a reporter. It seems he invented (in a measure) a system of
stenography for himself; this is to say he altered Gurney’s
system to suit his own needs. He was a very young man, not yet
20, when at seven guineas a week he was engaged as reporter
on the “Morning Chronicle,” then a very large and powerful
paper. At this period the present Lord Derby, then Mr. Stanley,
was beginning his brilliant career, and O’Connell, Shiel, and
others were at the height of their powers. Wherever these men
spoke a corps of reporters was detailed to follow them and
with the utmost expedition forward verbatim reports to the
“Chronicle.” Often and often he has gone by post-chaise to
Edinburgh, heard a speech or a part of it (having instructions,
whatever happened, to leave the place again at a certain hour,
the next reporter taking up his work where he must leave it),
and has driven all the way back to London, a bag of sovereigns
on one side of his body and a bag of slips of paper on the
other, writing, writing desperately all the way by the light of
a small lamp. At each station a man on horseback would stand
ready to seize the sheets already prepared and ride with them
to London. Often and often this work would make him deadly
sick and he would have to plunge his head out of the window
to relieve himself; still the writing went steadily forward
on very little slips of paper which he held before him, just
resting his body on the edge of the seat and his paper on the
front of the window underneath the lamp. As the station was
reached, a sudden plunge into the pocket of sovereigns would
pay the postboys, another behind him would render up the
completed pages, and a third into the pocket on the other side
would give him the fresh paper to carry forward the inexorable,
unremitting work.
At this period there was a large sheet started in which all
the speeches of Parliament were reported verbatim in order
to preserve them for future reference—a monstrous plan which
fell through after a time. For this paper it was especially
desired to have a speech of Mr. Stanley accurately reported
upon the condition of Ireland, containing suggestions for
the amelioration of the people’s suffering. It was a very
long and eloquent speech and took many hours in the delivery.
There were eight reporters upon the work, each to work
three-quarters of an hour and then to retire to write out his
portion and be succeeded by the next. It happened that the
roll of reporters was exhausted before the speech came to an
end and C. D. was called in to report the last portions, which
were very eloquent. This was on Friday, and on Saturday the
whole was given to the press and the young reporter ran down to
the country for a Sunday’s rest. Sunday morning had scarcely
dawned “when my poor father, who was a man of immense energy,
surprised me by making his appearance. The speech had come into
Mr. Stanley’s hands, who was most anxious to have it correctly
given in order to have it largely circulated in Ireland, and he
found it all bosh, hardly a word right, except at the beginning
and the end. Sending immediately to the office, he had obtained
my sheets, at the top of which, according to custom, the name
of the reporter was written, and, finding the name of Dickens,
had immediately sent in search of me. My father, thinking this
would be the making of me, came immediately, and I followed him
back to London. I remember perfectly the look of the room and
of the two gentlemen in it as I entered—Mr. Stanley and his
father. They were extremely courteous, but I could see their
evident surprise at the appearance of so young a man. For a
moment as we talked I had taken a seat extended to me in the
middle of the room. Mr. Stanley told me he wished to go over
the whole speech, and if I was ready he would begin. Where
would I like to sit? I told him I was very well where I was
and we would begin immediately. He tried to induce me to sit
elsewhere or more comfortably, but at that time in the House
of Commons there was nothing but one’s knees to write upon and
I had formed the habit of it. Without further pause then he
began, and went on hour after hour to the end, often becoming
very much excited, bringing down his hand with violence upon
the desk near which he stood and rising at the end into great
eloquence.
“In these later years we never meet without that scene
returning vividly to my mind, as I have no doubt it does to his
also, but I, of course, have never referred to it, leaving him
to do so if he shall ever think fit.
“Shiel was a small man with a queer high voice and spoke very
fast. O’Connell had a fine brogue which he cultivated, and
a magnificent eye. He had written a speech about this time
upon the wrongs of Ireland, and, though he repeated it many,
many times during three months when I followed him about the
country, I never heard him give it twice the same, nor ever
without being himself deeply moved.”[27]
Mr. Dickens’s imitation of Bulwer Lytton is so vivid that
I feel as if it were taking a glimpse at the man himself.
His deaf manner of speaking he represents exactly. He says
he is very brilliant and quick in conversation, and knows
everything!! He is a conscientious and unremitting student
and worker. “I have been surprised to see how well his books
wear. Lately I have reread ‘Pelham’ and I assure you I found
it admirable. His speech at the dinner given to me just before
leaving was well written, full of good things, but delivered
execrably. He lacks a kind of confidence in his own powers
which is necessary in a good speaker.”
