for some time been inclining to the idea of making his home altogether
at Gad's Hill, giving up his London house, and taking a furnished house
for the sake of his daughters for a few months of the London season.
And, as his daughter Kate was to be married this summer to Mr. Charles
Collins, this intention was confirmed and carried out. He made
arrangements for the sale of Tavistock House to Mr. Davis, a Jewish
gentleman, and he gave up possession of it in September. Up to this time
Gad's Hill had been furnished merely as a temporary summer
residence--pictures, library, and all best furniture being left in the
London house. He now set about beautifying and making Gad's Hill
thoroughly comfortable and homelike. And there was not a year
afterwards, up to the year of his death, that he did not make some
addition or improvement to it. He also furnished, as a private
residence, a sitting-room and some bedrooms at his office in Wellington
Street, to be used, when there was no house in London, as occasional
town quarters by himself, his daughter, and sister-in-law.
He began in this summer his occasional papers for "All the Year Round,"
which he called "The Uncommercial Traveller," and which were continued
at intervals in his journal until 1869.
In the autumn of this year he began another story, to be published
weekly in "All the Year Round." The letter to Mr. Forster, which we
give, tells him of this beginning and gives him the name of the book.
The first number of "Great Expectations" appeared on the 1st December.
The Christmas number, this time, was written jointly by himself and Mr.
Wilkie Collins. The scene was laid at Clovelly, and they made a journey
together into Devonshire and Cornwall, for the purpose of this story, in
November.
The letter to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton is, unfortunately, the only one
we have as yet been able to procure. The present Lord Lytton, the
Viceroy of India, has kindly endeavoured to help us even during his
absence from England. But it was found to be impossible without his own
assistance to make the necessary search among his father's papers. And
he has promised us that, on his return, he will find and lend to us,
many letters from Charles Dickens, which are certainly in existence, to
his distinguished fellow-writer and great friend. We hope, therefore, it
may be possible for us at some future time to be able to publish these
letters, as well as those addressed to the present Lord Lytton (when he
was Mr. Robert Lytton, otherwise "Owen Meredith," and frequent
contributor to "Household Words" and "All the Year Round"). We have the
same hope with regard to letters addressed to Sir Henry Layard, at
present Ambassador at Constantinople, which, of course, for the same
reason, cannot be lent to us at the present time.
We give a letter to Mr. Forster on one of his books on the Commonwealth,
the "Impeachment of the Five Members;" which, as with other letters
which we are glad to publish on the subject of Mr. Forster's own works,
was not used by himself for obvious reasons.
A letter to his daughter Mamie (who, after her sister's marriage, paid a
visit with her dear friends the White family to Scotland, where she had
a serious illness) introduces a recent addition to the family, who
became an important member of it, and one to whom Charles Dickens was
very tenderly attached--her little white Pomeranian dog "Mrs. Bouncer"
(so called after the celebrated lady of that name in "Box and Cox"). It
is quite necessary to make this formal introduction of the little pet
animal (who lived to be a very old dog and died in 1874), because future
letters to his daughter contain constant references and messages to
"Mrs. Bouncer," which would be quite unintelligible without this
explanation. "Boy," also referred to in this letter, was his daughter's
horse. The little dog and the horse were gifts to Mamie Dickens from her
friends Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Smith, and the sister of the latter, Miss
Craufurd.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. C. Macready.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Monday, Jan. 2nd, 1860._
MY DEAREST MACREADY,
A happy New Year to you, and many happy years! I cannot tell you how
delighted I was to receive your Christmas letter, or with what pleasure
I have received Forster's emphatic accounts of your health and spirits.
But when was I ever wrong? And when did I not tell you that you were an
impostor in pretending to grow older as the rest of us do, and that you
had a secret of your own for reversing the usual process! It happened
that I read at Cheltenham a couple of months ago, and that I have rarely
seen a place that so attracted my fancy. I had never seen it before.
Also I believe the character of its people to have greatly changed for
the better. All sorts of long-visaged prophets had told me that they
were dull, stolid, slow, and I don't know what more that is
disagreeable. I found them exactly the reverse in all respects; and I
saw an amount of beauty there--well--that is not to be more specifically
mentioned to you young fellows.
