getting well, strong, and into good spirits, with the least possible
delay. Also, that I look forward to seeing you at Gad's Hill sometime in
the summer, staying with the girls, and heartlessly putting down the
Plorn You know that there is no appeal from the Plorn's inimitable
father. What _he_ says must be done. Therefore I send you my love (which
please take care of), and my commands (which please obey).
Ever your affectionate.
[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Tuesday, May 31st, 1859._
MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,
You surprise me by supposing that there is ever latent a defiant and
roused expression in the undersigned lamb! Apart from this singular
delusion of yours, and wholly unaccountable departure from your usual
accuracy in all things, your satisfaction with the portrait is a great
pleasure to me. It has received every conceivable pains at Frith's
hands, and ought on his account to be good. It is a little too much (to
my thinking) as if my next-door neighbour were my deadly foe, uninsured,
and I had just received tidings of his house being afire; otherwise very
good.
I cannot tell you how delighted we shall be if you would come to Gad's
Hill. You should see some charming woods and a rare old castle, and you
should have such a snug room looking over a Kentish prospect, with every
facility in it for pondering on the beauties of its master's beard! _Do_
come, but you positively _must not_ come and go on the same day.
We retreat there on Monday, and shall be there all the summer.
My small boy is perfectly happy at Southsea, and likes the school very
much. I had the finest letter two or three days ago, from another of my
boys--Frank Jeffrey--at Hamburg. In this wonderful epistle he says:
"Dear papa, I write to tell you that I have given up all thoughts of
being a doctor. My conviction that I shall never get over my stammering
is the cause; all professions are barred against me. The only thing I
should like to be is a gentleman farmer, either at the Cape, in Canada,
or Australia. With my passage paid, fifteen pounds, a horse, and a
rifle, I could go two or three hundred miles up country, sow grain, buy
cattle, and in time be very comfortable."
Considering the consequences of executing the little commission by the
next steamer, I perceived that the first consequence of the fifteen
pounds would be that he would be robbed of it--of the horse, that it
would throw him--and of the rifle, that it would blow his head off;
which probabilities I took the liberty of mentioning, as being against
the scheme. With best love from all,
Ever believe me, my dear Mrs. Watson,
Your faithful and affectionate.
[Sidenote: Mrs. White.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Sunday, June 5th, 1859._
MY DEAR MRS. WHITE,
I do not write to you this morning because I have anything to say--I
well know where your consolation is set, and to what beneficent figure
your thoughts are raised--but simply because you are so much in my mind
that it is a relief to send you and dear White my love. You are always
in our hearts and on our lips. May the great God comfort you! You know
that Mary and Katie are coming on Thursday. They will bring dear Lotty
what she little needs with you by her side--love; and I hope their
company will interest and please her. There is nothing that they, or any
of us, would not do for her. She is a part of us all, and has belonged
to us, as well as to you, these many years.
Ever your affectionate and faithful.
[Sidenote: Miss Dickens.]
GAD'S HILL, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Monday, June 11th, 1859._
MY DEAREST MAMIE,
On Saturday night I found, very much to my surprise and pleasure, the
photograph on my table at Tavistock House. It is not a very pleasant or
cheerful presentation of my daughters; but it is wonderfully like for
all that, and in some details remarkably good. When I came home here
yesterday I tried it in the large Townshend stereoscope, in which it
shows to great advantage. It is in the little stereoscope at present on
the drawing-room table. One of the balustrades of the destroyed old
Rochester bridge has been (very nicely) presented to me by the
contractor for the works, and has been duly stonemasoned and set up on
the lawn behind the house. I have ordered a sun-dial for the top of it,
and it will be a very good object indeed. The Plorn is highly excited
to-day by reason of an institution which he tells me (after questioning
George) is called the "Cobb, or Bodderin," holding a festival at The
Falstaff. He is possessed of some vague information that they go to
Higham Church, in pursuance of some old usage, and attend service there,
and afterwards march round the village. It so far looks probable that
they certainly started off at eleven very spare in numbers, and came
back considerably recruited, which looks to me like the difference
between going to church and coming to dinner. They bore no end of bright
banners and broad sashes, and had a band with a terrific drum, and are
now (at half-past two) dining at The Falstaff, partly in the side room
on the ground-floor, and partly in a tent improvised this morning. The
drum is hung up to a tree in The Falstaff garden, and looks like a
tropical sort of gourd. I have presented the band with five shillings,
which munificence has been highly appreciated. Ices don't seem to be
provided for the ladies in the gallery--I mean the garden; they are
prowling about there, endeavouring to peep in at the beef and mutton
through the holes in the tent, on the whole, in a debased and degraded
manner.
