The voyage thence to Naples, written from the latter place, is too

capital a description to be lost. The steamer in which they embarked was

"the new express English ship," but they found her to be already more

than full of passengers from Marseilles (among them an old friend, Sir

Emerson Tennent, with his family), and everything in confusion. There

were no places at the captain's table, dinner had to be taken on deck,

no berth or sleeping accommodation was available, and heavy first-class

fares had to be paid. Thus they made their way to Leghorn, where worse

awaited them. The authorities proved to be not favourable to the "crack"

English-officered vessel (she had just been started for the India mail);

and her papers not being examined in time, it was too late to steam away

again that day, and she had to lie all night long off the lighthouse.

"The scene on board beggars description. Ladies on the tables; gentlemen

under the tables; bed-room appliances not usually beheld in public

airing themselves in positions where soup-tureens had been lately

developing themselves; and ladies and gentlemen lying indiscriminately

on the open deck, arranged like spoons on a sideboard. No mattresses, no

blankets, nothing. Towards midnight attempts were made, by means of

awning and flags, to make this latter scene remotely approach an

Australian encampment; and we three (Collins, Egg, and self) lay

together on the bare planks covered with our coats. We were all

gradually dozing off, when a perfectly tropical rain fell, and in a

moment drowned the whole ship. The rest of the night we passed upon the

stairs, with an immense jumble of men and women. When anybody came up

for any purpose we all fell down, and when anybody came down we all fell

up again. Still, the good-humour in the English part of the passengers

was quite extraordinary. . . . There were excellent officers aboard, and,

in the morning, the first mate lent me his cabin to wash in--which I

afterwards lent to Egg and Collins. Then we, the Emerson Tennents, the

captain, the doctor, and the second officer, went off on a jaunt

together to Pisa, as the ship was to lie all day at Leghorn. The captain

was a capital fellow, but I led him, facetiously, such a life the whole

day, that I got most things altered at night. Emerson Tennent's son,

with the greatest amiability, insisted on turning out of his state-room

for me, and I got a good bed there. The store-room down by the hold was

opened for Collins and Egg; and they slept with the moist sugar, the

cheese in cut, the spices, the cruets, the apples and pears, in a

perfect chandler's shop--in company with what a friend of ours would

call a hold gent, who had been so horribly wet through over night that

his condition frightened the authorities; a cat; and the steward, who

dozed in an arm-chair, and all-night-long fell head foremost, once every

five minutes, on Egg, who slept on the counter or dresser. Last night, I

had the steward's own cabin, opening on deck, all to myself. It had been

previously occupied by some desolate lady who went ashore at Civita

Vecchia. There was little or no sea, thank Heaven, all the trip; but

the rain was heavier than any I have ever seen, and the lightning very

constant and vivid. We were, with the crew, some 200 people--provided

with boats, at the utmost stretch, for one hundred perhaps. I could not

help thinking what would happen if we met with any accident: the crew

being chiefly Maltese, and evidently fellows who would cut off alone in

the largest boat, on the least alarm; the speed very high; and the

running, thro' all the narrow rocky channels. Thank God, however, here

we are."

A whimsical postscript closed the amusing narrative. "We towed from

Civita Vecchia the entire Greek navy, I believe; consisting of a little

brig of war with no guns, fitted as a steamer, but disabled by having

burnt the bottoms of her boilers out, in her first run. She was just big

enough to carry the captain and a crew of six or so: but the captain was

so covered with buttons and gold that there never would have been room

for him on board to put those valuables away, if he hadn't worn

them--which he consequently did, all night. Whenever anything was wanted

to be done, as slackening the tow-rope or anything of that sort, our

officers roared at this miserable potentate, in violent English, through

a speaking trumpet; of which he couldn't have understood a word in the

most favourable circumstances. So he did all the wrong things first, and

the right thing always last. The absence of any knowledge of anything

but English on the part of the officers and stewards was most

ridiculous. I met an Italian gentleman on the cabin steps yesterday

morning, vainly endeavouring to explain that he wanted a cup of tea for

his sick wife. And when we were coming out of the harbour at Genoa, and

it was necessary to order away that boat of music you remember, the

chief officer (called 'aft' for the purpose, as 'knowing something of

Italian') delivered himself in this explicit and clear Italian to the

principal performer--'Now Signora, if you don't sheer off you'll be run

down, so you had better trice up that guitar of yours and put about.'"

At Naples some days were passed very merrily; going up Vesuvius and into

the buried cities, with Layard who had joined them, and with the

Tennents. Here a small adventure befell Dickens specially, in itself

extremely unimportant; but told by him with delightful humour in a

letter to his sister-in-law. The old idle Frenchman, to whom all things

are possible, with his snuff-box and dusty umbrella, and all the

delicate and kindly observation, would have enchanted Leigh Hunt, and

made his way to the heart of Charles Lamb. After mentioning Mr. Lowther,

then English charge d'affaires in Naples, as a very agreeable fellow who

had been at the Rockingham play, he alludes to a meeting at his house.

"We had an exceedingly pleasant dinner of eight, preparatory to which I

was near having the ridiculous adventure of not being able to find the

house and coming back dinnerless. I went in an open carriage from the

hotel in all state, and the coachman to my surprise pulled up at the end

of the Chiaja. 'Behold the house,' says he, 'of Il Signor Larthoor!'--at

the same time pointing with his whip into the seventh heaven where the

early stars were shining. 'But the Signor Larthorr,' says I, 'lives at

Pausilippo.' 'It is true,' says the coachman (still pointing to the

evening star), 'but he lives high up the Salita Sant' Antonio where no

carriage ever yet ascended, and that is the house' (evening star as

aforesaid), 'and one must go on foot. Behold the Salita Sant' Antonio!'

I went up it, a mile and a half I should think, I got into the strangest

places among the wildest Neapolitans; kitchens, washing-places,

archways, stables, vineyards; was baited by dogs, and answered, in

profoundly unintelligible language, from behind lonely locked doors in

cracked female voices, quaking with fear; but could hear of no such

Englishman, nor any Englishman. Bye and bye, I came upon a polenta-shop

in the clouds, where an old Frenchman with an umbrella like a faded

tropical leaf (it had not rained in Naples for six weeks) was staring at

nothing at all, with a snuff-box in his hand. To him I appealed,

concerning the Signor Larthoor. 'Sir,' said he, with the sweetest

politeness, 'can you speak French?' 'Sir,' said I, 'a little.' 'Sir,'

said he, 'I presume the Signer Loothere'--you will observe that he

changed the name according to the custom of his country--'is an

Englishman?' I admitted that he was the victim of circumstances and had

that misfortune. 'Sir,' said he, 'one word more. _Has_ he a servant with

a wooden leg?' 'Great heaven, sir,' said I, 'how do I know? I should

think not, but it is possible.' 'It is always,' said the Frenchman,

'possible. Almost all the things of the world are always possible.'

'Sir,' said I--you may imagine my condition and dismal sense of my own

absurdity, by this time--'that is true.' He then took an immense pinch

of snuff wiped the dust off his umbrella, led me to an arch commanding

a wonderful view of the Bay of Naples, and pointed deep into the earth

from which I had mounted. 'Below there, near the lamp, one finds an

Englishman with a servant with a wooden leg. It is always possible that

he is the Signor Loothore.' I had been asked at six o'clock, and it was

now getting on for seven. I went back in a state of perspiration and

misery not to be described, and without the faintest hope of finding the

spot. But as I was going farther down to the lamp, I saw the strangest

staircase up a dark corner, with a man in a white waistcoat (evidently

hired) standing on the top of it fuming. I dashed in at a venture, found

it was the house, made the most of the whole story, and achieved much

popularity. The best of it was that as nobody ever did find the place,

Lowther had put a servant at the bottom of the Salita to wait 'for an

English gentleman;' but the servant (as he presently pleaded), deceived

by the moustache, had allowed the English gentleman to pass

unchallenged."

From Naples they went to Rome, where they found Lockhart, "fearfully

weak and broken, yet hopeful of himself too" (he died the following

year); smoked and drank punch with David Roberts, then painting everyday

with Louis Haghe in St. Peter's; and took the old walks. The Coliseum,

Appian Way, and Streets of Tombs, seemed desolate and grand as ever; but

generally, Dickens adds, "I discovered the Roman antiquities to be

_smaller_ than my imagination in nine years had made them. The Electric

Telegraph now goes like a sunbeam through the cruel old heart of the

Coliseum--a suggestive thing to think about, I fancied. The Pantheon I

thought even nobler than of yore." The amusements were of course an

attraction; and nothing at the Opera amused the party of three English

more, than another party of four Americans who sat behind them in the

pit. "All the seats are numbered arm-chairs, and you buy your number at

the pay-place, and go to it with the easiest direction on the ticket

itself. We were early, and the four places of the Americans were on the

next row behind us--all together. After looking about them for some

time, and seeing the greater part of the seats empty (because the

audience generally wait in a caffe which is part of the theatre), one of

them said 'Waal I dunno--I expect we aint no call to set so nigh to one

another neither--will you scatter Kernel, will you scatter sir?--' Upon

this the Kernel 'scattered' some twenty benches off; and they

distributed themselves (for no earthly reason apparently but to get rid

of one another) all over the pit. As soon as the overture began, in came

the audience in a mass. Then the people who had got the numbers into

which they had 'scattered,' had to get them out; and as they understood

nothing that was said to them, and could make no reply but 'A-mericani,'

you may imagine the number of cocked hats it took to dislodge them. At

last they were all got back into their right places, except one. About

an hour afterwards when Moses (_Moses in Egypt_ was the opera) was

invoking the darkness, and there was a dead silence all over the house,

unwonted sounds of disturbance broke out from a distant corner of the

pit, and here and there a beard got up to look. 'What is it neow sir?'

said one of the Americans to another;--'some person seems to be getting

along, again streeem.' 'Waal sir' he replied 'I dunno. But I xpect 'tis

the Kernel sir, a holdin on.' So it was. The Kernel was ignominiously

escorted back to his right place, not in the least disconcerted, and in

perfectly good spirits and temper." The opera was excellently done, and

the price of the stalls one and threepence English. At Milan, on the

other hand, the Scala was fallen from its old estate, dirty, gloomy,

dull, and the performance execrable.

Another theatre of the smallest pretension Dickens sought out with

avidity in Rome, and eagerly enjoyed. He had heard it said in his old

time in Genoa that the finest Marionetti were here; and now, after great

difficulty, he discovered the company in a sort of stable attached to a

decayed palace. "It was a wet night, and there was no audience but a

party of French officers and ourselves. We all sat together. I never saw

anything more amazing than the performance--altogether only an hour

long, but managed by as many as ten people, for we saw them all go

behind, at the ringing of a bell. The saving of a young lady by a good

fairy from the machinations of an enchanter, coupled with the comic

business of her servant Pulcinella (the Roman Punch) formed the plot of

the first piece. A scolding old peasant woman, who always leaned forward

to scold and put her hands in the pockets of her apron, was incredibly

natural. Pulcinella, so airy, so merry, so life-like, so graceful, he

was irresistible. To see him carrying an umbrella over his mistress's

head in a storm, talking to a prodigious giant whom he met in the

forest, and going to bed with a pony, were things never to be forgotten.

And so delicate are the hands of the people who move them, that every

puppet was an Italian, and did exactly what an Italian does. If he

pointed at any object, if he saluted anybody, if he laughed, if he

cried, he did it as never Englishman did it since Britain first at

Heaven's command arose--arose--arose, &c. There was a ballet afterwards,

on the same scale, and we really came away quite enchanted with the

delicate drollery of the thing. French officers more than ditto."

Of the great enemy to the health of the now capital of the kingdom of

Italy, Dickens remarked in the same letter. "I have been led into some

curious speculations by the existence and progress of the Malaria about

Rome. Isn't it very extraordinary to think of its encroaching and

encroaching on the Eternal City as if it were commissioned to swallow it

up. This year it has been extremely bad, and has long outstayed its

usual time. Rome has been very unhealthy, and is not free now. Few

people care to be out at the bad times of sunset and sunrise, and the

streets are like a desert at night. There is a church, a very little way

outside the walls, destroyed by fire some 16 or 18 years ago, and now

restored and re-created at an enormous expense. It stands in a

wilderness. For any human creature who goes near it, or can sleep near

it, after nightfall, it might as well be at the bottom of the uppermost

cataract of the Nile. Along the whole extent of the Pontine Marshes

(which we came across the other day), no creature in Adam's likeness

lives, except the sallow people at the lonely posting-stations. I walk

out from the Coliseum through the Street of Tombs to the ruins of the

old Appian Way--pass no human being, and see no human habitation but

ruined houses from which the people have fled, and where it is Death to

sleep: these houses being three miles outside a gate of Rome at its

farthest extent. Leaving Rome by the opposite side, we travel for many

many hours over the dreary Campagna, shunned and avoided by all but the

wretched shepherds. Thirteen hours' good posting brings us to Bolsena (I

slept there once before), on the margin of a stagnant lake whence the

workpeople fly as the sun goes down--where it is a risk to go; where

from a distance we saw a mist hang on the place; where, in the

inconceivably wretched inn, no window can be opened; where our dinner

was a pale ghost of a fish with an oily omelette, and we slept in great

mouldering rooms tainted with ruined arches and heaps of dung--and

coming from which we saw no colour in the cheek of man, woman, or child

for another twenty miles. Imagine this phantom knocking at the gates of

Rome; passing them; creeping along the streets; haunting the aisles and

pillars of the churches; year by year more encroaching, and more

impossible of avoidance."

From Rome they posted to Florence, reaching it in three days and a half,

on the morning of the 20th of November; having then been out six weeks,

with only three days' rain; and in another week they were at Venice.

