“one small corner of the white of one eye” to his household
concerns, though he seems not to observe. His daughter Mary
has the governance of the servants, Miss Hogarth of the cellar
and provisions. There is a system in everything with which he
has to do. When he gives a reading, he is present in the hall
at half-past six, although the reading does not begin until
eight; for Dickens cannot go about as other people do, he must
go when the people do not press upon him. On reaching the
private room, his servant brings his evening dress, reading
desk, screen, lamps, when he arranges the hall, examines the
copper gas-tubes to see if in order, dresses himself and is
ready to begin. In Liverpool the other night he had advertised
to read “Sergeant Buzfuz,” instead of which by accident he
read “Bleak House.” Mr. Dolby spoke to him as soon as he had
finished, telling him the mistake he had made. He at once
returned to the desk, and said, “My friends, it is half-past
ten o’clock and you see how tired I am, but I will still read
Sergeant Buzfuz’s speech if you expect it.” “No, no,” the crowd
shouted; “you’re tired. No, no, this ought to do for tonight.”
One tall man raised himself up in the gallery and said, “Look
here, we came to hear Pickwick and we ought to hef it.” “Very
well, my friend,” replied Dickens, immediately, “I will read
Sergeant Buzfuz for your accommodation solely”; and thereat he
did read it to a breathless and delighted audience.
[Illustration: “THE TWO CHARLES’S” (CHARLES DICKENS AND CHARLES FECHTER).
_From a Humorous Drawing by_ ALFRED BRYAN, 1879.
DICKENS AND FECHTER]
At length came Dickens himself, and the diary takes up the tale:—
_November 18, 1867._—Today the steamer is telegraphed with
Dickens on board, and the tickets for his readings have been
sold. Such a rush! A long queue of people have been standing
all day in the street—a good-humored crowd, but a weary
one.[24] The weather is clear but really cold, with winter’s
pinch in it.
_November 19._— ... Yesterday I adorned Mr. Dickens’s room with
flowers, which seemed to please him. He was in the best of good
spirits with everything.
_Thursday, November 21._—Mr. Dickens dined here. Agassiz,
Emerson, Judge Hoar, Professor Holmes, Norton, Greene, dear
Longfellow, last not least, came to welcome. Dickens sat on
my right, Agassiz at my left. I never saw Agassiz so full of
fun....
Dickens bubbled over with fun, and I could not help fancying
that Holmes bored him a little by talking at him. I was sorry
for this, because Holmes is so simple and lovely, but Dickens
is sensitive, very. He is fond of Carlyle, seems to love nobody
better, and gave the most irresistible imitation of him. His
queer turns of expression often convulsed us with laughter, and
yet it is difficult to catch them, as when, in speaking of the
writer of books, always putting himself, his real self, in,
“which is always the case,” he said; “but you must be careful
of not taking him for his next-door neighbor.”
He spoke of the fineness of his Parisian audience:—“the most
delicately appreciative of all audiences.” He also gave a
most ludicrous account of a seasick curate trying to read the
service on board ship last Sunday. He tells us Browning is
really about to marry Miss Ingelow, and of Carlyle, that he is
deeply saddened, irretrievably, by the death of his wife. Just
as we were in a tempest of laughter over some witticism of his,
he jumped up, seized me by the hand, and said good-night. He
neither smoked nor drank. “I never do either from the time my
readings ‘set in,’” he said, as if it were a rainy season....
Among other interesting personal facts Dickens told us that
he had last year burned all his private letters. An appeal
from the daughter of Sydney Smith for some of his letters set
him thinking on the subject, and one day when there was a big
fire—[sentence unfinished].
Mr. Dickens left the table just as we were in a tempest of
laughter. Dr. Holmes ... was telling how inappreciative he had
found some country audiences—one he remembered in especial
when his landlady accompanied him to the lecture and her face,
he observed, was the only one which relaxed its grimness!
“Probably because she saw money enough in the house to cover
your expenses,” rejoined Dickens. That was enough; the laughter
was prodigious....
_Wednesday, November 27._—What a pity that these days have
flown while I have been unable to make any record of them.
J. has been to walk each day with Dickens, and has come home
full of wonderful things he has said.[25] His variety is so
inexhaustible that one can only listen in wonder.
_Thursday, 28._—Thanksgiving Day. J. took Dickens to see the
Aldriches’ house. He was very much amused by what he saw there
and has written out a full account to his daughter, Mrs.
Collins....
I have made no record of our supper party of Wednesday evening.