Katie dined with us yesterday, looking wonderfully well, and singing
"Excelsior" with a certain dramatic fire in her, whereof I seem to
remember having seen sparks afore now. Etc. etc. etc.
With kindest love from all at home to all with you,
Ever, my dear Macready, your most affectionate.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. Wilkie Collins.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON, W.C.,
_Saturday Night, Jan. 7th, 1860._
MY DEAR WILKIE,
I have read this book with great care and attention. There cannot be a
doubt that it is a very great advance on all your former writing, and
most especially in respect of tenderness. In character it is excellent.
Mr. Fairlie as good as the lawyer, and the lawyer as good as he. Mr.
Vesey and Miss Halcombe, in their different ways, equally meritorious.
Sir Percival, also, is most skilfully shown, though I doubt (you see
what small points I come to) whether any man ever showed uneasiness by
hand or foot without being forced by nature to show it in his face too.
The story is very interesting, and the writing of it admirable.
I seem to have noticed, here and there, that the great pains you take
express themselves a trifle too much, and you know that I always contest
your disposition to give an audience credit for nothing, which
necessarily involves the forcing of points on their attention, and which
I have always observed them to resent when they find it out--as they
always will and do. But on turning to the book again, I find it
difficult to take out an instance of this. It rather belongs to your
habit of thought and manner of going about the work. Perhaps I express
my meaning best when I say that the three people who write the
narratives in these proofs have a DISSECTIVE property in common, which
is essentially not theirs but yours; and that my own effort would be to
strike more of what is got _that way_ out of them by collision with one
another, and by the working of the story.
You know what an interest I have felt in your powers from the beginning
of our friendship, and how very high I rate them? _I_ know that this is
an admirable book, and that it grips the difficulties of the weekly
portion and throws them in masterly style. No one else could do it half
so well. I have stopped in every chapter to notice some instance of
ingenuity, or some happy turn of writing; and I am absolutely certain
that you never did half so well yourself.
So go on and prosper, and let me see some more, when you have enough
(for your own satisfaction) to show me. I think of coming in to back you
up if I can get an idea for my series of gossiping papers. One of those
days, please God, we may do a story together; I have very odd
half-formed notions, in a mist, of something that might be done that
way.
Ever affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]
11, WELLINGTON STREET, NORTH STRAND, LONDON, W.C.,
_Wednesday, May 2nd, 1860._
MY DEAR FORSTER,
It did not occur to me in reading your most excellent, interesting, and
remarkable book, that it could with any reason be called one-sided. If
Clarendon had never written his "History of the Rebellion," then I can
understand that it might be. But just as it would be impossible to
answer an advocate who had misstated the merits of a case for his own
purpose, without, in the interests of truth, and not of the other side
merely, re-stating the merits and showing them in their real form, so I
cannot see the practicability of telling what you had to tell without
in some sort championing the misrepresented side, and I think that you
don't do that as an advocate, but as a judge.
The evidence has been suppressed and coloured, and the judge goes
through it and puts it straight. It is not _his_ fault if it all goes
one way and tends to one plain conclusion. Nor is it his fault that it
goes the further when it is laid out straight, or seems to do so,
because it was so knotted and twisted up before.
I can understand any man's, and particularly Carlyle's, having a
lingering respect that does not like to be disturbed for those (in the
best sense of the word) loyal gentlemen of the country who went with the
king and were so true to him. But I don't think Carlyle sufficiently
considers that the great mass of those gentlemen _didn't know the
truth_, that it was a part of their loyalty to believe what they were
told on the king's behalf, and that it is reasonable to suppose that the
king was too artful to make known to _them_ (especially after failure)
what were very acceptable designs to the desperate soldiers of fortune
about Whitehall. And it was to me a curious point of adventitious
interest arising out of your book, to reflect on the probability of
their having been as ignorant of the real scheme in Charles's head, as
their descendants and followers down to this time, and to think with
pity and admiration that they believed the cause to be so much better
than it was. This is a notion I was anxious to have expressed in our
account of the book in these pages. For I don't suppose Clarendon, or
any other such man to sit down and tell posterity something that he has
not "tried on" in his own time. Do you?
