speculation will probably wait upon all. Dickens has generally been
thought, by the curious, to display not a few of his most characteristic
traits in this particular field of invention.
First there are titles for books; and from the list subjoined were taken
two for Christmas numbers and two for stories, though _Nobody's Fault_
had ultimately to give way to _Little Dorrit_.
"THE LUMBER ROOM.
SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE.
TO BE LEFT TILL CALLED FOR.
SOMETHING WANTED.
EXTREMES MEET.
NOBODY'S FAULT.
THE GRINDSTONE.
ROKESMITH'S FORGE.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
THE CINDER HEAP.
TWO GENERATIONS.
BROKEN CROCKERY.
DUST.
THE HOME DEPARTMENT.
THE YOUNG PERSON.
NOW OR NEVER.
MY NEIGHBOURS.
THE CHILDREN OF THE FATHERS.
NO THOROUGHFARE."
Then comes a batch of "Christian names": Girls and Boys: which stand
thus, with mention of the source from which he obtained them. These
therefore can hardly be called pure invention. Some would have been
reckoned too extravagant for anything but reality.
"_Girls from Privy Council Education lists._
"LELIA.
MENELLA.
RUBINA.
IRIS.
REBECCA.
ETTY.
REBINAH.
SEBA.
PERSIA.
ARAMANDA.
DORIS.
BALZINA.
PLEASANT.
GENTILLA.
"_Boys from Privy Council Education lists._
"DOCTOR.
HOMER.
ODEN.
BRADLEY.
ZERUBBABEL.
MAXIMILIAN.
URBIN.
SAMILIAS.
PICKLES.
ORANGE.
FEATHER.
"_Girls and Boys from Ditto._
"AMANDA, ETHLYNIDA; BOETIUS, BOLTIUS."
To which he adds supplementary lists that appear to be his own.
"_More Boys._
"ROBERT LADLE.
JOLY STICK.
BILL MARIGOLD.
STEPHEN MARQUICK.
JONATHAN KNOTWELL.
PHILIP BROWNDRESS.
HENRY GHOST.
GEORGE MUZZLE.
WALTER ASHES.
ZEPHANIAH FERRY (or FURY).
WILLIAM WHY.
ROBERT GOSPEL.
THOMAS FATHERLY.
ROBIN SCUBBAM.
"_More Girls._
"SARAH GOLDSACKS.
ROSETTA DUST.
SUSAN GOLDRING.
CATHERINE TWO.
MATILDA RAINBIRD.
MIRIAM DENIAL.
SOPHIA DOOMSDAY.
ALICE THORNEYWORK.
SALLY GIMBLET.
VERITY HAWKYARD.
BIRDIE NASH.
AMBROSINA EVENTS.
APAULINA VERNON.
NELTIE ASHFORD."
And then come the mass of his "available names," which stand thus,
without other introduction or comment:
"TOWNDLING.
MOOD.
GUFF.
TREBLE.
CHILBY.
SPESSIFER.
WODDER.
WHELPFORD.
FENNERCK.
GANNERSON.
CHINKERBLE.
BINTREY.
FLEDSON.
HIRLL.
BRAYLE.
MULLENDER.
TRESLINGHAM.
BRANKLE.
SITTERN.
DOSTONE.
CAY-LON.
SLYANT.
QUEEDY.
BESSELTHUR.
MUSTY.
GROUT.
TERTIUS JOBBER.
AMON HEADSTON.
STRAYSHOTT.
HIGDEN.
MORFIT.
GOLDSTRAW.
BARREL.
INGE.
JUMP.
JIGGINS.
BONES.
COY.
DAWN.
TATKIN.
DROWVEY.
PUDSEY.
PEDSEY.
DUNCALF.
TRICKLEBANK.
SAPSEA.
READYHUFF.
DUFTY.
FOGGY.
TWINN.
BROWNSWORD.
PEARTREE.
SUDDS.
SILVERMAN.
KIMBER.
LAUGHLEY.
LESSOCK.
TIPPINS.
MINNITT.
RADLOWE.
PRATCHET.
MAWDETT.
WOZENHAM.
SNOWELL.
LOTTRUM.
LAMMLE.
FROSER.
HOLBLACK.
MULLEY.
REDWORTH.
REDFOOT.
TARBOX (B).
TINKLING.
DUDDLE.
JEBUS.
POWDERHILL.
GRIMMER.
SKUSE.
TITCOOMBE.
CRABBLE.
SWANNOCK.
TUZZEN.
TWEMLOW.
SQUAB.
JACKMAN.
SUGG.
BREMMIDGE.
SILAS BLODGET.
MELVIN BEAL.
BUTTRICK.
EDSON.
SANLORN.
LIGHTWORD.
TITBULL.
BANGHAM.
KYLE--NYLE.
PEMBLE.
MAXEY.
ROKESMITH.
CHIVERY.
WABBLER.
PEEX--SPEEX.
GANNAWAY.
MRS. FLINKS.
FLINX.
JEE.
HARDEN.
MERDLE.
MURDEN.
TOPWASH.
PORDAGE.
DORRET--DORRIT.
CARTON.
MINIFIE.
SLINGO.
JOAD.
KINCH.
MAG.
CHELLYSON.
BLENNAM--CL.
BARDOCK.
SNIGSWORTH.
SWENTON.
CASBY--PEACH.
LOWLEIGH--LOWELY.
PIGRIN.
YERBURY.
PLORNISH.
MAROON.
BANDY-NANDY.
STONEBURY.
MAGWITCH.
MEAGLES.
PANCKS.
HAGGAGE.
PROVIS.
STILTINGTON.
STILTWALK.
STILTINGSTALK.
STILTSTALKING.
RAVENDER.
PODSNAP.
CLARRIKER.
COMPERY.
STRIVER-STRYVER.
PUMBLECHOOK.
WANGLER.
BOFFIN.
BANTINCK.
DIBTON.
WILFER.
GLIBBERY.
MULVEY.
HORLICK.
DOOLGE.
GANNERY.
GARGERY.
WILLSHARD.
RIDERHOOD.
PRATTERSTONE.
CHINKIBLE.
WOPSELL.
WOPSLE.
WHELPINGTON.
WHELPFORD.
GAYVERY.
WEGG.
HUBBLE.
URRY.
KIBBLE.
SKIFFINS.
WODDER.
ETSER.
AKERSHEM."
The last of the Memoranda, and the last words written by Dickens in the
blank paper book containing them, are these. "'Then I'll give up
snuff.' Brobity.--An alarming sacrifice. Mr. Brobity's snuff-box. The
Pawnbroker's account of it?" What was proposed by this must be left to
conjecture; but "Brobity" is the name of one of the people in his
unfinished story, and the suggestion may have been meant for some
incident in it. If so, it is the only passage in the volume which can be
in any way connected with the piece of writing on which he was last
engaged. Some names were taken for it from the lists, but there is
otherwise nothing to recall _Edwin Drood_.
FOOTNOTES:
[250] From the same authority proceeded, in answer to a casual question
one day, a description of the condition of his wardrobe of which he has
also made note in the Memoranda. "Well, sir, your clothes is all shabby,
and your boots is all burst."
[251] The date when this fancy dropped into his Memoranda is fixed by
the following passage in a letter to me of the 25th of August 1862. "I
am trying to coerce my thoughts into hammering out the Christmas number.
And I have an idea of opening a book (not the Christmas number--a book)
by bringing together two strongly contrasted places and two strongly
contrasted sets of people, with which and with whom the story is to
rest, through the agency of an electric message. I think a fine thing
might be made of the message itself shooting over the land and under the
sea, and it would be a curious way of sounding the key note."
[252] Following this in the "Memoranda" is an advertisement cut from the
_Times_: of a kind that always expressed to Dickens a child-farming that
deserved the gallows quite as much as the worst kind of starving, by way
of farming, babies. The fourteen guineas a-year, "tender" age of the
"dear" ones, maternal care, and no vacations or extras, to him had only
one meaning.
EDUCATION FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.--Terms 14 to 18
guineas per annum; no extras or vacations. The
system of education embraces the wide range of
each useful and ornamental study suited to the
tender age of the dear children. Maternal care
and kindness may be relied on.--X., Heald's
Library, Fulham-road.
CHAPTER XIII.
THIRD SERIES OF READINGS.
1864-1867.
Death of Thackeray--Dickens on
Thackeray--Mother's Death--Death of his Second
Son--_Our Mutual Friend_--Revising a
Play--Sorrowful New Year--Lameness--Fatal
Anniversary--New Readings undertaken--Offer of
Messrs. Chappell--Relieved from
Management--Greater Fatigues involved--A
Memorable Evening--Mrs. Carlyle--Offer for more
Readings--Result of the Last--Grave
Warnings--At Liverpool--At Manchester--At
Birmingham--In Scotland--Exertion and its
Result--An Old Malady--Audiences at
Newcastle--Scene at Tynemouth--In Dublin--At
Cambridge--Close of the Third Series--Desire in
America to hear Dickens read--Sends Agent to
America--Warning unheeded--For and against
reading in America--Decision to go--Departure.
THE sudden death of Thackeray on the Christmas eve of 1863 was a painful
shock to Dickens. It would not become me to speak, when he has himself
spoken, of his relations with so great a writer and so old a friend.
"I saw him first, nearly twenty-eight years ago, when he proposed to
become the illustrator of my earliest book. I saw him last,[253] shortly
before Christmas, at the Athenæum Club, when he told me that he had
been in bed three days . . . and that he had it in his mind to try a new
remedy which he laughingly described. He was cheerful, and looked very
bright. In the night of that day week, he died. The long interval
between these two periods is marked in my remembrance of him by many
occasions when he was extremely humorous, when he was irresistibly
extravagant, when he was softened and serious, when he was charming with
children. . . . No one can be surer than I, of the greatness and goodness
of his heart. . . . In no place should I take it upon myself at this time
to discourse of his books, of his refined knowledge of character, of his
subtle acquaintance with the weaknesses of human nature, of his
delightful playfulness as an essayist, of his quaint and touching
ballads, of his mastery over the English language. . . . But before me lies
all that he had written of his latest story . . . and the pain I have felt
in perusing it has not been deeper than the conviction that he was in
the healthiest vigour of his powers when he worked on this last
labour. . . . The last words he corrected in print were 'And my heart
throbbed with an exquisite bliss.' God grant that on that Christmas Eve
when he laid his head back on his pillow and threw up his arms as he had
been wont to do when very weary, some consciousness of duty done, and of
Christian hope throughout life humbly cherished, may have caused his
own heart so to throb, when he passed away to his Redeemer's rest. He
was found peacefully lying as above described, composed, undisturbed,
and to all appearance asleep."
Other griefs were with Dickens at this time, and close upon them came
the too certain evidence that his own health was yielding to the
overstrain which had been placed upon it by the occurrences and
anxieties of the few preceding years. His mother, whose infirm health
had been tending for more than two years to the close, died in September
1863; and on his own birthday in the following February he had tidings
of the death of his second son Walter, on the last day of the old year
in the officers' hospital at Calcutta; to which he had been sent up
invalided from his station, on his way home. He was a lieutenant in the
26th Native Infantry regiment, and had been doing duty with the 42nd
Highlanders. In 1853 his father had thus written to the youth's
godfather, Walter Savage Landor: "Walter is a very good boy, and comes
home from school with honorable commendation and a prize into the
bargain. He never gets into trouble, for he is a great favourite with
the whole house and one of the most amiable boys in the boy-world. He
comes out on birthdays in a blaze of shirt pin." The pin was a present
from Landor; to whom three years later, when the boy had obtained his
cadetship through the kindness of Miss Coutts, Dickens wrote again.
"Walter has done extremely well at school; has brought home a prize in
triumph; and will be eligible to 'go up' for his India examination soon
after next Easter. Having a direct appointment he will probably be sent
out soon after he has passed, and so will fall into that strange life
'up the country' before he well knows he is alive, or what life
is--which indeed seems to be rather an advanced state of knowledge." If
he had lived another month he would have reached his twenty-third year,
and perhaps not then the advanced state of knowledge his father speaks
of. But, never forfeiting his claim to those kindly paternal words, he
had the goodness and simplicity of boyhood to the last.
Dickens had at this time begun his last story in twenty numbers, and my
next chapter will show through what unwonted troubles, in this and the
following year, he had to fight his way. What otherwise during its
progress chiefly interested him, was the enterprise of Mr. Fechter at
the Lyceum, of which he had become the lessee; and Dickens was moved to
this quite as much by generous sympathy with the difficulties of such a
position to an artist who was not an Englishman, as by genuine
admiration of Mr. Fechter's acting. He became his helper in disputes,
adviser on literary points, referee in matters of management; and for
some years no face was more familiar than the French comedian's at
Gadshill or in the office of his journal. But theatres and their affairs
are things of a season, and even Dickens's whim and humour will not
revive for us any interest in these. No bad example, however, of the
difficulties in which a French actor may find himself with English
playwrights, will appear in a few amusing words from one of his letters
about a piece played at the Princess's before the Lyceum management was
taken in hand.
"I have been cautioning Fechter about the play whereof he gave the plot
and scenes to B; and out of which I have struck some enormities, my
account of which will (I think) amuse you. It has one of the best first
acts I ever saw; but if he can do much with the last two, not to say
three, there are resources in his art that _I_ know nothing about. When
I went over the play this day week, he was at least 20 minutes, _in a
boat, in the last scene_, discussing with another gentleman (also in the
boat) whether he should kill him or not; after which the gentleman dived
overboard and swam for it. Also, in the most important and dangerous
parts of the play, there was a young person of the name of Pickles who
was constantly being mentioned by name, in conjunction with the powers
of light or darkness; as, 'Great Heaven! Pickles?'--'By Hell, 'tis
Pickles!'--'Pickles? a thousand Devils!'--'Distraction! Pickles?'"[254]
The old year ended and the new one opened sadly enough. The death of
Leech in November affected Dickens very much,[255] and a severe attack
of illness in February put a broad mark between his past life and what
remained to him of the future. The lameness now began in his left foot
which never afterwards wholly left him, which was attended by great
suffering, and which baffled experienced physicians. He had persisted
in his ordinary exercise during heavy snow-storms, and to the last he
had the fancy that his illness was merely local. But that this was an
error is now certain; and it is more than probable that if the nervous
danger and disturbance it implied had been correctly appreciated at the
time, its warning might have been of priceless value to Dickens.
Unhappily he never thought of husbanding his strength except for the
purpose of making fresh demands upon it, and it was for this he took a
brief holiday in France during the summer. "Before I went away," he
wrote to his daughter, "I had certainly worked myself into a damaged
state. But the moment I got away, I began, thank God, to get well. I
hope to profit by this experience, and to make future dashes from my
desk before I want them." At his return he was in the terrible railway
accident at Staplehurst, on a day[256] which proved afterwards more
fatal to him; and it was with shaken nerves but unsubdued energy he
resumed the labour to be presently described. His foot troubled him more
or less throughout the autumn;[257] he was beset by nervous
apprehensions which the accident had caused to himself, not lessened by
his generous anxiety to assuage the severer sufferings inflicted by it
on others;[258] and that he should nevertheless have determined, on the
close of his book, to undertake a series of readings involving greater
strain and fatigue than any hitherto, was a startling circumstance. He
had perhaps become conscious, without owning it even to himself, that
for exertion of this kind the time left him was short; but, whatever
pressed him on, his task of the next three years, self-imposed, was to
make the most money in the shortest time without any regard to the
physical labour to be undergone. The very letter announcing his new
engagement shows how entirely unfit he was to enter upon it.
"For some time," he wrote at the end of February 1866, "I have been very
unwell. F. B. wrote me word that with such a pulse as I described, an
examination of the heart was absolutely necessary. 'Want of muscular
power in the heart,' B said. 'Only remarkable irritability of the
heart,' said Doctor Brinton of Brook-street, who had been called in to
consultation. I was not disconcerted; for I knew well beforehand that
the effect could not possibly be without the one cause at the bottom of
it, of some degeneration of some function of the heart. Of course I am
not so foolish as to suppose that all my work can have been achieved
without _some_ penalty, and I have noticed for some time a decided
change in my buoyancy and hopefulness--in other words, in my usual
'tone.' But tonics have already brought me round. So I have accepted an
offer, from Chappells of Bond-street, of £50 a night for thirty nights
to read 'in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Paris;' they undertaking all
the business, paying all personal expenses, travelling and otherwise, of
myself, John" (his office servant), "and my gasman; and making what they
can of it. I begin, I believe, in Liverpool on the Thursday in Easter
week, and then come to London. I am going to read at Cheltenham (on my
own account) on the 23rd and 24th of this month, staying with Macready
of course."
The arrangement of this series of Readings differed from those of its
predecessors in relieving Dickens from every anxiety except of the
reading itself; but, by such rapid and repeated change of nights at
distant places as kept him almost wholly in a railway carriage when not
at the reading-desk or in bed, it added enormously to the physical
fatigue. He would read at St. James's Hall in London one night, and at
Bradford the next. He would read in Edinburgh, go on to Glasgow and to
Aberdeen, then come back to Glasgow, read again in Edinburgh, strike off
to Manchester, come back to St. James's Hall once more, and begin the
same round again. It was labour that must in time have broken down the
strongest man, and what Dickens was when he assumed it we have seen.
He did not himself admit a shadow of misgiving. "As to the readings"
(11th of March), "all I have to do is, to take in my book and read, at
the appointed place and hour, and come out again. All the business of
every kind, is done by Chappells. They take John and my other man,
merely for my convenience. I have no more to do with any detail
whatever, than you have. They transact all the business at their own
cost, and on their own responsibility. I think they are disposed to do
it in a very good spirit, because, whereas the original proposition was
for thirty readings 'in England, Ireland, Scotland, or Paris,' they
wrote out their agreement 'in London, the Provinces, or elsewhere, _as
you and we may agree_.' For this they pay £1500 in three sums; £500 on
beginning, £500 on the fifteenth Reading, £500 at the close. Every
charge of every kind, they pay besides. I rely for mere curiosity on
_Doctor Marigold_ (I am going to begin with him in Liverpool, and at St.
James's Hall). I have got him up with immense pains, and should like to
give you a notion what I am going to do with him."
The success everywhere went far beyond even the former successes. A
single night at Manchester, when eight hundred stalls were let, two
thousand five hundred and sixty-five people admitted, and the receipts
amounted to more than three hundred pounds, was followed in nearly the
same proportion by all the greater towns; and on the 20th of April the
outlay for the entire venture was paid, leaving all that remained, to
the middle of the month of June, sheer profit. "I came back last
Sunday," he wrote on the 30th of May, "with my last country piece of
work for this time done. Everywhere the success has been the same. St.
James's Hall last night was quite a splendid spectacle. Two more
Tuesdays there, and I shall retire into private life. I have only been
able to get to Gadshill once since I left it, and that was the day
before yesterday."
One memorable evening he had passed at my house in the interval, when he
saw Mrs. Carlyle for the last time. Her sudden death followed shortly
after, and near the close of April he had thus written to me from
Liverpool. "It was a terrible shock to me, and poor dear Carlyle has
been in my mind ever since. How often I have thought of the unfinished
novel. No one now to finish it. None of the writing women come near her
at all." This was an allusion to what had passed at their meeting. It
was on the second of April, the day when Mr. Carlyle had delivered his
inaugural address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, and a couple
of ardent words from Professor Tyndall had told her of the triumph just
before dinner. She came to us flourishing the telegram in her hand, and
the radiance of her enjoyment of it was upon her all the night. Among
other things she gave Dickens the subject for a novel, from what she had
herself observed at the outside of a house in her street; of which the
various incidents were drawn from the condition of its blinds and
curtains, the costumes visible at its windows, the cabs at its door, its
visitors admitted or rejected, its articles of furniture delivered or
carried away; and the subtle serious humour of it all, the truth in
trifling bits of character, and the gradual progress into a
half-romantic interest, had enchanted the skilled novelist. She was well
into the second volume of her small romance before she left, being as
far as her observation then had taken her; but in a few days exciting
incidents were expected, the denouement could not be far off, and
Dickens was to have it when they met again. Yet it was to something far
other than this amusing little fancy his thoughts had carried him, when
he wrote of no one being capable to finish what she might have begun. In
greater things this was still more true. No one could doubt it who had
come within the fascinating influence of that sweet and noble nature.
With some of the highest gifts of intellect, and the charm of a most
varied knowledge of books and things, there was something "beyond,
beyond." No one who knew Mrs. Carlyle could replace her loss when she
had passed away.
The same letter which told of his uninterrupted success to the last,
told me also that he had a heavy cold upon him and was "very tired and
depressed." Some weeks before the first batch of readings closed,
Messrs. Chappell had already tempted him with an offer for fifty more
nights to begin at Christmas, for which he meant, as he then said, to
ask them seventy pounds a night. "It would be unreasonable to ask
anything now on the ground of the extent of the late success, but I am
bound to look to myself for the future. The Chappells are speculators,
though of the worthiest and most honourable kind. They make some bad
speculations, and have made a very good one in this case, and will set
this against those. I told them when we agreed: 'I offer these thirty
Readings to you at fifty pounds a night, because I know perfectly well
beforehand that no one in your business has the least idea of their real
worth, and I wish to prove it.' The sum taken is £4720." The result of
the fresh negotiation, though not completed until the beginning of
August, may be at once described. "Chappell instantly accepts my
proposal of forty nights at sixty pounds a night, and every conceivable
and inconceivable expense paid. To make an even sum, I have made it
forty-two nights for £2500. So I shall now try to discover a Christmas
number" (he means the subject for one), "and shall, please Heaven, be
quit of the whole series of readings so as to get to work on a new story
for the new series of _All the Year Round_ early in the spring. The
readings begin probably with the New Year." These were fair designs, but
the fairest are the sport of circumstance, and though the subject for
Christmas was found, the new series of _All the Year_ Round never had a
new story from its founder. With whatever consequence to himself, the
strong tide of the Readings was to sweep on to its full. The American
war had ceased, and the first renewed offers from the States had been
made and rejected. Hovering over all, too, were other sterner
dispositions. "I think," he wrote in September, "there is some strange
influence in the atmosphere. Twice last week I was seized in a most
distressing manner--apparently in the heart; but, I am persuaded, only
in the nervous system."
In the midst of his ovations such checks had not been wanting. "The
police reported officially," he wrote to his daughter from Liverpool on
the 14th of April, "that three thousand people were turned away from the
hall last night. . . . Except that I can _not_ sleep, I really think myself
in very much better training than I had anticipated. A dozen oysters and
a little champagne between the parts every night, seem to constitute the
best restorative I have ever yet tried." "Such a prodigious
demonstration last night at Manchester," he wrote to the same
correspondent twelve days later, "that I was obliged (contrary to my
principle in such cases) to go back. I am very tired to-day; for it
would be of itself very hard work in that immense place, if there were
not to be added eighty miles of railway and late hours to boot." "It has
been very heavy work," he wrote to his sister-in-law on the 11th of May
from Clifton, "getting up at 6.30 each morning after a heavy night, and
I am not at all well to-day. We had a tremendous hall at Birmingham last
night, £230 odd, 2100 people; and I made a most ridiculous mistake. Had
_Nickleby_ on my list to finish with, instead of _Trial_. Read
_Nickleby_ with great go, _and the people remained_. Went back again at
10 o'clock, and explained the accident: but said if they liked I would
give them the _Trial_. They _did_ like;--and I had another half hour of
it, in that enormous place. . . . I have so severe a pain in the ball of my
left eye that it makes it hard for me to do anything after 100 miles
shaking since breakfast. My cold is no better, nor my hand either." It
was his left eye, it will be noted, as it was his left foot and hand;
the irritability or faintness of heart was also of course on the left
side; and it was on the same left side he felt most of the effect of the
railway accident.
Everything was done to make easier the labour of travel, but nothing
could materially abate either the absolute physical exhaustion, or the
nervous strain. "We arrived here," he wrote from Aberdeen (16th of May),
"safe and sound between 3 and 4 this morning. There was a compartment
for the men, and a charming room for ourselves furnished with sofas and
easy chairs. We had also a pantry and washing-stand. This carriage is to
go about with us." Two days later he wrote from Glasgow: "We halted at
Perth yesterday, and got a lovely walk there. Until then I had been in a
condition the reverse of flourishing; half strangled with my cold, and
dyspeptically gloomy and dull; but, as I feel much more like myself this
morning, we are going to get some fresh air aboard a steamer on the
Clyde." The last letter during his country travel was from Portsmouth on
the 24th of May, and contained these words: "You need have no fear about
America." The readings closed in June.
The readings of the new year began with even increased enthusiasm, but
not otherwise with happier omen. Here was his first outline of plan: "I
start on Wednesday afternoon (the 15th of January) for Liverpool, and
then go on to Chester, Derby, Leicester, and Wolverhampton. On Tuesday
the 29th I read in London again, and in February I read at Manchester
and then go on into Scotland." From Liverpool he wrote on the 21st:
"The enthusiasm has been unbounded. On Friday night I quite astonished
myself; but I was taken so faint afterwards that they laid me on a sofa,
at the hall for half an hour. I attribute it to my distressing inability
to sleep at night, and to nothing worse. Everything is made as easy to
me as it possibly can be. Dolby would do anything to lighten the work,
and _does_ everything." The weather was sorely against him. "At
Chester," he wrote on the 24th from Birmingham, "we read in a snow-storm
and a fall of ice. I think it was the worst weather I ever saw. . . . At
Wolverhampton last night the thaw had thoroughly set in, and it rained
furiously, and I was again heavily beaten. We came on here after the
reading (it is only a ride of forty miles), and it was as much as I
could do to hold out the journey. But I was not faint, as at Liverpool.
I was only exhausted." Five days later he had returned for his Reading
in London, and thus replied to a summons to dine with Macready at my
house: "I am very tired; cannot sleep; have been severely shaken on an
atrocious railway; read to-night, and have to read at Leeds on Thursday.
But I have settled with Dolby to put off our going to Leeds on
Wednesday, in the hope of coming to dine with you, and seeing our dear
old friend. I say 'in the hope,' because if I should be a little more
used-up to-morrow than I am to-day, I should be constrained, in spite of
myself, to take to the sofa and stick there."
On the 15th of February he wrote to his sister-in-law from Liverpool
that they had had "an enormous turnaway" the previous night. "The day
has been very fine, and I have turned it to the wholesomest account by
walking on the sands at New Brighton all the morning. I am not quite
right within, but believe it to be an effect of the railway shaking.
There is no doubt of the fact that, after the Staplehurst experience, it
tells more and more (railway shaking, that is) instead of, as one might
have expected, less and less." The last remark is a strange one, from a
man of his sagacity; but it was part of the too-willing self-deception
which he practised, to justify him in his professed belief that these
continued excesses of labour and excitement were really doing him no
harm. The day after that last letter he pushed on to Scotland, and on
the 17th wrote to his daughter from Glasgow. The closing night at
Manchester had been enormous. "They cheered to that extent after it was
over that I was obliged to huddle on my clothes (for I was undressing to
prepare for the journey) and go back again. After so heavy a week, it
_was_ rather stiff to start on this long journey at a quarter to two in
the morning; but I got more sleep than I ever got in a railway-carriage
before. . . . I have, as I had in the last series of readings, a curious
feeling of soreness all round the body--which I suppose to arise from
the great exertion of voice . . ." Two days later he wrote to his
sister-in-law from the Bridge of Allan, which he had reached from
Glasgow that morning. "Yesterday I was so unwell with an internal malady
that occasionally at long intervals troubles me a little, and it was
attended with the sudden loss of so much blood, that I wrote to F. B.
from whom I shall doubtless hear to-morrow. . . . I felt it a little more
exertion to read, afterwards, and I passed a sleepless night after that
again; but otherwise I am in good force and spirits to-day: I may say,
in the best force. . . . The quiet of this little place is sure to do me
good." He rallied again from this attack, and, though he still
complained of sleeplessness, wrote cheerfully from Glasgow on the 21st,
describing himself indeed as confined to his room, but only because "in
close hiding from a local poet who has christened his infant son in my
name, and consequently haunts the building." On getting back to
Edinburgh he wrote to me, with intimation that many troubles had beset
him; but that the pleasure of his audiences, and the providence and
forethought of Messrs. Chappell, had borne him through. "Everything is
done for me with the utmost liberality and consideration. Every want I
can have on these journeys is anticipated, and not the faintest spark of
the tradesman spirit ever peeps out. I have three men in constant
attendance on me; besides Dolby, who is an agreeable companion, an
excellent manager, and a good fellow."
On the 4th of March he wrote from Newcastle: "The readings have made an
immense effect in this place, and it is remarkable that although the
people are individually rough, collectively they are an unusually tender
and sympathetic audience; while their comic perception is quite up to
the high London standard. The atmosphere is so very heavy that yesterday
we escaped to Tynemouth for a two hours' sea walk. There was a high
north wind blowing, and a magnificent sea running. Large vessels were
being towed in and out over the stormy bar, with prodigious waves
breaking on it; and, spanning the restless uproar of the waters, was a
quiet rainbow of transcendent beauty. The scene was quite wonderful. We
were in the full enjoyment of it when a heavy sea caught us, knocked us
over, and in a moment drenched us and filled even our pockets. We had
nothing for it but to shake ourselves together (like Dr. Marigold), and
dry ourselves as well as we could by hard walking in the wind and
sunshine. But we were wet through for all that, when we came back here
to dinner after half-an-hour's railway drive. I am wonderfully well, and
quite fresh and strong." Three days later he was at Leeds; from which he
was to work himself round through the most important neighbouring places
to another reading in London, before again visiting Ireland.
This was the time of the Fenian excitements; it was with great
reluctance he consented to go;[259] and he told us all at his first
arrival that he should have a complete breakdown. More than 300 stalls
were gone at Belfast two days before the reading, but on the afternoon
of the reading in Dublin not 50 were taken. Strange to say however a
great crowd pressed in at night, he had a tumultuous greeting, and on
the 22nd of March I had this announcement from him: "You will be
surprised to be told that we have done WONDERS! Enthusiastic crowds have
filled the halls to the roof each night, and hundreds have been turned
away. At Belfast the night before last we had £246 5_s._ In Dublin
to-night everything is sold out, and people are besieging Dolby to put
chairs anywhere, in doorways, on my platform, in any sort of hole or
corner. In short the Readings are a perfect rage at a time when
everything else is beaten down." He took the Eastern Counties at his
return, and this brought the series to a close. "The reception at
Cambridge was something to be proud of in such a place. The colleges
mustered in full force, from the biggest guns to the smallest; and went
beyond even Manchester in the roars of welcome and rounds of cheers. The
place was crammed, and all through the reading everything was taken with
the utmost heartiness of enjoyment." The temptation of offers from
America had meanwhile again been presented to him so strongly, and in
such unlucky connection with immediate family claims threatening excess
of expenditure even beyond the income he was making, that he was fain to
write to his sister-in-law: "I begin to feel myself drawn towards
America as Darnay in the _Tale of Two Cities_ was attracted to Paris. It
is my Loadstone Rock." Too surely it was to be so; and Dickens was not
to be saved from the consequence of yielding to the temptation, by any
such sacrifice as had rescued Darnay.
The letter which told me of the close of his English readings had in it
no word of the farther enterprise, yet it seemed to be in some sort a
preparation for it. "Last Monday evening" (14th May) "I finished the 50
Readings with great success. You have no idea how I have worked at them.
Feeling it necessary, as their reputation widened, that they should be
better than at first, I have _learnt them all_, so as to have no
mechanical drawback in looking after the words. I have tested all the
serious passion in them by everything I know; made the humorous points
much more humorous; corrected my utterance of certain words; cultivated
a self-possession not to be disturbed; and made myself master of the
situation. Finishing with _Dombey_ (which I had not read for a long
time) I learnt that, like the rest; and did it to myself, often twice a
day, with exactly the same pains as at night, over and over and over
again." . . . Six days later brought his reply to a remark that no degree
of excellence to which he might have brought his readings could
reconcile me to what there was little doubt would soon be pressed upon
him. "It is curious" (20th May) "that you should touch the American
subject, because I must confess that my mind is in a most disturbed
state about it. That the people there have set themselves on having the
readings, there is no question. Every mail brings me proposals, and the
number of Americans at St. James's Hall has been surprising. A certain
Mr. Grau, who took Ristori out, and is highly responsible, wrote to me
by the last mail (for the second time) saying that if I would give him a
word of encouragement he would come over immediately and arrange on the
boldest terms for any number I chose, and would deposit a large sum of
money at Coutts's. Mr. Fields writes to me on behalf of a committee of
private gentlemen at Boston who wished for the credit of getting me out,
who desired to hear the readings and did not want profit, and would put
down as a guarantee £10,000--also to be banked here. Every American
speculator who comes to London repairs straight to Dolby, with similar
proposals. And, thus excited, Chappells, the moment this last series was
over, proposed to treat for America!" Upon the mere question of these
various offers he had little difficulty in making up his mind. If he
went at all, he would go on his own account, making no compact with any
one. Whether he should go at all, was what he had to determine.
One thing with his usual sagacity he saw clearly enough. He must make up
his mind quickly. "The Presidential election would be in the autumn of
next year. They are a people whom a fancy does not hold long. They are
bent upon my reading there, and they believe (on no foundation whatever)
that I am going to read there. If I ever go, the time would be when the
Christmas number goes to press. Early in this next November." Every sort
of enquiry he accordingly set on foot; and so far came to the immediate
decision, that, if the answers left him no room to doubt that a certain
sum might be realized, he would go. "Have no fear that anything will
induce me to make the experiment, if I do not see the most forcible
reasons for believing that what I could get by it, added to what I have
got, would leave me with a sufficient fortune. I should be wretched
beyond expression there. My small powers of description cannot describe
the state of mind in which I should drag on from day to day." At the end
of May he wrote: "Poor dear Stanfield!" (our excellent friend had passed
away the week before). "I cannot think even of him, and of our great
loss, for this spectre of doubt and indecision that sits at the board
with me and stands at the bedside. I am in a tempest-tossed condition,
and can hardly believe that I stand at bay at last on the American
question. The difficulty of determining amid the variety of statements
made to me is enormous, and you have no idea how heavily the anxiety of
it sits upon my soul. But the prize looks so large!" One way at last
seemed to open by which it was possible to get at some settled opinion.
"Dolby sails for America" (2nd of July) "on Saturday the 3rd of August.
It is impossible to come to any reasonable conclusion, without sending
eyes and ears on the actual ground. He will take out my MS. for the
_Children's Magazine_. I hope it is droll, and very child-like; though
the joke is a grown-up one besides. You must try to like the pirate
story, for I am very fond of it." The allusion is to his pleasant
_Holiday Romance_ which he had written for Mr. Fields.
Hardly had Mr. Dolby gone when there came that which should have availed
to dissuade, far more than any of the arguments which continued to
express my objection to the enterprise. "I am laid up," he wrote on the
6th of August, "with another attack in my foot, and was on the sofa all
last night in tortures. I cannot bear to have the fomentations taken off
for a moment. I was so ill with it on Sunday, and it looked so fierce,
that I came up to Henry Thompson. He has gone into the case heartily,
and says that there is no doubt the complaint originates in the action
of the shoe, in walking, on an enlargement in the nature of a bunion.
Erysipelas has supervened upon the injury; and the object is to avoid a
gathering, and to stay the erysipelas where it is. Meantime I am on my
back, and chafing. . . . I didn't improve my foot by going down to
Liverpool to see Dolby off, but I have little doubt of its yielding to
treatment, and repose." A few days later he was chafing still; the
accomplished physician he consulted having dropped other hints that
somewhat troubled him. "I could not walk a quarter of a mile to-night
for £500. I make out so many reasons against supposing it to be gouty
that I really do not think it is."
So momentous in my judgment were the consequences of the American
journey to him that it seemed right to preface thus much of the
inducements and temptations that led to it. My own part in the
discussion was that of steady dissuasion throughout: though this might
perhaps have been less persistent if I could have reconciled myself to
the belief, which I never at any time did, that Public Readings were a
worthy employment for a man of his genius. But it had by this time
become clear to me that nothing could stay the enterprise. The result of
Mr. Dolby's visit to America--drawn up by Dickens himself in a paper
possessing still the interest of having given to the Readings when he
crossed the Atlantic much of the form they then assumed[260]--reached me
when I was staying at Ross; and upon it was founded my last argument
against the scheme. This he received in London on the 28th of September,
on which day he thus wrote to his eldest daughter: "As I telegraphed
after I saw you, I am off to Ross to consult with Mr. Forster and Dolby
together. You shall hear, either on Monday, or by Monday's post from
London, how I decide finally." The result he wrote to her three days
later: "You will have had my telegram that I go to America. After a long
discussion with Forster, and consideration of what is to be said on both
sides, I have decided to go through with it. We have telegraphed 'Yes'
to Boston." Seven days later he wrote to me: "The Scotia being full, I
do not sail until lord mayor's day; for which glorious anniversary I
have engaged an officer's cabin on deck in the Cuba. I am not in very
brilliant spirits at the prospect before me, and am deeply sensible of
your motive and reasons for the line you have taken; but I am not in the
least shaken in the conviction that I could never quite have given up
the idea."
The remaining time was given to preparations; on the 2nd of November
there was a Farewell Banquet in the Freemasons' Hall over which Lord
Lytton presided; and on the 9th Dickens sailed for Boston. Before he
left he had contributed his part to the last of his Christmas Numbers;
all the writings he lived to complete were done; and the interval of his
voyage may be occupied by a general review of the literary labour of his
life.
FOOTNOTES:
[253] There had been some estrangement between them since the autumn of
1858, hardly now worth mention even in a note. Thackeray, justly
indignant at a published description of himself by the member of a club
to which both he and Dickens belonged, referred it to the Committee, who
decided to expel the writer. Dickens, thinking expulsion too harsh a
penalty for an offence thoughtlessly given, and, as far as might be,
manfully atoned for by withdrawal and regret, interposed to avert that
extremity. Thackeray resented the interference, and Dickens was justly
hurt by the manner in which he did so. Neither was wholly right, nor was
either altogether in the wrong.
[254] As I have thus fallen on theatrical subjects, I may add one or two
practical experiences which befell Dickens at theatres in the autumn of
1864, when he sallied forth from his office upon these night wanderings
to "cool" a boiling head. "I went the other night" (8th of October) "to
see the _Streets of London_ at the Princess's. A piece that is really
drawing all the town, and filling the house with nightly overflows. It
is the most depressing instance, without exception, of an utterly
degraded and debased theatrical taste that has ever come under my
writhing notice. For not only do the audiences--of all classes--go, but
they are unquestionably delighted. At Astley's there has been much
puffing at great cost of a certain Miss Ada Isaacs Menkin, who is to be
seen bound on the horse in _Mazeppa_ 'ascending the fearful precipices
not as hitherto done by a dummy.' Last night, having a boiling head, I
went out from here to cool myself on Waterloo Bridge, and I thought I
would go and see this heroine. Applied at the box-door for a stall.
'None left sir.' For a box-ticket. 'Only standing-room sir.' Then the
man (busy in counting great heaps of veritable checks) recognizes me and
says--'Mr. Smith will be very much concerned when he hears that you went
away sir'--'Never mind; I'll come again.' 'You never go behind I think
sir, or--?' 'No thank you, I never go behind.' 'Mr. Smith's box, sir--'
'No thank you, I'll come again.' Now who do you think the lady is? If
you don't already know, ask that question of the highest Irish mountains
that look eternal, and they'll never tell you--_Mrs. Heenan!_" This
lady, who turned out to be one of Dickens's greatest admirers, addressed
him at great length on hearing of this occurrence, and afterwards
dedicated a volume of poems to him! There was a pleasanter close to his
letter. "Contrariwise I assisted another night at the Adelphi (where I
couldn't, with careful calculation, get the house up to Nine Pounds),
and saw quite an admirable performance of Mr. Toole and Mrs.
Mellon--she, an old servant, wonderfully like Anne--he, showing a power
of passion very unusual indeed in a comic actor, as such things go, and
of a quite remarkable kind."
[255] Writing to me three months before, he spoke of the death of one
whom he had known from his boyhood (_ante_, i. 47-8) and with whom he
had fought unsuccessfully for some years against the management of the
Literary Fund. "Poor Dilke! I am very sorry that the capital old
stout-hearted man is dead." Sorrow may also be expressed that no
adequate record should remain of a career which for steadfast purpose,
conscientious maintenance of opinion, and pursuit of public objects with
disregard of self, was one of very high example. So averse was Mr. Dilke
to every kind of display that his name appears to none of the literary
investigations which were conducted by him with an acuteness wonderful
as his industry, and it was in accordance with his express instructions
that the literary journal which his energy and self-denial had
established kept silence respecting him at his death.
[256] One day before, the 8th of June 1865, his old friend Sir Joseph
Paxton had breathed his last.
[257] Here are allusions to it at that time. "I have got a boot on
to-day,--made on an Otranto scale, but really not very discernible from
its ordinary sized companion." After a few days' holiday: "I began to
feel my foot stronger the moment I breathed the sea air. Still, during
the ten days I have been away, I have never been able to wear a boot
after four or five in the afternoon, but have passed all the evenings
with the foot up, and nothing on it. I am burnt brown and have walked by
the sea perpetually, yet I feel certain that if I wore a boot this
evening, I should be taken with those torments again before the night
was out." This last letter ended thus: "As a relief to my late dismal
letters, I send you the newest American story. Backwoods Doctor is
called in to the little boy of a woman-settler. Stares at the child some
time through a pair of spectacles. Ultimately takes them off, and says
to the mother: 'Wa'al Marm, this is small-pox. 'Tis Marm, small-pox. But
I am not posted up in Pustuls, and I do not know as I could bring him
along slick through it. But I'll tell you wa'at I can do Marm:--I can
send him a draft as will certainly put him into a most etarnal Fit, and
I am almighty smart at Fits, and we might git round Old Grisly that
way.'"
[258] I give one such instance: "The railway people have offered, in the
case of the young man whom I got out of the carriage just alive, all the
expenses and a thousand pounds down. The father declines to accept the
offer. It seems unlikely that the young man, whose destination is India,
would ever be passed for the Army now by the Medical Board. The question
is, how far will that contingency tell, under Lord Campbell's Act?"
[259] He wrote to me on the 15th of March from Dublin: "So profoundly
discouraging were the accounts from here in London last Tuesday that I
held several councils with Chappell about coming at all; had actually
drawn up a bill announcing (indefinitely) the postponement of the
readings; and had meant to give him a reading to cover the charges
incurred--but yielded at last to his representations the other way. We
ran through a snow storm nearly the whole way, and in Wales got snowed
up, came to a stoppage, and had to dig the engine out. . . . We got to
Dublin at last, found it snowing and raining, and heard that it had been
snowing and raining since the first day of the year. . . . As to outward
signs of trouble or preparation, they are very few. At Kingstown our
boat was waited for by four armed policemen, and some stragglers in
various dresses who were clearly detectives. But there was no show of
soldiery. My people carry a long heavy box containing gas-fittings. This
was immediately laid hold of; but one of the stragglers instantly
interposed on seeing my name, and came to me in the carriage and
apologised. . . . The worst looking young fellow I ever saw, turned up at
Holyhead before we went to bed there, and sat glooming and glowering by
the coffee-room fire while we warmed ourselves. He said he had been
snowed up with us (which we didn't believe), and was horribly
disconcerted by some box of his having gone to Dublin without him. We
said to one another 'Fenian:' and certainly he disappeared in the
morning, and let his box go where it would." What Dickens heard and saw
in Dublin, during this visit, convinced him that Fenianism and
disaffection had found their way into several regiments.
[260] This renders it worth preservation in a note. He called it
"THE CASE IN A NUTSHELL.
"1. I think it may be taken as proved, that
general enthusiasm and excitement are awakened
in America on the subject of the Readings, and
that the people are prepared to give me a great
reception. _The New York Herald_, indeed, is of
opinion that 'Dickens must apologise first';
and where a _New York Herald_ is possible,
anything is possible. But the prevailing tone,
both of the press and of people of all
conditions, is highly favourable. I have an
opinion myself that the Irish element in New
York is dangerous; for the reason that the
Fenians would be glad to damage a conspicuous
Englishman. This is merely an opinion of my
own.
"2. All our original calculations were based on
100 Readings. But an unexpected result of
careful enquiry on the spot, is the discovery
that the month of May is generally considered
(in the large cities) bad for such a purpose.
Admitting that what governs an ordinary case in
this wise, governs mine, this reduces the
Readings to 80, and consequently at a blow
makes a reduction of 20 per cent., in the means
of making money within the half year--unless
the objection should not apply in my
exceptional instance.
"3. I dismiss the consideration that the great
towns of America could not possibly be
exhausted--or even visited--within 6 months,
and that a large harvest would be left
unreaped. Because I hold a second series of
Readings in America is to be set down as out of
the question: whether regarded as involving two
more voyages across the Atlantic, or a vacation
of five months in Canada.
"4. The narrowed calculation we have made, is
this: What is the largest amount of clear
profit derivable, under the most advantageous
circumstances possible, as to their public
reception, from 80 Readings and no more? In
making this calculation, the expenses have been
throughout taken on the New York scale--which
is the dearest; as much as 20 per cent., has
been deducted for management, including Mr.
Dolby's commission; and no credit has been
taken for any extra payment on reserved seats,
though a good deal of money is confidently
expected from this source. But on the other
hand it is to be observed that four Readings
(and a fraction over) are supposed to take
place every week, and that the estimate of
receipts is based on the assumption that the
audiences are, on all occasions, as large as
the rooms will reasonably hold.
"5. So considering 80 Readings, we bring out
the net profit of that number, remaining to me
after payment of all charges whatever, as
£15,500.
"6. But it yet remains to be noted that the
calculation assumes New York City, and the
State of New York, to be good for a very large
proportion of the 80 Readings; and that the
calculation also assumes the necessary
travelling not to extend beyond Boston and
adjacent places, New York City and adjacent
places, Philadelphia, Washington, and
Baltimore. But, if the calculation should prove
too sanguine on this head, and if these places
should _not_ be good for so many Readings, then
it may prove impracticable to get through 80
within the time: by reason of other places that
would come into the list, lying wide asunder,
and necessitating long and fatiguing journeys.
"7. The loss consequent on the conversion of
paper money into gold (with gold at the present
ruling premium) is allowed for in the
calculation. It counts seven dollars to the
pound."
CHAPTER XIV.
DICKENS AS A NOVELIST.
1836-1870.
THE TALE OF TWO CITIES.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
CHRISTMAS SKETCHES.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
DR. MARIGOLD AND TALES FOR AMERICA.
M. Taine's Criticism--What M. Taine
overlooks--Anticipatory Reply to M.
Taine--Paper by Mr. Lewes--Plea for Objectors
to Dickens--Dickens a "Seer of
Visions"--Criticised and Critic--An Opinion on
Mr. and Mrs. Micawber--Dickens in a Fit of
Hallucination--Dickens's Leading
Quality--Dickens's Earlier Books--Mastery of
Dialogue--Realities of Fiction--Fielding and
Dickens--Universality of Micawber
Experiences--Dickens's Enjoyment of his Own
Humour--Origin of _Tale of Two
Cities_--Title-hunting--Success--Method
different from his Other Books--Reply to an
Objection--Care with which Dickens
worked--_Tale of Two Cities_
characterized--Opinion of an American
Critic--_Great Expectations_--Another Boy-child
for Hero--Groundwork of the Story--Masterly
Drawing of Character--Christmas Sketches--_Our
Mutual Friend_--Germ of Characters for
it--Writing Numbers in Advance--Death of
Leech--Holiday in France--In the Staplehurst
Accident--On a Tale by Edmund About--Doctor
Marigold--Minor Stories--Edwin Drood--Purity of
Dickens's Writings--True Province of
Humour--Dickens's Death--Effect of the News in
America--A Far-Western Admirer of Dickens.
WHAT I have to say generally of Dickens's genius as a writer may be made
part of the notice, which still remains to be given, of his writings
from _The Tale of Two Cities_ to the time at which we have arrived,
leaving _Edwin Drood_ for mention in its place; and this will be
accompanied, as in former notices of individual stories, by
illustrations drawn from his letters and life. His literary work was so
intensely one with his nature that he is not separable from it, and the
man and the method throw a singular light on each other. But some
allusion to what has been said of these books, by writers assuming to
speak with authority, will properly precede what has to be offered by
me; and I shall preface this part of my task with the hint of Carlyle,
that in looking at a man out of the common it is good for common men to
make sure that they "see" before they attempt to "oversee" him.
Of the French writer, M. Henri Taine, it has before been remarked that
his inability to appreciate humour is fatal to his pretensions as a
critic of the English novel. But there is much that is noteworthy in his
criticism notwithstanding, as well as remarkable in his knowledge of our
language; his position entitles him to be heard without a suspicion of
partizanship or intentional unfairness; whatever the value of his
opinion, the elaboration of its form and expression is itself no common
tribute; and what is said in it of Dickens's handling in regard to style
and character, embodies temperately objections which have since been
taken by some English critics without his impartiality and with less
than his ability. As to style M. Taine does not find that the natural or
simple prevails sufficiently. The tone is too passionate. The
imaginative or poetic side of allusion is so uniformly dwelt on, that
the descriptions cease to be subsidiary, and the minute details of pain
or pleasure wrought out by them become active agencies in the tale. So
vivid and eager is the display of fancy that everything is borne along
with it; imaginary objects take the precision of real ones; living
thoughts are controlled by inanimate things; the chimes console the poor
old ticket-porter; the cricket steadies the rough carrier's doubts; the
sea waves soothe the dying boy; clouds, flowers, leaves, play their
several parts; hardly a form of matter without a living quality; no
silent thing without its voice. Fondling and exaggerating thus what is
occasional in the subject of his criticism, into what he has evidently
at last persuaded himself is a fixed and universal practice with
Dickens, M. Taine proceeds to explain the exuberance by comparing such
imagination in its vividness to that of a monomaniac. He fails
altogether to apprehend that property in Humour which involves the
feeling of subtlest and most affecting analogies, and from which is
drawn the rare insight into sympathies between the nature of things and
their attributes or opposites, in which Dickens's fancy revelled with
such delight. Taking the famous lines which express the lunatic, the
lover, and the poet as "of Imagination all compact," in a sense that
would have startled not a little the great poet who wrote them, M. Taine
places on the same level of creative fancy the phantoms of the lunatic
and the personages of the artist. He exhibits Dickens as from time to
time, in the several stages of his successive works of fiction, given up
to one idea, possessed by it, seeing nothing else, treating it in a
hundred forms, exaggerating it, and so dazzling and overpowering his
readers with it that escape is impossible. This he maintains to be
equally the effect as Mr. Mell the usher plays the flute, as Tom Pinch
enjoys or exposes his Pecksniff, as the guard blows his bugle while Tom
rides to London, as Ruth Pinch crosses Fountain Court or makes the
beefsteak pudding, as Jonas Chuzzlewit commits and returns from the
murder, and as the storm which is Steerforth's death-knell beats on the
Yarmouth shore. To the same kind of power he attributes the
extraordinary clearness with which the commonest objects in all his
books, the most ordinary interiors, any old house, a parlour, a boat, a
school, fifty things that in the ordinary tale-teller would pass
unmarked, are made vividly present and indelible; are brought out with a
strength of relief, precision, and force, unapproached in any other
writer of prose fiction; with everything minute yet nothing cold, "with
all the passion and the patience of the painters of his country." And
while excitement in the reader is thus maintained to an extent
incompatible with a natural style or simple narrative, M. Taine yet
thinks he has discovered, in this very power of awakening a feverish
sensibility and moving laughter or tears at the commonest things, the
source of Dickens's astonishing popularity. Ordinary people, he says,
are so tired of what is always around them, and take in so little of the
detail that makes up their lives, that when, all of a sudden, there
comes a man to make these things interesting, and turn them into objects
of admiration, tenderness, or terror, the effect is enchantment. Without
leaving their arm-chairs or their firesides, they find themselves
trembling with emotion, their eyes are filled with tears, their cheeks
are broad with laughter, and, in the discovery they have thus made that
they too can suffer, love, and feel, their very existence seems doubled
to them. It had not occurred to M. Taine that to effect so much might
seem to leave little not achieved.
So far from it, the critic had satisfied himself that such a power of
style must be adverse to a just delineation of character. Dickens is not
calm enough, he says, to penetrate to the bottom of what he is dealing
with. He takes sides with it as friend or enemy, laughs or cries over
it, makes it odious or touching, repulsive or attractive, and is too
vehement and not enough inquisitive to paint a likeness. His imagination
is at once too vivid and not sufficiently large. Its tenacious quality,
and the force and concentration with which his thoughts penetrate into
the details he desires to apprehend, form limits to his knowledge,
confine him to single traits, and prevent his sounding all the depths of
a soul. He seizes on one attitude, trick, expression, or grimace; sees
nothing else; and keeps it always unchanged. Mercy Pecksniff laughs at
every word, Mark Tapley is nothing but jolly, Mrs. Gamp talks
incessantly of Mrs. Harris, Mr. Chillip is invariably timid, and Mr.
Micawber is never tired of emphasizing his phrases or passing with
ludicrous brusqueness from joy to grief. Each is the incarnation of some
one vice, virtue, or absurdity; whereof the display is frequent,
invariable, and exclusive. The language I am using condenses with strict
accuracy what is said by M. Taine, and has been repeated _ad nauseam_ by
others, professing admirers as well as open detractors. Mrs. Gamp and
Mr. Micawber, who belong to the first rank of humorous creation, are
thus without another word dismissed by the French critic; and he shows
no consciousness whatever in doing it, of that very fault in himself for
which Dickens is condemned, of mistaking lively observation for real
insight.
He has, however much concession in reserve, being satisfied, by his
observation of England, that it is to the people for whom Dickens wrote
his deficiencies in art are mainly due. The taste of his nation had
prohibited him from representing character in a grand style. The English
require too much morality and religion for genuine art. They made him
treat love, not as holy and sublime in itself, but as subordinate to
marriage; forced him to uphold society and the laws, against nature and
enthusiasm; and compelled him to display, in painting such a seduction
as in _Copperfield_, not the progress, ardour, and intoxication of
passion, but only the misery, remorse, and despair. The result of such
surface religion and morality, combined with the trading spirit, M.
Taine continues, leads to so many national forms of hypocrisy, and of
greed as well as worship for money, as to justify this great writer of
the nation in his frequent choice of those vices for illustration in his
tales. But his defect of method again comes into play. He does not deal
with vices in the manner of a physiologist, feeling a sort of love for
them, and delighting in their finer traits as if they were virtues. He
gets angry over them. (I do not interrupt M. Taine, but surely, to take
one instance illustrative of many, Dickens's enjoyment in dealing with
Pecksniff is as manifest as that he never ceases all the time to make
him very hateful.) He cannot, like Balzac, leave morality out of
account, and treat a passion, however loathsome, as that great
tale-teller did, from the only safe ground of belief, that it is a
force, and that force of whatever kind is good. It is essential to an
artist of that superior grade, M. Taine holds, no matter how vile his
subject, to show its education and temptations, the form of brain or
habits of mind that have reinforced the natural tendency, to deduce it
from its cause, to place its circumstances around it, and to develop its
effects to their extremes. In handling such and such a capital miser,
hypocrite, debauchee, or what not, he should never trouble himself about
the evil consequences of the vices. He should be too much of a
philosopher and artist to remember that he is a respectable citizen. But
this is what Dickens never forgets, and he renounces all beauties
requiring so corrupt a soil. M. Taine's conclusion upon the whole
nevertheless is, that though those triumphs of art which become the
property of all the earth have not been his, much has yet been achieved
by him. Out of his unequalled observation, his satire, and his
sensibility, has proceeded a series of original characters existing
nowhere but in England, which will exhibit to future generations not the
record of his own genius only, but that of his country and his times.
Between the judgment thus passed by the distinguished French lecturer,
and the later comment to be now given from an English critic, certainly
not in arrest of that judgment, may fitly come a passage from one of
Dickens's letters saying something of the limitations placed upon the
artist in England. It may read like a quasi-confession of one of M.
Taine's charges, though it was not written with reference to his own
but to one of Scott's later novels. "Similarly" (15th of August 1856) "I
have always a fine feeling of the honest state into which we have got,
when some smooth gentleman says to me or to some one else when I am by,
how odd it is that the hero of an English book is always
uninteresting--too good--not natural, &c. I am continually hearing this
of Scott from English people here, who pass their lives with Balzac and
Sand. But O my smooth friend, what a shining impostor you must think
yourself and what an ass you must think me, when you suppose that by
putting a brazen face upon it you can blot out of my knowledge the fact
that this same unnatural young gentleman (if to be decent is to be
necessarily unnatural), whom you meet in those other books and in mine,
_must_ be presented to you in that unnatural aspect by reason of your
morality, and is not to have, I will not say any of the indecencies you
like, but not even any of the experiences, trials, perplexities, and
confusions inseparable from the making or unmaking of all men!"
M. Taine's criticism was written three or four years before Dickens's
death, and to the same date belong some notices in England which adopted
more or less the tone of depreciation; conceding the great effects
achieved by the writer, but disputing the quality and value of his art.
For it is incident to all such criticism of Dickens to be of necessity
accompanied by the admission, that no writer has so completely impressed
himself on the time in which he lived, that he has made his characters a
part of literature, and that his readers are the world.
But, a little more than a year after his death, a paper was published
of which the object was to reconcile such seeming inconsistency, to
expound the inner meanings of "Dickens in relation to Criticism," and to
show that, though he had a splendid genius and a wonderful imagination,
yet the objectors were to be excused who called him only a stagy
sentimentalist and a clever caricaturist. This critical essay appeared
in the _Fortnightly Review_ for February 1872, with the signature of Mr.
George Henry Lewes; and the pretentious airs of the performance, with
its prodigious professions of candour, force upon me the painful task of
stating what it really is. During Dickens's life, especially when any
fresh novelist could be found available for strained comparison with
him, there were plenty of attempts to write him down: but the trick of
studied depreciation was never carried so far or made so odious as in
this case, by intolerable assumptions of an indulgent superiority; and
to repel it in such a form once for all is due to Dickens's memory.
The paper begins by the usual concessions--that he was a writer of vast
popularity, that he delighted no end of people, that his admirers were
in all classes and all countries, that he stirred the sympathy of masses
not easily reached through literature and always to healthy emotion,
that he impressed a new direction on popular writing, and modified the
literature of his age in its spirit no less than its form. The very
splendour of these successes, on the other hand, so deepened the shadow
of his failures, that to many there was nothing but darkness. Was it
unnatural? Could greatness be properly ascribed, by the fastidious, to a
writer whose defects were so glaring, exaggerated, untrue, fantastic,
and melodramatic? Might they not fairly insist on such defects as
outweighing all positive qualities, and speak of him with condescending
patronage or sneering irritation? Why, very often such men, though their
talk would be seasoned with quotations from, and allusions to, his
writings, and though they would lay aside their most favourite books to
bury themselves in his new "number," had been observed by this critic to
be as niggardly in their praise of him as they were lavish in their
scorn. He actually heard "_a very distinguished man_," on one occasion,
express measureless contempt for Dickens, and a few minutes afterwards
admit that Dickens had "entered into his life." And so the critic betook
himself to the task of reconciling this immense popularity and this
critical contempt, which he does after the following manner.
He says that Dickens was so great in "fun" (humour he does not concede
to him anywhere) that Fielding and Smollett are small in comparison, but
that this would only have been a passing amusement for the world if he
had not been "gifted with an imagination of marvellous vividness, and an
emotional sympathetic nature capable of furnishing that imagination with
elements of universal power." To people who think that words should
carry some meaning it might seem, that, if only a man could be "gifted"
with all this, nothing more need be said. With marvellous imagination,
and a nature to endow it with elements of universal power, what secrets
of creative art could possibly be closed to him? But this is reckoning
without your philosophical critic. The vividness of Dickens's
imagination M. Taine found to be simply monomaniacal, and his follower
finds it to be merely hallucinative. Not the less he heaps upon it
epithet after epithet. He talks of its irradiating splendour; calls it
glorious as well as imperial and marvellous; and, to make us quite sure
he is not with these fine phrases puffing-off an inferior article, he
interposes that such imagination is "common to all great writers."
