considerable. Its influence was felt all the more, no doubt, by reason
of the Novelist having had to contend during upwards of four hard
winter months, as he himself laughingly remarked just before his return
homewards, with “what he had sometimes been quite admiringly assured,
was a true American catarrh!” Nevertheless, even with its depressing and
exhausting influence upon him, he not only contrived to carry out the
project upon which he had adventured, triumphantly to its appointed
close, but even upon one of the most inclement days of an unusually
inclement season, namely, on Saturday, the 29th of February, 1868, he
actually took part as one of the umpires in the good-humoured frolic of
a twelve-mile walking match, up hill and down dale, through the snow,
on the Milldam road, between Boston and Newton, doing every inch of the
way, heel and toe, as though he had been himself one of the competitors.
The first six miles having been accomplished by the successful
competitor in one hour and twenty-three minutes, and the return six
in one hour and twenty-five minutes, the Novelist--although, with his
light, springy step, he had observantly gone the whole distance himself,
as we have seen, in his capacity as umpire,--presided blithely, in
celebration of this winter day's frolic, at a sumptuous little banquet,
given by him at the Parker House, a banquet that Lucullus would hardly
have disdained. Having appeared before his last audience in America
on the 20th of April, 1868, at New York, the Author-Reader addressed
through them to all his other auditors in the United States, after
that final Reading was over, a few genial and generous utterances of
farewell. Among other things, he said to them,--“The relations which
have been set up between us, while they have involved for me something
more than mere devotion to a task, have been sustained by you with the
readiest sympathy and the kindest acknowledgment. Those relations must
now be broken for ever. Be assured, however, that you will not pass
from my mind. I shall often realise you as I see you now, equally by
my winter fire, and in the green English summer weather. I shall
never recall you as a mere audience, but rather as a host of
personal friends,--and ever with the greatest gratitude, tenderness,
and consideration.” Two days before that last of all these American
Readings, he had been entertained at a public banquet in New York, on
the 18th of April, at Delmonico's. Two days after the final American
Reading and address of farewell, he took his departure from New York on
board the _Russia_, on Wednesday, the 22nd of April, arriving on Friday,
the 1st of May, at Liverpool.
Scarcely a month had elapsed after his return homewards, when the
prospective and definitive close of the great author's career as a
public Reader was formally announced. Again the Messrs. Chappell, of
New Bond Street, appeared between the Novelist and the public as
intermediaries. They intimated through their advertisement, that
“knowing it to be the determination of Mr. Dickens finally to retire
from public Readings, soon after his return from America, they (as
having been honoured with his confidence on former occasions) made
proposals to him, while he was still in the United States achieving
his recent brilliant successes there, for a final farewell series of
Readings in this country.” They added that “their proposals were at once
accepted in a manner highly gratifying to them;” and that the series,
which would commence in the ensuing autumn, would comprehend, besides
London, several of the chief towns and cities of England, Ireland, and
Scotland. Looking back to this preliminary advertisement now, there is a
melancholy significance in the emphasis with which it was observed--“It
is scarcely necessary to add that any announcement made in connection
with these Farewell Readings will be strictly adhered to and considered
final; and that on no consideration whatever will Mr. Dickens be induced
to appoint an extra night in any place in which he shall have been
announced to read for the last time.” According to promise, in the
autumn, these well-remembered Farewell Readings commenced. They were
intended to run on to the number of one hundred altogether. Beginning
within the first week of October, they were not to end until the third
week of the ensuing May. As it happened, Seventy-Four Readings were
given in place of the full hundred. On Tuesday, the 6th of October,
1868, the series was commenced. On Thursday, the 22nd of April, 1869,
its abrupt termination was announced, by a telegram from Preston, that
caused a pang of grief and anxiety to the vast multitude of those to
whom the very name of Charles Dickens had, for more than thirty years,
been endeared. The intimation conveyed through that telegram was the
fact of his sudden and alarming illness. Already, in the two preceding
months, though the public generally had taken no notice of the
circumstance, three of the Readings had, for various reasons, been
unavoidably given up--one at Hull, fixed for the 12th of March, and
previously one at Glasgow, fixed for the 18th, and another at Edinburgh,
fixed for the 19th of February. Otherwise than in those three instances,
the sequence of Readings marked on the elaborate programme had been most
faithfully adhered to; the Reader, indeed, only succumbing at last under
the nervous exhaustion caused by his own indomitable perseverance.