Turk somehow cut his foot in Cobham Lanes yesterday, and Linda hers.
They are both lame, and looking at each other. Fancy Mr. Townshend not
intending to go for another three weeks, and designing to come down here
for a few days--with Henri and Bully--on Wednesday! I wish you could
have seen him alone with me on Saturday; he was so extraordinarily
earnest and affectionate on my belongings and affairs in general, and
not least of all on you and Katie, that he cried in a most pathetic
manner, and was so affected that I was obliged to leave him among the
flowerpots in the long passage at the end of the dining-room. It was a
very good piece of truthfulness and sincerity, especially in one of his
years, able to take life so easily.
Mr. and Mrs. Wills are here now (but I daresay you know it from your
aunt), and return to town with me to-morrow morning. We are now going on
to the castle. Mrs. Wills was very droll last night, and told me some
good stories. My dear, I wish particularly to impress upon you and dear
Katie (to whom I send my other best love) that I hope your stay will not
be very long. I don't think it very good for either of you, though of
course I know that Lotty will be, and must be, and should be the first
consideration with you both. I am very anxious to know how you found her
and how you are yourself.
Best love to dear Lotty and Mrs. White. The same to Mr. White and Clara.
We are always talking about you all.
Ever, dearest Mamie, your affectionate Father.
[Sidenote: Rev. James White.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Thursday, July 7th, 1859._
MY DEAR WHITE,
I send my heartiest and most affectionate love to Mrs. White and you,
and to Clara. You know all that I could add; you have felt it all; let
it be unspoken and unwritten--it is expressed within us.
Do you not think that you could all three come here, and stay with us?
You and Mrs. White should have your own large room and your own ways,
and should be among us when you felt disposed, and never otherwise. I do
hope you would find peace here. Can it not be done?
We have talked very much about it among ourselves, and the girls are
strong upon it. Think of it--do!
Ever your affectionate.
[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]
GAD'S HILL, _Thursday Night, Aug. 25th, 1859._
MY DEAR FORSTER,
Heartily glad to get your letter this morning.
I cannot easily tell you how much interested I am by what you tell me of
our brave and excellent friend the Chief Baron, in connection with that
ruffian. I followed the case with so much interest, and have followed
the miserable knaves and asses who have perverted it since, with so much
indignation, that I have often had more than half a mind to write and
thank the upright judge who tried him. I declare to God that I believe
such a service one of the greatest that a man of intellect and courage
can render to society. Of course I saw the beast of a prisoner (with my
mind's eye) delivering his cut-and-dried speech, and read in every word
of it that no one but the murderer could have delivered or conceived
it. 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
that black scoundrel and the gallows. I can_not_ believe--and my belief
in all wrong as to public matters is enormous--that such a thing will be
done.
I am reminded of Tennyson, by thinking that King Arthur would have made
short work of the amiable ----, whom the newspapers strangely delight to
make a sort of gentleman of. How fine the "Idylls" are! Lord! what a
blessed thing it is to read a man who can write! I thought nothing could
be grander than the first poem till I came to the third; but when I had
read the last, it seemed to be absolutely unapproached and
unapproachable.
