P.S. I saw a good deal of Walker at Cincinnati. I like him very
much. We took to him mightily at first, because he resembled you in
face and figure, we thought. You will be glad to hear that our news
from home is cheering from first to last, all well, happy, and
loving. My friend Forster says in his last letter that he "wants to
know you," and looks forward to Longfellow.
When Dickens arrived in Montreal he had, it seems, a busy time of it,
and I have often heard of his capital acting in private theatricals
while in that city.
Montreal, Saturday, 21st May, 1842.
My Dear Felton: I was delighted to receive your letter yesterday,
and was well pleased with its contents. I anticipated objection to
Carlyle's letter. I called particular attention to it for three
reasons. Firstly, because he boldly _said_ what all the others
_think_, and therefore deserved to be manfully supported. Secondly,
because it is my deliberate opinion that I have been assailed on
this subject in a manner in which no man with any pretensions to
public respect or with the remotest right to express an opinion on
a subject of universal literary interest would be assailed in any
other country.....
I really cannot sufficiently thank you, dear Felton, for your warm
and hearty interest in these proceedings. But it would be idle to
pursue that theme, so let it pass.
The wig and whiskers are in a state of the highest preservation. The
play comes off next Wednesday night, the 25th. What would I give to
see you in the front row of the centre box, your spectacles gleaming
not unlike those of my dear friend Pickwick, your face radiant with
as broad a grin as a staid professor may indulge in, and your very
coat, waistcoat, and shoulders expressive of what we should take
together when the performance was over! I would give something (not
so much, but still a good round sum) if you could only stumble into
that very dark and dusty theatre in the daytime (at any minute
between twelve and three), and see me with my coat off, the stage
manager and universal director, urging impracticable ladies and
impossible gentlemen on to the very confines of insanity, shouting
and driving about, in my own person, to an extent which would
justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a
strait-waistcoat without further inquiry, endeavoring to goad H.
into some dim and faint understanding of a prompter's duties, and
struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and
inextricable entanglement of speech and action as you would grow
giddy in contemplating. We perform A Roland for an Oliver, A good
Night's Rest, and Deaf as a Post. This kind of voluntary hard labor
used to be my great delight. The _furor_ has come strong upon me
again, and I begin to be once more of opinion that nature intended
me for the lessee of a national theatre, and that pen, ink, and
paper have spoiled a manager.
O, how I look forward across that rolling water to home and its
small tenantry! How I busy myself in thinking how my books look, and
where the tables are, and in what positions the chairs stand
relatively to the other furniture; and whether we shall get there in
the night, or in the morning, or in the afternoon; and whether we
shall be able to surprise them, or whether they will be too sharply
looking out for us; and what our pets will say; and how they'll
look, and who will be the first to come and shake hands, and so
forth! If I could but tell you how I have set my heart on rushing
into Forster's study (he is my great friend, and writes at the
bottom of all his letters, "My love to Felton"), and into Maclise's
painting-room, and into Macready's managerial ditto, without a
moment's warning, and how I picture every little trait and
circumstance of our arrival to myself, down to the very color of the
bow on the cook's cap, you would almost think I had changed places
with my eldest son, and was still in pantaloons of the thinnest
texture. I left all these things--God only knows what a love I have
for them--as coolly and calmly as any animated cucumber; but when I
come upon them again I shall have lost all power of self-restraint,
and shall as certainly make a fool of myself (in the popular meaning
of that expression) as ever Grimaldi did in his way, or George III.
in his.
And not the less so, dear Felton, for having found some warm hearts,
and left some instalments of earnest and sincere affection, behind
me on this continent. And whenever I turn my mental telescope
hitherward, trust me that one of the first figures it will descry
will wear spectacles so like yours that the maker couldn't tell the
difference, and shall address a Greek class in such an exact
imitation of your voice, that the very students hearing it should
cry, "That's he! Three cheers. Hoo-ray-ay-ay-ay-ay!"
About those joints of yours, I think you are mistaken. They _can't_
be stiff. At the worst they merely want the air of New York, which,
being impregnated with the flavor of last year's oysters, has a
surprising effect in rendering the human frame supple and flexible
in all cases of rust.
A terrible idea occurred to me as I wrote those words. The
oyster-cellars,--what do they do when oysters are not in season? Is
pickled salmon vended there? Do they sell crabs, shrimps, winkles,
herrings? The oyster-openers,--what do _they_ do? Do they commit
suicide in despair, or wrench open tight drawers and cupboards and
hermetically sealed bottles for practice? Perhaps they are dentists
out of the oyster season. Who knows?
Affectionately yours,