Luckily for great writers in general, however, their creations are of
the old, immortal, commonplace sort; whereas Dickens in his creative
processes, according to this philosophy of criticism, is tied up hard
and fast within hallucinative limits.
"He was," we are told, "a seer of visions." Amid silence and darkness,
we are assured, he heard voices and saw objects; of which the revived
impressions to him had the vividness of sensations, and the images his
mind created in explanation of them had the coercive force of
realities;[261] so that what he brought into existence in this way, no
matter how fantastic and unreal, was (whatever this may mean)
universally intelligible. "His types established themselves in the
public mind like personal experiences. Their falsity was unnoticed in
the blaze of their illumination. Every humbug seemed a Pecksniff, every
jovial improvident a Micawber, every stinted serving-wench a
Marchioness." The critic, indeed, saw through it all, but he gave his
warnings in vain. "In vain critical reflection showed these figures to
be merely masks; not characters, but personified characteristics;
caricatures and distortions of human nature. The vividness of their
presentation triumphed over reflection; their creator managed to
communicate to the public his own unhesitating belief." What, however,
is the public? Mr Lewes goes on to relate. "Give a child a wooden horse,
with hair for mane and tail, and wafer-spots for colouring, he will
never be disturbed by the fact that this horse does not move its legs
but runs on wheels; and this wooden horse, which he can handle and draw,
is believed in more than a pictured horse by a Wouvermanns or an
Ansdell(!!) It may be said of Dickens's human figures that they too are
wooden, and run on wheels; but these are details which scarcely disturb
the belief of admirers. Just as the wooden horse is brought within the
range of the child's emotions, and dramatizing tendencies, when he can
handle and draw it, so Dickens's figures are brought within the range of
the reader's interests, and receive from these interests a sudden
illumination, when they are the puppets of a drama every incident of
which appeals to the sympathies."
_Risum teneatis?_ But the smile is grim that rises to the face of one to
whom the relations of the writer and his critic, while both writer and
critic lived, are known; and who sees the drift of now scattering such
rubbish as this over an established fame. As it fares with the
imagination that is imperial, so with the drama every incident of which
appeals to the sympathies. The one being explained by hallucination, and
the other by the wooden horse, plenty of fine words are to spare by
which contempt may receive the show of candour. When the characters in a
play are puppets, and the audiences of the theatre fools or children, no
wise man forfeits his wisdom by proceeding to admit that the successful
playwright, "with a fine felicity of instinct," seized upon situations,
for his wooden figures, having "irresistible hold over the domestic
affections;" that, through his puppets, he spoke "in the mother-tongue
of the heart;" that, with his spotted horses and so forth, he "painted
the life he knew and everyone knew;" that he painted, of course, nothing
ideal or heroic, and that the world of thought and passion lay beyond
his horizon; but that, with his artificial performers and his
feeble-witted audiences, "all the resources of the bourgeois epic were
in his grasp; the joys and pains of childhood, the petty tyrannies of
ignoble natures, the genial pleasantries of happy natures, the life of
the poor, the struggles of the street and back parlour, the insolence of
office, the sharp social contrasts, east wind and Christmas jollity,
hunger, misery, and hot punch"--"so that even critical spectators who
complained that these broadly painted pictures were artistic daubs could
not wholly resist their effective suggestiveness." Since Trinculo and
Caliban were under one cloak, there has surely been no such delicate
monster with two voices. "His forward voice, now, is to speak well of
his friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and to
detract." One other of the foul speeches I may not overlook, since it
contains what is alleged to be a personal revelation of Dickens made to
the critic himself.
"When one thinks of Micawber always presenting himself in the same
situation, moved with the same springs and uttering the same sounds,
always confident of something turning up, always crushed and rebounding,
always making punch--and his wife always declaring she will never part
from him, always referring to his talents and her family--when one
thinks of the 'catchwords' personified as characters, one is reminded of
the frogs whose brains have been taken out for physiological purposes,
and whose actions henceforth want the distinctive peculiarity of organic
action, that of fluctuating spontaneity." Such was that sheer inability
of Dickens, indeed, to comprehend this complexity of the organism, that
it quite accounted, in the view of this philosopher, for all his
unnaturalness, for the whole of his fantastic people, and for the
strained dialogues of which his books are made up, painfully resembling
in their incongruity "the absurd and eager expositions which insane
patients pour into the listener's ear when detailing their wrongs, or
their schemes. Dickens once declared to me," Mr. Lewes continues, "that
every word said by his characters was distinctly _heard_ by him; I was
at first not a little puzzled to account for the fact that he could hear
language so utterly unlike the language of real feeling, and not be
aware of its preposterousness; but the surprise vanished when I thought
of the phenomena of hallucination." Wonderful sagacity! to unravel
easily such a bewildering "puzzle"! And so to the close. Between the
uncultivated whom Dickens moved, and the cultivated he failed to move;
between the power that so worked in delft as to stir the universal
heart, and the commonness that could not meddle with porcelain or aspire
to any noble clay; the pitiful see-saw is continued up to the final
sentence, where, in the impartial critic's eagerness to discredit even
the value of the emotion awakened in such men as Jeffrey by such
creations as Little Nell, he reverses all he has been saying about the
cultivated and uncultivated, and presents to us a cultivated
philosopher, in his ignorance of the stage, applauding an actor whom
every uncultivated playgoing apprentice despises as stagey. But the bold
stroke just exhibited, of bringing forward Dickens himself in the actual
crisis of one of his fits of hallucination, requires an additional word.
To establish the hallucinative theory, he is said on one occasion to
have declared to the critic that every word uttered by his characters
was distinctly _heard_ by him before it was written down. Such an
averment, not credible for a moment as thus made, indeed simply untrue
to the extent described, may yet be accepted in the limited and quite
different sense which a passage in one of Dickens's letters gives to it.
All writers of genius to whom their art has become as a second nature,
will be found capable of doing upon occasion what the vulgar may think
to be "hallucination," but hallucination will never account for. After
Scott began the _Bride of Lammermoor_ he had one of his terrible
seizures of cramp, yet during his torment he dictated[262] that fine
novel; and when he rose from his bed, and the published book was placed
in his hands, "he did not," James Ballantyne explicitly assured
Lockhart, "recollect one single incident, character, or conversation it
contained." When Dickens was under the greatest trial of his life, and
illness and sorrow were contending for the mastery over him, he thus
wrote to me. "Of my distress I will say no more than that it has borne a
terrible, frightful, horrible proportion to the quickness of the gifts
you remind me of. But may I not be forgiven for thinking it a wonderful
testimony to my being made for my art, that when, in the midst of this
trouble and pain, I sit down to my book, some beneficent power shows it
all to me, and tempts me to be interested, and I don't invent it--really
do not--_but see it_, and write it down. . . . It is only when it all fades
away and is gone, that I begin to suspect that its momentary relief has
cost me something."
Whatever view may be taken of the man who wrote those words, he had the
claim to be judged by reference to the highest models in the art which
he studied. In the literature of his time, from 1836 to 1870, he held
the most conspicuous place, and his claim to the most popular one in
the literature of fiction was by common consent admitted. He obtained
this rank by the sheer force of his genius, unhelped in any way, and he
held it without dispute. As he began he closed. After he had written for
only four months, and after he had written incessantly for four and
thirty years, he was of all living writers the most widely read. It is
of course quite possible that such popularity might imply rather
littleness in his contemporaries than greatness in him: but his books
are the test to judge by. Each thus far, as it appeared, has had notice
in these pages for its illustration of his life, or of his method of
work, or of the variety and versatility in the manifestations of his
power. But his latest books remain still for notice, and will properly
suggest what is farther to be said of his general place in literature.
His leading quality was Humour. It has no mention in either of the
criticisms cited, but it was his highest faculty; and it accounts for
his magnificent successes, as well as for his not infrequent failures,
in characteristic delineation. He was conscious of this himself. Five
years before he died, a great and generous brother artist, Lord Lytton,
amid much ungrudging praise of a work he was then publishing, asked him
to consider, as to one part of it, if the modesties of art were not a
little overpassed. "I cannot tell you," he replied, "how highly I prize
your letter, or with what pride and pleasure it inspires me. Nor do I
for a moment question its criticism (if objection so generous and easy
may be called by that hard name) otherwise than on this ground--that I
work slowly and with great care, and never give way to my invention
recklessly, but constantly restrain it; and that I think it is my
infirmity to fancy or perceive relations in things which are not
apparent generally. Also, I have such an inexpressible enjoyment of what
I see in a droll light, that I dare say I pet it as if it were a spoilt
child. This is all I have to offer in arrest of judgment." To perceive
relations in things which are not apparent generally, is one of those
exquisite properties of humour by which are discovered the affinities
between the high and the low, the attractive and the repulsive, the
rarest things and things of every day, which bring us all upon the level
of a common humanity. It is this which gives humour an immortal touch
that does not belong of necessity to pictures, even the most exquisite,
of mere character or manners; the property which in its highest aspects
Carlyle so subtly described as a sort of inverse sublimity, exalting
into our affections what is below us as the other draws down into our
affections what is above us. But it has a danger which Dickens also
hints at, and into which he often fell. All humour has in it, is indeed
identical with, what ordinary people are apt to call exaggeration; but
there is an excess beyond the allowable even here, and to "pet" or
magnify out of proper bounds its sense of what is droll, is to put the
merely grotesque in its place. What might have been overlooked in a
writer with no uncommon powers of invention, was thrown into
overpowering prominence by Dickens's wealth of fancy; and a splendid
excess of his genius came to be objected to as its integral and
essential quality.
It cannot be said to have had any place in his earlier books. His
powers were not at their highest and the humour was less fine and
subtle, but there was no such objection to be taken. No misgiving
interrupted the enjoyment of the wonderful freshness of animal spirits
in _Pickwick_; but beneath its fun, laughter, and light-heartedness were
indications of power of the first rank in the delineation of character.
Some caricature was in the plan; but as the circle of people widened
beyond the cockney club, and the delightful oddity of Mr. Pickwick took
more of an independent existence, a different method revealed itself,
nothing appeared beyond the exaggerations permissible to humorous
comedy, and the art was seen which can combine traits vividly true to
particular men or women with propensities common to all mankind. This
has its highest expression in Fielding: but even the first of Dickens's
books showed the same kind of mastery; and, by the side of its life-like
middle-class people universally familiar, there was one figure before
seen by none but at once knowable by all, delightful for the surprise it
gave by its singularity and the pleasure it gave by its truth; and,
though short of the highest in this form of art, taking rank with the
class in which live everlastingly the dozen unique inventions that have
immortalized the English novel. The groups in _Oliver Twist_, Fagin and
his pupils, Sikes and Nancy, Mr. Bumble and his parish-boy, belong to
the same period; when Dickens also began those pathetic delineations
that opened to the neglected, the poor, and the fallen, a world of
compassion and tenderness. Yet I think it was not until the third book,
_Nickleby_, that he began to have his place as a writer conceded to
him; and that he ceased to be regarded as a mere phenomenon or marvel
of fortune, who had achieved success by any other means than that of
deserving it, and who challenged no criticism better worth the name than
such as he has received from the Fortnightly reviewer. It is to be added
to what before was said of _Nickleby_, that it established beyond
dispute his mastery of dialogue, or that power of making characters real
existences, not by describing them but by letting them describe
themselves, which belongs only to story-tellers of the first rank.
Dickens never excelled the easy handling of the subordinate groups in
this novel, and he never repeated its mistakes in the direction of
aristocratic or merely polite and dissipated life. It displayed more
than before of his humour on the tragic side; and, in close connection
with its affecting scenes of starved and deserted childhood, were placed
those contrasts of miser and spendthrift, of greed and generosity, of
hypocrisy and simple-heartedness, which he handled in later books with
greater power and fullness, but of which the first formal expression was
here. It was his first general picture, so to speak, of the character
and manners of his time, which it was the design more or less of all his
books to exhibit; and it suffers by comparison with his later
productions, because the humour is not to the same degree enriched by
imagination; but it is free from the not infrequent excess into which
that supreme gift also tempted its possessor. None of the tales is more
attractive throughout, and on the whole it was a step in advance even of
the stride previously taken. Nor was the gain lost in the succeeding
story of the _Old Curiosity Shop_. The humorous traits of Mrs. Nickleby
could hardly be surpassed: but, in Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness,
there was a subtlety and lightness of touch that led to finer issues;
and around Little Nell[263] and her fortunes, surpassingly touching and
beautiful, let criticism object what it will, were gathered some small
characters that had a deeper intention and more imaginative insight,
than anything yet done. Strokes of this kind were also observable in the
hunted life of the murderer in _Barnaby Rudge_; and his next book,
_Chuzzlewit_, was, as it still remains, one of his greatest
achievements. Even so brief a retrospect of the six opening years of
Dickens's literary labour will help to a clearer judgment of the work of
the twenty-eight more years that remained to him.
To the special observations already made on the series of stories which
followed the return from America, _Chuzzlewit_, _Dombey_, _Copperfield_,
and _Bleak House_, in which attention has been directed to the higher
purpose and more imaginative treatment that distinguished them,[264] a
general remark is to be added. Though the range of character they
traverse is not wide, it is surrounded by a fertility of invention and
illustration without example in any previous novelist; and it is
represented in these books, so to speak, by a number and variety of
existences sufficiently real to have taken places as among the actual
people of the world. Could half as many known and universally
recognisable men and women be selected out of one story, by any other
prose writer of the first rank, as at once rise to the mind from one of
the masterpieces of Dickens? So difficult of dispute is this, that as
much perhaps will be admitted; but then it will be added, if the reply
is by a critic of the school burlesqued by Mr. Lewes, that after all
they are not individual or special men and women so much as general
impersonations of men and women, abstract types made up of telling
catchwords or surface traits, though with such accumulation upon them of
a wonderful wealth of humorous illustration, itself filled with minute
and accurate knowledge of life, that the real nakedness of the land of
character is hidden. Well, what can be rejoined to this, but that the
poverty or richness of any territory worth survey will for the most part
lie in the kind of observation brought to it. There was no finer
observer than Johnson of the manners of his time, and he protested of
their greatest delineator that he knew only the shell of life. Another
of his remarks, after a fashion followed by the criticizers of Dickens,
places Fielding below one of his famous contemporaries; but who will not
now be eager to reverse such a comparison, as that Fielding tells you
correctly enough what o'clock it is by looking at the face of the dial,
but that Richardson shows you how the watch is made? There never was a
subtler or a more sagacious observer than Fielding, or who better
deserved what is generously said of him by Smollett, that he painted the
characters and ridiculed the follies of life with equal strength,
humour, and propriety. But might it not be said of him, as of Dickens,
that his range of character was limited; and that his method of
proceeding from a central idea in all his leading people, exposed him
equally to the charge of now and then putting human nature itself in
place of the individual who should only be a small section of it? This
is in fact but another shape of what I have expressed on a former page,
that what a character, drawn by a master, will roughly present upon its
surface, is frequently such as also to satisfy its more subtle
requirements; and that when only the salient points or sharper
prominences are thus displayed, the great novelist is using his
undoubted privilege of showing the large degree to which human
intercourse is carried on, not by men's habits or ways at their
commonest, but by the touching of their extremes. A definition of
Fielding's genius has been made with some accuracy in the saying, that
he shows common propensities in connection with the identical
unvarnished adjuncts which are peculiar to the individual, nor could a
more exquisite felicity of handling than this be any man's aim or
desire; but it would be just as easy, by employment of the critical
rules applied to Dickens, to transform it into matter of censure.
Partridge, Adams, Trulliber, Squire Western, and the rest, present
themselves often enough under the same aspects, and use with sufficient
uniformity the same catchwords, to be brought within the charge of
mannerism; and though M. Taine cannot fairly say of Fielding as of
Dickens, that he suffers from too much morality, he brings against him
precisely the charge so strongly put against the later novelist of
"looking upon the passions not as simple forces but as objects of
approbation or blame." We must keep in mind all this to understand the
worth of the starved fancy, that can find in such a delineation as that
of Micawber only the man described by Mr. Lewes as always in the same
situation, moved with the same springs and uttering the same sounds,
always confident of something turning up, always crushed and rebounding,
always making punch, and his wife always declaring she will never part
from him. It is not thus that such creations are to be viewed; but by
the light which enables us to see why the country squires, village
schoolmasters, and hedge parsons of Fielding became immortal. The later
ones will live, as the earlier do, by the subtle quality of genius that
makes their doings and sayings part of those general incentives which
pervade mankind. Who has not had occasion, however priding himself on
his unlikeness to Micawber, to think of Micawber as he reviewed his own
experiences? Who has not himself waited, like Micawber, for something to
turn up? Who has not at times discovered, in one or other acquaintance
or friend, some one or other of that cluster of sagacious hints and
fragments of human life and conduct which the kindly fancy of Dickens
embodied in this delightful form? If the irrepressible New Zealander
ever comes over to achieve his long promised sketch of St. Paul's, who
can doubt that it will be no other than our undying Micawber, who had
taken to colonisation the last time we saw him, and who will thus again
have turned up? There are not many conditions of life or society to
which his and his wife's experiences are not applicable; and when, the
year after the immortal couple made their first appearance on earth,
Protection was in one of its then frequent difficulties, declaring it
could not live without something widely different from existing
circumstances shortly turning up, and imploring its friends to throw
down the gauntlet and boldly challenge society to turn up a majority and
rescue it from its embarrassments, a distinguished wit seized upon the
likeness to Micawber, showed how closely it was borne out by the jollity
and gin-punch of the banquets at which the bewailings were heard, and
asked whether Dickens had stolen from the farmer's friends or the
farmer's friends had stolen from Dickens. "Corn, said Mr. Micawber, may
be gentlemanly, but it is not remunerative. . . . I ask myself this
question: if corn is not to be relied on, what is? We must live. . . ."
Loud as the general laughter was, I think the laughter of Dickens
himself was loudest, at this discovery of so exact and unexpected a
likeness.[265]
A readiness in all forms thus to enjoy his own pleasantry was indeed
always observable (it is common to great humourists, nor would it be
easier to carry it farther than Sterne did), and his own confession on
the point may receive additional illustration before proceeding to the
later books. He accounted by it, as we have seen, for occasional even
grotesque extravagances. In another of his letters there is this
passage: "I can report that I have finished the job I set myself, and
that it has in it something--to me at all events--so extraordinarily
droll, that though I have been reading it some hundred times in the
course of the working, I have never been able to look at it with the
least composure, but have always roared in the most unblushing manner. I
leave you to find out what it was." It was the encounter of the major
and the tax-collector in the second Mrs. Lirriper. Writing previously of
the papers in _Household Words_ called The Lazy Tour of Two Idle
Apprentices, after saying that he and Mr. Wilkie Collins had written
together a story in the second part, "in which I think you would find it
very difficult to say where I leave off and he comes in," he had said of
the preceding descriptions: "Some of my own tickle me very much; but
that may be in great part because I know the originals, and delight in
their fantastic fidelity." "I have been at work with such a will" he
writes later of a piece of humour for the holidays, "that I have done
the opening and conclusion of the Christmas number. They are done in the
character of a waiter, and I think are exceedingly droll. The thread on
which the stories are to hang, is spun by this waiter, and is,
purposely, very slight; but has, I fancy, a ridiculously comical and
unexpected end. The waiter's account of himself includes (I hope)
everything you know about waiters, presented humorously." In this last
we have a hint of the "fantastic fidelity" with which, when a fancy
"tickled" him, he would bring out what Corporal Nym calls the humour of
it under so astonishing a variety of conceivable and inconceivable
aspects of subtle exaggeration, that nothing was left to the subject but
that special individual illustration of it. In this, however, humour was
not his servant but his master; because it reproduced too readily, and
carried too far, the grotesque imaginings to which great humourists are
prone; which lie indeed deep in their nature; and from which they derive
their genial sympathy with eccentric characters that enables them to
find motives for what to other men is hopelessly obscure, to exalt into
types of humanity what the world turns impatiently aside at, and to
enshrine in a form for eternal homage and love such whimsical absurdity
as Captain Toby Shandy's. But Dickens was too conscious of these
excesses from time to time, not zealously to endeavour to keep the
leading characters in his more important stories under some strictness
of discipline. To confine exaggeration within legitimate limits was an
art he laboriously studied; and, in whatever proportions of failure or
success, during the vicissitudes of both that attended his later years,
he continued to endeavour to practise it. In regard to mere description,
it is true, he let himself loose more frequently, and would sometimes
defend it even on the ground of art; nor would it be fair to omit his
reply, on one occasion, to some such remonstrance as M. Taine has
embodied in his adverse criticism, against the too great imaginative
wealth thrown by him into mere narrative.[266] "It does not seem to me
to be enough to say of any description that it is the exact truth. The
exact truth must be there; but the merit or art in the narrator, is the
manner of stating the truth. As to which thing in literature, it always
seems to me that there is a world to be done. And in these times, when
the tendency is to be frightfully literal and catalogue-like--to make
the thing, in short, a sort of sum in reduction that any miserable
creature can do in that way--I have an idea (really founded on the love
of what I profess), that the very holding of popular literature through
a kind of popular dark age, may depend on such fanciful treatment."
THE TALE OF TWO CITIES.
Dickens's next story to _Little Dorrit_ was the _Tale of Two Cities_, of
which the first notion occurred to him while acting with his friends and
his children in the summer of 1857 in Mr. Wilkie Collins's drama of _The
Frozen Deep_. But it was only a vague fancy, and the sadness and trouble
of the winter of that year were not favourable to it. Towards the close
(27th) of January 1858, talking of improvements at Gadshill in which he
took little interest, it was again in his thoughts. "Growing
inclinations of a fitful and undefined sort are upon me sometimes to
fall to work on a new book. Then I think I had better not worry my
worried mind yet awhile. Then I think it would be of no use if I did,
for I couldn't settle to one occupation.--And that's all!" "If I can
discipline my thoughts," he wrote three days later, "into the channel of
a story, I have made up my mind to get to work on one: always supposing
that I find myself, on the trial, able to do well. Nothing whatever will
do me the least 'good' in the way of shaking the one strong possession
of change impending over us that every day makes stronger; but if I
could work on with some approach to steadiness, through the summer, the
anxious toil of a new book would have its neck well broken before
beginning to publish, next October or November. Sometimes, I think I may
continue to work; sometimes, I think not. What do you say to the title,
ONE OF THESE DAYS?" That title held its ground very briefly. "What do
you think," he wrote after six weeks, "of _this_ name for my
story--BURIED ALIVE? Does it seem too grim? Or, THE THREAD OF GOLD? Or,
THE DOCTOR OF BEAUVAIS?" But not until twelve months later did he fairly
buckle himself to the task he had contemplated so long. _All the Year
Round_ had taken the place of _Household Words_ in the interval; and the
tale was then started to give strength to the new weekly periodical for
whose pages it was designed.
"This is merely to certify," he wrote on the 11th of March 1859, "that I
have got exactly the name for the story that is wanted; exactly what
will fit the opening to a T. A TALE OF TWO CITIES. Also, that I have
struck out a rather original and bold idea. That is, at the end of each
month to publish the monthly part in the green cover, with the two
illustrations, at the old shilling. This will give _All the Year Round_
always the interest and precedence of a fresh weekly portion during the
month; and will give me my old standing with my old public, and the
advantage (very necessary in this story) of having numbers of people who
read it in no portions smaller than a monthly part. . . . My American
ambassador pays a thousand pounds for the first year, for the privilege
of republishing in America one day after we publish here. Not bad?" . . .
He had to struggle at the opening through a sharp attack of illness, and
on the 9th of July progress was thus reported. "I have been getting on
in health very slowly and through irksome botheration enough. But I
think I am round the corner. This cause--and the heat--has tended to my
doing no more than hold my ground, my old month's advance, with the
_Tale of Two Cities_. The small portions thereof, drive me frantic; but
I think the tale must have taken a strong hold. The run upon our
monthly parts is surprising, and last month we sold 35,000 back numbers.
A note I have had from Carlyle about it has given me especial pleasure."
A letter of the following month expresses the intention he had when he
began the story, and in what respect it differs as to method from all
his other books. Sending in proof four numbers ahead of the current
publication, he adds: "I hope you will like them. Nothing but the
interest of the subject, and the pleasure of striving with the
difficulty of the form of treatment,--nothing in the way of mere money,
I mean,--could else repay the time and trouble of the incessant
condensation. But I set myself the little task of making a _picturesque
story_, rising in every chapter, with characters true to nature, but
whom the story should express more than they should express themselves
by dialogue. I mean in other words, that I fancied a story of incident
might be written (in place of the odious stuff that is written under
that pretence), pounding the characters in its own mortar, and beating
their interest out of them. If you could have read the story all at
once, I hope you wouldn't have stopped halfway."[267] Another of his
letters supplies the last illustration I need to give of the design and
meanings in regard to this tale expressed by himself. It was a reply to
some objections of which the principal were, a doubt if the feudal
cruelties came sufficiently within the date of the action to justify his
use of them, and some question as to the manner of disposing of the
chief revolutionary agent in the plot. "I had of course full knowledge
of the formal surrender of the feudal privileges, but these had been
bitterly felt quite as near to the time of the Revolution as the
Doctor's narrative, which you will remember dates long before the
Terror. With the slang of the new philosophy on the one side, it was
surely not unreasonable or unallowable, on the other, to suppose a
nobleman wedded to the old cruel ideas, and representing the time going
out as his nephew represents the time coming in. If there be anything
certain on earth, I take it that the condition of the French peasant
generally at that day was intolerable. No later enquiries or provings by
figures will hold water against the tremendous testimony of men living
at the time. There is a curious book printed at Amsterdam, written to
make out no case whatever, and tiresome enough in its literal
dictionary-like minuteness; scattered up and down the pages of which is
full authority for my marquis. This is Mercier's _Tableau de Paris_.
Rousseau is the authority for the peasant's shutting up his house when
he had a bit of meat. The tax-tables are the authority for the wretched
creature's impoverishment. . . . I am not clear, and I never have been
clear, respecting the canon of fiction which forbids the interposition
of accident in such a case as Madame Defarge's death. Where the accident
is inseparable from the passion and action of the character; where it is
strictly consistent with the entire design, and arises out of some
culminating proceeding on the part of the individual which the whole
story has led up to; it seems to me to become, as it were, an act of
divine justice. And when I use Miss Pross (though this is quite another
question) to bring about such a catastrophe, I have the positive
intention of making that half-comic intervention a part of the desperate
woman's failure; and of opposing that mean death, instead of a desperate
one in the streets which she wouldn't have minded, to the dignity of
Carton's. Wrong or right, this was all design, and seemed to me to be in
the fitness of things."
These are interesting intimations of the care with which Dickens worked;
and there is no instance in his novels, excepting this, of a deliberate
and planned departure from the method of treatment which had been
pre-eminently the source of his popularity as a novelist. To rely less
upon character than upon incident, and to resolve that his actors should
be expressed by the story more than they should express themselves by
dialogue, was for him a hazardous, and can hardly be called an entirely
successful, experiment. With singular dramatic vivacity, much
constructive art, and with descriptive passages of a high order
everywhere (the dawn of the terrible outbreak in the journey of the
marquis from Paris to his country seat, and the London crowd at the
funeral of the spy, may be instanced for their power), there was
probably never a book by a great humourist, and an artist so prolific in
the conception of character, with so little humour and so few
rememberable figures. Its merits lie elsewhere. Though there are
excellent traits and touches all through the revolutionary scenes, the
only full-length that stands out prominently is the picture of the
wasted life saved at last by heroic sacrifice. Dickens speaks of his
design to make impressive the dignity of Carton's death, and in this he
succeeded perhaps even beyond his expectation. Carton suffers himself to
be mistaken for another, and gives his life that the girl he loves may
be happy with that other; the secret being known only to a poor little
girl in the tumbril that takes them to the scaffold, who at the moment
has discovered it, and whom it strengthens also to die. The incident is
beautifully told; and it is at least only fair to set against verdicts
not very favourable as to this effort of his invention, what was said of
the particular character and scene, and of the book generally, by an
American critic whose literary studies had most familiarized him with
the rarest forms of imaginative writing.[268] "Its pourtrayal of the
noble-natured castaway makes it almost a peerless book in modern
literature, and gives it a place among the highest examples of literary
art. . . . The conception of this character shows in its author an ideal of
magnanimity and of charity unsurpassed. There is not a grander, lovelier
figure than the self-wrecked, self-devoted Sydney Carton, in literature
or history; and the story itself is so noble in its spirit, so grand and
graphic in its style, and filled with a pathos so profound and simple,
that it deserves and will surely take a place among the great serious
works of imagination." I should myself prefer to say that its
distinctive merit is less in any of its conceptions of character, even
Carton's, than as a specimen of Dickens's power in imaginative
story-telling. There is no piece of fiction known to me, in which the
domestic life of a few simple private people is in such a manner knitted
and interwoven with the outbreak of a terrible public event, that the
one seems but part of the other. When made conscious of the first sultry
drops of a thunderstorm that fall upon a little group sitting in an
obscure English lodging, we are witness to the actual beginning of a
tempest which is preparing to sweep away everything in France. And, to
the end, the book in this respect is really remarkable.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS.
The _Tale of Two Cities_ was published in 1859; the series of papers
collected as the _Uncommercial Traveller_ were occupying Dickens in
1860; and it was while engaged in these, and throwing off in the course
of them capital "samples" of fun and enjoyment, he thus replied to a
suggestion that he should let himself loose upon some single humorous
conception, in the vein of his youthful achievements in that way. "For a
little piece I have been writing--or am writing; for I hope to finish it
to-day--such a very fine, new, and grotesque idea has opened upon me,
that I begin to doubt whether I had not better cancel the little paper,
and reserve the notion for a new book. You shall judge as soon as I get
it printed. But it so opens out before _me_ that I can see the whole of
a serial revolving on it, in a most singular and comic manner." This was
the germ of Pip and Magwitch, which at first he intended to make the
groundwork of a tale in the old twenty-number form, but for reasons
perhaps fortunate brought afterwards within the limits of a less
elaborate novel. "Last week," he wrote on the 4th of October 1860, "I
got to work on the new story. I had previously very carefully considered
the state and prospects of _All the Year Round_, and, the more I
considered them, the less hope I saw of being able to get back, _now_,
to the profit of a separate publication in the old 20 numbers." (A tale,
which at the time was appearing in his serial, had disappointed
expectation.) "However I worked on, knowing that what I was doing would
run into another groove; and I called a council of war at the office on
Tuesday. It was perfectly clear that the one thing to be done was, for
me to strike in. I have therefore decided to begin the story as of the
length of the _Tale of Two Cities_ on the first of December--begin
publishing, that is. I must make the most I can out of the book. You
shall have the first two or three weekly parts to-morrow. The name is
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. I think a good name?" Two days later he wrote: "The
sacrifice of _Great Expectations_ is really and truly made for myself.
The property of _All the Year Round_ is far too valuable, in every way,
to be much endangered. Our fall is not large, but we have a considerable
advance in hand of the story we are now publishing, and there is no
vitality in it, and no chance whatever of stopping the fall; which on
the contrary would be certain to increase. Now, if I went into a
twenty-number serial, I should cut off my power of doing anything serial
here for two good years--and that would be a most perilous thing. On the
other hand, by dashing in now, I come in when most wanted; and if Reade
and Wilkie follow me, our course will be shaped out handsomely and
hopefully for between two and three years. A thousand pounds are to be
paid for early proofs of the story to America." A few more days brought
the first instalment of the tale, and explanatory mention of it. "The
book will be written in the first person throughout, and during these
first three weekly numbers you will find the hero to be a boy-child,
like David. Then he will be an apprentice. You will not have to complain
of the want of humour as in the _Tale of Two Cities_. I have made the
opening, I hope, in its general effect exceedingly droll. I have put a
child and a good-natured foolish man, in relations that seem to me very
funny. Of course I have got in the pivot on which the story will turn
too--and which indeed, as you remember, was the grotesque tragi-comic
conception that first encouraged me. To be quite sure I had fallen into
no unconscious repetitions, I read _David Copperfield_ again the other
day, and was affected by it to a degree you would hardly believe."
It may be doubted if Dickens could better have established his right to
the front rank among novelists claimed for him, than by the ease and
mastery with which, in these two books of _Copperfield_ and _Great
Expectations_, he kept perfectly distinct the two stories of a boy's
childhood, both told in the form of autobiography. A subtle penetration
into character marks the unlikeness in the likeness; there is enough at
once of resemblance and of difference in the position and surroundings
of each to account for the divergences of character that arise; both
children are good-hearted, and both have the advantage of association
with models of tender simplicity and oddity, perfect in their truth and
quite distinct from each other; but a sudden tumble into distress
steadies Peggotty's little friend, and as unexpected a stroke of good
fortune turns the head of the small protégé of Joe Gargery. What a deal
of spoiling nevertheless, a nature that is really good at the bottom of
it will stand without permanent damage, is nicely shown in Pip; and the
way he reconciles his determination to act very shabbily to his early
friends, with a conceited notion that he is setting them a moral
example, is part of the shading of a character drawn with extraordinary
skill. His greatest trial comes out of his good luck; and the
foundations of both are laid at the opening of the tale, in a churchyard
down by the Thames, as it winds past desolate marshes twenty miles to
the sea, of which a masterly picture in half a dozen lines will give
only average example of the descriptive writing that is everywhere one
of the charms of the book. It is strange, as I transcribe the words,
with what wonderful vividness they bring back the very spot on which we
stood when he said he meant to make it the scene of the opening of his
story--Cooling Castle ruins and the desolate Church, lying out among the
marshes seven miles from Gadshill! "My first most vivid and broad
impression . . . on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening . . . was
. . . that this bleak place, overgrown with nettles, was the churchyard,
and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected
with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it,
was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and
that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the
sea. . . . On the edge of the river . . . only two black things in all
the prospect seemed to be standing upright . . . one, the beacon by
which the sailors steered, like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly
thing when you were near it; the other, a gibbet with some chains
hanging to it which had once held a pirate." Here Magwitch, an escaped
convict from Chatham, terrifies the child Pip into stealing for him food
and a file; and though recaptured and transported, he carries with him
to Australia such a grateful heart for the small creature's service,
that on making a fortune there he resolves to make his little friend a
gentleman. This requires circumspection; and is so done, through the
Old-Bailey attorney who has defended Magwitch at his trial (a character
of surprising novelty and truth), that Pip imagines his present gifts
and "great expectations" to have come from the supposed rich lady of
the story (whose eccentricities are the unattractive part of it, and
have yet a weird character that somehow fits in with the kind of wrong
she has suffered). When therefore the closing scenes bring back Magwitch
himself, who risks his life to gratify his longing to see the gentleman
he has made, it is an unspeakable horror to the youth to discover his
benefactor in the convicted felon. If any one doubts Dickens's power of
so drawing a character as to get to the heart of it, seeing beyond
surface peculiarities into the moving springs of the human being
himself, let him narrowly examine those scenes. There is not a grain of
substitution of mere sentiment, or circumstance, for the inner and
absolute reality of the position in which these two creatures find
themselves. Pip's loathing of what had built up his fortune, and his
horror of the uncouth architect, are apparent in even his most generous
efforts to protect him from exposure and sentence. Magwitch's convict
habits strangely blend themselves with his wild pride in, and love for,
the youth whom his money has turned into a gentleman. He has a craving
for his good opinion; dreads to offend him by his "heavy grubbing," or
by the oaths he lets fall now and then; and pathetically hopes his Pip,
his dear boy, won't think him "low": but, upon a chum of Pip's appearing
unexpectedly while they are together, he pulls out a jack-knife by way
of hint he can defend himself, and produces afterwards a greasy little
clasped black Testament on which the startled new-comer, being found to
have no hostile intention, is sworn to secrecy. At the opening of the
story there had been an exciting scene of the wretched man's chase and
recapture among the marshes, and this has its parallel at the close in
his chase and recapture on the river while poor Pip is helping to get
him off. To make himself sure of the actual course of a boat in such
circumstances, and what possible incidents the adventure might have,
Dickens hired a steamer for the day from Blackwall to Southend. Eight or
nine friends and three or four members of his family were on board, and
he seemed to have no care, the whole of that summer day (22nd of May
1861), except to enjoy their enjoyment and entertain them with his own
in shape of a thousand whims and fancies; but his sleepless observation
was at work all the time, and nothing had escaped his keen vision on
either side of the river. The fifteenth chapter of the third volume is a
masterpiece.
The characters generally afford the same evidence as those two that
Dickens's humour, not less than his creative power, was at its best in
this book. The Old-Bailey attorney Jaggers, and his clerk Wemmick (both
excellent, and the last one of the oddities that live in everybody's
liking for the goodheartedness of its humorous surprises), are as good
as his earliest efforts in that line; the Pumblechooks and Wopsles are
perfect as bits of _Nickleby_ fresh from the mint; and the scene in
which Pip, and Pip's chum Herbert, make up their accounts and schedule
their debts and obligations, is original and delightful as Micawber
himself. It is the art of living upon nothing and making the best of it,
in the most pleasing form. Herbert's intentions to trade east and west,
and get himself into business transactions of a magnificent extent and
variety, are as perfectly warranted to us, in his way of putting them,
by merely "being in a counting-house and looking about you," as Pip's
means of paying his debts are lightened and made easy by his method of
simply adding them up with a margin. "The time comes," says Herbert,
"when you see your opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it, and
you make your capital, and then there you are! When you have once made
your capital you have nothing to do but employ it." In like manner Pip
tells us "Suppose your debts to be one hundred and sixty four pounds
four and two-pence, I would say, leave a margin and put them down at two
hundred; or suppose them to be four times as much, leave a margin and
put them down at seven hundred." He is sufficiently candid to add, that,
while he has the highest opinion of the wisdom and prudence of the
margin, its dangers are that in the sense of freedom and solvency it
imparts there is a tendency to run into new debt. But the satire that
thus enforces the old warning against living upon vague hopes, and
paying ancient debts by contracting new ones, never presented itself in
more amusing or kindly shape. A word should be added of the father of
the girl that Herbert marries, Bill Barley, ex-ship's purser, a gouty,
bed-ridden, drunken old rascal, who lies on his back in an upper floor
on Mill Pond Bank by Chinks's Basin, where he keeps, weighs, and serves
out the family stores or provisions, according to old professional
practice, with one eye at a telescope which is fitted on his bed for the
convenience of sweeping the river. This is one of those sketches, slight
in itself but made rich with a wealth of comic observation, in which
Dickens's humour took especial delight; and to all this part of the
story, there is a quaint riverside flavour that gives it amusing reality
and relish.
Sending the chapters that contain it, which open the third division of
the tale, he wrote thus: "It is a pity that the third portion cannot be
read all at once, because its purpose would be much more apparent; and
the pity is the greater, because the general turn and tone of the
working out and winding up, will be away from all such things as they
conventionally go. But what must be, must be. As to the planning out
from week to week, nobody can imagine what the difficulty is, without
trying. But, as in all such cases, when it is overcome the pleasure is
proportionate. Two months more will see me through it, I trust. All the
iron is in the fire, and I have 'only' to beat it out." One other letter
throws light upon an objection taken not unfairly to the too great speed
with which the heroine, after being married, reclaimed, and widowed, is
in a page or two again made love to, and remarried by the hero. This
summary proceeding was not originally intended. But, over and above its
popular acceptance, the book had interested some whose opinions Dickens
specially valued (Carlyle among them, I remember);[269] and upon Bulwer
Lytton objecting to a close that should leave Pip a solitary man,
Dickens substituted what now stands. "You will be surprised" he wrote
"to hear that I have changed the end of _Great Expectations_ from and
after Pip's return to Joe's, and finding his little likeness there.
Bulwer, who has been, as I think you know, extraordinarily taken by the
book, so strongly urged it upon me, after reading the proofs, and
supported his view with such good reasons, that I resolved to make the
change. You shall have it when you come back to town. I have put in as
pretty a little piece of writing as I could, and I have no doubt the
story will be more acceptable through the alteration." This turned out
to be the case; but the first ending nevertheless seems to be more
consistent with the drift, as well as natural working out, of the tale,
and for this reason it is preserved in a note.[270]
CHRISTMAS SKETCHES.
Between that fine novel, which was issued in three volumes in the autumn
of 1861, and the completion of his next serial story, were interposed
three sketches in his happiest vein at which everyone laughed and cried
in the Christmas times of 1862, '3, and '4. Of the waiter in _Somebody's
Luggage_ Dickens has himself spoken; and if any theme is well treated,
when, from the point of view taken, nothing more is left to say about
it, that bit of fun is perfect. Call it exaggeration, grotesqueness, or
by what hard name you will, laughter will always intercept any graver
criticism. Writing from Paris of what he was himself responsible for in
the articles left by Somebody with his wonderful Waiter, he said that in
one of them he had made the story a camera obscura of certain French
places and styles of people; having founded it on something he had
noticed in a French soldier. This was the tale of Little Bebelle, which
had a small French corporal for its hero, and became highly popular. But
the triumph of the Christmas achievements in these days was Mrs.
Lirriper. She took her place at once among people known to everybody;
and all the world talked of Major Jemmy Jackman, and his friend the poor
elderly lodging-house keeper of the Strand, with her miserable cares
and rivalries and worries, as if they had both been as long in London
and as well known as Norfolk-street itself. A dozen volumes could not
have told more than those dozen pages did. The _Legacy_ followed the
_Lodgings_ in 1864, and there was no falling off in the fun and
laughter.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND.
The publication of _Our Mutual Friend_, in the form of the earliest
stories, extended from May 1864 to November 1865. Four years earlier he
had chosen this title as a good one, and he held to it through much
objection. Between that time and his actual commencement there is
mention, in his letters, of the three leading notions on which he
founded the story. In his water-side wanderings during his last book,
the many handbills he saw posted up, with dreary description of persons
drowned in the river, suggested the 'long shore men and their ghastly
calling whom he sketched in Hexam and Riderhood, "I think," he had
written, "a man, young and perhaps eccentric, feigning to be dead, and
_being_ dead to all intents and purposes external to himself, and for
years retaining the singular view of life and character so imparted,
would be a good leading incident for a story;" and this he partly did in
Rokesmith. For other actors in the tale, he had thought of "a poor
impostor of a man marrying a woman for her money; she marrying _him_ for
_his_ money; after marriage both finding out their mistake, and
entering into a league and covenant against folks in general:" with
whom he had proposed to connect some Perfectly New people. "Everything
new about them. If they presented a father and mother, it seemed as if
THEY must be bran new, like the furniture and the carriages--shining
with varnish, and just home from the manufacturers." These groups took
shape in the Lammles and the Veneerings. "I must use somehow," is the
remark of another letter, "the uneducated father in fustian and the
educated boy in spectacles whom Leech and I saw at Chatham;" of which a
hint is in Charley Hexam and his father. The benevolent old Jew whom he
makes the unconscious agent of a rascal, was meant to wipe out a
reproach against his Jew in _Oliver Twist_ as bringing dislike upon the
religion of the race he belonged to.[271]
Having got his title in '61 it was his hope to have begun in '62.
"Alas!" he wrote in the April of that year, "I have hit upon nothing for
a story. Again and again I have tried. But this odious little house" (he
had at this time for a few weeks exchanged Gadshill for a friend's house
near Kensington) "seems to have stifled and darkened my invention." It
was not until the autumn of the following year he saw his way to a
beginning. "The Christmas number has come round again" (30th of August
1863)--"it seems only yesterday that I did the last--but I am full of
notions besides for the new twenty numbers. When I can clear the
Christmas stone out of the road, I think I can dash into it on the
grander journey." He persevered through much difficulty; which he
described six weeks later, with characteristic glance at his own ways
when writing, in a letter from the office of his journal. "I came here
last night, to evade my usual day in the week--in fact to shirk it--and
get back to Gad's for five or six consecutive days. My reason is, that I
am exceedingly anxious to begin my book. I am bent upon getting to work
at it. I want to prepare it for the spring; but I am determined not to
begin to publish with less than five numbers done. I see my opening
perfectly, with the one main line on which the story is to turn; and if
I don't strike while the iron (meaning myself) is hot, I shall drift off
again, and have to go through all this uneasiness once more."
He had written, after four months, very nearly three numbers, when upon
a necessary rearrangement of his chapters he had to hit upon a new
subject for one of them. "While I was considering" (25th of February)
"what it should be, Marcus,[272] who has done an excellent cover, came
to tell me of an extraordinary trade he had found out, through one of
his painting requirements. I immediately went with him to Saint Giles's
to look at the place, and found--what you will see." It was the
establishment of Mr. Venus, preserver of animals and birds, and
articulator of human bones; and it took the place of the last chapter of
No. 2, which was then transferred to the end of No. 3. But a start with
three full numbers done, though more than enough to satisfy the hardest
self-conditions formerly, did not satisfy him now. With his previous
thought given to the story, with his Memoranda to help him, with the
people he had in hand to work it with, and ready as he still was to turn
his untiring observation to instant use on its behalf, he now moved,
with the old large canvas before him, somewhat slowly and painfully. "If
I were to lose" (29th of March) "a page of the five numbers I have
proposed to myself to be ready by the publication day, I should feel
that I had fallen short. I have grown hard to satisfy, and write very
slowly. And I have so much--not fiction--that _will_ be thought of, when
I don't want to think of it, that I am forced to take more care than I
once took."
The first number was launched at last, on the first of May; and after
two days he wrote: "Nothing can be better than _Our Friend_, now in his
thirtieth thousand, and orders flowing in fast." But between the first
and second number there was a drop of five thousand, strange to say, for
the larger number was again reached, and much exceeded, before the book
closed. "This leaves me" (10th of June) "going round and round like a
carrier-pigeon before swooping on number seven." Thus far he had held
his ground; but illness came, with some other anxieties, and on the 29th
of July he wrote sadly enough. "Although I have not been wanting in
industry, I have been wanting in invention, and have fallen back with
the book. Looming large before me is the Christmas work, and I can
hardly hope to do it without losing a number of _Our Friend_. I have
very nearly lost one already, and two would take one half of my whole
advance. This week I have been very unwell; am still out of sorts; and,
as I know from two days' slow experience, have a very mountain to climb
before I shall see the open country of my work." The three following
months brought hardly more favourable report. "I have not done my
number. This death of poor Leech (I suppose) has put me out woefully.
Yesterday and the day before I could do nothing; seemed for the time to
have quite lost the power; and am only by slow degrees getting back into
the track to-day." He rallied after this, and satisfied himself for a
while; but in February 1865 that formidable illness in his foot broke
out which, at certain times for the rest of his life, deprived him more
or less of his inestimable solace of bodily exercise. In April and May
he suffered severely; and after trying the sea went abroad for more
complete change. "Work and worry, without exercise, would soon make an
end of me. If I were not going away now, I should break down. No one
knows as I know to-day how near to it I have been."
That was the day of his leaving for France, and the day of his return
brought these few hurried words. "Saturday, tenth of June, 1865. I was
in the terrific Staplehurst accident yesterday, and worked for hours
among the dying and dead. I was in the carriage that did not go over,
but went off the line, and hung over the bridge in an inexplicable
manner. No words can describe the scene.[273] I am away to Gads." Though
with characteristic energy he resisted the effects upon himself of that
terrible ninth of June, they were for some time evident; and, up to the
day of his death on its fatal fifth anniversary, were perhaps never
wholly absent. But very few complaints fell from him. "I am curiously
weak--weak as if I were recovering from a long illness." "I begin to
feel it more in my head. I sleep well and eat well; but I write half a
dozen notes, and turn faint and sick." "I am getting right, though still
low in pulse and very nervous. Driving into Rochester yesterday I felt
more shaken than I have since the accident." "I cannot bear railway
travelling yet. A perfect conviction, against the senses, that the
carriage is down on one side (and generally that is the left, and _not_
the side on which the carriage in the accident really went over), comes
upon me with anything like speed, and is inexpressibly distressing."
These are passages from his letters up to the close of June. Upon his
book the immediate result was that another lost number was added to the
losses of the preceding months, and "alas!" he wrote at the opening of
July, "for the two numbers you write of! There is only one in existence.
I have but just begun the other." "Fancy!" he added next day, "fancy my
having under-written number sixteen by two and a half pages--a thing I
have not done since _Pickwick_!" He did it once with _Dombey_, and was
to do it yet again.
The book thus begun and continued under adverse influences, though with
fancy in it, descriptive power, and characters well designed, will never
rank with his higher efforts. It has some pictures of a rare veracity of
soul amid the lowest forms of social degradation, placed beside others
of sheer falsehood and pretence amid unimpeachable social correctness,
which lifted the writer to his old place; but the judgment of it on the
whole must be, that it wants freshness and natural development. This
indeed will be most freely admitted by those who feel most strongly that
all the old cunning of the master hand is yet in the wayward loving
Bella Wilfer, in the vulgar canting Podsnap, and in the dolls'
dressmaker Jenny Wren, whose keen little quaint weird ways, and
precocious wit sharpened by trouble, are fitted into a character as
original and delightfully conceived as it is vividly carried through to
the last. A dull coarse web her small life seems made of; but even from
its taskwork, which is undertaken for childhood itself, there are
glittering threads cast across its woof and warp of care. The
unconscious philosophy of her tricks and manners has in it more of the
subtler vein of the satire aimed at in the book, than even the voices of
society which the tale begins and ends with. In her very kindliness
there is the touch of malice that shows a childish playfulness familiar
with unnatural privations; this gives a depth as well as tenderness to
her humours which entitles them to rank with the writer's happiest
things; and though the odd little creature's talk is incessant when she
is on the scene, it has the individuality that so seldom tires. It is
veritably her own small "trick" and "manner," and is never mistakeable
for any one else's. "I have been reading," Dickens wrote to me from
France while he was writing the book, "a capital little story by Edmond
About--_The Notary's Nose_. I have been trying other books; but so
infernally conversational, that I forget who the people are before they
have done talking, and don't in the least remember what they talked
about before when they begin talking again!" The extreme contrast to his
own art could not be defined more exactly; and other examples from this
tale will be found in the differing members of the Wilfer family, in the
riverside people at the Fellowship Porters, in such marvellous
serio-comic scenes as that of Rogue Riderhood's restoration from
drowning, and in those short and simple annals of Betty Higden's life
and death which might have given saving virtue to a book more likely
than this to perish prematurely. It has not the creative power which
crowded his earlier page, and transformed into popular realities the
shadows of his fancy; but the observation and humour he excelled in are
not wanting to it, nor had there been, in his first completed work,
more eloquent or generous pleading for the poor and neglected, than this
last completed work contains. Betty Higden finishes what Oliver Twist
began.
DR. MARIGOLD AND TALES FOR AMERICA.
He had scarcely closed that book in September, wearied somewhat with a
labour of invention which had not been so free or self-sustaining as in
the old facile and fertile days, when his customary contribution to
Christmas became due from him; and his fancy, let loose in a narrower
field, resumed its old luxury of enjoyment. Here are notices of it from
his letters. "If people at large understand a Cheap Jack, my part of the
Christmas number will do well. It is wonderfully like the real thing, of
course a little refined and humoured." "I do hope that in the beginning
and end of this Christmas number you will find something that will
strike you as being fresh, forcible, and full of spirits." He described
its mode of composition afterwards. "Tired with _Our Mutual_, I sat down
to cast about for an idea, with a depressing notion that I was, for the
moment, overworked. Suddenly, the little character that you will see,
and all belonging to it, came flashing up in the most cheerful manner,
and I had only to look on and leisurely describe it." This was _Dr.
Marigold's Prescriptions_, one of the most popular of all the pieces
selected for his readings, and a splendid example of his humour, pathos,
and character. There were three more Christmas pieces before he made his
last visit to America: _Barbox Brothers_, _The Boy at Mugby Station_,
and _No Thoroughfare_: the last a joint piece of work with Mr. Wilkie
Collins, who during Dickens's absence in the States transformed it into
a play for Mr. Fechter, with a view to which it had been planned
originally. There were also two papers written for first publication in
America, _George Silverman's Explanation_, and _Holiday Romance_,
containing about the quantity of half a shilling number of his ordinary
serials, and paid for at a rate unexampled in literature. They occupied
him not many days in the writing, and he received a thousand pounds for
them.
* * * * *
The year after his return, as the reader knows, saw the commencement of
the work which death interrupted. The fragment will hereafter be
described; and here meanwhile may close my criticism--itself a fragment
left for worthier completion by a stronger hand than mine.
But at least I may hope that the ground has been cleared by it from
those distinctions and comparisons never safely to be applied to an
original writer, and which always more or less intercept his fair
appreciation. It was long the fashion to set up wide divergences between
novels of incident and manners, and novels of character; the narrower
range being left to Fielding and Smollett, and the larger to Richardson;
yet there are not many now who will accept such classification. Nor is
there more truth in other like distinctions alleged between novelists
who are assumed to be real, or ideal, in their methods of treatment. To
any original novelist of the higher grade there is no meaning in these
contrasted phrases. Neither mode can exist at all perfectly without the
other. No matter how sensitive the mind to external impressions, or how
keen the observation to whatever can be seen, without the rarer seeing
of imagination nothing will be arrived at that is real in any genuine
artist-sense. Reverse the proposition, and the result is expressed in an
excellent remark of Lord Lytton's, that the happiest effort of
imagination, however lofty it may be, is that which enables it to be
cheerfully at home with the real. I have said that Dickens felt
criticism, of whatever kind, with too sharp a relish for the
indifference he assumed to it; but the secret was that he believed
himself to be entitled to higher tribute than he was always in the habit
of receiving. It was the feeling which suggested a memorable saying of
Wordsworth. "I am not at all desirous that any one should write a
critique on my poems. If they be from above, they will do their own work
in course of time; if not, they will perish as they ought."
The something "from above" never seems to be absent from Dickens, even
at his worst. When the strain upon his invention became apparent, and he
could only work freely in a more confined space than of old, it was
still able to assert itself triumphantly; and his influence over his
readers was continued by it to the last day of his life. Looking back
over the series of his writings, the first reflection that rises to the
mind of any thoughtful person, is one of thankfulness that the most
popular of writers, who had carried into the lowest scenes and
conditions an amount of observation, fun, and humour not approached by
any of his contemporaries, should never have sullied that world-wide
influence by a hint of impurity or a possibility of harm. Nor is there
anything more surprising than the freshness and variety of character
which those writings include, within the range of the not numerous types
of character that were the limit of their author's genius. For, this
also appears, upon any review of them collectively, that the teeming
life which is in them is that of the time in which his own life was
passed; and that with the purpose of showing vividly its form and
pressure, was joined the hope and design to leave it better than he
found it. It has been objected that humanity receives from him no
addition to its best types; that the burlesque humourist is always
stronger in him than the reflective moralist; that the light thrown by
his genius into out of the way corners of life never steadily shines in
its higher beaten ways; and that beside his pictures of what man is or
does, there is no attempt to show, by delineation of an exalted purpose
or a great career, what man is able to be or to do. In the charge
abstractedly there is truth; but the fair remark upon it is that
whatever can be regarded as essential in the want implied by it will be
found in other forms in his writings, that the perfect innocence of
their laughter and tears has been itself a prodigious blessing, and that
it is otherwise incident to so great a humourist to work after the
fashion most natural to the genius of humour. What kind of work it has
been in his case, the attempt is made in preceding pages to show; and on
the whole it can be said with some certainty that the best ideals in
this sense are obtained, not by presenting with added comeliness or
grace the figures which life is ever eager to present as of its best,
but by connecting the singularities and eccentricities, which ordinary
life is apt to reject or overlook, with the appreciation that is deepest
and the laws of insight that are most universal. It is thus that all
things human are happily brought within human sympathy. It was at the
heart of everything Dickens wrote. It was the secret of the hope he had
that his books might help to make people better; and it so guarded them
from evil, that there is scarcely a page of the thousands he has written
which might not be put into the hands of a little child.[274] It made
him the intimate of every English household, and a familiar friend
wherever the language is spoken whose stores of harmless pleasure he has
so largely increased.
"The loss of no single man during the present generation, if we except
Abraham Lincoln alone," said Mr. Horace Greeley, describing the profound
and universal grief of America at his death, "has carried mourning into
so many families, and been so unaffectedly lamented through all the
ranks of society." "The terrible news from England," wrote Longfellow to
me (Cambridge, Mass. 12th of June 1870), "fills us all with
inexpressible sadness. Dickens was so full of life that it did not seem
possible he could die, and yet he has gone before us, and we are
sorrowing for him. . . . I never knew an author's death cause such general
mourning. It is no exaggeration to say that this whole country is
stricken with grief . . ." Nor was evidence then wanting, that far beyond
the limits of society on that vast continent the English writer's
influence had penetrated. Of this, very touching illustration was given
in my first volume; and proof even more striking has since been afforded
to me, that not merely in wild or rude communities, but in life the most
savage and solitary, his genius had helped to while time away.
"Like all Americans who read," writes an American gentleman, "and that
takes in nearly all our people, I am an admirer and student of
Dickens. . . . Its perusal" (that of my second volume) "has recalled an
incident which may interest you. Twelve or thirteen years ago I crossed
the Sierra Nevada mountains as a Government surveyor under a famous
frontiersman and civil engineer--Colonel Lander. We were too early by a
month, and became snow-bound just on the very summit. Under these
circumstances it was necessary to abandon the wagons for a time, and
drive the stock (mules) down the mountains to the valleys where there
was pasturage and running water. This was a long and difficult task,
occupying several days. On the second day, in a spot where we expected
to find nothing more human than a grizzly bear or an elk, we found a
little hut, built of pine boughs and a few rough boards clumsily hewn
out of small trees with an axe. The hut was covered with snow many feet
deep, excepting only the hole in the roof which served for a chimney,
and a small pit-like place in front to permit egress. The occupant came
forth to hail us and solicit whisky and tobacco. He was dressed in a
suit made entirely of flour-sacks, and was curiously labelled on various
parts of his person _Best Family Flour_. _Extra._ His head was covered
by a wolf's skin drawn from the brute's head--with the ears standing
erect in a fierce alert manner. He was a most extraordinary object, and
told us he had not seen a human being in four months. He lived on bear
and elk meat and flour laid in during his short summer. Emigrants in
the season paid him a kind of ferry-toll. I asked him how he passed his
time, and he went to a barrel and produced _Nicholas Nickleby_ and
_Pickwick_. I found he knew them almost by heart. He did not know, or
seem to care, about the author; but he gloried in Sam Weller, despised
Squeers, and would probably have taken the latter's scalp with great
skill and cheerfulness. For Mr. Winkle he had no feeling but contempt,
and in fact regarded a fowling-piece as only a toy for a squaw. He had
no Bible; and perhaps if he practised in his rude savage way all Dickens
taught, he might less have felt the want even of that companion."
FOOTNOTES:
[261] I hope my readers will find themselves able to understand that, as
well as this which follows: "What seems preposterous, impossible to us,
seemed to him simple fact of observation. When he imagined a street, a
house, a room, a figure, he saw it not in the vague schematic way of
ordinary imagination, but in the sharp definition of actual perception,
all the salient details obtruding themselves on his attention. He,
seeing it thus vividly, made us also see it; and believing in its
reality however fantastic, he communicated something of his belief to
us. He presented it in such relief that we ceased to think of it as a
picture. So definite and insistent was the image, that even while
knowing it was false we could not help, for a moment, being affected, as
it were, by his hallucination."
[262] "Though," John Ballantyne told Lockhart, "he often turned himself
on his pillow with a groan of torment, he usually continued the sentence
in the same breath. But when dialogue of peculiar animation was in
progress, spirit seemed to triumph altogether over matter--he arose from
his couch and walked up and down the room, raising and lowering his
voice, and as it were acting the parts." _Lockhart_, vi. 67-8. The
statement of James Ballantyne is at p. 89 of the same volume. The
original incidents on which Scott had founded the tale he remembered,
but "not a single character woven by the romancer, not one of the many
scenes and points of humour, nor anything with which he was connected as
the writer of the work."
