II.—AS A POET.

Withfew of his literary contemporaries has Mr. Dickens held more cordial and pleasant relations than with the lateDouglas Jerrold. During all the years of their intercourse that sympathy and friendship existed between them, which two minds so thoroughly manly and honourable could hardly help feeling for each other. Dickens, though considerably the younger of the two, had won earlier the prizes of his profession. But there was no mean envy and jealousy on the one side, and no mean assumption on the other. The letters that passed between the two men are altogether delightful to read. We shall proceed to give, as far as our space will allow, a few extracts from those of Dickens to Jerrold,[330]with intercalary elucidations explanatory of the circumstances under which they were written.

In the year 1843, Douglas Jerrold wrote to Mr. Dickens from Herne Bay, where he had taken up his abode in “a little cabin, built up of ivy and woodbine, and almost within sound of the sea.”

Mr. Dickens replies:—

“Herne Bay. Hum! I suppose it’s no worse than anyother place in this weather, but itiswatery, rather, isn’t it? In my mind’s eye, I have the sea in a perpetual state of small-pox, and the chalk running down hill like town milk. But I know the comfort of getting to work ‘in a fresh place,’ and proposing pious projects to one’s self, and having the more substantial advantage of going to bed early, and getting up ditto, and walking about alone. If there were a fine day, I should like to deprive you of the last-named happiness, and to take a good long stroll.”

In the summer of 1844, “Come,” wrote Mr. Dickens temptingly, “come and see me in Italy. Let us smoke a pipe among the vines. I have taken a little house surrounded by them, and no man in the world should be more welcome to it than you.”

Again from Cremona, (November, 1844,) Dickens writes:—

“You rather entertained the notion once, of coming to see me at Genoa. I shall return straight on the ninth of December, limiting my stay in town to one week. Now, couldn’t you come back with me? The journey that way is very cheap, and I am sure the gratification to you would be high. I am lodged in quite a wonderful place, and would put you in a painted room as big as a church, and much more comfortable. There are pens and ink upon the premises; orange trees, gardens, battledores and shuttlecocks, rousing wood fires for evenings, and a welcome worth having.” * * *

In 1846, again, Mr. Dickens is off to Switzerland, and still would tempt Jerrold in his wake. “I wish,” he writes, “you would seriously consider the expediency and feasibility of coming to Lausanne in the summer or early autumn. It is a wonderful place to see; and what sort of welcome you would find I will say nothing about, for I have vanity enough to believe that you would be willing to feel yourself as much at home in my household as in any man’s.”

Arrived at Lausanne, Mr. Dickens writes that he will be ready for his guest in June. “We are established here,” he says, “in a perfect doll’s house, which could be put bodily into the hall of our Italian palazzo. But it is in the most lovely and delicious situation imaginable, and there is a spare bedroom wherein we could make you as comfortable as need be. Bowers of roses for cigar-smoking, arbours for cool punch-drinking, mountain and Tyrolean countries close at hand, piled-up Alps before the windows, &c., &c., &c.” Then follow business-like directions for the journey.

But it could not be. Jerrold was busy with his paper, and with his magazine, and felt unable to abandon them even for a few weeks. Well, could he reach Paris for Christmas, persisted Mr. Dickens, and spend that merry time with his friend.

Early in 1847 Jerrold thought he did see his way clear at last to make a short visit to Paris, where Dickens was still established. “We are delighted at your intention of coming,” writes the latter, giving the most minute details of the manner in which the journey was to be performed; but even this journey was never accomplished. Once only, after all these promises and invitations—and that for but two or three days—did Douglas Jerrold escape from the cares of London literary life, to meet Mr. Dickens at Ostend, on his return from Italy, and have a few days’ stroll about Belgium.

The following is an extract from a curious and interesting letter addressed by Dickens to Douglas Jerrold on the subject of public hanging, respecting which the latter held conservative opinions:—

‘Devonshire Terrace, November 17, 1849.“In a letter I have received from G. this morning he quotes a recent letter from you, in which you deprecate the ‘mystery’ of private hanging.“Will you consider what punishment there is, except death, to which ‘mystery’ does not attach? Will you consider whether all the improvements in prisons and punishments that have been made within the last twenty years have or have not, been all productive of ‘mystery?’ I can remember very well when the silent system was objected to as mysterious, and opposed to the genius of English society. Yet there is no question that it has been a great benefit. The prison vans are mysterious vehicles; but surely they are better than the old system of marching prisoners through the streets chained to a long chain, like the galley slaves in Don Quixote. Is there no mystery about transportation, and our manner of sending men away to Norfolk Island, or elsewhere? None in abandoning the use of a man’s name, and knowing him only by a number? Is not the whole improved and altered system, from the beginning to end, a mystery? I wish I could induce you to feel justified in leaving that word to the platform people, on the strength of your knowledge of what crime was, and of what its punishments were, in the days when there was no mystery connected with these things, and all was as open as Bridewell when Ned Ward went to see the women whipped.”

