I have been hammering away in that strenuous manner at my book, that I
have had leisure for scarcely any letters but such, as I have been
obliged to write; having a horrible temptation when I lay down my
book-pen to run out on the breezy downs here, tear up the hills, slide
down the same, and conduct myself in a frenzied manner, for the relief
that only exercise gives me.
Your letter to Miss Coutts in behalf of little Miss Warner I despatched
straightway. She is at present among the Pyrenees, and a letter from her
crossed that one of mine in which I enclosed yours, last week.
Pray stick to that dim notion you have of coming to Paris! How
delightful it would be to see your aged countenance and perfectly bald
head in that capital! It will renew your youth, to visit a theatre
(previously dining at the Trois Freres) in company with the jocund boy
who now addresses you. Do, do stick to it.
You will be pleased to hear, I know, that Charley has gone into Baring's
house under very auspicious circumstances. Mr. Bates, of that firm, had
done me the kindness to place him at the brokers' where he was. And when
said Bates wrote to me a fortnight ago to say that an excellent opening
had presented itself at Baring's, he added that the brokers gave Charley
"so high a character for ability and zeal" that it would be unfair to
receive him as a volunteer, and he must begin at a fifty-pound salary,
to which I graciously consented.
As to the suffrage, I have lost hope even in the ballot. We appear to me
to have proved the failure of representative institutions without an
educated and advanced people to support them. What with teaching people
to "keep in their stations," what with bringing up the soul and body of
the land to be a good child, or to go to the beershop, to go a-poaching
and go to the devil; what with having no such thing as a middle class
(for though we are perpetually bragging of it as our safety, it is
nothing but a poor fringe on the mantle of the upper); what with
flunkyism, toadyism, letting the most contemptible lords come in for all
manner of places, reading _The Court Circular_ for the New Testament, I
do reluctantly believe that the English people are habitually consenting
parties to the miserable imbecility into which we have fallen, _and
never will help themselves out of it_. Who is to do it, if anybody is,
God knows. But at present we are on the down-hill road to being
conquered, and the people WILL be content to bear it, sing "Rule
Britannia," and WILL NOT be saved.
In No. 3 of my new book I have been blowing off a little of indignant
steam which would otherwise blow me up, and with God's leave I shall
walk in the same all the days of my life; but I have no present
political faith or hope--not a grain.
I am going to read the "Carol" here to-morrow in a long carpenter's
shop, which looks far more alarming as a place to hear in than the Town
Hall at Birmingham.
Kindest loves from all to your dear sister, Kate and the darlings. It is
blowing a gale here from the south-west and raining like mad.
Ever most affectionately.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Charles Dickens.]