"The fine weather has accompanied us here," Dickens wrote on the 28th of

November, "the place of all others where it is necessary, and the city

has been a blaze of sunlight and blue sky (with an extremely clear cold

air) ever since we have been in it. If you could see it at this moment

you would never forget it. We live in the same house that I lived in

nine years ago, and have the same sitting-room--close to the Bridge of

Sighs and the Palace of the Doges. The room is at the corner of the

house, and there is a narrow street of water running round the side: so

that we have the Grand Canal before the two front windows, and this wild

little street at the corner window: into which, too, our three bedrooms

look. We established a gondola as soon as we arrived, and we slide out

of the hall on to the water twenty times a day. The gondoliers have

queer old customs that belong to their class, and some are sufficiently

disconcerting. . . . It is a point of honour with them, while they are

engaged, to be always at your disposal. Hence it is no use telling them

they may go home for an hour or two--for they won't go. They roll

themselves in shaggy capuccins, great coats with hoods, and lie down on

the stone or marble pavement until they are wanted again. So that when I

come in or go out, on foot--which can be done from this house for some

miles, over little bridges and by narrow ways--I usually walk over the

principal of my vassals, whose custom it is to snore immediately across

the doorway. Conceive the oddity of the most familiar things in this

place, from one instance: Last night we go downstairs at half-past

eight, step into the gondola, slide away on the black water, ripple and

plash swiftly along for a mile or two, land at a broad flight of steps,

and instantly walk into the most brilliant and beautiful theatre

conceivable--all silver and blue, and precious little fringes made of

glittering prisms of glass. There we sit until half-past eleven, come

out again (gondolier asleep outside the box-door), and in a moment are

on the black silent water, floating away as if there were no dry

building in the world. It stops, and in a moment we are out again, upon

the broad solid Piazza of St. Mark, brilliantly lighted with gas, very

like the Palais Royal at Paris, only far more handsome, and shining with

no end of caffes. The two old pillars and the enormous bell-tower are as

gruff and solid against the exquisite starlight as if they were a

thousand miles from the sea or any undermining water: and the front of

the cathedral, overlaid with golden mosaics and beautiful colours, is

like a thousand rainbows even in the night."

His formerly expressed notions as to art and pictures in Italy received

confirmation at this visit. "I am more than ever confirmed in my

conviction that one of the great uses of travelling is to encourage a

man to think for himself, to be bold enough always to declare without

offence that he _does_ think for himself, and to overcome the villainous

meanness of professing what other people have professed when he knows

(if he has capacity to originate an opinion) that his profession is

untrue. The intolerable nonsense against which genteel taste and

subserviency are afraid to rise, in connection with art, is astounding.

Egg's honest amazement and consternation when he saw some of the most

trumpeted things was what the Americans call 'a caution.' In the very

same hour and minute there were scores of people falling into

conventional raptures with that very poor Apollo, and passing over the

most beautiful little figures and heads in the whole Vatican because

they were not expressly set up to be worshipped. So in this place. There

are pictures by Tintoretto in Venice, more delightful and masterly than

it is possible sufficiently to express. His Assembly of the Blest I do

believe to be, take it all in all, the most wonderful and charming

picture ever painted. Your guide-book writer, representing the general

swarming of humbugs, rather patronizes Tintoretto as a man of some sort

of merit; and (bound to follow Eustace, Forsyth, and all the rest of

them) directs you, on pain of being broke for want of gentility in

appreciation, to go into ecstacies with things that have neither

imagination, nature, proportion, possibility, nor anything else in them.

You immediately obey, and tell your son to obey. He tells his son, and

he tells his, and so the world gets at three-fourths of its frauds and

miseries."

The last place visited was Turin, where the travellers arrived on the

5th of December, finding it, with a brightly shining sun, intensely cold

and freezing hard. "There are double windows to all the rooms, but the

Alpine air comes down and numbs my feet as I write (in a cap and shawl)

within six feet of the fire." There was yet something better than this

to report of that bracing Alpine air. To Dickens's remarks on the

Sardinian race, and to what he says of the exile of the noblest

Italians, the momentous events of the few following years gave striking

comment; nor could better proof be afforded of the judgment he brought

to the observation of what passed before him. The letter had in all

respects much interest and attractiveness. "This is a remarkably

agreeable place. A beautiful town, prosperous, thriving, growing

prodigiously, as Genoa is; crowded with busy inhabitants; full of noble

streets and squares. The Alps, now covered deep with snow, are close

upon it, and here and there seem almost ready to tumble into the houses.

The contrast this part of Italy presents to the rest, is amazing.

Beautifully made railroads, admirably managed; cheerful, active people;

spirit, energy, life, progress. In Milan, in every street, the noble

palace of some exile is a barrack, and dirty soldiers are lolling out of

the magnificent windows--it seems as if the whole place were being

gradually absorbed into soldiers. In Naples, something like a hundred

thousand troops. 'I knew,' I said to a certain Neapolitan Marchese there

whom I had known before, and who came to see me the night after I

arrived, 'I knew a very remarkable gentleman when I was last here; who

had never been out of his own country, but was perfectly acquainted with

English literature, and had taught himself to speak English in that

wonderful manner that no one could have known him for a foreigner; I am

very anxious to see him again, but I forget his name.'--He named him,

and his face fell directly. 'Dead?' said I.--'In exile.'--'O dear me!'

said I, 'I had looked forward to seeing him again, more than any one I

was acquainted with in the country!'--'What would you have!' says the

Marchese in a low-voice. 'He was a remarkable man--full of knowledge,

full of spirit, full of generosity. Where should he be but in exile!

Where could he be!' We said not another word about it, but I shall

always remember the short dialogue."

On the other hand there were incidents of the Austrian occupation as to

which Dickens thought the ordinary style of comment unfair; and his

closing remark on their police is well worth preserving. "I am strongly

inclined to think that our countrymen are to blame in the matter of the

Austrian vexations to travellers that have been complained of. Their

manner is so very bad, they are so extraordinarily suspicious, so

determined to be done by everybody, and give so much offence. Now, the

Austrian police are very strict, but they really know how to do

business, and they do it. And if you treat them like gentlemen, they

will always respond. When we first crossed the Austrian frontier, and

were ushered into the police office, I took off my hat. The officer

immediately took off his, and was as polite--still doing his duty,

without any compromise--as it was possible to be. When we came to

Venice, the arrangements were very strict, but were so business-like

that the smallest possible amount of inconvenience consistent with

strictness ensued. Here is the scene. A soldier has come into the

railway carriage (a saloon on the American plan) some miles off, has

touched his hat, and asked for my passport. I have given it. Soldier has

touched his hat again, and retired as from the presence of superior

officer. Alighted from carriage, we pass into a place like a

banking-house, lighted up with gas. Nobody bullies us or drives us

there, but we must go, because the road ends there. Several soldierly

clerks. One very sharp chief. My passport is brought out of an inner

room, certified to be en regle. Very sharp chief takes it, looks at it

(it is rather longer, now, than _Hamlet_), calls out--'Signor Carlo

Dickens!' 'Here I am sir.' 'Do you intend remaining long in Venice sir?'

'Probably four days sir!' 'Italian is known to you sir. You have been

in Venice before?' 'Once before sir.' 'Perhaps you remained longer then

sir?' 'No indeed; I merely came to see, and went as I came.' 'Truly sir?

Do I infer that you are going by Trieste?' 'No. I am going to Parma, and

Turin, and by Paris home.' 'A cold journey sir, I hope it may be a

pleasant one.' 'Thank you.'--He gives me one very sharp look all over,

and wishes me a very happy night. I wish _him_ a very happy night and

it's done. The thing being done at all, could not be better done, or

more politely--though I dare say if I had been sucking a gentish cane

all the time, or talking in English to my compatriots, it might not

unnaturally have been different. At Turin and at Genoa there are no such

stoppages at all; but in any other part of Italy, give me an Austrian in

preference to a native functionary. At Naples it is done in a beggarly,

shambling, bungling, tardy, vulgar way; but I am strengthened in my old

impression that Naples is one of the most odious places on the face of

the earth. The general degradation oppresses me like foul air."

CHAPTER IV.

THREE SUMMERS AT BOULOGNE.

1853, 1854, and 1856.

Boulogne--Visits to France--His First

Residence--Fishermen's Quarter--Villa des

Moulineaux--M. Beaucourt--Tenant and

Landlord--French Prices--Beaucourt's Visit to

England--Preparations for the Fair--English

Friends--Northern Camp--Visit of Prince

Albert--Grand Review--Beaucourt's

Excitement--Emperor, Prince, and

Dickens--Jack-Tars--Legerdemain in

Perfection--Conjuring by Dickens--Making Demons

of Cards--Old Residence resumed--Last of the

Camp--A Household War--Feline Foes--State of

Siege--Preparing for Christmas--Gilbert

A'Becket.

DICKENS was in Boulogne, in 1853, from the middle of June to the end of

September, and for the next three months, as we have seen, was in

Switzerland and Italy. In the following year he went again to Boulogne

in June, and stayed, after finishing _Hard Times_, until far into

October. In February of 1855 he was for a fortnight in Paris with Mr.

Wilkie Collins; not taking up his more prolonged residence there until

the winter. From November 1855 to the end of April 1856 he made the

French capital his home, working at _Little Dorrit_ during all those

months. Then, after a month's interval in Dover and London, he took up

his third summer residence in Boulogne, whither his younger children had

gone direct from Paris; and stayed until September, finishing _Little

Dorrit_ in London in the spring of 1857.

Of the first of these visits, a few lively notes of humour and character

out of his letters will tell the story sufficiently. The second and

third had points of more attractiveness. Those were the years of the

French-English alliance, of the great exposition of English paintings,

of the return of the troops from the Crimea, and of the visit of the

Prince Consort to the Emperor; such interest as Dickens took in these

several matters appearing in his letters with the usual vividness, and

the story of his continental life coming out with amusing distinctness

in the successive pictures they paint with so much warmth and colour.

Another chapter will be given to Paris. This deals only with Boulogne.

For his first summer residence, in June 1853, he had taken a house on

the high ground near the Calais road; an odd French place with the

strangest little rooms and halls, but standing in the midst of a large

garden, with wood and waterfall, a conservatory opening on a great bank

of roses, and paths and gates on one side to the ramparts, on the other

to the sea. Above all there was a capital proprietor and landlord, by

whom the cost of keeping up gardens and wood (which he called a forest)

was defrayed, while he gave his tenant the whole range of both and all

the flowers for nothing, sold him the garden produce as it was wanted,

and kept a cow on the estate to supply the family milk. "If this were

but 300 miles farther off," wrote Dickens, "how the English would rave

about it! I do assure you that there are picturesque people, and town,

and country, about this place, that quite fill up the eye and fancy. As

to the fishing people (whose dress can have changed neither in colour

nor in form for many many years), and their quarter of the town

cobweb-hung with great brown nets across the narrow up-hill streets,

they are as good as Naples, every bit." His description both of house

and landlord, of which I tested the exactness when I visited him, was in

the old pleasant vein; requiring no connection with himself to give it

interest, but, by the charm and ease with which everything picturesque

or characteristic was disclosed, placed in the domain of art.

"O the rain here yesterday!" (26th of June.) "A great sea-fog rolling

in, a strong wind blowing, and the rain coming down in torrents all day

long. . . . This house is on a great hill-side, backed up by woods of young

trees. It faces the Haute Ville with the ramparts and the unfinished

cathedral--which capital object is exactly opposite the windows. On the

slope in front, going steep down to the right, all Boulogne is piled and

jumbled about in a very picturesque manner. The view is charming--closed

in at last by the tops of swelling hills; and the door is within ten

minutes of the post-office, and within quarter of an hour of the sea.

The garden is made in terraces up the hill-side, like an Italian garden;

the top walks being in the before-mentioned woods. The best part of it

begins at the level of the house, and goes up at the back, a couple of

hundred feet perhaps. There are at present thousands of roses all about

the house, and no end of other flowers. There are five great

summer-houses, and (I think) fifteen fountains--not one of which

(according to the invariable French custom) ever plays. The house is a

doll's house of many rooms. It is one story high, with eight and thirty

steps up and down--tribune wise--to the front door: the noblest French

demonstration I have ever seen I think. It is a double house; and as

there are only four windows and a pigeon-hole to be beheld in front, you

would suppose it to contain about four rooms. Being built on the

hill-side, the top story of the house at the back--there are two stories

there--opens on the level of another garden. On the ground floor there

is a very pretty hall, almost all glass; a little dining-room opening on

a beautiful conservatory, which is also looked into through a great

transparent glass in a mirror-frame over the chimney-piece, just as in

Paxton's room at Chatsworth; a spare bed-room, two little drawing-rooms

opening into one another, the family bed-rooms, a bath-room, a glass

corridor, an open yard, and a kind of kitchen with a machinery of stoves

and boilers. Above, there are eight tiny bed-rooms all opening on one

great room in the roof, originally intended for a billiard-room. In the

basement there is an admirable kitchen with every conceivable requisite

in it, a noble cellar, first-rate man's room and pantry; coach-house,

stable, coal-store and wood-store; and in the garden is a pavilion,

containing an excellent spare bed-room on the ground floor. The

getting-up of these places, the looking-glasses, clocks, little stoves,

all manner of fittings, must be seen to be appreciated. The conservatory

is full of choice flowers and perfectly beautiful."