‘Devonshire Terrace, November 17, 1849.

“In a letter I have received from G. this morning he quotes a recent letter from you, in which you deprecate the ‘mystery’ of private hanging.

“Will you consider what punishment there is, except death, to which ‘mystery’ does not attach? Will you consider whether all the improvements in prisons and punishments that have been made within the last twenty years have or have not, been all productive of ‘mystery?’ I can remember very well when the silent system was objected to as mysterious, and opposed to the genius of English society. Yet there is no question that it has been a great benefit. The prison vans are mysterious vehicles; but surely they are better than the old system of marching prisoners through the streets chained to a long chain, like the galley slaves in Don Quixote. Is there no mystery about transportation, and our manner of sending men away to Norfolk Island, or elsewhere? None in abandoning the use of a man’s name, and knowing him only by a number? Is not the whole improved and altered system, from the beginning to end, a mystery? I wish I could induce you to feel justified in leaving that word to the platform people, on the strength of your knowledge of what crime was, and of what its punishments were, in the days when there was no mystery connected with these things, and all was as open as Bridewell when Ned Ward went to see the women whipped.”

Thereare several among our foremost prose writers in the present century, who, possessing high imagination, and a considerable power of rhythmical expression, have occasionally produced verse of a high though not of the first order. Lord Macaulay will not be remembered either by his prize poems, or by his “Lays of Ancient Rome,” but one who wrote such eloquent prose could hardly fail ignobly when he attempted verse. Thomas Carlyle, in spite of his energetic denunciation of modern poetry as mere dilettantism and trifling, has occasionally courted the muse, and were the original pieces and translations from the German which lie scattered through his earlier writings, collected together, they would by themselves form a volume of no mean value. They have a wild, rugged melody of their own, as have also the occasional verses of Emerson; the latter bear in many respects a remarkable resemblance to those of Blake. The author ofModern Paintersmight also have gained some reputation as a poet, had he chosen to preserve in a more permanent form his scattered contributions to annuals. Indeed, it would seem that no eloquent writer of prose is altogether devoid of the lyric gift if he chooses to exercise it. The only attempt at poetry by Charles Dickens which is at all known to the general public is the famous song of “The Ivy Green,” in the Pickwick Papers. This exquisite little lyric, with its beautiful refrain, so often wedded to music and so familiar to us all, would alone suffice to give him no mean rank among contemporary writers of verse. But in the Comic Opera of the Village Coquettes,[334]to whichwe alluded in our Introduction, there were a dozen songs of equal tenderness and melody, though, as the author has never thought fit to reprint the little piece, they are now forgotten.

The first is a song of Harvest-Home, supposed to be sung by a company of reapers.

It must be mentioned that this and the other songs had the advantage of being set to music by John Hullah. The next, “Love is not a feeling to pass away,” was a great favourite at the time. We quote the first stanza, the last line of which recalls the little song in the Pickwick Papers:

“Love is not a feeling to pass away,Like the balmy breath of a summer day;It is not—it cannot be—laid aside;It is not a thing to forget or hide.It clings to the heart, ah, woe is me!As the ivy clings to the old oak tree.”

The next is a Bacchanalian song, supposed to be sung by a country squire.

But the gem of all these little lyrics, in our opinion, is that of “Autumn Leaves,” of which the refrain strikes us as being peculiarly happy. The reader, however, shall judge for himself, from the following quotation:—

“Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me here;Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!How like the hopes of childhood’s day,Thick clustering on the bough!How like those hopes is their decay,How faded are they now!Autumn leaves, autumn leaves, lie strewn around me hereAutumn leaves, autumn leaves, how sad, how cold, how drear!”

The next lyric, “The Child and the Old Man,” was sung by Braham at different concerts, long after the piece from which it is taken, had been forgotten, and was almost invariably encored.

Mr. Dickens’s poetical attempts have not, however, been confined to song-writing. In 1842 he wrote for a friend a very fine Prologue to a new tragedy. Mr. Westland Marston came to London in his twenty-first year, and resolved to try his success in the world of letters: after writing for several of the second-class magazines, he finished his tragedy of the “Patrician’s Daughter,” and introduced himself to Mr. Dickens, who became interested in the play. Struck with the novelty of “a coat-and-breeches tragedy,” the good-tempered novelist recommended Macready to produce it, and after some little hesitation, this distinguished actor took himself the chief character—Mordaunt,—and also recited a prologue by Mr. Dickens,[336]from which we quote a few lines.