We had Alfred to wait, and a pretty supper and more important
by far (tho’ the first a consequent of the last) a pretty
company. There were Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Helen Bell and
Mrs. Silsbee, Mr. and Mrs. Bigelow, Mr. Hillard and Louisa and
Mr. Beal. Mrs. Bell sang a little before supper (“Douglas”
for one) very gracefully with real feeling. At nine o’clock
oysters and fun began; finally Mr. Dickens told several ghost
stories, but none of them more interesting than a little bit
of clairvoyance or what-you-will, which he let drop concerning
himself. He said a story was sent to him for “All the Year
Round,” which he liked and accepted; just after the matter had
been put in type, he received a letter from another person
altogether from the one who had forwarded it in the first
place, saying that _he_ and not the first man was the author,
and in proof of his position he supplied a date which was
wanting in the first paper. Curiously enough, Mr. Dickens,
seeing the story hinged upon a date and the date being but a
blank in the MS., had supplied one, as it were by chance, and,
behold! _it was the same date which the new man had sent_.
_Sunday._—Dined with Mr. Dickens at six o’clock. Mr. and Mrs.
Bigelow, Mr. Dolby and ourselves were the only guests.
After dinner we played two or three games which I will set down
lest they should be forgotten.
Descriptions of “Buzz,” “Russian Scandal,” and another wholly innocent
amusement may be omitted.
_Monday night, December 2, 1867._—The first great reading! How
we listened till we seemed turned into one eyeball! How we all
loved him! How we longed to tell him all kinds of confidences!
How Jamie and he did hug in the anteroom afterward! What a
teacher he seemed to us of humanity as he read out his own
words which have enchanted us from childhood! And what a house
it was! Longfellow, Dana, Norton (Mrs. Dana, Jr., and the three
little Andrews went with us), and a world of lovely faces and
ardent admirers.
Tuesday came Miss Dodge and Mrs. Hawthorne, Julian, and Rose.
The reading was quite as remarkable, tho’ more quiet than that
of the night before. As usual, we went to speak to him at his
request after it was over. Found him in the best of spirits,
but very tired. “You can’t think,” he said, “what resolution it
requires to dress again after it is over!”
_Monday, December 9._—Left home at 8 A.M. for New York. The
day was clear and cold, the journey somewhat long, but on the
whole extremely agreeable. We only had each other to plague
or amuse, as the case might be, and we had the new Christmas
story of Dickens and Wilkie Collins (called “No Thoroughfare”)
to read, and so by sufficient attention to the peculiarities
or follies or troubles of our neighbors and some forgetfulness
of our own, we came to the Westminster Hotel at night, in
capital spirits but _rather_ frozen physically. We had scant
time to dress and dine and to go to the Dickens reading. We
accomplished it, nevertheless. Saw the rapturous enthusiasm,
heard the “Carol” far better read than in Boston, because the
applause was more ready and he felt stimulated by it. Afterward
Mr. D. sent for us to come to his room. He was fatigued, of
course, but we sat at table with him and after a while he began
to feel warmer as vigor returned. He brought out his jewels for
us to see—a pearl Count D’Orsay once wore, set with diamonds,
etc.—laughed and talked about the way we dress and other bits
of nonsense suggested by the time, all turned towards the fine
light of Charles Dickens’s lovely soul and returning with a
fresh gleam of beauty. We left early lest we should overfatigue
him.
_Wednesday, December 11._—At four Dickens came to dinner in
our room with Eythinge and Anthony, his American designer and
engraver. Afterward we went to the “Black Crook” together, and
then home to the hotel, where we sat talking until one o’clock.
There is nothing I should like so much to do as to set down
every word he said in that time, but much must go down to
oblivion....
He talked of actors and acting—said if a man’s Hamlet was a
sustained conception, it was not to be quarrelled with; the
only question was, what a man of melancholy temperament would
do under such circumstances. Talked of Charles Reade and the
greatness of “Griffith Gaunt,” and the pity of it that he did
not stand on his own bottom instead of getting in with Dion
Boucicault, etc., etc. But after dinner he unbent, and while we
were in the box at the theatre showed how true his sympathies
were with the actors, was especially careful to make no sound
which could hurt their feelings by apparent want of attention.
The play was very dull, so we sat and talked. He told me that
no ballet dancer could have pretty feet, and one dreadful thing
was they could never wash them, as water renders the feet
tender and they must become horny. He asked about Longfellow’s
sorrow again and expressed the deepest sympathy, but said he
was like a man purified by suffering.