In the whole narrative I saw nothing anywhere to which I demurred. I
admired it all, went with it all, and was proud of my friend's having
written it all. I felt it to be all square and sound and right, and to
be of enormous importance in these times. Firstly, to the people who
(like myself) are so sick of the shortcomings of representative
government as to have no interest in it. Secondly, to the humbugs at
Westminster who have come down--a long, long way--from those men, as you
know. When the great remonstrance came out, I was in the thick of my
story, and was always busy with it; but I am very glad I didn't read it
then, as I shall read it now to much better purpose. All the time I was
at work on the "Two Cities," I read no books but such as had the air of
the time in them.
To return for a final word to the Five Members. I thought the marginal
references overdone. Here and there, they had a comical look to me for
that reason, and reminded me of shows and plays where everything is in
the bill.
Lastly, I should have written to you--as I had a strong inclination to
do, and ought to have done, immediately after reading the book--but for
a weak reason; of all things in the world I have lost heart in one--I
hope no other--I cannot, times out of calculation, make up my mind to
write a letter.
Ever, my dear Forster, affectionately yours.
[Sidenote: M. de Cerjat.]
TAVISTOCK HOUSE, _Thursday, May 3rd, 1860._
MY DEAR CERJAT,
The date of this letter would make me horribly ashamed of myself, if I
didn't know that _you_ know how difficult letter-writing is to one whose
trade it is to write.
You asked me on Christmas Eve about my children. My second daughter is
going to be married in the course of the summer to Charles Collins, the
brother of Wilkie Collins, the novelist. The father was one of the most
famous painters of English green lanes and coast pieces. He was bred an
artist; is a writer, too, and does "The Eye Witness," in "All the Year
Round." He is a gentleman, accomplished, and amiable. My eldest daughter
has not yet started any conveyance on the road to matrimony (that I know
of); but it is likely enough that she will, as she is very agreeable and
intelligent. They are both very pretty. My eldest boy, Charley, has been
in Barings' house for three or four years, and is now going to Hong
Kong, strongly backed up by Barings, to buy tea on his own account, as a
means of forming a connection and seeing more of the practical part of a
merchant's calling, before starting in London for himself. His brother
Frank (Jeffrey's godson) I have just recalled from France and Germany,
to come and learn business, and qualify himself to join his brother on
his return from the Celestial Empire. The next boy, Sydney Smith, is
designed for the navy, and is in training at Portsmouth, awaiting his
nomination. He is about three foot high, with the biggest eyes ever
seen, and is known in the Portsmouth parts as "Young Dickens, who can do
everything."
Another boy is at school in France; the youngest of all has a private
tutor at home. I have forgotten the second in order, who is in India. He
went out as ensign of a non-existent native regiment, got attached to
the 42nd Highlanders, one of the finest regiments in the Queen's
service; has remained with them ever since, and got made a lieutenant by
the chances of the rebellious campaign, before he was eighteen. Miss
Hogarth, always Miss Hogarth, is the guide, philosopher, and friend of
all the party, and a very close affection exists between her and the
girls. I doubt if she will ever marry. I don't know whether to be glad
of it or sorry for it.
I have laid down my pen and taken a long breath after writing this
family history. I have also considered whether there are any more
children, and I don't think there are. If I should remember two or three
others presently, I will mention them in a postscript.
We think Townshend looking a little the worse for the winter, and we
perceive Bully to be decidedly old upon his legs, and of a most
diabolical turn of mind. When they first arrived the weather was very
dark and cold, and kept them indoors. It has since turned very warm and
bright, but with a dusty and sharp east wind. They are still kept
indoors by this change, and I begin to wonder what change will let them
out. Townshend dines with us every Sunday. You may be sure that we
always talk of you and yours, and drink to you heartily.
Public matters here are thought to be rather improving; the deep
mistrust of the gentleman in Paris being counteracted by the vigorous
state of preparation into which the nation is getting. You will have
observed, of course, that we establish a new defaulter in respect of
some great trust, about once a quarter. The last one, the cashier of a
City bank, is considered to have distinguished himself greatly, a
quarter of a million of money being high game.
No, my friend, I have not shouldered my rifle yet, but I should do so on
more pressing occasion. Every other man in the row of men I know--if
they were all put in a row--is a volunteer though. There is a tendency
rather to overdo the wearing of the uniform, but that is natural enough
in the case of the youngest men. The turn-out is generally very
creditable indeed. At the ball they had (in a perfectly unventilated
building), their new leather belts and pouches smelt so fearfully that
it was, as my eldest daughter said, like shoemaking in a great prison.