Then came the charm of the letter, his description of his landlord,

lightly sketched by him in print as M. Loyal-Devasseur, but here filled

in with the most attractive touches his loving hand could give. "But the

landlord--M. Beaucourt--is wonderful. Everybody here has two surnames (I

cannot conceive why), and M. Beaucourt, as he is always called, is by

rights M. Beaucourt-Mutuel. He is a portly jolly fellow with a fine open

face; lives on the hill behind, just outside the top of the garden; and

was a linen draper in the town, where he still has a shop, but is

supposed to have mortgaged his business and to be in difficulties--all

along of this place, which he has planted with his own hands; which he

cultivates all day; and which he never on any consideration speaks of

but as 'the Property.' He is extraordinarily popular in Boulogne (the

people in the shops invariably brightening up at the mention of his

name, and congratulating us on being his tenants), and really seems to

deserve it. He is such a liberal fellow that I can't bear to ask him for

anything, since he instantly supplies it whatever it is. The things he

has done in respect of unreasonable bedsteads and washing-stands, I

blush to think of. I observed the other day in one of the side

gardens--there are gardens at each side of the house too--a place where

I thought the Comic Countryman" (a name he was giving just then to his

youngest boy) "must infallibly trip over, and make a little descent of a

dozen feet. So I said, 'M. Beaucourt'--who instantly pulled off his cap

and stood bareheaded--'there are some spare pieces of wood lying by the

cow-house, if you would have the kindness to have one laid across here I

think it would be safer.' 'Ah, mon dieu sir,' said M. Beaucourt, 'it

must be iron. This is not a portion of the property where you would like

to see wood.' 'But iron is so expensive,' said I, 'and it really is not

worth while----' 'Sir, pardon me a thousand times,' said M. Beaucourt,

'it shall be iron. Assuredly and perfectly it shall be iron.' 'Then M.

Beaucourt,' said I, 'I shall be glad to pay a moiety of the cost.'

'Sir,' said M. Beaucourt, 'Never!' Then to change the subject, he slided

from his firmness and gravity into a graceful conversational tone, and

said, 'In the moonlight last night, the flowers on the property

appeared, O Heaven, to be _bathing themselves in the sky_. You like the

property?' 'M. Beaucourt,' said I, 'I am enchanted with it; I am more

than satisfied with everything.' 'And I sir,' said M. Beaucourt, laying

his cap upon his breast, and kissing his hand--'I equally!' Yesterday

two blacksmiths came for a day's work, and put up a good solid handsome

bit of iron-railing, morticed into the stone parapet. . . . If the

extraordinary things in the house defy description, the amazing

phenomena in the gardens never could have been dreamed of by anybody but

a Frenchman bent upon one idea. Besides a portrait of the house in the

dining-room, there is a plan of the property in the hall. It looks about

the size of Ireland; and to every one of the extraordinary objects,

there is a reference with some portentous name. There are fifty-one such

references, including the Cottage of Tom Thumb, the Bridge of

Austerlitz, the Bridge of Jena, the Hermitage, the Bower of the Old

Guard, the Labyrinth (I have no idea which is which); and there is

guidance to every room in the house, as if it were a place on that

stupendous scale that without such a clue you must infallibly lose your

way, and perhaps perish of starvation between bedroom and bedroom."[188]

On the 3rd of July there came a fresh trait of the good fellow of a

landlord. "Fancy what Beaucourt told me last night. When he 'conceived

the inspiration' of planting the property ten years ago, he went over to

England to buy the trees, took a small cottage in the market-gardens at

Putney, lived there three months, held a symposium every night attended

by the principal gardeners of Fulham, Putney, Kew, and Hammersmith

(which he calls Hamsterdam), and wound up with a supper at which the

market-gardeners rose, clinked their glasses, and exclaimed with one

accord (I quote him exactly) VIVE BEAUCOURT! He was a captain in the

National Guard, and Cavaignac his general. Brave Capitaine Beaucourt!

said Cavaignac, you must receive a decoration. My General, said

Beaucourt, No! It is enough for me that I have done my duty. I go to lay

the first stone of a house upon a Property I have--that house shall be

my decoration. (Regard that house!)" Addition to the picture came in a

letter of the 24th of July: with a droll glimpse of Shakespeare at the

theatre, and of the Saturday's pig-market.

"I may mention that the great Beaucourt daily changes the orthography of

this place. He has now fixed it, by having painted up outside the garden

gate, 'Entree particuliere de la Villa des Moulineaux.' On another gate

a little higher up, he has had painted 'Entree des Ecuries de la Villa

des Moulineaux.' On another gate a little lower down (applicable to one

of the innumerable buildings in the garden), 'Entree du Tom Pouce.' On

the highest gate of the lot, leading to his own house, 'Entree du

Chateau Napoleonienne.' All of which inscriptions you will behold in

black and white when you come. I see little of him now, as, all things

being 'bien arrangees,' he is delicate of appearing. His wife has been

making a trip in the country during the last three weeks, but (as he

mentioned to me with his hat in his hand) it was necessary that he

should remain here, to be continually at the disposition of the tenant

of the Property. (The better to do this, he has had roaring dinner

parties of fifteen daily; and the old woman who milks the cows has been

fainting up the hill under vast burdens of champagne.)

"We went to the theatre last night, to see the _Midsummer Night's

Dream_--of the Opera Comique. It is a beautiful little theatre now, with

a very good company; and the nonsense of the piece was done with a sense

quite confounding in that connexion. Willy Am Shay Kes Peer; Sirzhon

Foll Stayffe; Lor Lattimeer; and that celebrated Maid of Honour to Queen

Elizabeth, Meees Oleeveeir--were the principal characters.

"Outside the old town, an army of workmen are (and have been for a week

or so, already) employed upon an immense building which I supposed might

be a Fort, or a Monastery, or a Barrack, or other something designed to

last for ages. I find it is for the annual fair, which begins on the

fifth of August and lasts a fortnight. Almost every Sunday we have a

fete, where there is dancing in the open air, and where immense men with

prodigious beards revolve on little wooden horses like Italian irons, in

what we islanders call a roundabout, by the hour together. But really

the good humour and cheerfulness are very delightful. Among the other

sights of the place, there is a pig-market every Saturday, perfectly

insupportable in its absurdity. An excited French peasant, male or

female, with a determined young pig, is the most amazing spectacle. I

saw a little Drama enacted yesterday week, the drollery of which was

perfect. _Dram. Pers._ 1. A pretty young woman with short petticoats and

trim blue stockings, riding a donkey with two baskets and a pig in each.

2. An ancient farmer in a blouse, driving four pigs, his four in hand,

with an enormous whip--and being drawn against walls and into smoking

shops by any one of the four. 3. A cart, with an old pig (manacled)

looking out of it, and terrifying six hundred and fifty young pigs in

the market by his terrific grunts. 4. Collector of Octroi in an immense

cocked hat, with a stream of young pigs running, night and day, between

his military boots and rendering accounts impossible. 5. Inimitable,

confronted by a radiation of elderly pigs, fastened each by one leg to a

bunch of stakes in the ground. 6. John Edmund Reade, poet, expressing

eternal devotion to and admiration of Landor, unconscious of approaching

pig recently escaped from barrow. 7. Priests, peasants, soldiers, &c.

&c."

He had meanwhile gathered friendly faces round him. Frank Stone went

over with his family to a house taken for him on the St. Omer road by

Dickens, who was joined in the chateau by Mr. and Mrs. Leech and Mr.

Wilkie Collins. "Leech says that when he stepped from the boat after

their stormy passage, he was received by the congregated spectators with

a distinct round of applause as by far the most intensely and

unutterably miserable looking object that had yet appeared. The laughter

was tumultuous, and he wishes his friends to know that altogether he

made an immense hit." So passed the summer months: excursions with these

friends to Amiens and Beauvais relieving the work upon his novel, and

the trip to Italy, already described, following on its completion.

In June, 1854, M. Beaucourt had again received his famous tenant, but in

another cottage or chateau (to him convertible terms) on the much

cherished property, placed on the very summit of the hill with a private

road leading out to the Column, a really pretty place, rooms larger than

in the other house, a noble sea view, everywhere nice prospects, good

garden, and plenty of sloping turf.[189] It was called the Villa du

Camp de Droite, and here Dickens stayed, as I have intimated, until the

eve of his winter residence in Paris.

The formation of the Northern Camp at Boulogne began the week after he

had finished _Hard Times_, and he watched its progress, as it increased

and extended itself along the cliffs towards Calais, with the liveliest

amusement. At first he was startled by the suddenness with which

soldiers overran the roads, became billeted in every house, made the

bridges red with their trowsers, and "sprang upon the pier like

fantastic mustard and cress when boats were expected, many of them never

having seen the sea before." But the good behaviour of the men had a

reconciling effect, and their ingenuity delighted him. The quickness

with which they raised whole streets of mud-huts, less picturesque than

the tents,[190] but (like most unpicturesque things) more comfortable,

was like an Arabian Nights' tale. "Each little street holds 144 men, and

every corner-door has the number of the street upon it as soon as it is

put up; and the postmen can fall to work as easily as in the Rue de

Rivoli at Paris." His patience was again a little tried when he found

baggage-wagons ploughing up his favourite walks, and trumpeters in twos

and threes teaching newly-recruited trumpeters in all the sylvan places,

and making the echoes hideous. But this had its amusement too. "I met

to-day a weazen sun-burnt youth from the south with such an immense

regimental shako on, that he looked like a sort of lucifer match-box,

evidently blowing his life rapidly out, under the auspices of two

magnificent creatures all hair and lungs, of such breadth across the

shoulders that I couldn't see their breast-buttons when I stood in front

of them."

The interest culminated as the visit of the Prince Consort approached

with its attendant glories of illuminations and reviews. Beaucourt's

excitement became intense. The Villa du Camp de Droite was to be a blaze

of triumph on the night of the arrival; Dickens, who had carried over

with him the meteor flag of England and set it streaming over a haystack

in his field,[191] now hoisted the French colours over the British Jack

in honour of the national alliance; the Emperor was to subside to the

station of a general officer, so that all the rejoicings should be in

honour of the Prince; and there was to be a review in the open country

near Wimereux, when "at one stage of the maneuvres (I am too excited to

spell the word but you know what I mean)" the whole hundred thousand men

in the camp of the North were to be placed before the Prince's eyes, to

show him what a division of the French army might be. "I believe

everything I hear," said Dickens. It was the state of mind of Hood's

country gentleman after the fire at the Houses of Parliament.

"Beaucourt, as one of the town council, receives summonses to turn out

and debate about something, or receive somebody, every five minutes.

Whenever I look out of window, or go to the door, I see an immense black

object at Beaucourt's porch like a boat set up on end in the air with a

pair of white trowsers below it. This is the cocked hat of an official

Huissier, newly arrived with a summons, whose head is thrown back as he

is in the act of drinking Beaucourt's wine." The day came at last, and

all Boulogne turned out for its holiday; "but I" Dickens wrote, "had by

this cooled down a little, and, reserving myself for the illuminations,

I abandoned the great men and set off upon my usual country walk. See my

reward. Coming home by the Calais road, covered with dust, I suddenly

find myself face to face with Albert and Napoleon, jogging along in the

pleasantest way, a little in front, talking extremely loud about the

view, and attended by a brilliant staff of some sixty or seventy

horsemen, with a couple of our royal grooms with their red coats riding

oddly enough in the midst of the magnates. I took off my wide-awake

without stopping to stare, whereupon the Emperor pulled off his cocked

hat; and Albert (seeing, I suppose, that it was an Englishman) pulled

off his. Then we went our several ways. The Emperor is broader across

the chest than in the old times when we used to see him so often at

Gore-house, and stoops more in the shoulders. Indeed his carriage

thereabouts is like Fonblanque's."[192] The town he described as "one

great flag" for the rest of the visit; and to the success of the

illuminations he contributed largely himself by leading off splendidly

with a hundred and twenty wax candles blazing in his seventeen front

windows, and visible from that great height over all the place. "On the

first eruption Beaucourt _danced and screamed_ on the grass before the

door; and when he was more composed, set off with Madame Beaucourt to

look at the house from every possible quarter, and, he said, collect the

suffrages of his compatriots."

Their suffrages seem to have gone, however, mainly in another direction.

"It was wonderful," Dickens wrote, "to behold about the streets the

small French soldiers of the line seizing our Guards by the hand and

embracing them. It was wonderful, too, to behold the English sailors in

the town, shaking hands with everybody and generally patronizing

everything. When the people could not get hold of either a soldier or a

sailor, they rejoiced in the royal grooms, and embraced _them_. I don't

think the Boulogne people were surprised by anything so much, as by the

three cheers the crew of the yacht gave when the Emperor went aboard to

lunch. The prodigious volume of them, and the precision, and the

circumstance that no man was left straggling on his own account either

before or afterwards, seemed to strike the general mind with amazement.

Beaucourt said it was _like boxing_." That was written on the 10th of

September; but in a very few days Dickens was unwillingly convinced

that whatever the friendly disposition to England might be, the war with

Russia was decidedly unpopular. He was present when the false report of

the taking of Sebastopol reached the Emperor and Empress. "I was at the

Review" (8th of October) "yesterday week, very near the Emperor and

Empress, when the taking of Sebastopol was announced. It was a

magnificent show on a magnificent day; and if any circumstance could

make it special, the arrival of the telegraphic despatch would be the

culminating point one might suppose. It quite disturbed and mortified me

to find how faintly, feebly, miserably, the men responded to the call of

the officers to cheer, as each regiment passed by. Fifty excited

Englishmen would make a greater sign and sound than a thousand of these

men do. . . . The Empress was very pretty, and her slight figure sat

capitally on her grey horse. When the Emperor gave her the despatch to

read, she flushed and fired up in a very pleasant way, and kissed it

with as natural an impulse as one could desire to see."