Impressing the audience strongly with the scope and purpose of what they had come to see, this prologue thoroughly prepared them for welcome and applause. The strength and truth of some of the concluding lines address themselves equally to a larger audience.

“No tale of streaming plumes and harness brightDwells on the poet’s maiden theme to-night.

* * * *

Enough for him if in his boldest wordThe beating heart of man be faintly stirr’d.That mournful music, that, like chords which sighThrough charmed gardens, all who hear it die;That solemn music he does not pursue,To distant ages out of human view.

* * * *

But musing with a calm and steady gazeBefore the crackling flame of living days,He hears it whisper, through the busy roarOf what shall be, and what has been before.Awake the Present! Shall no scene displayThe tragic passion of the passing day?Is it with man as with some meaner things,That out of death his solemn purpose springs?Can this eventful life no moral teach,Unless he be for aye beyond its reach?

* * * *

Awake the Present! What the past has sownIs in its harvest garner’d, reap’d, and grown.How pride engenders pride, and wrong breeds wrong,And truth and falsehood hand in hand alongHigh places walk in monster-like embrace,The modern Janus with a double face;How social usage hath the power to changeGood thought to evil in its highest range,To cramp the noble soul, and turn to ruthThe kindling impulse of the glowing youth,Crushing the spirit in its house of clay,—Learn from the lesson of the present day.Not light its import, and not poor its mien,Yourselves the actors, and your home the scene.”

We now come to a very curious fact. Mr. R. H. Horne pointed out twenty-five years ago,[337]that a great portion of the scenes describing the death of Little Nell in the “Old Curiosity Shop,” will be found to be written—whether by design or harmonious accident, of which the author was not even subsequently fully conscious—in blank verse, of irregular metre and rhythms, which Southey, Shelley, and some other poets have occasionally adopted. The following passage, properly divided into lines, will stand thus:

NELLY’S FUNERAL.“And now the bell—the bellShe had so often heard by night and day,And listen’d to with solemn pleasure,Almost as a living voice—Rung its remorseless toll for her,So young, so beautiful, so good.“Decrepit age, and vigorous life,And blooming youth and helpless infancy,Pour’d forth—on crutches, in the pride of strengthAnd health, in the full blushOf promise, the mere dawn of life—To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,Whose eyes were dimAnd senses failing—Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,And still been old—the deaf, the blind, the lame,The palsied,The living dead in many shapes and forms,To see the closing of this early grave.What was the death it would shut in,To that which still could crawl and creep above it!“Along the crowded path they bore her now;Pure as the new-fall’n snowThat cover’d it; whose day on earthHad been as fleeting.Under that porch, where she had sat when HeavenIn mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,She pass’d again, and the old churchReceived her in its quiet shade.”

NELLY’S FUNERAL.

“And now the bell—the bellShe had so often heard by night and day,And listen’d to with solemn pleasure,Almost as a living voice—Rung its remorseless toll for her,So young, so beautiful, so good.

“Decrepit age, and vigorous life,And blooming youth and helpless infancy,Pour’d forth—on crutches, in the pride of strengthAnd health, in the full blushOf promise, the mere dawn of life—To gather round her tomb. Old men were there,Whose eyes were dimAnd senses failing—Grandames, who might have died ten years ago,And still been old—the deaf, the blind, the lame,The palsied,The living dead in many shapes and forms,To see the closing of this early grave.What was the death it would shut in,To that which still could crawl and creep above it!

“Along the crowded path they bore her now;Pure as the new-fall’n snowThat cover’d it; whose day on earthHad been as fleeting.Under that porch, where she had sat when HeavenIn mercy brought her to that peaceful spot,She pass’d again, and the old churchReceived her in its quiet shade.”

Throughout the whole of the above, only two unimportant words have been omitted—inandits; and “grandames” has been substituted for “grandmothers.” All that remains is exactly as in the original, not a single word transposed, and the punctuation the same to a comma.

Again, take the brief homily that concludes the funeral:

“Oh! it is hard to take to heartThe lesson that such deaths will teach,But let no man reject it,For it is one that all must learn,And is a mighty, universal Truth.When Death strikes down the innocent and young,For every fragile form from which he letsThe parting spirit free,A hundred virtues rise,In shapes of mercy, charity, and love,To walk the world and bless it.Of every tearThat sorrowing mortals shed on such green gravesSome good is born, some gentler nature comes.”

Not a ward of the original is changed in the above quotation, which is worthy of the best passages in Wordsworth, and thus, meeting on the common ground of a deeply truthful sentiment, the two most dissimilar men in the literature of the century are brought into the closest approximation.