It is, now, matter of all but absolute certainty that his immense
energies, his elastic temperament, and his splendid constitution had
all of them, long before this, been cruelly overtaxed and overweighted.
Unsuspected by any of us at the time, he had, there can be little doubt
of it, received the deadliest shock to his whole system as far back
as on the 9th of June, 1865, in that terrible railway accident at
Staplehurst, on the fifth anniversary of which fatal day, by a strange
coincidence, he breathed his last. His intense vitality deceived himself
and everybody else, however, until it was all too late. The extravagant
toil he was going through for months together--whirling hither and
thither in express trains, for the purpose of making one exciting
public appearance after another, each of them a little world of animated
impersonations--he accomplished with such unfailing and unflagging
vivacity, with such an easy step, such an alert carriage, with such an
animated voice and glittering eye, that for a long while at least we
were under the illusion. Hurrying about England, Ireland, and Scotland
as he was during almost the whole of the last quarter of 1868 and during
the whole of the first quarter of 1869--dividing his time not only
between Liverpool and Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow, Dublin and
Belfast, with continual returns to his central reading-platform in the
great Hall near Piccadilly, but visiting afterwards as well nearly
all the great manufacturing towns and nearly all the fashionable
watering-places--the wonder is now not so much that he gave in at last
to the exorbitant strain, but that he did not give in much sooner.
A single incident will suffice to show the pace at which he was going
before the overwrought system gave the first sign of its _being_
overwrought. On the evening of Thursday, the 11th of March, 1869, an
immense audience crowded the Festival Concert Room at York, the people
there having only that one opportunity of attending a Farewell Reading.
As they entered the room, each person received a printed slip of
paper, on which was read, “The audience are respectfully informed that
carriages have been ordered tonight at half-past nine. Without altering
his Reading in the least, Mr. Dickens will shorten his usual pauses
between the Parts, in order that he may leave York by train a few
minutes after that time. He has been summoned,” it was added, “to
London, in connection with a late sad occurrence within the general
knowledge, but a more particular reference to which would be out of
place here.” His attendance, in point of fact, was suddenly required at
the funeral of a dear friend of his in the metropolis. To the funeral he
had to go. From the poignantly irksome duty of the Reading he could not
escape. Giving the latter even as proposed, he would barely have time to
catch the up express, so as to arrive in town by the aid of rapid night
travelling, and be true to the melancholy rendezvous at the scene of his
friend's obsequies. The Readings that night were three, and they were
given in rapid succession, the Reader, after the first and second,
instead of withdrawing, as usual, for ten minutes' rest into his
retiring room at the back of the platform, merely stepping for an
instant or two behind the screen at the side of the platform, putting
his lips to some iced champagne, and stepping back at once to the
reading-desk. The selected Readings were these--“Boots at the Holly-Tree
Inn,” the murder scene of “Sikes and Nancy,” and the grotesque monologue
of “Mrs. Gamp.” The Archbishop and the other principal people of York
were there conspicuously noticeable in the stalls, eagerly listening and
keenly observant, evidently in rapt attention throughout the evening,
but more especially during the powerfully acted tragic incident from
“Oliver Twist.” The Reading, as a whole, was more than ordinarily
successful--parts of it were exceptionally impressive. Directly it
was over, the Reader, having had a _coupé_ previously secured for his
accommodation in the express, was just barely enabled, at a rush, to
catch the train an instant or so before its starting. Then only, after
it had started, could he give a thought to his dress, changing his
clothes and snatching a morsel of supper in the railway carriage as he
whirled on towards London. The occasion referred to serves, at any
rate, to illustrate the wear and tear to which the Author had rendered
himself, through these Readings, more or less continually liable.