On the night of that day Dickens went up to see a play acted at a cafe

at the camp, and found himself one of an audience composed wholly of

officers and men, with only four ladies among them, officers' wives. The

steady, working, sensible faces all about him told their own story; "and

as to kindness and consideration towards the poor actors, it was real

benevolence." Another attraction at the camp was a conjuror, who had

been called to exhibit twice before the imperial party, and whom Dickens

always afterwards referred to as the most consummate master of

legerdemain he had seen. Nor was he a mean authority as to this, being

himself, with his tools at hand, a capital conjuror;[193] but the

Frenchman scorned help, stood among the company without any sort of

apparatus, and, by the mere force of sleight of hand and an astonishing

memory, performed feats having no likeness to anything Dickens had ever

seen done, and totally inexplicable to his most vigilant reflection. "So

far as I know, a perfectly original genius, and that puts any sort of

knowledge of legerdemain, such as I supposed that I possessed, at utter

defiance." The account he gave dealt with two exploits only, the easiest

to describe, and, not being with cards, not the most remarkable; for he

would also say of this Frenchman that he transformed cards into very

demons. He never saw a human hand touch them in the same way, fling them

about so amazingly, or change them in his, one's own, or another's hand,

with a skill so impossible to follow.

"You are to observe that he was _with the company_, not in the least

removed from them; and that we occupied the front row. He brought in

some writing paper with him when he entered, and a black-lead pencil;

and he wrote some words on half-sheets of paper. One of these

half-sheets he folded into two, and gave to Catherine to hold. Madame,

he says aloud, will you think of any class of objects? I have done

so.--Of what class, Madame? Animals.--Will you think of a particular

animal, Madame? I have done so.--Of what animal? The Lion.--Will you

think of another class of objects, Madame? I have done so.--Of what

class? Flowers.--The particular flower? The Rose.--Will you open the

paper you hold in your hand? She opened it, and there was neatly and

plainly written in pencil--_The Lion._ _The Rose._ Nothing whatever had

led up to these words, and they were the most distant conceivable from

Catherine's thoughts when she entered the room. He had several common

school-slates about a foot square. He took one of these to a

field-officer from the camp, decore and what not, who sat about six from

us, with a grave saturnine friend next him. My General, says he, will

you write a name on this slate, after your friend has done so? Don't

show it to me. The friend wrote a name, and the General wrote a name.

The conjuror took the slate rapidly from the officer, threw it violently

down on the ground with its written side to the floor, and asked the

officer to put his foot upon it and keep it there: which he did. The

conjuror considered for about a minute, looking devilish hard at the

General.--My General, says he, your friend wrote Dagobert, upon the

slate under your foot. The friend admits it.--And you, my General, wrote

Nicholas. General admits it, and everybody laughs and applauds.--My

General, will you excuse me, if I change that name into a name

expressive of the power of a great nation, which, in happy alliance

with the gallantry and spirit of France will shake that name to its

centre? Certainly I will excuse it.--My General, take up the slate and

read. General reads: DAGOBERT, VICTORIA. The first in his friend's

writing; the second in a new hand. I never saw anything in the least

like this; or at all approaching to the absolute certainty, the

familiarity, quickness, absence of all machinery, and actual

face-to-face, hand-to-hand fairness between the conjuror and the

audience, with which it was done. I have not the slightest idea of the

secret.--One more. He was blinded with several table napkins, and then a

great cloth was bodily thrown over them and his head too, so that his

voice sounded as if he were under a bed. Perhaps half a dozen dates were

written on a slate. He takes the slate in his hand, and throws it

violently down on the floor as before, remains silent a minute, seems to

become agitated, and bursts out thus: 'What is this I see? A great city,

but of narrow streets and old-fashioned houses, many of which are of

wood, resolving itself into ruins! How is it falling into ruins? Hark! I

hear the crackling of a great conflagration, and, looking up, I behold a

vast cloud of flame and smoke. The ground is covered with hot cinders

too, and people are flying into the fields and endeavouring to save

their goods. This great fire, this great wind, this roaring noise! This

is the great fire of London, and the first date upon the slate must be

one, six, six, six--the year in which it happened!' And so on with all

the other dates. There! Now, if you will take a cab and impart these

mysteries to Rogers, I shall be very glad to have his opinion of them."

Rogers had taxed our credulity with some wonderful clairvoyant

experiences of his own in Paris to which here was a parallel at last!

When leaving Paris for his third visit to Boulogne, at the beginning of

June 1856, he had not written a word of the ninth number of his new

book, and did not expect for another month to "see land from the running

sea of _Little Dorrit_." He had resumed the house he first occupied, the

cottage or villa "des Moulineaux," and after dawdling about his garden

for a few days with surprising industry in a French farmer garb of blue

blouse, leathern belt, and military cap, which he had mounted as "the

only one for complete comfort," he wrote to me that he was getting "Now

to work again--to work! The story lies before me, I hope, strong and

clear. Not to be easily told; but nothing of that sort IS to be easily

done that _I_ know of." At work it became his habit to sit late, and

then, putting off his usual walk until night, to lie down among the

roses reading until after tea ("middle-aged Love in a blouse and belt"),

when he went down to the pier. "The said pier at evening is a phase of

the place we never see, and which I hardly knew. But I never did behold

such specimens of the youth of my country, male and female, as pervade

that place. They are really, in their vulgarity and insolence, quite

disheartening. One is so fearfully ashamed of them, and they contrast so

very unfavourably with the natives." Mr. Wilkie Collins was again his

companion in the summer weeks, and the presence of Jerrold for the

greater part of the time added much to his enjoyment.

The last of the camp was now at hand. It had only a battalion of men in

it, and a few days would see them out. At first there was horrible

weather, "storms of wind, rushes of rain, heavy squalls, cold airs, sea

fogs, banging shutters, flapping doors, and beaten down rose-trees by

the hundred; but then came a delightful week among the corn fields and

bean fields, and afterwards the end. It looks very singular and very

miserable. The soil being sand, and the grass having been trodden away

these two years, the wind from the sea carries the sand into the chinks

and ledges of all the doors and windows, and chokes them;--just as if

they belonged to Arab huts in the desert. A number of the

non-commissioned officers made turf-couches outside their huts, and

there were turf orchestras for the bands to play in; all of which are

fast getting sanded over in a most Egyptian manner. The Fair is on,

under the walls of the haute ville over the way. At one popular show,

the Malakhoff is taken every half-hour between 4 and 11. Bouncing

explosions announce every triumph of the French arms (the English have

nothing to do with it); and in the intervals a man outside blows a

railway whistle--straight into the dining-room. Do you know that the

French soldiers call the English medal 'The Salvage Medal'--meaning that

they got it for saving the English army? I don't suppose there are a

thousand people in all France who believe that we did anything but get

rescued by the French. And I am confident that the no-result of our

precious Chelsea enquiry has wonderfully strengthened this conviction.

Nobody at home has yet any adequate idea, I am deplorably sure, of what

the Barnacles and the Circumlocution Office have done for us. But

whenever we get into war again, the people will begin to find out."

His own household had got into a small war already, of which the

commander-in-chief was his man-servant "French," the bulk of the forces

engaged being his children, and the invaders two cats. Business brought

him to London on the hostilities breaking out, and on his return after a

few days the story of the war was told. "Dick," it should be said, was a

canary very dear both to Dickens and his eldest daughter, who had so

tamed to her loving hand its wild little heart that it was become the

most docile of companions.[194] "The only thing new in this garden is

that war is raging against two particularly tigerish and fearful cats

(from the mill, I suppose), which are always glaring in dark corners,

after our wonderful little Dick. Keeping the house open at all points,

it is impossible to shut them out, and they hide themselves in the most

terrific manner: hanging themselves up behind draperies, like bats, and

tumbling out in the dead of night with frightful caterwaulings.

Hereupon, French borrows Beaucourt's gun, loads the same to the muzzle,

discharges it twice in vain and throws himself over with the recoil,

exactly like a clown. But at last (while I was in town) he aims at the

more amiable cat of the two, and shoots that animal dead. Insufferably

elated by this victory, he is now engaged from morning to night in

hiding behind bushes to get aim at the other. He does nothing else

whatever. All the boys encourage him and watch for the enemy--on whose

appearance they give an alarm which immediately serves as a warning to

the creature, who runs away. They are at this moment (ready dressed for

church) all lying on their stomachs in various parts of the garden.

Horrible whistles give notice to the gun what point it is to approach. I

am afraid to go out, lest I should be shot. Mr. Plornish says his

prayers at night in a whisper, lest the cat should overhear him and take

offence. The tradesmen cry out as they come up the avenue, 'Me voici!

C'est moi--boulanger--ne tirez pas, Monsieur Franche!' It is like living

in a state of siege; and the wonderful manner in which the cat preserves

the character of being the only person not much put out by the intensity

of this monomania, is most ridiculous." (6th of July.) . . . "About four

pounds of powder and half a ton of shot have been (13th of July) fired

off at the cat (and the public in general) during the week. The finest

thing is that immediately after I have heard the noble sportsman blazing

away at her in the garden in front, I look out of my room door into the

drawing-room, and am pretty sure to see her coming in after the birds,

in the calmest manner, by the back window. Intelligence has been brought

to me from a source on which I can rely, that French has newly conceived

the atrocious project of tempting her into the coach-house by meat and

kindness, and there, from an elevated portmanteau, blowing her head off.

This I mean sternly to interdict, and to do so to-day as a work of

piety."

Besides the graver work which Mr. Wilkie Collins and himself were busy

with, in these months, and by which _Household Words_ mainly was to

profit, some lighter matters occupied the leisure of both. There were

to be, at Christmas, theatricals again at Tavistock House; in which the

children, with the help of their father and other friends, were to

follow up the success of the _Lighthouse_ by again acquitting themselves

as grown-up actors; and Mr. Collins was busy preparing for them a new

drama to be called _The Frozen Deep_, while Dickens was sketching a

farce for Mr. Lemon to fill in. But this pleasant employment had sudden

and sad interruption.

An epidemic broke out in the town, affecting the children of several

families known to Dickens, among them that of his friend Mr. Gilbert

A'Becket; who, upon arriving from Paris, and finding a favourite little

son stricken dangerously, sank himself under an illness from which he

had been suffering, and died two days after the boy. "He had for three

days shown symptoms of rallying, and we had some hope of his recovery;

but he sank and died, and never even knew that the child had gone before

him. A sad, sad story." Dickens meanwhile had sent his own children home

with his wife, and the rest soon followed. Poor M. Beaucourt was

inconsolable. "The desolation of the place is wretched. When Mamey and

Katey went, Beaucourt came in and wept. He really is almost

broken-hearted about it. He had planted all manner of flowers for next

month, and has thrown down the spade and left off weeding the garden, so

that it looks something like a dreary bird-cage with all manner of

grasses and chickweeds sticking through the bars and lying in the sand.

'Such a loss too,' he says, 'for Monsieur Dickens!' Then he looks in at

the kitchen window (which seems to be his only relief), and sighs

himself up the hill home."[195]

The interval of residence in Paris between these two last visits to

Boulogne is now to be described.

FOOTNOTES:

[188] Prices are reported in one of the letters; and, considering what

they have been since, the touch of disappointment hinted at may raise a

smile. "Provisions are scarcely as cheap as I expected, though very

different from London: besides which, a pound weight here, is a pound

and a quarter English. So that meat at 7_d._ a pound, is actually a

fourth less. A capital dish of asparagus costs us about fivepence; a

fowl, one and threepence; a duck, a few halfpence more; a dish of fish,

about a shilling. The very best wine at tenpence that I ever drank--I

used to get it very good for the same money in Genoa, but not so good.

The common people very engaging and obliging."

[189] Besides the old friends before named, Thackeray and his family

were here in the early weeks, living "in a melancholy but very good

chateau on the Paris road, where their landlord (a Baron) has supplied

them, T. tells me, with one milk-jug as the entire crockery of the

establishment." Our friend soon tired of this, going off to Spa, and on

his return, after ascending the hill to smoke a farewell cigar with

Dickens, left for London and Scotland in October.

[190] Another of his letters questioned even the picturesqueness a

little, for he discovered that on a sunny day the white tents, seen from

a distance, looked exactly like an immense washing establishment with

all the linen put out to dry.

[191] "Whence it can be seen for miles and miles, to the glory of

England and the joy of Beaucourt."

[192] The picture had changed drearily in less than a year and a half,

when (17th of Feb. 1856) Dickens thus wrote from Paris. "I suppose

mortal man out of bed never looked so ill and worn as the Emperor does

just now. He passed close by me on horseback, as I was coming in at the

door on Friday, and I never saw so haggard a face. Some English saluted

him, and he lifted his hand to his hat as slowly, painfully, and

laboriously, as if his arm were made of lead. I think he _must_ be in

pain."

[193] I permit myself to quote from the bill of one of his

entertainments in the old merry days at Bonchurch (ii. 425-434), of

course drawn up by himself, whom it describes as "The Unparalleled

Necromancer RHIA RHAMA RHOOS, educated cabalistically in the Orange

Groves of Salamanca and the Ocean Caves of Alum Bay," some of whose

proposed wonders it thus prefigures:

THE LEAPING CARD WONDER.

Two Cards being drawn from the Pack by two of

the company, and placed, with the Pack, in the

Necromancer's box, will leap forth at the

command of any lady of not less than eight, or

more than eighty, years of age.

*** _This wonder is the result of nine years'

seclusion in the mines of Russia._

THE PYRAMID WONDER.