Speaking of O’Connell, Mr. Dickens said there had been nobody
since who could compare with him but John Bright, who is at
present the finest speaker in England. Cobden was fond of
reasoning, and hardly what would be called a brilliant speaker;
but his noble truthfulness and devotion to the cause to
which he had pledged himself made him one of the grandest of
England’s great men. I asked about Mrs. Cobden. He told me she
had been made very comfortable and in a beautiful manner. After
her husband’s death, his affairs having become involved by some
bad investment he had made, a committee of six gentlemen came
together to consider what should be done to commemorate his
great and unparalleled devotion to his country. The result was,
instead of having a public subscription for Mrs. Cobden with
the many unavoidable and disagreeable features of such a step,
each of these gentlemen subscribed about £12,000, thus making
£70,000, a sufficient sum to make her most comfortable for
life....
I have forgotten to say how in those long rides from Edinburgh
the mud dashed up and into the opened windows of the
post-chaise, nor how they would be obliged to fling it off from
their faces and even from the papers on which they wrote. As
Dickens told us, he flung the imaginary evil from him as he did
the real in the days long gone, and we could see him with the
old disgust returned. He said, by the way, that never since
those old days when he left the House of Commons as a Reporter
had he entered it again. His hatred of the falseness of talk,
of bombastic eloquence, he had heard there made it impossible
for him ever to go in again to hear anyone.
_Sunday, April 12._—Last night we went to the circus together,
C. D., J., and I. It is a pretty building. I was astonished
at the knowledge C. D. showed of everything before him. He
knew how the horses were stenciled, how tight the wire bridles
were, etc. The monkey was, however, the chief attraction. He
was rather drunk or tired last night and did not show to good
advantage, but he knew how to do all the things quite as well
as the men. When the young rope-dancer slipped (he was but an
apprentice at the business, without wages, C. D. thought), he
tried over and over again to accomplish a certain somersault
until he achieved it. “That’s the law of the circus,” said C.
D.; “they are never allowed to give up, and it’s a capital rule
for everything in life. Doubtless this idea has been handed
down from the Greeks or Romans and these people know nothing
about where it came from. But it’s well for all of us.” ...
At six o’clock Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby came in to dinner. He
seemed much revived both in health and spirits, in spite of the
weather....
Dickens talked of Frédérick Lemaître; he is upwards of sixty
years old now; but he has always lived a wretched life, a low,
poor fellow; yet he will surprise the actors continually by the
new points he will make. He will come in at rehearsal, go about
the stage in an abject wretched manner, with clothes torn and
soiled as he has just emerged from his vulgar, vicious haunts,
and without giving sign or glimmer of his power. Presently he
says to the prompter, who always has a tallow candle burning
on his box, “Give me your candle”; then he will blow it out
and with the snuff make a cross upon his book. “What are you
going to do, Frédérick?” the actors say. “I don’t know yet;
you’ll see by and by,” he says, and day after day perhaps will
pass, until one night when he will suddenly flash upon them
some wonderful point. They, the actors, watching him, try to
hold themselves prepared, and if he gives them the least hint
will mould their parts to fit his. Sometimes he will ask for
a chair. “What will you do with it, Frédérick?” He does not
reply, but night after night the chair is placed there until he
makes his point. He often comes hungry to the theatre, and the
manager must give him a dinner and pay for it before he will go
on. Fechter, from whom these particulars come, tells Dickens
that there can be nothing more wonderful than his acting in the
old scene of the miserable father who kills his own son at the
inn. The son, coming in rich and handsome, and seeing this old
sot about to be driven from the porch by the servant, tells
the man to give him meat and wine. While he eats and drinks,
the wretch sees how freely the rich man handles his gold and
resolves to kill him. Fechter’s description, with his own
knowledge of Lemaître, had so inspired Dickens that he was able
to reproduce him again for us.
_Wednesday, April 15._—[On returning from a reading in
“Steinway Hall, than which nothing could be worse for reading
or speaking”]: He soon came up after a little soup, when he
called for brandy and lemons and made _such_ a burnt brandy
punch as has been seldom tasted this side of the “pond.” As
the punch blazed his spirits rose and he began to sing an
old-fashioned comic song such as in the old days was given
between the plays at the theatre. One song led to another until
we fell into inextinguishable laughter, for anything more comic
than his renderings of the chorus cannot be imagined. Surely
there is no living actor who could excel him in these things
if he chose to exert his ability. His rendering of “Chrush ke
lan ne chouskin!!” or a lingo which sounded like that (the
refrain of an old Irish song) was something tremendous. We
laughed till I was really afraid he would make himself too
hoarse to read the next night. He gave a queer old song full of
rhymes, obtained with immense difficulty and circumlocution,
to the word “annuity,” which it appeared has been sought
by an old woman with great _assiduity_ and granted with
immense _incongruity_. The negro minstrels have in great part
supplanted these queer old English, Irish, and Scotch ballads,
but they are sure to come up again from time to time. We did
not separate until 12, and felt the next morning (as he said)
as if we had had a regular orgy. They did not forget, Dolby and
he, to pay a proper tribute to “Maryland, My Maryland,” and
“Dixie” as very stirring ballads.