We had punch in our room after the play, when he laughed till
the tears ran down his cheeks over Bob Sawyer’s party and
the remembrance of the laughter he had seen depicted on the
faces of people the night before. Jack Hopkins was such a
favorite with J. that D. made up the face again and went over
the necklace story until we roared aloud. At length he began
to talk of Fechter and to describe the sensitive character of
the man. He saw him first quite by accident in Paris, having
strolled into a little theatre there one night. He was making
love to a woman, and so elevated her as well as himself by the
sentiment in which he enveloped her that they trod into purer
ether and in another sphere quite lifted out of the present.
“‘By heavens!’ I said, ‘a man who can do this can do anything!’
I never saw two people more purely and instantly elevated by
the power of love. The manner in which he presses the hem of
the dress of Lucy in the ‘Bride of Lammermoor’ is something
surpassing speech and simply wonderful. The man has a thread
of genius in him which is unmistakable, yet I should not call
him a man of genius exactly, either.” Mr. Dickens described him
as a man full of plans for plays, one who had lost much money
as a manager, too. He was apt to come down to Gad’s Hill with
his head full of plans about a play which he wished Mr. Dickens
to write out and which Fechter would act in the writing-room,
using Mr. Dickens’s small pillow for a baby in a manner to make
the latter feel, if Fechter were but a writer, how marvellous
his powers of representation would be. “I, who for so many
years have been studying the best way of putting things, felt
utterly amazed and distanced by this man.”
Before the end of our talk Mr. Dickens became penetrated by
the memory of his friend and brought him before us in all the
warmth of ardent sympathy. Fechter is sure to come to this
country: we are sure to have the happiness of knowing him (if
we all live), and in that event I shall consider last night as
the beginning of a new friendship.
[Illustration: _Reduced facsimile of Dickens’s directions, preserved
among the Fields papers, for the brewing of pleasant beverages_]
_Sunday, December 22._—Another week has gone. We are again at
home in our dear little nook by the Charles, and tonight the
lover of Christmas comes to have dinner with us. We had a merry
time last Sunday, and after we had separated the hotel must
needs take fire—to be sure, I had been packing and was in my
first sleep and knew nothing distinctly of it; but it was an
escape all the same and Mr. Dickens rushed out to help, as he
always seems to do....
At night came Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby, Mr. Lowell and Mabel,
Mr. and Mrs. Dorr, to dinner. It was really a beautiful
Christmas festival, as we intended it should be for the love of
this new apostle of Christmas. Mr. Dickens talked all the time,
as he always will do, generously, when the moment comes that he
sees it is expected, of Sir Sam. Baker, of Froude, of Fechter
again, this time as if he did not know the man, but spoke
critically as if he were a stranger, seeing Lowell’s face when
his name was mentioned, which inclined itself sneeringly.
We played games at table afterward, which turned out so queerly
that we had storms of laughter.
What a shame it is to write down anything respecting one’s
contact with Charles Dickens and have it so slight as my
accounts are; but the subtle turns of conversation are so
difficult to render—the way in which he represents the woman
who will not on any account be induced to look at him while
he is reading, and at whom he looks steadily, endeavoring
to compel the eyes to move—all these queer turns are too
delicate to be set down. I thought I should have had a
convulsion of laughter when Mrs. Dorr said Miss Laura Howe
sat down in her (Mrs. D.’s) room and wrote out a charade in
such an unparalleled and brilliant manner that nobody could
have outshone her—not even the present company. “In the same
given time, I trust?” said Dickens. “No, no,” said the lady,
persistently.
_December 31._—The year goes out clear and cold. The moon was
marvellously bright last night, and every time I woke there she
was with her attendant star looking freshly in upon us sleeping
mortals in her eternal, unwearied way. We received a letter
from Charles Dickens yesterday, saying he was coming to stay
with us when he returns. What a pleasure this will be to us! We
anticipate his coming with continual delight! To have him as
much as we can, at morning, noon, and night.
This letter, long preserved in an American copy of “A Christmas Carol” on
the shelves of the Charles Street library, throws a light of its own on
the physical handicaps with which Dickens was struggling through all this
time.
WESTMINSTER HOTEL, NEW YORK
_Sunday, Twenty-Ninth December, 1867_
MY DEAR FIELDS:—
When I come to Boston for the two readings of the 6th and 7th I
shall be alone, as Dolby must be selling elsewhere. If you and
Mrs. Fields should have no other visitor, I shall be very glad
indeed on this occasion to come to you. It is very likely that
you may have some one with you. Of course you will tell me so
if you have, and I will then reëmbellish the Parker House.