[263] "Do you know _Master Humphrey's Clock_! I admire Nell in the _Old
Curiosity Shop_ exceedingly. The whole thing is a good deal borrowed
from _Wilhelm Meister_. But little Nell is a far purer, lovelier, more
_English_ conception than Mignon, treasonable as the saying would seem
to some. No doubt it was suggested by Mignon."--Sara Coleridge to Aubrey
de Vere (_Memoirs and Letters_, ii. 269-70). Expressing no opinion on
this comparison, I may state it as within my knowledge that the book
referred to was not then known to Dickens.
[264] The distinction I then pointed out was remarked by Sara Coleridge
(_Memoirs and Letters_, ii. 169) in writing of her children. "They like
to talk to me . . . above all about the productions of Dickens, the
never-to-be-exhausted fun of _Pickwick_, and the capital new strokes of
_Martin Chuzzlewit_. This last work contains, besides all the fun, some
very marked and available morals. I scarce know any book in which the
evil and odiousness of selfishness are more forcibly brought out, or in
a greater variety of exhibitions. In the midst of the merry quotations,
or at least on any fair opportunity, I draw the boys' attention to these
points."
[265] All the remarks in my text had been some time in type when Lord
Lytton sent me what follows, from one of his father's manuscript (and
unpublished) note-books. Substantially it agrees with what I have said;
and such unconscious testimony of a brother novelist of so high a rank,
careful in the study of his art, is of special value. "The greatest
masters of the novel of modern manners have generally availed themselves
of Humour for the illustration of manners; and have, with a deep and
true, but perhaps unconscious, knowledge of art, pushed the humour
almost to the verge of caricature. For, as the serious ideal requires a
certain exaggeration in the proportions of the natural, so also does the
ludicrous. Thus Aristophanes, in painting the humours of his time,
resorts to the most poetical extravagance of machinery, and calls the
Clouds in aid of his ridicule of philosophy, or summons Frogs and Gods
to unite in his satire on Euripides. The Don Quixote of Cervantes never
lived, nor, despite the vulgar belief, ever could have lived, in Spain;
but the art of the portrait is in the admirable exaltation of the
humorous by means of the exaggerated. With more or less qualification,
the same may be said of Parson Adams, of Sir Roger de Coverley, and even
of the Vicar of Wakefield. . . . It follows therefore that art and
correctness are far from identical, and that the one is sometimes proved
by the disdain of the other. For the ideal, whether humorous or serious,
does not consist in the imitation but in the exaltation of nature. And
we must accordingly enquire of art, not how far it resembles what we
have seen, so much as how far it embodies what we can imagine."
[266] I cannot refuse myself the satisfaction of quoting, from the best
criticism of Dickens I have seen since his death, remarks very pertinent
to what is said in my text. "Dickens possessed an imagination
unsurpassed, not only in vividness, but in swiftness. I have
intentionally avoided all needless comparisons of his works with those
of other writers of his time, some of whom have gone before him to their
rest, while others survive to gladden the darkness and relieve the
monotony of our daily life. But in the power of his imagination--of this
I am convinced--he surpassed them, one and all. That imagination could
call up at will those associations which, could we but summon them in
their full number, would bind together the human family, and make that
expression no longer a name, but a living reality. . . . Such associations
sympathy alone can warm into life, and imagination alone can at times
discern. The great humourist reveals them to every one of us; and his
genius is indeed an inspiration from no human source, in that it enables
him to render this service to the brotherhood of mankind. But more than
this. So marvellously has this earth become the inheritance of mankind,
that there is not a thing upon it, animate or inanimate, with which, or
with the likeness of which, man's mind has not come into contact; . . .
with which human feelings, aspirations, thoughts, have not acquired an
endless variety of single or subtle associations. . . . These also, which
we imperfectly divine or carelessly pass by, the imagination of genius
distinctly reveals to us, and powerfully impresses upon us. When they
appeal directly to the emotions of the heart, it is the power of Pathos
which has awakened them; and when the suddenness, the unexpectedness,
the apparent oddity of the one by the side of the other, strike the mind
with irresistible force, it is the equally divine gift of Humour which
has touched the spring of laughter by the side of the spring of
tears."--_Charles Dickens. A Lecture by Professor Ward. Delivered in
Manchester, 30th November, 1870._
[267] The opening of this letter (25th of August 1859), referring to a
conviction for murder, afterwards reversed by a Home Office pardon
against the continued and steadily expressed opinion of the judge who
tried the case, is much too characteristic of the writer to be lost. "I
cannot easily tell you how much interested I am by what you tell me of
our brave and excellent friend. . . . I have often had more than half a
mind to write and thank that upright judge. I declare to heaven that I
believe such a service one of the greatest that a man of intellect and
courage can render to society. . . . Of course I have been driving the
girls out of their wits here, by incessantly proclaiming that there
needed no medical evidence either way, and that the case was plain
without it. . . . Lastly of course (though a merciful man--because a
merciful man, I mean), I would hang any Home Secretary, Whig, Tory,
Radical, or otherwise, who should step in between so black a scoundrel
and the gallows. . . . I am reminded of Tennyson by thinking that King
Arthur would have made short work of the amiable man! How fine the
Idylls are! Lord! what a blessed thing it is to read a man who really
can write. I thought nothing could be finer than the first poem, till I
came to the third; but when I had read the last, it seemed to me to be
absolutely unapproachable." Other literary likings rose and fell with
him, but he never faltered in his allegiance to Tennyson.
[268] Mr. Grant White, whose edition of Shakespeare has been received
with much respect in England.
[269] A dear friend now gone, used laughingly to relate what outcry
there used to be, on the night of the week when a number was due, for
"that Pip nonsense!" and what roars of laughter followed, though at
first it was entirely put aside as not on any account to have time
wasted over it.
[270] There was no Chapter xx. as now; but the sentence which opens it
("For eleven years" in the original, altered to "eight years") followed
the paragraph about his business partnership with Herbert, and led to
Biddy's question whether he is sure he does not fret for Estella ("I am
sure and certain, Biddy" as originally written, altered to "O no--I
think not, Biddy"): from which point here was the close. "It was two
years more, before I saw herself. I had heard of her as leading a most
unhappy life, and as being separated from her husband who had used her
with great cruelty, and who had become quite renowned as a compound of
pride, brutality, and meanness. I had heard of the death of her husband
(from an accident consequent on ill-treating a horse), and of her being
married again to a Shropshire doctor, who, against his interest, had
once very manfully interposed, on an occasion when he was in
professional attendance on Mr. Drummle, and had witnessed some
outrageous treatment of her. I had heard that the Shropshire doctor was
not rich, and that they lived on her own personal fortune. I was in
England again--in London, and walking along Piccadilly with little
Pip--when a servant came running after me to ask would I step back to a
lady in a carriage who wished to speak to me. It was a little pony
carriage, which the lady was driving; and the lady and I looked sadly
enough on one another. 'I am greatly changed, I know; but I thought you
would like to shake hands with Estella too, Pip. Lift up that pretty
child and let me kiss it!' (She supposed the child, I think, to be my
child.) I was very glad afterwards to have had the interview; for, in
her face and in her voice, and in her touch, she gave me the assurance,
that suffering had been stronger than Miss Havisham's teaching, and had
given her a heart to understand what my heart used to be."
[271] On this reproach, from a Jewish lady whom he esteemed, he had
written two years before. "Fagin, in _Oliver Twist_, is a Jew, because
it unfortunately was true, of the time to which that story refers, that
that class of criminal almost invariably _was_ a Jew. But surely no
sensible man or woman of your persuasion can fail to observe--firstly,
that all the rest of the wicked _dramatis personæ_ are Christians; and,
secondly, that he is called 'The Jew,' not because of his religion, but
because of his race."
[272] Mr. Marcus Stone had, upon the separate issue of the _Tale of Two
Cities_, taken the place of Mr. Hablot Browne as his illustrator. _Hard
Times_ and the first edition of _Great Expectations_ were not
illustrated; but when Pip's story appeared in one volume, Mr. Stone
contributed designs for it.
[273] He thus spoke of it in his "Postscript in lieu of Preface" (dated
2nd of September 1865), which accompanied the last number of the story
under notice. "On Friday the ninth of June in the present year, Mr. and
Mrs. Boffin (in their manuscript dress of receiving Mr. and Mrs. Lammle
at breakfast) were on the South-Eastern Railway with me, in a terribly
destructive accident. When I had done what I could to help others, I
climbed back into my carriage--nearly turned over a viaduct, and caught
aslant upon the turn--to extricate the worthy couple. They were much
soiled, but otherwise unhurt. The same happy result attended Miss Bella
Wilfer on her wedding-day, and Mr. Riderhood inspecting Bradley
Headstone's red neckerchief as he lay asleep. I remember with devout
thankfulness that I can never be much nearer parting company with my
readers for ever, than I was then, until there shall be written against
my life the two words with which I have this day closed this book--THE
END."
[274] I borrow this language from the Bishop of Manchester, who, on the
third day after Dickens's death, in the Abbey where he was so soon to be
laid, closed a plea for the toleration of differences of opinion where
the foundations of religious truth are accepted, with these words. "It
will not be out of harmony with the line of thought we have been
pursuing--certainly it will be in keeping with the associations of this
place, dear to Englishmen, not only as one of the proudest Christian
temples, but as containing the memorials of so many who by their genius
in arts, or arms, or statesmanship, or literature, have made England
what she is--if in the simplest and briefest words I allude to that sad
and unexpected death which has robbed English literature of one of its
highest living ornaments, and the news of which, two mornings ago, must
have made every household in England feel as though they had lost a
personal friend. He has been called in one notice an apostle of the
people. I suppose it is meant that he had a mission, but in a style and
fashion of his own; a gospel, a cheery, joyous, gladsome message, which
the people understood, and by which they could hardly help being
bettered; for it was the gospel of kindliness, of brotherly love, of
sympathy in the widest sense of the word. I am sure I have felt in
myself the healthful spirit of his teaching. Possibly we might not have
been able to subscribe to the same creed in relation to God, but I think
we should have subscribed to the same creed in relation to man. He who
has taught us our duty to our fellow men better than we knew it before,
who knew so well to weep with them that wept, and to rejoice with them
that rejoiced, who has shown forth in all his knowledge of the dark
corners of the earth how much sunshine may rest upon the lowliest lot,
who had such evident sympathy with suffering, and such a natural
instinct of purity that there is scarcely a page of the thousands he has
written which might not be put into the hands of a little child, must be
regarded by those who recognise the diversity of the gifts of the spirit
as a teacher sent from God. He would have been welcomed as a
fellow-labourer in the common interests of humanity by Him who asked the
question 'If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he
love God whom he hath not seen?'"
CHAPTER XV.
AMERICA REVISITED: NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 1867.
1867.
In Boston--Warmth of the Greeting--Old and New
Friends--Changes since 1842--Sale of Tickets in
New York--First Boston Reading--Profits--Scene
at First New York Sales--A Fire at the
Hotel--Increase of New York City--Story of
_Black Crook_--Local and General
Politics--Railway Travelling--Police of New
York--Again in Boston--More Fires--New York
Newspapers generally--Cities chosen for
Readings--The Webster Murder in 1849--Again at
New York--Illness--Mr. Fields's Account of
Dickens while in America--Miseries of American
Travel.
IT is the intention of this and the following chapter to narrate the
incidents of the visit to America in Dickens's own language, and in that
only. They will consist almost exclusively of extracts from his letters
written home, to members of his family and to myself.
On the night of Tuesday the 19th of November he arrived at Boston, where
he took up his residence at the Parker House hotel; and his first letter
(21st) stated that the tickets for the first four Readings, all to that
time issued, had been sold immediately on their becoming saleable. "An
immense train of people waited in the freezing street for twelve hours,
and passed into the office in their turns, as at a French theatre. The
receipts already taken for these nights exceed our calculation by more
than £250." Up to the last moment, he had not been able to clear off
wholly a shade of misgiving that some of the old grudges might make
themselves felt; but from the instant of his setting foot in Boston not
a vestige of such fear remained. The greeting was to the full as
extraordinary as that of twenty-five years before, and was given now, as
then, to the man who had made himself the most popular writer in the
country. His novels and tales were crowding the shelves of all the
dealers in books in all the cities of the Union. In every house, in
every car, on every steamboat, in every theatre of America, the
characters, the fancies, the phraseology of Dickens were become familiar
beyond those of any other writer of books. "Even in England," said one
of the New York journals, "Dickens is less known than here; and of the
millions here who treasure every word he has written, there are tens of
thousands who would make a large sacrifice to see and hear the man who
has made happy so many hours. Whatever sensitiveness there once was to
adverse or sneering criticism, the lapse of a quarter of a century, and
the profound significance of a great war, have modified or removed." The
point was more pithily, and as truly, put by Mr. Horace Greeley in the
_Tribune_. "The fame as a novelist which Mr. Dickens had already created
in America, and which, at the best, has never yielded him anything
particularly munificent or substantial, is become his capital stock in
the present enterprise."
The first Reading was appointed for the second of December, and in the
interval he saw some old friends and made some new ones.[275] Boston he
was fond of comparing to Edinburgh as Edinburgh was in the days when
several dear friends of his own still lived there. Twenty-five years had
changed much in the American city; some genial faces were gone, and on
ground which he had left a swamp he found now the most princely streets;
but there was no abatement of the old warmth of kindness, and, with
every attention and consideration shown to him, there was no intrusion.
He was not at first completely conscious of the change in this respect,
or of the prodigious increase in the size of Boston. But the latter grew
upon him from day to day, and then there was impressed along with it a
contrast to which it was difficult to reconcile himself. Nothing
enchanted him so much as what he again saw of the delightful domestic
life of Cambridge, simple, self-respectful, cordial, and affectionate;
and it seemed impossible to believe that within half an hour's distance
of it should be found what might at any time be witnessed in such hotels
as that which he was staying at: crowds of swaggerers, loafers,
bar-loungers, and dram-drinkers, that seemed to be making up, from day
to day, not the least important-part of the human life of the city. But
no great mercantile resort in the States, such as Boston had now become,
could be without that drawback; and fortunate should we account any
place to be, though even so plague-afflicted, that has yet so near it
the healthier influence of the other life which our older world has
wellnigh lost altogether.
"The city has increased prodigiously in twenty-five years," he wrote to
his daughter Mary. "It has grown more mercantile. It is like Leeds mixed
with Preston, and flavoured with New Brighton. Only, instead of smoke
and fog, there is an exquisitely bright light air." "Cambridge is
exactly as I left it," he wrote to me. "Boston more mercantile, and much
larger. The hotel I formerly stayed at, and thought a very big one, is
now regarded as a very small affair. I do not yet notice--but a day, you
know, is not a long time for observation!--any marked change in
character or habits. In this immense hotel I live very high up, and have
a hot and cold bath in my bed room, with other comforts not in existence
in my former day. The cost of living is enormous." "Two of the staff are
at New York," he wrote to his sister-in-law on the 25th of November,
"where we are at our wits' end how to keep tickets out of the hands of
speculators. We have communications from all parts of the country, but
we take no offer whatever. The young under-graduates of Cambridge have
made a representation to Longfellow that they are 500 strong and cannot
get one ticket. I don't know what is to be done, but I suppose I must
read there, somehow. We are all in the clouds until I shall have broken
ground in New York." The sale of tickets, there, had begun two days
before the first reading in Boston. "At the New York barriers," he wrote
to his daughter on the first of December, "where the tickets were on
sale and the people ranged as at the Paris theatres, speculators went up
and down offering twenty dollars for any body's place. The money was in
no case accepted. But one man sold two tickets for the second, third,
and fourth nights; his payment in exchange being one ticket for the
first night, fifty dollars (about £7 10_s._), and a 'brandy-cocktail.'"
On Monday the second of December he read for the first time in Boston,
his subjects being the _Carol_ and the _Trial from Pickwick_; and his
reception, from an audience than which perhaps none more remarkable
could have been brought together, went beyond all expectations formed.
"It is really impossible," he wrote to me next morning, "to exaggerate
the magnificence of the reception or the effect of the reading. The
whole city will talk of nothing else and hear of nothing else to-day.
Every ticket for those announced here, and in New York, is sold. All are
sold at the highest price, for which in our calculation we made no
allowance; and it is impossible to keep out speculators who immediately
sell at a premium. At the decreased rate of money even, we had above
£450 English in the house last night; and the New York hall holds 500
people more. Everything looks brilliant beyond the most sanguine hopes,
and I was quite as cool last night as though I were reading at Chatham."
The next night he read again; and also on Thursday and Friday; on
Wednesday he had rested; and on Saturday he travelled to New York.
He had written, the day before he left, that he was making a clear
profit of thirteen hundred pounds English a week, even allowing seven
dollars to the pound; but words were added having no good omen in them,
that the weather was taking a turn of even unusual severity, and that he
found the climate, in the suddenness of its changes, "and the wide leaps
they take," excessively trying. "The work is of course rather trying
too; but the sound position that everything must be subservient to it
enables me to keep aloof from invitations. To-morrow," ran the close of
the letter, "we move to New York. We cannot beat the speculators in our
tickets. We sell no more than six to any one person for the course of
four readings; but these speculators, who sell at greatly increased
prices and make large profits, will employ any number of men to buy. One
of the chief of them--now living in this house, in order that he may
move as we move!--can put on 50 people in any place we go to; and thus
he gets 300 tickets into his own hands." Almost while Dickens was
writing these words an eye-witness was describing to a Philadelphia
paper the sale of the New York tickets. The pay-place was to open at
nine on a Wednesday morning, and at midnight of Tuesday a long line of
speculators were assembled in _queue_; at two in the morning a few
honest buyers had begun to arrive; at five there were, of all classes,
two lines of not less than 800 each; at eight there were at least 5000
persons in the two lines; at nine each line was more than three-quarters
of a mile in length, and neither became sensibly shorter during the
whole morning. "The tickets for the course were all sold before noon.
Members of families relieved each other in the _queues_; waiters flew
across the streets and squares from the neighbouring restaurant, to
serve parties who were taking their breakfast in the open December air;
while excited men offered five and ten dollars for the mere permission
to exchange places with other persons standing nearer the head of the
line!"
The effect of the reading in New York corresponded with this marvellous
preparation, and Dickens characterised his audience as an unexpected
support to him; in its appreciation quick and unfailing, and highly
demonstrative in its satisfactions. On the 11th of December he wrote to
his daughter: "Amazing success. A very fine audience, far better than at
Boston. _Carol_ and _Trial_ on first night, great: still greater,
_Copperfield_ and _Bob Sawyer_ on second. For the tickets of the four
readings of next week there were, at nine o'clock this morning, 3000
people in waiting, and they had begun to assemble in the bitter cold as
early as two o'clock in the morning." To myself he wrote on the 15th,
adding touches to the curious picture. "Dolby has got into trouble about
the manner of issuing the tickets for next week's series. He cannot get
four thousand people into a room holding only two thousand, he cannot
induce people to pay at the ordinary price for themselves instead of
giving thrice as much to speculators, and he is attacked in all
directions . . . I don't much like my hall, for it has two large
balconies far removed from the platform; but no one ever waylays me as I
go into it or come out of it, and it is kept as rigidly quiet as the
Français at a rehearsal. We have not yet had in it less than £430 per
night, allowing for the depreciated currency! I send £3000 to England by
this packet. From all parts of the States, applications and offers
continually come in. We go to Boston next Saturday for two more
readings, and come back here on Christmas Day for four more. I am not
yet bound to go elsewhere, except three times (each time for two nights)
to Philadelphia; thinking it wisest to keep free for the largest places.
I have had an action brought against me by a man who considered himself
injured (and really may have been) in the matter of his tickets.
Personal service being necessary, I was politely waited on by a marshal
for that purpose; whom I received with the greatest courtesy, apparently
very much to his amazement. The action was handsomely withdrawn next
day, and the plaintiff paid his own costs. . . . Dolby hopes you are
satisfied with the figures so far; the profit each night exceeding the
estimated profit by £130 odd. He is anxious I should also tell you that
he is the most unpopular and best-abused man in America." Next day a
letter to his sister-in-law related an incident too common in American
cities to disconcert any but strangers. He had lodged himself, I should
have said, at the Westminster Hotel in Irving Place. "Last night I was
getting into bed just at 12 o'clock, when Dolby came to my door to
inform me that the house was on fire. I got Scott up directly; told him
first to pack the books and clothes for the Readings; dressed, and
pocketed my jewels and papers; while the manager stuffed himself out
with money. Meanwhile the police and firemen were in the house tracing
the mischief to its source in a certain fire-grate. By this time the
hose was laid all through from a great tank on the roof, and everybody
turned out to help. It was the oddest sight, and people had put the
strangest things on! After chopping and cutting with axes through
stairs, and much handing about of water, the fire was confined to a
dining-room in which it had originated; and then everybody talked to
everybody else, the ladies being particularly loquacious and cheerful. I
may remark that the second landlord (from both, but especially the
first, I have had untiring attention) no sooner saw me on this agitating
occasion, than, with his property blazing, he insisted on taking me down
into a room full of hot smoke, to drink brandy and water with him! And
so we got to bed again about 2."
Dickens had been a week in New York before he was able to identify the
great city which a lapse of twenty-five years had so prodigiously
increased. "The only portion that has even now come back to me," he
wrote, "is the part of Broadway in which the Carlton Hotel (long since
destroyed) used to stand. There is a very fine new park in the
outskirts, and the number of grand houses and splendid equipages is
quite surprising. There are hotels close here with 500 bedrooms and I
don't know how many boarders; but this hotel is quite as quiet as, and
not much larger than, Mivart's in Brook Street. My rooms are all en
suite, and I come and go by a private door and private staircase
communicating with my bed-room. The waiters are French, and one might be
living in Paris. One of the two proprietors is also proprietor of
Niblo's Theatre, and the greatest care is taken of me. Niblo's great
attraction, the _Black Crook_, has now been played every night for 16
months(!), and is the most preposterous peg to hang ballets on that was
ever seen. The people who act in it have not the slightest idea of what
it is about, and never had; but, after taxing my intellectual powers to
the utmost, I fancy that I have discovered Black Crook to be a malignant
hunchback leagued with the Powers of Darkness to separate two lovers;
and that the Powers of Lightness coming (in no skirts whatever) to the
rescue, he is defeated. I am quite serious in saying that I do not
suppose there are two pages of _All the Year Round_ in the whole piece
(which acts all night); the whole of the rest of it being ballets of all
sorts, perfectly unaccountable processions, and the Donkey out of last
year's Covent Garden pantomime! At the other theatres, comic operas,
melodramas, and domestic dramas prevail all over the city, and my
stories play no inconsiderable part in them. I go nowhere, having laid
down the rule that to combine visiting with my work would be absolutely
impossible. . . . The Fenian explosion at Clerkenwell was telegraphed here
in a few hours. I do not think there is any sympathy whatever with the
Fenians on the part of the American people, though political
adventurers may make capital out of a show of it. But no doubt large
sections of the Irish population of this State are themselves Fenian;
and the local politics of the place are in a most depraved condition, if
half of what is said to me be true. I prefer not to talk of these
things, but at odd intervals I look round for myself. Great social
improvements in respect of manners and forbearance have come to pass
since I was here before, but in public life I see as yet but little
change."
He had got through half of his first New York readings when a winter
storm came on, and from this time until very near his return the
severity of the weather was exceptional even for America. When the first
snow fell, the railways were closed for some days; and he described New
York crowded with sleighs, and the snow piled up in enormous walls the
whole length of the streets. "I turned out in a rather gorgeous sleigh
yesterday with any quantity of buffalo robes, and made an imposing
appearance." "If you were to behold me driving out," he wrote to his
daughter, "furred up to the moustache, with an immense white
red-and-yellow-striped rug for a covering, you would suppose me to be of
Hungarian or Polish nationality." These protections nevertheless availed
him little; and when the time came for getting back to Boston, he found
himself at the close of his journey with a cold and cough that never
again left him until he had quitted the country, and of which the
effects became more and more disastrous. For the present there was
little allusion to this, his belief at the first being strong that he
should overmaster it; but it soon forced itself into all his letters.
His railway journey otherwise had not been agreeable. "The railways are
truly alarming. Much worse (because more worn I suppose) than when I was
here before. We were beaten about yesterday, as if we had been aboard
the Cuba. Two rivers have to be crossed, and each time the whole train
is banged aboard a big steamer. The steamer rises and falls with the
river, which the railroad don't do; and the train is either banged up
hill or banged down hill. In coming off the steamer at one of these
crossings yesterday, we were banged up such a height that the rope
broke, and one carriage rushed back with a run down-hill into the boat
again. I whisked out in a moment, and two or three others after me; but
nobody else seemed to care about it. The treatment of the luggage is
perfectly outrageous. Nearly every case I have is already broken. When
we started from Boston yesterday, I beheld, to my unspeakable amazement,
Scott, my dresser, leaning a flushed countenance against the wall of the
car, and _weeping bitterly_. It was over my smashed writing-desk. Yet
the arrangements for luggage are excellent, if the porters would not be
beyond description reckless." The same excellence of provision, and
flinging away of its advantages, are observed in connection with another
subject in the same letter. "The halls are excellent. Imagine one
holding two thousand people, seated with exact equality for every one of
them, and every one seated separately. I have nowhere, at home or
abroad, seen so fine a police as the police of New York; and their
bearing in the streets is above all praise. On the other hand, the laws
for regulation of public vehicles, clearing of streets, and removal of
obstructions, are wildly outraged by the people for whose benefit they
are intended. Yet there is undoubtedly improvement in every direction,
and I am taking time to make up my mind on things in general. Let me add
that I have been tempted out at three in the morning to visit one of the
large police station-houses, and was so fascinated by the study of a
horrible photograph-book of thieves' portraits that I couldn't shut it
up."
A letter of the same date (22nd) to his sister-in-law told of personal
attentions awaiting him on his return to Boston by which he was greatly
touched. He found his rooms garnished with flowers and holly, with real
red berries, and with festoons of moss; and the homely Christmas look of
the place quite affected him. "There is a certain Captain Dolliver
belonging to the Boston custom-house, who came off in the little steamer
that brought me ashore from the Cuba; and he took it into his head that
he would have a piece of English mistletoe brought out in this week's
Cunard, which should be laid upon my breakfast-table. And there it was
this morning. In such affectionate touches as this, these New England
people are especially amiable. . . . As a general rule you may lay it down
that whatever you see about me in the papers is not true; but you may
generally lend a more believing ear to the Philadelphia correspondent of
the _Times_, a well-informed gentleman. Our hotel in New York was on
fire again the other night. But fires in this country are quite matters
of course. There was a large one in Boston at four this morning; and I
don't think a single night has passed, since I have been under the
protection of the Eagle, that I have not heard the Fire Bells dolefully
clanging all over both cities." The violent abuse of his manager by
portions of the press is the subject of the rest of the letter, and
receives farther illustration in one of the same date to me. "A good
specimen of the sort of newspaper you and I know something of, came out
in Boston here this morning. The editor had applied for our
advertisements, saying that 'it was at Mr. D's disposal for paragraphs.'
The advertisements were not sent; Dolby did not enrich its columns
paragraphically; and among its news to-day is the item that 'this chap
calling himself Dolby got drunk down town last night, and was taken to
the police station for fighting an Irishman!' I am sorry to say that I
don't find anybody to be much shocked by this liveliness." It is right
to add what was said to me a few days later. "The _Tribune_ is an
excellent paper. Horace Greeley is editor in chief, and a considerable
shareholder too. All the people connected with it whom I have seen are
of the best class. It is also, a very fine property--but here the _New
York Herald_ beats it hollow, hollow, hollow! Another able and well
edited paper is the _New York Times_. A most respectable journal too is
Bryant's _Evening Post_, excellently written. There is generally a much
more responsible and respectable tone than prevailed formerly, however
small may be the literary merit, among papers pointed out to me as of
large circulation. In much of the writing there is certainly
improvement, but it might be more widely spread."
The time had now come when the course his Readings were to take
independently of the two leading cities must be settled, and the general
tour made out. His agent's original plan was that they should be in New
York every week. "But I say No. By the 10th of January I shall have read
to 35,000 people in that city alone. Put the readings out of the reach
of all the people behind them, for the time. It is that one of the
popular peculiarities which I most particularly notice, that they must
not have a thing too easily. Nothing in the country lasts long; and a
thing is prized the more, the less easy it is made. Reflecting therefore
that I shall want to close, in April, with farewell readings here and in
New York, I am convinced that the crush and pressure upon these
necessary to their adequate success is only to be got by absence; and
that the best thing I can do is not to give either city as much reading
as it wants now, but to be independent of both while both are most
enthusiastic. I have therefore resolved presently to announce in New
York so many readings (I mean a certain number) as the last that can be
given there, before I travel to promised places; and that we select the
best places, with the largest halls, on our list. This will include,
East here--the two or three best New England towns; South--Baltimore and
Washington; West--Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and St. Louis; and
towards Niagara--Cleveland and Buffalo. Philadelphia we are already
pledged to, for six nights; and the scheme will pretty easily bring us
here again twice before the farewells. I feel convinced that this is the
sound policy." (It was afterwards a little modified, as will be seen, by
public occurrences and his own condition of health; the West, as well
as a promise to Canada, having to be abandoned; but otherwise it was
carried out.) "I read here to-morrow and Tuesday; all tickets being sold
to the end of the series, even for subjects not announced. I have not
read a single time at a lower clear profit per night (all deductions
made) than £315. But rely upon it I shall take great care not to read
oftener than four times a week--after this next week, when I stand
committed to five. The inevitable tendency of the staff, when these
great houses excite them, is, in the words of an old friend of ours, to
'hurge the hartist hon;' and a night or two ago I had to cut away five
readings from _their_ list."
An incident at Boston should have mention before he resumes his readings
in New York. In the interval since he was first in America, the Harvard
professor of chemistry, Dr. Webster, whom he had at that visit met among
the honoured men who held chairs in their Cambridge University, had been
hanged for the murder, committed in his laboratory in the college, of a
friend who had lent him money, portions of whose body lay concealed
under the lid of the lecture-room table where the murderer continued to
meet his students. "Being in Cambridge," Dickens wrote to Lord Lytton,
"I thought I would go over the Medical School, and see the exact
localities where Professor Webster did that amazing murder, and worked
so hard to rid himself of the body of the murdered man. (I find there is
of course no rational doubt that the Professor was always a secretly
cruel man.) They were horribly grim, private, cold, and quiet; the
identical furnace smelling fearfully (some anatomical broth in it I
suppose) as if the body were still there; jars of pieces of sour
mortality standing about, like the forty robbers in _Ali Baba_ after
being scalded to death; and bodies near us ready to be carried in to
next morning's lecture. At the house where I afterwards dined I heard an
amazing and fearful story; told by one who had been at a dinner-party of
ten or a dozen, at Webster's, less than a year before the murder. They
began rather uncomfortably, in consequence of one of the guests (the
victim of an instinctive antipathy) starting up with the sweat pouring
down his face, and crying out, 'O Heaven! There's a cat somewhere in the
room!' The cat was found and ejected, but they didn't get on very well.
Left with their wine, they were getting on a little better; when Webster
suddenly told the servants to turn the gas off and bring in that bowl of
burning minerals which he had prepared, in order that the company might
see how ghastly they looked by its weird light. All this was done, and
every man was looking, horror-stricken, at his neighbour; when Webster
was seen bending over the bowl with a rope round his neck, holding up
the end of the rope, with his head on one side and his tongue lolled
out, to represent a hanged man!"
Dickens read at Boston on the 23rd and the 24th of December, and on
Christmas day travelled back to New York where he was to read on the
26th. The last words written before he left were of illness. "The low
action of the heart, or whatever it is, has inconvenienced me greatly
this last week. On Monday night, after the reading, I was laid upon a
bed, in a very faint and shady state; and on the Tuesday I did not get
up till the afternoon." But what in reality was less grave took
outwardly the form of a greater distress; and the effects of the cold
which had struck him in travelling to Boston, as yet not known to his
English friends, appear most to have alarmed those about him. I depart
from my rule in this narrative, otherwise strictly observed, in singling
out one of those friends for mention by name: but a business connection
with the Readings, as well as untiring offices of personal kindness and
sympathy, threw Mr. Fields into closer relations with Dickens from
arrival to departure, than any other person had; and his description of
the condition of health in which Dickens now quitted Boston and went
through the rest of the labour he had undertaken, will be a sad though
fit prelude to what the following chapter has to tell. "He went from
Boston to New York carrying with him a severe catarrh contracted in our
climate. He was quite ill from the effects of the disease; but he fought
courageously against them. . . . His spirit was wonderful, and, although he
lost all appetite and could partake of very little food, he was always
cheerful and ready for his work when the evening came round. A dinner
was tendered to him by some of his literary friends in Boston; but he
was so ill the day before that the banquet had to be given up. The
strain upon his strength and nerves was very great during all the months
he remained, and only a man of iron will could have accomplished what he
did. He was accustomed to talk and write a good deal about eating and
drinking, but I have rarely seen a man eat and drink less. He liked to
dilate in imagination over the brewing of a bowl of punch, but when the
punch was ready he drank less of it than any one who might be present.
It was the sentiment of the thing and not the thing itself that engaged
his attention. I scarcely saw him eat a hearty meal during his whole
stay. Both at Parker's hotel in Boston, and at the Westminster in New
York, everything was arranged by the proprietors for his comfort, and
tempting dishes to pique his invalid appetite were sent up at different
hours of the day; but the influenza had seized him with masterful power,
and held the strong man down till he left the country."
When he arrived in New York on the evening of Christmas Day he found a
letter from his daughter. Answering her next day he told her: "I wanted
it much, for I had a frightful cold (English colds are nothing to those
of this country) and was very miserable. . . . It is a bad country to be
unwell and travelling in. You are one of, say, a hundred people in a
heated car with a great stove in it, all the little windows being
closed; and the bumping and banging about are indescribable, the
atmosphere detestable, the ordinary motion all but intolerable." The
following day this addition was made to the letter. "I managed to read
last night, but it was as much as I could do. To-day I am so very unwell
that I have sent for a doctor. He has just been, and is in doubt whether
I shall not have to stop reading for a while."
His stronger will prevailed, and he went on without stopping. On the
last day of the year he announced to us that though he had been very low
he was getting right again; that in a couple of days he should have
accomplished a fourth of the entire Readings; and that the first month
of the new year would see him through Philadelphia and Baltimore, as
well as through two more nights in Boston. He also prepared his English
friends for the startling intelligence they might shortly expect, of
four readings coming off in a church, before an audience of two thousand
people accommodated in pews, and with himself emerging from a vestry.
FOOTNOTES:
[275] Among these I think he was most delighted with the great
naturalist and philosopher, Agassiz, whose death is unhappily announced
while I write, and as to whom it will no longer be unbecoming to quote
his allusion. "Agassiz, who married the last Mrs. Felton's sister, is
not only one of the most accomplished but the most natural and jovial of
men." Again he says: "I cannot tell you how pleased I was by Agassiz, a
most charming fellow, or how I have regretted his seclusion for a while
by reason of his mother's death." A valued correspondent, Mr. Grant
Wilson, sends me a list of famous Americans who greeted Dickens at his
first visit, and in the interval had passed away. "It is melancholy to
contemplate the large number of American authors who had, between the
first and second visits of Mr. Dickens, 'gone hence, to be no more
seen.' The sturdy Cooper, the gentle Irving, his friend and kinsman
Paulding, Prescott the historian and Percival the poet, the eloquent
Everett, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar A. Poe, N. P. Willis, the genial
Halleck, and many lesser lights, including Prof. Felton and Geo. P.
Morris, had died during the quarter of a century that elapsed between
Dickens's visits to this country, leaving a new generation of writers to
extend the hand of friendship to him on his second coming."--Let me add
to this that Dickens was pleased, at this second visit, to see his old
secretary who had travelled so agreeably with him through his first tour
of triumph. "He would have known him anywhere."
CHAPTER XVI.
AMERICA REVISITED: JANUARY TO APRIL 1868.
1868.
Speculators and the Public--Republican
Self-help--Receipts affected by
Speculators--Again at Boston--Hit of _Marigold_
and of _Boots at Holly Tree_--Chapel Readings
at Brooklyn--Energy of New York Speculators--At
Philadelphia--Irish Element in New
York--Improved Social Ways--Result of
Thirty-four Readings--Shadow to the
Sunshine--Arrangements for Washington--At
Baltimore--Success in Philadelphia--Value of a
Vote--Objections to Coloured People--At
Washington--With Sumner and Stanton--Lincoln's
last Cabinet Council--Lincoln's
Dream--Interview with President
Johnson--Incident at First Reading--One of the
Audience--A Day at the Readings--Proposed
Walking-match--In his Hotel at
Philadelphia--Providence and New
Haven--North-west Tour--President's
Impeachment--Political Excitement--Boston
Audiences--Struggle for Tickets in Remote
Places--At Rochester--At Syracuse and
Buffalo--American Female Beauty--Suspension
Bridge at Niagara--Final Impression of the
Falls--At Utica--Reading at Albany--New England
Engagements--Again attacked by
Lameness--Reading at New Bedford--"Nearly used
up"--Farewell Readings--Last Boston
Readings--New York Farewells--Receipts
throughout--Public Dinner to Dickens.
THE Reading on the third of January closed a fourth of the entire
series, and on that day Dickens wrote of the trouble brought on them by
the "speculators," which to some extent had affected unfavourably the
three previous nights in New York. When adventurers buy up the best
places, the public resent it by refusing the worst; to prevent it by
first helping themselves, being the last thing they ever think of doing.
"We try to withhold the best seats from the speculators, but the
unaccountable thing is that the great mass of the public buy of them
(prefer it), and the rest of the public are injured if we have not got
those very seats to sell them. We have now a travelling staff of six
men, in spite of which Dolby, who is leaving me to-day to sell tickets
in Philadelphia to-morrow morning, will no doubt get into a tempest of
difficulties. Of course also, in such a matter, as many obstacles as
possible are thrown in an Englishman's way; and he may himself be a
little injudicious into the bargain. Last night, for instance, he met
one of the 'ushers' (who show people to their seats) coming in with one
of our men. It is against orders that any one employed in front should
go out during the reading, and he took this man to task in the British
manner. Instantly, the free and independent usher put on his hat and
walked off. Seeing which, all the other free and independent ushers
(some 20 in number) put on _their_ hats and walked off; leaving us
absolutely devoid and destitute of a staff for to-night. One has since
been improvised: but it was a small matter to raise a stir and ill-will
about, especially as one of our men was equally in fault; and really
there is little to be done at night. American people are so accustomed
to take care of themselves, that one of these immense audiences will
fall into their places with an ease amazing to a frequenter of St.
James's Hall; and the certainty with which they are all in, before I go
on, is a very acceptable mark of respect. Our great labour is outside;
and we have been obliged to bring our staff up to six, besides a boy or
two, by employment of a regular additional clerk, a Bostonian. The
speculators buying the front-seats (we have found instances of this
being done by merchants in good position), the public won't have the
back seats; return their tickets; write and print volumes on the
subject; and deter others from coming. You are not to suppose that this
prevails to any great extent, as our lowest house here has been £300;
but it does hit us. There is no doubt about it. Fortunately I saw the
danger when the trouble began, and changed the list at the right
time. . . . You may get an idea of the staff's work, by what is in hand
now. They are preparing, numbering, and stamping, 6000 tickets for
Philadelphia, and 8000 tickets for Brooklyn. The moment those are done,
another 8000 tickets will be wanted for Baltimore, and probably another
6000 for Washington; and all this in addition to the correspondence,
advertisements, accounts, travelling, and the nightly business of the
Readings four times a week. . . . I cannot get rid of this intolerable
cold! My landlord invented for me a drink of brandy, rum, and snow,
called it a 'Rocky Mountain Sneezer,' and said it was to put down all
less effectual sneezing; but it has not yet had the effect. Did I tell
you that the favourite drink before you get up is an Eye-Opener? There
has been another fall of snow, succeeded by a heavy thaw."
The day after (the 4th) he went back to Boston, and next day wrote to
me: "I am to read here on Monday and Tuesday, return to New York on
Wednesday, and finish there (except the farewells in April) on Thursday
and Friday. The New York reading of _Doctor Marigold_ made really a
tremendous hit. The people doubted at first, having evidently not the
least idea what could be done with it, and broke out at last into a
perfect chorus of delight. At the end they made a great shout, and gave
a rush towards the platform as if they were going to carry me off. It
puts a strong additional arrow into my quiver. Another extraordinary
success has been _Nickleby_ and _Boots at the Holly Tree_ (appreciated
here in Boston, by the bye, even more than _Copperfield_); and think of
our last New York night bringing £500 English into the house, after
making more than the necessary deduction for the present price of gold!
The manager is always going about with an immense bundle that looks like
a sofa-cushion, but is in reality paper-money, and it had risen to the
proportions of a sofa on the morning he left for Philadelphia. Well, the
work is hard, the climate is hard, the life is hard: but so far the gain
is enormous. My cold steadily refuses to stir an inch. It distresses me
greatly at times, though it is always good enough to leave me for the
needful two hours. I have tried allopathy, homoeopathy, cold things,
warm things, sweet things, bitter things, stimulants, narcotics, all
with the same result. Nothing will touch it."
In the same letter, light was thrown on the ecclesiastical mystery. "At
Brooklyn I am going to read in Mr. Ward Beecher's chapel: the only
building there available for the purpose. You must understand that
Brooklyn is a kind of sleeping-place for New York, and is supposed to be
a great place in the money way. We let the seats pew by pew! the pulpit
is taken down for my screen and gas! and I appear out of the vestry in
canonical form! These ecclesiastical entertainments come off on the
evenings of the 16th, 17th, 20th, and 21st, of the present month." His
first letter after returning to New York (9th of January) made additions
to the Brooklyn picture. "Each evening an enormous ferry-boat will
convey me and my state-carriage (not to mention half a dozen wagons and
any number of people and a few score of horses) across the river to
Brooklyn, and will bring me back again. The sale of tickets there was an
amazing scene. The noble army of speculators are now furnished (this is
literally true, and I am quite serious) each man with a straw mattress,
a little bag of bread and meat, two blankets, and a bottle of whiskey.
With this outfit, _they lie down in line on the pavement_ the whole of
the night before the tickets are sold: generally taking up their
position at about 10. It being severely cold at Brooklyn, they made an
immense bonfire in the street--a narrow street of wooden houses--which
the police turned out to extinguish. A general fight then took place;
from which the people farthest off in the line rushed bleeding when they
saw any chance of ousting others nearer the door, put their mattresses
in the spots so gained, and held on by the iron rails. At 8 in the
morning Dolby appeared with the tickets in a portmanteau. He was
immediately saluted with a roar of Halloa! Dolby! So Charley has let you
have the carriage, has he, Dolby? How is he, Dolby? Don't drop the
tickets, Dolby! Look alive, Dolby! &c. &c. &c. in the midst of which he
proceeded to business, and concluded (as usual) by giving universal
dissatisfaction. He is now going off upon a little journey to look over
the ground and cut back again. This little journey (to Chicago) is
twelve hundred miles on end, by railway, besides the back again!" It
might tax the Englishman, but was nothing to the native American. It was
part of his New York landlord's ordinary life in a week, Dickens told
me, to go to Chicago and look at his theatre there on a Monday; to pelt
back to Boston and look at his theatre there on a Thursday; and to come
rushing to New York on a Friday, to apostrophize his enormous ballet.
Three days later, still at New York, he wrote to his sister-in-law. "I
am off to Philadelphia this evening for the first of three visits of two
nights each, tickets for all being sold. My cold steadily refuses to
leave me, but otherwise I am as well as I can hope to be under this
heavy work. My New York readings are over (except the farewell nights),
and I look forward to the relief of being out of my hardest hall. On
Friday I was again dead beat at the end, and was once more laid upon a
sofa. But the faintness went off after a little while. We have now cold
bright frosty weather, without snow; the best weather for me." Next day
from Philadelphia he wrote to his daughter that he was lodged in The
Continental, one of the most immense of American hotels, but that he
found himself just as quiet as elsewhere. "Everything is very good, my
waiter is German, and the greater part of the servants seem to be
coloured people. The town is very clean, and the day as blue and bright
as a fine Italian day. But it freezes very very hard, and my cold is not
improved; for the cars were so intolerably hot that I was often obliged
to stand upon the brake outside, and then the frosty air bit me indeed.
I find it necessary (so oppressed am I with this American catarrh as
they call it) to dine at three o'clock instead of four, that I may have
more time to get voice; so that the days are cut short and
letter-writing not easy."
He nevertheless found time in this city to write to me (14th of January)
the most interesting mention he had yet made of such opinions as he had
been able to form during his present visit, apart from the pursuit that
absorbed him. Of such of those opinions as were given on a former page,
it is only necessary to repeat that while the tone of party politics
still impressed him unfavourably, he had thus far seen everywhere great
changes for the better socially. I will add other points from the same
letter. That he was unfortunate in his time of visiting New York, as far
as its politics were concerned, what has since happened conclusively
shows. "The Irish element is acquiring such enormous influence in New
York city, that when I think of it, and see the large Roman Catholic
cathedral rising there, it seems unfair to stigmatise as 'American'
other monstrous things that one also sees. But the general corruption in
respect of the local funds appears to be stupendous, and there is an
alarming thing as to some of the courts of law which I am afraid is
native-born. A case came under my notice the other day in which it was
perfectly plain, from what was said to me by a person interested in
resisting an injunction, that his first proceeding had been to 'look up
the Judge.'" Of such occasional provincial oddity, harmless in itself
but strange in large cities, as he noticed in the sort of half
disappointment at the small fuss made by himself about the Readings, and
in the newspaper references to "Mr. Dickens's extraordinary composure"
on the platform, he gives an illustration. "Last night here in
Philadelphia (my first night), a very impressible and responsive
audience were so astounded by my simply walking in and opening my book
that I wondered what was the matter. They evidently thought that there
ought to have been a flourish, and Dolby sent in to prepare for me. With
them it is the simplicity of the operation that raises wonder. With the
newspapers 'Mr. Dickens's extraordinary composure' is not reasoned out
as being necessary to the art of the thing, but is sensitively watched
with a lurking doubt whether it may not imply disparagement of the
audience. Both these things strike me as drolly expressive.". . .
His testimony as to improved social habits and ways was expressed very
decidedly. "I think it reasonable to expect that as I go westward, I
shall find the old manners going on before me, and may tread upon their
skirts mayhap. But so far, I have had no more intrusion or boredom than
I have when I lead the same life in England. I write this in an immense
hotel, but I am as much at peace in my own rooms, and am left as wholly
undisturbed, as if I were at the Station Hotel in York. I have now read
in New York city to 40,000 people, and am quite as well known in the
streets there as I am in London. People will turn back, turn again and
face me, and have a look at me, or will say to one another 'Look here!
Dickens coming!' But no one ever stops me or addresses me. Sitting
reading in the carriage outside the New York post-office while one of
the staff was stamping the letters inside, I became conscious that a few
people who had been looking at the turn-out had discovered me within.
On my peeping out good-humouredly, one of them (I should say a
merchant's book-keeper) stepped up to the door, took off his hat, and
said in a frank way: 'Mr. Dickens, I should very much like to have the
honour of shaking hands with you'--and, that done, presented two others.
Nothing could be more quiet or less intrusive. In the railway cars, if I
see anybody who clearly wants to speak to me, I usually anticipate the
wish by speaking myself. If I am standing on the brake outside (to avoid
the intolerable stove), people getting down will say with a smile: 'As I
am taking my departure, Mr. Dickens, and can't trouble you for more than
a moment, I should like to take you by the hand sir.' And so we shake
hands and go our ways. . . . Of course many of my impressions come through
the readings. Thus I find the people lighter and more humorous than
formerly; and there must be a great deal of innocent imagination among
every class, or they never could pet with such extraordinary pleasure as
they do, the Boots' story of the elopement of the two little children.
They seem to see the children; and the women set up a shrill
undercurrent of half-pity and half-pleasure that is quite affecting.
To-night's reading is my 26th; but as all the Philadelphia tickets for
four more are sold, as well as four at Brooklyn, you must assume that I
am at--say--my 35th reading. I have remitted to Coutts's in English gold
£10,000 odd; and I roughly calculate that on this number Dolby will have
another thousand pounds profit to pay me. These figures are of course
between ourselves, at present; but are they not magnificent? The
expenses, always recollect, are enormous. On the other hand we never
have occasion to print a bill of any sort (bill-printing and posting are
great charges at home); and have just now sold off £90 worth of
bill-paper, provided beforehand, as a wholly useless incumbrance."
Then came, as ever, the constant shadow that still attended him, the
slave in the chariot of his triumph. "The work is very severe. There is
now no chance of my being rid of this American catarrh until I embark
for England. It is very distressing. It likewise happens, not seldom,
that I am so dead beat when I come off that they lay me down on a sofa
after I have been washed and dressed, and I lie there, extremely faint,
for a quarter of an hour. In that time I rally and come right." One week
later from New York, where he had become due on the 16th for the first
of his four Brooklyn readings, he wrote to his sister-in-law. "My cold
sticks to me, and I can scarcely exaggerate what I undergo from
sleeplessness. I rarely take any breakfast but an egg and a cup of
tea--not even toast or bread and butter. My small dinner at 3, and a
little quail or some such light thing when I come home at night, is my
daily fare; and at the hall I have established the custom of taking an
egg beaten up in sherry before going in, and another between the parts,
which I think pulls me up. . . . It is snowing hard now, and I begin to
move to-morrow. There is so much floating ice in the river, that we are
obliged to have a pretty wide margin of time for getting over the ferry
to read." The last of the readings over the ferry was on the day when
this letter was written. "I finished at my church to-night. It is Mrs.
Stowe's brother's, and a most wonderful place to speak in. We had it
enormously full last night (_Marigold_ and _Trial_), but it scarcely
required an effort. Mr. Ward Beecher being present in his pew, I sent to
invite him to come round before he left. I found him to be an
unostentatious, evidently able, straightforward, and agreeable man;
extremely well-informed, and with a good knowledge of art."
Baltimore and Washington were the cities in which he was now, on
quitting New York, to read for the first time; and as to the latter some
doubts arose. The exceptional course had been taken in regard to it, of
selecting a hall with space for not more than 700 and charging everybody
five dollars; to which Dickens, at first greatly opposed, had yielded
upon use of the argument, "you have more people at New York, thanks to
the speculators, paying more than five dollars every night." But now
other suggestions came. "Horace Greeley dined with me last Saturday," he
wrote on the 20th, "and didn't like my going to Washington, now full of
the greatest rowdies and worst kind of people in the States. Last night
at eleven came B. expressing like doubts; and though they may be absurd
I thought them worth attention, B. coming so close on Greeley." Mr.
Dolby was in consequence sent express to Washington with power to
withdraw or go on, as enquiry on the spot might dictate; and Dickens
took the additional resolve so far to modify the last arrangements of
his tour as to avoid the distances of Chicago, St. Louis, and
Cincinnati, to content himself with smaller places and profits, and
thereby to get home nearly a month earlier. He was at Philadelphia on
the 23rd of January, when he announced this intention. "The worst of it
is, that everybody one advises with has a monomania respecting Chicago.
'Good heavens sir,' the great Philadelphia authority said to me this
morning, 'if you don't read in Chicago the people will go into fits!'
Well, I answered, I would rather they went into fits than I did. But he
didn't seem to see it at all."
From Baltimore he wrote to his sister-in-law on the 29th, in the hour's
interval he had to spare before going back to Philadelphia. "It has been
snowing hard for four and twenty hours--though this place is as far
south as Valentia in Spain; and my manager, being on his way to New
York, has a good chance of being snowed up somewhere. This is one of the
places where Butler carried it with a high hand during the war, and
where the ladies used to spit when they passed a Northern soldier. They
are very handsome women, with an Eastern touch in them, and dress
brilliantly. I have rarely seen so many fine faces in an audience. They
are a bright responsive people likewise, and very pleasant to read to.
My hall is a charming little opera house built by a society of Germans;
quite a delightful place for the purpose. I stand on the stage, with the
drop curtain down, and my screen before it. The whole scene is very
pretty and complete, and the audience have a 'ring' in them that sounds
deeper than the ear. I go from here to Philadelphia, to read to-morrow
night and Friday; come through here again on Saturday on my way back to
Washington; come back here on Saturday week for two finishing nights;
then go to Philadelphia for two farewells--and so turn my back on the
southern part of the country. Our new plan will give 82 readings in
all." (The real number was 76, six having been dropped on subsequent
political excitements.) "Of course I afterwards discovered that we had
finally settled the list on a Friday. I shall be halfway through it at
Washington; of course on a Friday also, and my birthday." To myself he
wrote on the following day from Philadelphia, beginning with a thank
Heaven that he had struck off Canada and the West, for he found the wear
and tear "enormous." "Dolby decided that the croakers were wrong about
Washington, and went on; the rather as his raised prices, which he put
finally at three dollars each, gave satisfaction. Fields is so confident
about Boston, that my remaining list includes, in all, 14 more readings
there. I don't know how many more we might not have had here (where I
have had attentions otherwise that have been very grateful to me), if we
had chosen. Tickets are now being resold at ten dollars each. At
Baltimore I had a charming little theatre, and a very apprehensive
impulsive audience. It is remarkable to see how the Ghost of Slavery
haunts the town; and how the shambling, untidy, evasive, and postponing
Irrepressible proceeds about his free work, going round and round it,
instead of at it. The melancholy absurdity of giving these people votes,
at any rate at present, would glare at one out of every roll of their
eyes, chuckle in their mouths, and bump in their heads, if one did not
see (as one cannot help seeing in the country) that their
enfranchisement is a mere party trick to get votes. Being at the
Penitentiary the other day (this, while we mention votes), and looking
over the books, I noticed that almost every man had been 'pardoned' a
day or two before his time was up. Why? Because, if he had served his
time out, he would have been _ipso facto_ disfranchised. So, this form
of pardon is gone through to save his vote; and as every officer of the
prison holds his place only in right of his party, of course his hopeful
clients vote for the party that has let them out! When I read in Mr.
Beecher's church at Brooklyn, we found the trustees had suppressed the
fact that a certain upper gallery holding 150 was 'the Coloured
Gallery,' On the first night not a soul could be induced to enter it;
and it was not until it became known next day that I was certainly not
going to read there more than four times, that we managed to fill it.
One night at New York, on our second or third row, there were two
well-dressed women with a tinge of colour--I should say, not even
quadroons. But the holder of one ticket who found his seat to be next
them, demanded of Dolby 'what he meant by fixing him next to those two
Gord darmed cusses of niggers?' and insisted on being supplied with
another good place. Dolby firmly replied that he was perfectly certain
Mr. Dickens would not recognize such an objection on any account, but he
could have his money back, if he chose. Which, after some squabbling, he
had. In a comic scene in the New York Circus one night, when I was
looking on, four white people sat down upon a form in a barber's shop to
be shaved. A coloured man came as the fifth customer, and the four
immediately ran away. This was much laughed at and applauded. In the
Baltimore Penitentiary, the white prisoners dine on one side of the
room, the coloured prisoners on the other; and no one has the slightest
idea of mixing them. But it is indubitably the fact that exhalations
not the most agreeable arise from a number of coloured people got
together, and I was obliged to beat a quick retreat from their
dormitory. I strongly believe that they will die out of this country
fast. It seems, looking at them, so manifestly absurd to suppose it
possible that they can ever hold their own against a restless, shifty,
striving, stronger race."
On the fourth of February he wrote from Washington. "You may like to
have a line to let you know that it is all right here, and that the
croakers were simply ridiculous. I began last night. A charming
audience, no dissatisfaction whatever at the raised prices, nothing
missed or lost, cheers at the end of the _Carol_, and rounds upon rounds
of applause all through. All the foremost men and their families had
taken tickets for the series of four. A small place to read in. £300 in
it." It will be no violation of the rule of avoiding private detail if
the very interesting close of this letter is given. Its anecdote of
President Lincoln was repeatedly told by Dickens after his return, and I
am under no necessity to withhold from it the authority of Mr. Sumner's
name. "I am going to-morrow to see the President, who has sent to me
twice. I dined with Charles Sumner last Sunday, against my rule; and as
I had stipulated for no party, Mr. Secretary Stanton was the only other
guest, besides his own secretary. Stanton is a man with a very
remarkable memory, and extraordinarily familiar with my books. . . . He and
Sumner having been the first two public men at the dying President's
bedside, and having remained with him until he breathed his last, we
fell into a very interesting conversation after dinner, when, each of
them giving his own narrative separately, the usual discrepancies about
details of time were observable. Then Mr. Stanton told me a curious
little story which will form the remainder of this short letter.
"On the afternoon of the day on which the President was shot, there was
a cabinet council at which he presided. Mr. Stanton, being at the time
commander-in-chief of the Northern troops that were concentrated about
here, arrived rather late. Indeed they were waiting for him, and on his
entering the room, the President broke off in something he was saying,
and remarked: 'Let us proceed to business, gentlemen.' Mr. Stanton then
noticed, with great surprise, that the President sat with an air of
dignity in his chair instead of lolling about it in the most ungainly
attitudes, as his invariable custom was; and that instead of telling
irrelevant or questionable stories, he was grave and calm, and quite a
different man. Mr. Stanton, on leaving the council with the
Attorney-General, said to him, 'That is the most satisfactory cabinet
meeting I have attended for many a long day! What an extraordinary
change in Mr. Lincoln!' The Attorney-General replied, 'We all saw it,
before you came in. While we were waiting for you, he said, with his
chin down on his breast, "Gentlemen, something very extraordinary is
going to happen, and that very soon."' To which the Attorney-General had
observed, 'Something good, sir, I hope?' when the President answered
very gravely: 'I don't know; I don't know. But it will happen, and
shortly too!' As they were all impressed by his manner, the
Attorney-General took him up again: 'Have you received any information,
sir, not yet disclosed to us?' 'No,' answered the President: 'but I have
had a dream. And I have now had the same dream three times. Once, on the
night preceding the Battle of Bull Run. Once, on the night preceding'
such another (naming a battle also not favourable to the North). His
chin sank on his breast again, and he sat reflecting. 'Might one ask the
nature of this dream, sir?' said the Attorney-General. 'Well,' replied
the President, without lifting his head or changing his attitude, 'I am
on a great broad rolling river--and I am in a boat--and I drift--and I
drift!--But this is not business--' suddenly raising his face and
looking round the table as Mr. Stanton entered, 'let us proceed to
business, gentlemen.' Mr. Stanton and the Attorney-General said, as they
walked on together, it would be curious to notice whether anything
ensued on this; and they agreed to notice. He was shot that night."
On his birthday, the seventh of February, Dickens had his interview with
President Andrew Johnson. "This scrambling scribblement is resumed this
morning, because I have just seen the President: who had sent to me very
courteously asking me to make my own appointment. He is a man with a
remarkable face, indicating courage, watchfulness, and certainly
strength of purpose. It is a face of the Webster type, but without the
'bounce' of Webster's face. I would have picked him out anywhere as a
character of mark. Figure, rather stoutish for an American; a trifle
under the middle size; hands clasped in front of him; manner,
suppressed, guarded, anxious. Each of us looked at the other very
hard. . . . It was in his own cabinet that I saw him. As I came away,
Thornton drove up in a sleigh--turned out for a state occasion--to
deliver his credentials. There was to be a cabinet council at 12. The
room was very like a London club's ante-drawing room. On the walls, two
engravings only: one, of his own portrait; one, of Lincoln's. . . . In the
outer room was sitting a certain sunburnt General Blair, with many
evidences of the war upon him. He got up to shake hands with me, and
then I found that he had been out on the Prairie with me five-and-twenty
years ago. . . . The papers having referred to my birthday's falling
to-day, my room is filled with most exquisite flowers.[276] They came
pouring in from all sorts of people at breakfast time. The audiences
here are really very fine. So ready to laugh or cry, and doing both so
freely, that you would suppose them to be Manchester shillings rather
than Washington half-sovereigns. Alas! alas! my cold worse than ever."
So he had written too at the opening of his letter.