The jeopardy in which it placed his life at last was alarmingly
indicated by the peremptory order of his medical adviser, Mr. Frank
Beard, of Welbeck Street--immediately on his arrival in Preston on the
22nd of April, in answer to a telegram summoning him thither upon
the instant from London--that the Readings must be stopped then and
thenceforth. When this happened, a fortnight had not elapsed after the
grand Banquet given in honour of Charles Dickens at St. George's Hall,
in Liverpool. As the guest of the evening, he had, there and then, been
“cheered to the echo” by seven hundred enthusiastic admirers of his
presided over by the Mayor of Liverpool. That was on Saturday, the 10th
of April, during a fortnight's blissful rest in the whirling round of
the Readings. Immediately that fortnight was over, the whirling round
began again its momentarily interrupted gyrations. Three days in
succession there was a Reading at Leeds--on Thursday, the 15th, Friday,
the 16th, and Saturday, the 17th of April. On Monday, the 19th, there
was a Reading at Blackburn; on Tuesday, the 20th, another at Bolton; on
Wednesday, the 21st, another at Southport. Then came the morning of the
22nd, on the evening of which Thursday he was to have read at Preston.
By the then Dickens's medical adviser had arrived from London, the
audience had already begun assembling. Thereupon, not only was that
particular Reading prohibited, but, by the same wise mandate, all
thought of resuming the course, or even a portion of it, afterwards,
was as peremptorily interdicted. In one sense, it is only matter for
wistful regret, now, that that judicious interdict was so far removed,
three-quarters of a year afterwards, that the twelve Final Readings of
Farewell which were given at the St. James' Hall in the spring of 1870,
beginning on Tuesday, the 11th of January, and ending on Tuesday, the
15th of March, were' assented to as in any way reasonable.
That even these involved an enormous strain upon the system, was proved
to absolute demonstration by the statistics jotted down with the utmost
precision during the Readings, as to the fluctuations of the Reader's
pulse immediately before and immediately after each of his appearances
upon the platform, mostly two, but often three, appearances in a
single evening. The acceleration of his pulse has, to our knowledge,
upon some of these occasions been something extraordinary. Upon the
occasion of his last and grandest Reading of the Murder, for example,
as he stepped upon the platform, resolved, apparently, upon outdoing
himself, he remarked, in a half-whisper to the present writer,
just before advancing from the cover of the screen to the familiar
reading-desk, “I shall tear myself to pieces.” He certainly never acted
with more impassioned earnestness--though never once, for a single
instant, however, overstepping the boundaries of nature. His pulse just
before had been tested, as usual, keenly and carefully, by his most
sedulous and sympathetic medical attendant. It was counted by him just
as keenly and carefully directly afterwards--the rise then apparent
being something startling, almost alarming, as it seemed to us under the
circumstances.
Those twelve Farewell Readings are all the more to be regretted now when
we come to look back at them, on our recalling to remembrance the fact
that then, for the first time since he assumed to himself the position
of a Public Reader professionally, Dickens consented to give a series of
Readings at the very period when he was producing one of his imaginative
works in monthly instalments. He appeared to give himself no rest
whatever, when repose, at any rate for a while, was most urgently
required. He seemed to have become his own taskmaster precisely at
the time when he ought to have taken the repose he had long previously
earned, by ministering so largely and laboriously to the world's
enjoyment.
Summing up in a few words what has already been related in detail,
one passing sentence may here recall to recollection the fact, that in
addition to the various works produced by the Novelist during the
last three lustres of his energetic life as a man of letters, he had
personally, within that busy interval of fifteen years, given in round
numbers at a moderate computation some 500 of these Public Readings--423
in a strictly professional capacity, the rest, prior to 1858, purely
out of motives of generosity, in his character as a practical
philanthropist. In doing this he had addressed as many as five hundred
enormous audiences, whose rapt attention he had always secured, and
who had one and all of them, without exception, welcomed his coming and
going with enthusiasm. During this period he had travelled over many
thousands of miles, by railway and steam-packet. In a single tour,
that of the winter of 1867 and 1868, in America, he had appeared before
upwards of 100,000 persons, earning, at the same time, over 200,000
dollars within an interval of very little more than four months
altogether.