[After another reading, from which Dickens came home extremely
tired]: We ran in at once to talk with him and he soon cheered
up. When I first pushed open the door he was a perfect picture
of prostration, his head thrown back without support on the
couch, the blood suffusing his throat and temples again where
he had been very white a few minutes before. This is a physical
peculiarity with Dickens which I have never seen before in a
man, though women are very subject to that thing. Excitement
and exercise of reading will make the blood rush into his hands
until they become at times almost black, and his face and head
(especially since he has become so fatigued) will turn from red
to white and back to red again without his being conscious of
it.
_Friday, April 17._—Weather excessively warm, sky often
overcast. Last evening Mr. Dickens read again and for the last
time “Copperfield” and “Bob Sawyer.” He was much exhausted
and said he watched a man who was carried out in a fainting
condition to see how they managed it, with the lively interest
of one who was about to go through the same scene himself.
The heat from the gas around him was intolerable. After the
reading we went into his room to have a little soup, “broiled
bones,” and a sherry cobbler. His spirits were good in spite of
fatigue, the thought of home and the memories of England coming
back vividly. We, finally, from talk of English scenery, found
ourselves in Stratford. He says there is an inn at Rochester,
very old, which he has no doubt Shakespeare haunted. This
conviction came forcibly upon him one night as he was walking
that way and discovered Charles’s Wain setting over the chimney
just as Shakespeare has described. “When you come to Gad’s
Hill, please God, I will show you Charles’s Wain setting over
the old roof.”
We left him early, hoping he would sleep, but he hardly closed
his eyes all night. Whether he was haunted by visions of home,
or what the cause was, we cannot discover, but whatever it
may be, his strength fails under such unnatural and continual
excitement.
_Saturday, April 18._—Mr. Dickens has a badly sprained foot.
We like our rooms at his hotel—47 is the number. Last night
was “Marigold” and “Gamp” for the last time. He threw in a few
touches for our amusement and a great deal of vigor into the
whole. Afterward we took supper together, when he told us some
remarkable things. Among others he rehearsed a scene described
to him years ago by Dr. Eliotson of London of a man about to
be hanged. His last hour had approached as the doctor entered
the cell of the criminal, who was as justly sentenced as ever a
wretch was for having cut off the end of his own illegitimate
child. The man was rocking miserably in his chair back and
forth in a weak, maudlin condition, while the clergyman in
attendance, who had spoken of him as repentant and religious in
his frame of mind, was administering the sacrament. The wine
stood in a cup at one side until the sacred words were said,
when at the proper moment the clergyman gave it to the man,
who was still rocking backward and forward, muttering, “What
will my poor mother think of this?” Finding the cup in his
hands, he looked into it for a moment as if trying to collect
himself, and then, putting on his regular old pothouse manner,
he said, “Gen’lemen, I drink your health,” and drained the
cup in a drunken way. “I think,” said C. D., “it is thirty
years since I heard Dr. Eliotson tell me this, but I shall
never forget the horror that scene inspired in my mind.” The
talk had taken this turn from the fact of a much-dreaded Press
dinner which is to come off tonight and which jocosely assumed
the idea of a hanging to their minds. C. D. said he had often
thought how restricted one’s conversation must become with a
man who was to be hanged in half an hour. “You could not say,
if it rains, ‘We shall have fine weather tomorrow!’ for what
would that be to him? For my part, I think I should confine
my remarks to the times of Julius Cæsar and King Alfred!!” He
then related a story of a condemned man out of whom no evidence
could be elicited. He would not speak. At last he was seated
before a fire for a few moments, just before his execution,
when a servant entered and smothered what fire there was with
a huge hodful of coal. “_In half an hour that will be a good
fire_,” he was heard to murmur.
Mr. Dickens has now read 76 times. It seems like a dream.
_Sunday, April 19._—Last night the great New York Press dinner
came off. It was a close squeeze with Mr. Dickens to get there
at all. He had been taken lame the night before, his foot
becoming badly swollen and painful. In spite of a skilful
physician he grew worse and worse every hour, and when the
time for the dinner arrived he was unable to bear anything
upon his foot. So long as he was above ground, however, it
was a necessity he should go, and an hour and a half after
the time appointed, with his foot sewed up in black silk, he
made his way to Delmonico’s. Poor man! Nothing could be more
unfortunate, but he bore this difficult part off in a stately
and composed manner as if it were a sign of the garter he
were doffing for the first time instead of a badge of ill
health. The worst of it is that the papers will telegraph news
of his illness to England. This seems to disturb him more
than anything else. Ah! What a mystery these ties of love
are—such pain, such ineffable happiness—the only happiness.