She, consequently, distinguished herself by fainting away in the most
inaccessible place in the whole structure, and being brought out
(horizontally) by a file of volunteers, like some slain daughter of
Albion whom they were carrying into the street to rouse the indignant
valour of the populace.
Lord, my dear Cerjat, when I turn to that page of your letter where you
write like an ancient sage in whom the fire has paled into a meek-eyed
state of coolness and virtue, I half laugh and half cry! _You_ old!
_You_ a sort of hermit? Boh! Get out.
With this comes my love and all our loves, to you and Mrs. Cerjat, and
your daughter. I add my special and particular to the sweet "singing
cousin." When shall you and I meet, and where? Must I come to see
Townshend? I begin to think so.
Ever, my dear Cerjat, your affectionate and faithful.
[Sidenote: Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton.]
GAD'S HILL, _Tuesday, June 5th, 1860._
MY DEAR BULWER LYTTON,
I am very much interested and gratified by your letter concerning "A
Tale of Two Cities." I do not quite agree with you on two points, but
that is no deduction from my pleasure.
In the first place, although the surrender of the feudal privileges (on
a motion seconded by a nobleman of great rank) was the occasion of a
sentimental scene, I see no reason to doubt, but on the contrary, many
reasons to believe, that some of these privileges had been used to the
frightful oppression of the peasant, quite as near to the time of the
Revolution as the doctor's narrative, which, you will remember, dates
long before the Terror. And surely when the new philosophy was the talk
of the salons and the slang of the hour, it is not unreasonable or
unallowable to suppose a nobleman wedded to the old cruel ideas, and
representing the time going out, as his nephew represents the time
coming in; as to the condition of the peasant in France generally at
that day, I take it that if anything be certain on earth it is certain
that it was intolerable. No _ex post facto_ enquiries and provings by
figures will hold water, surely, against the tremendous testimony of men
living at the time.
There is a curious book printed at Amsterdam, written to make out no
case whatever, and tiresome enough in its literal dictionary-like
minuteness, scattered up and down the pages of which is full authority
for my marquis. This is "Mercier's Tableau de Paris." Rousseau is the
authority for the peasant's shutting up his house when he had a bit of
meat. The tax-taker was the authority for the wretched creature's
impoverishment.
I am not clear, and I never have been clear, respecting that canon of
fiction which forbids the interposition of accident in such a case as
Madame Defarge's death. Where the accident is inseparable from the
passion and emotion of the character, where it is strictly consistent
with the whole design, and arises out of some culminating proceeding on
the part of the character which the whole story has led up to, it seems
to me to become, as it were, an act of divine justice. And when I use
Miss Pross (though this is quite another question) to bring about that
catastrophe, I have the positive intention of making that half-comic
intervention a part of the desperate woman's failure, and of opposing
that mean death--instead of a desperate one in the streets, which she
wouldn't have minded--to the dignity of Carton's wrong or right; this
_was_ the design, and seemed to be in the fitness of things.
Now, as to the reading. I am sorry to say that it is out of the question
this season. I have had an attack of rheumatism--quite a stranger to
me--which remains hovering about my left side, after having doubled me
up in the back, and which would disable me from standing for two hours.
I have given up all dinners and town engagements, and come to my little
Falstaff House here, sensible of the necessity of country training all
through the summer. Smith would have proposed any appointment to see you
on the subject, but he has been dreadfully ill with tic. Whenever I read
in London, I will gladly put a night aside for your purpose, and we will
plot to connect your name with it, and give it some speciality. But this
could not be before Christmas time, as I should not be able to read
sooner, for in the hot weather it would be useless. Let me hear from you
about this when you have considered it. It would greatly diminish the
expenses, remember.
Ever affectionately and faithfully.
[Sidenote: The Lord John Russell.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Sunday, June 17th, 1860._
MY DEAR LORD JOHN RUSSELL,
I cannot thank you enough for your kind note and its most welcome
enclosure. My sailor-boy comes home from Portsmouth to-morrow, and will
be overjoyed. His masters have been as anxious for getting his
nomination as though it were some distinction for themselves.
Ever your faithful and obliged.