The first reading had been four days earlier, and was described to his
daughter in a letter on the 4th, with a comical incident that occurred
in the course of it. "The gas was very defective indeed last night, and
I began with a small speech to the effect that I must trust to the
brightness of their faces for the illumination of mine. This was taken
greatly. In the _Carol_ a most ridiculous incident occurred. All of a
sudden, I saw a dog leap out from among the seats in the centre aisle,
and look very intently at me. The general attention being fixed on me, I
don't think anybody saw this dog; but I felt so sure of his turning up
again and barking, that I kept my eye wandering about in search of him.
He was a very comic dog, and it was well for me that I was reading a
comic part of the book. But when he bounced out into the centre aisle
again, in an entirely new place, and (still looking intently at me)
tried the effect of a bark upon my proceedings, I was seized with such a
paroxysm of laughter that it communicated itself to the audience, and we
roared at one another, loud and long." Three days later the sequel came,
in a letter to his sister-in-law. "I mentioned the dog on the first
night here? Next night, I thought I heard (in _Copperfield_) a
suddenly-suppressed bark. It happened in this wise:--One of our people,
standing just within the door, felt his leg touched, and looking down
beheld the dog, staring intently at me, and evidently just about to
bark. In a transport of presence of mind and fury, he instantly caught
him up in both hands, and threw him over his own head, out into the
entry, where the check-takers received him like a game at ball. Last
night he came again, _with another dog_; but our people were so sharply
on the look-out for him that he didn't get in. He had evidently
promised to pass the other dog, free."
What is expressed in these letters, of a still active, hopeful,
enjoying, energetic spirit, able to assert itself against illness of the
body and in some sort to overmaster it, was also so strongly impressed
upon those who were with him, that, seeing his sufferings as they did,
they yet found it difficult to understand the extent of them. The
sadness thus ever underlying his triumph makes it all very tragical.
"That afternoon of my birthday," he wrote from Baltimore on the 11th,
"my catarrh was in such a state that Charles Sumner, coming in at five
o'clock, and finding me covered with mustard poultice, and apparently
voiceless, turned to Dolby and said: 'Surely, Mr. Dolby, it is
impossible that he can read to-night!' Says Dolby: 'Sir, I have told Mr.
Dickens so, four times to-day, and I have been very anxious. But you
have no idea how he will change, when he gets to the little table.'
After five minutes of the little table I was not (for the time) even
hoarse. The frequent experience of this return of force when it is
wanted, saves me a vast amount of anxiety; but I am not at times without
the nervous dread that I may some day sink altogether." To the same
effect in another letter he adds: "Dolby and Osgood" (the latter
represented the publishing firm of Mr. Fields and was one of the
travelling staff), "who do the most ridiculous things to keep me in
spirits[277] (I am often very heavy, and rarely sleep much), are
determined to have a walking match at Boston on the last day of February
to celebrate the arrival of the day when I can say '_next_ month!' for
home." The match ended in the Englishman's defeat; which Dickens doubly
commemorated, by a narrative of the American victory in
sporting-newspaper style, and by a dinner in Boston to a party of dear
friends there.
After Baltimore he was reading again at Philadelphia, from which he
wrote to his sister-in-law on the 13th as to a characteristic trait
observed in both places. "Nothing will induce the people to believe in
the farewells. At Baltimore on Tuesday night (a very brilliant night
indeed), they asked as they came out: 'When will Mr. Dickens read here
again?' 'Never.' 'Nonsense! Not come back, after such houses as these?
Come. Say when he'll read again.' Just the same here. We could as soon
persuade them that I am the President, as that to-morrow night I am
going to read here for the last time. . . . There is a child in this
house--a little girl--to whom I presented a black doll when I was here
last; and as I have just seen her eye at the keyhole since I began
writing this, I think she and the doll must be outside still. 'When you
sent it up to me by the coloured boy,' she said after receiving it
(coloured boy is the term for black waiter), 'I gave such a cream that
Ma come running in and creamed too, 'cos she fort I'd hurt myself. But I
creamed a cream of joy.' She had a friend to play with her that day, and
brought the friend with her--to my infinite confusion. A friend all
stockings and much too tall, who sat on the sofa very far back with her
stockings sticking stiffly out in front of her, and glared at me, and
never spake a word. Dolby found us confronted in a sort of fascination,
like serpent and bird."
On the 15th he was again at New York, in the thick of more troubles with
the speculators. They involved even charges of fraud in ticket-sales at
Newhaven and Providence; indignation meetings having been held by the
Mayors, and unavailing attempts made by his manager to turn the wrath
aside. "I expect him back here presently half bereft of his senses, and
I should be wholly bereft of mine if the situation were not comical as
well as disagreeable. We can sell at our own box-office to any extent;
but we cannot buy back of the speculators, because we have informed the
public that all the tickets are gone; and even if we made the sacrifice
of buying at their price and selling at ours, we should be accused of
treating with them and of making money by it." It ended in Providence by
his going himself to the town and making a speech; and in Newhaven it
ended by his sending back the money taken, with intimation that he would
not read until there had been a new distribution of the tickets approved
by all the town. Fresh disturbance broke out upon this; but he stuck to
his determination to delay the reading until the heats had cooled down,
and what should have been given in the middle of February he did not
give until the close of March.
The Readings he had promised at the smaller outlying places by the
Canadian frontier and Niagara district, including Syracuse, Rochester,
and Buffalo, were appointed for that same March month which was to be
the interval between the close of the ordinary readings and the
farewells in the two leading cities. All that had been promised in New
York were closed when he returned to Boston on the 23rd of February,
ready for the increase he had promised there; but the check of a sudden
political excitement came. It was the month when the vote was taken for
impeachment of President Johnson. "It is well" (25th of February) "that
the money has flowed in hitherto so fast, for I have a misgiving that
the great excitement about the President's impeachment will damage our
receipts. . . . The vote was taken at 5 last night. At 7 the three large
theatres here, all in a rush of good business, were stricken with
paralysis. At 8 our long line of outsiders waiting for unoccupied
places, was nowhere. To-day you hear all the people in the streets
talking of only one thing. I shall suppress my next week's promised
readings (by good fortune, not yet announced), and watch the course of
events. Nothing in this country, as I before said, lasts long; and I
think it likely that the public may be heartily tired of the President's
name by the 9th of March, when I read at a considerable distance from
here. So behold me with a whole week's holiday in view!" Two days later
he wrote pleasantly to his sister-in-law of his audiences. "They have
come to regard the Readings and the Reader as their peculiar property;
and you would be both amused and pleased if you could see the curious
way in which they show this increased interest in both. Whenever they
laugh or cry, they have taken to applauding as well; and the result is
very inspiriting. I shall remain here until Saturday the 7th; but after
to-morrow night shall not read here until the 1st of April, when I begin
my farewells--six in number." On the 28th he wrote: "To-morrow
fortnight we purpose being at the Falls of Niagara, and then we shall
come back and really begin to wind up. I have got to know the _Carol_ so
well that I can't remember it, and occasionally go dodging about in the
wildest manner, to pick up lost pieces. They took it so tremendously
last night that I was stopped every five minutes. One poor young girl in
mourning burst into a passion of grief about Tiny Tim, and was taken
out. We had a fine house, and, in the interval while I was out, they
covered the little table with flowers. The cough has taken a fresh start
as if it were a novelty, and is even worse than ever to-day. There is a
lull in the excitement about the President: but the articles of
impeachment are to be produced this afternoon, and then it may set in
again. Osgood came into camp last night from selling in remote places,
and reports that at Rochester and Buffalo (both places near the
frontier), tickets were bought by Canada people, who had struggled
across the frozen river and clambered over all sorts of obstructions to
get them. Some of those distant halls turn out to be smaller than
represented; but I have no doubt--to use an American expression--that we
shall 'get along.' The second half of the receipts cannot reasonably be
expected to come up to the first; political circumstances, and all other
surroundings, considered."
His old ill luck in travel pursued him. On the day his letter was
written a snow-storm began, with a heavy gale of wind; and "after all
the hard weather gone through," he wrote on the 2nd of March, "this is
the worst day we have seen. It is telegraphed that the storm prevails
over an immense extent of country, and is just the same at Chicago as
here. I hope it may prove a wind up. We are getting sick of the very
sound of sleigh-bells even." The roads were so bad and the trains so
much out of time, that he had to start a day earlier; and on the 6th of
March his tour north-west began, with the gale still blowing and the
snow falling heavily. On the 13th he wrote to me from Buffalo.
"We go to the Falls of Niagara to-morrow for our own pleasure; and I
take all the men, as a treat. We found Rochester last Tuesday in a very
curious state. Perhaps you know that the Great Falls of the Genessee
River (really very fine, even so near Niagara) are at that place. In the
height of a sudden thaw, an immense bank of ice above the rapids refused
to yield; so that the town was threatened (for the second time in four
years) with submersion. Boats were ready in the streets, all the people
were up all night, and none but the children slept. In the dead of the
night a thundering noise was heard, the ice gave way, the swollen river
came raging and roaring down the Falls, and the town was safe. Very
picturesque! but 'not very good for business,' as the manager says.
Especially as the hall stands in the centre of danger, and had ten feet
of water in it on the last occasion of flood. But I think we had above
£200 English. On the previous night at Syracuse--a most out of the way
and unintelligible-looking place, with apparently no people in it--we
had £375 odd. Here, we had last night, and shall have to-night, whatever
we can cram into the hall.
"This Buffalo has become a large and important town, with numbers of
German and Irish in it. But it is very curious to notice, as we touch
the frontier, that the American female beauty dies out; and a woman's
face clumsily compounded of German, Irish, Western America, and
Canadian, not yet fused together, and not yet moulded, obtains instead.
Our show of Beauty at night is, generally, remarkable; but we had not a
dozen pretty women in the whole throng last night, and the faces were
all blunt. I have just been walking about, and observing the same thing
in the streets. . . . The winter has been so severe, that the hotel on the
English side at Niagara (which has the best view of the Falls, and is
for that reason very preferable) is not yet open. So we go, perforce, to
the American: which telegraphs back to our telegram: 'all Mr. Dickens's
requirements perfectly understood.' I have not yet been in more than two
_very bad_ inns. I have been in some, where a good deal of what is
popularly called 'slopping round' has prevailed; but have been able to
get on very well. 'Slopping round,' so used, means untidyness and
disorder. It is a comically expressive phrase, and has many meanings.
Fields was asking the price of a quarter-cask of sherry the other day.
'Wa'al Mussr Fields,' the merchant replies, 'that varies according to
quality, as is but nay'tral. If yer wa'ant a sherry just to slop round
with it, I can fix you some at a very low figger.'"
His letter was resumed at Rochester on the 18th. "After two most
brilliant days at the Falls of Niagara, we got back here last night.
To-morrow morning we turn out at 6 for a long railway journey back to
Albany. But it is nearly all 'back' now, thank God! I don't know how
long, though, before turning, we might have gone on at Buffalo. . . . We
went everywhere at the Falls, and saw them in every aspect. There is a
suspension bridge across, now, some two miles or more from the Horse
Shoe; and another, half a mile nearer, is to be opened in July. They are
very fine but very ticklish, hanging aloft there, in the continual
vibration of the thundering water: nor is one greatly reassured by the
printed notice that troops must not cross them at step, that bands of
music must not play in crossing, and the like. I shall never forget the
last aspect in which we saw Niagara yesterday. We had been everywhere,
when I thought of struggling (in an open carriage) up some very
difficult ground for a good distance, and getting where we could stand
above the river, and see it, as it rushes forward to its tremendous
leap, coming for miles and miles. All away to the horizon on our right
was a wonderful confusion of bright green and white water. As we stood
watching it with our faces to the top of the Falls, our backs were
towards the sun. The majestic valley below the Falls, so seen through
the vast cloud of spray, was made of rainbow. The high banks, the riven
rocks, the forests, the bridge, the buildings, the air, the sky, were
all made of rainbow. Nothing in Turner's finest water-colour drawings,
done in his greatest day, is so ethereal, so imaginative, so gorgeous in
colour, as what I then beheld. I seemed to be lifted from the earth and
to be looking into Heaven. What I once said to you, as I witnessed the
scene five and twenty years ago, all came back at this most affecting
and sublime sight. The 'muddy vesture of our clay' falls from us as we
look. . . . I chartered a separate carriage for our men, so that they might
see all in their own way, and at their own time.
"There is a great deal of water out between Rochester and New York, and
travelling is very uncertain, as I fear we may find to-morrow. There is
again some little alarm here on account of the river rising too fast.
But our to-night's house is far ahead of the first. Most charming halls
in these places; excellent for sight and sound. Almost invariably built
as theatres, with stage, scenery, and good dressing-rooms. Audience
seated to perfection (every seat always separate), excellent doorways
and passages, and brilliant light. My screen and gas are set up in front
of the drop-curtain, and the most delicate touches will tell anywhere.
No creature but my own men ever near me."
His anticipation of the uncertainty that might beset his travel back had
dismal fulfilment. It is described in a letter written on the 21st from
Springfield to his valued friend, Mr. Frederic Ouvry, having much
interest of its own, and making lively addition to the picture which
these chapters give. The unflagging spirit that bears up under all
disadvantages is again marvellously shown. "You can hardly imagine what
my life is with its present conditions--how hard the work is, and how
little time I seem to have at my disposal. It is necessary to the daily
recovery of my voice that I should dine at 3 when not travelling; I
begin to prepare for the evening at 6; and I get back to my hotel,
pretty well knocked up, at half-past 10. Add to all this, perpetual
railway travelling in one of the severest winters ever known; and you
will descry a reason or two for my being an indifferent correspondent.
Last Sunday evening I left the Falls of Niagara for this and two
intervening places. As there was a great thaw, and the melted snow was
swelling all the rivers, the whole country for three hundred miles was
flooded. On the Tuesday afternoon (I had read on the Monday) the train
gave in, as under circumstances utterly hopeless, and stopped at a place
called Utica; the greater part of which was under water, while the high
and dry part could produce nothing particular to eat. Here, some of the
wretched passengers passed the night in the train, while others stormed
the hotel. I was fortunate enough to get a bed-room, and garnished it
with an enormous jug of gin-punch; over which I and the manager played a
double-dummy rubber. At six in the morning we were knocked up: 'to come
aboard and try it.' At half-past six we were knocked up again with the
tidings 'that it was of no use coming aboard or trying it.' At eight all
the bells in the town were set agoing, to summon us to 'come aboard'
instantly. And so we started, through the water, at four or five miles
an hour; seeing nothing but drowned farms, barns adrift like Noah's
arks, deserted villages, broken bridges, and all manner of ruin. I was
to read at Albany that night, and all the tickets were sold. A very
active superintendent of works assured me that if I could be 'got along'
he was the man to get me along: and that if I couldn't be got along, I
might conclude that it couldn't possibly be fixed. He then turned on a
hundred men in seven-league boots, who went ahead of the train, each
armed with a long pole and pushing the blocks of ice away. Following
this cavalcade, we got to land at last, and arrived in time for me to
read the _Carol_ and _Trial_ triumphantly. My people (I had five of the
staff with me) turned to at their work with a will, and did a day's
labour in a couple of hours. If we had not come in as we did, I should
have lost £350, and Albany would have gone distracted. You may conceive
what the flood was, when I hint at the two most notable incidents of our
journey:--1, We took the passengers out of two trains, who had been in
the water, immovable all night and all the previous day. 2, We released
a large quantity of sheep and cattle from trucks that had been in the
water I don't know how long, but so long that the creatures in them had
begun to eat each other, and presented a most horrible spectacle."[278]
Beside Springfield, he had engagements at Portland, New Bedford, and
other places in Massachusetts, before the Boston farewells began; and
there wanted but two days to bring him to that time, when he thus
described to his daughter the labour which was to occupy them. His
letter was from Portland on the 29th of March, and it will be observed
that he no longer compromises or glozes over what he was and had been
suffering. During his terrible travel to Albany his cough had somewhat
spared him, but the old illness had broken out in his foot; and, though
he persisted in ascribing it to the former supposed origin ("having been
lately again wet, from walking in melted snow, which I suppose to be the
occasion of its swelling in the old way"), it troubled him sorely,
extended now at intervals to the right foot also, and lamed him for all
the time he remained in the States. "I should have written to you by the
last mail, but I really was too unwell to do it. The writing day was
last Friday, when I ought to have left Boston for New Bedford (55 miles)
before eleven in the morning. But I was so exhausted that I could not be
got up, and had to take my chance of an evening train's producing me in
time to read--which it just did. With the return of snow, nine days ago,
my cough became as bad as ever. I have coughed every morning from two or
three till five or six, and have been absolutely sleepless. I have had
no appetite besides, and no taste.[279] Last night here, I took some
laudanum; and it is the only thing that has done me good, though it made
me sick this morning. But the life, in this climate, is so very hard!
When I did manage to get to New Bedford, I read with my utmost force and
vigour. Next morning, well or ill, I must turn out at seven, to get
back to Boston on my way here. I dined at Boston at three, and at five
had to come on here (a hundred and thirty miles or so) for to-morrow
night: there being no Sunday train. To-morrow night I read here in a
very large place; and Tuesday morning at six I must again start, to get
back to Boston once more. But after to-morrow night I have only the
farewells, thank God! Even as it is, however, I have had to write to
Dolby (who is in New York) to see my doctor there, and ask him to send
me some composing medicine that I can take at night, inasmuch as without
sleep I cannot get through. However sympathetic and devoted the people
are about one, they CAN NOT be got to comprehend, seeing me able to do
the two hours when the time comes round, that it may also involve much
misery." To myself on the 30th he wrote from the same place, making like
confession. No comment could deepen the sadness of the story of
suffering, revealed in his own simple language. "I write in a town three
parts of which were burnt down in a tremendous fire three years ago. The
people lived in tents while their city was rebuilding. The charred
trunks of the trees with which the streets of the old city were planted,
yet stand here and there in the new thoroughfares like black spectres.
The rebuilding is still in progress everywhere. Yet such is the
astonishing energy of the people that the large hall in which I am to
read to-night (its predecessor was burnt) would compare very favourably
with the Free Trade Hall at Manchester! . . . I am nearly used up. Climate,
distance, catarrh, travelling, and hard work, have begun (I may say so,
now they are nearly all over) to tell heavily upon me. Sleeplessness
besets me; and if I had engaged to go on into May, I think I must have
broken down. It was well that I cut off the Far West and Canada when I
did. There would else have been a sad complication. It is impossible to
make the people about one understand, however zealous and devoted (it is
impossible even to make Dolby understand until the pinch comes), that
the power of coming up to the mark every night, with spirits and spirit,
may coexist with the nearest approach to sinking under it. When I got
back to Boston on Thursday, after a very hard three weeks, I saw that
Fields was very grave about my going on to New Bedford (55 miles) next
day, and then coming on here (180 miles) _next_ day. But the stress is
over, and so I can afford to look back upon it, and think about it, and
write about it." On the 31st he closed his letter at Boston, and he was
at home when I heard of him again. "The latest intelligence, my dear old
fellow, is, that I have arrived here safely, and that I am certainly
better. I consider my work virtually over, now. My impression is, that
the political crisis will damage the farewells by about one half. I
cannot yet speak by the card; but my predictions here, as to our
proceedings, have thus far been invariably right. We took last night at
Portland, £360 English; where a costly Italian troupe, using the same
hall to-night, had not booked £14! It is the same all over the country,
and the worst is not seen yet. Everything is becoming absorbed in the
Presidential impeachment, helped by the next Presidential election.
Connecticut is particularly excited. The night after I read at Hartford
this last week, there were two political meetings in the town; meetings
of two parties; and the hotel was full of speakers coming in from
outlying places. So at Newhaven: the moment I had finished, carpenters
came in to prepare for next night's politics. So at Buffalo. So
everywhere very soon."
In the same tone he wrote his last letter to his sister-in-law from
Boston. "My notion of the farewells is pretty certain now to turn out
right. We had £300 English here last night. To-day is a Fast Day, and
to-night we shall probably take much less. Then it is likely that we
shall pull up again, and strike a good reasonable average; but it is not
at all probable that we shall do anything enormous. Every pulpit in
Massachusetts will resound with violent politics to-day and to-night."
That was on the second of April, and a postscript was added. "Friday
afternoon the 3rd. Catarrh worse than ever! and we don't know (at four
o'clock) whether I can read to-night or must stop. Otherwise, all well."
Dickens's last letter from America was written to his daughter Mary from
Boston on the 9th of April, the day before his sixth and last farewell
night. "I not only read last Friday when I was doubtful of being able to
do so, but read as I never did before, and astonished the audience quite
as much as myself. You never saw or heard such a scene of excitement.
Longfellow and all the Cambridge men have urged me to give in. I have
been very near doing so, but feel stronger to-day. I cannot tell whether
the catarrh may have done me any lasting injury in the lungs or other
breathing organs, until I shall have rested and got home. I hope and
believe not. Consider the weather! There have been two snow storms since
I wrote last, and to-day the town is blotted out in a ceaseless whirl of
snow and wind. Dolby is as tender as a woman, and as watchful as a
doctor. He never leaves me during the reading, now, but sits at the side
of the platform, and keeps his eye upon me all the time. Ditto George
the gasman, steadiest and most reliable man I ever employed. I have
_Dombey_ to do to-night, and must go through it carefully; so here ends
my report. The personal affection of the people in this place is
charming to the last. Did I tell you that the New York Press are going
to give me a public dinner on Saturday the 18th?"
In New York, where there were five farewell nights, three thousand two
hundred and ninety-eight dollars were the receipts of the last, on the
20th of April; those of the last at Boston, on the 8th, having been
three thousand four hundred and fifty-six dollars. But on earlier nights
in the same cities respectively, these sums also had been reached; and
indeed, making allowance for an exceptional night here and there, the
receipts varied so wonderfully little, that a mention of the highest
average returns from other places will give no exaggerated impression of
the ordinary receipts throughout. Excluding fractions of dollars, the
lowest were New Bedford ($1640), Rochester ($1906), Springfield ($1970),
and Providence ($2140). Albany and Worcester averaged something less
than $2400; while Hartford, Buffalo, Baltimore, Syracuse, Newhaven, and
Portland rose to $2600. Washington's last night was $2610, no night
there having less than $2500. Philadelphia exceeded Washington by $300,
and Brooklyn went ahead of Philadelphia by $200. The amount taken at the
four Brooklyn readings was 11,128 dollars.
The New York public dinner was given at Delmonico's, the hosts were more
than two hundred, and the chair was taken by Mr. Horace Greeley. Dickens
attended with great difficulty,[280] and spoke in pain. But he used the
occasion to bear his testimony to the changes of twenty-five years; the
rise of vast new cities; growth in the graces and amenities of life;
much improvement in the press, essential to every other advance; and
changes in himself leading to opinions more deliberately formed. He
promised his kindly entertainers that no copy of his _Notes_, or his
_Chuzzlewit_, should in future be issued by him without accompanying
mention of the changes to which he had referred that night; of the
politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, and consideration in
all ways for which he had to thank them; and of his gratitude for the
respect shown, during all his visit, to the privacy enforced upon him by
the nature of his work and the condition of his health.
He had to leave the room before the proceedings were over. On the
following Monday he read to his last American audience, telling them at
the close that he hoped often to recall them, equally by his winter fire
and in the green summer weather, and never as a mere public audience but
as a host of personal friends. He sailed two days later in the "Russia,"
and reached England in the first week of May 1868.
FOOTNOTES:
[276] few days later he described it to his daughter. "I couldn't help
laughing at myself on my birthday at Washington; it was observed so much
as though I were a little boy. Flowers and garlands of the most
exquisite kind, arranged in all manner of green baskets, bloomed over
the room; letters radiant with good wishes poured in; a shirt pin, a
handsome silver travelling bottle, a set of gold shirt studs, and a set
of gold sleeve links, were on the dinner table. Also, by hands unknown,
the hall at night was decorated; and after _Boots at the Holly Tree_,
the whole audience rose and remained, great people and all, standing and
cheering, until I went back to the table and made them a little speech."
[277] Mr. Dolby unconsciously contributed at this time to the same happy
result by sending out some advertisements in these exact words: "The
Reading will be comprised within _two minutes_, and the audience are
earnestly entreated to be seated _ten hours_ before its commencement."
He had transposed the minutes and the hours.
[278] What follows is from the close of the letter. "On my return, I
have arranged with Chappell to take my leave of reading for good and
all, in a hundred autumnal and winter Farewells _for ever_. I return by
the Cunard steam-ship 'Russia.' I had the second officer's cabin on
deck, when I came out; and I am to have the chief steward's going home.
Cunard was so considerate as to remember that it will be on the sunny
side of the vessel."
[279] Here was his account of his mode of living for his last ten weeks
in America. "I cannot eat (to anything like the necessary extent) and
have established this system. At 7 in the morning, in bed, a tumbler of
new cream and two tablespoonsful of rum. At 12, a sherry cobbler and a
biscuit. At 3 (dinner time) a pint of champagne. At five minutes to 8,
an egg beaten up with a glass of sherry. Between the parts, the
strongest beef tea that can be made, drunk hot. At a quarter past 10,
soup, and any little thing to drink that I can fancy. I do not eat more
than half a pound of solid food in the whole four-and-twenty hours, if
so much."
[280] Here is the newspaper account: "At about five o'clock on Saturday
the hosts began to assemble, but at 5.30 news was received that the
expected guest had succumbed to a painful affection of the foot. In a
short time, however, another bulletin announced Mr. Dickens's intention
to attend the dinner at all hazards. At a little after six, having been
assisted up the stairs, he was joined by Mr. Greeley, and the hosts
forming in two lines silently permitted the distinguished gentlemen to
pass through. Mr. Dickens limped perceptibly; his right foot was
swathed, and he leaned heavily on the arm of Mr. Greeley. He evidently
suffered great pain."
CHAPTER XVII.
LAST READINGS.
1868-1870.
At Home--Project for Last Readings--What the
Readings did and undid--Profit from all the
Readings--Noticeable Changes--Proposed Reading
from _Oliver Twist_--Parting from his Youngest
Son--Death of his Brother Frederick--Old
Friends--_Sikes and Nancy_ Reading--Reading
stopped--Mr. Syme's Opinion of the
Lameness--Emerson Tennent's Funeral--Public
Dinner in Liverpool--His Description of his
Illness--Brought to Town--Sir Thomas Watson's
Note of the Case--Close of Career as Public
Reader.
FAVOURABLE weather helped him pleasantly home. He had profited greatly
by the sea voyage, perhaps greatly more by its repose; and on the 25th
of May he described himself to his Boston friends as brown beyond
belief, and causing the greatest disappointment in all quarters by
looking so well. "My doctor was quite broken down in spirits on seeing
me for the first time last Saturday. _Good Lord! seven years younger!_
said the doctor, recoiling." That he gave all the credit to "those fine
days at sea," and none to the rest from such labours as he had passed
through, the close of the letter too sadly showed. "We are already
settling--think of this!--the details of my farewell course of
readings."
Even on his way out to America that enterprise was in hand. From Halifax
he had written to me. "I told the Chappells that when I got back to
England, I would have a series of farewell readings in town and country;
and then read No More. They at once offer in writing to pay all expenses
whatever, to pay the ten per cent. for management, and to pay me, for a
series of 75, six thousand pounds." The terms were raised and settled
before the first Boston readings closed. The number was to be a hundred;
and the payment, over and above expenses and per centage, eight thousand
pounds. Such a temptation undoubtedly was great; and though it was a
fatal mistake which Dickens committed in yielding to it, it was not an
ignoble one. He did it under no excitement from the American gains, of
which he knew nothing when he pledged himself to the enterprise. No man
could care essentially less for mere money than he did. But the
necessary provision for many sons was a constant anxiety; he was proud
of what the Readings had done to abridge this care; and the very strain
of them under which it seems certain that his health had first given
way, and which he always steadily refused to connect especially with
them, had also broken the old confidence of being at all times available
for his higher pursuit. What affected his health only he would not
regard as part of the question either way. That was to be borne as the
lot more or less of all men; and the more thorough he could make his
feeling of independence, and of ability to rest, by what was now in
hand, the better his final chances of a perfect recovery would be. That
was the spirit in which he entered on this last engagement. It was an
opportunity offered for making a particular work really complete before
he should abandon it for ever. Something of it will not be
indiscernible even in the summary of his past acquisitions, which with a
pardonable exultation he now sent me.
"We had great difficulty in getting our American accounts squared to the
point of ascertaining what Dolby's commission amounted to in English
money. After all, we were obliged to call in the aid of a money-changer,
to determine what he should pay as his share of the average loss of
conversion into gold. With this deduction made, I think his commission
(I have not the figures at hand) was £2,888; Ticknor and Fields had a
commission of £1,000, besides 5 per cent. on all Boston receipts. The
expenses in America to the day of our sailing were 38,948
dollars;--roughly 39,000 dollars, or £13,000. The preliminary expenses
were £614. The average price of gold was nearly 40 per cent., and yet my
profit was within a hundred or so of £20,000. Supposing me to have got
through the present engagement in good health, I shall have made by the
Readings, _in two years_, £33,000: that is to say, £13,000 received from
the Chappells, and £20,000 from America. What I had made by them before,
I could only ascertain by a long examination of Coutts's books. I should
say, certainly not less than £10,000: for I remember that I made half
that money in the first town and country campaign with poor Arthur
Smith. These figures are of course between ourselves; but don't you
think them rather remarkable? The Chappell bargain began with £50 a
night and everything paid; then became £60; and now rises to £80."
The last readings were appointed to begin with October; and at the
request of an old friend, Chauncy Hare Townshend, who died during his
absence in the States, he had accepted the trust, which occupied him
some part of the summer, of examining and selecting for publication a
bequest of some papers on matters of religious belief, which were issued
in a small volume the following year. There came also in June a visit
from Longfellow and his daughters, with later summer visits from the
Eliot Nortons; and at the arrival of friends whom he loved and honoured
as he did these, from the great country to which he owed so much,
infinite were the rejoicings of Gadshill. Nothing could quench his old
spirit in this way. But in the intervals of my official work I saw him
frequently that summer, and never without the impression that America
had told heavily upon him. There was manifest abatement of his natural
force, the elasticity of bearing was impaired, and the wonderful
brightness of eye was dimmed at times. One day, too, as he walked from
his office with Miss Hogarth to dine at our house, he could read only
the halves of the letters over the shop doors that were on his right as
he looked. He attributed it to medicine. It was an additional
unfavourable symptom that his right foot had become affected as well as
the left, though not to anything like the same extent, during the
journey from the Canada frontier to Boston. But all this disappeared,
upon any special cause for exertion; and he was never unprepared to
lavish freely for others the reserved strength that should have been
kept for himself. This indeed was the great danger, for it dulled the
apprehension of us all to the fact that absolute and pressing danger did
positively exist.
He had scarcely begun these last readings than he was beset by a
misgiving, that, for a success large enough to repay Messrs. Chappell's
liberality, the enterprise would require a new excitement to carry him
over the old ground; and it was while engaged in Manchester and
Liverpool at the outset of October that this announcement came. "I have
made a short reading of the murder in _Oliver Twist_. I cannot make up
my mind, however, whether to do it or not. I have no doubt that I could
perfectly petrify an audience by carrying out the notion I have of the
way of rendering it. But whether the impression would not be so horrible
as to keep them away another time, is what I cannot satisfy myself upon.
What do you think? It is in three short parts: 1, Where Fagin sets Noah
Claypole on to watch Nancy. 2, The scene on London Bridge. 3, Where
Fagin rouses Claypole from his sleep, to tell his perverted story to
Sikes. And the Murder, and the Murderer's sense of being haunted. I have
adapted and cut about the text with great care, and it is very powerful.
I have to-day referred the book and the question to the Chappells as so
largely interested." I had a strong dislike to this proposal, less
perhaps on the ground which ought to have been taken of the physical
exertion it would involve, than because such a subject seemed to be
altogether out of the province of reading; and it was resolved, that,
before doing it, trial should be made to a limited private audience in
St. James's Hall. The note announcing this, from Liverpool on the 25th
of October, is for other reasons worth printing. "I give you earliest
notice that the Chappells suggest to me the 18th of November" (the 14th
was chosen) "for trial of the _Oliver Twist_ murder, when everything in
use for the previous day's reading can be made available. I hope this
may suit you? We have been doing well here; and how it was arranged,
nobody knows, but we had £410 at St. James's Hall last Tuesday, having
advanced from our previous £360. The expenses are such, however, on the
princely scale of the Chappells, that we never begin at a smaller, often
at a larger, cost than £180. . . . I have not been well, and have been
heavily tired. However, I have little to complain of--nothing, nothing;
though, like Mariana, I am aweary. But think of this. If all go well,
and (like Mr. Dennis) I 'work off' this series triumphantly, I shall
have made of these readings £28,000 in a year and a half." This did not
better reconcile me to what had been too clearly forced upon him by the
supposed necessity of some new excitement to ensure a triumphant result;
and even the private rehearsal only led to a painful correspondence
between us, of which a few words are all that need now be preserved. "We
might have agreed," he wrote, "to differ about it very well, because we
only wanted to find out the truth if we could, and because it was quite
understood that I wanted to leave behind me the recollection of
something very passionate and dramatic, done with simple means, if the
art would justify the theme." Apart from mere personal considerations,
the whole question lay in these last words. It was impossible for me to
admit that the effect to be produced was legitimate, or such as it was
desirable to associate with the recollection of his readings.
Mention should not be omitted of two sorrows which affected him at this
time. At the close of the month before the readings began his youngest
son went forth from home to join an elder brother in Australia. "These
partings are hard hard things" (26th of September), "but they are the
lot of us all, and might have to be done without means or influence, and
then would be far harder. God bless him!" Hardly a month later, the last
of his surviving brothers, Frederick, the next to himself, died at
Darlington. "He had been tended" (24th of October) "with the greatest
care and affection by some local friends. It was a wasted life, but God
forbid that one should be hard upon it, or upon anything in this world
that is not deliberately and coldly wrong."
Before October closed the renewal of his labour had begun to tell upon
him. He wrote to his sister-in-law on the 29th of sickness and sleepless
nights, and of its having become necessary, when he had to read, that he
should lie on the sofa all day. After arrival at Edinburgh in December
he had been making a calculation that the railway travelling over such a
distance involved something more than thirty thousand shocks to the
nerves; but he went on to Christmas, alternating these far-off places
with nights regularly intervening in London, without much more complaint
than of an inability to sleep. Trade reverses at Glasgow had checked the
success there,[281] but Edinburgh made compensation. "The affectionate
regard of the people exceeds all bounds and is shown in every way. The
audiences do everything but embrace me, and take as much pains with the
readings as I do. . . . The keeper of the Edinburgh hall, a fine old
soldier, presented me on Friday night with the most superb red camellia
for my button-hole that ever was seen. Nobody can imagine how he came by
it, as the florists had had a considerable demand for that colour, from
ladies in the stalls, and could get no such thing."
The second portion of the enterprise opened with the New Year, and the
_Sikes and Nancy_ scenes, everywhere his prominent subject, exacted the
most terrible physical exertion from him. In January he was at Clifton,
where he had given, he told his sister-in-law, "by far the best Murder
yet done;" while at the same date he wrote to his daughter: "At Clifton
on Monday night we had a contagion of fainting; and yet the place was
not hot. I should think we had from a dozen to twenty ladies taken out
stiff and rigid, at various times! It became quite ridiculous." He was
afterwards at Cheltenham. "Macready is of opinion that the Murder is two
Macbeths. He declares that he heard every word of the reading, but I
doubt it. Alas! he is sadly infirm." On the 27th he wrote to his
daughter from Torquay that the place into which they had put him to
read, and where a pantomime had been played the night before, was
something between a Methodist chapel, a theatre, a circus, a
riding-school, and a cow-house. That day he wrote to me from Bath:
"Landor's ghost goes along the silent streets here before me. . . . The
place looks to me like a cemetery which the Dead have succeeded in
rising and taking. Having built streets, of their old gravestones, they
wander about scantly trying to 'look alive.' A dead failure."
In the second week of February he was in London, under engagement to
return to Scotland (which he had just left) after the usual weekly
reading at St. James's Hall, when there was a sudden interruption. "My
foot has turned lame again!" was his announcement to me on the 15th,
followed next day by this letter. "Henry Thompson will not let me read
to-night, and will not let me go to Scotland to-morrow. Tremendous house
here, and also in Edinburgh. Here is the certificate he drew up for
himself and Beard to sign. 'We the undersigned hereby certify that Mr.
C. D. is suffering from inflammation of the foot (caused by
over-exertion), and that we have forbidden his appearance on the
platform this evening, as he must keep his room for a day or two.' I
have sent up to the Great Western Hotel for apartments, and, if I can
get them, shall move there this evening. Heaven knows what engagements
this may involve in April! It throws us all back, and will cost me some
five hundred pounds."
A few days' rest again brought so much relief, that, against the urgent
entreaties of members of his family as well as other friends, he was in
the railway carriage bound for Edinburgh on the morning of the 20th of
February, accompanied by Mr. Chappell himself. "I came down lazily on a
sofa," he wrote to me from Edinburgh next day, "hardly changing my
position the whole way. The railway authorities had done all sorts of
things, and I was more comfortable than on the sofa at the hotel. The
foot gave me no uneasiness, and has been quiet and steady all
night."[282] He was nevertheless under the necessity, two days later, of
consulting Mr. Syme; and he told his daughter that this great authority
had warned him against over-fatigue in the readings, and given him some
slight remedies, but otherwise reported him in "joost pairfactly
splendid condition." With care he thought the pain might be got rid of.
"'Wa'at mad' Thompson think it was goot?' he said often, and seemed to
take that opinion extremely ill." Again before leaving Scotland he saw
Mr. Syme, and wrote to me on the second of March of the indignation with
which he again treated the gout diagnosis, declaring the disorder to be
an affection of the delicate nerves and muscles originating in cold. "I
told him that it had shewn itself in America in the other foot as well.
'Noo I'll joost swear,' said he, 'that ayond the fatigue o' the readings
ye'd been tramping i' th' snaw, within twa or three days.' I certainly
had. 'Wa'al,' said he triumphantly, 'and hoo did it first begin? I' th'
snaw. Goot! Bah!--Thompson knew no other name for it, and just ca'd it
Goot--Boh!' For which he took two guineas." Yet the famous pupil, Sir
Henry Thompson, went certainly nearer the mark than the distinguished
master, Mr. Syme, in giving to it a more than local character.
The whole of that March month he went on with the scenes from _Oliver
Twist_. "The foot goes famously," he wrote to his daughter. "I feel the
fatigue in it (four Murders in one week[283]) but not overmuch. It
merely aches at night; and so does the other, sympathetically I
suppose." At Hull on the 8th he heard of the death of the old and dear
friend, Emerson Tennent, to whom he had inscribed his last book; and on
the morning of the 12th I met him at the funeral. He had read the
_Oliver Twist_ scenes the night before at York; had just been able to
get to the express train, after shortening the pauses in the reading, by
a violent rush when it was over; and had travelled through the night. He
appeared to, me "dazed" and worn. No man could well look more so than he
did, that sorrowful morning.
The end was near. A public dinner, which will have mention on a later
page, had been given him in Liverpool on the 10th of April, with Lord
Dufferin in the chair, and a reading was due from him in Preston on the
22nd of that month. But on Sunday the 18th we had ill report of him from
Chester, and on the 21st he wrote from Blackpool to his sister-in-law.
"I have come to this Sea-Beach Hotel (charming) for a day's rest. I am
much better than I was on Sunday; but shall want careful looking to, to
get through the readings. My weakness and deadness are all on the left
side; and if I don't look at anything I try to touch with my left hand,
I don't know where it is. I am in (secret) consultation with Frank
Beard, who says that I have given him indisputable evidences of overwork
which he could wish to treat immediately; and so I have telegraphed for
him. I have had a delicious walk by the sea to-day, and I sleep soundly,
and have picked up amazingly in appetite. My foot is greatly better too,
and I wear my own boot." Next day was appointed for the reading at
Preston; and from that place he wrote to me, while waiting the arrival
of Mr. Beard. "Don't say anything about it, but the tremendously severe
nature of this work is a little shaking me. At Chester last Sunday I
found myself extremely giddy, and extremely uncertain of my sense of
touch, both in the left leg and the left hand and arms. I had been
taking some slight medicine of Beard's; and immediately wrote to him
describing exactly what I felt, and asking him whether those feelings
_could be_ referable to the medicine? He promptly replied: 'There can be
no mistaking them from your exact account. The medicine cannot possibly
have caused them. I recognise indisputable symptoms of overwork, and I
wish to take you in hand without any loss of time.' They have greatly
modified since, but he is coming down here this afternoon. To-morrow
night at Warrington I shall have but 25 more nights to work through. If
he can coach me up for them, I do not doubt that I shall get all right
again--as I did when I became free in America. The foot has given me
very little trouble. Yet it is remarkable that it is _the left foot
too_; and that I told Henry Thompson (before I saw his old master Syme)
that I had an inward conviction that whatever it was, it was not gout. I
also told Beard, a year after the Staplehurst accident, that I was
certain that my heart had been fluttered, and wanted a little helping.
This the stethoscope confirmed; and considering the immense exertion I
am undergoing, and the constant jarring of express trains, the case
seems to me quite intelligible. Don't say anything in the Gad's
direction about my being a little out of sorts. I have broached the
matter of course; but very lightly. Indeed there is no reason for
broaching it otherwise."
Even to the close of that letter he had buoyed himself up with the hope
that he might yet be "coached" and that the readings need not be
discontinued. But Mr. Beard stopped them at once, and brought his
patient to London. On Friday morning the 23rd, the same envelope brought
me a note from himself to say that he was well enough, but tired; in
perfectly good spirits, not at all uneasy, and writing this himself that
I should have it under his own hand; with a note from his eldest son to
say that his father appeared to him to be very ill, and that a
consultation had been appointed with Sir Thomas Watson. The statement of
that distinguished physician, sent to myself in June 1872, completes for
the present the sorrowful narrative.
"It was, I think, on the 23rd of April 1869 that I was asked to see
Charles Dickens, in consultation with Mr. Carr Beard. After I got home I
jotted down, from their joint account, what follows.
"After unusual irritability, C. D. found himself, last Saturday or
Sunday, giddy, with a tendency to go backwards, and to turn round.
Afterwards, desiring to put something on a small table, he pushed it and
the table forwards, undesignedly. He had some odd feeling of insecurity
about his left leg, as if there was something unnatural about his heel;
but he could lift, and he did not drag, his leg. Also he spoke of some
strangeness of his left hand and arm; missed the spot on which he wished
to lay that hand, unless he carefully looked at it; felt an unreadiness
to lift his hands towards his head, especially his left hand--when, for
instance, he was brushing his hair.
"He had written thus to Mr. Carr Beard.
"'Is it possible that anything in my medicine can have made me extremely
giddy, extremely uncertain of my footing, especially on the left side,
and extremely indisposed to raise my hands to my head. These symptoms
made me very uncomfortable on Saturday (qy. Sunday?) night, and all
yesterday, &c.'
"The state thus described showed plainly that C. D. had been on the
brink of an attack of paralysis of his left side, and possibly of
apoplexy. It was, no doubt, the result of extreme hurry, overwork, and
excitement, incidental to his Readings.
"On hearing from him Mr. Carr Beard had gone at once to Preston, or
Blackburn (I am not sure which), had forbidden his reading that same
evening, and had brought him to London.
"When I saw him he _appeared_ to be well. His mind was unclouded, his
pulse quiet. His heart was beating with some slight excess of the
natural impulse. He told me he had of late sometimes, but rarely, lost
or misused a word; that he forgot names, and numbers, but had always
done that; and he promised implicit obedience to our injunctions.
"We gave him the following certificate.
"'The undersigned certify that Mr. Charles Dickens has been seriously
unwell, through great exhaustion and fatigue of body and mind consequent
upon his public Readings and long and frequent railway journeys. In our
judgment Mr. Dickens will not be able with safety to himself to resume
his Readings for several months to come.
"'THOS. WATSON, M.D.
"'F. CARR BEARD.'
"However, after some weeks, he expressed a wish for my sanction to his
endeavours to redeem, in a careful and moderate way, some of the reading
engagements to which he had been pledged before those threatenings of
brain-mischief in the North of England.
"As he had continued uniformly to seem and to feel perfectly well, I did
not think myself warranted to refuse that sanction: and in writing to
enforce great caution in the trials, I expressed some apprehension that
he might fancy we had been too peremptory in our injunctions of mental
and bodily repose in April; and I quoted the following remark, which
occurs somewhere in one of Captain Cook's Voyages. 'Preventive measures
are always invidious, for when most successful, the necessity for them
is the least apparent.'
"I mention this to explain the letter which I send herewith,[284] and
which I must beg you to return to me, as a precious remembrance of the
writer with whom I had long enjoyed very friendly and much valued
relations.
"I scarcely need say that if what I have now written can, _in any way_,
be of use to you, it is entirely at your service and disposal--nor need
I say with how much interest I have read the first volume of your late
friend's Life. I cannot help regretting that a great pressure of
professional work at the time, prevented my making a fuller record of a
case so interesting."
The twelve readings to which Sir Thomas Watson consented, with the
condition that railway travel was not to accompany them, were farther to
be delayed until the opening months of 1870. They were an offering from
Dickens by way of small compensation to Messrs. Chappell for the
breakdown of the enterprise on which they had staked so much. But here
practically he finished his career as a public reader, and what remains
will come with the end of what is yet to be told. One effort only
intervened, by which he hoped to get happily back to his old pursuits;
but to this, as to that which preceded it, sterner Fate said also No,
and his Last Book, like his Last Readings, prematurely closed.
FOOTNOTES:
[281] "I think I shall be pretty correct in both places as to the run
being on the Final readings. We had an immense house here" (Edinburgh,
12th of December) "last night, and a very large turnaway. But Glasgow
being shady and the charges very great, it will be the most we can do, I
fancy, on these first Scotch readings, to bring the Chappells safely
home (as to them) without loss."
[282] The close of the letter has an amusing picture which I may be
excused for printing in a note. "The only news that will interest you is
that the good-natured Reverdy Johnson, being at an Art Dinner in Glasgow
the other night, and falling asleep over the post-prandial speeches
(only too naturally), woke suddenly on hearing the name of 'Johnson' in
a list of Scotch painters which one of the orators was enumerating; at
once plunged up, under the impression that somebody was drinking his
health; and immediately, and with overflowing amiability, began
returning thanks. The spectacle was then presented to the astonished
company, of the American Eagle being restrained by the coat tails from
swooping at the moon, while the smaller birds endeavoured to explain to
it how the case stood, and the cock robin in possession of the
chairman's eye twittered away as hard as he could split. I am told that
it was wonderfully droll."
[283] I take from the letter a mention of the effect on a friend. "The
night before last, unable to get in, B. had a seat behind the screen,
and was nearly frightened off it, by the Murder. Every vestige of colour
had left his face when I came off, and he sat staring over a glass of
champagne in the wildest way."
[284] In this letter Dickens wrote: "I thank you heartily" (23rd of June
1869) "for your great kindness and interest. It would really pain me if
I thought you could seriously doubt my implicit reliance on your
professional skill and advice. I feel as certain now as I felt when you
came to see me on my breaking down through over fatigue, that the
injunction you laid upon me to stop in my course of Readings was
necessary and wise. And to its firmness I refer (humanly speaking) my
speedy recovery from that moment. I would on no account have resumed,
even on the turn of this year, without your sanction. Your friendly aid
will never be forgotten by me; and again I thank you for it with all my
heart."
CHAPTER XVIII.
LAST BOOK.
1869-1870.
First Fancy for _Edwin Drood_--Story as planned
in his Mind--Nothing written of his
Intentions--Merits of the Fragment--Comparison
of his Early and his Late MSS.--Discovery of
Unpublished Scene--Probable Reason for writing
it in Advance--How Mr. Sapsea ceased to be a
Member of the Eight Club.
THE last book undertaken by Dickens was to be published, in illustrated
monthly numbers, of the old form, but to close with the twelfth.[285] It
closed, unfinished, with the sixth number, which was itself
underwritten by two pages.
His first fancy for the tale was expressed in a letter in the middle of
July. "What should you think of the idea of a story beginning in this
way?--Two people, boy and girl, or very young, going apart from one
another, pledged to be married after many years--at the end of the book.
The interest to arise out of the tracing of their separate ways, and the
impossibility of telling what will be done with that impending fate."
This was laid aside; but it left a marked trace on the story as
afterwards designed, in the position of Edwin Drood and his betrothed.
I first heard of the later design in a letter dated "Friday the 6th of
August 1869," in which after speaking, with the usual unstinted praise
he bestowed always on what moved him in others, of a little tale he had
received for his journal,[286] he spoke of the change that had occurred
to him for the new tale by himself. "I laid aside the fancy I told you
of, and have a very curious and new idea for my new story. Not a
communicable idea (or the interest of the book would be gone), but a
very strong one, though difficult to work." The story, I learnt
immediately afterward, was to be that of the murder of a nephew by his
uncle; the originality of which was to consist in the review of the
murderer's career by himself at the close, when its temptations were to
be dwelt upon as if, not he the culprit, but some other man, were the
tempted. The last chapters were to be written in the condemned cell, to
which his wickedness, all elaborately elicited from him as if told of
another, had brought him. Discovery by the murderer of the utter
needlessness of the murder for its object, was to follow hard upon
commission of the deed; but all discovery of the murderer was to be
baffled till towards the close, when, by means of a gold ring which had
resisted the corrosive effects of the lime into which he had thrown the
body, not only the person murdered was to be identified but the locality
of the crime and the man who committed it.[287] So much was told to me
before any of the book was written; and it will be recollected that the
ring, taken by Drood to be given to his betrothed only if their
engagement went on, was brought away with him from their last
interview. Rosa was to marry Tartar, and Crisparkle the sister of
Landless, who was himself, I think, to have perished in assisting Tartar
finally to unmask and seize the murderer.
Nothing had been written, however, of the main parts of the design
excepting what is found in the published numbers; there was no hint or
preparation for the sequel in any notes of chapters in advance; and
there remained not even what he had himself so sadly written of the book
by Thackeray also interrupted by death. The evidence of matured designs
never to be accomplished, intentions planned never to be executed, roads
of thought marked out never to be traversed, goals shining in the
distance never to be reached, was wanting here. It was all a blank.
Enough had been completed nevertheless to give promise of a much greater
book than its immediate predecessor. "I hope his book is finished,"
wrote Longfellow when the news of his death was flashed to America. "It
is certainly one of his most beautiful works, if not the most beautiful
of all. It would be too sad to think the pen had fallen from his hand,
and left it incomplete." Some of its characters were touched with
subtlety, and in its descriptions his imaginative power was at its best.
Not a line was wanting to the reality, in the most minute local detail,
of places the most widely contrasted; and we saw with equal vividness
the lazy cathedral town and the lurid opium-eater's den.[288] Something
like the old lightness and buoyancy of animal spirits gave a new
freshness to the humour; the scenes of the child-heroine and her
luckless betrothed had both novelty and nicety of character in them; and
Mr. Grewgious in chambers with his clerk and the two waiters, the
conceited fool Sapsea, and the blustering philanthropist Honeythunder,
were first-rate comedy. Miss Twinkleton was of the family of Miss La
Creevy; and the lodging-house keeper, Miss Billickin, though she gave
Miss Twinkleton but a sorry account of her blood, had that of Mrs.
Todgers in her veins. "I was put in life to a very genteel
boarding-school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of
about your own age, or it may be, some years younger, and a poorness of
blood flowed from the table which has run through my life." Was ever
anything better said of a school-fare of starved gentility?
The last page of _Edwin Drood_ was written in the Châlet in the
afternoon of his last day of consciousness; and I have thought there
might be some interest in a facsimile of the greater part of this final
page of manuscript that ever came from his hand, at which he had worked
unusually late in order to finish the chapter. It has very much the
character, in its excessive care of correction and interlineation, of
all his later manuscripts; and in order that comparison may be made
with his earlier and easier method, I place beside it a portion of a
page of the original of _Oliver Twist_. His greater pains and
elaboration of writing, it may be mentioned, become first very obvious
in the later parts of _Martin Chuzzlewit_; but not the least remarkable
feature in all his manuscripts, is the accuracy with which the portions
of each representing the several numbers are exactly adjusted to the
space the printer had to fill. Whether without erasure or so interlined
as to be illegible, nothing is wanting, and there is nothing in excess.
So assured was the habit, that he has himself remarked upon an instance
the other way, in _Our Mutual Friend_, as not having happened to him for
thirty years. But _Edwin Drood_ more startlingly showed him how
unsettled the habit he most prized had become, in the clashing of old
and new pursuits. "When I had written" (22nd of December 1869) "and, as
I thought, disposed of the first two Numbers of my story, Clowes
informed me to my horror that they were, together, _twelve printed pages
too short_!!! Consequently I had to transpose a chapter from number two
to number one, and remodel number two altogether! This was the more
unlucky, that it came upon me at the time when I was obliged to leave
the book, in order to get up the Readings" (the additional twelve for
which Sir Thomas Watson's consent had been obtained), "quite gone out of
my mind since I left them off. However, I turned to it and got it done,
and both numbers are now in type. Charles Collins has designed an
excellent cover." It was his wish that his son-in-law should have
illustrated the story; but, this not being practicable, upon an opinion
expressed by Mr. Millais which the result thoroughly justified, choice
was made of Mr. S. L. Fildes.
* * * * *
[Illustration: Handwritten Notes]
[Illustration: Handwritten Notes]
This reference to the last effort of Dickens's genius had been written
as it thus stands, when a discovery of some interest was made by the
writer. Within the leaves of one of Dickens's other manuscripts were
found some detached slips of his writing, on paper only half the size of
that used for the tale, so cramped, interlined, and blotted as to be
nearly illegible, which on close inspection proved to be a scene in
which Sapsea the auctioneer is introduced as the principal figure, among
a group of characters new to the story. The explanation of it perhaps
is, that, having become a little nervous about the course of the tale,
from a fear that he might have plunged too soon into the incidents
leading on to the catastrophe, such as the Datchery assumption in the
fifth number (a misgiving he had certainly expressed to his
sister-in-law), it had occurred to him to open some fresh veins of
character incidental to the interest, though not directly part of it,
and so to handle them in connection with Sapsea as a little to suspend
the final development even while assisting to strengthen it. Before
beginning any number of a serial he used, as we have seen in former
instances, to plan briefly what he intended to put into it chapter by
chapter; and his first number-plan of _Drood_ had the following: "Mr.
Sapsea. Old Tory jackass. Connect Jasper with him. (He will want a
solemn donkey by and by):" which was effected by bringing together
both Durdles and Jasper, for connection with Sapsea, in the matter of
the epitaph for Mrs. Sapsea's tomb. The scene now discovered might in
this view have been designed to strengthen and carry forward that
element in the tale; and otherwise it very sufficiently expresses
itself. It would supply an answer, if such were needed, to those who
have asserted that the hopeless decadence of Dickens as a writer had set
in before his death. Among the lines last written by him, these are the
very last we can ever hope to receive; and they seem to me a delightful
specimen of the power possessed by him in his prime, and the rarest
which any novelist can have, of revealing a character by a touch. Here
are a couple of people, Kimber and Peartree, not known to us before,
whom we read off thoroughly in a dozen words; and as to Sapsea himself,
auctioneer and mayor of Cloisterham, we are face to face with what
before we only dimly realised, and we see the solemn jackass, in his
business pulpit, playing off the airs of Mr. Dean in his Cathedral
pulpit, with Cloisterham laughing at the impostor.
"HOW MR. SAPSEA CEASED TO BE A MEMBER OF THE EIGHT CLUB.
"TOLD BY HIMSELF.
"Wishing to take the air, I proceeded by a circuitous route to the Club,
it being our weekly night of meeting. I found that we mustered our full
strength. We were enrolled under the denomination of the Eight Club. We
were eight in number; we met at eight o'clock during eight months of the
year; we played eight games of four-handed cribbage, at eightpence the
game; our frugal supper was composed of eight rolls, eight mutton chops,
eight pork sausages, eight baked potatoes, eight marrow-bones, with
eight toasts, and eight bottles of ale. There may, or may not, be a
certain harmony of colour in the ruling idea of this (to adopt a phrase
of our lively neighbours) reunion. It was a little idea of mine.
"A somewhat popular member of the Eight Club, was a member by the name
of Kimber. By profession, a dancing-master. A commonplace, hopeful sort
of man, wholly destitute of dignity or knowledge of the world.
"As I entered the Club-room, Kimber was making the remark: 'And he still
half-believes him to be very high in the Church.'
"In the act of hanging up my hat on the eighth peg by the door, I caught
Kimber's visual ray. He lowered it, and passed a remark on the next
change of the moon. I did not take particular notice of this at the
moment, because the world was often pleased to be a little shy of
ecclesiastical topics in my presence. For I felt that I was picked out
(though perhaps only through a coincidence) to a certain extent to
represent what I call our glorious constitution in Church and State. The
phrase may be objected to by captious minds; but I own to it as mine. I
threw it off in argument some little time back. I said: 'OUR GLORIOUS
CONSTITUTION in CHURCH and STATE.'
"Another member of the Eight Club was Peartree; also member of the Royal
College of Surgeons. Mr. Peartree is not accountable to me for his
opinions, and I say no more of them here than that he attends the poor
gratis whenever they want him, and is not the parish doctor. Mr.
Peartree may justify it to the grasp of _his_ mind thus to do his
republican utmost to bring an appointed officer into contempt. Suffice
it that Mr. Peartree can never justify it to the grasp of _mine_.
"Between Peartree and Kimber there was a sickly sort of feeble-minded
alliance. It came under my particular notice when I sold off Kimber by
auction. (Goods taken in execution). He was a widower in a white
under-waistcoat, and slight shoes with bows, and had two daughters not
ill-looking. Indeed the reverse. Both daughters taught dancing in
scholastic establishments for Young Ladies--had done so at Mrs.
Sapsea's; nay, Twinkleton's--and both, in giving lessons, presented the
unwomanly spectacle of having little fiddles tucked under their chins.
In spite of which, the younger one might, if I am correctly informed--I
will raise the veil so far as to say I KNOW she might--have soared for
life from this degrading taint, but for having the class of mind
allotted to what I call the common herd, and being so incredibly devoid
of veneration as to become painfully ludicrous.
"When I sold off Kimber without reserve, Peartree (as poor as he can
hold together) had several prime household lots knocked down to him. I
am not to be blinded; and of course it was as plain to me what he was
going to do with them, as it was that he was a brown hulking sort of
revolutionary subject who had been in India with the soldiers, and ought
(for the sake of society) to have his neck broke. I saw the lots shortly
afterwards in Kimber's lodgings--through the window--and I easily made
out that there had been a sneaking pretence of lending them till better
times. A man with a smaller knowledge of the world than myself might
have been led to suspect that Kimber had held back money from his
creditors, and fraudulently bought the goods. But, besides that I knew
for certain he had no money, I knew that this would involve a species of
forethought not to be made compatible with the frivolity of a caperer,
inoculating other people with capering, for his bread.
"As it was the first time I had seen either of those two since the sale,
I kept myself in what I call Abeyance. When selling him up, I had
delivered a few remarks--shall I say a little homely?--concerning
Kimber, which the world did regard as more than usually worth notice. I
had come up into my pulpit;, it was said, uncommonly like--and a murmur
of recognition had repeated his (I will not name whose) title, before I
spoke. I had then gone on to say that all present would find, in the
first page of the catalogue that was lying before them, in the last
paragraph before the first lot, the following words: 'Sold in pursuance
of a writ of execution issued by a creditor.' I had then proceeded to
remind my friends, that however frivolous, not to say contemptible, the
business by which a man got his goods together, still his goods were as
dear to him, and as cheap to society (if sold without reserve), as
though his pursuits had been of a character that would bear serious
contemplation. I had then divided my text (if I may be allowed so to
call it) into three heads: firstly, Sold; secondly, In pursuance of a
writ of execution; thirdly, Issued by a creditor; with a few moral
reflections on each, and winding up with, 'Now to the first lot' in a
manner that was complimented when I afterwards mingled with my hearers.
"So, not being certain on what terms I and Kimber stood, I was grave, I
was chilling. Kimber, however, moving to me, I moved to Kimber. (I was
the creditor who had issued the writ. Not that it matters.)