A shilling being lent to the Necromancer by any

gentleman of not less than twelve months, or

more than one hundred years, of age, and

carefully marked by the said gentleman, will

disappear from within a brazen box at the word

of command, and pass through the hearts of an

infinity of boxes, which will afterwards build

themselves into pyramids and sink into a small

mahogany box, at the Necromancer's bidding.

*** _Five thousand guineas were paid for the

acquisition of this wonder, to a Chinese

Mandarin, who died of grief immediately after

parting with the secret._

THE CONFLAGRATION WONDER.

A Card being drawn from the Pack by any lady,

not under a direct and positive promise of

marriage, will be immediately named by the

Necromancer, destroyed by fire, and reproduced

from its own ashes.

*** _An annuity of one thousand pounds has been

offered to the Necromancer by the Directors of

the Sun Fire Office for the secret of this

wonder--and refused!!!_

THE LOAF OF BREAD WONDER.

The watch of any truly prepossessing lady, of

any age, single or married, being locked by the

Necromancer in a strong box, will fly at the

word of command from within that box into the

heart of an ordinary half-quartern loaf, whence

it shall be cut out in the presence of the

whole company, whose cries of astonishment will

be audible at a distance of some miles.

*** _Ten years in the Plains of Tartary were

devoted to the study of this wonder._

THE TRAVELLING DOLL WONDER.

The travelling doll is composed of solid wood

throughout, but, by putting on a travelling

dress of the simplest construction, becomes

invisible, performs enormous journeys in half a

minute, and passes from visibility to

invisibility with an expedition so astonishing

that no eye can follow its transformations.

*** _The Necromancer's attendant usually faints

on beholding this wonder, and is only to be

revived by the administration of brandy and

water._

THE PUDDING WONDER.

The company having agreed among themselves to

offer to the Necromancer, by way of loan, the

hat of any gentleman whose head has arrived at

maturity of size, the Necromancer, without

removing that hat for an instant from before

the eyes of the delighted company, will light a

fire in it, make a plum pudding in his magic

saucepan, boil it over the said fire, produce

it in two minutes, thoroughly done, cut it, and

dispense it in portions to the whole company,

for their consumption then and there; returning

the hat at last, wholly uninjured by fire, to

its lawful owner.

*** _The extreme liberality of this wonder

awakening the jealousy of the beneficent

Austrian Government, when exhibited in Milan,

the Necromancer had the honour to be seized,

and confined for five years in the fortress of

that city._

[194] Dick died at Gadshill in 1866, in the sixteenth year of his age,

and was honoured with a small tomb and epitaph.

[195] I cannot take leave of M. Beaucourt without saying that I am

necessarily silent as to the most touching traits recorded of him by

Dickens, because they refer to the generosity shown by him to an English

family in occupation of another of his houses, in connection with whom

his losses must have been considerable, but for whom he had nothing but

help and sympathy. Replying to some questions about them, put by Dickens

one day, he had only enlarged on their sacrifices and self-denials. "Ah

that family, unfortunate! 'And you, Monsieur Beaucourt,' I said to him,

'you are unfortunate too, God knows!' Upon which he said in the

pleasantest way in the world, Ah, Monsieur Dickens, thank you, don't

speak of it!--And backed himself down the avenue with his cap in his

hand, as if he were going to back himself straight into the evening

star, without the ceremony of dying first. I never did see such a

gentle, kind heart."

CHAPTER V.

RESIDENCE IN PARIS.

1855-1856.

Actors and Dramas--Criticism of Frederic

Lemaitre--Increase of Celebrity--French

Translation of Dickens--Conventionalities of

the Theatre Francais--_Paradise Lost_ at the

Ambigu--Profane Nonsense--French _As You Like

It_--Story of a French Drama--Auber and Queen

Victoria--Robinson Crusoe--A Compliment and its

Result--Madame Scribe--Ristori--Viardot in

Orphee--Madame Dudevant at the

Viardots--Banquet at Girardin's--National and

Personal Compliment--Second Banquet--The Bourse

and its Victims--Entry of Troops from

Crimea--Paris illuminated--Streets on New

Year's Day--Results of Imperial

Improvement--English and French Art--French and

English Nature--Sitting to Ary Scheffer--A

Reading in Scheffer's Studio--Scheffer's

Opinion of the Likeness--A Duchess murdered--A

Chance Encounter, and what came of it.

IN Paris Dickens's life was passed among artists, and in the exercise of

his own art. His associates were writers, painters, actors, or

musicians, and when he wanted relief from any strain of work he found it

at the theatre. The years since his last residence in the great city had

made him better known, and the increased attentions pleased him. He had

to help in preparing for a translation of his books into French; and

this, with continued labour at the story he had in hand, occupied him as

long as he remained. It will be all best told by extracts from his

letters; in which the people he met, the theatres he visited, and the

incidents, public or private, that seemed to him worthy of mention,

reappear with the old force and liveliness.

Nor is anything better worth preserving from them than choice bits of

description of an actor or a drama, for this perishable enjoyment has

only so much as may survive out of such recollections to witness for

itself to another generation; and an unusually high place may be

challenged for the subtlety and delicacy of what is said in these

letters of things theatrical, when the writer was especially attracted

by a performer or a play. Frederic Lemaitre has never had a higher

tribute than Dickens paid to him during his few days' earlier stay at

Paris in the spring.

"Incomparably the finest acting I ever saw, I saw last night at the

Ambigu. They have revived that old piece, once immensely popular in

London under the name of _Thirty Years of a Gambler's Life_. Old

Lemaitre plays his famous character,[196] and never did I see anything,

in art, so exaltedly horrible and awful. In the earlier acts he was so

well made up, and so light and active, that he really looked

sufficiently young. But in the last two, when he had grown old and

miserable, he did the finest things, I really believe, that are within

the power of acting. Two or three times, a great cry of horror went all

round the house. When he met, in the inn yard, the traveller whom he

murders, and first saw his money, the manner in which the crime came

into his head--and eyes--was as truthful as it was terrific. This

traveller, being a good fellow, gives him wine. You should see the dim

remembrance of his better days that comes over him as he takes the

glass, and in a strange dazed way makes as if he were going to touch the

other man's, or do some airy thing with it; and then stops and flings

the contents down his hot throat, as if he were pouring it into a

lime-kiln. But this was nothing to what follows after he has done the

murder, and comes home, with a basket of provisions, a ragged pocket

full of money, and a badly-washed bloody right hand--which his little

girl finds out. After the child asked him if he had hurt his hand, his

going aside, turning himself round, and looking over all his clothes for

spots, was so inexpressibly dreadful that it really scared one. He

called for wine, and the sickness that came upon him when he saw the

colour, was one of the things that brought out the curious cry I have

spoken of, from the audience. Then he fell into a sort of bloody mist,

and went on to the end groping about, with no mind for anything, except

making his fortune by staking this money, and a faint dull kind of love

for the child. It is quite impossible to satisfy one's-self by saying

enough of such a magnificent performance. I have never seen him come

near its finest points, in anything else. He said two things in a way

that alone would put him far apart from all other actors. One to his

wife, when he has exultingly shewn her the money and she has asked him

how he got it--'I found it'--and the other to his old companion and

tempter, when he charged him with having killed that traveller, and he

suddenly went headlong mad and took him by the throat and howled out,

'It wasn't I who murdered him--it was Misery!' And such a dress; such a

face; and, above all, such an extraordinary guilty wicked thing as he

made of a knotted branch of a tree which was his walking-stick, from the

moment when the idea of the murder came into his head! I could write

pages about him. It is an impression quite ineffaceable. He got

half-boastful of that walking-staff to himself, and half-afraid of it;

and didn't know whether to be grimly pleased that it had the jagged end,

or to hate it and be horrified at it. He sat at a little table in the

inn-yard, drinking with the traveller; and this horrible stick got

between them like the Devil, while he counted on his fingers the uses he

could put the money to."

That was at the close of February. In October, Dickens's longer

residence began. He betook himself with his family, after two

unsuccessful attempts in the new region of the Rue Balzac and Rue Lord

Byron, to an apartment in the Avenue des Champs Elysees. Over him was an

English bachelor with an establishment consisting of an English groom

and five English horses. "The concierge and his wife told us that his

name was _Six_, which drove me nearly mad until we discovered it to be

_Sykes_." The situation was a good one, very cheerful for himself and

with amusement for his children. It was a quarter of a mile above

Franconi's on the other side of the way, and within a door or two of the

Jardin d'Hiver. The Exposition was just below; the Barriere de l'Etoile

from a quarter to half a mile below; and all Paris, including Emperor

and Empress coming from and returning to St. Cloud, thronged past the

windows in open carriages or on horseback, all day long. Now it was he

found himself more of a celebrity than when he had wintered in the city

nine years before;[197] the feuilleton of the _Moniteur_ was filled

daily with a translation of _Chuzzlewit_; and he had soon to consider

the proposal I have named, to publish in French his collected novels and

tales.[198] Before he had been a week in his new abode, Ary Scheffer,

"a frank and noble fellow," had made his acquaintance; introduced him to

several distinguished Frenchmen; and expressed the wish to paint him. To

Scheffer was also due an advantage obtained for my friend's two little

daughters of which they may always keep the memory with pride. "Mamey

and Katey are learning Italian, and their master is Manin of Venetian

fame, the best and the noblest of those unhappy gentlemen. He came here

with a wife and a beloved daughter, and they are both dead. Scheffer

made him known to me, and has been, I understand, wonderfully generous

and good to him." Nor may I omit to state the enjoyment afforded him,

not only by the presence in Paris during the winter of Mr. Wilkie

Collins and of Mr. and Mrs. White of Bonchurch, but by the many friends

from England whom the Art Exposition brought over. Sir Alexander

Cockburn was one of these; Edwin Landseer, Charles Robert Leslie, and

William Boxall, were others. Macready left his retreat at Sherborne to

make him a visit of several days. Thackeray went to and fro all the

time between London and his mother's house, also in the Champs Elysees,

where his daughters were. And Paris for the time was the home of Robert

Lytton, who belonged to the Embassy, of the Sartorises, of the

Brownings, and of others whom Dickens liked and cared for.

At the first play he went to, the performance was stopped while the news

of the last Crimean engagement, just issued in a supplement to the

_Moniteur_, was read from the stage. "It made not the faintest effect

upon the audience; and even the hired claqueurs, who had been absurdly

loud during the piece, seemed to consider the war not at all within

their contract, and were as stagnant as ditch-water. The theatre was

full. It is quite impossible to see such apathy, and suppose the war to

be popular, whatever may be asserted to the contrary." The day before,

he had met the Emperor and the King of Sardinia in the streets, "and, as

usual, no man touching his hat, and very very few so much as looking

round."

The success of a most agreeable little piece by our old friend Regnier

took him next to the Francais, where Plessy's acting enchanted him. "Of

course the interest of it turns upon a flawed piece of living china

(_that_ seems to be positively essential), but, as in most of these

cases, if you will accept the position in which you find the people, you

have nothing more to bother your morality about." The theatre in the Rue

Richelieu, however, was not generally his favourite resort. He used to

talk of it whimsically as a kind of tomb, where you went, as the Eastern

people did in the stories, to think of your unsuccessful loves and dead

relations. "There is a dreary classicality at that establishment

calculated to freeze the marrow. Between ourselves, even one's best

friends there are at times very aggravating. One tires of seeing a man,

through any number of acts, remembering everything by patting his

forehead with the flat of his hand, jerking out sentences by shaking

himself, and piling them up in pyramids over his head with his right

forefinger. And they have a generic small comedy-piece, where you see

two sofas and three little tables, to which a man enters with his hat

on, to talk to another man--and in respect of which you know exactly

when he will get up from one sofa to sit on the other, and take his hat

off one table to put it upon the other--which strikes one quite as

ludicrously as a good farce.[199]. . . There seems to be a good piece at

the Vaudeville, on the idea of the _Town and Country Mouse_. It is too

respectable and inoffensive for me to-night, but I hope to see it before

I leave . . . I have a horrible idea of making friends with Franconi, and

sauntering when I am at work into their sawdust green-room."

At a theatre of a yet heavier school than the Francais he had a drearier

experience. "On Wednesday we went to the Odeon to see a new piece, in

four acts and in verse, called _Michel Cervantes_. I suppose such an

infernal dose of ditch water never was concocted. But there were certain

passages, describing the suppression of public opinion in Madrid, which

were received with a shout of savage application to France that made one

stare again! And once more, here again, at every pause, steady, compact,

regular as military drums, the Ca Ira!" On another night, even at the

Porte St. Martin, drawn there doubtless by the attraction of repulsion,

he supped full with the horrors of classicality at a performance of

_Orestes_ versified by Alexandre Dumas. "Nothing have I ever seen so

weighty and so ridiculous. If I had not already learnt to tremble at the

sight of classic drapery on the human form, I should have plumbed the

utmost depths of terrified boredom in this achievement. The chorus is

not preserved otherwise than that bits of it are taken out for

characters to speak. It is really so bad as to be almost good. Some of

the Frenchified classical anguish struck me as so unspeakably ridiculous

that it puts me on the broad grin as I write."