Something of a similar kind of versification in prose may be discovered in Chapter LXXVII. of “Barnaby Rudge,” and there is an instance of successive verses in the Third Part of the “Christmas Carol,” beginning

“Far in this den of infamous resort.”

The following is from the concluding paragraph of “Nicholas Nickleby”:—

“The grass was green above the dead boy’s grave,Trodden by feet so small and light,That not a daisy droop’d its headBeneath their pressure.Through all the spring and summer timeGarlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands,Rested upon the stone.”

The following stanzas, entitled “A Word in Season,” were contributed by Mr. Dickens in the winter of 1843 to an annual edited by his friend and correspondent, the Countess of Blessington. Since that time he has ceased to write, or at any rate to publish anything in verse.

This poem savours much of the manner of Robert Browning. Full of wit and wisdom, and containing some very remarkableand rememberable lines, an extract from it will fitly close this chapter of our volume.

A WORD IN SEASON.BY CHARLES DICKENS.“They have a superstition in the East,ThatAllah, written on a piece of paper,Is better unction than can come of priestOf 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.“So have I known a country on the earth,Where darkness sat upon the living waters,And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearthWere the hard portion of its sons and daughters:And yet, where they who should have oped the doorOf charity and light, for all men’s finding,Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,And rent The Book, in struggles for the binding.”[341]

A WORD IN SEASON.BY CHARLES DICKENS.

“They have a superstition in the East,ThatAllah, written on a piece of paper,Is better unction than can come of priestOf 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.

“So have I known a country on the earth,Where darkness sat upon the living waters,And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearthWere the hard portion of its sons and daughters:And yet, where they who should have oped the doorOf charity and light, for all men’s finding,Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,And rent The Book, in struggles for the binding.”[341]

Note.—In the Introduction to the present volume,p.42,it is stated that Dickens’s“FirstReading”in public was given at Birmingham in the Christmas of1853.The offer to read on this public occasion was certainly theFirstwhich the great novelist made,but before the Christmas had come around he thought proper to give a trial Reading before a much smaller audience,in the quiet little city of Peterborough.—Ed.

Itmust be sixteen or seventeen years ago—I cannot fix the date exactly, though the affair made a strong impression on me at the time—that I witnessed Charles Dickens’sdébûtas a public reader. The circumstances surrounding this event were so singular that I am tempted to recall them.

Scene, the City of Peterborough—dreamy and quiet enough then, though now a flourishing railroad terminus—a silent city, with a grand old Norman cathedral, round which the rooks cawed lazily all day, straggling narrow streets of brick-built houses, a large Corn Exchange, a Mechanics’ Institute, and about seven thousand inhabitants. The Mechanics’ Institute brought it all about. That well-meaning but weak-kneed organization was, I need hardly say, in debt. Mechanics’ Institutes always are in debt. That is their chiefpeculiarity, next to the fact that they never by any chance have any mechanics among their members. Our institution was no exception to the rule. On the contrary, it was a bright and shining example. No mechanics’ institute of its size anywhere around was so deeply in debt; none was more snobbishly exclusive in its membership. We had overrun our resources to such an extent that we could not even pay the rent of the building we occupied, and were in daily danger of being turned out of doors. Lectures on highly improving subjects had been tried, but the proceeds did not pay the printer. Concerts succeeded better, but the committee said they were immoral. We had given two monster tea meetings to pay off the debt, on which occasions all the cake required was supplied gratuitously by the members’ mothers, and all the members and their friends came in by free tickets and ate it up. Henry Vincent delivered us an oration; George Dawson propounded metaphysical sophistries for our intellectual mystification; but with all this we got no better of our troubles—every flounder we made only plunged us deeper into the mud. At last it was resolved to write to our Borough members. This was in the good old days of Whig supremacy; and all the land and all the houses round about us being owned by one great Whig earl, our borough was privileged to return two members to represent the opinions of that unprotected earl in Parliament. A contested election had just come to a close, and the honeyed promises and grateful pledges of our elected candidates were still fresh in our memory. So to our members the committee addressed their tearful entreaties—“deserving institution,”—“valuable agency of self-improvement,”—“pressing pecuniary embarrassments,” and so forth. Member No. 1 sent his compliments and a five pound note. Member No. 2 delayed writing for several days, and then had great pleasure in informing us that the celebrated author,Mr. Charles Dickens, had kindly consented to deliver a public reading on our behalf.