"'I was alluding, Mr. Sapsea,' said Kimber, 'to a stranger who entered
into conversation with me in the street as I came to the Club. He had
been speaking to you just before, it seemed, by the churchyard; and
though you had told him who you were, I could hardly persuade him that
you were not high in the Church.'
"'Idiot!' said Peartree.
"'Ass!' said Kimber.
"'Idiot and Ass!" said the other five members.
"'Idiot and Ass, gentlemen,' I remonstrated, looking around me, 'are
strong expressions to apply to a young man of good appearance and
address.' My generosity was roused; I own it.
"'You'll admit that he must be a Fool,' said Peartree.
"'You can't deny that he must be a Blockhead, said Kimber.
"Their tone of disgust amounted to being offensive. Why should the young
man be so calumniated? What had he done? He had only made an innocent
and natural mistake. I controlled my generous indignation, and said so.
"'Natural?' repeated Kimber; '_He's_ a Natural!'
"The remaining six members of the Eight Club laughed unanimously. It
stung me. It was a scornful laugh. My anger was roused in behalf of an
absent, friendless stranger. I rose (for I had been sitting down).
"'Gentlemen,' I said with dignity, 'I will not remain one of this Club
allowing opprobrium to be cast on an unoffending person in his absence.
I will not so violate what I call the sacred rites of hospitality.
Gentlemen, until you know how to behave yourselves better, I leave you.
Gentlemen, until then I withdraw, from this place of meeting, whatever
personal qualifications I may have brought into it. Gentlemen, until
then you cease to be the Eight Club, and must make the best you can of
becoming the Seven.'
"I put on my hat and retired. As I went down stairs I distinctly heard
them give a suppressed cheer. Such is the power of demeanour and
knowledge of mankind. I had forced it out of them.
"II.
"Whom should I meet in the street, within a few yards of the door of the
inn where the Club was held, but the self-same young man whose cause I
had felt it my duty so warmly--and I will add so disinterestedly--to
take up.
"Is it Mr. Sapsea,' he said doubtfully, 'or is it----'
"'It is Mr. Sapsea,' I replied.
"'Pardon me, Mr. Sapsea; you appear warm, sir,'
"'I have been warm,' I said, 'and on your account.' Having stated the
circumstances at some length (my generosity almost overpowered him), I
asked him his name.
"'Mr. Sapsea,' he answered, looking down, 'your penetration is so acute,
your glance into the souls of your fellow men is so penetrating, that if
I was hardy enough to deny that my name is Poker, what would it avail
me?'
"I don't know that I had quite exactly made out to a fraction that his
name _was_ Poker, but I daresay I had been pretty near doing it.
"'Well, well,' said I, trying to put him at his ease by nodding my head
in a soothing way. 'Your name is Poker, and there is no harm in being
named Poker.'
"'Oh Mr. Sapsea!' cried the young man, in a very well-behaved manner.
'Bless you for those words!' He then, as if ashamed of having given way
to his feelings, looked down again.
"'Come, Poker,' said I, 'let me hear more about you. Tell me. Where are
you going to, Poker? and where do you come from?'
"'Ah Mr. Sapsea!' exclaimed the young man. 'Disguise from you is
impossible. You know already that I come from somewhere, and am going
somewhere else. If I was to deny it, what would it avail me?'
"'Then don't deny it,' was my remark.
"'Or,' pursued Poker, in a kind of despondent rapture, 'or if I was to
deny that I came to this town to see and hear you sir, what would it
avail me? Or if I was to deny----'"
The fragment ends there, and the hand that could alone have completed it
is at rest for ever.
* * * * *
Some personal characteristics remain for illustration before the end is
briefly told.
FOOTNOTES:
[285] In drawing the agreement for the publication, Mr. Ouvry had, by
Dickens's wish, inserted a clause thought to be altogether needless, but
found to be sadly pertinent. It was the first time such a clause had
been inserted in one of his agreements. "That if the said Charles
Dickens shall die during the composition of the said work of the
_Mystery of Edwin Drood_, or shall otherwise become incapable of
completing the said work for publication in twelve monthly numbers as
agreed, it shall be referred to John Forster, Esq, one of Her Majesty's
Commissioners in Lunacy, or in the case of his death, incapacity, or
refusal to act, then to such person as shall be named by Her Majesty's
Attorney-General for the time being, to determine the amount which shall
be repaid by the said Charles Dickens, his executors or administrators,
to the said Frederic Chapman as a fair compensation for so much of the
said work as shall not have been completed for publication." The sum to
be paid at once for 25,000 copies was £7500; publisher and author
sharing equally in the profit of all sales beyond that impression; and
the number reached, while the author yet lived, was 50,000. The sum paid
for early sheets to America was £1000; and Baron Tauchnitz paid
liberally, as he always did, for his Leipzig reprint. "All Mr. Dickens's
works," M. Tauchnitz writes to me, "have been published under agreement
by me. My intercourse with him lasted nearly twenty-seven years. The
first of his letters dates in October 1843, and his last at the close of
March 1870. Our long relations were not only never troubled by the least
disagreement, but were the occasion of most hearty personal feeling; and
I shall never lose the sense of his kind and friendly nature. On my
asking him his terms for _Edwin Drood_, he replied 'Your terms shall be
mine.'"
[286] "I have a very remarkable story indeed for you to read. It is in
only two chapters. A thing never to melt into other stories in the mind,
but always to keep itself apart." The story was published in the 37th
number of the new series of _All the Year Round_, with the title of "An
Experience." The "new series" had been started to break up the too great
length of volumes in sequence, and the only change it announced was the
discontinuance of Christmas Numbers. He had tired of them himself; and,
observing the extent to which they were now copied in all directions (as
usual with other examples set by him), he supposed them likely to become
tiresome to the public.
[287] The reader curious in such matters will be helped to the clue for
much of this portion of the plot by reference to pp. 90, 103, and 109,
in Chapters XII, XIII, and XIV.
[288] I subjoin what has been written to me by an American
correspondent. "I went lately with the same inspector who accompanied
Dickens to see the room of the opium-smokers, old Eliza and her Lascar
or Bengalee friend. There a fancy seized me to buy the bedstead which
figures so accurately in _Edwin Drood_, in narrative and picture. I gave
the old woman a pound for it, and have it now packed and ready for
shipment to New York. Another American bought a pipe. So you see we have
heartily forgiven the novelist his pleasantries at our expense. Many
military men who came to England from America refuse to register their
titles, especially if they be Colonels; all the result of the basting we
got on that score in _Martin Chuzzlewit_."
CHAPTER XIX.
PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS.
1836-1870.
Dickens not a Bookish Man--Character of his
Talk--Dickens made to tell his Own Story--Lord
Russell on Dickens's Letters--No Self-conceit
in Dickens--Letter to his Youngest
Son--Personal Prayer--Hymn in a Christmas
Tale--Objection to Posthumous Honours--Source
of Quarrel with Literary Fund--Small Poets--On
"Royalty" Bargains--Editorship--Relations with
Contributors--Foreign Views of English
People--Editorial Pleasures--Adverse Influences
of Periodical Writing--Anger and Satire--No
desire to enter the House of Commons--Reforms
he took most Interest in--The Liverpool Dinner
in 1869--Tribute to Lord Russell--The People
governing and the People governed--Tone of Last
Book--Alleged Offers from the Queen--The
Queen's Desire to see Dickens act--Her
Majesty's Wish to hear Dickens read--Interview
with the Queen--Dickens's Grateful Impression
from it--"In Memoriam" by Arthur Helps--Rural
Enjoyments--A Winner in the Games--Dickens's
Habits of Life everywhere--Centre and Soul of
his Home--Daily Habits--London Haunts--First
Attack of Lameness--How it affected his Large
Dogs--His Hatred of Indifference--At Social
Meetings--Agreeable Pleasantries--Ghost
Stories--Marvels of Coincidence--Predominant
Impression of his Life--Effects on his Career.
OBJECTION has been taken to this biography as likely to disappoint its
readers in not making them "talk to Dickens as Boswell makes them talk
to Johnson." But where will the blame lie if a man takes up _Pickwick_
and is disappointed to find that he is not reading _Rasselas_? A book
must be judged for what it aims to be, and not for what it cannot by
possibility be. I suppose so remarkable an author as Dickens hardly ever
lived who carried so little of authorship into ordinary social
intercourse. Potent as the sway of his writings was over him, it
expressed itself in other ways. Traces or triumphs of literary labour,
displays of conversational or other personal predominance, were no part
of the influence he exerted over friends. To them he was only the
pleasantest of companions, with whom they forgot that he had ever
written anything, and felt only the charm which a nature of such
capacity for supreme enjoyment causes every one around it to enjoy. His
talk was unaffected and natural, never bookish in the smallest degree.
He was quite up to the average of well read men, but as there was no
ostentation of it in his writing, so neither was there in his
conversation. This was so attractive because so keenly observant, and
lighted up with so many touches of humorous fancy; but, with every
possible thing to give relish to it, there were not many things to bring
away.
Of course a book must stand or fall by its contents. Macaulay said very
truly that the place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not by
what is written about them, but by what is written in them. I offer no
complaint of any remark made upon these volumes, but there have been
some misapprehensions. Though Dickens bore outwardly so little of the
impress of his writings, they formed the whole of that inner life which
essentially constituted the man; and as in this respect he was actually,
I have thought that his biography should endeavour to present him. The
story of his books, therefore, at all stages of their progress, and of
the hopes or designs connected with them, was my first care. With that
view, and to give also to the memoir what was attainable of the value of
autobiography, letters to myself, such as were never addressed to any
other of his correspondents, and covering all the important incidents in
the life to be retraced, were used with few exceptions exclusively; and
though the exceptions are much more numerous in the present volume, this
general plan has guided me to the end. Such were my limits indeed, that
half even of those letters had to be put aside; and to have added all
such others as were open to me would have doubled the size of my book,
not contributed to it a new fact of life or character, and altered
materially its design. It would have been so much lively illustration
added to the subject, but out of place here. The purpose here was to
make Dickens the sole central figure in the scenes revived, narrator as
well as principal actor; and only by the means employed could
consistency or unity be given to the self-revelation, and the picture
made definite and clear. It is the peculiarity of few men to be to their
most intimate friend neither more nor less than they are to themselves,
but this was true of Dickens; and what kind or quality of nature such
intercourse expressed in him, of what strength, tenderness, and delicacy
susceptible, of what steady level warmth, of what daily unresting
activity of intellect, of what unbroken continuity of kindly impulse
through the change and vicissitude of three-and-thirty years, the
letters to myself given in these volumes could alone express. Gathered
from various and differing sources, their interest could not have been
as the interest of these; in which everything comprised in the
successive stages of a most attractive career is written with unexampled
candour and truthfulness, and set forth in definite pictures of what he
saw and stood in the midst of, unblurred by vagueness or reserve. Of the
charge of obtruding myself to which their publication has exposed me, I
can only say that I studied nothing so hard as to suppress my own
personality, and have to regret my ill success where I supposed I had
even too perfectly succeeded. But we have all of us frequent occasion to
say, parodying Mrs. Peachem's remark, that we are bitter bad judges of
ourselves.
The other properties of these letters are quite subordinate to this main
fact that the man who wrote them is thus perfectly seen in them. But
they do not lessen the estimate of his genius. Admiration rises higher
at the writer's mental forces, who, putting so much of himself into his
work for the public, had still so much overflowing for such private
intercourse. The sunny health of nature in them is manifest; its
largeness, spontaneity, and manliness; but they have also that which
highest intellects appreciate best. "I have read them," Lord Russell
wrote to me, "with delight and pain. His heart, his imagination, his
qualities of painting what is noble, and finding diamonds hidden far
away, are greater here than even his works convey to me. How I lament he
was not spared to us longer. I shall have a fresh grief when he dies in
your volumes." Shallower people are more apt to find other things. If
the bonhommie of a man's genius is obvious to all the world, there are
plenty of knowing ones ready to take the shine out of the genius, to
discover that after all it is not so wonderful, that what is grave in it
wants depth, and the humour has something mechanical. But it will be
difficult even for these to look over letters so marvellous in the art
of reproducing to the sight what has once been seen, so natural and
unstudied in their wit and fun, and with such a constant well-spring of
sprightly runnings of speech in them, point of epigram, ingenuity of
quaint expression, absolute freedom from every touch of affectation, and
to believe that the source of this man's humour, or of whatever gave
wealth to his genius, was other than habitual, unbounded, and
resistless.
There is another consideration of some importance. Sterne did not more
incessantly fall back from his works upon himself than Dickens did, and
undoubtedly one of the impressions left by the letters is that of the
intensity and tenacity with which he recognized, realized, contemplated,
cultivated, and thoroughly enjoyed, his own individuality in even its
most trivial manifestations. But if any one is led to ascribe this to
self-esteem, to a narrow exclusiveness, or to any other invidious form
of egotism, let him correct the impression by observing how Dickens bore
himself amid the universal blazing-up of America, at the beginning and
at the end of his career. Of his hearty, undisguised, and unmistakeable
enjoyment of his astonishing and indeed quite bewildering popularity,
there can be as little doubt as that there is not a particle of vanity
in it, any more than of false modesty or grimace.[289] While realizing
fully the fact of it, and the worth of the fact, there is not in his
whole being a fibre that answers falsely to the charmer's voice. Few men
in the world, one fancies, could have gone through such grand displays
of fireworks, not merely with so marvellous an absence of what the
French call _pose_, but unsoiled by the smoke of a cracker. No man's
strong individuality was ever so free from conceit.
Other personal incidents and habits, and especially some matters of
opinion of grave importance, will help to make his character better
known. Much questioning followed a brief former reference to his
religious belief, but, inconsistent or illogical as the conduct
described may be, there is nothing to correct or to modify in my
statement of it;[290] and, to what otherwise appeared to be in doubt,
explicit answer will be afforded by a letter, written upon the youngest
of his children leaving home in September 1868 to join his brother in
Australia, than which none worthier appears in his story. "I write this
note to-day because your going away is much upon my mind, and because I
want you to have a few parting words from me, to think of now and then
at quiet times. I need not tell you that I love you dearly, and am very,
very sorry in my heart to part with you. But this life is half made up
of partings, and these pains must be borne. It is my comfort and my
sincere conviction that you are going to try the life for which you are
best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more suited to you than
any experiment in a study or office would have been; and without that
training, you could have followed no other suitable occupation. What you
have always wanted until now, has been a set, steady, constant purpose.
I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough determination to do
whatever you have to do, as well as you can do it. I was not so old as
you are now, when I first had to win my food, and to do it out of this
determination; and I have never slackened in it since. Never take a mean
advantage of any one in any transaction, and never be hard upon people
who are in your power. Try to do to others as you would have them do to
you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better
for you that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid down by
Our Saviour than that you should. I put a New Testament among your books
for the very same reasons, and with the very same hopes, that made me
write an easy account of it for you, when you were a little child.
Because it is the best book that ever was, or will be, known in the
world; and because it teaches you the best lessons by which any human
creature, who tries to be truthful and faithful to duty, can possibly be
guided. As your brothers have gone away, one by one, I have written to
each such words as I am now writing to you, and have entreated them all
to guide themselves by this Book, putting aside the interpretations and
inventions of Man. You will remember that you have never at home been
harassed about religious observances, or mere formalities. I have always
been anxious not to weary my children with such things, before they are
old enough to form opinions respecting them. You will therefore
understand the better that I now most solemnly impress upon you the
truth and beauty of the Christian Religion, as it came from Christ
Himself, and the impossibility of your going far wrong if you humbly but
heartily respect it. Only one thing more on this head. The more we are
in earnest as to feeling it, the less we are disposed to hold forth
about it. Never abandon the wholesome practice of saying your own
private prayers, night and morning. I have never abandoned it myself,
and I know the comfort of it. I hope you will always be able to say in
after life, that you had a kind father. You cannot show your affection
for him so well, or make him so happy, as by doing your duty." They who
most intimately knew Dickens will know best that every word there is
written from his heart, and is radiant with the truth of his nature.
To the same effect, in the leading matter, he expressed himself twelve
years before, and again the day before his death; replying in both cases
to correspondents who had addressed him as a public writer. A clergyman,
the Rev. R. H. Davies, had been struck by the hymn in the Christmas tale
of the Wreck of the Golden Mary (_Household Words_, 1856). "I beg to
thank you" Dickens answered (Christmas Eve, 1856) "for your very
acceptable letter--not the less gratifying to me because I am myself the
writer you refer to. . . . There cannot be many men, I believe, who have a
more humble veneration for the New Testament, or a more profound
conviction of its all-sufficiency, than I have. If I am ever (as you
tell me I am) mistaken on this subject, it is because I discountenance
all obtrusive professions of and tradings in religion, as one of the
main causes why real Christianity has been retarded in this world; and
because my observation of life induces me to hold in unspeakable dread
and horror, those unseemly squabbles about the letter which drive the
spirit out of hundreds of thousands." In precisely similar tone, to a
reader of _Edwin Drood_ (Mr. J. M. Makeham), who had pointed out to him
that his employment as a figure of speech of a line from Holy Writ in
his tenth chapter might be subject to misconstruction, he wrote from
Gadshill on Wednesday the eighth of June, 1870. "It would be quite
inconceivable to me, but for your letter, that any reasonable reader
could possibly attach a scriptural reference to that passage. . . . I am
truly shocked to find that any reader can make the mistake. I have
always striven in my writings to express veneration for the life and
lessons of our Saviour; because I feel it; and because I re-wrote that
history for my children--every one of whom knew it, from having it
repeated to them, long before they could read, and almost as soon as
they could speak. But I have never made proclamation of this from the
house tops."[291]
A dislike of all display was rooted in him; and his objection to
posthumous honours, illustrated by the instructions in his will, was
very strikingly expressed two years before his death, when Mr. Thomas
Fairbairn asked his help to a proposed recognition of Rajah Brooke's
services by a memorial in Westminster Abbey. "I am very strongly
impelled" (24th of June 1868) "to comply with any request of yours. But
these posthumous honours of committee, subscriptions, and Westminster
Abbey are so profoundly unsatisfactory in my eyes that--plainly--I would
rather have nothing to do with them in any case. My daughter and her
aunt unite with me in kindest regards to Mrs. Fairbairn, and I hope you
will believe in the possession of mine until I am quietly buried without
any memorial but such as I have set up in my lifetime." Asked a year
later (August 1869) to say something on the inauguration of Leigh Hunt's
bust at his grave in Kensal-green, he told the committee that he had a
very strong objection to speech-making beside graves. "I do not expect
or wish my feelings in this wise to guide other men; still, it is so
serious with me, and the idea of ever being the subject of such a
ceremony myself is so repugnant to my soul, that I must decline to
officiate."
His aversion to every form of what is called patronage of
literature[292] was part of the same feeling. A few months earlier a
Manchester gentleman[293] wrote for his support to such a scheme. "I beg
to be excused," was his reply, "from complying with the request you do
me the honour to prefer, simply because I hold the opinion that there is
a great deal too much patronage in England. The better the design, the
less (as I think) should it seek such adventitious aid, and the more
composedly should it rest on its own merits." This was the belief
Southey held; it extended to the support by way of patronage given by
such societies as the Literary Fund, which Southey also strongly
resisted; and it survived the failure of the Guild whereby it was hoped
to establish a system of self-help, under which men engaged in literary
pursuits might be as proud to receive as to give. Though there was no
project of his life into which he flung himself with greater eagerness
than the Guild, it was not taken up by the class it was meant to
benefit, and every renewed exertion more largely added to the failure.
There is no room in these pages for the story, which will add its
chapter some day to the vanity of human wishes; but a passage from a
letter to Bulwer Lytton at its outset will be some measure of the height
from which the writer fell, when all hope for what he had so set his
heart upon ceased. "I do devoutly believe that this plan, carried by the
support which I trust will be given to it, will change the status of the
literary man in England, and make a revolution in his position which no
government, no power on earth but his own, could ever effect. I have
implicit confidence in the scheme--so splendidly begun--if we carry it
out with a stedfast energy. I have a strong conviction that we hold in
our hands the peace and honour of men of letters for centuries to come,
and that you are destined to be their best and most enduring
benefactor. . . . Oh what a procession of new years may walk out of all
this for the class we belong to, after we are dust."
These views about patronage did not make him more indulgent to the
clamour with which it is so often invoked for the ridiculously small.
"You read that life of Clare?" he wrote (15th of August 1865). "Did you
ever see such preposterous exaggeration of small claims? And isn't it
expressive, the perpetual prating of him in the book as _the Poet_? So
another Incompetent used to write to the Literary Fund when I was on the
committee: 'This leaves the Poet at his divine mission in a corner of
the single room. The Poet's father is wiping his spectacles. The Poet's
mother is weaving'--Yah!'" He was equally intolerant of every
magnificent proposal that should render the literary man independent of
the bookseller, and he sharply criticized even a compromise to replace
the half-profits system by one of royalties on copies sold. "What does
it come to?" he remarked of an ably-written pamphlet in which this was
urged (10th of November 1866): "what is the worth of the remedy after
all? You and I know very well that in nine cases out of ten the author
is at a disadvantage with the publisher because the publisher has
capital and the author has not. We know perfectly well that in nine
cases out of ten money is advanced by the publisher before the book is
producible--often, long before. No young or unsuccessful author (unless
he were an amateur and an independent gentleman) would make a bargain
for having that royalty, to-morrow, if he could have a certain sum of
money, or an advance of money. The author who could command that
bargain, could command it to-morrow, or command anything else. For the
less fortunate or the less able, I make bold to say--with some knowledge
of the subject, as a writer who made a publisher's fortune long before
he began to share in the real profits of his books--that if the
publishers met next week, and resolved henceforth to make this royalty
bargain and no other, it would be an enormous hardship and misfortune
because the authors could not live while they wrote. The pamphlet seems
to me just another example of the old philosophical chess-playing, with
human beings for pieces. 'Don't want money.' 'Be careful to be born with
means, and have a banker's account.' 'Your publisher will settle with
you, at such and such long periods according to the custom of his trade,
and you will settle with your butcher and baker weekly, in the meantime,
by drawing cheques as I do.' 'You must be sure not to want money, and
then I have worked it out for you splendidly.'"
Less has been said in this work than might perhaps have been wished, of
the way in which his editorship of _Household Words_ and _All the Year
Round_ was discharged. It was distinguished above all by liberality; and
a scrupulous consideration and delicacy, evinced by him to all his
contributors, was part of the esteem in which he held literature itself.
It was said in a newspaper after his death, evidently by one of his
contributors, that he always brought the best out of a man by
encouragement and appreciation; that he liked his writers to feel
unfettered; and that his last reply to a proposition for a series of
articles had been: "Whatever you see your way to, I will see mine to,
and we know and understand each other well enough to make the best of
these conditions." Yet the strong feeling of personal responsibility was
always present in his conduct of both journals; and varied as the
contents of a number might be, and widely apart the writers, a certain
individuality of his own was never absent. He took immense pains (as
indeed was his habit about everything) with numbers in which he had
written nothing; would often accept a paper from a young or unhandy
contributor, because of some single notion in it which he thought it
worth rewriting for; and in this way, or by helping generally to give
strength and attractiveness to the work of others, he grudged no
trouble.[294] "I have had a story" he wrote (22nd of June 1856) "to
hack and hew into some form for _Household Words_ this morning, which
has taken me four hours of close attention. And I am perfectly addled by
its horrible want of continuity after all, and the dreadful spectacle I
have made of the proofs--which look like an inky fishing-net." A few
lines from another letter will show the difficulties in which he was
often involved by the plan he adopted for Christmas numbers, of putting
within a framework by himself a number of stories by separate writers to
whom the leading notion had before been severally sent. "As yet" (25th
of November 1859), "not a story has come to me in the least belonging to
the idea (the simplest in the world; which I myself described in
writing, in the most elaborate manner); and everyone of them turns, by a
strange fatality, on a criminal trial!" It had all to be set right by
him, and editorship on such terms was not a sinecure.
It had its pleasures as well as pains, however, and the greatest was
when he fancied he could descry unusual merit in any writer. A letter
will give one instance for illustration of many; the lady to whom it was
addressed, admired under her assumed name of Holme Lee, having placed it
at my disposal. (Folkestone: 14th of August 1855.) "I read your tale
with the strongest emotion, and with a very exalted admiration of the
great power displayed in it. Both in severity and tenderness I thought
it masterly. It moved me more than I can express to you. I wrote to Mr.
Wills that it had completely unsettled me for the day, and that by
whomsoever it was written, I felt the highest respect for the mind that
had produced it. It so happened that I had been for some days at work
upon a character externally like the Aunt. And it was very strange to me
indeed to observe how the two people seemed to be near to one another at
first, and then turned off on their own ways so wide asunder. I told Mr.
Wills that I was not sure whether I could have prevailed upon myself to
present to a large audience the terrible consideration of hereditary
madness, when it was reasonably probable that there must be many--or
some--among them whom it would awfully, because personally, address. But
I was not obliged to ask myself the question, inasmuch as the length of
the story rendered it unavailable for _Household Words_. I speak of its
length in reference to that publication only; relatively to what is told
in it, I would not spare a page of your manuscript. Experience shows me
that a story in four portions is best suited to the peculiar
requirements of such a journal, and I assure you it will be an uncommon
satisfaction to me if this correspondence should lead to your enrolment
among its contributors. But my strong and sincere conviction of the
vigour and pathos of this beautiful tale, is quite apart from, and not
to be influenced by, any ulterior results. You had no existence to me
when I read it. The actions and sufferings of the characters affected me
by their own force and truth, and left a profound impression on
me."[295] The experience there mentioned did not prevent him from
admitting into his later periodical, _All the Year Round_, longer serial
stories published with the names of known writers; and to his own
interference with these he properly placed limits. "When one of my
literary brothers does me the honour to undertake such a task, I hold
that he executes it on his own personal responsibility, and for the
sustainment of his own reputation; and I do not consider myself at
liberty to exercise that control over his text which I claim as to other
contributions." Nor had he any greater pleasure, even in these cases,
than to help younger novelists to popularity. "You asked me about new
writers last night. If you will read _Kissing the Rod_, a book I have
read to-day, you will not find it hard to take an interest in the author
of such a book." That was Mr. Edmund Yates, in whose literary successes
he took the greatest interest himself, and with whom he continued to the
last an intimate personal intercourse which had dated from kindness
shown at a very trying time. "I think" he wrote of another of his
contributors, Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, for whom he had also much personal
liking, and of whose powers he thought highly, "you will find _Fatal
Zero_ a very curious bit of mental development, deepening as the story
goes on into a picture not more startling than true." My mention of
these pleasures of editorship shall close with what I think to him was
the greatest. He gave to the world, while yet the name of the writer was
unknown to him, the pure and pathetic verse of Adelaide Procter. "In the
spring of the year 1853 I observed a short poem among the proffered
contributions, very different, as I thought, from the shoal of verses
perpetually setting through the office of such a periodical."[296] The
contributions had been large and frequent under an assumed name, when at
Christmas 1854 he discovered that Miss Mary Berwick was the daughter of
his old and dear friend Barry Cornwall.
But periodical writing is not without its drawbacks, and its effect on
Dickens, who engaged in it largely from time to time, was observable in
the increased impatience of allusion to national institutions and
conventional distinctions to be found in his later books. Party
divisions he cared for less and less as life moved on; but the decisive,
peremptory, dogmatic style, into which a habit of rapid remark on topics
of the day will betray the most candid and considerate commentator,
displayed its influence, perhaps not always consciously to himself, in
the underlying tone of bitterness that runs through the books which
followed _Copperfield_. The resentment against remediable wrongs is as
praiseworthy in them as in the earlier tales; but the exposure of
Chancery abuses, administrative incompetence, politico-economic
shortcomings, and social flunkeyism, in _Bleak House_, _Little Dorrit_,
_Hard Times_, and _Our Mutual Friend_, would not have been made less
odious by the cheerier tone that had struck with much sharper effect at
prison abuses, parish wrongs, Yorkshire schools, and hypocritical
humbug, in _Pickwick_, _Oliver Twist_, _Nickleby_, and _Chuzzlewit_. It
will be remembered of him always that he desired to set right what was
wrong, that he held no abuse to be unimprovable, that he left none of
the evils named exactly as he found them, and that to influences drawn
from his writings were due not a few of the salutary changes which
marked the age in which he lived; but anger does not improve satire, and
it gave latterly, from the causes named, too aggressive a form to what,
after all, was but a very wholesome hatred of the cant that everything
English is perfect, and that to call a thing _un_English is to doom it
to abhorred extinction.
"I have got an idea for occasional papers in _Household Words_ called
the Member for Nowhere. They will contain an account of his views,
votes, and speeches; and I think of starting with his speeches on the
Sunday question. He is a member of the Government of course. The moment
they found such a member in the House, they felt that he must be dragged
(by force, if necessary) into the Cabinet." "I give it up reluctantly,"
he wrote afterwards, "and with it my hope to have made every man in
England feel something of the contempt for the House of Commons that I
have. We shall never begin to do anything until the sentiment is
universal." That was in August 1854; and the break-down in the Crimea
that winter much embittered his radicalism. "I am hourly strengthened in
my old belief," he wrote (3rd of February 1855) "that our political
aristocracy and our tuft-hunting are the death of England. In all this
business I don't see a gleam of hope. As to the popular spirit, it has
come to be so entirely separated from the Parliament and Government, and
so perfectly apathetic about them both, that I seriously think it a most
portentous sign." A couple of months later: "I have rather a bright
idea, I think, for _Household Words_ this morning: a fine little bit of
satire: an account of an Arabic MS. lately discovered very like the
_Arabian Nights_--called the Thousand and One Humbugs. With new versions
of the best known stories." This also had to be given up, and is only
mentioned as another illustration of his political discontents and of
their connection with his journal-work. The influences from his early
life which unconsciously strengthened them in certain social directions
has been hinted at, and of his absolute sincerity in the matter there
can be no doubt. The mistakes of Dickens were never such as to cast a
shade on his integrity. What he said with too much bitterness, in his
heart he believed; and had, alas! too much ground for believing. "A
country," he wrote (27th of April 1855) "which is discovered to be in
this tremendous condition as to its war affairs; with an enormous black
cloud of poverty in every town which is spreading and deepening every
hour, and not one man in two thousand knowing anything about, or even
believing in, its existence; with a non-working aristocracy, and a
silent parliament, and everybody for himself and nobody for the rest;
this is the prospect, and I think it a very deplorable one." Admirably
did he say, of a notorious enquiry at that time: "O what a fine aspect
of political economy it is, that the noble professors of the science on
the adulteration committee should have tried to make Adulteration a
question of Supply and Demand! We shall never get to the Millennium,
sir, by the rounds of that ladder; and I, for one, won't hold by the
skirts of that Great Mogul of impostors, Master M'Culloch!" Again he
wrote (30th of September 1855): "I really am serious in thinking--and I
have given as painful consideration to the subject as a man with
children to live and suffer after him can honestly give to it--that
representative government is become altogether a failure with us, that
the English gentilities and subserviences render the people unfit for
it, and that the whole thing has broken down since that great
seventeenth-century time, and has no hope in it."
With the good sense that still overruled all his farthest extremes of
opinion he yet never thought of parliament for himself. He could not
mend matters, and for him it would have been a false position. The
people of the town of Reading and others applied to him during the first
half of his life, and in the last half some of the Metropolitan
constituencies. To one of the latter a reply is before me in which he
says: "I declare that as to all matters on the face of this teeming
earth, it appears to me that the House of Commons and Parliament
altogether is become just the dreariest failure and nuisance that ever
bothered this much-bothered world." To a private enquiry of apparently
about the same date he replied: "I have thoroughly satisfied myself,
having often had occasion to consider the question, that I can be far
more usefully and independently employed in my chosen sphere of action
than I could hope to be in the House of Commons; and I believe that no
consideration would induce me to become a member of that extraordinary
assembly." Finally, upon a reported discussion in Finsbury whether or
not he should be invited to sit for that borough, he promptly wrote
(November 1861): "It may save some trouble if you will kindly confirm a
sensible gentleman who doubted at that meeting whether I was quite the
man for Finsbury. I am not at all the sort of man; for I believe nothing
would induce me to offer myself as a parliamentary representative of
that place, or of any other under the sun." The only direct attempt to
join a political agitation was his speech at Drury-lane for
administrative reform, and he never repeated it. But every movement for
practical social reforms, to obtain more efficient sanitary
legislation, to get the best compulsory education practicable for the
poor, and to better the condition of labouring people, he assisted
earnestly to his last hour; and the readiness with which he took the
chair at meetings having such objects in view, the help he gave to
important societies working in beneficent ways for themselves or the
community, and the power and attractiveness of his oratory, made him one
of the forces of the time. His speeches derived singular charm from the
buoyancy of his perfect self-possession, and to this he added the
advantages of a person and manner which had become as familiar and as
popular as his books. The most miscellaneous assemblages listened to him
as to a personal friend.
Two incidents at the close of his life will show what upon these matters
his latest opinions were. At the great Liverpool dinner after his
country readings in 1869, over which Lord Dufferin eloquently presided,
he replied to a remonstrance from Lord Houghton against his objection to
entering public life,[297] that when he took literature for his
profession he intended it to be his sole profession; that at that time
it did not appear to him to be so well understood in England, as in some
other countries, that literature was a dignified profession by which any
man might stand or fall; and he resolved that in his person at least it
should stand "by itself, of itself, and for itself;" a bargain which "no
consideration on earth would now induce him to break." Here however he
probably failed to see the entire meaning of Lord Houghton's regret,
which would seem to have been meant to say, in more polite form, that to
have taken some part in public affairs might have shown him the
difficulty in a free state of providing remedies very swiftly for evils
of long growth. A half reproach from the same quarter for alleged
unkindly sentiments to the House of Lords, he repelled with vehement
warmth; insisting on his great regard for individual members, and
declaring that there was no man in England he respected more in his
public capacity, loved more in his private capacity, or from whom he had
received more remarkable proofs of his honour and love of literature,
than Lord Russell.[298] In Birmingham shortly after, discoursing on
education to the members of the Midland Institute, he told them they
should value self-improvement not because it led to fortune but because
it was good and right in itself; counselled them in regard to it that
Genius was not worth half so much as Attention, or the art of taking an
immense deal of pains, which he declared to be, in every study and
pursuit, the one sole, safe, certain, remunerative quality; and summed
up briefly his political belief.--"My faith in the people governing is,
on the whole, infinitesimal; my faith in the People governed is, on the
whole, illimitable." This he afterwards (January 1870) explained to mean
that he had very little confidence in the people who govern us ("with a
small p"), and very great confidence in the People whom they govern
("with a large P"). "My confession being shortly and elliptically
stated, was, with no evil intention I am absolutely sure, in some
quarters inversely explained." He added that his political opinions had
already been not obscurely stated in an "idle book or two"; and he
reminded his hearers that he was the inventor "of a certain fiction
called the Circumlocution Office, said to be very extravagant, but which
I _do_ see rather frequently quoted as if there were grains of truth at
the bottom of it." It may nevertheless be suspected, with some
confidence, that the construction of his real meaning was not far wrong
which assumed it as the condition precedent to his illimitable faith,
that the people, even with the big P, should be "governed." It was his
constant complaint that, being much in want of government, they had only
sham governors; and he had returned from his second American visit, as
he came back from his first, indisposed to believe that the political
problem had been solved in the land of the free. From the pages of his
last book, the bitterness of allusion so frequent in the books just
named was absent altogether; and his old unaltered wish to better what
was bad in English institutions, carried with it no desire to replace
them by new ones.
In a memoir published shortly after his death there appeared this
statement. "For many years past Her Majesty the Queen has taken the
liveliest interest in Mr. Dickens's literary labours, and has frequently
expressed a desire for an interview with him. . . . This interview took
place on the 9th of April, when he received her commands to attend her
at Buckingham Palace, and was introduced by his friend Mr. Arthur Helps,
the clerk of the Privy Council. . . . Since our author's decease the
journal with which he was formerly connected has said: 'The Queen was
ready to confer any distinction which Mr. Dickens's known views and
tastes would permit him to accept, and after more than one title of
honour had been declined, Her Majesty desired that he would, at least,
accept a place in her Privy Council.'" As nothing is too absurd[299] for
belief, it will not be superfluous to say that Dickens knew of no such
desire on her Majesty's part; and though all the probabilities are on
the side of his unwillingness to accept any title or place of honour,
certainly none was offered to him.
It had been hoped to obtain her Majesty's name for the Jerrold
performances in 1857, but, being a public effort in behalf of an
individual, assent would have involved "either perpetual compliance or
the giving of perpetual offence." Her Majesty however then sent, through
Colonel Phipps, a request to Dickens that he would select a room in the
palace, do what he would with it, and let her see the play there. "I
said to Col. Phipps thereupon" (21st of June 1857) "that the idea was
not quite new to me; that I did not feel easy as to the social position
of my daughters, &c. at a Court under those circumstances; and that I
would beg her Majesty to excuse me, if any other way of her seeing the
play could be devised. To this Phipps said he had not thought of the
objection, but had not the slightest doubt I was right. I then proposed
that the Queen should come to the Gallery of Illustration a week before
the subscription night, and should have the room entirely at her own
disposal, and should invite her own company. This, with the good sense
that seems to accompany her good nature on all occasions, she resolved
within a few hours to do." The effect of the performance was a great
gratification. "My gracious sovereign" (5th of July 1857) "was so
pleased that she sent round begging me to go and see her and accept her
thanks. I replied that I was in my Farce dress, and must beg to be
excused. Whereupon she sent again, saying that the dress 'could not be
so ridiculous as that,' and repeating the request. I sent my duty in
reply, but again hoped her Majesty would have the kindness to excuse my
presenting myself in a costume and appearance that were not my own. I
was mighty glad to think, when I woke this morning, that I had carried
the point."
The opportunity of presenting himself in his own costume did not arrive
till the year of his death, another effort meanwhile made having proved
also unsuccessful. "I was put into a state of much perplexity on Sunday"
(30th of March 1858). "I don't know who had spoken to my informant, but
it seems that the Queen is bent upon hearing the _Carol_ read, and has
expressed her desire to bring it about without offence; hesitating about
the manner of it, in consequence of my having begged to be excused from
going to her when she sent for me after the _Frozen Deep_. I parried the
thing as well as I could; but being asked to be prepared with a
considerate and obliging answer, as it was known the request would be
preferred, I said, 'Well! I supposed Col. Phipps would speak to me about
it, and if it were he who did so, I should assure him of my desire to
meet any wish of her Majesty's, and should express my hope that she
would indulge me by making one of some audience or other--for I thought
an audience necessary to the effect.' Thus it stands: but it bothers
me." The difficulty was not surmounted, but her Majesty's continued
interest in the _Carol_ was shown by her purchase of a copy of it with
Dickens's autograph at Thackeray's sale;[300] and at last there came,
in the year of his death, the interview with the author whose popularity
dated from her accession, whose books had entertained larger numbers of
her subjects than those of any other contemporary writer, and whose
genius will be counted among the glories of her reign. Accident led to
it. Dickens had brought with him from America some large and striking
photographs of the Battle Fields of the Civil War, which the Queen,
having heard of them through Mr. Helps, expressed a wish to look at.
Dickens sent them at once; and went afterwards to Buckingham Palace with
Mr. Helps, at her Majesty's request, that she might see and thank him in
person.
It was in the middle of March, not April. "Come now sir, this is an
interesting matter, do favour us with it," was the cry of Johnson's
friends after his conversation with George the Third; and again and
again the story was told to listeners ready to make marvels of its
commonplaces. But the romance even of the eighteenth century in such a
matter is clean gone out of the nineteenth. Suffice it that the Queen's
kindness left a strong impression on Dickens. Upon her Majesty's regret
not to have heard his Readings, Dickens intimated that they were become
now a thing of the past, while he acknowledged gratefully her Majesty's
compliment in regard to them. She spoke to him of the impression made
upon her by his acting in the _Frozen Deep_; and on his stating, in
reply to her enquiry, that the little play had not been very successful
on the public stage, said this did not surprise her, since it no longer
had the advantage of his performance in it. Then arose a mention of some
alleged discourtesy shown to Prince Arthur in New York, and he begged
her Majesty not to confound the true Americans of that city with the
Fenian portion of its Irish population; on which she made the quiet
comment that she was convinced the people about the Prince had made too
much of the affair. He related to her the story of President Lincoln's
dream on the night before his murder. She asked him to give her his
writings, and could she have them that afternoon? but he begged to be
allowed to send a bound copy. Her Majesty then took from a table her own
book upon the Highlands, with an autograph inscription "to Charles
Dickens"; and, saying that "the humblest" of writers would be ashamed to
offer it to "one of the greatest" but that Mr. Helps, being asked to
give it, had remarked that it would be valued most from herself, closed
the interview by placing it in his hands. "Sir," said Johnson, "they may
say what they like of the young King, but Louis the Fourteenth could not
have shown a more refined courtliness"; and Dickens was not disposed to
say less of the young King's granddaughter. That the grateful impression
sufficed to carry him into new ways, I had immediate proof, coupled with
intimation of the still surviving strength of old memories. "As my
sovereign desires" (26th of March 1870) "that I should attend the next
levee, don't faint with amazement if you see my name in that unwonted
connexion. I have scrupulously kept myself free for the second of April,
in case you should be accessible." The name appeared at the levee
accordingly, his daughter was at the drawing-room that followed, and
Lady Houghton writes to me "I never saw Mr. Dickens more agreeable than
at a dinner at our house about a fortnight before his death, when he met
the King of the Belgians and the Prince of Wales at the special desire
of the latter." Up to nearly the hour of dinner, it was doubtful if he
could go. He was suffering from the distress in his foot; and on arrival
at the house, being unable to ascend the stairs, had to be assisted at
once into the dining-room.
The friend who had accompanied Dickens to Buckingham Palace, writing of
him[301] after his death, briefly but with admirable knowledge and
taste, said that he ardently desired, and confidently looked forward to,
a time when there would be a more intimate union than exists at present
between the different classes in the state, a union that should embrace
alike the highest and the lowest. This perhaps expresses, as well as a
few words could, what certainly was always at his heart; and he might
have come to think it, when his life was closing, more possible of
realisation some day than he ever thought it before. The hope of it was
on his friend Talfourd's lips when he died, and his own most jarring
opinions might at last have joined in the effort to bring about such
reconcilement. More on this head it needs not to say. Whatever may be
the objection to special views held by him, he would, wanting even the
most objectionable, have been less himself. It was by something of the
despot seldom separable from genius, joined to a truthfulness of nature
belonging to the highest characters, that men themselves of a rare
faculty were attracted to find in Dickens what Sir Arthur Helps has
described, "a man to confide in, and look up to as a leader, in the
midst of any great peril."
Mr. Layard also held that opinion of him. He was at Gadshill during the
Christmas before Dickens went for the last time to America, and
witnessed one of those scenes, not infrequent there, in which the master
of the house was pre-eminently at home. They took generally the form of
cricket matches; but this was, to use the phrase of his friend Bobadil,
more popular and diffused; and of course he rose with the occasion. "The
more you want of the master, the more you'll find in him," said the
gasman employed about his readings. "Foot-races for the villagers," he
wrote on Christmas Day, "come off in my field to-morrow. We have been
all hard at work all day, building a course, making countless flags, and
I don't know what else. Layard is chief commissioner of the domestic
police. The country police predict an immense crowd." There were between
two and three thousand people; and somehow, by a magical kind of
influence, said Layard, Dickens seemed to have bound every creature
present, upon what honour the creature had, to keep order. What was the
special means used, or the art employed, it might have been difficult to
say; but that was the result. Writing on New Year's Day, Dickens himself
described it to me. "We had made a very pretty course, and taken great
pains. Encouraged by the cricket matches experience, I allowed the
landlord of the Falstaff to have a drinking-booth on the ground. Not to
seem to dictate or distrust, I gave all the prizes (about ten pounds in
the aggregate) in money. The great mass of the crowd were labouring men
of all kinds, soldiers, sailors, and navvies. They did not, between
half-past ten, when we began, and sunset, displace a rope or a stake;
and they left every barrier and flag as neat as they found it. There was
not a dispute, and there was no drunkenness whatever. I made them a
little speech from the lawn, at the end of the games, saying that please
God we would do it again next year. They cheered most lustily and
dispersed. The road between this and Chatham was like a Fair all day;
and surely it is a fine thing to get such perfect behaviour out of a
reckless seaport town. Among other oddities we had a Hurdle Race for
Strangers. One man (he came in second) ran 120 yards and leaped over ten
hurdles, in twenty seconds, _with a pipe in his mouth, and smoking it
all the time_. 'If it hadn't been for your pipe,' I said to him at the
winning-post, 'you would have been first.' 'I beg your pardon, sir,' he
answered, 'but if it hadn't been for my pipe, I should have been
nowhere.'" The close of the letter had this rather memorable
announcement. "The sale of the Christmas number was, yesterday evening,
255,380." Would it be absurd to say that there is something in such a
vast popularity in itself electrical, and, though founded on books, felt
where books never reach?
It is also very noticeable that what would have constituted the strength
of Dickens if he had entered public life, the attractive as well as the
commanding side of his nature, was that which kept him most within the
circle of home pursuits and enjoyments. This "better part" of him had
now long survived that sorrowful period of 1857-8, when, for reasons
which I have not thought myself free to suppress, a vaguely disturbed
feeling for the time took possession of him, and occurrences led to his
adoption of other pursuits than those to which till then he had given
himself exclusively. It was a sad interval in his life; but, though
changes incident to the new occupation then taken up remained, and with
them many adverse influences which brought his life prematurely to a
close, it was, with any reference to that feeling, an interval only; and
the dominant impression of the later years, as of the earlier, takes the
marvellously domestic home-loving shape in which also the strength of
his genius is found. It will not do to draw round any part of such a man
too hard a line, and the writer must not be charged with inconsistency
who says that Dickens's childish sufferings,[302] and the sense they
burnt into him of the misery of loneliness and a craving for joys of
home, though they led to what was weakest in him, led also to what was
greatest. It was his defect as well as his merit in maturer life not to
be able to live alone. When the fancies of his novels were upon him and
he was under their restless influence, though he often talked of
shutting himself up in out of the way solitary places, he never went
anywhere unaccompanied by members of his family. His habits of daily
life he carried with him wherever he went. In Albaro and Genoa, at
Lausanne and Geneva, in Paris and Boulogne, his ways were as entirely
those of home as in London and Broadstairs. If it is the property of a
domestic nature to be personally interested in every detail, the
smallest as the greatest, of the four walls within which one lives, then
no man had it so essentially as Dickens. No man was so inclined
naturally to derive his happiness from home concerns. Even the kind of
interest in a house which is commonly confined to women, he was full of.
Not to speak of changes of importance, there was not an additional hook
put up wherever he inhabited, without his knowledge, or otherwise than
as part of some small ingenuity of his own. Nothing was too minute for
his personal superintendence. Whatever might be in hand, theatricals for
the little children, entertainments for those of larger growth, cricket
matches, dinners, field sports, from the first new year's eve dance in
Doughty Street to the last musical party in Hyde Park Place, he was the
centre and soul of it. He did not care to take measure of its greater or
less importance. It was enough that a thing was to do, to be worth his
while to do it as if there was nothing else to be done in the world.
The cry of Laud and Wentworth was his, alike in small and great things;
and to no man was more applicable the German "Echt," which expresses
reality as well as thoroughness. The usual result followed, in all his
homes, of an absolute reliance on him for everything. Under every
difficulty, and in every emergency, his was the encouraging influence,
the bright and ready help. In illness, whether of the children or any of
the servants, he was better than a doctor. He was so full of resource,
for which every one eagerly turned to him, that his mere presence in the
sick-room was a healing influence, as if nothing could fail if he were
only there. So that at last, when, all through the awful night which
preceded his departure, he lay senseless in the room where he had
fallen, the stricken and bewildered ones who tended him found it
impossible to believe that what they saw before them alone was left, or
to shut out wholly the strange wild hope that he might again be suddenly
among them _like_ himself, and revive what they could not connect, even
then, with death's despairing helplessness.
It was not a feeling confined to the relatives whom he had thus taught
to have such exclusive dependence on him. Among the consolations
addressed to those mourners came words from one whom in life he had most
honoured, and who also found it difficult to connect him with death, or
to think that he should never see that blithe face anymore. "It is
almost thirty years," Mr. Carlyle wrote, "since my acquaintance with him
began; and on my side, I may say, every new meeting ripened it into more
and more clear discernment of his rare and great worth as a brother
man: a most cordial, sincere, clear-sighted, quietly decisive, just and
loving man: till at length he had grown to such a recognition with me as
I have rarely had for any man of my time. This I can tell you three, for
it is true and will be welcome to you: to others less concerned I had as
soon _not_ speak on such a subject." "I am profoundly sorry, for _you_,"
Mr. Carlyle at the same time wrote to me; "and indeed for myself and for
us all. It is an event world-wide; a _unique_ of talents suddenly
extinct; and has 'eclipsed,' we too may say, 'the harmless gaiety of
nations.' No death since 1866 has fallen on me with such a stroke. No
literary man's hitherto ever did. The good, the gentle, high-gifted,
ever-friendly, noble Dickens,--every inch of him an Honest Man."
Of his ordinary habits of activity I have spoken, and they were
doubtless carried too far. In youth it was all well, but he did not make
allowance for years. This has had abundant illustration, but will admit
of a few words more. To all men who do much, rule and order are
essential; method in everything was Dickens's peculiarity; and between
breakfast and luncheon, with rare exceptions, was his time of work. But
his daily walks were less of rule than of enjoyment and necessity. In
the midst of his writing they were indispensable, and especially, as it
has often been shown, at night. Mr. Sala is an authority on London
streets, and, in the eloquent and generous tribute he was among the
first to offer to his memory, has described himself encountering Dickens
in the oddest places and most inclement weather, in Ratcliffe-highway,
on Haverstock-hill, on Camberwell-green, in Gray's-inn-lane, in the
Wandsworth-road, at Hammersmith Broadway, in Norton Folgate, and at
Kensal New Town. "A hansom whirled you by the Bell and Horns at
Brompton, and there he was striding, as with seven-league boots,
seemingly in the direction of North-end, Fulham. The Metropolitan
Railway sent you forth at Lisson-grove, and you met him plodding
speedily towards the Yorkshire Stingo. He was to be met rapidly skirting
the grim brick wall of the prison in Coldbath-fields, or trudging along
the Seven Sisters-road at Holloway, or bearing, under a steady press of
sail, underneath Highgate Archway, or pursuing the even tenor of his way
up the Vauxhall-bridge-road." But he was equally at home in the
intricate byways of narrow streets and in the lengthy thoroughfares.
Wherever there was "matter to be heard and learned," in back streets
behind Holborn, in Borough courts and passages, in city wharfs or
alleys, about the poorer lodging-houses, in prisons, workhouses,
ragged-schools, police-courts, rag-shops, chandlers' shops, and all
sorts of markets for the poor, he carried his keen observation and
untiring study. "I was among the Italian Boys from 12 to 2 this
morning," says one of his letters. "I am going out to-night in their
boat with the Thames Police," says another. It was the same when he was
in Italy or Switzerland, as we have seen; and when, in later life, he
was in French provincial places. "I walk miles away into the country,
and you can scarcely imagine by what deserted ramparts and silent little
cathedral closes, or how I pass over rusty drawbridges and stagnant
ditches out of and into the decaying town." For several consecutive
years I accompanied him every Christmas Eve to see the marketings for
Christmas down the road from Aldgate to Bow; and he had a surprising
fondness for wandering about in poor neighbourhoods on Christmas-day,
past the areas of shabby genteel houses in Somers or Kentish Towns, and
watching the dinners preparing or coming in. But the temptations of his
country life led him on to excesses in walking. "Coming in just now," he
wrote in his third year at Gadshill, "after twelve miles in the rain, I
was so wet that I have had to change and get my feet into warm water
before I could do anything." Again, two years later: "A south-easter
blowing, enough to cut one's throat. I am keeping the house for my cold,
as I did yesterday. But the remedy is so new to me, that I doubt if it
does me half the good of a dozen miles in the snow. So, if this mode of
treatment fails to-day, I shall try that to-morrow." He tried it perhaps
too often. In the winter of 1865 he first had the attack in his left
foot which materially disabled his walking-power for the rest of his
life. He supposed its cause to be overwalking in the snow, and that this
had aggravated the suffering is very likely; but, read by the light of
what followed, it may now be presumed to have had more serious origin.
It recurred at intervals, before America, without any such provocation;
in America it came back, not when he had most been walking in the snow,
but when nervous exhaustion was at its worst with him; after America, it
became prominent on the eve of the occurrence at Preston which first
revealed the progress that disease had been making in the vessels of the
brain; and in the last year of his life, as will immediately be seen,
it was a constant trouble and most intense suffering, extending then
gravely to his left hand also, which had before been only slightly
affected.
It was from a letter of the 21st of February 1865 I first learnt that he
was suffering tortures from a "frost-bitten" foot, and ten days later
brought more detailed account. "I got frost-bitten by walking
continually in the snow, and getting wet in the feet daily. My boots
hardened and softened, hardened and softened, my left foot swelled, and
I still forced the boot on; sat in it to write, half the day; walked in
it through the snow, the other half; forced the boot on again next
morning; sat and walked again; and being accustomed to all sorts of
changes in my feet, took no heed. At length, going out as usual, I fell
lame on the walk, and had to limp home dead lame, through the snow, for
the last three miles--to the remarkable terror, by-the-bye, of the two
big dogs." The dogs were Turk and Linda. Boisterous companions as they
always were, the sudden change in him brought them to a stand-still; and
for the rest of the journey they crept by the side of their master as
slowly as he did, never turning from him. He was greatly moved by the
circumstance, and often referred to it. Turk's look upward to his face
was one of sympathy as well as fear, he said; but Linda was wholly
struck down.
The saying in his letter to his youngest son that he was to do to others
what he would that they should do to him, without being discouraged if
they did not do it; and his saying to the Birmingham people that they
were to attend to self-improvement not because it led to fortune, but
because it was right; express a principle that at all times guided
himself. Capable of strong attachments, he was not what is called an
effusive man; but he had no half-heartedness in any of his likings. The
one thing entirely hateful to him, was indifference. "I give my heart to
very few people; but I would sooner love the most implacable man in the
world than a careless one, who, if my place were empty to-morrow, would
rub on and never miss me." There was nothing he more repeatedly told his
children than that they were not to let indifference in others appear to
justify it in themselves. "All kind things," he wrote, "must be done on
their own account, and for their own sake, and without the least
reference to any gratitude." Again he laid it down, while he was making
some exertion for the sake of a dead friend that did not seem likely to
win proper appreciation from those it was to serve. "As to gratitude
from the family--as I have often remarked to you, one does a generous
thing because it is right and pleasant, and not for any response it is
to awaken in others." The rule in another form frequently appears in his
letters; and it was enforced in many ways upon all who were dear to him.
It is worth while to add his comment on a regret of a member of his
family at an act of self-devotion supposed to have been thrown away:
"Nothing of what is nobly done can ever be lost." It is also to be noted
as in the same spirit, that it was not the loud but the silent heroisms
he most admired. Of Sir John Richardson, one of the few who have lived
in our days entitled to the name of a hero, he wrote from Paris in 1856.
"Lady Franklin sent me the whole of that Richardson memoir; and I think
Richardson's manly friendship, and love of Franklin, one of the noblest
things I ever knew in my life. It makes one's heart beat high, with a
sort of sacred joy." (It is the feeling as strongly awakened by the
earlier exploits of the same gallant man to be found at the end of
Franklin's first voyage, and never to be read without the most exalted
emotion.) It was for something higher than mere literature he valued the
most original writer and powerful teacher of the age. "I would go at all
times farther to see Carlyle than any man alive."
Of his attractive points in society and conversation I have
particularized little, because in truth they were himself. Such as they
were, they were never absent from him. His acute sense of enjoyment gave
such relish to his social qualities that probably no man, not a great
wit or a professed talker, ever left, in leaving any social gathering, a
blank so impossible to fill up. In quick and varied sympathy, in ready
adaptation to every whim or humour, in help to any mirth or game, he
stood for a dozen men. If one may say such a thing, he seemed to be
always the more himself for being somebody else, for continually putting
off his personality. His versatility made him unique. What he said once
of his own love of acting, applied to him equally when at his happiest
among friends he loved; sketching a character, telling a story, acting a
charade, taking part in a game; turning into comedy an incident of the
day, describing the last good or bad thing he had seen, reproducing in
quaint, tragical, or humorous form and figure, some part of the
passionate life with which all his being overflowed. "Assumption has
charms for me so delightful--I hardly know for how many wild
reasons--that I feel a loss of Oh I can't say what exquisite foolery,
when I lose a chance of being some one not in the remotest degree like
myself." How it was, that, from one of such boundless resource in
contributing to the pleasure of his friends, there was yet, as I have
said, so comparatively little to bring away, may be thus explained. But
it has been also seen that no one at times said better things, and to
happy examples formerly given I will add one or two of a kind he more
rarely indulged. "He is below par on the Exchange," a friend remarked of
a notorious puffing actor; "he doesn't stand well at Lloyds." "Yet no
one stands so well with the under-writers," said Dickens; a pun that
Swift would have envied. "I call him an Incubus!" said a non-literary
friend, at a loss to express the boredom inflicted on him by a popular
author. "Pen-and-ink-ubus, you mean," interposed Dickens. So, when
Stanfield said of his mid-shipman son, then absent on his first cruise,
"the boy has got his sea-legs on by this time!" "I don't know," remarked
Dickens, "about his getting his sea-legs on; but if I may judge from his
writing, he certainly has not got his A B C legs on."
Other agreeable pleasantries might be largely cited from his letters.
"An old priest" (he wrote from France in 1862), "the express image of
Frederic Lemaitre got up for the part, and very cross with the
toothache, told me in a railway carriage the other day, that we had no
antiquities in heretical England. 'None at all?' I said. 'You have some
ships however.' 'Yes; a few.' 'Are they strong?' 'Well,' said I, 'your
trade is spiritual, my father: ask the ghost of Nelson.' A French
captain who was in the carriage, was immensely delighted with this small
joke. I met him at Calais yesterday going somewhere with a detachment;
and he said--Pardon! But he had been so limited as to suppose an
Englishman incapable of that bonhommie!" In humouring a joke he was
excellent, both in letters and talk; and for this kind of enjoyment his
least important little notes are often worth preserving. Take one small
instance. So freely had he admired a tale told by his friend and
solicitor Mr. Frederic Ouvry, that he had to reply to a humorous
proposal for publication of it, in his own manner, in his own
periodical. "Your modesty is equal to your merit. . . . I think your way of
describing that rustic courtship in middle life, quite matchless. . . . A
cheque for £1000 is lying with the publisher. We would willingly make it
more, but that we find our law charges so exceedingly heavy." His
letters have also examples now and then of what he called his
conversational triumphs. "I have distinguished myself" (28th of April
1861) "in two respects lately. I took a young lady, unknown, down to
dinner, and, talking to her about the Bishop of Durham's nepotism in the
matter of Mr. Cheese, I found she was Mrs. Cheese. And I expatiated to
the member for Marylebone, Lord Fermoy, generally conceiving him to be
an Irish member, on the contemptible character of the Marylebone
constituency and Marylebone representation."
Among his good things should not be omitted his telling of a ghost
story. He had something of a hankering after them, as the readers of his
briefer pieces will know; and such was his interest generally in things
supernatural that, but for the strong restraining power of his common
sense, he might have fallen into the follies of spiritualism. As it was,
the fanciful side of his nature stopped short at such pardonable
superstitions as those of dreams, and lucky days, or other marvels of
natural coincidence; and no man was readier to apply sharp tests to a
ghost story or a haunted house, though there was just so much tendency
to believe in any such, "well-authenticated," as made perfect his manner
of telling one. Such a story is related in the 125th number of _All the
Year Round_, which before its publication both Mr. Layard and myself saw
at Gadshill, and identified as one related by Lord Lytton. It was
published in September, and in a day or two led to what Dickens will
relate. "The artist himself who is the hero of that story" (to Lord
Lytton, 15th of September 1861) "has sent me in black and white his own
account of the whole experience, so very original, so very
extraordinary, so very far beyond the version I have published, that all
other like stories turn pale before it." The ghost thus reinforced came
out in the number published on the 5th of October; and the reader who
cares to turn to it, and compare what Dickens in the interval (17th of
September) wrote to myself, will have some measure of his readiness to
believe in such things. "Upon the publication of the ghost story, up has
started the portrait-painter who saw the phantoms! His own written story
is out of all distance the most extraordinary that ever was produced;
and is as far beyond my version or Bulwer's, as Scott is beyond James.
