“You rather entertained the notion once, of coming to see me at
Genoa. I shall return straight on the ninth of December, limiting my
stay in town to one week. Now, couldn’t you come back with me? The
journey that way is very cheap, and I am sure the gratification to
you would be high. I am lodged in quite a wonderful place, and would
put you in a painted room as big as a church, and much more
comfortable. There are pens and ink upon the premises; orange trees,
gardens, battledores and shuttlecocks, rousing wood fires for
evenings, and a welcome worth having.” * * *
* * * * *
In 1846, again, Mr. Dickens is off to Switzerland, and still would tempt
Jerrold in his wake. “I wish,” he writes, “you would seriously consider
the expediency and feasibility of coming to Lausanne in the summer or
early autumn. It is a wonderful place to see; and what sort of welcome
you would find I will say nothing about, for I have vanity enough to
believe that you would be willing to feel yourself as much at home in my
household as in any man’s.”
Arrived at Lausanne, Mr. Dickens writes that he will be ready for his
guest in June. “We are established here,” he says, “in a perfect doll’s
house, which could be put bodily into the hall of our Italian palazzo.
But it is in the most lovely and delicious situation imaginable, and
there is a spare bedroom wherein we could make you as comfortable as need
be. Bowers of roses for cigar-smoking, arbours for cool punch-drinking,
mountain and Tyrolean countries close at hand, piled-up Alps before the
windows, &c., &c., &c.” Then follow business-like directions for the
journey.
But it could not be. Jerrold was busy with his paper, and with his
magazine, and felt unable to abandon them even for a few weeks. Well,
could he reach Paris for Christmas, persisted Mr. Dickens, and spend that
merry time with his friend.
Early in 1847 Jerrold thought he did see his way clear at last to make a
short visit to Paris, where Dickens was still established. “We are
delighted at your intention of coming,” writes the latter, giving the
most minute details of the manner in which the journey was to be
performed; but even this journey was never accomplished. Once only,
after all these promises and invitations—and that for but two or three
days—did Douglas Jerrold escape from the cares of London literary life,
to meet Mr. Dickens at Ostend, on his return from Italy, and have a few
days’ stroll about Belgium.
The following is an extract from a curious and interesting letter
addressed by Dickens to Douglas Jerrold on the subject of public hanging,
respecting which the latter held conservative opinions:—
‘Devonshire Terrace, November 17, 1849.
“In a letter I have received from G. this morning he quotes a recent
letter from you, in which you deprecate the ‘mystery’ of private
hanging.
“Will you consider what punishment there is, except death, to which
‘mystery’ does not attach? Will you consider whether all the
improvements in prisons and punishments that have been made within
the last twenty years have or have not, been all productive of
‘mystery?’ I can remember very well when the silent system was
objected to as mysterious, and opposed to the genius of English
society. Yet there is no question that it has been a great benefit.
The prison vans are mysterious vehicles; but surely they are better
than the old system of marching prisoners through the streets chained
to a long chain, like the galley slaves in Don Quixote. Is there no
mystery about transportation, and our manner of sending men away to
Norfolk Island, or elsewhere? None in abandoning the use of a man’s
name, and knowing him only by a number? Is not the whole improved
and altered system, from the beginning to end, a mystery? I wish I
could induce you to feel justified in leaving that word to the
platform people, on the strength of your knowledge of what crime was,
and of what its punishments were, in the days when there was no
mystery connected with these things, and all was as open as Bridewell
when Ned Ward went to see the women whipped.”