What an excitement it caused in the little city! Mr. Dickens at that time had made no public appearance as a reader. He had occasionally been heard of as giving selections from his works to small coteries of friends or in the private saloon of some distinguished patron of art. But he had nervously shrunk from any publicdébût, unwilling, so it seemed, to weaken his reputation as a writer by any possible failure as a reader. This diffidence had taken so strong a hold of him that it might never have been overcome but for the insidious persuasions of “our member.” “Here was an opportunity,” he argued, “for testing the matter without risk: an antediluvian country town; an audience of farmers’ sons and daughters, rural shop-keepers, and a few country parsons—if interest could be excited in the stolid minds of such a Bœotian assemblage, the success of the reader would be assured wherever the English tongue was spoken. On the other hand, if failure resulted, none would be the wiser outside this Sleepy-Hollow circle.” The bait took, and Mr. Dickens consented to deliver a public reading in aid of the Peterborough Mechanics’ Institute. He only stipulated that the prices of admission should be such that every mechanic, if he chose, might come to hear him, and named two shillings, a shilling, and sixpence as the limit of charge.

Vain limitation!—a fortnight before the reading every place was taken, and half a guinea and a guinea were the current rates for front seat tickets.

Dickens himself came down and superintended the arrangements, so anxious was he as to the result. At one end of the large Corn Exchange before spoken of he had caused to be erected a tall pulpit of red baize, as much like a Punch and Judy show with the top taken off as anything.This was to be the reader’s rostrum. But, as the tall red pulpit looked lanky and very comical stuck up there alone, two dummy pulpits of similar construction were placed one on each side to bear it company. When the reader mounted into the middle box nothing was visible of him but his head and shoulders. So if it be really true, as was stated afterwards by an indiscreet supernumerary, that Mr. Dickens’s legs shook under him from first to last, the audience knew nothing of it. The whole character of the stage arrangements suggested that Mr. Dickens was sure of his head, but was not quite so sure of his legs.

It was theChristmas Carolthat Mr. Dickens read; the night was Christmas Eve. As the clock struck the appointed hour, a red, jovial face, unrelieved by the heavy moustache which the novelist has since assumed, a broad, high forehead, and a perfectly Micawber-like expanse of shirt-collar and front appeared above the red baize box, and a full, sonorous voice rang out the words, “Marley-was-dead-to-begin-with”—then paused, as if to take in the character of the audience. No need of further hesitation. The voice held all spellbound. Its depth of quiet feeling when the ghost of past Christmases led the dreamer through the long-forgotten scenes of his boyhood—its embodiment of burly good nature when old Fezziwig’s calves were twinkling in the dance—its tearful suggestiveness when the spirit of Christmases to come pointed to the nettle-grown, neglected grave of the unloved man—its exquisite pathos by the death-bed of Tiny Tim, dwell yet in memory like a long-known tune. That one night’s reading in the quaint little city, so curiously brought about, so ludicrous almost in its surroundings, committed Mr. Dickens to the career of a public reader; and he has since derived nearly as large an income from his readings as from the copyright of his novels. Only he signally failed tocarry out his wish of making his first bow before an uneducated audience. The vote of thanks which closed the proceedings was moved by the senior marquis of Scotland and seconded by the heir of the wealthiest peer in England.

One other incident suggests itself in this connection. Somewhere about this time three notable men stood together in a print-shop in this same city—a singular three-cornered shop, with three fiddles dangling forlorn and dusty from the ceiling, and everything from piano-fortes to hair-brushes comprised in its stock-in-trade. They stood there one whole morning, laughing heartily at the perplexities of the little shopwoman, who in her nervousness continually transposed the first letters of words, sometimes with very comical effect. Thus, instead of saying, “Put the bottle in the cupboard,” she would remark, “Put the cottle in the bupboard.” The laughing trio were Dickens, Albert Smith, and Layard the traveller, now our minister to the court of Madrid. I strongly suspect that the eccentricity of the medical student in Albert Smith’sAdventures of Mr. Ledbury—the student who invites his friends to “poke a smipe” when he means them to “smoke a pipe”—was born on that occasion, and that Charles Dickens was robbed by his friend of some thunder which he intended to use himself.

Butto return to the “Readings.” One glance at the platform is sufficient to convince the audience that Mr. Dickens thoroughly appreciates “stage effect.” A large screen of maroon cloth occupies the background; before it stands a light table of peculiar design, on the inner left-hand corner of which there peers forth a miniature desk, large enough to accommodate the reader’s book. On the right hand of thetable, and somewhat below its level, is a shelf, where repose a carafe of water and a tumbler. This is covered with velvet, somewhat lighter in colour than the screen. No drapery conceals the table, whereby it is plain that Mr. Dickens believes in expression of figure as well as of face, and does not throw away everything but his head and arms, according to the ordinary habit of ordinary speakers. About twelve feet above the platform, and somewhat in advance of the table, is a horizontal row of gas-jets with a tin reflector; and midway in both perpendicular gas-pipes there is one powerful jet with glass chimney. By this admirable arrangement, Mr. Dickens stands against a dark background in a frame of gaslight, which throws out his face and figure to the best advantage.