At the same theatre, in the early spring, he had a somewhat livelier

entertainment. "I was at the Porte St. Martin last night, where there is

a rather good melodrama called _Sang Mele_, in which one of the

characters is an English Lord--Lord William Falkland--who is called

throughout the piece Milor Williams Fack Lorn, and is a hundred times

described by others and described by himself as Williams. He is

admirably played; but two English travelling ladies are beyond

expression ridiculous, and there is something positively vicious in

their utter want of truth. One 'set,' where the action of a whole act is

supposed to take place in the great wooden verandah of a Swiss hotel

overhanging a mountain ravine, is the best piece of stage carpentering I

have seen in France. Next week we are to have at the Ambigu _Paradise

Lost_, with the murder of Abel, and the Deluge. The wildest rumours are

afloat as to the un-dressing of our first parents." Anticipation far

outdoes a reality of this kind; and at the fever-pitch to which rumours

raised it here, Dickens might vainly have attempted to get admission on

the first night, if Mr. Webster, the English manager and comedian, had

not obtained a ticket for him. He went with Mr. Wilkie Collins. "We were

rung in (out of the cafe below the Ambigu) at 8, and the play was over

at half-past 1; the waits between the acts being very much longer than

the acts themselves. The house was crammed to excess in every part, and

the galleries awful with Blouses, who again, during the whole of the

waits, beat with the regularity of military drums the revolutionary tune

of famous memory--Ca Ira! The play is a compound of _Paradise Lost_ and

Byron's _Cain_; and some of the controversies between the archangel and

the devil, when the celestial power argues with the infernal in

conversational French, as 'Eh bien! Satan, crois-tu donc que notre

Seigneur t'aurait expose aux tourments que t'endures a present, sans

avoir prevu,' &c. &c. are very ridiculous. All the supernatural

personages are alarmingly natural (as theatre nature goes), and walk

about in the stupidest way. Which has occasioned Collins and myself to

institute a perquisition whether the French ever have shown any kind of

idea of the supernatural; and to decide this rather in the negative. The

people are very well dressed, and Eve very modestly. All Paris and the

provinces had been ransacked for a woman who had brown hair that would

fall to the calves of her legs--and she was found at last at the Odeon.

There was nothing attractive until the 4th act, when there was a pretty

good scene of the children of Cain dancing in, and desecrating, a

temple, while Abel and his family were hammering hard at the Ark,

outside; in all the pauses of the revel. The Deluge in the fifth act was

up to about the mark of a drowning scene at the Adelphi; but it had one

new feature. When the rain ceased, and the ark drove in on the great

expanse of water, then lying waveless as the mists cleared and the sun

broke out, numbers of bodies drifted up and down. These were all real

men and boys, each separate, on a new kind of horizontal sloat. They

looked horrible and real. Altogether, a merely dull business; but I dare

say it will go for a long while."

A piece of honest farce is a relief from these profane absurdities. "An

uncommonly droll piece with an original comic idea in it has been in

course of representation here. It is called _Les Cheveux de ma Femme_. A

man who is dotingly fond of his wife, and who wishes to know whether she

loved anybody else before they were married, cuts off a lock of her hair

by stealth, and takes it to a great mesmeriser, who submits it to a

clairvoyante who never was wrong. It is discovered that the owner of

this hair has been up to the most frightful dissipations, insomuch that

the clairvoyante can't mention half of them. The distracted husband goes

home to reproach his wife, and she then reveals that she wears a wig,

and takes it off."

The last piece he went to see before leaving Paris was a French version

of _As You Like It_; but he found two acts of it to be more than enough.

"In _Comme il vous Plaira_ nobody had anything to do but to sit down as

often as possible on as many stones and trunks of trees as possible.

When I had seen Jacques seat himself on 17 roots of trees, and 25 grey

stones, which was at the end of the second act, I came away." Only one

more sketch taken in a theatre, and perhaps the best, I will give from

these letters. It simply tells us what is necessary to understand a

particular "tag" to a play, but it is related so prettily that the thing

it celebrates could not have a nicer effect than is produced by this

account of it. The play in question, _Memoires du Diable_, and another

piece of enchanting interest, the _Medecin des Enfants_,[200] were his

favourites among all he saw at this time. "As I have no news, I may as

well tell you about the tag that I thought so pretty to the _Memoires

du Diable_; in which piece by the way, there is a most admirable part,

most admirably played, in which a man says merely 'Yes' or 'No' all

through the piece, until the last scene. A certain M. Robin has got hold

of the papers of a deceased lawyer, concerning a certain estate which

has been swindled away from its rightful owner, a Baron's widow, into

other hands. They disclose so much roguery that he binds them up into a

volume lettered 'Memoires du Diable.' The knowledge he derives from

these papers not only enables him to unmask the hypocrites all through

the piece (in an excellent manner), but induces him to propose to the

Baroness that if he restores to her her estate and good name--for even

her marriage to the deceased Baron is denied--she shall give him her

daughter in marriage. The daughter herself, on hearing the offer,

accepts it; and a part of the plot is, her going to a masked ball, to

which he goes as the Devil, to see how she likes him (when she finds, of

course, that she likes him very much). The country people about the

Chateau in dispute, suppose him to be really the Devil, because of his

strange knowledge, and his strange comings and goings; and he, being

with this girl in one of its old rooms, in the beginning of the 3rd act,

shews her a little coffer on the table with a bell in it. 'They

suppose,' he tells her, 'that whenever this bell is rung, I appear and

obey the summons. Very ignorant, isn't it? But, if you ever want me

particularly--very particularly--ring the little bell and try.' The plot

proceeds to its development. The wrong-doers are exposed; the missing

document, proving the marriage, is found; everything is finished; they

are all on the stage; and M. Robin hands the paper to the Baroness. 'You

are reinstated in your rights, Madame; you are happy; I will not hold

you to a compact made when you didn't know me; I release you and your

fair daughter; the pleasure of doing what I have done, is my sufficient

reward; I kiss your hand and take my leave. Farewell!' He backs himself

courteously out; the piece seems concluded, everybody wonders, the girl

(little Mdlle. Luther) stands amazed; when she suddenly remembers the

little bell. In the prettiest way possible, she runs to the coffer on

the table, takes out the little bell, rings it, and he comes rushing

back and folds her to his heart. I never saw a prettier thing in my

life. It made me laugh in that most delightful of ways, with the tears

in my eyes; so that I can never forget it, and must go and see it

again."

But great as was the pleasure thus derived from the theatre, he was, in

the matter of social intercourse, even more indebted to distinguished

men connected with it by authorship or acting. At Scribe's he was

entertained frequently; and "very handsome and pleasant" was his account

of the dinners, as of all the belongings, of the prolific dramatist--a

charming place in Paris, a fine estate in the country, capital carriage,

handsome pair of horses, "all made, as he says, by his pen." One of the

guests the first evening was Auber, "a stolid little elderly man, rather

petulant in manner," who told Dickens he had once lived "at Stock

Noonton" (Stoke Newington) to study English, but had forgotten it all.

"Louis Philippe had invited him to meet the Queen of England, and when

L. P. presented him, the Queen said, 'We are such old acquaintances

through M. Auber's works, that an introduction is quite unnecessary.'"

They met again a few nights later, with the author of the _History of

the Girondins_, at the hospitable table of M. Pichot, to whom Lamartine

had expressed a strong desire again to meet Dickens as "un des grands

amis de son imagination." "He continues to be precisely as we formerly

knew him, both in appearance and manner; highly prepossessing, and with

a sort of calm passion about him, very taking indeed. We talked of De

Foe[201] and Richardson, and of that wonderful genius for the minutest

details in a narrative, which has given them so much fame in France. I

found him frank and unaffected, and full of curious knowledge of the

French common people. He informed the company at dinner that he had

rarely met a foreigner who spoke French so easily as your inimitable

correspondent, whereat your correspondent blushed modestly, and almost

immediately afterwards so nearly choked himself with the bone of a fowl

(which is still in his throat), that he sat in torture for ten minutes

with a strong apprehension that he was going to make the good Pichot

famous by dying like the little Hunchback at his table. Scribe and his

wife were of the party, but had to go away at the ice-time because it

was the first representation at the Opera Comique of a new opera by

Auber and himself, of which very great expectations have been formed. It

was very curious to see him--the author of 400 pieces--getting nervous

as the time approached, and pulling out his watch every minute. At last

he dashed out as if he were going into what a friend of mine calls a

plunge-bath. Whereat she rose and followed. She is the most

extraordinary woman I ever beheld; for her eldest son must be thirty,

and she has the figure of five-and-twenty, and is strikingly handsome.

So graceful too, that her manner of rising, curtseying, laughing, and

going out after him, was pleasanter than the pleasantest thing I have

ever seen done on the stage." The opera Dickens himself saw a week

later, and wrote of it as "most charming. Delightful music, an excellent

story, immense stage tact, capital scenic arrangements, and the most

delightful little prima donna ever seen or heard, in the person of Marie

Cabel. It is called _Manon Lescaut_--from the old romance--and is

charming throughout. She sings a laughing song in it which is received

with madness, and which is the only real laughing song that ever was

written. Auber told me that when it was first rehearsed, it made a

great effect upon the orchestra; and that he could not have had a better

compliment upon its freshness than the musical director paid him, in

coming and clapping him on the shoulder with 'Bravo, jeune homme! Cela

promet bien!'"

At dinner at Regnier's he met M. Legouvet, in whose tragedy Rachel,

after its acceptance, had refused to act Medea; a caprice which had led

not only to her condemnation in costs of so much a night until she did

act it, but to a quasi rivalry against her by Ristori, who was now on

her way to Paris to play it in Italian. To this performance Dickens and

Macready subsequently went together, and pronounced it to be hopelessly

bad. "In the day entertainments, and little melodrama theatres, of

Italy, I have seen the same thing fifty times, only not at once so

conventional and so exaggerated. The papers have all been in fits

respecting the sublimity of the performance, and the genuineness of the

applause--particularly of the bouquets; which were thrown on at the most

preposterous times in the midst of agonizing scenes, so that the

characters had to pick their way among them, and a certain stout

gentleman who played King Creon was obliged to keep a wary eye, all

night, on the proscenium boxes, and dodge them as they came down. Now

Scribe, who dined here next day (and who follows on the Ristori side,

being offended, as everybody has been, by the insolence of Rachel),

could not resist the temptation of telling us, that, going round at the

end of the first act to offer his congratulations, he met all the

bouquets coming back in men's arms to be thrown on again in the second

act. . . . By the bye, I see a fine actor lost in Scribe. In all his

pieces he has everything done in his own way; and on that same night he

was showing what Rachel did not do, and wouldn't do, in the last scene

of Adrienne Lecouvreur, with extraordinary force and intensity."

At the house of another great artist, Madame Viardot,[202] the sister of

Malibran, Dickens dined to meet Georges Sands, that lady having

appointed the day and hour for the interesting festival, which came off

duly on the 10th of January. "I suppose it to be impossible to imagine

anybody more unlike my preconceptions than the illustrious Sand. Just

the kind of woman in appearance whom you might suppose to be the Queen's

monthly nurse. Chubby, matronly, swarthy, black-eyed. Nothing of the

blue-stocking about her, except a little final way of settling all your

opinions with hers, which I take to have been acquired in the country

where she lives, and in the domination of a small circle. A singularly

ordinary woman in appearance and manner. The dinner was very good and

remarkably unpretending. Ourselves, Madame and her son, the Scheffers,

the Sartorises, and some Lady somebody (from the Crimea last) who wore a

species of paletot, and smoked. The Viardots have a house away in the

new part of Paris, which looks exactly as if they had moved into it last

week and were going away next. Notwithstanding which, they have lived in

it eight years. The opera the very last thing on earth you would

associate with the family. Piano not even opened. Her husband is an

extremely good fellow, and she is as natural as it is possible to be."

Dickens was hardly the man to take fair measure of Madame Dudevant in

meeting her thus. He was not familiar with her writings, and had no very

special liking for such of them as he knew. But no disappointment,

nothing but amazement, awaited him at a dinner that followed soon after.

Emile de Girardin gave a banquet in his honour. His description of it,

which he declares to be strictly prosaic, sounds a little Oriental, but

not inappropriately so. "No man unacquainted with my determination never

to embellish or fancify such accounts, could believe in the description

I shall let off when we meet of dining at Emile Girardin's--of the three

gorgeous drawing rooms with ten thousand wax candles in golden sconces,

terminating in a dining-room of unprecedented magnificence with two

enormous transparent plate-glass doors in it, looking (across an

ante-chamber full of clean plates) straight into the kitchen, with the

cooks in their white paper caps dishing the dinner. From his seat in the

midst of the table, the host (like a Giant in a Fairy story) beholds the

kitchen, and the snow-white tables, and the profound order and silence

there prevailing. Forth from the plate-glass doors issues the

Banquet--the most wonderful feast ever tasted by mortal: at the present

price of Truffles, that article alone costing (for eight people) at

least five pounds. On the table are ground glass jugs of peculiar

construction, laden with the finest growth of Champagne and the coolest

ice. With the third course is issued Port Wine (previously unheard of in

a good state on this continent), which would fetch two guineas a bottle

at any sale. The dinner done, Oriental flowers in vases of golden cobweb

are placed upon the board. With the ice is issued Brandy, buried for 100

years. To that succeeds Coffee, brought by the brother of one of the

convives from the remotest East, in exchange for an equal quantity of

California gold dust. The company being returned to the

drawing-room--tables roll in by unseen agency, laden with Cigarettes

from the Hareem of the Sultan, and with cool drinks in which the flavour

of the Lemon arrived yesterday from Algeria, struggles voluptuously with

the delicate Orange arrived this morning from Lisbon. That period past,

and the guests reposing on Divans worked with many-coloured blossoms,

big table rolls in, heavy with massive furniture of silver, and

breathing incense in the form of a little present of Tea direct from

China--table and all, I believe; but cannot swear to it, and am resolved

to be prosaic. All this time the host perpetually repeats 'Ce petit

diner-ci n'est que pour faire la connaissance de Monsieur Dickens; il ne

compte pas; ce n'est rien.' And even now I have forgotten to set down

half of it--in particular the item of a far larger plum pudding than

ever was seen in England at Christmas time, served with a celestial

sauce in colour like the orange blossom, and in substance like the

blossom powdered and bathed in dew, and called in the carte (carte in a

gold frame like a little fish-slice to be handed about) 'Hommage a

l'illustre ecrivain d'Angleterre.' That illustrious man staggered out at

the last drawing-room door, speechless with wonder, finally; and even at

that moment his host, holding to his lips a chalice set with precious

stones and containing nectar distilled from the air that blew over the

fields of beans in bloom for fifteen summers, remarked 'Le diner que

nous avons eu, mon cher, n'est rien--il ne compte pas--il a ete

tout-a-fait en famille--il faut diner (en verite, diner) bientot. Au

plaisir! Au revoir! Au diner!'"

