pains in my back and limbs, and a very sensitive and uncomfortable
throat. There was a great draught up some stone steps near me last
night, and I daresay that caused it.
The weather on my first two nights at Birmingham was so intolerably
bad--it blew hard, and never left off raining for one single
moment--that the houses were not what they otherwise would have been. On
the last night the weather cleared, and we had a grand house.
Last night at Nottingham was almost, if not quite, the most amazing we
have had. It is not a very large place, and the room is by no means a
very large one, but three hundred and twenty stalls were let, and all
the other tickets were sold.
Here we have two hundred and twenty stalls let for to-night, and the
other tickets are gone in proportion. It is a pretty room, but not
large.
I have just been saying to Arthur that if there is not a large let for
York, I would rather give it up, and get Monday at Gad's Hill. We have
telegraphed to know. If the answer comes (as I suppose it will) before
post time, I will tell you in a postscript what we decide to do. Coming
to London in the night of to-morrow (Saturday), and having to see Mr.
Ouvry on Sunday, and having to start for York early on Monday, I fear I
should not be able to get to Gad's Hill at all. You won't expect me till
you see me.
Arthur and I have considered Plornish's joke in all the immense number
of aspects in which it presents itself to reflective minds. We have come
to the conclusion that it is the best joke ever made. Give the dear boy
my love, and the same to Georgy, and the same to Katey, and take the
same yourself. Arthur (excessively low and inarticulate) mutters that he
"unites."
[We knocked up Boylett, Berry, and John so frightfully yesterday, by
tearing the room to pieces and altogether reversing it, as late as four
o'clock, that we gave them a supper last night. They shine all over
to-day, as if it had been entirely composed of grease.]
Ever, my dearest Mamie,
Your most affectionate Father.
[Sidenote: Miss Hogarth.]
WOLVERHAMPTON, _Wednesday, Nov. 3rd, 1858._
Little Leamington came out in the most amazing manner yesterday--turned
away hundreds upon hundreds of people. They are represented as the
dullest and worst of audiences. I found them very good indeed, even in
the morning.
There awaited me at the hotel, a letter from the Rev. Mr. Young,
Wentworth Watson's tutor, saying that Mrs. Watson wished her boy to
shake hands with me, and that he would bring him in the evening. I
expected him at the hotel before the readings. But he did not come. He
spoke to John about it in the room at night. The crowd and confusion,
however, were very great, and I saw nothing of him. In his letter he
said that Mrs. Watson was at Paris on her way home, and would be at
Brighton at the end of this week. I suppose I shall see her there at the
end of next week.
We find a let of two hundred stalls here, which is very large for this
place. The evening being fine too, and blue being to be seen in the sky
beyond the smoke, we expect to have a very full hall. Tell Mamey and
Katey that if they had been with us on the railway to-day between
Leamington and this place, they would have seen (though it is only an
hour and ten minutes by the express) fires and smoke indeed. We came
through a part of the Black Country that you know, and it looked at its
blackest. All the furnaces seemed in full blast, and all the coal-pits
to be working.
It is market-day here, and the ironmasters are standing out in the
street (where they always hold high change), making such an iron hum and
buzz, that they confuse me horribly. In addition, there is a bellman
announcing something--not the readings, I beg to say--and there is an
excavation being made in the centre of the open place, for a statue, or
a pump, or a lamp-post, or something or other, round which all the
Wolverhampton boys are yelling and struggling.
And here is Arthur, begging to have dinner at half-past three instead of
four, because he foresees "a wiry evening" in store for him. Under which
complication of distractions, to which a waitress with a tray at this
moment adds herself, I sink, and leave off.
My best love to the dear girls, and to the noble Plorn, and to you.
Marguerite and Ellen Stone not forgotten. All yesterday and to-day I
have been doing everything to the tune of:
And the day is dark and dreary.
Ever, dearest Georgy,
Your most affectionate and faithful.
P.S.--I hope the brazier is intolerably hot, and half stifles all the
family. Then, and not otherwise, I shall think it in satisfactory work.