After his return he repeated to me from memory every word of
his speech without dropping one. He never thinks of such a
thing as writing his speeches, but simply turns it over in
his mind and “balances the sentences,” when he is all right.
He produced an immense effect on the Press of New York,
tremendous applause responding to every sentence. Curtis’s
speech was very beautiful. “I think him the very best speaker
I ever heard,” said C. D. “I am sure he would produce a great
effect in England from the sympathetic quality he possesses.”
I have seldom seen a finer exercise of energy of will than Mr.
Dickens’s attendance on this dinner. It brought its own reward,
too, for he returned with his foot feeling better. He made a
rum punch in his room, where we sat until one o’clock. After
repeating his speech, he gave us an imitation of old Rogers as
he would repeat a quatrain:—
“The French have sense in what they do
Which we are quite without,
For what in Paris they call _goût_
In England we call _gout_.”
Mr. Dolby sat at dinner near a poor bohemian of great keenness
of mind, Henry Clapp, by name, who said some things worthy
of Rivarol or any other wittiest Frenchman we might choose
to select. Speaking of Horace Greeley (the chairman at the
dinner), he said: “He was a self-made man and worshipped his
creator.” Of Dr. O——, a vain and popular clergyman, that “he
was continually looking for a vacancy in the Trinity.” Of
Mr. Dickens, that “nothing gave him so high an idea of Mr.
Dickens’s genius as the fact that he created Uriah Heep without
seeing a certain Mr. Young (who sat near them), and Wilkins
Micawber without being acquainted with himself (Henry Clapp).”
Of Henry T—— that “he aimed at nothing and always hit the mark
precisely.”
This speech of Mr. Dickens will make a fine effect, a
reactionary effect, in the country. The enthusiasm for him knew
no bounds. Charles Norton spoke for New England. I had a visit
from him this morning as well as from Mr. Osgood, Dolby, etc.
C. D. lunched at the Jockey Club with Dr. Barker and Donald
Mitchell and returned to dine with us. He talked of actors,
artists, and the clergy—church and religion—but was evidently
suffering more or less all the time with his foot, yet kept up
a good heart until nine o’clock, when he retired to the privacy
of his own room. He feels bitterly the wrong under which
English dissenters have labored for years in being obliged not
only to support their own church interests in which they _do_
believe, but also the abuses of the English Church against
which their whole lives are a continual protest. He spoke of
the beauty of the landscape through which we had both been
walking and driving under a grey sky, with the eager spring
looking out among leafless branches and dancing in the red and
yellow sap. He said it had always been a fancy of his to write
a story, keeping the whole thing in the same landscape, but
picturing its constantly varying effects upon men and things
and chiefly, of course, upon the minds of men. He asked me if I
had ever read Crabbe’s “Lover’s Ride.” We became indignant over
a tax of five per cent which had just been laid upon the entire
proceeds of his Readings, telegraphed to Washington, and found
that it was unjust and had been taken off.
_Monday, April 20._—Attended a meeting of a new “institution”
just on foot, first called “Sorosis” and afterwards “Woman’s
League” for the benefit and mutual support of women. It was the
first official meeting, but it proved so unofficial that I was
entertained, and amused as well, and was able on my return to
make Mr. Dickens laugh until he declared if anything could make
him feel better for the evening that account of the Woman’s
League would.
_Tuesday._—I find it very difficult today to write at all. Mr.
Dickens is on his bed and has been unable to rise, in spite of
efforts all day long.... Mr. Norton has been here and we have
been obliged to go out, but our hearts have been in that other
room all the time where our dear friend lies suffering.... Oh!
these last times—what heartbreak there is in the words. I lay
awake since early this morning (though we did not leave him
until half-past twelve) feeling as if when I arose we must
say good-bye. How relieved I felt to brush the tears away and
know there was one more day, but even that gain was lessened
when I found he could not rise and even this must be a day of
separation too. When Jamie told him last night he felt like
erecting a statue to him because of his heroism in doing his
duty so well, he laughed and said, “No, don’t; take down one of
the old ones instead!”
The diary goes on to express the genuine sorrow of Mrs. Fields and her
husband at parting from a friend who had so completely absorbed their
affection, but in terms which the diarist herself would have been the
first to regard as more suitable for manuscript than for print. The pages
that contain them throw more light upon Mrs. Fields—a warm and tender
light it is—than upon Dickens. There is, however, one paragraph, written
after the Fieldses had returned to Boston from New York, which tells
something both of Dickens and of Queen Victoria, in whose personality
the public interest appears to be perpetual; and with this passage the
quotations from the diary shall end.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE PLAY-BILL OF “THE FROZEN DEEP,” WITH DICKENS AS
ACTOR-MANAGER]