The second dinner came, wonderful as the first; among the company were

Regnier, Jules Sandeau, and the new Director of the Francais; and his

host again played Lucullus in the same style, with success even more

consummate. The only absolutely new incident however was that "After

dinner he asked me if I would come into another room and smoke a cigar?

and on my saying Yes, coolly opened a drawer, containing about 5000

inestimable cigars in prodigious bundles--just as the Captain of the

Robbers in _Ali Baba_ might have gone to a corner of the cave for bales

of brocade. A little man dined who was blacking shoes 8 years ago, and

is now enormously rich--the richest man in Paris--having ascended with

rapidity up the usual ladder of the Bourse. By merely observing that

perhaps he might come down again, I clouded so many faces as to render

it very clear to me that _everybody present_ was at the same game for

some stake or other!" He returned to that subject in a letter a few days

later. "If you were to see the steps of the Bourse at about 4 in the

afternoon, and the crowd of blouses and patches among the speculators

there assembled, all howling and haggard with speculation, you would

stand aghast at the consideration of what must be going on. Concierges

and people like that perpetually blow their brains out, or fly into the

Seine, 'a cause des pertes sur la Bourse.' I hardly ever take up a

French paper without lighting on such a paragraph. On the other hand,

thoroughbred horses without end, and red velvet carriages with white kid

harness on jet black horses, go by here all day long; and the

pedestrians who turn to look at them, laugh, and say 'C'est la Bourse!'

Such crashes must be staved off every week as have not been seen since

Law's time."

Another picture connects itself with this, and throws light on the

speculation thus raging. The French loans connected with the war, so

much puffed and praised in England at the time for the supposed spirit

in which they were taken up, had in fact only ministered to the

commonest and lowest gambling; and the war had never in the least been

popular. "Emile Girardin," wrote Dickens on the 23rd of March, "was here

yesterday, and he says that Peace is to be formally announced at Paris

to-morrow amid general apathy." But the French are never wholly

apathetic to their own exploits; and a display with a touch of

excitement in it had been witnessed a couple of months before on the

entry of the troops from the Crimea,[203] when the Zouaves, as they

marched past, pleased Dickens most. "A remarkable body of men," he

wrote, "wild, dangerous, and picturesque. Close-cropped head, red skull

cap, Greek jacket, full red petticoat trowsers trimmed with yellow, and

high white gaiters--the most sensible things for the purpose I know, and

coming into use in the line. A man with such things on his legs is

always free there, and ready for a muddy march; and might flounder

through roads two feet deep in mud, and, simply by changing his gaiters

(he has another pair in his haversack), be clean and comfortable and

wholesome again, directly. Plenty of beard and moustache, and the

musket carried reverse-wise with the stock over the shoulder, make up

the sunburnt Zouave. He strides like Bobadil, smoking as he goes; and

when he laughs (they were under my window for half-an-hour or so),

plunges backward in the wildest way, as if he were going to throw a

sommersault. They have a black dog belonging to the regiment, and, when

they now marched along with their medals, this dog marched after the one

non-commissioned officer he invariably follows with a profound

conviction that he was decorated. I couldn't see whether he had a medal,

his hair being long; but he was perfectly up to what had befallen his

regiment; and I never saw anything so capital as his way of regarding

the public. Whatever the regiment does, he is always in his place; and

it was impossible to mistake the air of modest triumph which was now

upon him. A small dog corporeally, but of a great mind."[204] On that

night there was an illumination in honour of the army, when the "whole

of Paris, bye streets and lanes and all sorts of out of the way places,

was most brilliantly illuminated. It looked in the dark like Venice and

Genoa rolled into one, and split up through the middle by the Corso at

Rome in the carnival time. The French people certainly do know how to

honour their own countrymen, in a most marvellous way." It was the

festival time of the New Year, and Dickens was fairly lost in a mystery

of amazement at where the money could come from that everybody was

spending on the etrennes they were giving to everybody else. All the

famous shops on the Boulevards had been blockaded for more than a week.

"There is now a line of wooden stalls, three miles long, on each side of

that immense thoroughfare; and wherever a retiring house or two admits

of a double line, there it is. All sorts of objects from shoes and

sabots, through porcelain and crystal, up to live fowls and rabbits

which are played for at a sort of dwarf skittles (to their immense

disturbance, as the ball rolls under them and shakes them off their

shelves and perches whenever it is delivered by a vigorous hand), are on

sale in this great Fair. And what you may get in the way of ornament for

two-pence, is astounding." Unhappily there came dark and rainy weather,

and one of the improvements of the Empire ended, as so many others did,

in slush and misery.[205]

Some sketches connected with the Art Exposition in the winter of 1855,

and with the fulfilment of Ary Scheffer's design to paint the portrait

of Dickens, may close these Paris pictures. He did not think that

English art showed to advantage beside the French. It seemed to him

small, shrunken, insignificant, "niggling." He thought the general

absence of ideas horribly apparent; "and even when one comes to

Mulready, and sees two old men talking over a much-too-prominent

table-cloth, and reads the French explanation of their proceedings, 'La

discussion sur les principes de Docteur Whiston,' one is dissatisfied.

Somehow or other they don't tell. Even Leslie's Sancho wants go, and

Stanny is too much like a set-scene. It is of no use disguising the fact

that what we know to be wanting in the men is wanting in their

works--character, fire, purpose, and the power of using the vehicle and

the model as mere means to an end. There is a horrible respectability

about most of the best of them--a little, finite, systematic routine in

them, strangely expressive to me of the state of England itself. As a

mere fact, Frith, Ward, and Egg, come out the best in such pictures as

are here, and attract to the greatest extent. The first, in the picture

from the Good-natured Man; the second, in the Royal Family in the

Temple; the third, in the Peter the Great first seeing Catherine--which

I always thought a good picture, and in which foreigners evidently

descry a sudden dramatic touch that pleases them. There are no end of

bad pictures among the French, but, Lord! the goodness also!--the

fearlessness of them; the bold drawing; the dashing conception; the

passion and action in them![206] The Belgian department is full of

merit. It has the best landscape in it, the best portrait, and the best

scene of homely life, to be found in the building. Don't think it a part

of my despondency about public affairs, and my fear that our national

glory is on the decline, when I say that mere form and conventionalities

usurp, in English art, as in English government and social relations,

the place of living force and truth. I tried to resist the impression

yesterday, and went to the English gallery first, and praised and

admired with great diligence; but it was of no use. I could not make

anything better of it than what I tell you. Of course this is between

ourselves. Friendship is better than criticism, and I shall steadily

hold my tongue. Discussion is worse than useless when you cannot agree

about what you are going to discuss." French nature is all wrong, said

the English artists whom Dickens talked to; but surely not because it is

French, was his reply. The English point of view is not the only one to

take men and women from. The French pictures are "theatrical," was the

rejoinder. But the French themselves are a demonstrative and

gesticulating people, was Dickens's retort; and what thus is rendered by

their artists is the truth through an immense part of the world. "I

never saw anything so strange. They seem to me to have got a fixed idea

that there is no natural manner but the English manner (in itself so

exceptional that it is a thing apart, in all countries); and that unless

a Frenchman--represented as going to the guillotine for example--is as

calm as Clapham, or as respectable as Richmond-hill, he cannot be

right."

To the sittings at Ary Scheffer's some troubles as well as many

pleasures were incident, and both had mention in his letters. "You may

faintly imagine what I have suffered from sitting to Scheffer every day

since I came back. He is a most noble fellow, and I have the greatest

pleasure in his society, and have made all sorts of acquaintances at his

house; but I can scarcely express how uneasy and unsettled it makes me

to have to sit, sit, sit, with _Little Dorrit_ on my mind, and the

Christmas business too--though that is now happily dismissed. On Monday

afternoon, _and all day on Wednesday_, I am going to sit again. And the

crowning feature is, that I do not discern the slightest resemblance,

either in his portrait or his brother's! They both peg away at me at the

same time." The sittings were varied by a special entertainment, when

Scheffer received some sixty people in his "long atelier"--"including a

lot of French who _say_ (but I don't believe it) that they know

English"--to whom Dickens, by special entreaty, read his _Cricket on

the Hearth_.

That was at the close of November. January came, and the end of the

sittings was supposed to be at hand. "The nightmare portrait is nearly

done; and Scheffer promises that an interminable sitting next Saturday,

beginning at 10 o'clock in the morning, shall finish it. It is a fine

spirited head, painted at his very best, and with a very easy and

natural appearance in it. But it does not look to me at all like, nor

does it strike me that if I saw it in a gallery I should suppose myself

to be the original. It is always possible that I don't know my own face.

It is going to be engraved here, in two sizes and ways--the mere head

and the whole thing." A fortnight later, the interminable sitting came.

"Imagine me if you please with No. 5 on my head and hands, sitting to

Scheffer yesterday four hours! At this stage of a story, no one can

conceive how it distresses me." Still this was not the last. March had

come before the portrait was done. "Scheffer finished yesterday; and

Collins, who has a good eye for pictures, says that there is no man

living who could do the painting about the eyes. As a work of art I see

in it spirit combined with perfect ease, and yet I don't see myself. So

I come to the conclusion that I never _do_ see myself. I shall be very

curious to know the effect of it upon you." March had then begun; and at

its close Dickens, who had meanwhile been in England, thus wrote: "I

have not seen Scheffer since I came back, but he told Catherine a few

days ago that he was not satisfied with the likeness after all, and

thought he must do more to it. My own impression of it, you remember?"

In these few words he anticipated the impression made upon myself. I was

not satisfied with it. The picture had much merit, but not as a

portrait. From its very resemblance in the eyes and mouth one derived

the sense of a general unlikeness. But the work of the artist's brother,

Henri Scheffer, painted from the same sittings, was in all ways greatly

inferior.

Before Dickens left Paris in May he had sent over two descriptions that

the reader most anxious to follow him to a new scene would perhaps be

sorry to lose. A Duchess was murdered in the Champs Elysees. "The murder

over the way (the third or fourth event of that nature in the Champs

Elysees since we have been here) seems to disclose the strangest state

of things. The Duchess who is murdered lived alone in a great house

which was always shut up, and passed her time entirely in the dark. In a

little lodge outside lived a coachman (the murderer), and there had been

a long succession of coachmen who had been unable to stay there, and

upon whom, whenever they asked for their wages, she plunged out with an

immense knife, by way of an immediate settlement. The coachman never had

anything to do, for the coach hadn't been driven out for years; neither

would she ever allow the horses to be taken out for exercise. Between

the lodge and the house, is a miserable bit of garden, all overgrown

with long rank grass, weeds, and nettles; and in this, the horses used

to be taken out to swim--in a dead green vegetable sea, up to their

haunches. On the day of the murder, there was a great crowd, of course;

and in the midst of it up comes the Duke her husband (from whom she was

separated), and rings at the gate. The police open the grate. 'C'est

vrai donc,' says the Duke, 'que Madame la Duchesse n'est plus?'--'C'est

trop vrai, Monseigneur.'--'Tant mieux,' says the Duke, and walks off

deliberately, to the great satisfaction of the assemblage."

The second description relates an occurrence in England of only three

years previous date, belonging to that wildly improbable class of

realities which Dickens always held, with Fielding, to be (properly)

closed to fiction. Only, he would add, critics should not be so eager to

assume that what had never happened to themselves could not, by any

human possibility, ever be supposed to have happened to anybody else.

"B. was with me the other day, and, among other things that he told me,

described an extraordinary adventure in his life, at a place not a

thousand miles from my 'property' at Gadshill, three years ago. He lived

at the tavern and was sketching one day when an open carriage came by

with a gentleman and lady in it. He was sitting in the same place

working at the same sketch, next day, when it came by again. So, another

day, when the gentleman got out and introduced himself. Fond of art;

lived at the great house yonder, which perhaps he knew; was an Oxford

man and a Devonshire squire, but not resident on his estate, for

domestic reasons; would be glad to see him to dinner to-morrow. He went,

and found among other things a very fine library. 'At your disposition,'

said the Squire, to whom he had now described himself and his pursuits.

'Use it for your writing and drawing. Nobody else uses it.' He stayed in

the house _six months_. The lady was a mistress, aged five-and-twenty,

and very beautiful, drinking her life away. The Squire was drunken, and

utterly depraved and wicked; but an excellent scholar, an admirable

linguist, and a great theologian. Two other mad visitors stayed the six

months. One, a man well known in Paris here, who goes about the world

with a crimson silk stocking in his breast pocket, containing a

tooth-brush and an immense quantity of ready money. The other, a college

chum of the Squire's, now ruined; with an insatiate thirst for drink;

who constantly got up in the middle of the night, crept down to the

dining-room, and emptied all the decanters. . . . B. stayed on in the

place, under a sort of devilish fascination to discover what might come

of it. . . . Tea or coffee never seen in the house, and very seldom water.