Since I left Boston last, I have been so miserable that I
have been obliged to call in a Dr.—Dr. Fordyce Barker, a very
agreeable fellow. He was strongly inclined to stop the Readings
altogether for some few days, but I pointed out to him how we
stood committed, and how I must go on if it could be done.
My great terror was yesterday’s Matinée, but it went off
splendidly. (A very heavy cold indeed, an irritated condition
of the uvula, and a restlessly low state of the nervous system,
were your friend’s maladies. If I had not avoided visiting, I
think I should have been disabled for a week or so.)
I hear from London that the general question in society is,
what will be blown up next by the Fenians.
With love to Mrs. Fields, Believe me,
Ever affectionately yours,
And hers,
CHARLES DICKENS
_Saturday night, January 4._—All in readiness. Mr. Dickens
arrived punctually with Mr. Osgood at half-past nine. Hot
supper was soon in order and we put ourselves at it. The dear
“chief” was in the best of good humor in spite of a cold which
hangs about him and stuffs up head and throat, only leaving him
for two hours at night when he reads. ’Tis something to be in
first-rate mood with such a cold....
The Readings have been so successful in New York he cannot fail
to be pleased, and he does not fail to show it. Kate Field, New
Year’s Eve, placed a basket of flowers on his table; he had
seen her bright eyes and sensitive face, he said. I was glad
for Kate, because he wrote her a little note, which pleased
her, of course.
_Wednesday, January 8_, 12 A.M.—I take up the pen again, having
bade our guest a most unwilling farewell. Last night he read
“Copperfield” and the Trial from “Pickwick.” It was an enormous
house, packed in every extremity, receipts in gold about
five hundred and ten pounds!! He was pleased, naturally, and
read marvellously well even for him. He was somewhat excited
and a good deal tired when he returned, and in spite of a
light supper and stiff glass of punch, which usually contains
soporific qualities, he could not sleep until near morning. He
has been in the best of spirits during this visit—when he came
downstairs last night to take a cup of coffee before leaving,
he turned to J., saying, “The hour has almost come when I to
sulphurous and tormenting gas must render up myself!” He has
been afflicted with catarrh, which comes and goes and distracts
him with a buzzing in his head. It usually leaves him for the
two reading hours. This is convenient, but it probably returns
with worse force.
Sunday night dinner went off brilliantly. Longfellow, Appleton,
Mr. and Mrs. Thaxter came to meet “the chief” and ourselves.
Unfortunately there was one empty seat which Rowse, the artist,
had promised to fill, but was ill at the last and could
not—curiously enough we had asked Osgood, Miss Putnam, and Mr.
Gay besides, all kept away by accident when they would have
given their eyes to come. In the course of the day he had been
to see (with O. W. H.) the ground of the Parkman murder which
has lately been so clearly described by Sir Emerson Tennent in
“All the Year Round”; in the evening the talk turned naturally
enough that way, when, after much surmise with regard to the
previous life of the man, Mr. Longfellow looked up and with an
assured, clear tone, said: “Now I have a story to tell! A year
or two before this event took place Dr. Webster invited a party
of gentlemen to a dinner at this house, I believe to meet some
foreigner who was interested in science. The doctor himself was
a chemist, and after dinner he had a large bowl placed in the
centre of the table with some chemical mixture in it which he
set on fire after turning the lamp low. A lurid light came from
the bowl which caused a livid look upon the faces of those who
sat round the table, and while all were observing the ghastly
effect, Dr. Webster rose and, pulling a bit of rope from
somewhere about his person, put it around his neck, reached his
head over the bowl to heighten the effect, hung it on one side,
and lolled his tongue out to give the appearance of a man who
had been hanged!!! The whole scene was terrible and ghastly in
the extreme, and, remembered in the light of what followed, had
a prescience frightful to contemplate.”[26]
Appleton did not talk as much as usual, and we were rather
glad; but Mrs. Thaxter’s story took strong hold on Dickens’s
fancy, and he told me afterward that when he awaked in the
night he thought of her. I have seldom sat at dinner with a
gentleman more careful and fine in his choice and taste of
food and drink than C. D. The idea of his ever passing the
bounds of temperance is an absurdity not to be thought of for a
moment. In this respect he is quite unlike Mr. Thackeray, who
at times both ate and drank inordinately, and without doubt
shortened his life by his carelessness in these particulars.