[Sidenote: Rev. James White.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W. C.,
_Friday, Nov. 5th, 1858._
MY DEAR WHITE,
May I entreat you to thank Mr. Carter very earnestly and kindly in my
name, for his proffered hospitality; and, further, to explain to him
that since my readings began, I have known them to be incompatible with
all social enjoyments, and have neither set foot in a friend's house nor
sat down to a friend's table in any one of all the many places I have
been to, but have rigidly kept myself to my hotels. To this resolution I
must hold until the last. There is not the least virtue in it. It is a
matter of stern necessity, and I submit with the worst grace possible.
Will you let me know, either at Southampton or Portsmouth, whether any
of you, and how many of you, if any, are coming over, so that Arthur
Smith may reserve good seats? Tell Lotty I hope she does not contemplate
coming to the morning reading; I always hate it so myself.
Mary and Katey are down at Gad's Hill with Georgy and Plornish, and they
have Marguerite Power and Ellen Stone staying there. I am sorry to say
that even my benevolence descries no prospect of their being able to
come to my native place.
On Saturday week, the 13th, my tour, please God, ends.
My best love to Mrs. White, and to Lotty, and to Clara.
Ever, my dear White, affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Frank Stone, A.R.A.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Monday, Dec. 13th, 1858._
MY DEAR STONE,
Many thanks for these discourses. They are very good, I think, as
expressing what many men have felt and thought; otherwise not specially
remarkable. They have one fatal mistake, which is a canker at the foot
of their ever being widely useful. Half the misery and hypocrisy of the
Christian world arises (as I take it) from a stubborn determination to
refuse the New Testament as a sufficient guide in itself, and to force
the Old Testament into alliance with it--whereof comes all manner of
camel-swallowing and of gnat-straining. But so to resent this miserable
error, or to (by any implication) depreciate the divine goodness and
beauty of the New Testament, is to commit even a worse error. And to
class Jesus Christ with Mahomet is simply audacity and folly. I might as
well hoist myself on to a high platform, to inform my disciples that the
lives of King George the Fourth and of King Alfred the Great belonged to
one and the same category.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. B. W. Procter.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, Dec. 18th, 1858._
MY DEAR PROCTER,
A thousand thanks for the little song. I am charmed with it, and shall
be delighted to brighten "Household Words" with such a wise and genial
light. I no more believe that your poetical faculty has gone by, than I
believe that you have yourself passed to the better land. You and it
will travel thither in company, rely upon it. So I still hope to hear
more of the trade-songs, and to learn that the blacksmith has hammered
out no end of iron into good fashion of verse, like a cunning workman,
as I know him of old to be.
Very faithfully yours, my dear Procter.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] Niece to the Rev. W. Harness.
[4] The birthplace of Mr. Forster.
1859.
NARRATIVE.
During the winter, Charles Dickens was living at Tavistock House,
removing to Gad's Hill for the summer early in June, and returning to
London in November. At this time a change was made in his weekly
journal. "Household Words" became absolutely his own--Mr. Wills being
his partner and editor, as before--and was "incorporated with 'All the
Year Round,'" under which title it was known thenceforth. The office was
still in Wellington Street, but in a different house. The first number
with the new name appeared on the 30th April, and it contained the
opening of "A Tale of Two Cities."
The first letter which follows shows that a proposal for a series of
readings in America had already been made to him. It was carefully
considered and abandoned for the time. But the proposal was constantly
renewed, and the idea never wholly relinquished for many years before he
actually decided on making so distant a "reading tour."
Mr. Procter contributed to the early numbers of "All the Year Round"
some very spirited "Songs of the Trades." We give notes from Charles
Dickens to the veteran poet, both in the last year, and in this year,
expressing his strong approval of them.
The letter and two notes to Mr. (afterwards Sir Antonio) Panizzi, for
which we are indebted to Mr. Louis Fagan, one of Sir A. Panizzi's
executors, show the warm sympathy and interest which he always felt for
the cause of Italian liberty, and for the sufferings of the State
prisoners who at this time took refuge in England.