To come to myself. I have written and begged the "All the Year Round"
publisher to send you directly four weeks' proofs beyond the current
number, that are in type. I hope you will like them. Nothing but the
interest of the subject, and the pleasure of striving with the
difficulty of the forms of treatment, nothing in the mere way of money,
I mean, could also repay the time and trouble of the incessant
condensation. But I set myself the little task of making a _picturesque_
story, rising in every chapter with characters true to nature, but whom
the story itself should express, more than they should express
themselves, by dialogue. I mean, in other words, that I fancied a story
of incident might be written, in place of the bestiality that _is_
written under that pretence, pounding the characters out in its own
mortar, and beating their own interests out of them. If you could have
read the story all at once, I hope you wouldn't have stopped halfway.
As to coming to your retreat, my dear Forster, think how helpless I am.
I am not well yet. I have an instinctive feeling that nothing but the
sea will restore me, and I am planning to go and work at Ballard's, at
Broadstairs, from next Wednesday to Monday. I generally go to town on
Monday afternoon. All Tuesday I am at the office, on Wednesday I come
back here, and go to work again. I don't leave off till Monday comes
round once more. I am fighting to get my story done by the first week in
October. On the 10th of October I am going away to read for a fortnight
at Ipswich, Norwich, Oxford, Cambridge, and a few other places. Judge
what my spare time is just now!
I am very much surprised and very sorry to find from the enclosed that
Elliotson has been ill. I never heard a word of it.
Georgy sends best love to you and to Mrs. Forster, so do I, so does
Plorn, so does Frank. The girls are, for five days, with the Whites at
Ramsgate. It is raining, intensely hot, and stormy. Eighteen creatures,
like little tortoises, have dashed in at the window and fallen on the
paper since I began this paragraph [Illustration: ink-blot] (that was
one!). I am a wretched sort of creature in my way, but it is a way that
gets on somehow. And all ways have the same fingerpost at the head of
them, and at every turning in them.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Miss Dickens and Miss Katie Dickens.]
ALBION, BROADSTAIRS, _Friday, Sept. 2nd, 1859._
MY DEAREST MAMIE AND KATIE,
I have been "moved" here, and am now (Ballard having added to the hotel
a house we lived in three years) in our old dining-room and
sitting-room, and our old drawing-room as a bedroom. My cold is so bad,
both in my throat and in my chest, that I can't bathe in the sea; Tom
Collin dissuaded me--thought it "bad"--but I get a heavy shower-bath at
Mrs. Crampton's every morning. The baths are still hers and her
husband's, but they have retired and live in "Nuckells"--are going to
give a stained-glass window, value three hundred pounds, to St. Peter's
Church. Tom Collin is of opinion that the Miss Dickenses has growed two
fine young women--leastwise, asking pardon, ladies. An evangelical
family of most disagreeable girls prowl about here and trip people up
with tracts, which they put in the paths with stones upon them to keep
them from blowing away. Charles Collins and I having seen a bill
yesterday--about a mesmeric young lady who did feats, one of which was
set forth in the bill, in a line by itself, as
THE RIGID LEGS,
--were overpowered with curiosity, and resolved to go. It came off in
the Assembly Room, now more exquisitely desolate than words can
describe. Eighteen shillings was the "take." Behind a screen among the
company, we heard mysterious gurglings of water before the entertainment
began, and then a slippery sound which occasioned me to whisper C. C.
(who laughed in the most ridiculous manner), "Soap." It proved to be the
young lady washing herself. She must have been wonderfully dirty, for
she took a world of trouble, and didn't come out clean after all--in a
wretched dirty muslin frock, with blue ribbons. She was the alleged
mesmeriser, and a boy who distributed bills the alleged mesmerised. It
was a most preposterous imposition, but more ludicrous than any poor
sight I ever saw. The boy is clearly out of pantomime, and when he
pretended to be in the mesmeric state, made the company back by going
in among them head over heels, backwards, half-a-dozen times, in a most
insupportable way. The pianist had struck; and the manner in which the
lecturer implored "some lady" to play a "polker," and the manner in
which no lady would; and in which the few ladies who were there sat with
their hats on, and the elastic under their chins, as if it were going to
blow, is never to be forgotten. I have been writing all the morning, and
am going for a walk to Ramsgate. This is a beast of a letter, but I am
not well, and have been addling my head.