Later on, the circumstances surrounding the immediate close of this
portion of the popular author's life, as a Public Reader of his own
works, will be described when mention is made of his final appearance
in St. James's Hall, on the night of his Farewell Reading. Before any
particular reference is made, however, to that last evening, it may
be advisable, as tending to make this record more complete, that there
should now be briefly passed in review, one after another, those minor
stories, and fragments of the larger stories, the simple recounting
of which by his own lips yielded so much artistic delight to a great
multitude of his contemporaries. Whatever may thus be remarked in
regard to these Readings will be written at least from a vivid personal
recollection; the writer, throughout, speaking, as before observed, from
his intimate knowledge of the whole of this protracted episode in the
life of the Novelist.
Whatever aid to the memory besides might have been thought desirable,
he has had ready to hand all through, in the marked copies of the very
books from which the author read upon these occasions, or from which, at
the least, he had the appearance of reading. For, especially towards
the last, Charles Dickens hardly ever glanced, even momentarily, at the
printed pages, simply turning the leaves mechanically as they lay open
before him on the picturesque little reading-desk. Besides the Sixteen
Readings actually given, there were Four others which were so far
meditated that they were printed separately as “Readings,” though the
reading copies of them that have been preserved, were never otherwise
prepared by their author-compiler for representation. One of these
the writer remembers suggesting to the Novelist, as a characteristic
companion or contrast to Dr. Marigold,--meaning “Mrs. Lirriper.”
Another, strange to say,--about the least likely of all his stories one
would have thought to have been thus selected,--was “The Haunted Man.” A
third was “The Prisoner of the Bastile,” which would, for certain, have
been one of Dickens's most powerful delineations. The fourth, if only
in remembrance of the Old Bailey attorney, Mr. Jaggers, of the convict
Magwitch, and of Joe the blacksmith, the majority would probably have
been disposed to regret almost more than Mrs. Lirriper. Though the
lodging-house keeper would have been welcome, too, for her own sake,
as who will not agree in saying, if merely out of a remembrance of the
“trembling lip” put up towards her face, speaking of which the good
motherly old soul exclaims, “and I dearly kissed it;” or, bearing in
mind, another while, her preposterous reminiscence of the “impertinent
little cock-sparrow of a monkey whistling with dirty shoes on the clean
steps, and playing the harp on the area railings with a hoop-stick.”
Actually given or only meditated, the whole of these twenty
Readings--meaning the entire collection of the identical marked copies
used by the Novelist himself on both sides of the Atlantic--have, for
the verification of this retrospect, been placed for the time being in
the writer's possession. Selecting from among them those merely which
are familiar to the public, from their having been actually produced,
he here proposes cursorily to glance one by one through the well-known
series of Sixteen.
THE CHRISTMAS CAROL.
It can hardly be any matter for wonder that the “Christmas Carol” was,
among all the Readings, the author's own especial favourite! That it
was so, he showed from first to last unmistakeably. He began with it in
1853, and ended with it in 1870, upon the latter occasion appending to
the long since abbreviated narrative, that other incomparable evidence
of his powers as a humorist, “The Trial from Pickwick.” Whoever went for
the first time to see and hear Charles Dickens read one or other of his
writings, did well in selecting a night when he was going to relate his
immortal ghost story of Christmas. In compliance with the well-known
wish of the Novelist, the audience, as a rule, contrived to assemble
and to have actually taken their places several minutes before the time
fixed for the Reader's appearance upon the platform. Occasionally
it happened, nevertheless, that a stray couple or so would be still
drifting in, here and there, among the serried ranks of the stalls,
when, book in hand, with a light step, a smile on his face, and a flower
in his button-hole, the author had already rapidly advanced and
taken his place before his quaintly constructed but graceful little
reading-desk. Then it was, perhaps, at those very times, that a
stranger to the whole scene regarded himself almost as under a personal
obligation to these vexatious stragglers. For, until every one of
them had quietly settled down, there stood the Novelist, cheerfully,
patiently, glancing to the right and to the left, taking the bearings of
his night's company, as one might say, with an air of the most perfect
ease and self-possession. Whosoever, consequently, was in attendance
there for the first time, had an opportunity, during any such momentary
pause, of familiarising himself with the appearance of the famous
writer, with whose books he had probably been intimately acquainted for
years upon years previously, but whom until then he had never had the
chance of beholding face to face.