We give a little note to the dear friend and companion of Charles
Dickens's daughters, "Lotty" White, because it is a pretty specimen of
his writing, and because the young girl, who is playfully "commanded" to
get well and strong, died early in July of this year. She was, at the
time this note was written, first attacked with the illness which was
fatal to all her sisters. Mamie and Kate Dickens went from Gad's Hill to
Bonchurch to pay a last visit to their friend, and he writes to his
eldest daughter there. Also we give notes of loving sympathy and
condolence to the bereaved father and mother.
In the course of this summer Charles Dickens was not well, and went for
a week to his old favourite, Broadstairs--where Mr. Wilkie Collins and
his brother, Mr. Charles Allston Collins, were staying--for sea-air and
change, preparatory to another reading tour, in England only. His letter
from Peterborough to Mr. Frank Stone, giving him an account of a reading
at Manchester (Mr. Stone's native town), was one of the last ever
addressed to that affectionate friend, who died very suddenly, to the
great grief of Charles Dickens, in November. The letter to Mr. Thomas
Longman, which closes this year, was one of introduction to that
gentleman of young Marcus Stone, then just beginning his career as an
artist, and to whom the premature death of his father made it doubly
desirable that he should have powerful helping hands.
Charles Dickens refers, in a letter to Mrs. Watson, to his portrait by
Mr. Frith, which was finished at the end of 1858. It was painted for Mr.
Forster, and is now in the "Forster Collection" at South Kensington
Museum.
The Christmas number of this year, again written by several hands as
well as his own, was "The Haunted House." In November, his story of "A
Tale of Two Cities" was finished in "All the Year Round," and in
December was published, complete, with dedication to Lord John Russell.
[Sidenote: Mr. Arthur Smith.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Wednesday, Jan. 26th, 1859._
MY DEAR ARTHUR,
Will you first read the enclosed letters, having previously welcomed,
with all possible cordiality, the bearer, Mr. Thomas C. Evans, from New
York?
You having read them, let me explain that Mr. Fields is a highly
respectable and influential man, one of the heads of the most classical
and most respected publishing house in America; that Mr. Richard Grant
White is a man of high reputation; and that Felton is the Greek
Professor in their Cambridge University, perhaps the most distinguished
scholar in the States.
The address to myself, referred to in one of the letters, being on its
way, it is quite clear that I must give some decided and definite answer
to the American proposal. Now, will you carefully discuss it with Mr.
Evans before I enter on it at all? Then, will you dine here with him on
Sunday--which I will propose to him--and arrange to meet at half-past
four for an hour's discussion?
The points are these:
First. I have a very grave question within myself whether I could go to
America at all.
Secondly. If I did go, I could not possibly go before the autumn.
Thirdly. If I did go, how long must I stay?
Fourthly. If the stay were a short one, could _you_ go?
Fifthly. What is his project? What could I make? What occurs to you upon
his proposal?
I have told him that the business arrangements of the readings have been
from the first so entirely in your hands, that I enter upon nothing
connected with them without previous reference to you.
Ever faithfully.
[Sidenote: M. de Cerjat.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday, Feb. 1st, 1859._
MY DEAR CERJAT,
I received your always welcome annual with even more interest than usual
this year, being (in common with my two girls and their aunt) much
excited and pleased by your account of your daughter's engagement. Apart
from the high sense I have of the affectionate confidence with which you
tell me what lies so tenderly on your own heart, I have followed the
little history with a lively sympathy and regard for her. I hope, with
you, that it is full of promise, and that you will all be happy in it.
The separation, even in the present condition of travel (and no man can
say how much the discovery of a day may advance it), is nothing. And so
God bless her and all of you, and may the rosy summer bring her all the
fulness of joy that we all wish her.
To pass from the altar to Townshend (which is a long way), let me report
him severely treated by Bully, who rules him with a paw of iron; and
complaining, moreover, of indigestion. He drives here every Sunday, but
at all other times is mostly shut up in his beautiful house, where I
occasionally go and dine with him _tete-a-tete_, and where we always
talk of you and drink to you. That is a rule with us from which we never
depart. He is "seeing a volume of poems through the press;" rather an
expensive amusement. He has not been out at night (except to this house)
save last Friday, when he went to hear me read "The Poor Traveller,"
"Mrs. Gamp," and "The Trial" from "Pickwick." He came into my room at
St. Martin's Hall, and I fortified him with weak brandy-and-water. You
will be glad to hear that the said readings are a greater _furore_ than
they ever have been, and that every night on which they now take
place--once a week--hundreds go away, unable to get in, though the hall
holds thirteen hundred people. I dine with ---- to-day, by-the-bye,
along with his agent; concerning whom I observe him to be always divided
between an unbounded confidence and a little latent suspicion. He always
tells me that he is a gem of the first water; oh yes, the best of
business men! and then says that he did not quite like his conduct
respecting that farm-tenant and those hay-ricks.