Ever, dear Girls, your affectionate Father.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Friday Night, Sept. 16th, 1859._
MY DEAR WILKIE,
Just a word to say that I have received yours, and that I look forward
to the reunion on Thursday, when I hope to have the satisfaction of
recounting to you the plot of a play that has been laid before me for
commending advice.
Ditto to what you say respecting the _Great Eastern_. I went right up to
London Bridge by the boat that day, on purpose that I might pass her. I
thought her the ugliest and most unshiplike thing these eyes ever
beheld. I wouldn't go to sea in her, shiver my ould timbers and rouse me
up with a monkey's tail (man-of-war metaphor), not to chuck a biscuit
into Davy Jones's weather eye, and see double with my own old toplights.
Turk has been so good as to produce from his mouth, for the wholesome
consternation of the family, eighteen feet of worm. When he had brought
it up, he seemed to think it might be turned to account in the
housekeeping and was proud. Pony has kicked a shaft off the cart, and is
to be sold. Why don't you buy her? she'd never kick with you.
Barber's opinion is, that them fruit-trees, one and all, is touchwood,
and not fit for burning at any gentleman's fire; also that the stocking
of this here garden is worth less than nothing, because you wouldn't
have to grub up nothing, and something takes a man to do it at
three-and-sixpence a day. Was "left desponding" by your reporter.
I have had immense difficulty to find a man for the stable-yard here.
Barber having at last engaged one this morning, I enquired if he had a
decent hat for driving in, to which Barber returned this answer:
"Why, sir, not to deceive you, that man flatly say that he never have
wore that article since man he was!"
I am consequently fortified into my room, and am afraid to go out to
look at him. Love from all.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Monsieur Regnier.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Saturday, Oct. 15th, 1859._
MY DEAR REGNIER,
You will receive by railway parcel the proof-sheets of a story of mine,
that has been for some time in progress in my weekly journal, and that
will be published in a complete volume about the middle of November.
Nobody but Forster has yet seen the latter portions of it, or will see
them until they are published. I want you to read it for two reasons.
Firstly, because I hope it is the best story I have written. Secondly,
because it treats of a very remarkable time in France; and I should very
much like to know what you think of its being dramatised for a French
theatre. If you should think it likely to be done, I should be glad to
take some steps towards having it well done. The story is an
extraordinary success here, and I think the end of it is certain to make
a still greater sensation.
Don't trouble yourself to write to me, _mon ami_, until you shall have
had time to read the proofs. Remember, they are _proofs_, and _private_;
the latter chapters will not be before the public for five or six weeks
to come.
With kind regards to Madame Regnier, in which my daughters and their
aunt unite,
Believe me, ever faithfully yours.
P.S.--The story (I daresay you have not seen any of it yet) is called
"A Tale of Two Cities."
[Sidenote: Mr. Frank Stone, A.R.A.]
PETERBOROUGH, _Wednesday Evening, Oct. 19th, 1859._
MY DEAR STONE,
We had a splendid rush last night--exactly as we supposed, with the
pressure on the two shillings, of whom we turned a crowd away. They were
a far finer audience than on the previous night; I think the finest I
have ever read to. They took every word of the "Dombey" in quite an
amazing manner, and after the child's death, paused a little, and then
set up a shout that it did one good to hear. Mrs. Gamp then set in with
a roar, which lasted until I had done. I think everybody for the time
forgot everything but the matter in hand. It was as fine an instance of
thorough absorption in a fiction as any of us are likely to see ever
again.
---- (in an exquisite red mantle), accompanied by her sister (in another
exquisite red mantle) and by the deaf lady, (who leaned a black
head-dress, exactly like an old-fashioned tea-urn without the top,
against the wall), was charming. HE couldn't get at her on account of
the pressure. HE tried to peep at her from the side door, but she (ha,
ha, ha!) was unconscious of his presence. I read to her, and goaded him
to madness. He is just sane enough to send his kindest regards.
This is a place which--except the cathedral, with the loveliest front I
ever saw--is like the back door to some other place. It is, I should
hope, the deadest and most utterly inert little town in the British
dominions. The magnates have taken places, and the bookseller is of
opinion that "such is the determination to do honour to Mr. Dickens,
that the doors _must_ be opened half an hour before the appointed time."
