Chapter 58

[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 severalcouncilswith 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 aNew York Heraldis 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 thenetprofit 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 shouldnotbe 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."[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 knowMaster Humphrey's Clock!I admire Nell in theOld Curiosity Shopexceedingly. The whole thing is a good deal borrowed fromWilhelm Meister. But little Nell is a far purer, lovelier, moreEnglishconception 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 ofPickwick, and the capital new strokes ofMartin 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, inOliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true, of the time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariablywasa Jew. But surely no sensible man or woman of your persuasion can fail to observe—firstly, that all the rest of the wickeddramatis personæare 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 theTale of Two Cities, taken the place of Mr. Hablot Browne as his illustrator.Hard Timesand the first edition ofGreat Expectationswere 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?'"[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."[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 afterBoots 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 withintwo minutes, and the audience are earnestly entreated to be seatedten hoursbefore 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 Farewellsfor 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."[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."[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 theMystery 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 forEdwin 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 ofAll 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 inEdwin 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 inMartin Chuzzlewit."[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 calledHome 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 inA 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 theNorthern 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 ofDumas' preposterous play ofKean, 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 labelRhum, 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 calledGilbert Massengeris the tale referred to.[296]See the introductory memoir from his pen now prefixed to every edition of the popular and delightfulLegends and Lyrics.[297]On this remonstrance and Dickens's reply theTimeshad 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 atête-à-têteluncheon, 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.

[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 severalcouncilswith 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 aNew York Heraldis 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 thenetprofit 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 shouldnotbe 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."

[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 aNew York Heraldis 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 thenetprofit 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 shouldnotbe 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."

"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 thenetprofit 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 shouldnotbe 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."

[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 knowMaster Humphrey's Clock!I admire Nell in theOld Curiosity Shopexceedingly. The whole thing is a good deal borrowed fromWilhelm Meister. But little Nell is a far purer, lovelier, moreEnglishconception 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 ofPickwick, and the capital new strokes ofMartin 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, inOliver Twist, is a Jew, because it unfortunately was true, of the time to which that story refers, that that class of criminal almost invariablywasa Jew. But surely no sensible man or woman of your persuasion can fail to observe—firstly, that all the rest of the wickeddramatis personæare 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 theTale of Two Cities, taken the place of Mr. Hablot Browne as his illustrator.Hard Timesand the first edition ofGreat Expectationswere 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?'"

[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."

[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 afterBoots 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 withintwo minutes, and the audience are earnestly entreated to be seatedten hoursbefore 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 Farewellsfor 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."

[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."

[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 theMystery 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 forEdwin 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 ofAll 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 inEdwin 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 inMartin Chuzzlewit."

[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 calledHome 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 inA 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 theNorthern 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 ofDumas' preposterous play ofKean, 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 labelRhum, 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 calledGilbert Massengeris the tale referred to.

[296]See the introductory memoir from his pen now prefixed to every edition of the popular and delightfulLegends and Lyrics.

[297]On this remonstrance and Dickens's reply theTimeshad 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 atête-à-têteluncheon, 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.

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