Everything connected with it is amazing; but conceive this--the
portrait-painter had been engaged to write it elsewhere as a story for
next Christmas, and not unnaturally supposed, when he saw himself
anticipated in _All the Year Round_, that there had been treachery at
his printer's. 'In particular,' says he, 'how else was it possible that
the date, the 13th of September, could have been got at? For I never
told the date, until I wrote it.' Now, _my_ story had NO DATE; but
seeing, when I looked over the proof, the great importance of having _a_
date, I (C. D.) wrote in, unconsciously, the exact date on the margin of
the proof!" The reader will remember the Doncaster race story; and to
other like illustrations of the subject already given, may be added this
dream. "Here is a curious case at first-hand" (30th of May 1863). "On
Thursday night in last week, being at the office here, I dreamed that I
saw a lady in a red shawl with her back towards me (whom I supposed to
be E.). On her turning round I found that I didn't know her, and she
said 'I am Miss Napier.' All the time I was dressing next morning, I
thought--What a preposterous thing to have so very distinct a dream
about nothing! and why Miss Napier? for I never heard of any Miss
Napier. That same Friday night, I read. After the reading, came into my
retiring-room, Mary Boyle and her brother, and _the_ Lady in the red
shawl whom they present as 'Miss Napier!' These are all the
circumstances, exactly told."
Another kind of dream has had previous record, with no superstition to
build itself upon but the loving devotion to one tender memory. With
longer or shorter intervals this was with him all his days. Never from
his waking thoughts was the recollection altogether absent; and though
the dream would leave him for a time, it unfailingly came back. It was
the feeling of his life that always had a mastery over him. What he said
on the sixth anniversary of the death of his sister-in-law, that friend
of his youth whom he had made his ideal of all moral excellence, he
might have said as truly after twenty-six years more. In the very year
before he died, the influence was potently upon him. "She is so much in
my thoughts at all times, especially when I am successful, and have
greatly prospered in anything, that the recollection of her is an
essential part of my being, and is as inseparable from my existence as
the beating of my heart is." Through later troubled years, whatever was
worthiest in him found in this an ark of safety; and it was the nobler
part of his being which had thus become also the essential. It gave to
success what success by itself had no power to give; and nothing could
consist with it, for any length of time, that was not of good report and
pure. What more could I say that was not better said from the pulpit of
the Abbey where he rests?
"He whom we mourn was the friend of mankind, a philanthropist in the
true sense; the friend of youth, the friend of the poor, the enemy of
every form of meanness and oppression. I am not going to attempt to draw
a portrait of him. Men of genius are different from what we suppose them
to be. They have greater pleasures and greater pains, greater affections
and greater temptations, than the generality of mankind, and they can
never be altogether understood by their fellow men. . . . But we feel that
a light has gone out, that the world is darker to us, when they depart.
There are so very few of them that we cannot afford to lose them one by
one, and we look vainly round for others who may supply their places. He
whose loss we now mourn occupied a greater space than any other writer
in the minds of Englishmen during the last thirty-three years. We read
him, talked about him, acted him; we laughed with him; we were roused by
him to a consciousness of the misery of others, and to a pathetic
interest in human life. Works of fiction, indirectly, are great
instructors of this world; and we can hardly exaggerate the debt of
gratitude which is due to a writer who has led us to sympathize with
these good, true, sincere, honest English characters of ordinary life,
and to laugh at the egotism, the hypocrisy, the false respectability of
religious professors and others. To another great humourist who lies in
this Church the words have been applied that his death eclipsed the
gaiety of nations. But of him who has been recently taken I would rather
say, in humbler language, that no one was ever so much beloved or so
much mourned."
FOOTNOTES:
[289] Mr. Grant Wilson has sent me an extract from a letter by
Fitz-Greene Halleck (author of one of the most delightful poems ever
written about Burns) which exactly expresses Dickens as he was, not only
in 1842, but, as far as the sense of authorship went, all his life. It
was addressed to Mrs. Rush of Philadelphia, and is dated the 8th of
March 1842. "You ask me about Mr. Boz. I am quite delighted with him. He
is a thorough good fellow, with nothing of the author about him but the
reputation, and goes through his task as Lion with exemplary grace,
patience, and good nature. He has the brilliant face of a man of
genius. . . . His writings you know. I wish you had listened to his
eloquence at the dinner here. It was the only real specimen of eloquence
I have ever witnessed. Its charm was not in its words, but in the manner
of saying them."
[290] In a volume called _Home and Abroad_, by Mr. David Macrae, is
printed a correspondence with Dickens on matters alluded to in the text,
held in 1861, which will be found to confirm all that is here said.
[291] This letter is facsimile'd in _A Christmas Memorial of Charles
Dickens by A. B. Hume_ (1870), containing an Ode to his Memory written
with feeling and spirit.
[292] I may quote here from a letter (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 5th Sept. 1858)
sent me by the editor of the _Northern Express_. "The view you take of
the literary character in the abstract, or of what it might and ought to
be, expresses what I have striven for all through my literary
life--never to allow it to be patronized, or tolerated, or treated like
a good or a bad child. I am always animated by the hope of leaving it a
little better understood by the thoughtless than I found it."--To James
B. Manson, Esq.
[293] Henry Ryder-Taylor, Esq. Ph.D. 8th Sept. 1868.
[294] By way of instance I subjoin an amusing insertion made by him in
an otherwise indifferently written paper descriptive of the typical
Englishman on the foreign stage, which gives in more comic detail
experiences of his own already partly submitted to the reader (ii. 127).
"In a pretty piece at the Gymnase in Paris, where the prime minister of
England unfortunately ruined himself by speculating in railway shares, a
thorough-going English servant appeared under that thorough-going
English name Tom Bob--the honest fellow having been christened Tom, and
born the lawful son of Mr. and Mrs. Bob. In an Italian adaptation of
DUMAS' preposterous play of KEAN, which we once saw at the great theatre
of Genoa, the curtain rose upon that celebrated tragedian, drunk and
fast asleep in a chair, attired in a dark blue blouse fastened round the
waist with a broad belt and a most prodigious buckle, and wearing a dark
red hat of the sugar-loaf shape, nearly three feet high. He bore in his
hand a champagne-bottle, with the label RHUM, in large capital letters,
carefully turned towards the audience; and two or three dozen of the
same popular liquor, which we are nationally accustomed to drink neat as
imported, by the half gallon, ornamented the floor of the apartment.
Every frequenter of the Coal Hole tavern in the Strand, on that
occasion, wore a sword and a beard. Every English lady, presented on the
stage in Italy, wears a green veil; and almost every such specimen of
our fair countrywomen carries a bright red reticule, made in the form of
a monstrous heart. We do not remember to have ever seen an Englishman on
the Italian stage, or in the Italian circus, without a stomach like
Daniel Lambert, an immense shirt-frill, and a bunch of watch-seals each
several times larger than his watch, though the watch itself was an
impossible engine. And we have rarely beheld this mimic Englishman,
without seeing present, then and there, a score of real Englishmen
sufficiently characteristic and unlike the rest of the audience, to whom
he bore no shadow of resemblance." These views as to English people and
society, of which Count d'Orsay used always to say that an average
Frenchman knew about as much as he knew of the inhabitants of the moon,
may receive amusing addition from one of Dickens's letters during his
last visit to France; which enclosed a cleverly written Paris journal
containing essays on English manners. In one of these the writer
remarked that he had heard of the venality of English politicians, but
could not have supposed it to be so shameless as it is, for, when he
went to the House of Commons, he heard them call out "Places! Places!"
"Give us Places!" when the Minister entered.
[295] The letter is addressed to Miss Harriet Parr, whose book called
_Gilbert Massenger_ is the tale referred to.
[296] See the introductory memoir from his pen now prefixed to every
edition of the popular and delightful _Legends and Lyrics_.
[297] On this remonstrance and Dickens's reply the _Times_ had a leading
article of which the closing sentences find fitting place in his
biography. "If there be anything in Lord Russell's theory that Life
Peerages are wanted specially to represent those forms of national
eminence which cannot otherwise find fitting representation, it might be
urged, for the reasons we have before mentioned, that a Life Peerage is
due to the most truly national representative of one important
department of modern English literature. Something may no doubt be said
in favour of this view, but we are inclined to doubt if Mr. Dickens
himself would gain anything by a Life Peerage. Mr. Dickens is
pre-eminently a writer of the people and for the people. To our
thinking, he is far better suited for the part of the 'Great Commoner'
of English fiction than for even a Life Peerage. To turn Charles Dickens
into Lord Dickens would be much the same mistake in literature that it
was in politics to turn William Pitt into Lord Chatham."
[298] One of the many repetitions of the same opinion in his letters may
be given. "Lord John's note" (September 1853) "confirms me in an old
impression that he is worth a score of official men; and has more
generosity in his little finger than a Government usually has in its
whole corporation." In another of his public allusions, Dickens
described him as a statesman of whom opponents and friends alike felt
sure that he would rise to the level of every occasion, however exalted;
and compared him to the seal of Solomon in the old Arabian story
inclosing in a not very large casket the soul of a giant.
[299] In a memoir by Dr. Shelton McKenzie which has had circulation in
America, there is given the following statement, taken doubtless from
publications at the time, of which it will be strictly accurate to say,
that, excepting the part of its closing averment which describes Dickens
sending a copy of his works to her Majesty by her own desire, _there is
in it not a single word of truth_. "Early in 1870 the Queen presented a
copy of her book upon the Highlands to Mr. Dickens, with the modest
autographic inscription, 'from the humblest to the most distinguished
author of England.' This was meant to be complimentary, and was accepted
as such by Mr. Dickens, who acknowledged it in a manly, courteous
letter. Soon after, Queen Victoria wrote to him, requesting that he
would do her the favour of paying her a visit at Windsor. He accepted,
and passed a day, very pleasantly, in his Sovereign's society. It is
said that they were mutually pleased, that Mr. Dickens caught the royal
lady's particular humour, that they chatted together in a very friendly
manner, that the Queen was never tired of asking questions about certain
characters in his books, that they had almost a _tête-à-tête_ luncheon,
and that, ere he departed, the Queen pressed him to accept a baronetcy
(a title which descends to the eldest son), and that, on his declining,
she said, 'At least, Mr. Dickens, let me have the gratification of
making you one of my Privy Council.' This, which gives the personal
title of 'Right Honourable,' he also declined--nor, indeed, did Charles
Dickens require a title to give him celebrity. The Queen and the author
parted, well pleased with each other. The newspapers reported that a
peerage had been offered and declined--_but even newspapers are not
invariably correct_. Mr. Dickens presented his Royal Mistress with a
handsome set of all his works, and, on the very morning of his death, a
letter reached Gad's Hill, written by Mr. Arthur Helps, by her desire,
acknowledging the present, and describing the exact position the books
occupied at Balmoral--so placed that she could see them before her when
occupying the usual seat in her sitting-room. When this letter arrived,
Mr. Dickens was still alive, but wholly unconscious. What to him, at
that time, was the courtesy of an earthly sovereign?" I repeat that the
only morsel of truth in all this rigmarole is that the books were sent
by Dickens, and acknowledged by Mr. Helps at the Queen's desire. The
letter did not arrive on the day of his death, the 9th of June, but was
dated from Balmoral on that day.
[300] The book was thus entered in the catalogue. "DICKENS (C.), A
CHRISTMAS CAROL, in prose, 1843; _Presentation Copy_, inscribed '_W. M.
Thackeray, from Charles Dickens (whom he made very happy once a long way
from home_).'" Some pleasant verses by his friend had affected him much
while abroad. I quote the Life of Dickens published by Mr. Hotten. "Her
Majesty expressed the strongest desire to possess this presentation
copy, and sent an unlimited commission to buy it. The original published
price of the book was 5_s._ It became Her Majesty's property for £25
10_s._, and was at once taken to the palace."
[301] "In Memoriam" by Arthur Helps, in _Macmillan's Magazine_ for July
1870.
[302] An entry, under the date of July 1833, from a printed but
unpublished Diary by Mr. Payne Collier, appeared lately in the
_Athenæum_, having reference to Dickens at the time when he first
obtained employment as a reporter, and connecting itself with what my
opening volume had related of those childish sufferings. "Soon
afterwards I observed a great difference in C. D.'s dress, for he had
bought a new hat and a very handsome blue cloak, which he threw over his
shoulder _à l' Espagnole_. . . . We walked together through Hungerford
Market, where we followed a coal-heaver, who carried his little rosy but
grimy child looking over his shoulder; and C. D. bought a
halfpenny-worth of cherries, and as we went along he gave them one by
one to the little fellow without the knowledge of the father. . . . He
informed me as we walked through it that he knew Hungerford Market
well. . . . He did not affect to conceal the difficulties he and his family
had had to contend against."
CHAPTER XX.
THE END.
1869-1870.
Visit from Mr. and Mrs. Fields--Places shown to
Visitor--Last Paper in _All the Year
Round_--Son Henry's Scholarship--A Reading of
_Edwin Drood_--Medical Attendance at
Readings--Excitement after _Oliver Twist_
Scenes--Farewell Address--Results of Over
Excitement--Last Appearances in Public--Death
of Daniel Maclise--Temptations of
London--Another Attack in the Foot--Noteworthy
Incident--Tribute of Gratitude for his
Books--Last Letter from him--Last
Days--Thoughts on his Last Day of
Consciousness--The Close--General
Mourning--Wish to bury him in the Abbey--His
Own Wish--The Burial--Unbidden Mourners--The
Grave.
THE summer and autumn of 1869 were passed quietly at Gadshill. He
received there, in June, the American friends to whom he had been most
indebted for unwearying domestic kindness at his most trying time in the
States. In August, he was at the dinner of the International boat-race;
and, in a speech that might have gone far to reconcile the victors to
changing places with the vanquished, gave the healths of the Harvard and
the Oxford crews. He went to Birmingham, in September, to fulfil a
promise that he would open the session of the Institute; and there,
after telling his audience that his invention, such as it was, never
would have served him as it had done, but for the habit of commonplace,
patient, drudging attention, he declared his political creed to be
infinitesimal faith in the people governing and illimitable faith in the
People governed. In such engagements as these, with nothing of the kind
of strain he had most to dread, there was hardly more movement or change
than was necessary to his enjoyment of rest.
He had been able to show Mr. Fields something of the interest of London
as well as of his Kentish home. He went over its "general post-office"
with him, took him among its cheap theatres and poor lodging-houses, and
piloted him by night through its most notorious thieves' quarter. Its
localities that are pleasantest to a lover of books, such as Johnson's
Bolt-court and Goldsmith's Temple-chambers, he explored with him; and,
at his visitor's special request, mounted a staircase he had not
ascended for more than thirty years, to show the chambers in Furnival's
Inn where the first page of _Pickwick_ was written. One more book,
unfinished, was to close what that famous book began; and the original
of the scene of its opening chapter, the opium-eater's den, was the last
place visited. "In a miserable court at night," says Mr. Fields, "we
found a haggard old woman blowing at a kind of pipe made of an old
ink-bottle; and the words which Dickens puts into the mouth of this
wretched creature in _Edwin Drood_, we heard her croon as we leaned over
the tattered bed in which she was lying."
Before beginning his novel he had written his last paper for his weekly
publication. It was a notice of my _Life of Landor_, and contained some
interesting recollections of that remarkable man. His memory at this
time dwelt much, as was only natural, with past pleasant time, as he saw
familiar faces leaving us or likely to leave; and, on the death of one
of the comedians associated with the old bright days of Covent Garden, I
had intimation of a fancy that had never quitted him since the
Cheltenham reading. "I see in the paper to-day that Meadows is dead. I
had a talk with him at Coutts's a week or two ago, when he said he was
seventy-five, and very weak. Except for having a tearful eye, he looked
just the same as ever. My mind still constantly misgives me concerning
Macready. Curiously, I don't think he has been ever, for ten minutes
together, out of my thoughts since I talked with Meadows last. Well, the
year that brings trouble brings comfort too: I have a great success in
the boy-line to announce to you. Harry has won the second scholarship at
Trinity Hall, which gives him £50 a year as long as he stays there; and
I begin to hope that he will get a fellowship." I doubt if anything ever
more truly pleased him than this little success of his son Henry at
Cambridge. Henry missed the fellowship, but was twenty-ninth wrangler in
a fair year, when the wranglers were over forty.
He finished his first number of _Edwin Drood_ in the third week of
October, and on the 26th read it at my house with great spirit. A few
nights before we had seen together at the Olympic a little drama taken
from his _Copperfield_, which he sat out with more than patience, even
with something of enjoyment; and another pleasure was given him that
night by its author, Mr. Halliday, who brought into the box another
dramatist, Mr. Robertson, to whom Dickens, who then first saw him, said
that to himself the charm of his little comedies was "their unassuming
form," which had so happily shown that "real wit could afford to put off
any airs of pretension to it." He was at Gadshill till the close of the
year; coming up for a few special occasions, such as Procter's
eighty-second birthday; and at my house on new-year's eve he read to us,
again aloud, a fresh number of his book. Yet these very last days of
December had not been without a reminder of the grave warnings of April.
The pains in somewhat modified form had returned in both his left hand
and his left foot a few days before we met; and they were troubling him
still on that day. But he made so light of them himself; so little
thought of connecting them with the uncertainties of touch and tread of
which they were really part; and read with such an overflow of humour
Mr. Honeythunder's boisterous philanthropy; that there was no room,
then, for anything but enjoyment. His only allusion to an effect from
his illness was his mention of a now invincible dislike which he had to
railway travel. This had decided him to take a London house for the
twelve last readings in the early months of 1870, and he had become Mr.
Milner-Gibson's tenant at 5, Hyde Park Place.
St. James's Hall was to be the scene of these Readings, and they were to
occupy the interval from the 11th of January to the 15th of March; two
being given in each week to the close of January, and the remaining
eight on each of the eight Tuesdays following. Nothing was said of any
kind of apprehension as the time approached; but, with a curious absence
of the sense of danger, there was certainly both distrust and fear.
Sufficient precaution was supposed to have been taken[303] by
arrangement for the presence, at each reading, of his friend and medical
attendant, Mr. Carr Beard; but this resolved itself, not into any
measure of safety, the case admitting of none short of stopping the
reading altogether, but simply into ascertainment of the exact amount of
strain and pressure, which, with every fresh exertion, he was placing on
those vessels of the brain where the Preston trouble too surely had
revealed that danger lay. No supposed force in reserve, no dominant
strength of will, can turn aside the penalties sternly exacted for
disregard of such laws of life as were here plainly overlooked; and
though no one may say that it was not already too late for any but the
fatal issue, there will be no presumption in believing that life might
yet have been for some time prolonged if these readings could have been
stopped.
"I am a little shaken," he wrote on the 9th of January, "by my journey
to Birmingham to give away the Institution's prizes on Twelfth Night,
but I am in good heart; and, notwithstanding Lowe's worrying scheme for
collecting a year's taxes in a lump, which they tell me is damaging
books, pictures, music, and theatres beyond precedent, our 'let' at St.
James's Hall is enormous." He opened with _Copperfield_ and the
_Pickwick Trial_; and I may briefly mention, from the notes taken by Mr.
Beard and placed at my disposal, at what cost of exertion to himself he
gratified the crowded audiences that then and to the close made these
evenings memorable. His ordinary pulse on the first night was at 72; but
never on any subsequent night was lower than 82, and had risen on the
later nights to more than 100. After _Copperfield_ on the first night it
went up to 96, and after _Marigold_ on the second to 99; but on the
first night of the _Sikes and Nancy_ scenes (Friday the 21st of January)
it went from 80 to 112, and on the second night (the 1st of February) to
118. From this, through the six remaining nights, it never was lower
than 110 after the first piece read; and after the third and fourth
readings of the _Oliver Twist_ scenes it rose, from 90 to 124 on the
15th of February, and from 94 to 120 on the 8th of March; on the former
occasion, after twenty minutes' rest, falling to 98, and on the latter,
after fifteen minutes' rest, falling to 82. His ordinary pulse on
entering the room, during these last six nights, was more than once
over 100, and never lower than 84; from which it rose, after _Nickleby_
on the 22nd of February, to 112. On the 8th of February, when he read
_Dombey_, it had risen from 91 to 114; on the 1st of March, after
_Copperfield_, it rose from 100 to 124; and when he entered the room on
the last night it was at 108, having risen only two beats more when the
reading was done. The pieces on this occasion were the _Christmas
Carol_, followed by the _Pickwick Trial_; and probably in all his life
he never read so well. On his return from the States, where he had to
address his effects to audiences composed of immense numbers of people,
a certain loss of refinement had been observable; but the old delicacy
was now again delightfully manifest, and a subdued tone, as well in the
humorous as the serious portions, gave something to all the reading as
of a quiet sadness of farewell. The charm of this was at its height when
he shut the volume of _Pickwick_ and spoke in his own person. He said
that for fifteen years he had been reading his own books to audiences
whose sensitive and kindly recognition of them had given him instruction
and enjoyment in his art such as few men could have had; but that he
nevertheless thought it well now to retire upon older associations, and
in future to devote himself exclusively to the calling which had first
made him known. "In but two short weeks from this time I hope that you
may enter, in your own homes, on a new series of readings at which my
assistance will be indispensable; but from these garish lights I vanish
now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, respectful, affectionate
farewell." The brief hush of silence as he moved from the platform; and
the prolonged tumult of sound that followed suddenly, stayed him, and
again for another moment brought him back; will not be forgotten by any
present.
Little remains to be told that has not in it almost unmixed pain and
sorrow. Hardly a day passed, while the readings went on or after they
closed, unvisited by some effect or other of the disastrous excitement
shown by the notes of Mr. Beard. On the 23rd of January, when for the
last time he met Carlyle, he came to us with his left hand in a sling;
on the 7th of February, when he passed with us his last birthday, and on
the 25th, when he read the third number of his novel, the hand was still
swollen and painful; and on the 21st of March, when he read admirably
his fourth number, he told us that as he came along, walking up the
length of Oxford-street, the same incident had recurred as on the day of
a former dinner with us, and he had not been able to read, all the way,
more than the right-hand half of the names over the shops. Yet he had
the old fixed persuasion that this was rather the effect of a medicine
he had been taking than of any grave cause, and he still strongly
believed his other troubles to be exclusively local. Eight days later he
wrote: "My uneasiness and hemorrhage, after having quite left me, as I
supposed, has come back with an aggravated irritability that it has not
yet displayed. You have no idea what a state I am in to-day from a
sudden violent rush of it; and yet it has not the slightest effect on my
general health that I know of." This was a disorder which troubled him
in his earlier life; and during the last five years, in his intervals of
suffering from other causes, it had from time to time taken aggravated
form.
His last public appearances were in April. On the 5th he took the chair
for the Newsvendors, whom he helped with a genial address in which even
his apology for little speaking overflowed with irrepressible humour. He
would try, he said, like Falstaff, "but with a modification almost as
large as himself," less to speak himself than to be the cause of
speaking in others. "Much in this manner they exhibit at the door of a
snuff-shop the effigy of a Highlander with an empty mull in his hand,
who, apparently having taken all the snuff he can carry, and discharged
all the sneezes of which he is capable, politely invites his friends and
patrons to step in and try what they can do in the same line." On the
30th of the same month he returned thanks for "Literature" at the Royal
Academy dinner, and I may preface my allusion to what he then said with
what he had written to me the day before. Three days earlier Daniel
Maclise had passed away. "Like you at Ely, so I at Higham, had the shock
of first reading at a railway station of the death of our old dear
friend and companion. What the shock would be, you know too well. It has
been only after great difficulty, and after hardening and steeling
myself to the subject by at once thinking of it and avoiding it in a
strange way, that I have been able to get any command over it or over
myself. If I feel at the time that I can be sure of the necessary
composure, I shall make a little reference to it at the Academy
to-morrow. I suppose you won't be there."[304] The reference made was
most touching and manly. He told those who listened that since he first
entered the public lists, a very young man indeed, it had been his
constant fortune to number among his nearest and dearest friends members
of that Academy who had been its pride; and who had now, one by one, so
dropped from his side that he was grown to believe, with the Spanish
monk of whom Wilkie spoke, that the only realities around him were the
pictures which he loved, and all the moving life but a shadow and a
dream. "For many years I was one of the two most intimate friends and
most constant companions of Mr. Maclise, to whose death the Prince of
Wales has made allusion, and the President has referred with the
eloquence of genuine feeling. Of his genius in his chosen art, I will
venture to say nothing here; but of his fertility of mind and wealth of
intellect I may confidently assert that they would have made him, if he
had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The
gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his generous
appreciation of young aspirants and the frankest and largest hearted as
to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly
sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of
self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, 'in wit
a man, simplicity a child,'--no artist of whatsoever denomination, I
make bold to say, ever went to his rest leaving a golden memory more
pure from dross, or having devoted himself with a truer chivalry to the
art-goddess whom he worshipped." These were the last public words of
Dickens, and he could not have spoken any worthier.
Upon his appearance at the dinner of the Academy had followed some
invitations he was led to accept; greatly to his own regret, he told me
on the night (7th of May) when he read to us the fifth number of _Edwin
Drood_; for he was now very eager to get back to the quiet of Gadshill.
He dined with Mr. Motley, then American minister; had met Mr. Disraeli
at a dinner at Lord Stanhope's; had breakfasted with Mr. Gladstone; and
on the 17th was to attend the Queen's ball with his daughter. But she
had to go there without him; for on the 16th I had intimation of a
sudden disablement. "I am sorry to report, that, in the old preposterous
endeavour to dine at preposterous hours and preposterous places, I have
been pulled up by a sharp attack in my foot. And serve me right. I hope
to get the better of it soon, but I fear I must not think of dining with
you on Friday. I have cancelled everything in the dining way for this
week, and that is a very small precaution after the horrible pain I have
had and the remedies I have taken." He had to excuse himself also from
the General Theatrical Fund dinner, where the Prince of Wales was to
preside; but at another dinner a week later, where the King of the
Belgians and the Prince were to be present, so much pressure was put
upon him that he went, still suffering as he was, to dine with Lord
Houghton.
We met for the last time on Sunday the 22nd of May, when I dined with
him in Hyde Park Place. The death of Mr. Lemon, of which he heard that
day, had led his thoughts to the crowd of friendly companions in letters
and art who had so fallen from the ranks since we played Ben Jonson
together that we were left almost alone. "And none beyond his sixtieth
year," he said, "very few even fifty." It is no good to talk of it, I
suggested. "We shall not think of it the less" was his reply; and an
illustration much to the point was before us, afforded by an incident
deserving remembrance in his story. Not many weeks before, a
correspondent had written to him from Liverpool describing himself as a
self-raised man, attributing his prosperous career to what Dickens's
writings had taught him at its outset of the wisdom of kindness, and
sympathy for others; and asking pardon for the liberty he took in hoping
that he might be permitted to offer some acknowledgment of what not only
had cheered and stimulated him through all his life, but had contributed
so much to the success of it. The letter enclosed £500. Dickens was
greatly touched by this; and told the writer, in sending back his
cheque, that he would certainly have taken it if he had not been, though
not a man of fortune, a prosperous man himself; but that the letter, and
the spirit of its offer, had so gratified him, that if the writer
pleased to send him any small memorial of it in another form he would
gladly receive it. The memorial soon came. A richly worked basket of
silver, inscribed "from one who has been cheered and stimulated by Mr.
Dickens's writings, and held the author among his first remembrances
when he became prosperous," was accompanied by an extremely handsome
silver centrepiece for the table, of which the design was four figures
representing the Seasons. But the kindly donor shrank from sending
Winter to one whom he would fain connect with none but the brighter and
milder days, and he had struck the fourth figure from the design. "I
never look at it," said Dickens, "that I don't think most of the
Winter."
A matter discussed that day with Mr. Ouvry was briefly resumed in a note
of the 29th of May, the last I ever received from him; which followed me
to Exeter, and closed thus. "You and I can speak of it at Gads by and
by. Foot no worse. But no better." The old trouble was upon him when we
parted, and this must have been nearly the last note written before he
quitted London. He was at Gadshill on the 30th of May; and I heard no
more until the telegram reached me at Launceston on the night of the 9th
of June, which told me that the "by and by" was not to come in this
world.
The few days at Gadshill had been given wholly to work on his novel. He
had been easier in his foot and hand; and, though he was suffering
severely from the local hemorrhage before named, he made no complaint of
illness. But there was observed in him a very unusual appearance of
fatigue. "He seemed very weary." He was out with his dogs for the last
time on Monday the 6th of June, when he walked with his letters into
Rochester. On Tuesday the 7th, after his daughter Mary had left on a
visit to her sister Kate, not finding himself equal to much fatigue, he
drove to Cobhamwood with his sister-in-law, there dismissed the
carriage, and walked round the park and back. He returned in time to put
up in his new conservatory some Chinese lanterns sent from London that
afternoon; and, the whole of the evening, he sat with Miss Hogarth in
the dining-room that he might see their effect when lighted. More than
once he then expressed his satisfaction at having finally abandoned all
intention of exchanging Gadshill for London; and this he had done more
impressively some days before. While he lived, he said, he should like
his name to be more and more associated with the place; and he had a
notion that when he died he should like to lie in the little graveyard
belonging to the Cathedral at the foot of the Castle wall.
On the 8th of June he passed all the day writing in the Châlet. He came
over for luncheon; and, much against his usual custom, returned to his
desk. Of the sentences he was then writing, the last of his long life of
literature, a portion has been given in facsimile on a previous page;
and the reader will observe with a painful interest, not alone its
evidence of minute labour at this fast-closing hour of time with him,
but the direction his thoughts had taken. He imagines such a brilliant
morning as had risen with that eighth of June shining on the old city of
Rochester. He sees in surpassing beauty, with the lusty ivy gleaming in
the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air, its antiquities and
its ruins; its Cathedral and Castle. But his fancy, then, is not with
the stern dead forms of either; but with that which makes warm the cold
stone tombs of centuries, and lights them up with flecks of brightness,
"fluttering there like wings." To him, on that sunny summer morning, the
changes of glorious light from moving boughs, the songs of birds, the
scents from garden, woods, and fields, have penetrated into the
Cathedral, have subdued its earthy odour, and are preaching the
Resurrection and the Life.
* * * * *
He was late in leaving the Châlet; but before dinner, which was ordered
at six o'clock with the intention of walking afterwards in the lanes, he
wrote some letters, among them one to his friend Mr. Charles Kent
appointing to see him in London next day; and dinner was begun before
Miss Hogarth saw, with alarm, a singular expression of trouble and pain
in his face. "For an hour," he then told her, "he had been very ill;"
but he wished dinner to go on. These were the only really coherent words
uttered by him. They were followed by some, that fell from him
disconnectedly, of quite other matters; of an approaching sale at a
neighbour's house, of whether Macready's son was with his father at
Cheltenham, and of his own intention to go immediately to London; but at
these latter he had risen, and his sister-in-law's help alone prevented
him from falling where he stood. Her effort then was to get him on the
sofa, but after a slight struggle he sank heavily on his left side. "On
the ground" were the last words he spoke. It was now a little over ten
minutes past six o'clock. His two daughters came that night with Mr.
Beard, who had also been telegraphed for, and whom they met at the
station. His eldest son arrived early next morning, and was joined in
the evening (too late) by his younger son from Cambridge. All possible
medical aid had been summoned. The surgeon of the neighbourhood was
there from the first, and a physician from London was in attendance as
well as Mr. Beard. But all human help was unavailing. There was effusion
on the brain; and though stertorous breathing continued all night, and
until ten minutes past six o'clock on the evening of Thursday the 9th of
June, there had never been a gleam of hope during the twenty-four hours.
He had lived four months beyond his 58th year.
* * * * *
The excitement and sorrow at his death are within the memory of all.
Before the news of it even reached the remoter parts of England, it had
been flashed across Europe; was known in the distant continents of
India, Australia, and America; and not in English-speaking communities
only, but in every country of the civilised earth, had awakened grief
and sympathy. In his own land it was as if a personal bereavement had
befallen every one. Her Majesty the Queen telegraphed from Balmoral "her
deepest regret at the sad news of Charles Dickens's death;" and this was
the sentiment alike of all classes of her people. There was not an
English journal that did not give it touching and noble utterance; and
the _Times_ took the lead in suggesting[305] that the only fit
resting-place for the remains of a man so dear to England was the Abbey
in which the most illustrious Englishmen are laid.
With the expression thus given to a general wish, the Dean of
Westminster lost no time in showing ready compliance; and on the morning
of the day when it appeared was in communication with the family and
representatives. The public homage of a burial in the Abbey had to be
reconciled with his own instructions to be privately buried without
previous announcement of time or place, and without monument or
memorial. He would himself have preferred to lie in the small graveyard
under Rochester Castle wall, or in the little churches of Cobham or
Shorne; but all these were found to be closed; and the desire of the
Dean and Chapter of Rochester to lay him in their Cathedral had been
entertained, when the Dean of Westminster's request, and the considerate
kindness of his generous assurance that there should be only such
ceremonial as would strictly obey all injunctions of privacy, made it a
grateful duty to accept that offer. The spot already had been chosen by
the Dean; and before mid-day on the following morning, Tuesday the 14th
of June, with knowledge of those only who took part in the burial, all
was done. The solemnity had not lost by the simplicity. Nothing so grand
or so touching could have accompanied it, as the stillness and the
silence of the vast Cathedral. Then, later in the day and all the
following day, came unbidden mourners in such crowds, that the Dean had
to request permission to keep open the grave until Thursday; but after
it was closed they did not cease to come, and "all day long," Doctor
Stanley wrote on the 17th, "there was a constant pressure to the spot,
and many flowers were strewn upon it by unknown hands, many tears shed
from unknown eyes." He alluded to this in the impressive funeral
discourse delivered by him in the Abbey on the morning of Sunday the
19th, pointing to the fresh flowers that then had been newly thrown (as
they still are thrown, in this fourth year after the death), and saying
that "the spot would thenceforward be a sacred one with both the New
World and the Old, as that of the representative of the literature, not
of this island only, but of all who speak our English tongue." The stone
placed upon it is inscribed
CHARLES DICKENS.
BORN FEBRUARY THE SEVENTH 1812. DIED JUNE THE
NINTH 1870.
[Illustration]
The highest associations of both the arts he loved surround him where
he lies. Next to him is RICHARD CUMBERLAND. Mrs. PRITCHARD'S monument
looks down upon him, and immediately behind is DAVID GARRICK'S. Nor is
the actor's delightful art more worthily represented than the nobler
genius of the author. Facing the grave, and on its left and right, are
the monuments of CHAUCER, SHAKESPEARE, and DRYDEN, the three immortals
who did most to create and settle the language to which CHARLES DICKENS
has given another undying name.
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES:
[303] I desire to guard myself against any possible supposition that I
think these Readings might have been stopped by the exercise of medical
authority. I am convinced of the contrary. Dickens had pledged himself
to them; and the fact that others' interests were engaged rather than
his own supplied him with an overpowering motive for being determinedly
set on going through with them. At the sorrowful time in the preceding
year, when, yielding to the stern sentence passed by Sir Thomas Watson,
he had dismissed finally the staff employed on his country readings, he
had thus written to me. "I do believe" (3rd of May 1869) "that such
people as the Chappells are very rarely to be found in human affairs. To
say nothing of their noble and munificent manner of sweeping away into
space all the charges incurred uselessly, and all the immense
inconvenience and profitless work thrown upon their establishment, comes
a note this morning from the senior partner, to the effect that they
feel that my overwork has been 'indirectly caused by them, and by my
great and kind exertions to make their venture successful to the
extreme.' There is something so delicate and fine in this, that I feel
it deeply." That feeling led to his resolve to make the additional
exertion of these twelve last readings, and nothing would have turned
him from it as long as he could stand at the desk.
[304] I preserve also the closing words of the letter. "It is very
strange--you remember I suppose?--that the last time we spoke of him
together, you said that we should one day hear that the wayward life
into which he had fallen was over, and there an end of our knowledge of
it." The waywardness, which was merely the having latterly withdrawn
himself too much from old friendly intercourse, had its real origin in
disappointments connected with the public work on which he was engaged
in those later years, and to which he sacrificed every private interest
of his own. His was only the common fate of Englishmen, so engaged, who
do this; and when the real story of the "Fresco-painting for the Houses
of Parliament" comes to be written, it will be another chapter added to
our national misadventures and reproaches in everything connected with
Art and its hapless cultivators.
[305] It is a duty to quote these eloquent words. "Statesmen, men of
science, philanthropists, the acknowledged benefactors of their race,
might pass away, and yet not leave the void which will be caused by the
death of Dickens. They may have earned the esteem of mankind; their days
may have been passed in power, honour, and prosperity; they may have
been surrounded by troops of friends; but, however pre-eminent in
station, ability, or public services, they will not have been, like our
great and genial novelist, the intimate of every household. Indeed, such
a position is attained not even by one man in an age. It needs an
extraordinary combination of intellectual and moral qualities . . . before
the world will thus consent to enthrone a man as their unassailable and
enduring favourite. This is the position which Mr. Dickens has occupied
with the English and also with the American public for the third of a
century. . . . Westminster Abbey is the peculiar resting-place of English
literary genius; and among those whose sacred dust lies there, or whose
names are recorded on the walls, very few are more worthy than Charles
Dickens of such a home. Fewer still, we believe, will be regarded with
more honour as time passes and his greatness grows upon us."
APPENDIX.
I.
THE WRITINGS OF CHARLES DICKENS.
1835.
SKETCHES BY BOZ. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.
(The detached papers collected under this title were in course of
publication during this year, in the pages of the _Monthly Magazine_ and
the columns of the _Morning_ and the _Evening Chronicle_.) i. 97; 104,
105; 107; 113, 114.
1836.
SKETCHES BY BOZ. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.
Two volumes: Illustrations by George Cruikshank. (Preface dated from
Furnival's Inn, February 1836.) John Macrone.
THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB. Edited by Boz. With
Illustrations by R. Seymour and Phiz (Hablot Browne). (Nine numbers
published monthly from April to December.) Chapman and Hall.
SUNDAY UNDER THREE HEADS. As it is; as Sabbath Bills would make it; as
it might be made. By Timothy Sparks. Illustrated by H. K. B. (Hablot
Browne). Dedicated (June 1836) to the Bishop of London. Chapman & Hall.
i. 149.
THE STRANGE GENTLEMAN. A Comic Burletta, in two acts. By "Boz."
(Performed at the St. James's Theatre, 29th of September 1836, and
published with the imprint of 1837.) Chapman & Hall. i. 116.
THE VILLAGE COQUETTES. A Comic Opera, in two acts. By Charles Dickens.
The Music by John Hullah. (Dedication to Mr. Braham is dated from
Furnival's Inn, 15th of December 1836.) Richard Bentley. i. 116.
SKETCHES BY BOZ. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. Second Series. One
volume. (Preface dated from Furnival's Inn, 17th of December 1836.) John
Macrone.
1837.
THE POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF THE PICKWICK CLUB. Edited by Boz. (Eleven
numbers, the last being a double number, published monthly from January
to November. Issued complete in the latter month, with Dedication to Mr.
Serjeant Talfourd dated from Doughty-street, 27th of September, as _The
Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. By Charles Dickens._) Chapman &
Hall. i. 108-113; 125-132. iii. 343.
OLIVER TWIST; OR THE PARISH BOY'S PROGRESS. By Boz. Begun in _Bentley's
Miscellany_ for January, and continued throughout the year. Richard
Bentley.
1838.
OLIVER TWIST. By Charles Dickens, Author of the Pickwick Papers. With
Illustrations by George Cruikshank. Three volumes. (Had appeared in
monthly portions, in the numbers of _Bentley's Miscellany_ for 1837 and
1838, with the title of _Oliver Twist; or the Parish Boy's Progress_. By
Boz. Illustrated by George Cruikshank. The Third Edition, with Preface
dated Devonshire-terrace, March 1841, published by Messrs. Chapman &
Hall.) Richard Bentley. i. 121; 124-126; 152-164. iii. 24, 25; 343.
MEMOIRS OF JOSEPH GRIMALDI. Edited by "Boz." Illustrated by George
Cruikshank. Two volumes. (For Dickens's small share in the composition
of this work, his preface to which is dated from Doughty-street,
February 1838, see i. 141-143.) Richard Bentley.
SKETCHES OF YOUNG GENTLEMEN. Illustrated by Phiz. Chapman & Hall. i.
149.
LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. By Charles Dickens. With
Illustrations by Phiz (Hablot Browne). (Nine numbers published monthly
from April to December.) Chapman & Hall.
1839.
LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF NICHOLAS NICKLEBY. (Eleven numbers, the last
being a double number, published monthly from January to October. Issued
complete in the latter month, with dedication to William Charles
Macready.) Chapman & Hall. i. 145; 165-179. ii. 99, 100; 102. iii. 344.
SKETCHES BY BOZ. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People.
With forty Illustrations by George Cruikshank. (The first complete
edition, issued in monthly parts uniform with _Pickwick_ and _Nickleby_,
from November 1837 to June 1839, with preface dated 15th of May 1839.)
Chapman & Hall. i. 121-124.
1840.
SKETCHES OF YOUNG COUPLES; with an urgent Remonstrance to the Gentlemen
of England, being Bachelors or Widowers, at the present alarming crisis.
By the Author of Sketches of Young Gentlemen. Illustrated by Phiz.
Chapman & Hall, i. 149.
1840-1841.
MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK. By Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by
George Cattermole and Hablot Browne. Three volumes. (First and second
volume, each 306 pp.; third, 426 pp.) For the account of this work,
published in 88 weekly numbers, extending over the greater part of these
two years, see i. 191-203; 240; 281, 282. In addition to occasional
detached papers and a series of sketches entitled MR. WELLER'S WATCH,
occupying altogether about 90 pages of the first volume, 4 pages of the
second, and 5 pages of the third, which have not yet appeared in any
other collected form, this serial comprised the stories of The Old
Curiosity Shop and Barnaby Rudge; each ultimately sold separately in a
single volume, from which the pages of the _Clock_ were detached.
Chapman and Hall.
I. OLD CURIOSITY SHOP (1840).
Began at p. 37 of vol. i.; resumed at intervals up to the appearance of
the ninth chapter; from the ninth chapter at p. 133, continued without
interruption to the close of the volume (then issued with dedication to
Samuel Rogers and preface from Devonshire-terrace, dated September
1840); resumed in the second volume, and carried on to the close of the
tale at p. 223. i. 200-216, iii. 344, 345.
II. BARNABY RUDGE (1841).
Introduced by brief paper from Master Humphrey (pp. 224-8), and carried
to end of Chapter XII. in the closing 78 pages of volume ii., which was
issued with a preface dated in March 1841. Chapter XIII. began the third
volume, and the story closed with its 82nd chapter at p. 420; a closing
paper from Master Humphrey (pp. 421--426) then winding up the Clock, of
which the concluding volume was published with a preface dated November
1841. i. 134, 135; 147-149; 161-163; 223-225; 232-248.
1841.
THE PIC-NIC PAPERS by Various Hands. Edited by Charles Dickens. With
Illustrations by George Cruikshank, Phiz, &c. Three volumes. (To this
Book, edited for the benefit of Mrs. Macrone, widow of his old
publisher, Dickens contributed a preface and the opening story, the
_Lamplighter_.) Henry Colburn. i. 124; 183; 240, 241.
1842.
AMERICAN NOTES FOR GENERAL CIRCULATION. By Charles Dickens. Two volumes.
Chapman and Hall. ii. 21-39; 50.
1843.
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. With Illustrations by
Hablot Browne. (Begun in January, and, up to the close of the year,
twelve monthly numbers published). Chapman & Hall.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL IN PROSE. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. By Charles
Dickens. With Illustrations by John Leech. (Preface dated December
1843.) Chapman & Hall. ii. 60, 61; 71, 72; 84-92.
1844.
THE LIFE AND ADVENTURES OF MARTIN CHUZZLEWIT. With Illustrations by
Hablot Browne. (Eight monthly numbers issued; the last being a double
number, between January and July; in which latter month the completed
work was published, with dedication to Miss Burdett Coutts, and Preface
dated 25th of June.) Chapman & Hall. ii. 44-46; 50, 51; 63-65; 74-84;
99-103. iii. 345.
EVENINGS OF A WORKING MAN. By John Overs. With a Preface relative to the
Author, by Charles Dickens. (Dedication to Doctor Elliotson, and Preface
dated in June.) T. C. Newby. ii. 109, 110.
THE CHIMES: a Goblin Story of some Bells that Rang an Old Year out and a
New Year in. By Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by Maclise R.A.,
Stanfield R.A., Richard Doyle, and John Leech. Chapman & Hall. ii.
143-147; 151-157; 160-162; 174, 175; 179.
1845.
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH. A Fairy Tale of Home. By Charles Dickens.
With Illustrations by Maclise R.A., Stanfield R.A., Edwin Landseer R.A.,
Richard Doyle, and John Leech. (Dedication to Lord Jeffrey dated in
December 1845.) Bradbury & Evans (for the Author). ii. 202-204; 215;
445.
1846.
PICTURES FROM ITALY. By Charles Dickens. (Published originally in the
_Daily News_ from January to March 1846, with the title of "Travelling
Letters written on the Road.") Bradbury & Evans (for the Author). ii.
88; 105; 163-167; 191; 219, 220.
DEALINGS WITH THE FIRM OF DOMBEY AND SON, WHOLESALE, RETAIL, AND FOR
EXPORTATION. By Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by Hablot Browne.
(Three monthly numbers published, from October to the close of the
year.) Bradbury & Evans. (During this year Messrs. Bradbury & Evans
published "for the Author," in numbers uniform with the other serials,
and afterwards in a single volume, _The Adventures of Oliver Twist, or
the Parish Boy's Progress_. By Charles Dickens. With 24 Illustrations by
George Cruikshank. A new Edition, revised and corrected.).
THE BATTLE OF LIFE. A Love Story. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by
Maclise R.A., Stanfield R.A., Richard Doyle, and John Leech. (Dedicated
to his "English Friends in Switzerland.") Bradbury & Evans (for the
Author). ii. 230; 241, 242; 279, 280; 284, 285; 286-289; 293-297;
303-311.
1847.
DEALINGS WITH THE FIRM OF DOMBEY AND SON. (Twelve numbers published
monthly during the year.) Bradbury & Evans.
FIRST CHEAP ISSUE OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS. An Edition, printed
in double columns, and issued in weekly three-halfpenny numbers. The
first number, being the first of _Pickwick_, was issued in April 1847;
and the volume containing that book, with preface dated September 1847,
was published in October. New prefaces were for the most part prefixed
to each story, and each volume had a frontispiece. The first series
(issued by Messrs. Chapman and Hall, and closing in September 1852)
comprised Pickwick, Nickleby, Curiosity Shop, Barnaby Rudge, Chuzzlewit,
Oliver Twist, American Notes, Sketches by Boz, and Christmas Books. The
second (issued by Messrs. Bradbury & Evans, and closing in 1861)
contained Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, Bleak House, and Little
Dorrit. The third, issued by Messrs. Chapman & Hall, has since included
Great Expectations (1863), Tale of Two Cities (1864), Hard Times and
Pictures from Italy (1865), Uncommercial Traveller (1865), and Our
Mutual Friend (1867). Among the Illustrators employed for the
Frontispieces were Leslie R.A., Webster R.A., Stanfield R.A., George
Cattermole, George Cruikshank, Frank Stone A.R.A., John Leech, Marcus
Stone, and Hablot Browne. See ii. 326 and 388.
1848.
DEALINGS WITH THE FIRM OF DOMBEY & SON: WHOLESALE, RETAIL, AND FOR
EXPORTATION. (Five numbers issued monthly, the last being a double
number, from January to April; in which latter month the complete work
was published with dedication to Lady Normanby and preface dated
Devonshire-terrace, 24th of March.) Bradbury & Evans, ii. 102; 107; 219;
220; 230; 241; 265; 278; 280-282; 334-336; 337-367. iii. 345.
THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST'S BARGAIN. A Fancy for Christmas Time. By
Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Stanfield R.A., John Tenniel, Frank
Stone A.R.A., and John Leech. Bradbury & Evans, ii. 280; 388-390; 419;
442-447; 468.
1849.
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD. By Charles Dickens. With
Illustrations by Hablot Browne. (Eight parts issued monthly from May to
December.) Bradbury & Evans.
1850.
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD. By Charles Dickens.
Illustrated by Hablot Browne. (Twelve numbers issued monthly, the last
being a double number, from January to November; in which latter month
the completed work was published, with inscription to Mr. and Mrs.
Watson of Rockingham, and preface dated October.) Bradbury & Evans. ii.
102; 422, 423; 434, 435; 438; 447; 462-466; 484-487; 494. iii. 21-40;
348, 349.
HOUSEHOLD WORDS. On Saturday the 30th of March in this year the weekly
serial of HOUSEHOLD WORDS was begun, and was carried on uninterruptedly
to the 28th of May 1859, when, its place having been meanwhile taken by
the serial in the same form still existing, HOUSEHOLD WORDS was
discontinued. ii. 201-203; 449-456. iii. 239; 490-498.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. CHRISTMAS. To this Dickens
contributed A CHRISTMAS TREE.
1851.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. WHAT CHRISTMAS IS. To this
Dickens contributed WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER.
1852.
BLEAK HOUSE. By Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by Hablot Browne.
(Ten numbers, issued monthly, from March to December.) Bradbury & Evans.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS. To this
Dickens contributed THE POOR RELATION'S STORY, and THE CHILD'S STORY.
1853.
BLEAK HOUSE. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Hablot Browne. (Ten
numbers issued monthly, the last being a double number, from January to
September, in which latter month, with dedication to his "Companions in
the Guild of Literature and Art," and preface dated in August, the
completed book was published.) Bradbury & Evans, ii. 342; 441. iii.
25-29; 40-54; 57-59; 345.
A CHILD'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. By Charles Dickens. Three vols. With
frontispieces from designs by F. W. Topham. Reprinted from _Household
Words_, where it appeared between the dates of the 25th of January 1851
and the 10th of December 1853. (It was published first in a complete
form with dedication to his own children in 1854.) Bradbury & Evans,
iii. 58.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. CHRISTMAS STORIES. To this
Dickens contributed THE SCHOOL BOY'S STORY, and NOBODY'S STORY.
1854.
HARD TIMES. FOR THESE TIMES. By Charles Dickens. (This tale appeared in
weekly portions in _Household Words_, between the dates of the 1st of
April and the 12th of August 1854; in which latter month it was
published complete, with inscription to Thomas Carlyle.) Bradbury &
Evans, iii. 65-70.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_: THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS. To
this Dickens contributed three chapters. I. IN THE OLD CITY OF
ROCHESTER; II. THE STORY OF RICHARD DOUBLEDICK; III. THE ROAD. iii. 154.
1855.
LITTLE DORRIT. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Hablot Browne. The
first number published in December. Bradbury & Evans.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. THE HOLLY-TREE. To this Dickens
contributed three branches. I. MYSELF; II. THE BOOTS; III. THE BILL.
iii. 154; 415.
1856.
LITTLE DORRIT. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Hablot Browne. (Twelve
numbers issued monthly, between January and December.) Bradbury & Evans.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY. To
this Dickens contributed the leading chapter: THE WRECK. iii. 485.
1857.
LITTLE DORRIT. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Hablot Browne. (Seven
numbers issued monthly, the last being a double number, from January to
June, in which latter month the tale was published complete, with
preface, and dedication to Clarkson Stanfield.) Bradbury & Evans, iii.
72; 75; 96; 115; 154-164; 276-278.
THE LAZY TOUR OF TWO IDLE APPRENTICES, in _Household Words_ for
October. To the first part of these papers Dickens contributed all up to
the top of the second column of page 316; to the second part, all up to
the white line in the second column of page 340; to the third part, all
except the reflections of Mr. Idle (363-5); and the whole of the fourth
part. All the rest was by Mr. Wilkie Collins, iii. 170-176; 351.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. THE PERILS OF CERTAIN ENGLISH
PRISONERS. To this Dickens contributed the chapters entitled THE ISLAND
OF SILVER-STORE, and THE RAFTS ON THE RIVER.
THE FIRST LIBRARY EDITION OF THE WORKS OF CHARLES DICKENS. The first
volume, with dedication to John Forster, was issued in December 1857,
and the volumes appeared monthly up to the 24th, issued in November
1859. The later books and writings have been added in subsequent
volumes, and an addition has also been issued with the illustrations. To
the second volume of the Old Curiosity Shop, as issued in this edition,
were added 31 "REPRINTED PIECES" taken from Dickens's papers in
_Household Words_; which have since appeared also in other collected
editions. Chapman & Hall. iii. 236.
AUTHORIZED FRENCH TRANSLATION OF THE WORKS OF DICKENS. Translations of
Dickens exist in every European language; but the only version of his
writings in a foreign tongue authorized by him, or for which he received
anything, was undertaken in Paris. Nickleby was the first story
published, and to it was prefixed an address from Dickens to the French
public dated from Tavistock-house the 17th January 1857. Hachette. iii.
121; 125.
1858.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _Household Words_. A HOUSE TO LET. To this Dickens
contributed the chapter entitled "GOING INTO SOCIETY." iii. 250; 260.
1859.
ALL THE YEAR ROUND, the weekly serial which took the place of HOUSEHOLD
WORDS. Began on the 30th of April in this year, went on uninterruptedly
until Dickens's death, and is continued under the management of his son.
iii. 239-254; 462; 490-499.
A TALE OF TWO CITIES. By Charles Dickens. Illustrated by Hablot Browne.
This tale was printed in weekly portions in _All the Year Round_,
between the dates of the 30th of April and the 26th of November 1859;
appearing also concurrently in monthly numbers with illustrations, from
June to December; when it was published complete with dedication to Lord
John Russell, iii. 243; 279; 353-360.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. THE HAUNTED HOUSE. To which
Dickens contributed two chapters. I. THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE. II. THE
GHOST IN MASTER B'S ROOM. iii. 246.
1860.
HUNTED DOWN. A Story in two Portions. (Written for an American
newspaper, and reprinted in the numbers of _All the Year Round_ for the
4th and the 11th of August. iii. 253; 279.)
THE UNCOMMERCIAL TRAVELER. By Charles Dickens. (Seventeen papers, which
had appeared under this title between the dates of 28th of January and
13th of October 1860 in _All the Year Round_, were published at the
close of the year, in a volume, with preface dated December. A later
impression was issued in 1868, as a volume of what was called the
Charles Dickens Edition; when eleven fresh papers, written in the
interval, were added; and promise was given, in a preface dated December
1868, of the Uncommercial Traveller's intention "to take to the road
again before another winter sets in." Between that date and the autumn
of 1869, when the last of his detached papers were written, _All the
Year Round_ published seven "New Uncommercial Samples" which have not
yet been collected. Their title's were, i. Aboard ship (which opened, on
the 5th of December 1868, the New Series of _All the Year Round_); ii. A
Small Star in the East; iii. A Little Dinner in an Hour; iv. Mr.
Barlow; v. On an Amateur Beat; vi. A Fly-Leaf in a Life; vii. A Plea for
Total Abstinence. The date of the last was the 5th of June 1869; and on
the 24th of July appeared his last piece of writing for the serial he
had so long conducted, a paper entitled _Landor's Life_.) iii. 247-252;
528.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. A MESSAGE FROM THE SEA. To
which Dickens contributed nearly all the first, and the whole of the
second and the last chapter: THE VILLAGE, THE MONEY, and THE
RESTITUTION; the two intervening chapters, though also with insertions
from his hand, not being his.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. By Charles Dickens. Begun in _All the Year Round_ on
the 1st of December, and continued weekly to the close of that year.
1861.
GREAT EXPECTATIONS. By Charles Dickens. Resumed on the 5th of January
and issued in weekly portions, closing on the 3rd of August, when the
complete story was published in three volumes and inscribed to Chauncy
Hare Townshend. In the following year it was published in a single
volume, illustrated by Mr. Marcus Stone. Chapman & Hall. iii. 245; 259;
260 (the words there used "on Great Expectations closing in June 1861"
refer to the time when the Writing of it was closed: it did not close in
the Publication until August, as above stated); 360-369.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_, TOM TIDDLER'S GROUND. To which
Dickens contributed three of the seven chapters. I. PICKING UP SOOT AND
CINDERS; II. PICKING UP MISS KIMMEENS; III. PICKING UP THE TINKER. iii.
245.
1862.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. SOMEBODY'S LUGGAGE. To which
Dickens contributed four chapters. I. HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR;
II. HIS BOOTS; III. HIS BROWN-PAPER PARCEL; IV. HIS WONDERFUL END. To
the chapter of His Umbrella he also contributed a portion. iii. 351;
370.
1863.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. MRS. LIRRIPER'S LODGINGS. To
which Dickens contributed the first and the last chapter. I. HOW MRS.
LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS; II. HOW THE PARLOURS ADDED A FEW
WORDS. iii. 370, 371.
1864.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. By Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by Marcus
Stone. Eight numbers issued monthly between May and December. Chapman &
Hall.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_: MRS. LIRRIPER'S LEGACY: to
which Dickens contributed the first and the last chapter. I. MRS.
LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER; II. MRS. LIRRIPER
RELATES HOW JEMMY TOPPED UP. iii. 371.
1865.
OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. By Charles Dickens. With Illustrations by Marcus
Stone. In Two Volumes. (Two more numbers issued in January and February,
when the first volume was published, with dedication to Sir James
Emerson Tennent. The remaining ten numbers, the last being a double
number, were issued between March and November, when the complete work
was published in two volumes.) Chapman & Hall. iii. 271; 280, 281; 301.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. DOCTOR MARIGOLD'S
PRESCRIPTIONS. To this Dickens contributed three portions. I. TO BE
TAKEN IMMEDIATELY. II. TO BE TAKEN FOR LIFE; III. The portion with the
title of TO BE TAKEN WITH A GRAIN OF SALT, describing a Trial for
Murder, was also his. iii. 379.
1866.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. MUGBY JUNCTION. To this
Dickens contributed four papers. I. BARBOX BROTHERS; II. BARBOX
BROTHERS AND CO.; III. MAIN LINE--THE BOY AT MUGBY. IV. NO. I BRANCH
LINE--THE SIGNAL-MAN. iii. 379 (where a slight error is made in not
treating _Barbox_ and the _Mugby Boy_ as parts of one Christmas piece).
1867.
THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION. This collected edition, which had
originated with the American publishing firm of Ticknor and Fields, was
issued here between the dates of 1868 and 1870, with dedication to John
Forster, beginning with Pickwick in May 1868, and closing with the
Child's History in July 1870. The REPRINTED PIECES were with the volume
of AMERICAN NOTES, and the PICTURES FROM ITALY closed the volume
containing HARD TIMES. Chapman & Hall.
CHRISTMAS NUMBER of _All the Year Round_. NO THOROUGHFARE. To this
Dickens contributed, with Mr. Wilkie Collins, in nearly equal portions.
With the new series of _All the Year Round_, which began on the 5th of
December 1868, Dickens discontinued the issue of Christmas Numbers. iii.
462 note.
1868.
A HOLIDAY ROMANCE. GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION. Written respectively
for a Child's Magazine, and for the Atlantic Monthly, published in
America by Messrs. Ticknor and Fields. Republished in _All the Year
Round_ on the 25th of January and the 1st and 8th of February 1868. iii.
321, 380.
1870.
THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD. By Charles Dickens, with twelve
illustrations by S. L. Fildes. (Meant to have comprised twelve monthly
numbers, but prematurely closed by the writer's death in June.) Issued
in six monthly numbers, between April and September. Chapman & Hall.
iii. 461-477.
II.
THE WILL OF CHARLES DICKENS.
"I, Charles Dickens, of Gadshill Place, Higham in the county of Kent,
hereby revoke all my former Wills and Codicils and declare this to be my
last Will and Testament. I give the sum of £1000 free of legacy duty to
Miss Ellen Lawless Ternan, late of Houghton Place, Ampthill Square, in
the county of Middlesex. I GIVE the sum of £19 19 0 to my faithful
servant Mrs. Anne Cornelius. I GIVE the sum of £19 19 0 to the daughter
and only child of the said Mrs. Anne Cornelius. I GIVE the sum of £19 19
0 to each and every domestic servant, male and female, who shall be in
my employment at the time of my decease, and shall have been in my
employment for a not less period of time than one year. I GIVE the sum
of £1000 free of legacy duty to my daughter Mary Dickens. I also give to
my said daughter an annuity of £300 a year, during her life, if she
shall so long continue unmarried; such annuity to be considered as
accruing from day to day, but to be payable half yearly, the first of
such half-yearly payments to be made at the expiration of six months
next after my decease. If my said daughter Mary shall marry, such
annuity shall cease; and in that case, but in that case only, my said
daughter shall share with my other children in the provision hereinafter
made for them. I GIVE to my dear sister-in-law Georgina Hogarth the sum
of £8000 free of legacy duty. I also give to the said Georgina Hogarth
all my personal jewellery not hereinafter mentioned, and all the little
familiar objects from my writing-table and my room, and she will know
what to do with those things. I ALSO GIVE to the said Georgina Hogarth
all my private papers whatsoever and wheresoever, and I leave her my
grateful blessing as the best and truest friend man ever had. I GIVE to
my eldest son Charles my library of printed books, and my engravings and
prints; and I also give to my son Charles the silver salver presented
to me at Birmingham, and the silver cup presented to me at Edinburgh,
and my shirt studs, shirt pins, and sleeve buttons. AND I BEQUEATH unto
my said son Charles and my son Henry Fielding Dickens, the sum of £8000
upon trust to invest the same, and from time to time to vary the
investments thereof, and to pay the annual income thereof to my wife
during her life, and after her decease the said sum of £8000 and the
investments thereof shall be in trust for my children (but subject as to
my daughter Mary to the proviso hereinbefore contained) who being a son
or sons shall have attained or shall attain the age of twenty-one years
or being a daughter or daughters shall have attained or shall attain
that age or be previously married, in equal shares if more than one. I
GIVE my watch (the gold repeater presented to me at Coventry), and I
give the chains and seals and all appendages I have worn with it, to my
dear and trusty friend John Forster, of Palace Gate House, Kensington,
in the county of Middlesex aforesaid; and I also give to the said John
Forster such manuscripts of my published works as may be in my
possession at the time of my decease. AND I DEVISE AND BEQUEATH all my
real and personal estate (except such as is vested in me as a trustee or
mortgagee) unto the said Georgina Hogarth and the said John Forster,
their heirs, executors, administrators, and assigns respectively, upon
trust that they the said Georgina Hogarth and John Forster, or the
survivor of them or the executors or administrators of such survivor, do
and shall, at their, his, or her uncontrolled and irresponsible
direction, either proceed to an immediate sale or conversion into money
of the said real and personal estate (including my copyrights), or defer
and postpone any sale or conversion into money, till such time or times
as they, he, or she shall think fit, and in the meantime may manage and
let the said real and personal estate (including my copyrights), in such
manner in all respects as I myself could do, if I were living and acting
therein; it being my intention that the trustees or trustee for the time
being of this my Will shall have the fullest power over the said real
and personal estate which I can give to them, him, or her. AND I DECLARE
that, until the said real and personal estate shall be sold and
converted into money, the rents and annual income thereof respectively
shall be paid and applied to the person or persons in the manner and for
the purposes to whom and for which the annual income of the monies to
arise from the sale or conversion thereof into money would be payable or
applicable under this my Will in case the same were sold or converted
into money. AND I DECLARE that my real estate shall for the purposes of
this my Will be considered as converted into personalty upon my decease.
AND I DECLARE that the said trustees or trustee for the time being, do
and shall, with and out of the monies which shall come to their, his, or
her hands, under or by virtue of this my Will and the trusts thereof,
pay my just debts, funeral and testamentary expenses, and legacies. AND
I DECLARE that the said trust funds or so much thereof as shall remain
after answering the purposes aforesaid, and the annual income thereof,
shall be in trust for all my children (but subject as to my daughter
Mary to the proviso hereinbefore contained), who being a son or sons
shall have attained or shall attain the age of twenty-one years, and
being a daughter or daughters shall have attained or shall attain that
age or be previously married, in equal shares if more than one. PROVIDED
ALWAYS, that, as regards my copyrights and the produce and profits
thereof, my said daughter Mary, notwithstanding the proviso hereinbefore
contained with reference to her, shall share with my other children
therein whether she be married or not. AND I DEVISE the estates vested
in me at my decease as a trustee or mortgagee unto the use of the said
Georgina Hogarth and John Forster, their heirs and assigns, upon the
trusts and subject to the equities affecting the same respectively. AND
I APPOINT the said GEORGINA HOGARTH and JOHN FORSTER executrix and
executor of this my Will, and GUARDIANS of the persons of my children
during their respective minorities. AND LASTLY, as I have now set down
the form of words which my legal advisers assure me are necessary to the
plain objects of this my Will, I solemnly enjoin my dear children always
to remember how much they owe to the said Georgina Hogarth, and never to
be wanting in a grateful and affectionate attachment to her, for they
know well that she has been, through all the stages of their growth and
progress, their ever useful self-denying and devoted friend. AND I
DESIRE here simply to record the fact that my wife, since our separation
by consent, has been in the receipt from me of an annual income of £600,
while all the great charges of a numerous and expensive family have
devolved wholly upon myself. I emphatically direct that I be buried in
an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner; that no
public announcement be made of the time or place of my burial; that at
the utmost not more than three plain mourning coaches be employed; and
that those who attend my funeral wear no scarf, cloak, black bow, long
hat-band, or other such revolting absurdity. I DIRECT that my name be
inscribed in plain English letters on my tomb, without the addition of
'Mr.' or 'Esquire.' I conjure my friends on no account to make me the
subject of any monument, memorial, or testimonial whatever. I rest my
claims to the remembrance of my country upon my published works, and to
the remembrance of my friends upon their experience of me in addition
thereto. I commit my soul to the mercy of God through our Lord and
Saviour Jesus Christ, and I exhort my dear children humbly to try to
guide themselves by the teaching of the New Testament in its broad
spirit, and to put no faith in any man's narrow construction of its
letter here or there. IN WITNESS whereof I the said Charles Dickens, the
testator, have to this my last Will and Testament set my hand this 12th
day of May in the year of our Lord 1869.
"Signed published and declared by }
the above-named Charles Dickens the }
testator as and for his last Will and Testament }
in the presence of us (present together } CHARLES DICKENS.
at the same time) who in his presence }
at his request and in the presence of }
each other have hereunto subscribed our }
names as witnesses. }
"G. HOLSWORTH,
"26 Wellington Street, Strand.
"HENRY WALKER,
"26 Wellington Street, Strand.
"I, Charles Dickens of Gadshill Place near Rochester in the county of
Kent Esquire declare this to be a Codicil to my last Will and Testament
which Will bears date the 12th day of May 1869. I GIVE to my son Charles
Dickens the younger all my share and interest in the weekly journal
called 'All the Year Round,' which is now conducted under Articles of
Partnership made between me and William Henry Wills and the said Charles
Dickens the younger, and all my share and interest in the stereotypes
stock and other effects belonging to the said partnership, he defraying
my share of all debts and liabilities of the said partnership which may
be outstanding at the time of my decease, and in all other respects I
confirm my said Will. IN WITNESS whereof I have hereunto set my hand the
2nd day of June in the year of our Lord 1870.
"Signed and declared by the said }
CHARLES DICKENS, the testator as and }
for a Codicil to his Will in the presence }
of us present at the same time who at } CHARLES DICKENS.
his request in his presence and in the }
presence of each other hereunto subscribe }
our names as witnesses. }
"G. HOLSWORTH,
"26 Wellington Street, Strand.
"HENRY WALKER,
"26 Wellington Street, Strand.
* * * * *
The real and personal estate,--taking the property bequeathed by the
last codicil at a valuation of something less than two years' purchase;
and of course before payment of the legacies, the (inconsiderable)
debts, and the testamentary and other expenses,--amounted, as nearly as
may be calculated, to, £93,000.
III.
CORRECTIONS MADE IN THE LATER EDITIONS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
I regret to have had no opportunity until now (May, 1873) of making the
corrections which appear in this impression of my second volume. All the
early reprints having been called for before the close of 1872, the only
change I at that time found possible was amendment of an error at p.
397, as to the date of the first performance at Devonshire House, and of
a few others of small importance at pp. 262, 291, 320, 360, 444, and
446.
Premising that additional corrections, also unimportant, are now made at
pp. 57, 135, 136, 142, 301, 329, 405, and 483, I proceed to indicate
what may seem to require more detailed mention.
P. 50. "Covent-garden" is substituted for
"Drury-lane." The _Chronicle_ atoned for its
present silence by a severe notice of the man's
subsequent appearance at the Haymarket; and of
this I am glad to be reminded by Mr. Gruneisen,
who wrote the criticism.
50. The son of the publican referred to (Mr.
Whelpdale of Streatham), pointing out my error
in not having made the Duke of Brunswick the
defendant, says he was himself a witness in the
case, and has had pride in repeating to his own
children what the Chief Justice said of his
father.
117. The "limpet on the rock" and the "green
boots" refer to a wonderful piece by Turner in
the previous year's Academy, exhibiting a rock
overhanging a magnificent sea, a booted figure
appearing on the rock, and at its feet a blotch
to represent a limpet: the subject being
Napoleon at St. Helena.
168. "Assumption" is substituted for "Transfiguration."
182. Six words are added to the first note.
193, 194. An error in my former statement of
the circumstances of Mr. Fletcher's death,
which I much regret to have made, is now
corrected.
195. The proper names of the ship and her
captain are here given, as the Fantôme,
commanded by Sir Frederick (now Vice-Admiral)
Nicolson.
229. A correspondent familiar with Lausanne
informs me that the Castle of Chillon is not
visible from Rosemont, and that Dickens in
these first days must have mistaken some other
object for it. "A long mass of mountain hides
Chillon from view, and it only becomes visible
when you get about six miles from Lausanne on
the Vevay road, when a curve in the road or
lake shows it visible behind the bank of
mountains." The error at p. 257, now corrected,
was mine.
247. "Clinking," the right word, replaces
"drinking."
263. A passage which stood in the early
editions is removed, the portrait which it
referred to having been not that of the lady
mentioned, but of a relative bearing the same
name.
267, 268. I quote a letter to myself from one
of the baronet's family present at the outbreak
goodnaturedly exaggerated in Mr. Cerjat's
account to Dickens. "I well remember the dinner
at Mr. Cerjat's alluded to in one of the
letters from Lausanne in your Life of Dickens.
It was not however our first acquaintance with
the 'distinguished writer,' as he came with his
family to stay at a Pension on the border of
the Lake of Geneva where my father and his
family were then living, and notwithstanding
the gallant captain's 'habit' the families
subsequently became very intimate."
270. Lord Vernon is more correctly described as
the fifth Baron, who succeeded to the title in
1835 and died in 1866 in his 64th year.
283. The distance of Mont Blanc from the
Neuchâtel road is now properly given as sixty
not six miles.
341, second line from bottom. Not
"subsequent" but "modified" is the proper word.
398. In mentioning the painters who took an
interest in the Guild scheme I omitted the
distinguished name of Mr. E. M. Ward, R.A., by
whom an admirable design, taken from Defoe's
life, was drawn for the card of membership.
455, 456. In supposing that the Child's Dream
of a Star was not among Dickens's Reprinted
Pieces, I fell into an error, which is here
corrected.
468. I did not mean to imply that Lady Graham
was herself a Sheridan. She was only connected
with the family she so well "represented" by
being the sister of the lady whom Tom Sheridan
married.
* * * * *
The incident at Mr. Hone's funeral quoted at pp. 31-33 from a letter to
Mr. Felton written by Dickens shortly after the occurrence (2nd of
March, 1843), and published, a year before my volume, in Mr. Field's
_Yesterdays with Authors_ (pp. 146-8), has elicited from the
"Independent clergyman" referred to a counter statement of the alleged
facts, of which I here present an abridgement, omitting nothing that is
in any way material. "Though it is thirty years since . . . several who
were present survive to this day, and have a distinct recollection of
all that occurred. One of these is the writer of this article--another,
the Rev. Joshua Harrison. . . . The Independent clergyman never wore bands,
and had no Bible under his arm. . . . An account of Mr. Hone had appeared
in some of the newspapers, containing an offensive paragraph to the
effect that one 'speculation' having failed, Mr. Hone was disposed, and
persuaded by the Independent clergyman, to try another, that other being
'to try his powers in the pulpit.' This was felt by the family to be an
insult alike to the living and the dead. . . . Mr. Harrison's account is,
that the Independent clergyman was observed speaking to Miss Hone about
something apparently annoying to both, and that, turning to Mr.
Cruikshank, he said 'Have you seen the sketch of Mr. Hone's life in the
_Herald_?' Mr. C. replied 'Yes.' 'Don't you think it very
discreditable? It is a gross reflection on our poor friend, as if he
would use the most sacred things merely for a piece of bread; and it is
a libel on me and the denomination I belong to, as if we could be
parties to such a proceeding.' Mr. C. said in reply, 'I know something
of the article, but what you complain of was not in it originally--it
was an addition by another hand.' Mr. C. afterwards stated that he wrote
the article, 'but _not_ the offensive paragraph.' The vulgar nonsense
put into the mouth of the clergyman by Mr. Dickens was wound up, it is
said, by 'Let us pray' . . . but this _cannot_ be true; and for this
reason, the conversation with Mr. Cruikshank took place before the
domestic service, and that service, according to Nonconformist custom,
is always begun by reading an appropriate passage of Scripture. . . . Mr.
Dickens says that while they were kneeling at prayer Mr. Cruikshank
whispered to him what he relates. Mr. C. denies it; and I believe
him. . . . In addition to the improbability, one of the company remembers
that Mr. Dickens and Mr. Cruikshank did not sit together, and could not
have knelt side by side." The reader must be left to judge between what
is said of the incident in the text and these recollections of it after
thirty years.
* * * * *
At the close of the corrections to the first volume, prefixed to the
second, the intention was expressed to advert at the end of the work to
information, not in correction but in illustration of my text, forwarded
by obliging correspondents who had been scholars at the Wellington House
Academy (i. 74). But inexorable limits of space prevent, for the
present, a fulfilment of this intention.
J. F.
PALACE GATE HOUSE, KENSINGTON,
_22nd of January 1874_.
INDEX.
A'BECKETT (GILBERT), at Miss Kelly's theatre, ii. 210;
death of, iii. 119.
Aberdeen, reading at, iii. 234.
Actors and acting, i. 174, 175, 260, ii. 96, 103, 126-128, 176,
399, 401;
at Miss Kelly's theatre, ii. 210;
French, iii. 127-134.
Adams (John Quincey), i. 214, 349.
Adelphi theatre, _Carol_ dramatized at the, ii. 96.
Africa, memorials of dead children in, iii. 293.
Agassiz (M.), iii. 389 note.
Agreements, literary, ii. 87, 88, iii. 240.
Ainsworth (Harrison), i. 118, 163, 181.
Alamode beef-house (Johnson's), i. 54.
Albany (U. S.), reading at, iii. 436 (and see 441).
Albaro, Villa Bagnerello at, ii. 113, 120;
the sirocco at, ii. 114;
Angus Fletcher's sketch of the villa, ii. 121;
English servants at, ii. 123;
tradespeople at, ii. 124, 125;
dinner at French consul's, ii. 130-132;
reception at the Marquis di Negri's, ii. 132.
Albert (Prince), i. 322 note;
at Boulogne, iii. 108.
Alison (Dr.), i. 258, 260.
Alison (Sheriff), ii. 391.
_All the Year Round_, titles suggested for, iii. 241-243;
first number of, iii. 244;
success of, iii. 244;
difference between _Household Words_ and, iii. 245;
tales in, by eminent writers, iii. 245;
sale of Christmas numbers of, iii. 246;
Dickens's detached papers in, iii. 247-249, 528;
Charles Collins's papers in, iii. 257;
projected story for, iii. 310, 462;
new series of, iii. 462 note;
change of plan in, iii. 462 note;
Dickens's last paper in, iii. 528.
Allan (Sir William), i. 258, 260; ii. 475.
Allonby (Cumberland), iii. 173;
landlady of inn at, iii. 173.
Allston (Washington), i. 331.
Amateur theatricals, i. 413-417; ii. 481; iii. 62-64.
Ambigu (Paris), _Paradise Lost_ at the, iii. 130, 131.
America, visit to, contemplated by Dickens, i. 195;
wide-spread knowledge of Dickens's writings in, i. 215, 216,
iii. 384-386;
eve of visit to, i. 284-291;
visit to, decided, i. 285;
proposed book about, i. 286;
arrangements for journey, 286;
rough passage to, i. 292-298;
first impressions of, i. 299-309;
hotels in, i. 304, iii. 390, 396, 412, 435;
inns in, i. 344, 366 note, 393, 395, 400, 401, iii. 432;
Dickens's popularity in, i. 307, iii. 388;
second impressions of, i. 310-334;
levees in, i. 312, 347, 365, 373, 386, 397;
outcry against Dickens in, i. 319;
slavery in, i. 327, 352-354, 395, ii. 103;
international copyright agitation in, i. 329, 351, 408, 409;
railway travelling in, i. 336, 368, iii. 398, 405, 435, 436;
trying climate of, i. 347;
"located" Englishmen in, i. 350;
Dickens's dislike of, i. 351;
canal-boat journeys in, i. 358-380;
Dickens's real compliment to, i. 361;
deference paid to ladies in, i. 374;
duelling in, i. 396;
Dickens's opinion of country and people of,
in 1842, i. 350, 351 (and see 401, 402);
in 1868, ii. 38, iii. 413-416;
effect of _Martin Chuzzlewit_ in, ii. 76, 77;
desire in, to hear Dickens read, iii. 319;
Mr. Dolby sent to, iii, 320;
result of Dolby's visit, iii. 322, 323 note;
revisited by Dickens, iii. 387-443;
old and new friends in, iii. 389;
profits of readings in, iii. 392;
Fenianism in, iii. 397;
newspapers in, iii. 400;
planning the readings in, iii. 401;
nothing lasts long in, iii. 401, 429;
work of Dickens's staff in, iii. 410;
the result of 34 readings in, iii. 415;
Dickens's way of life in, iii. 416, 434, 437 note;
value of a vote in, iii. 420;
objection to coloured people in, iii. 420;
female beauty in, iii. 432;
total expenses of reading tour, and profits from readings, iii. 446
(and see 441, 442);
Dickens's departure from, iii. 443;
effect of Dickens's death in, iii. 384.
Americanisms, i. 303, 327, 370, 387, 410, 414, 415.
_American Notes_, choicest passages of, i. 362, 363;
less satisfactory than Dickens's letters, i. 358, 359;
in preparation, ii. 23, 24;
proposed dedication of, ii. 27;
rejected motto for, ii. 30;
suppressed introductory chapter to, ii. 34-37;
Jeffrey's opinion of, ii. 38;
large sale of, 37, 38.
Americans, friendly, ii. 177;
deaths of famous, since 1842, iii. 389 note;
homage to Dickens by, iii. 465 note;
French contrasted with, ii. 322.
Andersen (Hans), iii. 167.
Anniversary, a birthday, i. 113, 150, iii. 308, 508;
a fatal, iii. 304, 376, 384.
Arnold (Dr.), Dickens's reverence for, ii. 150.
Arras (France), a religious Richardson's show at, iii. 273.
Art, conventionalities of, ii. 169;
limitations of, in England, iii. 331;
inferiority of English to French, iii. 146, 147.
Artists' Benevolent Fund dinner, iii. 236.
Ashburton (Lord), i. 329, 387.
Ashley (Lord) and ragged schools, i. 283;
ii. 58, 493, 494.
Astley's, a visit from, iii. 164, 165;
_Mazeppa_ at, iii. 302 note.
_As You Like It_, French version of, iii. 132.
Atlantic, card-playing on the, i. 295, 296.
Auber and Queen Victoria, iii. 135.
Austin (Henry), i. 182;
iii. 244;
secretary to the Sanitary Commission, ii. 385;
death of, iii. 261, 262.
Australia, idea of settling in, entertained by Dickens, iii. 185;
scheme for readings in, iii. 270 note (idea abandoned, iii. 272).
Austrian police, the, iii. 94, 95.
Authors, American, i. 319.
Authorship, disquietudes of, ii. 288, 289.
BABBAGE (CHARLES) ii. 108.
Bagot (Sir Charles), i. 412.
Balloon Club at Twickenham, i. 182 note.
Baltimore (U. S.), women of, iii. 418;
readings at, iii. 418, 419, 427 (and see 441);
white and coloured prisoners in Penitentiary at, iii. 419.
Bancroft (George), i. 305, ii. 467.
Banquets, Emile de Girardin's superb, iii. 139-141.
Bantams, reduced, iii. 251.
Barham (Rev. Mr.), ii. 175, 476.
_Barnaby Rudge_, agreement to write, i. 135 (and see 147, 148,
161-163, 177, 225);
Dickens at work on, i. 186, 232-234, 239-244;
agreement for, transferred to Chapman and Hall, i. 223-226;
the raven in, i. 233-240;
constraints of weekly publication, i. 243;
close of, i. 244;
the story characterised, i. 244-248.
Bartlett (Dr.) on slavery in America, i. 389.
Bath, a fancy about, iii. 451, 452.
Bathing, sea, Dickens's love of, ii. 28, 56, 138.
_Battle of Life_ title suggested for the, ii. 251 (and see 295);
contemplated abandonment of, ii. 289;
writing of, resumed, ii. 293;
finished, ii. 295;
points in the story, 296;
Jeffrey's opinion of the, ii. 303, 304;
sketch of the story, ii. 304, 305;
Dickens's own comments on, ii. 306;
date of the story, 306;
reply to criticism on, ii. 308;
doubts as to third part of, ii. 309;
dedication of, ii. 309;
illustrated by Stanfield and Leech, 310;
grave mistake made by Leech, ii. 311;
dramatized, ii. 323.
Bayham-street, Camden town, Dickens's early life in, i. 30-42.
Beale (Mr.), a proposal from, iii. 196.
Beard (Mr. Carr), ii. 476;
on Dickens's lameness, iii. 455;
readings stopped by, iii. 456;
in constant attendance on Dickens at his last readings, iii. 531
(and see 541).
Beard (Thos.), i. 92. 101, 102, iii. 256.
Beaucourt (M.), described by Dickens, iii. 99-102;
his "Property," iii. 100;
among the Putney market-gardeners, iii. 102;
goodness of, iii. 120 note.
Bedrooms, American, i. 304, 313.
Beecher (Ward), iii. 410;
readings in his church at Brooklyn, iii. 417.
Beer, a dog's fancy for, iii. 217 note.
Beggars, Italian, ii. 183, 184.
Begging-letter writers, i. 228, ii. 106, 107;
in Paris, ii. 327.
Belfast, reading at, iii. 229.
Benedict (Jules), illness of, ii. 466.
Bentley (Mr.), Dickens's early relations with, i. 134, 135, 141,
147, 148, 161, 163, 224, iii. 240;
friendly feeling of Dickens to, in after life, ii 481, iii. 241.
_Bentley's Miscellany_, Dickens editor of, i. 121;
proposal to write _Barnaby Rudge_ in, i. 148;
editorship of, transferred to Mr. Ainsworth, i. 163, 164.
Berwick, Mary (Adelaide Procter), iii. 495
Berwick-on-Tweed, reading at, iii. 266.
Betting-men at Doncaster, iii. 174-176.
Beverley (William), at Wellington-house academy, i. 84.
Birds and low company, iii. 251, 252.
Birmingham, Dickens's promise to read at, iii. 56;
promise fulfilled (first public readings), iii. 59;
another reading at, iii. 311;
Dickens's speeches at Institute at, ii. 94, 95, iii. 527.
Birthday associations, i. 113, 150, iii. 308, 508.
Black (Adam), i. 259.
Black (Charles), ii. 476.
Black (John), i. 100, ii. 104;
early appreciation by, of Dickens, i. 106;
dinner to, ii. 53.
Blacking-warehouse (at Hungerford Stairs), Dickens employed at, i. 50;
described, i. 51 (and see iii. 512 note);
associates of Dickens at, i. 52;
removed to Chandos-street, Covent-garden, i. 67;
Dickens leaves, i. 68;
what became of the business, i. 70.
Blackmore (Edward), Dickens employed as clerk by, i. 87;
his recollections of Dickens, i. 87.
Blackpool, Dickens at, iii. 455.
_Blackwood's Magazine and Little Dorrit_, iii. 163.
Blair (General), iii. 424.
Blanchard (Laman). ii. 162, 175 (and see 187);
a Literary Fund dinner described by, i. 322 note.
_Bleak House_ begun, ii. 441;
originals of Boythorn and Skimpole in, iii. 25-28;
inferior to _Copperfield_, iii. 32;
handling of character in, iii. 40-50;
defects of, iii. 44;
Dean Ramsay on, iii. 47;
originals of Chancery abuses in, iii. 50;
proposed titles for, iii. 52 note;
completion of, iii. 51;
sale of, iii. 53.
Blessington (Lady), lines written for, ii. 52 note (and see 93).
Blind Institution at Lausanne, inmates of, ii. 235, 240, iii. 78.
Bonchurch, Dickens at, ii. 425-436;
effect of climate of, ii. 431-433;
entertainment at, iii. 111, 112 note.
Books, written and unwritten, hints for, iii. 275-297;
suggested titles in Memoranda for new, iii. 293, 294;
a complete list of Dickens's, iii. 547-560.
Booksellers, invitation to, ii. 100 note.
Boots, absurdity of, i. 314.
Boots, a gentlemanly, at Calais, i. 136;
a patriotic Irish, iii. 227.
_Boots at the Holly-tree Inn_, iii. 154;
reading of, at Boston (U. S.), iii. 410.
Bores, American, i. 375, 376, 383, 384, 385.
Boston (U. S.), first visit to, i. 300-309;
enthusiastic reception at, i. 301;
dinner at, i. 312;
changes in, since 1842, iii. 390;
first reading in, iii. 391;
a remembrance of Christmas at, iii. 399;
walking-match at, iii. 427;
audiences at, iii. 429;
last readings at, iii. 440.
_Bottle_ (Cruikshank's), Dickens's opinion of, ii. 384, 411.
Boulogne, an imaginary dialogue at, ii. 328, 329;
Dickens at, iii. 55, 56, 59, 96-120;
the Pier at, iii. 115;
Dickens's liking for, iii. 56;
M. Beaucourt's "Property" at, iii. 97-106, 115-120;
sketch of M. Beaucourt, iii. 99-103;
prices of provisions at, iii. 102 note;
Shakespearian performance at, iii. 103;
pig-market at, iii. 104;
Thackeray at, iii. 105 note;
camp at, iii. 106, 107, 116;
Prince Albert at, iii. 107, 108;
illuminations at, iii. 109;
epidemic at, iii. 119.
_Boulogne Jest Book_, iii. 65 note.
Bouquets, serviceable, iii. 137.
Bourse, victims of the, iii. 142.
Boxall (William), ii. 475, iii. 126.
Boxing-match, a, ii. 224.
Boyle (Mary), ii. 481, iii. 524.
Boys, a list of Christian names of, iii. 294, 295.
Boz, origin of the word, i. 104;
facsimile of autograph signature, i. 276.
Bradbury & Evans (Messrs.), ii. 66, 67, 68, 105, 250;
a suggestion by, ii. 71;
Dickens's agreements with, ii. 88 (and see 289), iii. 56.
Bradford, Dickens asked to read at, iii. 61 note.
Brighton, Dickens's first visit to, i. 138;
other visits, ii. 421, 422, 455;
theatre at, i. 138;
reading at, iii. 263.
_Bride of Lammermoor_ (Scott's), composition of the, iii. 339, 340.
British Museum reading-room, frequented by Dickens, i. 90.
Broadstairs, Dickens at, i. 136, 137, 176, 204, 277-283,
ii. 55, 214 note, 387-389, 405-421, 422-424, 436-441;
_Nickleby_ completed at, i. 176;
Dickens's house at, i. 205;
writing _American Notes_ at, ii. 23;
pony-chaise accident, ii. 418, 419;
smuggling at, ii. 439.
Brobity's (Mr.) snuff-box, iii. 297.
Brooklyn (New York), scene at, iii. 411;
readings in Mr. Ward Beecher's chapel, iii. 417.
Brougham (Lord), in Paris, ii. 316, 317;
the "_Punch_ people" and, ii. 469.
Browne (H. K.) chosen to illustrate _Pickwick_, i. 115;
accompanies Dickens and his wife to Flanders, i. 135;
failure of, in a _Dombey_ illustration, ii. 354, 355
(but see 348, 349);
sketch by, for Micawber, ii. 435;
his sketch of Skimpole, iii. 53.
Browning's (R. B.) _Blot on the 'Scutcheon_, Dickens's opinion of,
ii. 46.
Bruce (Knight), ii. 97.
Brunel (Isambard), ii. 469.
Buckingham Palace, Dickens at, iii. 508.
Buffalo (U. S.), reading at, iii. 432.
Buller (Charles), ii. 53.
Burdett (Sir Francis), advocacy of the poor, i. 250.
Burns festival, Prof. Wilson's speech at the, ii. 136.
Buss (Mr.), _Pickwick_ illustrations by, i. 115.
Byron's (Lord) Ada, ii. 469.
ÇA IRA, the revolutionary tune of, iii. 129.
Cambridge, reading at, iii. 317.
Cambridge (U. S.) and Boston contrasted, iii. 390;
the Webster murder at, iii. 402, 403.
Camden-town, Dickens with Mrs. Roylance at, i. 55.
Campbell (Lord), i. 322 note;
on the writings of Dickens, iii. 72 and note;
death of, iii. 247 note.
Canada, emigrants in, ii. 28, 29.
Canal-boat journeys in America, i. 358-380;
a day's routine on, i. 366, 367;
disagreeables of, i. 367;
a pretty scene on board, i. 390-392.
Cannibalism, an approach to, ii. 326.
Cannon-row, Westminster, incident at public-house in, i. 63.
Canterbury, reading at, iii. 264.
Car-driver, an Irish, iii. 225, 226 note.
Carlyle (Lord), ii. 469.
Carlisle (Bishop of) and Colenso, iii. 248 note.
Carlyle (Thomas), ii. 110, 135, 160, 162, 174;
a strange profane story, i. 130;
on international copyright, i. 332-334;
Dickens's admiration of, i. 334 (and see ii. 470);
a correction for, ii. 440;
on Dickens's acting, iii. 72;
grand teaching of, iii. 204;
inaugural address of, at Edinburgh University, iii. 308;
hint by, to common men, iii. 326;
on humour, iii. 342;
a hero to Dickens, iii. 520;
on Dickens's death, iii. 514, 515 (and see ii. 110).
Carlyle (Mrs.), on the expression in Dickens's face, i. 119;
death of, iii. 308;
Dickens's last meeting, iii. 309.
Carriage, an unaccommodating, ii. 232;
a wonderful, ii. 270.
Carrick Fell (Cumberland), ascent of, iii. 170, 171;
accident on, iii. 171.
_Castle Spectre_, a judicious "tag" to the, ii. 471.
Catholicism, Roman, the true objection to, ii. 299.
Cattermole (George), i. 181, 197, ii. 113 note;
imitation of a cabstand waterman by, ii. 423 note.
_Caudle Lectures_, a suggestion for the, ii. 136 note.
Cerjat (Mr.), ii. 232 (and see iii. 567), 252.
Chalk (Kent), Dickens's honeymoon spent at, i. 108;
revisited, i. 119.
Chambers, contemplated chapters on, i. 194.
Chamounix, Dickens's trip to, ii. 253-256;
revisited, iii. 76, 77;
narrow escape of Egg at, iii. 77.
Chancery, Dickens's experience of a suit in, ii. 97-99;
originals of the abuses exposed in _Bleak House_, iii. 49, 50.
Channing (Dr.) on Dickens, i. 302, 308, 309.
Chapman and Hall, overtures to Dickens by, i. 109;
advise purchase of the _Sketches_ copyright from Mr. Macrone,
i. 124;
early relations of Dickens with, i. 144, 145;
share of copyright in _Pickwick_ conceded by, i. 145;
payments by, for _Pickwick_ and _Nicholas Nickleby_, i. 145;
outline of _Master Humphrey's Clock_ submitted to, i. 192-197;
purchase of _Barnaby Rudge_ by, i. 225;
Dickens's earliest and latest publishers, iii. 240.
Chapman (Mr. Thomas), not the original of Mr. Dombey, ii. 107
(and see 108).
Chappell (Messrs.), agreements with, iii. 306, 309, 310;
arrangement with, for course of final readings, iii. 437 note
(and see 445);
amount received from, on account of readings, iii. 446;
Dickens's tribute to, iii. 531 note (and see 315).
_Charles Dickens as a Reader_ (Charles Kent's), iii. 236 note.
Chatham, Dickens's early impressions of, i. 23, 34;
day-school in Rome-lane, i. 27 note;
Mr. Giles's school at, i. 32, 33.
Cheeryble (Brothers) in _Nickleby_, originals of, i. 181.
Chester, readings at, iii. 268, 313.
Chesterton (Mr.), i. 280, ii. 23.
Chicago (U. S.), monomania respecting, iii. 418.
Chigwell, inn at, i. 239.
Children, powers of observation in, i. 23, 27;
mortality of young, in London, iii. 192 note, 293;
old, iii. 292.
Children-farming, Dickens on, iii. 287, 288 note.
_Child's History_, the, finished, iii. 59.
Child's night-lights, wonders of, iii. 172.
Chillon, Castle of, ii. 229, 257, 258.
_Chimes_, a title found for the, ii. 143;
design for, ii. 144;
Dickens hard at work on, ii. 150;
first outline of the, ii. 152-155;
effect of, on Dickens's health, ii. 156, 157;
objections to, ii. 160;
finished, ii. 161;
private readings of, at Lincoln's-inn fields, ii. 162, 174, 175;
Jeffrey's opinion of the, ii. 179.
Chimneys, the smoky, i. 221.
Chinese Junk, ii. 405-408.
Chorley (Henry), iii. 256.
Christmas, Dickens's identity with, ii. 90.
Christmas-eve and day, Dickens's accustomed walk on, iii. 517.
_Christmas Carol_, origin of, ii. 60;
preparation of, ii. 71, 72;
sale and accounts of, ii. 85-87;
Jeffrey and Thackeray on, ii. 89;
message of the, ii. 89;
the story characterized, ii. 91;
dramatized at the Adelphi, ii. 96;
reading of, for the Hospital for Sick Children, iii. 200;
reading of, in Boston (U. S.), iii. 429, 430;
Thackeray's copy of, purchased by her Majesty, iii. 506 note.
_Christmas Sketches_, Dickens's, iii. 370, 371.
Christmas sports, ii. 47 note.
Cicala, the, ii. 118.
Cincinnati (U. S.), i. 378;
described, i. 379, 380;
temperance festival at, i. 383;
bores at, i. 385.
Circumlocution Office, the, iii. 159.
Clay (Henry), i. 348, 349;
on international copyright, i. 323.
Clennam (Mrs.), in _Little Dorrit_, original of, iii. 277.
Cleveland (U. S.), rude reception of mayor of, i. 403.
Coachman, a Paris, ii. 332 note.
Cobham-park, i. 224, 288;
Dickens's last walk in, iii. 540.
Cockburn (Sir Alexander), iii. 126.
Coffee-shops frequented by Dickens, i. 56.
Cogswell (Mr.), ii. 476, 477.
Coincidence, marvels of, iii. 174, 175, 524.
Col de Balme Pass, ii. 253.
Colden (David), i. 315, 316, ii. 192 note, 476.
Colenso (Bishop) and the Bishop of Carlisle, iii. 248 note.
Coleridge (Sara) on Little Nell, iii. 345 note;
on _Chuzzlewit_, iii. 345 note.
Collier (Payne) and Dickens in Hungerford Market, iii. 512 note.
Collins (Charles Alston), marriage of, to Kate Dickens, iii. 255;
books by, iii. 257;
on Dickens's accompaniments of work, iii. 211 note;
cover designed by, for _Edwin Drood_, iii. 466;
death of, iii. 258.
Collins (Wilkie), Dickens's regard for, ii. 402;
holiday trip of, with Dickens and Egg, iii. 76-95;
at Boulogne, iii. 106;
in Paris, iii. 126;
in Cumberland, iii. 170-173;
accident to, on Carrick Fell, iii. 171;
tales by, in _All the Year Round_, iii. 245;
at his brother's wedding, iii. 256.
Colquhoun (Mr.), i. 258.
Columbus (U. S.), levee at, i. 398.
Commercial Travellers' schools, admired by Dickens, iii. 247.
Commons, House of, Dickens's opinion of, i. 103, iii. 499.
Conjuror, a French, iii. 110-115.
Consumption, hops a supposed cure for, iii. 208.
Conversion, a wonderful, ii. 180 note.
Cooke, Mr. (of Astley's), iii. 164, 165.
Cooling Castle, ruins of, iii. 206, 220.
Cooling churchyard, Dickens's partiality for, iii. 221.
Copyright, international, Dickens's views on, i. 311, 318, 322,
332, 349, 360, ii. 50;
Henry Clay on, i. 323;
petition to American Congress on, i. 328, 351;
Carlyle on, i. 332-334;
two obstacles to, i. 408, 409 (and see ii. 26);
result of agitation, i. 322.
Corduroy-road, a, i. 398, 399.
Cornwall (Barry), ii. 187, iii. 27 (and see 495, 530).
Cornwall, Dickens's trip to, ii. 40-43.
Costello (Dudley), fancy sketch of, ii. 383.
Coutts, Miss (Baroness Burdett-Coutts), great regard for, ii. 58;
true friendship of, ii. 323;
generosity of, ii. 109 note, 488, iii. 300 (and see ii. 179).
Covent-garden theatre, Macready at, i. 140, 185;
farce written by Dickens for, i. 183;
dinner at the close of Mr. Macready's management, i. 185;
the editor of the _Satirist_ hissed from stage of, ii. 50;
Dickens applies for an engagement at, ii. 206.
Coventry, gold repeater presented to Dickens by watchmakers of,
iii. 237 (and see 562).
Crawford (Sir George), ii. 172.
_Cricket on the Hearth_, origin of the, ii. 201-204;
Dickens busy on, ii. 215;
reading of, in Ary Scheffer's studio, iii. 148.
Crimean war, unpopular in France, iii. 110, 127, 143.
Cruikshank (George), illustrations by, to _Sketches_, i. 113;
claim by, to the origination of _Oliver Twist_, i. 154-156,
ii. 347, 348, 350, 351 note (and see autograph letter of
Dickens, ii. 349, 350, and p. vii. of vol. ii.);
fancy sketch of, ii. 379, 381;
Dickens's opinion of his _Bottle_ and _Drunkard's Children_,
ii. 384, 410, 411.
_Cruize on Wheels_ (Charles Collins's), iii, 257.
Cumberland, Dickens's trip in, iii. 170-173.
Cunningham, Peter, character and life, iii. 73, 74.
Curry (Mr.), ii. 125, 158, 172.
Custom-house-officers (continental), ii. 172, 173, 315.
_Daily News_ projected, ii. 203;
misgiving as to, ii. 215-217;
first number of, ii. 218;
Dickens's short editorship, ii. 215-219;
succeeded by author of this book, ii. 220, 302, 303.
Dana (R. H.), i. 304.
Danson (Dr. Henry), recollections by, of Dickens at school,
i. 81-85;
letter from Dickens to, i. 85 note.
Dansons (the), at work, iii. 166.
_David Copperfield_, identity of Dickens with hero of, i. 50-69;
iii. 33-36;
characters and incidents in, iii. 21-40;
original of Dora in, i. 93;
name found for, ii. 422;
dinners in celebration of, ii. 438, 439, 470;
sale of, ii. 447;
titles proposed for, ii. 463-465;
progress of, ii. 483-487;
Lord Lytton on, iii. 21;
popularity of, iii. 22;
original of Miss Moucher in, iii. 23;
original of Mr. Micawber in, iii. 30-32;
_Bleak House_ inferior to, iii. 32;
a proposed opening of, iii. 155;
fac-simile of plan prepared for first number of, iii. 157.
De Foe (Daniel), Dickens's opinion of, iii. 135 note;
his _History of the Devil_, i. 139.
Delane (John), ii. 469.
Denman (Lord), ii. 108.
Devonshire (Duke of) and the Guild of Literature and Art, ii. 397.
Devonshire-terrace, Dickens removes from Doughty-street into,
i. 186;
Maclise's sketch of Dickens's house in, iii. 41.
Dick, a favourite canary, iii. 117.
Dickens (John), family of, i. 22;
small but good library of, i. 29;
money embarrassments of, i. 36, 42;
character of, described by his son, i. 37;
arrested for debt, i. 43;
legacy to, i. 64;
leaves the Marshalsea, i. 66;
on the education of his son, i. 89;
becomes a reporter, i. 90;
Devonshire home of, described, i. 186-189;
death of, ii. 489;
his grave at Highgate, ii. 490;
sayings of, iii. 31, 32;
respect entertained by his son for, iii. 31.
Dickens (Fanny), ii. 206, 456, 459;
elected a pupil to the Royal Academy of Music, i. 39;
obtains a prize thereat, i. 66;
illness of, ii. 319, 320;
death of, ii. 460;
her funeral, i. 67.
Dickens (Alfred), i. 223, 288; death of, iii. 258.
Dickens, Augustus, (died in America), ii. 385.
Dickens (Frederick), i. 182, 261, 288 (and see ii. 476);
narrow escape from drowning in the bay at Genoa, ii. 137;
death of, iii. 450.
DICKENS, CHARLES, birth of, at Portsea, i. 21.
reminiscences of childhood at Chatham, i. 23-36.
relation of David Copperfield to, i. 28, 48, 92; iii. 33-35.
his wish that his biography should be written by the author of
this book, i. 40 note.
first efforts at description, i. 42.
account by himself of his boyhood, i. 50-69
(and see ii. 205-207; iii. 247).
illnesses of, i. 60, 130, 244, 288; ii. 216, 297, 312 note;
iii. 304, 305, 306, 311, 312, 313, 315, 321, 355, 375, 404,
410, 412, 416, 426, 427, 437, 441, 450.
clerk in an attorney's office, i. 87.
hopeless love of, i. 92, 93.
employed as a parliamentary reporter, i. 96
(and see iii. 512 note).
his first attempts in literature, i. 97.
his marriage, i. 108.
writes for the stage, i. 116 (and see 140, 183).
predominant impression of his life, i. 120, 405; ii. 147-150;
iii. 524, 525.
personal habits of, i. 132, 133, 224, 368, 376, 377, 400;
ii. 216, 225, 324; iii. 215-218, 513.
relations of, with his illustrators, i. 154-156; ii. 347, 348.
portraits of, i. 178 note; iii. 148-150, 238.
curious epithets given by, to his children, i. 182 note;
ii. 248 note, 266 note, 314, 315, 324 note;
iii. 100 (and see i. 261, 306, 331, 356, 418).
his ravens, i. 233-239; ii. 215.
adventures in the Highlands, i. 263-276.
first visit to the United States, i. 284.
domestic griefs of, i. 289.
an old malady of, i. 288; iii. 314, 534.
an admirable stage manager, i. 414-417; ii. 210, 212-214,
370, 371, 393 note, 400, 401.
his dogs, ii. 24, 25, 134 note; iii. 144 note, 217-220, 222.
his Will, ii. 59, 60 (and see iii. 561).
his accompaniments of work, ii. 48, 121, 240; iii. 211, 212 note.
religious views of, ii. 59, 60, 147-150; iii. 484-486.
turning-point of his career, ii. 72.
writing in the _Chronicle_, ii. 105.
fancy sketch of his biographer, ii. 383.
sea-side holidays of, ii. 403-441; iii. 96-120.
Italian travels, ii. 111-200; iii. 78-95.
craving for crowded streets, ii. 144, 151, 277, 281, 313.
political opinions of, ii. 146; iii. 498-503 (and see 528).
wish to become an actor, ii. 205.
his long walks, ii. 158, 230 note, 312 note; iii. 249, 515-517.
first desire to become a public reader, ii. 174, 284; iii. 60, 61.
edits the _Daily News_, ii. 218.
his home in Switzerland, ii. 225, 226.
residence in Paris, ii. 316-336, iii. 121-153.
underwriting numbers, ii. 335 note, 362; iii. 377, 466.
overwriting numbers, ii. 342, 343, 356.
first public readings, iii. 60.
revisits Switzerland and Italy, iii. 76-95.
his birds, iii. 117, 118.
home disappointments, iii. 177-201 (and see 512).
separation from his wife, iii. 200.
purchases Gadshill-place, iii. 205.
first paid Readings, iii. 223-238.
second series of Readings, iii. 255-274.
third series of Readings, iii. 298-324.
revisits America, iii. 387-443.
memoranda for stories first jotted down by, iii. 180
(and see 275-297).
his "violated letter," iii. 201, 231.
favourite walks of, iii. 209, 220-222.
his mother's death, iii. 300.
his first attack of lameness, iii. 304 (and see 312, 321, 376,
437, 442 note, 453, 455, 456, 509, 514, 530, 537).
general review of his literary labours, iii. 325-386, 380-386.
effect of his death in America, iii. 384.
last readings of, iii. 444-460.
noticeable changes in, iii. 447, 455, 534.
comparison of his early and his late MSS., iii. 466, 468, 469.
personal characteristics of, iii. 478-526.
his interview with the Queen, iii. 507, 508.
strain and excitement at the final readings at St. James's Hall,
iii. 532.
last days at Gadshill, iii. 539, 543.
a tribute of gratitude to, for his books, iii. 538, 539.
general mourning for, iii. 542.
burial in Westminster Abbey, iii. 544.
unbidden mourners at grave, iii. 544.
Dickens (Mrs.), i. 108, 135, 252, 264, 273, 287, 290, 294, 299, 304,
313, 318, 336, 344, 348, 349, 373, 375, 387, 397, 403, 404, 411,
413-415, ii. 140, 149, 163, 165, iii. 113;
reluctance to leave England, i. 287;
an admirable traveller, i. 397;
Maclise's portrait of, ii. 44;
the separation, iii. 200 (and see 562, 564.)
Dickens (Charles, jun.), i. 257, 331, ii. 179;
birth of, i. 119;
illness of, ii. 335;
education of, ii. 323, iii. 57 note;
marriage of, iii. 262.
Dickens (Mary), birth of, i. 149 (and see ii. 471, iii. 561).
Dickens (Kate), birth of, i. 186 (and see ii. 470);
illness of, ii. 122;
marriage of, iii. 255.
Dickens (Walter Landor), death of, i. 250 (and see iii. 300, 301).
Dickens (Francis Jeffrey), birth of, ii. 61.
Dickens (Alfred Tennyson), ii. 215.
Dickens (Lieut. Sydney), death of, at sea, ii. 369 note.
Dickens (Henry Fielding), birth of, ii. 462;
acting of, iii. 63;
scholarship at Cambridge won by, iii. 529 (and see iii. 562).
Dickens (Edward Bulwer Lytton), birth of, iii. 54.
Dickens (Dora Annie), birth of, ii. 487;
death of, ii. 492;
her grave at Highgate, ii. 493, iii. 52.
_Dickens in Camp_ (Bret Harte's), i. 215, 216.
Dilke (Charles Wentworth), i. 47, 48;
death of, iii. 303 note.
Dilke (Sir Charles), ii. 437.
Disraeli (Mr.), iii. 537.
Doctors, Dickens's distrust of, ii. 433.
Doctors' Commons, Dickens reporting in, i. 92
(and see ii. 219, iii. 39).
_Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions_, large sale of, ii. 87 note;
Dickens's faith in, iii. 307;
how written, iii. 379;
success of the reading of, at New York, iii. 409, 410.
Dogs, Dickens's, ii. 24, 25, 134 note, iii. 144 note, 217-220, 222;
effect of his sudden lameness upon, iii. 518.
Dolby (Miss), ii. 475.
Dolby, Mr. (Dickens's manager) sent to America, iii. 320;
troubles of, iii. 394, 400, 408, 411, 412;
the most unpopular man in America, iii. 394;
care and kindness of, iii. 441;
commission received by, iii. 446.
_Dombey and Son_, original of Mrs. Pipchin in, i. 55, ii. 355;
begun at Rosemont, ii. 241;
Dickens at work on, ii. 249, 250, 266, 297, 314;
general idea for, ii. 250;
hints to artist, ii. 250;
a reading of first number of, ii. 283;
large sale of, ii. 296, 353 (and see 447);
a number under written, ii. 335 note;
charwoman's opinion of, ii. 335, 336;
plan of, ii. 337-341;
progress of, ii. 341-367;
artist-fancies for Mr. Dombey, ii. 345, 346;
passage of original MS. omitted, ii. 343, 344 note;
a reading of second number of, ii. 353 (and see 257, 281);
Jeffrey on, ii. 358, 359 and note, 358;
characters in, and supposed originals of, ii. 362-367
(and see 107);
profits of, ii. 384;
translated into Russian, ii. 448.
Doncaster, the race-week at, iii. 174-176;
a "groaning phantom" at, iii. 174.
Dora, a real, i. 92, 93;
changed to Flora in _Little Dorrit_, i. 94.
D'Orsay (Count) and Roche the courier, ii. 204 note;
death of, iii. 55.
Doughty-street, Dickens removes to, i. 119;
incident of, iii. 252.
Dover, Dickens at, iii. 54, 55;
reading at, iii. 264;
storm at, iii. 264.
Dowling (Vincent), i. 101.
Dramatic College, Royal, Dickens's interest in the, iii. 236.
Dream, a vision in a, ii. 148-150 (and see iii. 522-524);
President Lincoln's, iii. 423.
_Drunkard's Children_ (Cruikshank's), Dickens's opinion of,
ii. 410, 411.
Drury-lane theatre, opening of, ii. 30.
Dublin, Dickens's first impressions of, iii. 225;
humorous colloquies at Morrison's hotel in, iii. 227, 228;
reading in, iii. 317 (and see 226 note, 228).
Duelling in America, i. 396.
Dumas (Alexandre), tragedy of _Kean_ by, ii. 127
(and see iii. 491 note);
his _Christine_, ii. 176;
a supper with, ii. 331.
Dundee, reading at, iii. 233.
Du Plessis (Marie), death of, ii. 333.
Dyce (Alexander), ii. 473.
EDEN in _Martin Chuzzlewit_, original of, i. 363, 369;
a worse swamp than, ii. 77.
Edinburgh, public dinner in, to Dickens, i. 249-262;
presentation of freedom of, i. 257 (and see iii. 197);
wassail-bowl presented after _Carol_ reading, iii. 197;
readings at, iii. 233, 267, 451, and 450 note;
Scott monument at, ii. 392.
Editorial troubles and pleasures, iii. 493.
Editors, American, incursion of, i. 300.
Education, two kinds of, i. 89;
Dickens's speeches on, ii. 95.
_Edwin Drood_, clause inserted in agreement for, iii. 461 note;
sale of, iii. 461 note;
amount paid for, iii. 461 note;
first fancy for, iii. 462;
the story as planned in Dickens's mind, iii. 463, 464;
Longfellow on, iii. 464;
merits of, iii. 464, 465;
facsimile of portion of final page of, iii. 466 (and see 468);
an unpublished scene for, iii. 467-476;
original of the opium-eater in, iii. 528;
a reading of a number of, iii. 530.
Egg (Augustus), fancy sketch of, ii. 383;
holiday trip of, with Dickens and Wilkie Collins, iii. 76-95;
narrow escape at Chamounix, iii. 77.
Electric message, uses for an, iii. 282.
Eliot (George), Dickens's opinion of her first book, ii. 47.
Elliotson (Dr.), i. 270, ii. 109, 313.
Elton (Mr.), Dickens's exertions for family of, ii. 55.
Elwin (Rev. Whitwell), allusion to, ii. 462.
Emerson (Ralph Waldo), ii. 476.
Emigrants in Canada, ii. 28, 29.
Emigration schemes, Dickens's belief in, ii. 262.
Emmanuel (Victor), visit of, to Paris, iii. 127.
Englishmen abroad, ii. 223, 252, 266-271.
Engravings, Dickens on, ii. 167, 168 note.
_Evening Chronicle_, sketches contributed by Dickens to, i. 105.
_Evenings of a Working-man_ (John Overs'), ii. 109.
_Every Man in his Humour_, private performances of, at Miss Kelly's
theatre, ii. 209, 211 (and see iii. 537).
_Examiner_, articles by Dickens in the, i. 185.
Executions, public, letter against, ii. 479.
Exeter, reading at, iii. 224.
Eye-openers, iii. 409.
FACSIMILES:
of letter written in boyhood by Dickens, i. 79;
of the autograph signature "Boz," i. 276;
of New York invitations to Dickens, i. 308-309;
of letter to George Cruikshank, ii. 349, 350;
of plan prepared for first numbers of _Copperfield_ and _Little
Dorrit_, iii. 157, 158;
of portion of last page of _Edwin Drood_, iii. 468 (and see 488);
of _Oliver Twist_, iii. 469.
Fairbairn (Thomas), letter of Dickens to, on posthumous honours,
iii. 487.
_Fatal Zero_ (Percy Fitzgerald's), iii. 495.
Faucit (Helen), ii. 475.
Fechter (Mr.), châlet presented by, to Dickens, iii. 211, 212;
Dickens's friendly relations with, iii. 302.
Feline foes, iii. 117, 118.
Felton (Cornelius C.), i. 304, 315, 320, ii. 192 note;
death of, iii. 269 note.
Fenianism in Ireland, iii. 316, 317 note;
in America, iii. 397 (and see 508).
Fermoy (Lord), iii. 522.
Fêtes at Lausanne, ii. 246, 258.
Fiction, realities of, iii. 346-363.
Field (Kate), _Pen Photographs_ by, iii. 236 note.
Fielding (Henry), real people in novels of, iii. 22;
episodes introduced by, in his novels, iii. 161;
Dr. Johnson's opinion of, iii. 346;
M. Taine's opinion of, iii. 348.
Fields (James T.), _Yesterdays with Authors_ by, ii. 42 note;
on Dickens's health in America, iii. 404, 405;
at Gadshill, iii. 527, 528.
Fiesole, Landor's villa at, ii. 189 note.
Fildes (S. L.), chosen to illustrate _Edwin Drood_, iii. 467.
Finality, a type of, ii. 408.
Finchley, cottage at, rented by Dickens, ii. 51.
_Fine Old English Gentleman_, political squib by Dickens, i. 278,
279.
Fireflies in Italy, ii. 196, and note.
Fires in America, frequency of, iii. 399, 400.
Fitzgerald (Percy), iii. 218;
a contributor in _All the Year Round_, iii. 245;
personal liking of Dickens for, iii. 495.
"Fix," a useful word in America, i. 370.
Flanders, Dickens's trip to, i. 135.
Fletcher, (Angus), i. 254, 263, 274;
stay of, with Dickens at Broadstairs, i. 228;
anecdotes of, i. 262, 263, 264 note, 269 (and see ii. 113, 120,
144, 182, 193, 194 note);
pencil sketch by, of the Villa Bagnerello at Albaro, ii. 121;
death of, ii. 194 note.
Flies, plague of, at Lausanne, ii. 244, 245 note.
Fonblanque (Albany), i. 113, ii. 53, 162;
wit of, ii. 175, 467, iii. 349.
Footman, a meek, ii. 194.
Fortescue (Miss), ii. 96.
_Fortnightly Review_, Mr. Lewes's critical essay on Dickens in,
iii. 332-338.
Fowls, eccentric, iii. 251, 252.
Fox (William Johnson), ii. 53.
Fox-under-the-hill (Strand), reminiscence of, i. 62.
Franklin (Lady), iii. 519.
Fraser (Peter), ii. 475.
Freemasons' Hall, banquet to Dickens at, iii. 324.
Freemasons' secret, a, ii. 440.
Free-trade, Lord "Gobden" and, ii. 312.
French and Americans contrasted, ii. 322.
Frescoes, perishing, ii. 119;
at the Palazzo Peschiere, ii. 140 note, 141;
Maclise's, for the Houses of Parliament, iii. 536 note.
Friday, important incidents of Dickens's life connected with,
ii. 441, iii. 205, 419, &c.
Frith (W. P.), portrait of Dickens by, iii. 238.
Funeral, scene at a, ii. 31-33;
an English, in Italy, ii. 193.
Furnival's inn, room in, where the first page of _Pickwick_ was
written, iii, 528.
GADSHILL PLACE, a vision of boyhood at, i. 24 (and see iii. 204);
Dick's tomb at, iii. 117 note;
first description of, iii. 202;
sketch of porch at, iii. 204;
purchase of, iii. 205;
antecedents of, iii. 207;
improvements and additions at, iii. 208-215;
sketch of Châlet at, iii. 212;
nightingales at, iii. 212;
Dickens's daily life at, iii. 215-222;
sketch of house and conservatory, iii. 216;
Study at, iii. 222;
games at, for the villagers, iii. 510, 511;
Dickens's last days at, iii. 539-542.
_Gambler's Life_, Lemaitre's acting in the, iii. 122-124.
Gamp (Mrs.), original of, ii. 51;
a masterpiece of English humour, ii. 83, 84;
with the Strollers, ii. 376-384.
Gaskell (Mrs.), ii. 454, 470, iii. 54.
Gasman's compliment to Dickens, iii. 265 (and see 441).
Gautier (Théophile), ii. 331.
Geneva, Dickens at, ii. 288;
revolution at, ii. 298-301;
aristocracy of, ii. 299.
Genoa described, ii. 125-128;
theatres at, ii. 127, 128 (and see iii. 491 note);
religious houses at, ii. 128;
rooms in the Palazzo Peschiere hired by Dickens, ii. 129;
view over, ii. 141;
Governor's levee at, ii. 144;
an English funeral at, ii. 193;
nautical incident at, ii. 195;
revisited by Dickens, iii. 78-80.
_George Silverman's Explanation_, iii. 380 (and see 253 note).
Gibson (Milner), ii. 468.
_Gilbert Massenger_ (Holme Lee's) remarks of Dickens on,
iii. 493, 494.
Giles (William), i. 23;
Dickens at the school kept by, i. 32, 33;
snuff box presented to "Boz" by, i. 33.
Gipsy tracks, iii. 250.
Girardin (Emile de), iii. 142;
banquets given by, in honour of Dickens, iii. 139-141.
Girls, American, i. 384, 385 note;
Irish, iii. 226 note;
list of Christian names of, iii. 294, 295.
Gladstone (Mr.), and Dickens, i. 103, iii. 537.
Glasgow, proposed dinner to Dickens at, i. 276;
reading at, iii. 234;
Dickens at meeting of Athenæum, ii. 390.
Glencoe, Pass of, i. 268, 271;
effect of, on Dickens, i. 270.
Goldfinch, the, and his friend, iii. 252.
Gondoliers at Venice, habits of, iii. 90.
Gordon (Lord George), character of, i. 241.
Gordon (Sheriff), ii. 475.
Gore-house, a party at, ii. 334 note.
Gower-street-north, school in, opened by Dickens's mother, i. 43;
a dreary home, i. 45, iii. 218;
home broken up, i. 54.
Graham (Sir James), ii. 109.
Graham (Lady), ii. 468.
Grant (James), recollections of Dickens by, i. 101 (and see 108).