Beer, champagne, and brandy, were the three drinkables. Breakfast: leg

of mutton, champagne, beer, and brandy. Lunch: shoulder of mutton,

champagne, beer, and brandy. Dinner: every conceivable dish (Squire's

income, L7,000 a-year), champagne, beer, and brandy. The Squire had

married a woman of the town from whom he was now separated, but by whom

he had a daughter. The mother, to spite the father, had bred the

daughter in every conceivable vice. Daughter, then 13, came from school

once a month. Intensely coarse in talk, and always drunk. As they drove

about the country in two open carriages, the drunken mistress would be

perpetually tumbling out of one, and the drunken daughter perpetually

tumbling out of the other. At last the drunken mistress drank her

stomach away, and began to die on the sofa. Got worse and worse, and was

always raving about Somebody's where she had once been a lodger, and

perpetually shrieking that she would cut somebody else's heart out. At

last she died on the sofa, and, after the funeral, the party broke up. A

few months ago, B. met the man with the crimson silk stocking at

Brighton, who told him that the Squire was dead 'of a broken heart';

that the chum was dead of delirium tremens; and that the daughter was

heiress to the fortune. He told me all this, which I fully believe to be

true, without any embellishment--just in the off-hand way in which I

have told it to you."

Dickens left Paris at the end of April, and, after the summer in

Boulogne which has been described, passed the winter in London, giving

to his theatrical enterprise nearly all the time that _Little Dorrit_

did not claim from him. His book was finished in the following spring;

was inscribed to Clarkson Stanfield; and now claims to have something

said about it.

FOOTNOTES:

[196] Twenty-one years before this date, in this same part, Lemaitre had

made a deep impression in London; and now, eighteen years later, he is

appearing in one of the revivals of Victor Hugo in Paris (1873.)

[197] "It is surprising what a change nine years have made in my

notoriety here. So many of the rising French generation now read English

(and _Chuzzlewit_ is now being translated daily in the _Moniteur_), that

I can't go into a shop and give my card without being acknowledged in

the pleasantest way possible. A curiosity-dealer brought home some

little knick-knacks I had bought, the other night, and knew all about my

books from beginning to end of 'em. There is much of the personal

friendliness in my readers, here, that is so delightful at home; and I

have been greatly surprised and pleased by the unexpected discovery." To

this I may add a line from one of his letters six years later. "I see my

books in French at every railway station great and small."--13th of Oct.

1862.

[198] "I forget whether" (6th of Jan. 1856) "I have already told you

that I have received a proposal from a responsible bookselling house

here, for a complete edition, authorized by myself, of a French

translation of all my books. The terms involve questions of space and

amount of matter; but I should say, at a rough calculation, that I shall

get about L300 by it--perhaps L50 more." "I have arranged" (30th of

Jan.) "with the French bookselling house to receive, by monthly payments

of L40, the sum of L440 for the right to translate all my books: that

is, what they call my Romances, and what I call my Stories. This does

not include the Christmas Books, _American Notes_, _Pictures from

Italy_, or the _Sketches_; but they are to have the right to translate

them for extra payments if they choose. In consideration of this venture

as to the unprotected property, I cede them the right of translating all

future Romances at a thousand francs (L40) each. Considering that I get

so much for what is otherwise worth nothing, and get my books before so

clever and important a people, I think this is not a bad move?" The

first friend with whom he advised about it, I should mention, was the

famous Leipzig publisher, M. Tauchnitz, in whose judgment, as well as in

his honour and good faith, he had implicit reliance, and who thought the

offer fair. On the 17th of April he wrote: "On Monday I am going to dine

with all my translators at Hachette's, the bookseller who has made the

bargain for the complete edition, and who began this week to pay his

monthly L40 for a year. I don't mean to go out any more. Please to

imagine me in the midst of my French dressers." He wrote an address for

the Edition in which he praised the liberality of his publishers and

expressed his pride in being so presented to the French people whom he

sincerely loved and honoured. Another word may be added. "It is rather

appropriate that the French translation edition will pay my rent for the

whole year, and travelling charges to boot."--24th of Feb. 1856.

[199] He wrote a short and very comical account of one of these stock

performances at the Francais in which he brought out into strong relief

all their conventionalities and formal habits, their regular surprises

surprising nobody, and their mysterious disclosures of immense secrets

known to everybody beforehand, which he meant for _Household Words_; but

it occurred to him that it might give pain to Regnier, and he destroyed

it.

[200] Before he saw this he wrote: "That piece you spoke of (the

_Medecin des Enfants_) is one of the very best melodramas I have ever

read. Situations, admirable. I will send it to you by Landseer. I am

very curious indeed to go and see it; and it is an instance to me of the

powerful emotions from which art is shut out in England by the

conventionalities." After seeing it he writes: "The low cry of

excitement and expectation that goes round the house when any one of the

great situations is felt to be coming is very remarkable indeed. I

suppose there has not been so great a success of the genuine and worthy

kind (for the authors have really taken the French dramatic bull by the

horns, and put the adulterous wife in the right position), for many

years. When you come over and see it, you will say you never saw

anything so admirably done. There is one actor, Bignon (M. Delormel),

who has a good deal of Macready in him; sometimes looks very like him;

and who seems to me the perfection of manly good sense." 17th of April

1856.

[201] I subjoin from another of these French letters of later date a

remark on _Robinson Crusoe_. "You remember my saying to you some time

ago how curious I thought it that _Robinson Crusoe_ should be the only

instance of an universally popular book that could make no one laugh and

could make no one cry. I have been reading it again just now, in the

course of my numerous refreshings at those English wells, and I will

venture to say that there is not in literature a more surprising

instance of an utter want of tenderness and sentiment, than the death of

Friday. It is as heartless as _Gil Blas_, in a very different and far

more serious way. But the second part altogether will not bear enquiry.

In the second part of _Don Quixote_ are some of the finest things. But

the second part of _Robinson Crusoe_ is perfectly contemptible, in the

glaring defect that it exhibits the man who was 30 years on that desert

island with no visible effect made on his character by that experience.

De Foe's women too--Robinson Crusoe's wife for instance--are terrible

dull commonplace fellows without breeches; and I have no doubt he was a

precious dry and disagreeable article himself--I mean De Foe: not

Robinson. Poor dear Goldsmith (I remember as I write) derived the same

impression."

[202] When in Paris six years later Dickens saw this fine singer in an

opera by Gluck, and the reader will not be sorry to have his description

of it. "Last night I saw Madame Viardot do Gluck's Orphee. It is a most

extraordinary performance--pathetic in the highest degree, and full of

quite sublime acting. Though it is unapproachably fine from first to

last, the beginning of it, at the tomb of Eurydice, is a thing that I

cannot remember at this moment of writing, without emotion. It is the

finest presentation of grief that I can imagine. And when she has

received hope from the Gods, and encouragement to go into the other

world and seek Eurydice, Viardot's manner of taking the relinquished

lyre from the tomb and becoming radiant again, is most noble. Also she

recognizes Eurydice's touch, when at length the hand is put in hers from

behind, like a most transcendant genius. And when, yielding to

Eurydice's entreaties she has turned round and slain her with a look,

her despair over the body is grand in the extreme. It is worth a journey

to Paris to see, for there is no such Art to be otherwise looked upon.

Her husband stumbled over me by mere chance, and took me to her

dressing-room. Nothing could have happened better as a genuine homage to

the performance, for I was disfigured with crying."--30th of November

1862.

[203] Here is another picture of Regiments in the Streets of which the

date is the 30th of January. "It was cold this afternoon, as bright as

Italy, and these Elysian Fields crowded with carriages, riders, and foot

passengers. All the fountains were playing, all the Heavens shining.

Just as I went out at 4 o'clock, several regiments that had passed out

at the Barriere in the morning to exercise in the country, came marching

back, in the straggling French manner, which is far more picturesque and

real than anything you can imagine in that way. Alternately great storms

of drums played, and then the most delicious and skilful bands,

'Trovatore' music, 'Barber of Seville' music, all sorts of music with

well-marked melody and time. All bloused Paris (led by the Inimitable,

and a poor cripple who works himself up and down all day in a big

wheeled car) went at quick march down the avenue, in a sort of hilarious

dance. If the colours with the golden eagle on the top had only been

unfurled, we should have followed them anywhere, in any cause--much as

the children follow Punches in the better cause of Comedy. Napoleon on

the top of the Column seemed up to the whole thing, I thought."

[204] Apropos of this, I may mention that the little shaggy white

terrier who came with him from America, so long a favourite in his

household, had died of old age a few weeks before (5th of Oct. 1855) in

Boulogne.

[205] "We have wet weather here--and dark too for these latitudes--and

oceans of mud. Although numbers of men are perpetually scooping and

sweeping it away in this thoroughfare, it accumulates under the windows

so fast, and in such sludgy masses, that to get across the road is to

get half over one's shoes in the first outset of a walk." . . . "It is

difficult," he added (20th of Jan.) "to picture the change made in this

place by the removal of the paving stones (too ready for barricades),

and macadamization. It suits neither the climate nor the soil. We are

again in a sea of mud. One cannot cross the road of the Champs Elysees

here, without being half over one's boots." A few more days brought a

welcome change. "Three days ago the weather changed here in an hour, and

we have had bright weather and hard frost ever since. All the mud

disappeared with marvellous rapidity, and the sky became Italian. Taking

advantage of such a happy change, I started off yesterday morning (for

exercise and meditation) on a scheme I have taken into my head, to walk

round the walls of Paris. It is a very odd walk, and will make a good

description. Yesterday I turned to the right when I got outside the

Barriere de l'Etoile, walked round the wall till I came to the river,

and then entered Paris beyond the site of the Bastille. To-day I mean to

turn to the left when I get outside the Barriere, and see what comes of

that."

[206] This was much the tone of Edwin Landseer also, whose praise of

Horace Vernet was nothing short of rapture; and how well I remember the

humour of his description of the Emperor on the day when the prizes were

given, and, as his old friend the great painter came up, the comical

expression in his face that said plainly "What a devilish odd thing this

is altogether, isn't it?" composing itself to gravity as he took Edwin

by the hand, and said in cordial English "I am very glad to see you." He

stood, Landseer told us, in a recess so arranged as to produce a clear

echo of every word he said, and this had a startling effect. In the

evening of that day Dickens, Landseer, Boxall, Leslie "and three others"

dined together in the Palais Royal.

CHAPTER VI.

LITTLE DORRIT, AND A LAZY TOUR.

1855-1857.

Little Dorrit--A Proposed Opening--How the

Story grew--Sale of the Book--Circumlocution

Office--Flora and her Surroundings--Weak Points

in the Book--Remains of Marshalsea

visited--Reception of the Novel--Christmas

Theatricals--Theatre-making--At Gadshill--Last

Meeting of Jerrold and Dickens--Proposed

Memorial Tribute--At the Zoological

Gardens--Lazy Tour projected--Visit to

Cumberland--Accident to Wilkie Collins--At

Allonby--At Doncaster--Racing Prophecy--A

Performance of _Money_.

BETWEEN _Hard Times_ and _Little Dorrit_, Dickens's principal literary

work had been the contribution to _Household Words_ of two tales for

Christmas (1854 and 1855) which his readings afterwards made widely

popular, the Story of Richard Doubledick,[207] and Boots at the

Holly-Tree Inn. In the latter was related, with a charming naturalness

and spirit, the elopement, to get married at Gretna Green, of two little

children of the mature respective ages of eight and seven. At Christmas

1855 came out the first number of _Little Dorrit_, and in April 1857 the

last.

The book took its origin from the notion he had of a leading man for a

story who should bring about all the mischief in it, lay it all on

Providence, and say at every fresh calamity, "Well it's a mercy,

however, nobody was to blame you know!" The title first chosen, out of

many suggested, was _Nobody's Fault_; and four numbers had been written,

of which the first was on the eve of appearance, before this was

changed. When about to fall to work he excused himself from an

engagement he should have kept because "the story is breaking out all

round me, and I am going off down the railroad to humour it." The

humouring was a little difficult, however; and such indications of a

droop in his invention as presented themselves in portions of _Bleak

House_, were noticeable again. "As to the story I am in the second

number, and last night and this morning had half a mind to begin again,

and work in what I have done, afterwards." It had occurred to him, that,

by making the fellow-travellers at once known to each other, as the

opening of the story stands, he had missed an effect. "It struck me that

it would be a new thing to show people coming together, in a chance way,

as fellow-travellers, and being in the same place, ignorant of one

another, as happens in life; and to connect them afterwards, and to make

the waiting for that connection a part of the interest." The change was

not made; but the mention of it was one of several intimations to me of

the altered conditions under which he was writing, and that the old,

unstinted, irrepressible flow of fancy had received temporary check. In

this view I have found it very interesting to compare the original

notes, which as usual he prepared for each number of the tale, and which

with the rest are in my possession, with those of _Chuzzlewit_ or

_Copperfield_; observing in the former the labour and pains, and in the

latter the lightness and confidence of handling.[208] "I am just now

getting to work on number three: sometimes enthusiastic, more often dull

enough. There is an enormous outlay in the Father of the Marshalsea

chapter, in the way of getting a great lot of matter into a small space.

I am not quite resolved, but I have a great idea of overwhelming that

family with wealth. Their condition would be very curious. I can make

Dorrit very strong in the story, I hope." The Marshalsea part of the

tale undoubtedly was excellent, and there was masterly treatment of

character in the contrasts of the brothers Dorrit; but of the family

generally it may be said that its least important members had most of

his genius in them. The younger of the brothers, the scapegrace son, and

"Fanny dear," are perfectly real people in what makes them unattractive;

but what is meant for attractiveness in the heroine becomes often

tiresome by want of reality.

[Illustration]

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