“The grass was green above the dead boy’s grave,
Trodden by feet so small and light,
That not a daisy droop’d its head
Beneath their pressure.
Through all the spring and summer time
Garlands of fresh flowers, wreathed by infant hands,
Rested upon the stone.”
The following stanzas, entitled “A Word in Season,” were contributed by
Mr. Dickens in the winter of 1843 to an annual edited by his friend and
correspondent, the Countess of Blessington. Since that time he has
ceased to write, or at any rate to publish anything in verse.
This poem savours much of the manner of Robert Browning. Full of wit and
wisdom, and containing some very remarkable and rememberable lines, an
extract from it will fitly close this chapter of our volume.
A WORD IN SEASON.
BY CHARLES DICKENS.
“They have a superstition in the East,
That ALLAH, written on a piece of paper,
Is better unction than can come of priest
Of rolling incense, and of lighted taper:
Holding, that any scrap which bears that name,
In any characters, its front impress’d on,
Shall help the finder thro’ the purging flame,
And give his toasted feet a place to rest on.
“So have I known a country on the earth,
Where darkness sat upon the living waters,
And brutal ignorance, and toil, and dearth
Were the hard portion of its sons and daughters:
And yet, where they who should have oped the door
Of charity and light, for all men’s finding,
Squabbled for words upon the altar-floor,
And rent The Book, in struggles for the binding.” {341}
CHARLES DICKENS’S READINGS.
THE FIRST PUBLIC READING.
BY ONE WHO HEARD IT.
NOTE.—_In the Introduction to the present volume_, _p._ 42, _it is stated
that Dickens’s_ “FIRST _Reading_” _in public was given at Birmingham in
the Christmas of_ 1853. _The offer to read on this public occasion was
certainly the_ FIRST _which the great novelist made_, _but before the
Christmas had come around he thought proper to give a trial Reading
before a much smaller audience_, _in the quiet little city of
Peterborough_.—ED.
IT must be sixteen or seventeen years ago—I cannot fix the date exactly,
though the affair made a strong impression on me at the time—that I
witnessed Charles Dickens’s _débût_ as a public reader. The
circumstances surrounding this event were so singular that I am tempted
to recall them.
Scene, the City of Peterborough—dreamy and quiet enough then, though now
a flourishing railroad terminus—a silent city, with a grand old Norman
cathedral, round which the rooks cawed lazily all day, straggling narrow
streets of brick-built houses, a large Corn Exchange, a Mechanics’
Institute, and about seven thousand inhabitants. The Mechanics’
Institute brought it all about. That well-meaning but weak-kneed
organization was, I need hardly say, in debt. Mechanics’ Institutes
always are in debt. That is their chief peculiarity, next to the fact
that they never by any chance have any mechanics among their members.
Our institution was no exception to the rule. On the contrary, it was a
bright and shining example. No mechanics’ institute of its size anywhere
around was so deeply in debt; none was more snobbishly exclusive in its
membership. We had overrun our resources to such an extent that we could
not even pay the rent of the building we occupied, and were in daily
danger of being turned out of doors. Lectures on highly improving
subjects had been tried, but the proceeds did not pay the printer.
Concerts succeeded better, but the committee said they were immoral. We
had given two monster tea meetings to pay off the debt, on which
occasions all the cake required was supplied gratuitously by the members’
mothers, and all the members and their friends came in by free tickets
and ate it up. Henry Vincent delivered us an oration; George Dawson
propounded metaphysical sophistries for our intellectual mystification;
but with all this we got no better of our troubles—every flounder we made
only plunged us deeper into the mud. At last it was resolved to write to
our Borough members. This was in the good old days of Whig supremacy;
and all the land and all the houses round about us being owned by one
great Whig earl, our borough was privileged to return two members to
represent the opinions of that unprotected earl in Parliament. A
contested election had just come to a close, and the honeyed promises and
grateful pledges of our elected candidates were still fresh in our
memory. So to our members the committee addressed their tearful
entreaties—“deserving institution,”—“valuable agency of
self-improvement,”—“pressing pecuniary embarrassments,” and so forth.
Member No. 1 sent his compliments and a five pound note. Member No. 2
delayed writing for several days, and then had great pleasure in
informing us that the celebrated author, Mr. Charles Dickens, had kindly
consented to deliver a public reading on our behalf.
What an excitement it caused in the little city! Mr. Dickens at that
time had made no public appearance as a reader. He had occasionally been
heard of as giving selections from his works to small coteries of friends
or in the private saloon of some distinguished patron of art. But he had
nervously shrunk from any public _débût_, unwilling, so it seemed, to
weaken his reputation as a writer by any possible failure as a reader.
This diffidence had taken so strong a hold of him that it might never
have been overcome but for the insidious persuasions of “our member.”
“Here was an opportunity,” he argued, “for testing the matter without
risk: an antediluvian country town; an audience of farmers’ sons and
daughters, rural shop-keepers, and a few country parsons—if interest
could be excited in the stolid minds of such a Bœotian assemblage, the
success of the reader would be assured wherever the English tongue was
spoken. On the other hand, if failure resulted, none would be the wiser
outside this Sleepy-Hollow circle.” The bait took, and Mr. Dickens
consented to deliver a public reading in aid of the Peterborough
Mechanics’ Institute. He only stipulated that the prices of admission
should be such that every mechanic, if he chose, might come to hear him,
and named two shillings, a shilling, and sixpence as the limit of charge.
Vain limitation!—a fortnight before the reading every place was taken,
and half a guinea and a guinea were the current rates for front seat
tickets.