Everyone, even to the illiterate wayfarers in the public streets, had,
to a certain extent, long since come to know what manner of man Charles
Dickens was by means of his widely-scattered photographs. But, there,
better than any photograph, was the man himself,--the master of all
English humorists, the most popular author during his own lifetime that
ever existed; one whose stories for thirty years together had been read
with tears and with laughter, and whose books had won for him personal
affection, as well as fame and fortune. Anyone seeing him at those
moments for the first time, would unquestionably think--How like he
was to a very few indeed, how utterly unlike the vast majority of his
countless cartes-de-visites! To the last there was the bright,
animated, alert carriage of the head--phrenologically a noble
head--physiognomically a noble countenance. Encountering him within
a very few weeks of his death, Mr. Arthur Locker has said, “I was
especially struck with the brilliancy and vivacity of his eyes:” adding,
“there seemed as much life and animation in them as in twenty ordinary
pairs of eyes.” Another keen observer, Mr. Arthur Helps, has in the
same spirit exclaimed, “What portrait can do justice to the frankness,
kindness, and power of his eyes?” None certainly that ever was painted
by the pencil of the sunbeam, or by the brush of a Royal Academician.
Fully to realise the capacity for indicating emotion latent in them,
and informing his whole frame--his hands for example, in their every
movement, being wonderfully expressive--those who attended these
Readings soon came to know, that you had but to listen to his variable
and profoundly sympathetic voice, and to watch the play of his handsome
features.
The different original characters introduced in his stories, when he
read them, he did not simply describe, he impersonated: otherwise to
put it, for whomsoever he spoke, he spoke in character. Thus, when
everything was quiet in the crowded assembly, and when the ringing
applause that always welcomed his appearance, but which he never by any
chance acknowledged, had subsided--when he began: “A Christmas Carol, in
four staves. Stave one, Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead to begin with.”
Having remarked, yet further, that “there was no doubt whatever about
that,” the register of his burial being signed by this functionary, that
and the other--when he added, “_Scrooge_ signed it; and Scrooge's name
was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to”--Scrooge
in the flesh was, through the very manner of the utterance of his name,
brought vividly and upon the instant before the observant listener. “Oh!
but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was Scrooge!” _That_
we knew instinctively, without there being any need whatever for our
hearing one syllable of the description of him, admirably given in the
book, but suppressed in the Reading, judiciously suppressed enough,
because, for that matter, we saw and heard it without any necessity for
its being explained. As one might say--quoting here a single morsel from
the animated description of Scrooge, that was actually illustrated
by Scrooge's impersonator--it all “spoke out shrewdly in his grating
voice!” And it was thus, not merely with regard to the leading
personages of the little acted drama, as, turn by turn, they were
introduced; precisely the same artistic care was applied by the
impersonating realist to the very least among the minor characters,
filling in, so to speak, little incidental gaps in the background. A
great fat man with a monstrous chin, for example, was introduced just
momentarily in the briefest street-dialogue, towards the close of
this very Reading, who had only to open his lips once or twice for
an instant, yet whose individuality was in that instant or two so
thoroughly realised, that he lives ever since then in the hearers'
remembrance. When, in reply to some one's inquiry, as to what was
the cause of Scrooge's (presumed) death?--this great fat man with the
monstrous chin answered, with a yawn, in two words, “God knows!”--he was
before us there, as real as life, as selfish, and as substantial. So was
it also with the grey-haired rascal, Joe, of the rag-and-bottle shop;
with Topper, when he pronounced himself, as a bachelor, to be “a
wretched outcast;” with the Schoolmaster, when he “glared on Master
Scrooge with ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful
state of mind by shaking hands with him,” all of whom were indicated by
the merest touch or two, and yet each of whom was a living and breathing
and speaking verisimilitude.