EVE OF THE VISIT TO AMERICA.
1841.
Greetings from America--Reply to Washington
Irving--Difficulties in the Way--Resolve to
go--Wish to revisit Scenes of Boyhood--Proposed
Book of Travel--Arrangements for the
Journey--Impatience of Suspense--Resolve to
leave the Children--Mrs. Dickens reconciled--A
Grave Illness--Domestic Griefs--The Old
Sorrow--At Windsor--Son Walter's
Christening--At Liverpool with the Travelers.
THE notion of America was in his mind, as we have seen, when he first
projected the _Clock_; and a very hearty letter from Washington Irving
about Little Nell and the _Curiosity Shop_, expressing the delight with
his writings and the yearnings to himself which had indeed been pouring
in upon him for some time from every part of the States, had very
strongly revived it. He answered Irving with more than his own warmth:
unable to thank him enough for his cordial and generous praise, or to
tell him what lasting gratification it had given. "I wish I could find
in your welcome letter," he added, "some hint of an intention to visit
England. I should love to go with you, as I have gone, God knows how
often, into Little Britain, and Eastcheap, and Green Arbor Court, and
Westminster Abbey. . . . It would gladden my heart to compare notes with
you about all those delightful places and people that I used to walk
about and dream of in the daytime, when a very small and
not-over-particularly-taken-care-of boy." After interchange of these
letters the subject was frequently revived; upon his return from
Scotland it began to take shape as a thing that somehow or other, at no
very distant date, _must be_; and at last, near the end of a letter
filled with many unimportant things, the announcement, doubly
underlined, came to me.
The decision once taken, he was in his usual fever until its
difficulties were disposed of. The objections to separation from the
children led at first to the notion of taking them, but this was as
quickly abandoned; and what remained to be overcome yielded readily to
the kind offices of Macready, the offer of whose home to the little ones
during the time of absence, though not accepted to the full extent, gave
yet the assurance needed to quiet natural apprehensions. All this,
including an arrangement for publication of such notes as might occur to
him on the journey, took but a few days; and I was reading in my
chambers a letter he had written the previous day from Broadstairs, when
a note from him reached me, written that morning in London, to tell me
he was on his way to take share of my breakfast. He had come overland by
Canterbury after posting his first letter, had seen Macready the
previous night, and had completed some part of the arrangements. This
mode of rapid procedure was characteristic of him at all similar times,
and will appear in the few following extracts from his letters:
"Now" (19th September) "to astonish you. After balancing, considering,
and weighing the matter in every point of view, I HAVE MADE UP MY MIND
(WITH GOD'S LEAVE) TO GO TO AMERICA--AND TO START AS SOON AFTER
CHRISTMAS AS IT WILL BE SAFE TO GO." Further information was promised
immediately; and a request followed, characteristic as any he could have
added to his design of traveling so far away, that we should visit once
more together the scenes of his boyhood. "On the ninth of October we
leave here. It's a Saturday. If it should be fine dry weather, or
anything like it, will you meet us at Rochester, and stop there two or
three days to see all the lions in the surrounding country? Think of
this. . . . If you'll arrange to come, I'll have the carriage down, and
Topping; and, supposing news from Glasgow don't interfere with us, which
I fervently hope it will not, I will insure that we have much
enjoyment."
Three days later than that which announced his resolve, the subject was
resumed: "I wrote to Chapman & Hall asking them what they thought of it,
and saying I meant to keep a note-book, and publish it for half a guinea
or thereabouts, on my return. They instantly sent the warmest possible
reply, and said they had taken it for granted I would go, and had been
speaking of it only the day before. I have begged them to make every
inquiry about the fares, cabins, berths, and times of sailing; and I
shall make a great effort to take Kate _and_ the children. In that case
I shall try to let the house furnished, for six months (for I shall
remain that time in America); and if I succeed, the rent will nearly pay
the expenses out, and home. I have heard of family cabins at L100; and I
think one of these is large enough to hold us all. A single fare, I
think, is forty guineas. I fear I could not be happy if we had the
Atlantic between us; but leaving them in New York while I ran off a
thousand miles or so, would be quite another thing. If I can arrange all
my plans before publishing the _Clock_ address, I shall state therein
that I am going: which will be no unimportant consideration, as
affording the best possible reason for a long delay. How I am to get on
without you for seven or eight months, I cannot, upon my soul, conceive.
I dread to think of breaking up all our old happy habits for so long a
time. The advantages of going, however, appear by steady looking-at so
great, that I have come to persuade myself it is a matter of imperative
necessity. Kate weeps whenever it is spoken of. Washington Irving has
got a nasty low fever. I heard from him a day or two ago."
His next letter was the unexpected arrival which came by hand from
Devonshire Terrace, when I thought him still by the sea: "This is to
give you notice that I am coming to breakfast with you this morning on
my way to Broadstairs. I repeat it, sir,--on my way _to_ Broadstairs.