Graves, town, iii. 49, 52 note;
Dickens's dislike to speech-making at, iii. 488.
_Great Expectations_, original of Satis-house in, iii. 220;
germ of, iii. 361;
the story characterized, iii. 362-369;
close of, changed at Bulwer Lytton's suggestion, iii. 369,
and note.
Great Malvern, cold-waterers at, ii. 487.
Greek war-ship, a, iii. 82.
Greeley (Horace), iii. 400, 442;
on the effect in America of Dickens's death, iii. 384;
on Dickens's fame as a novelist, iii. 388;
a suggestion from, iii. 417.
Grey (Lord), recollection of, ii. 264, 265.
_Grimaldi, Life of_, edited by Dickens, i. 142;
the editor's modest estimate of it, i. 142;
criticisms on, i. 142, 143.
Grip, Dickens's raven, i. 220;
death of, i. 234, 235;
apotheosis, by Maclise, i. 237;
a second Grip, i. 239.
Grisi (Madame), ii. 176.
Guild of Literature and Art, origin of, ii. 395;
princely help of the Duke of Devonshire to, ii. 397
(and see iii. 488, 489).
HACHETTE (MM.), agreement with, for French translation of Dickens's
works, iii. 125 note.
Haghe (Louis), iii. 85.
Haldimand (Mr.), seat of, at Lausanne, ii, 232.
Halévy (M.), dinner to, ii. 469.
Halifax, the "Britannia" aground off, i. 297;
the house of assembly at, i. 299.
Hall (Mr. and Mrs. S. C.), ii. 475.
Hall (William), funeral of, ii. 369.
Hallam (Henry), loquacity of, ii. 251.
Halleck (Fitz-Greene) on Dickens, iii. 482 note.
Halliday (Andrew), iii. 529.
_Hamlet_, an emendation for, ii. 389;
performance of, at Preston, iii. 70.
Hampstead Heath, Dickens's partiality for, i. 133, ii. 101.
Hampstead-road, Mr. Jones's school in the, i. 74.
Hansard (Mr.), letter from, concerning Mr. Macrone, ii. 442,
443 note.
Hardwick (John), ii. 468.
_Hard Times_, proposed names for, iii. 65, and note;
title chosen, iii. 65;
written for _Household Words_, iii. 66;
Ruskin's opinion of, iii. 66, 67.
Harley (Mr.), ii. 475.
Harness (Rev. Wm.), ii. 162, 175, 473.
Harrogate, reading at, iii. 230.
Harte (Bret), Dickens on, i. 214;
tribute by, to Dickens, i. 215, 216.
Hartford (U. S.) levee at, i. 313.
Harvard and Oxford crews, the, iii. 527.
Hastings, reading at, iii. 264.
Hatton-garden, Dickens at, iii. 25.
_Haunted Man_, first idea of, ii. 280;
large sale of, ii. 443;
dramatized, ii. 443;
teachings and moral of the story, ii. 443-446;
the christening dinner, ii. 468.
Hawthorne (N.), Dickens on, ii. 440.
Hayes (Catherine), ii. 468.
Heaven, ambition to see into, ii. 477.
Helps (Arthur), iii. 245;
_In Memoriam_ by, iii. 509.
Hereditary transmission, iii. 179 note (and see 493).
Highgate, Dora's grave at, ii. 493, iii. 52.
Highlands, Dickens's adventures in the, i. 263-276.
Hogarth, Dickens on, ii. 413, 414.
Hogarth (George), i. 105;
Dickens marries eldest daughter of, i. 108.
Hogarth (Georgina), ii. 120, iii. 540, 541, 561, 563;
sketch taken from, ii. 48, iii. 287;
Maclise's portrait of, ii. 48, 49.
Hogarth (Mary), death of, i. 120;
epitaph on tomb of, i. 120 note (and see ii. 458);
Dickens's loving memory of, i. 120, 144, 289, 405, ii. 147-150,
458, iii. 525.
_Holiday Romance and George Silverman's Explanation_, high price
paid for, iii. 380 (and see 253 note, and 321).
Holland (Lady), a remembrance of, ii. 194.
Holland (Lord), ii. 190.
Holland (Captain), the _Monthly Magazine_ conducted by, i. 104.
Holyhead, a Fenian at, iii. 316 note.
Hone of the _Every Day Book_, scene at funeral of, ii. 31-33
(but see iii. 568, 569).
Honesty under a cloud, ii. 112.
Hood (Thomas), ii. 190; his _Tylney Hall_, ii. 264.
Hop-pickers, iii. 208.
Horne (R. H.), ii. 475.
Hospital for Sick Children, Dickens's exertions on behalf of,
iii. 192-200;
a small patient at, iii. 194;
_Carol_ reading for, iii. 200.
Hotels American, i. 304, iii. 390, 395, 412, 435;
extortion at, i. 331, 344.
Houghton (Lord), ii. 472, iii. 509, 538.
_Household Words_ in contemplation, ii. 449-453;
title selected for, ii. 454;
names proposed for, ii. 453;
first number of, ii. 454;
early contributors to, ii. 454;
Mrs. Gaskell's story in, iii. 54;
unwise printed statement in, iii. 200;
discontinued, iii. 239 (and see 37).
Hudson (George), glimpse of, in exile, iii. 274.
Hugo (Victor), an evening with, ii. 331, 332.
Hulkes (Mr.), iii. 206 note, 256.
Hull, reading at, iii. 232.
Humour, Americans destitute of i. 401;
a favourite bit of, ii. 102;
the leading quality of Dickens, iii. 341, 342;
Lord Lytton on the employment of, by novelists, iii. 350 note;
Dickens's enjoyment of his own, iii. 350-352;
the true province of, iii. 382.
Hungerford-market, i. 50 (and see iii. 512 note).
Hunt (Holman), iii. 257.
Hunt (Leigh), saying of, i. 119;
on _Nicholas Nickleby_, i. 169;
Civil-list pension given to, ii. 369;
theatrical benefit for, ii. 369-373;
result of performances, ii. 373;
last glimpse of, iii. 26 note;
letter of Dickens to, in self-defence, iii. 28;
the original of Harold Skimpole in _Bleak House_, iii. 26-29;
inauguration of bust of, at Kensal-green, iii. 487.
_Hunted Down_, high price paid for, iii. 253;
original of, iii. 279.
IMAGINATIVE life, tenure of, iii. 187.
Improprieties of speech, ii. 269.
Incurable Hospital, patients in the, iii. 287.
Inimitable, as applied to Dickens, origin of the term, i. 33.
Inn, a log-house, i. 400.
Innkeeper, a model, i. 365.
Inns, American, Miss Martineau on, i. 344 (and see 366 note, 393,
395, 400, iii. 432);
Highland, i. 265, 267, 275;
Italian, ii. 158, 170, 171, 181.
International boat-race dinner, Dickens at, iii. 527.
Ireland, a timely word on, ii. 260.
Irving (Washington), i. 287, 315, 330, 351, 352, 357 note;
letter from Dickens to, i. 284;
a bad public speaker, i. 320-322;
at Literary Fund dinner in London, i. 321;
at Richmond (U. S.), i. 351.
Italians hard at work, ii. 197.
Italy, art and pictures in, ii. 167-169, iii. 91, 92;
private galleries in, ii. 168 note;
cruelty to brutes in, ii. 187 note;
wayside memorials in, ii. 188, 189 note;
best season in, ii. 191;
fire-flies in, ii. 195;
Dickens's trip to, iii. 76-95;
the noblest men of, in exile, iii. 93.
JACK STRAW'S-CASTLE (Hampstead-heath), i. 133, 299, 346,
ii. 101, 117.
Jackson (Sir Richard), i. 413.
Jeffrey (Lord), i. 260;
praise of Little Nell by, i. 251;
presides at Edinburgh dinner to Dickens, i. 252;
on the _American Notes_, ii. 38;
praise by, of the _Carol_, ii. 88;
on the _Chimes_, ii. 179;
his opinion of the _Battle of Life_, ii. 303, 304;
forecaste of _Dombey_ by, ii. 358 note;
on Paul's death, ii. 361 note;
on the character of Edith in Dombey, ii. 362-364;
James Sheridan Knowles and, ii. 392;
touching letter from, ii. 428;
death of, ii. 483.
Jerrold (Douglas), ii. 136, 162, 175, 200;
at Miss Kelly's theatre, ii. 209, 210;
fancy sketch of, ii. 282, iii. 63 note;
last meeting with Dickens, iii. 167;
death of, iii. 168;
proposed memorial tribute to, and result, iii. 168.
Jesuits at Geneva, rising against the, ii. 297-301
(and see 179-180).
Johnson (President), interview of Dickens with, iii. 423;
impeachment of, iii. 429.
Johnson (Reverdy), at Glasgow art-dinner, iii. 453 note.
Jonson (Ben), an experience of, ii. 352.
Jowett (Dr.), on Dickens, iii. 525, 526.
KARR (ALPHONSE), ii. 331.
Keeley (Mrs.), ii. 475;
in _Nicholas Nickleby_, i. 175, ii. 96.
Kelly (Fanny), theatre of, in Dean-street, Soho, ii. 208-214;
whims and fancies of, ii. 209.
Kemble (Charles) and his daughters, ii. 473.
Kemble (John), ii. 473.
Kensal-green, Mary Hogarth's tomb at, i. 120 note, ii. 458 note.
Kent (Charles), _Charles Dickens as a Reader_ by, iii. 235 note;
letter to, iii. 541.
_Kissing the Rod_ (Edmund Yates'), iii. 495.
Knebworth, private performances at, ii. 396, 397;
Dickens at, iii. 245, 246.
Knight (Charles), ii. 475.
Knowles (James Sheridan), bankruptcy of, ii. 392;
civil-list pension granted to, ii. 393;
performances in aid of, ii. 394, 395.
LADIES, American, i. 327;
eccentric, ii. 291-293.
Laing (Mr.), of Hatton Garden, iii. 25.
Lamartine (A., de), ii. 331, iii. 135.
Lameness, strange remedy for, i. 22.
Lamert (James), private theatricals got up by, i. 31;
takes young Dickens to the theatre, i. 32;
employs Dickens at the blacking-warehouse, i. 51;
quarrel of John Dickens with, i. 68 (and see 228).
_Lamplighter_, Dickens's farce of the, i. 183, ii. 207;
turned into a tale for the benefit of Mrs. Macrone, i. 241.
Landor (Walter Savage), Dickens's visit to, at Bath, i. 200;
mystification of, i. 218;
villa at Fiesole, ii. 189, 190 (and see 486 note);
the original of Boythorn in _Bleak House_, iii. 26;
a fancy respecting, iii. 451;
Forster's _Life_ of, ii. 189 note, iii. 528.
Landport (Portsea), birth of Dickens at, i. 21.
Landseer (Charles), ii. 475.
Landseer (Edwin), i. 181, ii. 162, 470, 475, iii. 63 note, 126;
and Napoleon III., iii. 147 note (and see iii. 238).
Land's-end, a sunset at, ii. 40.
Lankester (Dr.), ii. 430.
Lant-street, Borough, Dickens's lodgings in, i. 59;
the landlord's family reproduced in the Garlands in _Old
Curiosity Shop_, i. 60.
Lausanne, Dickens's home at, ii. 225, 226;
booksellers' shops at, ii. 227;
the town described, ii. 227;
view of Rosemont, ii. 229;
girl drowned in lake at, ii. 232, 233;
theatre at, ii. 233, 234 note;
fêtes at, ii. 246, 247, 258, 259;
marriage at, ii. 248;
revolution at, ii. 259;
prison at, ii. 234, 235;
Blind Institution at, ii. 236-240, iii. 78;
English colony at, ii. 242 note;
plague of flies at, ii. 244, 245 note;
earthquake at, ii. 283 note;
feminine smoking party, ii. 292;
the town revisited, iii. 77, 78.
Lawes (Rev. T. B.), club established by, at Rothamsted, iii. 244.
Layard (A. H.), iii. 83;
at Gadshill, iii. 510, 523.
Lazy Tour projected, iii. 170 (and see 351).
Lazzaroni, what they really are, ii. 187.
Leech (John) at Miss Kelly's theatre, ii. 210;
grave mistake by, in _Battle of Life_ illustration, ii. 310, 311;
fancy sketch of, ii. 381;
Dickens's opinion of his _Rising Generation_, ii. 414-418;
what he will be remembered for, ii. 417;
accident to, at Bonchurch, ii. 435;
at Boulogne, iii. 105;
death of, iii. 303 (and see 375).
Leeds, reading at, iii. 232.
Leeds Mechanics' Society, Dickens at meeting of the, ii. 390, 391.
_Legends and Lyrics_ (Adelaide Procter's), iii. 495 note.
Legerdemain in perfection, iii. 112-114 (and see 111, 112 note).
Leghorn, Dickens at, iii. 80, 81.
Legislatures, local, i. 365.
Lehmann (Frederic), iii. 218, 256.
Leigh (Percival), ii. 210.
Lemaitre (Frédéric), acting of, iii. 122-124 (and see 521).
Lemon (Mark), ii. 210, 211, 263;
fancy sketch of, ii. 382;
acting with children, iii. 62;
death of, iii. 538.
Lemon (Mrs.), ii. 263.
Leslie (Charles Robert), iii. 126.
Letter-opening at the General Post-Office, ii. 108, 109.
Levees in the United States, i. 313, 347, 365, 373, 386, 398;
queer customers at, i. 373;
what they are like, i. 398.
Lever (Charles), tale by, in _All the Year Round_, iii. 245.
Lewes (George Henry), Dickens's regard for, ii. 475;
critical essay on Dickens, in the _Fortnightly Review_, noticed,
iii. 333-339.
Library, a gigantic, ii. 272, 273.
_Life of Christ_, written by Dickens for his children, ii. 241 note.
Life-preservers, i. 376.
_Lighthouse_, Carlyle on Dickens's acting in the, iii. 72.
Lincoln (President), curious story respecting, iii. 422, 423
(and see 508).
Lincoln's-inn-fields, a reading of the _Chimes_ in, ii. 162, 174,
175.
Linda, Dickens's dog, iii. 218, 219;
burial-place of, iii. 222.
Liston (Robert), ii. 475.
Literary Fund dinner, i. 321 (and see iii. 488).
Literature, too much "patronage" of, in England, iii. 488.
Littérateur, a fellow, ii. 325.
_Little Dorrit_, fac-simile of plan prepared for first number of,
iii. 158;
sale of, iii. 159;
general design of, iii. 159;
weak points in, iii. 160, 161;
Von Moltke and, iii. 164;
original of Mrs. Clennam in, iii. 277;
notions for, iii. 278.
Little Nell, Florence Dombey and, ii. 362;
Sara Coleridge on, iii. 345 note.
Liverpool, readings at, iii. 225, 268, 311, 313;
Dickens's speech at Mechanics' Institution at, ii. 94, 95;
Leigh Hunt's benefit at, ii. 372, 373;
public dinner to Dickens, iii. 454, 500, 501.
Loch-earn-head, postal service at, i. 269.
Locock (Dr.), ii. 468.
Lodi, Dickens at, ii. 166-173.
Logan Stone, Stanfield's sketch of, ii. 42.
London, pictures of, in Dickens's books, i. 171;
readings in, iii. 223, 235, 258, 269.
Longfellow (Henry Wadsworth), i. 304, 331, iii. 447;
among London thieves and tramps, ii. 22 (and see 57);
at Gadshill, iii. 216;
on Dickens's death, iii. 384.
Longman (Thomas), ii. 469.
Louis Philippe, a glimpse of, ii. 320;
dethronement of, ii. 403.
Lovelace (Lord), ii. 468.
Lowther, Mr. (chargé d'affaires at Naples), difficulty in finding
house of, iii. 83-85.
Lytton (Lord), ii. 188 (and see iii. 246);
prologue written by, for Ben Jonson's play, ii. 372, 373 note;
Dickens's admiration for, ii. 472, 488;
his opinion of _Copperfield_, iii. 21, 22;
_Strange Story_ contributed to _All the Year Round_, iii. 245;
Dickens's reply to remonstrance from, iii. 341, 342;
defence by, of humourists, iii. 350 note;
suggestion as to close of _Great Expectations_, iii. 369;
letter of Dickens to, from Cambridge (U. S.), iii. 402, 403.
Lytton (Robert), iii. 127.
MACKENZIE (Dr. SHELTON) and Cruikshank's illustrations to
_Oliver Twist_, i. 155 note;
rigmarole by, concerning Dickens and Her Majesty, iii. 503,
504 note.
Maclise (Daniel), i. 261, ii. 160, 175, 200;
portrait of Dickens by, i. 178 note;
social charm of, i. 180, 181;
his apotheosis of Grip, i. 237;
his play-scene in _Hamlet_, i. 355;
among London tramps, ii. 23;
sketches in Cornwall by, ii. 42, 43;
letter from, on the Cornwall trip, 42, 43;
his "Girl at the Waterfall," ii, 43;
paints Mrs. Dickens's portrait, ii. 44;
pencil drawing of Charles Dickens, his wife, and her sister,
ii. 49;
Dickens's address to, ii. 116-119;
sketch of the private reading in Lincoln's-inn-fields, ii. 174;
house in Devonshire-terrace sketched by, iii. 41;
death of, iii. 535;
tribute of Dickens to, iii. 536.
_Macmillan's Magazine_, paper in, on Dickens's amateur theatricals,
iii. 63 note.
Macrae (David), _Home and Abroad_ by, iii. 483 note.
Macready (William Charles), i. 261, 287, 288, ii. 160, 177;
at Covent-garden, i. 140;
dinner to, on his retirement from management, i. 185;
dinner to, prior to American visit, ii. 53, 54;
an apprehended disservice to, ii. 54;
in New Orleans, ii. 103;
in Paris, ii. 176, 177, iii. 126;
strange news for, ii. 207;
anecdote of, ii. 372, 373 note;
Dickens's affection for, ii. 467;
farewell dinner to, ii. 488;
at Sherborne, iii. 185;
his opinion of the _Sikes and Nancy_ scenes, iii. 451;
misgiving of Dickens respecting, iii. 481, 529.
Macready (Mrs.), death of, iii. 55.
Macrone (Mr.), copyright of _Sketches by Boz_ sold to, i. 107;
scheme to reissue _Sketches_, i. 122;
exorbitant demand by, i. 124, ii. 442, 443 note;
close of dealings with, i. 125;
a friendly plea for, ii. 443 note.
Magnetic experiments, i. 375, 376.
Malleson (Mr.), iii. 256.
Malthus philosophy, ii. 262.
Managerial troubles, ii. 210, 370, 400-402.
Manby (Charles), pleasing trait of, iii. 273.
Manchester, Dickens's speech at opening of Athenæum, ii. 56
(and see iii. 237);
Leigh Hunt's benefit at, ii. 372;
Guild dinner at, ii. 401;
readings at, iii. 231, 268, 307, 311, 314.
Manchester (Bishop of) on Dickens's writings, iii. 383, 384 note.
Manin (Daniel), iii. 126.
Mannings, execution of the, ii. 479.
_Manon Lescaut_, Auber's opera of, iii. 136.
Mansion-house dinner to "literature and art," ii. 477;
doubtful compliment at, ii. 478;
suppressed letter of Dickens respecting, ii. 478.
Marcet (Mrs.), ii. 231, 252.
Margate theatre, burlesque of classic tragedy at, ii. 26
(and see ii. 387).
Mario (Signor), ii. 176.
Marryat (Captain) on the effect in America of the _Nickleby_
dedication, ii. 54;
fondness of, for children, ii. 472 (and see ii. 268, iii. 567).
Marshalsea prison, Dickens's first and last visits to the,
i. 44, 45, iii. 162;
an incident in, described by Dickens, i. 64-66 (and see iii. 163).
Marston's (Mr. Westland) _Patrician's Daughter_, prologue to, ii. 45.
Martineau (Harriet) on American inns, i. 344, 366 note.
_Martin Chuzzlewit_, agreement for, i. 282 (and see ii. 24, 65);
original of Eden in, i. 362, 370;
fancy for opening of, ii. 24 (and see i. 282, 283);
first year of, ii. 40-62;
names first given to, ii. 44;
Sydney Smith's opinion of first number of, ii. 45;
origin of, ii. 45;
original of Mrs. Gamp in, ii. 51;
sale of, less than former books, ii. 63, 64 (and see 447);
unlucky clause in agreement for, ii. 65;
Dickens's own opinion of, ii. 69, 70;
the story characterized, ii. 74-84;
Thackeray's favourite scene in, ii. 79;
intended motto for, ii. 81;
M. Taine on, ii. 78;
christening dinner, ii. 109;
Sara Coleridge on, iii. 345 note.
_Master Humphrey's Clock_, projected, i. 193-199;
first sale of, i. 202;
first number published, i. 222;
original plan abandoned, i. 223;
dinner in celebration of, i. 240;
_Clock_ discontents, i. 281.
Mazzini (Joseph), Dickens's interest in his school, ii. 474.
Mediterranean, sunset on the, ii. 117.
_Mémoires du Diable_, a pretty tag to, iii. 133, 134.
Memoranda, extracts from Dickens's book of, iii. 275-297;
available names in, iii. 293-296.
Mendicity Society, the, ii. 106.
Mesmerism, Dickens's interest in, i. 279, 280, 375, ii. 436.
Micawber (Mr.), in _David Copperfield_, original of, iii. 30-32;
comparison between Harold Skimpole and, iii. 32;
Mr. G. H. Lewes on, iii. 338, 348;
on corn, iii. 349.
Middle Temple, Dickens entered at, i. 183, 186.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_ at the Opera Comique, Boulogne,
iii. 103.
Milnes (Monckton), ii. 472.
_Mirror of Parliament_, Dickens reporting for, i. 97.
Mississippi, the, i. 386.
Mitton (Thomas), i. 182, ii. 476.
Moltke (Von) and _Little Dorrit_, iii. 164.
_Money_ (Lord Lytton's), a performance of, at Doncaster,
iii. 175 note.
Mont Blanc, effect of, on Dickens, ii. 254.
Montreal, private theatricals in, i. 414, 417;
facsimile of play-bill at, i. 415.
Moore (George), business qualities and benevolence, iii. 248.
Moore (Thomas), i. 251, 321.
Morgue at Paris, ii. 321;
a tenant of the, ii. 327.
_Morning Chronicle_, Dickens a reporter for the, i. 97;
liberality of proprietors, i. 98;
change of editorship of, ii. 53, 104;
articles by Dickens in the, ii. 104, 105.
Morris (Mowbray), ii. 468.
Moulineaux, Villa des, iii. 97-105, 115-119.
Mountain travelling, ii. 253.
_Mr. Nightingale's Diary_, the Guild farce of, ii. 397, iii. 72.
_Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings_, iii. 370.
_Mugby Junction_, germ of, in Memoranda, iii. 290.
Mule-travelling in Switzerland, ii. 253.
Mulgrave (Lord), i. 297, 300, 305, 413, ii. 469.
Mumbo Jumbo, ii. 440.
Murray (Lord), i. 260, ii. 475.
Music, effect of, on a deaf, dumb, and blind girl, ii. 239;
vagrant, ii. 387, 438.
NAMES, available, iii. 295, 296.
Naples, burial place at, ii. 186 note;
filth of, ii. 186 (and see iii. 95);
Dickens at, iii. 83-85.
Napoleon III. at Gore-house, ii. 334 note;
at Boulogne, iii. 108;
at Paris, iii. 108 note;
Edwin Landseer and, iii. 147 note.
Nautical incident at Genoa, ii. 195.
Neaves (Mr.), i. 258.
Negri (Marquis di), ii. 130-132.
New Bedford (U.S.), reading at, iii. 437.
Newcastle, readings at, iii. 264, 315;
alarming scene at, iii. 265.
Newhaven (U. S.), levee at, i. 313.
_New Sentimental Journey_ (Collins's), iii. 257.
Newspaper express, a, i. 101.
Newspapers, American, iii. 400.
Newsvendors' dinner, Dickens at, iii. 535.
New-year's day in Paris, iii. 145.
New York, fac-similes of invitations to Dickens, i. 308, 309;
the Carlton hotel in, i. 315 (and see iii. 361);
ball at, i. 316-318;
life in, i. 324;
hotel bills in, i. 331 (and see 345);
public institutions ill-managed at, i. 339;
prisons in, i. 339-344;
capital punishment in, i. 342;
sale of tickets for the readings, iii. 391, 392-394;
first reading in, iii. 393;
fire at the Westminster-hotel, iii. 395, 399;
prodigious increase since Dickens's former visit, iii. 395;
Niblo's theatre at, iii. 396;
sleigh-driving at, iii. 397;
police of, iii. 398 (and see i. 339);
the Irish element in, iii. 413;
farewell readings in, iii. 441;
public dinner to Dickens at, iii. 442.
_New York Herald_, i. 320, iii. 400.
_New York Ledger_, high price paid for tale by Dickens in, iii. 253.
_New York Tribune_, Dickens's "violated letter" in the,
iii. 201, 231.
Niagara Falls, effect of, on Dickens, i. 404, 405
(and see iii. 433).
_Nicholas Nickleby_, agreement for, i. 145;
first number of, i. 150, 165;
sale of, i. 150;
the _Saturday Review_ on, i. 166;
characters in, i. 167-171;
opinions of Sydney Smith and Leigh Hunt on, i. 168, 169;
Dickens at work on, i. 172-176;
dinner-celebration of, i. 177, 178;
originals of the Brothers Cheeryble in, i. 181;
proclamation on the eve of publication, ii. 99, 100 note;
effect of, in establishing Dickens, iii. 344 (and see 386).
Nicolson (Sir Frederick), ii. 194.
Nightingales at Gadshill, iii. 212.
_Nobody's Fault_, the title first chosen for _Little Dorrit_,
iii. 155.
No-Popery riots, description of the, i. 246.
Normanby (Lord), ii. 108, 109, 320.
Norton (Charles Eliot), iii. 215, 447.
Norwich, reading at, iii. 262.
_No Thoroughfare_, i. 140.
Novels, real people in, iii. 22-33;
episodes in, iii. 161.
Novelists, old, design for cheap edition of, ii. 385.
Nugent (Lord), ii. 473.
"OCEAN SPECTRE," the, ii. 369 note.
O'Connell (Daniel), ii. 135.
Odéon (Paris), Dickens at the, iii. 128, 129.
Ohio, on the, i. 377.
_Old Curiosity Shop_, original of the Marchioness in, i. 59;
originals of the Garland family, i. 60;
original of the poet in Jarley's wax-work, i. 70;
the story commenced, i. 200;
disadvantages of weekly publication, i. 203;
changes in proofs, i. 206;
Dick Swiveller and the Marchioness, i. 207;
effect of story upon the writer, i. 208;
death of Little Nell, i. 210;
close of the tale, i. 210;
success of, i. 211;
characterized, i. 212-214;
a tribute by Bret Harte, i. 215, 216;
characters in, iii. 345.
_Old Monthly Magazine_, Dickens's first published piece in, i. 97;
other sketches in, i. 104.
_Oliver Twist_, commenced in _Bentley's Miscellany_, i. 121;
characters in, real to Dickens, i. 125, 139;
the story characterized, i. 146, 147, 158, 160;
Dickens at work on, i. 149;
the last chapter of, i. 153;
the Cruikshank illustrations to, 154-157;
reputation of, i. 156;
reply to attacks against, i. 160-162;
teaching of, i. 161;
"adapted" for the stage, i. 174, 175;
noticed in the _Quarterly Review_, i. 184;
copyright of, repurchased, i. 224;
original of Mr. Fang, iii. 25;
character-drawing in, iii. 343;
proposed reading from, iii. 448;
facsimile of portion of MS. of, iii. 469.
Opium-den, an, iii. 528 (and see 464 note).
Osnaburgh-terrace, Dickens in, ii. 106.
_Our Mutual Friend_, title chosen for, iii. 271;
hints for, in Memoranda, iii. 280, 281;
first notion for, iii. 371;
original of Mr. Venus in, iii. 374;
Marcus Stone chosen as illustrator, iii. 373;
the story reviewed, iii. 377-379.
Ouvry (Frederic), iii. 434, 539;
clause inserted by, in agreement for _Edwin Drood_, iii. 461 note;
humorous letter of Dickens to, iii. 522.
Overs (John), Dickens's interest in, ii. 109;
death of, ii. 109 note.
Over-work, remains of, ii. 297.
Owen (Prof.), ii. 477.
PAINTINGS, Dickens on, ii. 167-169.
_Paradise Lost_ at the Ambigu, Paris, iii. 130, 131.
Paris, Dickens's first day in, ii. 316;
Sunday in, ii. 317;
Dickens's house in, described, ii. 317-319;
unhealthy political symptoms at, ii. 321, 334;
the Morgue at, ii. 321;
incident in streets of, ii. 321;
hard frost at, ii. 324;
Dickens's alarming neighbour, ii. 325;
begging-letter writers in, ii. 327;
sight-seeing at, ii. 330;
theatres at, ii. 331;
Bibliothèque Royale, ii. 333;
the Praslin tragedy in, ii. 386;
Dickens's life in, iii. 121-153;
Dickens's house in, iii. 124;
personal attentions to Dickens, iii. 124;
theatres of, iii. 126-134;
illumination of, iii. 144;
New-year's day in, iii. 144, 145;
results of imperial improvement in, iii. 145 note;
Art Exposition at, iii. 146-148;
a Duchess murdered in, iii. 150, 151.
Parliament, old Houses of, inconvenience of the, i. 100.
Parr (Harriet), iii. 494 note.
Parry (John), ii. 475.
Pawnbrokers, Dickens's early experience of, i. 46.
Peel (Sir Robert) and his party, i. 277;
Lord Ashley and, i. 283;
the Whigs and, ii. 261.
_Pen Photographs_ (Miss Field's) iii. 235 note.
Perth, reading at, iii. 234.
Peschiere, Palazzo (Genoa), rooms in the, hired by Dickens, ii. 129;
a fellow-tenant in, ii. 129;
described, ii. 139-142;
view of the, ii. 141;
revisited, iii. 79;
dinner-party at, ii. 172;
owner of the, iii. 79.
Petersham, athletic sports at, i. 183.
Phelps (Mr.), ii. 475.
Philadelphia, Dickens at, i. 335-344;
penitentiary at, i. 345-347;
letters from, iii. 413-415 (and see ii. 38, 39).
_Pickwick Papers_, materials for, i. 66;
first number of, i. 108;
origin of, i. 110;
Seymour's illustrations to, i. 111 note;
Thackeray's offer to illustrate, i. 115, 116;
the debtor's prison in, i. 128, 129;
popularity of, i. 129 (and see iii. 385, 386);
reality of characters in, i. 130, 131;
inferior to later books, i. 131;
Mr. Pickwick an undying character, i. 131 (and see 112);
piracies of, i. 137;
completion of, i. 143;
payments for, i. 145;
a holy brother of St. Bernard and, ii. 276;
characters in, iii. 343;
where it was begun, iii. 528.
_Pictures from Italy_, original of the courier in, ii. 171-173;
publication commenced in the _Daily News_, ii. 219.
_Pic Nic Papers_ published, i. 241.
"Piljians Projiss," a new, ii. 376-384.
Pig-market at Boulogne, iii. 104.
Pipchin (Mrs.) in _Dombey_, original of, i. 55, ii. 355, 356;
various names proposed for, ii. 355 note.
Pirates, literary, ii. 97;
proceedings in Chancery against, ii. 97-99;
warning to, ii. 100 note.
Pisa, a jaunt to, iii, 81.
Pittsburg (U. S.), description of, i. 373;
solitary prison at, i. 378.
Poets, small, iii. 489.
Pollock (Chief Baron) on the death of Dickens, iii. 247 note.
Poole (John), aid rendered to, by Dickens, ii. 370;
civil-list pension granted to, ii. 393.
Poor, Dickens's sympathy with the, i. 167, 168 (and see 250),
ii. 146, 147, 240.
Popularity, distresses of, i. 324.
Porte St. Martin (Paris), Dickens at the, iii. 129.
Portland (U. S.) burnt and rebuilt, iii. 438.
Portrait painter, story of a, iii. 523.
Portsea, birth of Dickens at, i. 21.
Prairie, an American, i. 393, 394;
pronunciations of the word, i. 396.
Praslin tragedy in Paris, ii. 386.
Prayer, Dickens on personal, iii. 485.
Preston, a strike at, iii. 69, 70;
_Hamlet_ at, iii. 70.
Primrose (Mr.), i. 258.
Printers' Pension fund dinner, presided over by Dickens, ii. 55.
Prisons, London, visits to, i. 280;
American, i. 339-344, 345-347, 378;
comparison of systems pursued in, ii. 234.
Procter (Bryan Waller), iii. 27, 28;
Dickens's affection for, ii. 467.
Procter (Adelaide), Dickens's appreciation of poems by, iii. 495.
Publishers, hasty compacts with, i. 121;
Dickens's agreements with, ii. 88, iii. 56 (and see 240-243).
Publishers, authors and, ii. 64, 72, iii. 489, 490.
Puddings, a choice of, i. 55, 56.
"_Punch_ people," Lord Brougham and the, ii. 469;
at Mansion-house dinner, ii. 477.
Q, Dickens's secretary in the United States, i. 303, 315, 322, 328,
344, 348, 366, 370, 374, 375, 393, 397, 400, 411;
described, i. 410-412 (and see iii. 389 note).
_Quarterly Review_, prophecy in not fulfilled, i. 139 note;
notice of _Oliver Twist_ in, i. 184;
on Cruikshank and Leech, ii. 418.
Queen (Her Majesty the) and Auber, iii. 134, 135;
alleged offers to Dickens, iii. 503, and 503, 504 note;
desire of, to see Dickens act, iii. 506;
Thackeray's copy of the _Carol_ purchased by, iii. 506, 507 note;
Dickens's interview with, iii. 507, 508;
grief at Dickens's death, iii. 542.
RACHEL (Madame), caprice of, iii. 137.
Ragged schools, Dickens's interest in, ii. 57;
results of, ii. 57 note (and see ii. 494);
proposed paper on, by Dickens, declined by _Edinburgh Review_,
ii. 58.
Railroads, American, ladies' cars on, i. 338.
Railway travelling, effect on Dickens, iii. 450;
in America, i. 336-338, 368, iii. 398, 405, 435, 436.
Ramsay (Dean) on _Bleak House_ and Jo, iii. 47, 48.
Ramsgate, entertainments at, ii. 214 note.
Raven, death of Dickens's first, i. 235-239;
of second, ii. 215.
Raymond (George), ii. 476.
Reade (Charles), _Hard Cash_ contributed by, to _All the Year
Round_, iii. 245.
Readings, gratuitous, iii. 61 note;
private, in Scheffer's atelier, iii. 148;
in Lincoln's-inn-fields, ii. 162, 174, 175.
public, Dickens's first thoughts of, ii. 174, 284, iii. 60;
argument against paid, iii. 61, 189;
idea of, revived, iii. 189;
opinions as to, asked and given, iii. 189, 190 note;
disadvantages of, iii. 191;
proposal from Mr. Beale respecting, iii. 196;
first rough notes as to, iii. 198, 199 note;
various managers employed by Dickens, iii. 223;
hard work involved by, iii. 224, 445;
study given to, iii. 318.
first series of, iii. 223-238;
sale of books of, iii. 232 note;
subjects of, iii. 235.
second series of, iii. 255-274;
what it comprised, iii. 259;
new subjects for, iii. 260.
third series of, iii. 298-324;
Messrs. Chappell's connection with, iii. 306-310.
American, iii. 388-443;
result of, iii. 415, 441.
Readings given by Dickens:
Australian, contemplated, iii. 270 note (but see 272);
Bulwer's opinion of, iii. 271 note.
last series of, iii. 444-460 (and see 437 note).
Readings (alphabetical list of):
Aberdeen, iii. 234.
Albany (U. S.), iii. 435;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Baltimore (U. S.), iii. 418, 419, 427;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Belfast, iii. 229.
Berwick-on-Tweed, iii. 266.
Birmingham, iii. 311.
Boston (U. S.), iii. 391, 403, 440;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Brighton, iii. 263.
Brooklyn (New York), iii. 416;
receipts at, iii. 442.
Buffalo (U. S.), iii. 431;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Cambridge, iii. 317.
Canterbury, iii. 264.
Chester, iii. 268, 313.
Dover, iii. 264.
Dublin, iii. 220-228, 317.
Dundee, iii. 233.
Edinburgh, iii. 233, 267, 451, and 450 note.
Exeter, iii. 224, 268.
Glasgow, iii. 234.
Harrogate, iii. 230.
Hartford (U. S.), iii. 441.
Liverpool, iii. 225, 268, 311, 313, 314.
London, iii. 223, 234, 258, 269.
Manchester, iii. 232, 268, 308, 311, 314.
New Bedford (U. S.), iii. 437;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Newcastle, iii. 265, 315.
Newhaven (U. S.), iii. 428;
receipts at, iii. 441.
New York, iii. 393, 410, 441;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Norwich, iii. 262.
Paris, iii. 272.
Perth, iii. 234.
Philadelphia (U. S.), iii. 414, 418, 427;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Portland (U. S.), iii. 438;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Providence (U. S.), iii. 428;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Rochester (U. S.), iii. 431;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Springfield (U. S.), iii. 441.
Syracuse (U. S.), iii. 431;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Torquay, iii. 268, 451.
Washington (U. S.), iii. 421, 425, 426;
receipts at, iii. 441.
Worcester (U. S.), iii. 441.
York, iii. 231, 454.
Reeves (Sims), ii, 475.
Reformers, administrative, iii. 70, 71 note.
Regiments in the streets of Paris, iii. 143 note.
Regnier (M.) of the Français, ii. 330, 429, iii. 127, 137.
Rehearsals, troubles at, ii. 371.
Religion, what is the true, ii. 149.
Reporters' gallery, Dickens enters the, i. 96;
ceases connection with, i. 116.
Reporter's life, Dickens's own experience of a, i. 99-101
(and see ii. 265).
Revolution at Geneva, ii. 298-301;
traces left by, ii. 300;
abettors of, ii. 301.
Rhine, Dickens on the, ii. 222, 223;
travelling Englishmen on the, ii. 223.
_Richard Doubledick, story of_, iii. 154.
Richardson (Sir John), iii. 519.
Richardson's show, a religious, iii. 273.
Richmond (U. S.), levees at, i. 354.
Rifle-shooting, Lord Vernon's passion for, ii. 270;
at Lausanne, ii. 247, 298, 299.
_Rising Generation_ (Leech's), Dickens on, ii. 414-418.
Ristori (Mad.) in _Medea_, iii. 137.
Roberts (David), iii. 85.
Robertson (Peter), i. 259, ii. 135, 475;
sketch of, i. 253, 254.
Robertson (T. W.), iii. 530, 531.
_Robinson Crusoe_, Dickens's opinion of, iii. 135 note
(and see i. 264 note).
Roche (Louis), employed by Dickens as his courier in Italy, ii. 106;
resources of, ii. 172, 196, 199 (and see 111, 325);
Count d'Orsay and, ii. 204 note;
illness of, ii. 421;
death of, ii. 255 note.
Rochester, early impressions of, i. 28 (and see iii. 213);
Watts's Charity at, iii. 154 note.
Rochester Castle, adventure at, ii. 22.
Rochester Cathedral, brass tablet in, to Dickens's memory,
iii. 154 note.
Rochester (U. S.), alarming incident at, iii. 431.
Rockingham-castle, Dickens's visit to, ii. 481-483;
private theatricals at, ii. 481, iii. 83.
Rocky Mountain Sneezer, a, iii. 409.
Rogers (Samuel), i. 251, ii. 190;
sudden illness of, ii. 466 (and see 486 note).
Rome, Dickens's first impressions of, ii. 185;
Dickens at, iii. 85-89;
a "scattering" party at Opera at, iii. 86, 87;
marionetti at, iii. 87, 88;
malaria at, iii. 88, 89.
Rosemont (Lausanne), taken by Dickens, ii. 225;
view of, ii. 229;
Dickens's neighbours at, ii. 231, 242 note, 252;
_Dombey_ begun at, ii. 241;
the landlord of, ii. 246 note.
Rothamsted, Rev. Mr. Lawes's club at, iii. 244.
Royal Academy dinner, Dickens's last public words spoken at,
iii. 537.
Roylance (Mrs.), the original of Mrs. Pipchin in _Dombey_, i. 55,
ii. 355.
Ruskin (Mr.) on _Hard Times_, iii. 66, 67.
Russell (Lord J.), a friend of letters, ii. 369, 393;
on Dickens's letters, iii. 481;
dinner with, ii. 483;
Dickens's tribute to, iii. 501, and note.
Ryland (Arthur), letter of Dickens to, iii. 56 note.
SALA (G. A.), Dickens's opinion of, ii. 454 note;
tribute by, to Dickens's memory, iii. 516.
Salisbury Plain, superiority of, to an American prairie, i. 394;
a ride over, ii. 461.
Sand (Georges), iii. 138, 139.
Sandusky (U. S.), discomforts of inn at, i. 400.
Sardinians, Dickens's liking for, iii. 92.
_Satirist_, editor of, hissed from the Covent-garden stage, ii. 50.
_Saturday Review_ on the realities of Dickens's characters, i. 166.
Scene-painting, iii. 166.
Scheffer (Ary), portrait of Dickens by, iii. 148, 149;
reading of _Cricket on the Hearth_ in atelier of, iii. 149.
Scheffer (Henri), iii. 150.
Schools, public, Dickens on, iii. 236.
Scotland, readings in, iii. 232-235.
Scott (Sir W.), real people in novels of, iii. 22, 29.
Scott monument at Edinburgh, ii. 392.
Scribe (M.), dinner to, ii. 469;
social intercourse of Dickens with, iii. 134, 135;
author-anxieties of, iii. 136;
a fine actor lost in, iii. 138.
Scribe (Madame), iii. 136.
Sea-bathing and authorship, ii. 28.
Seaside holidays, Dickens's, ii. 403-441, iii. 97-120.
Sebastopol, reception in France of supposed fall of, iii. 110.
Serenades at Hartford and Newhaven (U. S.), i. 314.
Servants, Swiss, excellence of, ii. 246.
Seven Dials, ballad literature of, i. 230.
Seymour (Mr.) and the _Pickwick Papers_, i. 111 note;
death of, i. 115.
Shaftesbury (Lord) and ragged schools, i. 283, ii. 57, 58 note,
493, 494 (and see 494).
Shakespeare Society, the, i. 185.
Shakespeare on the actor's calling, iii. 191.
Shakespeare's house, purchase of, ii. 392.
Sheffield, reading at, iii. 232.
Sheil (Richard Lalor), ii. 53.
Shepherd's-bush, the home for fallen women at, ii. 488.
Sheridans (the), ii. 468.
Ship news, i. 296.
Short-hand, difficulties of, i. 91.
Shows, Saturday-night, i. 61.
Siddons (Mrs.), genius of, ii. 473, 474.
Sierra Nevada, strange encounter on the, iii. 385, 386.
_Sikes and Nancy_ reading, proposed, iii. 448;
at Clifton, iii. 451;
Macready on the, iii. 451;
at York, iii. 454, and note;
Dickens's pulse after, iii. 532.
Simplon, passing the, ii. 174.
"Six," Bachelor, iii. 124.
_Sketches by Boz_, first collected and published, i. 113;
characterized, i. 114.
Slavery in America, i. 327, 352-354, 388-390;
the ghost of, iii. 419.
Slaves, runaway, i. 389.
Sleeplessness, Dickens's remedy for, iii. 249.
Sleighs in New York, iii. 397.
"Slopping round," iii. 432.
"Smallness of the world," i. 372, ii. 222, iii. 204.
Small-pox, American story concerning, iii. 305 note.
Smith (Albert), _Battle of Life_ dramatized by, ii. 323.
Smith (Arthur), iii. 168;
first series of Dickens's readings under management of,
iii. 199, 200 (and see 263 note);
distresses of, iii. 225 note;
first portion of second series planned by, iii. 258;
serious illness of, iii. 260, 261;
death of, iii. 261;
touching incident at funeral, iii. 261 note.
Smith (Bobus), ii. 190.
Smith (O.), acting of, i. 174, ii. 96.
Smith (Porter), ii. 476.
Smith (Southwood), ii. 53, 108.
Smith (Sydney), i. 311, ii. 108;
on _Nicholas Nickleby_, i. 168, 176 note;
death of, ii. 190.
Smithson (Mr.), i. 182;
death of, ii. 93.
Smoking party, a feminine, ii. 292, 293.
Smollett (Tobias), a recollection of, i. 128;
real people in novels of, iii. 22.
Snuff-shop readings, ii. 336.
Solitary confinement, effects of, i. 345, 346, ii. 234, 235.
_Somebody's Luggage_, the Waiter in, iii. 351, 370.
Sortes Shandyanæ, ii. 242.
Sparks (Jared), i. 304.
Speculators, American, iii. 391, 393, 408, 409, 411, 428.
Spiritual tyranny, ii. 231 note.
Spittoons in America, i. 338.
_Squib Annual_, the, i. 109, 110.
St. Bernard, Great, proposed trip to, ii. 271;
ascent of the mountain, ii. 274;
the convent, ii. 274;
scene at the top, ii. 274, 275;
bodies found in the snow, ii. 275;
the convent a tavern in all but sign, ii. 276;
Dickens's fancy of writing a book about the, iii. 184.
St. George (Madame), ii. 176.
St. Giles's, Dickens's early attraction of repulsion to, i. 39;
original of Mr. Venus found in, iii. 374.
St. Gothard, dangers of the, ii. 198, 199.
St. James's Hall, Dickens's final readings at, iii. 532, 533.
St. Leger, Dickens's prophecy at the, iii. 175.
St. Louis (U. S.), levee at, i. 386;
slavery at, i. 388;
pretty scene at, i. 390, 392;
duelling in, i. 396.
Stage-coach, queer American, i. 363, 364.
Stage, training for the, ii. 213, 214, (and see iii. 191).
Stanfield (Clarkson), i. 181, ii. 47 note, 160, 162, 175,
iii. 521;
sketches in Cornwall by, ii. 42;
illustrations by, to _Battle of Life_, ii. 310;
price realized at the Dickens sale for the Lighthouse scenes,
iii. 71 note (and see ii. 296, iii. 164, 243);
at work, iii. 166;
death of, iii. 320.
Stanfield Hall, Dickens at, ii. 462
Stanley (Dr. A. P.), Dean of Westminster, compliance with general
wish, iii. 543;
letter and sermon iii. 544.
Stanton (Secretary), curious story told by, iii. 422, 423
(and see 508).
Staplehurst accident, iii. 304;
effect on Dickens, iii. 376.
Staples (J. V.), letter from Dickens to, ii. 90 note.
Statesmen, leading American, i. 349, 350.
State Trials, story from the, iii. 283, 284.
Stealing, Carlyle's argument against, i. 333.
Steamers, perils of, i. 293, 305, 326, 331 (and see iii. 80-83).
Stevenage, visit to the hermit near, iii. 246.
Stirling (Mr.), a theatrical adapter, i. 174.
Stone (Frank), ii. 385. iii. 105;
sketch of Sydney Dickens by, ii. 368, 369 note;
fancy sketch of, ii. 383;
death of, iii. 256 note.
Stone (Marcus), designs supplied by, to _Our Mutual Friend_,
iii. 373 note.
Streets, Dickens's craving for crowded, ii. 144, 151, 277, 281,
282, 283, 287, iii. 515.
_Strange Gentleman_, a farce written by Dickens, i. 116.
Stuart (Lord Dudley), ii. 472.
Sue (Eugène), ii. 331.
Sumner (Charles), i. 305, iii. 421, 426.
Sunday, a French, ii. 317, 485 note.
Swinburne (Algernon), ii. 428.
Switzerland; splendid scenery of, ii. 198;
villages in, ii. 199;
Dickens resolves to write new book in, ii. 220;
early impressions of, ii. 226, 227;
climate of, ii. 244 note;
the people of, ii. 245, 246, 259;
mule-travelling in, ii. 253;
Protestant and Catholic cantons in, ii. 260;
Dickens's last days in, ii. 311-315;
pleasures of autumn in, ii. 313;
revisited, iii. 76-95.
Syme (Mr.), opinion of, as to Dickens's lameness, iii. 453, 454.
Syracuse (U. S.), reading at, iii. 431.
TAGART (EDWARD), ii. 59, 470.
Taine (M.), on _Martin Chuzzlewit_, ii. 78;
criticisms by, on Dickens, ii. 102
(and see 251 note, iii. 326-331);
a hint for, ii. 419;
on Hard Times, iii. 67 note;
Fielding criticized by, iii. 348.
_Tale of Two Cities_, titles suggested for, iii. 279;
first germ of Carton in, iii. 280 (and see 360);
origin of, iii. 354;
the story reviewed, iii. 354-360;
titles suggested for, iii. 354, 355.
Talfourd (Judge), i. 180, ii. 97, 98, 293, 294, 427, 470
(and see iii. 509);
Dickens's affection for, ii. 427.
_Tatler_ (Hunt's), sayings from, iii. 26 note.
Tauchnitz (Baron), letter from, iii. 57 note;
intercourse of, with Dickens, iii. 462 note (and see 125 note).
Tavistock-house, sketch of, iii. 54;
a scene outside, iii. 165;
Stanfield scenes at, iii. 243;
sale of, iii. 257;
startling message from servant at, iii. 276.
Taylor (Tom), ii. 472.
Taylor (the Ladies), ii. 271.
Telbin (William), at work, iii. 166.
Temperance agitation, Dickens on the, ii. 409, 410.
Temperature, sudden changes of, in America, i. 347.
Temple (Hon. Mr.), ii. 190.
Tennent (Sir Emerson), ii. 476, iii. 80;
death and funeral of, iii. 454.
Tennyson (Alfred), Dickens's allegiance to, ii. 25, 136, 472,
iii. 357 note.
Ternan (Ellen Lawless), iii. 561.
Tête Noire Pass, ii. 255;
accident in, ii. 256, 257.
Thackeray (W. M.), ii. 188;
offers to illustrate _Pickwick_, i. 115, 116;
on Maclise's portrait of Dickens, i. 178 note;
on the _Carol_, ii. 89 (and see ii. 53, 470);
dinner to, iii. 73;
at Boulogne, iii. 105 note;
in Paris, iii. 126;
tribute to, by Dickens, iii. 236;
death of, iii. 298-300;
estrangement between Dickens and, iii. 298 note.
Thanet races, Dickens at the, ii. 24.
Théâtre Français (Paris), conventionalities of the, iii. 128.
Theatres, Italian, ii. 182;
French, ii. 330, 331.
Theatrical Fund dinner, Dickens's speech at, ii. 491, 492
(and see 221, iii. 537).
Theatricals, private, at Montreal, i. 413-415;
at Rockingham, ii. 481;
at Tavistock House, iii. 62-64 (and see ii. 108).
Thomas (Owen P.), recollections of Dickens at school, i. 76-81.
Thompson (Mr. T. I.), ii. 476.
Thompson (Sir Henry), consulted by Dickens, iii. 321;
a reading of Dickens's stopped by, iii. 452;
opinion as to Dickens's lameness, iii. 453, 454.
Ticknor (George), i. 304, 308.
Ticknor & Fields (Messrs.), commission received by, on the American
readings, iii. 446.
Timber Doodle (Dickens's dog), ii. 24, 25, 28, ii. 134 note;
death of, iii. 144 note.
_Times_, the, on Dickens's death, iii. 542, 543 note.
Tintoretto, Dickens on the works of, ii. 168, iii. 92.
Titian's Assumption, effect of, on Dickens, ii. 168.
Tobin (Daniel), a schoolfellow of Dickens, i. 76;
assists Dickens as amanuensis, but finally discarded, i. 81.
Toole (J. L.), encouragement given to in early life, by Dickens,
iii. 54 (and see iii. 302 note).
Topping (Groom), i. 220, 221, 234, 235, 413.
Toronto, toryism of, i. 412.
Torquay, readings at, iii. 268, 451.
Torrens (Mrs.), ii. 476.
_Tour in Italy_ (Simond's), ii. 116 note.
Townshend (Chauncy Hare), iii. 256;
death and bequest of, iii. 417.
Tracey (Lieut.), i. 280, ii. 23.
Tramps, ways of, iii. 210 note, 249, 250.
Tremont House (Boston, U. S.), Dickens at, i. 300.
Trossachs, Dickens in the, i. 264.
_True Sun_, Dickens reporting for the, i. 96.
Turin, Dickens at, iii. 92, 93.
Turner (J. M. W.), ii. 110.
Tuscany, wayside memorials in, ii. 188 note.
Twickenham, cottage at, occupied by Dickens, i. 180-182;
visitors at, i. 180-182;
childish enjoyments at, i. 182 note.
Twiss (Horace), ii. 468.
Tyler (President), i. 350.
Tynemouth, scene at, iii. 315, 316.
_Uncommercial Traveller_, Dickens's, iii. 247-253.
_Uncommercial Traveller Upside Down_, contemplated, iii. 270.
Undercliff (Isle of Wight), Dickens's first impressions of, ii. 426;
depressing effect of climate of, ii. 431-433.
Unitarianism adopted by Dickens for a short time, ii. 59.
Upholsterer, visit to an, i. 189;
visit from an, i. 190.
_Up the Rhine_ (Hood's), Dickens on, i. 185.
Utica (U. S.), hotel at, iii. 435.
VAUXHALL, the Duke and party at, ii. 470.
Venice, Dickens's impressions of, ii. 163-166, iii. 90;
habits of gondoliers at, iii. 90;
theatre at, iii. 91.
Verdeil (M.), ii. 233.
Vernet (Horace), iii. 147 note.
Vernon (Lord), eccentricities of, ii. 270, 271, 298.
Vesuvius, Mount, iii. 83.
Viardot (Madame) in _Orphée_, iii. 138 note.
_Village Coquettes_, the story and songs for, written by Dickens,
i. 116.
Vote, value of a, in America, iii. 420.
WALES, Prince of, and Dickens, iii. 509.
Wainewright (the murderer), recognized by Macready in Newgate,
i. 184 (and see ii. 334 note);
made the subject of a tale in the _New York Ledger_, iii. 253;
portrait of a girl by, ii. 334 note (and see ii. 468, iii. 279).
Wales, North, tour in, i. 184.
Ward (Professor) on Dickens, iii. 352, 353 note.
Washington (U. S.), hotel extortion at, i. 345;
climate of, i. 347;
Congress and Senate at, i. 349;
a comical dog at reading at, iii. 425;
readings at, iii. 424, 425.
Wassail-bowl presented to Dickens at Edinburgh, iii. 197.
_Waterloo, Battle of_, at Vauxhall, ii. 470.
Watson, Mr. (of Rockingham), ii. 231, 264, 479;
death of, iii. 55.
Watson (Sir Thomas), note by, of Dickens's illness in April, 1869,
iii. 457-459;
readings stopped by, iii. 458;
guarded sanction given to additional readings, iii. 458
(and see 466, 531 note);
Dickens's letter to, iii. 459 note.
Watts's Charity at Rochester, iii. 154 note.
Webster (Daniel), Dickens on, i. 308.
Webster (Mr.), ii. 475.
Webster murder at Cambridge (U. S.), iii. 402, 403.
Well-boring at Gadshill, iii. 209.
Weller (Sam) a pre-eminent achievement in literature, i. 131.
Wellington, Duke of, fine trait of, ii. 264.
Wellington House Academy (Hampstead-road), Dickens a day-scholar at,
i. 74-84;
described in _Household Words_, i. 75;
Dickens's schoolfellows at, i. 76-84;
Beverley painting scenes at, i. 84;
revisited after five-and-twenty years, i. 76.
Weyer (M. Van de), ii. 477.
Whig jealousies, i. 250 (and see ii. 261).
Whitechapel workhouse, incident at, iii. 75.
White-conduit-house, reminiscence of, ii. 132.
Whitefriars, a small revolution in, ii. 302.
White (Rev. James), character of, ii. 424-426 (and see ii. 426,
iii. 126).
White (Grant) on the character of Carton in the _Tale of Two Cities_,
iii. 359, 360.
Whitehead (Charles), i. 109.
Whitworth (Mr.), ii. 475.
Wieland the clown, death of, iii. 166 note.
Wig experiences, ii. 380.
Wilkie (Sir David), on the genius of Dickens, i. 178;
death of, i. 252.
Willis (N. P.), fanciful description of Dickens by, i. 107 note.
Wills (W. H.), ii. 453, iii. 256, 493.
Wilson (Professor), i. 259;
sketch of, i. 253, 254;
speeches of, i. 255 note, ii. 136.
Wilson (Mr.) the hair-dresser, fancy sketch of, ii. 379-383.
Wilton (Marie) as Pippo in the _Maid and Magpie_, iii. 236, 237 note.
Women, home for fallen, ii. 488 (and see iii. 286).
Wordsworth, memorable saying of, iii. 381.
Worms, the city of, ii. 223.
YARMOUTH first seen by Dickens, ii. 462.
Yates (Edmund), tales by, in _All the Year Round_, iii. 245;
Dickens's interest in, iii. 495.
Yates (Mr.), acting of, i. 174, ii. 96.
_Yesterdays with Authors_ (Fields'), ii. 42 note.
York, readings at, iii. 231, 454.
Yorkshire, materials gathered in, for _Nickleby_, i. 172.
_Young Gentlemen_ and _Young Couples_,
sketches written by Dickens for Chapman & Hall, i. 149 note.
ZOOLOGICAL Gardens, feeding the serpents at, iii. 169 note.
Zouaves, Dickens's opinion of the, iii. 143, 144.
* * * * *
Volume III
Page xi, "a" changed to "at" (Scene at Tynemouth)
Page 46, "inpressed" changed to "impressed" (impressed on the better)
Page 108, "Gore-House" changed to "Gore-house" to match rest of usage
(often at Gore-house)
Page 129, "Ca" changed to "Ça" (the Ça Ira!)
Page 130, "Ca" changed to "Ça" (memory--Ça Ira)
Page 137, "entertaiments" changed to "entertainments" (the day
entertainments)
Page 141, "diner" changed to "dîner" (Le dîner que)
Page 166, "hereon" changed to "thereon" (thereon may be beheld)
Page 166, "under aking" changed to "undertaking" (of the little
undertaking)
Page 175, "Th" changed to "The" (The landlord came up)
Page 214, "chesnuts" changed to "chestnuts" (limes and chestnuts)
Footnote 224, "chalet" changed to "châlet" ("The châlet," he wrote)
Page 241, "cap ble" changed to "capable" (might be capable)
Page 241, "Sha espeare" changed to "Shakespeare" (a line from
Shakespeare)
Page 245, "alled" changed to "called" (it called for)
Illustration entitled THE CHÂLET, "CHALÊT" changed to "CHÂLET".
Page 324, "hi" changed to "his" (interval of his)
Footnote 259, "counils" changed to "councils" (held several councils)
Footnote 260, "nett" changed to "net" (out the net profit)
Page 339, "delf" changed to "delft" (worked in delft)
Page 404, "diner" changed to "dîner" (dîner à tout)
Page 539, "for" changed to "four" (four figures representing)
Page 581, "iii." inserted into text (storm at, iii. 264.)
Page 581, "Duplessis" changed to "Du Plessis" (Du Plessis (Marie))
Page 581, "iii." inserted into text (amount paid for, iii. 461 note)
Page 582, "chalet" changed to "châlet" (châlet presented by)
Page 583, "Hill" changed to "hill" (Fox-under-the-hill)
Page 583, "Chalet" changed to "Châlet" (sketch of Châlet at)
Page 583, "christian" changed to "Christian" (list of Christian)
Page 584, "Halevy" changed to "Halévy" (Halévy (M.))
The volume number was added to the following entries in the index:
the editor's modest estimate of it, i. 142
death of, i. 234, 235;
To retain the integrity of the original text, varied hyphenations,
capitalizations, and, at times, spellings were retained.
For example:
Varied hyphenation and capitalization of Devonshire Terrace was
retained. Also fac-simile and facsimile. Varied spelling of
A'Beckett/A'Becket was retained.
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete" ***
Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.