There is a general impression here, among the best-informed, that war in
Italy, to begin with, is inevitable, and will break out before April. I
know a gentleman at Genoa (Swiss by birth), deeply in with the
authorities at Turin, who is already sending children home.
In England we are quiet enough. There is a world of talk, as you know,
about Reform bills; but I don't believe there is any general strong
feeling on the subject. According to my perceptions, it is undeniable
that the public has fallen into a state of indifference about public
affairs, mainly referable, as I think, to the people who administer
them--and there I mean the people of all parties--which is a very bad
sign of the times. The general mind seems weary of debates and
honourable members, and to have taken _laissez-aller_ for its motto.
My affairs domestic (which I know are not without their interest for
you) flow peacefully. My eldest daughter is a capital housekeeper, heads
the table gracefully, delegates certain appropriate duties to her sister
and her aunt, and they are all three devotedly attached. Charley, my
eldest boy, remains in Barings' house. Your present correspondent is
more popular than he ever has been. I rather think that the readings in
the country have opened up a new public who were outside before; but
however that may be, his books have a wider range than they ever had,
and his public welcomes are prodigious. Said correspondent is at present
overwhelmed with proposals to go and read in America. Will never go,
unless a small fortune be first paid down in money on this side of the
Atlantic. Stated the figure of such payment, between ourselves, only
yesterday. Expects to hear no more of it, and assuredly will never go
for less. You don't say, my dear Cerjat, when you are coming to England!
Somehow I feel that this marriage ought to bring you over, though I
don't know why. You shall have a bed here and a bed at Gad's Hill, and
we will go and see strange sights together. When I was in Ireland, I
ordered the brightest jaunting-car that ever was seen. It has just this
minute arrived per steamer from Belfast. Say you are coming, and you
shall be the first man turned over by it; somebody must be (for my
daughter Mary drives anything that can be harnessed, and I know of no
English horse that would understand a jaunting-car coming down a Kentish
hill), and you shall be that somebody if you will. They turned the
basket-phaeton over, last summer, in a bye-road--Mary and the other
two--and had to get it up again; which they did, and came home as if
nothing had happened. They send their loves to Mrs. Cerjat, and to you,
and to all, and particularly to the dear _fiancee_. So do I, with all my
heart, and am ever your attached and affectionate friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. Antonio Panizzi.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Monday Night, March 14th, 1859._
MY DEAR PANIZZI,
If you should feel no delicacy in mentioning, or should see no objection
to mentioning, to Signor Poerio, or any of the wronged Neapolitan
gentlemen to whom it is your happiness and honour to be a friend on
their arrival in this country, an idea that has occurred to me, I should
regard it as a great kindness in you if you would be my exponent. I
think you will have no difficulty in believing that I would not, on any
consideration, obtrude my name or projects upon any one of those noble
souls, if there were any reason of the slightest kind against it. And if
you see any such reason, I pray you instantly to banish my letter from
your thoughts.
It seems to me probable that some narrative of their ten years'
suffering will, somehow or other, sooner or later, be by some of them
laid before the English people. The just interest and indignation alive
here, will (I suppose) elicit it. False narratives and garbled stories
will, in any case, of a certainty get about. If the true history of the
matter is to be told, I have that sympathy with them and respect for
them which would, all other considerations apart, render it unspeakably
gratifying to me to be the means of its diffusion. What I desire to lay
before them is simply this. If for my new successor to "Household Words"
a narrative of their ten years' trial could be written, I would take any
conceivable pains to have it rendered into English, and presented in the
sincerest and best way to a very large and comprehensive audience. It
should be published exactly as you might think best for them, and
remunerated in any way that you might think generous and right. They
want no mouthpiece and no introducer, but perhaps they might have no
objection to be associated with an English writer, who is possibly not
unknown to them by some general reputation, and who certainly would be
animated by a strong public and private respect for their honour,
spirit, and unmerited misfortunes. This is the whole matter; assuming
that such a thing is to be done, I long for the privilege of helping to
do it. These gentlemen might consider it an independent means of making
money, and I should be delighted to pay the money.