He comes! A lithe, energetic man, of medium stature, crosses the platform at the brisk gait of five miles an hour, and takes his position behind the table. This is Charles Dickens, whose name has been a household word for thirty years in England. He has a broad, full brow, a fine head,—which, for a man of such power and energy, is singularly small at the base of the brain,—and a cleanly cut profile.

There is a slight resemblance between Mr. Dickens and the Emperor of the French in the latter respect, owing mainly to the nose; but it is unnecessary to add that the faces of the two men are totally different. Mr. Dickens’s eyes are light-blue, and his mouth and jaw, without having any claim to beauty, possess a strength that is not concealed by the veil of iron-gray moustache and generous imperial. His head is but slightly graced with iron-gray hair, and his complexion is florid. There is a twinkle in his eye, as he enters, that, like a promissory note, pledges itself to any amount of fun—within sixty minutes.

People may think in perusing Mr. Dickens’s books that he must be a man of large humanity, of forgiving nature, ofgenerous impulses; in hearing him read theyknowthat he must be such a man. This, of course, does not alone make a great artist; but equally, of course, it goes a long way towards making one. To this general and catholic qualification for his task Mr. Dickens adds special advantages of a high order. He has action of singular ease and felicity, a remarkably expressive eye, and a mobility of the facial muscles which belongs to actors of the highest grade. As in the case of Garrick, it is impossible to say whether love or terror, humour or despair, are best simulated in a countenance which expresses each and all on occasion with almost absolute perfection. This is, no doubt, due in a great measure not to natural qualities only, but to a varied and peculiar experience. Some will have it that actors, like poets, are born, not made, but this is only true in a limited and guarded sense.

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.[349]“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour to read to you ‘A Christmas Carol,’ in four staves. Stave one, Marley’s Ghost. Marley was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.[349]

“Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honour to read to you ‘A Christmas Carol,’ in four staves. Stave one, Marley’s Ghost. Marley was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.”

At the close of this paragraph our first impression is that Mr. Dickens’s voice is limited in power, husky, and naturally monotonous. If he succeeds in overcoming these defects,it will be by dramatic genius. We begin to wonder why Mr. Dickens constantly employs the rising inflexion, and never comes to a full stop; but we are so pleasantly introduced to Scrooge, that our spirits revive.

“Foul weather didn’t know where to leave him. The heaviest rain and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect,—they often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scroogenever did.” Here the magnetic current between reader and listener sets in, and when Scrooge’s clerk “put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed;” the connexion is tolerably well established. We see old Scrooge very plainly, growling and snarling at his pleasant nephew; and when that nephew invites that uncle to eat a Christmas dinner with him, and Mr. Dickens goes on to relate that Scrooge said “he would see him—yes, I am sorry to say he did,—he went the whole length of the expression, and said he would see him in that extremity first.” He makes one dive at our sense of humour, and takes it captive. Mr. Dickens is Scrooge; he is the two portly gentlemen on a mission of charity; he is twice Scrooge when, upon one of the portly gentlemen remarking that many poor people would rather die than go to the workhouse, he replies: “If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population;” and thrice Scrooge, when, turning upon his clerk, he says, “You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?” It is the incarnation of a hard-hearted, hard-fisted, hard-voiced miser.

“If quite convenient, sir.” A few words, but they denote Bob Cratchit in three feet of comforter exclusive of fringe, in well-darned, thread-bare clothes, with a mild, frightened voice, so thin that you can see through it!

Then there comes the change when Scrooge, upon going home, “saw in the knocker, Marley’s face!” Of course Scrooge saw it, because the expression of Mr. Dickens’s face makes us see it “with a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.” There is good acting in this scene, and there is fine acting when the dying flame leaps up as though it cried, “I know him! Marley’s ghost!” With what gusto Mr. Dickens reads that description of Marley, and how, “looking through his waistcoat, Scroogecould see the two buttons on his coat behind.”

Nothing can be better than the rendering of the Fezziwig party, in Stave Two. You behold Scrooge gradually melting into humanity; Scrooge, as a joyous apprentice; that model of employers, Fezziwig; Mrs. Fezziwig “one vast substantial smile,” and all the Fezziwigs. Mr. Dickens’s expression as he relates how “in came the housemaid withher cousinthe baker, and in came the cookwith her brother’s particular friend the milkman,” is delightfully comic, while his complete rendering of that dance where “all were top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them,” is owing to the inimitable action of his hands. They actually perform upon the table, as if it were the floor of Fezziwig’s room, and every finger were a leg belonging to one of the Fezziwig’s family. This feat is only surpassed by Mr. Dickens’s illustration of Sir Roger de Coverley, as interpreted by Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig, when “a positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves,” and he “cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs!” It is a maze of humour. Before the close of the stave, Scrooge’s horror at sight of the young girl once loved by him, and put aside for gold, shows that Mr. Dickens’s power is not purely comic.