For, directly I got Macready's note yesterday I went to Canterbury, and
came on by day-coach for the express purpose of talking with him; which
I did between 11 and 12 last night in Clarence Terrace. The American
preliminaries are necessarily startling, and, to a gentleman of my
temperament, destroy rest, sleep, appetite, and work, unless definitely
arranged.[42] Macready has quite decided me in respect of time and so
forth. The instant I have wrung a reluctant consent from Kate, I shall
take our joint passage in the mail-packet for next January. I never
loved my friends so well as now." We had all discountenanced his first
thought of taking the children; and, upon this and other points, the
experience of our friend who had himself traveled over the States was
very valuable. His next letter, two days later from Broadstairs,
informed me of the result of the Macready conference: "Only a word. Kate
is quite reconciled. 'Anne' (her maid) goes, and is amazingly cheerful
and light of heart upon it. And I think, at present, that it's a greater
trial to me than anybody. The 4th of January is the day. Macready's note
to Kate was received and acted upon with a perfect response. She talks
about it quite gayly, and is satisfied to have nobody in the house but
Fred, of whom, as you know, they are all fond. He has got his promotion,
and they give him the increased salary from the day on which the minute
was made by Baring, I feel so amiable, so meek, so fond of people, so
full of gratitudes and reliances, that I am like a sick man. And I am
already counting the days between this and coming home again."
He was soon, alas! to be what he compared himself to. I met him at
Rochester at the end of September, as arranged; we passed a day and
night there; a day and night in Cobham and its neighborhood, sleeping at
the Leather Bottle; and a day and night at Gravesend. But we were hardly
returned when some slight symptoms of bodily trouble took suddenly
graver form, and an illness followed involving the necessity of surgical
attendance. This, which with mention of the helpful courage displayed by
him has before been alluded to,[43] put off necessarily the Glasgow
dinner; and he had scarcely left his bedroom when a trouble arose near
home which touched him to the depths of the greatest sorrow of his life,
and, in the need of exerting himself for others, what remained of his
own illness seemed to pass away.
His wife's younger brother had died with the same unexpected suddenness
that attended her younger sister's death; and the event had followed
close upon the decease of Mrs. Hogarth's mother while on a visit to her
daughter and Mr. Hogarth. "As no steps had been taken towards the
funeral," he wrote (25th October) in reply to my offer of such service
as I could render, "I thought it best at once to bestir myself; and not
even you could have saved my going to the cemetery. It is a great trial
to me to give up Mary's grave; greater than I can possibly express. I
thought of moving her to the catacombs and saying nothing about it; but
then I remembered that the poor old lady is buried next her at her own
desire, and could not find it in my heart, directly she is laid in the
earth, to take her grandchild away. The desire to be buried next her is
as strong upon me now as it was five years ago; and I _know_ (for I
don't think there ever was love like that I bear her) that it will never
diminish. I fear I can do nothing. Do you think I can? They would move
her on Wednesday, if I resolved to have it done. I cannot bear the
thought of being excluded from her dust; and yet I feel that her
brothers and sisters, and her mother, have a better right than I to be
placed beside her. It is but an idea. I neither think nor hope (God
forbid) that our spirits would ever mingle _there_. I ought to get the
better of it, but it is very hard. I never contemplated this--and coming
so suddenly, and after being ill, it disturbs me more than it ought. It
seems like losing her a second time. . . ." "No," he wrote the morning
after, "I tried that. No, there is no ground on either side to be had. I
must give it up. I shall drive over there, please God, on Thursday
morning, before they get there; and look at her coffin."
He suffered more than he let any one perceive, and was obliged again to
keep his room for some days. On the 2d of November he reported himself
as progressing and ordered to Richmond, which, after a week or so, he
changed to the White Hart at Windsor, where I passed some days with him,
Mrs. Dickens, and her younger sister Georgina; but it was not till near
the close of that month he could describe himself as thoroughly on his
legs again, in the ordinary state on which he was wont to pride himself,
bolt upright, staunch at the knees, a deep sleeper, a hearty eater, a
good laugher, and nowhere a bit the worse, "bating a little weakness now
and then, and a slight nervousness at times."
We had some days of much enjoyment at the end of the year, when Landor
came up from Bath for the christening of his godson; and the
"Britannia," which was to take the travelers from us in January, brought
over to them in December all sorts of cordialities, anticipations, and
stretchings-forth of palms, in token of the welcome awaiting them. On
New Year's Eve they dined with me, and I with them on New Year's Day;
when (his house having been taken for the period of his absence by
General Sir John Wilson) we sealed up his wine-cellar, after opening
therein some sparkling Moselle in honor of the ceremony, and drinking it
then and there to his happy return. Next morning (it was a Sunday) I
accompanied them to Liverpool, Maclise having been suddenly stayed by
his mother's death; the intervening day and its occupations have been
humorously sketched in his American book; and on the 4th they sailed. I
never saw the Britannia after I stepped from her deck back to the small
steamer that had taken us to her. "How little I thought" (were the last
lines of his first American letter), "the first time you mounted the
shapeless coat, that I should have such a sad association with its back
as when I saw it by the paddle-box of that small steamer!"
FOOTNOTES:
[42] See _ante_, p. 123.
[43] See _ante_, p. 244.