[Sidenote: The Earl of Carlisle.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Wednesday, Aug. 8th, 1860._
MY DEAR LORD CARLISLE,
Coming back here after an absence of three days in town, I find your
kind and cordial letter lying on my table. I heartily thank you for it,
and highly esteem it. I understand that the article on the spirits to
which you refer was written by ---- (he played an Irish porter in one
scene of Bulwer's comedy at Devonshire House). Between ourselves, I
think it must be taken with a few grains of salt, imperial measure. The
experiences referred to "came off" at ----, where the spirit of ----
(among an extensive and miscellaneous bodiless circle) _dines_
sometimes! Mr. ----, the high priest of the mysteries, I have some
considerable reason--derived from two honourable men--for mistrusting.
And that some of the disciples are very easy of belief I know.
This is Falstaff's own Gad's Hill, and I live on the top of it. All goes
well with me, thank God! I should be thoroughly delighted to see you
again, and to show you where the robbery was done. My eldest daughter
keeps my house, and it is one I was extraordinarily fond of when a
child.
My dear Lord Carlisle, ever affectionately yours.
P.S.--I am prowling about, meditating a new book.
[Sidenote: Mr. W. H. Wills.]
OFFICE OF "ALL THE YEAR ROUND,"
_Tuesday, Sept. 4th, 1860._
MY DEAR WILLS,
Your description of your sea-castle makes your room here look uncommonly
dusty. Likewise the costermongers in the street outside, and the one
customer (drunk, with his head on the table) in the Crown Coffee House
over the way, in York Street, have an earthy, and, as I may say, a
land-lubberly aspect. Cape Horn, to the best of _my_ belief, is a
tremendous way off, and there are more bricks and cabbage-leaves between
this office and that dismal point of land than _you_ can possibly
imagine.
Coming here from the station this morning, I met, coming from the
execution of the Wentworth murderer, such a tide of ruffians as never
could have flowed from any point but the gallows. Without any figure of
speech it turned one white and sick to behold them.
Tavistock House is cleared to-day, and possession delivered up. I must
say that in all things the purchaser has behaved thoroughly well, and
that I cannot call to mind any occasion when I have had money dealings
with a Christian that have been so satisfactory, considerate, and
trusting.
I am ornamented at present with one of my most intensely preposterous
and utterly indescribable colds. If you were to make a voyage from Cape
Horn to Wellington Street, you would scarcely recognise in the bowed
form, weeping eyes, rasped nose, and snivelling wretch whom you would
encounter here, the once gay and sparkling, etc. etc.
Everything else here is as quiet as possible. Business reports you
receive from Holsworth. Wilkie looked in to-day, going to
Gloucestershire for a week. The office is full of discarded curtains and
coverings from Tavistock House, which Georgina is coming up this evening
to select from and banish. Mary is in raptures with the beauties of
Dunkeld, but is not very well in health. The Admiral (Sydney) goes up
for his examination to-morrow. If he fails to pass with credit, I will
never believe in anybody again, so in that case look out for your own
reputation with me.
This is really all the news I have, except that I am lazy, and that
Wilkie dines here next Tuesday, in order that we may have a talk about
the Christmas number.
I beg to send my kind regard to Mrs. Wills, and to enquire how she likes
wearing a hat, which of course she does. I also want to know from her
in confidence whether _Crwllm festidiniog llymthll y wodd_?
Yesterday I burnt, in the field at Gad's Hill, the accumulated letters
and papers of twenty years. They sent up a smoke like the genie when he
got out of the casket on the seashore; and as it was an exquisite day
when I began, and rained very heavily when I finished, I suspect my
correspondence of having overcast the face of the heavens.
Ever faithfully.
P.S.--Kind regard to Mr. and Mrs. Novelli.[6]
I have just sent out for _The Globe_. No news.
Hullah's daughter (an artist) tells me that certain female students have
addressed the Royal Academy, entreating them to find a place for their
education. I think it a capital move, for which I can do something
popular and telling in _The Register_. Adelaide Procter is active in the
business, and has a copy of their letter. Will you write to her for
that, and anything else she may have about it, telling her that I
strongly approve, and want to help them myself?
[Sidenote: The Hon. Mrs. Watson.]
GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_Friday Night, Sept. 14th, 1860._
MY DEAR MRS. WATSON,