But the best of all, is Stave Three. We distinctly see that “Cratchit” family. There are the potatoes that“knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled;” there is Mrs. Cratchit, fluttering and cackling like a motherly hen with a young brood of chickens; and there is everybody. The way those two young Cratchits hail Martha, and exclaim—“There’ssucha goose, Martha!” can never be forgotten. By some conjuring trick, Mr. Dickens takes off his own head and puts on a Cratchit’s. Later Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim come in. Assuredly it is Bob’s thin voice that pipes out, “Why, where’s our Martha?” and it is Mrs. Cratchit who shakes her head and replies, “Not coming!” Then Bob relates how Tiny Tim behaved: “as good as gold and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you have ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember, upon Christmas-day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.” There is a volume of pathos in these words, which are the most delicate and artistic rendering of the whole reading.

Ah, that Christmas dinner! We feel as if we were eating every morsel of it. There are “the two young Cratchits,” who “crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn;” there is Tiny Tim, who “beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried, ‘Hoorray,’” in such a still, small voice. And there is that goose! I see it with my naked eye. And O the pudding! “A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding.” Mr. Dickens’s sniffing and smelling of that pudding would make a starving familybelieve that they had swallowed it, holly and all. It is infectious.

What Mr. Dickensdoesis very frequently infinitely better than anything he says, or the way he says it; yet the doing is as delicate and intangible as the odour of violets, and can be no better described. Nothing of its kind can be more touchingly beautiful than the manner in which Bob Cratchit—previous to proposing “a merry Christmas to us all, my dears, God bless us”—stoops down, with tears in his eyes and places Tiny Tim’s withered little hand in his, “as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.” It is pantomime worthy of the finest actor.

Admirable is Mrs. Cratchit’s ungracious drinking to Scrooge’s health, and Martha’s telling how she had seen a lord, and how he “was much about as tall as Peter!”

It is a charming cabinet picture, and so likewise is the glimpse of Christmas at Scrooge’s nephew’s. The plump sister is “satisfactory, O perfectly satisfactory,” and Topper is a magnificent fraud on the understanding; a side-splitting fraud. We see Fred get off the sofa, andstampat his own fun, and we hear the plump sister’s voice when she guesses the wonderful riddle, “It’s your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!” Altogether, Mr. Dickens is better than any comedy.

What a change in Stave Four! There sit the gray-haired rascal “Old Joe,” with his crooning voice; Mr. Dilber, and those robbers of dead men’s shrouds; there lies the body of the plundered, unknown man; there sit the Cratchits weeping over Tiny Tim’s death, a scene that would be beyond all praise were Bob’s cry, “My little, little child!” a shade less dramatic. Here, and only here, Mr. Dickens forgets the nature of Bob’s voice, and employs all the power of his own, carried away apparently by the situation. Bob would notthus give way to his feelings. Finally, there is Scrooge, no longer a miser, but a human being, screaming at the “conversational” boy in Sunday clothes, to buy him the prize turkey “that never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped ’em off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.” There is Bob Cratchit behind time, trying to overtake nine o’clock, “that fled fifteen minutes before.” There is Scrooge poking Bob in the ribs, and vowing he will raise his salary; and there is at last happiness for all, as Tiny Tim exclaims, “God bless us every one!”

It is difficult to see how the “Christmas Carol” can be read and acted better. The only improvement possible is in the ghosts, who are, perhaps, too monotonous; a way ghosts have when they return to earth. Solemnity and monotony are not synonymous terms, yet every theatrical ghost insists that they are, and Mr. Dickens is no exception to the rule. If monotony is excusable in anyone, however, it is in him; for, when one actor is obliged to representtwenty-three different characters, giving to everyone an individual tone, he may be pardoned if his ghosts are not colloquial.

Talk of sermons and churches! There never was a more beautiful sermon than this of “The Christmas Carol.” Sacred names do not necessarily mean sacred things.

