When your Christmas letter did not arrive according to custom, I felt as
if a bit of Christmas had fallen out and there was no supplying the
piece. However, it was soon supplied by yourself, and the bowl became
round and sound again.
The Christmas number of "Household Words," I suppose, will reach
Lausanne about midsummer. The first ten pages or so--all under the head
of "The First Poor Traveller"--are written by me, and I hope you will
find, in the story of the soldier which they contain, something that may
move you a little. It moved me _not_ a little in the writing, and I
believe has touched a vast number of people. We have sold eighty
thousand of it.
I am but newly come home from reading at Reading (where I succeeded poor
Talfourd as the president of an institution), and at Sherborne, in
Dorsetshire, and at Bradford, in Yorkshire. Wonderful audiences! and the
number at the last place three thousand seven hundred. And yet but for
the noise of their laughing and cheering, they "went" like one man.
The absorption of the English mind in the war is, to me, a melancholy
thing. Every other subject of popular solicitude and sympathy goes down
before it. I fear I clearly see that for years to come domestic reforms
are shaken to the root; every miserable red-tapist flourishes war over
the head of every protester against his humbug; and everything connected
with it is pushed to such an unreasonable extent, that, however kind and
necessary it may be in itself, it becomes ridiculous. For all this it is
an indubitable fact, I conceive, that Russia MUST BE stopped, and that
the future peace of the world renders the war imperative upon us. The
Duke of Newcastle lately addressed a private letter to the newspapers,
entreating them to exercise a larger discretion in respect of the
letters of "Our Own Correspondents," against which Lord Raglan protests
as giving the Emperor of Russia information for nothing which would cost
him (if indeed he could get it at all) fifty or a hundred thousand
pounds a year. The communication has not been attended with much effect,
so far as I can see. In the meantime I do suppose we have the
wretchedest Ministry that ever was--in whom nobody not in office of some
sort believes--yet whom there is nobody to displace. The strangest
result, perhaps, of years of Reformed Parliaments that ever the general
sagacity did _not_ foresee.
Let me recommend you, as a brother-reader of high distinction, two
comedies, both Goldsmith's--"She Stoops to Conquer" and "The
Good-natured Man." Both are so admirable and so delightfully written
that they read wonderfully. A friend of mine, Forster, who wrote "The
Life of Goldsmith," was very ill a year or so ago, and begged me to read
to him one night as he lay in bed, "something of Goldsmith's." I fell
upon "She Stoops to Conquer," and we enjoyed it with that wonderful
intensity, that I believe he began to get better in the first scene, and
was all right again in the fifth act.
I am charmed by your account of Haldimand, to whom my love. Tell him
Sydney Smith's daughter has privately printed a life of her father with
selections from his letters, which has great merit, and often presents
him exactly as he used to be. I have strongly urged her to publish it,
and I think she will do so, about March.
My eldest boy has come home from Germany to learn a business life at
Birmingham (I think), first of all. The whole nine are well and happy.
Ditto, Mrs. Dickens. Ditto, Georgina. My two girls are full of interest
in yours; and one of mine (as I think I told you when I was at Elysee)
is curiously like one of yours in the face. They are all agog now about
a great fairy play, which is to come off here next Monday. The house is
full of spangles, gas, Jew theatrical tailors, and pantomime carpenters.
We all unite in kindest and best loves to dear Mrs. Cerjat and all the
blooming daughters. And I am, with frequent thoughts of you and cordial
affection, ever, my dear Cerjat,
Your faithful Friend.
[Sidenote: Miss Mary Boyle.]