In my absence from town, my friend and sub-editor, Mr. Wills (to whom I
had expressed my feeling on the subject), has seen, I think, three of
the gentlemen together. But as I hear, returning home to-night, that
they are in your good hands, and as nobody can be a better judge than
you of anything that concerns them, I at once decide to write to you and
to take no other step whatever. Forgive me for the trouble I have
occasioned you in the reading of this letter, and never think of it
again if you think that by pursuing it you would cause them an instant's
uneasiness.
Believe me, very faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. Antonio Panizzi.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Tuesday, March 15th, 1859._
MY DEAR PANIZZI,
Let me thank you heartily for your kind and prompt letter. I am really
and truly sensible of your friendliness.
I have not heard from Higgins, but of course I am ready to serve on the
Committee.
Always faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Mr. B. W. Procter.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Saturday, March 19th, 1859._
MY DEAR PROCTER,
I think the songs are simply ADMIRABLE! and I have no doubt of this
being a popular feature in "All the Year Round." I would not omit the
sexton, and I would not omit the spinners and weavers; and I would omit
the hack-writers, and (I think) the alderman; but I am not so clear
about the chorister. The pastoral I a little doubt finding audience for;
but I am not at all sure yet that my doubt is well founded.
Had I not better send them all to the printer, and let you have proofs
kept by you for publishing? I shall not have to make up the first number
of "All the Year Round" until early in April. I don't like to send the
manuscript back, and I never do like to do so when I get anything that I
know to be thoroughly, soundly, and unquestionably good. I am hard at
work upon my story, and expect a magnificent start. With hearty thanks,
Ever yours affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. Edmund Yates.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Tuesday, March 29th, 1859._
MY DEAR EDMUND,
1. I think that no one seeing the place can well doubt that my house at
Gad's Hill is the place for the letter-box. The wall is accessible by
all sorts and conditions of men, on the bold high road, and the house
altogether is the great landmark of the whole neighbourhood. Captain
Goldsmith's _house_ is up a lane considerably off the high road; but he
has a garden _wall_ abutting on the road itself.
2. "The Pic-Nic Papers" were originally sold to Colburn, for the benefit
of the widow of Mr. Macrone, of St. James's Square, publisher, deceased.
Two volumes were contributed--of course gratuitously--by writers who had
had transactions with Macrone. Mr. Colburn, wanting three volumes in all
for trade purposes, added a third, consisting of an American reprint.
Of that volume I didn't know, and don't know, anything. The other two I
edited, gratuitously as aforesaid, and wrote the Lamplighter's story in.
It was all done many years ago. There was a preface originally,
delicately setting forth how the book came to be.
3. I suppose ---- to be, as Mr. Samuel Weller expresses it somewhere in
"Pickwick," "ravin' mad with the consciousness o' willany." Under their
advertisement in _The Times_ to-day, you will see, without a word of
comment, the shorthand writer's verbatim report of the judgment.
Ever faithfully.
[Sidenote: Mr. Antonio Panizzi.]
"ALL THE YEAR ROUND" OFFICE, _Thursday, April 7th, 1859._
MY DEAR PANIZZI,
If you don't know, I think you should know that a number of letters are
passing through the post-office, purporting to be addressed to the
charitable by "Italian Exiles in London," asking for aid to raise a fund
for a tribute to "London's Lord Mayor," in grateful recognition of the
reception of the Neapolitan exiles. I know this to be the case, and have
no doubt in my own mind that the whole thing is an imposture and a "do."
The letters are signed "Gratitudine Italiana."
Ever faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Miss White.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Monday, April 18th, 1859._
MY DEAR LOTTY,