SIKES AND NANCY.[353a]

“Although amongst his friends, and such of the outside world as had been admitted to the private performances of the Tavistock House theatricals, Mr. Dickens was known to possess much dramatic power, it was not until within the last few weeks[353b]that he found scope for its exhibition on theplatform. Although the characters in his previous readings had each a distinct and defined individuality—and in true artistic spirit the comparatively insignificant characters have as much finish bestowed upon their representation as the heroes and heroines,e.g.the fat man on ’Change who replies ‘God knows,’ to the query as to whom Scrooge had left his money—a bit of perfect Dutch painting—one could not help feeling that the personation was but a half-personation given under restraint; that the reader was ‘underacting,’ as it is professionally termed, and one longed to see him give his dramatic genius full vent. That wish has now been realised. When Mr. Dickens called round him some half-hundred of his friends and acquaintances on whose discrimination and knowledge of public audiences he had reliance, and when, after requesting their frank verdict on the experiment, he commenced the new reading, ‘Sikes and Nancy,’ until, gradually warming with excitement, he flung aside his book and acted the scene of the murder, shrieked the terrified pleadings of the girl, growled the brutal savagery of the murderer, brought looks, tones, gestures simultaneously into play to illustrate his meaning, there was no one, not even of those who had known him best, or who believed in him most, but was astonished at the power and the versatility of his genius.

“Grandest of all the characters stands out Fagin, the Jew. The voice is husky and with a slight lisp, but there is no nasal intonation; a bent back, but no shoulder shrug; the conventional attributes are omitted, the conventional words are never spoken; and the Jew fence, crafty and cunning even in his bitter vengeance, is there before us, to the life.

“Next comes Nancy. Readers of the old editions of ‘Oliver Twist’ will doubtless recollect how desperatelydifficult it was to fight against the dreadful impression which Mr. George Cruikshank’s picture of Nancy left upon the mind, and how it required all the assistance of the author’s genius to preserve interest in the stunted, squab, round-faced trull whom the artist had depicted. Accurately delineating every other character in the book, and excelling all his previous and subsequent productions in his etching of ‘Fagin in the Condemned Cell,’ Mr. Cruikshank not merely did not convey the right idea of Nancy, which would have been bad enough, but conveyed the wrong one, which was worse. No such ill-favoured slut would have found a protector in Sikes, who amongst his set and in his profession was a man of mark. We all know Nancy’s position; but just because we know it we are certain she must have had some amount of personal comeliness, which Mr. Cruikshank has entirely denied her. In the reading we get none of the common side of her character, which peeps forth occasionally in the earlier volumes. She is the heroine, doing evil that good may come of it—breaking the trust reposed in her that the man she loves and they amongst whom she has lived may be brought to better lives. With the dread shadow of impending death upon her, she is thrillingly earnest, almost prophetic. Thus, in accordance with a favourite custom of the author, during the interview on the steps at London Bridge, not only does the girl’s language rise from the tone of everyday life and become imbued with dramatic imagery and fervour, but that eminently prosaic old person, Mr. Brownlow, becomes affected in the same manner, saying, ‘before this river wakes to life,’ and indulging in other romantic types and metaphors. This may be scarcely life-like, but it is very effective in the reading, enchaining the attention of the audience and forming a fine contrast to the simple pathos of the dialogue in themurder-scene, every word of which is in the highest degree natural and well-placed. It is here, of course, that the excitement of the audience is wrought to its highest pitch, and that the acme of the actor’s art is reached. The raised hands, the bent-back head, are good; but shut your eyes, and the illusion is more complete. Then the cries for mercy, the ‘Bill! dear Bill! for dear God’s sake!’ uttered in tones in which the agony of fear prevails even over the earnestness of the prayer, the dead, dull voice as hope departs, are intensely real. When the pleading ceases, you open your eyes in relief, in time to see the impersonation of the murderer seizing a heavy club, and striking his victim to the ground.

“Artistically speaking, the story of Sikes and Nancy ends at the point here indicated. Throughout the entire scene of the murder, from the entrance of Sikes into the house until the catastrophe, the silence was intense—the old phrase ‘a pin might have been heard to drop,’ could have been legitimately employed. It was a great study to watch the faces of the people—eager, excited, intent—permitted for once in a life-time to be natural, forgetting to be British, and cynical, and unimpassioned. The great strength of this feeling did not last into the concluding five minutes. The people were earnest and attentive; but the wild excitement so seldom seen amongst us died as Nancy died, and the rest was somewhat of an anti-climax.

“No one who appreciates great acting should miss this scene. It will be a treat such as they have not had for a long time, such as, from all appearances, they are not likely to have soon again. To them the earnestness and force, the subtlety, thenuances, the delicate lights and shades of the great dramatic art, will be exhibited by one of the first—if not the first—of its living masters; while those offar less intellectual calibre will understand the vigour of the entire performance, and be specially amused at the facial and vocal dexterity by which the crafty Fagin is, instantaneously changed into the chuckle-headed Noah Claypole.”

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