You will picture to yourself Arthur's quiet indignation at this, and the
manner in which he remarked to me at dinner, "that he turned away twice
Peterborough last night."
A very pretty room--though a Corn Exchange--and a room we should have
been glad of at Cambridge, as it is large, bright, and cheerful, and
wonderfully well lighted.
The difficulty of getting to Bradford from here to-morrow, at any time
convenient to us, turned out to be so great, that we are all going in
for Leeds (only three-quarters of an hour from Bradford) to-night after
the reading, at a quarter-past eleven. We are due at Leeds a quarter
before three.
So no more at present from,
Yours affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. R. Sculthorpe.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Thursday, Nov. 10th, 1859._
DEAR SIR,
Judgment must go by default. I have not a word to plead against Dodson
and Fogg. I am without any defence to the action; and therefore, as law
goes, ought to win it.
Seriously, the date of your hospitable note disturbs my soul. But I have
been incessantly writing in Kent and reading in all sorts of places, and
have done nothing in my own personal character these many months; and
now I come to town and our friend[5] is away! Let me take that
defaulting miscreant into council when he comes back.
Faithfully yours.
[Sidenote: Monsieur Regnier.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Wednesday, Nov. 16th, 1859._
MY DEAR REGNIER,
I send you ten thousand thanks for your kind and explicit letter. What I
particularly wished to ascertain from you was, whether it is likely the
Censor would allow such a piece to be played in Paris. In the case of
its being likely, then I wished to have the piece as well done as
possible, and would even have proposed to come to Paris to see it
rehearsed. But I very much doubted whether the general subject would not
be objectionable to the Government, and what you write with so much
sagacity and with such care convinces me at once that its representation
would be prohibited. Therefore I altogether abandon and relinquish the
idea. But I am just as heartily and cordially obliged to you for your
interest and friendship, as if the book had been turned into a play five
hundred times. I again thank you ten thousand times, and am quite sure
that you are right. I only hope you will forgive my causing you so much
trouble, after your hard work.
My girls and Georgina send their kindest regards to Madame Regnier and
to you. My Gad's Hill house (I think I omitted to tell you, in reply to
your enquiry) is on the very scene of Falstaff's robbery. There is a
little _cabaret_ at the roadside, still called The Sir John Falstaff.
And the country, in all its general features, is, at this time, what it
was in Shakespeare's. I hope you will see the house before long. It is
really a pretty place, and a good residence for an English writer, is it
not?
Macready, we are all happy to hear from himself, is going to leave the
dreary tomb in which he lives, at Sherborne, and to remove to
Cheltenham, a large and handsome place, about four or five hours'
railway journey from London, where his poor girls will at least see and
hear some life. Madame Celeste was with me yesterday, wishing to
dramatise "A Tale of Two Cities" for the Lyceum, after bringing out the
Christmas pantomime. I gave her my permission and the book; but I fear
that her company (troupe) is a very poor one.
This is all the news I have, except (which is no news at all) that I
feel as if I had not seen you for fifty years, and that
I am ever your attached and faithful Friend.
[Sidenote: Mr. T. Longman.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Monday, Nov. 28th, 1859._
MY DEAR LONGMAN,
I am very anxious to present to you, with the earnest hope that you will
hold him in your remembrance, young Mr. Marcus Stone, son of poor Frank
Stone, who died suddenly but a little week ago. You know, I daresay,
what a start this young man made in the last exhibition, and what a
favourable notice his picture attracted. He wishes to make an additional
opening for himself in the illustration of books. He is an admirable
draughtsman, has a most dexterous hand, a charming sense of grace and
beauty, and a capital power of observation. These qualities in him I
know well of my own knowledge. He is in all things modest, punctual, and
right; and I would answer for him, if it were needful, with my head.
If you will put anything in his way, you will do it a second time, I am
certain.
Faithfully yours always.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] Mr. Edmund Yates.
1860.
NARRATIVE.