Dickens himself came down and superintended the arrangements, so anxious
was he as to the result. At one end of the large Corn Exchange before
spoken of he had caused to be erected a tall pulpit of red baize, as much
like a Punch and Judy show with the top taken off as anything. This was
to be the reader’s rostrum. But, as the tall red pulpit looked lanky and
very comical stuck up there alone, two dummy pulpits of similar
construction were placed one on each side to bear it company. When the
reader mounted into the middle box nothing was visible of him but his
head and shoulders. So if it be really true, as was stated afterwards by
an indiscreet supernumerary, that Mr. Dickens’s legs shook under him from
first to last, the audience knew nothing of it. The whole character of
the stage arrangements suggested that Mr. Dickens was sure of his head,
but was not quite so sure of his legs.
It was the _Christmas Carol_ that Mr. Dickens read; the night was
Christmas Eve. As the clock struck the appointed hour, a red, jovial
face, unrelieved by the heavy moustache which the novelist has since
assumed, a broad, high forehead, and a perfectly Micawber-like expanse of
shirt-collar and front appeared above the red baize box, and a full,
sonorous voice rang out the words, “_Marley-was-dead-to-begin-with_”—then
paused, as if to take in the character of the audience. No need of
further hesitation. The voice held all spellbound. Its depth of quiet
feeling when the ghost of past Christmases led the dreamer through the
long-forgotten scenes of his boyhood—its embodiment of burly good nature
when old Fezziwig’s calves were twinkling in the dance—its tearful
suggestiveness when the spirit of Christmases to come pointed to the
nettle-grown, neglected grave of the unloved man—its exquisite pathos by
the death-bed of Tiny Tim, dwell yet in memory like a long-known tune.
That one night’s reading in the quaint little city, so curiously brought
about, so ludicrous almost in its surroundings, committed Mr. Dickens to
the career of a public reader; and he has since derived nearly as large
an income from his readings as from the copyright of his novels. Only he
signally failed to carry out his wish of making his first bow before an
uneducated audience. The vote of thanks which closed the proceedings was
moved by the senior marquis of Scotland and seconded by the heir of the
wealthiest peer in England.
One other incident suggests itself in this connection. Somewhere about
this time three notable men stood together in a print-shop in this same
city—a singular three-cornered shop, with three fiddles dangling forlorn
and dusty from the ceiling, and everything from piano-fortes to
hair-brushes comprised in its stock-in-trade. They stood there one whole
morning, laughing heartily at the perplexities of the little shopwoman,
who in her nervousness continually transposed the first letters of words,
sometimes with very comical effect. Thus, instead of saying, “Put the
bottle in the cupboard,” she would remark, “Put the cottle in the
bupboard.” The laughing trio were Dickens, Albert Smith, and Layard the
traveller, now our minister to the court of Madrid. I strongly suspect
that the eccentricity of the medical student in Albert Smith’s
_Adventures of Mr. Ledbury_—the student who invites his friends to “poke
a smipe” when he means them to “smoke a pipe”—was born on that occasion,
and that Charles Dickens was robbed by his friend of some thunder which
he intended to use himself.
* * * * *
BUT to return to the “Readings.” One glance at the platform is
sufficient to convince the audience that Mr. Dickens thoroughly
appreciates “stage effect.” A large screen of maroon cloth occupies the
background; before it stands a light table of peculiar design, on the
inner left-hand corner of which there peers forth a miniature desk, large
enough to accommodate the reader’s book. On the right hand of the table,
and somewhat below its level, is a shelf, where repose a carafe of water
and a tumbler. This is covered with velvet, somewhat lighter in colour
than the screen. No drapery conceals the table, whereby it is plain that
Mr. Dickens believes in expression of figure as well as of face, and does
not throw away everything but his head and arms, according to the
ordinary habit of ordinary speakers. About twelve feet above the
platform, and somewhat in advance of the table, is a horizontal row of
gas-jets with a tin reflector; and midway in both perpendicular gas-pipes
there is one powerful jet with glass chimney. By this admirable
arrangement, Mr. Dickens stands against a dark background in a frame of
gaslight, which throws out his face and figure to the best advantage.
He comes! A lithe, energetic man, of medium stature, crosses the
platform at the brisk gait of five miles an hour, and takes his position
behind the table. This is Charles Dickens, whose name has been a
household word for thirty years in England. He has a broad, full brow, a
fine head,—which, for a man of such power and energy, is singularly small
at the base of the brain,—and a cleanly cut profile.
There is a slight resemblance between Mr. Dickens and the Emperor of the
French in the latter respect, owing mainly to the nose; but it is
unnecessary to add that the faces of the two men are totally different.
Mr. Dickens’s eyes are light-blue, and his mouth and jaw, without having
any claim to beauty, possess a strength that is not concealed by the veil
of iron-gray moustache and generous imperial. His head is but slightly
graced with iron-gray hair, and his complexion is florid. There is a
twinkle in his eye, as he enters, that, like a promissory note, pledges
itself to any amount of fun—within sixty minutes.
People may think in perusing Mr. Dickens’s books that he must be a man of
large humanity, of forgiving nature, of generous impulses; in hearing him
read they _know_ that he must be such a man. This, of course, does not
alone make a great artist; but equally, of course, it goes a long way
towards making one. To this general and catholic qualification for his
task Mr. Dickens adds special advantages of a high order. He has action
of singular ease and felicity, a remarkably expressive eye, and a
mobility of the facial muscles which belongs to actors of the highest
grade. As in the case of Garrick, it is impossible to say whether love
or terror, humour or despair, are best simulated in a countenance which
expresses each and all on occasion with almost absolute perfection. This
is, no doubt, due in a great measure not to natural qualities only, but
to a varied and peculiar experience. Some will have it that actors, like
poets, are born, not made, but this is only true in a limited and guarded
sense.