John Forster, C. D.’s old friend, is quite ill with gout and
some other ails, so C. D. writes him long letters full of
his experiences. We breakfast at half-past nine punctually,
he on a rasher of bacon and an egg and a cup of tea, always
preferring this same thing. Afterward we talk or play with the
sewing-machine or anything else new and odd to him. Then he
sits down to write until one o’clock, when he likes a glass
of wine and biscuit, and afterward goes to walk until nearly
four, when we dine. After dinner, reading days, he will take
a cup of strong coffee, a tiny glass of brandy, and a cigar,
and likes to lie down for a short time to get his voice in
order. His man then takes a portmanteau of clothes to the
reading hall, where he dresses for the evening. Upon our return
we always have supper and he brews a marvellous punch, which
usually makes us all sleep like tops after the excitement. The
perfect kindliness and sympathy which radiates from the man
is, after all, the secret never to be told, but always to be
studied and to thank God for. His rapid eyes, which nothing
can escape, eyes which, when he first appears upon the stage,
seem to interrogate the lamps and all things above and below
(like exclamation points, Aldrich says), are unlike anything
before in our experience. There are no living eyes like them,
swift and kind, possessing none of the bliss of ignorance, but
the different bliss of one who sees what the Lord has done and
what, or something of what, he intends. Such charity! Poor man!
He must have learned great need for that.... He is a man who
has suffered, evidently. Georgina Hogarth he always speaks of
in the most affectionate terms, such as “she has been a mother
to my children,” “she keeps the list of the wine cellar, and
every few days examines to see what we are now in want of.”
I hardly know anything more amusing than when he begs not
to be “set a-going” on one of his readings by a quotation
or otherwise, and [it is] odd enough to hear him go on,
having been so touched off. He has been a great student of
Shakespeare, which appears often in his talk. His love of
the theatre is something which never pales, he says, and the
people who go upon the stage, however poor their pay or hard
their lot, love it, he thinks, too well ever to adopt another
vocation of their free will. One of the oddest sights a green
room presents, he says, is when they are collecting children
for a pantomime. For this purpose the prompter calls together
all the women in the ballet and begins giving out their names
in order, while they press about him, eager for the chance
of increasing their poor pay by the extra pittance their
children will receive. “Mrs. Johnson, how many?” “Two, sir.”
“What years?” “Seven and ten.” “Mrs. B.”—and so on until the
requisite number is made up. He says, where one member of
a family obtains regular employment at the theatre, others
are sure to come in after a time; the mother will be in the
wardrobe, children in pantomime, elder sisters in the ballet,
etc.
When we asked him to return to us, he said he must be loyal to
“the show,” and, having three or four men with him, ought to be
at an hotel where he could attend properly to the business. He
never forgets the needs of those who are dependent upon him, is
liberal to his servants (and to ours also), and liberal in his
heart to all sorts and conditions of men.
I have one deeply seated hope, that he will read for the Freed
people before he leaves the country; and I cannot help thinking
he will....
For more than a month from the time of this entry Dickens was carrying
the triumph of his readings into other cities than Boston. There he had
left a faithful champion in the person of Mrs. Fields, who wrote in her
diary on January 26, 1868: “It is odd how prejudiced people have allowed
themselves to become about Dickens. I seldom make a call where his name
is introduced that I do not feel the injustice done to him personally,
as if mankind resented the fact that he had excited more love than most
men.” As his return to Boston drew near, she wrote, February 18th: “We
are anticipating and doorkeeping for the arrival of our friend. Whatever
unpleasant is said of Charles Dickens I take almost as if said against
myself. It is so hard to help this when you love a friend.” On February
21st there is the entry: “We go to Providence tonight to hear ‘Dr.
Marigold.’ I have been full of plans for next week, which is to be a busy
season with us of company.”
_Saturday, February 22._—We have heard “Marigold”! To be
sure, the audience was sadly stupid and unresponsive, but we
were penetrated by it.... What a night we had in Providence!
Our beds were comfortable enough, for which we were deeply
thankful; but none of the party slept, I believe, except Mr.
Dolby, and his rest was inevitably cut short in the morning
by business. I believe I lay awake from pure pleasure after
such a treat. Hearing “Marigold” and having supper afterward
with the dear great man. We played a game at cards which was
most curious—indeed, something more—so much more that I have
forgotten to be afraid of him.
In writing the chapter, “Glimpses of Emerson,” in “Authors and Friends,”
Mrs. Fields drew freely upon the entry that here follows in its fullness.